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Title: Luther, vol. 5 of 6
Author: Grisar, Hartmann
Language: English
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LUTHER
IMPRIMATUR
EDM. CAN. SURMONT,
_Vic. Gen._
_Westmonasterii, die 13 Decembris, 1915._
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 V
LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO., LTD.
BROADWAY HOUSE, 68-74 CARTER LANE, E.C.
1916
A FEW PRESS OPINIONS OF VOLUMES I-IV.
“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).
“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_ (Vol. III).
“Historical research owes a debt of gratitude to Father Grisar for the
calm unbiased manner in which he marshals the facts and opinions on
Luther which his deep erudition has gathered.”—_The Tablet_ (Vol. IV).
CONTENTS
CHAPTER XXIX. ETHICAL RESULTS OF THE NEW TEACHING _pages_ 3-164
1. PRELIMINARIES. NEW FOUNDATIONS OF MORALITY.
Difficulties involved in Luther’s standpoint; poverty
of human reason, power of the devil, etc. How despair
may serve to excite humility _pages_ 3-7
2. THE TWO POLES: THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL.
His merits in distinguishing the two; what he means by
“the Gospel”; his contempt for “the Law”; the Law a
mere gallows _pages_ 7-14
3. ENCOUNTER WITH THE ANTINOMIANISM OR AGRICOLA.
Connection between Agricola’s doctrine and Luther’s.
Luther’s first step against Agricola; the Disputations;
the tract “Against the Antinomians”; action of the
Court; end of Agricola; the reaction of the Antinomian
movement on Luther _pages_ 15-25
4. THE CERTAINTY OF SALVATION AND ITS RELATION TO MORALITY.
Psychology of Luther’s conception of this certainty as
the very cause and aim of true morality. Luther’s last
sermons at Eisleben; notable omissions in these sermons
on morality; his wavering between Old and New _pages_ 25-43
5. ABASEMENT OF PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY.
Faith, praise and gratitude our only duties towards
God. “All works, apart from faith, must be for our
neighbour’s sake.” There are “no good works save such
as God commands.” Good works done without faith are
mere sins. Annulment of the supernatural and abasement
of the natural order. The Book of Concord on the
curtailment of free-will. Christianity merely inward.
Divorce of Church and World, of Religion and Morals.
Lack of obligation and sanction _pages_ 43-66
6. THE PART PLAYED BY CONSCIENCE AND PERSONALITY. LUTHER’S WARFARE WITH
HIS OLD FRIEND CASPAR SCHWENCKFELD.
On Conscience and its exercise; how to set it to rest.
Help of conscience at critical junctures. Conscience
in the religious questions of the day. Schwenckfeld
_pages_ 66-84
7. SELF-IMPROVEMENT AND THE REFORMATION OF THE CHURCH.
Whether Luther founded a school of godly, Christian
life. A Lutheran theologian on the lack of any teaching
concerning emancipation from the world. The means of
self-reform and their reverse side. Self-reform and
hatred of the foe. Companion phenomena of Luther’s
hate. Kindlier traits and episodes: The Kohlhase case
in history and legend. The Reformation of the Church
and Luther’s Ethics; His work “Against the new idol and
olden devil.” The Reformation in the Duchy of Saxony.
The aims of the Reformation and the currents of the age _pages_ 84-133
8. THE CHURCH APART OF THE TRUE BELIEVERS.
Luther’s earlier theory on the subject; Schwenckfeld;
the proceedings at Leisnig; the Popular Church
supported by the State; the abortive attempt to create
a Church Apart in Hesse _pages_ 133-144
9. PUBLIC WORSHIP. QUESTIONS OF RITUAL.
The “Deutsche Messe”; the liturgy not meant for “true
believers”; place of the sermon _pages_ 145-154
10. SCHWENCKFELD AS A CRITIC OF THE ETHICAL RESULTS OF LUTHER’S
LIFE-WORK.
Schwenckfeld disappointed in his hope of a moral
renovation. Luther’s wrong teaching on Law and Evangel;
on predestination, on freedom and on faith alone,
on the inward and outward Word. Schwenckfeld on the
Popular Church and the new Divine Service _pages_ 155-164
CHAPTER XXX. LUTHER AT THE ZENITH OF HIS LIFE AND
SUCCESS, FROM 1540 ONWARDS. APPREHENSIONS AND
PRECAUTIONS _pages_ 165-224
1. THE GREAT VICTORIES OF 1540-1544.
Success met with at Halle and Naumburg; efforts made at
Cologne, Münster, Osnabrück, Brunswick, and Merseburg.
Progress abroad; the Turkish danger; the Council _pages_ 165-168
2. SAD FOREBODINGS.
False brethren; new sects; gloomy outlook for the
future _pages_ 169-174
3. PROVISIONS FOR THE FUTURE.
A Protestant Council suggested by Bucer and
Melanchthon. Luther’s attitude towards the
Consistories. He seeks to reintroduce the Lesser
Excommunication. The want of a Hierarchy begins to be
felt _pages_ 174-191
4. CONSECRATION OF NICHOLAS AMSDORF AS “EVANGELICAL BISHOP” OF
NAUMBURG (1542).
The Ceremony. Luther’s booklet on the Consecration of
Bishops. Excerpts from his correspondence with the new
“Bishop” _pages_ 192-200
5. SOME FURTHER DEEDS OF VIOLENCE. FATE OF ECCLESIASTICAL WORKS OF ART.
End of the Bishopric of Meissen. Destruction of
Church Property. Luther’s attitude towards pictures
and images. Details as to the fate of works of art in
Prussia, Brunswick, Danzig, Hildesheim, Merseburg, etc.
Protest of the Nuremberg artists _pages_ 200-224
CHAPTER XXXI. LUTHER IN HIS DISMAL MOODS, HIS
SUPERSTITION AND DELUSIONS _pages_ 225-318
1. HIS PERSISTENT DEPRESSION IN LATER YEARS. PERSECUTION MANIA AND
MORBID FANCIES.
Weariness and pessimism. Grounds of his low
spirits; suspects the Papists; and his friends. His
single-handed struggle with the powers of evil _pages_ 225-241
2. LUTHER’S FANATICAL EXPECTATION OF THE END OF THE WORLD. HIS
HOPELESS PESSIMISM.
Why he was convinced that the end was nigh. Allusions
to the end of the world in the Table-Talk _pages_ 241-252
3. MELANCHTHON UNDER THE DOUBLE BURDEN, OF LUTHER’S PERSONALITY AND
HIS OWN LIFE’S WORK.
Some of Melanchthon’s deliverances. His state of
servitude. His last years. His real character.
Unfounded tales about him _pages_ 252-275
4. DEMONOLOGY AND DEMONOMANIA.
Luther’s devil-lore. On all the evil the devil works
in the world. On the devil’s dwelling-place, his
shapes and kinds. Witchcraft. Connection of Luther’s
devil-mania with his character and doctrine. The best
weapons to use against the devil _pages_ 275-305
5. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LUTHER’S JESTS AND SATIRE.
His humour in the home and in his writings. He finds
relief in it amidst his troubles. Some instances of his
jests _pages_ 306-318
CHAPTER XXXII. A LIFE FULL OF STRUGGLES OF CONSCIENCE _pages_ 319-375
1. ON LUTHER’S “TEMPTATIONS” IN GENERAL.
Some characteristic statements concerning his “combats
and temptations” _pages_ 319-321
2. THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF THE “TEMPTATIONS.”
“Supposing you had to answer for all the souls that
perish!” “If you do not penance shall you not likewise
perish?” “See how much evil arises from your
doctrine!” _pages_ 321-326
3. AN EPISODE. TERRORS OF CONSCIENCE BECOME TEMPTATIONS OF THE DEVIL.
Schlaginhaufen falls into a faint at Luther’s house.
Luther persuades himself that his remorse of conscience
comes from the devil _pages_ 326-330
4. PROGRESS OF HIS MENTAL SUFFERINGS UNTIL THEIR FLOOD-TIDE IN
1527-1528.
“What labour did it not cost me ... to denounce the
Pope as Antichrist.” The height of the storm; “tossed
about between death and hell”; “I seek only for a
gracious God.” Luther pens his famous hymn, “A safe
stronghold our God is still”; the hymn an echo of his
struggles _pages_ 330-345
5. THE TEN YEARS FROM 1528-1538. HOW TO WIN BACK PEACE OF CONSCIENCE.
At the Coburg. “I should have died without a struggle.”
The waning of the “struggles by day and by night”;
thoughts of suicide; how to reach peace _pages_ 346-356
6. LUTHER ON HIS FAITH, HIS DOCTRINE, AND HIS DOUBTS, PARTICULARLY IN
HIS LATER YEARS.
His notion of faith, (_a_) the accepting as true, (_b_)
the believing trust. His picture of himself and his
difficulties in late years; he compares his case with
that of St. Paul and with that of Christ in the Garden.
Some misunderstandings and false reports as to Luther’s
having himself condemned his own life-work _pages_ 356-375
CHAPTER XXXIII. THE COUNCIL OF TRENT IS CONVOKED, 1542.
LUTHER’S POLEMICS AT THEIR HIGHEST TENSION _pages_ 376-431
1. STEPS TAKEN AND TRACTS PUBLISHED SUBSEQUENT TO 1537 AGAINST THE
COUNCIL OF THE CHURCH.
The Schmalkalden meeting in 1537. Luther, after having
asked for a Council, now opposes such a thing. His “Von
den Conciliis.” The Ratisbon Interim. The Council is
summoned _pages_ 376-381
2. “WIDER DAS BAPSTUM ZU ROM VOM TEUFFEL GESTIFFT.” THE PAPACY RENEWS
ITS STRENGTH.
Luther is urged by highly placed friends to thwart
the plans of Pope Paul III. The fury of his new book.
How to deal with Pope and Cardinals. The “Wittenberg
Reformation” drawn up as a counterblast against the
Council of Trent _pages_ 381-389
3. SOME SAYINGS OF LUTHER’S ON THE COUNCIL AND HIS OWN AUTHORITY.
“If we are to submit to this Council we might as well
have submitted twenty-five years since to the lord of
the Councils.” How Luther would have spoken to the
Fathers of the Council had he attended it _pages_ 389-394
4. NOTABLE MOVEMENTS OF THE TIMES ACCOMPANIED BY LUTHER WITH “ABUSE AND
DEFIANCE DOWN TO THE VERY GRAVE.” THE CARICATURES.
The Brunswick raid and Luther’s treatment of Duke
Henry. His wrath against the Zwinglians: “A man that
is a heretic avoid.” The exception Luther made in
favour of Calvin, the friendly relations between the
two, their similarities and divergencies. Luther vents
his anger on the Jews in his “Von den Jüden” and “Vom
Schem Hamphoras” (1543); exceptional foulness of his
language in these two screeds. An earlier work of his
on the Jews; reason why, in it, he is fairer to the
Jews than in his later writings; some special motives
for his later polemics against the Jews; his “De
ultimis verbis Davidis.” His crusade against the Turks;
his translation of the work of Richardus against the
Alcoran. His last effort against the Papacy: “Popery
Pictured”; some of the abominable woodcuts described;
the state of soul they presuppose. Pirkheimer on “the
audacity of Luther’s unwashed tongue” _pages_ 394-431
CHAPTER XXXIV. END OF LUTHER’S LITERARY LABOURS. THE
WHOLE REVIEWED _pages_ 432-556
1. TOWARDS A CHRISTIANITY VOID OF DOGMA. PROTESTANT OPINIONS.
Harnack, etc., on Luther’s abandonment of individual
points of Christian doctrine and destruction of the
older idea of faith: The Canon and true interpretation
of Scripture; speculative theology. Luther’s own
admissions that Christian doctrine is a chain the
rupture of any link of which involves the rupture
of the whole. Luther’s inconsistencies in matters
of doctrine as instanced by Protestant theologians:
Original sin and unfreedom; Law and Gospel; Penance;
Justification and good works; his teaching on merit, on
the sacraments and the supper; on the Church and Divine
worship _pages_ 432-469
2. LUTHER AS A POPULAR RELIGIOUS WRITER. THE CATECHISM.
Collected works: Luther’s preface to the Latin
and German Collections. The Church-postils and
Home-postils; advantages and shortcomings of his
popular works; his silence regarding self-denial.
Origin and character of the Larger and Smaller
Catechisms. His Catechisms compared with the older
catechetic works _pages_ 470-494
3. THE GERMAN BIBLE.
The work of translation completed in 1534; how it was
launched on the public and the extent of its success.
The various revisions of the work and the notes of the
meetings held under Luther’s presidency. His anxiety
to use only the best German; “Chancery German.” The
language of the German Bible, its scholarship; its
inaccuracies; Luther’s “Sendbrieff” to defend his
addition of the word “alone” in Romans iii. 28.
The corrections of Emser the Dresden “scribbler.”
How Luther belittled certain books of Scripture.
Some side-lights into the psychology of Luther’s
translation. The Bible in earlier ages; the “Bible
in chains.” Luther’s indebtedness to earlier German
translators _pages_ 494-546
4. LUTHER’S HYMNS.
His efforts to interest his friends in the making of
hymns. His best-known hymn, “A safe stronghold our God
is still.” Other hymns; their character and musical
setting. The “Hymn for the Out-driving of Antichrist”
once falsely ascribed to Luther _pages_ 546-556
CHAPTER XXXV. LUTHER’S ATTITUDE TOWARDS SOCIETY AND
EDUCATION (continued in Vol. VI) _pages_ 557-606
1. HISTORICAL OUTLINES FOR JUDGING OF HIS SOCIAL WORK.
Luther’s “signal services” as they appear to certain
modern Protestants. The fell results of his twin
principle: 1º, that the Church is alien to the world,
and 2º, has no power to make binding laws _pages_ 557-568
2. THE STATE AND THE STATE CHURCH.
The State de-Christianised and the Church regarded
as a mere union of souls. Luther as “Founder of the
modern State.” The secular potentate assimilated to
King David. The New Theocracy. The Established Church.
Significance of the Visitation introduced in the Saxon
Electorate. The “Instructions of the Visitors.” Luther
to the end the plaything of divergent currents _pages_ 568-606
VOL. V.
THE REFORMER (III)
LUTHER
CHAPTER XXIX
ETHICAL RESULTS OF THE NEW TEACHING
1. Preliminaries. New Foundations of Morality
LUTHER’S system of ethics mirrors his own character. If Luther’s
personality, in all its psychological individuality, shows itself in
his dogmatic theology (see vol. iv., p. 387 ff.), still more is this
the case in his ethical teaching. To obtain a vivid picture of the
mental character of their author and of the inner working of his mind,
it will suffice to unfold his practical theories in all their blatant
contradiction and to examine on what they rest and whence they spring.
First and foremost we must investigate the starting-point of his moral
teaching.
To begin with, it was greatly influenced by his theory that the Gospel
consisted essentially in forgiveness, in the cloaking over of guilt and
in the soothing of “troubled consciences.” Thanks to a lively faith
to reach a feeling of confidence, is, according to him, the highest
achievement of ethical effort. At the same time, however, Luther lets
it be clearly understood that we can never get the better of sin. In
the shape of original sin it ever remains; concupiscence is always
sinful; and, even in the righteous, actual sin persists, only that its
cry is drowned by the voice speaking from the Blood of Christ. Man must
look upon himself as entirely under the domination of the devil, and,
only in so far as Christ ousts the devil from his human stronghold, can
a man be entitled to be called good. In himself he is not even free to
do what is right.
To the author of such doctrines it was naturally a matter of some
difficulty to formulate theoretically the injunctions of morality.
Some Protestants indeed vaunt his system of ethics as the best ever
known, and as based on an entirely “new groundwork.” Many others,
headed by Stäudlin the theologian, have nevertheless openly admitted
that “no system of Christian morality could exist,” granted Luther’s
principles.[1]
Of his principles the following must be borne in mind. Man’s attitude
towards things Divine is just that of the dumb, lifeless “pillar of
salt into which Lot’s wife was changed”; “he is not one whit better
off than a clod or stone, without eyes or mouth, without any sense
and without a heart.”[2] Human reason, which ought to govern moral
action, becomes in matters of religion “a crazy witch and Lady
Hulda,”[3] the “clever vixen on whom the heathen hung when they thought
themselves cleverest.”[4] Like reason, so the will too, in fallen
man, behaves quite negatively towards what is good, whether in ethics
or in religion. “We remain as passive,” he says, “as the clay in the
hands of the potter”; freedom there is indeed, “but it is not under
our control.” In this connection he refers to Melanchthon’s “_Loci
communes_,”[5] whence some striking statements against free-will have
already been quoted in the course of this work.[6]
It is only necessary to imagine the practical application of such
principles to perceive how faulty in theory Luther’s ethics must have
been. Luther, however, was loath to see these principles followed out
logically in practice.
Other theories of his which he applies either not at all or only to
a very limited extent in ethics are, for instance, his opinions that
the believer, “even though he commit sin, remains nevertheless a godly
man,” and, that, owing to our trusting faith in Christ, God can descry
no sin in us “even when we remain stuck in our sins,” because we “have
donned the golden robe of grace furnished by Christ’s Blood.” In his
Commentary on Galatians he had said: “Act as though there had never
been any law or any sin but only grace and salvation in Christ”;[7] he
had declared that all the damned were predestined to hell, and, in
spite of their best efforts, could not escape eternal punishment. (Vol.
ii., pp. 268 ff., 287 ff.)
In view of all the above we cannot help asking ourselves, whence the
moral incentive in the struggle against the depravity of nature is to
come; where, granted that our will is unfree and our reason blind,
any real ethical answerableness is to be found; what motive for moral
conduct a man can have who is irrevocably predestined to heaven or to
hell; and what grounds God has for either rewarding or punishing?
To add a new difficulty to the rest, Luther is quite certain of the
overwhelming power of the devil. The devil sways all men in the world
to such a degree, that, although we are “lords over the devil and
death,” yet “at the same time we lie under his heel ... for the world
and all that belongs to it must have the devil as its master, who
is far stronger than we and clings to us with all his might, for we
are his guests and dwellers in a foreign hostelry.”[8] But because
through faith we are masters, “my conscience, though it feels its
guilt and fears and despairs on its account, yet must insist on being
lord and conqueror of sin ... until sin is entirely banished and is
felt no longer.”[9] Yea, since the devil is so intent on affrighting
us by temptations, “we must, when tempted, banish from sight and mind
the whole Decalogue with which Satan threatens and plagues us so
sorely.”[10]
Such advice could, however, only too easily lead people to relinquish
an unequal struggle with an unquenchable Concupiscence and an
overwhelmingly powerful devil, or, to lose sight of the distinction
between actual sin and our mere natural concupiscence, between sin and
mere temptation; Luther failed to see that his doctrines would only
too readily induce an artificial confidence, and that people would put
the blame for their human frailties on their lack of freedom, their
ineradicable concupiscence, or on the almighty devil.
How, all this notwithstanding, he contrived to turn his back on the
necessary consequences of his own teaching, and to evolve a practical
system of ethics far better than what his theories would have led us
to expect, is plain from his warm recommendation of good works, of
chastity, neighbourly love and other virtues.
In brief, he taught in his own way what earlier ages had also taught,
viz. that sin and vice must be shunned; in his own way he exhorted all
to practise virtue, particularly to perform those deeds of brotherly
charity reckoned so high in the Church of yore. In what follows we
shall have to see how far his principles nevertheless intervened,
and how much personal colouring he thereby imparted to his system of
ethics. In so doing what we must bear in mind is his own way of viewing
the aims of morality and practical matters generally, for here we are
concerned, not with the results at which he should logically have
arrived, but with the opinions he actually held.
The difficulty of the problem is apparent not merely from the nature
of certain of his theological views just stated, but particularly
from what he thought concerning original sin and concupiscence, which
colours most of his moral teaching.
In his teaching, as we already know, original sin remains, even after
baptism, as a real sin in the guise of concupiscence; by its evil
desires and self-seeking it poisons all man’s actions to the end of
his life, except in so far as his deeds are transformed by the “faith”
from above into works pleasing to God, or rather, are accounted as
such. Owing to the enmity to God which prevails in the man who thus
groans under the weight of sin even “civil justice is mere sinfulness;
it cannot stand before the absolute demands of God. All that man
can do is to acknowledge that things really are so and to confess
his unrighteousness.”[11] Such an attitude Luther calls “humility.”
Catholic moralists and ascetics have indeed ever made all other virtues
to proceed from humility as from a fertile source, but there is no need
to point out how great is the difference between Luther’s “humility”
and that submission of the heart to God’s will of which Catholic
theologians speak. Humility, as Luther understood it, was an “admission
of our corruption”; according to him it is our recognition of the
enduring character of original sin that leads us to God and compels us
“to admit the revelation of the Grace of God bestowed on us in Christ’s
work of redemption,” by means of “faith, i.e. security of salvation.”
It is possible to speak “only of a gradual restraining of sin,” so
strongly are we drawn to evil. We indeed receive grace by faith, but
of any infused grace or blotting out of sin, Luther refuses to hear,
since the inclinations which result from original sin still persist.
Hence “by grace sin is not blotted out.” Rather, the grace which man
receives is an imputed grace; “the real answer to the question as to
how Luther arrived at his conviction that imputed grace was necessary
and not to be escaped is to be found in his own inward experience that
the tendencies due to original sin remain, even in the regenerate. This
sin, which persists in the baptised, ... forces him, if he wishes to
avoid the pitfall of despair ... to keep before his mind the consoling
thought ... ‘that God does not impute to him his sin.’”[12]
2. The two Poles: the Law and the Gospel
One of the ethical questions that most frequently engaged Luther’s
attention concerned the relation of Law and Gospel. In reality it
touched the foundations of his moral teaching.
His having rightly determined how Law and Gospel stood seemed to him
one of his greatest achievements, in fact one of the most important
of the revelations made to him from on High. “Whoever is able clearly
to distinguish the Law from the Gospel,” he says, “let such a one
give thanks to God and know that he is indeed a theologian.”[13]
Alluding to the vital importance of Luther’s theory on the Law with
its demands and the Gospel with its assurance of salvation, Friedrich
Loofs, the historian of dogma, declares: Here “may be perceived the
fundamental difference between the Lutheran and the Catholic conception
of Christianity,”[14] though he does not fear to hint broadly at the
“defects” and “limitations” of Luther’s new discovery; rather he admits
quite openly, that some leading aspects of the question “never even
revealed themselves clearly” to Luther, but betray a “notable” lack of
discernment, and that Luther’s whole conception of the Law contained
“much that called for further explanation.”[15]
In order to give here a clearer picture of Luther’s doctrine on this
matter than it was possible to do in the earlier passages where
his view was touched upon it may be pointed out, that, when, as he
so frequently does, he speaks of the Law he means not merely the
Old-Testament ceremonial and judicial law, but even the moral law and
commands both of the Old Covenant[16] and of the New,[17] in short
everything in the nature of a precept binding on the Christian the
infringement of which involves him in guilt; he means, as he himself
expresses it, “everything ... that speaks to us of our sins and of
God’s wrath.”[18]
By the Gospel moreover he understands, not merely the promises
contained in the New Testament concerning our salvation, but also those
of the Old Covenant; he finds the Gospel everywhere, even previous to
Christ: “There is not a book in the Bible,” he says, “which does not
contain them both [the Law and the Gospel]. God has thus placed in
every instance, side by side, the Law and the promises, for, by the
Law, He teaches what we are to do, and, by the promises, how we are to
set about it.” In his church-postils where this passage occurs Luther
explains more fully what he means by the “promise,” or Gospel, as
against the Law: It is the “glad tidings whereby grace and forgiveness
of sins is offered. Hence works do not belong to the Gospel, for it is
no law, but faith only [is required], for it is simply a promise and an
offer of Divine grace. Whoever believes it receives the grace.”[19]
As to the relationship between the Law and the Gospel: Whereas the Law
does not express the relation between God and man, the Gospel does. The
latter teaches us that we may, nay must, be assured of our salvation
previous to any work of ours, in order, that, born anew by such faith,
we may be ready to fulfil God’s Will as free, Christian men. The Law,
on the other hand, reveals the Will of God, on pedagogic grounds, as
the foundation of a system of merit or reward. It is indeed necessary
as a negative preparation for faith, but its demands cannot be complied
with by the natural man, to say nothing of the fact that it seems to
make certainty of salvation, upon which everything depends in our
moral life, contingent on the fulfilment of its prescriptions.[20]
From this one can see how inferior to the Gospel is the Law.
The Law speaks of “_facere_, _operari_,” of “deeds and works” as
essential for salvation. “These words”—so Luther told the students
in his Disputations in 1537 on the very eve of the Antinomian
controversy—“I should like to see altogether banished from theology;
for they imply the notions of merit and duty (“_meritum et debitum_”),
which is beyond toleration. Hence I urge you to refrain from the use of
such terms.”[21]
What he here enjoins he had himself striven to keep in view from
the earliest days of his struggle against “self-righteousness” and
“holiness-by-works.” These he strove to undermine, in the same measure
as he exalted original sin and its consequences. Psychologically his
attitude in theology towards these questions was based on the renegade
monk’s aversion to works and their supposed merit. His chief bugbear
is the meritoriousness of any keeping of the Law. For one reason
or another he went further and denied even its binding character
(“_debitum_”); caught in the meshes of that pseudo-mystic idealism to
which he was early addicted we hear him declaring: the Christian, when
he is justified by “faith,” does of his own accord and without the Law
everything that is pleasing to God; what is really good is performed
without any constraint out of a simple love for what is good. In
this wise it was that he reached his insidious thesis, viz. that the
believer stands everywhere above the Law and that the Christian knows
no Law whatever.[22] In quite general terms he teaches that the Law is
in opposition to the Gospel; that it does not vivify but kills; and
that its real task is merely to frighten us, to show us what we are
unable to do, to reveal sin and “increase it.” The preaching of the Law
he here depicts, not as “good and profitable, but as actually harmful,”
as “nothing but death and poison.”[23]
That such a setting aside of the specifically Mosaic Law appealed to
him, we can readily understand. But does he include in his reprobation
the whole “_lex moralis_,” the Natural Law which the Old Testament
merely confirmed, and which, according to Luther himself, is written
in man’s heart by nature? This Law he asserts is implicitly obeyed as
soon as the heart, by its acceptance of the assurance of salvation,
is cleansed and filled with the love of God.[24] And yet “in many
instances he applies to this Natural Law what he says elsewhere of the
Law of Moses; it too affrights us, increases sin, kills, and stands
opposed to the Gospel.”[25] Desirous of destroying once and for all any
idea of righteousness or merit being gained through any fulfilment of
any Law, he forgets himself, in his usual way, and says strong things
against the Law which scarcely agree with other statements he makes
elsewhere.
Owing to polemists taking too literally what he said, he has been
represented as holding opinions on the Law and the Gospel which in
point of fact he does not hold; indeed, some have made him out a real
Antinomian. Yet we often hear him exhorting his followers to bow with
humility to the commandments, to bear the yoke of submission and thus
to get the better of sin and death. Nevertheless, particularly when
dealing with those whose “conscience is affrighted,” he is very apt
to forget what he has just said in favour of the Law, and prefers to
harp on his pet theology: “Man must pay no heed to the Law but only to
Christ.” “In dealing with this aspect of the matter we cannot speak too
slightingly of so contemptuous a thing [as the Law].”[26]
His changeableness and obscurity on this point is characteristic of
his mode of thought.
At times he actually goes so far as to ascribe to the Law merely
an outward, deterrent force and to make its sole value in ordinary
life consist in the restraining of evil. Even when he is at pains to
emphasise the “real, theological” use of the Law as preparatory to
grace, he deliberately introduces statements concerning the Law which
do not at all help to explain the matter. According to him, highly
as we must esteem the Law for its sacred character, its effect upon
people who are unable to keep it is nevertheless not wholesome but
rather harmful, because thereby sin is multiplied, particularly the
sin of unbelief, i.e. as seen in want of confidence in the certainty
of salvation and in the striving after righteousness by the exact
fulfilling of the Law.[27] “Whoever feels contrition on account of the
Law,” he says for instance, “cannot attain to grace, on the contrary
he is getting further and further away from it.”[28]
Even for the man who has already laid hold on salvation by the “_fides
specialis_” and has clothed himself in Christ’s merits, the deadening
and depraving effect of the Law has not yet ceased. It is true that he
is bound to listen to the voice of the Law and does so with profit in
order to learn “how to crucify the flesh by means of the spirit, and
direct his steps in the concerns of this life.” Yet—and on this it is
that Luther dwells—because the pious man is quite unable to fulfil
the Law perfectly, he is only made sensible of his own sinfulness;
against this dangerous feeling he must struggle.[29] Hence everything
depends on one’s ability to set oneself with Christ above the Law and
to refuse to listen to its demands; for Christ, Who has taken the
whole load upon Himself, bears the sin and has fulfilled the Law for
us.[30] That this, however, was difficult, nay, frequently, quite
impossible, Luther discovered for himself during his inward struggles,
and made no odds in admitting it. He gives a warning against engaging
in any struggles with our conscience, which is the herald of the
Law; such contests “often lead men to despair, to the knife and the
halter.”[31] Of the manner in which he dealt with his own conscience
we shall, however, speak more in detail below (XXIX, 6).
It is not necessary to point out the discrepancies and contradictions
in the above train of thought. Luther was untiring in his efforts
at accommodation, and, whenever he wished, had plenty to say on
the matter. Here, even more plainly than elsewhere, we see both
his lack of system and the irreconcilable contradictions lying in
the very core of his ethics and theology. Friedrich Loofs says
indulgently: “Dogmatic theories he had none; without over much
theological reflection he simply gives expression to his religious
convictions.”[32]
It is strange to note how the aspect of the Law changes according
as it is applied to the wicked or to the just, though it was given
for the instruction and salvation of all alike. In the New Testament
we read: “My yoke is sweet and my burden light,” but even in the
Old Testament it had been said: “Much peace have they that love thy
Law.”[33] According to Luther the man who is seeking for salvation and
has not yet laid hold on faith in the forgiveness of sins must let
himself be “ground down [’_conteri_,’ cp. ‘_contritio_’] by the Law”
until he has learnt “to live in a naked trust in God’s Mercy.”[34] The
man, however, who by faith has assured himself of salvation looks at
the Law and its transgressions, viz. sin, in quite a different light.
“He lives in a different world,” says Luther, “where he must know
nothing either of sin or of merit; if however he feels his sin, he is
to look at it as clinging, not to his own person, but to the person
(Christ) on whom God has cast it, i.e. he must regard it, not as it
is in itself and appears to his conscience, but rather in Christ
by Whom it has been atoned for and vanquished. Thus he has a heart
cleansed from all sin by the faith which affirms that sin has been
conquered and overthrown by Christ.... Hence it is sacrilege to look
at the sin in your heart, for it is the devil who puts it there, not
God. You must say, my sins are not mine; they are not in me at all;
they are the sins of another; they are Christ’s and are none of my
business.”[35] Elsewhere he describes similarly the firm consolation
of the righteous with regard to the Law and its accusations of sin:
“This is the supreme comfort of the righteous, to vest and clothe
Christ with my sins and yours and those of the whole world, and then
to look upon Him as the bearer of all our sins. The man who thus
regards Him will soon come to scorn the fanatical notions of the
sophists concerning justification by works. They rave of a faith that
works by love (‘_fides formata caritate_’), and assert that thereby
sins are taken away and men justified. But this simply means to
undress Christ, to strip Him of sin, to make Him innocent, to burden
and load ourselves with our own sins and to see them, not in Christ,
but in ourselves, which is the same thing as to put away Christ and
say He is superfluous.”[36]
The confidence with which Luther says such things concerning the
transgression of the Divine Law by the righteous is quite startling;
nor does he do so in mere occasional outbursts, but his frequent
statements to this effect seem measured and dispassionate, nor were
they intended simply for the learned but even for common folk.
It was for the latter, for instance, that in his “Sermon von dem
Sacrament der Puss” he said briefly: “To him who believes, everything
is profitable and nothing harmful, but, to him who believes not,
everything is harmful and nothing profitable.”[37]
“Whosoever does not believe,” i.e. has failed to lay hold of the
certainty of salvation, deserves to feel the relentless severity of
the Law; let him learn that the “right understanding and use of the
Law” is this, “that it does no more than prove” that all “who, without
faith, follow its behests are slaves, stuck [in the Law] against their
will and without any certainty of grace.” “They must confess that by
the Law they are unable to make the slightest progress.”
“Even should you worry yourself to death with works, still your heart
cannot thereby raise itself to such a faith as the Law calls for.”[38]
Thus, by the Law alone, and without the help of Luther’s “faith,” we
become sheer “martyrs of the devil.”
It is this road, according to him, that the Papists tread and that he
himself, so he assures us, had followed when a monk. There he had been
obliged to grind himself on the Law, i.e. had been forced to fight his
way in despair until at last he discovered justification in faith.[39]
One thing that is certain is his early antipathy—due to the laxity of
his life as a religious and to his pseudo-mysticism—for the burdens
and supposed deadening effect of the Law, an antipathy to which he
gave striking expression at the Heidelberg Disputation.[40]
Luther remained all his life averse to the Law.[41] In 1542, i.e.
subsequent to the Antinomian controversy, he even compared the Law to
the gallows. He hastens, however, to remove any bad impression he may
have made, by referring to the power of the Gospel: “The Law does not
punish the just; the gallows are not put up for those who do not steal
but for robbers.”[42] The words occur in an answer to his friends’
questions concerning the biblical objections advanced by the Catholics.
They had adduced certain passages in which everlasting life is promised
to those who keep the Law (“_factores legis_”) and where “love of
God with the whole heart” rather than faith alone is represented as
the true source of righteousness and salvation. Luther solves the
questions to his own content. Those who keep the Law, he admits, “are
certainly just, but not by any means owing to their fulfilment of the
Law, for they were already just beforehand by virtue of the Gospel;
for the man who acts as related in the Bible passages quoted stands in
no need of the Law.... Sin does not reign over the just, and, to the
end, it will not sully them.... The Law is named merely for those who
sin, for Paul thus defines the Law: ‘The Law is the knowledge of sin’
(Rom. iii. 20).”—In reality what St. Paul says is that “_By the Law_
is the knowledge of sin,” and he only means that the Old-Testament
ordinances of which he is speaking, led, according to God’s plan, to
a sense of utter helplessness and therefore to a yearning for the
Saviour. Luther’s very different idea, viz. that the Law was meant for
the sinner and served as a gallows, is stated by W. Walther the Luther
researcher, in the following milder though perfectly accurate form: “In
so far as the Christian is not yet a believer he lacks true morality.
Even in his case therefore the Law is not yet abrogated.”[43]
“A distinction must be made,” so Luther declares, “between the Law for
the sinner and the Law for the non-sinner. The Law is not given to the
righteous, i.e. it is not against them.”[44]
The olden Church had stated her conception of the Law and the Gospel
both simply and logically. In her case there was no assumption of any
assurance of salvation by faith alone to disturb the relations between
the Law and the Gospel; one was the complement of the other; though,
agreeably to the Gospel, she proclaimed the doctrine of love in its
highest perfection, yet at the same time, like St. Peter, she insisted
in the name of the “Law,” that, in the fear of sin and “by dint of
good works” we must make sure our calling and election (2 Peter i.
10). She never ceased calling attention to the divinely appointed
connection between the heavenly reward and our fidelity to the Law,
vouched for both in the Old Testament (“For thou wilt render to every
man according to his works,” Ps. lxi. 13) and also in the New (“The
Son of Man will render to every man according to his works,” Mt. xvi.
27, and elsewhere, “For we must all be manifested before the judgment
seat of Christ that everyone may receive the proper things of the body
according as he hath done, whether it be good or evil,” 2 Cor. v. 10).
3. Encounter with the Antinomianism of Agricola
Just as the Anabaptist and fanatic movement had originally been
fostered by Luther’s doctrines, so Antinomianism sprang from the seed
he had scattered.
Johann Agricola, the chief spokesman of the Antinomians, merely carried
certain theses of Luther’s to their logical conclusion, doing so
openly and regardless of the consequences. He went much further than
his master, who often had at least the prudence here and elsewhere to
turn back half-way, a want of logic which Luther had to thank for his
escape from many dangers in both doctrine and practice. In the same
way as Luther, with the utmost tenacity and vigour, had withstood the
Anabaptists and fanatics when they strove to put in full practice
his own principles, so also he proclaimed war on the Antinomians’
enlargement and application of his ideas on the Law and Gospel which
appeared to him fraught with the greatest danger. That the contentions
of the Antinomians were largely his own, formulated anew, must be
fairly evident to all.[45]
Johann Agricola, the fickle and rebellious Wittenberg professor, seized
on Luther’s denunciations of the Law, more particularly subsequent
to the spring of 1537, and built them up into a fantastic Antinomian
system, at the same time rounding on Luther, and even more on the
cautious and reticent Melanchthon, for refusing to proceed along the
road on which they had ventured. In support of his views he appealed to
such sayings of Luther’s, as, the Law “was not made for the just,” and,
was “a gallows only meant for thieves.”
He showed that, whereas Luther had formerly refused to recognise any
repentance due to fear of the menaces of the Law, he had come to hold
up the terrors of the Law before the eyes of sinners. As a matter of
fact Luther did, at a later date, teach that justifying faith was
preceded by a contrition produced by the Law; such repentance due to
fear was excited by God Almighty in the man deprived of moral freedom,
as in a “_materia passiva_.”—The following theses were issued as
Agricola’s: “1. The Law [the Decalogue] does not deserve to be called
the Word of God. 2. Even should you be a prostitute, a cuckold, an
adulterer or any other kind of sinner, yet, so long as you believe,
you are on the road to salvation. 3. If you are sunk in the depths of
sin, if only you believe, you are really in a state of grace. 4. The
Decalogue belongs to the petty sessions, not to the pulpit. 11. The
words of Peter: ‘That by good works you may make sure your calling and
election’ [2 Peter i. 10] are all rubbish. 12. So soon as you begin to
fancy that Christianity requires this or that, or that people should be
good, honest, moral, holy and chaste, you have already rent asunder the
Gospel [Luke, ch. vi.].”[46]
In his counter theses Luther indignantly rejected such opinions: “the
deduction is not valid,” he says, for instance, “when people make out,
that what is not necessary for justification, either at the outset,
later, or at the end, should not to be taught” (as obligatory), e.g.
the keeping of the Law, personal co-operation and good works. “Even
though the Law be useless to justification, still it does not follow
that it is to be made away with, or not to be taught.”[47]
* * * * *
Luther was the more indignant at the open opposition manifest in
his own neighbourhood and at the yet worse things that were being
whispered, because he feared, that, owing to the friendly understanding
between Agricola, Jacob Schenk and others, the new movement might
extend abroad. The doctrine, in its excesses, seemed to him as
compromising as the teaching of Carlstadt and the doings of the
fanatics in former days. In reality it did embody a fanatical doctrine
and an extremely dangerous pseudo-theology; in Antinomianism the
pseudo-mystical ideas concerning freedom and inner experience which
from the very beginning had brought Luther into conflict with the
“Law,” culminated in a sort of up-to-date gnosticism.
We now find Luther, in the teeth of his previous statements, declaring
that “Whoever makes away with the Law, makes away with the Gospel.”[48]
He says: “Agricola perverts our doctrine, which is the solace of
consciences, and seeks by its means to set up the freedom of the
flesh”;[49] the grace preached by Agricola was really nothing more than
immoral licence.[50]
The better to counter the new movement Luther at once proceeded to
modify his teaching concerning the Law. In this wise Antinomianism
exercised on him a restraining influence, and was to some extent of
service to his doctrine and undertaking, warning him, as the fanatic
movement had done previously, of certain rocks to be avoided.
Luther now came to praise Melanchthon’s view of the Law, which hitherto
had not appealed to him, and declared in his Table-Talk: If the Law is
done away with in the Church, that will spell the end of all knowledge
of sin.[51]
This last utterance, dating from March, 1537, is the first to forebode
the controversy about to commence, which was to cause Luther so much
anxiety but which at the same time affords us so good an insight into
his ethics and, no less, into his character. Even more noteworthy are
the two sermons in which he expounds his standpoint as against that of
Agricola, whom, however, he does not name.[52]
The first step taken by Luther at the University against the Antinomian
movement was the Disputation of Dec. 18, 1537. For this he drew up a
list of weighty theses. When the Disputation was announced everyone
was aware that it was aimed at a member of the Wittenberg Professorial
staff, at one, moreover, whom Luther himself, as dean, had authorised
to deliver lectures on theology at Wittenberg. When Agricola failed
even to put in an appearance at the Disputation, as though it in no
way concerned him, and also continued to “agitate secretly” against
the Wittenberg doctrine, Luther, in a letter addressed to Agricola
on Jan. 6, 1538, withdrew from him his faculty to teach, and even
demanded that he should forswear theology altogether (“_a theologia in
totum abstinere_”); if he now wished to deliver lectures he would have
to ask permission “of the University” (where Luther’s influence was
paramount).[53] This was a severe blow for Agricola and his family.
His wife called on Luther, dropped a humble curtsey and assured him
that in future her husband would do whatever he was told. This seems
to have mollified Luther. Agricola himself also plucked up courage to
go to him, only to be informed that he would have to appear at the
second Disputation on the subject—for which Luther had drawn up a
fresh set of theses—and there make a public recantation. Driven into
a corner, Agricola agreed to these terms. At the second Disputation
(Jan. 12, 1538) he did, as a matter of fact, give explanations deemed
satisfactory by Luther, by whom he was rewarded with an assurance
of confidence. He was, nevertheless, excluded from all academical
office, and though the Elector of Saxony permitted him to act as
preacher this sanction was not extended by Bugenhagen to any preaching
at Wittenberg.[54] A third and fourth set of theses drawn up by
Luther,[55] who could not do enough against the new heresy, date from
the interval previous to the settlement, though no Disputation was held
on them that the peace might not be broken.
Agricola nevertheless was staunch in his contention, that, in his
earlier writings, Luther had expressed himself quite differently, and
this was a fact which it was difficult to disprove.
On account of Agricola’s renewal of activity, Luther, on Sep. 13,
1538, held another lengthy and severe Disputation against him and his
supporters, the “hotheads and avowed hypocrites.” For this occasion
he produced a fifth and last set of theses. He also insisted that his
opponent should publicly eat his words. This time Luther admitted that
some of his own previous statements had been injudicious, though he
was disposed to excuse them. In the beginning they had been preaching
to people whose consciences were troubled and who stood in need of a
different kind of language than those whose consciences had first to
be stirred up. Agricola, finding himself in danger of losing his daily
bread, yielded, and even agreed to allow Luther himself to pen the
draft of his retractation, hoping thus to get off more easily.
Instead of this, and in order, as he said, to “paint him as a
cowardly, proud and godless man,” Luther wrote a tract (“Against the
Antinomians”) addressed to the preacher Caspar Güttel, which might take
the place of the retractation agreed upon.[56] It was exceedingly rude
to Agricola. It represented him as a man of “unusual arrogance and
presumption,” “who presumed to have a mind of his own, but one that
was really intent on self-glorification”; he was a standing proof that
in the world “the devil liveth and reigneth”; by his means the devil
was set on raising another storm against Luther’s Evangel, like those
others raised by Carlstadt, Münzer, the Anabaptists and so forth.[57]
In spite of all this the writing, according to a statement made by
its author to Melanchthon, was all too mild (“_tam levis fui_”),
particularly now that Agricola’s great “obstinacy” was becoming so
patent.[58]
Luther even spoke of the excommunication which should be launched
against so contumacious a man. As a penalty he caused him to be
excluded from among the candidates for the office of Dean, and when
Agricola complained to the Rector and to Bugenhagen of Luther’s
“tyranny” both refused to listen to him.[59]
In the meantime Agricola expressed his complete submission in a printed
statement, which, however, was probably not meant seriously, and
thereupon, on Feb. 7, 1539, was nominated by the Elector a member of
the Consistory. He at once profited by this mark of favour to present
at Court a written complaint against Luther, referring particularly
to the scurrilous circular letter sent to Caspar Güttel. He protested
that, for wellnigh three years, he had submitted to being trodden under
foot by Luther, and had slunk along at his heels like a wretched cur,
though there had been no end to the insult and abuse heaped upon him.
What Luther reproached him with he had never taught. The latter had
accused him of many things which he “neither would, could nor might
admit.”[60]
Luther in his turn, in a writing, appealed to the Elector and his
supreme tribunal. In vigorous language he explained to the Court,
utterly incapable though it was of deciding on so delicate a question,
why he had been obliged to withstand the false opinions of his opponent
which the Bible condemned. Agricola had dared to call Luther’s doctrine
unclean, “a doctrine on behalf of which our beloved Prince and Lord
wagered and imperilled land and subjects, life and limb, not to speak
of his soul and ours.” In other words, to differ from Luther was
high treason against the sovereign who agreed with him. He sneers at
Agricola in a tone which shows how great licence he allowed himself
in his dealings with the Elector: Agricola had drawn up a Catechism,
best nicknamed a “Cackism”; Master Grickel was ridden by an angry imp,
etc. So far was he from offering any excuse for his virulence against
Agricola that he even expressed his regret for having been “so friendly
and gentle.”[61]
To the same authority, as though to it belonged judgment in
ecclesiastical matters, Melanchthon, Jonas, Bugenhagen and Amsdorf sent
a joint memorandum in which they recommended a truce, “somewhat timidly
pointing out to the Elector, that Luther was hardly a man who could be
expected to retract.”[62]
The Court Councillors now took the whole matter into their hands and
it was settled to lodge a formal suit against Agricola. The latter,
however, accepted a call from Elector Joachim of Brandenburg, to act as
Court preacher, and, in spite of having entered into recognisances not
to quit the town, he made haste to get himself gone to his new post
in Berlin (Aug., 1540). On a summons from Wittenberg, and seeing that,
unless he made peace with Luther, he could do nothing at Berlin, he
consented to issue a circular letter to the preachers, magistrates and
congregation of Eisleben[63] “which might have satisfied even Luther’s
exorbitant demands.”[64] He explained that he had in the meantime
thought better of the points under discussion, and even promised “to
believe and teach as the Church at Wittenberg believes and teaches.”
In 1545, when he came to Wittenberg with his wife and daughter, Luther,
who still bore him a grudge, whilst allowing them to pay him a visit,
refused to see Agricola himself. On another occasion it was only thanks
to the friendly intervention of Catherine Bora that Luther consented to
glance at a kindly letter from him, but of any reconciliation he would
not hear. Regarding this last incident we have a note of Agricola’s
own: “_Domina Ketha, rectrix cœli et terræ, Iuno coniunx et soror
Iovis_, who rules her husband as she wills, has for once in a way
spoken a good word on my behalf. Jonas likewise did the same.”[65]
Luther’s hostility continued to the day of his death. He found
justification for his harshness and for his refusal to be reconciled in
the evident inconstancy and turbulence of his opponent. For a while,
too, he was disposed to credit the news that Antinomianism was on the
increase in Saxony, Thuringia and elsewhere.
Not only was Agricola’s fickleness not calculated to inspire
confidence, but his life also left much to be desired from the moral
standpoint. Though Luther was perhaps unaware of it, we learn from
Agricola’s own private Notes, that the “vices in which the young take
delight” had assailed him in riper years even more strongly than in
his youth. Seckendorff also implies that he did not lead a “regular
life.”[66]
In 1547 Agricola, together with Julius Pflug, Bishop of Naumburg, and
Helding, auxiliary of Mayence, drew up the Augsburg Interim. As General
Superintendent of the Brandenburg district and at the invitation
of his Elector he assisted in the following year at the religious
Conferences of the Saxon theologians. He died at Berlin, Sep. 22, 1566,
of a disease resulting from the plague.
Of the feeling called forth in circles friendly to Luther by
Agricola’s part in the Interim we have proof in the preface which
introduces in the edition of 1549 Luther’s letter of 1539 to the Saxon
Court. Here we read: If the Eisleben fellow (Agricola) “was ever a
dissolute sharper, who secretly promoted false doctrine and made use
of the favour and applause of the pious as a cloak for his knavery,”
much more has this now become apparent by his outcry concerning the
Interim and the alleged good it does. The editors recall the fact,
that “Our worthy father in God, Dr. Martin Luther of happy memory,
shortly before his end, in the presence of Dr. Pommer, Philip,
Creutziger, Major, Jonas and D. Paulus Benedictus” spoke as follows:
“Eisleben (Agricola) is not merely ridden by the devil but the devil
himself lodges in him.” In proof of the latter statement they add,
that trustworthy persons, who had good grounds for their opinion,
had declared, that “it was the simple truth that devils had visibly
appeared in Eisleben’s house and study, and at times had made a great
disturbance and clatter; whence it is clear that he is the devil’s own
in body and soul.” “The truth,” they conclude, “is clear and manifest.
God gives us warnings enough in the writings of pious and learned
persons and also by signs in the sky and in the waters. Let whoever
wills be admonished and warned. For to each one it is a matter of life
eternal; to which may God assist us through Christ our Lord, Amen.”[67]
A writing of Melanchthon’s, dating from the last months of his
life and brought to light only in 1894, gives further information
concerning a later phase of the Antinomian controversy as fought out
between Agricola and Melanchthon.[68]
Melanchthon, for all his supposed kindliness, here empties the vials
of his wrath on Johann Agricola because the latter had vehemently
assailed his thesis “_Bona opera sunt necessaria_.” As a matter of
fact, so he writes, he bothered himself as little about Agricola’s
“preaching, slander, abuse, insistence and threats” as about the
“cackle of some crazy gander.” But Christian people were becoming
scandalised at “this grand preacher of blasphemy” and were beginning
to suspect his own (Melanchthon’s) faith. Hence he would have them
know that Agricola’s component parts were an “asinine righteousness,
a superstitious arrogance and an Epicurean belly-service.” To his
thesis he could not but adhere to his last breath, even were he to
be torn to pieces with red-hot pincers. He had refrained from adding
the words “_ad salutem_” after “_necessaria_” lest the unwary should
think of some merit. The “_ad salutem_” was an addition of Agricola’s,
that “foolish man,” who had thrust it on him by means of a “shameless
and barefaced lie.” He is anxious to win his spurs off the Lutherans.
Yet donkeys of his ilk do understand nothing in the matter, and God
will “punish these blasphemers and disturbers of the Churches.”
But in order that “a final end may at length be put to the evil
doing, slander, abuse and cavilling it will,” he says, “be necessary
for God to send the Turk; nothing else will help in such a case.”
Melanchthon compares himself to Joseph, who was sold by his brethren.
If Joseph had to endure this “in the first Church,” what then “will
be my fate in the extreme old age of this mad world (‘_extrema mundi
delira senecta_’) when licence wanders abroad unrestrained to sully
everything and when such unspeakably cruel hypocrites control our
destinies? I can only pray to God that He will deign to come to the
aid of His Church and graciously heal all the gaping wounds dealt her
by her foes. Amen.”
A certain reaction against the Antinomian tendency, is, as already
explained, noticeable in Luther’s latter years; at least he felt called
upon to revise a little his former standpoint with regard to the Law,
the motive of fear, indifference to sin and so forth, and to remove
it from the danger of abuse. He was also at pains to contradict the
view that his doctrine of faith involved an abrogation of the Law.
“The fools do not know,” he remarked, for instance, alluding to Jacob
Schenk, “all that faith has to do.”[69]
In his controversy with Agricola we can detect a tendency on his part
“to revert to Melanchthon’s doctrine concerning repentance.”[70]
He insisted far more strongly than before[71] on the necessity of
preaching the Law in order to arouse contrition; he even went so far
along Catholic lines as to assert, that “Penance is sorrow for sin with
the resolve to lead a better life.”[72] He also admitted, that, at the
outset, he had said things which the Antinomians now urged against
the Law, though he also strove to show that he had taken pains to
qualify and safeguard what he had said. Nor indeed can Luther ever have
expected that all the strong things he had once hurled against the Law
and its demands would ever be used to build up a new moral theology.
And yet, even at the height of the Antinomian controversy, he stood
firmly by his thesis regarding the Law, fear and contrition, viz. that
“Whoever seeks to be led to repentance by the Law, will never attain to
it, but, on the contrary, will only turn his back on it the more”;[73]
to this he was ever true.
“Luther,” says Adolf Harnack, “could never doubt that only the
Christian who has been vanquished by the Gospel is capable of true
repentance, and that the Law can work no real repentance.”[74]
The fact however remains, that, at least if we take his words as
they stand, we do find in Luther a doctrine of repentance which
does not claim faith in the forgiveness of sins so exclusively as
its source.[75] The fact is that his statements do not tally.[76]
Other Protestant theologians will have it that no change took place
in Luther’s views on penance,[77] or at least that the attempts
so far made to solve the problem are not satisfactory.[78] Stress
should, however, be laid on the fact, that, during his contest with
Antinomianism Luther insisted that it was necessary “to drive men to
penance even by the terrors of the Law,”[79] and that, alluding to his
earlier statements, he admits having had much to learn: “I have been
made to experience the words of St. Peter, ‘Grow in the knowledge of
the Lord.’”
Of the converted, i.e. of those justified by the certainty of
salvation, he says in 1538 in his Disputations against Agricola: The
pious Christian as such “is dead to the Law and serves it not, but
lies in the bosom of grace, secure in the righteousness imputed to him
by God.... But, so far as he is still in the flesh, he serves the law
of sin, repulsive as it may sound that a saint should be subject to
the law of sin.”[80] If Luther finds in the saint or devout man such
a double life, a free man side by side with a slave, holiness side by
side with sin, this is on account of the concupiscence, or as Luther
says elsewhere, original sin, which still persists, and the results of
which he regarded as really sinful in God’s sight.
Elsewhere in the same Disputations he speaks of the Law as
contemptuously as ever: “The Law can work in the soul nothing but
wanhope; it fills us with shame; to lead us to seek God is not in the
nature and might of the Law; this is the doing of another fellow,”
viz. of the Gospel with its preaching of forgiveness of sins in
Christ.[81] It is true he adds in a kindlier vein: “The Law ought
not so greatly to terrify those who are justified (‘_nec deberet
ita terrere iustificatos_’) for it is already much chastened by
our justification in Christ. But the devil comes and makes the Law
harsh and repellent to those who are justified. Thus, through the
devil’s fault, many are filled with fear who have no reason to fear.
But [and now follows the repudiation of the extreme theories of the
Antinomians], the Law is not on that account abolished in the Church,
or its preaching suppressed; for even the pious have some remnant of
sin abiding in their flesh, which must be purified by the Law.... To
them, however, the Law must be preached under a milder form; they
should be admonished in this wise: You are now washed clean in the
Blood of Christ. Yield therefore your bodies to serve justice and
lay aside the lusts of the flesh that you may not become like to
the world. Be zealous for the righteousness of good works.” There
too he also teaches how the “Law” must be brought home to hardened
sinners. In their case no “mitigation” is allowable. On the contrary,
they are to be told: You will be damned, God hates you, you are full
of unrighteousness, your lot is that of Cain, etc. For, “before
Justification, the Law rules, and terrifies all who come in contact
with it, it convicts and condemns.”[82]
Among the most instructive utterances touching the Antinomians is the
following one on sin, more particularly on breach of wedlock, which
may be given here as amplifying Luther’s statements on the subject
recorded in our vol. iii. (pp. 245, 256 f., etc.): The Antinomians
taught, so he says, that, if a man had broken wedlock, he had only to
believe (“_tantum ut crederet_”) and he would find a Gracious God. But
surely that was no Church where so horrible a doctrine (“_horribilis
vox_”) was heard. On the contrary what was to be taught was, that,
in the first place, there were adulterers and other sinners who
acknowledged their sin, made good resolutions against it and possessed
real faith, such as these found mercy with God. In the second place,
however, there were others who neither repented of their sin nor
wished to forsake it; such men had no faith, and a preacher who should
discourse to them concerning faith (i.e. fiducial faith) would merely
be seducing and deceiving them.
4. The Certainty of Salvation and its relation to Morality
How did Luther square his system of morality with his principal
doctrine of Faith and Justification, and where did he find any ground
for the performance of good works?
In the main he made everything to proceed from and rest upon a firm,
personal certainty of salvation. The artificial system thus built up,
so far as it is entitled to be called a system at all, requires only
to be set forth in order to be appreciated as it deserves. It will be
our duty to consider Luther’s various statements, and finally his own
summary, made late in life, of the conclusions he had reached.
_Certainty of Salvation as the cause and aim of True Morality. The
Psychological Explanation_
Quite early Luther had declared: “The ‘_fides specialis_,’ or assurance
of salvation, of itself impels man to true morality.” For, “faith
brings along with it love, peace, joy and hope.... In this faith all
works are equal and one as good as the other, and any difference
between works disappears, whether they be great or small, short or
long, few or many; for works are not pleasing [to God] in themselves
but on account of faith.... A Christian who lives in this faith has
no need to be taught good works, but, whatever occurs to him, that he
does, and everything is well done.” Such are his words in his “Sermon
von den guten Wercken” to Duke Johann of Saxony in 1520.[83]
He frequently repeats, that “Faith brings love along with it,” which
impels us to do good.
He enlarges on this in the festival sermons in his Church-Postils,
and says: When I am made aware by faith, that, through the Son of God
Who died for me, I am able to “resist and flaunt sin, death, devil,
hell and every ill, then I cannot but love Him in return and be well
disposed towards Him, keeping His commandments and doing lovingly and
gladly everything He asks”; the heart will then show itself full “of
gratitude and love. But, seeing that God stands in no need of our
works and that He has not commanded us to do anything else for Him but
to praise and thank Him, therefore such a man must proceed to devote
himself entirely to his neighbour, to serve, help and counsel him
freely and without reward.”[84]
All this, as Luther says in his “Von der Freyheyt eynes Christen
Menschen,” must be performed “by a free, willing, cheerful and
unrequited serving of our neighbour”;[85] it must be done “cheerfully
and gladly for Christ’s sake Who has done so much for us.”[86]
“That same Law which once was hateful to free-will,” he says in his
Commentary on Galatians, “now [i.e. after we have received the faith
and assurance of salvation] becomes quite pleasant since love is
poured into our hearts by the Holy Ghost.... We now are lovers of the
Law.”[87] From the wondrous well-spring of the imputed merits of Christ
there comes first and foremost prayer; if only we cling “trustfully
to the promise of grace,” then “the heart will unceasingly beat and
pulsate to such prayers as the following: O, beloved Father, may Thy
Name be hallowed, Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done.”[88] But all is
not prayer and holy desire; even when the “soul has been cleansed by
faith,” the Christian still must struggle against sin and against the
body “in order to deaden its wantonness.”[89] The Christian will set
himself to acquire chastity; “in this work a good, strong faith is of
great help, more so here than anything else.” And why? Because whoever
is assured of salvation in Christ and “enjoys the grace of God, also
delights in spiritual purity.... Under such a faith the Spirit without
doubt will tell him how to avoid evil thoughts and everything opposed
to chastity. For as faith in the Divine mercy persists and works all
good, so also it never ceases to inform us of all that is pleasing or
displeasing to God.”[90]
Whence does our will derive the ability and strength to wage this
struggle to the end? Only from the assurance of salvation, from
its unshaken awareness that it has indeed a Gracious God. For this
certainty of faith sets one free, first of all from those anxieties
with regard to one’s salvation with which the righteous-by-works are
plagued and thus allows one to devote time and strength to doing what
is good; secondly this faith in one’s salvation teaches one how to
overcome the difficulties that stand in one’s way.[91]
There was, however, an objection raised against Luther by his
contemporaries and which even presented itself to his own mind: Why
should a lifelong struggle and the performance of good works be
requisite for a salvation of which we are already certain? It was
re-formulated even by Albert Ritschl, in whose work, “Rechtfertigung
und Versöhnung,” we find the words: “If one asks why God, Who makes
salvation to depend on Justification by faith, prescribes good works
at all, the arbitrary character of the assumption becomes quite
evident.”[92] In Luther’s own writings we repeatedly hear the same
stricture voiced: “If sin is forgiven me gratuitously by God’s Mercy
and is blotted out in baptism, then there is nothing for me to do.”
People say, “If faith is everything and suffices of itself to make us
pious, why then are good works enjoined?”[93]
In order to render Luther’s meaning adequately we must emphasise his
leading answer to such objections. He is determined to insist on good
works, because, as he says, they are of the utmost importance to the
one thing on which everything else depends, viz. to faith and the
assurance of salvation.[94]
In his “Sermon von den guten Wercken,” which deserves to be taken as
conclusive, he declares outright that all good works are ordained—for
the sake of faith. “Such works and sufferings must be performed
in faith and in firm trust in the Divine mercy, in order that, as
already stated, all works may come under the first commandment and
under faith, and that they may serve to exercise and strengthen
faith, on account of which all the other commandments and works are
demanded.”[95] Hence morality is necessary, not primarily in order
to please God, to obey Him and thus to work out our salvation, but
in order to strengthen our “_fides specialis_” in our own salvation,
which then does all the needful.[96] It is necessary, as Luther says
elsewhere, in order to provide a man with a reassuring token of the
reality of his “_fides specialis_”; he may for instance be tempted to
doubt whether he possesses this saving gift of God, though the very
doubt already spells its destruction; hence let him look at his works;
if they are good, they will tell him at the dread hour of death: Yes,
you have the “faith.”[97] Strangely enough he also takes the Bible
passages which deal with works performed under grace as referring to
faith, e.g. “If thou wilt enter into life keep the commandments” (Mt.
xix. 17) and, “By good works make your calling and election sure” (2
Peter i. 10). The latter exhortation of St. Peter signifies according
to Luther’s exegesis: “Take care to strengthen your faith,” from the
works “you may see whether you have the faith.”[98] According to St.
Peter you are to seek in works merely “a sign and token that the faith
is there”; his meaning is not that you “are to do good works in order
that you may secure your election.” “We are not to fancy that thereby
we can become pious.”[99]
This thought is supplemented by another frequent exhortation of
Luther’s which concerns the consciousness of sin persisting even after
“justification.” The sense of sin has, according to him, no other
purpose than to strengthen us in our trustful clinging to Christ, for
as no one’s faith is perfect we are ever called upon to fortify it, in
which we are aided by this anxiety concerning sin: “Though we still
feel sin within us this is merely to drive us to faith and make our
faith stronger, so that despite our feeling we may accept the Word and
cling with all our heart and conscience to Christ alone,” in other
words, to follow Luther’s own example amidst the pangs of conscience
that had plunged him into “death and hell.”[100] “Thus does faith,
against all feeling and reason, lead us quietly through sin, through
death and through hell.” “The more faith waxes, the more the feeling
diminishes, and vice versa. Sins still persist within us, e.g. pride,
avarice, anger and so on and so forth, but only in order to move us
to faith.” He refrains from adducing from Holy Scripture any proof in
support of so strange a theory, but proceeds to sing a pæan on faith
“in order that faith may increase from day to day until man at length
becomes a Christian through and through, keeps the real Sabbath, and
creeps, skin, hair and all, into Christ.”[101] The Christian, by
accustoming himself to trust in the pardoning grace of Christ and by
fortifying himself in this faith, becomes at length “one paste with
Christ.”[102]
Hence the “_fides specialis_” as just explained, seems to be the chief
ethical aim of life.[103] This is why it is so necessary to strengthen
it by works, and so essential to beat down all anxieties of conscience.
Here Luther is speaking from his own inward experience. He says: “Thus
must the conscience be lulled to rest and made content, thus must all
the waves and billows subside.... Our sins towered mountain-high about
us and would fain have made us despair, but in the end they are calmed,
and settle down, and soon are seen no longer.”[104] It was only very
late in his life that Luther reached a state of comparative calm, a
calm moreover best to be compared with the utter weariness of a man
worn out by fatigue.[105]
_Luther’s Last Sermons at Eisleben on the Great Questions of Morality_
In the four sermons he preached at Eisleben—the last he ever
delivered—Luther gives utterance to certain leading thoughts quite
peculiar to himself regarding morality and the “_fides specialis_.”
These utterances, under the circumstances to be regarded as the ripest
fruit of his reflection, must be taken in conjunction with other
statements made by him in his old age. They illustrate even more
clearly than what has gone before the cardinal point of his teaching
now under discussion, which, even more than any other, has had the bad
luck to be so often wrongly presented by combatants on either side.
Luther’s four sermons at Eisleben, which practically constitute his
Last Will and Testament of his views on faith and good works, were
delivered before a great concourse of people. A note on one delivered
on Feb. 2, 1546, tells us: “So great was the number of listeners
collected from the surrounding neighbourhood, market-places and
villages, that even Paul himself were he to come preaching could
hardly expect a larger audience.”[106] For the reports of his sermons
we are indebted to the pen of his pupil and companion on his journey,
Johann Aurifaber.[107] From their contents we can see how much Luther
was accustomed to adapt himself to his hearers and to the conditions
prevailing in the district where he preached. The great indulgence
then extended to the Jews in that territory of the Counts of Mansfeld;
the religious scepticism shared or favoured by certain people at the
Court; and, in particular, the moral licence—which, taking its cue
from Luther’s teaching, argued: “Well and good, I will sin lustily
since sin has been taken away and can no longer damn me,” as he
himself relates in the third sermon,[108]—all this lends colour to
the background of these addresses delivered at Eisleben. In particular
the third sermon, on the parable of the cockle (Mt. xiii. 24-30), is
well worth notice. It speaks of the weeds which infest the Church and
of those which spring up in ourselves; in the latter connection Luther
expatiates on the leading principles of his ethics, on faith, sin and
good works, and concludes by telling the Christian how he must live and
“grow in faith and the spirit.”[109] One cannot but acknowledge the
force with which the preacher, who was even then suffering acutely,
speaks on behalf of good works and the struggle against sin. What he
says is, however, tainted by his own peculiar views.
“God forgives sin in that He does not impute it.... But from this
it does not follow that you are without sin, although it is already
forgiven; for in yourself you feel no hearty desire to obey God, to go
to the sacrament or to hear God’s Word. Do you perhaps imagine that
this is no sin, or mere child’s play?” Hence, he concludes, we must
pray daily “for forgiveness and never cease to fight against ourselves
and not give the rein to our sinful inclinations and lusts, nor obey
them contrary to the dictates of conscience, but rather weaken and
deaden sin ever more and more; for sin must not merely be forgiven but
verily swept away and destroyed.”[110]
He exhorts his hearers to struggle against sin, whether original or
actual sin, and does so in words which place the “_fides specialis_” in
the first place and impose the obligation of a painful and laborious
warfare which contrasts strongly with the spontaneous joy of the just
in doing what is good, elsewhere taken for granted by Luther.
“Our doctrine as to how we are to deal with our own uncleanness
and sin is briefly this: Believe in Jesus Christ and your sins are
forgiven; then avoid and withstand sin, wage a hand-to-hand fight with
it, do not allow it its way, do not hate or cheat your neighbour,”
etc.[111]
Such admonitions strenuously to strive against sin involuntarily
recall some very different assurances of his, viz. that the man who
has once laid hold on righteousness by faith, at once and of his own
accord does what is good: “Hence from faith there springs love and joy
in God and a free and willing service of our neighbour out of simple
love.”
Elsewhere too he says, “Good works are performed by faith and out of
our heartfelt joy that we have through Christ obtained the remission
of our sins.... Interiorly everything is sweet and delicious, and
hence we do and suffer all things gladly.”[112] And again, just
as we eat and drink naturally, so also to do what is good comes
naturally to the believer; the word is fulfilled: Only believe and
you will do all things of your own accord;[113] as a good tree must
bring forth good fruit and cannot do otherwise, so, where there is
faith, good works there must also be.[114] He speaks of this as a
“_necessitas immutabilitatis_” and as a “_necessitas gratuita_,” no
less necessary than that the sun must shine. In 1536 he even declared
in an instruction to Melanchthon that it was not right to say that
a believer _should_ do good works, because he can’t help performing
them; who thinks of ordering “the sun to shine, a good tree to bring
forth good fruit, or three and seven to make ten?”[115]
* * * * *
Of this curious idealism, first noticed in his “Von der Freyheyt eynes
Christen Menschen,” we find traces in Luther till the very end of his
life.[116] In later life, however, he either altered it a little or
was less prone to insist on it in and out of season. This was due to
his unfortunate experiences to the contrary; as a matter of fact faith
failed to produce the effects expected, and only in rare instances and
at its very best was it as fruitful as Luther wished. The truth is he
had overrated it, obviously misled by his enthusiasm for his alleged
discovery of the power of faith for justification.
He was also fond of saying—and of this assurance we find an echo
in his last sermon—that a true and lively faith should govern even
our feeling, and as we are so little conscious of such a feeling and
impulse to what is good, it follows that we but seldom have this faith,
i.e. this lively certainty of salvation.
When a Christian is lazy, starts thinking he possesses everything and
refuses to grow and increase, then “neither has he earnestness nor a
true faith.” Even the just are conscious of sin (i.e. original sin),
but they resist it; but where there is a distaste for the beloved
Word of God there can be “no real faith.” Luther, to the detriment
of his ethics, was disposed to relegate faith too much to the region
of feeling and personal experience; this, however, he could scarcely
avoid since his was a “_fides specialis_” in one’s own personal
salvation. True religion, in his opinion, is ever to rejoice and be
glad by reason of the forgiveness of sins and cheerfully to run the
way of God’s service; this idea is prominent in his third sermon at
Eisleben. The right faith “is toothsome and lively; it consoles and
gladdens.”[117] “It bores its way into the heart and brings comfort
and cheer”; “we feel glad and ready for anything.”[118]
But because the actual facts and his experience failed to tally with
his views, Luther, as already explained, had recourse to a convenient
expedient; towards the close of his life we frequently hear him
speaking as follows: Unfortunately we have not yet got this faith, for
“we do not possess in our hearts, and cannot acquire, that joy which
we would gladly feel”; thus we become conscious how the “old Adam, sin
and our sinful nature, still persist within us; this it is that forces
you and me to fail in our faith.”[119] “Even great saints do not
always feel that joy and might, and we others, owing to our unbelief,
cannot attain to this exalted consolation and strength ... and even
though we would gladly believe, yet we cannot make our faith as strong
as we ought.”[120] He vouchsafes no answer to the objection: But why
then set up aims that cannot be reached; why make the starting-point
consist in a “faith” of which man, owing to original sin, can only
attain to a shadow, except perhaps in the rare instances of martyrs,
or divinely endowed saints?
Luther, when insisting so strongly that good works must follow “faith,”
as a moral incentive to such works also refers incidentally to our duty
of gratitude and love in return for this faith bestowed on us.
Thus in the Eisleben sermons he invites the believer, the better to
arouse himself to good works, to address God in this way: “Heavenly
Father, there is no doubt that Thou hast given Thy Son for the
forgiveness of my sins. Therefore will I thank God for this during my
whole life, and praise and exalt Him, and no longer steal, practise
usury or be miserly, proud or jealous.... If you rightly believe,” he
continues, “that God has sent you His Son, you will, like a fruitful
tree, bring forth finer and finer blossoms the older you grow.”[121] In
what follows he is at pains to show that good works will depend on the
constant putting into practice of the “faith”; the Justification that
is won by the “_fides specialis_” is insufficient, in spite of all the
comfort it brings; rather we must be mindful of the saying of St. Paul:
“If by the spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh you shall live.”
“But if your flesh won’t do it, then leave it to the Holy Ghost.”[122]
The motive for good works which Luther here advances, viz. “To thank
God, to praise and extol Him,”[123] is worthy of special attention;
it is the only real one he furnishes either here or elsewhere. Owing
to the love of God which arises in the heart at the thought of His
benefits we must rouse ourselves to serve Him. The idea is a grand one
and had always appealed to the noblest spirits in the Church before
Luther’s day. It is, however, a very different thing to represent this
motive of perfect love as the exclusive and only true incentive to
doing what is pleasing to God. Yet throughout Luther’s teaching this
is depicted as the general, necessary and only motive. “From faith and
the Holy Ghost necessarily comes the love of God, and together with
it love of our neighbour and every good work.”[124] When I realise by
faith that God has sent His Son for my sake, etc., says Luther, in his
Church-Postils, “I cannot do otherwise than love Him in return, do His
behests and keep His commandments.”[125] This love, however, as he
expressly states, must be altogether unselfish, i.e. must be what the
Old Testament calls a “whole-hearted love,” which in turn “presupposes
perfect self-denial.”[126]
It is plain that we have here an echo of the mysticism which had at one
time held him in thrall;[127] but his extravagant idealism was making
demands which ordinary Christians either never, or only very seldom,
could attain to.
The olden Church set up before the faithful a number of motives adapted
to rouse them to do good works; such motives she found in the holy fear
of God and His chastisements, in the hope of temporal or everlasting
reward; in the need of making satisfaction for sin committed, or,
finally, for those who had advanced furthest, in the love of God,
whether as the most perfect Being and deserving of all our love,
or on account of the benefits received from Him; she invited people
to weld all these various motives into one strong bond; those whose
dispositions were less exalted she strove to animate with the higher
motives of love, so far as the weakness of human nature allowed.
Luther, on the contrary, in the case of the righteous already assured
of salvation, not only excluded every motive other than love, but also,
quite unjustifiably, refused to hear of any love save that arising from
gratitude for the redemption and the faith. “To love God,” in his eyes,
“is nothing more than to be grateful for the benefit bestowed” (through
the redemption).[128] And, again, he imputes such power to this sadly
curtailed motive of love, or rather gratitude, that it is his only
prescription, even for those who are so cold-hearted that the Word of
God “comes in at one ear and goes out at the other,” and who hear of
the death of Christ with as little devotion as though they had been
told, “that the Turks had beaten the Sultan, or some other such tit-bit
of news.”[129]
_Some notable Omissions of Luther’s in the above Sermons on Morality_
Hitherto we have been considering what Luther had to say on the
question of faith and morality in his last sermons. It remains to point
out what he did not say, and what, on account of his own doctrines, it
was impossible for him to say; as descriptive of his ethics the latter
is perhaps of even greater importance.
In the first place he says nothing of the supernatural life, which,
according to the ancient teaching of the Church, begins with the
infusion of sanctifying grace in the soul of the man who is justified.
As we know, he would not hear of this new and vital principle in the
righteous, which indeed was incompatible with his theory of the mere
non-imputation of sin. Further, he also ignores the so-called “infused
virtues” whence, with the help of actual grace, springs the new motive
force of the man received into the Divine sonship. By his denial of
the complete renewal of the inner man he placed himself in opposition
to the ancient witnesses of Christendom, as Protestant historians of
dogma now admit.[130]
Secondly, he dismisses in silence the so-called actual grace. Not even
in answering the question as to the source whence the believer draws
strength and ability to strive after what is good, does he refer to
it, so hostile is his whole system to any co-operation between the
natural and the supernatural in man.
Thirdly, he does not give its due to man’s freedom in co-operating
in the doing of what is good; it is true he does not expressly deny
it, but it was his usual practice in his addresses to the people to
say as little as possible of his doctrine of the enslaved will.[131]
Along with faith, however, he extols the Holy Ghost. “Leave it to
the Holy Ghost!” Indeed faith itself, and the strong feeling which
should accompany it, are exclusively the work of the Holy Ghost. It
is the Holy Ghost alone Who believes, and feels, and works in man,
according to Luther’s teaching elsewhere. This action of God alone is
something different from actual grace. In the instructions he gave to
Melanchthon in 1536 concerning justification and works,[132] Luther
entirely ignores any action on man’s part as a free agent, and yet
here we have the “clearest expression” of his doctrine of how good
works follow on justification. The Protestant author of “Luthers
Theologie in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung” remarks of this work
(and the same applies to the above sermons and other statements):
“Luther is always desirous, on the one hand of depreciating man’s
claim to personal worth and merit, and on the other by his testimony
to God’s mercy in Christ, of furthering faith and the impulses and
desires which spring from faith and the spirit; here, too, he says
nothing of any choice as open to man between the Divine impulses
working within him and those of his sinful nature.”[133]
Fourthly, and most important of all, Luther says nothing of the true
significance of morality for the attainment of everlasting life.
The best and theologically most convincing reply to the objection of
which he spoke: “Well and good, then I shall sin lustily,” etc. would
have been: No, a good moral life is essential for salvation! The
strongest Bible texts would have been there to back such a statement,
and, to his powerful eloquence, it should have proved an attractive
task to crush his frivolous opponents by so weighty an argument.
Yet we find never a word concerning the necessity of good works for
salvation, but merely an account of the wonders worked by faith of
its own accord alone _after_ it has laid hold on the heart. This is
readily understood, if justification is purely passive and effected
solely by the Spirit of God which enkindles faith and, with it, covers
over sin as with a shield, then the very being of the life of faith
must be mere passivity, and there can be no more question of attaining
to salvation by means of good deeds performed with the aid of grace.
In the instruction for Melanchthon mentioned above we find at the
end this clear query: “Is this saying true: Righteousness by works
is necessary for salvation?” Luther answers by a distinction: “Not
as if works operate or bring about salvation,” he says, “but rather
they are present together with the faith that operates righteousness;
just as of necessity I must be present in order to be saved.” This
distinction, however, leaves the question just where it was before. He
concludes his remarks on this vital matter with a jest on the purely
external and fortuitous presence of works in the man received into
eternal life: “I too shall be in at the death, said the rascal when
he was about to be hanged and many people were hurrying to see the
scene.”[134]
All the more strongly did Luther in his usual way describe in his last
sermon the natural sinfulness which persists in man owing to original
sin.
The sin that still dwells within us “forces” man to prevent faith
and works coming to their own.[135] For “he is not yet without sin,
though he has the forgiveness of sins and is sanctified by the Holy
Ghost.” In consequence of the “foulness” within him “the longer he
lives the worse he gets.” “We cannot get rid of our sinful body.”[136]
For this reason even the “best minds” so often are indifferent to
eternal life. On account of the evil taint in our flesh we are
unable to rise as high as we ought.[137] But if original sin and
its workings were declared really sinful in man (for even the very
motions against “heartfelt pleasure” in God’s service are, so we are
told, “sins”[138]), then it is no wonder that Luther should have been
confronted with the question of which he speaks: “If sin be in me, how
then can I be pleasing to God?”—a question which formerly could not
have been asked of those whose original sin had been washed away in
baptism. The teaching of the olden Church had been, that original sin
was blotted out by baptism, but that the inclination to evil persisted
in man to his last breath, though without any fault on his part so
long as consent was lacking.[139]
Still less to be wondered at was it, that many, unable to regard
themselves as responsible or guilty on account of the involuntary
motions of original sin, began to doubt whether any responsibility
existed for evil actions or whether moral effort was within the bounds
of possibility.
Further, according to Luther, our constant exercise of ourselves in
faith and our “rubbing” ourselves against sin was finally to lead
“not merely to our sins being forgiven but to their being altogether
rooted up and swept away; for your shabby, smelly body could not enter
heaven without first being cleansed and beautified.”[140] Taking for
granted his mystic assumption that sinful concupiscence can at last
be “swept away,” he insists on our continuing hopefully “to amend
by faith and prayer our weakness and to fight against it until such
a change takes place in our sinful body that sin no longer exists
therein,”[141] though, in his opinion, this cannot entirely be until
we reach heaven. Yet experience, had he but opened his eyes to it,
here once again contradicted him. The “_fomes peccati_,” as the
Catholic Church rightly teaches, cannot be extinguished so long as man
is on this earth, though it may be damped, and, by the practice of
what is right and the use of the means of grace, be rendered harmless
to our moral life. The Church expected nothing unreasonable from man,
though her moral standards were of the highest. Luther, however, by
abandoning the Church’s ethics, came to teach a strange mixture of
perverted, unworkable idealism and all too great indulgence towards
human frailty.
_Luther’s Vacillation between the Two Faiths, Old and New, in the
Matter of Morality and the Assurance of Salvation_
Many discordant utterances, betraying his uncertainty and his
struggles, have been bequeathed to us by Luther regarding the main
questions of morality and as to how we may insure salvation. First we
have his statements with regard to the importance of morality in God’s
sight.
In 1537 in a Disputation on June 1 he denounced the thesis, “Good
works are necessary for salvation.”[142] In the same way, in a
sermon of 1535, he asserted that it was by no means necessary for us
to perform good works “in order to blot out sin, to overcome death
and win heaven, but merely for the profit and assistance of our
neighbour.” “Our works,” he there says, “can only shape what concerns
our temporal life and being”; higher than this they cannot rise.[143]
Yet, when thus degrading works, he had again and again to struggle
within his own heart against the faith of the ancient Church
concerning the merit of good deeds. Especially was this the case
when he considered the “texts which demand a good life on account
of the eternal reward,”[144] for instance, “If thou wilt enter into
life, keep the commandments” (Mt. xix. 17), or “Lay up for yourselves
treasure in heaven” (_ib._, vi. 20). With them he deals in a sermon
of 1522. The eternal reward, he here says, follows the works because
it is a result of the faith which itself is the cause of the works.
But the believer must not “look to the reward,” or trouble about it.
Why then does God promise a reward?—In order that “all may know
what the natural result of a good life will be.” Yet he also admits
a certain anxiety on the part of the pious Christian to be certain
of his reward, and the favourable effect of such a certainty on the
good man’s will.[145] Here he exhorts his listeners; “that you be
content to know and be assured that this indeed will be the result,”
whilst in another sermon of that same year he describes as follows the
promise of eternal life as the reward of works: “It is an incentive
and inducement that makes us zealous in piety and in the service
and praise of God.... That God should guide us so kindly makes us
esteem the more His Fatherly Will and the Mercy of Christ”—but on no
account “must we be good as if for the sake of the reward.”[146] He
also quotes incidentally Mt. xix. 29, where our Lord says that all
who leave home, brethren, etc. for His name’s sake “shall receive
a hundredfold and shall possess life everlasting”; also Heb. x. 35
concerning the “great reward” that awaits those who lose not their
confidence. Such statements, he refuses, however, to see referred to
salvation, which will be the equal portion of all true believers,
but, in his arbitrary fashion, explains them as denoting some extra
ornament of glory.[147]
* * * * *
“Good works will be present wherever faith is.” As this supposition, a
favourite one with Luther from early days, fails to verify itself in
practice, and as the expedients he proposed to meet the new difficulty
are scattered throughout his writings, an admirer in recent times
ventured to sum up these elements into a system under the following
headings: “Faulty morality is a proof of a faulty faith.” “The fact
of morality being present proves the presence of faith.” “Moral
indolence induces loss of faith.” “Zeal for morality causes faith to
increase.”[148] The true explanation would therefore seem always to
be in the assumption of a want of “faith,” i.e. of a lack of that
absolute certainty of personal salvation which should regulate all
religious life,[149] in other words moral failings should be held to
prove the absence of this saving certainty.
Seen in this light good works are of importance, as the outward
demonstration that a person possesses the “_fides specialis_,” and
in this wise alone are they a guarantee of everlasting happiness.
They prove “before the world and before his own conscience” that
a Christian really has the “faith.” This is what Luther expressly
teaches in his Church-Postils: “Therefore hold fast to this, that a
man who is inwardly a Christian is justified before God solely by
faith and without any works; but outwardly and publicly, before the
people and to himself, he is justified by works, i.e. he becomes
known to others as, and certain in himself that, he is inwardly
just, believing and pious. Thus you may term one an open or outward
justification and the other an inward justification.”[150] Hence
Luther’s certainty of salvation, however strong it may be, still
requires to be tested by something else as to whether it is the true
“faith” deserving of God’s compassion; for “it is quite possible for
a man never to doubt God’s mercy towards him though all the while he
does not really possess it”;[151] according to Luther, namely, there
is such a thing as a fictitious faith.
In Luther’s opinion “faith” was a grasping of something actually
there. Hence if God’s mercy was not there, then neither was there any
“faith.” Accordingly, an “unwarrantable assurance of salvation” was
not at all impossible, and works served as a means of detecting it.
Walther, to whom we owe our summary, does not, it is true, prove the
existence of such a state of “unwarrantable assurance” by any direct
quotation from Luther’s writings, and, indeed, it might be difficult
to find any definite statement to this effect, seeing that Luther
was chary of speaking of any failure in the personal certainty of
salvation, on which alone, exclusive of works, he based the whole work
of justification.
And yet, as Luther himself frequently says, moods and feelings are
no guarantee of true faith; what is required are the works, which,
like good fruit, always spring from a good tree.—So strongly, in
spite of all his predilection for faith alone, is he impelled again
and again to have recourse to works. In many passages they tend to
become something more than mere signs confirmatory of faith. We need
not examine here how far his statements concerning faith and works are
consistent, and to what extent the sane Catholic teaching continued to
influence him.
What is remarkable, however, is, that, in his commendable efforts
to urge the performance of works in order to curtail the pernicious
results of his doctrine, Luther comes to attribute a saving action
to “faith,” only on condition that, out of love of God, we “strive”
against sin. In one of his last sermons at Eisleben he tells his
hearers: Sins are forgiven by faith and “are not imputed _so far as
you set yourself to fight against them_, and learn to repeat the Our
Father diligently ... and to grow in strength as you grow in age; and
you must be at pains to exercise your faith by resisting the sins
that remain in you ... in short, you must become stronger, humbler,
more patient and believe more firmly.”[152] The conditional “so far
as” furnishes a key which has to be used in many other passages
where works are demanded as well as faith. Faith, there, is real and
wholesome “in so far as” it produces works: “For we too admit it
and have always taught it, better and more forcibly than they [the
Papists], that we must both preach and perform works, and that they
must follow the faith, and, that, where they do not follow there the
faith is not as it should be.”[153]
Nor does he merely say that works of charity must follow eventually,
but that charity must be infused by the Spirit of God together with
faith of which it is the fruit.
“For though faith makes us righteous and pure, yet it cannot be
without love, and the Spirit must infuse love together with faith.
In short, where there is true faith, there the Holy Ghost is also
present, and where the Holy Ghost is, there love and all good things
must also be.... Love is a consequence or fruit of the Spirit which
comes to us wrapped up in the faith.”[154] “Charity is so closely
bound up [with faith and hope] that it can never be parted from faith
where this is true faith, and as little as there can be fire without
heat and smoke, so little can faith exist without charity.”[155] From
gratitude (as we have heard him state above, p. 26) the man who is
assured of salvation must be “well disposed towards God and keep His
commandments.” But if he be “sweetly disposed towards God” this must
“show itself in all charity.”
Taking the words at their face value we might find in these and similar
statements on charity something reminiscent of the Catholic doctrine
of a faith working through love.[156] But though this is what Luther
should logically have arrived at, he was in reality always kept far
from it by his idea both of faith and of imputation. It should be
noted that he was fond of taking shelter behind the assertion, that
his “faith” also included, or was accompanied by, charity. He was
obliged to do this in self-defence against the objections of certain
Evangelicals—who rushed to conclusions he would not accept—or of
Catholic opponents. Indeed, in order to pacify the doubters, he even
went so far as to say, that love preceded the “faith” he taught, and
that “faith” itself was simply a work like any other work done for the
fulfilling of the commandments.
It was in this sense that he wrote in the “Sermon von den guten
Werken,” composed at the instance of his prudent friend Spalatin for
the Duke of Saxony: “Such trust and faith brings with it charity and
hope; indeed, if we look at the matter aright, charity comes first, or
at least simultaneously with faith. For I should not care to trust God
unless I believed He would be kindly and gracious to me, whereby I am
well disposed towards Him, trust Him heartily and perform all that is
good in His sight.” In the same connection he characterises “faith”
as a “work of the first Commandment,” and as a “true keeping of that
command,” and as the “first, topmost and best work from which all
others flow.”[157] It might seem, though this is but apparent, that he
had actually come to acknowledge the reality and merit of man’s works,
in the teeth of his denial of free-will and of the possibility of
meriting.
Of charity as involved in faith he wrote in a similar strain in 1519
to Johann Silvius Egranus, who at that time still belonged to his
party, but was already troubled with scruples concerning the small
regard shown for ethical motives and the undue stress laid on faith
alone: “I do not separate justifying faith from charity,” Luther told
him, “on the contrary we believe because God, in Whom we believe,
pleases us and is loved by us.” To him all this was quite clear and
plain, but the new-comers who had busied themselves with faith, hope
and charity “understood not one of the three.”[158]
We may recall how the enquiring mind of Egranus was by no means
entirely satisfied by this explanation. In 1534 he published a bitter
attack on the Lutheran doctrine of works, though he never returned
more than half-way from Lutheranism to the olden Church.[159]
Many, like Silvius Egranus, who at the outset had been won over to the
new religion, took fright when they saw that, owing to the preference
shown to faith (i.e. the purely personal assurance of salvation), the
ethical principles regarding Christian perfection and man’s aim in
life, received but scant consideration.
Many truly saw therein an alarming abasement of the moral standard and
accordingly returned to the doctrine of their fathers. As the ideal to
be aimed at throughout life the Church had set up before them progress
in the love of God, encouraging them to put this love in practice by
fidelity to the duties of their calling and by a humble and confident
trust in God’s Fatherly promises rather than in any perilous “_fides
specialis_.”
In previous ages Christian perfection had rightly been thought to
consist in the development of the moral virtues, particularly of
charity, the queen of all the others. Now, however, Luther represented
“the consoling faith in the forgiveness of sins as the sum of
Christian perfection.”[160] According to him the “real essence of
personal Christianity lies in the confidence of the justified sinner
that he shares the paternal love of the Almighty of which he has been
assured by the work and person of Jesus Christ.” In this sense alone
can he be said to have “rediscovered Christianity” as a religion. We
are told that “the essence of Lutheran Christianity is to be found
in Luther’s reduction of practical Christianity to the doctrine of
salvation.”[161] He “altered the ideal of religious perfection as
no other Christian before his day had ever done.” The “revulsion”
in moral ideals which this necessarily involved spelt “a huge
decline.”[162]
George Wicel, who, after having long been an adherent of Lutheranism,
broke away from it in consequence of the moral results referred to,
wrote, in 1533, with much bitterness in the defence he addressed to
Justus Jonas: “Amongst you one hears of nothing but of remitting
and forgiving; you don’t seem to see that your seductions sow more
sins than ever you can take away. Your people, it is true, are so
constituted that they will only hear of the forgiving and never of
the retaining of sin (John xx. 23); evidently they stand more in need
of being loosed than of being bound. Ah, you comfortable theologians!
You are indeed sharp-sighted enough in all this business, for were
you to bind as often as you loose, you, the ringleaders of the party,
would soon find yourselves all alone with your faith, and might then
withdraw into some hole to weep for the loss of your authority and
congregation.” “Ah, you rascals, what a fine Evangelical mode of life
have you wrought with your preachment on grace.”[163]
5. Abasement of Practical Christianity
To follow up the above statement emanating from a Protestant
source, concerning the “huge decline” in moral ideals and practical
Christianity involved in Luther’s work, we shall go on to consider how
greatly he did in point of fact narrow and restrict ethical effort in
comparison with what was required by the ethics of earlier days. In so
doing he was following the psychological impulse discernible even in
the first beginnings of his dislike for the austerity of his Order and
the precepts of the Church.
_Lower Moral Standards_
1. The only works of obligation in the service of God are faith, praise
and thanksgiving. God, he says, demands only our faith, our praise
and our gratitude. Of our works He has no need.[164] He restricts our
“deeds towards God” to the praise-offering or thank-offering for the
good received, and to the prayer-offering “or Our Father, against the
evil and badness we would wish to be rid of.”[165] This service is the
duty of each individual Christian and is practised in common in Divine
worship. The latter is fixed and controlled with the tacit consent of
the congregation by the ministers who represent the people; in this we
find the trace of Luther’s innate aversion to any law or obligation
which leads him to avoid anything savouring of legislative action.[166]
In the preface to his instructions to the Visitors in 1528 he declares,
for instance, that the rules laid down were not meant to “found new
Papal Decretals”; they were rather to be taken as a “history of and
witness to our faith” and not as “strict commands.”[167] This well
expresses his antipathy to the visible Catholic Church, her hierarchy
and her so-called man-made ordinances for public worship.
Since, to his mind, it is impossible to offer God anything but love,
thanksgiving and prayer, it follows that, firstly, the Eucharistic
Sacrifice falls, and, with it, all the sacrifices made to the greater
glory of God by self-denial and abnegation, obedience or bodily
penances, together with all those works—practised in imitation of
Christ by noble souls—done over and above the bounden duties of each
one’s calling. He held that it was wrong to say of such sacrifices,
made by contrite and loving hearts, that they were both to God’s
glory and to our own advantage, or to endeavour to justify them by
arguing that: Whoever does not do great things for God must expect
small recompense. Among the things which fell before him were: vows,
processions, pilgrimages, veneration of relics and of the Saints,
ecclesiastical blessings and sacramentals, not to speak of holy
days and prescribed fasts. With good reason can one speak of a “huge
decline.”
He justifies as follows his radical opposition to the Catholic forms
of Divine worship: “The only good we can do in God’s service is to
praise and thank Him, in which in fact the only true worship of God
consists.... If any other worship of God be proposed to you, know that
it is error and deception.”[168] “It is a rank scandal that the Papists
should encourage people to toil for God with works so as thereby to
expiate their sins and secure grace.... If you wish to believe aright
and really to lay hold on Christ, you must discard all works whereby
you may think you labour for God; all such are nothing but scandals
leading you away from Christ and from God; in God’s sight no work is of
any value except Christ’s own; this you must leave to toil for you in
God’s sight; you yourself must perform no other work for Him than to
believe that Christ does His work for you.”[169]
In the same passage he attempts to vindicate this species of Quietism
with the help of some recollections from his own earlier career, viz.
by the mystic principle which had at one time ruled him: “You must be
blind and lame, deaf and dead, poor and leprous, or else you will be
scandalised in Christ. This is what it means to know Christ aright and
to accept Him; this is to believe as befits a true Christian.”[170]
2. “All other works, apart from faith, must be directed towards our
neighbour.”[171] As we know, besides that faith, gratitude and love
which are God’s due, Luther admits no good works but those of charity
towards our neighbour. By our faith we give to God all that He asks of
us. “After this, think only of doing for your neighbour what Christ
has done for you, and let all your works and all your life go to the
service of your neighbour.”[172]—God, he says elsewhere, asks only for
our thank-offering; “look upon Me as a Gracious God and I am content”;
“thereafter serve your neighbour, freely and for nothing.”[173] Good
works in his eyes are only “good when they are profitable to others and
not to yourself.” Indeed he goes so far as to assert: “If you find
yourself performing a work for God, or for His Saints, or for yourself
and not alone for your neighbour, know that the work is not good.”[174]
The only explanation of such sentences, as already hinted, is to be
found in his passionate polemics against the worship and the pious
exercises of the Catholics. It is true that such practices were sullied
at that time by certain blemishes, owing to the abuses rampant in the
Church; yet the Catholic could confidently answer in self-defence in
the words Luther proceeds to put on his lips: Such “works are spiritual
and profitable to the soul of our neighbour, and God thereby is served
and propitiated and His Grace obtained.”
Luther rudely retorts: “You lie in your throat; God is served not
by works but by faith; faith must do everything that is to be done
as between God and ourselves.” That the priests and monks should
vaunt their religious exercises as spiritual treasures, he brands as
a “Satanic lie.” “The works of the Papists such as organ-playing,
chanting, vesting, ringing, smoking [incensation], sprinkling,
pilgriming and fasting, etc., are doubtless fine and many, grand and
long, broad and thick works, but about them there is nothing good,
useful or profitable.”
3. “Know that there are no good works but such as God has commanded.”
What, apart from faith, makes a work a good one is solely God’s express
command. Luther, while finding fault with the self-chosen works of the
Catholics, points to the Ten Commandments as summing up every good
work willed by God. “There used to be ecclesiastical precepts which
were to supersede the Decalogue.” “The commandments of the Church were
invented and set up by men in addition to and beyond God’s Word. Luther
therefore deals with the true worship of God in the light of the Ten
Commandments.”[175] As for the Evangelical Counsels so solemnly enacted
in the New Testament, viz. the striving after a perfection which is
not of obligation, Luther, urged on by his theory that only what is
actually commanded partakes of the nature of a good work, came very
near branding them as an invention of the Papists.
They have “made the Counsels twelve” in number,[176] he says, “and
twist the Gospel as they please.” They have split the Gospel into two,
into “_Consilia et præcepta_.” “Christ,” so he teaches, “gave only
one Counsel in the whole of the Gospel, viz. that of chastity, which
even a layman can preserve, assuming him to have the grace.” He sneers
at the Pope and the Doctors because they had established not only a
clerical order which should be superior to the laity, but also an
order of the counsels the duty of whose members it was to portray the
Evangelical perfection by the keeping of the three vows of poverty,
chastity and obedience. “By this the common Christian life and faith
became like flat, sour beer; everyone rubbed his eyes, despised the
commandments and ran after the counsels. And after a good while they
at last discovered man-made ordinances in the shape of habits, foods,
chants, lessons, tonsures, etc., and thus God’s Law went the way of
faith, both being blotted out and forgotten, so that, henceforth,
to be perfect and to live according to the counsels means to wear a
black, white, grey or coloured cowl, to bawl in church, wear a tonsure
and to abstain from eggs, meat, butter, etc.”[177]
In the heat of his excitement he even goes so far as to deny the
necessity of any service in the churches, because God demands only the
praise and thanks of the heart, and “this may be given ... equally
well in the home, in the field, or anywhere else.” “If they should
force any other service upon you, know that it is error and deception;
just as hitherto the world has been crazy, with its houses, churches
and monasteries set aside for the worship of God, and its vestments of
gold and silk, etc. ... which expenditure had better been used to help
our neighbour, if it was really meant for God.”[178]
It was of course impossible for him to vindicate in the long run so
radical a standpoint concerning the churches, and, elsewhere, he
allows people their own way on the question of liturgical vestments
and other matters connected with worship.
4. The good works which are performed where there is no “faith” amount
to sin. This strangely unethical assertion Luther is fond of repeating
in so extravagant a form as can only be explained psychologically by
the utter blindness of his bias in favour of the “_fides specialis_”
by him discovered. True morality belongs solely to those who have been
justified after his own fashion, and no others have the slightest right
to credit themselves with anything of the sort.
When, in 1528, in his “Great Confession” he expounded his “belief
bit by bit,” declaring that he had “most diligently weighed all
these articles” as in the presence of death and judgment, he there
wrote: “Herewith I reject and condemn as rank error every doctrine
that exalts our free-will, which is directly opposed to the help
and grace of our Saviour Jesus Christ. For seeing, that, outside
of Christ, death and sin are our masters and the devil our God and
sovereign, there can be no power or might, no wit or understanding
whereby we could make ourselves fit for, or could even strive after,
righteousness and life, but on the contrary we must remain blind
and captive, slaves of sin and the devil, and must do what pleases
them and runs counter to God and His Commandments.”[179] Even the
most pious of the Papists, he goes on to say, since they lack Christ
and the “Faith,” have “merely a great semblance of holiness,” and
although “there seem to be many good works” among them, “yet all is
lost”; chastity, poverty and obedience as practised in the convents
is nothing but “blasphemous holiness,” and “what is horrible is that
thereby they refuse Christ’s help and grace.”[180]
This, his favourite idea, finds its full expression in his learned
Latin Commentary on Galatians (1535): “In the man who does not believe
in Christ not only are all sins mortal, but even his good works are
sins”;[181] for the benefit of the people he enunciates the same
in his Church-Postils. “The works performed without faith are sins
... for such works of ours are soiled and foul in God’s eyes, nay,
He looks on them with horror and loathing.” As a matter of course
he thinks that God looks upon concupiscence as sin, even in its
permissible manifestations, e.g. in the “_opus conjugalis_.” Amongst
the heathen even virtues such as patriotism, continence, justice and
courage in which, owing to the divine impulses (“_divini motus_”),
they may shine, are tainted by the presence in them of original sin
(“_in ipsis heroicis virtutibus depravata_”).[182] As to whether such
men were saved, Luther refuses to say anything definite; he holds fast
to the text that without faith it is impossible to please God. Only
those who, in the days of Noe, did not believe may, so he declares, be
saved in accordance with his reading of 1 Peter iii. 19 by Christ’s
preaching of salvation on the occasion of His descent into hell. He
is also disposed to include among those saved by this supposed course
of sermons delivered “_in inferis_,” such fine men of every nation as
Scipio, Fabius and others of their like.[183]
In general, however, the following holds good: Before “faith and
grace” are infused into the heart “by the Spirit alone,” “as the work
of God which He works in us”—everything in man is the “work of the
Law, of no value for justification, but unholy and opposed to God
owing to the unbelief in which it is performed.”[184]
_Annulment of the Supernatural and Abasement of the Natural Order_
From the above statements it is clear that Luther, in doing away with
the distinction between the natural and supernatural order, also did
away with the olden doctrine of virtue, and without setting up anything
positive in its place. He admits no naturally good action different
from that performed “by faith and grace”; no such thing exists as a
natural, moral virtue of justice. This opinion is closely bound up with
his whole warfare on man’s natural character and endowments in respect
of what is good. Moreover, what he terms the state of grace is not the
supernatural state the Church had always understood, but an outward
imputation by God; it is indeed God’s goodness towards man, but no new
vital principle thanks to which we act justly.[185]
Not only does he deny the distinction between natural and supernatural
goodness, essential as it is for forming an ethical estimate of man,
but he practically destroys both the natural and supernatural order.
Even in other points of Luther’s doctrine we can notice the abrogation
of the fundamental difference between the two orders; for instance
in his view of Adam’s original state, which, according to him, was
a natural not a supernatural one, “no gift,” as he says, “apart
from man’s nature, and bestowed on him from without, but a natural
righteousness so that it came natural to him to love God [as he did],
to believe in Him and to acknowledge Him.”[186] It is, however, in the
moral domain that this peculiarity of his new theology comes out most
glaringly. Owing to his way of proceeding and the heat of his polemics
he seems never to have become fully conscious of how far-reaching the
consequences were of his destruction of all distinction between the
natural and the supernatural order.
Natural morality, viz. that to which man attains by means of his
unaided powers, appears to him simply an invention of the pagan
Aristotle. He rounds on all the theologians of his day for having
swallowed so dangerous an error in their Aristotelian schools to the
manifest detriment of the divine teaching. This he does, for instance,
at the commencement of his recently published Commentary on Romans. He
calls it a “righteousness of the philosophers and lawyers” in itself
utterly worthless.[187] A year later, in his manuscript Commentary
on Hebrews, he has already reached the opinion, that, “the virtues
of all the philosophers, nay, of all men, whether they be lawyers or
theologians, have only a semblance of virtue, but in reality are vices
(‘_vitia_’).”[188]
But what would be quite incomprehensible, had he actually read the
scholastic theologians whose “civil, Aristotelian doctrine of justice”
he was so constantly attacking, is, that he charges them with having
stopped short at this natural justice and with not having taught
anything higher; this higher justice was what he himself had brought
to light, this was the “Scriptural justice which depended more on the
Divine imputation than on the nature of things,”[189] and was not
acquired by deeds but bestowed by God. The fact is, however, that
the Schoolmen did not rest content merely with natural justice, but
insist that true justice is something higher, supernatural and only
to be attained to with the help of grace; it is only in some few
later theologians with whom Luther may possibly have been acquainted,
that this truth fails to find clear expression. Thomas of Aquin, for
instance, distinguishes between the civil virtue of justice and the
justice infused in the act of justification. He says expressly: “A man
may be termed just in two ways, on account of civil [natural] justice
and on account of infused justice. Civil justice is attained to without
the grace which comes to the assistance of the natural powers, but
infused justice is the work of grace. Neither the one nor the other,
however, consists in the mere doing of what is good, for not everyone
who does what is good is just, but only he who does it as do the
just.”[190]
With regard to supernatural (infused) justice, the Church’s
representatives, quite differently from Luther, had taught that man by
his natural powers could only attain to God as the Author of nature
but not to God as He is in Himself, i.e. to God as He has revealed and
will communicate Himself in heaven; it is infused, sanctifying grace
alone that places us in a higher order than that of nature and raises
us to the status of being children of God; in it we love God, by
virtue of the “habit” of love bestowed upon us, as He is in Himself,
i.e. as He wills to be loved; sanctifying grace it is that brings
us into a true relation with our supernatural and final end, viz.
the vision of God in heaven, in which sense it may be called a vital
principle infused into the soul.[191]
This language Luther either did not or would not understand. On this
point particularly he had to suffer for his ignorance of the better
class of theologians. He first embraced Occam’s hypothesis of the
_possibility_ of an imputation of justice, and then, going further
along the wrong road, he changed this possibility into a reality;
soon, owing to his belief in the entire corruption of the natural
man, imputed justice became, to him, the only justice. In this way
he deprived theology of supernatural as well as of natural justice;
for imputed justice is really no justice at all, but merely an alien
one. “With Luther we have the end of the supernatural. His basic view,
of justifying faith as the work of God in us performed without our
co-operation, bears indeed a semblance of the supernatural.... But the
supernatural is ever something alien.”[192]
What he had in his mind was always a foreign righteousness produced,
not by man’s own works and acts performed under the help of grace,
but only by the work of another; this we are told by Luther in so
many words: “True and real piety which is of worth in God’s sight
consists in alien works and not in our own.”[193] “If we wish to work
for God we must not approach Him with our own works but with foreign
ones.” “These are the works of Our Lord Jesus Christ.” “All that He
has is ours.... I may attribute to myself all His works as though I
had actually done them, if only I believe in Christ.... Our works
will not suffice, all our powers together are too weak to resist even
the smallest sin.... Hence when the Law comes and accuses you of not
having kept it, send it to Christ and say: There is the Man who has
fulfilled it, to Him I cling, He has fulfilled it for me and bestowed
His fulfilment of it upon me; then the Law will have to hold its
tongue.”[194]
_The Book of Concord on the Curtailment of Free-Will._
When orthodox Lutheranism gained a local and temporary victory in 1580
with the so-called Book of Concord, the authors of the book deplored
the inferences drawn from Luther’s moral teaching, particularly from
his denial of free-will, the dangers of which had already long been
apparent.
“It is not unknown to us,” they say, “that this holy doctrine of the
malice and impotence of free-will, the doctrine whereby our conversion
and regeneration is ascribed solely to God and in no way to our own
powers, has been godlessly, shamelessly and hatefully abused.... Many
are becoming immoral and savage and neglectful of all pious exercises;
they say: ‘Since we cannot turn to God of our own natural powers, let
us remain hostile to God or wait until He converts us by force and
against our will.’” “It is true that they possess no power to act in
spiritual things, and that the whole business of conversion is merely
the work of the Holy Ghost. And thus they refuse to listen to the Word
of God, or to study it, or to receive the Sacraments; they prefer to
wait until God infuses His gifts into them directly from above, and
until they feel and are certain by inward experience that they have
been converted by God.”
“Others,” they continue, speaking of the case as a possibility and
not as a sad reality, “may possibly give themselves up to sad and
dangerous doubts as to whether they have been predestined by God to
heaven, and as to whether God will really work His gifts in them by
the help of the Holy Ghost. Being weak and troubled in mind they
do not grasp aright our pious doctrine of free-will, and they are
confirmed in their doubts by the fact that they do not find within
themselves any firm and ardent faith or hearty devotion to God, but
only weakness, misery and fear.” The authors then proceed to deal with
the widespread fear of predestination to hell.[195]
We have as it were a sad monument set up to the morality of the
enslaved will and the doctrine of imputation, when the Book of
Concord, in spite of the sad results it has just admitted, goes on
in the same chapter to insist that all Luther’s principles should be
preserved intact. “This matter Dr. Luther settled most excellently
and thoroughly in his ‘_De servo arbitrio_’ against Erasmus, where he
showed this opinion to be pious and irrefutable. Later on he repeated
and further explained the same doctrine in his splendid Commentary
on Genesis, particularly in his exposition of ch. xxvi. There, too,
he made other matters clear—e.g. the doctrine of the ‘_absoluta
necessitas_’—defended them against the objections of Erasmus and,
by his pious explanations, set them above all evil insinuations and
misrepresentations. All of which we here corroborate and commend to the
diligent study of all.”[196]
Melanchthon’s and his school’s modifications of these extreme doctrines
are here sharply repudiated, though Luther himself “never spoke with
open disapproval” of Melanchthon’s Synergism.[197]
“From our doctrinal standpoint,” we there read, “it is plain that the
teaching of the Synergists is false, who allege that man in spiritual
things is not _altogether_ dead to what is good but merely badly
wounded and _half_ dead.... They teach wrongly, that after the Holy
Spirit has given us, through the Evangel, grace, forgiveness and
salvation, then free-will is able to meet God by its natural powers
and ... co-operate with the Holy Ghost. In reality the ability to lay
hold upon grace (‘_facultas applicandi se ad gratiam_’) is solely due
to the working of the Holy Ghost.”
What then is man to do, and how are the consequences described above
to be obviated, on the one hand libertinism, on the other fear of
predestination to hell?
Man still possesses a certain freedom, so the Book of Concord teaches,
e.g. “to be present or not at the Church’s assemblies, to listen or
close his ears to the Word of God.”
“The preaching of the Word of God is however the tool whereby the Holy
Ghost seeks to effect man’s conversion and to make him ready to will
and to work (‘_in ipsis et velle et perficere operari vult_’).” “Man
is free to open his ears to the Word of God or to read it even when
not yet converted to God or born again. In some way or other man still
has free-will in such outward things even since Adam’s Fall.” Hence,
by the Word, “by the preaching and contemplation of the sweet Evangel
of the forgiveness of sins, the spark of ‘faith’ is enkindled in his
heart.”[198]
“Although all effort without the power and work of the Holy Spirit is
worthless, yet neither the preacher nor the hearer must doubt of this
grace or work of the Holy Spirit,” so long as the preacher proceeds
according to God’s will and command and “the hearer listens earnestly
and diligently and dwells on what he hears.” We are not to judge of
the working of the Holy Ghost by our feelings, but “agreeably with
the promises of God’s Word.” We must hold that “the Word preached is
the organ of the Holy Ghost whereby He truly works and acts in our
hearts.”[199]
With the help of this queer, misty doctrine which, as we may notice,
makes of preaching a sort of Sacrament working “_ex opere operato_,”
Luther’s followers attempted to construct a system out of their
master’s varying and often so arbitrary statements. At any rate
they upheld his denial of any natural order of morality distinct
from the order of grace. It was to remain true that man, “previous
to conversion, possesses indeed an understanding, but not of divine
things, and a will, though not for anything good and wholesome.” In
this respect man stands far below even a stock or stone, because
he resists the Word and Will of God (which they cannot do) until
God raises him up from the death of sin, enlightens and creates him
anew.[200]
Nevertheless several theses, undoubtedly Luther’s own, are here
glossed over or quietly bettered. If, for instance, according to
Luther everything takes place of absolute necessity (a fact to which
the Formula of Concord draws attention), if man, even in the natural
acts of the mind, is bound by what is fore-ordained,[201] then even
the listening to a sermon and the dwelling on it cannot be matters of
real freedom. Moreover the man troubled with fears on predestination,
is comforted by the well-known Bible texts, which teach that it is
the Will of God that all should be saved; whilst nothing is said of
Luther’s doctrine that it is only the revealed God who speaks thus,
whereas the hidden God acts quite otherwise, plans and carries out
the very opposite, “damns even those who have not deserved it—and,
yet, does not thereby become unjust.”[202] Reference is made to
Adam’s Fall, whereby nature has been depraved; but nothing is said
of Luther’s view that Adam himself simply could not avoid falling
because God did not then “bestow on him the spirit of obedience.”[203]
But, though these things are passed over in silence, due prominence
is given to those ideas of Luther’s of which the result is the
destruction of all moral order, natural as well as supernatural.
According to the Formula of Concord the natural order was shattered
by Adam’s Fall; as for the supernatural order it is replaced by the
alien, mechanical order of imputation.
_Christianity merely Inward. The Church Sundered from the World_
Among the things which Luther did to the detriment of the moral
principle must be numbered his merciless tearing asunder of spiritual
and temporal, of Christian and secular life.
The olden Church sought to permeate the world with the religious
spirit. Luther’s trend was in a great measure towards making the
secular state and its office altogether independent; this, indeed,
the more up-to-date sort of ethics is disposed to reckon among his
greatest achievements. Luther even went so far as to seek to erect into
a regular system this inward, necessary opposition of world and Church.
Of this we have a plain example in certain of his instructions to the
authorities.[204] Whereas the Church had exhorted people in power to
temper with Christianity their administration of civil justice and
their use of physical force—urging that the sovereign was a Christian
not merely in his private but also in his official capacity,—Luther
tells the ruler: The Kingdom of Christ wholly belongs to the order of
grace, but the kingdom of the world and worldly life belong to the
order of the Law; the two kingdoms are of a different species and
belong to different worlds. To the one you belong as a Christian, to
the other as a man and a ruler. Christ has nothing to do with the
regulations of worldly life, but leaves them to the world; earthly
life stands in no need of being outwardly hallowed by the Church.[205]
Certain statements to a different effect will be considered elsewhere.
“A great distinction,” Luther said in 1523, “must be made between a
worldling and a Christian, i.e. between a Christian and a worldly
man. For a Christian is neither man nor woman ... must know nothing
and possess nothing in the world.... A prince may indeed be a
Christian, but he must not rule as a Christian, and when he rules
he does so not as a Christian but as a prince. As an individual he
is indeed a Christian, but his office or princedom is no business
of his Christianity.” This seems to him proved by his mystical
theory that a Christian “must not harm or punish anyone or revenge
himself, but forgive everyone and endure patiently all injustice or
evil that befalls him.” The theory, needless to say, is based on
his misapprehension of the Evangelical Counsels which he makes into
commands.[206] On such principles as these, he concludes, it was
impossible for any prince to rule, hence “his being a Christian had
nothing to do with land and subjects.”[207]
For the same reason he holds that “every man on this earth” comprises
two “practically antagonistic personalities,” for “each one has at the
same time to suffer, and not to suffer, everything.”[208] The dualism
which Luther here creates is due to his extravagant over-statement of
the Christian law. The Counsels of Perfection given by Christ in the
Sermon on the Mount, with which Luther is here dealing (not to resist
evil, not to go to law, etc., Mt. v. 19 ff.), are not an invitation
addressed to all Christians, and if higher considerations or some
duty stands in the way it would certainly denote no perfection to
follow them. Luther’s misinterpretation necessarily led him to make a
cleavage between Christian life and life in the world.
The dualism, however, in so far as it concerned the authorities
had, however, yet another source. For polemical reasons Luther was
determined to make an end of the great influence that the olden
Church had acquired over public life. Hence he absolves the secular
power from all dependence as the latter had itself sought to do
even before his time. He refused to see that, in spite of all the
abuses which had followed on the Church’s interference in politics
during the Middle Ages, mankind had gained hugely by the guidance of
religion. To swallow up the secular power in the spiritual had never
been part of the Church’s teaching, nor was it ever the ideal of her
enlightened representatives; but, for the morality of the great, for
the observance of maxims of justice and for the improvement of the
nations the principle that religion must not be separated from the
life of the State and from the office of those in authority, but
must permeate and spiritualise them was, as history proved, truly
vital. Subsequent to Luther’s day the tendency to separate the two
undoubtedly made unchecked progress. He himself, however, was not
consistent in his attitude. On the contrary, he came more and more
to desiderate the establishment of the closest possible bond between
the civil authorities and religion—provided only that the ruler’s
faith was the same as Luther’s. Nevertheless, generally speaking, the
separation he had advocated of secular from spiritual became the rule
in the Protestant fold.
“Lutheranism,” as Friedrich Paulsen said on the strength of his own
observations in regions partly Catholic and partly Protestant, “which
is commonly said to have introduced religion into the world and to
have reconciled public worship with life and the duties of each one’s
calling has, as a matter of fact, led to the complete alienation and
isolation of the Church from real life; on the contrary, the older
Church, despite all her ‘over-worldliness,’ has contrived to make
herself quite at home in the world, and has spun a thousand threads
in and around the fabric of its life.” He thinks himself justified in
stating: “Protestantism is a religion of the individual, Catholicism
is the religion of the people; the former seeks seclusion, the latter
publicity. In the one even public worship bears a private character
and appears as foreign to the world as the pulpit rhetoric of a
Lutheran preacher of the old school; the [Protestant] Church stands
outside the bustle of the workaday world in a world of her own.”[209]
We may pass over the fact, that, Luther, by discarding the so-called
Counsels reduced morality to a dead level. In the case of all the
faithful he abased it to the standard of the Law, doing away with that
generous, voluntary service of God which the Church had ever approved
and blessed. We have already shown this elsewhere, more particularly in
connection with the status of the Evangelical Counsels and the striving
after Christian perfection in the monastic life. According to him there
are practically no Counsels for those who wish to pass beyond the
letter of the Law; there is but one uniform moral Law, and, on the true
Christian, even the so-called Counsels are strictly binding.[210]
Life in the world, however, according to his theory has very different
laws; here quite another order obtains, which is, often enough, quite
the opposite to what man, as a Christian, recognises in his heart to
be the true standard. As a Christian he _must_ offer his cheek to the
smiter; as a member of the civil order he may not do so, but, on the
contrary, must everywhere vindicate his rights. Thus his Christianity,
so long as he lives in the world, must perforce be reduced to a matter
of inward feeling; it is constantly exposed to the severest tests, or,
more accurately, constantly in the need of being explained away. The
believer is faced by a twofold order of things, and the regulating of
his moral conduct becomes a problem which can never be satisfactorily
solved.
“Next to the doctrine of Justification there is hardly any other
doctrine which Luther urges so frequently and so diligently as that of
the inward character and nature of Christ’s kingdom, and the difference
thus existing between it and the kingdom of the world, i.e. the domain
of our natural life.”[211]
Let us listen to Luther’s utterances at various periods on the dualism
in the moral life of the individual: “The twin kingdoms must be kept
wide asunder: the spiritual where sin is punished and forgiven,
and the secular where justice is demanded and dealt out. In God’s
kingdom which He rules according to the Gospel there is no demanding
of justice, but all is forgiveness, remission and bestowal, nor is
there any anger, or punishment, but nothing save brotherly charity
and service.”[212]—“No rights, anger, or punishment,” this certainly
would have befitted the invisible, spiritual Church which Luther had
originally planned to set up in place of the visible one.[213]
“Christ’s everlasting kingdom ... is to be an eternal spiritual
kingdom in the hearts of men by the preaching of the Gospel and by
the Holy Spirit.”[214] “For your own part, hold fast to the Gospel
and to the Word of Christ so as to be ready to offer the other cheek
to the smiter, to give your mantle as well as your coat whenever
it is a question of yourself and your cause.”[215] It is a strict
command, though at utter variance with the civil law, in which your
neighbour also is greatly concerned. In so far, therefore, you must
resist. “Thus you manage perfectly to satisfy at the same time both
the Kingdom of God and that of the world, both the outward and the
inward; you suffer evil and injustice and yet at the same time punish
evil and injustice; you do not resist evil, and yet at the same time
you resist it; for according to the one you look to yourself and to
yours, and, according to the other, to your neighbour and to his
rights. As regards yourself and yours, you act according to the Gospel
and suffer injustice as a true Christian; as regards your neighbour
and his rights, you act in accordance with charity and permit no
injustice.”[216]
If, as is but natural, we ask, how Christ came so strictly to enjoin
what was almost impossible, Luther replies that He gave His command
only for Christians, and that real Christians were few in number: “In
point of fact Christ is speaking only to His dear Christians [when He
says, ‘that Christians must not go to law,’ etc.], and it is they
alone who take it and carry it out; they make no mere Counsel of it
as the Sophists do, but are so transformed by the Spirit that they do
evil to no one and are ready willingly to suffer evil from anyone.”
But the world is full of non-Christians and “them the Word does not
concern at all.”[217] Worldlings must needs tread a very different
way: “All who are not Christians belong to the kingdom of the world
and are under the law.” Since they know not the command “Resist not
evil,” “God has given them another government different from the
Christian estate, and the Kingdom of God.” There ruleth coercion,
severity, and, in a word, the Law, “seeing, that, amongst a thousand,
there is barely one true Christian.” “If anyone wished to govern the
world according to the Gospel ... dear heart, what would the result
be! He would be loosening the leashes and chains of the wild and
savage beasts, and turning them astray to bite and tear everybody....
Then the wicked would abuse the Christian freedom of the Gospel and
work their own knavery.”[218]
Luther clung to the very end of his life to this congeries of
contradictory theories, which he advocated in 1523, in his passionate
aversion to the ancient doctrine of perfection. In 1539 or 1540 he put
forth a declaration against the “Sophists” in defence of his theory of
the “Counsels,” directed more particularly against the Sorbonne, which
had insisted that the “_consilia evangelica_,” “were they regarded as
precepts, would be too heavy a burden for religion.”[219] “They make
out the Counsels,” he says, “i.e. the commandments of God, to be not
necessary for eternal life and invite people to take idolatrous, nay,
diabolical vows. To lower the Divine precepts to the level of counsels
is a horrible, Satanic blasphemy.” As a Christian “you must rather
forsake and sacrifice everything”; to this the first table of the Law
(of Moses, the Law of the love of God) binds you, but, on account of
the second table (the law of social life), you may and must preserve
your own for the sake of your family. As a Christian, too, you must
be willing to suffer at the hands of every man, “but, apart from your
Christian profession, you must resist evil if you wish to be a good
citizen of this world.”[220]
“Hence you see, O Christian brother,” he concludes, “how much you
owe to the doctrine which has been revived in our day, as against a
Pharisaical theology which leaves us nothing even of Moses and the Ten
Commandments, and still less of Christ.”
“Such honour and glory have I by the grace of God—whether it be to
the taste or not of the devil and his brood—that, since the days of
the Apostles, no doctor, scribe, theologian or lawyer has confirmed,
instructed and comforted the consciences of the secular Estates so well
and lucidly as I have done by the peculiar grace of God. Of this I
am confident. For neither St. Augustine nor St. Ambrose, who are the
greatest authorities in this field, are here equal to me.... Such fame
as this must be and remain known to God and to men even should they go
raving mad over it.”[221]
It is true that his theories contain many an element of good and, had
he not been able to appeal to this, he could never have spoken so
feelingly on the subject.
The good which lies buried in his teaching had, however, always
received its due in Catholicism. Luther, when contrasting the Church’s
alleged aversion for secular life with his own exaltation of the
dignity of the worldly calling, frequently speaks in language both
powerful and fine of the worldly office which God has assigned to
each one, not only to the prince but even to the humble workman and
tiller of the field, and of the noble moral tasks which thus devolve
on the Christian. Yet any aversion to the world as he conceives it had
never been a principle within the Church, though individual writers
may indeed have erred in this direction. The assertion that the olden
Church, owing to her teaching concerning the state of perfection and
the Counsels, had not made sufficient allowance for the dignity of the
secular calling, has already been fully dealt with.
It is true that Luther, to the admiration of his followers, confronted
the old Orders founded by the Church with three new Orders, all
Divinely instituted, viz. the home, the State and the Church.[222] But,
so far from “notably improving” on the “scholastic ethics” of the past,
he did not even contrive to couch his thoughts on these “Orders” in
language as lucid as that used long before his day by the theologians
and moralists of the Church in voicing the same idea; what he says of
these “Orders” also falls short of the past on the score of wealth
and variety.[223] Nevertheless the popular ways he had of depicting
things as he fain would see them, proved alluring, and this gift of
appealing to the people’s fancy and of charming them by the contrast
of new and old, helped to build up the esteem in which he has been
held ever since; his inclination, moreover, to promote the independence
of the individual in the three “Orders,” and to deliver him from all
hierarchical influence must from the outset have won him many friends.
_Divorce of Religion and Morals_
Glancing back at what has already been said concerning Luther’s
abasement of morality and considering it in the light of his theories
of the Law and Gospel, of assurance of salvation and morality, we find
as a main characteristic of Luther’s ethics a far-reaching, dangerous
rift between religion and morals. Morality no longer stands in its old
position at the side of faith.
Faith and the religion which springs from it are by nature closely and
intimately bound up with morality. This is shown by the history of
heathenism in general, of modern unbelief in particular. Heathenism or
unbelief in national life always signifies a moral decline; even in
private life morality reacts on the life of faith and the religious
feeling, and _vice versa_. The harmony between religion and morality
arises from the fact that the love of God proceeds from faith in His
dominion and Fatherly kindness.
Luther, in spite of his assurances concerning the stimulus of the
life of faith and of love, severed the connection between faith and
morality and placed the latter far below the former. His statements
concerning faith working by love, had they been more than mere words,
would, in themselves, have led him back to the very standpoint of the
Church he hated. In reality he regards the “Law” as something utterly
hostile to the “pious” soul; before the true “believer” the Law shrinks
back, though, to the man not yet justified by “faith,” it serves as a
taskmaster and a hangman. The “Law” thus loses the heavenly virtue with
which it was stamped. In Luther’s eyes the only thing of any real value
is that religion which consists in faith in the forgiveness of sins.
“This,” he says, “is the ‘_Summa Summarum_’ of a truly Christian life,
to know that in Christ you have a Gracious God ready to forgive you
your sins and never to think of them again, and that you are now a
child of everlasting happiness, reigning with Christ over heaven and
earth.”
It is true he hastens to add, that, from this saving faith, works of
morality would “assuredly” flow.[224]
“Assuredly”? Since Albert Ritschl it has been repeated countless times
that Luther did no more than “assert that faith by its very nature is
productive of good works.” As a matter of fact “he is wont to speak in
much too uncertain a way of the good works which follow faith”; with
him “faith” is the whole man, whereas the Bible says: “Fear God _and_
keep His commandments [i.e. religion _plus_ morality]; this is the
whole man.”[225]
Luther’s one-sided insistence on a confiding, trusting faith in God,
at the cost of the moral work, has its root in his theory of the utter
depravity of man and his entire lack of freedom, in his low esteem
for the presuppositions of morality, in his conviction that nature
is capable of nothing, and, owing to its want of self-determination,
is unable on its own even to be moral at all. If we desire, so he
says frankly, to honour God’s sublime majesty and to humble fallen
creatures as they deserve, then let us recognise that God works all
in all without any possibility of any resistance whatsoever on man’s
part, God’s action being like to that of the potter on his clay. Just
as Luther was unable to recognise justification in the sense in which
it had been taught of yore, so also he entirely failed to appreciate
the profounder conception of morality.
His strictures on morality—which had ever been esteemed as the
voluntary keeping of the Law by man, who by a generous obedience
renders to God the freedom received—point plainly to the cause of
his upheaval of the whole field of dogma. At the outset he had set
himself to oppose self-righteousness, but in doing so he dealt a blow
at righteousness itself; he had attacked justice by works, but justice
itself had suffered; he declared war on the wholly imaginary phantom
of a self-chosen morality based on man-made ordinances and thereby
degraded morality, if he did not indeed undermine its very foundations.
What Möhler says of the reformers and their tendency to set aside
the commands of morality applies in particular to Luther and his
passionate campaign. It is true he writes, that “the moral freedom
they had destroyed came to involve the existence of a freedom from
that moral law which concerns only the seen, bounded world of time,
but fails to apply in the eternal world, set high above all time and
space. This does not mean, however, that the reformers were conscious
of what lay at the base of their system; on the contrary, had they
seen it, had they perceived whither their doctrines were necessarily
leading, they would have rejected them as quite unchristian.”[226]
The following reflection of the famous author of “Catholic Symbolism”
may also be set on record, the better to safeguard against
misapprehension anything that may have been said, particularly as it
touches upon a matter to which we repeatedly have had occasion to
allude.
“No one can fail to see the religious element in Protestantism,” he
says, “who calls to mind the idea of Divine Providence held by Luther
and Melanchthon when they started the work of the Reformation.... All
the phenomena of this world [according to it] are God’s own particular
work and man is merely His instrument. Everything in the history of
the world is God’s invisible doing which man’s agency merely makes
visible. Who can fail to see in this a truly religious outlook on all
things? All is referred back to God, Who is all in all.... In the
same way the Redeemer also is all in all in the sense that He and His
Spirit are alone active, and faith and regeneration are solely due to
Him.”[227]
Möhler here relates how, according to Luther, Staupitz had said of
the new teaching at its inception, “What most consoles me is that it
has again been brought to light how all honour and praise belong to
God alone, but, to man, nothing at all.” This statement is quite in
keeping with the vague, mystical world of thought in which Staupitz,
who was no master of theology or philosophy, lived. But it also
reflects the impression of many of Luther’s contemporaries who,
unaware of his misrepresentation of the subject, were attracted by
the advantage to religion and morality which seemed to accrue from
Luther’s effort to ascribe all things solely to God.
Where this tendency to subordinate all to God and to exalt the merits
of Christ finds more chastened expression in Luther’s writings, when,
in his hearty, homely fashion, he paints the love of the Master or
His virtues as the pattern of all morality, or pictures in his own
peculiar realistic style the conditions of everyday life the better to
lash abuses, then the reader is able to appreciate the better side of
his ethics and the truly classic example he sometimes sets of moral
exhortations. It would surely be inexplicable how so many earnest
Protestant souls, from his day to our own, should have found and still
find a stimulus in his practical works, for instance, in his Postils,
did these works not really contain a substratum of truth, food for
thought and a certain gift of inspiration. Even the man who studies
the long list of Luther’s practical writings simply from the standpoint
of the scholar and historian—though he may not always share Luther’s
opinions—cannot fail to acknowledge that the warmth with which Luther
speaks of those Christian truths accepted by all, leaves a deep
impression and re-echoes within the soul like a voice from our common
home.
On the one hand Luther rightly retained many profoundly religious
elements of the mediæval theology, indeed, owing to his curious way of
looking at things, he actually outdid in mediævalism the Middle Ages
themselves, for he merged all human freedom in the Divine action, a
thing those Ages had not dared to do.
And yet, on the other hand, to conclude our survey of his “abasement of
practical Christianity,” he is so ultramodern on a capital point of his
ethics as to merit being styled the precursor of modern subjectivism as
applied to morals. For all his new ethical precepts and rules, beyond
the Decalogue and the Natural Law, are devoid of objective obligation;
they lack the sanction which alone would have rendered them capable of
guiding the human conscience.
_The Lack of Obligation and Sanction_
Luther’s moral instructions differed in one weighty particular from
those of the olden Church.
As he himself insists at needless length, they were a collection of
personal opinions and exhortations which appeared to him to be based
on Holy Scripture or the Law of Nature—and in many instances, though
not always, actually did rest on this foundation. When he issued new
pronouncements of a practical character, for instance, concerning
clandestine espousals, or annulled the olden order of public worship,
the sacraments, or the Commandments of the Church, he was wont to
say, that, it was his intention merely to advise consciences and to
arouse the Evangelical consciousness. He took this line partly because
he was conscious of having no personal authority, partly because he
wished to act according to the principles proclaimed in his “Von der
Freyheyt eynes Christen Menschen,” or, again, in order to prevent the
rise of dissent and the resistance he always dreaded to any attempt
to lay down categorical injunctions. Thus his ethical regulations,
so far as they differed from the olden ones, amounted merely to so
many invitations to act according to the standard set up, whereas the
character of the ethical legislation of Catholicism is essentially
binding. Having destroyed the outward authority of the Church, he
had nothing more to count upon than the “ministry of the Word,” and
everything now depended on the minister’s being able to convince the
believer, now freed from the ancient trammels.
He himself, for instance, once declared that he would “assume no
authority or right to coerce, for I neither have nor desire any
such. Let him rule who will or must; I shall instruct and console
consciences as far as I am able. Who can or wants to obey, let him do
so; who won’t or can’t, let him leave it alone.”[228]
He would act “by way of counsel,” so he teaches, “as in conscience
he would wish to serve good friends, and whoever likes to follow
his advice must do so at his own risk.”[229] “He gives advice
agreeably to his own conscience,” writes Luthardt in “Luthers Ethik,”
“leaving it to others to accept his advice or not on their own
responsibility.”[230]
Nor can one well argue that the requisite sanction for the new moral
rules was the general sanction found in the Scriptural threats of
Divine chastisements to overtake transgressors. The question is
whether the Law laid down in the Bible or written in man’s heart is
really identical with Luther’s. Those who were unable of themselves to
prove that this was the case were ultimately (so Luther implies) to
believe it on his authority and conform themselves to his “Evangelical
consciousness”; thus, for instance, in the matter of religious vows,
held by Luther to be utterly detestable, and by the Church to be both
permissible and praiseworthy.
In but few points does the purely subjective character of the new
religion and morality advocated by Luther stand out so clearly as
in this absence of any objective sanction or higher authority for
his new ethics. Christianity hitherto had appealed to the divine,
unchangeable dignity of the Church, which, by her infallible teaching,
her discipline and power to punish, insured the observance of law and
order in the religious domain. But, now, according to the new teaching,
man—who so sadly needs a clear and definite lead for his moral
life—besides the Decalogue, “clear” Bible text and Natural Law, is
left with nothing but “recommendations” devoid of any binding force;
views are dinned into his ears the carrying out of which is left solely
to his feelings, or, as Luther says, to his “conscience.”
Deprived of the quieting guidance of an authority which proclaims
moral obligations and sees that they are carried out, conscience and
personality tend in his system to assume quite a new rôle.
6. The part played by Conscience and Personality. Luther’s warfare with
his old friend Caspar Schwenckfeld
Protestants have confidently opined, that “Luther mastered anew the
personal foundation of morality by reinstating conscience in its
rights”; by insisting on feeling he came to restore to “personality
the dignity” which in previous ages it had lost under the ban of a
“legalism” devoid of “morality.”
To counter such views it may be of use to give some account of the way
in which Luther taught conscience to exercise her rights. The part he
assigns to the voice within which judges of good and evil, scarcely
bears out the contention that he really strengthened the “foundation
of morality.” The vague idea of “personality” may for the while be
identified with conscience, especially as in the present connection
“person” stands for the medium of conscience.[231]
_On Conscience and its Exercise in General_
To quiet the conscience, to find some inward support for one’s actions
in the exercise of one’s own will, this is what Luther constantly
insists on in the moral instructions he gives, at the same time
pointing to his own example.[232] What was the nature of his own
example? His rebellion against the Church’s authority was to him the
cause of a long, fierce struggle with himself. He sought to allay the
anxiety which stirred his soul to its depths by the reassuring thought,
that all doubts were from the devil from whom alone all scruples
come; he sternly bade his soul rest secure and as resolutely refused
to hearken to any doubts regarding the truth of his new Evangel. His
new and quite subjective doctrines he defended in the most subjective
way imaginable and, to those of his friends whose consciences were
troubled, he recommends a similar course of action; he even on
several occasions told people thus disturbed in mind whom he wished
to reassure, that they must listen to his, Luther’s, voice as though
it were the voice of God. This was his express advice to his pupil
Schlaginhaufen[233] and, in later days, to his friend Spalatin, who
also had become a prey to melancholy.[234] He himself claimed to have
been delivered from his terrors by having simply accepted as a God-sent
message the encouraging words of Bugenhagen.[235]
“Conscience is death’s own cruel hangman,” so he told Spalatin; from
Ambrose and Augustine the latter should learn to place all his trust
not in conscience but in Christ.[236] It scarcely needs stating that
here he is misapplying the fine sayings of both these Fathers. They
would have repudiated with indignation the words of consolation
which not long after he offered the man suffering from remorse of
conscience, assuring him that he was as yet a novice in struggling
against conscience, and had hitherto been “too tender a sinner”; “join
yourself to us real, big, tough sinners, that you may not belittle
and put down Christ, Who is the Saviour, not of small, imaginary
sinners, but of great and real ones”; thus it was that he, Luther,
had once been consoled in his sadness by Staupitz.[237] Here he is
applying wrongly a perfectly correct thought of his former Superior.
Not perhaps quite false, but at any rate thoroughly Lutheran, is the
accompanying assurance: “I stand firm [in my conscience] and maintain
my attitude, that you may lean on me in your struggle against Satan
and be supported by me.”
Thus does he direct Spalatin, “who was tormented by remorse, to
comfort himself _against_ his conscience.”[238]
“To comfort oneself against one’s conscience,” such is the task which
Luther, in many of his writings, proposes to the believer. Indeed, in
his eyes the chief thing of all is to “get the better of sin, death,
hell and our own conscience”; in spite of the opposition of reason to
Luther’s view of Christ’s satisfaction, we must learn, “through Him
[Christ] to possess nothing but grace and forgiveness,” of course, in
the sense taught at Wittenberg.[239]
A former brother monk, Link, the apostate Augustinian of Nuremberg,
Luther also encourages, like Spalatin the fallen priest, to kick
against the prick of conscience: “These are devil’s thoughts and not
from us, which make us despair,” they must be “left to the devil,” the
latter always “keeps closest to those who are most pious”; to yield
to such despairing thoughts “is as bad as giving in and leaving Satan
supreme.”[240]
When praising the “sole” help and consolation of the grace of Christ
he does not omit to point out, directly or otherwise, how, “when in
despair of himself,” and enduring frightful inward “sufferings” of
conscience, he had hacked his way through them all and had reached
a firm faith in Christ minus all works, and had thus become a
“theologian of the Cross.”[241]
Even at the commencement of the struggle, in order to encourage
wavering followers, he allowed to each man’s conscience the right
to defy any confessor who should forbid Luther’s writings to such
of his parishioners who came to him: “Absolve me at my own risk,”
they were to say to him, “I shall not give up the books, for then I
should be sinning against my conscience.” He argues that, according
to Rom. xiv. 1, the confessor might not “urge them against their
conscience.” Was it then enough for a man to have formed himself a
conscience, for the precept no longer to hold? His admonition was,
however, intended merely as a counsel for “strong and courageous
consciences.” If the confessor did not prove amenable, they were
simply to “go without scruple to the Sacrament,” and if this, too, was
refused them then they had only to send “Sacrament and Church” about
their business.[242] Should the confessor require contrition for sins
committed, this, according to another of his statements, was a clear
attack on conscience which does not require contrition for absolution,
but merely faith in Christ; such a priest ought to have the keys taken
out of his hands and be given a pitchfork instead.[243]
In the above instances the Catholic could find support for his
conscience in the infallible authority of the Church. It was this
authority which forbade him Luther’s writings as heretical, and, in the
case of contrition—which Luther also brings forward—it was likewise
his religious faith, which, consonantly with man’s natural feeling,
demanded such sorrow for sin. In earlier days authority and faith were
the reliable guides of conscience without which it was impossible
to do. Luther left conscience to itself or referred it to his own
words and his reading of Scripture, though this again, as he himself
acknowledged, was not an absolute rule; thus he leaves it a prey to
a most unhappy uncertainty—unless, indeed, it was able to “find
assurance” in the way he wishes.
Quite early in his career he also gave the following instruction to
those of the clergy who were living in concubinage on how to form
their conscience; they were “to salve their conscience” and take the
female to their “wedded wife,” even though this were against the law,
fleshly or ghostly. “Your soul’s salvation is of more account than
any tyrannical laws.... Let him who has the faith to take the risk
follow me boldly.” “I will not deceive him,” he adds apologetically,
but at least he had “the power to advise him regarding his sins and
dangers”; he will show them how they may do what they are doing, “but
with a good conscience.”[244] For as Luther points out in another
passage, even though their discarding of their supposed obligation of
celibacy had taken place with a bad conscience, still the Bible-texts
subsequently brought forward, read according to the interpretation
of the new Evangelist, avail to heal their conscience.[245] At any
rate, so he tells the Teutonic Knights when inviting them to break
their vow of chastity: “on the Word of God we will risk it and do it
in the teeth of and contrary to all Councils and Churches! Close eyes
and ears and take God’s Word to heart.”[246] Better, he cries, go on
keeping two or three prostitutes than seek of a Council permission to
marry![247]
These were matters for “those to risk who have the faith,” so we have
heard him say. In reality all did depend on people’s faith ... in
Luther, on their conviction that his doctrine and his moral system
were right.
But what voice was to decide in the case of those who were wavering?
On the profoundest questions of moral teaching, it is, according to
Luther, the “inward judgment” that is to decide what “spirit” must
be followed. “For every Christian,” he writes, “is enlightened in
heart and conscience by the Holy Ghost and by God’s Grace in such
a way as to be able to judge and decide with the utmost certainty
on all doctrines.” It is to this that the Apostle refers when he
says: “A spiritual man judges all things” (1 Cor. iii. 15). Beyond
this, moreover, Scripture constitutes an “outward judgment” whereby
the Spirit is able to convince men, it being a “ghostly light, much
brighter than the sun.”[248] It is highly important “to be certain” of
the meaning of the Bible,[249] though here Luther’s own interpretation
was, needless to say, to hold the field. The preachers instructed by
him were to say: “I know that the doctrine is right in God’s sight” and
“boast” of the inward certainty they shared with him.[250]
Luther’s rules for the guidance of conscience in other matters were
quite similar. Subjectivism becomes a regular system for the guidance
of conscience. In this sense it was to the person that the final
decision was left. But whether this isolation of man from man, this
snatching of the individual from dutiful submission to an authority
holding God’s place, was really a gain to the individual, to religion
and to society, or not rather the reverse, is only to be settled in
the light of the history of private judgment which was the outcome of
Luther’s new principle.
Of himself Luther repeats again and again, that his knowledge and
conscience alone sufficed to prove the truth of his position;[251]
that he had won this assurance at the cost of his struggles with
conscience and the devil. Ulenberg, the old writer, speaking of these
utterances in his “Life of Luther,”[252] says that his hero mastered
his conscience when at the Wartburg, and, from that time, believed
more firmly than ever that he had gained this assurance by a Divine
revelation (“_cœlesti quadam revelatione_”), for which reason he had
then written to his Elector that he had received his lead solely from
heaven.[253]
In matters of conscience wherever the troublesome “Law” comes in we
can always trace the devil’s influence; we “must come to grips with
him and fight him,”[254] only the man who has been through the mill,
as he himself had, could boast of having any certainty: “The devil is
a juggler. Unless God helps us, our work and counsel is of no account;
whether we turn right or left he remains the Prince of this world. Let
him who does not know this just try. I have had some experience of
this. But let no one believe me until he too has experienced it.”[255]
Not merely in the case of his life-work in general, but even in
individual matters of importance, the inward struggles and “agonies”
through which he had passed were signs by which to recognise that he
was in the right. Thus, for instance, referring to his hostile action
in Agricola’s case, Luther says: “Oh, how many pangs and agonies did I
endure about this business. I almost died of anxiety before I brought
these propositions out into the light of day.”[256] Hence it was
plain, he argued, how far he was from the palpable arrogance displayed
by his Antinomian foe, and how evidently his present conduct was
willed by God.
_The Help of Conscience at Critical Junctures_
It was the part played by subjectivism in Luther’s ethics that led
him in certain circumstances to extend suspiciously the rights of
“conscience.”
In the matter of the bigamy of Philip of Hesse he soothed the Elector
of Saxony by telling him he must ignore the general outcry, since the
Landgrave had acted “from his need of conscience”; in his “conscience”
the Prince regarded his “wedded concubine” as “no mere prostitute.” “By
God’s Grace I am well able to distinguish between what by way of grace
and before God may be permitted in the case of a troubled conscience
and what, apart from such need of conscience, is not right before God
in outward matters.”[257] In his extreme embarrassment, consequent
on this matrimonial tangle, Luther deemed it necessary to make so
hair-splitting a distinction between lawfulness and permissibility when
need of conscience required it. The explanation—that, in such cases,
something must be conceded “before God and by way of grace”—which he
offers together with the Old-Testament texts as justifying the bigamy,
must look like a fatal concession to laxity.
He also appealed to conscience in another marriage question where he
made the lawfulness of bigamy depend entirely on the conscience.
A man, who, owing to his wife’s illness was prevented from matrimonial
intercourse, wished, on the strength of Carlstadt’s advice, to take a
second wife. Luther thereupon wrote to Chancellor Brück, on Jan. 27,
1524, telling him the Prince should reply as follows: “The husband
must be sure and convinced in his own conscience by means of the Word
of God that it is lawful in his case. Therefore let him seek out such
men as may convince him by the Word of God, whether Carlstadt [who was
then in disgrace at Court], or some other, matters not at all to the
Prince. For if the fellow is not sure of his case, then the permission
of the Prince will not make him so; nor is it for the Prince to decide
on this point, for it is the priests’ business to expound the Word
of God, and, as Zacharias says, from their lips the Law of the Lord
must be learned. I, for my part, admit I can raise no objection if a
man wishes to take several wives since Holy Scripture does not forbid
this; but I should not like to see this example introduced amongst
Christians.... It does not beseem Christians to seize greedily and
for their own advantage on everything to which their freedom gives
them a right.... No Christian surely is so God-forsaken as not to be
able to practise continence when his partner, owing to the Divine
dispensation, proves unfit for matrimony. Still, we may well let
things take their course.”[258]
On the occasion of his own marriage with Bora we may remember how he
had declared with that defiance of which he was a past master, that
he would take the step the better to withstand the devil and all his
foes. (Vol. ii., p. 175 ff.)
A curious echo of the way in which he could set conscience at defiance
is to be met with in his instructions to his assistant Justus Jonas,
who, as soon as his first wife was dead, cast about for a second.
Luther at first was aghast, owing to Biblical scruples, at the scandal
which second marriages on the part of the regents of the Church would
give and entreated him at least to wait a while. When he found it
impossible to dissuade Jonas, he warned him of the “malicious gossip
of our foes,” “who are ever eager to make capital out of our example”;
nevertheless, he goes on to say that he had nothing else to urge
against another union, so long as Jonas “felt within himself that
spirit of defiance which would enable him, after the step, to ignore
all the outcry and the hate of all the devils and of men, and not to
attempt, nay, to scorn any effort to stop the mouths of men, or to
crave their favour.”[259]
The “spirit of defiance” which he here requires as a condition for the
step becomes elsewhere a sort of mystical inspiration which may justify
an action of doubtful morality.
Granted the presence of this inspiration he regards as permissible
what otherwise would not be so. In a note sent to the Elector of
Saxony at the time of the Diet of Augsburg regarding the question
whether it was allowed to offer armed resistance to the Emperor, we
find this idea expressed in remarkable words. Till then Luther had
looked upon resistance as forbidden. The predicament of his cause, now
endangered by the warlike threats of the Emperor, led him to think of
resistance. He writes: If the Elector wishes to take up arms “he must
do so under the influence of a singular spirit and faith (‘_vocante
aliquo singulari spiritu et fide_’). Otherwise he must yield to
superior force and suffer death together with the other Christians of
his faith.”[260] It is plain that there would have been but little
difficulty in finding the peculiar mystical inspiration required;
no less plain is it, that, once this back door had been opened
“inspiration” would soon usurp the place of conscience and justify
steps, that, in themselves, were of a questionable character.
_Conscience in the Religious Question of the Day_
The new method of dealing with conscience is more closely connected
with Luther’s new method of inducing faith than might at first sight
appear.
The individualism he proclaimed in matters of faith embodied the
principle, that “each one must, in his own way, lay hold on religious
experience and thus attain religious conviction.”[261] Luther often
says, in his idealistic way, that only thus is it possible to arrive
at the supreme goal, viz. to feel one’s faith within as a kind of
inspiration; our aim must ever be to feel it “surely and immutably”
in our conscience and in all the powers of our soul.[262] Everything
must depend on this experience, the more so as to him faith means
something very different from what it means to Catholics; it is, he
says, “no taking it all for true”; “for that would not be Christian
faith but more an opinion than faith”; on the contrary, each one
must believe that “he is one of those on whom such grace and mercy
is bestowed.”[263] Now, such a faith, no matter how profound and
immutable the feeling be, cannot be reached except at the cost of a
certain violence to conscience; such coercion is, in fact, essential
owing to the nature of this faith in personal salvation.
What, according to Luther, is the general character of faith? Fear and
struggles, so he teaches, are not merely its usual accompaniments,
but are also the “sure sign that the Word has touched and moved
you, that it exercises, urges and compels you”; nay, Confession and
Communion are really meant only for such troubled ones, “otherwise
there would be no need of them”—i.e. they would not be necessary
unless there existed despair of conscience and anxiety concerning
faith. It was a mistaken practice, he continues, for many to refrain
from receiving the Sacrament, “preferring to wait until they feel
the faith within their heart”; in this way all desire to receive is
extinguished; people should rather approach even when they feel not at
all their faith; then “you will feel more and more attracted towards
it”[264]—though this again, according to Luther, is by no means quite
certain.
The “inward experience of faith” too often becomes simply the dictate
of one’s whim. But a whim and order to oneself to think this or that
does not constitute faith as the word is used in revelation, nor does
a command imposed on the inward sense of right and wrong amount to a
pronouncement of conscience.
Though Luther often held up himself and his temptations regarding
faith, as an example which might comfort waverers, Protestants have
nevertheless praised him for the supposed firmness of his faith and
for his joy of conscience. But was not his “defiant faith” really
identical with that imposition he was wont to practise on his
conscience and to dignify by the name of inspiration?
Yet, in spite of all, he never found a secure foundation. “I know
what it costs me, for I have daily to struggle with myself,” he told
his friends in 1538.[265] “I was scarcely able to bring myself to
believe,” he said in a sermon of the same year, “that the doctrine
of the Pope and the Fathers was all wrong.”[266] His faith was as
insecurely fixed, so he quaintly bewailed on another occasion, “as
the fur trimming on his sleeve.”[267] “Who believes such things?”
he asks, wildly implicating all people in general, at the conclusion
of a note jotted down in a Bible and alluding to the hope of life
everlasting.[268] In 1529 he repeatedly describes to his friends how
Satan tempts him (“_Satanas fatigat_”) with lack of faith and despair,
how he was sunk in unspeakable “bitterness of soul,” and, how, for
this reason as he once says, he was scarce able “with a trembling
hand” to write to them.[269]
Calvin, too, was aware of the frequent terrors Luther endured. When
Pighius, the Catholic writer, alleged Luther’s struggles of conscience
and temptations concerning the faith as disproving his authority,
Calvin took good care not to deny them. He boldly replied that this
only redounded to Luther’s honour since it was the experience of all
devout people, and particularly of the most famous divines.[270]
Was it possible, according to Luther, to be conscientiously opposed
to his teaching on faith and morals? At least in theory, he does go
so far in certain statements as to recognise the possibility of such
conscientious scruples. In these utterances he would even appear to
surrender the whole weight and authority of his theological and ethical
discoveries, fundamental though they were to his innovations. “I have
served the Church zealously with what God has given me and what I owe
to Him. Whoever does not care for it, let him read or listen to others.
It matters but little should they feel no need of me.”[271] With regard
to public worship, it is left “to each one to make up his conscience
as to how he shall use his freedom.” “I am not your preacher,” so he
wrote to the “Strasburg Christians,” who were inclined to distrust his
exclusiveness; “no one is bound to believe me; let each man look to
himself”;[272] all are to be referred “from Luther,” “to Christ.”[273]
Such statements, however, cannot stand against his constant insistence
on his Divine mission; they are rather of psychological interest as
showing how suddenly he passes from one idea to another. Moreover, his
statement last mentioned, often instanced by Protestants as testifying
to his breadth of mind, is nullified almost on the same page by the
solemn assurance, that, his “Gospel is the true Gospel” and that
everything that contradicts it is “heresy,” for, indeed, as had been
foretold by the Apostle Paul (1 Cor. xi. 19), “heresies” must needs
arise.[274]
And, in point of fact, those teachers who felt themselves bound in
conscience to differ from him and go their own way—for instance,
the “Sacramentarians” in their interpretation of the words of
consecration—were made to smart. Of this the example of Schwenckfeld
was a new and striking proof.
The contradiction presented on the one hand by Luther’s disposition
to grant the most absolute freedom of conscience, and on the other
by his rigid exclusiveness, is aptly described by Friedrich Paulsen:
“In the region of morals Luther leaves the decision to the individual
conscience as instructed by the Word of God. To rely on human
authority in questions of morals appeared to him not much better than
blasphemy.... True enough, however, this very Luther, at a later date,
attacked those whose conscience found in God’s Word doctrines at all
different from those taught at Wittenberg.”[275]
Hence, neither to the heretics in his own camp nor to the adherents
of the olden faith would he allow the right of private judgment, so
greatly extolled both by himself and his followers. Nothing had been
dearer to the people of mediæval times, who for all their love of
freedom were faithful children of the Church, than regard and esteem
for the rights of personality in its own domain. Personality, denoting
man’s unfettered and reasonable nature stamped with its own peculiar
individuality, is assuredly something noble. The Catholic Church,
far from setting limits to the development of personality, promoted
both its real freedom and the growth of individuality in ways suited
to man’s nature and his supernatural vocation. Even the monastic
life, so odious to Luther, was anything but “hostile to the ideal of
personality.” An impartial observer, prepared to disregard fortuitous
abuses, could have seen even then, that the religious life strives
after the fairest fruits of ethical personality, which are fostered by
the very sacrifice of self-will: Obedience is but a sacrifice “made in
the interests of personality.”[276] Mere wilfulness and the spirit of
“defiance,” ever ready to overstep the bounds set by reason and grace,
creates, not a person, but a “superman,” whose existence we could well
spare; of such a being Luther’s behaviour reminds us more than once.
After all we have said it would be superfluous to deal in detail with
the opinion expressed above (p. 66) by certain Protestant judges, viz.
that Luther reinstated conscience, which had fallen into the toils
of “legalism,” and set it again on its “true basis,” insisting on
“feeling” and on real “morality.” Nor shall we enquire whether it is
seriously implied, that, before Luther’s day, people were not aware
that the mere “legality” of a deed did not suffice unless first of all
morality was recognised as the true guide of conduct.
We may repeat yet once again that Luther was not the first to brand
“outward holiness-by-works” in the sphere of morality.[277] Berthold
of Ratisbon, whose voice re-echoed through the whole of Germany,
summing up the teaching of the mediæval moral theologians, reprobates
most sternly any false confidence in outward deeds. No heaping up of
external works, no matter how eager, can, according to him, prove
of any profit to the soul, not even if the sinner, after unheard-of
macerations, goes loaded with chains on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and
there lays himself down to die within the very sepulchre of the Lord;
all that, so he points out with an eloquence all his own, would be
thrown away were there lacking the inward spirit of love and contrition
for the sins committed.
The doctrine on contrition of the earlier Catholic theologians and
popular writers, which we have already had occasion to review, forms
an excellent test when compared with Luther’s own, by which to decide
the question: Which is the outward and which the inward morality?
Their doctrine is based both on Scripture and on the traditions of
antiquity. Similarly the Catholic teaching on moral self-adaptation to
Christ, such as we find it, for instance, in St. Benedict’s Prologue
to his world-famous Rule, that textbook of the mediæval ascetics, in
the models and examples of the Fathers and even in the popular Catholic
works of piety so widely read in Luther’s day, strikingly confutes
the charge, that, by the stress it laid on certain commandments and
practices, Catholicism proved it had lost sight of “the existence of
a living personal morality” and that it fell to Luther once more to
recall to life this ideal. The imitation of Christ in the spirit of
love was undoubtedly regarded as the highest aim of morality, and this
aim necessarily included “personal morality” in its most real sense,
and Luther was not in the least necessity of inaugurating any new
ideals of virtue.
_Luther’s Warfare with his old friend Caspar Schwenckfeld_
Caspar Schwenckfeld, a man of noble birth hailing from Ossig near Lüben
in Silesia, after having studied at Cologne, Frankfurt-on-the-Oder and
perhaps also at Erfurt, was, in 1519, won over by Luther’s writings
to the religious innovations. Being idealistically inclined, the
Wittenberg preaching against formalism in religion and on the need of
returning to a truly spiritual understanding of the Bible roused him to
enthusiasm. He attempted, with rather more logic than Luther, to put
in practice the latter’s admonitions concerning the inward life and
therefore started a movement, half pietist, half mystic, for bringing
together those who had been really awakened.
Schwenckfeld was a man of broad mind, with considerable independence
of judgment and of a noble and generous disposition. His good position
in the world gave him what many of the other Lutheran leaders lacked,
viz. a free hand. His frank criticism did not spare the faults in
their preaching. The sight of the sordid elements which attached
themselves to Luther strengthened him in his resolve to establish
communities—first of all in Silesia—modelled on the very lines
roughly sketched by Luther, which should present a picture of the
apostolic age of the Church. The Duke of Silesia and many of the
nobility were induced to desert Catholicism, and a wide field was won
in Silesia for the new ideals of Wittenberg.
In spite of his high esteem for Luther, Schwenckfeld wrote, in 1523:
It is evident “that little improvement can be discerned emerging from
the new teaching, and that those who boast of the Evangel lead a bad
and scandalous life.... This moves us not a little, indeed pierces our
heart when we hear of it.”[278] To the Duke he dedicated, in 1524,
a writing entitled: “An exhortation regarding the misuse of sundry
notable Articles of the Evangel, through the wrong understanding
of which the common man is led into the freedom of the flesh and
into error.” The book forms a valuable source of information on the
religious state of the people at the time of the rise of Lutheranism.
Therein he laments, with deep feeling and with an able pen, that so
many Lutherans were being influenced by the most worldly of motives,
and that a pernicious tendency towards freedom from social restrictions
was rife amongst them.[279]
Though Schwenckfeld was all his life equally averse to the demagogue
Anabaptist movement and to Zwinglianism with its rationalistic
tendency, yet his fate led him into ways very much like theirs.
Together with his associate Valentine Krautwald, a former precentor,
he attacked the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament, giving,
however, a new interpretation of the words of Institution., different
from that of Zwingli and Œcolampadius. To the fanaticism of the
Anabaptists he approximated by his opposition to any organised Church,
to the sacraments as means of grace, and to all that appeared to him to
deviate from the spirit of the Apostolic Church.
He besought Luther in a personal interview at Wittenberg, on Dec. 1,
1525, to agree to his doctrine of the Sacrament, explaining to him at
the same time its affinity with his supposedly profounder conception
of the atonement, the sacraments and the life of Christ as followed
in his communities; he also invited him in fiery words to throw over
the popular churches in which all the people received the Supper and
rather to establish congregations of awakened Christians. Luther,
though in no unfriendly manner, put him off; throughout the interview
he addressed him as “Dear Caspar,” but he flatly refused to give any
opinion. According to Schwenckfeld’s own account he even allowed that
his doctrine of the Sacrament was “plausible” ... if only it could
be proved, and, on parting, whispered in his ear: “Keep quiet for a
while.”[280]
When, however, the Sacramentarian movement began to assume alarming
dimensions, and the Swiss started quoting Schwenckfeld in favour of
their view of the Sacrament, Luther was exasperated and began to
assail his Silesian fellow-worker. His indignation was increased by
certain charges against the nobleman which reached him from outside
sources. He replied on April 14, 1526, to certain writings sent him by
Schwenckfeld and Krautwald by an unconditional refusal to agree, though
he did so briefly and with reserve.[281] On Jan. 4, of the same year,
referring to Zwingli, Œcolampadius and Schwenckfeld in a writing to
the “Christians of Reutlingen” directed against the Sacramentarians he
said: “Just behold and comprehend the devil and his coarseness”; in it
he had included Schwenckfeld, though without naming him, as a “spirit
and head” among the three who were attacking the Sacrament.[282]
From that time onward the Silesian appeared to him one of the most
dangerous of heretics. He no longer admitted in his case the rights
of conscience and private judgment which Luther claimed so loudly
for himself and defended in the case of his friends, and to which
Schwenckfeld now appealed. It was nothing to him that on many
occasions, and even till his death, Schwenckfeld expressed the highest
esteem for Luther and gratitude for his services in opening up a better
way of theology.
“Dr. Martin,” Schwenckfeld wrote in 1528, “I would most gladly have
spared, if only my conscience had allowed it, for I know, praise be to
God, what I owe to him.”[283]
It was his purpose to pursue the paths along which Luther had at first
striven to reach a new world. “A new world is being born and the old
is dying,” so he wrote in 1528.[284] This new world he sought within
man, but with the same mistaken enthusiasm with which he taught the
new resurrection to life. The Divine powers there at work he fancied
were the Holy Ghost, the Word of God and the Blood of the all-powerful
Jesus. The latter he wished to reinstate in person as the sole ruler
of the Church; in raising up to life and in supporting it, Jesus
was ministering personally. According to him Christ’s manhood was
not the same as a creature’s; he deified it to such an extent as to
dissolve it, thus laying himself open to the charge of Eutychianism.
Regeneration in baptism to him seemed nothing, compared with Christ’s
raising up of the adult to life.
He would have it that he himself had passed, in 1527, through an
overwhelming spiritual experience, the chief crisis of his life,
when God, as he says, made him “partaker of the heavenly calling,
received him into His favour, and bestowed upon him a good and joyful
conscience and knowledge.”[285] On his “conscience and knowledge”
he insisted from that time with blinded prejudice, and taught
his followers, likewise with a joyful conscience to embrace the
illumination from on high. He adhered with greater consistency than
Luther to the thesis that everyone who has been enlightened has the
right to judge of doctrine; no “outward office or preaching” might
stand in the way of such a one. To each there comes some upheaval
of his earthly destiny; it is then that we receive the infusion of
the knowledge of salvation given by the Spirit, and of faith in the
presence of Christ the God-man; it is a spiritual revelation which
fortifies the conscience by the absolute certainty of salvation and
guides a man in the freedom of the Spirit through all the scruples of
conscience he meets in his moral life. His system also comprises a
theory of practically complete immunity from sin.[286]
No other mind has given such bold expression as Schwenckfeld to the
individualism or subjectivism which Luther originally taught; no one
has ever attempted to calm consciences and fortify them against the
arbitrariness of religious feeling in words more sympathetic and
moving.
Carl Ecke,[287] his most recent biographer, who is full of
admiration for him, says quite truly of the close connection between
Schwenckfeld and the earlier Luther, that the chief leaders of the
incipient Protestant Church, estimable men though some of them were,
nevertheless misunderstood and repulsed one of the most promising
Christians of the Reformation age. When he charged them with want of
logic in their reforming efforts they regarded it as the fanaticism of
an ignoramus.... In Schwenckfeld 16th-century Protestantism nipped in
the bud the Christian individualism of the early ages rediscovered by
Luther, in which lay the hope of a higher unity.[288]
In 1529, two years after his great interior experience, Schwenckfeld
left his home, and, on a hint from the Duke of Silesia, severed his
connection with him, being unwilling to expose him to the risk of
persecution. Thereafter he led a wandering existence for thirty years;
until his seventy-second year he lived with strangers at Strasburg,
Esslingen, Augsburg, Spires, Ulm and elsewhere. After 1540, when
the Lutheran theologians at Schmalkalden published an admonition
against him, his history was more that of a “fugitive” than a mere
“wanderer.”[289]
Still, he was untiringly active in furthering his cause by means of
lectures and circular letters, as well as by an extensive private
correspondence. He scattered the seeds of his peculiar doctrines
amongst the nobility in particular and their dependents in country
parts. Many people of standing either belonged or were well-disposed to
his school, as Duke Christopher of Würtemberg wrote in 1564; according
to him there were many at Augsburg and Nuremberg, in the Tyrol,
in Allgäu, Silesia and one part of the Mark.[290] “The well-known
intolerance of the Reformation and of its preachers,” remarks the
Protestant historian of Schwenckfeld, “could not endure in their body a
man who had his own views on the Sacraments and refused for conscience
sake to take part in the practices of their Church.... He wandered,
like a hunted deer, without hearth or home, through the cities and
forests of South Germany, pursued by Luther and the preachers.”[291] As
late as 1558 Melanchthon incited the authorities against him, declaring
that “such sophistry as his requires to be severely dealt with by the
princes.”[292]
Not long after Schwenckfeld departed this life at Ulm in 1561. His
numerous following in Silesia migrated, first to Saxony, then to
Holland and England, and finally to Pennsylvania, where they still
exist to this day.
Luther’s indignation against Schwenckfeld knew no bounds. In
conversation he spoke of him as Swinesfield,[293] and, in his addresses
and writings, still more commonly as Stinkfield, a name which was also
repeatedly applied by his followers to the man they so disliked.[294]
In his Table-Talk Luther refers to that “rascal Schwenckfeld,” who
was the instigator of numerous errors and deceives many people with
his “honeyed words.”[295] He, like the fanatics, so Luther complains,
despises “the spoken word,” and yet God willed “to deal with and work
in us by such means.”[296]
In 1540 he told his friends that Schwenckfeld was unworthy of being
refuted by him, no less unworthy than Sebastian Frank, another gifted
and independent critic of Luther and Lutheranism.[297]
In 1543, when Schwenckfeld attempted to make advances to Luther
and sent him a tract together with a letter, Luther sent down to
the messenger a card on which he acknowledged the receipt of the
book, but declared that “the senseless fool, beset as he is by the
devil, understands nothing and does not even know what he is talking
about.” He had better leave him, Luther, alone and not worry him with
his “booklets, which the devil himself discharges through him.” In
the last lines he invokes a sort of curse on Schwenckfeld, and all
“Sacramentarians and Eutychians” of whom it had been said in the Bible
(Jer. xxiii. 21): “I did not send prophets, yet they ran: I have not
spoken to them, yet they prophesy.”[298]
When giving vent to his grudge against Schwenckfeld in his Table-Talk
shortly after this, he declared: “He is a poor creature, with neither
talent nor an enlightened spirit.... He bespirts the people with the
grand name of Christ.... The dreamer has stolen a few phrases from
my book, ‘_De ultimis verbis Davidis_’ [of 1543], and with these the
poor wretch seeks to make a great show.” It was on this occasion that
Catherine Bora took exception to a word used by her husband, declaring
that it was “too coarse.”[299]
In his “Kurtz Bekentnis vom heiligen Sacrament” (1545) Luther again
gives vigorous expression to his aversion to the “Fanatics and foes
of the Sacrament, Carlstadt, Zwingli, Œcolampadius and ‘Stinkfield’”;
they were heretics “whom he had warned sufficiently” and who were to be
avoided.[300] He had refused to listen to or to answer that “slanderer
Schwenckfeld” because everything was wasted on him. “This you may well
tell those among whom, no doubt, Stinkfield makes my name to stink. I
like being abused by such slanderers.” If by their attacks upon the
Sacrament they call the “Master of the house Beelzebub, how should they
not abuse His household?”[301]
7. Self-Improvement and the Reformation of the Church
Self-betterment, by the leading of a Christian life and, particularly,
by striving after Christian perfection, had in Catholic times been
inculcated by many writers and even by first-rank theologians. In this
field it was usual to take for granted, both in popular manuals and in
learned treatises, as the general conviction, that religion teaches
people to strive after what is highest, whether in each one’s ordinary
duties of daily life, or in the ecclesiastical or religious state. The
power of the moral teaching was to stand revealed in the struggle after
the ideal thus set forth.
_Did Luther Found a School of True Christian Life?_
Luther, of set purpose, refused to make any attempt to found, in
the strict sense of the term, a spiritual school of Christian life
or perfection. He ever found it a difficult matter even to give any
methodical instructions to this end.
Though he dealt fully and attractively with many details of life, not
only in his sermons and commentaries, but also in special writings
which still serve as inspirations to practical Christianity, yet he
would never consent to draft anything in the shape of a system for
reaching virtue, still less for attaining perfection. On one occasion
he even deliberately refused his friend Bugenhagen’s request that he
would sketch out a rule of Christian life, appealing to his well-known
thesis that “the true Christian has no need of rules for his conduct,
for the spirit of faith guides him to do all that God requires and that
brotherly love demands of him.”[302]
It may indeed be urged that his failure to bequeath to posterity any
regular guide to the spiritual life was due to lack of time, that
his active and unremitting struggle with his opponents left him no
leisure, and, in point of fact, it is quite true that his controversy
did deprive him of the requisite freedom and peace of mind. It may also
be allowed that no one man can do everything and that Luther had not
the methodical mind needed for such a task, which, in his case, was
rendered doubly hard by his revolution in doctrine. The main ground,
however, is that there were too many divergent elements in his moral
teaching which it was impossible to harmonize; so much in it was false
and awry that no logical combination of the whole was possible. Hence
his readiness to invoke the theory, which really sprung from the very
depths of his ethics, viz. that the true Christian has no need of rules
because everything he has to do is the natural outcome of faith.
In his “Sermon von den guten Wercken” (1520), he expressed this in a
way that could not fail to find a following, though it could hardly
be described as in the interests of moral effort. Each one must take
as his first rule of conduct, not on any account to bind himself, but
to keep himself free from all troublesome laws. The very title of the
tract in question, so frequently reprinted during Luther’s lifetime,
would have led people to expect to find in it his practical views on
ethics. Characteristically enough, instead of attempting to define the
exact nature and value of moral effort, Luther penned what, in reality,
was merely an appendix to his new doctrine on faith. He himself, in his
dedication of it to Duke Johann of Saxony, admits this of the first and
principal part: “Here I have striven to show how we must exercise and
make use of faith in all our good works and consider it as the chiefest
of works. If God allows me I shall at some other time deal with faith
itself, how we must each day pray and speak it.”[303]
As, however, no other of Luther’s writings contains so many elements
of moral teaching drawn from his theology, some further remarks on it
may here be in place, especially as he himself set such store on the
sermon, that, while engaged on it, referring evidently to the first
part, he wrote to Spalatin, that, in his opinion it “would be the best
thing he had yet published.”[304] Köstlin felt justified in saying:
“The whole sermon may be termed the Reformer’s first exposition and
vindication of the Evangelical teaching on morals.”[305]
Starting from his doctrine that good works are only those which God
has commanded, and that the highest is “faith, or trust in God’s
mercy,”[306] he endeavours to show, agreeably to his usual idea, that
from faith the works proceed, and for this reason he lingers over the
first four commandments of the Decalogue. He explains the principle
that faith knows no idleness. By this faith the believer is inwardly
set free from the laws and ceremonies by which men were driven to
perform good works. If faith reigned in all, then of such there would
no longer be any need. The Christian must perform good works, but he
is free to perform works of any kind, no man being bound to one or any
work, though he finds no fault with those who bind themselves.[307]
“Here we see, that, by faith, every work and thing is lawful to a
Christian, though, because the others do not yet believe, he bears
with them and performs even what he knows is not really binding.”[308]
Faith issues in works and all works come back to faith, to strengthen
the assurance of salvation.[309]
His explanation of the 3rd Commandment, where he speaks of the ghostly
Sabbath of the soul and of the putting to death of the old man, seems
like an attempt to lay down some sort of a system of moral injunction,
and incidentally recalls the pseudo-mystic phase through which Luther
had passed not so long before. Here we get just a glimpse of his
theory of human unfreedom and of God’s sole action, so far as this was
in place in a work intended for the “unschooled laity.”[310]
In man, because he is “depraved by sin, all works, all words, all
thoughts, in a word his whole life, is wicked and ungodly. If God is
to work and live in him all these vices and this wickedness must be
stamped out.” This he calls “the keeping of the day of rest, when our
works cease and God alone acts within us.” We must, indeed, “resist
our flesh and our sins,” yet “our lusts are so many and so diverse,
and also at times under the inspiration of the Wicked One so clever,
so subtle and so plausible that no man can of his own keep himself in
the right way; he must let his hands and feet go, commend himself to
the Divine guidance, trusting nothing to his reason.... For there is
nothing more dangerous in us than our reason and our will. And this
is the highest and the first work of God in us, and the best thing we
can do, for us to refrain from work, to keep the reason and the will
idle, to rest and commend ourselves to God in all things, particularly
when they are running smoothly and well.” “The spiritual Sabbath is
to leave God alone to work in us and not to do anything ourselves
with any of our powers.”[311] He harks back here to that idea of
self-surrender to the sole action of God, under the spell of which he
had formerly stood: “The works of our flesh must be put to rest and
die, so that in all things we may keep the ghostly Sabbath, leaving
our works alone and letting God work in us.... Then man no longer
guides himself, his lust is stilled and his sadness too; God Himself
is now his leader; nothing remains but godly desires, joy and peace
together with all other works and virtues.”[312]
Though, according to the peculiar mysticism which speaks to the
“unschooled laity” out of these pages, all works and virtues spring up
of themselves during the Sabbath rest of the soul, still Luther finds
it advisable to introduce a chapter on the mortification of the flesh
by fasting.
Fasting is to be made use of for the salvation of our own soul, so
far but no further, as or than each one judges it necessary for the
repression of the “wantonness of the flesh” and for the “putting to
death of our lust.”[313] We are not to “regard the work in itself.” Of
corporal penance and mortification, and fasting in particular, he will
have it, that they are to be used exclusively to “quench the evil”
within us, but not on account of any law of Pope or Church. Luther
dismisses in silence the other motives for penance recommended by the
Church of yore, in the first place satisfaction for sins committed and
the desire to obtain graces by reinforcing our prayers by self-imposed
sacrifices.[314]
He fancies that a few words will suffice to guard against any abuse
of the new ascetical doctrine: “People must beware lest this freedom
degenerate into carelessness and indolence ... into which some indeed
tumble and then say that there is no need or call that we should fast
or practise mortification.”[315]
When, in the 3rd Commandment, he comes to speak of the practice of
prayer one would naturally have expected him to give some advice and
directions concerning its different forms, viz. the prayer of praise,
thanksgiving, petition or penitence. All he seems to know is, however,
the prayer of petition, in the case of temporal trials and needs, and
amidst spiritual difficulties.[316]
Throughout the writing Luther is dominated by the idea that faith in
Christ the Redeemer, and in personal salvation, must at all costs be
increased. At the same time he is no less certain that the Papists
neither prayed aright, nor were able to perform any good works because
they had no faith.
His exhortations to a devout life (some of them fine enough in
themselves, for instance, what he says on the trusting prayer of the
sinner, on the prayers of the congregation which cry aloud to heaven
and on patience under bitter sufferings), are, as a rule, intermingled
to such an extent with polemical matter, that, instead of a school of
the spiritual life, we seem rather to have before us the turmoil of
the battlefield.[317] To understand this we must bear in mind that he
wrote the book amidst the excitement into which he was thrown by the
launching of the ban.
In the somewhat earlier writing on the Magnificat, which might equally
well have served as a medium for the enforcing of virtue and which in
some parts Luther did so use,[318] we also find the same unbridled
spirit of hatred and abuse. Nor is it lacking even in his later works
of edification. The most peaceable ethical excursus Luther contrives
to disfigure by his bitterness, his calumnies and, not seldom, by his
venom.
In the Sermon on Good Works as soon as he comes to speak of prayer he
has a cut at the formalism of the prayer beloved of the Papists;[319]
he then proceeds to abuse the churches and convents for their mode
of life, their chanting and babbling, all performed in “obstinate
unbelief,” etc. At least one-half of his instruction on fasting
consists in mockery of the fasting as practised by the Papists. His
anger, however, reaches its climax in the 4th Commandment, where
he completely forgets his subject, and, losing all mastery over
himself, wildly storms against the spiritual authorities and their
disorders.[320] The only allusion to anything that by any stretch
of imagination would be termed a work, is the following:[321] The
rascally behaviour of the Church’s officers and episcopal or clerical
functionaries “ought to be repressed by the secular sword because no
other means is available.” “The best thing, and the only remaining
remedy, would be, that the King, Princes, nobles, townships and
congregations should take the law into their hands, so that the bishops
and clergy might have good cause to fear and therefore to obey.” For
everything must make room for the Word of God.
“Neither Rome, nor heaven, nor earth” may decree anything contrary to
the first three Commandments.
In dealing with these first three Commandments the booklet releases
the reader at one stroke from all the Church’s laws hitherto observed.
“Hence I allow each man to choose the day, the food and the amount of
his fasting.”[322] “Where the spirit of Christ is, there all is free,
for faith does not allow itself to be tied down to any work.”[323]
“The Christian who lives by faith has no need of any teacher’s good
works.”[324] Here we can see the chief reason why Luther’s instructions
on virtue and the spiritual life are so meagre.
_A Lutheran Theologian on the Lack of any Teaching Concerning
“Emancipation from the World”_
Even from Protestant theologians we hear the admission that Luther’s
Reformation failed to make sufficient allowance for the doctrine of
piety; he neglected, so they urge, the question of man’s “emancipation
from the world,” so that, even to the present day, Protestantism,
and traditional Lutheran theology in particular, lacks any definite
rule of piety. According to these critics, ever since Luther’s day
practical and adequate instructions had been wanting with regard to
what, subsequent to the reconciliation with the Father brought about by
Justification, still remains “to be done in the Father’s house”; nor
are we told how the life in Christ is to be led, of which nevertheless
the Apostle Paul speaks so eloquently, though this is in reality the
“main question in Christianity” and concerns the “vital interests of
the Church.”
The remarks just quoted occur in an article by the theologian Julius
Kaftan, Oberkonsistorialrat at Berlin, published in the “Zeitschrift
für Theologie und Kirche” in 1908 under the title, “Why does the
Evangelical Church know no doctrine of the Redemption in the narrower
sense, and how may this want be remedied?” We all the more gladly
append some further remarks by a theologian, who, as a rule, is by no
means favourably disposed to Catholicism.
According to Kaftan, Luther indeed supplied “all the elements” for the
upbuilding of a doctrine of “redemption from the world”; he gave “the
stimulus” to the thought; it is “not as though we had no conception of
it.”
But he, and the Reformation as a whole, failed to furnish any “actual,
detailed doctrine” on this subject because their attack was directed,
and had to be directed, against the ideal of piety as they found
it in the Church’s monastic life; they destroyed it, so the author
opines, because it was only under this distorted monkish shape that
the “Christian idea of redemption from the world was then met.”[325]
The Reformation omitted to replace it by a better system. It suffers
from having fallen into the way of giving “too great prominence to
the doctrine of Justification,” whereas the salvation “bestowed by
Christ is not merely Justification and forgiveness of sins,” as the
traditional Lutheran theology seems on the surface to assume even
to-day, but rather the “everlasting possession” to be reached by a
Christ-like life; Justification is but the road to this possession.
Because people failed to keep this in view the doctrine of the real
“work of salvation” has from the beginning been made far too little of.
A further reason which explains the neglect is, according to Kaftan,
the following: In Catholicism it is the Church which acts as the
guide to piety and supplies all the spiritual aids required; she acts
as intermediary between God and the faithful. But “the Evangelical
teaching rejected the Church (in this connection) as a supernatural
agency for the dispensation of the means of salvation. In her place
it set the action of the Spirit working by means of the Word of
God.” Since this same teaching stops short at the Incarnation and
Satisfaction of Christ, it has “no room for any doctrine of redemption
(from the world) as a work of God.”[326] Pietism, with all its
irregularities, was merely an outcome of this deficiency; but even the
Pietists never succeeded in formulating such a doctrine of redemption.
It is to the credit of the author that he feels this want deeply and
points out the way in which theology can remedy it.[327] He would fain
see introduced a system of plain directions, though framed on lines
different from those of the “ostensibly final doctrinal teaching”
of the Formula of Concord,[328] i.e. instructions to the devout
Christian how to manifest in his life in the world the death and
resurrection of Christ which St. Paul experienced in himself. Much too
much emphasis had been laid in Protestantism on Luther’s friendliness
to the world and the joy of living, which he was the first to teach
Christians in opposition to the doctrine of the Middle Ages; yet the
other idea, of redemption from the world, must nevertheless retain a
lasting significance in Christianity. Although, before Luther’s day,
the Church had erroneously striven to attain to the latter solely
in the monastic life, yet there is no doubt “that the most delicate
blossoms of pre-Reformation piety sprang from this soil, and that
the best forces in the Church owed their origin to this source.” Is
it merely fortuitous, continues the author, “that the ‘Imitation
of Christ,’ by Thomas à Kempis, should be so widely read throughout
Christendom, even by Evangelicals? Are there not many Evangelical
Christians who could witness that this book has been a great help
to them in a crisis of their inner life? But whoever knows it knows
what the idea of redemption from the world there signifies.” All this
leads our author to the conclusion: “The history of Christianity and
of the Church undoubtedly proves that here [in the case of the defect
in the Lutheran theology he is instancing] it is really a question of
a motive power and central thought of our religion.”[329] He points
out to the world of our day, “that growing civilisation culminates in
disgust with the world and with civilisation.” “Then,” he continues,
“the soul again cries for God, for the God Who is above all the world
and in Whom alone the heart finds rest. As it ever was, so is it still
to-day.”[330]
It is a satisfaction to hear this call which must rejoice the heart
of every believer. The same, however, had been heard throughout
the ancient Church and had met with a happy response. Not in the
“Imitation” only, but in a hundred other writings of Catholics, mystic
and ascetic, could our author have found the ideals of Christian
perfection and of the rest in God which comes from inward severance
from the world, all expressed with the utmost clearness and the warmest
feeling. Nor was Christian perfection imprisoned within the walls of
the monasteries; it also flourished in the breezy atmosphere of the
world. The Church taught the universality of this ideal of perfect love
of God, of the imitation of Christ and of detachment from the world,
and she recommended it indiscriminately to all classes, inviting people
to practise it under all conditions of life and expending liberally
in all directions her supernatural powers in order to attain her aim.
Among the best of those whose writings inaugurated a school of piety
may be classed St. Bernard and Gerson, in whom Luther had found light
and edification when still a zealous monk. With him, however, the
case was very different. Of the works he bequeathed to posterity the
Protestant theologian referred to above, says regretfully: They contain
neither a “doctrine” nor a definite “scheme of instruction” on “that
side of life which faces God.” “No clear, conclusive thoughts on this
all-important matter are to be found.”
On the other hand it must be added that there is no want of “clear,
conclusive thoughts” to a quite opposite effect; not merely on
enjoyment of the world, but on a kind of sovereignty over it which is
scarcely consistent with the effort after self-betterment.
_The Means of Self-Reform and their Reverse Side_
Self-denial as the most effective means of self-education in the good,
and self-conquest in outward and inward things, receive comparatively
small attention from Luther; rather he is set on delivering people from
the “anxiety-breeding,” traditional prejudice in favour of spiritual
renunciation, obedience to the Church and retrenchment in view of
the evil. This deliverance, thanks to its alluring and attractive
character, was welcomed, in spite of Luther’s repeated warnings against
any excess of the spirit of the world. His abandonment of the path of
perfection so strongly recommended by Christ and his depreciation of
“peculiar” works and “singular” practices were more readily understood
and also more engaging than his words in favour of real works of faith.
He set up his own inward experiences of the difficulty and, as he
thought, utter futility of the conflict with self, together with his
hostility to all spiritual efforts exceeding the common bounds, as the
standard for others, and, in fact, even for the Church; in the Catholic
past, on the other hand, the faithful had been taught to recognise the
standard of the Church, their teacher and guide, as the rule by which
to judge of their own experiences.
Here to prove what we have said, would necessitate the repetition of
what has already been given elsewhere.
Luther’s writings, particularly his letters, also contain certain
instructions, which, fortunately, have not become the common property
of Protestants, but which everybody must feel to be absolutely
opposed to anything like self-betterment. We need only call to mind
his teaching, that temptations to despondency and despair are best
withstood by committing some sin in defiance of the devil, or by
diverting the mind to sensual and carnal distractions.[331] The words:
“What matters it if we commit a fresh sin?”[332] since through faith
we have forgiveness, and the other similar utterance, “Be a sinner and
sin boldly, but believe more boldly still,” are characteristic of him,
though he would have been unwilling to see them pressed or taken too
literally. By these and other statements he did, however, seriously
endanger the ethical character of sin; in reality he diminished the
abhorrence for sin, though no doubt he did not fully perceive the
consequences of his act.[333]
* * * * *
To the man who had become sensible of the ensnaring influence of the
world and of its evil effects upon himself, or who on account of his
mental build felt himself endangered by it, Catholic moralists advised
retirement, recollection, self-examination and solitude. Luther was
certainly not furthering the cause of perfection when he repeatedly
insisted, with an emphasis that is barely credible, that solitude must
be avoided as the deadly foe of the true life of the soul, and that
what should be sought was rather company and distraction. Solitude
was a temptation to sin. “I too find,” so he says, “that I never fall
into sin more frequently than when I am alone.... Quietude calls forth
the worst of thoughts. Whatever our trouble be, it then becomes much
more dangerous,” etc.[334] Of course, in the case of persons of gloomy
disposition Luther was quite right in recommending company, but it was
just in doing so that he exceeded the bounds in his praise of sensual
distractions;[335] of his own example, too, he makes far too much. On
the other hand, all the great men in the Church had sought to find the
guiding light of self-knowledge in solitude; this they regarded as a
school for the subjugation of unruly emotions.
Not only were self-control and self-restraint something strange to
Luther,[336] but he often went so far as to adduce curious theoretical
reasonings of his own to prove that they could have no place in
his public life and controversies, and why he and his helpers were
compelled to give the reins to anger, hatred and abuse. Thus the work
of self-improvement was renounced in yet another essential point.
Then again with regard to prayer. His exhortations thereto are numerous
enough and he himself prayed frequently. But it is not necessary to be
an ascetic to see that several things are wanting in his admonitions
to prayer. The first is the salt of contrition and compunction. He
was less alive to the wholesome underlying feeling of melancholy
that characterises the soul which prays to God in the consciousness
of having abused its free-will, than he was to the suggestions of
self-confidence and assurance of salvation. The second thing wanting
is the humility which should permeate prayer even when exalted to the
highest limits of trusting confidence. If man, as Luther taught, is
incapable of any work, then of course there can be no sense of shame
at not having done more to please God and to merit greater grace from
Him. Moreover, Luther indirectly encouraged people to pray in the bold
consciousness of being justified and to look for the keeping of the
law as a natural consequence of such “faith.” Lastly, and this sums
up everything, we miss the spirit of love in his often so strongly
worded and eloquent exhortations to prayer; the spirit which should
have led him to resignation to God’s designs, and to commit his life’s
work to the Will of God with a calm indifference as to its eventual
success.[337] Hardly ever do we find any trace of that zeal for souls
which embraces the whole of God’s broad kingdom even to the heathen,
in short, the whole of the Church’s sphere.[338] On the other hand,
however, he expressly exhorts his followers to increase the ardour of
their prayers, after his own example, by interspersing them with curses
on all whose views were different.[339]
In place of the pleasing variety of the old exercises of prayer—from
the Office recited by the clergy with its daily commemoration of
the Saints down to the multifarious devotions of the people, to say
nothing of the great Sacrifice of the Altar, the very heart’s pulse
of the Church—he recommends as a rule only the Our Father, the Creed
and the Psalms—prayers indeed rich beyond all others and which will
ever hold the first place among Christian devotions. But had they not
been brought closer to the heart formerly in the inner and outer
life of prayer dealt with in the writings of the Catholic masters of
the spiritual life, and exemplified in the churches and monasteries,
and even in private houses and the very streets? But behind all this
rich display Luther saw lurking the demon of “singular works.” The
monk absorbed in contemplation was, in Luther’s eyes, an unhappy
wretch sitting “in filth” up to his neck. Thus he restricts himself
to recommending the old short formulas of prayer. In accordance with
his doctrine that faith alone avails, he desires that sin, and the
intention of sinning, should be withstood by the use of the Our Father:
“That you diligently learn to say the Our Father, the Creed and the Ten
Commandments.”[340] “Grant, O God (thus must you pray), that Thy Name
be hallowed by me, Thy Kingdom come to me, and Thy Will be done in me”;
in this wise they would come to scorn “devil, death and hell.”[341] He
indeed kept in touch with the people by means of the olden prayers,
but, even into them, he knew how to introduce his own new views; the
Kingdom of God, which to him is forgiveness of sins,[342] “must come
to us by faith,” and the chief article of the whole Creed with which
to defy “death, devil and hell” was the “_remissio peccatorum_.” These
remarks must not, however, be understood as detracting from the value
of his fine, practical, and often sympathetic expositions of the Our
Father, whether in his special work on it in 1518 or in the Larger
Catechism.[343]
Of the numerous “man-made laws” which he banished at one stroke by
denying the Church’s authority there is no need to speak here. Without
a doubt the overturning of all these barriers erected against human
lusts and wilfulness was scarcely conducive to the progress of the
individual.
Nor does the absence of any higher standard of life in his own
case[344] serve to recommend his system of ethics. Seeing that, as has
been already pointed out,[345] he himself is disposed to admit his
failings, the apparent confidence with which, in order to exalt his
reform of ethics, he appeals to the biblical verity, that the truth of
a doctrine is proved by its moral fruits, is all the more surprising.
* * * * *
Of this confidence we have a remarkable example in a sermon devoted
to the explanation of the 1st Epistle of St. John. At the same time
the exceptional boldness of his language and the resolute testimony
he bears in his own favour constitute striking proof of how the very
firmness of his attitude impressed his followers and exercised over
many a seductive spell. The weakness of the Reformer’s ethics seems all
at once to vanish before his mighty eloquence.
The discourse in question, where at the same time he vindicates his
own conduct, belongs to 1532. About that time he preached frequently
at Wittenberg on St. John’s sublime words concerning the love of
God and our neighbour (1 Jo. iv. 16-21). His object was to cleanse
and better the morals of Wittenberg, the low standard of which he
deplores, that the results of justification by faith might shine forth
more brightly. At that very time he was treating with the Elector and
the Saxon Estates in view of a new visitation of all the parishes to
be held the next year, which might promote the good of morality. The
sermons were duly reported by his pupil Cruciger, whose notes were
published at Wittenberg in 1533 under the general title of “A Sermon
on Love.”[346]
Dealing therein with ethical practice he starts by proclaiming that,
according to the “pious Apostle” whose doctrines he was expounding,
everything depends on Christians proving by their fruits whether
they really “walk in love.” Of many, however, who not only declared
themselves well acquainted with the principles of faith and ethics but
even professed to be qualified to teach them, it was true that, “if we
applied and manifested in our lives their ethics after their example,
then we should be but poorly off.”[347] Such men must, nevertheless,
be tested by their works. Nor does he exempt himself from this duty of
putting ethics to a practical test.
Nowhere else does he insist more boldly than in these sermons on proof
by actual deeds, even in his own case. According to the words of John,
so he says, a life of love would give them “confidence in the Day of
Judgment” (iv. 17). Confidence, nay, a spirit of holy defiance, even
in the presence of death and judgment, must fill the hearts of all
who acted aright, owing to the very testimony of their fellow-men to
the blamelessness of their lives. “We must be able to boast [with
Christ, ‘the reconciliation for our sins’] not before God alone but
before God and all Christendom, and against the whole world, that no
one can truthfully condemn or even accuse us.” “We must be able to
assure ourselves that we have lived in such a way that no one can take
scandal at us”; we must have this testimony, “that we have walked on
earth in simplicity and godly piety, and that no one can charge us
with having been given to ‘trickery.’” In this wise had Paul countered
false doctrines by boasting, just as Moses and Samuel had already done
under the Old Covenant.[348]
Coming to his own person the speaker thinks he can honestly say the
same of himself, though, like the rest, he too must confess to being
still in need of the article of the forgiveness of sins. There were
false teachers who could not appeal so confidently to the morality
of their lives, “proud, puffed-up spirits who lay claim to a great
and wonderful holiness, who want to reform the whole world and to do
something singular in order that all may say that they alone are true
Christians. This sort of thing lasts indeed for a while, during which
they parade and strut, but, when the hour of death comes, that is the
end of all such idle nonsense.”[349] He himself, with the faithful
teachers and good Christians, is in a very different case: “If I must
boast of how I have acted in my position towards everyone then I will
say: I witness before you and all the world, and know that God too
witnesses on my behalf together with all His angels, that I have not
falsified God’s Word, His Baptism or the Sacrament but have preached
and acted faithfully as much as was in me, and suffered all ill solely
for God’s and His Word’s sake. Thus must all the Saints boast.”[350]
He lays the greatest stress on the unanimous testimony which the
preacher must receive from his fellow-men and from posterity. He must
be able to say, “you shall be my witnesses,” he “must be able to call
upon all men to bear him witness”; they must bear us witness on the
Last Day that we have lived aright and shown by our deeds that we were
Christians. If this is the case, if they can point to their practice
of good works, then the preaching of good works can be insisted on
with all the emphasis required.[351] It is natural, however, that
towards the end Luther lays greater stress on his teaching than on his
works.
On his preaching of the value of good works he solemnly assures us:
“We can testify before the whole world that we have preached much more
grandly and forcefully on good works than even those who calumniate
us.”[352]
_Self-Reform and Hatred of the Foe_
In speaking of Luther, his staunch friends are wont to boast of
his lifelong struggle against the fetters of the Papacy and of the
overwhelming power of his assault on the olden Church; this, so they
imply, redounded to his glory and showed his moral superiority.
In what follows we shall therefore consider some of the main ethical
features of this struggle of Luther’s and of the attitude he adopted
in his conflict with Popery. His very defence of himself and of the
moral effects of his preaching, which we have just heard him pronounce
subsequent to the Diet of Augsburg, invites us to consider in the light
of ethics his public line of action, as traced in his writings of that
period. These years represent a turning-point in his life, and here,
if anywhere, we should be able to detect his higher moral standard
and the power of his new principles to effect a change first of all
in himself. In the sermon of 1532 (above, p. 96) he had said: The new
Gospel which he had “preached rightly and faithfully” made those who
accepted it “to walk in simplicity and godly piety” according to the
law of love, and to stand forth “blameless before all the world.” Could
he truthfully, he, the champion of this Gospel, really lay any claim to
these qualities as here he seems to do, at least indirectly?
His controversial tracts dating from that time display anything but
“simplicity and godly piety.” His hate was without bounds, and his
fury blazed forth in thunderbolts which slew all who dared to attempt
to bridge the chasm between him and the Catholic Church. Reproaching
voices, about him and within him, seemed to him to come from so many
devils. The Coburg, where he stayed, was assuredly “full of devils,”
so he wrote.[353] There, in spite of his previous attempts to jest
and be cheerful,[354] and notwithstanding the violent and distracting
labours in which he was engaged, the devil had actually established an
“embassy,” troubling him with many anxieties and temptations.[355]
The devil he withstood by paroxysms of that hate and rage which he
had always in store for his enemies. “The Castle may be crammed with
devils, yet Christ reigneth there in the midst of His foes!”[356]
He includes in the same category the Papists, and the Turks who then
were threatening Europe: Both are “monsters,” both have been “let
loose by the fury of the devil,” both represent a common “woe doomed
to overwhelm the world in these last days of Christendom.”[357] These
“stout jackasses” (of the Diet of Augsburg), so he cried from the
ramparts of his stronghold, “want to meddle in the business of the
Church. Let them try!”[358] “The very frenzy and madness of our foes of
itself alone proves that we are in the right.”[359] “Their blasphemy,
their murders, their contempt of the Gospel, and other enormities
against it, increase day by day and must bring the Turk into the field
against us.”[360] “I am a preacher of Christ,” so he assures us, “and
Christ is the truth.”—But is hatred a mark of a disciple of Christ, or
of a higher mission for the reformation of doctrine and worship?
Elsewhere Luther himself describes hate as a “true image of the devil;
in fact, it is neither human nor diabolical but the devil himself whose
whole being is nothing but an everlasting burning,” etc. “The devil is
always acting contrary to love.” “Such is his way; God works nothing
but benefits and deeds of charity, while he on the contrary performs
nothing but works of hate.”[361] On other occasions in his sermons he
speaks in familiar and at the same time inspiring words of the beauty
of Christian love. “Love is a great and rich treasure, worth many
hundred thousand gulden, or a great kingdom. Who is there who would
not esteem it highly and pursue it to the limit of his power, nay,
pour out sweat and blood for it if he only hoped or knew how to obtain
it!... What is sun, moon, heavens or all creation, all the angels, all
the saints compared with it? Love is nothing but the one, unspeakable,
eternal good and the highest treasure, which is God Himself.”[362]
But his “Vermanũg an die geistlichen versammelt auff dem Reichstag
zu Augsburg” (which he wrote from the Coburg) was the fruit, not
of love, but of the most glowing hate.[363] In a private letter he
calls it quite rightly, not an “exhortation” (Vermanũg), but “an
invective” against the clergy,[364] and, in another letter, admits
the “violent spirit” in which he had written it; when composing it
the abusive thoughts had rushed in on him like an “uninvited band of
moss-troopers.”[365] But, that he drove them back as he declares he
did, is not discernible from the work in question.
In the booklet under discussion he several times uses what would seem
to be words of peace, and, in one passage, even sketches a scheme
for reunion; but, as a Protestant critic of the latter says, not
altogether incorrectly, the “idea was of its very nature impossible
of execution.”[366] Indeed, we may say that Luther himself could see
well enough that the idea was a mere deception; the best motto for the
writing would be: Enmity and hatred until death!
The Catholic members of the Diet are there represented as “obstinate
and stiff-necked,” and as “bloodhounds raging wantonly”; they had
hitherto, but all to no purpose, “tried fraud and trickery, force
and anger, murder and penalties.” To the bishops he cries: “May the
devil who drives them dog their footsteps, and all our misfortunes
fall on their head!” He puts them on a level with “procurers and
whoremongers,” and trounces them as “the biggest robbers of benefices,
bawds and procurers to be found in all the world.”[367]—There had
been many cases of infringement of the law of celibacy among both
lower and higher clergy previous to Luther’s advent, while the
Wittenberg spirit of freedom set free in the German lands helped
considerably to increase the evil amongst the ranks of the Catholic
clergy; but to what unheard-of exaggerations, all steeped in hate,
did not Luther have recourse the better to inflame the people and to
defend the illicit marriages of those of the clergy who now were the
preachers of the new religion? He was about “to sweep out of the house
the harlots and abducted spouses” of the bishops, and not merely to
show up the bishops as real “lechers and brothel-keepers” (a favourite
expression of his), but to drag them still deeper in the mire. It was
his unclean fancy, which delighted to collect the worst to be found
in corrupt localities abroad, that led him to say: “And, moreover, we
shall do clean away with your Roman Sodom, your Italian weddings, your
Venetian and Turkish brides, and your Florentine bridegrooms!”[368]
The pious founders of the bishoprics and monasteries, he cries, “never
intended to found bawdy-houses or Roman robber-churches,” nor yet
to endow with their money “strumpets and rascals, or Roman thieves
and robbers.” The bishops, however, are set on “hiding, concealing
and burying in silence the whole pot-broth of their abominations and
corrupt, unepiscopal abuses, shame, vice and noxious perversion of
Christendom, and on seeing them lauded and praised,” whereas it is
high time that they “spat upon their very selves”; their auxiliary
bishops “smear the unschooled donkeys with chrism” (ordain priests)
and these in turn seek “to rise to power”; yet revolt against them
and against all authority is brewing in the distance; if the bloody
deeds of Münzer’s time were repeated, then, he, Luther, would not be
to blame; “men’s minds are prepared and greatly embittered and, that,
not without due cause”; if you “go to bits” then “your blood be upon
your own head!” Meanwhile it is too bad that the bishops “should go
about in mitres and great pomp,” as though we were “old fools”; but
still worse is it that they should make of all this pomp “articles of
faith and a matter of conscience, so that people must commit sin if
they refuse to worship such child’s play; surely this is the devil’s
own work.” Of such hateful misrepresentations, put forward quite
seriously, a dozen other instances might be cited from this writing.
“But that we _must_ look upon such child’s play as articles of faith,
and befool ourselves with bishops’ mitres, from that we cannot get
away, no matter how much we may storm or jeer.”[369]
The writing culminates in the following outburst: “In short we and you
alike know that you are living without God’s Word, but that, on our
side, we have God’s Word.”
“If I live I shall be your bane; if I die I shall be your death! For
God Himself has driven me to attack you! I must, as Hosea says, be to
you as a bear and a lion in the way of Assur. You shall have no peace
from me until you amend or rush to your own destruction.”[370]
At a later date, of the saying “If I live,” etc., Luther made the Latin
couplet: “_Pestis eram vivus moriens ero mors tua papa_.” In life,
O Pope, I was thy plague, in dying I shall be thy death. He first
produced this verse at Spalatin’s home at Altenburg on his return
journey from the Coburg; afterwards he frequently repeated it, for
instance, at Schmalkalden in 1537, when he declared, that he would
bequeath his hatred of the Papacy as an heirloom to his disciples.[371]
As early as 1522 he had also made use of the Bible passage concerning
the lion and the bear in his “Wyder den falsch genantten geystlichen
Standt” with the like assurance of the Divine character of his
undertaking, and in a form which shows how obsessed he was by the
spirit of hate: He was sure of his doctrine and by it would judge even
the angels; without it no one could be saved, for it was God’s and not
his, for which reason his sentence too was God’s and not his: “Let
this be my conclusion. If I live you shall have no peace from me, if
you kill me, you shall have ten times less peace; and I shall be to
you as Oseas says, xiii. 8, a bear in the path and a lion in the road.
However you may treat me you shall not have your will, until your
brazen front and iron neck are broken either unwillingly or by grace.
Unless you amend, as I would gladly wish, then we may persist, you in
your anger and hostility and I in paying no heed.”[372]
On another occasion he tells us how he would gladly have left
Wittenberg with Melanchthon and the others who were going by way of
Nuremberg to the Diet of Augsburg, but a friend had said to him: “Hold
your tongue! Your tongue is an evil one!”[373]
After the publication of the “Vermanũg an die Geistlichen,” or
possibly even before, Melanchthon seems to have written to him,
re-echoing the observations of startled and anxious friends, and
saying that the writing had been “variously” appreciated, in itself
a significant remark; Luther himself at that time certainly dreaded
the censure of his adherents. Still, he insists as defiantly as ever
on his “invective”: “Let not your heart be troubled,” he admonishes
Melanchthon, “My God is a God of fools, Who is wont to laugh at the
wise. Whence I trouble myself about them not the least bit.”[374] On
the contrary, he even came near regarding his writing as a special work
of God.
As we have already pointed out, the defiant and violent steps he took,
only too often became in his eyes special works of God. His notorious,
boundless sense of his own greatness, to which this gave rise, is the
first of the phenomena which accompanied his hate; these it will now
be our duty briefly to examine in order better to appreciate the real
strength of his ethical principles in his own case.
_Companion-Phenomena of his Hate_
As a matter of fact Luther’s sense of his superiority was so great that
the opponents he attacked had to listen to language such as no mortal
had ever before dreamed of making use of against the Church.
The Church is being reformed “in my age” in “a Divine way, not after
human ways.” “Were we to fall, then Christ would fall with us.”[375]
Whenever he meets with contradiction, whenever he hears even the hint
of a reproach or accusation, he at once ranges himself—as he does, for
instance, in the “Vermanũg”—on the side of the persecuted “prophets
and apostles,” nay, he even likens himself to Christ.[376] He stood
alone, without miracles, and devoid of holiness, as he himself candidly
informed Henry VIII. of England; nevertheless he pits himself against
the heads of both Church and Empire assembled at the Diet.
All he could appeal to was his degree of Doctor of Theology: “Had I
not been a Doctor, the devil would have given me much trouble, for it
is no small matter to attack the whole Papacy and to charge it” (with
error).[377] In the last instance, however, his self-confidence recalls
him to the proud consciousness of his entire certainty. “Thus our cause
stands firm, because we know how we believe and how we live.”[378]
With these words from his “Vermanũg” he defies the whole of the present
and of the past, the Pope and all his Councils.
He knows—and that suffices—that what he has and proclaims is God’s
Word; “and if you have God’s Word you may say: Now that I have the Word
what need have I to ask what the Councils say?”[379] “Among all the
Councils I have never found one where the Holy Spirit rules.... There
will never be no Council [_sic_], according to the Holy Spirit, where
the people have to agree. God allows this because He Himself wills to
be the Judge and suffers not men to judge. Hence He commands every man
to know what he believes.”[380] Luther only, and those who follow him,
know what they believe; he takes the place of all the councils, Doctors
of the Church, Popes and bishops, in short, of all the ecclesiastical
sources of theology.
“The end of the world may now come,” he said, in 1540, “for all that
pertains to the knowledge of God has now been supplied” (by me).[381]
With this contempt for the olden Church he combines a most imperious
exclusiveness in his treatment even of those who like him were
opposed to the Pope, whether they were individuals or formed schools
of thought. They must follow his lead, otherwise there awaits them
the sentence he launched at the Zwinglians from the Coburg: “These
Sacramentarians are not merely liars but the very embodiment of lying,
deceit and hypocrisy; this both Carlstadt and Zwingli prove by word
and deed.” Their books, he says, contain pestilential stuff; they
refused to retract even when confuted by him, but simply because they
stood in fear of their own following; he would continue to put them
to shame by those words, which so angered them: “You have a spirit
different from ours.” He could not look upon them as brothers; this
was duly expressed in the article in which he went so far as to
promise them that love which was due even to enemies. On his own
authority he curtly dubs them “heretics,” and is resolved in this
way to tread unharmed with Christ through Satan’s kingdom and all
his lying artifices.[382] Luther’s aggravating exclusiveness went
hand-in-hand with his overweening self-confidence.
In consequence of this treatment the Swiss, through the agency of
Bullinger, Zwingli’s successor, complained to Bucer, “Beware of not
believing Luther readily or of not yielding to him! He is a scorpion;
no matter how carefully he is handled he will sting, even though to
begin with he seems to caress your hand.”[383] To this Bucer, who
had also ventured to differ from Luther, wrote in his reply: “He has
flung another scathing book at us.... He speaks, and means to speak,
much more harshly than heretofore.” “He will not now endure even the
smallest contradiction, and I am sure that, were I to go any further,
I should cause such a tragedy that all the churches would once more
be convulsed.”[384] Another Protestant voice we hear exclaiming with
a fine irony: “Luther rages, thunders and lightens as though he were
a Jupiter and had all the bolts of heaven at his command to launch
against us.... Has he then become an emperor of the Christian army on
the model of the Pope, so as to be able to issue every pronouncement
that his brain suggests?”[385] “He confuses the two Natures in Christ
and brings forward foolish, nay godless, statements. If we may not
condemn this, then what, pray, may be condemned?”[386]
His natural lack of charity, of which we shall have later on to
add many fresh and appalling examples to those already enumerated,
aggravated his hatred, his sense of his own greatness and his
exclusiveness. What malicious hatred is there not apparent in his
advice that Zwingli and Œcolampadius should be condemned, “even though
this led to violence being offered them.”[387] It is with reluctance
that one gazes on Luther’s abuse of the splendid gifts of mind and
heart with which he had been endowed.
A recent Protestant biographer of Carlstadt’s laments the “frightful
harshness of his (Luther’s) polemics.” “How deep the traces left by
his mode of controversy were, ought not to be overlooked,” so he
writes. “From that time forward this sort of thing took the place of
any real discussion of differences of opinion between members of the
Lutheran camp, nor did people even seem aware of how far they were
thus drifting from the kindliness and dignity of Christian modes of
thought.”[388] What is here said of the treatment of opponents within
the camp applies even more strongly to Luther’s behaviour towards
Catholics.
The following episode of his habitual persecution of Albert,
Archbishop and Elector of Mayence, illustrates this very well.
On June 21, 1535, the Archbishop in accordance with the then law
and with the sentence duly pronounced by the judge, had caused Hans
von Schönitz, once his trusted steward, to be executed; the charge
of which he had been proved guilty was embezzlement on a gigantic
scale. The details of the case, which was dealt with rather hurriedly,
have not yet been adequately cleared up, but even Protestant
researchers agree that Schönitz deserved to be dealt with as a “public
thief,”[389] seeing that “in the pecuniary transactions which he
undertook for Albert he was not unmindful of his own advantage”;[390]
“there is no doubt that he was rightly accused of all manner of
peculation and cheating.”[391] Luther, however, furiously entered
the lists on behalf of the executed man and against the detested
Archbishop who, in spite of his private faults, remained faithful
to the Church and was a hindrance to the spread of Lutheranism in
Germany. Luther implicitly believed all that was told him, of Hans’s
innocence and of Albert’s supposed abominable motives, by Schönitz’s
brother and his friend Ludwig Rabe—who himself was implicated in the
matter—and both of whom came to Wittenberg. “Both naturally related
the case from their own point of view.”[392] Luther sent two letters
to the Cardinal, one more violent than the other.[393] The second
would seem to have been intended for publication and was sent to
the press, though at present no copy of it can be discovered. In it
in words of frightful violence he lays at the door of the Prince of
the Church the blood of the man done to death. The Archbishop was a
“thorough-paced Epicurean who does not believe that Abel lives in God
and that his blood still cries more loudly than Cain, his brother’s
murderer, fancies.” He, Luther, like another Elias, must call down
woes “upon Achab and Isabel.” He had indeed heard of many evil deeds
done by Cardinals, “but I had not taken your Cardinalitial Holiness
for such an insolent, wicked dragon.... Your Electoral Highness may
if he likes commit a nuisance in the Emperor’s Court of Justice,
infringe the freedom of the city of Halle, usurp the sword of Justice
belonging to Saxony, and, over and above this, look on the world and
on all reason as rags fit only for the closet”—such is a fair sample
of the language—and, moreover, treat everything in a Popish, Roman,
Cardinalitial way, but, please God, our Lord God will by our prayers
one day compel your Electoral Highness to sweep out all the filth
yourself.
In the first letter he had threatened fiercely the hated Cardinal
with publishing what he knew (or possibly only feigned to know)
of his faults; he would not “advise him to stir up the filth any
further”; here in the second letter he charges him in a general
way with robbery, petty theft and fraud in the matter of Church
property, also with having cheated a woman of the town whom he used
to keep; he deserved to be “hanged on a gallows three times as high
as the Giebichstein,” where Schönitz had been executed. Incidentally
he promises him a new work that shall reveal all his doings. The
threatened work was, however, never published, Albert’s family, the
Brandenburgs, having raised objections at the Electoral Court of
Saxony. Albert, however, offered quite frankly to submit the Schönitz
case and the grievances raised by his relatives to the judgment of
George of Anhalt, one of the princes who had gone over to Lutheranism,
who was perfectly at liberty to take the advice of Jonas, nay, even
of Luther himself. “In this we may surely see a proof that he was not
conscious of being in the least blameworthy.”[394] At any rate he
seems to have been quite willing to lay his case even before his most
bitter foe.[395]
* * * * *
Such was Luther’s irritability and quickness of temper, even in private
concerns, that, at times, even in his letters, he would pour forth the
most incredible threats.
On one occasion, in 1542, when a messenger sent by Justus Jonas
happened to offend him, he at once wrote an “angry letter” to Jonas
and on the next day followed it up with another in which he says, that
his anger has not yet been put to rest; never is Jonas to send such
people into his house again or else he will order them to be gagged
and put under restraint. “Remember this, for I have said it. This
man may scold and do the grand elsewhere, but not in Luther’s house,
unless indeed he wants to have his tongue torn out. Are we going to
allow such caitiffs as these to play the emperor?”[396]—He had, as
we already know, a sad experience with a certain girl named Rosina,
whom he had engaged as a servant, but who turned out to be a person
of loose morals and brought his house into disrepute. “She shall
never again have the chance of deceiving anyone so long as there is
water enough in the Elbe,” so he writes of her to a judge. In letters
to other persons he accuses her of “villainy and fornication”; she
had “shamed all the inmates of his house with the [assumed] name of
Truchsess”; he could only think that she had been “foisted on him by
the Papists as an arch-prostitute—the god-forsaken minx and lying
bag of trouble, who has damaged my household from garret to cellar ...
accursed harridan and perjured, thieving drab that she is!” Away with
her “for the honour of the Evangel.”[397]
Even in younger days he had been too much accustomed to give the reins
to his excitement, as his two indignant letters (his own description
of them) to his brother monks at Erfurt show.[398] Even his upbringing
of his own children, highly lauded as it has been, suffered from this
same lack of self-control. “The mere disobedience of a boy would stir
him to his very depths. For instance, he admits of a nephew he had
living with him—a son of his brother James—that once ‘he angered me
so greatly as almost to be the death of me, so that for a while I lost
the use of my bodily powers.’”[399]—So exasperated was he with the
lawyers who treacherously deceived the people that he went so far as
to demand that their tongues should be torn out. At times he confesses
his hot temper, owning and acknowledging that it was “sinful”; to
such fits of passion he was still subject, but, as a rule, his anger
was at least both right and called for, for he could not avoid being
angry where it was “a question of the soul and of hell.” Anger, he
also says, refreshed his inner man, sharpened his wits and chased away
his temptations; he had to be angry in order to write, preach or pray
well.[400]
Repeatedly he seemed on the point of quitting Wittenberg for ever
in revenge for all the neglect he met with there; “I can no longer
contain my anger and disappointment.”[401] It was to this depression
of spirits that he was referring when he said, that, often, in
his indignation, he had “flung down the keys on Our Lord God’s
threshold.”[402] He sees his inability to change his surroundings
and how Popery refuses to be overthrown; yet, as he told us, he is
determined to “rain abuse and curses on the miscreants [the Papists]
till he is carried to the grave,” and to provide the “thunder and
lightning for the funeral” of the foe.[403]
A gloomy, uncanny passion often glows in his words and serves to fire
the fanatism of the misguided masses.
“Lo and behold how my blood boils and how I long to see the Papacy
punished!” And what was the punishment he looked for? Just before
he had said that the Pope, his Cardinals and all his court should
have “the skins of their bodies drawn off over their heads; the hides
might then be flung into the healing bath [the sea] at Ostia, or into
the fire,” unless indeed they found means to pay back all the alien
property that the Pope, the “Robber of the Churches, had stolen only to
waste, lose and squander it, and to spend it on whores and their ilk.”
Yet even this punishment fell short of the crime, for “my spirit knows
well that no temporal penalty can avail to make amends even for one
Bull or Decree.”[404]
Side by side with language so astonishing we must put other sayings
which paint his habitual frame of mind in a light anything but
favourable: “It is God’s Word! Let what cannot stand fall ... no
matter what!”[405] “The Word is true, or everything crumbles into
ruin!”[406] “Even if _you_ will not follow”—such were his words to
Staupitz as early as 1521, “at least suffer _me_ to go on and be
carried away [’_ire et rapi_’].” “I have put on my horns against the
Roman Antichrists”;[407] in these words Luther compares himself to a
raving bull.
This frame of mind tended to promote his natural tendency to violence,
hitherto repressed. His proposal to flay all the members of the Roman
Curia was not by any means his first hint at deeds of blood; such
allusions occur in other shapes in earlier discourses, particularly
in his predictions of the judgments to come. The Princes, nobility
and towns, so he declared, must put their foot down and prevent the
shameful abuses of Rome: “If we mean to fight against the Turks let us
begin at home where they are worst; if we do right in hanging thieves
and beheading robbers, why then do we let Roman avarice go scot free,
when all the time it is the biggest thief and robber there ever has
been or will ever be upon the earth.” Whoever comes from Rome bringing
in his pocket a collation to a benefice ought to be warned either “to
desist, or else to jump into the Rhine or the nearest pond, and give
the Roman Brief—letter, seals and all, a cold bath.”[408] Not without
a shudder can one read the description in his “Bapstum vom Teuffel
gestifft,” written in his last days, of the kinds of death best suited
to the Pope and his Curia, of which the flaying and the “bath” at
Ostia is only one example. (Cp. below, xxx., 2.) True enough he is
careful to point out that such a death will be theirs only should they
refuse to amend their ways and accept the Lutheran Evangel!
Ten years previously, in 1535, he had written to Melanchthon, who
shrank from acts of violence with what appeared to Luther too great
timidity: “Oh, that our most venerable Cardinals, Popes and Roman
Legates had more Kings of England to put them to death!”[409] These
words he penned soon after Henry VIII of England had sacrificed the
lives of John Fisher, bishop of Rochester, and his Chancellor, Sir
Thomas More, to his sensual passions and his thirst for blood. Luther
adds, of the Pope and the Curia, with the object of vindicating the
sentence of death he had passed on them, “They are traitors, thieves,
robbers and regular devils.... They are out and out miscreants to
the very bottom of their hearts. May God only grant you too to see
this.”[410]
Fury had stood by the cradle of Luther’s undertaking and under its
gloomy auspices his cause continued to progress. Without repeating
what has already been said, it may suffice to point out how his
excitement frequently led him to take even momentous steps which he
would otherwise have boggled at. Only too frankly he admitted to
his friend Lang in 1519 and soon after to Spalatin, that Eck had so
exasperated him that he would now shake himself loose and write and do
things from which he would otherwise have refrained. His early “jest”
at Rome’s expense would now become a real warfare against her[411]—as
though Rome was to be made to suffer for Eck and his violence. In
1521, from apprehension of his violence and out of consideration for
the Court, Spalatin had kept back two of Luther’s writings which the
latter wished to be printed. “I shall get into a towering rage,” so
the author wrote to him, “and bring out much worse things on this
subject afterwards if my manuscripts are lost, or you refuse to
surrender them. You cannot destroy the spirit even though you destroy
the lifeless paper.”[412]—This incident at so early a date shows
how deeply seated in him was his tendency to violence; even at the
outset it was to some extent personal animus which led him to shape
his action as he did. Self-esteem and the plaudits of the mob had even
then begun to dim his mental vision.
The part played by the first person is great indeed in Luther’s
writings.
“We should all have fallen back into the state of the brute!” “Not for
a thousand years has God bestowed such great graces on any bishop as on
me.” “I, wonderful monk that I am,” have, by God’s grace, overthrown
the devil of Rome; “I have stamped off the heads of more than twenty
factions, as though they had been worms.” Countless other such
utterances are to be found in what has gone before.[413] “He,” so he
declares, “was surely far too learned to allow himself to be taught
by the Swiss theologians”; this was one of the sayings that led the
friends of the latter to speak of his “tyrannical pride.”[414]
Here come the fractious Sacramentarians, he says, and want a share
in my fame; they want to celebrate a “glorious victory” as though it
was not from me that they got everything. This is how things turn
out, “one labours and some other man takes the fruit.”[415] Carlstadt
comes forward and seeks to become a new doctor; “he is anxious to
detract from my importance and to introduce among the people his own
regulations.”[416]
A character where the first person asserted itself so imperiously could
not but be a disputatious one. Down to his very last years Luther’s
whole life was filled with strife: quarrels with the jurists; with
his own theologians; with the Jews; with the Princes and rapacious
nobility; with the Popish foemen and with his own colleagues and
followers, even with the preachers and writers dearest to him.
Luther sought to safeguard his cause on every side, even at the cost of
concessions at variance with his duty, or by grovelling subserviency
to the Princes, whether he actually granted their desire,[417] or, as
in the case of the bigamy of Henry VIII of England, merely threw out a
suggestion.[418]
His new ethical principles should surely have been attested in his own
person, above all by truthfulness. In this connection we must, however,
recall to mind the observations made elsewhere. (Above, vol. iv., p. 80
ff.)
Who is the lover of truth who does not regret the advice Luther gave
from the Coburg to his followers at the Diet of Augsburg, viz. to
make use of cunning when the cause seemed endangered? Where does
self-betterment come in if “tricks and lapses” are to form a part of
his life’s task, even though “with God’s help” they were afterwards
to be amended;[419] if, when treating of the most important church
matters, “reservation and subterfuge (‘_insidiæ_’)” are not only to be
used but even to be represented as the work of Christ? Wherever the
principle holds: Against the malice of our opponents everything is
lawful,[420] there, undoubtedly, the least honest will always have the
upper hand. As to how far Luther thought himself justified in going in
order to conceal his real intentions we may see from his letters to the
Pope, particularly from the last letter he addressed to him, where the
public assertion of his devotion to the Roman Church coincides with his
private admission to friends that the Pope was Antichrist and that he
had sworn to attack him.[421]
* * * * *
In his relentless polemics against the Church—where he does not
hesitate to bring the most baseless of charges against both her
dignitaries and her institutions—we might dismiss as not uncommon
his tendency to see only what was evil, eagerly setting this in the
foreground while passing over all that was good; his eyes also served
to magnify and distort the dark spots into all manner of grotesque
shapes. But what tells more heavily against him is his having evolved
out of his own mind a mountain of false doctrines which he foists on
the Church as hers, though in reality not one of them but the very
opposite was taught in and by the Church.
The Pope, he writes, for instance, in his “Vermanũg” from the Coburg,
wants to “forbid marriage” and teaches that the “love of woman”
is to be despised; this is one of the abominations and plagues of
Antichrist, for God created woman for the honour and help of man.[422]
The state of celibacy, willingly embraced by many under the Papacy,
Luther decried in the same violent writing as a “state befitting
whores and knaves,”[423] and he even connects with it unmentionable
abominations.
He had declared “contempt of God” to be the mark of the Papal
Antichrist, but, in the booklet in question, and elsewhere, we find
him tirelessly charging with utter forgetfulness of God, hatred of
religion, nay, complete absence of Christian faith not only the Pope
and his advisers—who, none of them rose above an Epicurean faith—but
all his opponents, particularly those who by their pen had damaged his
doctrine. “Willingly enough would I obey the Pope and all the bishops,
but they require me to deny Christ and His Gospel and to take of God
a liar, therefore I prefer to attack them.”[424] When, in addition to
this, he tries in all seriousness to make the people believe that at
Rome the Gospel and all it contained was scoffed at; that the Papists
were all sceptics; that their Doctors did not even know the Ten
Commandments; that their priests were quite unable to quiet any man’s
conscience; that the popish doctrine spelt nothing but murder, and
that indeed every Papist must be a murderer, etc.,[425] one is tempted
to seek for a pathological explanation of so strange a phenomenon.
Such explanations will, it is true, be forthcoming in due course and
will furnish grounds for a more lenient judgment. Here it may suffice
to instance the terrific strength of will which dominated Luther’s
fiery warfare, and which at times made him see things that others,
even his own followers, were absolutely unable to see. Fortunately his
mad statements concerning the Papists’ love of murder found little
credence, any more than his repeated assurance that the Papists were
at heart on his side, at any rate their leaders, writers and educated
men.
He seems, however, also to believe many other monstrous things: it
was his discovery, that, “in the Papacy, men sought to find salvation
in Aristotle”; this belief he attempted to instil into the people in
a sermon of 1528.[426] In 1542 he assured his friends in tones no
less confident that the Papists had succeeded in teaching nothing but
idolatry, “for every work [as taught by them] is idolatry. What they
learnt was nothing but holiness-by-works.... Man was to perform this
or that; to put on a cowl or get his head shaved; whoever did not do
or believe this was damned. Yet, on the other hand, even if a man did
all this they were unable to say with certainty whether thereby he
would be saved. Fie, devil, what sort of doctrine was this!”[427]
The cowl and tonsure of the monks were particularly obnoxious to
him. He cherished the view that he had for ever extirpated monkery;
he declared that even the heads of Catholicism would not in future
endure these hateful guests. To have been instrumental in preparing
such a fate for the sons of the most noble-minded men, of St. Francis
of Assisi and St. Dominic, and for all the monks generally, who had
been the trustiest supports of the faith, of the missions and of
civilisation, this appears to him a triumph, which he proceeds to
magnify out of all proportion the better to gloat over it.
“No greater service has ever been rendered to the bishops and
pastors,” so he writes in his “Vermanũg,” “than that they should thus
be rid of the monks; and I venture to surmise that there is hardly
anyone now at Augsburg who would take the part of the monks and beg
for their reinstatement. Indeed the bishops will not permit such bugs
and lice again to fasten on their fur [their cappas], but are right
glad that I have washed the fur so clean for them.”[428]—The untruth
of this is self-evident. If some few short-sighted or tepid bishops
among them were willing to dispense with the monks, still this was
not the general feeling towards those auxiliaries of the Church, whom
Luther himself on the same page dubs the “Pope’s right-hand men.” But
the lie was calculated to impress those who possessed influence.
Further untruths are found in this booklet: Hitherto, the monks, not
the bishops, had “governed the churches”; it was merely his peaceable
teaching and the power of the Word that had “destroyed” the monks;
this the bishops, “backed by the might of all the kings and with all
the learning of the universities at their command had not been able to
do.”[429] Let no one accuse him of “preaching sedition,” so he goes
on; he had merely “taught the people to keep the peace”;[430] he would
much rather have preferred to end his days in retirement; “for me
there will be no better tidings than to hear that I had been removed
from the office of preacher”; better and more pious heretics than the
Lutherans had never before been met with; he cannot deny that there
is nothing lacking in his doctrine and in that of his “followers ...
whatever their life may be.”[431]
We have here a row of instances of the honesty of his polemics and
of the way in which he treated with the State authorities concerning
the deepest matters of the Church’s life. Often enough his polemics
consist solely of unwarrantable statements concerning his own pacific
intentions and salutary achievements, supported by revolting untruths,
misrepresentations and exaggerations tending to damage his opponents’
case.
Beyond this we frequently find him having recourse to low and unworthy
language, and to filthy and unmannerly abuse. (Vol. iv., p. 318 ff.)
“When they are most angry I say to the Papists,” he cries in his
“Warnunge an seine lieben Deudschen,” “My dear sirs, leave the wall,
relieve yourselves into your drawers and sling it round your neck....
If they do not care to accept my services, then the devil may well be
thankful to them!” etc.[432] “Oh, the shameful Diet, such as has never
before been held or heard of ... an everlasting blot on the whole
Empire! What will the Turk say ... to our allowing the accursed Pope
with his minions to fool and mock at us, to treat us as children, nay,
as clouts and blocks, to our behaving contrary to justice and truth,
nay, with such utter shamelessness in open Diet as regards their
blasphemies, their shameful and Sodomitic life and doctrines?”[433]
These were the words in which he described the Diet of Augsburg in
1530.
We may here recall the saying of Valentine Ickelsamer the Anabaptist.
At one time he had thought of espousing Luther’s cause, but “owing to
the diabolical abuse” which he piled on “erring men” it was possible
to regard him only “as a non-Christian.” Luther wanted to overthrow
his opponents simply by words “of abuse”; these “Saxon rogues of
Wittenberg,” “when unable to get what they want by means of a few kind
words, invoke on you all the curses of the devil.”
Heinrich Bullinger complains repeatedly, and quite as bitterly, of the
frightful storm into which Luther’s eloquence was apt to break out. It
is noteworthy that he applies what he says to Luther’s polemics, not
merely against the Swiss, but against other opponents. “Here all men
have in their hands Luther’s King Harry of England, and another Harry
as well, in his unsavoury Hans Worst; _item_, they have Luther’s book
on the Jews with its hideous letters of the Bible dropped from the
posterior of the pig, which the Jews may swallow, indeed, but never
read; then, again, there is Luther’s filthy, swinish Schemhamphorasch,
for which some small excuse might have been found had it been written
by a swine-herd and not by a famous pastor of souls.”[434]
“And yet most people,” so Bullinger says, “even go so far as to
worship the houndish, filthy eloquence of the man. Thus it comes
that he goes his way and seeks to outdo himself in vituperation....
Many pious and learned people take scandal at his insolence, which
really is beyond measure.” He should have someone at his side to keep
a check on him, so Bullinger tells Bucer, for instance, his friend
Melanchthon, “so that Luther may not ruin a good cause with his
wonted invective, his bitterness, his torrent of bad words and his
ridicule.”[435]
And yet Luther at this very time, in his “Warnunge,” calls himself
“the German Prophet” and “a faithful teacher.”[436]
The following words of Erasmus contain a general censure: “You wish to
be taken for a teacher of the Gospel. In that case, however, would it
not better beseem you not to repel all the prudent and well-meaning
by your vituperation nor to incite men to strife and revolt in these
already troubled times?”[437]—“You snarl at me as an Epicurean. Had
I been an Epicurean and lived in the time of the Apostles and heard
them proclaim the Gospel with such invective, then I fear I should
have remained an Epicurean.... Whoever is conscious of teaching a holy
doctrine should not behave with insolence and delight in malicious
misrepresentation.”[438]—“To what class of spirits,” he had already
asked him, “does yours belong, if indeed it be a spirit at all? And
what unevangelical way is this of inculcating the holy Gospel? Has
perchance the risen Gospel done away with all the laws of public order
so that now one may say and write anything against anyone? Does the
freedom you are bringing back to us spell no more than this?”[439]
_Kindlier Traits and Episodes_
The unprejudiced reader will gladly turn his gaze from pictures such as
the above to the more favourable traits in Luther’s character, which,
as already shown elsewhere,[440] are by no means lacking.
Whoever has the least acquaintance with his Kirchenpostille and
Hauspostille will not scruple to acknowledge the good and morally
elevating undercurrent which runs below his polemics and peculiar
theories. For instance, his exhortations, so warm and eloquent, to
give alms to the needy; his glowing praise of Holy Scripture and of
the consolation its divine words bring to troubled hearts; again, his
efforts to promote education and juvenile instruction; his admonitions
to assist at the sermon and at Divine worship, to avoid envy, strife,
avarice and gluttony, and private no less than public vice of every
kind.
The many who are familiar only with this beautiful and inspiring side
of his writings, and possibly of his labours, must not take it amiss
if, in a work like the present, the historian is no less concerned with
the opposite side of Luther’s writings and whole conduct.
As a matter of fact, gentler tones often mingle with the harsher notes,
while the unpleasant traits just described alter at times and tend
to assume a more favourable aspect. This is occasionally true of his
severity, his defiant and imperious behaviour. He not seldom, thanks
to this art of his, achieved good and eminently creditable results,
particularly in the protection of the poor or oppressed. Many who
were in dire straits were wont to apply to him in order to secure his
powerful intervention with the authorities on their behalf.
During the famine of 1539, when the nobles avariciously cornered the
grain, Luther made strong representations to the Elector and begged him
to come to the assistance of the town. Nor, in the same year, did he
hesitate to address a severe “warning” to the Electoral steward, the
Knight Franz Schott of Coburg, when the town-council at his instigation
was moved to take too precipitate action.[441]
Best known of all, however, was his powerful intervention in the case
of a certain man whose misdeeds were the plague of the Saxon Electorate
from 1534 to 1540; this was Hans Kohlhase, a Berlin merchant. He had
been overreached in a matter of two horses by a certain Saxon squire
of Zaschwitz, and had afterwards lost his case in the courts. In order
to obtain satisfaction Kohlhase formally gave out, that he would
“rob, burn, capture and hold to ransom” the Saxons until he obtained
redress. Incendiary fires broke out shortly after in Wittenberg and
the neighbourhood which were laid to the charge of Kohlhase’s men. The
Elector could think of no better plan than to suggest a settlement
between the merchant, now turned robber-knight, and the heirs of the
above-mentioned squire; it was then that Kohlhase appealed to Luther
for advice.
Luther replied with authority and dignity, not hesitating to rebuke
him for his unprincipled action. He would not escape the wrath of God
if he continued to pursue his unheard-of course of private revenge,
since it stands written that “Vengeance is mine”; the shameful acts of
violence which had been perpetrated by his men would be put down to his
account. He ought not to take the devil as his sponsor. If in spite of
all peaceful efforts he failed to succeed in obtaining his due, then
nothing was left but for him to submit to the Divine decree, which was
always for our best, and to suffer in patience. He consoled him at the
same time in a friendly way for such injury and outrage as he might
have endured; nor was it wrong to seek redress, but this must be done
within the right bounds.[442]
The well-meaning letter, which does Luther credit, had unfortunately no
effect.
The attempted arbitration, owing to the leniency of the Electoral
agent, Hans Metzsch, ended so much to the advantage of Kohlhase that
the Elector, partly owing to his strained relations with Brandenburg,
refused to ratify it. Kohlhase’s bands came from Brandenburg and fell
upon the undefended castles and villages in the Saxon Electorate.
Their raids were also to some extent connived at by the Elector of
Brandenburg. They excited great terror even at Wittenberg itself owing
to sudden attacks made in the vicinity of the town. New attempts to
reach a settlement brought them to a standstill for a while, but soon
the strange civil war—an echo of the Peasant Rising and Revolt of the
Knights—broke out anew and lasted until 1539.
Luther told his friends that such things could never have taken place
under the Landgrave of Hesse; that, as the principal actor had shed
blood, he would himself die a violent death. In 1539 he invited the
Elector of Saxony by letter to act as the father of his country; he
should come to the assistance of his people who were at the mercy of a
criminal, nor should he leave the Elector of Brandenburg a free hand if
it were true that he was implicated in the business.[443]
Finally Kohlhase, after committing excesses even in Brandenburg itself,
was executed at Berlin on March 22, 1540, being broken on the wheel.
On Luther’s admonition to the robber, Protestant legend soon laid
hold, and, even in the second half of the 16th century, we find it
further embellished. There is hardly a popular history of Luther to-day
which does not give the scene where Kohlhase, in disguise, knocks at
Luther’s door one dark night and on his reply to the question, “Art
thou Kohlhase?” is admitted by the latter, explains his quarrel in the
presence of Melanchthon, Cruciger and others and is reconciled with God
and his fellow-men; he then promises to abstain from violence in future
as Luther and his people are willing to help him to his rights, and the
romantic visit closes by the repentant sinner making his confession and
receiving the Supper.
The only chronicler of the March who relates this at the date mentioned
above fails to give any authority for his narrative, nor can it,
as Köstlin-Kawerau points out, be assigned its place “anywhere in
Kohlhase’s life-story as otherwise known to us.”[444] Luther’s own
statements concerning the affair, particularly his last ones, do not
agree with such an ending; throughout he appears as the champion of
outraged justice against a public offender. The not unkindly words in
which Luther had answered Kohlhase’s request were probably responsible
for the legend, which sprang up all the easier seeing that numerous
instances were known where Luther’s powerful intervention had succeeded
in restraining violence and in securing victory for the cause of
justice against the oppressor.[445]
_The Reformation of the Church and Luther’s Ethics_
The defenders of the ancient faith urged very strongly that the first
step towards a real moral reformation of the Church was to depict the
Church as she was to be in accordance with Christ’s institution and
the best traditions, and then, with the help of this standard, to see
how far the Church of the times fell short of this ideal; in order to
reform any institution, so they argued, we must be acquainted with its
primitive shape so as to be able to revert to it.
This they declared they had in vain asked of Luther, who, on the
contrary, seemed bent on subverting the whole Church. They even failed
to see that he had suggested any means wherewith to withstand the moral
shortcomings of the age. In their eyes the radical and destructive
changes on which he so vehemently insisted spelt no real improvement;
the discontent with prevailing conditions which he preached to
the people could not but create a wrong atmosphere; nor could the
abolishing of the Church’s spiritual remedies, the slighting of her
commands and the revolting treatment of the hierarchy serve the cause
of prudent Church reform.
Luther himself, in his so-called “Bull and Reformation,” put forth
his demands for the reform of ecclesiastical conditions as they
presented themselves to his mind during the days of his fiercest
struggle.[446] The “Bull” does not, however, afford any positive scheme
of reformation, as the title might lead one to suppose. It is made up
wholly of denials and polemics, and the same is true of his later works.
According to this writing the bishops are “not merely phantoms and
idols, but folk accursed in God’s sight”; they corrupt souls, and,
against them, “every Christian should strive with body and substance.”
One should “cheerfully do to them everything that they disliked, just
as though they were the devil himself.” All those who now are pastors
must repudiate the obedience which they gave “with the promise of
chastity,” seeing that this obedience was promised, not to God, but to
the devil, “just as a man must repudiate a compact he has made with the
devil.” “This is my Bull, yea, Dr. Luther’s own,” etc.
In this Luther was striking out a new road. Christ and his Apostles had
begun the moral reform of the world by preaching the doing of “penance,
for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” True enough such a preaching can
never have been so popular with the masses as Luther’s invitation to
overthrow the Church.
Luther’s “Reformation” did not, however, consist merely in the
overthrow of the olden ecclesiasticism; it also strove to counteract
much that was really amiss.
His action had this to recommend it, that it threw into the full light
of day the shady side of ecclesiastical life; after all, knowledge
of the evil is already a step towards its betterment. For centuries
few had had the courage to point a finger at the Church’s wounds so
insistently as Luther; at the ills rampant in the clergy, Church
government and in the faith and morals of the people. His piercing
glance saw into every corner, and, assisted by expert helpers, some of
them formerly officials of the Curia, he laid bare every regrettable
disorder, needless to say not without exaggerating everything to his
heart’s content. Practically, however, Luther’s revelations represent
what was best in the movement which professed to aim at a reform of
morals. Had he not embittered with such unspeakable hate the long list
of shortcomings with which he persistently confronted the olden Church,
had he used it as a means of amendment and not rather as a goad whereby
to excite the masses, then one might have been even more thankful to
him.
It cannot be gainsaid that, particularly at the outset, ethical motives
were at work in him; that he like others felt the burden of the evil,
was certainly no lie.
Yet it must not be forgotten that he attacked the Pope and the Church
so violently, not on account of any refusal to amend, but in order to
clear a path for his subversive views of theology and for the “Evangel”
which had been condemned by ecclesiastical authority. The very
magnitude of the attack he led on the whole conception of the Church,
in itself proves that it was no mere question of defending the rights
of Christian ethics; the removal of moral disorders from Christendom
was to him but a secondary concern, and, moreover, he certainly did
everything he could to render impossible any ordered abolishment of
abuses and any real improvement.
One may even ask whether he had any programme at all for the betterment
of the Church. The question is made almost superfluous by the history
of the struggle. He himself never set up before his mind any regular
programme for his work, whether ecclesiastical, social or even ethical,
when once he had come to see that the idealist scheme in his “An
den christlichen Adel” was impossible of realisation. Hence, when
he had succeeded in destroying the old order in a small portion of
the Church’s territory, he had perforce to begin an uncertain search
after something new whereby to replace it; nothing could be more
hopeless than his efforts to build up from the ruins a new Church and
a new society, a new liturgy and a new canon law, and to improve the
morals of the adherents of his cause. In spite of Luther’s aversion
to the scheme, it came about that the whole work of reformation was,
by the force of circumstances, left to the secular authorities; from
the Consistories down to the school-teachers, from the Marriage
Courts down to the guardians of the poor, everything came into the
hands of the State. Luther had been wont to complain that the Church
in olden days had drawn all secular affairs to herself. Since his
day, on the other hand, everything that pertained to the Church was
secularised. The actual result was a gradual alienation of secular
and ecclesiastical, quite at variance with the theories embodied in
the faith. In this it is impossible to see a true reformation in any
moral meaning of the word, and Luther’s ethics, which made all secular
callings independent of the Church, failed in the event to celebrate
any triumph.
The better to appreciate certain striking contrasts between the
olden Church and her ratification of morality on the one hand and
Luther’s thought on the other, we may glance at his attitude towards
canonisation and excommunication.
Canonisation and excommunication are two opposite poles of the
Church’s life; by the one the Church stamps her heroes with the seal
of perfection and sets them up for the veneration of the faithful; by
the other she excludes the unworthy from her communion, using thereto
the greatest punishment at her command. Both are, to the eye of faith,
powerful levers in the moral life.
Luther, however, laughed both to scorn. The ban he attacked on
principle, particularly after he himself had fallen under it; in this
his action differed from that of Catholic writers, many of whom had
written against the ban though only to lament its abuse and its too
frequent employment for the defence of the material position of the
clergy.
The Pope, according to Luther, had made such a huge “mess in the
Church by means of the Greater Excommunication that the swine could
not get to the end with devouring it.”[447] Christians, according to
him, ought to be taught rather to love the ban of the Church than
to fear it. We ourselves, he cries, put the Pope under the ban and
declare that “the Pope and his followers are no believers.”
Later on, however, he came to see better the use of ghostly penalties
for unseemly conduct and made no odds in emphasising the right of the
community as such to make use of exclusion as a punishment; in view of
the increase of disorders he essayed repeatedly to reintroduce on his
own authority a sort of ban in his Churches.[448]
As early as 1519 Luther had expressed his disapproval of the
canonising of Saints by the Church, a practice which stimulated
the moral efforts of the faithful by setting up an ideal and by
encouraging daily worship; he added, however, that “each one was
free to canonise as much as he pleased.”[449] In 1524, however, he
poured forth his wrath on the never-ending canonisations; as a rule
they were “nothing but Popish Saints and no Christian Saints”;[450]
the foundations made in their honour served “merely to fatten lazy
gluttons and indolent swine in the Churches”; before the Judgment Day
no one could “pronounce any man holy”; Elisabeth, Augustine, Jerome,
Ambrose, Bernard and Francis, even he regarded as holy, though he
would not stake his life on it, seeing there was nothing about them in
Holy Scripture; “but the Pope, nay, all the angels, had not the power
of setting up a new article of faith not contained in Scripture.”[451]
On May 31, 1523, was canonised the venerable bishop Benno of Meissen,
a contemporary of Gregory VII. Luther was incensed to the last degree
at the thought of the special celebration to be held in 1524 in the
town—the Duchy being still Catholic—in honour of the new Saint. He
accordingly published his “Against the new idol and olden devil about
to be set up at Meyssen.”[452] His use of the term “devil” in the
title he vindicates as follows on the very first page: Now, that, “by
the grace of God, the Gospel has again arisen and shines brightly,”
“Satan incarnate” is avenging himself “by means of such foolery” and
is causing himself to be worshipped with great pomp under the name
of Benno. It was not in his power to prevent Duke George setting up
the relics at Meissen and erecting an artistic and costly altar in
their honour. The only result of Luther’s attack was to increase the
devotion of clergy and people, who confidently invoked the saintly
bishop’s protection against the inroads of apostasy. The attack also
led Catholic writers in the Duchy to publish some bitter rejoinders.
The rudeness of their titles bears witness to their indignation.
“Against the Wittenberg idol Martin Luther” was the title of the
pamphlet of Augustine Alveld, a Franciscan Guardian; the work of Paul
Bachmann, Abbot of Alte Zelle, was entitled “Against the fiercely
snorting wild-boar Luther,” and that of Hieronymus Emser, “Reply to
Luther’s slanderous book.” The last writer was to some extent involved
in the matter of the canonisation through having published the Legend
of the famous Bishop. This he had done rather uncritically and without
testing his authorities, and for this reason had been read a severe
lesson by Luther.
Luther’s opposition to this canonisation was, however, by no means
dictated by historical considerations but by his hatred of all
veneration of the Saints and by his aversion to the ideal of Christian
self-denial, submissive obedience to the Church and Catholic activity
of which the canonised Saints are models. He himself makes it easy to
answer the question whether it was zeal for the moral reformation of
the Church which drove him to assail canonisation and the veneration
of the Saints; nowhere else is his attempt to destroy the sublime
ideal of Christian life which he failed to understand and to drag down
to the gutter all that was highest so clearly apparent as here. The
real Saints, so he declared, were his Wittenbergers. Striving after
great holiness on the part of the individual merely tended to derogate
from Christ’s work; the Evangelical Counsels fostered only a mistaken
desertion of the world.
Judging others by his own standard, he attempted to drag down the
Saints of the past to the level of mediocrity. Real Saints must be
“good, lusty sinners who do not blush to insert in the Our Father the
‘forgive us our trespasses.’” It was “consoling” to him to hear, that
the Apostles, too, even after they had received the Holy Ghost, had
at times been shaky in their faith, and “very consoling indeed” that
the Saints of both Old and New Covenant “had fallen into great sins”;
only thus, so he fancies, do we learn to know the “Kingdom of Christ,”
viz. the forgiveness of sins. Even Abraham, agreeably with Luther’s
interpretation of Josue xxiv. 2, was represented to have worshipped
idols, in order that Luther might be able to instance his conversion
and say: Believe like him and you will be as holy as he.[453]
_The Reformation in the Duchy of Saxony considered as typical_
In 1539, after the death of Duke George, at Luther’s instance, the
protestantising of the duchy of Saxony was undertaken with unseemly
haste; to this end Henry, the new sovereign, ordered a Visitation on
the lines of that held in the Saxon Electorate and to be carried out
by preachers placed at his disposal by the Elector. Jonas and Spalatin
now became the visitors for Meissen. Before this, on the occasion
of the canonisation of St. Benno, Spalatin, in a letter to Luther,
had treated the canonisation as a laughing matter. On July 14, the
visitors, alleging the authority of the Duke, summoned the Cathedral
Chapter at Meissen to remove the sepulchre of St. Benno. On this being
met by a refusal armed men were sent to the Cathedral the following
night. “‘They broke into fragments the richly ornamented sepulchre of
the Saint, together with the altar,’ to quote the words of the bishop’s
report to the Emperor, ‘they decapitated a wooden statue of St. Benno
and stuck it up outside as a butt for ridicule.’”[454]
Luther, for his part, in a letter to Jonas of August 14 of the
same year, has his little joke about the visitors’ undoing of the
canonisation of Benno. “You have unsainted Benno and have shown no fear
of Cochlæus, Schmid, nor of the Nausei and Sadoleti, who teach the
contrary. They are indignant with you, ultra-sensitive men that they
are, knowing so little of grammar and so much less of theology.”[455]
Nor did the progress of the overthrow of the Church throughout the
Duchy bear the least stamp of moral reform. The very violence used
forbids our applying such a term to the work. The Catholic worship at
the Cathedral was at once abolished and replaced by Lutheran services
and preaching. The priests were driven into exile, the bishop alone
being permitted to carry on “his godless papistical abominations and
practices openly in his own residence” (the Castle of Stolpen). At the
demand of the Wittenbergers the professors at Leipzig University who
refused to conform to the Lutheran doctrine were dismissed. Melanchthon
insisted, that, if they refused to hold their tongues, they must be
driven out of the land as “blasphemers.” The new preachers publicly
abused the friends, clerical and lay, of the late Duke to such an
extent that the Estates were moved to make a formal complaint. Churches
and monasteries were plundered and the sacred vessels melted down.[456]
Maurice, the son of Duke Henry, who succeeded in 1541, showed himself
even more violent and relentless in extirpating the olden system.
The profoundly immoral character of this reformation, the interference
with the people’s freedom of conscience, the destruction of religious
traditions which the peaceable inhabitants had received a thousand
years before from holy missionaries and bishops, merely on the strength
of the new doctrines of a man who claimed to have a better Gospel—all
this was expressly sanctioned and supported by Luther.
He wrote in a memorandum on the proceedings: “There is not much room
here for discussion. If my gracious Duke Henry wishes to have the
Evangel, then His Highness must abolish idolatry, or not afford it
protection ... otherwise the wrath of heaven will be too great.” As
a “sovereign appointed by God” the ruler “owed it to Him to put down
such horrible, blasphemous idolatry by every means in his power.” This
was nothing more than “defending Christ and damning the devil”; an
example had been given by the “former kings of Juda and Israel,” who
had abolished “Baal and all his idolatry,” and later by Constantine,
Theodosius and Gratian. For it was as much the duty of princes and
lords as of other people to serve God and the Lord Christ to the
utmost of their power. Away, therefore, with the abbots and bishops
“since they are determined to remain blasphemers ... they are blind
leaders of the blind; God’s wrath has come upon them; hence we must
help in the matter as much as we can.”[457]
Yet the Christian emperors here appealed to could have furnished
Luther with an example of forbearance towards heathen Rome and its
religious works of art which might well have shamed him. He did not
know that at Rome the defacing and damaging of temples, altars or
statues was most strictly forbidden, and that, for instance, Pope
Damasus († 384) had been formally assured by the city-prefect that
never had a Christian Roman appeared before his tribunal on such
a charge.[458] Elsewhere, however, such acts of violence were not
unknown.
Luther’s spirit of persecution was quite different from the spirit
which animated those Roman emperors who came over to Christianity.
It was their desire to hasten the end of an outworn religion of
superstition, immorality and idolatry. With them it was a question
of defending and furthering a religion sent from heaven to renew the
world and which had convincingly proved the divinity of its mission by
miracles, by the blood of martyrs and by the striking holiness of so
many thousands of confessors.
It was against the faithful adherents of this very religion that, on
the pretext of the outward corruption under which it groaned, Luther
perpetrated so many acts of violence regardless of the testimony of
a thousand years of beneficent labours. His ingratitude towards the
achievements of the olden Church in the education of the nations, his
deliberate ignoring of the great qualities which distinguished her and
in his day could still have enabled her to carry out her own moral
regeneration from within, are incompatible with his having been a true
moral reformer.
_The Aims of the Reformation and the Currents of the Age_
Looking at the state of the case from the standpoint of the olden
Catholic Church a closer historical examination shows that what she
needed above all was a strengthening of her interior organisation.[459]
In view of the tendency to split up into separate States, in view of
the decay of that outward bond of the nations under the Empire which
had once been her stay, and of the rise of all sorts of new elements
of culture requiring to be exploited for the glory of God and the
spiritual betterment of mankind, a consolidation of the Church’s
structure was essential. The Primacy indeed was there, exercised its
functions and was recognised, but what was needed was a more direct
recognition of a purified Papacy. The bond of unity between the nations
within the Church needed to be more clearly put in evidence. This could
best be done by allowing the significance of a voluntary submission to
the authority appointed by God, and of the Primacy, to sink more deeply
into the consciousness of Christendom. This was all the more called
for, now that the traditional devotion to Rome had suffered so much
owing to the great Schism of the West, to the reforming Councils and
the prevalence of Gallican ideas, and that the splendour of the Papacy
seemed now on the wane. The excessive concern of the Popes in politics
and the struggle they had waged in Italy in the effort to establish
themselves more securely had by no means contributed to increase
respect for the power of the keys in its own peculiar domain, viz. the
spiritual.
Thus any reformer seeking to improve the Church’s condition had
necessarily to face this task first of all.—Many other moral
requirements arising out of the then state of society had, however,
also to be borne in mind.
It was necessary to counteract, by laying stress on what had been
handed down, the false subjectivism and universal scepticism which
the schools of philosophy had let loose on the world; also to oppose
the cynicism, lack of discipline and love of destruction which
characterised Humanism, by infusing into education the true spirit
of the Church. Both these tasks could, however, be accomplished only
by men filled with respect for tradition who while on the one hand
broad-mindedly accepting the new learning, i.e. without questioning
or distrusting reason and its rights, on the other hand possessed the
power and the will to spiritualise the new culture. The disruptive
tendency of the nations, the counterpart in international politics
of the prevalent individualism, required to be corrected by laying
stress on the underlying common ground. The undreamt-of enlargement
of the Church through the discovery of new lands had to be met
by organisations, the members of which were filled with love of
self-denial and zeal for souls. At the same time the materialism, which
was a consequence of the great increase of wealth brought from foreign
lands, had to be checked. To oppose the alarming growth of Turkish
power it was necessary to preach self-sacrifice, manly courage and
above all Christian unity amongst those in power, amongst those who in
former times had sallied forth against the East strong in the feeling
of being one family in the faith. A still worse foe to Christian
society was to be found in moral discouragement and exhaustion; there
was need of a new spirit to awaken the motive force of religious life
and to stir men to a more active use of the means of grace.
If we compare the moral aims and motives which inspired Luther’s
reformation, with the great needs of the times, as just described, we
cannot fail to see how far short he fell of the requirements.
Most of the aims indicated were quite strange to him. Judging from the
standpoint of the olden Church, he frequently sought the very opposite
of what was required. Some few instances may be cited.
So little did Luther’s reformation tend to realise the sublime moral
principle of the union and comradeship of the nations, that, on the
contrary, he encouraged nationalism and separatist tendencies even
in Church matters. Where his idea of a National Church prevailed,
there the strongest bond of union disappeared completely.[460] The
more the authority of the Empire was subverted by the separatists, by
religious Leagues and violent inroads of princes and sovereign towns
within the Empire, the more the idea of unity, which at one time had
been so great a power for good, had to suffer. He complained that the
nations and races were as unfriendly to each other as devils. But for
him, the rude Saxon, to abuse all who dwelt outside his borders in
the most unmeasured terms, and to pour out the vials of his wrath and
vituperation on the Latin nations because they were Catholic could
hardly be regarded as conducive to better harmony. When he persistently
declared in his writings and sermons that the real Turks were to be
found at home, or when he fanned the flames of fraternal hatred against
the Papists within the Fatherland, such action could scarcely promote a
more effectual resistance to the danger looming in the East. The Bible,
according to him, was to serve as the means of uniting the people of
God. He flung it amongst the people at a time when everything was
seething with excitement; yet he himself, in spite of all his praise
of Bible study, was moved to execrate the results. It seemed, so he
declared, as though it had been done merely “in order that each one
might bore a hole where his snout happened to be.”[461]
As to subjectivism, the dominant evil of the age, he himself carried
it to its furthest limits, relentlessly condemning everywhere whatever
did not appeal to him and exalting his personal views and feelings into
a regular law; subjectivism pervades and spoils his whole theology,
and, in the domain of ethics, puts both personality and conscience on
a new and very questionable basis.[462] The subjective principle as
used by him and exalted into an axiom, might be invoked equally by any
religious faction for its own ends. We need only recall Luther’s theory
of the lonely isolation of the individual in the matter of faith.
Again, if that transition period between mediæval and modern times was
suffering from moral and religious exhaustion and was inclined to be
pessimistic concerning spiritual goods, and if, for its moral reform,
what was needed was a leader deeply imbued with faith in revelation,
able by the very strength of his faith to arouse the world of his
day, and to inspire the lame and timid with enthusiasm and delight
in the ancient treasures of religion—then, again, one is forced
to ask whether such a man as Luther, even apart from his new and
erroneous doctrines, had the requisite strong and overbearing devotion
to supernatural truths? Is it not Luther who speaks so often of the
weakness of his faith, of his doubts and his inward trials, and who, in
order to reassure himself, declares that everyone, even the Apostles,
the martyrs and the saints, were acquainted with the like?
Not only did he not fight against pessimism, but, as the years went
by, he even built it into a truly burdensome system. Towards the end
of his life, owing both to his theories and to his experiences, he
became a living embodiment of dejection, constituting himself its
eloquent advocate. His view of the history of the kingdom of Christ
was the gloomiest imaginable. Everywhere he saw the power of the devil
predominant throughout the whole course of the world’s history.
Not only is everything in the world outside of Christ Satanic, but
even the ancient people of God, chosen with a view to the coming
Redeemer, according to Luther, “raged and stormed” against the faith.
But “the fury of the Jews” was exceeded by the “malice” which began
to insinuate itself into the first Church not very long after its
foundation. What the Jews did was “but a joke and mere child’s play”
compared with the corruption of the Christian religion by means of
“human ordinances, councils and Papistry.” Hardly had the light
enkindled by Christ begun to shine before it gradually flickered out,
until lighted again by Luther. In the East prevailed the rule of the
Turks, those devils incarnate, whilst the West groaned under the
Papacy, which far exceeds even the Islam in devilry.[463]
His pessimism sees the origin of the corruption in the Church in the
fact, that, already in the first centuries, “the devil had broken into
Holy Scripture and made such a disturbance as to give rise to many
heresies.” To counteract these the Christians surrendered themselves
to human ordinances; “they knew of no other way out of the difficulty
than to set up a multitude of Councils side by side with Scripture.”
“In short, the devil is too clever and powerful for us; everywhere he
is an obstacle and a hindrance. If we go to Scripture, he arouses so
much dissension and strife that we grow sick of the Word and afraid to
trust to it. Yet if we rely on human councils and counsels, we lose
Scripture altogether and become the devil’s own, body and soul.” This
evil was not solely due to setting up human ordinances in the place of
Scripture, but also to the preference shown in theory to works which
arose when people saw, that “works or deeds did not follow” from the
preaching of the Apostles, “as they should have done.” “Hence the
new disciples set to work to improve upon the Master’s building and
proceeded to confuse two different things, viz. works and faith. This
scandal has been a hindrance to the new doctrine of faith from the
beginning even to the present day.”
From all this one would rather gather that the fault lay more in the
nature of Christianity than in the devil.
Luther’s pessimistic tendency also expresses itself in the conviction,
that it was the “gruesome, frightful and boundless anger of God”
that was the cause of the desolation of Christendom during so many
centuries, though he assigns no reason for such anger on the part of
God.
His gloomy view of the world, exercising an increasing domination over
him, led him to take refuge in fatalistic grounds for consolation,
which, according to his wont, he even attributed to Christ who had
inspired him with them. Haunted by his diabolical visions he finally
became more deeply imbued with pessimism than any present-day
representative of the pessimistic philosophy.
“Here you are living,” so he writes to one of his friends, “in the
devil’s own den of murderers, surrounded by dragons and serpents. Of
two things one must happen; either the people become devils to you, or
you yourself become a devil.”[464]
Formerly he had looked forward with some courage and confidence to
the possibility of a change. But even his courage, particularly at
critical junctures, for instance, at the Coburg and during the Diet of
Augsburg, more resembled the wanton rashness of a man who seeks to set
his own fears at defiance. At any rate his peculiar form of courage in
faith was not calculated to give a fresh stimulus, amid the general
relaxation and exhaustion, to religious enthusiasm and the spirit of
cheerful self-sacrifice for the highest aims of human life. On the
other hand, his success was largely due to the discouragement so widely
prevalent. We meet with a mournful echo of this discouragement in the
sayings of certain contemporary Princes of the Church, who seem to
have given up everything for lost. Many who had been surprised and
overwhelmed by the sudden bursting of the storm were victims of this
depression.
* * * * *
Luther not only failed to direct the unfavourable tendencies of the age
into better channels, but even to some extent allowed himself to be
carried away by them.
Even so strong a man as he, was keenly affected by the spirit of
the age. In some respects it is true his work exercised a lasting
effect on the prevalent currents, but in others he allowed his work
to be dominated by the spirit then abroad. To the nominalistic
school of Occam he owed not only certain of his doctrines but also
his disputatious and subversive ways, and his method of ignoring the
general connection between the truths of faith and of making the most
of the grounds for doubt. Pseudo-mystic influences explain both his
subjectivism and those quietistic principles, traces of which are
long met with in his writings. Humanism increased his aversion to the
old-time scholasticism, his animosity to the principles of authority
and tradition, his contempt for all things mediæval, his lack of
appreciation for, and unfairness to, the religious orders no less
than the paradox and arrogance of his language. A strain of coarse
materialism runs through the Renaissance. In Luther, says Paulsen,
“we are reminded of the Renaissance by a certain coarse naturalism
with which the new Evangel is spiced, and which, in his attacks on
celibacy and the religious life, occasionally leads Luther to speak as
though to abstain from carnal works was to rebel against God’s Will
and command.”[465] To the tendency of the Princes to exalt themselves
Luther yielded, even at the expense of the liberties and well-being of
the people, simply because he stood in need of the rulers’ support. The
spirit of revolt against the hierarchy which was seething amongst the
masses and even among many of the theologians, and which the disorders
censured in the _Gravamina_ of the various Diets had brought almost to
the point of explosion, carried Luther away; even in those writings
which contemporaries and aftercomers were to praise as his greatest
achievement and, in fact, in his whole undertaking in so far as it
involved separation from Rome, he was simply following the trend of his
time.
8. The Church Apart of the True Believers
Luther’s sad experiences in establishing a new Church led him for
several years to cherish a strange idea; his then intention was to
unite the true believers into a special band and to restrict the
preaching of the Gospel to these small congregations which would then
represent the real Church.
This idea of his of gathering together the true Christians has already
been referred to cursorily elsewhere,[466] but it is of such importance
that it may well be dealt with somewhat more in detail.
_Luther’s Theory of the Church Apart prior to 1526_
On the whole the idea which Luther, previous to 1526, expressed over
and over again as clearly as could be desired and never rejected later,
viz. of uniting certain chosen Christians—the true believers—in a
“congregation apart” and of regarding the remainder, i.e. the ordinary
members of the flock which followed him, or popular Church as it was
termed, as a mere lump still to be kneaded, gives us a deep insight
into the development which his conception of the Church underwent and
into his opinion of the position of his congregations generally. The
idea was an outcome more of circumstances than of reflection, more a
fanciful expedient than a consequence of his theories; thus it was that
it suffered shipwreck on the outward conditions which soon showed that
the plan was impossible of realisation. It really originated in the
moral disorders rampant in the new Church, particularly at Wittenberg.
So few of those who followed him allowed their hearts to be touched
by the Evangel, and yet all, none the less, claimed not merely to be
called Evangelicals but even to share in the Supper. Luther saw that
this state of things was compromising the good name of the work he had
started.
After the refusal of the Princes and nobles to listen to his appeal
to amend the state of Christendom, he determined to take his stand
on the congregational principle. He fondly expected that, thanks
to the supposed inward power of reform in the new communities, all
his proposals would soon be put into execution, the old system of
Church government swept away and a new order established more in
accordance with his views. Hence in the writing to the magistrates
and congregation of Prague, “_De instituendis ministris ecclesiæ_”
(Nov., 1523), which, without delay, he caused to be translated into
German,[467] he strove to show, how, everywhere, the new Church system
was to be established from top to bottom by the selection of pastors
by members of the congregation filled with faith (“_iis qui credunt,
hæc scribimus_”).[468] According to this writing, the Visitors and
Archbishop yet to be chosen by the zealous clergy, were to live only
for the sake of the pastors and the congregations, whom they had to
better by means of the Word. The faithful congregations “will indeed
be weak and sinful”—Luther had no hope of setting up a Church of
the perfect—but, “seeing they have the Word, they are at least not
ungodly; they sin indeed, but, far from denying, they confess the
Word.”[469] “Luther’s optimism,” says Paul Drews, “saw already whole
parishes converted into congregations of real Christians, realising
anew the true Church of the Apostolic ideal.”[470]
In the same year, 1523, on Maundy Thursday, he for the first time
spoke publicly, in a sermon delivered at Wittenberg, of the plan he
had long cherished of segregating the “believing” Christians from the
common herd. This was when publishing a new rule on the receiving of
the Supper, making Penance, or at least a general confession of sin,
a condition of reception. In future all were no longer to be allowed
to approach the Sacrament indiscriminately, but only those who were
true Christians; hence communion was to be preceded by an examination
in faith, i.e. by the asking of certain questions on the subject. The
five questions, and the answers, which were printed with a preface
by Bugenhagen, practically constituted an assurance of a sort to the
dispensers of the Sacrament that the communicants approached from
religious motives and that they received the Body and Blood of Christ
as a sign of the forgiveness of their sins.
“It must be a faith,” says Luther in this sermon, “which God works
in you, and you must know and feel that God is working this in you.”
But did it come to a “serious self-examination you would soon see how
few are Christians and how few there would be who would go to the
Sacrament. But it might be arranged and brought about, as I greatly
wish, for those in every place who really believe to be set apart
and distinguished from the others. I should like to have done this
long ago, but it was not feasible; for it has not been sufficiently
preached and urged as yet.” Meanwhile, instead of “separating” the
true believers (later on he speaks of private sermons for them to
be preached in the Augustinian minster) he will still address his
discourse to all, even though it be not possible to know “who is
really touched by it,” i.e. who really accepts the Gospel in faith;
but it was thus that Christ and the Apostles had preached, “to the
masses, to everyone; ... whoever can pick it up, let him do so.... But
the Sacrament ought not thus to be scattered broadcast amongst the
people in the way the Pope did.”[471]
In the “_Formula missæ_” from about the beginning of Dec., 1523, he
again speaks of the examination of the communicants, and adds that
it was enough that this should take place once a year, while, in the
case of educated people, it might well be omitted altogether; the
examination by the “bishop” (i.e. the pastor) must however extend
also to the “life and conduct” of the communicants. “If he sees a
man addicted to fornication, adultery, drunkenness, gambling, usury,
cursing or any other open vice he is to exclude him from the Supper
unless he has given proof of amendment.” Moreover, those admitted
to the Sacrament are to be assigned a special place at the altar
in order that they may be seen by all and their moral conduct more
easily judged of all. He would, however, lay down no commands on such
matters, but leave everything, as was his wont, to the good will of
free Christian men.[472]
The introduction of the innovation was, moreover, to depend entirely
on the consent of the congregation, agreeably with his theory of their
rights. This he said in a sermon of Dec. 6, 1523.[473] It was probably
in that same month that the plan was tried.
These preliminary attempts at the formation of an assembly of true
Christians were no more crowned with success than his plan for the
relief of the poor by means of the so-called common box, or his
efforts to establish a new system of penalties. Hence he declared,
that, owing to the Wittenbergers’ want of preparation, he was obliged
to put off its execution “until our Lord God forms some Christians.”
For the time being “we have not got the necessary persons.” In 1524 he
told them that “neither charity nor the Gospel could make any headway
amongst them.”[474] In the Wittenberg congregation he could “not yet
discern a truly Christian one.”[475] He nevertheless permitted the
whole congregation to take its share, when, in the autumn of 1523,
the town-council appointed Bugenhagen to the office of parish-priest;
this he did agreeably with his ideas concerning the rights of the
congregation.
Meanwhile, however, the ideal of a whole parish of true believers
seemed about to be realised elsewhere. Full of apparent zeal for the
new Evangel, the magistrates and burghers of Leisnig on the Mulde
drafted a scheme for a “common box” and begged Luther to send them
something confirming their right to appoint a minister—the town having
refused to accept the lawfully presented Catholic priest—and also a
reformed order for Divine worship. The instructive incident has already
been mentioned.[476]
Luther seized eagerly on the opportunity of calling into existence at
Leisnig a community which might in turn prove a model elsewhere. From
the establishment of such congregations he believed there would result
a system of new Churches independent indeed, though supported by the
authorities, which might then take the place of the Papal Church now
thought on the point of expiry. The idealistic dreams with which, as
his writings show, the proceedings at Leisnig filled his mind would
seem to have been responsible both for his project for Wittenberg and
for his letter to the Bohemians previously referred to. The fact that
they belonged to the same time is at any rate a remarkable coincidence.
He promised the town-council of Leisnig (Jan. 29, 1523) that he would
have their scheme for the establishment of a common fund printed,[477]
and this he did shortly after, adding an introduction of his own.[478]
In the introduction he expresses his conviction that true
Christianity, the right belief such as he desiderated, had taken up
its abode with them. For had they not made known their willingness to
enforce strict discipline at Leisnig? “By God’s grace,” he tells them,
“you are yourselves enriched by God,” hence you have “no need of my
small powers.” Still, he was far from loath to draw up for them and
for others, too, first the writing which appeared in print in 1523
(possibly at the beginning of March), “Von Ordenung Gottes Dienst
ynn der Gemeyne,”[479] and then, about Easter, 1523, another booklet
destined to become particularly famous and to which we have already
frequently referred, “Das eyn Christliche Versamlung odder Gemeyne
Recht und Macht habe, alle Lere zu urteylen,” etc.[480]
In the first, speaking of public worship “to real, heartfelt,
holy Christians,” he says the model must surely be sought in the
“apostolic age”; at least the clergy and the scholars, if not the
whole congregation, were to assemble daily, and on Sundays all were
to meet; then follow his counsels—he took care to lay down no actual
rules—for the details of public worship, where the Word and the
awakening of faith were to be the chief thing. These matters the
congregation were to arrange on their own authority.
The second booklet lays it down that it is the congregation and not
the bishops, the learned or the councils who have the right and
duty of judging of the preacher and of choosing a true preacher to
replace him who does not proclaim the Word of God aright—needless
to say, regardless of the rights of church patronage. A minority
of true “Christians” is at liberty to reject the parish priest and
appoint a new one of the right kind, whom it then becomes their duty
to support. Even “the best preachers” might not be appointed by the
bishops or patrons “without the consent, choice and call of the
congregation.”—There can be no doubt, that, if every congregation
acted as was here proposed, this would have spelt the doom of the old
church system. This too was what Luther’s vivid fancy anticipated
from the power of that Word which never returns empty-handed,
though he preferred simply to ignore the huge inner difficulties
which the proposal involved. The tidings that new congregations and
town-councils were joining his cause strengthened him in his belief.
His statements then, concerning the near overthrow of the Papacy by
the mere breath of Christ’s mouth, are in part to be explained by this
frame of mind.
At Leisnig, however, events did not in the least justify his sanguine
expectations.
The citizens succeeded in making an end of their irksome dependence on
the neighbouring Cistercian monastery, and the town-council promptly
sequestrated all the belongings and foundations of the Church; it
then became apparent, however, that, particularly on the side of the
council, the prevalent feeling was anything but evangelical; the
councillors, for instance, refused to co-operate in the establishment
of a common poor-box or to apply to this object the endowments it had
appropriated. Grave dissensions soon ensued and Luther sought in vain
the assistance of the Elector. Of any further progress of the new
religious-community ideal we hear nothing. The fact is, the fate at
Leisnig of the model congregation and “common fund” scheme was a great
disappointment to Luther. Elsewhere, too, attempts at establishing a
common poor-box were no less unsuccessful. Of these, however, we shall
treat later.[481]
Luther’s next detailed statements concerning the “assembly of true
Christians” are met in 1525. Towards the end of that year Caspar
Schwenckfeld, a representative of the innovations in Silesia, visited
him, and various theological discussions took place in the presence
of Bugenhagen and Jonas,[482] of which Schwenckfeld took notes which
have come down to us.[483] With the help of what Luther said then,
supplemented by some later explanations, the history of the remarkable
plan can be followed further.
In the discussion then held with Schwenckfeld the latter voiced his
conviction, that true Christians must be separated from the false,
“otherwise there was no hope” of improvement; excommunication, too,
must “ever go hand in hand with the Gospel,” otherwise “the longer
matters went on the worse they would get, for it was easy to see
the trend throughout the world; every man wanted to be Evangelical
and to boast of the name of Christ. To this he [Luther] replied: it
was very painful to him that no one showed any sign of amendment”;
he had, however, already taken steps concerning the separation of
the true believers and had announced “publicly in his sermons” his
intention of keeping a “register of Christians” and of having a watch
set over their conduct, also “of preaching to them in the monastery”
while a “curate preached to the others in the parish.”[484] It was a
disgrace, remarked Luther, how, without such helps, everything went to
rack and ruin. Not even half a gulden had he been able to obtain for
the poor.
Concerning the ban, however, “he refused to give a reply” even when
repeatedly pressed by Schwenckfeld; he merely said: “Yes, dear Caspar,
true Christians are not yet so plentiful; I should even be glad to see
two of them together; for I do not feel even myself to be one.” And
there the matter rested.[485]
Hence, even then, he still had a quite definite intention of forming
such a congregation of true believers at Wittenberg.[486]
During the last months of 1525 Luther concluded a writing entitled
“Deudsche Messe und Ordnung Gottis Diensts,” which was published in
1526, in which he speaks at length of the strange scheme which was
ever before his mind. Its reaction on his plans for Mass and Divine
worship may here be passed over.[487] What more nearly concerns us now
is the distinction he makes between those present at Divine worship.
If the new Mass, so he says, “is held publicly in the churches before
all the people” many are present “who as yet neither believe nor are
Christians.” In the popular Church, such as it yet is, “there is no
ordered or clearly cut assembly where the Christians can be ruled
in accordance with the Gospel”; to them worship is merely “a public
incentive to faith and Christianity.” It would be a different matter
if we had the true Christians assembled together, “with their names
registered and meeting together in some house or other,” where prayer,
reading, and the receiving of the Sacrament would be assiduously
practised, general almsgiving imposed and “penalties, correction,
expulsion or the ban made use of according to the law of Christ.” But
here again we find him complaining: “I have not yet the necessary
number of people for this, nor do I see many who are desirous of
trying it.” “Hence until Christians take the Word seriously, find
their own legs and persevere,” the carrying out of the plan must be
delayed. Nor did he wish, so he says, to set up “anything new in
Christendom.” As he put it in a previous sermon: “It is perfectly true
that I am certain I have and preach the Word, and am called; yet I
hesitate to lay down any rules.”[488]
This hesitation cannot be explained merely by the anxiety to which he
himself refers incidentally lest commands should arouse the spirit
of opposition and give rise to “factions,”[489] for the absence of
authority was evident; it must also have sprung from the author’s own
sense of the indefiniteness of the plan. His pious wish to establish an
organisation on the apostolic model was not conspicuous for practical
insight, however great the stress Luther laid on the passages he
regarded as authoritative (2 Cor. ix., 1 Cor. xiv., Mt. xviii. 2, and
Acts vi.). “This much is clear,” rightly remarks Drews, “that Luther
was uncertain and wavered in the details of his plan. He had but little
bent to sketch out organisations even in his head; to this he did not
feel himself called.”[490]
Others, not alone from the ranks of such as inclined to fanatism,
were also to some extent to blame for the persistence with which he
continued to revert to this pet idea. Nicholas Hausmann, pastor of
Zwickau, and an intimate friend, approached him at the end of 1526 on
the subject of the ban, which he regarded as indispensable for the
cause of order. On Jan. 10, 1527, Luther replied, referring him to
the Visitation which the Elector had promised to have held. “When the
Churches have been constituted (‘_constitutis ecclesiis_’) by it, then
we shall be able to try excommunication. What can you hope to effect so
long as everything is in such disorder?”[491]
Here we reach a fresh stage in the efforts to establish a new system of
Church organisation. Luther waited in vain for the birth of the ideal
community. Everything remained “in disorder.”[492] The intervention of
the State introduced in the Visitation was, however, soon to establish
an organisation and thus to improve discipline.
_The Church Apart replaced by the Popular Church Supported by the State_
Luther hoped much from the Visitation of 1527; it was not merely to
constitute parishes but also to serve the cause of the “assembly of
Christians” and of discipline; the segregation of the true believers
was to be effected within the parishes, at least when the parishes
were not prepared to go over as a whole to the true Church, as, for
instance, Leisnig had once promised to do. Luther again wrote, on
March 29, 1527, to Hausmann, the zealous Zwickau Evangelical: “We hope
that it [the ‘assembly of Christians’] will come about through the
Visitation.” Then, he fancies, “Christians and non-Christians would no
longer be found side by side” as at the ordinary gatherings in church;
but, once they were “separated and formed an assembly where it was the
custom to admonish, reprove and punish,” church discipline could soon
be applied to individuals too.[493]
But the “hope” remained a mere hope even when the Visitation was over.
Nothing whatever is known of any further attempt of Luther in this
direction, though, as Drews points out, “it is evident that he was
unable to understand how Christians who had reached the faith could
fail to feel themselves impelled to assemble in communities organised
on the Apostolic model.”[494] He had to look on helplessly while the
followers of the new preaching formed a great congregation, of which
many of the members were, as he had said, “not Christians at all,” and
whose prayer-gatherings were no more than “an incentive to faith and
Christianity.” (Above, p. 139.)
In Hesse alone had steps been taken—independently of the Visitation
in the Saxon Electorate and previous to it—to bring about a condition
of things more in accordance with Luther’s ideal. Moreover, Luther
himself preferred to remain entirely neutral in respect of this novel
attempt, destined to become famous in the history of Protestant
church-organisation. The prime mover in the Hessian plan was the
preacher, Lambert of Avignon, an apostate Friar Minor; his draft was
submitted to Landgrave Philip by a Synod held at Homberg at the end
of 1526.[495] Philip forwarded it to Luther in order to hear his
opinion. Among the proposals made in the draft were the following:
After preaching for a while to the whole of the people, they were to
be asked individually whether they wished to join the assembly of true
believers and submit themselves to the discipline prevailing amongst
them; those, however few in number, who give in their names are the
Christians; as for the others they must be looked upon as pagans;
the former have their meetings and choose their pastors because it
is the duty of the flock to decide in what voice the shepherds shall
speak. All the clergy were annually to meet the delegates of the
congregations, nobles and princes in synod and to elect a committee
and three Visitors for the direction and supervision of the whole
Church of the land; these were also to ratify the election of all the
clergy chosen by the people.[496]
Luther advised the Landgrave “not as yet to allow this order to appear
in print, for I,” he adds, “dare not yet be so bold as to introduce so
great a number of laws amongst us and with such high-sounding words.”
He did not, however, by any means reject the plan absolutely. On the
contrary he writes, that, in his opinion, it were better to allow
the project to grow up gradually “from force of habit”; a few of the
pastors, “say one, three, six, or nine” might well make a beginning;
otherwise they were sure to find that “the people were not yet ripe
for it,” and that “much would have to be altered.”[497]
As Landgrave Philip, after receiving from Luther this rather
discouraging reply, proceeded no further, the “plan for the
realisation of Luther’s ideas” was carried stillborn to the
grave.[498] “And yet it was the only practical plan which at all
corresponded with the theories of the Reformer prior to 1525.”[499]
Later on Philip adopted the Saxon Reformation-book for the organising
of the Church of Hesse.
That the project of esoteric congregations of true believers still
survived in Luther’s mind long after, in spite of the consolidation
of the popular Church in the form of a State Church, is plain from a
letter of his on June 26, 1533, to Tilemann Schnabel and the other
Hessian clergy (“_episcopi Hassiæ_”), again sitting in assembly at
Homberg. Schnabel was a whilom Provincial of the Saxon Augustinians and
had taken part in the abortive attempt to establish a community of true
Christians at Leisnig of which he was pastor. Finally, want, misery
and his own instability of character drove him from the country.[500]
From 1526 onwards he had been living at Alsfeld in Hesse. The new
assembly at Homberg had submitted to Luther, for his approval, the
draft of a scheme of church discipline, most probably inspired by
Schnabel himself. Luther’s reply is of the utmost importance for the
understanding of his opinion of the conditions then prevailing in the
Church.[501]
He is, at bottom, quite at one with the Hessian preachers, but, on
practical grounds, chiefly on account of the lack of the “_veri
Christiani_,” he rejects the well-meant proposals as too far-reaching
and incapable of execution.
The time, according to him, “is not yet ripe for the introduction of
discipline.” “Verily one must let the peasants run riot a little ...
and then things will right themselves.” We have not as yet taken root
in the earth; when the branches and leaves shall have appeared, then we
shall be better able to oppose the mighty. The Hessian preachers, so
he tells them, instead of rushing in with the Greater Excommunication
involving such serious civil consequences, would do better to begin
with the so-called “Lesser Excommunication” in use at Wittenberg,
simply excluding the unworthy from Communion and from the right to
stand as sponsors; for “the Greater Excommunication does not come
within our jurisdiction (‘_quod non sit nostri iuris_’), and, moreover,
concerns only those who desire to be real Christians; nor are we in
these times in a position to make use of the Greater Excommunication;
it would merely make us look silly were we to attempt it before we have
the necessary power. You seem to hope that the Prince will take the
enforcing of it into his own hands; but this is very uncertain, and it
is better he should have nothing to do with it.”
Thus, though Luther did not believe in the feasibility of a community
of real Christians there and then, or that it was likely soon to be
realised, yet the idea had not quitted his mind. The great mass of
those belonging to his party meanwhile constituted a sort of popular
Church. But such a popular Church was not in Luther’s eyes the real
institution intended by the Gospel. It consisted of the masses “who
must first be left their own way for a while” before the Church can be
established. Drews justly observes of the above statement: “Luther did
not relinquish the ideal of a really Christian congregation because
he had come to see that it was mistaken, the ideal had simply lost
its practical value in his eyes because it now seemed impossible of
realisation. Luther resigned himself to take things as they were. As he
had always regarded it as his mission, not to organise, but merely to
preach the Evangel, he was easily able to console himself. At any rate
it would be quite wrong to say that the popular Churches which now grew
up at all corresponded with his ideal.”[502]
The popular Church throve, nevertheless, and, soon, owing to the
co-operation of numerous factors, became a State institution.
The result was the Lutheran State-Church, to be considered later in
another connection, was something widely different from the original
idea of its founder; he frequently grumbled about it, without, however,
being able to check its development, which, indeed, he himself had been
the first to urge.[503] The sovereigns on their side, particularly the
Saxon Elector in the very birthplace of the innovations, did their best
to make ecclesiastical order, so far as externals, its organisation and
control went, depend upon themselves.[504]
The Visitation of 1527, for which Luther himself had asked, furnished
the Elector Johann with a welcome pretext for such action.
Even when giving his formal consent to the Visitation the Elector says,
speaking of the “erection of parishes”: “We have considered and weighed
the matter and have come to the conclusion that it becomes us as ruler
of the land to see to the business.”[505] Luther, moreover, for the
sake of securing some order in the new Church by the only means at his
command, outdid himself in assurances to the Elector, that, he, being
the principal member of the Church, must take in hand the adjusting of
the parishes and the appointment of suitable clergy; that his very love
of his country obliged him to this, and, that, owing to the pressing
needs of the time, he was a sort of “makeshift bishop” of the Church.
This last title is significant of the reserve Luther still maintained;
he was loath to see the Church’s authority simply merged in that of the
State; he did, nevertheless, speak of the sovereign as the head of the
new congregations and, little by little, allowed him so large a share
in their government that, even in his own day, the secular sovereign
was to all intents and purposes supreme head of the episcopate.[506]
9. Public Worship. Questions of Ritual
The ordering of public worship, particularly at Wittenberg, was a
source of much anxiety to Luther. He was not blind to the difficulties
which his reformation had to face in this department.
The soul of every religion must be sought in its public worship. Hence,
in Catholicism, the bishops, from earliest times, had bestowed the most
diligent and pious care on worship. A proof of this is to be found in
the grand liturgies of antiquity and the prayers, lessons and outward
rites with which they so lovingly surround the eucharistic sacrifice.
To build up a new liturgy from the very foundation was far from
Luther’s thoughts. He was not the “creator” of any new form of
public worship. He preferred to make the best of the Roman Mass,
for one reason, as he so often insists, because of the weak, i.e.
so as not needlessly to alienate the people from the new Church by
the introduction of novelties.[507] From the ancient rite he merely
eliminated all that had reference to the sacrificial character of the
Mass, the Canon, for instance, and the preceding Offertory. He also
thought it best to retain the word “Mass” in both the writings in which
he embodied his adaptation: “_Formula missæ et communionis pro ecclesia
Wittenbergensi_” 1523,[508] and “Deudsche Messe und Ordnung Gottis
Diensts” 1526.[509]
By the introduction of the German Mass in the latter year “the whole
Pope was flung out of the Church,”[510] to use Spalatin’s words. It
is noteworthy that Luther, in announcing this latest innovation to
the inhabitants of Wittenberg, admitted that he had been urged by the
sovereign to make the change.[511]
In Luther’s “German Mass,” as in his even more traditional Latin
one, we find at the beginning the Introit, Kyrie Eleison, Gloria and
a Collect; then follows the Epistle for the Sunday together with a
Gradual or Alleluia or both; then the Gospel and the Credo, followed
by the sermon. “After the sermon the Our Father is to be publicly
explained and an exhortation given to those intending to approach the
Sacrament,”[512] then comes the Consecration. The Secret was omitted
with the Offertory. The Preface was shortened. Of the whole of the
hated “Canon”[513] the “priest” was merely to pronounce aloud over the
Bread and Wine the words of consecration as given in 1 Cor. xi. 23-25,
saying then the Sanctus and Benedictus. The Elevation came during the
Benedictus.[514] The Our Father and the Pax follow, then the communion
of the officiating clergyman and the faithful, under both kinds. To
conclude there was another collect and then the blessing.
* * * * *
Some of the portions mentioned were sung by the congregation and great
use was made of German hymns.[515] Whatever had been retained in Latin
till 1526 was after that date put into German. For the sake of the
scholars who had to learn Latin Luther would have been in favour of
continuing to say the Mass in that language. The old ecclesiastical
order of the excerpts of the Epistles and Gospels read in church was
retained, though the selection was not to Luther’s tastes; it seemed
to him that the passages in Holy Scripture which taught saving faith
were not sufficiently to the fore; he was convinced that the man
who originally made the selection was an ignorant and superstitious
admirer of works;[516] his advice was that the deficiency should at
any rate be made good by the sermon. The celebration of Saints’ days
was abolished, saving the feasts of the Apostles and a few others, and
of the feasts of the Virgin Mary only those were retained which bore
on some mystery of Our Lord’s life. In addition to the Sunday service
short daily services were introduced consisting of the reading and
expounding of Holy Scripture; these were to be attended at least by
the scholars and those preparing themselves for the preaching office.
At these services Communion was not to be dispensed as a general rule
but only to those who needed it.
Alb and chasuble continued to be worn by the clergyman at the “Mass”
in the parish church of Wittenberg, though no longer in the monastic
church. The Swiss who visited Wittenberg were struck by this, and, in
their reports, declared that Luther’s service was still half Popish.
At Augsburg where Zwinglianism was rampant the “puppet show” of
the Saxons, with their priestly vestments, candles, etc., seemed a
“foolish” and scandalous thing.[517] Luther wished the use of lights
and incense to be neither enjoined nor abolished.
As he frequently declared, the utmost freedom was to prevail in
matters of ritual in order to avoid a relapse into the Popish practice
of man-made ordinances. Even the adoption of the “Deudsche Messe,
etc.,” was to be left to the decision of the congregations and the
pastors.[518] If they knew of anything better to set up in its place,
this was not to be excluded; yet in every parish-congregation there
must at least be uniformity. The chief thing is charity, edification
and regard for the weak. Above all, the “Word must have free course and
not be allowed to degenerate into singing and shouting, as was formerly
the case.”[519]
Of the whole of the Wittenberg liturgical service, he says in his
“Deudsche Messe”—to the surprise of his readers who expected to find
in it a work for the believers—that it did not concern true believers
at all: “In short we do not set up such a service for those who are
already Christians.”[520] He is thinking, of course, of the earnest,
convinced Christians whom, as stated above (p. 133 f.), he had long
planned to assemble in special congregations. They alone in his eyes
constituted the true Church, however imperfect and sinful they might
be, provided they displayed faith and good-will.
“They” (the true believers), he here says of his regulations, “need
none of these things, for which indeed we do not live, but rather
they for the sake of us who are not yet Christians, in order that
we may become Christian; true believers have their service in the
spirit.”[521] In the case of the particular assemblies he had in
mind for the latter, they would have to “enter their names and meet
in some house or other for prayer, reading, baptism, receiving of
the Sacrament and other Christian works.” “Here there would be no
need of loud or fine singing. They could descant a while on baptism
and the Sacrament, and direct everything towards the Word and prayer
and charity. All they would need would be a good, short catechism
on faith, the Ten Commandments and the Our Father.” Amongst them
ecclesiastical discipline and particularly excommunication would be
introduced; such assemblies would also be well suited for “common
almsgiving,” all the members helping in replenishing the poor-box.[522]
Until such “congregations apart” had come into being the service, and
particularly the sermon, according to Luther, must needs be addressed
to all. “Such a service there must be for the sake of those who are
yet to become Christians, or need strengthening ... especially for the
sake of the simple-minded and young ... on their account we must read,
sing and preach ... and, where this helps at all, I would have all the
bells rung and all the organs played.” He boasts of having been the
first to impart to public worship this aim and character, “to exercise
the young and to call and incite others to the faith”; the “popish
services,” on the other hand, were “so reprehensible” because of the
absence of any such character.—In his Churches he sees “many who do
not yet believe and are no Christians; the greater part stand there
gaping at the sight of something new, just as though we were holding
an open-air service among the Turks or heathen.” Hence it seems to him
quite necessary to regard the worship in common as simply a public
encouragement to faith and Christianity.[523]
As for those Christians who already believed, Luther cannot loudly
enough assert their freedom.
As his highest principle he sets up the following, which in reality
is subversive of all liturgy: In Divine worship “it is a matter for
each one’s conscience to decide how he is to make use of such freedom
[the freedom of the Christian man given by the Evangel]; the right to
use it is not to be refused or denied to any.... Our conscience is
in no way bound before God by this outward order.”[524] This has the
true Lutheran ring. Beside this must be placed his frequently repeated
assertion, that we can give God nothing that tends to His honour, and
that every effort on our part to give Him anything is merely an attempt
to make something of man and his works, which works are invariably
sinful.[525] He also teaches elsewhere that not only does real and true
worship consist in a life of faith and love, but that the outward
worship given in common is in reality a sacrifice of praise and
thanksgiving (a gift to God after all) made in common solely because
of all people’s need to express their faith and love;[526] he also
calls it a “_sacrificium_,” naturally, not in the Catholic, but in the
widest sense of the word. Even the expression “eucharistic sacrifice,”
i.e. sacrifice of praise, is not inacceptable to him; but at least the
sacrifice must be entirely free.
With such a view the form of worship described above seems scarcely
to tally. A well-defined outward order of worship was first proposed,
and then prescribed; it would, according to Luther’s statement, have
imposed itself even on the assemblies of true believers. It is true,
he says, that only considerations of charity and public order compel
such outward regulations, that it was not his doing nor that of
any other evangelical authority. Still it is a fact that they were
enjoined, that a service according to the choice of the individual
was, even in Luther’s day, regarded with misgivings, and that even in
the 16th century it fell to the secular prince to sanction the form
of worship in church and to punish those who stayed away, those who
failed to communicate and those who did not know their catechism.[527]
We have here another instance of the same contradiction apparent
in matters of dogma, where Luther bound down the free religious
convictions of the individual—supposed to be based on conscience
and the Bible—in cast-iron strands in his catechism and theological
hymns. The catechism, even in the matter of confession, and likewise
the theology of the hymns, closely trenched on the regulations for
Divine worship. The Ten Commandments, the Our Father, etc., were also
put into verse and song. Moreover, those who presented themselves for
communion had to submit at least to a formal examination into their
faith and intentions, and also to a certain scrutiny of their morals—a
strange limitation surely of Evangelical freedom and of the universal
priesthood of all believers.
According to Kawerau, the best Protestant liturgical writers agree,
that a “false, pedagogic conception of worship” finds expression in
Luther’s form of service.[528] To make the aim of the public worship
of the congregation—whatever elements the latter might comprise—a
mere exercise for the young and a method of pressing “Christianity” on
non-believers was in reality to drag down the sublime worship of God,
the “sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving” as Luther himself sometimes
calls it, to an undeservedly low level.
This degradation was, however, intimately bound up with the fact, that
Luther had robbed worship of its most precious and essential portion,
the eucharistic sacrifice, which, according to the Prophet Malachias,
was to be offered to the Lord from the rising till the going down of
the sun as a pure and acceptable oblation. To the Catholic observer
his service of the Mass, owing to the absence of this all-important
liturgical centre, appears like a blank ruin. As early as 1524 he was
told at Wittenberg that his service was “dreary and all too sober.”
Although it was his opposition to the Holy Sacrifice and its ceremonies
which called forth this stricture, yet at the same time his objection
to any veneration of the Saints also contributed to the lifeless
character of the new worship. It was, however, above all, the omission
of the sacrifice which rendered Luther’s clinging to the ancient
service of the Mass so unwarrantable.[529]
Older Protestant liturgical writers like Kliefoth spoke of the
profound, mystical value of Luther’s liturgy and even of certain
elements as being quite original. Recourse to the old scheme of the
Mass, duly expurgated, was, however, a much simpler process than they
imagined. We must also bear in mind, that Luther himself was not so
rigid in restricting the liturgy to the forms he himself had sketched
out as they assumed. On the contrary, he left room for development, and
allowed the claims of freedom. Hence it is not correct to say, that he
curtailed the tendency towards “free liturgical development,” as has
been asserted of him by Protestants in modern times.[530] For it was
no mere pretence on his part when he spoke of freedom to improve. The
progress made in hymnology owing to this freedom is a proof that better
results were actually arrived at.
How easy it was, on the other hand, for liberty to lead to serious
abuses is plain from the history of the Evangelical churches in
Livonia. Melchior Hofmann, the preacher, had come from that country to
Wittenberg complaining that the reformed service had given rise to the
worst discord among both people and clergy. Luther composed a circular
letter addressed to the inhabitants of Livonia, entitled “Eyne
christliche Vormanung von eusserlichem Gottis Dienste unde Eyntracht
an die yn Lieffland,” which was printed together with a letter from
Bugenhagen and another from Hofmann.[531] Therein he admits with
praiseworthy frankness his embarrassment with regard to ceremonial
uniformity.
“As soon as a particular form is chosen and set up,” he says, “people
fall upon it and make it binding, contrary to the freedom brought
by faith.” “But if nothing be set up or appointed, the result is as
many factions as there are heads.... One must, however, give the
best advice one can, albeit everything is not at once carried out
as we speak and teach.” He accordingly encourages those whom he is
addressing to meet together amicably “in order that the devil may not
slink in unawares, owing to this outward quarrel about ceremonies.”
“Come to some agreement as to how you wish these external matters
arranged, that harmony and uniformity may prevail among you in your
region,” otherwise the people would grow “confused and discontented.”
Beyond such general exhortations he does not go and thus refuses to
face the real difficulty.
When seeking to introduce uniformity nothing was to be imposed as
“absolute command,” but merely to “ensure the unity of the Christian
people in such external matters”; in other words, “because you see
that the weak need and desire it.” The people, however, were “to
inure themselves to the breaking out of factions and dissensions. For
who is able to ward off the devil and his satellites?” “When you were
Papists the devil, of course, left you in peace.... But now that you
have the true seed of the divine Word he cannot refrain from sowing
his own seed alongside.”
The writing did no good, for the confusion continued. It was only in
1528 that the Königsberg preacher, Johann Briesmann, at the request
of the authorities and with Luther’s help, established a new form of
church government in Livonia.
Were one to ask which was the principal point in Luther’s Mass, the
Supper or the sermon, it would not be easy to answer.
The term Mass and the adaptation of the olden ritual would seem to
speak in favour of the Supper.[532] If, however, the service was to
consist principally of the celebration of the Supper it was necessary
there should always be communicants. Without communions there was,
according to Luther, no celebration of the Sacrament. Now at Wittenberg
there were not always communicants, nor was there any prospect of the
same presenting themselves at every Sunday service, or that things
would always remain as in 1531 when Luther boasted, that “every Sunday
the hundred or so communicants were always different people.”[533]
At the weekly services, communion in any case was very unusual. The
custom had grown up under Luther’s eyes that, on Sundays, as soon
as the sermon was over, the greater part of the congregation left
the church.[534] From this it is clear that the ritual involved a
misunderstanding. In practice the celebration of the Supper became
something merely supplementary, whereas, according to Luther himself,
it ought to have constituted either the culmination of the service,
or at least an organic part of Divine worship; under him, however,
it was soon put on the same level with the sermon though the organic
connection between the two is not clear. Indeed, it would be more
accurate to say that predominance was assigned to the sermon,[535]
which undoubtedly was only right if, as Luther maintains, worship was
intended only for instruction.
In our own day some have gone so far as to demand that the sermon
should be completely sundered from the Supper; and also to admit, that
the creation of a real Lutheran liturgy constitutes “a problem still to
be solved.”[536]
It is a fact of great ethical importance, that, what was according to
Luther the Sacrament of His Real Presence instituted by Christ Himself,
had to make way for preaching and edification by means of prayers and
hymns. Even the Elevation had to go. From the beginning its retention
had aroused “misgivings,”[537] and, to say the least, Luther’s reason
for insisting on it, viz. to defy Carlstadt who had already abolished
it, was but a poor one. It was abrogated at Wittenberg only in
1542; elsewhere, too, it was discontinued.[538] Thus the Sacrament
receded into the background as compared with other portions of the
service. But, like prayer and hymn-singing, preaching too is human and
subject to imperfections, whereas the Sacrament, even though it be no
sacrifice, is, even according to Luther, the Body of Christ. Luther
was, indeed, ready with an answer, viz. that the sermon was also the
Word of God, and, that, by means of both Sacrament and sermon, God was
working for the strengthening of faith. Whether this reply gets rid of
the difficulty may here be left an open question. At any rate the ideal
Word of God could not be placed on the same footing with the sermons
as frequently delivered at that time by expounders of the new faith,
capable or otherwise, sermons, which, according to Luther’s own loud
complaints, contained anything but the rightful Word of God, and were
anything but worthy of being classed together with the Sacrament as one
of the two component parts of Divine worship.
Three charges of a general character were made by Luther against
Catholic worship. First, “the Word of God had not been preached ...
this was the worst abuse.” Secondly, “many unchristian fables and
lies found their way into the legends, hymns and sermons.” Finally,
“worship was performed as a work whereby to win salvation and God’s
grace; and so faith perished.”[539]
Of these charges it is hard to say which is the most unjust. His
assertion that the Word of God had not been preached and that there
was no Bible-preaching, has been refuted anew by every fresh work
of research in the history of preaching at that time. Nor was the
Bible-element in preaching entirely lacking, though it might not have
been so conspicuous. The truth is, that, in many places, sermons were
extremely frequent.[540]
Luther’s second assertion, viz. that Catholic worship was full
of lying legends, does not contain the faintest trace of truth,
more particularly there where he was most radical in his work
of expurgation, i.e. in the Canon. The Canon was a part of the
Mass-service, which had remained unaltered from the earliest times. It
was only into the sermons that legends had found their way to a great
extent.
If finally, as seems likely, Luther, by his third charge, viz. that
the olden Church sought to “win salvation and God’s Grace” through her
worship, means that this was the sole or principal aim of Catholic
worship, here, too, he is at sea. The real object had always been
the adoration and thanksgiving which are God’s due, offered by means
of the sublime sacrifice united with the spiritual sacrifice of the
whole congregation. Adoration and thanksgiving found their expression
above all in the sublime Prefaces of the Mass. The thought already
appears in the “_Sursum corda_, _Gratias agamus_, etc., _Dignum et
iustum est_,” whereupon the priest, taking up again the “_Dignum et
iustum est_,” proceeds: “_Æquum et salutare, nos tibi semper et ubique
gratias agere ... per Christum Dominum nostrum_.” It is not without
significance that “_dignum_,” “_iustum_” and “_æquum_” stand first,
and that “_salutare_” comes after; praise and thanksgiving are what
it becomes us first of all to offer in presence of God’s Majesty, but
they are also profitable to us because they render God gracious to
us.[541]
The ritual of the Catholic sacrifice, dating as it does from the
Church’s remotest past, expresses adequately the highest thoughts of
Christian ethics, viz. the adoration of the Creator by the creature
through the God-man Christ, Who alone worthily honours Him. To this
idea Luther’s attempt at a liturgy does not do justice.
10. Schwenckfeld as a Critic of the Ethical Results of Luther’s
Life-work
Caspar Schwenckfeld, the Silesian nobleman (see above, p. 78 ff.), is
a type of those men who attached themselves to Lutheranism with the
utmost enthusiasm, but, who, owing to the experience they met with and
in pursuance of those very principles which Luther himself had at first
advocated, came to strike out new paths of their own.
In spite of his pseudo-mystical schemes for the establishment of
a Church on the Apostolic model; in spite of his abandonment of
doctrines to which Luther clung as to an heirloom of the ancient
Church; regardless of his antagonism to Luther—which the latter repaid
with relentless persecution—this cultured fanatic expressed in his
numerous writings and letters his lasting gratitude to, and respect
for, Luther on account of the services which the latter had in his
opinion rendered in the restoration of truth. He extols his “wonderful
trumpet-call,”[542] and without any trace of hypocrisy, says: “What
Martin Luther and others have done aright, for instance in the
expounding of Holy Scripture ... I trust I will, with God’s help, never
underrate.”[543]
At the same time, however, he is not slow to express it as his
conviction, that, “At the beginning of the present Evangel the said
[Lutheran] doctrine was far better, purer and more wholesome than it
is now.”[544] “Dr. Martin led us out of Egypt, through the Red Sea and
into the wilderness, and there he left us to lose ourselves on the
rough roads; yet he seeks to persuade everybody that we are already in
the Promised Land.” This he said in 1528.[545]
“Although Luther has written much that is good,” “that has been and
still may be profitable to believers, for which we give praise and
thanks to God the Lord, still he has also written much that is evil,
and in the end it will be proved that his and his people’s doctrine
or _theologia_ was neither apostolic, nor pure, nor perfect ... which
certainly might have been seen long since by its fruits.”[546]
His criticisms of Luther, which, in spite of his harsh treatment at
the latter’s hands, are throughout temperately expressed and with a
certain aristocratic reticence, deal on the one hand with the fruits
of the Wittenberg Reformation, and, on the other, with certain main
features of the ethical teaching of his master and one-time friend; his
strictures thus form a recapitulation of what has gone before.
_On the hoped-for Moral Revival_
“The reformation of life has not taken place,” this is what Carl Ecke,
Schwenckfeld’s latest biographer, represents as the honest conviction
of the “apostolic” preacher of the faith in Silesia.[547] “The religion
of Lutheranism as it then was did not, in Schwenckfeld’s opinion, as
a whole reach the standard of Bible Christianity.”[548] “The greater
part of the common herd,” says Schwenckfeld, “who are called Lutherans
do not know to-day how they stand, whether with regard to works, or in
relation to God and to their own conscience.”[549]
Schwenckfeld’s own standard was certainly somewhat one-sided and
his own Apostolic Church, so far as it ever saw the light, fell
considerably short of the ideal. His insight into the ethical
conditions and doctrines was, however, keen enough and his judgment was
at least far calmer and clearer than that of Carlstadt and Luther’s
other more hot-headed antagonists. He was also able to base his
definite and oft-repeated statements on the experience he had gained
during his wide travels and in intercourse with all sorts of men.
Thus he writes: “If by God’s grace I see the great common herd and the
poor folk on both sides, as they really are, then I must fain admit,
that, under the Papacy and in spite of all its errors, there are
more pious, godfearing men than in Lutheranism. I also believe that
they might more easily be improved than some of our Evangelicals who
are now trying to hide themselves and their sinful life behind Holy
Scripture, nay, behind a fictitious faith and Christ’s satisfaction,
and in whom no fear of God is left.”[550]
Many of Schwenckfeld’s more specific complaints are supported by
other witnesses. We may compare what Luther himself and his friends
report of the conditions at Wittenberg[551] with what Schwenckfeld
says a little later: “It is credibly asserted concerning their Church
at Wittenberg, that there such a mad, dissolute life prevails as is
woeful to see; there is no discipline whatever, no fear of God, and
the people are wild, impudent and unmannerly, particularly Philip’s
students, so that even Dr. Major not long since (1556) is himself said
to have complained of it there in a sermon, saying: Our Wittenberg is
so widely talked of that strangers fancy there are only angels here;
when, however, they come they find only devils incarnate. If Philip,
who sends out his disciples as Apostles ‘_in omnem terram_’ does not
found any better Churches than these, he has but little to boast of
before God.”[552]
“What harm and damage to consciences such Lutheran teaching has
brought into Christendom it is easier to bewail with many tears than
to describe.” Though Luther’s “Evangel and office has discovered and
made an end of much false worship and a great apostasy, for which we
give thanks to God the Lord,” yet “it has but little of the power of
grace, of the Holy Spirit, or of blessing, for bringing sinners to
repentance and true conversion.”[553]
“Thus we have Schwenckfeld’s witness that he had seen nothing of any
real awakening or revival among the people generally. Whole classes,
the merchant class, for instance, remained inwardly untouched by
the glad tidings; even where the ‘Word’ was preached, there the bad
sermons, of which Schwenckfeld had complained as early as 1524, often
produced evil fruits.” Thus writes Ecke.[554] Schwenckfeld, however,
does not lay all the blame on the preachers, but rather directly on
the ethical principles resulting from Luther’s doctrines, which had
filled the utterances of the new preachers with so much that was
dangerous and misleading. “Oh, how many of our nobles have I heard
say: ‘I cannot help it,’ ‘it is God’s Will,’ ‘God does all, even my
sin, and I am not answerable’; ‘if He has predestined me I shall be
saved.’” “How many have I heard, who all appealed to the Wittenberg
writings, and, who, alas, to-day, are ten times worse than before the
Evangel began to be preached.”[555]
Whenever he exhorted his Lutheran co-religionists to conversion and
holiness of life, so he declares in 1543, he always received some
reply such as the following: “We are poor sinners and can do nothing
good.” “Faith alone without works saves us.” “We cannot keep God’s
law”; “have no free-will.” “Amendment is not in our power.” “Christ
has done enough for us; He has overthrown sin, death, hell and
the devil; that is what we have to believe.”[556] When he preached
sanctification he was dubbed a “Papist.” “That the Lutherans accuse me
of being more a Papist than a Lutheran is due mainly to good works and
the stress I lay on them.”[557]
Even in 1524 he had published an essay on practical ethics entitled,
“An Exhortation regarding the misuse of sundry Articles of the Evangel,
etc.” (Above, 79 f.) In 1547 he found it necessary to publish another
work on the “Misuse of the Evangel.” To this misuse he attributes
most of the above excuses of his “Lutheran co-religionists.” Luther
himself, so he declares here, was much to blame for the confusion that
prevailed. He quotes many passages from Luther’s Church-postils, from
the edition printed at Wittenberg in 1526 with prefaces by Luther and
Stephen Roth. He also makes use of the same work in another book,
“On Holy Scripture,” which he also wrote in 1547.[558] Many of the
incriminated passages were “wickedly omitted” in the next editions of
the Church-postils.[559]
_Further Complaints of Schwenckfeld’s. The Ethical Doctrines_
Schwenckfeld, in his strictures on Luther’s preaching and its results,
deals with the ethical side of the new teaching concerning the Law and
the Gospel.
Luther had said, that, with the law, God “wished to do no more than
make us feel our helplessness, our weakness and our sickness.”[560]
The critic asks: “Why not also to make us eschew evil and do good,
1 Peter iii.?” On the other hand, Luther will have it that the “Law
makes all of us sinners so that not even the smallest tittle of these
commandments can be kept even by the most holy.” “Such is in short
Luther’s doctrine concerning the Law and the Commandments of God. There
he lets it rest, as though the ground and contents of the Law and God’s
intention therein—which was centred on Christ—were nothing.... Of
this doctrine, particularly, the common people can make nothing save
that God has given us His commandments, not in order that we may keep
them by means of His Grace, but only that we may thereby come to the
knowledge of sin.”[561]
“Why should we hate our life in this world ... and follow Christ?
Nay, why take pains at all to enter in at the narrow gate and to seek
the strait way to life everlasting (Mt. vii.) if it is possible to
reach heaven along the broad way on which so many walk who are called
Lutherans, and to enter in through the wide gate which they make for
themselves!”[562]
Two other points of doctrine which in the same connection Schwenckfeld
censures in the strongest terms as real stumbling blocks in ethics, are
the preaching of predestination and the denial of free-will.
How, at the outset, the “learned had soared far too high” with their
article of predestination “and, by means of their human wisdom,
reached a philosophical, heathen conception [presumably the ancient
‘_fatum_’] can readily be seen from their books, especially from
Luther’s against free-will and Melanchthon’s first Commentary on the
Epistle to the Romans.”[563]
“Luther writes that no one is free to plan either good or evil, but
only does as he is obliged; that, as God wills, so we live.... _Item_,
that the man who does evil has no control over himself, that it is
not in man’s power to do evil or not, but that he is forced to do it,
‘_nos coacti facimus_.’” “God,” so Philip tells us, “does all things
by His own power.”[564]
“They have treated of predestination in accordance with heathen
philosophy, forgetful of Christ and the Grace of the Gospel now made
manifest; they wrote of it from a human standpoint; and though Luther
and Philip, after they had seen the evil results, would gladly have
retracted it, yet because what they had formerly taught was very
pleasing to the flesh, it took root in men’s hearts so deeply that
what they afterwards said passed almost unheard.”[565]
“This aberration,” says Ecke, “was to Schwenckfeld a further sign that
their method of reformation was not that of good missionaries.”[566]
Schwenckfeld complains rightly: “Instead of beginning, after the
Apostles’ example, by preaching penance in the name of Christ ...
they preferred vehemently to urge such lofty matters as predestination
and the Divine election together with the denial of free-will.”[567]
The universal priesthood as commonly preached and understood by the
people furnishes Schwenckfeld with a further cause for grumbling. “They
have also been in the habit of preaching and shouting to the multitudes
that all of them were already Christians, children of God and spiritual
kings and princes. What corruption of conscience and abuse of the
Evangel has resulted from all this we see and hear to-day from many ...
who thereby have fallen into a bold and godless manner of life.”[568]
Finally there was Luther’s ethical attitude towards sin. “Look at the
second sermon for Easter Day in Luther’s Church-sermons [where he
says]: ‘Where now is sin? It is nailed to the cross.... If only I hold
fast to this, I shall have a good conscience of being, like Christ
Himself, without sin; then I can defy death, devil, sin and hell.’”
Schwenckfeld continues: “And again: ‘Seeing that Christ allowed
Himself to be put to death for sin, it cannot harm me. Thus does faith
work in the man who believes that Christ has taken away sin; such a
one feels himself to be without sin like Christ, and knows that death,
devil and hell have been conquered and cannot harm him any more.’ _Hæc
ille._ This has proved a scandal to many.”[569]
He is angered by what Luther says in his sermon for the 8th Sunday
after Trinity, that “no work can condemn a man, that unbelief is the
only sin, and that it was the comfort of Christians to know that sins
do not harm them. _Item_, that only sinners belong to the Kingdom of
God.”—He is much shocked at such sayings as, “If you but believe you
are freed from sin.... If we believe then we have a Gracious God and
only need to direct our works to the advantage of our neighbour so
that they may be profitable to him.”[570]
Such a form of neighbourly love does not suffice to reassure
Schwenckfeld as to the method of justification taught by Luther. “We
see here that repentance, the renewal of the heart and the crucifixion
of the flesh with its lusts and concupiscences, as well as the
Christian combat ... are all forgotten.” “How is it possible that such
easy indulgence and soft and honeyed sermons should not lead to little
account being made of sin, seeing the people are told that God winks
at the sins of all those who believe?”[571]
Again and again he returns to the patent fact that “the result of such
shameless preaching and teaching is nothing but a grave and damnable
abuse of the Evangel of Jesus Christ, since people now make but little
account even of many and great sins.”[572]
For Luther to point to the Crucified and tell the believer that “sin
is nothing but a devilish spectre and a mere fancy,” was to speak
“fanatically.” Luther might write what he pleased, but here, at any
rate, he was himself guilty of that fanatism of which he was fond of
accusing others.[573] Schwenckfeld himself had been numbered by the
preachers among the crazy fanatics.
The Silesian also ruthlessly attacked the imputation of the merits of
Christ by means of the _Sola Fides_.
The Lutherans, even the best of them, imagine their righteousness to
be nothing else “but the bare faith, since they believe God accounts
them righteous, even though they remain as they were before.” “They
should, however, be exhorted to search Holy Scripture and to ask
themselves in their hearts whether such faith and righteousness are
not rather a human persuasion, mere imposition and self-delusion ...
which men invent to justify an impenitent life; not a true, living
faith, the gift of the Holy Ghost ... which, as Scripture says,
purifies the heart, Acts xv. ..., reconciles consciences, Rom. v. ...,
and brings Christ into our hearts, Eph. iii., Gal. ii.”[574]
An instructive parallel and at the same time a severe censure on
Luther’s method of building up “faith” on inward assurance is afforded
by Schwenckfeld’s account of the experiences and spiritual trials on
which he himself had founded his faith. The preachers, insisting on
the outward Word, urged that he had no right to appeal to his mere
feelings; yet, as he points out, this very thing had been proclaimed
from Wittenberg as the right, nay the duty of all.
“In addition to all this they reject the ghostly feeling and that
inward sense of the Grace of God which Luther at the outset ...
declared to be necessary for salvation, writing that: ‘No one can
rightly understand God or the Word of God unless he has it direct
from the Holy Ghost.’ No one, however, can receive it from the Holy
Ghost unless he experiences it, makes trial of it and feels it; in
this experience the Holy Ghost is teaching us as in His own school,
outside of which nothing is learned but all is mere delusion, words
and vapouring.”[575]
“How would Dr. Luther’s own gloss stand,” Schwenckfeld asks elsewhere,
“which he gives on the words of the New Testament, 1 Cor. xi.: ‘Let a
man prove himself,’ and where he says: ‘to prove oneself is to feel
one’s faith,’ etc.? But the man who feels his faith will assuredly
by such a faith—which is a power of God and the very being of the
Holy Ghost—have forgiveness of sins and bear Christ in his believing
heart.”[576]
He reproaches Luther with having in later days failed to distinguish
between the outward Word or preaching and the inward living Word
of God. The blunt assertion of the preachers—which was encouraged
by “Luther’s unapostolic treatment of the problem of Christian
experience”[577]—that faith referred solely to the written Word and
was elicited merely by preaching,[578] leads in practice to neglect
of those passages of Scripture which speak of the Divine character of
faith and of its transmission by the Holy Ghost; owing to the lack
of a faith really felt, there was also wanting any “holiness of life
worked by the Spirit, and any moral justice and sanctification.”[579]
_Schwenckfeld on the Popular Church and the New Divine Service_
The system of a State Church then being set up, the externalism of
the Lutheran Popular Church and the worship introduced were naturally
looked at askance by the promoter of the Church Apart of true
believers; at the same time his strictures are not unduly biassed.[580]
He looks at the matter from the standpoint of Lutheran freedom, or
as Carl Ecke expresses it, of “the early Christian individualism
rediscovered by Luther.”[581] From this point of view Schwenckfeld can
detect in the official Lutheran Church only a shadow of the Apostolic
Church. Not merely the principle of the multitude, but also the appeal
to the authorities for help and coercion was opposed to the spirit of
Christ, at least according to all he had learnt from Luther.
“He raises the question whether that can possibly be the true Church
of Christ where human coercion, force, commands and prohibitions,
rather than Christian freedom and willingness, rule over faith and
conscience.... The secular sword has no place in the Churches of
Christ, but belongs to the secular authorities for the punishment of
the wicked.... As little as it is in the power of the authorities to
bestow the faith on anyone, to strengthen or increase it, so little
does it befit it to force, coerce or urge.... What the authorities
do here [in matters of faith] is nothing but violence, insolence and
tyranny.”[582]
But “we always want to attract the great crowd!”[583] “They saw
the great multitude and feared lest the churches should dwindle
away.”[584] How were they to keep “Mr. Omnes, the common people,
faithful to their churches without the help of the secular arm?”[585]
They do not even think of first honestly instructing the magistrates
how to become Christians and what the duty of a Christian is.... I am
unable in conscience to agree with those who make idols of them so
speedily and persuade them that they already have that, which their
own conscience tells them they have never received.[586]
At the Supper, too, so he complains, owing to the want of proper
discrimination between the converted and unconverted, “a false
security of conscience is aroused, whereby people are led away
from true repentance; for they teach that it is a source of grace,
indulgence, ablution of sin, and salvation, whereas it is plain that
no one receives anything of the kind.”[587] In his view it is not
right to say that the Supper leads man to reconciliation with God by
enlivening his faith, and that even that man “who is full of sin or
has a bad conscience gnawed and bitten by his sins” should receive
it, as the preachers teach;[588] on the contrary, only those who are
reconciled have the right to approach. “Not the man who wants to
be holy [the unjustified], but he who has already been hallowed by
Christ, is fit for the Supper.”[589]
From the standpoint of his own peculiar doctrine he characterises
it as a downright error on Luther’s part to have “put Justification
even into the Sacrament”—Schwenckfeld himself had thrown all the
sacraments overboard.—He also reproaches Luther with teaching, that:
“Forgiveness of sins, which is only to be found in Christ as ruler, is
to be sought in the Sacrament.”[590]
Now, Schwenckfeld was far from advising people to forsake the official
Church; he did not recommend that the church service and its ceremonies
and sermons should be shunned, he feared lest such advice might play
into the hands of the Anabaptists. He recommends as necessary an
“external practice of godliness.”[591] Yet, according to him, this was
more readily carried out in private conventicles, i.e. in some sort
of congregation apart of the true believers such as Luther himself
had long dreamt of, and in conversation with Schwenckfeld, in 1525,
regretted his inability to establish owing to the fewness of true
Christians. (Above, p. 138 f.)
Luther in the meantime had become reconciled to the outer, Popular,
Church, and, with his preachers’ help, had made of the outward Word a
law.
The imperious behaviour of Luther and the preachers in the matter of
the outward Word was, however, odious to Schwenckfeld. He protested
strongly against being tied down to professions of faith liable at
any moment to be rendered obsolete by new discoveries in Scripture
truth.[592] Interest in things Divine was regarded as a privilege of
the pastor’s office and the layman was kept in ignorance on the ground,
that “one must believe blindly.”[593] Luther “is setting up a new
tyranny, and wishes to tie men to his doctrine.”[594]
CHAPTER XXX
LUTHER AT THE ZENITH OF HIS LIFE AND SUCCESS, FROM 1540 ONWARDS.
APPREHENSIONS AND PRECAUTIONS
1. The Great Victories of 1540-1544.
THE opening of the Diet of Ratisbon in 1541[595] coincided with the
advance of Protestantism in one of the strongholds of the power and
influence of Albert of Mayence. The usual residence of the Archbishop
and Elector was at Halle, in his diocese of Magdeburg. Against this
town accordingly all the already numerous Protestants in Albert’s sees
of Magdeburg and Halberstadt directed their united efforts. Albert was
compelled by the local Landtag to abolish the Catholic so-called “Neue
Stift” at Halle, and to remove his residence to Mayence. Thereupon
Jonas, Luther’s friend, at once, on Good Friday, 1541, commenced to
preach at the church of St. Mary’s at Halle. He then became permanent
preacher and head of the growing movement in the town, while two other
churches were also seized by Lutheran preachers.
The town and bishopric of Naumburg, which had been much neglected
by its bishop, Prince Philip of Bavaria, who resided at Freising,
fell a prey to the innovations under the Elector Johann Frederick of
Saxony; this in spite of being an imperial city under the immediate
protection of the Emperor. The Elector had taken advantage of his
position as arbitrator, thanks to his influence and to the authority
he soon secured, gradually to establish himself in Naumburg. By his
orders, in 1541, as soon as Philip was dead, Nicholas Medler began
to preach at the Cathedral as “Superintendent of Naumburg”; Julius
Pflug, the excellent Provost, who had been elected bishop by the
Cathedral chapter, was prevented by the Elector from taking possession
of the see. Even the Wittenberg theologians were rather surprised
at the haste and violence with which the Elector proceeded to upset
the religious conditions there, and—a matter which concerned him
deeply—to seize the city and the whole diocese. (See below, p. 191 f.)
The storm was already gathering over the archbishopric of Cologne under
the weak and illiterate Archbishop, Hermann von Wied. This man, who was
in reality more of a secular ruler, after having in earlier days shown
himself kindly disposed to the Church, was won over, first by Peter
Medmann in 1539 and then by Martin Bucer in 1541, and persuaded to
introduce Lutheranism. Only by the energetic resistance of the chapter,
and particularly of the chief Catholics of the archdiocese, was the
danger warded off; to them the Archbishop owed, first his removal, and
then his excommunication.
On March 28, 1546, shortly before the excommunication, the Emperor
Charles V said to Landgrave Philip of Hesse, who had been pleading the
cause of Hermann: “Why does he start novelties? He knows no Latin, and,
in his whole life, has only said three Masses, two of which I attended
myself. He does not even understand the Confiteor. To reform does not
mean to bring in another belief or another religion.”[596]
“We are beholders of the wonders of God,” so Luther wrote to Hermann
Bonn, his preacher, at Osnabrück; “such great Princes and Bishops
are now being called of God by the working of the Holy Ghost.”[597]
He was speaking not only of the misguided Archbishop of Cologne but
also of the Bishop of Münster and Osnabrück, who had introduced the
new teaching at Osnabrück by means of Bonn, Superintendent of Lübeck.
Luther, however, was rather too sanguine. In the same year he announced
to Duke Albert of Prussia: “The two bishops of ‘Collen’ and Münster,
have, praise be to God, accepted the Evangel in earnest, strongly
as the Canons oppose it. Things are also well forward in the Duchy
of Brunswick.”[598] As a matter of fact he turned out right only as
regards Brunswick. Henry, the Catholic Duke, was expelled in 1542 by
the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse after the war which
broke out on account of Goslar had issued in his loss of the stronghold
of Wolfenbüttel; thereupon with the help of Bugenhagen the churches of
the land were forcibly brought over to Lutheranism.
In 1544 the appointment at Merseburg of a bishop of the new faith in
the person of George of Anhalt followed on Duke Maurice of Saxony’s
illegal seizure of the see. So barefaced was this act of spoliation
that even Luther entered a protest against “this rapacious onslaught on
Church property.”[599] The appointment of an “Evangelical bishop” at
Naumburg took place in 1542 under similar circumstances.
From Metz, where the preacher Guillaume Farel was working for the
Reformation, an application was received for admission into the
Schmalkalden League. The Lutherans there received at least moral
support from Melanchthon who, in the name of the League, addressed a
writing to the Duke of Lorraine. Not only distant Transylvania, but
even Venice, held correspondence with Luther in order to obtain from
him advice and instructions concerning the Protestant congregations
already existing in those regions.
Thus the author of the religious upheaval might well congratulate
himself, when, in the evening of his days, he surveyed the widespread
influence of his work.
He was at the same time well aware what a potent factor in all this
progress was the danger which menaced Germany from the Turks. The
Protestant Estates continued to exploit the distress of the Empire to
their own advantage in a spirit far from loyal. They insisted on the
Emperor’s granting their demands within the Empire before they would
promise effectual aid against the foe without; their conduct was quite
inexcusable at such a time, when a new attack on Vienna was momentarily
apprehended, and when the King of France was quite openly supporting
the Turks.
In the meantime as a result of the negotiations an Imperial army was
raised and Luther published his prudent “Vermanunge zum Gebet wider den
Türcken.” In this he advised the princes to do their duty both towards
God and the Evangel and towards the Empire by defending it against
the foe. The Pope is as much an enemy as the Turk, and the world has
reached its close, for the last Judgment is at hand.[600]
The Emperor found it advisable to show himself even more lenient
than before; the violent encroachments of the Protestants, which
so unexpectedly strengthened their position, were allowed to pass
unresisted; the ecclesiastical and temporal penalties pronounced
against the promoters of the innovations remained a dead letter, and
for the time being the Church property was left in their hands. At
the Diet of Spires, in 1544, the settlement was deferred to a General
Council which the Reichsabschied describes as a “Free Christian Council
within the German Nation.”
As was only to be expected, Paul III, the supreme head of Christendom,
energetically protested against such a decision. With dignity, and in
the supreme consciousness of his rights and position, the Pope reminded
the Emperor that a Council had long since been summoned (above, vol.
iii., p. 424) and was only being delayed on account of the war. It did
not become the civil power, nor even the Emperor, to inaugurate the
religious settlement, least of all at the expense of the rights of
Church and Pope as had been the case; to the Vicar of Christ and the
assembly summoned by him it fell to secure the unity of the Church and
to lay down the conditions of reunion; yet the civil power had left the
Pope in the lurch in his previous endeavours to summon a Council and to
establish peace in Germany; “God was his witness that he had nothing
more at heart than to see the whole of the noble German people reunited
in faith and all charity”; “willingly would he spend life and blood, as
his conscience bore him witness, in the attempt to bring this about in
the right way.”[601]
These admonitions fell on deaf ears, as the evil work was already
done. The consent, which, by dint of defiance and determination, the
Protestant princes wrung from Empire and Emperor, secured the triumph
of the religious revolution in ever wider circles.
2. Sad Forebodings
In spite of all his outward success, Luther, at the height of his
triumph, was filled with melancholy forebodings concerning the future
of his work.
He felt more and more that the new Churches then being established
lacked inward stability, and that the principle on which they were
built was wanting in unity, cohesion and permanence. Neither for the
protection of the faith nor for the maintenance of an independent
system of Church government were the necessary provisions forthcoming.
Indeed, owing to the very nature of his undertaking, it was impossible
that such could be effectually supplied; thus a vision of coming
disunion, particularly in the domain of doctrine, unrolled itself
before his eyes; this was one of the factors which saddened him.
As early as the ‘thirties we find him giving vent to his fears of an
ever-increasing disintegration. In the ‘forties they almost assume the
character of definite prophecies.
In the Table-Talk of 1538, which was noted down by the Deacon
Lauterbach, he seeks comfort in the thought that every fresh revival
of religion had been accompanied by quarrels due to false brethren, by
heresies and decay; it was true that now “the morning star had arisen”
owing to his preaching, but he feared “that this light would not
endure for long, not for more than fifty years”; the Word of God would
“again decline for want of able ministers of the Word.”[602] “There
will come want and spiritual famine”; “many new interpretations will
arise, and the Bible will no longer hold. Owing to the sects that will
spring up I would rather I had not printed my books.”[603]
“I fear that the best is already over and that now the sects will
follow.”[604] The pen was growing heavy to his fingers; there “will
be no end to the writings,” he says; “I have outlived three frightful
storms, Münzer, the Sacramentarians and the Anabaptists; these are
over, but now others will come.” “I wish not to live any longer since
no peace is to be hoped for.”[605] “The Evangel is endangered by the
sectarians, the revolutionary peasants and the belly servers, just as
once the Roman empire was at Rome.”[606]
“On June 27 [1538],” we read, “Dr. Luther and Master Philip were
dining together at his house. They spoke much, with many a sigh,
of the coming times when many dangers would arise.” The greatest
confusion would prevail. No one would then allow himself to be guided
by the doctrine or authority of another. “Each one will wish to be his
own Rabbi, like Osiander and Agricola. From this the worst scandals
and the greatest desolation will come. Hence it would be best [one
said], that the Princes should forestall it by some council, if only
the Papists would not hold back and flee from the light. Master Philip
replied: The Pope will never be brought to hold a General Council....
Oh, that our Princes and the Estates would bring about a council and
some sort of unity in doctrine and worship so as to prevent each one
undertaking something on his own account to the scandal of many, as
some are already doing. The Church is a spectacle of woe, with so much
weakness and scandal heaped upon her.”[607]
Shortly after this Luther instituted a comparison—which for him must
have been very sad—between the “false Church [of the Pope] which
stands erect, a cheerful picture of dignity, strength and holiness,”
and the Church of Christ “which lies in such misery and ignominy, sin
and insignificance as though God had no care for her.” He fancied he
could find some slight comfort in the Article of the Creed: “I believe
in the Holy Church,” for, so he observes, “because we don’t see it,
therefore we believe in it.”[608]
In the midst of the great successes of those years he still gives
utterance to the gloomiest of predictions for the future of his
doctrine, which dissensions would eat to the very core. His pupil
Mathesius reports him as holding forth as follows:
“Alas, good God,” he groaned in 1540, “how we have to suffer
from divisions!... And many more sects will come. For the spirit
of lies and murder does not sleep.... But God will save His
Christendom.”[609]—In 1542 someone remarked in his presence: “Were
the world to last fifty years longer many things would happen.”
Thereupon Luther interjected: “God forbid, things would get worse than
ever before; for many sects will arise which yet are hidden in men’s
hearts, so that we shall not know how we stand. Hence, dear Lord, come
with Thy Judgment Day, for no further improvement is now to be looked
for!”[610]—After instancing the principal sects that had arisen up to
that time he said, in 1540: “After our death many sects will arise,
God help us!”[611] “But whoever after my death despises the authority
of this school—so long as the Church and the school remain as they
are—is a heretic and an evil man. For in this school [of Wittenberg]
God has revealed His Word, and this school and town can take a place
side by side with any others in the matter of doctrine and life, even
though our life be not yet quite above reproach.... Those who flee
from us and secretly contemn us have denied the faith.... Who knew
anything five-and-twenty years ago [before my preaching started]?
Alas for ambition; it is the cause of all the misfortunes.”[612]
Frequently he reverts to the theory, that the Church must needs put
up with onsets and temptations to despair. “Now even greater despair
has come upon us on account of the sectarians,” he said in 1537;
“the Church is in despair according to the words of the Psalmist
(cviii. 92): ‘Unless Thy Law had been my meditation I had then perhaps
perished in my abjection.’”[613]
At an earlier period (1531) a sermon of Luther’s vividly pictures this
despair: “If, in spiritual matters, it comes about, that the devil
sows his seed in Christ’s kingdom and it springs up both in doctrine
and life, then we have a crop of misery and distress. In the preaching
it happens, that although God has appointed _one_ man and commanded
him to preach the Evangel, yet others are found even amongst his
pupils who think they know how to do it ten times better than he....
Every man wants to be master in doctrine.... Now they are saying: ‘Why
should not we have the Spirit and understand Scripture just as well
as anyone else?’ Thus a new doctrine is at once set up and sects are
formed.... Hence a deadly peril to Christendom ensues, for it is torn
asunder and pure doctrine everywhere perishes.”[614] Christ had indeed
“foretold that this would happen”; true enough, it is not forbidden to
anyone “who holds the public office of preacher to judge of doctrine”;
but whoever has not such an office has no right to do so; if he does
this of “his own doctrine and spirit,” then “I call such judging of
doctrine one of the greatest, most shameful and most wicked vices to
be found upon earth, one from which all the factious spirits have
arisen.”[615]
Duke George of Saxony unfeelingly pointed out to the innovator that
his fear, that many, very many indeed, would say: “Do we not also
possess the Spirit and understand Scripture as well as you?” would
only too surely be realised.
“What man on earth,” wrote the Duke in his usual downright fashion,
“ever hitherto undertook a more foolish task than you in seeking to
include in your sect all Christians, especially those of the German
nation? Success is as likely in your case as it was in that of those
who set about building a tower in Babylonia which was to reach the
very heavens; in the end they had to cease from building, and the
result was seventy-two new tongues. The same will befall you; you also
will have to stop, and the result will be seventy-two new sects.”[616]
Luther’s letters speak throughout in a similar strain of the divisions
already existing and the gloomy outlook for the future; in the ‘forties
his lamentation over the approaching calamities becomes, however, even
louder than usual in spite of the apparent progress of his cause. Much
of what he says puts us vividly in mind of Duke George’s words just
quoted.
Amidst the excitement of his struggle with the fanatics he wrote as
early as 1525 to the “Christians at Antwerp”: “The tiresome devil
begins to rage amongst the ungodly and to belch forth many wild and
mazy beliefs and doctrines. This man will have nothing of baptism, that
one denies the Sacrament, a third awaits another world between this and
the Last Day; some teach that Christ is not God; some say this, some
that, and there are as many sects and beliefs as there are heads; no
peasant is so rude but that if he dreams or fancies something, it must
forsooth be the Holy Spirit which inspires him, and he himself must be
a prophet.”[617]
After the bitter experiences of the intervening years we find in a
letter of 1536 this bitter lament: “Pray for me that I too may be
delivered from certain ungodly men, seeing you rejoice that God has
delivered you from the Anabaptists and the sects. For new prophets are
constantly arising against me one after the other, so that I almost
wish to be dissolved in order not to see such evils without end, and
to be set free at last from this kingdom of the devil.”[618]
Even in the strong pillars of the Evangel, in the Landgrave of Hesse
and Bucer the theologian, he apprehended treason to his cause and
complains of them as “false brethren.” At the time of the negotiations
at Ratisbon, in 1541, he exclaims in a letter to Melanchthon: “They
are making advances to the Emperor and to our foes, and look on our
cause as a comedy to be played out among the people, though as is
evident it is a tragedy between God and Satan in which Satan’s side
has the upper hand and God’s comes off second best.... I say this with
anger and am incensed at their games. But so it must be; the fact that
we are endangered by false brethren likens us to the Apostle Paul,
nay, to the whole Church, and is the sure seal that God stamps upon
us.”[619]
In spite of this “seal of God,” he is annoyed to see how his Evangel
becomes the butt of “heretical attacks” from within, and suffers from
the disintegrating and destructive influence of the immorality and
godlessness of many of his followers.
This, for instance, he bewails in a letter of condolence sent in 1541
to Wenceslaus Link of Nuremberg. At Nuremberg according to Link’s
account the evil seemed to be assuming a menacing shape. Not the foe
without, writes Luther, but rather “our great gainsayers within, who
repay us with contempt, are the danger we must fear, according to the
words of the common prophecy: ‘After Antichrist has been revealed men
will come who say: There is no God!’ This we see everywhere fulfilled
to-day.... They think our words are but human words!”[620]
About this time he often contemplates with sadness the abundance of
other crying disorders in his Churches,[621] the wantonness of the
great and the decadence of the people; he cries: “Hasten, O Jesus, Thy
coming; the evils have come to a head and the end cannot be delayed.
Amen.”[622] “I am sick of life if this life can be called life....
Implacable hatred and strife amongst the great ... no hopes of any
improvement ... the age is Satan’s own; gladly would I see myself
and all my people quickly snatched from it!”[623] The evil spirit of
apostasy and fanatism which had raged so terribly at Münster, was now,
according to him, particularly busy amongst the great ones, just as
formerly it had laid hold on the peasants. “May God prevent him and
resist him, the evil spirit, for truly he means mischief.”[624]
And yet he still in his own way hopes in God and clings to the idea of
his call; God will soon mock at the devil: “The working of Satan is
patent, but God at Whom they now laugh will mock at Satan in His own
time.”[625]
We can understand after such expressions descriptive of his state of
mind, the assurance with which, for all his confidence of victory, he
frequently seems to forecast the certain downfall of his cause. In the
German Table-Talk, for instance, we read: “So long as those who are
now living and who teach the Word of God diligently are still with us,
those who have seen and heard me, Philip, Pomeranus and other pious,
faithful and honest teachers, all may be well; but when they all are
gone and this age is over, there will be a falling away.”[626] He also
sees how two great and widely differing parties will arise among his
followers: unbelievers on the one hand and Pietists and fanatics on the
other; we have a characteristic prophecy of the sort where he says of
the one party, that, like the Epicureans, they would acknowledge “no
God or other life after this,” and of the other, that many people would
come out of the school of enthusiasm, “following their own ideas and
speculations and boasting of the Spirit”; “drunk with their own virtues
and having their understanding darkened,” they would “obstinately
insist on their own fancies and yield to no one.”[627]
And again he says sadly: “God will sweep His threshing-floor. I pray
that after my death my wife and children may not long survive me; very
dangerous times are at hand.”[628] “I pray God,” he frequently said,
“to take away this our generation with us, for, when once we are gone,
the worst of times will follow.”[629] The preacher, “M. Antonius Musa
once said,” so he recalls: “We old preachers only vex the world, but on
you young ones the world will pour out its wrath; therefore take heed
to yourselves.”[630]
This is not the place to investigate historically the fulfilment
of these predictions. We shall content ourselves with quoting, in
connection with Musa, the words of another slightly later preacher.
Cyriacus Spangenberg saw in Luther a prophet, for one reason because
his gloomiest predictions were being fulfilled before the eyes of all.
In the third sermon of his book, “Luther the Man of God,” he shows
to what frightful contempt the preachers of Luther’s unadulterated
doctrine were everywhere exposed, just as he himself (Spangenberg) was
hated and persecuted for being over-zealous for the true faith of the
“Saint” of Wittenberg. “Ah,” he says in a sermon in 1563 couched in
Luther’s style, “Shame on thy heart, thy neck, thy tongue, thou filthy
and accursed world. Thy blasphemy, fornication, unchastity, gluttony
and drunkenness ... are not thought too much; but that such should be
scolded is too much.... If this be not the devil himself, then it is
something very like him and is assuredly his mother.”[631]
3. Provisions for the Future
Luther failed to make the effectual and systematic efforts called for
in order to stave off the fate to which he foresaw his work would be
exposed. He was not the man to put matters in order, quite apart from
the unsurmountable difficulties this would have involved, seeing he
possessed little talent for organisation. He was very well aware that
one expedient would be to surrender church government almost entirely
into the hands of the secular authorities.
_A Protestant Council?_
The negotiations which preceded the Œcumenical Council of the Catholic
Church, had for one result not only to impress the innovators with
a sense of their own unsettled state, but to lead them to discuss
the advisability of holding a great Protestant council of their own.
Luther himself, however, wisely held aloof from such a plan, nay his
opposition to it was one of the main obstacles which prevented its
fulfilment.
When the idea was first mooted in 1533 it was rejected by Luther
and his theologians Jonas, Bugenhagen and Melanchthon in a joint
memorandum. “Because it is plain,” so they declare, “that we ourselves
are not at one, and must first of all consider how we are to arrive
at unity amongst ourselves. In short, though an opposition council
might be good and useful it is needless to speak of such a thing just
now.”[632]
In 1537 the Landgrave of Hesse, and more particularly the Elector of
Saxony, again proposed at Schmalkalden that Luther, following the
example of the Greeks and the Bohemians, should summon a council of
his own, a national Evangelical council, to counteract the Papal
Council.[633] The Elector proposed that it should be assembled at
Augsburg and comprise at least 250 preachers and men of the law; the
Emperor might be invited to attend and a considerable army was also to
be drafted to Augsburg for the protection of the assembly. At that time
Luther’s serious illness saved him from an embarrassing situation.
Bucer and Melanchthon were now the sole supporters of the plan of a
council. Both were men who believed in mediation and Melanchthon may
really have hoped for a while, that the “philosophy of dissimulation,”
for which he stood,[634] might, even in a council, palliate the inward
differences and issue in something tolerably satisfactory. Luther
himself was never again to refer to the Evangelical Council.
It was the theologians headed by Martin Bucer, who, at the Diet
of Schmalkalden in 1540 at which Luther was not present, lodged a
memorandum on the advisability of holding a council. The petitioners
declared it “very useful and called for, both for the saving of unity
in doctrine and for the bettering of many other things, that, every
one or two years, the Estates should convene a synod.” Visitors
chosen there were to “silence any errors in doctrine” that they might
discover.[635] The Estates, however, did not agree to this proposal;
it was easy to foresee that it would be unworkable and productive of
evil. It was only necessary to call to mind the fruitlessness of the
great assemblies at Cassel and Wittenberg which had brought about the
so-called Wittenberg Concord and the disturbances to which the Concord
gave rise.[636]
Bucer keenly regretted the absence of any ecclesiastical unity and
cohesion amongst his friends.
“Not even a shadow of it remains,” so he wrote to Bullinger. “Every
church stands alone and every preacher for himself. Not a few shun all
connection with their brethren and any discussion of the things of
Christ. It is just like a body the members of which are cut off and
where one cannot help the other. Yet the spirit of Christ is a spirit
of harmony; Christ wills that His people should be one, as He and the
Father are one, and that they love one another as He loved us....
Unless we become one in the Lord every effort at mending and reviving
morals is bound to be useless. For this reason,” he continues, “it
was the wish of Œcolampadius when the faith was first preached at
Basle, to see the congregations represented and furthered by synods.
But he was not successful even amongst us [who stood nearest to him
in the faith]. I cannot say that to-day there is any more possibility
of establishing this union of the Churches; but the real cause of our
decline certainly lies in this inability. Possibly, later on, others
may succeed where we failed. For, truly, what we have received of the
knowledge of Christ and of discipline will fade away unless we, who
are Christ’s, unite ourselves more closely as members of His Body.”
He proceeds to indicate plainly that one of the main obstacles to
such a union was Luther’s rude and offensive behaviour towards the
Swiss theologians: Luther had undoubtedly heaped abuse on “guiltless
brethren.” But with this sort of thing, inevitable in his case, it
would be necessary to put up. “Will it not be better for us to let
this pass than to involve so many Churches in even worse scandals?
Could I, without grave damage to the Churches, do something to stop
all this vituperation, then assuredly I should not fail to do so.”[637]
Unfortunately the peacemaker’s efforts could avail nothing against a
personality so imperious and ungovernable as Luther’s.
Bucer continued nevertheless to further the idea of a Protestant
council, though, so long as Luther lived, only with bated breath. He
endeavoured at least to interest the Landgrave of Hesse in his plan
for holding small synods of theologians.
It was the want of unity in the matter of doctrine and the visible
decline of discipline that drove him again and again to think of
this remedy. On Jan. 8, 1544, he wrote to Landgrave Philip: In so
many places there is “no profession of faith, no penalties, no
excommunication of those who sin publicly, nor yet any Visitation or
synod. Only what the lord or burgomaster wished was done, and, in
place of one Pope, many Popes have arisen and things become worse
and worse from day to day.” He reminds the Prince of the proposal
made at Schmalkalden; because nothing was done to put this in effect,
scandals were on the increase. “We constantly find that scarcely a
third or fourth part communicate with Christ. What sort of Christians
will there be eventually?”[638]—In the same way he tells him later:
Because no synods are held “many things take place daily which ought
really greatly to trouble all of us.”[639] In Würtemberg and in
some of the towns of Swabia the authorities were dissuaded by the
groundless fear lest the preachers should once more gain too much
influence; this was why the secular authorities were averse to synods
and Visitations; but “on this account daily arise gruesome divisions
in matters of doctrine and unchastity of life; we find some who are
daily maddened with drink and who give such scandal in other matters
that the enemies of Christ have a terrible excuse for blaspheming and
hindering our true Gospel.... At the last Schmalkalden meeting all the
preachers were anxious that synods and Visitations should be ordered
and held everywhere. But who has paid any heed to this?” And yet this
is the best means whereby “our holy religion might be preserved and
guarded from the new Papists amongst us, i.e. those who do not accept
the Word of God in its purity and entirety, but explain it away, pull
it to pieces, distort and bend it as their own sensual passions and
temptations move them.”[640]
Once the main obstacle had been removed by Luther’s death, Bucer,
who was very confident of his own abilities, again mooted the idea
of a great council. In the same letter to Landgrave Philip of
Hesse in which he refers to the death of Luther, “the father and
teacher of us all,” which had occurred shortly before, he exhorts
the Landgrave more emphatically than ever to co-operate, so that
“first of all a general synod may be held of our co-religionists of
every estate,” to which all the sovereigns should despatch eminent
preachers and councillors—i.e. be formally convened by the secular
authorities—and, that, subsequently “particular synods be held in
every country of the Churches situated there.”[641] “Short of this the
Churches will assuredly fare badly.”[642]
The Landgrave was not averse, yet the matter never got any further.
The terrible quarrels amongst the theologians in the camp of the new
faith after Luther’s decease[643] put any general Protestant council
out of the question.
We can imagine what such a council would have become, if, in addition
to the theologians, the lay element had been represented to the extent
demanded at a certain Disputation held at Wittenberg under Luther’s
presidency in 1543.[644] From the idea of the whole congregation taking
its share in the government of the Church, Luther could never entirely
shake himself free. Nevertheless it is probable, that, in spite of this
Disputation, he had not really changed his mind as to the impossibility
of an Evangelical council.
If, with Luther’s, we compare Melanchthon’s attitude towards the
question of a Lutheran council we find that the latter’s wish for
such a council and his observations about it afforded him plentiful
opportunity for voicing his indignation at the religious disruption
then rampant.[645]
“Weak consciences are troubled,” he said in 1536, “and know not which
sect to follow; in their perplexity they begin to despair of religion
altogether.”[646]—“Violent sermons, which promote lawlessness and
break down all barriers against the passions, are listened to greedily.
Such preaching, more worthy of cynics than of Christians, it is which
thunders forth the false doctrine that good works are not called for.
Posterity will marvel that there should ever have been an age when such
madness was received with applause.”[647]—“Had you made the journey
with us,” he writes on his return from a visit to the Palatinate and
Swabia, “and, like us, seen the woeful desolation of the Churches in
so many places, you would doubtless long with tears and sighs that the
Princes and the learned should confer together how best to come to
the help of the Churches.”[648]—Later again we read in his letters:
“Behold how great is everywhere the danger to the Churches and how
difficult their government; for everywhere those in the ministry
quarrel amongst themselves and set up strife and division.” “We live
like the nomads, no one obeys any man in anything whatsoever.”[649]
Two provisions suggested by Luther for the future in lieu of the
impracticable synods were, the establishment of national consistories
and the use of a sort of excommunication.
_Luther’s Attitude towards the Consistories introduced in 1539_
With strange resignation Luther sought to persuade himself that, even
without the help of any synods and general laws, it would still be
possible to re-establish order by means of a certain supervision to
be exercised with the assistance of the State, backed by the penalty
of exclusion. Against laws and regulations for the guidance of the
Church’s life, he displayed an ever-growing prejudice, the reason for
this being partly his peculiar ideas on the abrogation of all governing
authority of the Church, partly the experiences with which he had met.
“So long as the sense of unity is not well rooted in the heart
and mind”—he wrote in 1545, i.e. after the establishment of the
consistories—“outward unity is not of much use, nor will it last
long.... The existing observances [in matters of worship] must not
become laws. On the contrary, just as the schoolmaster and father
of the family rule without laws, and, in the school and in the home,
correct faults, so to speak only by supervision, so, in the same way,
in the Church, everything should be done by means of supervision, but
not by rules for the future.... Everything depends on the minister
of the Word being prudent and faithful. For this reason we prefer to
insist on the erection of schools, but above all on that purity and
uniformity of doctrine which unites minds in the Lord. But, alas,
there are too few who devote themselves to study; many are just
bellies and no more, intent on their daily bread.... Time, however,
will mend much that it is impossible to settle beforehand by means of
regulations.”[650]
“If we make laws,” he continues, “they become snares for consciences
and pure doctrine is obscured and set aside, particularly if those who
come after are careless and unlearned.... Already during our lifetime
we have seen sects and dissensions enough under our very noses, how
each one follows his own way. In short, contempt for the Word on
our side and blasphemy on the other [Catholic] side proclaim loudly
enough the advent of the Last Day. Hence, above all, let us have pure
and abundant preaching of the Word! The ministers of the Word must
first of all become one heart and one soul. For if we make laws our
successors will lay claim to the same authority, and, fallen human
nature being what it is, the result will be a war of the flesh against
the flesh.”[651]
In other words Luther foresaw a war of all against all as likely sooner
or later to be the result of any thoroughgoing attempt to regulate
matters by means of laws as the Catholics did in their councils. He and
his friends were persuaded that laws could only be made effectual by
virtue of the power of the State.
Melanchthon declared: “Unless the Court supports our arrangements, what
else will they become but Platonic laws, to use a Greek saying?”[652]
The idea to which Luther had clung so long as there was any hope,
viz. to make the congregations self-governing, was but a fanciful
and impracticable one; when again, little by little, he came to seek
support from the secular authority, he did so merely under compulsion;
he felt it to involve a repudiation of his own principles, nor could he
control his jealousy when the far-reaching interference of the State
speedily became manifest.
In the Saxon electorate the consistories had been introduced in 1539,
not so much at the instance of Luther as of the committee representing
the Estates. They were to deal with ecclesiastical affairs and
disputes, with complaints against, and grievances of, the clergy,
but chiefly with the matrimonial cases. The earlier “Visitors” had
lacked executive powers. The consistory established by the Elector
at Wittenberg for the whole electorate was composed of two preachers
(Jonas and Agricola), and two lawyers. Luther raised many objections,
particularly to the consistory’s proposed use of excommunication;
he feared that, unless they stuck to his theological views, the
consistories would lead to “yet another scrimmage.” Later, however, he
gave the new organisation his support. It was not till 1541 that the
work of the consistories was more generally extended.[653]
Luther consoled himself and Spalatin as follows for the loss of
dignity which they apprehended: “The consistory will deal only with
matrimonial cases, with which we no longer will or can have any more
to do; also with the bringing back of the peasants to some sort of
discipline and the payment of stipends to the preachers.”[654]
For the Wittenberg consistory to relieve him of the matrimonial
cases was in many respects just what he desired. He had himself
frequently dealt with these cases according to the dictates of his
own ever-changing views on marriage, so far as he was allowed by
his frequent quarrels with the lawyers who questioned his right to
interfere. He now declared: “I am glad that the consistoria have been
established, especially on account of the matrimonial cases.”[655] As
early as 1536, he had written: “The peasants and rude populace who
seek nothing but the freedom of the flesh, and likewise the lawyers,
who, whenever possible, oppose our decisions, have wearied me so much
that I have flung aside the matrimonial cases and written to some
telling them that they may do just as they please in the name of all
the devils; let the dead bury their dead; for though I give much
advice, I cannot help the people when afterwards they are robbed and
teased [by the lawyers]. If the world will have the Pope then let it
have him if otherwise it cannot be.”
“So far I have not found one single lawyer,” he continues, speaking of
a certain matrimonial question, “who would hold with me against the
Pope in this or any similar case.... We theologians know nothing, and
are not supposed to count.”[656]
It was in part nausea and wounded vanity, in part also his abhorrence
for the ecclesiastical and sacramental side of marriage which
caused him repeatedly to declare: “I would we were rid of the
matrimonial business”;[657] “marriage and all its circumstances is a
political affair” (both statements date from 1538);[658] “leave the
matrimonial cases to the secular authorities, for they concern, not
the conscience, but the external law of the Princes and magistrates”
(1532).[659]
Of the ecclesiastical powers of the sovereign he declared however
(1539), “We must make the best of him as bishop, since no other bishop
will help us.”[660]
“But if things come to such a pass that the Courts try to rule as they
please,” so he wrote at a time when this principle had already begun
to bear its bitter fruit, “then the last state will be worse than
the first ... in that case let the Lords themselves be our pastors
and preachers, let them baptise, visit the sick, give communion and
perform all the other offices of the Church! Otherwise let them stop
confusing the two callings, attend to their own Courts and leave the
Churches to the clergy.... It is Satan who in our day is seeking
to introduce into the Church the counsels and the authority of the
government officials; we shall, however, resist him and keep the two
callings separate.”[661]
Yet the “two callings,” the secular and the ecclesiastical, were to
become more and more closely intermingled. As was inevitable, the weak
spiritual authority set up by Luther was soon absorbed by a strong
secular authority well aware of its own aims; the secular power treated
the former as its sacristan charged with carrying out the services of
the Church, and gradually assumed exclusive control, even in matters of
doctrine. A moral servitude such as had never been seen at any period
in the history of the German Church was the consequence of the State
government of the Church, brought about by the consistories.
In order to understand Luther’s attitude towards the consistories and
to gauge rightly his responsibility, some further particulars of their
rise and earliest form are called for.
In 1537 the “Great Committee of the Torgau district” demanded, that
the Elector should establish four consistories in his lands. On
these would devolve the looking after of “all _ecclesiasticæ causæ_,
the preaching office, the churches and ministers, their vindication
_contra injurias_, all that concerned their conduct and life, and
particularly the matrimonial suits.” Some such court was essential
in the case of these suits, because, since the dissolution of the
bishops’ courts, the utmost disorders had prevailed and nobody even
knew by which code the questions pending were to be judged, whether by
the old canon law with which the lawyers were familiar, or according
to the doctrine and statutes of Luther which were quite a different
thing. The disciplinary system too had become so lax that some
revision of the Church judiciary appeared inevitable.
As for the principles which were to direct the new organisation:
Luther was inclined at times to be forgetful of his theory, that his
Churches should have no canon law of their own;[662] even at this
grave crisis he does not seem to have been distinctly conscious of
it; at the same time his jealousy made him unwilling to see all the
authority for governing the new Churches conferred directly by the
State, though, with his usual frankness, he admitted it was impossible
for things to continue as they were. The most influential men of his
circle were, however, determined to have so-called ecclesiastical
courts introduced by the sovereign, which should then govern in his
name; hitherto, they urged, it was the purely secular courts which
had intervened, which was a mistake, as had been shown in practice by
their failure. Thus, as R. Sohm put it, “did Melanchthon’s ideas, from
about 1537, gradually oust those of Luther in the government of the
Lutheran Church.”[663]
It was from this standpoint that, in his Memorandum of 1538 addressed
to the Elector, Jonas, the lawyer and theologian, supported the
above-mentioned proposal of the Torgau assembly.
He points out that “the common people become daily more savage and
uncouth,” and that “no Christian Church can hope to stand where such
rudeness and lawlessness prevail.” According to him the authority of
the consistories was to embrace the whole domain of Church government.
They were, however, to derive their authority direct from the
sovereign, “through, and by order of, the prince of the land.” Hence
“their _iudices_ were to have the right to enforce their decisions”;
they were to be in a position to wield the Greater Excommunication
with its temporal consequences, also to inflict bodily punishment,
fines and “suitable terms of imprisonment,” and therefore to have
“men-at-arms” and “a prison” at their disposal.[664]
Jonas and those who agreed with him fancied that what they were
setting up with the help of the secular power was a spiritual court;
in reality, however, they were advocating a purely secular, coercive
institution.
Luther’s views differed from those of his friends in so far
as he wished to see the new courts—which he frowned at and
distrusted—merely invested with full powers for dealing with
matrimonial suits; even here, however, he made a reservation,
insisting on the abrogation of canon law. The Elector’s edict of 1539
appointing the consistories, out of consideration for Luther, was
worded rather vaguely. The consistories were, “until further notice,”
to see to the “ecclesiastical affairs” which “have occurred so far or
shall yet occur and be brought to your cognisance.”[665] According to
this their authority was received only “until further notice” from the
ruler, to whom it fell to bring cases to their “cognisance,” and, who,
naturally kept the execution of the sentence in his own hands.
Luther, it is true, accepted the new arrangement, because, as he said,
it represented a “Church court” which could take over the matrimonial
cases. But forthwith he found himself in conflict with the lawyers
attached to the courts because they insisted on taking their stand
on canon law. To his very death, even in his public utterances, he
lashed the men of the law for thus submitting themselves to the Pope
and to the code against which his life’s struggle had been directed.
Yet the lawyers were driven to make use of the old statutes, since
they alone afforded a legal basis, and because Luther’s propositions
to the contrary—on secret marriages, for instance—lacked any general
recognition. The result of Luther’s opposition to the consistories
was, that, so long as he lived, they remained without any definite
instructions, devoid of the authority which had been promised them,
and without the coercive powers they so much needed; for the nonce
they were spiritual courts without any outward powers of compulsion,
the latter being retained by the sovereign to use at his discretion.
After Luther’s death things were changed. The consistories both in
the Saxon Electorate and in most other places where they had been
copied became exclusively organs of Church government by the State,
though still composed of theologians and lawyers. In 1579 and 1580 the
end which Luther had foreseen arrived. “The last things became, as a
matter of fact, worse than the first,” as he himself had predicted,
nay, as the result of his own action; Satan has introduced “into the
Church the counsels and the authority of government officials” (above,
p. 182).
This change, which in reality was the realisation of the ideas of
Jonas, Melanchthon and Chancellor Brück, leads Rud. Sohm, after having
portrayed in detail the circumstances, to exclaim: “The sovereign as
head of the Church! How can such a thing be even imagined? The Church
of Christ, governed solely by the word of Christ ... and by command
of the ruler of the land.”[666] Speaking of the disorder in Luther’s
Church, which recognised no canon law, the Protestant canonist says:
“Canon law was needed to assist the Word; well, it came, but only
to establish the lord of the land as lord also of the Church.” “The
State government of the Church is in contradiction with the Lutheran
profession of faith.” “If, however, the Church is determined to be
ruled by force, then the ruler must be the secular authority.”[667]
The secular authorities to which Protestantism looked for support
had been well organised throughout the Empire by the League of
Schmalkalden. Subsequent to 1535 the warlike alliance had been extended
for a further ten years. In 1539 the state of things became so
threatening, that Luther feared lest the Catholic princes should attack
the Protestants. In a sermon he referred to the “fury of Satan amongst
the blinded Papists who incite the Emperor and other kings against the
Evangel”; he, however, also added, that “we, by our boundless malice
and ingratitude, have called down the wrath of God.” They ought to
pray, “that the Emperor might not turn his arms against us who have the
pure Word of Christ.”[668] As a matter of fact, however, the Emperor
and the Empire were not in a position even to protect themselves
against the wanton behaviour of the innovators.
Amongst the outward provisions made for the future benefit of the new
Church, the League of Schmalkalden deserves the first place. In the
very year before his death Luther took steps to ensure the prolongation
of this armed alliance.[669]
Among the efforts made at home to improve matters a place belongs to
Luther’s attempts to introduce a more frequent use of excommunication.
_Luther seeks to introduce the so-called Lesser Excommunication_
The introduction of the ban engrossed Luther’s attention more
particularly after 1539, but without any special results. In 1541
we find the question raised under rather peculiar circumstances in
one of the numerous letters in which Luther complains of the secular
authorities. At Nuremberg, Wenceslaus Link had threatened certain
persons of standing with excommunication, whereupon one of the
town-councillors hurled at him the opprobrious epithet of “priestling.”
Full of indignation, Luther wrote: “It is true the civil authorities
ever have been and always will be enemies of the Church.... God has
rejected the world and, of the ten lepers, scarcely one takes His
side, the rest go over to the prince of this world.” “Excommunication
is part of the Word of God.” If they look upon our preaching as the
Word of God then it is a disgrace that they should refuse to hear of
excommunication, despise the ministers of the Word and hate the God
Whom they have confessed; they wickedly blaspheme in thus hurling the
term ‘priestling’ at His ministers.[670]
Here we get a glimpse of the difficulty which attended the introduction
of the ban: “They refuse to hear of excommunication.”
With the Greater Excommunication which involved civil disabilities, and
in particular exclusion to some extent from social intercourse, Luther
had no sympathy; he was interested in the reintroduction merely of
the Lesser Excommunication prohibiting the excommunicate to take part
in public worship, or at least to receive the Supper or to stand as
godparent. In his view the Greater Excommunication was a matter for the
sovereign and did not in the least concern the ministers of the Church;
this he points out in his Schmalkalden Articles.[671] He even was
inclined to look upon any such action of the ruler with a jealous eye;
from anything of the sort it were better for the sovereign to abstain
for fear of any awkward confusion of the spiritual with the secular
power.[672]
The “Unterricht der Visitatorn,” printed in 1528, had already suggested
to the ministers the use of a kind of Lesser Excommunication, but, in
the absence of anything definite, the proposal remained practically
a dead letter. We learn, however, that Luther pronounced his first
ban of this sort against some alleged witches.[673] Subsequently he
had strongly urged at the Court of the Elector that the authorities
should at least threaten gross contemners of religion with “exile and
punishment” as in the case of blasphemers, and that then the pastors,
after instruction and admonition had proved of no avail, should proceed
to exclude such men from church membership[674] as “heathen to be
shunned.” When mentioning this he fails to state whether or to what
extent his proposal was carried out.[675] On the other hand, he often
declares that the actual state of the masses rendered quite impossible
any ordering of ecclesiastical life according to the Gospel; he is also
fond of speaking of the danger there would be of falling back into
the Popish regulations abolished by the freedom of the Gospel, were
disciplinary measures reintroduced.
What moved Luther in 1538 to advocate the use of the ban was, first,
the action of the Elector’s haughty Captain and Governor, Hans Metzsch
at Wittenberg, who, in addition to Luther’s excommunication, was
threatened with dismissal from his office, or, as Luther expresses it,
with the Greater Excommunication of the ruler (1538), and, secondly,
the doings of a Wittenberg burgher who (Feb., 1539) dared to go to the
Supper in spite of having committed homicide. In the case of Metzsch
a form of minor excommunication was resorted to, Luther declaring
invalid the absolution and permission to communicate granted by the
Deacon Fröschel; whether or not, after this, he pronounced a further
excommunication, this much is certain, viz. that, not long after the
pair were reconciled.[676]
Many of the well-disposed on Luther’s side were in favour of the ban
as a disciplinary measure; others were intensely hostile to it. Of his
latest intention, Luther speaks at some length in a sermon of Feb.
23, 1539. He there explains how the whole congregation must be behind
the clergy in enforcing the ban; they were to be notified publicly of
any man who proved obstinate and were to pray against him; then was
to follow the formal expulsion from the congregation; re-admission to
public worship was also to take place publicly.
The plan of using the ban as a disciplinary measure was, however,
brought to nought by the efforts of the Court and the lawyers, who
wished all proceedings of the sort to devolve upon the government as
represented in the consistories.[677] Luther also encountered the
further difficulty, that, in many cases, the ban was simply ignored,
even greater scandal arising out of this public display of contempt.
Hence, owing to his experience, he came to enjoin the greatest caution.
To his former pupil, Anton Lauterbach, preacher at Pirna, he sent
the following not over-confident instructions: “Hesse’s example of
the use of excommunication pleases me. If you can establish the same
thing, well and good. But the centaurs and harpies of the Court will
look at it askance. May the Lord be our help! Everywhere licence and
lawlessness continue to spread amongst the people, but it is the fault
of the secular authorities.”[678]
The example of Hesse to which Luther referred was the Hessian
“Regulations for church discipline,” enacted in 1539 at the instance
of Bucer, in which, amongst other things, provision was made for
excommunication. So-called “elders,” appointed conjointly by the
town authorities and the congregation, were to watch over the faith
and morals of all, preachers inclusive; to them, together with the
preacher, it fell, after seeking advice of the Superintendent, to
pronounce the ban over the obdurate sinner. In the Saxon Electorate,
however, so Luther hints, this would hardly be feasible on account
of the attitude of the authorities and the utter lawlessness of the
people.
In 1538 the Elector himself had well put the difficulty which would
face any such disciplinary measure: “If only people could be found
who would let themselves be excommunicated!” He had, as Jonas related
at Luther’s table, listened devoutly to the sermon at Zerbst and then
expressed himself strongly on the universal decline in morals, the
“outrageous wickedness, gluttony and drunkenness,” etc.; he had also
said that excommunication was necessary, but had then uttered the
despairing words just quoted.[679]
Yet in spite of all Luther still continued at times to hold up the
ban and its consequences as a threat: “I shall denounce him from the
pulpit as having been placed under the ban”—this of a burgher who had
absented himself from the Sacrament for fifteen years—“and will give
notice that he is to be looked upon as a dog; if, after this, anyone
holds intercourse or has anything to do with him, he will do so at
his own risk; if he dies he is to be buried on the rubbish-heap like
a dog; we formally make him over to the authorities for their justice
and their laws to do their worst on him.”[680]—“As for our usurers,
drunkards, libertines, whoremongers, blasphemers and scoffers,” he
says, “they do not require to be put under the ban, as they have done
so themselves; they are in it already up to their ears.... When they
are about to die, no pastor or curate may attend them, and when they
are dead let the hangman drag them out of the town to the carrion
heap.... Since they wish to be heathen, we shall look upon them as
such.”[681]
Such self-imposed excommunication was so frequent that the other, viz.
that to be imposed by the preacher, was but rarely needed.—“This
is the true and chief reason why the ban has everywhere fallen
into disuse,” Luther declares, echoing the Elector, “because real
Christians are everywhere so few, so small a body and so insignificant
in number.”[682] He too could exclaim with a sigh: “If only there were
people who would let themselves be banned.”
But even had such people been forthcoming, those who would have to
pronounce the ban were too often anything but perfect. What was
needed was prudent, energetic and disinterested preachers, for, in
order “to make use of the ban, we have need of good, courageous,
spiritual-minded ministers; we have too many who are immersed in
worldly business.” “I fear our pastors will be over-bold and grasp at
temporalities and at property.”[683]
_The want of a Hierarchy. Ordinations_
Sebastian Franck of Donauwörth, a man responsible for some fanatical
doctrines, but a good observer of events, wrote in 1534 in his
“Cosmography”: “Every sect has its own teacher, leader and priest, so
that now no one can write of the German faith, and a whole volume would
be necessary, and indeed would not suffice, to enumerate all their
sects and beliefs.” “Men will and must have a Pope,” he says, “they
will steal one or dig one out of the earth, and if you take one from
them every day they will soon find a new one.”[684]
It was not, however, exactly a “Pope” that the various sects desired;
the great and commanding name of the author of the schism could endure
none other beside it, quite apart from the impossibility of anything of
the sort being realised. On the other hand, the appointment of bishops
to the new Churches, i.e. the introduction of a kind of hierarchy, had
been discussed since about 1540.
Luther saw well enough what a firm foundation the Church of the
“Papists” possessed in its episcopate. Would not the introduction of
eminent Lutheran preachers into the old German episcopal sees and
their investment with the secular authority and quality of bishops,
serve to strengthen the cause of the Evangel where it was weakest?
The Superintendents did not suffice, though these officers, first
introduced in the Saxon Visitation of 1527, held a post of supervision
duly recognised in the Church.
“The Papists boast of their bishops,” said Luther, “and of their
spiritual authority though it is contrary to God’s ordinances.”[685]
“They are all set on retaining the bishops, and simply want to reform
them.”[686] “In Germany the bishops are wealthy and powerful, they
have a position and authority and they rule of their own power.”[687]
“If only we had one or two bishops on our side, or could induce them
to come over to us!”[688]
On Ascension Day, May 15, 1539, we are told that “Luther dined with
his Elector and assisted at a council. It was there resolved to
maintain the bishops in their authority, if only they would renounce
the Pope and were pious persons devoted to the Gospel, like Speratus.
In that case,” said Luther, “we shall grant them the right and the
power to ordain ministers.” When Melanchthon attempted to dissuade
him, pointing out that it would be difficult to make sure of them
by examination, he replied: “They are to be tested by our people
and then consecrated by the laying on of hands, just as I am now a
bishop.”[689] Instead of the words “as I am now a bishop” a more
likely rendering is, “as we have already done as bishops here at
Wittenberg.”[690] The resolution indicated would seem to have been
merely provisional and non-committal, possibly a mere project. Nor is
it likely that Melanchthon can have been very averse to it.
As a matter of fact, Luther had, like a bishop, already ordained or
inducted into office such men as had been “called” to the ministry,
viz. by the congregations or the authorities; this he did for the
first time in 1525 in the case of George Rörer, who had been called
to the archdiaconate of Wittenberg. The ordination took place with
imposition of hands and prayer. Since 1535 there existed a Wittenberg
oath of ordination to be taken by the preachers and pastors who should
be appointed, by which they bound themselves to preserve and to teach
the “Catholic” faith as taught at Wittenberg.[691]
Luther did not think that any consecration at the hands of the
existing episcopate was necessary for a new bishop;[692] such
necessity was incompatible with his conception of the Church, the
hierarchy and the common priesthood; as for the Sacrament of Orders in
the usual sense of the word, it no longer existed.
A welcome opportunity for setting up a Protestant “bishop” was
presented to the Elector of Saxony and to Luther when the bishopric of
Naumburg-Zeitz fell vacant (above, p. 165 f.).
Johann Frederick, the Elector, not satisfied with his rights as
protector, laid claim also to actual sovereignty, and as the
innovations had, as stated above, already secured a footing in
Naumburg, he determined to introduce a Lutheran preacher as bishop
and to seize upon the rights and lands in spite of the Chapter and
larger part of the nobility still being true to the Catholic faith.
He appealed to the fact that the kings of England, Denmark and
Sweden, and likewise the Duke of Prussia, had set their bishops in
“order.”[693] The noble and scholarly Julius Pflug, whom wisely the
Chapter at once elected to the vacant see, was, as related above,
never to be allowed to ascend the episcopal throne.
4. Consecration of Nicholas Amsdorf as “Evangelical Bishop” of Naumburg
(1542)
At first Luther was loath under the circumstances to advise the setting
up in Naumburg of a bishop of the new faith. To him and to his advisers
the step appeared too dangerous. Nevertheless, on hearing of the
election of Pflug, he wrote as follows to the Elector: These Naumburg
canons “are desperate people and the devil’s very own. But what cannot
be carried off openly, may be won by waiting. Some day God will let it
fall into your Electoral Highness’s hands, and the devil’s wiseacres
will be caught in their own wisdom.”[694]
When, however, the Elector obstinately insisted on putting into
execution his plan, contrary to justice and to the laws of the Empire
as it was, and when his agents had already begun to govern the new
territory, Luther’s views and those of the Wittenberg theologians
gradually changed. It was difficult, they wrote, to “map out beforehand
the order” of the German Church; the question whether they would have
bishops, or do without, had not yet been decided; meanwhile the Prince
had better establish a consistory. Later on, however, they advised the
appointment of a bishop, for the Church cannot be without its bishop
and the Chapter had forfeited its rights; there was, nevertheless,
to be a real and genuine election at which the faithful were to be
represented.[695]
Luther and his friends wanted to have as bishop Prince George of
Anhalt, Canon of Magdeburg and Merseburg, who shared the Wittenberg
views.
To the Elector, however, who had other plans of his own, it seemed,
that, owing to his position, this Prince might not prove an easy tool
in his sovereign’s hands. Nicholas Amsdorf, preacher at Magdeburg,
who for long years had been Luther’s associate, was accounted one of
his most determined supporters and, as time went on, even gained for
himself the reputation of being “more Lutheran than Luther,” appeared
a more likely candidate. It was no difficult matter to secure Luther’s
consent. He gave Amsdorf the following testimonial: “He was richly
endowed by God, learned and proficient in Holy Scripture, more so than
the whole crowd of Papists; also a man of good life and faithful and
upright at heart.” The fact that he was unmarried was a recommendation
for the post, even from the point of view of “Papal law.”[696]
It has already been mentioned that Amsdorf was later on to write the
book “That good works are harmful to Salvation,” and that, previously,
about 1525, he was active in making matches between the escaped nuns
and the leaders of the innovations. Melanchthon, writing to Johannes
Ferinarius, says: “He was an adulterer, and lay with the wife of his
deacon at Magdeburg”; of this we hear from the Luther researcher J. K.
Seidemann, who quotes from a Dresden MS.[697]
_The Ceremony at Naumburg_
The 20 Jan., 1542, was appointed for the “consecration” of the bishop.
Two days before, the Elector of Saxony made his solemn entry into the
little town on the Saale escorted by some three hundred horsemen, the
gentlemen all clothed in decorous black. His brother Johann Ernest
and Duke Ernest of Brunswick were in his train. Luther, Melanchthon
and Amsdorf also took part in the procession. It was a mere formality
when the Chapter (or rather the magistrates of the towns of Zeitz and
Naumburg, and the knights, though only such as were Protestant) were
asked to cast their votes in favour of Amsdorf; in reality the will of
Johann Frederick was law. Their scruples concerning the oath they had
taken under the former bishop, of everlasting fidelity to the Catholic
Chapter were, at their desire, dealt with by Luther himself, who
argued that no oath taken by the sheep to the wolves could be of any
account, and that no duty “could be binding which ran counter to God’s
commandment to do away with idolatrous doctrine.”[698]
The “consecration” then took place on the day appointed, within the
venerable walls of the mediæval Cathedral of Naumburg, ostensibly
according to the usage of the earliest ages, when the Church had not
as yet fallen away from the Gospel. The Blessing and imposition of
hands were to signify that the Church of Naumburg, i.e. the whole
flock, was wedded to its bishop; he too, in like manner, would
ceremonially proclaim his readiness to take charge of this same flock.
The bishops of the adjoining sees, who, in accordance with the custom
of antiquity should have assembled to perform the consecration, were
represented by three superintendents and one apostate Abbot. “At this
consecration [to quote Luther’s own words] the following bishops, or
as we shall call them parsons, shall officiate: Dr. Nicholas Medler,
parson and super-attendant of Naumburg, Master George Spalatin, parson
and super-attendant at Aldenburg [the former preacher at the Court of
the Elector], Master Wolfgang Stein, parson and super-attendant at
Weissenfels”[699] (also Abbot Thomas of St. George’s near Naumburg).
Luther is silent concerning the two requirements which, according to
the olden views, were the most essential for the consecration of a
bishop, viz. the ritual consecration, which only a consecrated bishop
could impart, and the jurisdiction or authority to rule, only to be
derived from bishops yet more highly placed in the hierarchy, or from
the Pope. Both these Luther himself had to supply.
At the outset of the ceremony Nicholas Medler announced the deed which
was about to be undertaken “through God’s Grace,” to which the people
assented by saying “Amen.” After this Luther preached a sermon on the
Bible-text addressed to the Church’s heads: “Take heed to yourselves
and to the whole flock, wherein the Holy Ghost hath placed you bishops
to rule the church of God which He hath purchased with His own blood”
(Acts xx. 28). After the sermon Amsdorf knelt before the altar
surrounded by the four assistants and the “_Veni Creator_” was sung.
Luther admonished the future bishop concerning his episcopal duties,
and, on the latter giving a satisfactory answer, in common with the
four others, he laid his hands on his head; after this Luther himself
offered a prayer for him. The “_Te Deum_” was then sung in German.
Hence the bishop’s consecration took place in much the same way as the
ordination of the preachers, viz. by imposition of hands and prayer.
Luther himself had some misgivings concerning the step and its
far-reaching consequences.
He wrote not long after to Jacob Probst, pastor at Bremen, whom he
here addresses as bishop: “I wonder you have not heard the news, how,
namely, on Jan. 20, Dr. Nicholas Amsdorf was ordained by the heresiarch
Luther bishop of the church of Naumburg. It was a daring act and will
arouse much hatred, animosity and indignation against us. I am hard
at work hammering out a book on the subject. What the result will be
God knows.” He adds: “Jonas is working successfully for the kingdom of
Christ at Halle [where he had been appointed pastor] in spite of the
accursed Heinz and Meinz [Duke Henry of Brunswick and Archbishop Albert
of Mayence]. My own lordship and Katey my Moses greet you and your
spouse. Pray for me that I may die at the right hour, for I am sick of
this life, or rather of this unspeakably bitter death.”[700]
_Luther’s booklet on the Consecration of Bishops_
The bitter work which Luther, at the request of the Elector and
the Naumburg Estates, “hammered out,” in vindication of this act
of violence, appeared in the same year, i.e. 1542, under the title
“Exempel einen rechten Christlichen Bischoff zu weihen.”[701]
The title itself shows that the pamphlet was no mere attempt to
justify himself and those who had taken part in the act but aims at
something more; Luther’s apologia becomes a violent attack; a breach
was to be made in the wall which so far had hindered Protestants from
appropriating the Catholic bishoprics of Germany. “Our intention,”
says Luther quite plainly, “is to establish an example to show how the
bishoprics may be reformed and governed in a Christian manner.”[702]
The opening lines show that the book was intended to inflame and
excite the masses. The jocular tone blatantly contrasts with the
august subject of the episcopate and supplies a good “example” of the
author’s mode of controversy. The work begins: “Martin Luther, Doctor.
We poor heretics have once more committed a great sin against the
hellish, unchristian Church of our most fiendish Father the Pope by
ordaining and consecrating a bishop for the see of Naumburg without
any chrism, without even any butter, lard, fat, grease, incense,
charcoal or any such-like holy things.” Cheerfully indeed did he own,
acknowledge and confess this sin against those, who “have shed our
blood, murdered, hanged, drowned, beheaded, burnt, robbed and driven
us into exile, and inflicted on us every manner of martyrdom, and now,
with Meinz and Heinz, have taken to sacking the land.”
With a couple of Bible passages he bowls over the legal difficulties
arising out of the expulsion of the bishop-elect and the oath of the
Estates: “Thou shalt have none other Gods before me”; “Beware of
false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are
ravening wolves,” etc. We must sweep away the “wolf-bishops whom the
devil ordains and thrusts in.” “Oath and obedience stand untouched,”
for they “could take no [valid] oath to the wolf.”[703] The further
question, “whether it was right to accept consecration or ordination
from such damnable heretics [i.e. as he], was disposed of by saying,
that the Evangel was no heresy, and that though he understood Holy
Scripture but little, yet at any rate he understood it far better—and
also knew better how to consecrate a Christian bishop—than the Pope
and all his men, who one and all were foes of Holy Writ and of the
Word of God.”[704]
This screed stands undoubtedly far below many of Luther’s other
productions. It tends to be diffuse and to harp tediously on the same
ideas. Luther had already overwritten himself, and when engaged on it
was struggling with bad health, the forerunner of his fatal sickness
three years later. His disgust with life spoiled his work.
The “Popes, cardinals, bishops, abbots, canons and parsons” he
implores to look rather to the beam in their own eye, to the “simony,
favouritism, sharp practices, agreements, conventions and other
horrible vices” which prevailed at their own consecrations, than
at the mote in the eye of the Lutherans. “You strainers at gnats
and swallowers of camels, wipe yourselves first—you know where I
mean—before coming and telling us to wipe our noses. It is not
fitting that a sow should teach a dove not to eat any unclean grain
of corn while itself it loves nothing better than to feed on the
excreta which the peasants leave behind the hedge. As for the rest you
understand it well enough.”[705] “Let us stop our ears and not listen
to their shouting, barking, bellowing, their complaints and their
abuse,” with which I have “put up for many a year from Dr. Sow [Dr.
Eck], from Witzel, Tölpel, Schmid, from Dr. Dirtyspoon [Cochlaeus],
Tellerlecker, ‘Brünzscherben,’ Heinz and Meinz and whatever else they
may be.... The [Last] Day is approaching for which we hope and which
they must needs fear, however obstinately they may affect to despise
it. Against their defiance we pit ours; at least we may look forward
to The Day with a happy, cheerful conscience. On that day we shall be
their judges, unless indeed there is really no God in heaven or on
earth as the Pope and his followers believe.”[706]
How little Luther really knew of the cunning policy of his sovereign
is plain from his assuring his reader in the same booklet, apparently
in the best of faith, that it was no motive of self-interest that had
led the Elector to intervene in the Naumburg business; “the lands
were to remain the property of the see,” the Elector did not wish “to
subjugate it, to deprive it of its liberty, or alienate it from the
Empire,” etc.[707] He declares that whatever reports Julius Pflug was
spreading to the contrary were a “stinking lie.” Yet the Elector had
ousted the rightful occupant of the see, as he had intended to do all
along, and those who ventured to oppose his commands he was to punish
by sequestration of lands and even by imprisonment.
The Protestant bishop was assigned a miserable pittance of six hundred
Gulden so that Amsdorf, as Luther declared, had been better off at
Magdeburg.[708] Practically nothing was done by the sovereign for the
ordering of the Church. Luther bewailed to Amsdorf: “The negligence of
our government gives me great concern. They so often take rash steps
and, then, when we are down in the mire, snore idly and leave us on the
lurch. I intend, however, to open the ears of Dr. Pontanus [Chancellor
Brück] and of the Prince and give them some plain speaking.”[709]
“How is this?” Luther wrote about this time to Justus Jonas, who, at
Halle, had gone through much the same experience, “We pray against the
Turk, we are the teachers of the people and their intercessors with God
and yet those who wish to be accounted ‘Evangelicals’ rashly excite
the wrath of God by their avarice, their robbing and plundering of the
Church. The people let us go on teaching, praying and suffering while
they heap sin upon sin!”[710]
_Excerpts from Luther’s Letters to the New “Bishop”_
Luther’s correspondence with his friend Amsdorf affords an instructive
psychological insight into the working of his mind. During those last
years of his life he took refuge more and more in a certain fanatical
mysticism. He sought comfort in the thought of his exalted calling
and in a kind of inspiration; yet all he could do availed but little
against his inward gloom.
Amsdorf, the whilom Catholic priest, found little pleasure in his
episcopal status and felt bitterly both his isolation and the contrast
between a pomp that was irksome to him and the real emptiness of
his position; Luther, accordingly, in the letters of consolation he
wrote him, appealed to the Divine inspiration, which had led to his
appointment as bishop. The consecration was surely undertaken at the
express command of God which no man may oppose. “In these Divine
matters,” he writes, “it is far safer to allow oneself to be carried
away than to take any active part; this is what happened in your case,
and yours is a noble and unusual example. We are never in worse case
than when we fancy we are acting with discernment and understanding,
because then self-complacency slinks in; but the blinder we are,
the more God acts through us. He does more than we can think or
understand.” We have here the same principle to which he had been so
fond of appealing in the early days of his career so as to be able
to attribute to God the unforeseen and far-going consequences of his
deeds, and to reassure himself and urge himself on.
“We must never seek to know,” he said to Amsdorf, “what God wills to
accomplish through us.” “The most foolish thing is the wisest.”[711]
“God rules the world by means of fools and children, He will finish
His work [in you] by our means, just as in the Book of Proverbs (xxx.
2), where we are called the greatest fools on earth.”[712]
“It is the counsel of a fool,” so Luther said in his “Exempel” of his
intentions regarding the bishops’ sees, “and I am a fool. But because
it is God’s counsel, therefore it is at least the counsel of a wise
fool.”[713]
This pseudo-mystical bent though usual enough in Luther seems to
have become very much stronger in him at that time. To this his sad
experiences contributed. More than ever convinced, on the one hand,
that everything in the world was of the devil and that “Satan and his
whole kingdom, full of a terrible wrath, were harassing” the Elector,
as he declares in a letter to Amsdorf,[714] he tends, on the other,
to fall back with a fanatical enthusiasm on the Evangel “revealed” to
him. More than one statement which is no mere empty form, shows that
he was really anxious to find consolation in the Divine truths; again
and again he strove to rouse himself to a firm confidence. He is also
more diligent in his peculiar sort of prayer and strongly urges his
friends, notably Amsdorf to whom he frankly imparts his fears and
hopes, to seek for help in prayer. His words are really those of one
who feels in need of assistance.
Amidst the trials of increasing bodily ailments and in other temporal
hardships he knows how to encourage his life’s partner, Catharine
Bora, whose anxiety distressed him: “You want to provide for your
God,” he says to her in one of his letters, “just as though He were
not all-powerful and able to create ten Dr. Martins should your
old one get drowned in the Saale, or smothered in the coal-hole or
elsewhere. Do not worry me with your cares; I have a better caretaker
than even you or all the angels. He lies in the crib and sucks at a
Virgin’s breast, but nevertheless is seated at the right hand of God
the Father Almighty. Hence be at peace, Amen.”[715] “Do you pray,” he
admonishes her not long after, “and leave God to provide, for it is
written: ‘Cast thy care upon the Lord and He shall sustain thee,’ Ps.
lv.”[716]
Such ready words of encouragement do not however prevent him,
when dealing with other more stout-hearted friends who were aware
of the precarious state of the cause, from giving full voice to
the depression, nay despair, which overwhelmed him. The following
example from his correspondence with the “bishop” of Naumburg is
characteristic.
After an attempt to parry the charge brought against him of being
responsible for the public misfortunes which had arisen through the
religious revolt, and to reassure Amsdorf, and incidentally himself
too, he goes on gloomily to predict the coming chastisement: “Were we
the cause of all the evils that have befallen us [and others], how
much blood should we have already shed!... It is, however, Christ’s
business to see to this, since He Himself by His Word has called
forth so much evil and such great hatred on the part of the devil.
All this, so they fancy, is a scandal and a disgrace to our teaching!
Nevertheless ingratitude for God’s proffered grace is so great, the
contempt for the Word goes such lengths, vice, avarice, usury, luxury,
hatred, perfidy, envy, pride, godlessness and blasphemy are increasing
by such leaps and bounds that it is hard to believe God can much
longer deal indulgently and patiently with Germany. Either the Turk
will chastise us [‘while we brood full of hate over the wounds of our
brethren’] or some inner misfortune [civil war] will break over us.
It is true we feel the chastisement, we pay the penalty in grief and
tears, but yet we remain sunk in terrible sins whereby we grieve the
Holy Ghost and rouse the anger of God against us.”
What faithful Catholics feared for him owing to his obstinacy, this,
in his sad blindness, he now predicts for the foes of his Evangel.
“Who can wonder,” he cries, “should God, as Holy Scripture says,
laugh at our destruction in spite of the weeping and sighing of the
guilty.... The worst end awaits the impenitent.”
“Let none of us expect the least good of the future. Our sins cry
aloud to heaven and on earth and there is no hope of any good. Now,
in a time of peace, Germany affords the eye a terrible spectacle,
seeing that God’s honour is outraged everywhere by so many wicked men
and that the churches and schools are being destroyed.... Meanwhile,
we at least [the despised preachers of the truth] will bewail our own
sins and those of Germany; we will pray and humble our souls, devote
ourselves to our office, teaching, exhorting and consoling. What
else can we do? Germany has become blind and deaf and rises up in
insolence; we cannot hope against hope.”
“But do you be brave and give thanks to the Lord for the holy calling
He has deigned to bestow upon us; He has willed to sunder us from
these reprobates, who are bent on ruining others too, to preserve us
clean and blameless in His pure and holy Word, and will continue so
to preserve us. Let us, however, weep for the foes of the cross of
Christ, even though they mock at our tears. Though we be filled with
grief on account of their misery still our grief will be assuaged by
the holy joy which will attend the again-rising of the Lord on the day
of our salvation, Amen.”
He concludes this curious letter, written on Easter Sunday, with
the following benediction: “May the Lord be with you to support and
comfort you together with us. Outside of Christ, in the kingdom of the
raging devil, there is nothing but sadness to be seen or heard.” Thus,
at the close, he returns to the opening thought suggested by the very
object of the letter. Amsdorf had deplored the warlike acts undertaken
by Duke Maurice of Saxony against the Elector. Luther, in turn, had
informed him, that “here, we are quite certain that what the Duke is
doing is the direct work of Satan.”[717]
5. Some Further Deeds of Violence. Fate of Ecclesiastical Works of Art
_End of the Bishopric of Meissen_
The Elector of Saxony, after having been so successful in seizing the
bishopric of Naumburg, sought to obtain control of that of Meissen also.
Here, however, there was another Protestant claimant in the field in
the person of the young Duke Maurice of Saxony, successor of the late
Duke Henry. As for the chartered rights, temporal and spiritual, of
the bishop of Meissen they were simply ignored. The Elector, by a
breach of the peace, sent a military force on March 22, 1542, to occupy
the important town of Wurzen, where there was a collegiate Chapter
depending on Meissen. The Chapter was “reformed” by compulsion, the
prebendaries who were faithful to the Church being threatened with
deposition and corporal penalties, and many sacred objects being flung
out of their church. When eventually war threatened to break out
between the two branches of the house of Saxony, Landgrave Philip of
Hesse stepped in as mediator in the interests of the new Evangel. He
twice sent express messengers to summon Luther to intervene. But, even
before this, the latter, horrified at the prospect of the “dreadful
disgrace” which civil war between two Evangelical princes would bring
upon the Evangel, had addressed a long and earnest letter of admonition
to both combatants: It was the devil who was seeking to kindle a great
fire from such a spark; both sides should have recourse to law instead
of falling upon each other over so insignificant a matter, like tipsy
yokels fighting in a tap-room over a broken glass; if they refused to
do this, he would take the part of the one who first suffered acts of
violence at the hands of the other and would free all the latter’s
followers from their duty and oath of obedience in the war.[718] The
writing, which was intended for publication and to be forwarded “to
both armies,” was only half-printed when the Landgrave intervened. The
author withdrew it in order to be able to take up a different attitude
in the struggle and to proceed at once to denounce Maurice.
Luther it is true admitted to Brück, the electoral chancellor, that
certain people at Wittenberg did not consider the Elector’s claims
at all well-founded.[719] At the Landgrave’s instigation he also
addressed a friendly request to the Elector, “not to be too hard and
stiff”; of the temporal rights of the case he was ignorant; seeing,
however, that there was a dispute the question could not be clear; at
any rate Duke Maurice was acting wrongfully in “pressing his rights by
so bloodthirsty an undertaking. At times there may be a good reason
for pulling one’s foot out of the tracks of a mad dog or for burning a
couple of tapers at the devil’s altar.”[720] But on the whole he took
the part of his Elector against Maurice, who, even before this, had
appeared to him lax and wavering in his support of the new faith. In
his history of Maurice of Saxony, G. Voigt gives as his opinion that:
“In this matter Luther neither showed himself unbiased nor did he act
uprightly and honourably.”[721]
To Amsdorf, who had helped to fan the flame of mutual hate, Luther
speaks of Duke Maurice as “a proud and furious young fellow, in whom
we undoubtedly see the direct work of Satan”; it is not he (Luther)
or Amsdorf who have to reproach themselves with the conflagration; he
is to be quite at rest on this score. Rather, it is Christ Who—by
His Word—has given rise to the mischief and to all the hatred of the
demons against us. His Word alone is to blame, not we, that so many
confessors of our faith have been slain, drowned and burnt. “In vain
do they impute to us the bloody deeds which have taken place owing to
Münzer, Carlstadt, Zwingli and the [Anabaptist] King of Münster.”
“At first Maurice was not regarded by Luther, Melanchthon and most
of their contemporaries as of such importance, whether for good or
for evil, as he soon after showed himself to be; they fancied him far
more dependent on his nobles and councillors than he really was.”[722]
Luther thought he detected the evil influence of the councillors
in the twin businesses of Wurzen and Meissen. In his reply to the
Landgrave concerning the attempt to bring the matter to a peaceful
issue, without having as yet examined the cause, he speaks of Duke
Maurice as a “stupid bloodhound.”[723] To his own Court he wrote,
on April 12, as though the Duke were without question in the wrong:
“May God strengthen, console and preserve my most Gracious Lord and
you all in His Grace and in a good conscience, and bring down on the
heads of the hypocritical bloodhound of Meissen what Cain and Absalom,
Judas and Herodes deserved. Amen and again Amen, to the glory of His
name Whom Duke Maurice is outraging to the utmost by this abominable
scandal, and singing meanwhile so blasphemous a hymn of praise to the
devil and all the foes of God.”[724]
In the meantime, owing to Philip’s exertions, a compromise was effected
between the two parties ready for the fray; by this it was agreed that
each should have a free hand in one of the two portions of the diocese,
the Elector retaining Wurzen; as for the defenceless bishop of Meissen,
who was not even informed of this, he had simply to bow to his fate.
Maurice, however, was so greatly angered that he soon after abandoned
the League of Schmalkalden and began to make advances to the Emperor.
After the conclusion of peace “the Elector had all the images in the
chief church of Wurzen destroyed, except those which were overlaid
with gold or which represented ‘serious events,’ and the rest buried
in the vaults.” The new teaching was then introduced throughout the
diocese.[725] Maurice on his part carried off from the cathedral of
Meissen, which had fallen to his share, all the gold and silver vessels
richly studded with jewels and precious stones and all the treasures
of art. He was taking them, he said, under his protection “because the
times were so full of risk and danger.” After he had taken them into
his “care” all trace of them disappeared for all time.
_Destruction of Church Property_
The fate of the treasures of Meissen Cathedral resembles that which
befell the riches of many churches at that time.
We are still in possession of the inventory made by Blasius Kneusel of
Meissen which gives us a glimpse of the wealth and magnificence of the
treasures of mediæval German art and industry which perished in this
way.
The list contains the following entries among others: “One gold cross
valued by Duke George at 1300 florins; in it there is a diamond valued
at 16,000 florins, besides other precious stones and pearls with which
the cross is covered.” “A second gold cross, worth 6000 florins. A
third is worth 1000 florins, besides the precious stones and pearls
of which the cross is full. I value the gold table and the credence
table, without the precious stones, at 1000 florins in gold. The
large bust of St. Benno weighs 36-1/2 lbs.; it is set with valuable
stones; it was made by order of the church and all the congregation
contributed towards it. The small cross with the medallions of the
Virgin Mary and St. John weighs about 50 lbs.”
The number of these treasures of art which fell a prey to the
plunderer amounted to fifty-one.[726]
Two years later Luther wrote to Duke Ernest of Saxony to seek help
on behalf of two fallen monks then studying theology at Wittenberg:
in order to support men who “may eventually prove very useful” “the
chalices and monstrances might well be melted down.”[727]
The ruthless handling of the Black Monastery at Wittenberg, which
had been bestowed on Luther after the dissolution of the Augustinian
community, was to set a bad example. The fittings of the church there
were scattered and the mediæval images and vestments which, though
perhaps only of small material value, would yet be carefully treasured
by any museum to-day, were calmly devoted by Luther to destruction.
“Now at last,” he says, “I have sold the best of the pictures that
still remained, but did not get much for them, fifty florins at the
most, and with this I have clothed, fed and provided for the nuns and
the monks—the thieves and rascals.” He had already remarked that the
best of the “church ornaments and vessels” had gone; at the “beginning
of the Evangel everything had been laid waste” and “even to this very
day they do not cease from carrying off ... each man whatever he can
lay hands on.”[728]
No one can adequately describe the material damage which the Catholic
parsonages and benefices, convents and bishoprics had to suffer on
their suppression. A simple list of the spoliations from the hundreds
of cases on record, would give us a shocking picture of the temporal
consequences involved in the ecclesiastical upheaval. Apart from
the injustice of thus robbing the churches and, incidentally, the
numberless poor who looked to the Church for help, it was regrettable
that there was no other institution ready to take the place of the
olden Church, and assume possession of the properties which fell
vacant. The Catholic Church was a firmly knit and well-established
community, capable of possessing property. The new Churches on the
contrary did not constitute an independent and united body; the
universal priesthood, the invisibility of the Church of Christ and its
utter want of independence were ideas altogether at variance with the
legal conception of ownership upon which, in the topsyturvydom of that
age of transition it was more than ever necessary to insist.
Hence the secular element had necessarily to assume the guardianship
of the property. But of the secular authorities, which was to take
control? For these authorities, which all were looking forward
expectantly to their share of the church property heaped up by their
Catholic ancestors, were not one but many: There was the sovereign with
his Court, the civil administration, the towns with their councils,
not to speak of other local claimants; to make the confusion worse
there were the church patrons, the trustees of monasteries, the
founders of institutions, and their heirs, and also those endowed with
certain privileges under letters patent. Moreover, the leaders of
the religious innovations insisted that the property acquired was to
be devoted to the support of the preachers, the schools and the poor.
Hence to the above already lengthy list of claimants must be added
the preachers, or the consistories representing them, likewise the
administrators of the relief funds, the governors of the schools, and
the senates of the universities which had to furnish the preachers.
The war-council of the town of Strasburg, in 1538, addressed a
letter to Luther concerning their prospects or intention of securing
a share of the church property there. On Nov. 20 of that year he
replied, peremptorily telling them to do nothing of the sort; under
the conditions then prevailing they must “_de facto_ stand still.”
Yet no less plain was his hint to them to warn Catholic owners “who
hold church property but pay no heed to the cure of souls,” to amend
and to accept the new Evangel; if they “wished to go,” i.e. preferred
banishment, so much the better, otherwise they must once for all by
some means be “at last brought to see that further persistence in their
wantonness” was out of question.[729]
* * * * *
To add to the general chaos in many places the powerful nobles, as
Luther frequently laments, without a shadow of a right, set violent
hands on the tempting possessions, and, by entering into possession,
frustrated all other claims.
The leading theologians of Wittenberg gradually gave up in despair
their attempts to interfere, and contented themselves with exhortations
to which nobody paid much heed.
They saw how the lion’s share fell to the strongest, i.e. to the
Elector, and how everywhere the State took the pennies of the devout
and the poor, using them for purposes of its own, which often enough
had nothing whatever to do with the Church.
Nowhere do we find any evidence to show that the theologians made
use of the authority on which on other occasions they laid so much
stress, or made any serious attempt to check arbitrary action and to
point out the way to a just distribution, or to lay down some clear
and general rules in accordance with which the graduated claims of the
different competitors might have been settled. They might at least
have associated themselves with the lawyers in the Privy Council and
formulated some rule whereby the rights of the State, of the towns
and of the church patrons could have been protected against the worst
attacks of the plunderers. But no check of this sort was imposed by the
theologians on the prevailing avarice and greed of gain. It is plain
that they despaired of the result, and, possibly, silence may not have
been the worst policy. No one can be blind to the huge difficulties
which attended interference, but who was after all to blame for these
and so many other difficulties which had arisen in public order, and
which could be solved only by the use of force?
When an exceptionally conscientious town-council sent a messenger to
Luther in 1544 to ask for advice and instructions how to deal with the
property of two monasteries which had been suppressed, the “honourable,
prudent and beloved masters and friends” received from him only a short
and evasive answer: “We theologians have nothing to do with this ...
such things must be decided by the lawyers ... our theology teaches
us to obey the worldly law, to protect the pious and to punish the
wicked.”[730]
If, however, the lawyers were to follow the jurisprudence in which they
had been trained, then they could but insist upon the property being
restored to its rightful owners, who had never ceased to claim it for
the Church, and had even appealed to the imperial authority. Luther’s
reply constituted a formal retreat from the domain of moral questions,
questions indeed which had become burning largely through the action
of his theologians. It was an admission that their theology was of no
avail to solve an eminently practical question of ethics coming well
within its purview which was the safeguarding of the moral law, and for
which, indeed, this theology was itself responsible. In this, however,
as in so many other instances, they sowed the wind, but when the
whirlwind came they ran for shelter to their theological cell.[731]
Still, the question of church property caused Luther so much
heart-burning in his old age that his death was hastened thereby.
The lamentations wrung from him in 1538, his description of himself as
“tormented” and the “unhappiest of all unhappy mortals,”[732] were due
in no small measure to the rapacity he had seen in connection with the
church lands. The bulwarks he strove to erect against this disorder
were constantly being torn down afresh by the unevangelical disposition
of the Evangelicals, and yet he refused to admit, even to himself,
that he had been the first to open the way to such arbitrary action.
As in his own house he had set an example of destruction of church
property, so in his turn he met with bitter experiences even in his own
dwelling and in the case of his own private concerns. His tenure of the
Black Monastery at Wittenberg was uncertain, and, as already stated,
hostile lawyers at Court even questioned his right to dispose of his
possessions by Will on the ground that his marriage was null in law,
whether canon or civil. The Monastery had been given him by the Prince,
and Luther and Catherine Bora used it both as their residence and as a
boarding-house for lodgers. It had not, however, been given to Luther’s
family, and from this the difficulty arose. He was most careful to
note down in his account books the things that were to be Katey’s
inalienable property on his death, but, when he was no more, Katey and
her children had in their turn to make acquaintance with the poverty
and vicissitudes endured by so many churchmen whose means of livelihood
had been filched from them.
_Luther and the Images_
Can the charge be brought against Luther’s teaching of being in
part responsible for the outbreaks of iconoclastic violence which
accompanied the spread of the Reformation in Germany? Did his writings
contribute to the destruction of those countless, admirable and often
costly creations of art and piety which fell a prey to the blind fury
of the zealot, or to greed of gain?
Assuredly he would, had he seen them, have disapproved of many of the
acts of vandalism which history tells us were perpetrated against
Catholic churches, monasteries and institutions. Generally speaking
the ideas of Carlstadt and Zwingli, wherever they gained the upper
hand, proved far more destructive to ecclesiastical works of art
than Luther’s gentler admonitions against the veneration of images.
Nevertheless, his exhortations, though more guarded, made their way
among both the mighty and the masses, and were productive of much harm.
He himself declared frankly, about the end of 1524, that “by his
writings he had done more harm to the images than Carlstadt with all
his storming and fanaticism will ever do.”[733] In the course of
the next year he boasted of having “brought contempt” on the images
even before Carlstadt’s time. He had repudiated the latter’s acts of
violence and his ill-judged appeal to the law of Moses;[734] on the
other hand, he had undermined the very foundations of image-worship by
his Evangelical doctrines; this was a better kind of “storming,” for in
this way those who once had bowed to images now “refused to have any
made.” As much as the most fanatical of the iconoclasts, he too wished
to see the images “torn out of men’s hearts, despised and abolished,”
but he “destroyed them [the images] outwardly and also inwardly,”[735]
and so went one better than Carlstadt, who attacked them only from the
outside.
He had, so he continues, speaking to the German people, “consented”
that the images should be “done away with outwardly so long as this
took place without fanaticism and violence, and by the hand of the
proper authorities.”[736] “We drive them out of men’s hearts until the
time comes for them to be torn down by the hands of those whose duty it
is to do this.”[737] Meanwhile, however, it was “every man’s duty” to
“destroy them by the Evangel,” “especially the images of God and other
idolatrous ones.”[738]
In his Church-sermons he makes his own the complaint, that, though
these images which attracted a great “concourse of people” should be
“overthrown,” the bishops were actually attaching indulgences to them
and thus increasing the disorder.[739]
In his sermons against Carlstadt at Wittenberg he had said things, and
afterwards disseminated them in print, little calculated to impose
restraint on the zeal of the multitude: “It were better we had none
of these images on account of the tiresome and execrable abuse and
unbelief.”[740]
The iconoclasts at Wittenberg were anxious, he says, to set about
hewing down the images. His reply was: “Not yet! For you will not
eradicate the images in this way, indeed you will only establish them
more firmly than ever.”[741]
Accordingly it was then his own opinion that they should be “abolished”
and “overthrown,” particularly such images as were held in peculiar
veneration; in 1528 he again admitted that this was his object, when
once more proposing his own less noisy and more cautious policy as the
more effectual; in his sermons on the Ten Commandments printed at this
time he declared that the way to “hew down and stamp out the images was
to tear and turn men’s hearts away from them.”[742] Then the “images
would tumble down of their own accord and fall into disrepute; for they
[the faithful] will say: If it is not a good work to make images, then
it is the devil who makes them and the pictures. In future I shall keep
my money in my pocket or lay it out to better advantage.”[743]—“The
iconoclasts rush in and tear down the images outwardly. To this I do
not object so much. But then they go on to say that it must be so, and
that it is well pleasing to God”; this, however, is false; it is a
mistake to say that such a Divine command exists to tear them down.[744]
The grounds on which he opposed the old-time use of images were the
following: By erecting them people sought to gain merit in God’s sight
and to perform good works; they also trusted in images and in the
Saints instead of in Christ, Who is our only ground for confidence;
finally—a reason alleged by him but seldom—people adored the
images and thus became guilty of idolatry. Here it is plain how much
his peculiar theology on good works and the worship of the saints
contribute to his condemnation of the ancient Catholic practice. In his
zeal against the existing abuses he overlooks the fact, that to invoke
before their images the Saints’ intercession with Christ was not in
the least opposed to belief in Christ as the one mediator. As for the
charge of adoring the images to which he resorts exceptionally—more
with the object of making an impression and shielding himself—it
amounted to an act of injustice against all his forefathers to accuse
them of having been so grossly stupid as to confuse the images with the
divinity; even he himself had elsewhere sufficiently absolved them of
the charge of adoring saints, let alone images.[745]
The real cause of this premature attack on images found in these
sermons was the storm called forth by Carlstadt, which Luther hoped
to divert and dominate[746] by the attitude he assumed; otherwise it
is very likely he would have refrained from assailing the religious
feelings of the people in so sensitive a spot for many years to come,
or at any rate would not have done so in the manner he chose by way of
reply to Carlstadt.
Nor assuredly would he have gone so far had he himself ever vividly
realised the profoundly religious and morally stimulating character of
the veneration of images, and its sympathetic and consoling side as
exemplified at many of the regular places of pilgrimage at that time.
Owing to the circumstances of his early years he had never enjoyed the
opportunity of tasting the refreshment and the blessings to be found in
those sacred resorts visited by thousands of the devout, where those
suffering from any ill of soul or body were wont to seek solace from
the cares and trials of life. Indeed it was particularly against such
images as were the object of special devotion and to which the people
“flocked” with a “false confidence” that his anger was directed.
His animosity to image-worship would also appear to have been
psychologically bound up with two tendencies of his: first, with the
desire to attack the hated Church of the Papists at those very spots
where her influence with the people was most apparent; secondly, with
his plan to bring everything down to a dead level, which led him on the
specious pretext of serving the religion of the spirit to abolish, or
to curtail, the most popular and cheering phenomena of outward worship.
It is a reprehensible thing, he says, even in his sermons against
Carlstadt, to have an image set up in the church, because the believer
fancies “he is doing God a service thereby and pleasing Him, and has
thus performed a good work and gained merit in God’s sight, which
is sheer idolatry.” In their zeal for their damnable good works
the princes, bishops and big ones of the earth had “caused many
costly images of silver and gold to be set up in the churches and
cathedrals.” These were not indeed to be pulled down by force since
many at least made a good use of them; but it was to be made clear
to the people that if “they were not doing any service to God, or
pleasing Him thereby,” then they would soon “tumble down of their own
accord.”[747]
It was a mistake, so he declared in 1528 concerning the grounds of
his verdict against the images, to “invoke them specially, as though
I sought to give great honour or do a great service to God with the
images, as has been the case hitherto.” The “trust” placed in the
images has cost us the loss of our souls; the Christians whom he had
instructed were now opposed to this “trust” and to the opinion “that
they were thereby doing a special service to God.”[748] Amongst them
memorial images might be permitted, i.e. such as “simply represent,
as in a glass, past events and things” but “are not made into objects
of devotion, trust or worship.”[749]—It is dreadful to make them a
pretext for “idolatry” and to place our trust in anything but God.
“Such images ought to be destroyed, just as we have already pulled
down many images of the Saints; it were also to be wished,” he adds
ironically, “that we had more such images of silver, for then we
should know how to make a right Christian use of them.”[750]—“I
will not pay court to such idols; the worship and adoration must
cease.”[751] Whoever “with his whole heart has learnt to keep” the
First Commandment would readily despise “all the idols of silver and
gold.”[752]—Yet of the “adoration” of the images he had said in a
letter of 1522 to Count Ludwig von Stolberg, that the motive of his
opposition was not so much fear of adoration, because adoration of the
Saints—so he hints—might well occur without any images; what urged
him on was, on the contrary, the false confidence and the opinion of
the Catholics that “they were thereby doing a good work and a service
to God.”[753]
We have just quoted Luther’s reservation, viz. that he was willing to
tolerate the use of images which “simply represent, as in a glass,
past events and things.” Statements of this sort occur frequently
in his writings. They go hand in hand with a radical insistence on
inward disdain for image-worship, and a tendency to demand its entire
suppression in the churches. It was on these lines that the Elector
of Saxony acted when ordering the destruction of the images in the
principal church of Wurzen (above, p. 202); images which represented
“serious events” and those overlaid with gold were not to be hewn to
pieces.
In the book “Against the Heavenly Prophets” Luther, in the same
sense, writes: “Images used as a memorial or for a symbol, like
the image of the Emperor” on the coins, were not objectionable;
even in conversation images were employed by way of illustration;
“memorial pictures or those which bear testimony to the faith,
such as crucifixes and the images of the Saints,” are honest and
praiseworthy, but the images venerated at places of pilgrimage are
“utterly idolatrous and mere shelters of the devil.”[754] And in the
“Vom Abendmal Christi Bekentnis” (1528) he says: “Images, bells, mass
vestments, church ornaments, altars, lights and such like I leave
optional; whoever wishes may discard them, although pictures from
Scripture and representations of sacred subjects I consider very
useful, though I leave each one free to do as he pleases; for with the
iconoclasts I do not hold.”[755]
In one passage of his Church-postils he entirely approves the use of
the crucifix; we ought to contemplate the cross as the Israelites
looked upon the serpent raised on high by Moses; we should “see Christ
in such an image and believe in Him.”[756] “If it be no sin,” he says
elsewhere, “to have Christ in my heart, why should it be a sin to have
it [His image] before my eyes?”[757]
But Catholics were saying much the same thing in defence of the
veneration of images, though to this Luther paid no attention: If
it be no sin to have in our hearts the saints who are Christ’s own
friends or Mary who is His Mother, how then should it be sinful to
have their images before our eyes and to honour them?
As years went by Luther became more and more liberal in recommending
the use of historical and, in particular, biblical representations.
In 1545, when he published his Passional with his little manual of
prayers, he said in the preface, alluding to the woodcuts contained in
the book: Such pictures ought to be in the hands of Christians, more
particularly of children and of the simple, who can “better be moved
by pictures and figures”; there was no harm “in painting such stories
in rooms and apartments, together with the texts”; he was in favour
of the “principal stories of the whole Bible” being pictorially
shown, though he was opposed to all “abuse of and false confidence in”
images.[758]
Such kindlier expressions did not, however, do full justice to the
veneration of images as practised throughout the olden Church, nor did
they counteract what he had said of the idols of silver and gold, of
the uselessness and harmfulness of bestowing money on sacred pictures
and religious works of art to be exposed for the devotion of the
people. All was drowned in his incitement to “destroy,” “break in
pieces,” “pull down” and “fall upon” the images, first by means of the
Evangel, and, then through the action of the authorities. It is plain
what fate was in store particularly for those religious works of art
which served as symbols of, or to extol, those dogmas and institutions
peculiarly odious to him, for instance, the sacrifice of the Mass,
around which centred the ornaments of the altar, the fittings of the
choir, and, more or less, all the decorations of the church. As for the
sacred vessels, often of the most costly character, and all else that
pertained to the dispensing of the sacraments, their destruction had
already been decreed.
_Further details regarding the Fate of the Works of Art and of Art
itself_
The account already given above of the squandering and destruction of
ecclesiastical works of art, in particular of the valuable images of
the Saints in the towns of Meissen and Wurzen,[759] may be supplemented
by the reports from Erfurt of the damage done there at the coming
of the religious innovations; we must also bear in mind, that the
suppression of Catholic worship in this town which looms so large in
Luther’s life, took place under his particular influence and with the
co-operation of preachers receiving their instructions from Wittenberg.
Before the lawless peasants entered the town on April 28, 1525, the
Council had already “taken into safe custody” the treasures of the
churches and monasteries; chalices and other vessels of precious metal
were on this occasion carried away in “tubs and trogs,” and eventually
the public funds were enriched with the profit derived from their
sale.[760]
Amongst the objects taken, were: a silver censer in the shape of a
small boat, the silver caskets containing the heads of Saints Severus,
Vincentia and Innocentia, the silver reliquary with the bones of SS.
Eobanus and Adolarius in which they were carried in solemn procession
every seven years. This art-treasure which belonged to St. Mary’s,
was, not long after, melted down by the town-council when pressed for
money, “and cast into bars which were taken to the mint at Weimar.” The
silver pennies minted from them were later on called coffin pennies.
Other valuables which the Council had taken in charge were put up
for auction secretly, without their owners learning anything of the
matter. “The prebendaries were well-justified in urging,” writes the
Protestant historian who has collected these data, “as against these
high-handed proceedings that the Council should first have laid hands
on the valuables belonging to the burghers, or at the very least
have summoned the rightful owners to be present at the sale of their
property, in order that they might make a note of the prices obtained
and thus be able to claim compensation later. The Council suffered a
moral set-back, while at the same time reaping no appreciable material
advantage.”[761]
Not only the Council but the peasants too, led by the Lutheran
preachers, were greatly to blame for the destruction of art treasures
wrought at Erfurt in that same year. When, in order to put an end to
the rule over the town of the Elector, Albert of Brandenburg, they
stormed the so-called Mainzer Hof at Erfurt, “all the jewels, gold,
silver and valuable household stuff were carried off.” Shortly after
“the peasants, thanks to their sharpness, managed to unearth a pastoral
staff in silver, worth 300 florins [in the then currency], which had
been concealed in the privy attached to the room of the master cook
to save it from the greed of the robbers.”[762] At the Mainzer Hof
they removed all monumental tablets, pictures and statues as well
as the elaborate coats of arms bearing witness to the Archbishop’s
sovereignty. A stone effigy of St. Martin which stood in front of the
Rathaus and the ancient symbols of the sovereignty of Mayence were
pulled down and smashed to bits. In place of these they scrawled on
the new stone edifice which had been erected there another coat of
arms in chalk and charcoal, having a plough, coulter and hoe in the
shield and in the field a horse-shoe. “During all this Adolarius
Huttner [with Eberlin of Günzburg, the apostate Franciscan] and other
Lutheran preachers were going to and fro amongst them.” The whole row
of priests’ houses standing alongside the torrent was searched and the
valuables plundered.[763]
“The people of Erfurt did almost as much damage as the peasants.”[764]
As a matter of fact the citizens frequently outdid the agricultural
population in this work of destruction. The chronicles of the times
relate, that they broke down the walls of the vaults of the two
collegiate churches in hopes of finding hidden treasure behind them,
and, then, in their disappointment, sacrilegiously tore open the
tabernacles, threw the holy oils to the dogs and treated the things in
the churches in such a manner as is “heartrending beyond description.”
The mob destroyed not merely the books and parchments in which their
obligations were recorded, but a number of others of importance for
literature and learning were also wantonly spoiled.
From another contemporary source we have the following on the
destruction of the old writings: “And besides all this on St. Walpurgis
Day in the Lauwengasse the peasants and those who were with them tore
up more than two waggonloads of books, and threw them out of the houses
into the street. These the burgher folk carried home in large baskets.
While gathering up the torn books as best they could, putting them into
baskets and binding them with ropes as one does straw, a whirlwind
sprang up and lifted the torn books, letters and papers high into the
air and over all the houses, so that many of them were afterwards found
sticking to the poles in the vineyards.”[765]
* * * * *
In very many instances, particularly during the Peasant War, the
destruction and scattering of ecclesiastical works of art went much
beyond Luther’s injunctions. We shall hear him protest, that many
were good Evangelicals only so long as there were still chalices,
monstrances and monkish vessels to be had.[766] It was naturally a
very difficult task to check the greed of gain and wanton love of
destruction once this had broken loose, particularly after the civil
authorities had tasted the sweets to be derived from the change of
religion, and after the peasants in the intoxication of their newly
found freedom of the Gospel, and in their lust for plunder, had begun
to lay violent hands on property.
It was in accordance with Luther’s express injunctions that the “proper
authorities” proceeded to destroy such images as were not a record of
history. They went further, however, nor was the zeal confined solely
to the authorities.
In Prussia, the land of the Teutonic Order, the crosses and the images
of the Saints had been doomed to destruction by the revolution of
1525; the silver treasures of art in the churches were hammered into
plate for use at the new Lutheran Duke’s dining-table. The Estates
of his country, when he had asked them to vote supplies, retorted
that he might as well help himself to the treasures of the churches.
The result was, so the chronicler of that day relates, “that all the
chalices and other ornaments” were removed from the houses of God,
barely one chalice being left in each church; some of the country
churches were even driven to use pewter chalices. “When they had taken
all the silver they fell upon the bells”; they left but one in each
village, the rest being carried off to Königsberg and sold to the
smelters.[767] At Marienwerder only did the prebendaries, appealing
to the King of Poland, make a stand for the retention of their church
plate and other property, until they themselves were sent in chains to
Preuschmark.[768]
In 1524, during the fair, the images were dragged out of the churches
at Riesenburg in Pomerania, shamelessly dishonoured and finally burnt.
The bishop-elect, a dignitary whom the Pope had refused to confirm and
who was notoriously a “zealous instrument of the Evangel,” excused the
proceeding. In other towns similar outrages were perpetrated by the
iconoclasts.
On the introduction of Lutheranism at Stralsund almost all the
churches and monasteries were stormed, the crucifixes and images being
broken up in the presence of members of the town-council (1525).[769]
In 1525 the Lutherans at Dantzig took possession of the wealthy church
of St. Mary’s, which was renowned for the number of its foundations
and had 128 clergy attached to it. A list of the articles confiscated
or plundered comprises: ten chalices of gold with precious stones
of great value, and as many bejewelled gold patens and ampullae; a
ciborium of gold with corals and gems, two gold crosses with gems, an
image of the Virgin Mary with four angels in gold, a silver statue
of the same, silver statues of the Apostles, four and twenty silver
ciboriums, six and forty silver chalices, two dozen of them of
silver-gilt, twelve silver and silver-gilt ampullae, eleven ungilt
silver ampullae, twenty-three silver vessels, twelve of them being
gilt, twelve silver-gilt chalices with lids, twelve silver-gilt
crosses with corals and precious stones, two dozen small silver
crosses, eight large and ten small silver censers, etc., twelve
chasubles in cloth of gold with pearls and gems, twelve of red silk
with a gold fringe, besides this eighty-two silk chasubles, twelve
cloth-of-gold antependiums with pearls and gems, six costly copes,
twelve other silk copes, six and forty albs of gold and silver
embroidered flower-pattern, sixty-five other fine albs, eighty-eight
costly altar covers, forty-nine gold-embroidered altar cloths,
ninety-nine less elaborate altar cloths.[770]
When Bugenhagen had secured the triumph of Lutheranism in the town
of Brunswick the altars were thrown down, the pictures and statues
removed, the chalices and other church vessels melted down and the
costly mass vestments sold to the highest bidder at the Rathaus
(1528). Bugenhagen, Luther’s closest spiritual colleague, laboured
zealously to sweep the churches clean of “every vestige of Popish
superstition and idolatry.” Only the collegiate churches of St.
Blasius and St. Cyriacus, and the monastery of St. Egidius, of which
Duke Henry of Brunswick was patron, remained intact.[771]
The wildest outbreak of iconoclasm took place in 1542 in the Duchy of
Brunswick, when the Elector Johann Frederick of Saxony and Landgrave
Philip of Hesse occupied the country and proceeded to extirpate the
Catholic worship still prevalent there. Within a short while over four
hundred churches had been plundered, altars, tabernacles, pictures and
sculptures being destroyed in countless numbers.[772]
During this so-called “Evangelical War” five thousand burghers and
mercenaries of the town of Brunswick, shouting their war-cry: “The
Word of God remaineth for ever,” set out, on July 21, 1542, against
the monastery of Riddaghausen; there they broke down the altars,
images and organs, carried off the monstrances, mass vestments and
other treasures of the church, plundering generally and perpetrating
the worst abominations. The mob also broke in pieces the images
and pictures in the monastery of Steterburg and then demolished
the building. Nor did the abbey of Gandersheim fare much better.
The prebendaries there complained to the Emperor, that all the
crucifixes and images of the Saints had been destroyed together with
other objects set up for the adornment of the church and churchyard
outside.[773]
The Lutheran preacher, K. Reinholdt, looking back two decades later on
the devastation wrought in Germany, reminded his hearers that Luther
himself had repeatedly preached that, “it would be better that all
churches and abbeys in the world were torn down and burnt to ashes,
that it would be less sinful, even if done from criminal motives,
than that a single soul should be led astray into Popish error and be
ruined”; “if they would not accept his teaching, then, so Luther the
man of God had exclaimed, he would wish not merely that his doctrine
might be the cause of the destruction of Popish churches and convents,
but that they were already lying in a heap of ashes.”[774]
At Hamburg iconoclastic disturbances began in Dec., 1528. The
Cistercian convent, Harvestehude, where the clergy still dare to say
Mass, was rased to the ground.[775]
At Zerbst, in 1524, images and church fittings were destroyed,
part of these being used to “keep up the fire for the brewing of
the beer”;[776] stone sculptures were mutilated and then used in
the construction of the Zerbst Town-Hall, whence they were brought
to light at a much later date, when a portion of the building was
demolished. The statues, headless, indeed, but still gleaming
with gold and colours, gave, as a narrator of the find said, “an
insight into the horrors of the iconoclasm which had run riot in the
neighbouring churches.”[777]
The chronicler Oldecop describes how, at Hildesheim in 1548, the
heads of the stone statues of St. Peter and St. Paul which stood at
the door of the church of the Holy Rood were hewn off and replaced
by the heads of two corpses from the mortuary; they were then stoned
by the boys. The magistrates, indeed, fined the chief offender, but
only because forced to do so.[778] Hildesheim had been protestantised
in great part as early as 1524. At that time the mob plundered the
churches and monasteries, rifled the coffins of the dead in search of
treasure, destroyed the crucifixes and the images of the Saints, tore
down the side altars in most of the churches and carried off chalices,
monstrances and ornaments, and even the silver casket containing the
bones of St. Bernward.[779] From St. Martin’s, a church belonging
to the Franciscans, the magistrates, according to the inventory,
removed the following: sixteen gilt chalices and patens, eleven silver
chalices, one large monstrance with bells, one large gilt cross,
three silver crosses with stands, a silver statue of Our Lady four
feet in height, a silver censer, two silver ampullae, a silver-gilt
St. Lawrence gridiron, a big Pacifical from the best cope, all the
bangles from the chasubles, seventeen silver clasps from the copes,
“the jewellery belonging to our dear ladies the Virgin Catherine and
Mother Anne,” and, besides, ten altars and also a monument erected
to Brother Conrad, who was revered as a Saint, were destroyed; the
copper and lead from the tower was carried off together with a small
bell.[780]
When the Schmalkalden Leaguers began to take up arms for the Evangel
the Evangelical captain Schärtlin von Burtenbach, commander-in-chief
of the South-German towns, suddenly fell upon the town of Füssen on
July 9, 1546, abolished the Catholic worship and threw the “idols” out
of the churches. Before his departure he plundered all the churches
and clergy, and “set the peasants on to massacre the idols in their
churches”; the proceeds “from the chalices and silver plate he devoted
to the common expenses of the Estates.”
This was only the beginning of Schärtlin’s plundering. After joining
hands with the Würtemberg troops his raiding expeditions were carried
on on a still larger scale.[781]
During the Schmalkalden campaign the soldiers of Saxony and Hesse on
their retreat from the Oberland, acting at the behest of the Elector
of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse, carried off as booty all the
valuable plate belonging to the churches and monasteries. Chalices,
monstrances, Mass vestments and costly images, none of them were
spared. In Saxony similar outrages were perpetrated.
In Jan., 1547, the Elector caused all the chalices, monstrances,
episcopal crosses and other valuables that still remained at Halle
and either were the property of the Archbishop of Magdeburg, Johann
Albert, or had been presented to the place by him, to be brought to
Eisleben and either sold or coined. The Elector’s men-at-arms and the
mob destroyed the pictures and statues in the Dominican and Franciscan
friaries. When, shortly after this, Merseburg, as well as Magdeburg
and Halberstadt, was occupied by the Saxon troops, the leaders robbed
the Cathedral church (of Merseburg) of its oldest and most valuable
art treasures, amongst which was the golden table which the Emperor
Henry II had presented to it.[782]
Magdeburg was the rallying-place of Lutheran zealots, such as Flacius
Illyricus, and was even called the “chancery of God and His Christ,”
by Aquila in a letter to Duke Albert of Prussia;[783] before it was
besieged in the Emperor’s name by Maurice of Saxony and was yet under
the rule of a Council banned by the Empire, it passed through a
period of wild outrage directed against the Catholic churches and
convents, both within and outside the walls. The appeal addressed by
the cathedral Chapter on Aug. 15, 1550, to the Estates of the Empire
assembled at Augsburg gives the details.[784] The town, “for the
protection of the true Christian religion and holy Evangel,” laid
violent hands on the rich property of the churches and cloisters, and
committed execrable atrocities against defenceless clerics. Bodies
were exhumed in the churches and cemeteries. Never, so the account
declares, would the Turks have acted with such barbarity. Even the
tomb of the Emperor Otto, the founder of the archdiocese, was, so the
Canons relate, “inhumanly and wantonly broken open and desecrated with
great uproar.”
Several thousand men set out from the town for the monastery of
Hamersleben, situated in the diocese of Halberstadt. They forced
their way into the church one Sunday during Divine service, wounded
or slaughtered the officiating priests, trampled under foot the
Sacred Host and ransacked church and monastery. Among the images and
works of art destroyed was some magnificent stained glass depicting
the Way of the Cross. No less than 150 waggons bore away the plunder
to Magdeburg, accompanied by the mob, who in mockery had decked
themselves out in the Mass vestments and habits of the monks.[785]
Hans, Margrave of Brandenburg-Küstrin, was one who had war against the
Catholic clergy much at heart. In a letter to the Elector Maurice he
spoke of the clergy as “priests of Baal and children of the devil.”
It was a proof of his Evangelical zeal, that, on July 15, 1551, he
ordered the church of St. Mary at Görlitz to be pillaged and destroyed
by Johann von Minckwitz. All the altars, images and carvings were
hacked to pieces, all the costly treasures stolen. Minckwitz had great
difficulty in rescuing the treasures from the hands of a drunken mob
of peasants who were helping in the work, and conveying them safely to
the Margrave at Küstrin.[786]
In the spring of 1552, when Maurice of Saxony levied a heavy fine on
the town of Nuremberg for having revolted against the Emperor, the
magistrates sought to indemnify themselves by taking nearly 900 lbs.
weight of gold and silver treasures out of the churches of Our Lady,
St. Lawrence and St. Sebaldus and ordering them to be melted down or
sold.[787]
In June and July, 1552, Margrave Albert of Brandenburg-Kulmbach laid
waste the country around Mayence with fire and sword to such an
extent, that the bishop of Würzburg, in order to raise the unheard-of
sums demanded, had, as we find it stated in a letter of Zasius to King
Ferdinand dated July 10, to lump together “all the gold and silver
plate in the churches, the jewels, reliquaries, monstrances, statues
and vessels of the sanctuary” and have them minted into thalers. “At
Neumünster one reliquary was melted down which alone was worth 1000
florins.”[788] The citizens of Würzburg were obliged to give up all
their household plate and the cathedral itself the silver statue of
St. Kilian, patron of the diocese.[789]
When the commanders and the troops of the Elector Maurice withdrew
from the Tyrol after the frustration of their undertaking owing to the
flight of the Emperor to Carinthia, all the sacred objects of value in
the Cistercian monastery of Stams in the valley of the upper Inn were
either broken to pieces or carried off. The soldiers broke open the
vault, where the earthly remains of the ruling Princes had rested for
centuries, dragged the corpses out of their coffins and stripped them
of their valuables.[790] The inventory of the treasures of art made
of precious metal and other substances which perished at Stams must
be classed with numerous other sad records of a similar nature dating
from that time.[791]
After the truce of Passau, Margrave Albert of Brandenburg, with the
help of France, turned his attention to Frankfurt, Mayence and Treves.
At Mayence, after making a vain demand for 100,000 gold florins from
the clergy, he gave orders to ransack the churches, and set on fire
the churches of St. Alban, St. Victor and Holy Cross, the Charterhouse
and the houses of the Canons. He boasted of this as a “right princely
firebrand we threw into the damned nest of parsons.” In Treves all
the collegiate churches and monasteries were “sacked down to the very
last farthing,” as an account relates; the monastery of St. Maximin,
the priory of St. Paul, the castle of Saarburg on the Saar, Pfalzel
and Echternach were given to the flames.[792] “Such proceedings were
incumbent on an honourable Prince who had the glory of God at heart
and was zealous for the spread of the Divine Gospel, which God the
Lord in our age has allowed to shine forth with such marvellous
light.” So Albert boasted to an envoy of the Archbishop of Mayence on
June 27, 1552, when laying waste Würzburg.[793]
“The archbishoprics of Treves and Mayence, the bishoprics of Spires,
Worms and Eichstätt are laid waste with pillage,” wrote Melchior von
Ossa the Saxon lawyer, “the stately edifices at Mayence, Treves and
other places, where lay the bones of so many pious martyrs of old, are
reduced to ashes.”[794] The complaints of a Protestant preacher who
had worked for a considerable time at Schwäbisch-Hall ring much the
same: “Our parents were willing to contribute towards the building
of churches and to the adornment of the temples of God.... But now
the churches have been pilfered so badly that they barely retain a
roof over them. Superb Mass vestments of silk and velvet with pearls
and corals were provided for the churches by our forefathers; these
have now been removed and serve the woman-folk as hoods and bodices;
indeed so poor have some of the churches become under the rule of the
Evangel, that it is impossible to provide the ministers of the Church
even with a beggarly surplice.”[795]
The wanton waste and destruction which took place in the domain of
art under Lutheran rule during the first fifty years of the religious
innovations, great as they were, do not by any means approach in
magnitude the losses caused elsewhere by Zwinglianism and Calvinism.
Yet two things in Lutheranism had a disastrous effect in checking the
revival of religious art, even when the first struggles for mastery
were over: first, there was the animosity against the Sacrifice of
the Mass and the perpetual eucharistic presence of Christ in the
tabernacle; this led people to view with distrust the old alliance
existing between the Eucharistic worship and the liberal arts for
exalting the dignity and beauty of the churches. After the Mass had
been abolished and the Sacrament had ceased to be reserved within the
sacred walls, respect for and interest in the house of God, which had
led to so much being lavished on it, began to wane. The other obstacle
lay in Luther’s negative attitude towards the ancient doctrine and
practice of good works. The belief in the meritoriousness of works
had in the past been a stimulus to pecuniary sacrifices and offerings
for the making of pious works of art. Now, however, artists began to
complain, that, owing to the decline of zeal for church matters their
orders were beginning to fall off, and that the makers of works of art
were being condemned to starvation.
In a protocol of the Council of Strasburg, dated Feb. 3, 1525, we read
in a petition from the artists: “Painters and sculptors beg, that,
whereas, through the Word of God their handicraft has died out they may
be provided with posts before other claimants.” The Council answered
that their appeal would “be borne in mind.”[796]
The verses of Hans Sachs of Nuremberg are well-known:
“Bell-founders and organists,
Gold-beaters and illuminists,
Hand-painters, carvers and goldsmiths,
Glass-painters, silk-workers, coppersmiths,
Stone-masons, carpenters and joiners,
’Gainst all these did Luther wield a sword.
From Thee we ask a verdict, Lord.”
In the poet’s industrious and artistic native town the decline must
have been particularly noticeable. According to the popular Lutheran
poet of Nuremberg the fault is with the complainants themselves, who,
“With scorn disdain
From greed of gain”
the Word of Christ. “They must cease worrying about worldly goods like
the heathen, but must seek the Kingdom of God with eagerness.”[797]
It is perfectly true that the words that Hans Sachs on this occasion
places in the mouth of the complainant are unfair to Luther:
“All church building and adorning he despises,
Treats with scorning,
He not wise is.”[798]
For in spite of his attacks on the veneration of images, on the
Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist and the meritoriousness of pious
foundations, Luther was, nevertheless, not so “unwise” as to despise
the “building and adorning” of the churches, where, after all, the
congregation must assemble for preaching, communion and prayer.[799]
That Luther was not devoid of a sense of the beautiful and of its
practical value in the service of religion is proved by his outspoken
love of music, particularly of church-music, his numerous poetic
efforts, no less than by that strongly developed appreciation of
well-turned periods, clearness and force of diction so well seen in his
translation of the Bible. His life’s struggle, however, led him along
paths which make it easy to understand how it is that he has so little
to say in his writings in commendation of the other liberal arts. It
also explains the baldness of his reminiscences of his visit to Italy
and the city of Rome; the young monk, immersed in his theology, was
even then pursuing quite other interests than those of art. It is true
Luther, once, in one of the rare passages in favour of ecclesiastical
art, speaking from his own point of view, says: “It is better to paint
on the wall how God created the world, how Noah made the ark and
such-like pious tales, than to paint worldly and shameless subjects;
would to God I could persuade the gentry and the rich to have the whole
Bible story painted on their houses, inside and out, for everyone’s
eye to see; that would be a good Christian work.”[800] Manifestly he
did not intend his words to be taken too literally in the case of
dwelling-houses. A fighter such as Luther was scarcely the right man to
give any real stimulus in the domain of art. The heat of his religious
polemics scorched up in his soul any good dispositions of this sort
which may once have existed, and blighted in its very beginnings the
growth of any real feeling for art among his zealous followers. Hardly
a single passage can be found in which he expresses any sense of
satisfaction in the products of the artist.
It is generally admitted that in the 16th century German art suffered
a severe set-back. For this the bitter controversies which for the
while transformed Germany into a hideous battlefield were largely
responsible; for such a soil could not but prove unfavourable for
the arts and crafts. The very artists themselves were compelled to
prostitute their talents in ignoble warfare. We need only call to mind
the work of the two painters Cranach, the Elder and the Younger, and
the horrid flood of caricatures and base vilifications cast both in
poetry and in prose. “The rock on which art suffered shipwreck was not,
as a recent art-writer says, the fact that ‘German art was too early
severed from its bond with the Church,’ but that, with regard to its
subject-matter and its methods of expression, it was forced into false
service by the intellectual and religious leaders.”[801]
CHAPTER XXXI
LUTHER IN HIS DISMAL MOODS, HIS SUPERSTITION AND DELUSIONS
1. His Persistent Depression in Later Years Persecution Mania and
Morbid Fancies
AMONG the various causes of the profound ill-humour and despondency,
which more and more overshadowed Luther’s soul during the last ten
years of his life, the principal without a doubt was his bitter
disappointment.
He was disappointed with what he himself calls the “pitiable spectacle”
presented by his Church no less than with the firmness and stability
of the Papacy. Not only did the Papal Antichrist refuse to bow to the
new Evangel or to be overthrown “by the mere breath of Christ’s mouth,”
as Luther had confidently proclaimed would be the case, but, in the
evening of his days, it was actually growing in strength, its members
standing shoulder to shoulder ready at last to seek inward reform by
means of a General Council.
The melancholy to which he had been subject in earlier years had
been due to other thoughts which not seldom pressed upon him, to his
uncertainty and fear of having to answer before the Judge. In his old
age such fears diminished, and the voices which had formerly disquieted
him scarcely ever reached the threshold of his consciousness; by
dint of persistent effort he had hardened himself against such
“temptations.” The idea of his Divine call was ever in his mind,
though, alas, it proved only too often a blind guide incapable of
transforming his sense of discouragement into any confidence worthy of
the name. At times this idea flickers up more brightly than usual; when
this happens his weariness seems entirely to disappear and makes room
for the frightful outbursts of bitterness, hate and anger of a soul at
odds both with itself and with the whole world.
Doubtless his state of health had a great deal to do with this,
for, in his feverish activity, he had become unmindful of certain
precautions. Lost in his exhausting literary labours and public
controversies his state of nervous excitement became at last unbearable.
The depression which is laying its hand on him manifests itself in
the hopeless, pessimistic tone of his complaints to his friends,
in his conviction of being persecuted by all, in his superstitious
interpretations of the Bible and the signs of the times, in his
expectation of the near end of all, and in his firm persuasion that the
devil bestrides and rules the world.
_His Depression and Pessimism_
Disgust with work and even with life itself, and an appalling unconcern
in the whole course of public affairs, are expressed in some of his
letters to his friends.
“I am old and worked out—‘old, cold and out of shape,’ as they
say—and yet cannot find any rest, so greatly am I tormented every day
with all manner of business and scribbling. I now know rather more of
the portents of the end of this world; that it is indeed on its last
legs is quite certain, with Satan raging so furiously and the world
becoming so utterly beastly. My only remaining consolation is that the
end cannot be far off. Now at last fewer false doctrines will spring
up, the world being weary and sick of the Word of God; for if they
take to living like Epicureans and to despising the Word, who will
then have any hankering after heresies?... Let us pray ‘Thy will be
done,’ and leave everything to take its course, to fall or stand or
perish; let things go their own way if otherwise they will not go.”
“Germany,” he says, “has had its day and will never again be what it
once was”; divided against itself it must, so he fancies, succumb to
the devil’s army embodied in the Turks. This to Jakob Probst, the
Bremen preacher.[802] Not long after he wrote to the same: “Germany
is full of scorners of the Word.... Our sins weigh heavily upon us as
you know, but it is useless for us to grumble. Let things take their
course, seeing they are going thus.”[803]
To Amsdorf he says in a letter that he would gladly die. “The world is
a dreadful Sodom.” “And, moreover, it will grow still worse.” “Could
I but pass away with such a faith, such peace, such a falling asleep
in the Lord as my daughter [who had just died]!”[804] Similarly, in
another letter to Amsdorf we read: “Before the flood the world was as
Germany now is before her downfall. Since they refuse to listen they
must be taught by experience. It will cry out with Jeremias [li. 9]:
‘We would have cured Babylon, but she is not healed; let us forsake
her.’ God is indeed our salvation, and to all eternity will He shield
us.”[805]
“We will rejoice in our tribulation,” so he encourages his former
guest Cordatus, “and leave things to go their way; it is enough that
we, and you too, should cause the sun of our teaching to rise all
cloudless over the wicked world, after the example of God our Father,
Who makes His sun to shine on the just and the unjust. The sun of our
doctrine is His; what wonder then if people hate us.” “Thus we can
see,” so he concludes, that “outwardly we live in the kingdom of the
devil.”[806]
Plunged in such melancholy he is determined, without trusting in
human help, so he writes to his friend Jonas, “to leave the guidance
of all things to Christ alone”; of all active work he was too weary;
everything was “full of deception and hypocrisy, particularly amongst
the powerful”; to sigh and pray was the best thing to do; “let us put
out of our heads any thought and plans for helping matters, for all is
alike useless and deceitful, as experience shows.”[807]
Christ had taken on Himself the quieting of consciences, hence, with
all the more confidence, “might they entrust to Him the outcome of
the struggle between the true Church and the powers of Satan.” “True,
Christ seems at times,” he writes to his friend Johann August, “to
be weaker than Satan; but His strength will be made perfect in our
weakness (2 Cor. xii. 9), His wisdom is exalted in our foolishness,
His goodness is glorified in our sins and misdeeds in accordance with
His wonderful and inscrutable ways. May He strengthen you and us, and
conform us to His likeness for the honour of His mercy.”[808]
During such a period of depression his fears are redoubled when he
hears of the atrocities perpetrated by the Turks at Stuhlweissenburg;
the following is his interpretation of the event: “Satan has noticed
the approach of the Judgment Day and shows his fear. What may be his
designs on us? He rages because his time is now short. May God help
us manfully to laugh at all his fury!” He laments with grim irony the
greed for gain and the treachery of the great. “Devour everything
in the devil’s name,” he cries to them, “Hell will glut you,” and
continues: “Come, Lord Jesus, come, hearken to the sighing of Thy
Church, hasten Thy coming; wickedness is reaching its utmost limit;
soon it must come to a head, Amen.”
Even this did not suffice and Luther again adds: “I have written the
above because it seems better than nothing. Farewell, and teach the
Church to pray for the Day of the Lord; for there is no hope of a
better time coming. God will listen only when we implore the quick
advent of our redemption, in which all the portents agree.”[809]
The outpourings of bitterness and disgust with life, which Antony
Lauterbach noted while a guest at Luther’s table in 1538, find a still
stronger echo in the Table-Talk collected by Mathesius in the years
subsequent to 1540.
In Lauterbach’s Notes he still speaks of his inner struggles with the
devil, i.e. with his conscience; this was no longer the case when
Mathesius knew him: “We are plagued and troubled by the devil, whose
bones are very tough until we learn to crack them. Paul and Christ had
enough to do with the devil. I, too, have my daily combats.”[810] He
had learnt how hard it was “when mental temptations come upon us and
we say, ‘Accursed be the day I was born’”; rather would he endure the
worst bodily pains during which at least one could still say, “Blessed
be the Name of the Lord.”[811] The passages in question will be quoted
at greater length below.
But according to Lauterbach’s Notes of his sayings he was also very
bitter about the general state of things: “It is the world’s way to
think of nothing but of money,” he says, for instance, “as though on
it hung soul and body. God and our neighbour are despised and people
serve Mammon. Only look at our times; see how full all the great ones,
the burghers too, and the peasants, are with avarice and how they
stamp upon religion.... Horrible times will come, worse even than
befell Sodom and Gomorrha!”[812]—“All sins,” he complains, “rage
mightily, as we see to-day, because the world of a sudden has grown so
wanton and calls down God’s wrath upon its head.” In these words he
was bewailing, as Lauterbach relates, the “impending misfortunes of
Germany.”[813]—“The Church to-day is more tattered than any beggar’s
cloak.”[814] “The world is made up of nothing but contempt, blasphemy,
disobedience, adultery, pride and thieving; it is now in prime
condition for the slaughter-house. And Satan gives us no rest, what
with Turk, Pope and fanatics.”[815]
“Who would have started preaching,” he says in the same year,
oppressed by such experiences, “had he known beforehand that such
misfortune, fanatism, scandal, blasphemy, ingratitude and wickedness
would be the sequel?”[816] To live any longer he had not the slightest
wish now that no peace was to be hoped for from the fanatics.[817] He
even wished his wife and children to follow him to the grave without
delay because of the evil times to come soon after.[818]
* * * * *
In the conversations taken down by Mathesius in the ‘forties Luther’s
weariness of life finds even stronger expression, nor are the words
in which he describes it of the choicest: “I have had enough of the
world and it, too, has had enough of me; with this I am well content.
It fancies that, were it only rid of me, all would be well....” As I
have often repeated: “I am the ripe shard and the world is the gaping
anus, hence the parting will be a happy one.”[819] “As I have often
repeated”; the repulsive comparison had indeed become a favourite
one with him in his exasperation. Other sayings in the Table-Talk
contain unmistakable allusions to the bodily excretions as a term
of comparison to Luther’s so ardently desired departure from this
world.[820] The same coarse simile is met in his letters dating from
this time.[821]
The reason of his readiness to depart, viz. the world’s hatred for
his person, he elsewhere depicts as follows; the politicians who were
against him, particularly those at the Dresden court, are “Swine,”
deserving of “hell-fire”; let them at least leave in peace our
Master, the Son of God, and the Kingdom of Heaven also; with a quiet
conscience we look upon them as abandoned bondsmen of the devil, whose
oaths though sworn to a hundred times over are not the least worthy of
belief; “we must scorn the devil in these devils and sons of devils,
yea, in this seed of the serpent.”[822]
“The gruff, boorish Saxon,”[823] as Luther calls himself, here comes
to the fore. He seeks, however, to refrain from dwelling unduly on
the growing lack of appreciation shown for his authority; he was even
ready, so he said, “gladly to nail to the Cross those blasphemers and
Satan with them.”[824]
“I thank Thee, my good God,” he once said in the winter 1542-43 to
Mathesius and the other people at table, “for letting me be one of
the little flock that suffers persecution for Thy Word’s sake; for
they do not persecute me for adultery or usury, as I well know.”[825]
According to the testimony of Mathesius he also said: “The Courts
are full of Eceboli and folk who change with the weather. If only a
real sovereign like Constantine came to his Court [the Elector’s]
we should soon see who would kiss the Pope’s feet.” “Many remain
good Evangelicals because there are still chalices, monstrances and
cloistral lands to be taken.”[826] That a large number, not only of
the high officials, but even of the “gentry and yokels,” were “tired”
of him is clear from statements made by him as early as 1530. Wishing
then to visit his father who lay sick, he was dissuaded by his friends
from undertaking the journey on account of the hostility of the
country people towards his person: “I am compelled to believe,” so he
wrote to the sick man, “that I ought not to tempt God by venturing
into danger, for you know how both gentry and yokels feel towards
me.”[827] “Amongst the charges that helped to lessen his popularity
was his supposed complicity in the Peasant War and in the rise of the
Sacramentarians.”[828]
“Would that I and all my children were dead,” so he repeats, according
to Mathesius,[829] “_Satur sum huius vitae_”; it was well for the
young, that, in their thoughtlessness and inexperience, they failed to
see the mischief of all the scandals rampant, for else “they would not
be able to go on living.”[830]—“The world cannot last much longer.
Amongst us there is the utmost ingratitude and contempt for the Word,
whilst amongst the Papists there is nothing but blood and blasphemy.
This will soon knock the bottom out of the cask.”[831] There would be
no lack of other passages to the same effect to quote from Mathesius.
_Some of the Grounds for His Lowness of Spirits_
Luther is so communicative that it is easy enough to fix on the various
reasons for his depression, which indeed he himself assigns.
To Melanchthon Luther wrote: “The enmity of Satan is too Satanic
for him not to be plotting something for our undoing. He feels that
we are attacking him in a vital spot with the eternal truth.”[832]
Here it is his gloomy forebodings concerning the outcome of the
religious negotiations, particularly those of Worms, which lead him
so to write. The course of public events threw fresh fuel on the
flame of his anger. “I have given up all hope in this colloquy....
Our theological gainstanders,” so he says, “are possessed of Satan,
however much they may disguise themselves in majesty and as angels of
light.”[833]—Then there was the terrifying onward march of the Turks:
“O raging fury, full of all manner of devils.” Such is his excitement
that he suspects the Christian hosts of “the most fatal and terrible
treachery.”[834]
The devil, however, also lies in wait even for his friends to
estrange them from him by delusions and distresses of conscience;
this knowledge wrings from him the admonition: “Away with the sadness
of the devil, to whom Christ sends His curse, who seeks to make out
Christ as the judge, whereas He is rather the consoler.”[835] Satan
just then was bent on worrying him through the agency of the Swiss
Zwinglians: “I have already condemned and now condemn anew these
fanatics and puffed-up idlers.” Now they refuse to admit my victories
against the Pope, and actually claim that it was all their doing.
“Thus does one man toil only for another to reap the harvest.”[836]
These satellites of Satan who work against him and against all
Christendom are hell’s own resource for embittering his old age.
Then again the dreadful state of morals, particularly at Wittenberg,
under his very eyes, makes his anger burst forth again and again;
even in his letter of congratulation to Justus Jonas on the latter’s
second marriage he finds opportunity to have a dig at the easy-going
Wittenberg magistrates: “There might be ten trulls here infecting
no end of students with the French disease and yet no one would
lift a finger; when half the town commits adultery, no one sits
in judgment.... The world is indeed a vexatious thing.” The civic
authorities, according to him, were but a “plaything in the devil’s
hand.”
At other times his ill-humour vents itself on the Jews, the lawyers,
or those German Protestant Reformers who had the audacity to hold
opinions at variance with his. Carlstadt, with his “monstrous
assertions”[837] against Luther, still poisons the air even when
Luther has the consolation of knowing, that, on Carlstadt’s death (in
1541), he had been fetched away by the “devil.” Carlstadt’s horrid
doctrines tread Christ under foot, just as Schwenckfeld’s fanaticism
is the unmaking of the Churches.
Then again there are demagogues within the fold who say: “I am your
Pope, what care I for Dr. Martin?” These, according to him, are in
almost as bad case as the others. Thus, “during our lifetime, this
is the way the world rewards us, for and on this account and behalf!
And yet we are expected to pray and heed lest the Turk slay such
Christians as these who really are worse than the Turks themselves!
As though it would not be better, if the yoke of the Turk must indeed
come upon us, to serve the Turkish foeman and stranger rather than the
Turks in our own circle and household. God will laugh at them when
they cry to Him in the day of their distress, because they mocked
at Him by their sins and refused to hearken to Him when He spoke,
implored, exhorted, and did everything, stood and suffered everything,
when His heart was troubled on their account, when He called them
by His holy prophets, and even rose up early on their account (Jer.
vii. 13; xi. 7).”[838] But such is their way; they know that it is God
Whose Word we preach and yet they say: “We shan’t listen. In short,
the wildest of wild furies have broken into them,” etc.[839]
Thus was he wont to rave when “excited,” though not until, so at least
he assures us, having first “by dint of much striving put down his
anger, his thoughts and his temptations.” “Blessed be the Lord Who has
spoken to me, comforting me: ‘Why callest thou? Let things go their
own way.’” It grieves him, so he tells us, to see the country he loves
going to rack and ruin; Germany is his fatherland, and, before his
very eyes, it is hastening to destruction. “But God’s ways are just,
we may not resist them. May God have mercy on us for no one believes
us.” Even the doctrine of letting things go their own way—to which
in his pessimism Luther grew attached in later life—he was firmly
convinced had come to him directly from the Lord, Who had “consolingly”
whispered to him these words. Even this saying reeks of his peculiar
pseudo-mysticism.
All the above outbursts are, however, put into the shade by the
utter ferocity of his ravings against Popery. Painful indeed are the
effects of his gloomy frame of mind on his attitude towards Rome. The
battle-cries, which, in one of his last works, viz. his “Wider das
Babstum vom Teuffel gestifft,” Luther hurls against the Church, which
had once nourished him at her bosom, form one of the saddest instances
of human aberration.
Yet, speaking of this work, the author assures a friend that, “in this
angry book I have done justice neither to myself nor to the greatness
of my anger; but I am quite aware that this I shall never be able
to do.”[840] “For no tongue can tell,” so he says, “the appalling
and frightful enormities of the Papal abomination, its substance,
quantity, quality, predicaments, predicables, categories, its species,
properties, differences and accidents.”[841]
The more distorted and monstrous his charges, the more they seem to
have pleased him when in this temper.
In a morbid way he now heaps together his wonted hyperboles to such
an extent, that, at times, it becomes very tiresome to read his
writings and letters; no hateful image or suspicion seems to him
sufficiently bad. “Though God Himself were to offer me Paradise for
living another forty years, I should prefer to hire an executioner to
chop off my head, for the world is so wicked; they are all becoming
rank devils.”[842] He compares his own times to those which went
before the Flood; the “rain of filth will soon begin”; he goes on to
say that he no longer understands his own times and finds himself as
it were in a strange world; “either I have never seen the world, or,
while I am asleep, a new world is born daily; not one but fancies
he is suffering injustice, and not one but is convinced he does no
injustice.”[843] With a strange note of contempt he says: “Let the
world be upset, kicked over and thrust aside, seeing it not only
rejects and persecutes God’s Word, but rages even against sound common
sense.... Even the seven devils of Cologne, who sit in the highest
temple, and who, like some of the council, still withstand us, will
God overthrow, Who breaks down the cedars of Lebanon. On account of
this [the actual and hoped-for successes at Cologne] we will rejoice
in the Lord, because by His Word He does such great things before our
very eyes.”[844]
Here, as elsewhere too, in spite of all his ill-humour, the progress
of his Evangel inspires him with hope. Nor is his dark mood entirely
unbroken, for, from time to time, his love of a joke gets the better
of it. His chief consolation was, however, his self-imposed conviction
that his teaching was the true one.
A certain playfulness is apparent in many of his letters, for instance,
in those to Jonas, one of his most intimate of friends: “Here is a
conundrum,” writes Luther to him, “which my guests ask me to put to
you. Does God, the wise administrator, annually bestow on the children
of men more wine or more milk? I think more milk; but do you give
your answer. And a second question: Would a barrel that reached from
Wittenberg to Kemberg be large and ample enough to hold all the wine
that our unwise, silly, foolish God wastes and throws away on the most
ungrateful of His children, setting it before Henries and Alberts, the
Pope and the Turk, all of them men who crucify His Son, whereas before
His own children He sets nothing but water? You see that, though I
am not much better than a corpse, I still love to chat and jest with
you.”[845]
In the Table-Talk, recently published by Kroker from the notes
taken by Mathesius in the last years of Luther’s life, the latter’s
irrepressible and saving tendency to jest is very apparent; his humour
here is also more spontaneous than in his letters, with the possible
exception of some of those he wrote to Catherine Bora.[846]
_Suspicion and Mania of Persecution_
A growing inclination to distrust, to seeing enemies everywhere and to
indulging in fearsome, superstitious fancies, stamps with a peculiar
impress his prevailing frame of mind.
His vivid imagination even led him, in April, 1544, to speak of “a
league entered into between the Turks and the most holy, or rather most
silly, Pope”; this was undoubtedly one of the “great signs” foretold by
Christ; “these signs are here in truth and are truly great.”[847] “The
Pope would rather adore the Turk,” he exclaims later, “nay, even Satan
himself, than allow himself to be put in order and reformed by God’s
Word”; he even finds this confirmed in a new “Bull or Brief.”[848]
He has heard of the peace negotiations with the Turks on the part of
the Pope and the Emperor, and of the neutrality of Paul III towards
the Turcophil King of France; he is horrified to see in spirit an
embassy of peace, “loaded with costly presents and clad in Turkish
garments,” wending its way to Constantinople, “there to worship the
Turk.” Such was the present policy of the Roman Satan, who formerly
had used indulgences, annates and countless other forms of robbery
to curtail the Turkish power. “Out upon these Christians, out upon
these hellish idols of the devil!”[849]—The truth is that, whereas
the Christian States winced at the difficulties or sought for delay,
Pope Paul III, faithful to the traditional policy of the Holy See,
insisted that it was necessary to oppose by every possible means the
Turk who was the Church’s foe and threatened Europe with ruin. The only
ground that Luther can have had for his suspicions will have been the
better relations then existing between the Pope and France which led
the Turkish fleet to spare the Papal territory on the occasion of its
demonstration at the mouth of the Tiber.[850]
But Luther was convinced that the Pope had no dearer hope than to
thwart Germany, and the Protesters in particular. It was the Pope and
the Papists whom he accused to Duke Albert of Prussia of being behind
the Court of Brunswick and of hiring, at a high price, the services of
assassins and incendiaries. To Wenceslaus Link he says, that it will
be the priests’ own fault if the saying “To death with the priests” is
carried into practice;[851] to Melanchthon he also writes: “I verily
believe that all the priests are bent on being killed, even against our
wish.”[852]—It was the Papists sure enough, who introduced the maid
Rosina into his house, in order that she might bring it into disrepute
by her immoral life;[853] they had also sent men to murder him, from
whom, however, God had preserved him;[854] they had likewise tried to
poison him, but all to no purpose.[855] We may recall how he had said:
“I believe that my pulpit-chair and cushion were frequently poisoned,
yet God preserved me.”[856] “Many attempts, as I believe, have been
made to poison me.”[857]
He had even once declared that poisoning was a regular business with
Satan: “He can bring death by means of a leaflet from off a tree; he
has more poison phials and kinds of death at his beck and call than
all the apothecaries in all the world; if one poison doesn’t work he
uses another.”[858] He had long been convinced that the devil was
able to carry through the air those who made themselves over to him;
“we must not call in the devil, for he comes often enough uncalled,
and loves to be by us, hardened foe of ours though he be.... He is
indeed a great and mighty enemy.”[859] Towards the end of his life, in
1541, it came to his ears that the devil was more than usually busy
with his poisons: “At Jena and elsewhere,” so he warns Melanchthon,
“the devil has let loose his poisoners. It is a wonder to me why
the great, knowing the fury of Satan, are not more watchful. Here
it is impossible any longer to buy or to use anything with safety.”
Melanchthon was therefore to be careful when invited out; at Erfurt
the spices and aromatic drugs on sale in the shops had been found
to be mixed with poison; at Altenburg as many as twelve people had
died from poison taken in a single meal. Anxious as he was about his
friend, his trust was nevertheless unshaken in the protection of God
and the angels. I myself am still in the hands of my Moses (Katey), he
adds, “suffering from a filthy discharge from my ear and meditating in
turn on life and on death. God’s Will be done. Amen. May you be happy
in the Lord now and for ever.”[860]
“A new art of killing us,” so he tells Melanchthon in the same year,
had been invented by Satan, viz. of mixing poison with our wine and
milk; at Jena twelve persons were said to have died of poisoned wine,
“though more likely of too much drink”; at Magdeburg and Nordhausen,
however, milk had been found in the possession of the sellers that
seemed to have been poisoned. “At any rate, all things lie under
Christ’s feet, and we shall suffer so long and as much as He pleases.
For the nonce we are supreme and they [the Papist ‘monsters’] are
hurrying to destruction.... So long as the Lord of Heaven is at the
helm we are safe, live and reign and have our foes under our feet.
Amen.” Casting all fear to the winds he goes on to comfort Melanchthon
and his faint-hearted comrades in the tone of the mystic: “Fear
not; you are angels, nay, great angels or archangels, working, not
for us but for the Church, nay, for God, Whose cause it is that you
uphold, as even the very gates of hell must admit; these, though they
may indeed block our way, cannot overcome us, because at the very
beginning of the world the hostile, snarling dragon was overthrown by
the Lion of the tribe of Juda.”[861]
The hostility of the Papists to Lutheranism, had, so Luther thought,
been manifestly punished by Heaven in the defeat of Henry of Brunswick;
it had “already been foretold in the prophecies pronounced against
him,” which had forecasted his destruction as the “son of perdition”;
he was a “warning example set up by God for the tyrants of our days”;
for every contemner of the Word is “plainly a tyrant.”[862]
Luther was very suspicious of Melanchthon, Bucer and others who leaned
towards the Zwinglian doctrine on the Supper. So much had Magister
Philippus, his one-time right-hand man, to feel his displeasure and
irritability that the latter bewails his lot of having to dwell as
it were “in the very den of the Cyclopes” and with a real “tyrant.”
“There is much in one’s intercourse with Luther,” so Cruciger said
confidentially, in 1545, in a letter to Veit Dietrich, “that repels
those who have a will of their own and attach some importance to their
own judgment; if only he would not, through listening to the gossip of
outsiders, take fire so quickly, chiding those who are blameless and
breaking out into fits of temper; this, often enough, does harm even in
matters of great moment.”[863] Luther himself was by no means unwilling
to admit his faults in this direction and endeavoured to make up for
them by occasionally praising his fellow-workers in fulsome terms; Yet
so deep-seated was his suspicion of Melanchthon’s orthodoxy, that he
even thought for a while of embodying his doctrine on the Sacrament in
a formulary, which should condemn all his opponents and which all his
friends, particularly those whom he had reason to mistrust, should be
compelled to sign. This, according to Bucer, would have involved the
departure of Melanchthon into exile. Bucer expressed his indignation at
this projected “abominable condemnation” and at the treatment meted out
to Melanchthon by Luther.[864]
Bucer himself was several times the object of Luther’s wrath, for
instance, for his part in the “Cologne Book of Reform”: “It is nothing
but a lot of twaddle in which I clearly detect the influence of that
chatterbox Bucer.”[865] When Jakob Schenk arrived at Wittenberg after a
long absence Luther was so angry with him for not sharing his views as
to refuse to receive him when he called; he did the same in the case
of Agricola, in spite of the fact that the latter brought a letter of
recommendation from the Margrave of Brandenburg; in one of his letters
calls him: “the worst of hypocrites, an impenitent man!”[866] From
such a monster, so he said, he would take nothing but a sentence of
condemnation. As for his former friend Schenk, he ironically offers
him to Bishop Amsdorf as a helper in the ministry. On both of them he
persisted in bestowing his old favourite nicknames, Jeckel and Grickel
(Jakob and Agricola).
_Luther’s Single-handed Struggle with the Powers of Evil_
Owing to the theological opinions reached by some of his one-time
friends Luther, as may well be understood, began to be oppressed by a
feeling of lonesomeness.
The devil, whom he at least suspected of being the cause of his bodily
pains,[867] is now backing the Popish teachers, and making him to be
slighted. But, by so doing, thanks to Luther’s perseverance and bold
defiance, he will only succeed in magnifying Christ the more.
“He hopes to get the better of us or to make us downhearted. But,
as the Germans say, _cacabimus in os eius_. Willy-nilly, he shall
suffer until his head is crushed, much as he may, with horrible
gnashing of teeth, threaten to devour us. We preach the Seed of the
woman; Him do we confess and to Him would we assign the first place,
wherefore He is with us.”[868] In his painful loneliness he praises
“the heavenly Father Who has hidden these things [Luther’s views on
religion] from the wise and prudent and has revealed them to babes and
little ones who cannot talk, let alone preach, and are neither clever
nor learned.”[869] This he says in a sermon. The clever doctors, he
adds, “want to make God their pupil; everyone is anxious to be His
schoolmaster and tutor. And so it has ever been among the heretics....
In the Christian churches one bishop nags at the other, and each
pastor snaps at his neighbour.... These are the real wiselings of whom
Christ speaks who know a lot about horses’ bowels, but who do not
keep to the road which God Himself has traced for us, but must always
go their own little way.” Indeed it is the fate of “everything that
God has instituted to be perverted by the devil,” by “saucy folk and
clever people.” “The devil has indeed smeared us well over with fools.
But they are accounted wise and prudent simply because they rule and
hold office in the Churches.”[870]
Let us leave them alone then and turn our backs on them, no matter
how few we be, for “God will not bear in His Christian Churches men
who twist His Divine Word, even though they be called Pope, Emperor,
Kings, Princes or Doctors.... We ourselves have had much to do with
such wiselings, who have taken it upon themselves to bring about unity
or reform.”[871] “They fancy that because they are in power they have
a deeper insight into Scripture than other people.”[872] “The devil
drives such men so that they seek their own praise and glory in Holy
Scripture.” But do you say: I will listen to a teacher “only so long
as he leads me to the Son of God,” the true master and preceptor, i.e.
in other words, so long as he teaches the truth.[873]
In his confusion of mind Luther does not perceive to what his proviso
“so long as” amounts. It was practically the same as committing the
decision concerning what was good for salvation to the hands of every
man, however ignorant or incapable of sound judgment. Luther’s real
criterion remained, however, his own opinion. “If anyone teaches
another Gospel,” he says in this very sermon,[874] “contrary to that
which we have proclaimed to you, let him be anathema” (cp. Gal. i.
8). The reason why people will not listen to him is, as he here tells
them, because, by means of the filth of his arch-knaves and liars,
“the devil in the world misleads and fools all.”
Luther was convinced that he was the “last trump,” which was to herald
in the destruction, not only of Satan and the Papacy, but also of the
world itself. “We are weak and but indifferent trumpeters, but, to the
assembly of the heavenly spirits, ours is a mighty call.” “They will
obey us and our trump, and the end of the world will follow. Amen.”[875]
Meanwhile, however, he notes with many misgivings the manifestations of
the evil one. He even intended to collect in book form the instances
of such awe-inspiring portents (“_satanæ portenta_”) and to have them
printed.
For this purpose he begged Jonas to send him once more a detailed
account of the case of a certain Frau Rauchhaupt, which would have
come under this category; he tells his friend that the object of his
new book is to “startle” the people who lull themselves in such a
state of false security that not only do they scorn the wholesome
marvels of the Gospel with which we are daily overwhelmed, but
actually make light of the real “furies of furies” of the wickedness
of the world; they must read such marvellous stories, for “they
are too prone to believe neither in the goodness of God nor in the
wickedness of the devil, and too set on becoming, as indeed they are
already, just bellies and nothing more.”[876]—Thus, when Lauterbach
told him of three suicides who had ended their lives with the halter,
he at once insisted that it was really Satan who had strung them up
while making them to think that it was they themselves who committed
the crime. “The Prince of this world is everywhere at work.” “God,
in permitting such crimes, is causing the wrath of heaven to play
over the world like summer lightning, that ungrateful men, who fling
the Gospel to the winds, may see what is in store for them.” “Such
happenings must be brought to the people’s knowledge so that they may
learn to fear God.”[877] Happily the book that was to have contained
these tales of horror never saw the light; the author’s days were
numbered.
The outward signs, whether in the heavens or on the earth, “whereby
Satan seeks to deceive,” were now scrutinised by Luther more
superstitiously than ever.
Talking at table about a thunder-clap which had been heard in winter,
he quite agreed with Bugenhagen “that it was downright Satanic.”
“People,” he complains, “pay no heed to the portents of this kind
which occur without number.” Melanchthon had an experience of this
sort before the death of Franz von Sickingen. Others, whom Luther
mentions, saw wonderful signs in the heavens and armies at grips; the
year before the coming of the Evangel wonders were seen in the stars;
“these are in every instance lying portents of Satan; nothing certain
is foretold by them; during the last fifteen years there have been
many of them; the only thing certain is that we have to expect the
coming wrath of God.”[878] Years before, the signs in the heavens and
on the earth, for instance the flood promised for 1524, had seemed
to him to forebode the “world upheaval” which his Evangel would
bring.[879]
Luther shared to the full the superstition of his day. He did not
stand alone when he thus interpreted public events and everyday
occurrences. It was the fashion in those days for people, even in
Catholic circles, superstitiously to look out for portents and signs.
In 1537[880] Luther relates some far-fetched tales of this sort.
The most devoted servants of the devil are, according to him, the
sorcerers and witches of whom there are many.[881] In 1540 he related
to his guests how a schoolmaster had summoned the witches by means of
a horse’s head.[882] “Repeatedly,” so he told them in that same year,
“they did their best to harm me and my Katey, but God preserved us.”
On another occasion, after telling some dreadful tales of sorcery, he
adds: “The devil is a mighty spirit.” “Did not God and His dear angels
intervene, he would surely slay us with those thunder-clubs of his
which you call thunderbolts.”[883] In earlier days he had told them,
that, Dr. “Faust, who claimed the devil as his brother-in-law, had
declared that ‘if I, Martin Luther, had only shaken hands with him he
would have destroyed me’; but I would not have been afraid of him, but
would have shaken hands with him in God’s name and reckoning on God’s
protection.”[884]
According to him, most noteworthy of all were the diabolical deeds then
on the increase which portended a mighty revulsion and a catastrophe
in the world’s history. Everything, his laboured calculations on the
numbers in the biblical prophecies included, all point to this. Even
the appearance of a new kind of fox in 1545 seemed to him of such
importance that he submitted the case to an expert huntsman for an
opinion. He himself was unable to decide what it signified, “unless it
be that change in all things which we await and for which we pray.”[885]
The change to which he here and so often elsewhere refers is the end of
the world.
2. Luther’s Fanatical Expectation of the End of the World. His hopeless
Pessimism
The excitement with which Luther looks forward to the approaching end
of the world affords a curious psychological medley of joy and fear,
hope and defiance; his conviction reposed on a wrong reading of the
Bible, on a too high estimate of his own work, on his sad experience
of men and on his superstitious observance of certain events of the
outside world.
The fact that the end of all was nigh gradually became an absolute
certainty with him. In his latter days it grew into one of those ideas
around which, as around so many fixed stars, his other plans, fancies
and grounds for consolation revolve. To the depth of his conviction
his excessive credulity and that habit—which he shared with his
contemporaries—of reading things into natural events contributed not a
little.
A remarkable conjunction of the planets in 1524,[886] “other signs
which have been described elsewhere, such as earthquakes, pestilences,
famines and wars,” a predicted flood[887]—“all these signs
agree”[888] in announcing the great day; never have “more numerous
and greater signs” occurred during the whole course of the world’s
history to vouch for the forthcoming end of the world.[889] “All the
firmaments and courses of the heavens are declining and coming to an
end; the Elbe has stood for a whole year at the same low level, this
also is a portent.”[890] Such signs invite us to be watchful.[891]
Over and above all this we have the “many gruesome dreams of the Last
Judgment” with which he was plagued in later years.[892]
He describes to his friends quite confidently the manner of the coming
of the end such as he pictures it to himself: “Early one morning,
about the time of the spring equinox, a thick black cloud, three
lightning flashes and a thunder-clap, and, presto, everything will
lie in ruins,” etc. “I am ever awaiting the day.”[893] “Things may go
on for some years longer,”[894] perhaps for “five or six years,” but
no more, because “the wickedness of men has increased so dreadfully
within so short a time.”[895] “We shall live to see the day”; Aggeus
(ii. 7 f.) says: “Yet a little while and I will shake the heaven and
the earth”; look around you; “surely the State is being shaken ...
the household too, and even the very mob, item our own very sons and
daughters. The Church too totters.”[896]
“All the great wonders have already taken place; the Pope has been
unmasked; the world rages. Nor will things improve until the Last Day
comes. I hope, however, now that the Evangel is so greatly despised,
that the Last Day is no longer far distant, not more than a hundred
years off. God’s Word will again decline ... and the world will become
quite savage and epicurean.”[897]
_Reason and Ground of Luther’s Conviction of the near End of the World_
The actual origin and basis of this strange idea are plainly expressed
in the statement last quoted: “The Pope is unmasked” as Antichrist,
such was Luther’s starting-point. Further, “the Evangel is despised,”
by his own followers no less than by his foes; this depressing sight,
together with the sad outlook for religion generally, formed the ground
on which Luther’s conviction of the coming cataclysm grew, particularly
when the fall of the Papacy seemed to be unduly delayed, and its
strength to be even on the increase. The Bible texts which he twists
into his service are an outcome rather than the cause of his conviction
concerning Antichrist, while the “signs” in the heavens and on earth
also serve merely to confirm a persuasion derived from elsewhere.
The starting-point of the idea and the soil on which it grew deserve to
be considered separately.
Luther’s views on the unmasking of Antichrist and the approaching end
of the world carry us back to the early years of his career. Soon after
beginning his attack on the Church, he, over and over again, declared
that he had been called to reveal the Pope as Antichrist.[898] His
breach with the ecclesiastical past was so far-reaching that he could
not have expressed his position and indicated the full extent of his
aims better than by so radical an apocalyptic announcement. Nor did
it sound so entirely strange to the world. Even according to Wiclif
the Papal power was the power of “Antichrist” and the Roman Church the
“Synagogue of Satan”; John Hus likewise taught, that it was Antichrist
who, by means of the Papal penalties, was seeking to affright those who
were after “unmasking” him.
The idea of Antichrist in Luther’s mind embodied all the wickedness of
the Roman Church which it was his purpose to unmask, all the religious
perversion of which he wished to make an end, and, in a word, the
dominion of the devil against which he fancied he was to proclaim the
last and decisive combat. When, by dint of insisting in his writings,
over and over again, and in the most drastic of ways, on the Papal
Antichrist, the idea came to assume its definitive shape in his own
mind, his announcement of the end of the world could not be any longer
delayed; for, according to the generally accepted view, Antichrist
was directly to precede the coming of Christ to Judgment, or at least
the latter’s coming would not be long delayed after the revelation of
Antichrist in his true colours.[899] As a rule Antichrist was taken to
be a person; Luther, however, saw Antichrist in the Papacy as a whole.
Antichrist had had a long spell of life; the last Pope would, however,
soon fall, he, Luther, with Christ’s help, was preparing his overthrow,
then the end would come—such is the sum of Luther’s eschatological
statements during the first period of his career.
Speaking of the end of the world he often says, that the fall of
the Papacy involves it. “Assuredly,” he says, the end will shortly
follow on account of the manifest wickedness of the Pope and the
Papists. According to him, the Bible itself teaches that, “after the
downfall of the Pope and the deliverance of the poor, no one on earth
would ever again be a tyrant and inspire fear.” “This would not be
possible,” so Luther thinks, “were the world to go on after the fall
of the Pope, for the world cannot exist without tyrants. And thus the
Prophet agrees with the Apostle, viz. that Christ, when He comes,
will upset the Holy Roman Chair. God grant it may happen speedily.
Amen!”[900]
In his fantastic interpretation of the Monk-Calf he declares in a
similar way, that the near end of the world is certain in view of the
abominations of the sinking Papacy and its monkish system, which last
is symbolised in the wonderful calf: “My wish and hope are that it may
mean the Last Day, since many signs have so far coincided, and the
whole world is as it were in an uproar,”[901] the source of the whole
to-do being his triumphant contest with Antichrist. In the same way
his conviction of the magnitude and success of his mission against the
foe of Christ gives the key to his curious reading of Daniel and the
Epistle to the Thessalonians with regard to the time of Antichrist’s
advent and the end of the world, which we find set forth quite
seriously in his reply to Catharinus.[902] In short, “Antichrist will
be revealed whatever the world may do; after this Christ must come
with His Judgment Day.”[903]
When the Papacy, instead of collapsing, began to gather strength and
even proceeded to summon a Council, Luther did not cease foretelling
its fall; he predicts the end of the world in terms even stronger
than before, though the reason he assigns for his forebodings is more
and more the “contempt shown for the Word,” i.e. for his teaching and
exhortations. Disgust, disappointment and the gloomy outlook for the
future of his work are now his chief grounds for expecting the end of
all and for ardently hoping that the Day will soon dawn.... It is the
self-seeking and vice so prevalent in his own fold which wrings from
him the exclamation: “It must soon come to a head,”[904] for things
cannot long go on thus.
The last temptation which shall assail the faithful, he says, will
be “an undisciplined life”; then we shall “grow sick of the Word
and disgusted with it.” “Not even the Word of God will they endure;
... the Gospel which they [his own people] once confessed, they now
look upon as merely the word of man.” “Do you fancy you are out of
the world, or that Satan, the Prince of this world, has died or been
crucified in you?”[905] It is bitter experience that causes him to
say: “The day will dawn when Christ shall come to free us from sin and
death.”[906] “May the world go to rack and ruin and be utterly blotted
out,” “the world which has shown me such gratitude during my own
lifetime!”[907] “May the Lord call me away, for I have done, and seen,
and suffered enough evil.”[908] “Would that the Lord would put an end
to the great misery [that among us each one does as he pleases]! Oh
that the day of our deliverance would come!”[909] “The people have
waxed cold towards the Evangel.... May Christ mend all things and
hasten the Day of His Coming.”[910]
“It is a wonder to me what the world does to-day,” he said, alluding
to the turmoil in the newly acquired bishopric of Naumburg; he then
goes on to complain in the words already given (p. 233), that a new
world is growing up around him; no one will admit of having done
wrong, of having lied or sinned; those only who meet with injustice
are reputed unrighteous, liars and sinners. Verily it would soon rain
filth. “The day of our redemption draweth nigh. Amen.” “The world will
rage, but good-bye to it”![911]—“The world is indeed a contemptible
thing,” he groans, after describing the morals of Wittenberg.[912]
The conduct of the great ones at the Saxon Court led him to
surmise that “soon,” after but a few days, hell would be their
portion.[913] For those who infringe the rights of his Church he
has a similar sentence ready: “Hell will be your share. Come, Lord
Jesus, come, listen to the groaning of Thy people, and hasten Thy
coming!”—“Farewell and teach your people to pray for the day of the
Lord; for of better times there is no longer any hope.”[914]
“During our lifetime,” he laments in 1545, “and under our very eyes,
we see sects and dissensions arising, each one wishing to follow
his own fancy. In short, contempt for the Word on our own side and
blasphemy on the other seem to me to announce the times of which
John the Baptist spoke to the people, saying: ‘The axe is laid to
the root of the tree,’ etc. Accordingly, since the end at least of
this happy age is imminent, there seems no call to bother much about
setting up, or coming to an understanding regarding, those troublesome
ceremonies.”[915]
In fact, he is determined not “to bother much,” not merely about the
“ceremonies,” but about the whole question of Church organisation,
for of what use doing so when the signs of the general end of all are
increasing at such a rate? “To set up laws” is, according to him, quite
impracticable; let everything settle itself “according to the law of
God by means of the inspection.”[916]
“To Luther the end which Christ was about to put to this wicked world
seemed so near,” so we read in Köstlin-Kawerau’s biography,[917]
“that he never contemplated any progressive development and expansion
of Christendom and the Church, nor was he at all anxious about the
possible ups and downs which might accompany such development.... It is
just in his later years that we find him more firmly established than
ever in the belief, that the world will always remain the world and
that it must be left to the Lord to take what course He pleases with
it and with His Christendom, until the coming of the ‘longed-for Last
Day.’”
At any rate, since the sectarians in his own camp and the various
centrifugal forces inherent in his creation made impossible any real
organisation, he was all the more ready to welcome the thought of the
end of the world in that it distracted his mind from the sad state of
things.
On the top of the schisms and immorality of the people there was also
the avarice of those in high places, which roused his hatred and
contributed to make him sigh for the coming of the Day.
“They all rage against God and His Messias.” “This is the work of
those centaurs, the foes of the Church, kept in store for the latter
days. They are more insatiable than hell itself. But Christ, Who will
shortly come in His glory, will quiet them, not indeed with gold, but
with brimstone and flames of hell, and with the wrath of God.”[918]
It was his displeasure against some of the authorities which wrung
from him the words: “But the end is close at hand,” the end which will
also spell the end of “all this seizing—or rather thieving greed
for Church property—of the Princes, nobles and magistrates, hateful
and execrable that it is.”[919] Taking this in conjunction with the
attitude of the Catholic rulers he could say with greater confidence
than ever: “Nothing good is to be hoped for any more but this alone,
that the day of the glory of our great God and our Redeemer may
speedily break upon us.” “From so Satanic a world” he would fain be
“quickly snatched,” longing as he does for the Day and for the “end of
Satan’s raging.”[920]
_The End of the World in the Table-Talk_
In the above we have drawn on Luther’s letters. If we turn to his
Table-Talk, particularly to that dating from his later years, we find
that there, too, his frequent allusions to the approaching end of the
world are as a rule connected with his experience of the corruption in
his surroundings, especially at Wittenberg. The carelessness of the
young is sufficient to make him long for the Last Day, which alone
seemed to promise any help.
To Melanchthon, who, with much concern, had drawn his attention to the
lawlessness of the students, Luther poured out his soul, as we read in
Lauterbach’s Diary: As the students were growing daily wilder he hoped
that, “if God wills, the Last Day be not far off, the Day which shall
put an end to all things.”[921] “The ingratitude and profanity of the
world,” he also says, “makes me apprehend that this light [of the
Evangel] will not last long.” “The refinement of malice, thanklessness
and disrespect shown towards the Gospel now revealed” is so great
“that the Last Day cannot be far off.”[922]
In his Table-Talk, where Luther is naturally more communicative than
in his letters, we see even more plainly how deeply the idea of the
approaching Day of Judgment had sunk into his mind and under how
curious a shape it there abides. “Things will get so bad on this
earth,” he says, for instance, “that men will cry out everywhere:
O God, come with Thy Last Judgment.” He would not mind “eating the
agate Paternoster” (a string of beads he wore round his neck) if only
that would make the Day “come on the morrow.”[923] “The end is at the
door,” he continues, “the world is on the lees; if anyone wants to
begin something let him hurry up and make a start.”[924] “The next
day he again spoke much of the end of the world, having had many evil
dreams of the Last Judgment during the previous six months”; it was
imminent, for Scripture said so; the present hangs like a ripe apple
on the tree; the Roman Empire, “the last sweet-william” would also
soon tumble to the ground.[925]
In 1530 Luther was disposed to regard the Roman Empire under Charles
V with a rather more favourable eye. His impression then was that the
Empire, “under our Emperor Carol, is beginning to look up and becoming
more powerful than it was for many a year”; yet strange to say he knew
how to bring even this fact into connection with the Judgment Day; for
this strengthening of the Empire “seems to me,” so he goes on, “like a
sort of last effort; for when a light or wisp of straw has burnt down
and is about to go out it sends up a flame and seems just about to
flare up bravely when suddenly it dies out; this is what Christendom
is now doing thanks to the bright Evangel.”[926] Hence all he could
see was the last flicker both of the Empire and of the new teaching
before final extinction.
The noteworthy utterance about the last flicker of the Lutheran
Evangel occurs also in the Table-Talk collected by Mathesius dating
from the years 1542 and 1543. “I believe that the Last Day is not far
off. The reason is that we now see the last effort of the Evangel;
this resembles a light; when a light is about to expire it sends up
at the last a sudden flame as though it were going to burn for quite
a long while and thereupon goes out. And, though it appears now as
though the Evangel were about to be spread abroad, I fear it will
suddenly expire and the Last Day come. It is the same with a sick man;
when at the point of death he seems quite cheerful and on the high
road to recovery, and, then, suddenly, he is gone.”[927]
The Table-Talk from the Mathesius collection recently published by
Kroker, among other curious utterances of Luther’s on the end of the
world, contains also the following:
In view of the dissensions by which the new Evangel was torn the
speaker says, in 1542-43: “If the world goes on for another fifty
years things will become worse than ever, for sects will arise which
still lie hidden in the hearts of men, so that we shall not know where
we stand. Hence, dear Lord, come! Come and overwhelm them with Thy
Judgment Day, for no improvement is any longer to be looked for.”[928]
Here too he repeatedly declares that he himself is tired of the world:
“I have had enough of the world,” he says, and goes on to introduce
the ugly comparison alluded to above.[929] He adds: “The world fancies
that if only it were rid of me all would be well.” He is saddened to
see that many of his followers make little account of him: “If the
Princes and gentry won’t do it, then things will not last long.”[930]
Of the want of respect shown to his preachers he says: “Where there
is such contempt of the Divine Word and of the preachers, shall not
God smite with His fist?” “But if we preachers were to meet and
agree amongst ourselves, as has been done in the Papacy, there would
be less need for this. The worst of it is that they are not at one
even amongst themselves.” He finds a makeshift consolation for the
divergency in teaching in the thought that “so it always was even from
the beginning of the world, preachers always having disagreed amongst
themselves.” “There is a bad time coming, look you to it”; things may
go on for another fifty years now that the young have been brought up
in his doctrine, but, after that, “let them look out. Hence, let no
one fear the plague, but rather be glad to die.”[931] Not only did he
look forward to his own death, but, as we know, to that of “all his
children,” seeing that strange things would happen in the world.[932]
We have heard him say, that it was a mercy for the young, that, being
thoughtless and without experience, they did not see the harm caused
by the scandals, “else they could not endure to live.”[933] And, that
the world could “not possibly last long.” Its hours are numbered, for,
thanks to me, “everything has now been put straight. The Gospel has
been revealed.”[934]
“Christ said, that, at His coming, faith would be hard to find on
the earth (Luke xviii. 8). That is true, for the whole of Asia and
Africa is without the Evangel, and even as regards Europe no Gospel is
preached in Greece, Italy, Hungary, Spain, France, England or Poland.
The one little bright spot, the house of Saxony, will not hinder the
coming of the Last Day.”[935]
“Praise be to God Who has taught us to sigh after it and long for it!
In Popery everybody dreads it.”[936]
“Amen, so be it, Amen!” so he sighed in 1543 in a letter to Amsdorf
alluding to the end of the world. “The world was just like this before
the Flood, before the Babylonian captivity, before the destruction of
Jerusalem, before the devastation of Rome and before the misfortunes
of Greece and Hungary; so it will be and so it is before the ruin of
Germany too. They refuse to listen, so they must be made to feel. I
should be glad to console ourselves both, by discussing this thought
[of the contempt of the Papists for us] with you by word of mouth.”
“We will leave them in the lurch” and cease from attempting their
conversion. “Farewell in the Lord, Who is our Helper and Who will help
us for ever and ever. Amen.”[937]
“Under the Pope,” we read in the Colloquies, “at least the name of
Christ was retained, but our thanklessness and presumptuous sense
of security will bring things to such a pass that Christ will be no
longer even named, and so the words of the Master already quoted will
be fulfilled according to which, at His coming, no faith will remain
on the earth.”[938]
As to the circumstances which should accompany the end of the world,
he still expected the catastrophe to take place most likely about
Easter time, “early in the morning, after a thunderstorm of an hour or
perhaps a little more.”[939]
Here he no longer gives the world “a bare hundred years more,” nor
even something “not more than fifty years”;[940] he almost expects
the end to come before the completion of his translation of the Bible
into German.[941] The world will certainly not last until 1548, so
he declared, “for this would run counter to Ezechiel.”[942] He is
not quite sure whether the Golden Age begins in 1540 or not, though
such was the contention of the mathematicians; but “we shall see the
fulfilment of Scripture,”[943] or at any rate, as he prudently adds
elsewhere, our descendants will. But before this can come the “great
light” of faith would have to be dimmed still more.[944]
Luther concludes by saying that he is unable to suggest anything
further; he had done all he could; God’s vengeance on the world was
so great, he declares, that he could no longer give any advice; for
“amongst us whom God has treated so mercifully and on whom He has
bestowed all His Graces there is nothing left that is not corrupted
and perverted.”[945] “On divine authority we began to amend the world,
but it refuses to hearken; hence let it crumble to ruins, for such is
its fate!”[946]
In his predictions concerning the end of the world Luther did not
sufficiently take to heart the mishap which befell his pupil and friend
Michael Stiefel, though he himself had been at pains to reprove him.
Stiefel had calculated that the end of the world would come at 8 a.m.
on Oct. 19, 1533, at which hour he and his parishioners awaited it
assembled in the church at Lochau. Their watch was, however, in vain;
the world continued to go its way and the Court judged it expedient to
remove the preacher for a while from his post.
Taking these eschatological ideas or rather ardent wishes of Luther’s
later life in all their bearings, and giving due weight to the almost
unbounded dominion they exercised over his mind, one might well incline
to see in them signs of an unhealthy and overwrought mind. They seem to
have been due to excessive mental strain, to the reaction following on
the labours of his long life’s struggle in the cause of his mission. It
is not unlikely that pathology played some part in the depression from
which he suffered.
His early theological development also throws some light on the
psychological problem, owing to a parallel which it affords.
The middle-point and mainstay of his theology, viz. his doctrine of
Justification, was wholly a result of his own personal feelings; after
cutting it, so to speak, to his own measure he proceeded to make it
something of world-wide application, a doctrine which should rule every
detail of religious life, and around which all theology should cluster
if it is to be properly understood. In a similar way, after beginning
by adapting to his own case the theory of the near end of the world—to
which he was early addicted—he gradually came to find in it the clue
wherewith to unravel all the knotty problems which began to present
themselves. It became his favourite plan to regard everything in the
light of the end of the world and advent of Christ. Just as he was fond
of asseverating, in spite of all the contradictions it involved, that
he could find in his dogma of Justification endless comfort for both
himself and the faithful, so, too, he came to regard the Last Day, in
spite of all its terrors, as the source of the highest, nay, of the
only remaining, joy of life, for himself and for all. With a vehemence
incomprehensible to sober reason he allowed himself to be carried away
by this idea as he had been by others. Such was his temperament that he
could rejoice in the coming of the Judge, Who should deliver him from
the bonds of despair.
Hence Luther’s expectation of the end of the world was something very
different from that of certain Saints of whom Church-history tells
us. Pope Gregory I or Vincent Ferrer were not moved to foretell the
approaching end of the world by disgust with life, by disappointment,
or as a result of waging an unequal struggle with the Church of their
day, nor again because they regarded the destruction of the world as
the only escape from the confusion they had brought about. Nor do they
speak of the end of the world with any fanatical expectation of their
own personal salvation, but rather with a mixture of fear and calm
trust in God’s bounty to the righteous; they have none of Luther’s
pessimism concerning the world, and, far from desiring things to “take
their course,”[947] they exerted every nerve to ensure the everlasting
salvation of as many of their fellow-creatures as possible before the
advent of the Judge; to this end they had recourse to preaching and
the means of grace provided by the Church and insisted greatly on the
call for faith and good works. Above all, they gave a speaking proof
of their faith by their works and by the inspiring example of heroic
sanctity.
3. Melanchthon under the Double Burden, of Luther’s Personality and his
own Life’s Work
The personality of Luther counts for much among the trials which
embittered Melanchthon’s life.
The passages already quoted witnessing thereto[948] must here be
supplemented by what he himself says of his experiences at Luther’s
side, in a letter he wrote in 1548 to the councillor Carlowitz and the
Court of Saxony. There was some doubt as to what attitude Melanchthon
would adopt towards Maurice of Saxony, the new sovereign, the victor of
the Schmalkalden War, and to his demands in the matter of religion.
In the letter, which to say the least is very conciliatory,
Melanchthon says that he will know how to keep silence on any
ecclesiastical regulations, no matter how distasteful to him they
may be: for he knew what it was “to endure even a truly ignominious
bondage, Luther having frequently given the rein to his own natural
disposition, which was not a little quarrelsome, instead of showing
due consideration for his own position and the general welfare.”
He goes on to explain the nature of the habit of silence he had
so thoroughly mastered; it meant no sacrifice of his own doctrine
and views (“_non mutato genere doctrinæ_”). For twenty long years,
so he complains, he had been obliged to bear the reproaches of the
zealots of the party because he had toned down certain doctrines
and had ventured to differ from Luther; they had called him ice and
frost, accused him of being in league with the Papists, nay, of
being ambitious to secure a Cardinal’s hat. Yet he had never had the
slightest inclination to go over to the Catholics, for they “were
guilty of cruel injustice.” He must, however, say that he, who by
nature was a lover of peace and the quiet of the study, had only been
drawn into the movement of which Luther was the leader because he,
like many wise and learned contemporaries, thought he discerned in
it a striving after that truth for which he thirsted and for which
he lived. Luther it was true, had, from the very first, introduced a
“rougher element into the cause”; he himself, however, had made it his
aim to set up only what was true and essentially necessary; he had
also done much in the way of reforms, and, to boot, had waged a war
against the demagogues (“_multa tribunitia plebs_”) which, owing to
the attacks of enemies at Court, had drawn down on him the displeasure
of the sovereign and had even put his life in jeopardy.
Coming finally to speak of the concessions, speculative and practical,
which he was prepared to make in addition to preserving silence, he
mentions “the authority to be conceded to the bishops and the chief
bishop in accordance with the Augsburg Confession.” He adds: “Mayhap
I am by nature of a servile turn of mind” (“_fortassis sum ingenio
servili_”), but, after all there is a real call to be humble and open
to advances. He also refers to the defeat of the Evangelical Princes,
but only to assure Carlowitz that he attributes this, “not to blind
fate, but rather admit that we have drawn down the chastisement on
ourselves by many and great misdeeds.”[949]
This is the oft-quoted declaration which Protestant writers as a whole
regret more on Melanchthon’s than on Luther’s account. It was “an
unhappy hour” in which Melanchthon wrote the letter “which gives us
so profound an insight into his soul”;[950] he forgot that he was “a
public character”; “in this letter not only what he says of Luther
and of his relations with him, but even his account of the share he
himself took in the Reformation,” “is scarcely to his credit.”[951]
Another Protestant holds, however, a different view. In this letter
we have, as a matter of fact, “the expression of feelings which for
long years Melanchthon had most carefully kept under restraint locked
up in his heart.... From it we may judge how great was the vexation
and bitterness Melanchthon had to endure.... In an unguarded moment
what had been so long pent up broke out with elemental force.”
The historian we are quoting then goes on to plead for a “milder
sentence,” especially as “almost every statement which occurs in the
letter can be confirmed from Melanchthon’s confidential correspondence
of the previous twenty years.”[952]
_Some of Melanchthon’s Deliverances_
It is quite true, that, in his confidential correspondence, Melanchthon
had long before made allusions to the awkwardness of his position.
He says, for instance, in a letter to the famous physician Leonard
Fuchs, who wanted him to take up his abode at Tübingen: “Some
Fate has, as it were, bound me fast against my will, like hapless
Prometheus,” bound to the Caucasian rock, of whom the classic myth
speaks. Nevertheless, he had not lost hope of sometime cutting himself
free; happy indeed would he account himself could he find a quiet home
amongst his friends at Tübingen where he might devote his last years to
study.[953]
On a later occasion, when bewailing his lot, the image of Prometheus
again obtrudes itself on the scholar.[954]
Melanchthon’s uneasiness and discontent with his position did not
merely arise from the mental oppression he experienced at Luther’s
side; it was, as already pointed out, in part due to sundry other
factors, such as the persecution he endured from disputatious
theologians within the party, the sight of the growing confusion which
met his eye day by day, the public dangers and the moral results of
the religious upheaval, and, lastly, the depressing sense of being out
of the element where his learning and humanistic tastes might have
found full and unhampered scope. His complaints dwell, now on one,
now on some other of these trials, but, taken together, they combine
to make up a tragic historical picture of a soul distraught; this is
all the more surprising, since, owing to the large share he had in
the introduction of the new Evangel, the cheering side of the great
religious reform should surely have been reflected in Melanchthon.
“It is not fitting,” writes the Protestant theologian Carl Sell, “to
throw a veil over the sad close of Melanchthon’s life, for it was
but the logical consequence of his own train of thought.” Luther’s
theology, of the defects of which Melanchthon was acutely conscious,
had, according to Sell, “already begun to break down as an adequate
theory of life”;[955] of the forthcoming disintegration Luther’s
colleague already had a premonition.
In Aug., 1536, when Melanchthon paid a visit to his home and also to
Tübingen, he became more closely acquainted with the state of the
Protestant Churches, both in the Palatinate and in Swabia. It was at
that time that he wrote to his friend Myconius: “Had you travelled
with us and seen the woeful devastation of the Churches in many
localities you would undoubtedly long, with tears and groans, for the
Princes and the learned to take steps for the welfare of the Churches.
At Nuremberg the good attendance at public worship and the orderly
arrangement of the ceremonies pleased me greatly; elsewhere, however,
lack of order and general barbarism is wonderfully estranging the
people [from religion; ‘_[Greek: ataxia] et barbaries mirum in modum
alienat animos_’]. Oh, that the authorities would see to the remedying
of this evil!”[956]
After he had reluctantly resumed the burden of his Wittenberg office
he continued to fret about the dissensions in his own camp. “Look,”
he wrote to Veit Dietrich in 1537, “how great is the danger to which
the Churches are everywhere exposed and how difficult it is to govern
them, when those in authority are at grips with one another and set
up strife and confusion, whereas it is from them that we should look
for help.... What we have to endure is worse than all the trials of
Odysseus the sufferer.”[957]
In the following year he told the same friend the real evil was, that
“we live like gipsies, no one being willing to obey another in any
single thing.”[958]
In the name of Wittenberg University he wrote to Mohr, the Naumburg
preacher, who was quarrelling with his brethren in the ministry, “What
is to happen in future if, for so trivial a matter, such wild and
angry broils break out amongst those who govern the Church?”[959]
The growing tendency to strife he describes in 1544 in these words:
“There are at present many people whose quarrels are both countless
and endless, and who everywhere find a pretext for them.”[960]
Many of his complaints concerning the morals of the time, as Döllinger
remarks, sound very much like those of a “sworn Catholic criticising
the state of affairs brought about by the Reformation.” Döllinger
also calls attention to the saying of 1537: “The only glory remaining
in this iron age is that of boldly breaking down the barriers of
discipline (‘_audacter dissipare vincula disciplinæ_’) and of
propounding to the people new opinions neatly cut and coloured.”[961]
A similar dictum dates from 1538. “Our age, as you can see, is full of
malice and madness, and more addicted to intrigue than any previous
one. The man who is most shameless in his abuse is regarded as the
best orator. Oh, that God would change this!”[962] The growing evils
made him more and more downhearted. “People have become barbarians,”
he exclaims twelve years later to his friend Camerarius, “and,
accustomed as they are to hatred and contempt of law and order, fear
lest any restraint be put on their licentiousness (‘_metuunt frenari
licentiam_’). These are the evils decreed for the last age of the
world.”[963]
Over and over again we can see how the timorous man endeavours
to clear the religious innovations of any responsibility for the
prevalent lawlessness, which, as he says, deserved to be bewailed with
floods of tears; after all, the true Church _had_ been revived; this
edifice, this temple of God, still remained amidst all the chaos; even
in Noe’s day it had been exposed to damage.[964] At times, though less
frequently than Luther, he lays all the blame on Satan; the latter, by
means of the scandals, was seeking to scare people away from the true
Evangel now brought to light, and to vex the preachers into holding
their tongues.
Pessimistic consideration of the “last age of the world” was quite
in his line; the dark though not altogether unfriendly shadow of the
approaching end of all was discernible in the moral disorders, in the
unbelief and anti-christian spirit of the foe. He would not dwell, so
he once said, on the state of things among the people towards whom he
was willing to be indulgent, but it could not be gainsaid that, “among
the learned open contempt for religion was on the increase; they
lean either towards the Epicureans or towards universal scepticism.
Forgetfulness of God, the wickedness of the times, the senseless fury
of the Princes, all unite in proving that the world lies in the pains
of travail and that the joyous coming of Christ is nigh.”[965] It was
his hopelessness and the great solace he derived from the approaching
end of all things that called forth this frame of mind. It is also
plain that he saw no prospect of improvement. “In these last days,”
he says, even a zealous preacher can no longer hope for success,
though this does not give him the right to quit his post.[966] The
poetic reference to the frenzied old age of the world (“_delira mundi
senecta_”) is several times met with in his letters.
In 1537 he grumbled to Johann Brenz, the preacher, of the hostility of
the theologians, especially of the Luther-zealots; he had seen what
hatred the mitigations he had introduced in Luther’s doctrines had
excited. “I conceal everything beneath the cloak of my moderation,
but what shall I do eventually faced by the rage of so many (‘_in
tanta rabie multorum_’)?”[967] “I seek for a creephole,” he continues,
“may God but show me one, for I am worn out with illness, old age and
sorrow.”
Of Amsdorf he learnt with pain that he had warned Luther against him as
a serpent whom he was warming in his bosom.[968]
Andreas Osiander likewise wrote of Melanchthon to Besold at Nuremberg,
that, since Apostolic times, no more mischievous and pernicious man
had lived in the Church, so skilful was he in giving to his writings
the semblance of wholesome doctrine while all the time denying its
truth. “I believe that Philip and those who think like him are nothing
but slaves of Satan.” On another occasion the same bitter opponent
of Melanchthon inveighs against the religious despotism which now
replaced at Wittenberg the former Papal authority, a new tyranny which
required, that “all disputes should be submitted to the elders of the
Church.”[969]—It was men such as these who repaid him for the labours
he had reluctantly undertaken on behalf of the Church. Of their bitter
opposition he wrote, that, even were he to shed as many tears as there
was water in the flooded Elbe, he would still not be able to weep away
his grief.[970]
_Melanchthon’s Strictures on Luther. His “Bondage”_
If we consider more closely Melanchthon’s relations with Luther we
find him, even during Luther’s lifetime, indignantly describing the
latter’s attacks on man’s free-will as “_stoica et manichæa deliria_”;
he himself, he declares, in spite of Luther’s views to the contrary,
had always insisted that man, even before regeneration, is able by
virtue of his free-will to observe outward discipline and, that, in
regeneration, free-will follows on grace and thereafter receives from
on High help for doing what is good. Later, after Luther’s death, he
declared, with regard to this denial of free-will which shocked him,
that it was quite true that “Luther and others had written that all
works, good and bad, were inevitably decreed to be performed of all
men, good and bad alike; but it is plain that this is against God’s
Word, subversive of all discipline and a blasphemy against God.”[971]
In a letter of 1535 to Johann Sturm he finds fault with the harshness
of Luther’s doctrine and with his manner of defending it, though,
from motives of caution, he refrains from mentioning Luther by name.
He himself, however, was looked upon at the Court of the Elector as
“less violent and stubborn than some others”; it was just because they
fancied him useful as a sort of valve, as they called it, that they
refused to release him from his professorial chair at Wittenberg. And
such is really the case. “I never think it right to quarrel unless
about something of great importance and quite essential. To support
every theory and extravagant opinion that takes the field has never
been my way. Would that the learned were permitted to speak out more
freely on matters of importance!” But, instead of this, people ran
after their own fancies. There was no doubt that, at times, even some
of their own acted without forethought. “On account of my moderation
I am in great danger from our own people ... and it seems to me that
the fate of Theramenes awaits me.”[972] Theramenes had perished on the
scaffold in a good cause—but before this had been guilty of grievous
infidelity and was a disreputable intriguer. Of this Melanchthon can
scarcely have been aware, otherwise he would surely have chosen some
less invidious term of comparison. He was happier in his selection
when, in 1544, he compared himself to Aristides on account of the risk
he ran of being sent into exile by Luther: “Soon you will hear that I
have been sent away from here as Aristides was from Athens.”[973]
Especially after 1538, i.e. during the last eight years of Luther’s
life, Melanchthon’s stay at Wittenberg was rendered exceedingly
unpleasant. In 1538 he reminds Veit Dietrich of the state of bondage
([Greek: doulotês]) of which the latter had gleaned some acquaintance
while in Wittenberg (1522-35); “and yet,” he continues, “Luther has
since become much worse.”[974] In later letters he likens Luther to
the demagogue Cleon and to boisterous Hercules.[975]
Although it was no easy task for Luther, whose irritability increased
with advancing years, to conceal his annoyance with his friend for
presuming to differ from him, yet, as we know, he never allowed matters
to come to an open breach. Melanchthon, too, owing to his fears and
pusillanimity, avoided any definite personal explanation. Both alike
were apprehensive of the scandal of an open rupture and its pernicious
effects on the common cause. Moreover, Luther was thoroughly convinced
that Melanchthon’s services were indispensable to him, particularly in
view of the gloomy outlook for the future.
The matter, however, deserves further examination in view of the
straightforwardness, clearness and inexorableness which Luther is
usually supposed to have displayed in his doctrines.
When important interests connected with his position seemed to call
for it, Luther could be surprisingly lenient in questions of doctrine.
Thus, for instance, we can hardly recognise the once so rigid Luther in
the Concord signed with the Zwinglians, and again, when, for a while,
the English seemed to be dallying with Lutheranism. In the case of the
Zwinglian townships of South Germany, which were received into the
Union by the Wittenberg Concord the better to strengthen the position
of Lutheranism against the Emperor, Luther finally, albeit grudgingly,
gave his assent to theological articles which differed so widely from
his own doctrines that the utmost skill was required to conceal the
discrepancy.[976] As for the English, Kolde says: “How far Luther was
prepared to go [in allowing matters to take their course] we see, e.g.
from the fact that, in his letter of March 28, 1536, to the Elector,
he describes the draft Articles of agreement with the English—only
recently made public and which (apart from Art. 10, which might at a
pinch be taken in the Roman sense) are altogether on the lines of the
‘_Variata_’—as quite in harmony with our own teaching.”[977] The terms
of this agreement were drawn up by Melanchthon. As a matter of fact “we
find little trace of Luther’s spirit in the Articles. We have simply
to compare [Luther’s] Schmalkalden Articles of the following year to
be convinced how greatly Luther’s own mode of thought and expression
differed from those Articles.” “They show us what concessions the
Wittenberg theologians, as a body, were disposed to make in order to
win over such a country as England.”[978]
Concerning Luther’s attitude towards the alterations made by
Melanchthon in the Confession of Augsburg (above, vol. iii., p. 445 f.)
we must also assume “from his whole behaviour, that he was not at all
pleased with Melanchthon’s action; yet he allowed it, like much else,
to pass.”[979] This, however, does not exclude Luther’s violence and
narrowness having caused an estrangement between them, Melanchthon
having daily to apprehend outbursts of anger, so that his stay became
extremely painful. The most critical time was in the summer of 1544, in
consequence of the Cologne Book of Reform (vol. iii., p. 447). Luther,
who strongly suspected Melanchthon’s orthodoxy on the Supper, prepared
to assail anew those who denied the Real Presence. Yet the storm which
Melanchthon dreaded did not touch him; Luther’s “Kurtz Bekentnis vom
heiligen Sacrament,” which appeared at the end of September, failed to
mention Melanchthon’s name. On Oct. 7, Cruciger was able by letter to
inform Dietrich, that the author no longer displayed any irritation
against his old friend.[980] Here again considerations of expediency
had prevailed over dogmatic scruples, nor is there any doubt that the
old feeling of friendship, familiarity and real esteem asserted its
rights. We may recall the kindly sympathy and care that Luther lavished
on Melanchthon when the latter fell sick at Weimar, owing to the
trouble consequent on his sanction given to the Hessian bigamy.[981]
Indeed we must assume that the relations between the two were often
more cordial than would appear from the letters of one so timid and
faint-hearted as Melanchthon; the very adaptability of the latter’s
character renders this probable. In Nov., 1544, Chancellor Brück
declared: “With regard to Philip, as far as I can see, he and Martin
are quite close friends”; in another letter written about that time
he also says Luther had told him that he was quite unaware of any
differences between himself and Melanchthon.[982]
The latter, whenever he was at Wittenberg, also continued as a rule to
put in an appearance at Luther’s table, and there is little doubt that,
on such occasions, Luther’s frank and, open conversation often availed
to banish any ill-feeling there may have been. We learn that Magister
Philip was present at the dinner in celebration of Luther’s birthday
in 1544, together with Cruciger, Bugenhagen, Jonas and Major, and that
they exchanged confidences concerning the present and future welfare of
the new religion.[983]
When Melanchthon was away from Wittenberg engaged in settling
ecclesiastical matters elsewhere he was careful to keep Luther fully
informed of the course of affairs. He occasionally expressed his thanks
to the latter for the charity and kindness of his replies; Luther in
his turn kept him posted in the little intimacies of their respective
families, in the occurrences in the town and University of Wittenberg,
and almost always added a request for prayer for help in his struggles
with “Satan.” This intimate correspondence was carried on until the
very month before Luther’s death. Even in his last letters Luther calls
the friend with whom he had worked for so many years “My Philip”;
Melanchthon, as a rule, heads his communications in more formal style:
“_Clarissimo et optimo viro D. Martino Luthero, doctori theologiæ,
instauratori puræ evangelicæ doctrinæ ac patri suo in Christo reverendo
et charissimo_.”[984]
The great praise which Melanchthon bestows on the deceased immediately
after his death is indeed startling, but we must beware of regarding it
as mere hypocrisy.
The news of Luther’s death which took place at Eisleben on Feb. 14,
1546, was received by Melanchthon the very next day. In spite of all
their differences it must have come as a shock to him, the more so
that the responsibility for the direction of his friend’s work was now
to devolve on him.
The panegyric on Luther which Melanchthon delivered at Wittenberg
boldly places him on the same footing with Isaias, John the Baptist,
the Apostle of the Gentiles, and Augustine of Hippo. In it the
humanistic element and style is more noticeable than the common
feeling of the friend. He hints discreetly at the “great vehemence”
of the departed, but does not omit to mention that everyone who
was acquainted with him must bear witness that he had always shown
himself kind-hearted towards his friends, and never obstinate or
quarrelsome.[985] Though this is undoubtedly at variance with what
he says elsewhere, still such a thing was expected in those days in
panegyrics on great men, nor would so smooth-tongued an orator have
felt any scruple about it. In his previous announcement of Luther’s
death to the students he had exclaimed: “The chariot of Israel and
the driver thereof have been taken from us, the man who ruled the
Church in these days of the world’s senile decay.”[986]
_Melanchthon’s Last Years_
After Luther’s death Melanchthon had still to endure fourteen years
of suffering, perhaps of even more bitter character than he had yet
tasted. Whilst representing Lutheranism and taking the lead amongst
his colleagues he did so with the deliberate intention of maintaining
the new faith by accommodating himself indulgently to the varying
conditions of the times. Our narrative may here be permitted to
anticipate somewhat in order to give a clear and connected account of
Melanchthon’s inner life and ultimate fate.[987]
His half-heartedness and love of compromise were a cause of many
hardships to him, particularly at the time of the so-called Interims
of Augsburg and Leipzig. It was a question of introducing the Augsburg
Interim into the Saxon Electorate after the latter, owing to the War
of Schmalkalden, had come under the rule of the new Elector Maurice.
Melanchthon had at first opposed the provisions of this Interim, by
means of which the Emperor hoped gradually to bring the Protestants
back to the fold. In Dec., 1548, however, he, together with other
theologians, formally accepted the Leipzig articles, which, owing
to their similarity with the Augsburg Interim, were dubbed by his
opponents the “Leipzig Interim,”[988] In this the “moot observances
(Adiaphora), i.e. those which may be kept without any contravention
of Divine Scripture,” were extended by Melanchthon so as to include
the reintroduction of fasting, festivals, not excluding even Corpus
Christi, images of the Saints in the churches, the Latin liturgy, the
Canonical Hours in Latin and even a sort of hierarchy. Melanchthon
also agreed to the demand for the recognition of the seven sacraments.
By strongly emphasising his own doctrine of synergism, he brought the
Wittenberg teaching on Justification much nearer to Catholic dogma; he
even dealt a death-blow to the genuine doctrine of Luther by appending
his signature to the following proposition: “God does not deal with
man as with a block of wood, but so draws him that his will also
co-operates.” In addition to this the true character of Luther’s _sola
fides_, or assurance of salvation, was veiled by Melanchthon under the
formula: “True faith accepts, together with other articles, that of
the ‘Forgiveness of Sins.’”
Hence when Flacius Illyricus, Amsdorf, Gallus, Wigand, Westphal and
others loudly protested against Melanchthon as though he had denied
Luther’s doctrine, they were not so very far wrong. The result of
their vigorous opposition and of the number of those who sided with
them was that Melanchthon gradually ceased to be the head of the
Lutheran Church, becoming merely the leader of a certain party.
Later on, in 1552, when the position of public affairs in Germany was
more favourable to Protestantism, Melanchthon admitted that he had
been wrong in his views concerning the Adiaphora, since, after all,
they were not so unimportant as he had at first thought. In order to
pacify his opponents he included the following proposition in his form
of examination for new preachers: “We ought to profess, not the Papal
errors, Interim, etc. ... but to remain faithful to the pure Divine
teaching of the Gospel.”[989]
Opposition to the “Papal errors” was indeed the one thing to which he
steadfastly adhered; this negative side of his attitude never varied,
whatever changes may have taken place in his positive doctrines.
Nevertheless during the ensuing controversies he was regarded as a
traitor by the stricter Lutherans and treated with a scorn that did
much to embitter his last years. The attitude of his opponents was
particularly noticeable at the conference of Worms in 1557. Even
before this, they, particularly the Jena theologians, had planned
an outspoken condemnation of all those who “had departed from the
Augsburg Confession,” as Melanchthon had done. They now appeared at
Worms with others of the same way of thinking. “I desire no fellowship
with those who defile the purity of our doctrine,” wrote one of them;
“we must shun them, according to the words of the Bible: ‘If any man
come to you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into the
house nor say to him, God speed you.’”[990] The friends of Flacius
Illyricus at the very first meeting made no secret of their unanimous
demand, so that Melanchthon in his justificatory statement could well
say: “I see plainly that all this is directed solely against me.” He
opposed any condemnation of Zwingli or of Calvin on account of their
doctrine on the Supper; this, he said, was the business of a synod.
At the very outset of the disputations with the Catholics it
became evident anew that the divergency of the Protestants in the
interpretation of Holy Scripture was too great to allow of the
points under discussion being satisfactorily settled in conference;
the abrogation of an ecclesiastical authority for the exposition
of Scripture had resulted in an ever-growing want of unity in the
interpretation of the Bible. Peter Canisius, the Catholic spokesman,
pointed out emphatically what obstacles were presented by the
contradictory opinions on doctrine amongst the Protestants; where
every man traced his opinions back to Scripture, how was it possible
to arrive at any decision?[991] It was from Canisius, “who during the
course of the conference distinguished himself as the leader of the
Catholic party and later repeatedly proved himself a sharp observer
of the religious conditions in Germany,”[992] that the suggestion
came, that the Protestants should define their position more clearly
by repudiating certain divergent sects. This led the followers of
Flacius to demand that all the Evangelicals should unite in condemning
Zwinglianism, Osianderism, Adiaphorism and Majorism, and also Calvin’s
doctrine on the Supper. To this Melanchthon and his friends absolutely
refused to agree. The result was that the followers of Flacius
departed greatly incensed, and the conference had to be broken off.
“The contradictions in the very heart of Protestantism were thus
revealed to the whole world.”[993]
“No greater disgrace befell the Reformation in the 16th century.”[994]
From that time Melanchthon was a broken man. His friend Languet wrote
to Calvin, “Mr. Philip is so worn out with old age, toils, calumnies
and intrigues that nothing is left of his former cheerfulness.”[995]
Melanchthon characterised the Book of Confutation published by
the Duke of Saxony in 1558, and finally revised by Flacius, as a
“congeries of sophisms” which he had perused with great pain, and
as “venomous sophistry.” He therefore once more begged for his
dismissal.[996]
His longing for death as a happy release from such bitter affliction
we find expressed in many of his letters. To Sigismund Gelous of
Eperies in Hungary he wrote, on May 20, 1559, that he was not averse
to departing this life owing to the attacks on his person, and in
order that he might behold “the light of the Heavenly Academy” and
become partaker of its wisdom.[997] He looked forward, so he writes
to another, to that light “where God is all in all and where there
is no more sophistry or calumny.”[998] Only a few days before his
death he solaced himself by drawing up some notes entitled: “Reasons
why you should fear death less.” On the left of the sheet he wrote:
“You will escape from sin, and will be delivered from all trouble
and the fury of the theologians (‘_liberaberis ab ærumnis et a rabie
theologorum_’)”; and, on the right: “You will attain to the light, you
will behold God, you will look on the Son of God, you will see into
those wonderful mysteries which you have been unable to comprehend
in this life, such as why we are created as we are, and how the two
natures are united in Christ.”[999] He finally departed this life on
April 19, 1560, from the results of a severe cold.
_Review of Melanchthon’s Religious Position as a whole_
Melanchthon’s last work was a “strong protest against Catholicism,”
which at the same time embodied an abstract of his whole doctrine—such
as it had become during the later years of his life. This work he calls
his “Confession”; it is professedly aimed at the “godless Articles of
the Bavarian Inquisition,” i.e. was intended to counteract the efforts
of Duke Albert of Bavaria to preserve his country from the inroads of
Protestantism.[1000]
In this “Confession,” dating from the evening of his days, the
“so-peaceful” Melanchthon bluntly describes the Pope and all his
train (_satellites_) as “defenders of idols”; according to him they
“withstand the known truth, and cruelly rage against the pious.”[1001]
This book, with its superficial humanistic theology, justifies,
like so many of his earlier works, the opinion of learned Catholic
contemporaries who regretted that the word of a scholar devoid of any
sound theological training should exercise so much influence over the
most far-reaching religious questions of the day.
Writing to Cardinal Sadoleto, Johann Fabri, Bishop of Vienna, says,
“Would that Melanchthon had pursued his studies on the lines indicated
by his teacher Capnion [Reuchlin]! Would that he had but remained
content with the rhetoric and grammar of the ancients instead of
allowing his youthful ardour to carry him away, to turn the true
religion into a tragedy! But alas ... when barely eighteen years
of age he began to teach the simple, and, by his soft speeches, he
has disturbed the whole Church beyond measure. And even after so
many years he is still unable to see his error or to desist from
the doctrines once imbibed and from furthering such lamentable
disorders.”[1002] To this letter Fabri appended excerpts from various
writings of Melanchthon’s as “specimens of what his godless pen had
produced against the truth and the peace of the Church.”
Others, for instance Eck and Cochlæus, in their descriptions of
Melanchthon dwell on the traits that displeased them in their personal
intercourse with him.
Johann Eck compares the way in which Melanchthon twice outwitted
Cardinal Campeggio to the false arts of Sinon the Greek, known to us
from Virgil’s account of the introduction of the wooden horse into
Troy.[1003] Johann Cochlæus, who had met him at Augsburg, calls him
the “fox,” and once warns a friend: “Take care lest he cheat you with
his deceitful cunning, for, like the Sirens, he gains a hearing by
sweet and honeyed words; he makes a hypocritical use of lying; he is
ever planning how he may win men’s hearts by all manner of wiles, and
seduces them with dishonest words.”[1004] About the same time in a
printed reply to Melanchthon’s “Apologia,” he drew an alarming picture
of the latter’s trickery at the Diet of Augsburg. By worming himself
into the confidence of the Princes and great men present, Melanchthon
learned, so he says, things that were little to the credit of the
Catholic Church; these he afterwards retailed to Luther, who at once,
after duly embellishing them, flung the tales broadcast amongst the
people by means of the press. Melanchthon made not the slightest
attempt to correct his statements, as he was in duty bound to do,
and his honeyed words merely fed the flames.[1005] “Most people,” he
writes elsewhere, “if not all, have hitherto supposed Melanchthon to
be much milder and more moderate than Luther”; such persons should,
however, study his writings carefully, and then they would soon see
how unspeakably bitter was his feeling against Catholics.[1006]
The latter assertion is only too fully confirmed by the extracts
already put before the reader, particularly by those from his
Schmalkalden tract on the Pope, from his Introduction to the new
edition of Luther’s “Warnunge” and from the “Confession” just alluded
to.[1007] Here there glows such deep hatred of the faith and practices
of the Catholic Church that one seeks in vain for the common ground on
which his professed love for union could thrive.
His conciliatory proposals were, however, in fact nothing more than
the vague and barren cravings of a Humanist.
In connection with this a characteristic, already pointed out, which
runs through the whole of Melanchthon’s religious attitude and strongly
differentiates him from Luther, merits being emphasised anew. This is
the shallow, numbing spirit which penetrates alike his theology and
his philosophy, and the humanistic tendency to reduce everything to
uniformity. That, in his theological vocabulary he is fond of using
classical terms (speaking, for instance, of the heavenly “Academy”
where we attend the “school” of the Apostles and Prophets)[1008] is a
detail; he goes much further and makes suspiciously free with the whole
contents of the faith, whether for the sake of reducing it to system,
or for convenience, or in order to promote peace.[1009] It would have
fared ill with Melanchthon had he applied to himself in earnest what
Luther said of those who want to be wiser than God, who follow their
crazy reason and seek to bring about an understanding between Christ
and ... the devil. But Melanchthon’s character was pliant enough not
to be unduly hurt by such words of Luther’s. He was able, on the one
hand, to regard Bucer and the Swiss as his close allies on the question
of the Supper and, on the other, while all the time sticking fast to
Luther, he could declare that on the whole he entirely agreed with the
religious views of Erasmus, the very “antipodes of Luther.” It was only
his lack of any real religious depth which enabled him so to act. In
a sketch of Erasmus which he composed for one of his pupils in 1557,
he even makes the former, in spite of all his hostility to Luther, to
share much the same way of thinking, a fact which draws from Kawerau
the complaint: “So easy was it for Melanchthon to close his eyes to the
doctrinal differences which existed even amongst the ‘_docti_.’”[1010]
A similar lack of any just and clear appreciation of the great truths
of the faith is also apparent in Melanchthon’s letters to Erasmus, more
particularly in the later ones. Here personal friendship and Humanist
fellow-feeling vie with each other in explaining away in the most
startling manner the religious differences.[1011] Many elements of
theology were dissolved by Melanchthon’s subjective method of exegesis
and by the system of philosophy he had built up from the classical
authors, particularly from Cicero. Melanchthon’s philosophy was quite
unfitted to throw light on the doctrines of revelation. To him the two
domains, of philosophy and theology, seemed, not only independent, but
actually hostile to each other, a state of things absolutely unknown to
the Middle Ages. If, as Melanchthon avers, reason is unable to prove
the existence of God on philosophical grounds, then, by this very fact,
the science of the supernatural loses every stay, nor is it possible
any longer to defend revelation against unbelief.
It is the merest makeshift, when, like other of his Humanist
contemporaries, Melanchthon seeks to base our knowledge of God’s
existence on feeling and on a vague inward experience.[1012]
Thus we can quite understand how old-fashioned Protestantism, after
having paid but little attention to Melanchthon either in the days
of orthodox Lutheranism or of Pietism, began to have recourse to
him with the advent of Rationalism. The orthodox had missed in him
Luther’s sparkling “strength of faith” and the courageous resolve to
twit the “devil” within and without; the Pietists failed to discern
in him the mysticism they extolled in Luther. Rationalists, on the
other hand, found in him many kindred elements. Even of quite recent
years Melanchthon has been hailed as the type of the easy-going
theologian who seeks to bridge the chasm between believing and infidel
Protestantism; at any rate, Melanchthon’s positive belief was far more
extensive than that of many of his would-be imitators.
_Melanchthon Legends_
The tale once current that, at the last, Melanchthon was a Lutheran
only in name, is to-day rejected by all scholars, Protestant and
Catholic.
Concerning the “honesty of his Protestantism” “no doubts” are raised
by Protestant theologians, who call his teaching a “modification and
a toning down” of that of Luther; nor can we conclude that “he was at
all shaky in his convictions,” even should the remarkable utterance
about to be cited really emanate from him.[1013] A Catholic historian
of the highest standing agrees in saying of him: “Even though Luther’s
teaching may not have completely satisfied Melanchthon, yet there is
no reason to doubt, that, on the whole, he was heart and soul on the
side of the innovations.... We may now and then come upon actions on
his part which arouse a suspicion as to his straightforwardness, but on
the whole his convictions cannot be questioned.”[1014]
In Catholic literature, nevertheless, even down to the present day,
we often find Melanchthon quoted as having said to his mother,
speaking of the relative value of the old and the new religion: “_Hæc
plausibilior, illa securior_; Lutheranism is the more popular, but
Catholicism is the safer.”[1015]
This story concerning Melanchthon assumed various forms as time went
on. We must dismiss the version circulated by Florimond de Raemond
in 1605, to the effect that the words had been spoken by Melanchthon
on his death-bed to his mother who had remained a Catholic, when the
latter adjured him to tell her the truth;[1016] his mother, as a
matter of fact, died at her home at Bretten in the Lower Palatinate
long before her son, in 1529, slightly before July 24, being then in
her fifty-third year.[1017]
Nor is there much to be said in favour of another version of the
above story which has it that Melanchthon’s mother, after having been
persuaded by him to come over, visited him in great distress of mind,
and received from him the above reply.
Melanchthon called on her at Bretten in May, 1524, during his stay in
his native place, and _may_ have done so again in 1529 in the spring,
when attending the Diet of Spires. A passage in his correspondence
construed as referring to this visit is by no means clear,[1018]
though the illness and death of his mother would seem to make such a
flying visit likely. On a third occasion Melanchthon went to Bretten
in the autumn of 1536.
We shall first see what Protestant writers have to say of the supposed
conversation with the mother.
K. Ed. Förstemann, who, in 1830,[1019] dealt with the family records
of the Schwarzerd family, says briefly of the matter: “Strobel was
wrong in declaring this story to be utterly devoid of historical
foundation.”[1020] C. G. Strobel, in his “_Melanchthoniana_” (1771),
had expressed his disbelief in the tale under the then widespread
form, according to which Melanchthon had spoken the words, when
visiting his dying mother in 1529; he had been much shocked to hear it
told in rhetorical style by M. A. J. Bose of Wittenberg in a panegyric
on Melanchthon. Bose, whose leanings were towards the Broad School,
had cited the story approvingly as an instance of Melanchthon’s
large-mindedness in religion.[1021] Against the account Strobel
alleges several _a priori_ objections of no great value; his best
argument really was that there was no authority for it.
Förstemann’s brief allusion was not without effect on the authors
of the article on Melanchthon in the “Realenzyklopädie für
protestantische Theologie”; there we read: “The tale is at least not
unlikely, though it cannot be proved with certainty”;[1022] even G.
Ellinger, the latest of Melanchthon’s biographers, declares: “We may
assume that Melanchthon treated the religious views of his mother, who
continued till the end of her life faithful to the olden Church, with
the same tender solicitude as he displayed towards her in the later
conversation in 1529.”[1023]
It is first of all necessary to settle whether the conversation
actually rests on reliable authority. Förstemann, like Strobel,
mentions only Melchior Adam († 1622), whose “_Vitæ theologorum_” was
first published in 1615 (see next page).
Adam, a Protestant writer, gives no authority for his statement.
Ægidius Albertinus, a popular Catholic author, writing slightly
earlier, also gives the story in his “Rekreation” (see next page),
published in 1612 and 1613, likewise without indicating its source.
Earlier than either we have Florimond de Raemond, whose “Histoire,”
etc. (above, p. 270, n. 3) contains the story even in the 1605
edition; he too gives no authority. So far no earlier mention of the
story is known. It seems to have been a current tale in Catholic
circles abroad and may have been printed. Strange to say the work of
the zealous Catholic convert and polemic, de Raemond (completed and
seen through the press by his son), contains the story under the least
likely shape, the dying Melanchthon being made to address the words to
his mother, who really had died long before.
It is quite likely that Ægidius Albertinus, the well-read priestly
secretary to the Munich Council, who busied himself much with
Italian, Spanish and Latin literature, was acquainted with this
passage. He nevertheless altered the narrative, relating how
Melanchthon’s “aged mother came to him” after he had “lived long in
the world and seen many things, and caused many scandals by his life.”
He translates as follows the Latin words supposed to have been uttered
by Melanchthon: “The new religion is much pleasanter, but the old one
is much safer.”[1024]
Next comes the Protestant Adam. The latter gives a plausible
historical setting to the story by locating it during the time of
Melanchthon’s stay at Spires, though without mentioning that the
mother was then at death’s door. “When asked by her,” so runs his
account, which is the commonest one, “what she was to believe of the
controversies, he listened to the prayers [she was in the habit of
reciting] and, finding nothing superstitious in them, told her to
continue to believe and to pray as heretofore and not be disturbed
by the discussions and controversies.”[1025] Here we do not meet the
sentence _Hæc plausibilior, illa securior_. The fact that Adam, who
as a rule is careful to give his authorities, omits to do so here,
points to the story having been verbally transmitted; for it is hardly
likely that he, as a Protestant, would have taken over the statements
of the two Catholic authorities Albertinus and Raemond, which were
so favourable to Catholicism and so unfavourable to Protestantism.
Probably, besides the Catholic version there was also a Protestant
one, which would explain here the absence of the sentence ending with
“_securior_.” Both may have risen at the time of the Diet of Spires,
where Catholics and Protestants alike attended, supposing that the
visit to Bretten took place at that time.
All things considered we may well accept the statement of the
“Realenzyklopädie,” that the story, as given by Adam, apart from the
time it occurred, is “not unlikely, though it cannot be proved with
certainty.” Taking into account the circumstances and the character
of Melanchthon, neither the incident nor his words involve any
improbability. He will have seen that his beloved mother—whether then
at the point of death or not—was in perfect good faith; he had no
wish to plunge her into inward struggles and disquiet and preferred to
leave her happy in her convictions; the more so since, in her presence
and amid the recollections of the past, his mind will probably have
travelled to the days of his youth, when he was still a faithful son
of the Church. He had never forgotten the exhortation given by his
father, nine days before his death, to his family “never to quit the
Church’s fold.”[1026] The exact date of the incident (1524 or 1529)
must however remain doubtful. N. Müller in his work on Melanchthon’s
brother, Jakob Schwarzerd, says rightly: “Nothing obliges us to place
the conversation between Melanchthon and his mother—assuming it to
be historical—in 1529, for it may equally well have taken place in
1524.”[1027]
Two unsupported stories connected with Melanchthon’s Augsburg
Confession must also be mentioned here. The twofold statement,
frequently repeated down to the present day, takes the following shape
in a recent historical work by a Protestant theologian: “When the
Confession was read out, the Bishop of Augsburg, Christoph von Stadion,
declared, ‘What has just been read here is the pure, unvarnished
truth’; Eck too had to admit to the Duke of Bavaria, that he might
indeed be able to refute this work from the Fathers of the Church,
but certainly not from Scripture.” So convincing and triumphant was
Melanchthon’s attitude at the Diet of Augsburg.
The information concerning Stadion is found only in the late,
Protestant history of the Diet of Augsburg written by George
Cœlestinus and published in 1577 at Frankfurt; here moreover the
story differs slightly, relating, that, during the negotiations
on the Confession on Aug. 6, Stadion declared: “It was plain that
those who inclined to the Lutheran views had, so far, not infringed
or overthrown a single article of the faith by what they had put
forward in defence of their views.”[1028] Any decisive advocacy of
the Catholic cause was of course not to be expected from this bishop,
in view of his general bearing. A good pupil of Erasmus, he had made
the latter’s reforming ideas his own. He was in favour of priestly
marriage, and was inclined to think that Christ had not instituted
auricular confession. There is, however, no proof that he went so
far in the direction of the innovations as actually to approve the
Lutheran teaching. It is true that the words quoted, even if really
his, do not assert this; it was one thing to say that no article of
the faith had been infringed by the Confession or by what had been
urged in vindication of Lutheranism, and quite another to say that the
Confession was nothing but the pure, unvarnished truth. At any rate,
in the one form this statement of Stadion’s is not vouched for by any
other authority before Cœlestinus and, in the other, lacks any proof
whatever. F. W. Schirrmacher, who relates the incident in his “Briefen
und Akten zur Geschichte des Reichstags zu Augsburg” on the authority
of Cœlestinus, admits that “its source is unknown.”[1029] Moreover
an historian, who some years ago examined into Stadion’s attitude at
Augsburg, pointed out, that, in view of the further circumstances
related by Cœlestinus, the story “sounds a little fabulous.”[1030] He
tells us how on the same occasion the bishops of Salzburg and Augsburg
fell foul of one another, the former, in his anger at Stadion’s
behaviour, even going so far as to charge the latter before the whole
assembly with immorality in his private life. All this, told at great
length and without mention of any authority, far from impressing us
as historically accurate, appears at best as an exaggerated hearsay
account of some incident of which the truth is no longer known.
As for what Johann Eck is stated to have said, viz. that he could
refute Melanchthon’s Confession from the Fathers but not from the
Bible, no proof whatever of the statement is forthcoming. The oldest
mention of it merely retails a piece of vague gossip, which may
well have gone the rounds in Lutheran circles. It is met with in
Spalatin’s Notes and runs: “_It is said_” that Eck, referring to
the whole doctrine of Melanchthon and Luther, told Duke William: “I
would not mind undertaking to refute it from the Fathers, but not
from Scripture.”[1031] It is true these notes go back as far as the
Diet of Augsburg, but they notoriously contain much that is false or
uncertain, and often record mere unauthenticated rumours. Neither
Melanchthon nor Luther ever dared to appeal to such an admission on
the part of their opponent, though it would certainly have been of the
utmost advantage to them to have done so.
Not only is no proof alleged in support of the saying, but it is in
utter contradiction with Eck’s whole mode of procedure, which was
always to attack the statements of his opponents, first with Scripture
and then with the tradition of the Fathers. This is the case with the
“_Confutatio confessionis_,” etc., aimed at Melanchthon’s Confession,
in the preparation of which Eck had the largest share and which he
presented at the Diet of Augsburg.
According to his own striking account of what happened at the
religious conference of Ratisbon in 1541, it was to his habitual and
triumphant use of biblical arguments against Melanchthon’s theses that
Eck appealed in the words he addressed to Bucer his chief opponent:
“Hearken, you apostate, does not Eck use the language of the Bible and
the Fathers? Why don’t you reply to his writings on the primacy of
Peter, on penance, on the Sacrifice of the Mass, and on Purgatory?”
etc.[1032]
What also weighs strongly against the tale is the fact that a charge
of a quite similar nature had been brought against Eck ten years
before the Diet of Augsburg by an opponent, who assailed him with
false and malicious accusations. What Protestant fable came wantonly
to connect with Melanchthon’s “Confession” had already, in 1520, been
charged against the Ingolstadt theologian by the author of “_Eccius
dedolatus_.” There he is told, that, in his view, one had perforce
(on account of the Bible) to agree with Luther secretly, though,
publicly, he had to be opposed.[1033]
Theodore Wiedemann, who wrote a Life of Eck and who at least hints at
the objection just made, was justified in concluding with the query:
“Is it not high time to say good-bye to this historic lie?”[1034]
When, as late as 1906, the story was once more burnished up by a
writer of note, N. Paulus, writing in the “Historisches Jahrbuch,”
could well say: “Eck’s alleged utterance was long ago proved to be
quite unhistorical.”[1035]
4. Demonology and Demonomania
“Come O Lord Jesus, Amen! The breath of Thy mouth dismays the
diabolical gainsayer.” “Satan’s hate is all too Satanic.”[1036]
Oh, that the devil’s gaping jaws were crushed by the blessed seed of
the woman![1037] How little is left for God.[1038] “The remainder
is swallowed by Satan who is the Prince of this world, surely an
inscrutable decree of Eternal Wisdom.”[1039] “Prodigies everywhere
daily manifest the power of the devil!”[1040]
Against such a devil’s world, as Luther descried, what can help save
the approaching “end of all”?
“The kingdom of God is being laid waste by Turk and Jew and Pope,”
the chosen tools of Satan; but “greater is He Who reigns in us
than he who rules the world; the devil shall be under Christ to
all eternity.”[1041] “The present rage of the devil only reveals
God’s future wrath against mankind, who are so ungrateful for the
Evangel.”[1042] “We cannot but live in this devil’s kingdom which
surrounds us”;[1043] “but even with our last breath we must fight
against the monsters of Satan.”[1044] Let the Papists, whose glory
is mere “devil’s filth,” rejoice in their successes.[1045] As little
heed is to be paid to them as to the preachers of the Evangel who
have gone astray in doctrine, like Agricola and Schwenckfeld; they
calmly “go their way to Satan to whom indeed they belong”;[1046]
“they are senseless fools, possessed of the devil.” The devil “spues
and ructates” his writings through them; this is the devil of heresy
against whom solemnly launch the malediction: “God’s curse be
upon thee, Satan! The spirit that summoned thee be with thee unto
destruction!”[1047]
Luther’s letters during his later years are crammed with things of this
sort.
The thought of the devil and his far-spread sphere of action, to which
Luther had long been addicted, assumes in his mind as time goes on a
more serious and gloomy shape, though he continues often enough to
refer to the Divine protection promised against the powers of darkness
and to the final victory of Christ.
In his wrong idea of the devil Luther was by no means without
precursors. On the contrary, in the Middle Ages exaggerations had long
prevailed on this subject, not only among the people but even among
the best-known writers; on the very eve of Luther’s coming forward
they formed no small part of the disorders in the ecclesiastical life
of the people. Had people been content with the sober teaching of Holy
Scripture and of the Church on the action of the devil, the faithful
would have been preserved from many errors. As it was, however, the
vivid imagination of laity and clergy led them to read much into the
revealed doctrine that was not really in it; witness, for instance,
the startling details they found in the words of St. Paul (Eph. vi.
12): “For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood: but against
principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this
darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places.” Great
abuses had gradually crept into the use of the blessings and exorcisms
of the Church, more particularly in the case of supposed sorcery.
Unfortunately, too, the beliefs and practices common among the people
received much too ready support from persons of high standing in the
Church. The supposition, which in itself had the sanction of tradition,
that intercourse with the devil was possible, grew into the fantastic
persuasion that witches were lurking everywhere, and required to have
their malicious action checked by the authority of Church and State.
That unfortunate book, “The Witches’ Hammer,” which Institoris and
Sprenger published in 1487, made these delusions fashionable in circles
which so far had been but little affected by them, though the authors’
purpose, viz. to stamp out the witches, was not achieved.
It is clear that at home in Saxony, and in his own family, Luther had
lived in an atmosphere where the belief in spirits and the harm wrought
by the devil was very strong; miners are credited with being partial
to such gloomy fancies owing to the nature of their dangerous work in
the mysterious bowels of the earth. As a young monk he had fancied he
heard the devil creating an uproar nightly in the convent, and the
state of excitement in which he lived and which accompanied him ever
afterwards was but little calculated to free him from the prejudices
of the age concerning the devil’s power. His earlier sermons, for
instance those to be mentioned below on the Ten Commandments, contain
much that is frankly superstitious, though this must be set down in
great part to the beliefs already in vogue and above which he failed
to rise. Had Luther really wished to play the part of a reformer of
the ecclesiastical life of his day, he would have found here a wide
field for useful labour. In point of fact, however, he only made bad
worse. His lively descriptions and the weight of his authority merely
served to strengthen the current delusions among those who looked to
him. Before him no one had ever presented these things to the people
with such attractive wealth of detail, no one had brought the weight of
his personality so strongly to bear upon his readers and so urgently
preached to them on how to deal with the spirits of evil.
Among non-Catholics it has been too usual to lay the whole blame on
the Middle Ages and the later Catholic period. They do not realise how
greatly Luther’s influence counted in the demonology and demonomania
of the ensuing years. Yet Luther’s views and practice show plainly
enough, that it was not merely the Catholic ages before his day that
were dishonoured with such delusions concerning the devil, and that it
was not the Catholics alone, of his time and the following decades, who
were responsible for the devil-craze and the bloody persecutions of the
witches in those dark days of German history in the 17th century.[1048]
_The Mischief Wrought by the Devil_
Luther’s views agree in so far with the actual teaching of the olden
Church, that he regards the devils as fallen angels condemned to
eternal reprobation, who oppose the aims of God for the salvation of
the world and the spiritual and temporal welfare of mankind. “The devil
undoes the works of God,” so he says, adding, however, in striking
consonance with the teaching of the Church and to emphasise the devil’s
powerlessness, “but Christ undoes the devil’s works; He, the seed [of
the woman] and the serpent are ever at daggers drawn.”[1049] But Luther
goes further, and depicts in glaring and extravagant colours the harm
which the devil can bring about. He declares he himself had had a taste
of how wrathful and mighty a foe the devil is; this he had learned
in the inward warfare he was compelled to wage against Satan. He was
convinced that, at the Wartburg, and also later, he had repeatedly to
witness the sinister manifestations of the Evil One’s malignant power.
Hence in his Church-postils, home-postils and Catechism, to mention
only these, he gives full vent to his opinions on the hostility and
might of Satan.
In the Larger Catechism of 1529,[1050] “when enumerating the evils
caused by the devil,” he tells of how he “breaks many a man’s neck,
drives others out of their mind or drowns them in the water”;[1051]
how he “stirs up strife and brings murder, sedition and war, _item_
causes hail and tempests, destroying the corn and the cattle, and
poisoning the air,” etc.;[1052] among those who break the first
commandment are all “who make a compact with the devil that he may
give them enough money, help them in their love-affairs, preserve
their cattle, bring back lost property, etc., likewise all sorcerers
and magicians.”[1053]
In his home-postils he practically makes it one of the chief dogmas
of the faith, that all temporal misfortune hails from the devil; “the
heathen” alone know this not; “but do you learn to say: This is the
work of the hateful devil.” “The devil’s bow is always bent and his
musket always primed, and we are his target; at us he aims, smiting
us with pestilence, ‘Franzosen’ [venereal disease], war, fire, hail
and cloudburst.” “It is also certain that wherever we be there too is
a great crowd of demons who lie in wait for us, would gladly affright
us, do us harm, and, were it possible, fall upon us with sword and
long spear. Against these are pitted the holy angels who stand up in
our defence.”[1054]
The devil, so he teaches in his Church-postils, a new edition of which
he brought out in 1543 towards the end of his life, could either
of himself or by the agency of others “raise storms, shoot people,
lame and wither limbs, harrow children in the cradle, bewitch men’s
members, etc.”[1055] Thanks to him, “those who ply the magic art are
able to give to things a shape other than their own, so that what in
reality is a man looks like an ox or a cow; they can make people to
fall in love, or to bawd, and do many other devilish deeds.”[1056]
How accustomed he was to enlarge on this favourite subject in his
addresses to the people is plain from a sermon delivered at the Coburg
in 1530, which he sent to the press the following year: “The devil
sends plagues, famines, worry and war, murder, etc. Whose fault is it
that one man breaks a leg, another is drowned, and a third commits
murder? Surely the devil’s alone. This we see with our own eyes and
touch with our hands.” “The Christian ought to know that he sits in
the midst of demons and that the devil is closer to him than his coat
or his shirt, nay, even than his skin, that he is all around us and
that we must ever be at grips with him and fighting him.” In these
words there is already an echo of his fancied personal experiences,
particularly of his inward struggles at the time of the dreaded
Diet of Augsburg, to which he actually alludes in this sermon; the
subjective element comes out still more strongly when he proceeds in
his half-jesting way: “The devil is more at home in Holy Scripture
than Paris, Cologne and all the godless make-believes, however learned
they may be. Whoever attempts to dispute with him will assuredly be
pitched on the ash heap, and when it comes to a trial of strength,
there too he wins the day; in one hour he could do to death all the
Turks, Emperors, Kings and Princes.”[1057] “Children should be taught
at an early age to fear the dangers arising from the devil; they
should be told: ‘Darling, don’t swear, etc.; the devil is close beside
you, and if you do he may throw you into the water or bring down
some other misfortune upon you.’”[1058] It is true that he also says
children must be taught that, by God’s command, their guardian angel
is ever ready to assist them against the devil; “God wills that he
shall watch over you so that when the devil tries to cast you into the
water or to affright you in your sleep, he may prevent him.” Still one
may fairly question the educational value of such a fear of the devil.
Taking into account the pliant character of most children and their
susceptibility to fear, Luther was hardly justified in expecting that:
“If children are treated in this way from their youth they will grow
up into fine men and women.”
According to an odd-sounding utterance of Luther’s, every bishop who
attended the Diet of Augsburg brought as many devils to oppose him “as
a dog has fleas on its back on Midsummer Day.”[1059] Had the devil
succeeded in his attempt there, “the next thing would have been that
he would have committed murder,”[1060] but the angels dispatched by
God had shielded him and the Evangel.
When a fire devastated that part of Wittenberg which lay beyond the
Castle gate, Luther was quite overwhelmed; watching the conflagration
he assured the people that, “it was the devil’s work.” With his eyes
full of tears he besought them to “quench it with the help of God and
His holy angels.” A little later he exhorted the people in a sermon to
withstand by prayer the work of the devil manifested in such fires.
One of his pupils, Sebastian Fröschel, recalled the incident in a
sermon on the feast of St. Michael. After the example and words of
the “late Dr. Martin,” he declares, “the devil’s breath is so hot and
poisonous that it can even infect the air and set it on fire, so that
cities, land and people are poisoned and inflamed, for instance by the
plague and other even more virulent diseases.... The devil is in and
behind the flame which he fans to make it spread,” etc.[1061] This
tallies with what Luther, when on a journey, wrote in later years to
Catherine Bora of the fires which were occurring: “The devil himself
has come forth possessed with new and worse demons; he causes fires
and does damage that is dreadful to behold.” The writer instances the
forest fires then raging (in July) in Thuringia and at Werda, and
concludes: “Tell them to pray against the troublesome Satan who is
seeking us out.”[1062]
Madness, in Luther’s view, is in every case due to the devil; “what
is outside reason is simply Satanic.”[1063] In a long letter to his
friend Link, in 1528, dealing with a case raised, he proves that
mad people must be regarded “as teased or possessed by the devil.”
“Medical men who are unversed in theology know not how great is
the strength and power of the devil”; but, against their natural
explanations, we can set, first, Holy Scripture (Luke xiii. 16; Acts
x. 38); secondly, experience, which proves that the devil causes
deafness, dumbness, lameness and fever; thirdly, the fact that he can
even “fill men’s minds with thoughts of adultery, murder, robbery and
all other evil lusts”; all the more easily then was he able to confuse
the mental powers.[1064] In the case of those possessed, the devil,
according to Luther, either usurps the place of the soul, or lives
side by side with it, ruling such unhappy people as the soul does the
body.[1065]
Thus it is the devil alone who is at work in those who commit suicide,
for the death a man fancies he inflicts on himself is nothing but the
“devil’s work”;[1066] the devil simply hoodwinks him and others who
see him. To Frederick Myconius he wrote, in 1544: “It is my habit to
esteem such a one as killed ‘_simpliciter et immediate_’ by the devil,
just as a traveller might be by highwaymen.... I think we must stick
to the belief that the devil deceives such a man and makes him fancy
that he is doing something quite different, for instance praying, or
something of the sort.”[1067] In the same sense he wrote to Anton
Lauterbach, in 1542, when the latter informed him of three men who
had hanged themselves: “Satan, with God’s leave, perpetrates such
abominations in the midst of our congregation.... He is the prince
of this world who in mockery deludes us into fancying that those men
hanged themselves, whereas it was he who killed them. By the images he
brought before their mind, he made them think that they were killing
themselves”—a statement at variance with the one last given.[1068]
Whereas in this letter he suggests that the people should be told of
such cases from the pulpit so that they may not despise the “devil’s
power from a mistaken sense of security,” previously, in conversation
he had declared, that it ought not to be admitted publicly that such
persons could not be damned not having been masters of themselves:
“They do not commit this wilfully, but are impelled to it by the
devil.... But the people must not be told this.”[1069] Speaking of a
woman who was sorely tempted and worried, he said to his friends, in
1543: “Even should she hang herself or drown herself through it, it
can do her no harm; it is just as though it all happened in a dream.”
The source of this woman’s distress was her low spirits and religious
doubts.[1070]
_On all that the Devil is able to do_
Many, in Luther’s opinion, had been snatched off alive by the devil,
particularly when they had made a compact or had dealings with him, or
had given themselves up to him.
For instance, he had carried off Pfeifer of Mühlberg, not far from
Erfurt, and also another man of the same name at Eisenach; indeed,
the devil had fetched the latter away in spite of his being watched
by the preacher Justus Menius and “many of his clergymen,” and though
“doors and windows had been shut so as to prevent his being carried
away”; the devil, however, broke away some tiles “round the stove” and
thus got in; finally he slew his victim “not far from the town in a
hazel thicket.”[1071] Needless to say it is a great crime to bargain
with the devil.[1072] This Dr. Eck had done and likewise the Elector
Joachim I of Brandenburg († 1535), who wanted to live another fifteen
years; this, however, the devil did not allow.[1073] Amsdorf too was
dragged into the diabolical affair; one night at an inn two dead men
appeared to him, thanks to some “Satanic art,” and compelled him to
draw up a document in writing and hand it over to Joachim. Two spirits
assisted on the occasion, bearing candles.[1074]
During battles the devil is able to carry men off more easily, but
then the angels also kill by Divine command, as the Old Testament
bears witness, for there “one angel could cause the death of many
persons.”[1075] In war the devil is at work and makes use of the
newest weapons “which indeed are Satan’s own invention,” for these
cannon “send men flying into the air” and that “is the end of
all man’s strength.”[1076] It is also the devil who guides the
sleep-walkers “so that they do everything as though wide awake,” “but
still there is something wanting and some defect apparent.”[1077]
Elsewhere too Luther discerns the work of the devil; for instance,
when Satan sends a number of strange caterpillars into his
garden,[1078] pilfers things, hampers the cattle and damages the
stalls[1079] and interferes with the preparation of the cheese and
milk.[1080] “Every tree has its lurking demon.[1081] You can see how,
to your damage, Satan knocks down walls and palings that already
totter;[1082] he also throws you down the stairs so as to make a
cripple of you.”[1083]
In cases of illness it is the devil who enables the Jews to be so
successful in effecting cures, more particularly in the case of the
“great and those of high standing”;[1084] on the other hand he is
also able maliciously to hinder the good effect of any medicine, as
Luther himself had experienced when he lay sick in 1537. He can alter
every medicine or medicament in the boxes, so that what has served its
purpose well once or twice no longer works at all; “so powerful is
the devil.”[1085] Luther, as his pupils bear witness, had frequently
maintained that many of his bodily ailments were inflicted on him
solely by the devil’s hatred.
Satan is a great foe of marriage and the blessing of children.
“This is why you find he has so many malicious tricks and ways of
frightening women who are with child, and causes such misfortune,
cunning, murder, etc.”[1086] “Satan bitterly hates matrimony,” he
says in 1537,[1087] and, in 1540, “he has great power in matrimonial
affairs, for unless God were to stand by us how could the children
grow up?”[1088] In matrimonial disputes “the devil shows his finger”;
the Pope gets along easily, “he simply dissolves all marriages”; but
we, “on account of the contentions instigated by the devil,” must have
“people who can give advice.”[1089]
Not him alone but many others had the devil affrighted by the “noisy
spirits.”[1090] These noisy spirits were, however, far more numerous
before the coming of the Evangel. They were looked upon, quite
wrongly, as the souls of the dead, and Masses and prayers were said
and good works done to lay them to rest;[1091] but now “you know
very well who causes this; you know it is the devil; he must not be
exorcised[1092], we must despise him and waken our holy faith against
him;[1093] we must be willing to abide the ‘spooks and spirits’ calmly
and with faith if God permits them to ‘exercise their wantonness on
us’ and ‘to affright us.’”[1094] Nevertheless, as he adds with much
truth, “we must not be too ready to give credence to everyone, for
many people are given to inventing such things.”[1095]
At the present time the noisy spirits are not so noticeable;
“among us they have thinned”;[1096] the chief reason is, that the
devils now prefer the company of the heretics, anabaptists and
fanatics;[1097] for Satan “enters into men, for instance into the
heretics and fanatics, into Münzer and his ilk, also into the
usurers and others”;[1098] “the fanatic spirits are greatly on the
increase.”[1099] The false teachers prove by their devilish speech how
greatly the devil, “clever and dangerous trickster that he is,” “can
deceive the hearts and consciences of men and hold them captive in his
craze.” “What is nothing but lies, idle error and gruesome darkness,
that they take to be the pure, unvarnished truth!”[1100]
If the devil can thus deceive men’s minds, surely it is far easier
for him to bewitch their bodily senses. “He can hoax and cheat all
the senses,”[1101] so that a man thinks he sees something that he
can’t see, or hears what isn’t, for instance, “thunder, pipes or
bugle-calls.” Luther fancies he finds an allusion to something of the
sort in the words of Paul to the Galatians iii. 1: “Who hath bewitched
you before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been set forth [that you
should not obey the truth]?”[1102] Children can be bewitched by the
evil eye of one who is under a spell, and Jerome was wrong when he
questioned whether the illness of children in a decline was really
due to the evil eye.[1103] It is certain that “by his great power
the devil is able to blind our eyes and our souls,” as he did in the
case of the woman who thought she was wearing a crown, whereas it was
simply “cow dung.”[1104] He tells how, in Thuringia, eight hares were
trapped, which, during the night, were changed into horses’ heads,
such as we find lying on the carrion heap.[1105] Had not St. Macarius
by his prayers dispelled the Satanic delusion by which a girl had
been changed into a cow in the presence of many persons, including
her own parents? The distressed parents brought their daughter in the
semblance of a cow to Macarius “in order that she might recover her
human shape,” and “the Lord did in point of fact dissolve the spell
whereby men’s senses had been misled.” Luther several times relates
this incident, both in conversation and in writing.[1106]
There is certainly no lack of marvellous tales of devils either in his
works or in his Table-Talk.[1107]
The toils of the sorcerer are everywhere. Magic may prove most
troublesome in married life, more particularly where true faith
is absent; for, as he told the people in a sermon on May 8, 1524,
“conjugal impotence is sometimes produced by the devil, by means of
the Black Art; in the case of [true] Christians, however, this cannot
happen.”[1108]
_On the Abode of the Devil; his Shapes and Kinds_
It is worth while to glance at what Luther says of the dwelling-places
of the devil, the different shapes he is wont to assume, and the
various categories into which demons may be classed.
First, as to his abode. In a sermon recently published, and dating
from June 13, 1529, Luther says: “The devil inhabits the forests, the
thickets, and the waters, and insinuates himself amongst us everywhere
in order to destroy us; sleep he never does.” Preaching in the hot
weather, he warns his hearers against the cool waters in which the
devil lurks: “Be careful about bathing in the cold water.... Every
year we hear of people being drowned [by the devil] through bathing in
the Elbe.”[1109]
In another sermon incorporated in the Church-postils he explains how
in countries like ours, “which are well watered,” the devils are fond
of infesting the waters and the swamps; they sometimes drown those who
venture there to bathe or even to walk. _Item_, in some places Naiades
are to be met with who entice the children to the water’s edge, drag
them in and drown them: all these are devils.[1110] Such devils can
commit fornication with the maidens, and “are able to beget children
which are simply devils”;[1111] for the devil will often drag a girl
into the water, get her with child and keep her by him until she has
borne her baby; he then lays these children in other people’s cradles,
removing the real children and carrying them off.[1112]
Elsewhere the devils prefer “bare and desolate regions,” “woods and
wildernesses.”[1113] “Some are to be found in the thick black clouds,
these cause hailstorms, thunder and lightning, and poison the air, the
pastures, etc.” Hence “_philosophi_” ought not to go on explaining
these phenomena as though they were natural.[1114] Further, the devil
has a favourite dwelling-place deep down in the earth, in the mines,
where he “pesters and deceives people,” showing them for instance what
appears to be “solid silver, whereas it is nothing of the kind.”[1115]
“Satan hides himself in the apes and long-tailed monkeys,” who lie in
wait for men and with whom it is wrong to play.[1116] That he inhabits
these creatures, and also the parrots, is plain from their skill in
imitating human beings.[1117]
In some countries many more devils are to be found than in others.
“There are many evil spirits in Prussia and also in Pilappen
[Lapland].” In Switzerland the devils make a “frightful to-do” in the
“Pilatus tarn not far from Lucerne”; in Saxony, “in the Poltersberg
tarn,” things are almost as bad, for if a stone be thrown in, it
arouses a “great tempest.”[1118] “Damp and stuffy places” are however
the devils’ favourite resort.[1119] He was firmly convinced that in
the moist and swampy districts of Saxony all the devils “that Christ
drove out of the swine in Jerusalem and Judæa had congregated”;
“so much thieving, sorcery and pilfering goes on that the Evil One
must indeed be present in person.”[1120] The fact of so many devils
inhabiting Saxony was perhaps the reason, so he adds quaintly enough,
“why the Evangel had to be preached there, i.e. that they might be
chased away.” It was for this reason, so he repeats, “that Christ came
amongst the Wends [Prussians], the worst of all the nations, in order
to destroy the work of Satan and to drive out the devils who there
abide among the peasants and townspeople.”[1121] That he was disposed
to believe that a number, by no means insignificant, of devils could
assemble in one place is plain from several statements such as, that
at the Wartburg he himself had been plagued by “a thousand devils,”
that at Augsburg every bishop had brought as many devils with him to
the Diet as a dog has fleas in hot weather, and, finally, that at
Worms their number was probably not far short of the tiles on the
roofs.
* * * * *
The forms the devil assumes when he appears to men are very varied; to
this the accounts sufficiently bear witness.
He appeared as a goat,[1122] and often as a dog;[1123] he tormented a
sick woman in the shape of a calf from which Luther set her free—at
least for one night.[1124] He is fond of changing himself into cats
and other animals, foxes, hares, etc., “without, however, assuming
greater powers than are possessed by such animals.”[1125] The
semblance of the serpent is naturally very dear to the devil. To a
sick girl at Wittenberg with whom Luther happened to be, he appeared
under the form of Christ, but afterwards transformed himself into a
serpent and bit the girl’s ear till the blood came.[1126] The devil
comes as Christ or as a good angel, so as to be the better able to
tempt people. He has been seen and heard under the guise of a hermit,
of a holy monk, and even, so the tale runs, of a preacher; the latter
had “preached so earnestly that the whole church was reduced to
tears”; whereupon he showed himself as the devil; but “whether this
story be true or not, I leave you to decide.”[1127] The form of a
satyr suits him better, what we now call a hobgoblin; in this shape
he “frequently appeared to the heathen in order to strengthen them in
their idolatry.”[1128] A prettier make under which he appears is that
of the “brownie”; it was in this guise that he was wont to sit on a
clean corner of the hearthstone beside a maid who had strangled her
baby.[1129] From the behaviour of the devils we may infer that, “so
far they are not undergoing any punishment though they have already
been sentenced, for were they being punished they would not play so
many roguish tricks.”[1130]
* * * * *
Amongst the different kinds of devils he enumerates, using names which
recall the humorous ones common in the old folk-lore of Germany, are
not merely the stupid, the playful, the malicious and the murderous
fiends, but also the more sightly ones,[1131] viz. the familiar and
friendly demons; then again there are the childish little devils who
allure to unchastity and so forth though not to unbelief or despair
like the more dangerous ones.[1132] He is familiar with angelic,
shining, white and holy devils, i.e. who pretend to be such, also
with black devils and the “supreme majestic devil.” The majestic
devil wants to be worshipped like God, and, in this, being “so
quick-witted,” he actually succeeded in the ages before Luther’s day,
for “the Pope worshipped him.”[1133] The devil repaid the Pope by
bewitching the world in his favour; he brought him a large following
and wrought much harm by means “of lies and magic,” doing on a vast
scale what the “witches” do in a smaller way.[1134]
There are further, as Luther jestingly explains, house-devils,
Court-devils and church-devils; of these “the last are the
worst.”[1135] “Boundless is the devils’ power,” he says elsewhere,
“and countless their number; nor are they all childish little devils,
but great national devils, devils of the sovereigns, devils of the
Church, who, with their five thousand years’ experience, have grown
very knowing ... in fact, far too cunning for us in these latter
days.”[1136] “Satan knows his business and no one but Jesus Christ can
cope with him.”[1137] Very dangerous indeed are the Court-devils, who
“never rest,” but “busy themselves at Court, and work all the mischief
in the councils of the kings and rulers, thwarting all that is good;
for the devil has some fine rakehells at Court.”[1138] As for the
noisy devils, they had troubled him even in his youth.[1139]
The Papists have their own devils who work supposed miracles on
their behalf, for the wonders which occur amongst them at the places
of pilgrimage or elsewhere in answer to their prayers are not real
miracles but devil’s make-believe. In fact, Satan frequently makes a
person appear ill, and, then, by releasing him from the spell, cures
him again.[1140]
The above ideas Luther had to a large extent borrowed from the past,
indeed we may say that the gist of his fancies concerning the devil
was but part of the great legacy of credulity, folk-lore and the
mistaken surmises of theologians handed down verbally and in writing
from the Middle Ages. Only an age-long accumulation of prejudice,
rife particularly among the Saxon people, can explain Luther’s rooted
attachment to such a congeries of wild fancies.
Assisted by the credulity of Melanchthon and other of his associates
Luther not only added to the number of such ideas, but, thanks to his
gift of vivid portraiture, made them far more strong and life-like
than before. Through his widely-read works he introduced them into
circles in which they were as yet scarcely known, and, in particular,
established them firmly in the Lutheran world for many an age to come.
_The Devil and the Witches_
“It is quite certain,” says Paulus in his recent critical study of the
history of witchcraft, “that Luther in his ideas on witchcraft was
swayed by mediæval opinion.” “In many directions the innovators in the
16th century shook off the yoke of the Middle Ages; why then did they
hold fast to the belief in witches? Why did Luther and many of his
followers even outstrip the Middle Ages in the stress they laid on the
work of the devil?”[1141]
Paulus here touches upon a question which the Protestant historian,
Walter Köhler, had already raised, viz.: “Is it possible to explain
the Reformers’ attachment to the belief in witchcraft simply on the
score that they received it from the Middle Ages? How did they treat
mediæval tradition in other matters? Why then was their attitude
different here?”[1142]
G. Steinhausen, in his “Geschichte der deutschen Kultur,” writes: “No
one ever insisted more strongly than Luther on his role [the devil’s];
he was simply carried away by the idea.... Though in his words and the
stories he tells of the devil he speaks the language of the populace,
yet the way in which he weaves diabolical combats and temptations into
man’s whole life is both new and unfortunate. Every misfortune, war
and tempest, every sickness, plague, crime and deformity emanates from
the Evil One.”[1143]
Some of what Luther borrowed from the beliefs of his own day goes back
to pre-Christian times. The belief in witches comprised much heathen
tradition too deeply rooted for the early missionaries to eradicate.
Moreover, certain statements of olden ecclesiastical writers
incautiously exploited enabled even the false notions of the ancient
Græco-Roman world to become also current. Fear of hidden, dangerous
forces, indiscriminating repetition of alleged incidents from the
unseen, the ill-advised discussions of certain theologians and
thoughtless sermons of popular orators, all these causes and others
contributed to produce the crass belief in witches as it existed even
before Luther’s day at the close of the Middle Ages, and such as we
find it, for instance, in the sermons of Geiler von Kaysersberg.
The famous Strasburg preacher not only accepted it as an undoubted
fact, that witches were able with the devil’s help to do all kinds of
astounding deeds, but he also takes for granted the possibility of
their making occasional aerial trips, though it is true he dismisses
the nocturnal excursions of the women with Diana, Venus and Herodias
as mere diabolical delusion. He himself never formally demanded the
death-penalty for witches, but it may be inferred that he quite
countenanced the severe treatment advocated in the “Witches’ Hammer.”
In his remarks on witches he follows partly Martin Plantsch, the
Tübingen priest and University professor, partly, and still more
closely, the “_Formicarius_” of the learned Dominican Johannes Nider
(1380-1438).[1144]
Concerning the witches and their ways Luther’s works contain an
extraordinary wealth of information.
In the sermons he delivered on the Ten Commandments as early as 1516
and 1517, and which, in 1518, he published in book form,[1145] he took
over an abundance of superstition from the beliefs current amongst
the people, and from such writers as Geiler. In 1518 and 1519 were
published no less than five editions in Latin of the sermons on the
Decalogue; the book was frequently reprinted separately and soon made
its appearance in Latin in some collections of Luther’s writings; later
on it figures in the complete Latin editions of his works; six German
editions of it had appeared up to 1520 and it is also comprised in the
German collections of his works. In his old age, when the “evils of
sorcery seemed to be gaining ground anew,” he deemed it “necessary,”
as he said,[1146] “to bring out the book once more with his own hand”;
certain tales, amongst which he instances one concerning the devil’s
cats and a young man, might serve to demonstrate “the power and malice
of Satan” to all the world. One cannot but regard it as a mistake on
Luther’s part, when, in his sermons on the Ten Commandments, he takes
his hearers and readers into the details of the magic and work of
the witches, though at the same time emphasising very strongly the
unlawfulness of holding any communication with Satan. This stricture
tells, however, as much against many a Catholic writer of that day.
It is in his commentary on the 1st Commandment that he gives us a
first glimpse into the world of witches which later was to engross his
attention even more.
He is anxious to bring home to the “weaklings” how one can sin against
the 1st Commandment.[1147] He therefore enumerates all the darkest
deeds of human superstition; of their reality he was firmly convinced,
and only seldom does he speak merely of their “possibility,” or say,
“it is believed” that this or that took place. He also divides into
groups the people who sin against the virtue of Divine love, doing so
according to their age, and somewhat on the lines of a Catechism, in
order that “the facts may be more easily borne in mind.”
“The third group,” he says, “is that of the old women, etc.” “By their
magic they are able to bring on blindness, cause sickness, kill,
etc.”[1148] “Some of them have their fireside devil who comes several
times a day.” “There are _incubi_ and _succubi_ amongst the devils,”
who commit lewdness with witches and others. Devil-strumpetry and
ordinary harlotry are amongst the sins of these women. Luther also
speaks of magic potions, desecration of the sacrament in the devil’s
honour, and secret incantations productive of the most marvellous
effects.
His opinion he sums up as follows: “What the devil himself is unable
to do, that he does by means of old hags”;[1149] “he is a powerful
god of this world”;[1150] “the devil has great power through the
sorceresses.”[1151] He prefers thus to make use of the female sex
because, “it comes natural to them ever since the time of Mother Eve
to let themselves be duped and fooled.”[1152] “It is as a rule a
woman’s way to be timid and afraid of everything, hence they practise
so much magic and superstition, the one teaching the other.”[1153]
Even in Paradise, so he says, the devil approached the woman rather
than the man, she being the weaker.[1154]
It is worthy of note that he does not merely base his belief in
witchcraft on the traditions of the past but preferably on Scripture
directly, and the power of Satan to which it bears witness.
In 1519 he had attempted to prove on St. Paul’s authority against the
many who refused to believe in such things, that sorcery can cause
harm, omitting, however, to make the necessary distinctions.[1155]
In 1538 he declares: “The devil is a great and powerful enemy. Verily
I believe, that, unless children were baptised at an early age no
congregations could be formed; for adults, who know the power of
Satan, would not submit to be baptised so as to avoid undertaking the
baptismal vows by which they renounce Satan.”[1156]
In the Commentary on Galatians he not merely appeals anew to the
apostolic authority in support of his doctrine concerning the devil,
but also directly bases his belief in witchcraft on the principle,
that it is plain that Satan “rules and governs the whole world,” that
we are but guests in the world, of which the devil is prince and god
and controls everything by which we live: food, drink, clothing, air,
etc.[1157] By means of sorcery he is able to strangle and slay us;
through the agency of his whores and sorceresses, the witches, he is
able to hurt the little children, with palpitations, blindness, etc.
“Nay, he is able to steal a child and lay himself in the cradle in its
stead, for I myself have heard of such a child in Saxony whom five
women were not able to supply with sufficient milk to quiet it; and
there are many such instances to be met with.”[1158]
The numerous other instances of harm wrought by witches with which he
is acquainted, such as the raising of storms, thefts of milk, eggs
and butter,[1159] the laying of snares to entrap men, tears of blood
that flow from the eyes, lizards cast up from the stomach,[1160]
etc., all recede into the background in comparison with the harlotry,
substitution of children, etc., which the devil carries out with the
witches’ help. “It is quite possible that, as the story goes, the Evil
Spirit can carnally know the sorceresses, get them with child and
cause all manner of mischief.”[1161] Changeling children of the sort
are nothing but a “lump of flesh without a soul”; the devil is the
soul, as Luther says elsewhere,[1162] for which reason he declared, in
1541, such children should simply be drowned; he recalls how he had
already given this advice in one such case at Dessau, viz. that such a
child, then twelve years of age, should be smothered.[1163]
It sometimes happens, so he says, that animals, cats for instance,
intent on doing harm, are wounded and that afterwards the witches
are found to have wounds in the same part of the body. In such case
the animals were all sham.[1164] A mouse trying to steal milk is hurt
somewhere, and the next day the witch comes and begs for oil for the
wound which she has in the very same place.[1165] If milk and butter
are placed on coals the devil, he says, will be obliged to call up the
witches who did the mischief.[1166] “It is also said that people who
eat butter that has been bewitched, eat nothing but mud.”[1167]
In such metamorphoses into animals it was not, however, the witches
who underwent the change, nor were the animals really hurt, but it was
“the devil who transformed himself into the animal” which was only
apparently wounded; afterwards, however, “he imprints the marks of the
wounds on the women so as to make them believe they had taken part
in the occurrence.”[1168] At any rate this is the curiously involved
explanation he once gives of the difficult problem.
In some passages he, like others too, is reluctant to accept the
theory that afterwards grew so prevalent, particularly during the
witch persecutions in the 17th century, viz. that the witches were in
the habit of flying through the air. In 1540 he says that this, like
the changes mentioned above, was merely conjured up before the mind
by the devil, and was thus a delusion of the senses and a Satanic
deception.[1169] Yet in 1538 he assumes that it was in Satan’s power
to carry those who had surrendered themselves to him bodily through
the air;[1170] he had heard of one instance where even repentance and
confession could not save such a man, when at the point of death,
from being carried off by the devil. At an earlier date he had
spoken without any hesitation of the witches who ride “on goats and
broom-sticks and travel on mantles.”[1171]
The witches are the most credulous and docile tools of the devil; they
are his hand and foot for the harm of mankind. They are “devil’s own
whores who give themselves up to Satan and with whom he holds fleshly
intercourse.”[1172]
“Such persons ought to be hurried to justice (‘_supplicia_’). The
lawyers want too much evidence, they despise these open and flagrant
proofs.” When questioned on the rack they answer nothing, “they are
dumb, they despise punishment, the devil will not let them speak. Such
deeds are, however, evidence enough, and for the sake of frightening
others they ought to be made an example.”[1173]
“Show them no mercy!” so he has it on another occasion. “I would burn
them myself, as we read in the Law [of Moses] that the priests led the
way in stoning the evildoer.”[1174] And yet here all the ado was simply
about ... a theft of milk! But sorcery as such was regarded by him
as “lèse majesté” [against God], as a rebellion, a crime whereby the
Divine Majesty is insulted in the worst possible of ways. “Hence it is
rightly punished by bodily pains and death.”[1175] He first expresses
himself in favour of the death-penalty in a sermon in 1526,[1176] and
to this point of view he adhered to the end.[1177]
Luther’s words and his views on witches generally became immensely
popular. The invitation to persecute the witches was read in the German
Table-Talk compiled by Aurifaber and published at Eisleben in 1566. It
reappeared, together with the rest of the contents, in the two reprints
published at Frankfurt in 1567, also in the new edition which Aurifaber
himself undertook in 1568, as well as in the Frankfurt and Eisleben
editions of 1569.[1178] Not only were the people exhorted to persecute
the witches, but, intermixed with the other matter, we find all
sorts of queer witch-stories just of the type to call up innumerable
imitations. He relates, for instance, the experiences of his own mother
with a neighbour who was a “sorceress,” who used to “shoot at her
children so that they screamed themselves to death”; also the tale told
him by Spalatin, in 1538, of a little maid at Altenburg over whom a
spell had been cast by a witch and who “shed tears of blood.”
The demonological literature which soon assumed huge proportions and
of which by far the greater part emanated from the pen of Protestant
writers, appealed constantly to Luther, and reproduced his theories and
stories, and likewise his demands that measures should be taken for
the punishment of the witches. It may suffice to draw attention to the
curious book entitled “Pythonissa, i.e. twenty-eight sermons on witches
and ghosts,” by the preacher Bernard Waldschmidt of Frankfurt. He
demonstrates from Luther’s Table-Talk that the devil was able to assume
all kinds of shapes, for instance, of “cats, goats, foxes, hares,
etc.,” just as he had appeared at Wittenberg in Luther’s presence,
first as Christ, and then as a serpent.[1179]
Many Lutheran preachers and religious writers were accustomed to
remind the people not only of the tales in the Table-Talk, but also of
what was contained in the early exposition of the Ten Commandments,
in the Prayer-book of 1522 and in the Church-postils, Commentary on
Galatians, etc. Books of instances such as those of Andreas Hondorf
in 1568 and Wolfgang Büttner in 1576 made these things widely known.
David Meder, Lutheran preacher at Nebra in Thuringia, in his “Eight
witch-sermons” (1605), referred in the first sermon to the Table-Talk,
also to Luther’s exposition of the Decalogue, to his Commentary
on Genesis and his work “Von den Conciliis und Kirchen.” Bernard
Albrecht, the Augsburg preacher, in his work on witches, 1628, G. A.
Scribonius, J. C. Gödelmann and N. Gryse all did the same.
In what esteem Luther’s sayings were held by the Protestant lawyers
is plain from certain memoranda of the eminent Frankfurt man of law,
Johann Fischart, dating from 1564 and 1567. Fischart was against the
“Witches’ Hammer” and the other Catholic productions of an earlier
day, such as Nider’s “_Formicarius_,” yet he expresses himself in
favour of the burning of witches and appeals on this point to Luther
and his interpretation of Holy Scripture.
Holy Scripture and Luther were as a rule appealed to by the
witch-zealots on the Protestant side, as is proved by the writings
of Abraham Saur (1582) and Jakob Gräter (1589), of the preacher
Nicholas Lotichius and Nicholas Krug (1567), of Frederick Balduin
of Wittenberg (1628)—whose statements were accepted by the famous
Saxon criminalogist Benedict Carpzov, who signed countless death
sentences against witches—and by J. Volkmar Bechmann, the opponent
of the Jesuit Frederick von Spee. We may pass over the many other
names cited by N. Paulus with careful references to the writings in
question.[1180]
It must be pointed out, however, that an increase in the severity
of the penal laws against witches is first noticeable in the Saxon
Electorate in 1572, when it was decreed that they should be burnt at
the stake, even though they had done no harm to anyone, on account
of their wicked compact with the devil.[1181] As early as 1540, at
a time when elsewhere in Germany the execution of witches was of
rare occurrence, four persons were burnt at Wittenberg on June 29 as
witches or wizards.[1182] Shortly before this Luther had lamented that
the plague of witches was again on the increase.[1183]
Even the Catholic clergy occasionally quoted Luther’s statements
on witches, as given in his widely read Table-Talk; thus, for
instance, Reinhard Lutz in his “True Tidings of the godless Witches”
(1571).[1184] This writing, at the very beginning and again at the
end, contains a passage from the Table-Talk dealing with witches,
devils’ children, incubi and succubi; on the other hand, it fails to
refer either to the “Witches’ Hammer” of 1487 or to the Bull, “_Summis
desiderantes_,” of Innocent VIII (1484).
Thus the making of this regrettable mania was in great part Luther’s
doing.[1185] And yet a reformer could have found no nobler task than to
set to work to sweep away the abusive outgrowths of the belief in the
devil’s power.
We still have instructive writings by Catholic authors of that day
which, whilst by no means promoting the popular ideas concerning the
devil, are unquestionably rooted in the Middle Ages. Such a work is
the Catechism of Blessed Peter Canisius. One particular in which
the “Larger” Canisian Catechism differs from Luther’s Larger German
Catechism is, that, whereas in the latter the evil power of Satan
over material things is dealt with at great length, the Catechism
of Canisius says never a word on the material harm wrought by the
devil. While Luther speaks of the devil sixty-seven times, Canisius
mentions him only ten times. Canisius’s book was from the first widely
known amongst German-speaking Catholics and served down to the last
century for purposes of religious instruction.[1186] Though this is
true of this particular book of Canisius, the influence of which was
so far-reaching, it must in honesty be added that even a man like
Canisius, both in his other writings and in his practical conduct, was
not unaffected by the prevailing ideas concerning the devil.
_Luther’s Devil-mania; its Connection with his Character and his
Doctrine_
Had Luther written his Catechism during the last period of his life he
would undoubtedly have brought the diabolical element and his belief in
witches even more to the fore. For, as has been pointed out (above, pp.
227, 238), Luther’s views on the power the devil possesses over mankind
and over the whole world were growing ever stronger, till at last they
came to colour everything great or small with which he had to deal;
they became, in fact, to him a kind of fixed idea.
In his last year (1546), having to travel to Eisleben, he fancies so
many fiends must be assembled there on his account, i.e. to oppose
him, “that hell and the whole world must for the nonce be empty of
devils.”[1187] At Eisleben he even believed that he had a sight of the
devil himself.[1188]
Three years before this he complains that no one is strong enough in
belief in the devil; the “struggle between the devils and the angels”
affrights him; for it is to be apprehended that “the angels whilst
fighting for us often get the worst for a time.”[1189] His glance
often surveys the great world-combat which the few who believe wage
on Christ’s side against Satan, and which has lasted since the dawn
of history; now, at the very end of the world, he sees the result
more clearly. Christ is able to save His followers from the devil’s
claws only by exerting all His strength; they, like Luther, suffer
from weakness of faith, just as Christ Himself did in the Garden of
Olives(!); they, like Luther, stumble, because Christ loves to show
Himself weak in the struggle with the devil; mankind’s and God’s
rights have come off second best during the age-long contest with the
devil. In Jewry, for which Luther’s hatred increases with age, he sees
men so entirely delivered over to the service of the devil that “all
the heathen in a lump” are simply nothing in comparison with the Jews;
but even the “fury of the Jews is mere jest and child’s play” compared
with the devilish corruption of the Papacy.
“The devil is there; he has great claws and whosoever falls into them
him he holds fast, as they find to their cost in Popery. Hence let
us always pray and fear God.” This in 1543.[1190] But we must also
fear the devil, and very much too, for, as he solemnly declares in
1542: “Our last end is that we fear the devil”; for the worst sins are
“delusions of the devil.”[1191] “The whole age is Satanic,”[1192] and
the “activity of the devil is now manifest”; the speaker longs for
“God at length to mock at Satan.”[1193] “The devil is all-powerful at
present, several foreign kings are his train-bearers.... God Himself
must come in order to resist the proud spirit.... Shortly Christ will
make an end of his lies and murders.”[1194]
The whole of his work, the struggle for the Evangel, seems to him at
times as one long wrestling with the boundless might of Satan.[1195]
All his life, so he said in his old age, he had forged ahead
“tempestuously” and “hit out with sledge-hammer blows”; but it was
all against Satan. “I rush in head foremost, but ... against the
devil.”[1196] As early as 1518, however, he knew the “thoughts of
Satan.”[1197]
It is not difficult to recognise the different elements which, as
Luther grew older, combined permanently to establish him in his
devil-mania.
Apart from his peculiar belief in the devil, of which he was never
to rid himself, there was the pessimism which loomed so large in his
later years;[1198] there was also his habit of regarding himself and
his work as the pet aversion and chief object of Satan’s persecution,
for since, according to his own contention, his great struggle against
Antichrist was in reality directed against the devil, the latter
naturally endeavoured everywhere to bar his way. If great scandals
arise as the result of his sermons, it is Satan who is to blame; “he
smarts under the wounds he receives and therefore does he rage and
throw everything into confusion.”[1199] The disorderly proceedings
against the Catholics at Erfurt which brought discredit on his teaching
were also due to the devil. The Wittenberg students who disgrace him
are instigated by the devil. Dr. Eck was incited against him by Satan.
The Catholic princes who resist him, like Duke George of Saxony, have
at least a “thousand devils” who inspire them and assist them. Above
all, it is the devil himself who delivers his oracles through the
mouthpiece of those teachers of the innovations who differ from Luther,
deluding them to such an extent that they lose “their senses and their
reason.”[1200] If Satan can do nothing else against the Evangel he
sends out noisy spirits so as to bolster up the heresy of the existence
“of a Purgatory.”[1201]
Such ideas became so habitual with him, that, in later years, the
conviction that the devil was persecuting his work developed into an
abiding mania, drawing, as it were, everything else into its vortex.
Everywhere he hears behind him the footsteps of his old enemy, the
devil.
“Satan has often had me by the throat.... He has frequently beset
me so hard that I knew not whether I was dead or alive ... but with
God’s Word I have withstood him.”[1202] He lies with me in my bed,
so he says on one occasion; “he sleeps much more with me than my
Katey.”[1203] His struggle with him degenerates into a hand-to-hand
brawl, “I have to be at grips with him daily.”[1204] His pupils
related, that on his own giving, when he was an old man “the devil
had walked with him in the dormitory of the [former] monastery ...
plaguing and tormenting him”; that “he had one or two such devils
who were in the habit of lying in wait” for him, and, “that, when
unable to get the better of his heart, they attacked and troubled his
head.”[1205] Whether the narrators of these accounts are referring to
actual apparitions or not does not much matter.
Later on, when dealing with his delusions, we shall have to speak of
the diabolical apparitions Luther is supposed to have had. There is
no doubt, however, that Luther’s first admirers took his statements
concerning his experiences with the devil rather more seriously than
he intended, as, for instance, when Cyriacus Spangenberg in his
“Theander Lutherus”[1206] relates a disputation on the Winkle-Mass
which he supposed Luther to have actually held with the devil, and
even goes so far as to prove from the bruises which the devil in
person inflicted on him that Luther was “really a holy martyr.”[1207]
Even some of his opponents, like Cochlæus, fancied that because
Luther said “in a sermon that he had eaten more than one mouthful of
salt with the devil, he had therefore most probably been in direct
communication with the devil himself, the more so since some persons
were said to have seen the two hobnobbing together.”[1208] Here we
shall merely point out generally that to Luther the power of Satan,
his delusions and persecutions, were something that seemed very
near,[1209] an uncanny feeling that increased as he grew older and as
his physical strength gave out.
“The devil is now very powerful,” he says in 1540, “for he no longer
deals with us through the agency of others, of Duke George, for
instance, or the Englishman [Henry VIII], or of the Mayence fellow
[Albert], but fights against us visibly. Against him we must pray
diligently.”[1210] “Didn’t he even ride many grand and holy prophets.
Was not David a great prophet? And yet even he was devil-ridden, and
so was Saul and ‘Bileam’ too.”[1211]
We must, moreover, not overlook the link which binds Luther’s
devil-mania to his doctrinal system as a whole, particularly to his
teaching on the enslaved will and on justification.
Robbed of free-will for doing what is good, when once the devil assumes
the mastery, man must needs endure his anger and perform his works.
Luther himself found a cruel rider in the devil. Again, though man by
the Grace of God is justified by faith, yet the old diabolical root of
sin remains in him, for original sin persists and manifests itself in
concupiscence, which is essentially the same thing as original sin. All
acts of concupiscence are, therefore, sins, being works of our bondage
under Satan; only by the free grace of Christ can they be cloaked
over. The whole outer world which has been depraved by original sin
is nothing but the “devil’s own den”; the devil stands up very close
(“_propinquissimus_”)[1212] even to the pious, so that it is no wonder
if we ever feel the working of the spirit of darkness. “Man must bear
the image either of God or of the devil.” Created to the image of God
he failed to remain true to it, but “became like unto the devil.”[1213]
Hence his doctrines explain how he expected every man to be so keenly
sensible of “God’s wrath, the devil, death and hell”; everyone should
realise that ours is “no real life, but only death, sin and power of
the devil.”[1214] It is true that in his doctrine faith affords a man
sufficient strength, and even makes him master of the devil; but, as
he remarks, this is “in no wise borne out by experience and must be
believed beforehand.” Meanwhile we are painfully “sensible” that we are
“under the devil’s heel,” for the “world and what pertains to it must
have the devil for its master, who also clings to us with all his might
and is far stronger than we are; for we are his guests in a strange
hostelry.”[1215]
_The Weapons to be used against the Devil_
On the fact that faith gives us strength against all Satanic influences
Luther insists frequently and in the strongest terms.
He tries to find here a wholesome remedy against the fear that presses
on him. He describes his own attempts to lay hold on it and to fill
himself with Christ boldly and trustfully. Even in his last days such
words of confidence occasionally pierce the mists of his depression.
“We see well,” he says, “that when the devil attacks a [true] Christian
he is put to shame, for where there is faith and confidence he has
nothing to gain.” This he said in 1542 when relating the story of
an old-time hermit who rudely accosted the devil as follows, when
the latter sought to disturb him at his prayers: “Ah, devil, this
serves you right! You were meant to be an angel and you have become a
swine.”[1216]
“We must muster all our courage so as not to dread the devil.”[1217]
We must “clasp the faith to our very bosom” and “cheerfully fling
to the winds the apparitions of the spirits”; “they seek in vain to
affright men.”[1218] Contempt of the devil and awakening of faith are,
according to Luther, the best remedies against all assaults of the
devil.[1219] A man who really has the faith may even set an example
that others cannot imitate.[1220] Luther knows, for instance, of a
doctor of medicine who with boundless faith stood up to Satan when the
latter, horns and all, appeared to him; the brave man even succeeded
in breaking off the horns; but, in a similar case, when another tried
to do the same in a spirit of boasting, he was killed by Satan.[1221]
Hence let us have faith, but let our faith be humble!
But, provided we have faith and rely on Christ, we may well show the
devil our contempt for him, vex him and mock at his power and cunning.
He himself, as he says, was given to breaking out into music and song,
the better to show the devil that he despised him, for “our hymns are
very galling to him”; on the contrary, he rejoices and has a laugh
when we are upset and cry out “alas and alack!”[1222] To remain alone
is not good. “This is what I do”; rather than be alone “I go to my
swine-herd Johann or to see the pigs.”[1223]
In this connection Luther can tell some very coarse and vulgar jokes,
both at his own and others’ expense, in illustration of the contempt
which the devil deserves; they cannot here be passed over in silence.
Thus, on April 15, 1538, he relates the story of a woman of Magdeburg
whom Satan vexed by running over her bed at night “like rats and
mice. As he would not cease the woman put her a—— over the bedside,
presented him with a f—— (if such language be permissible) and said:
‘There, devil, there’s a staff, take it in your hand and go pilgriming
with it to Rome to the Pope your idol.’” Ever after the devil left
her in peace, for “he is a proud spirit and cannot endure to be
treated contemptuously.”[1224] According to Lauterbach, who gives
the story in somewhat briefer form, Luther sapiently remarked: “Such
examples do not always hold good, and are dangerous.”[1225]
He himself was nevertheless fond of expressing his contempt for the
devil after a similar way when the latter assailed him with remorse of
conscience.
“I can drive away the devil with a single f——.”[1226] “To shame
him we may tell him: Kiss my a——”,[1227] or “Ease yourself into
your shirt and tie it round your neck,” etc.[1228] On May 7, 1532,
when troubled in mind and afraid lest “the thunder should strike
him, he said: ‘Lick my a——, I want to sleep, not to hold a
disputation.’”[1229] On another occasion he exclaims: “The devil shall
lick my a—— even though I should have sinned.”[1230] When the devil
teased him at night, “suggesting all sorts of strange thoughts to
him,” he at last said to him: “Kiss me on the seat! God is not angry
as you would have it.” Of course, seeing that the devil “‘fouls’ the
knowledge of God,” he must expect to be “fouled” in his turn. Luther
frequently said, so the Table-Talk relates, that he would end by
sending “into his a—— where they belonged” those “twin devils” who
were in the habit of prying on him and tormenting him mentally and
bodily; for “they had brought him to such a pass that he was fit for
nothing.”[1231] The Pope had once played him (Luther) the same trick:
“He has stuck me into the devil’s behind”;[1232] “for I snap at the
Pope’s ban and am his devil, therefore does he hate and persecute
me.”[1233]
He relates, in May, 1532, according to Schlaginhaufen’s Notes, his
method of dismissing the devil by the use of stronger and stronger
hints: When the devil came to him at night in order to plague him, he
first of all told him to let him sleep, because he must work during
the day and needed all the rest he could get. Then, if Satan continued
to upbraid him with his sins, he would answer mockingly that he had
been guilty of a lot more sins which the devil had forgotten to
mention, for instance, he had, etc. (there follows the choice simile
of the shirt as given above); thirdly, “if he still goes on accusing
me of sins I say to him contemptuously: ‘_Sancte Satanas ora pro me_;
you have never done a wrong and you alone are holy; be off to God and
get grace for yourself.’”[1234]
The way in which Bugenhagen or Pomeranus, the pastor of Wittenberg,
with Luther’s fullest approval, drove the devil out of the butter
churn (vol. iii., p. 229 f.) became famous at Wittenberg, and, thanks
to the Table-Talk, elsewhere too. It may here be remarked that the
incident was no mere joke. For when, in 1536, the question of the
harm wrought by the witches was discussed amongst Luther’s guests,
and Bartholomew Bernhardi, the Provost, complained that his cow had
been bewitched for two years, so that he had been unable to get any
milk from her, Luther related quite seriously what had taken place
in Bugenhagen’s house. (“Then Pommer came to the rescue, scoffed at
the devil and emptied his bowels into the churn,” etc.). According
to Lauterbach’s “Diary” Luther returned to the incident in 1538 and
stamped the whole proceeding with his approval: “Dr. Pommer’s plan
is the best, viz. to plague them [the witches] with muck and stir it
well up, for then all their things begin to stink.”[1235] What is even
more remarkable than the strange practice itself is the way in which
Luther comes to speak of “Pommer’s plan.” It is his intention to show
that the method of combating witches had made progress since Catholic
times. For, in Lauterbach, the passage runs: “The village clergy and
schoolmasters had a plan of their own [for counteracting spells] and
plagued them [the witches] not a little, but Dr. Pommer’s plan, etc.
(as above).”[1236] Hence not only did Luther sanction the superstition
of earlier ages, but he even sought to improve on it by the invention
of new practices of his own.
Luther is also addicted to the habit dear to the German Middle Ages
of using the devil as a comic figure; as he advanced in age, however,
he tended to drop this habit and also the kindred one of chasing
the devil away by filthy abuse; the truth is that the devil had now
assumed in his eyes a grimmer and more tragic aspect.
Formerly he had been fond of describing in his joking way how the
devil, “though he had never actually taken his doctor’s degree,”[1237]
proved himself an “able logician” in his suggestions and disputations;
when he brought forward objections Luther would reply: “Devil, tell
me something new; what you say I already know.”[1238] In his book on
the “Winkle-Mass,” pretending to “make a little confession,” he tells
how, “on one occasion, awakening at midnight,” the devil began a
disputation against the Mass with the words: “Hearken, oh most learned
Doctor, are you aware that for some fifteen years you said such
Winkle-Masses nearly every day?”[1239] Whereupon he had “seized on
the old weapons” which “in Popery he had learnt to put on and to use”
and had sought an excuse. “To this the devil retorted: ‘Friend, tell
me where this is written, etc.’”[1240] Formerly he had been fond of
poking fun at the Papists by telling them how they “were beset merely
by naughty little devils, legal rather than theological ones;[1241]
that they were tempted only to homicide, adultery and fornication,”
in short, to sins of the second table of the Law, by “puny fiendkins
and little petty devils,” whereas we on the other hand have “by us the
great devils who are _doctores theologiæ_”; “these attack us as the
leaders of the army, for they tempt us to the great sins against the
first table,” to question the forgiveness of sins, to doubts against
faith and to despair.[1242]
He was very inventive and quite indefatigable in devising new epithets
with the help of the devil’s name; his adversaries were, according to
him, “full of devils, on whose backs moreover lived other and worse
devils”; it seems to him to fall all too short of the truth to say
they are “endevilled,” “perdevilled,” or “superdevilled” and “the
children of Satan.”[1243] The devil’s mother, grandmother and brothers
and sisters are frequently alluded to by Luther, particularly when in
a merry mood. In hours of gloom or emotion he could, however, curse
people with such words as “may the devil take you,”[1244] “May the
devil pay you out,” or “May he tread you under foot!”
He was perfectly aware, nevertheless, of the failings of his tongue,
and even expressed his regret for them to his friends. During his
illness, in 1527, we are told how he begged pardon for and bewailed the
“hasty and inconsiderate words he had often used the better to dispel
the sadness of a weak flesh.”[1245]
Melancholy is “a devil’s bath” (“_balneum diaboli_”), so he remarked on
another occasion, against which there is no more effective remedy than
cheerfulness of spirit.[1246]
5. The Psychology of Luther’s Jests and Satire
Joking was a permanent element of Luther’s psychology. Often, even in
his old age, his love of fun struggles through the lowering clouds of
depression and has its fling against the gloomy anxiety that fills his
mind, and against the world and the devil.
Gifted with a keen sense of the ridiculous, it had been, in his
younger days, almost a second nature to him to delight in drollery
and particularly to clothe his ideas in playful imagery. His mind was
indeed an inexhaustible source of rich and homely humour.
Nature had indeed endowed Luther from his cradle with that rare talent
of humour which, amidst the trials of life, easily proves more valuable
than a gold mine to him who has it. During his secular studies at
Erfurt he had been able to give full play to this tendency as some
relief after the hardships of early days. His preference for Terence,
Juvenal, Plautus and Horace amongst the classic poets leads us to
infer that he did so; and still more does Mathesius’s description, who
says that, at that time, he was a “brisk and jolly fellow.” Monastic
life and, later, his professorship and the strange course on which he
entered must for a while have placed a rein on his humour, but it broke
out all the more strongly when be brought his marvellous powers of
imagination and extraordinary readiness in the use of the German tongue
to the literary task of bringing over the masses to his new ideas.
Anyone desirous of winning the hearts of the German masses has always
had to temper earnestness with jest, for a sense of humour is part of
the nation’s birthright. The fact that Luther touched this chord was
far more efficacious in securing for him loud applause and a large
following than all his rhetoric and theological arguments.
_Humour in his Writings and at his Home_
It was in his polemics that Luther first turned to account his gift of
humour; his manner of doing so was anything but refined.
The first of his German controversial works against a literary
opponent was his “Von dem Bapstum tzu Rome wider dem hochberumpten
Romanisten tzu Leiptzk”[1247] (the Franciscan Alveld or Alfeld),
dating from May and June, 1520. Here he starts with a comical
description of the “brave heroes in the market place at Leipzig,
so well armed as we have never seen the like before. Their helmets
they wear on their feet, their swords on their heads, their shields
and breastplates hang down their back, and their lances they grip
by the blade.... If Leipzig can produce such giants then that land
must indeed be fertile.” On the last page of the same writing he
puts the concluding touch to his work by telling Alveld, the “rude
miller’s beast,” that he does “not yet know how to bray his hee-haw,
hee-haw”; were I, says Luther, “to permit all the wantonness of these
thick-heads even the very washerwomen would end by writing against
me.” “What really helps it if a poor frog [like this fellow] blows
himself out? Even were he to swell himself out to bursting-point he
would never equal an ox.”
In his first German booklet against Emser, viz. his “An den Bock zu
Leyptzck” (1521),[1248] he plays on the motto of Emser’s coat-of-arms
“Beware of the goat.” There was really no call for Emser to inscribe
these words on his note-paper, for from his whole behaviour there was
no doubt that he was indeed a goat, and also that he could “do no more
than butt.” Luther’s reply to all his threats would be: “Dear donkey,
don’t lick! But God save the poor nanny-goats, whose horns are wrapped
in silk, from such a he-goat; as for me, so God wills, there is no
fear. Have you never heard the fable of the ass who tried to roar as
loud as the lion? I myself might have been afraid of you had I not
known you were an ass,” etc.
It is certainly not easy to believe his assertion, that it was only
against his will that he had recourse to all this derision which
he heaped on his adversaries in religious matters of such vital
importance. He has it that his words, “though maybe biting and
sarcastic,” are really “spoken from a heart that is breaking with
grief and has been obliged to turn what is serious into abuse.”[1249]
As a matter of fact the temptation to use just such weapons was too
great, and the prospect of success too alluring for us to place much
reliance in such an assurance. His “grief” was of quite another kind.
At a later date his humour, or rather his caustic and satirical manner
of treating his opponents, looked to him so characteristic of his
way of writing, that as he said, it would be quite easy to tell at a
glance which were the polemical tracts due to his pen, even though
they did not bear his name. This was his opinion of his “satirical
list” of the relics of the Cardinal of Mayence.[1250] Writing of this
work to his friend Jonas he says: “Whoever reads it and has ever been
familiar with my ideas and my pen will say: Here is Luther; the
Cardinal too will say: This is the work of that scamp Luther!... But
never mind; if they pipe then I insist on dancing, and, if I survive,
I hope one day to tread a measure with the bride of Mayence [the
Cardinal].” He had still “some sweet tit-bits” which he would like “to
lay on her red and rosy lips.”[1251] This last quotation may serve as
a specimen of the rough humour found in his controversial letters.
The reader already knows how the Papacy had to bear the brunt of such
jests and of an irony which often descends to the depths of vulgarity.
(Above, vol. iii., p. 232-235; vol. iv., pp. 295 f., 304 f, 318 ff.)
But it was not only in his polemics that his jests came in useful. The
jovial tone which often characterises his domestic life, the humour
that seasons his Table-talk (even though too often it oversteps the
bounds of the permissible) and makes itself felt even in his business
letters and intimate correspondence with friends, appears as Luther’s
almost inseparable companion, with whose smile and whose caustic irony
he cannot dispense.
The monotony and the hardships of his daily life were alleviated by his
cheerfulness. His intercourse with friends and pupils was rendered more
stimulating and attractive, and in many cases more useful. Under cover
of a jest he was often able to enforce good instruction more easily and
almost without its being noticed. His cheerful way of looking at things
often enabled Luther lightheartedly to surmount difficulties from which
others would have shrunk.
There is not the slightest doubt that his extraordinary influence over
those who came into contact with him was due in no small part to his
kindly addiction to pleasantry. It was indeed no usual thing to see
such mighty energy as he devoted to the world-struggle, so agreeably
combined with a keen gift of observation, with an understanding for
the most trivial details of daily life, and, above all, with such
refreshing frankness and such a determination to amuse his hearers.
In order to dispel the anxiety felt by Catherine Bora during her
husband’s absence, he would send her letters full of affection and of
humorous accounts of his doings. He tells her, for instance, how, in
consequence of her excessive fears for him “which hindered her from
sleeping,” everything about him had conspired to destroy him; how a
fire “at our inn just next door to our room” had tried to burn him,
how a heavy rock had fallen in order to kill him; “the rock really
had a mind to justify your solicitude, but the holy angels prevented
it.”[1252] In such cheerful guise does he relate little untoward
incidents. “You try to take care of your God,” he writes to her in a
letter already quoted, “just as though He were not Almighty and able
to create ten Dr. Martins were the old one to be drowned in the Saale,
suffocated in the coal-hole, or eaten up by the wolf.”[1253]
He was also joking, when, about the same time, i.e. during his stay
with the Counts of Mansfeld, he used the words which recently were
taken all too seriously by a Catholic polemist and made to constitute
a charge against Luther’s morals: “At present, thank God, I am well,
only that I am so beset by pretty women as once more to fear for my
chastity.”[1254]
The irony with which he frequently speaks and writes of both himself
and his friends is often not free from frivolity; we may recall, for
instance, his ill-timed jest concerning his three wives;[1255] or
his report to Catherine from Eisleben: “On the whole we have enough
to gorge and swill, and should have a jolly time were this tiresome
business to let us.”[1256] The last passage reminds us of his words
elsewhere: I feed like a Bohemian and swill like a German.[1257]
Among other jests at Catherine’s expense we find in the Table-Talk
the threat that soon the time will come when “we men shall be allowed
several wives,” words which perhaps are a humorous echo of the
negotiations concerning the Hessian bigamy.[1258]
Now and again Luther, by means of his witticisms, tried to teach his
wife some wholesome lessons. The titles by which he addresses her
may have been intended as delicate hints that her management of the
household was somewhat lordly and high-handed: My Lord Katey, Lord
Moses, my Chain (Kette) (“_catena mea_”). To seek to infer from this
that she was a “tyrant,” or to see in it an admission on his part that
he was but her slave, would be as mistaken as to be shocked at his
manner of addressing her elsewhere in his letters, e.g. “to the holy,
careful lady, the most holy lady Doctor; to my beloved lady Doctor
Self-martyr; to the deeply-learned Lady Catherine,” etc.
It has already been pointed out that many of the misunderstandings
of which Luther’s opponents were guilty are due to their inability
to appreciate his humour; they were thereby led to take seriously
as indicative of “unbelief,” statements which in reality were never
meant in earnest.[1259] On the other hand, however, certain texts and
explanations of Luther’s have, on insufficient grounds, been taken as
humorous even by Protestant writers, often because they seemed in some
way to cast a slur upon his memory. For instance, his interpretation of
the Monk-Calf was quite obviously never intended as a joke,[1260] nor
can it thus be explained away as some have recently tried to do. Nor,
again, to take an example from Luther’s immediate circle, can Amsdorf’s
offer of the nuns in marriage to Spalatin[1261] be dismissed as simply
a broad piece of pleasantry.
_Humour a Necessity to Luther in his Struggle with Others and with
Himself_
There can be no doubt that a remarkable psychological feature is
afforded by the combination in Luther of cheerfulness with intense
earnestness in work, indeed the persistence of his humour even in later
years when gloom had laid a firm hold on his soul constitutes something
of a riddle; for even the sufferings of the last period of his life did
not avail to stifle his love of a joke, though his jests become perhaps
less numerous; they serve, however, to conceal his sadder feelings, a
fact which explains why he still so readily has recourse to them.
First of all, a man so oppressed with inner difficulties and mental
exertion as Luther was, felt sadly the need of relaxation and
amusement. His jests served to counteract the strain, physical and
mental, resulting from the rush of literary work, sermons, conferences
and correspondence. In this we have but a natural process of the
nervous system.
A further explanation of his cheerfulness is, however, to be found
in the wish to prove against his own misgivings and his theological
opponents how joyous and confident he was at heart concerning his cause.
He hints at this himself. I will answer for the “Word of Christ,” so
he assures Alveld in his writing against him, “with a cheerful heart
and fresh courage, regardless of anyone; for which purpose God too
has given me a cheerful, fearless spirit, which I trust they will be
unable to sadden to all eternity.”[1262] He often gives the impression
of being anxious to show off his cheerfulness. He is fond of speaking
of his “steadfast and undaunted spirit”; let Emser, he says, take note
and bite his lips over the “glad courage which inspires him day by
day.”
Seeking to display this confidence in face of his opponents he
exclaims satirically in a writing of 1518: “Here I am.” If there be an
inquisitor in the neighbourhood he had better hurry up.[1263]
His courage and entire confidence he expressed as early as 1522 to
the Elector Frederick of Saxony who had urged him to fight shy of
Duke George: “Even if things at Leipzig were indeed as bad as at
Wittenberg [they think they are], I should nevertheless ride thither
even though—I hope your Electoral Highness will excuse my foolish
words—for nine days running it were to rain Duke Georges, each one
nine times as furious as he. He actually looks upon my Lord Christ as
a man of straw!”[1264] In such homely words did he speak, even to his
own sovereign whose protection counted for so much, in order to make
it yet clearer, that he was quite convinced of having received his
Evangel, “not from man, but solely from heaven through our Lord Jesus
Christ”; the Prince, his protector, should know, that God, “thanks to
the Evangel, has made us happy lords over death and all the devils.”
For this reason, according to his famous boast, he would still have
ridden to Worms in defiance of the devils, even had they outnumbered
the tiles on the roofs.[1265]
From the castle of Coburg, though himself a prey to all sorts of
anxiety, he addressed the following ironical, though at the same time
encouraging, admonition to faint-hearted Melanchthon: Why don’t you
fight against your own self? “What more can the devil do than slay
us? What then? You fight in every other field, why not then fight
also against your own self, viz. your biggest enemy who puts so many
weapons against you in Satan’s hands?”[1266] It was thus that Luther
was wont to fight against himself and to rob the devil of his fancied
weapons.
Often enough did he find salvation in humour alone, for instance, when
he had to overcome serious danger, or to beat down difficulties or
the censure of his friends and followers. The plague was threatening
Wittenberg; hence he jokes away his own fears and those of others with
a jest about his “trusty weathercock,” the governor Metzsch; the latter
had a nose which could detect the plague while yet five ells below the
ground; as he still remained in Wittenberg they had good reason to know
that no danger existed. On the same occasion he laughs and cries in
the same breath over the behaviour of the schoolboys, all the schools
having been already closed as a measure of precaution; the plague had
got into their pens and paper so that it would be impossible to make of
them “either preachers, pastors,. or schoolmasters; in the end swine
and dogs will be our best cattle, towards which end the Papists are
busily working.”[1267]
Further instances of jests of this sort, made under untoward
circumstances, are met with in connection with his marriage. His union
with Catherine Bora, as the reader already knows, set tongues wagging,
both in his own camp and outside. The resentment this aroused in him he
attempted to banish by a sort of half-jesting, half-earnest defiance.
“Since they are already cracked and crazy, I will drive them still
madder and so have done with it!”[1268] He jests incidentally over the
suddenness of his marriage, over the proof needed to convince even
himself that he was really a married man, over his surprise at finding
plaits of hair beside him when he awoke; he also makes merry over his
not very seemly play on the words Bore and bier.[1269]
At a later date he found the arrangement of the new ritual very
irksome, both on account of the difficulty of introducing any sort of
uniformity and also owing to the petty outside interests which intruded
themselves. Here again he tries to throw such questions to the winds
by the use of humour: “Put on three copes instead of one, if that
pleases you,” he wrote to Provost George Buchholzer of Berlin, who had
sent him an anxious letter of inquiry; and if Joachim, the Brandenburg
Elector, is not content with one procession “go around seven times as
Josue did at Jericho, and, if your master the Margrave does not mind,
His Electoral Highness is quite at liberty to leap and dance, with
harps, kettledrums, cymbals and bells as David did before the ark of
the Lord.”[1270]
During the whole of his career he felt the embarrassment of being
called upon by the Catholics to produce proof of his higher mission.
At times he sought to escape the difficulty, so far as miracles went,
by arguing on, and straining for all they were worth, certain natural
occurrences; on other occasions, however, he took refuge in jests.
On one occasion he even whimsically promised to perform a manifest
miracle. This was at a time when he was hard put to provide lodgings
for the nuns who had fled to Wittenberg and when it was rumoured that
he had undertaken a journey simply to escape the trouble. “‘I shall arm
myself with prayer,’ he said, ‘and, if it is needful, I shall assuredly
work a miracle.’ And at this he laughed,” so the notes of one present
relate.[1271]
Luther frequently lays it down that merry talk and good spirits are a
capital remedy against temptations to doubts on the faith and remorse
of conscience.
He exhorts Prince Joachim of Anhalt, who had much to suffer from the
“Tempter” and from “melancholy,” to be always cheerful, since God
has commanded us “to be glad in His presence.” “I, who have passed
my life in sorrow and looking at the black side of things, now seek
for joy, and find it whenever I can. We now have, praise be to God,
so much knowledge [through the Evangel] that we can afford to be
cheerful with a good conscience.” It was perfectly true—so he goes on
in a strangely shamefaced manner, to tell the pious but faint-hearted
Prince—that, at times, he himself still dreaded cheerfulness, as
though it were a sin, just as the Prince was inclined to do; “but
God-fearing, honourable, modest joy of good and pious people pleases
God well, even though occasionally there be a word or merry tale too
much.”[1272]
“Nothing does more harm than a sadness,” he declares in 1542. “It
drieth up the bones, as we read in Prov. xvii. [22]. Therefore let
a young man be cheerful, and for this reason I would inscribe over
his table the words ‘Sadness hath killed many, etc.’” (Eccles. xxx.
25).[1273]—“Thoughts of fear,” he insists on another occasion, “are
the sure weapons of death”; “Such thoughts have done me more harm than
all my enemies and all my labours.” They were at times so insistent
that my “efforts against them were in vain.” ... “So depraved is our
nature that we are not then open to any consolation; still, they must
be fought against by every means.”[1274]
For certain spells, particularly in earlier years, Luther nevertheless
succeeded so well in assuming a cheerful air and in keeping it up for
a considerable while, in spite of the oppression he felt within, that
those who came into contact with him were easily deceived. Of this
he once assures us himself; after referring to the great “spiritual
temptations” he had undergone with “fear and trembling” he proceeds:
“Many think that because I appear outwardly cheerful mine is a bed of
roses, but God knows how it stands with me in my life.”[1275]
In a word, we frequently find Luther using jocularity as an antidote
against depression. As he had come to look upon it as the best
medicine against what he was wont to call his “temptations” and had
habituated himself to its use, and as these “temptations” practically
never ceased, so, too, he was loath to deprive himself of so welcome
a remedy even in the dreariest days of his old age. In 1530, to all
intents and purposes, he openly confesses that such was the case. In
a letter to Spalatin, written from the Coburg at a time when he was
greatly disturbed, he describes for his friend’s amusement the Diet
which the birds were holding on the roof of the Castle. His remarks he
brings to a conclusion with the words: “Enough of such jests, earnest
and needful though they be for driving away the thoughts that worry
me—if indeed they can be driven away.”[1276]
Still deeper is the glimpse we get into his inmost thoughts when,
in his serious illness of 1527, he voiced his regret for his free
and offensive way of talking, remarking that it was often due to his
seeking “to drive away the sadness,” to which his “weak flesh” was
liable.
One particular instance in which he resorted to jest as a remedy is
related in the Table-Talk; “In 1541, on the Sunday after Michaelmas,
Dr. Martin was very cheerful and jested with his good friends at
table.... He said: Do not take it amiss of me, for I have received
many bad tidings to-day and have just read a troublesome letter.
Things are ever at their best,” so he concludes defiantly, “when the
devil attacks us in this way.”[1277]—It is just the same sort of
defiance, that, for all his fear of the devil, leads him to sum up
all the worst that the devil can do to him, and then to pour scorn
upon it. During the pressing anxieties of the Coburg days at the time
of the Diet of Augsburg, it really seemed to him that the devil had
“vowed to have his life.” He comforts himself with the words: “Well,
if he eats me, he shall, please God, swallow such a purge as shall
gripe his belly and make his anus seem all too small.”[1278]
It is a matter of common knowledge that people addicted to melancholy
can at certain hours surpass others in cheerfulness and high spirits.
When one side of the scale is weighed down with sadness many a man
will instinctively mend things by throwing humour into the other; at
first, indeed, such humour may be a trifle forced, but later it can
become natural and really serve its purpose well. The story often told
might quite well be true: an actor consulted a physician for a remedy
against melancholy; the latter, not recognising the patient, suggested
that he might be cheered by going to see the performance of a famous
comedian—who was no other than the patient himself.
_More on the Nature of Luther’s Jests_
The character of Luther’s peculiar and often very broad and homely
humour is well seen in his letter-preface to a story on the devil which
he had printed in 1535 and which made the round of Germany.[1279]
The devil, according to this “historia ... which happened on Christmas
Eve, 1534,” had appeared to a Lutheran pastor in the confessional, had
blasphemed Christ and departed leaving behind a horrible stench. In
the Preface Luther pretends to be making enquiries of Amsdorf, “the
chief and true Bishop of Magdeburg,” as he calls him, as to the truth
and the meaning of the apparition. He begs him “to paint and depict
the pious penitent as he deserves,” though quite aware that Amsdorf,
the Bishop, would refer back the matter to him as the Pope (“which
indeed I am”). He had ready the proper absolution which Amsdorf was
to give the devil: “I, by the authority of Our Lord Jesus Christ and
the most holy Father Pope Luther the First, deny you the grace of God
and life everlasting and herewith consign you to hell,” etc. Meanwhile
he himself gives his view of the tale, which he assumes to be true,
and, as so often elsewhere when he has to do with the devil, proceeds
to mingle mockery of the coarsest sort with bitter earnest. When the
Evil One ventures to approach so close to the Evangel, every nerve of
Luther is strung to hatred against the devil and his Roman Pope, both
of whom he overwhelms with a shower of the foulest abuse.
“The devil’s jests are for us Christians a very serious matter”;
having a great multitude of kings, princes, bishops and clergy on
his side he makes bold to mock at Christ; but let us pray that he
may soil himself even as he soiled himself in Paradise; our joy, our
consolation and our hope is, that the seed of the woman shall crush
his head. Hence, so he exclaims, the above absolution sent to Amsdorf
is amply justified. Like confession, like absolution; “as the prayer,
so the incense,” with which words he turns to another diabolical
apparition, which a drunken parson had in bed; he had meant to
conclude the canonical hours by reciting Compline in bed, and, while
doing so, “_se concacavit_,”[1280] whereupon the devil appeared to him
and said: “As the prayer, so also is the incense.”[1281]
He applies the same “humorous” story to the Pope and his praying monks
in his “An den Kurfursten zu Sachsen und Landgraven zu Hesse von dem
gefangenen H. von Brunswig” (1545).[1282] “They neither can pray nor
want to pray, nor do they know what it is to pray nor how one ought to
pray, because they have not the Word and the faith”; moreover, their
only aim is to make the “kings and lords” believe they are devout and
holy.[1283] “On one occasion when a tipsy priest was saying Compline
in bed, he heaved during the recital and gave vent to a big ‘bombart’;
Ah, said the devil, that’s just right, as the prayer so also is the
incense!” All the prayers of the Pope and “his colleges and convents”
are not one whit better “than that drunken priest’s Compline and
incense. Nay, if only they were as good there might still be some hope
of the Pope growing sober, and of his saying Matins better than he did
his stinking Compline. But enough of this.”[1284]
Of this form of humour we have many specimens in Luther’s books,
letters and Table-Talk, which abound in unsavoury anecdotes,
particularly about the clergy and the monks. He and his friends,
many of whom had at one time themselves been religious, seem to have
had ready an inexhaustible fund of such stories. Some Protestants
have even argued that it was in the convent that Luther and his
followers acquired this taste, and that such was the usual style of
conversation among “monks and celibates.” It is indeed possible that
the sweepings of the monasteries and presbyteries may have furnished
some contributions to this store, but the truth is that in many cases
the tales tell directly against the monks and clergy, and are really
inventions made at their expense, some of them in pre-Reformation
times. Frequently they can be traced back to those lay circles in
which it was the fashion to scoff at the clergy. In any case it would
be unjust, in order to excuse Luther’s manner of speech, to ascribe
it simply to “cloistral humour” and the “jokes of the sacristy.” The
evil had its root far more in the coarseness on which Luther prided
himself and in the mode of thought of his friends and table companions,
than in the monastery or among the clergy. Nearly everywhere there
were regulations against foul speaking among the monks, and against
frivolous conversation on the part of the clergy, though, of course,
the existence of such laws does not show that they were always complied
with. That Luther’s manner of speech was at all general has still to
be proved. Moreover, the reference to Luther’s “monkish” habits is all
the less founded, seeing that the older he gets and the dimmer his
recollections become, the stronger are the proofs he gives of his love
for such seasoning; nor must we forget that, even in the monastery, he
did not long preserve the true monastic spirit, but soon struck out a
way of his own and followed his own tastes.
Luther was in high spirits when he related in his Table-Talk the
following tales from the Court of Brandenburg and the city of Florence.
At the Offertory of the Mass the grandfather of Margrave Casimir of
Brandenburg, attended by a trusty chamberlain, watching the women as
they passed up to make their offering at the altar, amused themselves
by counting up the adulteresses, supposed or real; as each passed the
Margrave told the chamberlain to “draw” a bead of his rosary. The
chamberlain’s wife happening to pass, the Margrave, to his courtier’s
mortification, told him to draw a bead also for her. When, however,
the Margrave’s mother came forward the chamberlain had his revenge and
said: Now it’s your turn to draw. Upon which the Margrave gathered up
his rosary indignantly with the words: “Let us lump all the whores
together!”[1285]—The Florentine storiette he took from a book entitled
“The Women of Florence.” An adulteress was desirous of entering
into relations with a young man. She accordingly complained quite
untruthfully to his confessor, that he had been molesting her against
her will; she also brought the priest the presents she alleged he had
brought her, and described how by night he climbed up to her window by
means of a tree that stood beneath it. The zealous confessor thereupon,
no less than three times, takes the supposed peccant lover to task;
finally he speaks of the tree. Ah, thinks the young man, that’s rather
a good idea, I might well try that tree. Having learned of this mode
of entry he accordingly complies with the lady’s wishes. “And so,”
concludes Luther, “the confessor, seeking to separate them, actually
brought them together. Boundless indeed is the poetic ingenuity and
cunning of woman.”[1286]
* * * * *
Strong as was Luther’s whimsical bent, yet we are justified in asking
whether the delightful and morally so valuable gift of humour in its
truest sense was really his.
“Genuine humour is ever kindly,” rightly says Alb. Roderich, “and only
savages shoot with poisoned darts.” Humour as an ethical quality is
the aptitude so to rise above this petty world as to see and smile
at the follies and light sides of human life; it has been defined as
an optimistic kind of comedy which laughs at what is funny without,
however, hating it, and which lays stress on the kindlier side of what
it ridicules.
Of this happy, innocent faculty gently to smooth the asperities of
life Luther was certainly not altogether devoid, particularly in
private life. But if we take him as a whole, we find that his humour
is as a rule disfigured by a bitter spirit of controversy, by passion
and by hate. His wit tends to pass into satire and derision. Here we
have anything but the overflowing of a contented heart which seeks to
look at everything from the best side and to gratify all. He may have
delighted his own followers by his unmatched art of depreciating others
in the most grotesque of fashions, of exaggerating their foibles, and,
with his keen powers of imagination, of giving the most amusingly
ignominious account of their undoing, but, when judged impartially from
a literary and moral standpoint, his output appears more as irritating
satire, as clever, bitter word-play and sarcasm, rather than as real
humour.
CHAPTER XXXII
A LIFE FULL OF STRUGGLES OF CONSCIENCE
1. On Luther’s “Temptations” in General
AN account given by Luther himself in 1537 and taken down by his pupils
from his own lips is the best introduction to the subject now to be
considered.
“He spoke of his spiritual sickness (‘_morbus spiritualis_’). For a
fortnight he had tasted neither food nor drink and had had no sleep.
‘During this time,’ so he said, ‘I wrestled frequently with God and
impatiently upbraided Him with His promises.’” While in this state he
had been forced to complain, with the sick and troubled Job, that God
was killing him and hiding His countenance from him; like Job, however,
he had learnt to wait for His assistance, for here too his case was
like that of the “man crushed, and delivered over to the gates of
death” and on whom the devil had poured forth his wrath. How many, he
adds, have to wrestle like he and Job until they are able to say “I
know, O God, that Thou art gracious.”[1287]
Other statements of Luther’s at a later period supply us with further
information. Lauterbach notes, on Oct. 7, 1538, the complaint
already quoted: “I have my mortal combats daily. We have to struggle
and wrangle with the devil who has very hard bones, till we learn
how to crack them. Paul and Christ had hard work enough with the
devil.”[1288] On Aug. 16 of the same year Lauterbach takes down the
statement: “Had anyone else had to undergo such temptations as I,
he would long since have expired. I should not of my own have been
able to endure the blows of Satan, just as Paul could not endure the
all-too-great temptations of Christ. In short, sadness is a death in
itself.”[1289]
With the spiritual sickness above mentioned was combined, as has been
already pointed out (above, p. 226 f.), a growing state of depression:
“I have lived long enough,” he said in 1542; “the devil is weary of
my life and I am sick of hating the devil.”[1290] Terrible thoughts
of the “Judgment of God” repeatedly rose up before him and caused him
great fear.[1291]
Before this, according to other notes, he had said to his table
companions, that he was daily “at grips with Satan”;[1292] that during
the attacks of the devil he had often not known whether he were “dead
or alive.”[1293] “The devil,” so he assures them, “brought me to such
a pitch of despair that I did not even know if there was a God.”[1294]
“When the devil finds me idle, unmindful of God’s Word, and thus
unarmed, he assails my conscience with the thought that I have taught
what is false, that I have rent asunder the churches which were so
peaceful and content under the Papacy, and caused many scandals,
dissensions and factions by my teaching, etc. Well, I can’t deny that
I am often anxious and uneasy about this, but, as soon as I lay hold
on the Word, I again get the best.”[1295]
To the people he said, in a sermon in 1531: “The devil is closer to
us than we dream. I myself often feel the devil raging within me.
Sometimes I believe and sometimes I don’t, sometimes I am cheerful
and sometimes sad.”[1296]—A year later he describes in a sermon how
the devil, who “attacks the pious,” had often made him “sweat much
and his heart to beat,” before he could withstand him with the right
weapon, viz. with God’s Word, namely, the office committed to him
and the service he had rendered to the world, “which it was not his
to belie!”[1297] Some ten years before this he had spoken still more
plainly to his hearers at Wittenberg, telling them, strange to say,
of his experience in early days of the good effects of confession:
“I would not for all the treasures of the world give up private
confession, for I know what strength and comfort it has been to me.
No one knows what it can do unless he has fought often and much with
the devil. Indeed, the devil would long ago have done for me, had
not confession saved me.” In fact whoever tells his troubles to his
brother, receives from him, as from God, comfort “for his simple
conscience and faint heart”; seldom indeed did one find a “strong,
firm faith” which did not stand in need of this; hardly anyone could
boast of possessing it. “You do not know yet,” he concludes, “what
labour and trouble it costs to fight with and conquer the devil. But I
know it well, for I have eaten a mouthful or two of salt with him. I
know him well, and so does he know me.”[1298]
After all these remarkably frank admissions there can remain no doubt
that a heavy mist of doubts and anxieties overshadowed Luther’s inner
life.
A closer examination of this darker side of his soul seems to promise
further information concerning his inner life. Here, too, it is
advisable to sum up the phenomena, retracing them back to their very
starting-point. Though much of what is to be said has already been
mentioned, still, it is only now, towards the end of his life, that the
various traits can in any sense be combined so as to form something
as near a complete picture as possible. We have to thank Luther’s
communicativeness, talkativeness and general openness to his friends,
that a tragic side of his inner life has been to some extent revealed,
which otherwise might for ever have been buried in oblivion.
It is true that, to forestall what follows, few nowadays will be
disposed to follow Luther and to look on the devil as the originator
of his doubts and qualms of conscience. His fantastic ideas of the
“diabolical combats” he had to wage, form, as we shall see (below, p.
329 ff.), part of his devil-mania. Nevertheless his many references
to his ordinary, nay, almost daily, inward combats or “temptations,”
as he is accustomed to style them, are not mere fabrications, but
really seem to come from a profoundly troubled soul. In what follows
many such utterances will be quoted, because only thus can one reach
a faithful picture of his changing moods which otherwise would seem
barely credible. These utterances, though usually much alike, at times
strike a different note and thus depict his inner life from a new and
sometimes surprising side.
2. The Subject-matter of the “Temptations”
The spiritual warfare Luther had to wage concerned primarily his
calling and his work as a whole.
“You have preached the Evangel,” so the inner voice, which he
describes as the devil’s tempting, says to him; “But who commanded you
to do so, ‘_quis iussit_?’ Who called upon you to do things such as no
man ever did before? How if this were displeasing to God and you had to
answer for all the souls that perish?”[1299]
“Satan has often said to me: How if your own doctrine were false which
charges the Pope, monks and Mass-priests with such errors? Often he so
overwhelmed me that the sweat has poured off me, until I said to him,
go and carry your complaints to my God Who has commanded me to obey
this Christ.”[1300]—“The devil would often have laid me low with his
argument: ‘Thou art not called,’ had I not been a Doctor.”[1301]—“I
have had no greater temptation,” he said after dinner on Dec. 14,
1531, “and none more grievous than that about my preaching; for I
have said to myself: You alone are at the bottom of this; if it’s
all wrong you have to answer for all the many souls which it brings
down to hell. In this temptation I have often myself descended into
hell till God recalled me and strengthened me, telling me that it was
indeed the Word of God and true doctrine; but it costs much until
one reaches this comfort.”[1302]—“Now the devil troubles me with
other thoughts [than in the Papacy], for he accuses me thus: Oh, what
a vast multitude have you led astray by your teaching! Sometimes
amidst such temptation one single word consoles me and gives me fresh
courage.”[1303]
Not merely does he say this in the Table-Talk but even writes it in
his Bible Commentaries. In his exposition of Psalm xlv. he speaks of
an “argumentation and objection” which the devil urges against him:
“Lo, you stand all alone and are seeking to overthrow the good order
[of the Church] established with so much wisdom. For even though the
Papacy be not without its sins and errors, what about _you_? Are _you_
infallible? Are _you_ without sin? Why raise the standard of revolt
against the house of the Lord when you yourself can only teach them
what you yourself are full of, viz. error and sin? These thoughts,” he
continues, “upset one very much.... Hence we must learn that all our
strength lies in hearing God’s Word and laying hold on it, in seeing
God’s works and believing in them. Whoever does not do this will be
taken captive by the devil and overthrown.” He is fully cognisant of
the strength of the objection which dogs his footsteps: Though sins
and faults are to be met with in individual members of the hierarchy,
still we must honour their “office and authority.”[1304]
Among Luther’s peculiar doctrines the principal ones which became the
butt of “temptations” were his fundamental theses on Justification, on
the Law and on good works.
With regard to his doctrine of Justification, on Dec. 14, 1531, he
gave his pupil Schlaginhaufen, who also failed to find comfort in it,
some advice as to how he was to help himself. The devil was wont “to
come to him” [Luther] with righteousness and to “insist on our being
actively righteous,” and since none of us are, “no one can venture
to stand up to him”; what one should do was, however, resolutely to
fall back on passive righteousness and to say to Satan: Not by my own
righteousness am I justified, but by the righteousness of the man
Christ. “Do you know Him?” In this way we vanquish him by “the Word.”
Another method, also a favourite one of his,[1305] so he instructs
his anxious pupil, was to rid oneself of such ideas by “thinking of
dancing, or of a pretty girl; that also is good, eating and drinking
are likewise helpful; for one who is tempted, fasting is a hundred
times worse than eating and drinking.”[1306]—“This is the great
art,” he repeats at the beginning of the following year, looking back
upon his own bitter experiences, “to pass from my sin to Christ’s
righteousness to know that Christ’s righteousness is mine as surely as
I know that this body is mine.... What astonishes me is that I cannot
learn this doctrine, and yet all my pupils believe they have it at
their finger-tips.”[1307]
The doctrine of the Law in its relation to the Gospel, a point which
he was never able to make quite clear to himself, constituted in his
case an obstacle to peace of mind.[1308] In consequence of his own
experience he warns others from the outset against giving way to any
anxious thoughts about this: “Whoever, Law in hand, begins to dispute
with the devil is already a beaten man and a prisoner.... Hence let
no one dare to dispute with him about the Law, or about sin, but let
him rather desist in good time.”[1309] “When Satan reproaches me and
says: ‘The Law is also the Word of God,’ I reply: ‘God’s Word is only
the promise of God whereby He says: Let me be Thy God. In addition to
this, however, He also gives the Law, but for another purpose, not
that we may be saved thereby.”[1310]
But God, as Luther was well aware, will, as He threatens, judge people
by their fulfilment of the Law and only grant salvation to those who
keep it.
The stern and clear exhortations of Scripture on fidelity to the Law
and on penance for its transgression often filled his soul with the
utmost terror, and so did the text: “Unless you do penance, you shall
all likewise perish” (Luke xiii. 3). Even in one of his sermons he
confessed to the people in this connection, that he was acquainted
from experience “with the cunning of the devil and his malicious
tricks, how he is wont to upbraid us with the Law ... to make a real
hell for us so that the wide world seems all too narrow to hold us”;
the devil depicts Christ “as though He were angry with sinners”; “he
grabs a text of Holy Scripture, or one of Christ’s warnings, and
suddenly stabs us so hard in the heart ... that we actually believe
it, nay, our conscience would swear to it a thousand times,” that “it
was indeed Christ Who inspired such thoughts, whereas all the while
it was the devil himself.” “Of what I say I have had some experience
myself.”[1311] He then goes on to quote the above exhortation to
penance as an instance of the sort of warning on which the devil
seizes, though these words have ever been regarded by God-fearing
Christians as a powerful incentive to religion and not at all as
productive of excessive fear, at least in those who put their trust
in grace. Luther, however, thinks it right to add: “By fear the devil
fouls and poisons with his venom the pure and true knowledge of
Christ.”
Hence it is useless, or at best but a temporary expedient, to refrain
from disputing with Satan on the Law. Nor is Luther’s invitation much
better: “When a man is tempted, or is with those who are tempted,
let him slay Moses and throw every stone at him on which he can lay
hands.”[1312]
* * * * *
His doctrine of good works was no less a source of disquietude to
Luther. He declared that Satan was sure of an “easy victory” “once
he gets a man to think of what he has done or left undone.” What one
had to do was to retort to the devil, strong in one’s fiducial faith:
“Though I may not have done this or that good work, still I am saved
by the forgiveness of sins, as baptised and redeemed by the flesh and
blood of Christ”; beyond this he should not go: “Faith ranks above
deeds”; still, so he adds, before a man reaches this point, all may
be over for him. “It is hard in the time of temptation to get so far;
even Christ found it difficult”; “it is hard to escape from the idea
of works,” i.e. from believing that they as much as faith are required
for salvation and that they are meritorious.[1313]
The “devil” also frequently twitted Luther, so he declares, with the
consequences of his doctrines.
“Often he tormented me,” he says, “with words such as these: ‘Look at
the cloisters; formerly they enjoyed a delightful peace, of which you
have made an end; who told you to do such a thing?’” On one occasion,
when making some such admissions concerning the effect of his teaching
on the religious vows, one interrupted him and tried to show that he
had merely insisted that God was not to be worshipped by the doctrines
and commandments of men (Mt. xv. 9), and that the dissolution of the
monasteries was not so much his work as a consequence ordained by God;
Luther replied frankly: “My friend, before such a thought would have
occurred to me during such temptations I should indeed have been in a
fine sweat.”[1314]
“When Satan finds me idle and not armed with the Word,” so we read
in the notes made of one of his sermons,[1315] “he puts it into my
conscience that I am a disturber of the public order, a preacher of
false doctrines and a herald of revolt. This he often does. But as
soon as I make use of the Word as a weapon I get the best, for I
answer him.... It is written you must hear this man [the Son of God]
or everything falls. God heeds not the world, even were there ten
rebellious worlds. It was thus that Paul, too, had to console himself
when accused of preaching sedition against God and the Emperor.”[1316]
In this wise does Luther seek to fall back on Christ and on his divine
commission.
He frequently, indeed usually, appeals to this source of consolation,
and it is therefore due to him to quote a few more such statements. He
struggles, in spite of all his fears, not to relinquish his peculiar
trust in Christ.
Yet, as he often complains in this connection, “the devil knows well
how to get me away.”[1317]
“He says to me: See how much evil arises from your doctrine. To which
I reply: Much good has also come of it. Oh, says he, that is a mere
nothing! He is a fine talker and can make a great beam of a little
splinter, and destroy what is good and dissolve it into thin air. He
has never been so angry in his life.... I must hold fast to Christ and
to the Evangel. He frequently begins to dispute with me about this,
and well knows how to get me away. He is very wroth, I feel it and
understand it well.”[1318]—The moral consequences of the religious
innovations, and the disunion so rife undoubtedly weighed heavily on
Luther. “We, who boast of being Evangelical,” so he is impelled to
exclaim in 1538, “fling the most holy Gospel to the winds as though it
were but a quotation from Terence.” “Alas, Good God, how bitter the
devil must be against us, to incite the very ministers of the Word
against each other and to inspire them with mutual hatred!”[1319]
Misgivings as to his own salvation also constituted a source of
profound anxiety for Luther.
So repeatedly did he hear in fancy the devil announcing to him in a
voice of thunder his eternal damnation, that he was, as he confesses,
almost reduced to despair and to blasphemy.
“When we are thus tempted to blasphemy on account of God’s judgment,”
so he said on June 18, 1540, “we fail to see either that it is a sin,
or how to avoid it,” “such abominable thoughts does the prince of this
world suggest to the mind: Hatred of God, blasphemy, despair; these are
the devil’s own fiery darts; St. Paul understood them to some extent
when he felt the sting of the devil in his flesh [2 Cor. xii. 7].
These are the high temptations [which, as he explains elsewhere, were
reserved for himself and for his preachers]. No Pope has known them.
These stupid donkeys were familiar with no other temptations than those
of carnal passion.... To such they capitulated, and so did ‘Jeronimus.’
Yet such temptations are easily to be remedied while virgins and women
remain with us.”[1320]—But in that other sort of temptation it is hard
to “keep cheerful” and to tell the devil boldly: “God is not angry as
you say.”[1321]
On one occasion Melanchthon watched him during such a struggle, when he
was battling against despair and the appalling thought that he had been
delivered over to the “wrath of God and the punishment of sin.” Luther,
he says, was in “such sore terror that he almost lost consciousness,”
and sighed much as he wrestled with a text of Paul on unbelief and
grace.[1322]
Several incidents and many utterances noted down from Luther’s own
lips give us an even better insight into the varying character of his
“temptations” and into their nature as a whole.
3. An Episode. Terrors of Conscience become Temptations of the Devil
_Schlaginhaufen and Luther_
Johann Schlaginhaufen, the pupil of Luther whom we have had so frequent
occasion to mention, complained to his master in the winter of 1531
of the deep anxiety from which he could not shake himself free, which
led him to fear for the salvation of his soul. Luther sought in vain to
comfort the troubled man by pointing to his own case.[1323] The fact
that the master attributed the whole matter to the devil only added
to the confusion of his unfortunate pupil. So much was Schlaginhaufen
upset, that on one occasion, on New Year’s Eve, 1531, he actually
swooned whilst on a visit to Luther’s house. Luther, nothing abashed,
promptly exorcised the devil who had brought on the fainting-fit, using
thereto the Bible words: “The Lord rebuke thee, Satan” (Zach. iii. 2:
“_Increpet te Dominus_”); he added: “He [the devil], who should be an
angel of life, is an angel of death. He tries us with lying and with
murder.”
Schlaginhaufen, after having been put to bed, began to come to,
whereupon Luther consoled him thus: “David suffered such temptations;
I too have often experienced similar ones, though to-day I have
been free from them and have had nothing to complain of save only a
natural weakness of the head. Let the godless, Cochlæus, Faber and the
Margrave [Joachim I of Brandenburg] be afraid and tremble. This is a
temptation of the spirit; it is not meant for us, for we are ministers
and vicars of God.” Here Schlaginhaufen groaned: “Oh, my sins!” Luther
now tried to make him understand that he must turn to the thought
of grace and forget all about the Law. “Oh, my God,” replied the
young man, echoing his master’s own thoughts, “the tiniest devil is
stronger than the whole world!” But Luther pointed out that there were
even stronger good angels present for the Christian’s protection. He
went on, “Satan is as hostile as can be to us. Were we only to agree
to worship the Pope, we should be his dear children, enjoy perfect
peace and probably become cardinals. It is not you alone who endure
such temptations; I am inured to them, and Peter too and Paul were
acquainted with them.... We must not be afraid of the miscreant.” When
Schlaginhaufen had sufficiently recovered to return to his lodgings
close by, Luther paternally admonished him to mix more freely with
others and, for the rest, to trust entirely in his teacher. His
own waverings did not prevent him from giving the latter piece of
advice.[1324]
Of the temptations by which he himself was visited, “to despair, and
to dread the wrath of God,” he had already said to Schlaginhaufen,
on Dec. 14, 1531: Had it not been for them he would never have been
able to do so much harm to the devil, or to preserve his own humility;
now, however, he knew to his shame that “when the temptation comes I
am unable to get the better of a single venial sin. Thanks to these
temptations I have attained to such knowledge and to such gifts, that,
with the help of God, I won that glorious victory (‘_illam præclaram
victoriam_’), vanquishing my monkish state, the vows, the Mass and all
those abominations.” “After that I had peace,” he says, speaking of
those earlier years, “so that I even took a wife, such good days had
I.”[1325]—Yet his own contemporary statements show that inward peace
was not his at the time when he took a wife.[1326]
An incident related of Luther by Schlaginhaufen shows how a single
text of Scripture, and the train of ideas it awakened, could reduce
him, and Bugenhagen too, to a state verging on distraction. “The devil
on one occasion,” so Luther said to him, “tormented and almost slew
me with Paul’s words to Timothy [1 Tim. v. 11-12], so that my heart
melted in my bosom; the reason was the abandoning by so many monks and
nuns of the religious state in which they had vowed to God to live.”
(Paul, in the passage cited, has strong things to say of widows who
prove unfaithful to the widowhood in which they had promised to live.)
“The devil,” he continues concerning his attitude towards the devil at
that time, “hid from my sight the doctrine of Justification so that I
never even thought of it, and obtruded on me the text; he led me away
from the doctrine of grace to dispute on the Law, and then he had me
at his mercy. Bugenhagen happened to be near at the time. I submitted
it to him and went with him into the corridor. But he too began to
doubt, for he did not know that I was so hard put about it. Thereupon
I was at first much upset and passed the night with a heavy heart.
Next day Bugenhagen came to me. ‘I am downright angry,’ he said, ‘I
have now looked into that text more closely, and, right enough, the
argument is ridiculous!’ Thus he [the devil] is always on the watch
for us. But nevertheless we have Christ!”[1327]—We are not told why
the argument from this Bible-passage, which insists so solemnly on the
sacred character of vows, was regarded as “ridiculous.”
The last incident reminds us of the scene between Luther and Bugenhagen
on June, 1540, narrated in the Table-Talk; there Luther declares: “No
sooner am I assailed by temptation than the flesh begins to rebel even
though I understand the spirit.... Gladly would I be formally just,
but I do not find it in me.” And Bugenhagen chimed in: “Herr Doctor,
neither do I.”[1328]
_From Remorse of Conscience to Onslaughts of the Devil_
The actual cause of Luther’s anxiety, as is plain from the above, was
a certain quite intelligible disquiet of conscience. Yet, he chose to
regard all reproaches from within as merely the sting of the Evil One.
As time went on this became more and more his habit; it is always the
evil spirit who is at his heels, at whose person and doings, Luther,
following his bent, pokes his jokes.
Hieronymus Weller, another pupil tormented with inner pangs, once,
without any beating about the bush, put down all his sadness to his
conscience; he declared in Luther’s presence in the spring of 1532:
“Rather than endure such troubles of conscience I would willingly go
through the worst illnesses.”[1329] Luther tried his best to pacify him
with the assurance that the devil was “a murderer,” and that “God’s
Mercy endureth for ever and ever.”
Yet Luther himself had admitted to his friend Wenceslaus Link, that
“it is extremely difficult thoroughly to convince oneself that such
thoughts of hopelessness emanate from Satan and are not our very own,
but the best help is to be found in this conviction. One must by a
supreme effort contrive to turn one’s mind to other things and chase
such thoughts away.” “But you can guess how hard it is,” he continues,
“when the thoughts refer to God and to our eternal salvation; they are
of such a nature that our conscience can neither tear itself away from
them nor yet despise them.”[1330] Simply to tear itself away from such
disquieting thoughts was certainly not possible for a conscience in so
luckless a position as Luther’s, oppressed as it was with the weight of
a world catastrophe.
Luther once, in 1532, says quite outspokenly and not without a certain
reference to himself: “The spirit of sadness is conscience itself”;
here, however, he probably only means that we are always conscious
within ourselves of a painful antagonism to the Law, for he at once
goes on: “This we must ever endure,” we must necessarily be ever in
a state of woe because in this life we “lie amidst the throes of
childbirth that precede the Last Day;” but the devil who condemns us
inwardly “has not yet condemned” Christ. Those who are thus tempted
“do not feel those carnal temptations, which are so petty compared with
the spiritual.”[1331]
At any rate, so he will have it, there was a call to struggle most
earnestly against all the inward voices that make themselves heard
against the new teaching and the apostasy, just as though they came
from the devil.[1332]
He was helped in this, on the one hand, by his terrible energy, and, on
the other, by a theological fallacy: “God has commanded that we should
look to Christ for forgiveness of our sins; hence whoever does not do
so makes God a liar; I must therefore say to the devil: Even though I
be a scamp, yet Christ is just.”[1333]
Thus we find him declaring, for instance, in July, 1528: “to yield to
such disquiet of conscience is to be overcome by Satan, nay, to set
Satan on the throne!” “Such thoughts may appear to be quite heavenly
and called for, but they are nevertheless Satanic and cannot but be
so.” When they refuse to depart, even though spurned by us, and we
endure them patiently, then do we indeed “present a sublime spectacle
to God and the angels.”[1334]—“Away with the devil’s sadness!” so, at
a later date, in 1544, he exhorts his old friend Spalatin; “conscience
stands in the cruel service of the devil; a man must learn to find
consolation even against his own conscience.”[1335]
4. Progress of his Mental Sufferings until their Flood-tide in 1527-1528
If we glance at the history of Luther’s so-called “temptations”
throughout the whole course of his career, we shall find that they
were very marked at the beginning of his enterprise. Before 1525 they
had fallen off, but they became again more frequent during the terrors
of the Peasant War and then reasserted themselves with great violence
in 1527. After abating somewhat for the next two years they again
assumed alarming proportions in 1530 in the solitude of the Coburg
and thus continue, with occasional breaks, until 1538. From that time
until the end of his life he seemed to enjoy greater peace, at least
from doubts regarding his own salvation, though, on the other hand,
gloomy depression undoubtedly darkened the twilight of his days, and
he complains more than ever of the weakness of his own faith; we miss,
however, those vivid accounts of his struggles of conscience which he
had been wont to give.
_The Period Previous to 1527_
Let us listen first of all to Luther’s self-reproach in the early days
of his public labours; we may recall those words of 1521 where he
confesses, that, before he had grown so bold and confident, “his heart
had often quaked with fear,” when he thought of the words of his foes:
“Are you alone wise and are all others mistaken? Is it likely that so
many centuries were all in the wrong? Supposing, on the contrary, you
were in the wrong and were leading so many others with you into error
and to eternal perdition!”[1336] He admits similarly that he had still
to fight with his conscience even after having passed through the storm
in which, “amidst excitement and confusion of conscience,” he had
discovered the true doctrine of salvation.[1337] That discovery did
not bring him into a haven of rest even though we have his word that,
for a while, he was quite overcome with joy. “Oh, what great trouble
and labour did it cost me, even though grounded on Holy Scripture, to
convince my conscience that I had a right to stand up all alone against
the Pope, and denounce him as Antichrist, the Bishops as his Apostles
and the Universities as his brothels.”[1338]
The days he spent in the Wartburg and the opportunity they afforded
him to look back on his past, awakened anew these self-reproaches;
whilst in the solitude, we hear him complaining, that his “distress
of soul still persisted and that his former weakness of spirit and
of faith had not yet left him.”[1339] Later on he remembered having
had to battle with every kind of despair (“_omnibus desperationibus_”)
for three long years.[1340] At a much later date, in 1541, he reminds
his friends of the many inward struggles (“_tot agones_”) the first
proclamation of the Evangel and his crusade against the word of man had
cost him.[1341]
About 1521 he must have arrived at a pitch of “despair and temptation
regarding the wrath of God” such as he never before had tasted; for he
told one of his pupils, on Dec. 14, 1532, that it was “about ten years
since he had felt this struggle so severely; after that better days had
dawned, but later the difficulties began anew.”[1342]
But, as he often admits, he was all too addicted to thoughts of
despair, thanks to the devil who was ever lying in wait for him; as for
the “better days” they might easily be counted. “When these thoughts
come upon me I forget everything about Christ and God, and even begin
to look upon God as a miscreant”; the “_Laudate_” stops, so he says,
and the “_Blasphemate_” begins as soon as we begin to think of the fate
to which from all eternity we are predestined.[1343]
Subsequent to 1525 his new state of life with its domestic cares
and distractions, added to his satisfaction with the growing damage
inflicted on the Papacy, appear to have contributed to diminish his
trouble of mind.
Later, however, in 1527, it “began anew.”
Atrocious suffering of mind and bitter anxiety concerning the abuses
in the new Church—“a vinegar sourer than all other vinegars, as he
calls it,”—immediately preceded his illness which began about July
7, 1527.[1344] Mental uneasiness and self-reproaches accompanied the
fainting-fits which at that time seemed to threaten his life. His
inward struggles were so severe that Bugenhagen, who tried to comfort
him, compares them with the darkness of the soul “so frequently
mentioned in the Psalms as illustrative of the spiritual pangs of
hell.” “Dr. Martin,” writes the latter, who was pastor at Wittenberg
and Luther’s “confessor,” “had in all likelihood been through other
such temptations, but none had ever been so severe; this he admitted
on the following day to Dr. Jonas, to Dr. Christian [Schurf] and to
me. He said they were worse and more dangerous than the bodily ailment
which befell him on that same Saturday evening about five o’clock
and which was so serious that we feared he would succumb under it.”
Luther himself, in those critical days, declared “that he would not
retract his doctrine,” and, after making his confession to Bugenhagen
as the latter relates, “spoke at considerable length of the spiritual
temptation he had been through the same morning, with such fear and
trembling as could not be described in words.”[1345] It was then that
the curious complaint was involuntarily wrung from him that those who
saw his outward behaviour fancied he “lay on a bed of roses, though
God knew how it stood with him.” Bugenhagen and Jonas have embellished
their accounts of this illness of their friend with many pious
utterances supposed to have been spoken by him then.[1346]
_The Height of the Storm, 1527-28_
The worst struggles, lasting over many months, followed upon Luther’s
illness of 1527.
Hardly had he recovered his normal health than we find his letters
full of sad allusions to his abiding state of despair and to his fears
concerning the faith, probably the most melancholy outpourings of his
whole life.
“For more than a week I have been tossed about between death and
hell,” he writes to Melanchthon, “so that I still tremble in
every limb and feel utterly broken. Waves and storms of despair
and blasphemy against God broke over me and I lost Christ almost
entirely. But, at the intercession of the saints [his friends] God has
begun to take pity on me and has delivered my soul from the lowest
hell.”[1347]—“This struggle,” he writes to Justus Menius, “goes
beyond my strength.... I am tried not only in body but still more, and
worst of all, in soul. God allows Satan and his angels thus to torment
me.”[1348]
In a letter of Aug. 21, addressed to Johann Agricola, then still his
friend, he informed him that the fight was not yet at an end. “Satan
rages against me with all his might. Like another Job (Job xvi.
12), God has set me up as a mark, and He tempts me with intolerable
weakness of spirit. The prayers of holy men indeed save me from
remaining in his hands, but the wounds I have received in my heart
will be hard to heal. I trust that my strivings will turn to the
salvation of many.” He concludes by saying that those in power (the
Catholics) were unable to get at him, but that so much the more was he
plagued in spirit “by the Prince of this world.”[1349] He writes in
much the same vein on Aug. 26 to Nicholas Hausmann.
Truly, so he again wrote to Johann Agricola, on Aug. 31, “neither
world nor reason can understand how hard it is to realise that Christ
is our righteousness, so deeply rooted in us is the doctrine of works,
which has grown up with us and become part of us. That Christ may
strengthen me I commend myself to your prayers.”[1350] Hence it was
his chief dogma, the very rock of his Evangel, that “Satan” was then
tampering with. The call for good works was, as he felt, beyond even
his power to deny.
“For wellnigh three months I have been feeling wretched,” he wrote
on Oct. 8, “not so much in body as in soul, so that I have written
little or nothing, so greatly has Satan tossed me in the sieve [Luke
xxii. 31]”[1351]—“God has not yet completely restored me to health,”
he announces on Oct. 19, “but in His wisdom leaves me a prey to
Satan who assails me and buffets me; but God also sends help and
protection.”[1352]
He speaks of himself, on Oct. 27, as “a wretched and abject worm,
harassed by the spirit of sadness,” “I seek and thirst for nought else
than for a gracious God, for as such He reveals Himself even to His
enemies and contemners.”[1353] Luther had claimed, that, through his
new doctrine and through flinging aside his monkish frock he had found
“a gracious God,” and proclaimed Him to men for their reconciliation;
this has been extolled as the greatest gain achieved by the Lutheran
schism; yet here we have his word for it that the solace of a Gracious
God was still withheld from him.—“I have always been in the habit of
comforting others,” he says in a letter to Amsdorf on Nov. 1; “and now
I myself stand in desperate need of such consolation; only one thing,
however, do I wish, viz. never to be the foe of Christ, although I
have offended Him by many and great sins. Satan tries to make a Job
of me; he would like to sift me like Peter and his brethren. Oh, that
God would say to him: ‘Yet spare his life’ [Job ii. 6], and to me:
‘I am thy salvation’ [Ps. xxxiv. 3]. Even now I still hope that His
anger at my sins will not last for ever.... Meanwhile fighting goes on
outside and fears reign within, yea, very bitter ones indeed.”[1354]
Thus in spite of everything he tries to buoy himself up with hope.
Yet his lamentations continue. “Hardly can I breathe for storms
and faintheartedness.... My Katey, however, is strong in faith and
in good health.... As for me, my body is whole but I am tempted”
(Nov. 4).[1355]—“From several sides at once fears rush in on me. My
temptations torment me ... for months storms and faintness of spirit
have never left me; pray that my faith may not fail” (Nov. 7).—“I
have surely troubles enough already, please do not add to them by
crucifying me with your dissensions” (Nov. 9).—“Erasmus and the
Sacramentarians are now come to stamp me under foot, to persecute a
man already utterly worn out in spirit!”[1356]—“I endure God’s wrath
because I have sinned against Him. My sins, death, and Satan with his
angels all rage against me without a break; and now Pope and Emperor,
Princes, Bishops and the whole world too storms in upon me, making
common cause with the crew who vex me”; everything would be endurable
provided only Christ—for Whose sake he, the “most abject of all
sinners,” was hated—did not desert one “whom God has smitten”[1357]
and whom they persecute (Nov. 10).—“I believe that it is no mere
fiend from the ranks of the devil’s hosts who fights with me, but the
Prince of the demons himself; so powerful is he and so armed to the
teeth with Bible-texts that my knowledge of the Bible is left stranded
and I am obliged to have recourse to the words of others; from this
you may get some idea of the devil’s height, as they say” (Nov. 17).
“I am well in body, but as to how it stands with me in spirit I am
not certain.... I seek only for a gracious Christ.... Satan wants to
prevent me from writing and to drag me down with him to hell. May
Christ tread him under foot, Amen!” (Nov. 22).[1358]
His work and his doctrine must, according to him, be pleasing to
heaven; the difficulties and the attacks from without and from within,
all these he attributes to Satan’s raging and sees in them proofs
“that our word is the Word of God; this alone it is that makes him so
furious against us” (Dec. 30).—It has been said that Luther held fast
to this with a “bold faith”; it would, however, be more correct to say
that he catches at such thoughts as a drowning man does at a straw, a
phenomenon which of itself throws a lurid light on his delusions and
the misty trend of his thoughts. He is determined to be sure of his
cause—and at this very time, with the help of the State, he has a
Coburg Zwinglian put to silence, because the latter “neither is nor
can be sure of his cause.”[1359]
“I myself am weak and in wretchedness,” he again confesses. “If only
Christ does not forsake me.... Satan expends his fury on me because I
have attacked him by deed, and word, and writing; but I feel consoled
when I boldly believe (‘_fortiter credo_’) that what I did was
pleasing to the Lord and to His Christ. I am tossed about between the
two warring princes [Christ and Satan] till all my bones are sore.
Many works of Satan have I done and still do, nevertheless I hope to
please my Christ Who is merciful and inclined to forgive; but from
Satan I desire no forgiveness for what I have done against him and
for Christ. He is a murderer and the father of lies.... I feel in the
depths of my soul how, with unbelievable wrath, he plots against me,
assuming even the guise of Christ, to say nothing of that of the angel
of light” (Nov. 27, 1527).—The “guise of Christ” and of the “angel
of light,” to which he here alludes, are sufficient to show those who
look below the surface that what was troubling him was something not
very different from the inner voice of conscience.
How far he could go in deluding himself the better to appease his
conscience is plain from what he says in his letter “to the Christians
at Erfurt”: During the whole time he had spent at Erfurt in his
Catholic days he had longed in vain to hear “a Gospel or even a little
Psalm”; there, as was everywhere the case in Popery, Holy Scripture
lay buried deep, and “no one had even thought of preaching a really
Christian sermon.”[1360]
No less vain than this consolation from the past was that which he
sought in the future. He clung wildly to his delusion that the end of
all was at hand; “Satan,” he cries, “has but a short respite before
being completely overthrown, therefore does he make such furious and
incredible efforts” (Dec. 31).
“Now that the Word is preached Satan plainly comes off second best;
hence he persecutes me secretly; he is unchained, and, with all his
engines he seeks to tear Christ from me.” Thus (on Nov. 28).—“I am
the wretched ‘off-scourings of Christ’” (Nov. 29).—“I am to all
intents and purposes dead, as the Apostle calls it, yet still I live”
(Dec. 10).
The long and terrible year was drawing to a close. He had almost grown
accustomed to his inward troubles. “I have not yet shaken off my
temptation, nor do I desire to be free if it is to God’s glory. The
devil rages against me simply because Christ has vanquished him through
me, his most wretched of vessels” (Dec. 14).—“Well in body, in soul I
am as Christ wills, to Whom I am now bound only by a slender thread.
The devil on the other hand is moored to me with mighty cords, nay,
real cables; he drags me down into the depths, but the weak Christ has
still the upper hand owing to your prayers, or at least He puts up a
brave fight” (Dec. 29).
_The Trouble Continues_
Even his lectures on the 1st Epistle of St. John testify to Luther’s
inward excitement during that unhappy year (1527). The Preface to the
commentary as preserved in the Vatican MS. (Palat., 1825) is dated Aug.
19, and begins: “You know that we are so placed by God in this life as
to be exposed to all the darts of Satan. And not Satan alone storms
against us, but also the world, and our heart, and our flesh. Hence
we must despair of peace so long as we remain here below. Against all
these evils God has given us no other weapon than His Word which He
commands us to preach, who live in the midst of wolves.... Thus, since
we are exposed to all these dangers, to death, sin, heretics and the
whole might of Satan, I have undertaken to expound this Epistle.”
Amidst all this inward woe there was a cheerier side of things to look
at. A little daughter had been born to him at the end of 1527. He and
his family had happily been spared by the plague. He had succeeded
in imposing silence on most of his opponents among the preachers
of the new faith. His sovereign too was more than ever resolved to
support him in his work. In the German lands, and even beyond, the
Evangel was daily gaining new ground. Hence there was every reason for
self-gratulation. In spite of all this what he says to his friends
retains a tone of bitterness and apprehension: “Help me in my agony!”
“At times indeed the temptation becomes less severe, but then again it
overwhelms me more relentlessly than before” (Dec. 30).—“We are all
well excepting Luther himself, who, though he feels well in body, is
tormented outwardly by the whole world and inwardly by the devil and
all his angels.” “Satan gnashes his teeth furiously all around us”
(Dec. 31).—“I have been well acquainted with such temptations from my
youth upwards, but that they could assume such dimensions I had never
dreamed. Christ holds His own with the utmost difficulty, yet so far
He has been victorious. I commend myself to your prayers and those of
your brethren. I have saved others and cannot save myself. Praised
be my Christ,” he adds, convinced in spite of all that he was in the
right, “praised be He in the midst of despair, death and blasphemy....
It is our glory to have lived in the world agreeably with the will of
Christ, forgetful of our former very evil life. Let it suffice that
Christ is our life and our righteousness, though this is indeed a hard
truth and one which the flesh knows not. It is a bitter chalice that I
must drink as the end of the world draws nigh” (Jan. 1, 1528).
After this sad New Year’s letter Luther’s complaints of his pains
of soul cease for a while, though, not long after, they reappear at
intervals in an even more startling form.
That bodily sickness was not entirely responsible is clear from his
frequent allusions to his good state of health even during such spells
of stress; in the end, too, he got the better of these fears, not as
the result of any improvement in bodily health, but thanks to the
defiant spirit with which he clung to what he deemed was his Divine
mission. Everybody knows how much a forceful will is able to do, even
in the profoundest depths of the soul. Nevertheless the unhappy victory
he ultimately succeeded in gaining over his own self has a right to be
accounted something quite out of the common, something of which few in
his position would have been capable. Hardly ever has a man had such
Titanic forces at his disposal as Luther. He neither could nor would
go back, the gap was already too wide; the inward voices spoke in vain
which urged him to put away the “hard truth” of the doctrine he had
discovered, and to return to the Church which he had spurned.
On the contrary, quite in his own fashion, he declared, on Jan. 27,
1528, that “he was determined still further to provoke Satan, who was
raging against him with the utmost fury,” and thus make an end once
for all of his struggles and fears. “But after I am dead,” so he begs
his friends, “then do you who survive me avenge me on Satan and his
apostles” (Jan. 6).
In the same year, on the strength of his own experience, he gave his
friend Wenceslaus Link detailed directions for those followers of
the Evangel who are “tempted in faith and hope.” They are to make the
“greatest efforts” against the devil who is so plainly to be discerned;
they are to build blindly on the certainty that all thoughts to the
contrary are mere devil’s treason. Further, they are to cling to the
Word of a good man as to a voice from God in Heaven, just as he himself
had often found strength by revolving in mind Bugenhagen’s simple
words: “You must not despise our consolation.”[1361] Luther seems to
have sent Link several such letters on the means of escaping from
“despair.”[1362] He knew only too well the fears which many underwent
in the new Evangel.[1363]
“Our conscience tells us,” so he says in one of his sermons, “I am a
sinner, it goes ill with me, and this I have richly deserved. Then the
conscience begins to quake and says: It will not be well with me when I
die. Such is fear of death.”[1364]
* * * * *
The return of his friends to Wittenberg in 1528 and social intercourse
with his own circle gradually changed his frame of mind. He was very
susceptible to the influence of cheerful conversation and to the
exhilarating effects of drink. The new and important tasks which
confronted him also tended to take his mind from the trouble that
reigned within him.
“My Satan,” he was able to write on Feb. 25, 1528, “is now rather more
bearable; your prayers are taking effect.”[1365]
But, in the following year (1529), it became apparent that the storm
was not yet over. As early as Feb. 12 he again asks his friend Amsdorf
for the help of his prayers that he may not “be delivered into Satan’s
hand.”[1366]—Curiously enough, on the very day that the famous
Protest of Spires was made (April 19, 1529), Luther was again passing
through one of the worst bouts of his “wrestling with the devil”; he
poured out his heart and conscience to his friend Jonas: If it was
really an apostolic attribute to be “in deaths often” (2 Cor. xi.
23) then indeed he was in this respect a “very Peter or Paul”; but,
unfortunately, he had other less apostolic qualities, “qualities better
fitting robbers, publicans, whores and sinners.”[1367]—Elsewhere he
indeed compares himself with the Apostle Peter, but with Peter while
still weak in the faith and wavering, as he was before the descent of
the Holy Ghost: “Though I feel fairly well in body yet I am weak in the
spirit, and, like Peter’s, my faith is shaky”[1368] (July 31).
When he wrote this he had already consented to take part in the Marburg
Conference with Zwingli. We already know how, outwardly at least, he
triumphed over Zwingli at Marburg; yet, when returning home in good
health and spirits, the “temptations” suddenly came upon him again at
Torgau in Oct., 1529, with such violence, that he admitted he had “only
with difficulty (‘_vix et ægre_’) continued his journey to Wittenberg,
after having given up all hope of again seeing his family.”[1369] Very
likely apprehension of danger from the Turks contributed to this. He
himself says: “It may be that, by this combat (‘_agon_’), I myself am
doing my bit in enduring and conquering the Turk, or at least his god,
viz. the devil.”[1370] Just before this, however, and on this very
journey home, he had composed the so-called Articles of Schwabach,
which contain not a trace of his doubts and self-reproaches, but, on
the contrary, are full of that firm defiance which characterises his
other writings. They insist most strongly on his views as against those
of both Zwinglians and Catholics.
Before reaching Torgau Luther preached several sermons, including one
at Erfurt.
_Outbursts and Relief_
At Erfurt, as though to relieve his fears, Luther stormed against
the Evangelical fanatics, and likewise against the monks and the
holy-by-works. Maybe the sight of the town where he had passed his
youth set him thinking of the zealous and peaceful years he had spent
in the monastery and thus added to his sense of disquiet. Nor was this
the first time that his anger had gushed forth on Erfurt in one of
those outbursts by which he was wont to forestall the reproaches of his
conscience.
One such eruption of an earlier date may serve as an instance of the
fits of rage to which he was liable when battling with his temptations.
The Erfurt Evangelicals had failed to silence the Franciscan preacher,
Dr. Conrad Kling. That this valiant friar, the ablest priest at
Erfurt and a powerful pulpit orator, should continue to attract large
crowds, annoyed Luther exceedingly. In his writing to the “Christians
at Erfurt” of Jan. or Feb., 1527, he invoked “God’s anger and
judgments” upon them and threatened all with Christ’s warnings against
“Capharnaum, Chorozain and Bethsaida” unless at the order of their
Councillors they expelled the preacher and in this way safeguarded the
“great fulness and wealth of the Word” which he himself had proclaimed
to them. Satan, verily, was not asleep in their midst, as they could
very well see from the working of that “doctor of darkness,” the
shameless monk.[1371]
Kling, who was much esteemed by the Catholics, and was seeking to save
the last remnants of the faithful, was pictured by the fanatism of his
furious opponent as a glaring example of that most dreadful of all
sins, viz. the sin against the Holy Ghost. Now that the world, by the
preaching of the Evangel, has been delivered from the lesser sins of
“blindness, error and darkness,” so Luther told the people of Erfurt,
“why do we rage with the other sin against the Holy Ghost and provoke
God’s wrath to destroy us in time and for all eternity? God will not
forgive this sin, nor can He endure it; there is no need to say more.”
“When they start wantonly fighting against the plain, known truth,
then there is no further help or counsel.”[1372]
Such action can only be explained by a quite peculiar mental state.
Boundless irritation, probably not unconnected with his struggles of
conscience, combined with a positive infatuation for his own ideas,
was the cause of the following outbursts, which almost remind us of
the ravings of a maniac.
In 1528, in the preface to a book of Klingenbeyl, he inveighs against
the celibacy of the clergy: “They are devils in human skins and so are
all who knowingly and wilfully hold with them.” “Amongst themselves
they are the worst of all whoremongers, adulterers, women-stealers and
girl-spoilers, so that their shameless record of sins fills the heaven
and the earth.” Their wickedness is matched only by their stupidity.
“The people [the Papists] have become a Pope-Ass, so that they are and
remain donkeys however much we may boil them, roast them, flay them,
turn them over, baste them, or break them; all they can do is abuse
Luther.... And because I have driven them to Scripture and they can
neither understand nor make use of it, God help us what a wild bawling
and outcry I have caused. Here one howls about the sacrament under
one kind, there another bellows against the marriage of the clergy;
one shrieks about the Mass, and another yells about good works.” “The
vermin and the ugly crew I have rounded up understands not a bit even
its own noise and howling.” “Hence you may see how they love justice,
viz. their own tyranny.”
To the measure of their viciousness, stupidity and obstinacy must
be added vulgar impudence of the worst sort: “They shamelessly and
scandalously relieve themselves of their filth in front of all the
world.” “Such rude fellows remind me of a coarse clod-hopper who
would ease himself in the marketplace before everyone, all the while
pointing to a house where a little child is modestly and privily
relieving nature, and who would imagine that he had thereby excused
himself and provoked everybody to laugh at the child.” “Ought not such
rascals to be hunted down with hounds and driven out with rods.... Let
them go, blind leaders of the blind that they are! God’s endless wrath
has come upon them so that now they can no longer see anything.”[1373]
* * * * *
According to recent research it is to this trying time of inward
conflict, after his recovery from his illness in 1527, that Luther’s
famous Hymn “A safe stronghold our God is still” (“Ein’ feste Burg”)
belongs. This “great hymn of the evangelical community,” as Köstlin
termed it, proclaims, in the words of the Psalmist, that God is the
strong bulwark and sure refuge of Luther’s cause.
“The ancient Prince of Hell
Hath risen with purpose fell;
Strong mail of Craft and Power
He weareth in this hour,
On Earth is not his fellow.
* * * * *
And were this world all devils o’er,
And watching to devour us,
We lay it not to heart so sore,
Not they can overpower us.
* * * * *
God’s Word, for all their craft and force,
Shall not one moment linger.”[1374]
“This hymn came from the very bottom of his heart,” says Köstlin,
“being written with a bold faith under stress of temptation.” The
first trace of the hymn is now believed to be found in a recently
discovered Leipzig hymnbook, which is supposed to be a reprint of
the Wittenberg “Gesangbüchlein” of 1528, in which this hymn may have
figured.[1375]
A Protestant researcher, P. Tschackert, has pointed out, that, in that
same year (1528), the Wittenbergers went in fear of an attack on the
Evangelicals by the Catholic Estates. Luther’s attitude towards the
supposed menace, intensified as it was by his inward struggles about
that time, calls for some further remarks.
The alleged disclosures of Otto von Pack to the Landgrave of Hesse
concerning the secret plans of the Catholics to dethrone the Protestant
Princes by force of arms had proved to be a mere fabrication.[1376]
Luther, nevertheless, stormed against the Duke of Saxony who was
supposed to be implicated most deeply in the business. He wrote: “Duke
George is a foe of my doctrine, hence he rages against the Word of God;
I must therefore believe he rages against God Himself and His Christ.
But if he rages against God, then, privily, I must believe him to be
possessed of the devil. If he is possessed of the devil, then in my
heart I must believe that he cherishes the worst of intentions.”[1377]
Thanks to such dialectics, Luther again formulates the charges embodied
in the Pack disclosures. As Tschackert points out, Luther persisted in
crediting his opponents with all that was worst.
In 1528 he preached on John xvii.; in the tone of these sermons,
printed in 1530, we find several remarkable echoes of Luther’s hymn
“Ein’ feste Burg.”[1378]
The preacher speaks to his hearers both of inward temptations and of
outward hardships, and uses words which recall, now his complaints of
his experiences with the devil, now the trustful defiance he voices in
his hymn on the “Safe stronghold.”
“We must know that there is no way of resisting the devil’s
temptations than by holding fast to the plain word of Scripture and
not thinking or speculating further.... Whoever does not do this
will be disappointed, and err, and have a fall.”[1379] If you do not
simply believe in the Word, he repeats to the people, you will “rush
in headlong and be overthrown; for the devil is able to persuade our
heart that he is God, and to disguise himself in great splendour and
majesty”; “in the assumption of prudence, holiness and majesty no one
in the world excels him”; “hence no one can cheat him better than by
tying himself to the tree where God has placed him; otherwise, if he
seizes you, you are lost and he will carry you off as the hawk does
the chick from under the wing of the clucking hen.”[1380]
In the same sermon, however, he also prophesies the shame and
destruction of “our wrathful foes who seek to stifle the Evangel and
to stamp out the Christians, many of whom they have already burned and
murdered; for even prouder kings and lords—in comparison with whom
our princes and lords are the merest beggars[1381]—have come to grief
over the Evangel and been wrecked by it.” Speaking of the Catholic
princes headed by the Emperor Charles V, he exclaims: “Our furious
tyrants, when they abuse the Evangel, and persecute, murder and burn
all our people are termed Christian princes, and defenders of the
Church; this exonerates whatever shameful and wicked practices they
may commit against both God and man.”[1382]
Again he extols the Word, making Christ say: “I have given them the
Word whereby Thy Name has been made known to them” (“Das Wort sie
sollen lassen stahn,” as the original of the hymn runs); “but neither
the Papacy nor any other fanatics will accept it,” i.e. the knowledge
of Christ; “for this reason we are forced unceasingly to wrangle,
grapple and fight with them and the devil.”[1383] Still, “all our
protection, our redemption from sin, death, the world and the devil’s
power is comprised in the Word alone”; holding fast to this we have
all the prophets, martyrs, apostles and the whole of Christendom on
our side. But Christendom is a “powerful lady, Empress of heaven and
earth, at whose feet devil, world, death and hell must fall as soon as
she drops a word.” “For,” so he continues, thinking of himself, “who
can check or harm a man who has so defiant a spirit?” “Whether the
devil attacks singly a weak member of Christendom and fancies he has
gobbled him up [cp. the use of this same word below, p. 347] or even
Christendom as a whole,” he must nevertheless “tremble and fall to the
ground.” “If a sin attacks him [the Christian], and seeks to affright,
gnaw, and oppress his conscience and threaten him with devil, death
and hell, then God and His multitude [the saints and angels] will say:
‘Good sin, let him be; death, do not slay him; hell, do not swallow
him!’”[1384]
“But here faith comes in,” he at once goes on, “for, to the eyes
of the world and to reason, everything seems just the reverse.”
[“And were the world all devils o’er,” sings the hymn on the “Safe
stronghold.”]
The outside menace from the Papists and their princes, and the inward,
“sudden, baneful attacks of the devil in our conscience,” Luther
writes in his interpretation of John xviii. (v. 28), all “this is
written to put to blush our high-priests and elders, viz. the bishops
and princes who go about the world with noses in the air as though
they were pious and holy, whereas they drive out of their land the
pious, God-fearing Christians and preachers. Who in the devil’s name
gave them power to pass judgment on the teaching of the Evangel?”
But the devil, too, persecutes us with his machinations. “When he
finds some poor conscience that would fain be pious, he attacks it
with trifles.... Amongst us Evangelicals there is not one who has
not great, big sins and difficulties, such as doubts, and waverings
in the faith, and other awkward knots. But such big sins and great
difficulties the devil is willing to discard while he attacks us about
some paltry thing ... and torments and plagues our conscience.” But
when thereby we are “upset and become troubled” we ought to “console
ourselves and say: ‘If Our Lord God can have patience with me even
though my faith in Him be not firm, but often wavering and doubtful,
why then do you torment me, you devil, with other petty matters and
sins? I can see through all your artfulness and wicked malice; you
cloak over the great sins and big difficulties so that I may not
heed them, or make any conscience of them, nor seek forgiveness for
them....’ Therefore a Christian must learn not to allow himself to be
too easily troubled with remorse of conscience; but if he believes in
Christ, wishes to be pious, strives against sin as far as he is able
and yet occasionally makes mistakes, stumbles and falters, he must not
allow such stumbling to upset him in conscience, but rather he must
say: Away with this error and this stumbling! Let it join my other
faults and crimes and be included among the other sins of which the
Creed teaches us the forgiveness.”[1385]
The further course of Luther’s inner history will show more clearly
how far the article of the forgiveness of sins served its purpose in
his own case and how he contrived to prop up a faith, which, during
the years 1527 and 1528, was so distressingly inclined to “doubt and
wavering.”
5. The Ten Years from 1528-38. How to win back Peace of Conscience
_The Years Previous to 1537_
During the time when the Diet of Augsburg was in preparation Luther’s
complaints about his inward struggles recede somewhat into the
background, outward events engrossing all his attention.
Matters changed, however, when the Diet actually began its sessions and
he himself took up his residence in the fortress of Coburg. There he
was a prey to overwhelming suffering both of body and of mind.
His nervous ailments, particularly the noises in his head, became
much worse at that time, owing partly to his deep concern for his
cause, partly to his too great literary output during his sojourn
in the solitude. Against his inner anxieties he tried the weapon of
humour.[1386] But all in vain. The “spiritual temptations” set in, and
his loneliness made them even worse. It was at the beginning of May
that he received Satan’s famous “embassy.” Because he had been left
quite alone (in the absence of Veit Dietrich and Cyriacus Kaufmann),
so he says, Satan had so far got the better of him that he had been
obliged to flee from the room and to seek the society of men. When
writing to Melanchthon about this he uses some strange-sounding words:
“Hardly can I await the day when I shall at last behold the tremendous
power of this spirit and his majesty, which, in its kind, is quite
divine (‘_planeque divinam maiestatem quandam_’).”[1387] Here he is
presumably alluding to the time of his death and of the judgment when
he would behold Satan. He had, however, not to wait so long, for, in
the following month and while still at the Coburg, he was vouchsafed
a glimpse of the Enemy under a certain shape; at least such was his
belief; the actual vision will be described later (vol. vi., xxxvi., 3).
He must have suffered grievously from his fears whilst in the castle;
he compares himself to the parched country surrounding it, so greatly
was he tried inwardly by storms and heat;[1388] but “our cause is safe
if our Word is true, and that it is true is sufficiently demonstrated
by the ferocity and frenzy of our foes.”[1389] He was visited by
thoughts of death, and, during these, he sought, as he related later,
the spot in the castle chapel where he would be laid to rest.[1390]
Then, when his disquiet of mind began to abate, intense bodily weakness
again made him think of death; this too, in his opinion, was Satan’s
doing. When ultimately he left the Coburg he felt himself a broken man
and began to sigh more and more over his burden of years, though, as a
matter of fact, he was still comparatively young.
Nevertheless, in a letter to Melanchthon of June 29, 1530, he praised
the comfort of his place of residence. Above all he was able to report
that “the spirit who formerly beat me with fists [in mind] seems to be
losing heart.”[1391] Yet, alluding to his bodily pains, he says sadly:
“I fancy that another has taken his [the other tormentor’s] place and
plagues my body; but I prefer to endure this torture of the body rather
than that hangman of the spirit. But he has sworn to have my life, this
I feel plainly, and will never stop until he has gobbled me up.”[1392]
But when he had returned safe and sound to Wittenberg he was disposed
to look back with utter horror on what he had gone through, physically
and mentally, when at the Coburg. “Now my shoulders are really
beginning to feel the weight of my years,” he writes to trusty Amsdorf;
“and my powers are going. The angel of Satan has indeed dealt hardly
with me.”[1393]
“My thoughts did me more harm than all my work,” he said, in May,
1532, speaking of those which came by night (“_curæ nocturnæ_”).[1394]
Nothing, so he says elsewhere, had brought him so nigh to death as
these; with them all his labours, to which the great numbers of letters
he received bore witness, were not to be compared.[1395] To young
Schlaginhaufen Veit Dietrich related, as a memory of the Coburg days,
how Luther had said to him there: “Were I to die now and be cut open,
my heart would be found all shrivelled up in consequence of my distress
and sadness of spirit.”[1396]
His having to wrestle with such moods is also in great part responsible
for the stormy and extravagant tone of the works he wrote during, or
shortly after, his stay at the Coburg.[1397]
“_I should have Died without any Struggle_”
In 1537, in his second serious illness, at Schmalkalden, and on the
return journey from this town to Wittenberg, Luther displayed the same
stubborn spirit as in 1527. In 1537 it was an attack of stone which
brought him to the brink of the grave. Later on he himself declared
of this crisis, that he would have died quite easily and trustfully.
Into his deepest feelings at that time we have, of course, no means of
probing, but it may be, that, by dint of persistently repressing his
earlier scruples, he had indeed reached the state of calm resignation
he depicts. At the same time his great bodily exhaustion will probably
have reacted on his spirit, his very weakness thus explaining the
silence of the inward voices.
“At Gotha [on my way back],” so he told his friends in 1540, “I was
quite certain I was to die; I said good-bye to all, called Bugenhagen,
commended to him the Church, the school, my wife and all else, and
begged him to give me absolution.... Thus I should have died in Christ
with a perfectly quiet soul and without a struggle. But the Lord
wished to preserve me in life. My ‘_Catena_’ [Katey] too,” so he goes
on to speak of one of his wife’s illnesses, “when once we had already
given up all hopes for her life, would have died gladly, and readily,
and with a quiet soul; she merely repeated a thousand times over the
words: ‘In Thee, O Lord, have I hoped, I shall not be confounded
for ever.’” From such experiences in her case and in his own Luther
draws the conclusion, that “at times the devil desists from tempting
to blasphemy.” “At other times God allows him,” so he thinks, “to
try us thereby, so that we may not become indolent but may learn to
fight. At the end of our life, however, all such temptations cease;
for then the Holy Spirit is at the side of the faithful believer,
restrains the devil by force and pours into the heart perfect peace
and security.”[1398]
Such was his interpretation of the case.
At other times Luther expresses wonder at the wrong-headed sectarians
who can with such confidence look even death itself in the face.
He refuses to apply to them what has just been said; it is no real
peace that they die in, rather they are blinded by Satan’s delusions.
“This new sect of the Anabaptists,” he says indignantly, “grows
marvellously, they live with a great show [of the spirit] and boldly
face death by fire and water.”[1399] He is thinking of the Anabaptists
who were executed in 1527—“May God have mercy on these poor captives
of Satan.... They cannot be coerced either by fire or by the sword; so
greatly does Satan rage in this hour because it is his last.” And yet
the whole thing was little more than a joke of Satan’s.
“With me, however, he certainly does not jest; I believe that I am
pleasing to God and displeasing to Satan.”[1400]
He overlooks the fact that the Anabaptists, too, fancied they were
pleasing Christ, nay, were passionately convinced that they were
living for Christ and not for Satan; they even exposed themselves of
their own accord to the worst torments of the executioner before they
passed out of life, obstinately declaring that it was impossible for
them to recant. The words in which Luther complains of their obstinacy
are a two-edged sword.
He is fond of bewailing the stubbornness of the heretics; it was a
subject of wholesome fear for all; it penetrated “like water into
their inward parts and like oil into their bones”: so far do they go
that they see “salvation and blessing” in their own doctrine alone;
few are they who “come right again,” “the others remain under their
own curse.” “Neither have I ever read,” he assures us, “of any teacher
who originated a heresy being converted”; “the true Evangel which
teaches the contrary of their doctrine is and always will be to them
a devil’s thing.”[1401]—“No heretic,” he cries, “will let himself
be talked over.... A man is soon done for when the devil thus lays
hold of him.”[1402] Such a one boasts that, “he is quite certain of
things”; “No Christian ever held so fast to his Christ as a Jew or a
fanatic does to his pet doctrine.”[1403] He also believes his opponent
to be a liar “as surely as God is God.”[1404] And yet, so Luther
argues, the sectarian or fanatic can never be certain at all; not one
of his gainsayers is sure of his cause; not one has “felt the struggle
and been at grips with the devil” like himself.[1405]
But I, “I am certain that my word is not mine but the word of Christ,”
and “every man who speaks the word of Christ is free to boast that
his mouth is the mouth of Christ.”[1406]—“Had not the devil attacked
us with such power and cunning during all these years,” he says in his
second exposition of the 1st Epistle of Peter (published in 1539), “we
should never have acquired this certainty on doctrine.”[1407] It is to
his awful “temptations,” that, as we have heard him repeatedly assure
us, he owes the strength of his faith.[1408] Unceasingly did he strive
to acquire a feeling of strong certainty in defiance of the devil,
as indeed his theology demanded: We must by fiducial faith have made
our position secure against the devil, otherwise we have no stay at
all.[1409]
“Even though I stumble yet I am resolved to stand by what I have
taught.” And, as though to falter in this way was inevitable, he
continues: “for although a Christian holds fast until death to his
doctrine, yet he often stumbles and begins to doubt; but it is not
so with the fanatics, they stand firm.”[1410] And yet, according to
Luther, everyone must “stand firm,” for in theology there is no room
for “fears and doubts. And we must have certainty concerning God. But
in conversing with other men we must be modest and say, ‘If anyone
knows better let him say so.’”[1411]
_The “Struggles by Day and by Night” gradually Wane_
Hardly had Luther recovered from his second bout of illness than the
gloomy thoughts once more emerged from their hiding-place and began
again to dog his footsteps, though perhaps not quite so persistently as
after his recovery from his previous sickness ten years earlier. It is
as though on both occasions the sight of the gaping jaws of death had
set free the troubled spirits within, and as though the spell which
momentarily restrained his terrors of soul had been loosed as soon as
his bodily powers returned. This was the last great attack he had to
endure, or at least from this time onward definite allusions to his
struggles of conscience are not forthcoming as before.
In 1537 he lay for a fortnight under the stress of that “spiritual
malady” (above, p. 319), during which he “disputed with God,” was
scarcely able to take food, to sleep or to preach, in spite of his
“understanding a little” “the Psalter and its consolation,” viz. that
one must be patient.[1412]—On Oct. 7, 1538, he bewails his “daily
agony.”[1413] In the same year he wrings some comfort out of Paul, who
also had been unable to “lay hold of” what was right;[1414] he also has
a poke at the devil: “Why arraign us so sternly before God as though
you were quite holy, and the highest judge!”[1415]
He then realised in his own person how one thus oppressed with terrors
of soul could be tempted, like Job (iii. 1 ff.), to curse the day of
his birth. After having, during the night of Aug. 1, 1538, suffered
severe pains in the joints of the arm, he said next day, that such
pains were tolerable in comparison with others: “The flesh can get used
to this sort of thing. But when the spiritual temptations come and the
‘Cursed be the day I was born’ follows, that is a harder matter. Christ
was tried in a similar way in the Garden of Olives.... He, on account
of His temptations, is our best advocate in all temptations.... Let us
but cling fast to hope!”[1416]
It cannot be established that he was speaking seriously or was prompted
by despair when he wished that “he had died as a child,” nay, “had
never been born,” and stated that he would gladly see “all his books
perish.” We must beware of laying too great stress on occasional
deliverances spoken in moments of irritation, or on little tricks of
speech such as his depreciatory remarks concerning his books.[1417]
It may be to the purpose to quote here some undated statements of
Luther’s which paint in lurid style his frequent struggles of mind and
his manner of resistance.
Jerome, Augustine and Ambrose had “carnal and childish temptations”;
“these are nothing compared with Satan who strikes us, the
[Greek: skolops], that, as it were, fastens us to the gallows;
then Jerome’s and the others’ child-temptations are chased away
entirely.”[1418]—“On one occasion I was greatly tempted in my garden
near the bush of lavender, whereupon I sang the hymn ‘Now praise we
Christ the Holy One,’ otherwise I should have expired on the spot.
Hence, when you feel such a thought, say, ‘This is not Christ.’ ...
This I preach and write, but I am not yet at home in this art when
tempted in this way.”[1419]
The worst temptations of all are those when “one does not know whether
God is the devil or the devil God.”[1420] “The Apostle Judas, when the
hour [of temptation] came, walked into the snare and knew not how to
get out. But we who have taken the field against him [the devil] and
are at grips with him know, by God’s grace, how to meet and resist
him.”[1421]—“The devil can affright me to such an extent that in my
sleep the sweat breaks out all over me; otherwise I do not trouble
about dreams or signs.... Sad dreams are the work of the devil. Often
has he driven me from prayer and put such thoughts into my head that I
have run away; the best fights I have had with him were in my bed by
the side of my Katey.”[1422]
Elsewhere, however, he says: “I have found the nocturnal encounters
far harder than the daylight ones”; “but, that Christ is master, this
I can show not merely by Holy Scripture but also by experience”; “God
gives richly of both. But all has become bitter to me through these
temptations.”[1423]—“I know from my own experience what we read of
in the Psalms (vi. 7): ‘Every night I will wash my bed: I will water
my couch with my tears.’ In my temptations I have often wondered and
asked myself whether I had any heart left in my body, so great a
murderer is Satan; but he will not long keep the upper hand, for he
has indeed burnt his fingers on Christ.”[1424]
To add to the terrors of such struggles came thoughts of suicide. When
Leonard Beyer, an Augustinian, who had become pastor of Guben, spoke to
Luther of his temptations to take his own life, and of the voice which
occasionally whispered to him “Stick a knife into yourself,” Luther
answered: “This used to be the same with me. No sooner did I take a
knife in my hand, than such thoughts came to me; nor could I kneel
down to pray without the devil driving me out of the room. We have to
suffer from the great devils, the ‘_theologiæ doctores_’; but the Turks
and Papists have only the little devils” to tempt them.[1425] It would
indeed be no wonder if Luther in his excited frame of mind was for a
while troubled by such thoughts of suicide. By thoughts of the sort
sufferers of gloomy disposition are often tormented quite involuntarily
and without any fault of their own. It is hardly worth our while to
prove that another passage, which occurs in Cordatus, is not at all
to the point though it has been quoted against Luther as showing his
inclination to suicide. There, in his usual vein of exaggeration, he
says that he “would hang himself on the nearest tree” were Satan to
succeed in dragging down Christ from heaven. Surely there was just
as little likelihood of his being his own hangman as of the enemy
succeeding in this.[1426] And yet some Catholic polemists who believed
in the fable that Luther killed himself, seized on such passages in
order to show that Luther had long been bent on suicide.
_How to find Peace of Conscience_
If, towards the end of the ‘thirties, Luther was more successful in
countering his inward anxieties, this may have been due to the means
he used and the efficacy of which he frequently extols. Some of the
remedies to which he had recourse appear comparatively innocent, and
had even been recommended by Catholic spiritual writers to be used
when the circumstances demanded. Others, however, must be described as
doubtful and even dangerous, particularly considering what his moral
position was.
Above all he recommends distraction; people tempted should engage in
cheerful intercourse, or in games; in his own case he had urgently
desired the return of his friends, “in order that Satan may no longer
rejoice that we are so far apart.”[1427] He also bears witness to the
improvement which resulted from cheerful, animated conversation.
He also advises people to awaken some “stronger emotion so as to
counteract the disquieting thoughts.”[1428] For instance, it is a good
thing “to break out into scolding,”[1429] or to give vent to a “brave
outburst of anger.”[1430]
Further, animal pleasures are, according to him, of advantage; he
himself, on his own admission, sought to distract his thoughts by
sensual joys of the most material kind.[1431] In the case of gloomy
thoughts “a draught of beer” was, so he avers, of much greater use
than, e.g. astrology.[1432]
Sensuality, however, is not always sufficiently powerful or effective.
It is better to have recourse from the beginning to religious remedies.
“If I but seize the Scripture [text] I have gained the day,”[1433] but,
unfortunately, the verse wanted often won’t come. In general, what is
required is prayer, much patience and the arousing of confidence.[1434]
One’s patience may be fortified by the thought that “perhaps, thanks
to these temptations, I shall become a great man,” as he himself had
actually become, thanks largely to his temptations.[1435]
Further, the words of “great and learned men to one who is tempted
may serve him as an oracle or prophecy, which indeed they may really
be.”[1436] To hold fast to a single word spoken by a stranger had
often proved very helpful. We may recall how he compared Bugenhagen’s
words to him: “You must not despise our consolation,” to “a voice from
heaven.”[1437] Another saying of his same friend and confessor, had,
so he declares, greatly strengthened him. “Surely enough, God thinks:
‘What more can I do for this man [Luther]? I have given him such
excellent gifts and yet he despairs of my grace!’”[1438]
In these “temptations,” whether in his own case or in that of others,
he hardly gives a thought to penance and mortification, such as olden
Churchmen had always recommended and employed. On the contrary, ascetic
remedies of the sort would, according to him, only make things worse.
Needless to say, even Catholics were anxious that such remedies should
not be applied without discretion, since lessening of the bodily
powers might conceivably weaken the resistance of the spirit, nay,
even promote fears and temptations. Luther says, in 1531: “Were I to
follow my inclination I should [when in this state] go three days
without eating anything. This then is a double fasting, to eat and
drink without the least appetite. When the world sees it, it looks on
it as drunkenness, but God will judge whether it is drunkenness or
fasting. They will have fasts, but not as I fast. Therefore keep head
and belly full. Sleep also helps.”[1439] Sleep seemed to him especially
important, not merely as a condition for hard work, but also to enable
one to resist low spirits. It was when unable to sleep, that, as he
tells us, “the devil had annoyed him until he said: ‘_Lambe mihi
nates_,’ etc. We have the treasure of the Word; God be praised.”[1440]
His practice and teaching with regard to inward sources of troubles
were indeed miles apart from those of earlier Catholic times, and
even from what in his own day Catholic masters of the first rank
in the spiritual life had written for the benefit of posterity.
Everybody knows how these writers are, above all, desirous to provide
their readers with a method whereby they may discern between, on the
one hand, the voice of conscience, whether it warns us to desist
from wrong or encourages us to do what is good, and, on the other,
the promptings of the Evil Spirit. They say that it is the devil’s
practice alternately to disquiet and to cheer, though in a way very
different from that of the spirits from above. It was unfortunate for
Luther that he chose to close his eyes to any such “discerning of the
spirits.” He resolutely steeled his conscience once for all against
even wholesome disquietude and anxiety, and of set purpose he bore down
all misgivings. Of one thing he was determined to be convinced: “Above
all hold fast to this, that thoughts bad and sad come, not from God,
but from the devil;” “make it your wont at once to tell all inward
reproaches: ‘You were not sent by God.’”
“At first,” he adds, as though describing his own case, “this struggle
is hard, but practice makes it easier.”[1441]
He claimed that, owing to the amount of practice he had had in inward
combats, his “faith had been much strengthened”; the “temptations”
had won for him a “wealth of Divine gifts,” had taught him humility
and qualified him for his task, nay, had set a Divine seal on his
mission;[1442] his “_theologia_” he had learnt in the school of the
devil’s temptations; without such a devil to help, one remains a mere
speculative theologian.[1443]
Such sayings lead us to ask whether his life of faith really underwent
a strengthening as he advanced in years.
6. Luther on his Faith, his Doctrine and his Doubts, particularly in
his Later Years
Whoever would judge correctly of the remarkable statements made by
Luther which we are now about to consider must measure them, at least
in the lump, by the standard of his doctrine on faith. If anything in
him calls for explanation and consideration in the light of the views
on doctrine which he held, surely this is especially the case with the
mental state now under discussion to which he alludes so frequently in
both public and private utterances. At the same time it must not be
overlooked that occasionally he is speaking with his wonted hyperbole
and love of paradox, and that sometimes what he says is not meant quite
seriously; moreover, that sometimes, when apparently blaming himself,
he is really only trying to describe the heights which he fain would
attain; the true standard by which to judge all these many statements
which are yet so remarkably uniform must, however, be sought in the
theological groundwork of his attitude towards faith.
_Luther’s Notion of Faith_
As we already know, by faith he understands on the one hand the
accepting of all the verities of revelation as true; more often,
however, he means by it simply a believing trust in salvation through
Christ, a certainty of that justification by faith which constitutes
his “Evangel.”[1444]
For faith in the former sense he rightly appeals to the firm and
immovable foundation of God’s truth. But, as regards the source whence
mankind obtains its knowledge of revealed truth, he practically
undermines the authority of Scripture—which he nevertheless esteems so
highly—first, by his wanton rejection of whole books of the Bible and
by his neglect of the criteria necessary for determining which books
belong to Holy Scripture and for recognising which are canonical;[1445]
secondly, by his interpretation of the Bible, more particularly in
ascertaining the Divine truths therein contained, he flings open the
door to subjectivism and leaves each one to judge for himself, refusing
even to furnish him with any sure guidance.[1446] He set aside the
teaching office of the Church, which had been for the Catholic the
authentic exponent of Scripture, and at the same time had guaranteed
the canonicity of each of its parts. Of the Church’s olden creeds he
retained only a fragment, and even this he interpreted in his own
sense.[1447]
Thus, under the olden name of faith in revelation he had really
introduced a new objective faith, one utterly devoid of any stay.
It is sufficient to consider certain of his quite early theses to
appreciate the blow dealt at the Church’s traditional view of faith.
To these theses he was moved by his polemics against certain, to him,
distasteful dogmas of the ancient Church, but from the very outset his
attack was, at bottom, directed against all barriers of dogma, and,
even later, continued to threaten to some extent the very foundations
of that religious knowledge which he held in common with all other
Christians.[1448] The unrestrained freedom of opinion which many
Protestants claim to-day as part of the heirloom of Christianity they
are wont to justify by citing passages from Luther’s writings, e.g.
from his work of 1523, “Das eyn Christliche Versamlung odder Gemeyne
... Macht habe, alle Lere zu urteylen,” etc.[1449]
* * * * *
The fact of having taught faith in the second sense mentioned above,
and of having put it in the place of faith in the first and olden sense
is, according to many moderns, the achievement that more than any other
redounds to Luther’s credit.—He made an end of the “unevangelical idea
of faith as a mere holding for true, and of the submission of the most
inward and tender of questions to the decision of courts of law”;[1450]
in the trustful belief in Christ he rediscovered the only faith
deserving of the name and thereby brought back religion to mankind.
This trusting faith, however, by its very nature and according to
Luther’s express admission is, as has already been pointed out in
detail, also devoid of any true stay, is ever exposed to wavering
and uncertainty and is wholly dependent on feeling; above all, for a
conscience oppressed with the sense of guilt to lay hold on the alien
righteousness of Christ by faith alone is a task scarcely within its
power; it admittedly involves an unceasing struggle;[1451] lastly, true
faith, according to Luther, comes only from God, from whom man, who has
no free-will, can only passively look for it,[1452] nay, it belongs in
the last instance only to the Revealed God, for of the dispensations
of the Hidden Will of God concerning our future in heaven or in hell we
are entirely ignorant.[1453]
Here too, then, we have a new kind of faith.
This explains how it is that in Luther’s statements concerning his
personal faith, his preaching, his absorption in the religious point of
view he has discovered, his doubts and his fears, we meet with so much
that sounds strange. We say strange, for they cannot but unpleasantly
surprise anyone accustomed to regard faith in the truths of religion
as a firm possession of the mind and heart, above all a Catholic
believer. Before Luther’s day scarcely can a single Christian teacher
be instanced who was so open in speaking of the weakness of his own
faith or who so frequently and so persistently insisted on pitting his
own experience against the calm inward certainty with which God ever
rewards a humble and heartfelt faith, even in those most beset with
temptations.
When, in spite of this, we find Luther throughout his life plainly and
indubitably accepting as true a large portion of the common body of
faith (as we have repeatedly admitted him to have done),[1454] then
it is easy to see that in so doing he is not taking his stand on his
new and shaky foundations, but on the old and solid basis to which he
reverts with a happy want of logic, often perhaps unconsciously. We
should see him taking his stand on this foundation even more frequently
had not his sad breach with the whole past moved his soul to its very
depths. There can be no doubt that his terrors of conscience, or
“struggles with the devil,” had much to do in inducing the condition in
which he reveals himself to the reader of what follows.
_Luther as Pictured by Himself during Later Years_
It is clear that, in order to judge of Luther’s life of faith, stress
must not be laid on isolated statements of his torn from their context,
but that they must be taken in the lump.
When speaking of his temptations, as a man of fifty-six, he bewailed
the prevailing unbelief, at the same time including himself: “If only
we could believe concerning the [Divine] promises that it was God
Who spoke them! If only we paid heed to His Word we should esteem it
highly. But when we hear it [God’s Word] from the lips of a man, we
care no more for it than for the lowing of a cow.”[1455]—Shortly
before this, again including all, he consoles himself as follows: Our
weakness was ever disposed to doubt of God’s mercy, and even Paul
felt his shortcomings. “I am comforted when I see that even Paul did
not rise high enough. Away with the ambitious who pretend they have
succeeded in everything! We have God’s words to strengthen us and yet
even we do not believe.”[1456] “I have preached for five-and-twenty
years,” so he said about that time, “and do not yet understand the
text ‘The just man liveth by faith.’”[1457]
Of his trusting belief in his personal salvation he admits, in 1543,
that he did not feel it to be very steadfast, and that it still lagged
behind that of ordinary believers. He speaks of a woman at Torgau who
had told him that she looked upon herself as “lost,” and shut out
from salvation, because she was unable to believe (i.e. trust). He
had thereupon asked her whether she did not hold fast to the Creed,
and when she assured him that she did he had said: “My good woman, go
in God’s name! You believe more and better than I do.” “Yes, dear Dr.
Jonas,” so he said, turning to his friend, “yes, if a man could verily
believe it as it there stands, his heart would indeed jump for joy!
That is certain.”[1458]
So strongly did he express himself on this point on May 6, 1540,
that, taking the words as they stand, he would _seem_ to deny his
belief in Christ’s miracles and work. “I cannot believe it and yet
I teach others. I know it is true, but I am unable to believe it. I
think sometimes: ‘Sure enough you teach aright, for you are in the
sacred ministry and are called, you are helpful to many and glorify
Christ; for we do not preach Aristotle or Cæsar, but Jesus Christ.’
But when I consider my weakness, how I eat, drink, joke and am a merry
man about the town, then I begin to doubt. Oh, if only a man could
believe it!”[1459] These words were spoken on Ascension-Day, after
Luther had expressed his marvel at the strong faith of the Apostles
in the Divinity of Him Who was ascending into heaven. “Wonderful; I
cannot understand it nor can I believe it, and yet all the Apostles
believed.”[1460] “I am fond of Jonas [who was seated near him] but if
he were to ascend into heaven here and now, and disappear out of our
sight, what should I think?”
“Oh, if only a man could believe it!”
It is evident that he did not wish by such words to give himself
out as an unbeliever or a sceptic in religious matters. What he was
painfully aware of was the fact that that strong, clear faith in the
ordinary truths of revelation and matters of faith, which he himself
was wont to depict as essential, was absent in his own case. His
former violent struggles of conscience seem in later years to have
been replaced by this uncomfortable feeling.
The depressing sense of the feebleness of his religious belief was
not removed by the frequent references Luther was so fond of making
in his old age to the coming of the Redeemer and Judge of the world,
and to the nighness of the devil’s downfall, who is the Lord of this
world.[1461] We know already the psychological reasons for the stress
he lays on such expectations. Yet all the unnatural ardour he showed
in voicing them could not disguise the fact that his faith lacked any
real strength or fervour. Spiritual coldness could quite well co-exist
with a virulent hatred of the devil and a longing desire for the end
of the world.
“The devil is an evil spirit ... as I do not fail to realise day after
day; for a man waxes cold, and the more so the longer he lives.” Thus
to Count Albert of Mansfeld in 1542.[1462]—He was “in pain and very
morose,” he tells Jonas in 1541, “feeling disgusted with everything,
especially with his illnesses.”.[1463] In 1544, and frequently about
that time, he declares that he was quite tired of the devil and of his
struggles with him; his only wish was to see the “end of his raging,”
and to “die a good and wholesome death.”[1464] “God Himself may see
to my soul’s lodging”; He loved souls, says Luther, and it was a good
thing that his salvation was not in his own hands, otherwise he “would
soon be gobbled up by Satan”; but God’s care and the “many mansions”
in His gift were a sufficient consolation (1539).[1465]
On one occasion, in 1542, he mentioned that, unless he had escaped
from certain “thoughts and temptations,” he would have been drowned in
them and would have long ago found himself in hell; for such “devilish
thoughts” breed “desperate people,” and “contemners of God.”[1466]
“Though, towards the end of life, such temptations are wont to cease,”
he says, in 1540, yet other inward worries remain: “I am often angry
with myself because I find so much in me that is unclean. But what can
I do? I cannot strip off my nature. Meanwhile Christ looks upon us as
righteous because we desire to be righteous, abhor our uncleanliness,
and love, and confess the Word.”[1467]—Others, like Spalatin, in
their old age, felt the bite of conscience more strongly than did
Luther; they had not been through the same violent struggles and
mental gymnastics as Luther, nor had they learnt how to suppress the
voice from within. It was to Spalatin, then sunk in melancholy, that,
in 1544, Luther addressed the words already quoted: He (Spalatin) was
“too timid a sinner” (“_nimis tener peccator_”). “Unite yourself with
us great and hardened sinners, in a believing trust in Christ!”[1468]
_Earlier Undated Statements_
Many utterances and confidences of Luther’s still exist, about the
meaning of which there can be no doubt, though it is difficult
correctly to place them. Some of these concern the subject now under
discussion; several may well date from Luther’s later years, and thus
throw light on his interior in his old age. We shall give first of all
his statements concerning St. Paul in their bearing upon himself.
Speaking once of a pet view of his in which he seems to have found
great consolation, viz. that even Paul had not believed firmly (_neque
Paulum fortiter credidisse_), Luther went so far as to question the
apostle’s belief in the “crown of justice” which he professed to
look for, as “laid up for him in heaven” (2 Tim. iv. 8). Jonas, who
was present, had declared “he could not bestow any credence on this
statement of Paul’s.” Luther replied: It is quite true that Paul did
not believe it firmly, “for it was above him. I too am unable to
believe as I preach, although they all think I believe these things
firmly.” He goes on to allege the Divine Clemency, and jestingly says:
Were we to fulfil the will of God _perfectly_ we should be cheating
God of His Godhead; and what would then become of the article of the
forgiveness of sins?[1469] At any rate he would fain have believed his
own doctrines more strongly and vividly.
“Temptations against the faith,” says Luther, “are St. Paul’s goad and
sting of the flesh [2 Cor. xii. 7], a great skewer and roasting-spit
which pierces right through both spirit and flesh, both body and
soul.”[1470]—And elsewhere: “At times I think: I really do not know
where I stand, whether I preach aright or not. This was also St.
Paul’s temptation and martyrdom, which, as I believe, he found it
hard to speak of to many.” Yet, so Luther opines, Paul sufficiently
hinted at it in the words “I die daily” (1 Cor. xv. 31).—The fact
is, the Apostle is far from attributing to himself doubts on the
faith either here or elsewhere. Luther, however, would gladly have us
believe, that, with his doubts, he had been through precisely that
experience to which St. Paul refers when he says, “I die daily”;
he, too, has his agonies, he, too, has descended into hell.[1471]
Not merely in this does he resemble Paul, but also in his inability
to distinguish between the Law and the Gospel: “Paul and I have
never been able to manage this.”[1472] He saw also another point of
similarity between himself and the Apostle of the Gentiles. For, like
him, St. Paul, too, “had been much bothered by the objection, that,
one should listen to the Fathers (cp. Rom. ix. 5) and not oppose the
whole world single-handed.”[1473]
Not Paul alone, according to Luther, but all the other Apostles too
had been assailed by doubts.
He was always consoled to find new and illustrious companions in his
misery. Christ, he declares, had foretold this to the Apostles; He had
also spoken to them of this sort of persecution: “Your conscience will
grow weak so that you will often think: ‘Who knows whether I have been
right? Alas, have I not gone too far?’ Thus in the eyes of the world
and to your own conscience you will seem to be in the wrong”; it had,
however, been the duty of the Holy Ghost to comfort the Apostles in
all such trials.[1474]
And did not “even the man Christ have His momentary failing in the
Garden?”[1475] Did not Christ then confess: “‘I know not how I stand
with God, or whether I am doing right or not.’ This occurred even in
the case of Christ.”[1476] “All who are tempted must set Christ, Who
also was tempted in everything, as a model before their eyes; but it
was much harder for Him than for us and for me.”[1477] Luther fails
to take into account the world-wide difference between the sadness of
Christ, Who could never waver in the Truth, and his own doubts and
wavering in the faith.
“O, my God,” he said on another occasion, “the article on faith won’t
go home; hence so many sad moods arise. Often I have to take myself to
task for failing to master such moods when they come, I who have so
often taught in lectures, sermons and writings how such temptations
are to be overcome.”[1478]
His pupil Mathesius relates the following in his sermons on Luther,
the preface to the printed edition of which he wrote in 1565: “Antony
Musa, pastor of Rochlitz, told me that he once complained bitterly
to the Doctor of being unable to believe himself what he preached
to others. ‘Praise and thanks be to God,’ replied the Doctor, ‘that
this also happens to others. I fancied it was true only in my case.’
All his life Musa never forgot this consolation.”[1479] So full of
admiration for Luther was Mathesius, and probably so well schooled by
his master in the theory and practice of a faith which has ever to
strive after firmness, that he saw in this statement nothing at all
unfavourable to his hero. On the contrary, he includes the story in a
list of “all manner of wise sayings” which had fallen from the lips of
Luther. He even assures us at the beginning of these notes that, “The
man was full of grace and of the Holy Ghost, hence all who went to
him for advice as to a prophet of God found what they sought.”[1480]
Judging by this Mathesius must have been very easily satisfied in the
matter of firmness of faith. Perhaps had his faith been stronger it
would have fared better with him in the melancholy which came upon him
towards the end of his life.[1481]
“Ah,” said Dr. Martin, so we read elsewhere in Notes made by his
pupils, “I used to believe every single thing that the Pope and the
monks chose to say, but now I actually cannot believe even what Christ
says, Who assuredly does not lie. This is very sad and distressing.
Never mind, we must and will keep it for that Day.”[1482]—“When the
words of the prophet Hosea, ‘Thus saith the Lord,’ set to music by
Josquinus, were sung at Dr. Martin Luther’s table, the Doctor said
to Dr. Jonas: ‘As little as you believe this singing to be good, so
little do I believe theology to be true.... I do indeed love Christ,
but my faith ought to be much stronger and warmer.”[1483]—“Many boast
of having at their fingers’ ends the doctrine of the forgiveness of
sins, and I, wretch that I am, find so little comfort in the passion,
resurrection, and forgiveness of sins! One thing indeed I can do, viz.
eat our Lord God’s bread and drink His beer; but to take that far
more necessary treasure which is the free forgiveness of sins, this I
cannot succeed in doing.”[1484]
Not merely does he ascribe his own experiences to the first followers
of Christ, viz. to Paul and the other Apostles, but again and again
he seeks to make them out to be an evil common to all, an heritage
of all Christians, nay, something actually involved in the idea of
faith. Often he speaks of faith as of something altogether mystical
and intangible of the presence of which no man can be conscious.
Faith, he thinks, might well not be present at all just when a man
fancies he possesses it; again, it might exist in the man who thought
he lacked it; or “at any rate such is the case in times of stress and
temptation; for it often happens with faith that he who fancies he
believes, believes nothing at all, while the man who thinks he believes
nothing and lies in despair, really believes the most.... He who has
it, has it. We must believe, but we neither must nor can know it for
certain” [i.e. whether we really believe]. Thus in 1528.[1485] Needless
to say this theory of his was far removed from the strong, simple and
perfectly conscious faith of so many thousands even of the humblest
followers of the olden religion.
Some years before this, in a work intended for all, he had made a
practical application to himself of this curious doctrine of the
frequent impossibility of saying whether one really has the faith.
Owing to his temptations he admitted that he was not qualified to be
reckoned an authority on this question, nor “even a disciple, much less
a master.”
“Whoever boasts,” he says in his work on Psalm cxvii., “that he knows
very well we must be saved without our works by the grace of God,
does not know what he is saying”; “it is an art which keeps us ever
schoolboys,” a scent after which we must “sniff and run.” “Let anyone
who chooses take me as an example of this, which I admit myself to
be. Several times, when I was not thinking of this cardinal doctrine,
the devil has caught me and plagued me with texts from Scripture till
heaven and earth seemed too tight to hold me. Then human works and laws
would seem quite right and not an error would be noticed in the whole
of Popery. In short, no one but Luther had ever erred; and all my best
works, doctrines, sermons, books were condemned.... You hear now how
I am confessing to you and admitting what the devil was able to do
against Luther, who of all men ought surely to have been a very adept
in this art. For he has preached, told, written, spoken, sung and read
so much about it and yet remains a tyro in it, and is at times not even
a disciple, much less a master.”[1486]
What he is trying to impress on the reader is, that even if you “can
do all things,” take care that “your art does not fail you.”
Thus he did not enjoy the happiness which, according to the testimony
of Catholics both learned and unlearned, was shared by all the faithful
so long as they paid attention to their religious duties. Guided from
their youth by the hand of the Church they were acquainted with no
fears and uncertainties, for, thanks to her divine commission and
gift of infallibility, she could make up for the insufficiency of
human knowledge. Catholics did not look for salvation in a blind and
unattainable trust in an imputation of Christ’s righteousness.
Their attitude indeed presents a striking contrast to Luther’s restless
struggle after faith.
Not only in the last cold, barren years of his life but even at an
earlier period we notice in him a tendency to regard this clutching
at faith as the one great matter. In some quite early statements he
depicts himself as on the look-out for a believing trust, as violently
striving to clasp it to his breast, and, generally, as making this the
end of all religious effort.
Even in 1517 in his unpublished Commentary on Hebrews we find a
remarkable and oft-repeated admonition which bears on the subject in
hand. He sees the troubled conscience “in fear and oppressed whichever
way it turns”; hence it must learn to embrace faith in the power of
Christ’s blood: “By faith conscience is cleansed and put to rest.”
It is this faith in the blood of Christ which we must seek with all
our powers to reach. It follows, “that the best of contemplating the
sufferings of Christ is that it awakens in the soul this faith or
believing trust.” “The oftener he dwells on the Passion, the more
strongly will every man believe that the blood of Christ was shed for
his own sins. This is ‘to eat and drink spiritually,’ i.e. to feed on
Christ in faith and thus become one body with Him.”[1487]
On the other hand, the teaching of antiquity concerning meditation on
Christ’s Passion and likewise the hints contained in the language of
the Church’s liturgy, do not stop short at such an arousing of faith.
Taking for granted the Christian’s faith, what they seek to awaken is
a real love; meditation on the sufferings and death of our Lord was
above all to stimulate the faithful to feelings of loving gratitude,
holy compassion and self-sacrifice; in wholesome compunction people
were wont, by dwelling on the sufferings of the innocent Lamb, to
rouse themselves to a sense of shame, to a holy desire to imitate
Christ by good works of self-conquest and by zeal for souls. The
ancient hymn, the “_Stabat Mater_,” which is at the same time so
profound and wonderful a prayer, says never a word of faith, precious
as this grace is, but, taking it for granted as the groundwork, it
teaches us to pray: “_Fac ut tecum lugeam—fac ut ardeat cor meum in
amando Christum Deum—passionis fac consortem_,” etc. This is surely
something higher than that mere appropriation of trusting faith in
which Luther sums up all the heights and depths of our union with
Christ.
Luther, in his exaggerated language, declares that it was something
“almost Gentile” for a man when contemplating the Passion of Christ to
“strive after anything else but faith”; this statement, however, he
refutes in practice by himself occasionally introducing other good and
moral reflexions on the Passion, though he is always chiefly concerned
with its bearing on his own peculiar view of faith.
He was too ready to confuse the sentiment of faith with actual faith.
Religious writers before Luther’s day, when dealing with distrust and
unbelief, had been careful to distinguish between the involuntary acts
of man’s lower nature which do not rise above the realm of feeling,
and those which have the definite consent of the will and which
alone they regarded as grievous sins against faith or the virtue of
hope. With Luther everything is sin; he bewails the actual distrust,
and real weakness of faith springing from a fault of the will; but,
according to him, the involuntary movements of our corrupt nature also
deserve God’s signal anger; original sin whereby we bring this upon
ourselves must daily be cloaked over by means of the faith wrought by
God. But since it is God alone Who works this faith Luther might well
have excused himself even had he lost the faith completely. When he
is upset and begins to reproach himself as he often does on account
of the weakness of his faith, he is really saying good-bye to his own
teaching and again reverting to the standpoint of the olden faith, for
only the assumption of man’s free-will can justify self-reproaches.
“Sin” and “the devil” are made to bear the blame for the deeds of man
who lacks free-will.
“The sin which still persists in us,” says Luther, in his last sermon
at Eisleben,[1488] “compels us not to believe.” “Because we have it
daily before our eyes and at our door, it goes in at one ear and out
at the other.” “This is what the rude, savage folk do who care nought
for God and place no trust in Him; we, the best of Christians, also
do the same.” “We are too prone to obey original sin, the taint of
evil which yet sticks to our flesh, and although we would willingly
believe, and are fond of hearing and reading God’s Word, still we
cannot rise as high as we ought.”[1489] Before this he had said: “If a
man were to ask you: Good fellow, do you believe that the Son of God
... died for your sins? and that it is really true? You would have to
say—did you wish to answer right and truthfully and as you really
feel—and confess with dismay, that you cannot after all believe it so
strongly and indubitably.... You would have to say.... Alas, I see and
feel that I do not ... believe as I ought.”[1490] Later he returns to
this thought which evidently was much before his mind: “Although we
cannot now believe so strongly as we should, still God has patience
with us.”[1491] Yet “we ought to go on and believe more firmly and
be angered with ourselves and say: Heavenly Father, is it true that
I must believe that Thou didst send Thine only-begotten Son into the
world?... And when I hear that there is no doubt, then I shall go on
to say: Well, for this shall I thank God all the days of my life and
praise and extol Him.”[1492]
In reality, according to him, we should “run and jump for joy”
because by faith “we hear the Lord Christ speaking.” “The life of the
Christian ought, by rights, to be all joy and delight, but there are
few who really feel this joy.” The martyrs, with their glad, nay, even
jubilant confession of faith amidst their torments, are to him an
example of a sound, hardy, unshaken faith, for in them the Word was
strong and the teaching of the Gospel all-powerful.[1493] But, as he
had remarked in another of his Eisleben sermons, “We, owing to the
weakness of our faith, feel doubts and fears, as by our very nature we
cannot help doing”; yet we must “have wisdom enough again and again
to run to Christ and cry aloud and awaken Him with our shouts and
prayers.”[1494]
Luther’s farewell address where these words occur furnishes at the
same time an example of how, throughout his life, when assailed by
doubts and fears, or when the Evangel was in danger, as it then was
owing to the Emperor’s warlike preparations, he carried out his
injunction of “running to Christ.” He seeks to pour into his faith a
little of the strengthening cordial of defiance, and calls upon all
his followers to do the same: “Christ says.... Obey me; if you have My
Word, hold fast to it.... Leave Pope, Emperor, the mighty and learned
to be as wise as ever they please, but do not you follow them.... Do
not that which even the angels in heaven may not do.... The poor,
wretched creatures, the Pope, Emperor, kings and all the sects fear
not to presume this; but God has set His Son at His right hand and
said, Thou art My Son, I have given Thee all the kings and the whole
world for Thy possession, etc. To Him you kings and lords must
hearken.” “I will give you courage,” Christ says, “to laugh when the
Turk, Pope and Emperor rage and storm their very worst; come ye only
to me. Though you be burdened, faced by death or martyrdom, though
Pope and Turk and Emperor attack you, fear ye not.”[1495]
It is, in fact, quite characteristic of his faith, that, when in
difficulties, the more he becomes conscious of its lack of theological
foundation and of its purely emotional character, the more he arms
himself with the weapons of defiant violence. On the one hand he can
say, as he does in the Table-Talk of Cordatus: “Had I such great faith
as I ought to have, I should long ago have slain the Turk and curbed
every tyrant.”[1496] “I have indeed tormented myself greatly about
them. But my faith is wanting.” And yet on another occasion, with a
sadness which does him credit, he expresses his envy of the “pure and
simple faith” of the children, and laments: “We old fools torment
ourselves and make our hearts heavy with our disputations on the Word,
whether this be true, or whether that be possible.”[1497]
_Luther’s Pretended Condemnations of his whole Life-work_
Certain controversialists have alleged that Luther came outspokenly
to disown his doctrine and his work; they tell us that he expressed
his regret for ever having undertaken the religious innovation. Words
are even quoted as his which furnish “the tersest condemnation of the
Reformation by the Reformer himself.”
No genuine utterances of his to this effect exist.
The first abjuration of the whole of his life’s work is supposed to
be contained in the statement: “Well, since I have begun it I will
carry it through, but, not for the whole world would I begin it again
now.”[1498] But why was he disinclined to begin again anew? Not by a
single word does Luther give us to understand the reason to be that
he regarded what he had done as reprehensible; on the contrary, he
explains that he would not begin it again “on account of the great and
excessive cares and anxieties this office brings with it.” That he
by no means regarded the office itself as blameworthy is plain from
the words that immediately follow: “If I looked to Him Who called
me to it, then I would not even wish not to have begun it; nor do
I now desire to have any other God.” And before this, in the same
passage, extolling his office, he had said: Moses had besought God
as many as six times to excuse him from so arduous a mission. “Yet
he had to go. And in the same way God led me into it. Had I known
about it beforehand He would have had difficulty in inducing me to
undertake it.” It was Luther’s wont thus to represent the beginning
of his undertaking as having been entirely directed by God. He is
fond of saying that he had foreseen neither its final aims nor its
immense difficulties and then to proceed: My ignorance was a piece
of luck and a dispensation of providence, for, otherwise, affrighted
by the dangers, I should have drawn back from my labours. Here his
idea is much the same, and is as far removed as possible from any
self-condemnation. Of course the question, whether his idea that
God alone was responsible for his work was based on truth, is quite
another one.
The second utterance of Luther’s which has been brought forward
against him merely voices anew his disappointment with this wicked
world and his complaint of the cold way in which people had received
his Evangel though it is the Word of God: “Had I known when I first
began to write what I have now seen and experienced, namely that
people would be so hostile to the Word of God and would so violently
oppose it, I would assuredly have held my tongue, for I should never
have been so bold as to attack and anger the Pope and indeed all
mankind.”[1499] Here, moreover, we have little more than a rhetorical
exaggeration of the difficulties he had overcome.
Nor is it hard to estimate at its true value a third utterance wrung
from him: “I can never rid myself of the thought and wish, that I
had better never have begun this business.”[1500] The feeling which
prompted this deliverance is plainly expressed in what follows
immediately: “Item, I would rather be dead than witness such contempt
of God’s Word and of His faithful servants.” Here again he is simply
giving vent to his ill-temper, that his preaching of the divine truths
should receive such scant attention; not in the least can this be read
as an admission of the falsehood of his mission.
Two other curious statements which have further been cited, besides
having been spoken under the influence of the disappointment above
referred to, also bear the stamp of his peculiar rhetoric which alone
can explain their tenor. The context at any rate makes it impossible
to find in them any repudiation of his previous conduct.
One of these sayings of Luther’s does indeed ring strange: “The
tyrants in the Papacy” “plagued the world with their violence”; but
the people, now that they have been delivered from them, refuse to
lend an ear to those who preach “at God’s command,” but prefer to run
after seducers. “Hence I am going to help to set up again the Papacy
and raise the monks on high, for the world cannot get along without
such clowns and comedians.”—The truth is, however, that Luther never
seriously contemplated carrying out such a threat or countenancing
the rule of “Antichrist.” People simply misapprehended him when they
read into this jest of his a real intention to re-establish “the Papal
rule.”
In the other saying brought up against him he states: “Had I now to
begin to preach the Evangel, I would set about it otherwise.” Here he
is referring to a preceding remark, viz. that a preacher must have
great experience of the world. He then proceeds: “I would leave the
great, rude masses under the dominion of the Pope, for they are no
better off for the Evangel but only abuse its freedom. But I should
preach the Evangel and its comfort to the troubled in spirit and
the meek, to the despondent and the simple-minded.” A preacher, he
declares, could not paint the world in colours bad enough, seeing that
it belongs altogether to the devil; he must not be such a “simple
sheep” as he himself (Luther) had been at the outset when he had
expected all “at once to flock to the Evangel.”[1501]—Thus there is
again no question of any repentant condemnation of the whole work
of his lifetime. He clothes in his strange “rhetoric” an idea which
is indeed peculiar to him, viz. the special value of his Evangel
for those troubled in mind. It is his sad experiences, his personal
embitterment and also a certain irritation with his own party that
lead him here to lay such stress on the preference to be shown to
troubled consciences, even to the abandonment of all others. Of his
own exaggeration he himself was perfectly aware, for he also makes
far too much of his simplicity and lack of prudence. The resemblance
between what we have just heard him say and his theory of the Church
Apart of the True Believers, can hardly escape the reader.[1502]
* * * * *
The wish Luther is supposed to have expressed, viz. never to have
been born, and some other strong things to which he gave vent, when
in a state of depression, have likewise been quoted in support of the
assertion that he himself branded his work “more cruelly than any foe
dared to do.” If, however, we take the statements in their setting
we find they have quite a different meaning. As an instance we may
quote one passage from a tract of 1539 “Against the Antinomians”[1503]
where, apparently, he curses the day of his birth and regrets that all
his writings had not been destroyed. Alluding to Johann Agricola, an
opponent within the camp, he writes: “I might in good sooth expect my
own followers to leave me in peace, having quite enough to do with the
Papists. One might well cry out with Job and Jeremias: ‘Would that I
had never been born!’ and in the same way I am tempted to say: ‘Would
I had never come with my books,’ I care nothing for them, I should not
mind had they all been destroyed and did the works of such great minds
[as Agricola] outsell them in all the booksellers’ shops—as they
would like, being so desirous of being fed up with honour.”
Here both his good wishes to his adversary and his repudiation of
his own books are the merest irony, though, reading between the
lines, we get a glimpse of his pain and annoyance at the hostility
he encountered. In the same vein of mingled grief and sarcasm he
continues: Christ too (like himself) had complained through the
Prophet (Isaias xlix. 4): “I have laboured in vain”; but it was plain
(so little does he condemn his own preaching), that “the devil is
master of the world” since the Gospel of the “beloved master of the
house,” which Luther taught, was so violently attacked. “We must and
shall strive and suffer,” so he cries, “for it cannot fare better with
us than with the dear prophets and apostles who also had to bear these
things.” Seeing that, throughout the tract, he is inveighing against
“devilish” deformations of his doctrine, is it likely that here he is
cursing the day of his birth out of remorse for his teaching?[1504]
* * * * *
An old story that has repeatedly found its way even in recent times
into popular writings tells how Luther, in conversation, sadly
admitted to Catherine that “heaven is not for us.”
“One fine evening,” so the tale goes, “Luther was in the garden
with Catherine and both were looking up at the starlit sky. ‘Oh,
how beautiful heaven is,’ Catherine exclaimed. ‘Yes,’ said Luther
ruefully, ‘but I fear it will not be ours.’ ‘Will not be ours?’ cried
Catherine, ‘then in God’s name let us retrace our steps.’ ‘It is too
late,’ replied Luther, and went back into his study with a heavy
heart.”
A recent work against Luther quotes in support of the legend a modern
Danish writer, Pastor Stub. It would have been better to cite J. M.
Audin, an uncritical French author of a “Vie de M. Luther,” who helped
to spread the story.[1505] Audin, on his side, refers to George
Iwanek, S. J.(† 1693), who relates it in his “_Norma Vitæ_”[1506];
also to Johannes Kraus, S. J., author of a rather credulous polemical
work entitled “_Ovicula ex lutheranismo redux_.”[1507] Kraus certainly
took it from Iwanek, but from what source the latter had it we do not
know. He mentions no authority and probably took the legend on hearsay
and gave it too ready credence. As Luther seems occasionally to have
said his night prayers in the open air, and as he frequently enough
admits his struggles of conscience, the two together may have given
rise to the legend.
Far from being sorry for the work he had undertaken Luther, on
the contrary, is ever throwing on the devil the blame for all its
drawbacks. He it is who has to bear the blame for Luther’s own
wretchedness, for inward wavering no less than for the lack of order,
faith and morals among the Evangelical preachers and laity. He so
works upon me “that I sometimes believe, and sometimes do not.”[1508]
He could not view Satan’s raging as of small account; it was far more
to be dreaded than all the persecution of men. “You see from my books
what scorn I have for those men who withstand me. I look upon them as
fools”; even the lawyers I am ready to defy; “but when these fellows,
the evil spirits, come, then the congregation must back me up in the
fight,” for then the devil, the very “Lord of the world,” is entering
the lists against me.[1509] A glance at what has gone before shows how
these “combats” must be understood.
The tone he adopts, though frequently humorous and satirical, does not
conceal the deep depression which unquestionably underlies many of his
utterances.
Such depression would quite well explain passing fits of real sorrow
for all he had done. But that he really felt such sorrow is not
sufficiently attested, so that all one can say is, that the ground
for such a feeling of remorse was there. A discouraging sense of the
instability of his doctrine and “reformation” might well have aroused
contrition, for Luther himself saw only too plainly, as Döllinger
rightly remarks, that, though he was strong enough to bring about
an apostasy from the ancient Church yet he was powerless to effect
a moral regeneration, or even to preserve religious order.[1510]
Döllinger adds very truly: The reasons for his doubts were, “first
of all the recognition of the evil effects produced by his doctrine,
then the consciousness of having cut himself adrift from the Church
for the sake of a new doctrine previously unknown, and lastly the
inward contradictions from which his doctrinal system suffered and the
impossibility of squaring it with the many Bible passages which embody
or presuppose a contrary doctrine.”[1511]
The words “agonies” and “nocturnal combats” which Luther so often used
to describe his struggles of conscience remain to testify to their
severity.
In the years immediately preceding Luther’s death, these seem to have
become less violent. Remorse of conscience, as experience teaches,
however great it may at one period have been, can in progress of time
be lulled to rest. We may quote in this connection the words of one
of the most highly esteemed of the older Catholic spiritual guides,
without however applying them unconditionally to Luther, as it is
always difficult to gauge the extent and working of inward prejudice
in the various stages of a man’s mental growth, particularly in the
case of such a man as Luther. “Sometimes God withdraws himself from the
soul,” writes this author, “on account of secret grievous sins which
have been committed from culpable ignorance, or from that ignorance
which, at the instigation of the Evil One, seeks to hide itself beneath
a mantle of virtue. God then departs from the man, though the latter
is not aware of it, and may remain unaware for the rest of his life
until the night of death comes. The deluded man fancies he possesses
God, but, to his infinite pain and loss, ultimately finds that he has
been all the while without Him. In the Book of Proverbs (xiv. 12) it
is written: ‘There is a way which seemeth just to a man, but the ends
thereof lead to death.’”[1512]
Who would venture to determine in Luther’s case when exactly he
first clearly realised his moral responsibility, and when exactly he
succeeded in forming himself a false conscience? Though on the one hand
it is certain to every Catholic that at first, and for a considerable
while, his attack on the Church was extremely culpable, still one
cannot close one’s eyes to the fact that Luther himself was convinced
that he was in the right, and that this conviction grew with advancing
years. (See vol. iv., p. 306 f.) It was, however, of his own free-will
that he persisted in the unhappy attitude of apostasy and revolt which
had become a habit with him and thus, in itself, his burden of moral
responsibility remained.[1513]
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE COUNCIL OF TRENT IS CONVOKED, 1542. LUTHER’S POLEMICS AT THEIR
HIGHEST TENSION
1. Steps taken and Tracts Published subsequent to 1537 against the
Council of the Church
AT the meeting held in 1537 by the protesting Princes and Estates at
Schmalkalden the General Council, which had been suggested as a means
of bringing about a settlement and of establishing religious peace,
was most outspokenly rejected, and that in a way very insulting to
Rome.[1514] In its blunt refusal the assembly was more logical than
Luther and his theologians, who as yet were averse to an absolute
repudiation of the Council. The hatred of the Pope which Luther himself
had been so earnest in inculcating at Schmalkalden caused those with
whom the decision rested to overlook certain considerations of prudence
and diplomacy.
If Luther opposed a thoroughgoing rejection of the Council it was not
because he had the slightest intention of accepting any Council that
did not at once declare in his favour. He knew very well that under the
conditions on which he insisted there could be no question of a real
Council as the Church had always understood it. The real motive for
his hesitation was that, for him and his followers, it was a delicate
matter, in view of the attitude they had previously adopted on this
question, to oppose too abruptly the idea of a Council. He foresaw
that the Catholic Imperialists would overwhelm the Protestants with
most righteous and bitter reproaches for now turning their backs upon
the Council after having at one time been loudest in their demands for
it, and outdone themselves in complaints and murmurs on account of its
postponement. What impression would the attitude of the protesting
Princes make on the Emperor, who was now full of plans for the Council?
And would not many be scared away who were still halting at the
parting of the ways and were inclined to delay their decision until
the looked-for Council? “The Papists assert that we are so reprobate,”
wrote Luther, “that we refuse to listen to anybody, whether Pope,
Church, Emperor, or Empire, or even the Council which we had so often
called for.”[1515] Such considerations, however, were not strong enough
to prevent him at once lending the whole weight of his voice in support
of the resolution arrived at by the Schmalkalden Leaguers.
After so offensive a rejection of any further attempts at reunion, the
armed conflict with the Emperor which had so long been threatening now
seemed bound to come. Luther, putting all subterfuge aside, looked this
contingency boldly in the face. In a memorandum to his Elector dating
from the end of January, 1539, he expressed himself even more strongly
than before in favour of the right of armed resistance to the Emperor
and the Empire; should the former have recourse to violent measures
against the Evangel, then there would be no difference between the
Emperor and a hired assassin; if the overlord attempts to impose on his
subjects blasphemy and idolatry, he must expect to meet with bloody
resistance on the part of those attacked.[1516]
While negotiations on which hung war or peace were in progress at
Frankfurt, and while, in consequence of this, the question of the
Council receded once more into the background, Luther was putting the
finishing touch to his “Von den Conciliis und Kirchen,” which appeared
in the spring of 1539.[1517] In spite of being weak and unwell his
powers of work seemed inexhaustible; his own troubles and worries
were all forgotten when it was a question of entering the lists as
the leader of the movement. The work was intended to forestall the
Œcumenical Council should it ever become an accomplished fact, and to
frustrate as far as possible its harmful effects on himself. In it
with the utmost audacity the author pits his own authority against
that of the highest secular and ecclesiastical powers; his tone is at
once so self-confident and so coarse that here again it provides the
psychologist with an enigma.
With his projected Council, so he says at the commencement, the Pope
in reality only wanted to deal the Emperor and all Christians “a blow
on the snout.” He held out the Council to them just as, in playing
with a dog, we offer him a morsel on the point of a knife, and, when
he snaps at it, we hit him with the handle. He declares roundly that,
“the Papists would not and could not hold a Council unless indeed they
first took captive the Emperor, the kings and all the princes.”[1518]
If the Emperor and the Princes wished “reprobates to slap their
cheeks,” then let them continue to debate about the Council. The
alleged impossibility of the Council he proclaims still more rudely,
asserting that, the Papists being what they are, the whole world must
despair of any amelioration of the Church: “They would rather leave
Christendom to perish, and have the devil himself for their God and
Lord, than accept Christ and give up even one jot of their idolatry.”
Hence we must look for reformation from Christ our Lord, “and let them
fare devilwards as they are bent on doing.”[1519]
He then goes on to explain that amendment was impossible on the olden
principles of the Fathers and canons, but could come about only by
means of Holy Scripture; the Fathers and canons were not at one;
even the first four Œcumenical Councils—the history of which he
treats summarily though with little real historical knowledge—had
only been able to ratify the belief laid down in Scripture; for
faith a surer and more stable foundation was necessary than that of
ecclesiastical Councils ever subject to make mistakes. At the same
time he has nothing but scorn for the claims of the ancient and
universal Church to be the permanent infallible teacher on matters
of faith; he has no eye for her divinely guaranteed power as it had
been exemplified in the General Councils, so solemnly representing the
Churches of the whole world. On the other hand, his own pretensions
are far above question. He knows, so he asserts, much more about the
ancient Councils than all the Papists in a lump. He could instruct
the Council, should one actually be summoned, on its procedure and
its standards. It has, according to him, no power in the Church save
to reject new errors which do not agree with Scripture (as though
a Council had ever adopted any other course). Even the office of a
clergyman or schoolmaster may, he says, be compared with that of the
Councils in so far as, within their own small sphere, they judge human
opinions and human rules by the standard of the Word of God, and seek
to oppose the devil. But just as, in the case of these, he cannot
guarantee that they will always read Holy Scripture aright, so also in
the case of the Councils.
If, however, such a solemn Council was convened—and such a thing
might conceivably be of some use—then the first requirement, so he
declares with surprising frankness, was “that, in the Council, the
Pope should not merely lay aside his tyranny of human law, but also
hold with us.... The Emperor and the kings must also help in this
and compel the Pope should he refuse.”[1520] This he wrote for the
disabusal of the infatuated, for at that time, strange to say, some
Germans of the greatest influence still fancied it possible to pave
the way for a reconciliation by means of negotiations and religious
conferences, and were anxious to leave the Lutheran question in
suspense until a General Council should meet. Luther further demands,
that “the thoroughly learned in Holy Scripture ... and a few prudent
and well-disposed laymen ... should also be invited to the Council.
Then the abominations of the Pope would speedily be condemned.”
He adds: “Yes, you will say, but of such a Council there is no hope.
That is what I think too.”[1521]
He is ready, however, to be content with a Provincial Council of the
same sort held in Germany, and expresses the strange hope, that “the
other monarchs would in time approve and accept the decisions of
such a Council.” With this reference to the Provincial Council he is
dallying with a proposal made by some short-sighted imperial advisers,
viz. that a “free, German Council” should attempt to settle the
controversy.
The author then proceeds to set forth his jumbled theories on the
“Church” and finally brings the lengthy work to a conclusion with a
protestation that his doctrine forms the very pillars on which the
Church rests: “Whoever teaches differently, even were he an angel from
heaven, let him be anathema” (Gal. i. 8). “We are determined to be the
Pope’s master and to tread him under foot, as Psalm xci. [13] says:
Thou shalt walk upon the asp and the basilisk and thou shalt trample
under foot the lion and the dragon.”[1522]
In many parts of the “Von den Conciliis und Kirchen” Luther is inclined
to repeat himself, whilst the style exhibits a certain dreariness and
monotony often met with in this class of Luther’s productions, at least
when the ardour of his polemics begins to fail, or when his object in
view is not popular instruction and edification. He himself on its
completion wrote of it to Melanchthon who was attending the meeting at
Frankfurt: “The book sadly vexes me, I find it weak and wordy.”[1523]
At any rate with many who lacked any real discernment it no doubt
served to cover Luther’s and his friends’ retreat from a position they
had so long and persistently defended, viz. that a Council was the
chief thing called for.
The fruitless meetings of Frankfurt and Hagenau and the equally
fruitless conferences of Worms and Ratisbon were followed, in 1541,
by the Ratisbon Interim. This, as might have been foreseen, satisfied
neither party. As for the Council it had been repeatedly postponed by
Paul III on account of the embroilments between the Emperor and France
and the opposition of the Protestants.
At last, on May 22, 1542, the Pope convened a General Synod to begin
in the town of Trent on Nov. 1 of that same year. The head on earth
of the Catholic Church, in the Bull summoning the Council, spoke
of the political obstacles now at last happily removed. The aim of
the assembly was to be to debate, and by the light of divine wisdom
and truth, settle on such steps “as might appear effective for the
safeguarding of the purity and truth of the Christian religion, for
the restoration of good morals and the amendment of the bad, for
the establishing of peace, harmony and concord among Christians,
both rulers and ruled, and lastly for opposing the inroads of the
unbelievers [the Turks].” The Pope most earnestly implores the Emperor
and the other Christian monarchs “by the mercy of our Lord Jesus
Christ, Whose faith and religion are being most violently assailed both
from within and from without,” not to forsake God’s cause but by active
co-operation to support it in every way.
The grand project of a Council was, however, further delayed by the war
which suddenly broke out between Charles V and France. Only on Dec. 13,
1545, could the first session be held at Trent. It was then indeed high
time, for the Emperor Charles V, in the hope of securing a united front
against the French, had shown himself much too disposed to yield to the
German Protestants, as is evident from the Reichsabschied of Spires in
1544.
As to Luther: up to the very last moment he scoffed at the efforts of
Rome, as though her proposals for reform were all mere sham. Under this
cloak of contempt he concealed his real annoyance at the opening of the
Council.
As soon as the new Bull of Convocation for 1545 appeared he wrote to
his old friend, Wenceslaus Link: “I have seen the Pope’s writing and
the Bull convening the Council to Trent for Lætare Sunday. May Christ
laugh last at the reprobates who laugh at Him. Amen.”[1524] A few
days later he said in a letter to his confidant, Justus Jonas: “To
believe the Pope’s promises would be like placing faith in the father
of lies whose own darling son he is.”[1525]—“The Pope is mad and
foolish from top to toe,” so he informs his Elector.[1526] A “Feast
of Fools”[1527] is the only fit word with which he can describe the
assembly of the ablest and most learned men in the Church, who came
from every land, honourably intent on bringing peace to Christians and
gaining a victory for truth. Luther had not the slightest doubt where
the real well-spring of truth undefiled was to be found; on the same
day that he wrote to his Elector the words just quoted, in a letter
to Nicholas Amsdorf, the “true and genuine bishop of the Church of
Naumburg,” as he styles him, he says: “I glory in the fact that this
at least is certain: The Son of God is seated at the right hand of
the Father and by His Spirit speaks most sweetly to us here below,
just as He spoke to the Apostles; we, however, are His disciples
and hear the Word from His lips. Praise be to God Who has chosen us
unworthy sinners to be thus honoured by His Son and has permitted us
to hearken to His Majesty through the Word of the Evangel. The angels
and the whole of God’s creation wish us luck; but the Pope, Satan’s
own monster, grieves and is affrighted, and all the gates of hell
shake. Let us rejoice in the Lord. For them the Day approaches and
the end. I have in mind another book against Popery, but the state
of my head and my endless correspondence hinders me. Yet with God’s
help I shall set about it shortly.”[1528] What he is thinking of is a
continuation—which death prevented him from carrying out—of a new
book with which we must now deal.
2. “Wider das Bapstum zu Rom vom Teuffel Gestifft.” The Papacy renews
its Strength
Luther’s anger against the Papacy had been kindled into a glowing flame
by the sight of the unity displayed by the Catholic Church in view of
the Council. It seemed incredible to him that the old body which he had
pronounced dead should again sit in Council and prepare to infuse new
life into itself, to revive ecclesiastical discipline and to condemn
the Church he himself had founded. His soreness at such a consolidation
of Catholicism he relieved by a sort of last effort in his book
“Against the Roman Papacy founded by the devil.”[1529]
It was only his broken health, a foretoken of approaching death, and
his many cares that prevented his following it up as he had threatened
in his letter to Amsdorf just quoted. As he says there, he only hopes
that God will give him “bodily strength and ghostly energy enough” to
enable him, “like Samson of old, to wreak one act of vengeance on these
Philistines.” The simile is truly a horrible one; the unhappy man,
broken down from the effects of a life of tireless labour and endless
excitement, still burns with the desire once more to shake the pillars
of the ancient Church so as to bury all faithful Catholics beneath her
ruins. As to what would be his, the blind Samson’s, fate beneath the
ruins he does not consider as seriously as the true members of the
ancient Church would have wished him to do.
The occasion of the book was the following. Pope Paul III had sent to
the Emperor two briefs in quick succession to dissuade him from making
perilous concessions to the Protestants, and, in particular, in the
interests of the Œcumenical Council, to oppose the project of holding a
German National Council. Luther received from two different quarters an
invitation to write against the supposed interference of the Pope. His
Elector, through Chancellor Brück, requested, “that the said Martin may
deal with the Pope’s writing, particularly as the formal announcement
of the Council is now to hand; for we have no doubt that he is well
able to do this. The same might then be printed and launched into the
public.”[1530] Another invitation to the same effect, supported by
information to be used against the Pope, reached Luther indirectly
from the Imperial chancery itself through the intermediary of Nicholas
Perrenoti, a councillor; some of the officials seem to have been
anxious to avenge themselves on Paul III for crossing their plans.[1531]
The work was published on March 26, 1545. As early as April 13,
Marsupino, Secretary to King Ferdinand, was able to present a copy
to the Papal Legates at the Council of Trent. Justice Jonas at once
brought out a Latin translation entitled “_Contra papatum romanum a
diabolo inventum_.” Thus at the very time the General Council made its
bow before the world, Luther’s attack was brought to the notice of
educated readers of all nations. No great harm was done to Catholic
interests by Luther’s hanging up the drastic picture of himself,
depicted in this scurrilous writing, as a warning to the whole world;
humanistic culture and the grand classic idiom had, however, scarcely
ever before suffered such degradation as in the Latin rendering of this
foul book.
The first and chief part of the work was to prove, that it was both
wrong and presumptuous for the Popes to style themselves heads of
Christendom, and that it was the devil alone who had put such a notion
into their heads. In the second part it is demonstrated that in
particular the claim made by the Popes that no one had the right to
judge or to depose them was of fiendish origin. Finally, in the third,
it is shown that the alleged handing over of the Roman Empire by the
Greeks to the Germans through the instrumentality of the Popes was also
a mere hellish lie.
Sincere admirers of Luther read with amazement this book, which, for
all its ferocity, is so reminiscent of the gutter. Some, even of his
followers, again openly expressed the opinion that by it he had harmed
himself more than any foe could have done—so unmeasured are his words
and so utterly crazy the things he propounds. At times the pages seem
to have been written in nothing short of a paroxysm of hate, and can
only be understood by bearing in mind the author’s frightful state of
inward turmoil.
The very first words give us a glimpse of what is to come: “The most
hellish Father, St. Paulus Tertius, as though he were Bishop of the
Roman Churches, has written two briefs to Carolus Quintus, our Lord
Emperor.... He has also, to speak by permission, issued a Bull almost
for the fifth time, and now once more the Council is to meet at Trent;
no one, however, may attend it but only his own brew, the Epicureans
and those who please him.” Luther proceeds to ask whether this can
really be a Council, which is ruled by the “gruesome abomination at
Rome, who styles himself Pope,” and not rather some “puppet-show got
up during the Carnival to tickle the Pope’s fancy.”
The fury of the writer increases as he proceeds and he goes on to
make the following demands: “Now let Emperor, kings, princes, lords
and whoever can, set the axe to the root, and may God give no luck
to hands that hang idle. First of all let them take from the Pope,
Rome, Romandiol, Urbino, Bononia and all that he holds as Pope.... He
won them by blasphemy and idolatry, and has laid waste the kingdom
of Christ, wherefore he is termed the abomination of desolation [Mt.
xxiv. 15]. After this the Pope himself, the Cardinals and the whole
scoundrely train of his idolatrous Popish Holiness should be seized,
and, as blasphemers, have their tongues torn from their throats and
nailed in a row on the gallows-tree, in like manner as they affix
their seals in a row to their Bulls; though even this would be but
slight punishment for all their blasphemy and idolatry. After this
let them hold as many Councils as they please on the gallows, or in
hell with all the demons.... They are criminal, shameless, obstinate
creatures.”[1532]
The gloomy fancy that inspires his furious pen has, however, another
kind of death in readiness for such opponents. “Were I Emperor I
know full well what I should do: I would couple together all the
blasphemous knaves, Pope, Cardinals and all the Popish crew, bind them
and take them down to Ostia where there is a little stretch of water
called in Latin the Mare Tyrrhenum.... Into it I would drop the lot
and give them a good bath, along with the keys with which they bind
and loose everything.... They might also take their pastoral staves
so as to be able to smite the face of the waters.... And, lastly,
as refreshing fodder and drink, they might have all the decrees,
decretals, bulls, indulgences, etc. What do you wager that after half
an hour in this healing bath all their diseases would cease?... On it
I would risk Christ our Lord.”[1533]
“The Pope,” so he exclaims on the same page, “is the head of the
accursed Churches of all the worst knaves upon earth, a Vicar of
the devil, a foe of God, an adversary of Christ and a destroyer of
His Churches, a teacher of all lies, blasphemy and idolatry, an
arch-church-thief and robber of the Church’s keys, a murderer of kings
and an inciter to all kinds of bloodshed, a whoremonger above all
whoremongers and the author of every kind of immorality, even of that
which may not be mentioned, an antichrist, a man of sin, a child of
destruction, a real werewolf. Whoever refuses to believe this, let him
fare away with his God, the Pope.”[1534]
“As an elect teacher and preacher to the Churches of Christ bound
to speak the truth, I have herewith done my part. He who is set
on stinking may go on stinking.... Let a Church be where it may
throughout the world it can have no other Gospel ... than we have here
in our Churches at Wittenberg.”[1535]
As to how high Luther as a preacher and man of learning set himself
and his Church above the Pope and his, we can see from what follows:
“The whole Roman mob is nothing else but a stable full of great,
rude, loutish, shameless donkeys, who know nothing of Holy Scripture,
or of God, or of Christ, or what a bishop is, what God’s Word, or
the Spirit, or baptism is, or what are sacraments, the keys and good
works.... I, Dr. Martin, am still living, and having been brought up
in the Pope’s school and donkey’s stable became a Doctor of Theology,
and was even accounted a good and learned Doctor, which I assuredly
was, so that I can truly testify how deep, and high, and broad, and
long is their skill in Holy Scripture.”[1536]—And lest someone should
object: “Have you any right to judge?” he replies lightheartedly: “It
is enough for us to know that the Pope-Ass has been condemned by God
Himself and all the angels.” “We cannot be heretics, for we have
believed and confessed the Scriptures.”[1537]
An earlier saying of his to the effect that: “I am carried away and
know not by what spirit” (“_rapior nescio quo spiritu_”), comes before
the mind of the reader when Luther describes yet a third form of death
for the Pope and his courtiers. He would fain see him, the Cardinals
and the whole court, dealt with according “to fox-law, their hides
being dragged over their heads, that they may thus be taught to pay
with their skins; after this the hides may be thrown into the healing
bath of Ostia, or into the fire.” “See and behold,” he exclaims, “how
my blood boils! How it longs to see the Papacy punished though my
spirit is well aware that no temporal penalty can make amends, even
for one single Bull or decree!”[1538]
Luther’s defenders have, strange to say, thought it necessary to
lay stress on the fact that these three proposals cannot have been
seriously meant.[1539] Everyone will admit that they are not a
settled plan, for the carrying out of one would have rendered the
others difficult or unfeasible. But does this fact modify in any way
the revolting character of these words or cancel the invitation to
make use of violence? It would be better to argue, that, owing to
his fanatism about which only a pathologist can judge, he was not
fully aware of what he was doing.—Some Catholics have suggested
that the abnormal virulence of many pages of this book was due to
the excitement caused by intoxicating liquors. Of this unfortunately
there is no proof. That the reason for his horrible language must be
sought rather in mental overstrain, in the preponderance just then of
an abnormal side of his spiritual life, seems fairly clear also from
the other quotations from this work which we were obliged to adduce
elsewhere.[1540]
Some time before the work in question was written, Brück, the
Chancellor, had written to the Elector that, if the Council convened
by the Pope “were to resume and continue its knavery” it would be
necessary for Luther “to put the axe to the root of the tree, which by
the Grace of God he is better able to do than other men”; this he wrote
on Jan. 20, 1545.[1541]
At that same time a calmer scene was being enacted in Saxony. On
Jan. 14, the Wittenberg theologians, headed by Luther, presented
to the Elector the so-called Wittenberg Reformation, drawn up at
the sovereign’s request. This work had a close connection with the
Œcumenical Council. It is true it was merely written in view of the
approaching negotiations at the Diet, to facilitate one of those
“religious compromises” which had now become so common. It was,
however, at the same time, so to speak, a theological manifesto of the
Protestants called forth by the Council. Hence it had been drawn up by
Melanchthon (and not by Luther) in terms cautious and moderate. “The
theologians,” wrote Brück, “have drawn up their ‘Reformation’ very
courteously, nor is there any trace of Dr. Martin’s boisterousness” in
it.[1542]
The “Reformation” treats successively of “doctrine true and undefiled,”
which it asserts is to be found in the Confession of Augsburg, “of the
right use of the sacraments,” of the preaching office and episcopal
government, of the ecclesiastical courts and spiritual jurisdiction,
of learning and the schools, and of the defence and support of the
churches. Many useful elements which meet the actual needs of the time
are found scattered through the document. Stress is laid on the need
of some direction and supervision of the preachers in such a way as to
suggest the recognition of episcopal authority; the German episcopate
is to be retained ... provided it accepts Luther’s doctrine![1543]
It would in many respects be instructive to draw a parallel between
the “Wittenberg Reformation” and the Catholic reformation proclaimed
by the Council of Trent in the course of its successive sessions. We
shall emphasise only one point. In the case of proceedings against
“false doctrine” the Wittenbergers go much further than the Council
in their demands for submission on the part of the individual.
According to them the ecclesiastical courts (Consistories) were to
lend their firm support to Luther’s own doctrine and interpretation
of the Bible—for which, as a matter of fact, his name offered the
sole guarantee—these courts were moreover to comprise “God-fearing
men, chosen from among the laity of high standing in the Church.” The
question of any deviation from the faith, was, with their assistance,
“first to be examined into and then judgment pronounced in the ordinary
way.” So painful a subordination of the individual to private opinions
concerning faith, and so uncalled-for an introduction of the lay
element into the spiritual courts, never entered the mind of any
member of the Council.
* * * * *
Conscious of its divine right the Council of Trent, even during
Luther’s lifetime, solemnly laid the foundations of those decisions on
doctrine which are now, and for ever will be, binding on the Catholic
Church. It rose far above the quarrels of the day and the personal
attacks on the successor of Peter and the venerable hierarchy; in what
it laid down it was careful ever to preserve intact the great bond with
the past.
It was but a few days before Luther departed this life that the “Holy
Œcumenical and General Synod legitimately called together in the Holy
Ghost,” as in accordance with ancient usage it styles itself, declared
in its third session, that its highest task was to oppose the heresies
of the day and to reform the morals of the people. During this session,
on Feb. 4, 1546, the Council renewed the creed of the Roman Church as
the “basis on which all who confess the faith of Christ are agreed
and as the one firm foundation against which the gates of hell cannot
prevail.”
As the opposing camp had the habit of constantly appealing to Holy
Writ so the Council, in its next session, held after Luther’s death on
April 8, 1546, solemnly declared Holy Scripture to be the “Spring of
wholesome truth and discipline of morals,” though at the same time,
agreeably to the ancient and uninterrupted teaching of the Church,
it also included tradition: “Which truth is contained in the written
books, and the unwritten traditions which the Apostles received from
the lips of Christ ... and which, having been as it were handed down,
have survived to our own day”; it, on the one hand, declared the sacred
books of both Old and New Testament, the Canon of which it fixed anew,
to have God for their author (“_Deus auctor_”) and to be worthy of
equal affection and reverence; on the other, it reasserted the rights
of the teaching office of the Church and of the tradition handed down
from ages past, both of which Protestantism had questioned. To prevent
any abuse of the Word of God, it also enacted that no member of the
Church, relying on his own prudence, should, in matters of faith and
morals, twist Holy Writ so as to make it mean anything else “than Holy
Mother Church held and holds, seeing that it is hers to interpret
Scripture” in accordance “with the unanimous consensus of the Fathers.”
The Council’s first reforming decree also seeks to safeguard the
treasure of Holy Scripture by forbidding any profanation of it or its
use for superstitious purposes.
After long adjournments, necessitated by the state of public affairs
and after the ground had been prepared by careful study of the Bible,
the Fathers and the Schoolmen, there followed, in 1546 and 1547, the
weighty discussions on original sin and justification. In the final
Canon on the justification of the sinner by grace (vol. iii., p. 185),
the point on which all the questions raised by the innovations turned,
the Synod pronounces an anathema on any man who shall declare that the
Catholic doctrine it has just laid down “detracts from the glory of God
or the merits of Jesus Christ our Lord, and does not rather enhance the
truth of our faith and the glory of God and of Jesus Christ.” There
followed resolutions concerning the sacraments in general, then, in
1551, on the Holy Eucharist and the Sacrament of Penance; and finally,
to pass over other points, in 1562 and 1563, the decrees on Communion,
the Sacrifice of the Mass, the Sacrament of priestly ordination, and on
Marriage. The 25th and last session, on Dec. 4, 1563, was devoted to
the doctrine of Purgatory, of the veneration of the saints and relics,
indulgences, fast-days and festivals, and also to the drawing up of
various far-reaching regulations on discipline.
The Synod had striven throughout to make its disciplinary decrees keep
pace with its doctrinal promulgations. Thereby it provided a lasting
and effectual foundation for the reform of the Church. This, taken in
connection with so clear a statement of the unanimity of the Church’s
teaching throughout the ages, deprived the separatists of every pretext
for remaining estranged from the unity of the faith. The main point was
that the Church, purified from the many abuses to which human frailty
had given rise, or at least earnestly resolved to remove those still
remaining, stood forth again as the city on the hill, visible afar off
in her splendour and calling all to her in order to make them sharers
in the hope of life. She was confident that He Who had said: “I will be
with you all days, even to the consummation of the world,” had extended
His protecting Hand over the assembly, and had spoken through it for
the instruction of the faithful and also of the erring brethren. The
infallibility of such general Councils was never questioned by any
Catholic.
A fresh outburst of zeal was the result, and the ancient Church soon
showed that she had within her unsuspected powers for self-improvement.
3. Some Sayings of Luther’s on the Council and his own Authority
“They now seek to get at us under cover of a nominal Council,” says
Luther, “in order to be able to shriek at us.... This is Satan’s wisdom
as against the foolishness of God. How will God extricate Himself from
their cunning schemes? Still, he is the Lord Who will mock at His
contemners. If we are to submit to this Council we might as well have
submitted twenty-five years since to the lord of the Councils, viz.
the Pope and his Bulls. We shall not consent to discuss the matter
until the Pope admits that the Council stands above him, and until the
Council takes sides [with us] against the Pope, for even the Pope’s
own conscience already reproaches him. They are mad and crazy. ‘_Deo
gratias._’”[1544]
A series of similar utterances may be quoted.
“The Papists are ashamed of themselves and stand in fear of their own
conscience. Us they do not fear because, like Virgil of old, they
console themselves with having already survived worse things. The
paroxysm will cease suddenly.... They put to death the pious John Hus,
who never departed in the least from the Papacy but only reproved
moral disorders.”[1545] “For it was then not yet the time to unmask
the [Roman] beast” (this having been reserved for me). “I, however,
have not attacked merely the abuses but even the doctrine, and have
bitten off the [Pope’s] heart. I don’t think the Pope will grow
again.... The article of Justification has practically taken the shine
out of the Pope’s thunderbolts.”[1546]
“Our Church by the grace of God comes quite near to that of the
Apostles, because we have the pure doctrine, the catechism, the
sacraments and the [right] use of government, both in the State and
in the home. If the Word, which alone makes the Church, stands and
flourishes, then all is well. The Papists, however, who seek to
erect a Church on conciliar decrees and decretals will only arouse
dissensions among themselves and ‘wash the tiles’—however much they
may pride themselves on their reason and wisdom.”[1547]
“I must for once boast, for it is a long while since I did so last. A
Council whereby the Church might be reformed has long been clamoured
for. I think I have summoned such a Council as will make the ears
of the Papists tingle and their heart burst with malice: for I take
it, that, even should the Pope hold a General Council, he will not
be able to effect so much by it. First, I have driven the Papists
to their books, particularly to Scripture, and deposed the heathen
Aristotle and the ‘Summists.’ ... Secondly, I have made them to be
more reserved about their indulgences. Thirdly, I have almost put an
end to the pilgrimages and field-devilry.” Only look, he says, at
the reduction of the monasteries and the many other things which no
Council could ever have achieved but which have been brought about by
“our people.” Everything had been lost, the “Our Father, the Creed,
the Ten Commandments, Penance, Baptism, Prayer [etc., he enumerates
twenty-one similar things].” “No institution, no monastery, university
or presbytery” taught even one of these articles aright; now, however,
“I have set all things in order.”[1548]
I can “write books as well as the Fathers and the Councils,” and this
I may say “without pride.”[1549] This is because I have “exercised
myself” in the Word of God by “prayer, meditation and temptations”
(“_oratio, meditatio, tentatio_”).[1550] In my “temptation” the
devil raged against me in every way, but God in a wonderful manner
“kept alight His torch so that it did not go out.”[1551] Persecution
overtook me “like the Apostles,” who “fared no better than their
Lord and Master.”[1552] But the devil has entered into His foes
the Papists, to whom, “in spite of all our good and well-meant
admonitions, prayers and entreaties,”[1553] they have surrendered
themselves; and rightly so, for the Papists (as I know from my own
youthful experience when I did the same myself) refuse even to
recognise the Gospel as a mystery.[1554] They simply make an end of
all religion.
But, all this notwithstanding, as the Council shall learn “I am really
a defender and prop of the Pope. After my death the Pope will suffer a
blow which he will be unable to withstand. Then they will say: Would
that we now had Luther to give some advice; but if anyone offers
advice now they refuse it; when the hour is passed God will no longer
be willing.”[1555]
After “God had given me that splendid victory which enabled me to get
the better of my monkish vocation, the vows, masses and all the other
abominations ... Pope and Emperor were alike unable to stop me.” It
is true that I still have temptations to humble me, “but we remain
victorious and shall conquer.”[1556]
“These Italians [at Trent they were present in large numbers] are
profane men and Epicureans. No Pope or cardinal for the last six
hundred years has read the Bible. They understand less of the
catechism than does my little daughter. May God preserve us from such
blindness and leave us His divine Word.”[1557]
This was the frame of mind in which Luther confronted the Council.
We shall be better able to appreciate the strangeness of his attitude
if we imagine Luther, attended by a few theologians of his own circle,
journeying to the Council at Trent and there holding converse with the
foreign prelates, as he had done at Wittenberg with the Legate Vergerio.
In his wonted fashion he would not have hesitated to express plainly
his views concerning his own authority. Some examples of his opinions
of himself have already been given.[1558] What impression would the
Wittenberger’s novel claims have made on bishops and theologians from
distant lands where the Church was still in perfect peace, and where
the spiritual supremacy of the hierarchy was unquestioned? With what
astonishment would they have listened to those strange replies, which
the Saxon had always ready in plenty, to such objections as they might
have raised on the score of his disturbance of the peace of both Church
and State, of the disorders within his own fold and of his own private
life and that of his followers?
A number of other statements taken from his writings and conversations
with his intimates may help to make the picture even more vivid.
“I have the Word,” we can hear him saying to the bishops in his usual
vein, “that is enough for me! Were even an angel to come to me now I
should not believe him.”[1559]
“Whoever obtrudes his doctrine on me and refuses to yield, must
inevitably be lost; for I must be right, my cause being not mine, but
God’s, Whose Word it also is. Hence those who are against it must go
under. Hence my unfailing defiance.... I have risked my life on it and
will die for it. Therefore whoever sets himself against me must be
ruined if a God exists at all.”[1560]
To friend and foe I can only say: “Take in faith what Christ says to
you through me; for I am not deceived, so far as I know. It is not the
words of Satan that I speak. Christ speaks through me.”[1561]
“Though there are many who regard my cause as diabolical and condemn
it, yet I know that my word and undertaking is not of me but of God,
and neither death nor persecution will teach me otherwise.”[1562]
And before anyone can slip in a word of rejoinder he, again, as his
way was, appeals to his personal knowledge. “I know that God together
with all His angels bears me witness that I have not falsified
His Word, baptism or sacrament, but have preached rightly and
truthfully.”[1563]
This doctrine I learnt in my “temptations,” during which “I had to
ponder ever more and more deeply.” “What is lacking to the fanatics
and the mob is that they have not that real foeman who is the devil;
he certainly teaches a man thoroughly.”[1564]
The hostility met with, particularly from false brethren, is also
“God’s sure seal upon us”; by such “we have become like St. Paul, nay,
like the whole Church.”[1565]
The chief thing for me, however, so he continues, is conscience and
conviction. “Take heed,” such is my axiom, “not to make mere play
of it. If you wish to begin it, then begin it with such a clear
conscience that you may defy the devil.... Be a man and do everything
that goes against and vexes them [the opponents] and omit everything
that might please them.”[1566]
To those who ask whether his conscience did not upbraid him for
breaking the peace and for overthrowing all order, he replies: It is
quite true “Satan makes my conscience to prick me for having by false
doctrine thrown the world into confusion and caused revolts.... But I
meet him with this: The doctrine is not mine, but the Son of God’s;
whole worlds are nothing to God, even should ten of them be rent
by rebellion and go headlong to destruction. It is written in Holy
Scripture [Mt. xvii. 5], ‘Hear ye Him’ (Christ), or everything will
fall into ruins, and again [Ps. ii. 10], ‘Hearken, ye kings,’ or else
ye shall perish. It was thus that Paul too had to console himself,
when, in the Acts, he was accused of treason against God and Cæsar.
God wills that the article of Justification shall stand, and if men
accept it then no State or government will perish, but, if not, then
they alone are the cause of their misfortune.”[1567]
With no less confidence is he prepared to counter the other
objections. My doctrine breeds evil? “After the proclamation of the
Evangel it is true we see in the world great wickedness, ingratitude
and profanation; this followed on the overthrow of Antichrist [which
I brought about]; but in reality it is only, that, formerly, before
the dawn of the Evangel, we did not see so plainly these sins which
all were already there, but now that the morning star has risen the
whole world awakens, as though from a drunken sleep, and perceives
the sins which previously, while all men were asleep and sunk in the
gloom of night, they had failed to recognise. But [in view of all the
wickedness] I set my hopes on the Last Day being not far distant;
things cannot go on for more than a hundred years; for the Word of
God will again grow weaker; owing to lack of ministers of the Word
darkness will arise. Then the whole world will grow savage and so lull
itself into a state of security. After this the voice will resound
(Mt. xxv. 6): ‘Behold, the bridegroom cometh.’ Then God will not be
able to endure it any longer.”[1568]
Is our own life any objection? It is no question of life but of
doctrine, “and, as to the doctrine, it is indubitable that it is
the Word of God. ‘The words that I speak,’ saith the Lord [John
xiv. 10], ‘are not mine but the Father’s.’” Certainly “I should not
like God to judge me by my life.”[1569]—“My doctrine is true and
includes the forgiveness of sins, because my doctrine is not mine;
Christ also says, ‘My doctrine is not Mine.’ My doctrine stands fast,
be my life what it may.”[1570] “True enough, it is hard when Satan
comes and upbraids us saying: You have laid violent hands on this
marvellous edifice of the Papacy,” you, “a man full of error and
sin.” “But Paul also, according to Rom. ix., had at times to endure
similar reproaches.” “We answer: We do not attack the Pope on account
of his personal errors and trespasses; we must indeed condemn them,
but we will overlook them and forgive them as we ourselves wish to
be forgiven. Thus it is not a question for us of the Pope’s personal
faults and sins, but of his doctrine and of submission to the Word.
The Pope and his followers, quite apart from their own sins, offend
against the glory and the grace of God, nay, against Christ Himself,
of whom the Father says: Hear ye Him. But the Pope would have men’s
ears attentive only to what he says!”[1571]
But, because my doctrine is true, so he concludes, this had
to come about, “as I had long ago foreseen; in spite of the
purity of my theology I [like Paul] was alleged to have preached
‘scandal’ to the holy Jews and ‘foolishness’ to the sapient
heathen.”[1572]—Nevertheless, “whoever teaches otherwise than I
have taught, or condemns me, condemns God and must remain a child of
hell.”[1573]—“For the future I will not do the Papists the honour,”
of permitting them, “or even an angel from heaven, to judge of my
doctrine, for we have had too much already of foolish humility.”[1574]
With what wonder and perplexity at so unaccountable an attitude would
the foreign bishops have listened to words such as these!
4. Notable Movements of the Times accompanied by Luther with “Abuse and
Defiance down to the very Grave.” The Caricatures
_Brunswick, Cleves, the Schmalkalden Leaguers_
Luther followed with great sympathy and perturbation the warlike
proceedings instituted by the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of
Hesse against Duke Henry of Brunswick, whom he had himself already
attacked with the pen in his “Wider Hans Worst.” They made war on the
Duke in the summer of 1542, seized upon his lands and of their own
initiative introduced the innovations, their troops at the same time
committing unexampled excesses.
Luther acclaimed the victory as a deed of God; such a proceeding could
not be described as the work of man; such a success foreboded the
approach of the Day of Judgment and retribution.[1575]
The Imperial Chamber of Justice protested against the violent
appropriation of the country by the Schmalkalden Leaguers, and, on Sep.
3, summoned the two princes and their confederates to Spires to answer
for the breach of the peace committed at the expense of Duke Henry.
Thereupon all the members of the League of Schmalkalden repudiated
their obedience to the “wicked, dissolute, Popish rascals,” as the
Landgrave Philip politely styled the Imperial Court. In this he was at
one with Luther, who, in former years, had called the Imperial Chamber
“a devil’s whore.”[1576]
A new war of the Leaguers on Henry, who was anxious to recover his
lands, was crowned in 1545 by a still more notable success on the
part of the rebels, who this time contrived to take the Duke himself
prisoner. When, however, Philip of Hesse, out of consideration
for the Emperor, seemed inclined to set the captive free, Luther
intervened with a circular letter addressed to Philip and his own
Elector. He was determined to characterise any idea of setting free
the “mischievous, wild tool of the Roman idol” as an open attack
not merely on the Evangel, but even on the manifest will of God as
displayed in the recent war which had been waged “by His angels.” Here
his pseudo-mysticism is again much to the fore. The circular letter was
soon printed and spread broadcast.[1577]
Without any deep insight into the real state of affairs, either
political or ecclesiastical, unmindful even of diplomacy, Luther seeks
to work on the fears of the Protestant princes by an extravagant
description of the Divine Judgments which were overtaking blasphemers,
and tells them they will be sharers in the sin of others if, now that
God had “broken down the bulwark” of the Papacy, they were to set it up
anew.
To the Papists he says: “Stop, you mad fools, Pope and Papists, and
do not blow the flame that God has kindled. For it will turn against
yourselves so that the sparks and cinders will fly into your eyes. Yes,
indeed, this is God’s fire, Who calls Himself a consuming fire. You
know and are convinced in your own conscience that your cause is wicked
and lost and that you are striving against God.”[1578]
He writes confidently: We on this side, without causing either Emperor
or Pope “to raise a hair, have unceasingly prayed, implored, besought
and clamoured for peace, as they very well know; this, however, we
have never been able to obtain from them, but have had daily to endure
nothing but insults, attacks and extermination.” The defensive alliance
of the Catholic Princes and Estates became in his eyes a robber-league,
established under pretext of religion; “what they wanted was not the
Christian religion but the lands of the Elector and Landgrave.”[1579]
The captive Duke had obtained help from Italy, very likely from the
Pope. “In short, we all know that the Pope and the Papists would gladly
see us dead, body and soul, whereas we for our part would have them all
to be saved body and soul together with us.”[1580] The whole writing,
with its combination of rage and mysticism, and likewise much else
dating from that period, may well raise grave doubts as to the state
of the author’s mind.
The inroad into Brunswick was merely a preliminary to the religious
wars soon to break out and ravage Germany. No sooner had Luther
closed his eyes in death than they began on a larger scale with the
Schmalkalden War, which was to prove so disastrous to the Protestants.
His words just quoted to the princes of his party were repeated almost
word for word in the Protestant manifestos during the religious wars.
It is possible that he may have been roused to make such attacks on
the Catholics by certain disagreeable events which occurred from 1541
onwards. Political steps were being taken which were unfavourable to
Lutheranism and not at all adequately balanced by the Protestants’
victory in Brunswick and elsewhere.
Luther was made painfully aware of the unexpected weakening of the
League of Schmalkalden which resulted from the bigamy of Landgrave
Philip of Hesse. By virtue of a secret compact with the Emperor, into
which Philip of Hesse had found himself forced (June 13, 1541),[1581]
the latter, in his position of head of the German Protestants, had
bound himself not to consent that Duke William of Cleves, who inclined
to Protestantism, should be admitted into the Schmalkalden League; he
had also to refuse any assistance to the Duke when the Emperor Charles
V took the field against him on account of the union of Guelders with
Cleves. The progress of Protestantism in these districts was checked by
the Emperor’s victory in 1543. The formal introduction of the new faith
into Metz was frustrated by the Emperor; at Cologne too the Reformers
saw all their efforts brought to naught.
The Diet of Spires, in 1544, it is true brought the Protestants an
extension of that peace which was so favourable to their interests,
but the campaign which Charles V thereupon undertook against François
I—whom Philip of Hesse and the Schmalkaldeners were compelled by the
above-mentioned compact to leave on the lurch—led to the humiliation
of the Frenchman, who was compelled to make peace at Crespy on Sep. 14,
1544. There the King of France promised the Emperor never again to
side with the German Protestants.
Luther was also troubled by the dissensions within the League of
Schmalkalden, by the refusal of Joachim II of Brandenburg, of Louis,
Elector of the Palatinate, and especially of Duke Maurice of Saxony
to join the League; the last sovereign’s intimate relations with the
Emperor were also a source of anxiety. At Wittenberg it was clearly
seen what danger threatened Lutheranism should the Imperial power
gather strength and intervene on behalf of the Roman Church.
The Roman Church, so Luther exclaims fretfully in his “Kurtz Bekentnis”
(1545), is made up of “nothing but Epicureans and scoffers at the
Christian faith.” The Pope, “the greatest foe of Christ and the
real Antichrist, has made himself head of Christendom, nay, the
very hind-piece and bottom-hole of the devil through which so many
abominations of Masses, monkery and immorality are cacked into the
world.”[1582]
_The Zwinglian “Sacramentarians”_
One controversy which greatly excited Luther at this time was that with
the Swiss Sacramentarians. Once more his old feud with Zwinglianism was
to break out and embitter his days. When, in 1542, the elevation was
abolished in the parish church of Wittenberg (to some extent out of
deference to the wishes of the Landgrave of Hesse who objected to this
rite), some people too hastily concluded that Luther was renouncing
his own doctrine in favour of that of the Swiss; hence he deemed it
necessary once more to deny, in language too clear to be mistaken, any
intention to make common cause with a company, which, as he puts it,
had been “infected and intoxicated with an alien spirit.”
Moreover, Caspar Schwenckfeld, with the object of moving the feelings
of Luther’s opponents, made known to them Luther’s rude and so
discreditable letter.[1583] The animosity of the Swiss and of their
South German sympathisers now assumed serious dimensions. Luther
accordingly determined to address the reply which he had been planning
for some time to the Sacramentarians as a body, declaring that that
“slanderer” Schwenckfeld was not worth a single line.
He was also very desirous of once more before his death giving
vigorous and lasting expression to the positive faith which he still
shared and to which he was wont eagerly to fly when hard pressed
by the devil. The spectre of scepticism of which, as many of his
statements show, he dreaded the advent among his followers as soon as
he himself had been taken away, was to be exorcised beforehand.
The writing against the Swiss is the work just alluded to, which
appeared at the end of Sep., 1544, under the title “Kurtz Bekentnis
vom heiligen Sacrament.”[1584]
After briefly disposing of their arguments, with which he had
already sufficiently dealt, the work culminates in a most outspoken
condemnation of the errors and arbitrary opinions of the Swiss, the
most striking sentence of all being the following: “Hence, in a word,
either believe everything fully or else nothing at all.”[1585] This
was practically what the Catholic Church had said to him at his own
apostasy: The principle of faith permits of no picking and choosing
between the truths revealed by God and guaranteed by the Church’s
teaching authority; one must choose between either accepting the whole
body of the Church’s doctrines, or leaving her.[1586]
For the rest the writing was another bad example of the boundless fury
and offensiveness of his mode of controversy. In the first lines he
declares: “It is quite the same to me ... when the accursed mob of
fanatics, Zwinglians and the like praise or abuse me, as when Jews,
Turks, Pope or all the devils in unison scold or laud me. For I, who
am now about to go down into the grave, am determined to bring this
testimony and this boasting with me to the Judgment-seat of my dear
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, that I have with the utmost earnestness
condemned and shunned the fanatics and Sacramentarians, Carlstadt,
Zwingli, Œcolampadius, Stinkfield and their disciples, whether at
Zürich or wherever else they were, according to His command, Titus
iii. 10: ‘A man that is a heretic avoid.’”[1587]—He goes on to call
the Zwinglian Sacramentarians “devourers and murderers of souls, who
have an endevilled, perdevilled, supradevilled and blasphemous heart
and a lying jaw.” “Hence no Christian can or ought to pray for the
fanatics or to assist them. They are reprobates.... They want to have
nothing to do with me, and I want to have nothing to do with them.
They boast that they have nothing from me, for which I heartily thank
God: I have borrowed even less from them, for which, too, God be
praised.”[1588]
In this writing against the Zwinglians Luther also attacks the Papacy
with unspeakable coarseness. Was it perhaps that he was seeking to
atone in this way for his apparent agreement with the Catholics
in their belief in the Presence of Christ in the Sacrament? This
agreement with the Papacy was, however, as he boasts, only due to his
holding fast to the ancient doctrine, to that doctrine which the “true
olden Christian Church has held for fifteen hundred years.”[1589]
He did not bethink himself of his treatment of many other doctrines
of this “true, olden Church.” Moreover, even his doctrine of the
Sacrament was but a shadow of the ancient one. He insisted on denying
any change of substance in the Bread and on affirming that the Body of
Christ is actually and everywhere in heaven and on earth present as a
body. He is also known to have praised Calvin for a writing in which
the latter belied the “local presence” of Christ in the Bread,[1590]
and that he declared his readiness to “learn something from so able
a mind.” Thus what he retained was but a distorted fragment of the
ancient doctrine of the Sacrament, salved from the shattered treasure
of his former Catholic convictions.
_Calvin_
Very different from that which he displayed towards Zwingli and his
co-religionists was Luther’s attitude towards Calvin, the head of the
theocracy of Geneva, whose power in the “Swiss Rome” had developed so
amazingly since 1541, when he had returned after six years’ exile at
Strasburg in the companionship of Bucer.
Thanks to Bucer, Calvin’s opinions, which in the main had always been
Lutheran, had been directed more towards that form of Lutheranism
represented by Bucer and Melanchthon, his earlier humanistic education
making this all the easier. On account of his views some have, not
so wrongly, dubbed him the “South-German Lutheran,”[1591] though
his stiffness and harshness were not at all in keeping with the
South-German character. Being in close touch with Lutheranism he had
frequently visited Germany during his theological wanderings, and as
the representative of the Strasburg Protestants. He had taken a part
in the negotiations at the Frankfurt Convention and at the religious
conferences at Hagenau, Worms and Ratisbon.
Calvin esteemed Luther far higher than Zwingli. “If we compare them,”
he wrote to his friend Guillaume Farel, “Luther towers far above him,
as you yourself are well aware.”[1592]
Calvin’s doctrine, as exemplified in his frequently quoted
“_Institutio religionis christianæ_” (1536) and in his later writings,
like that of Luther, excludes any participation of the human will in
the work of salvation; all freedom is abolished, everything being
enacted by the unchangeable “_Providentia Dei_” in the deterministic
sense; with him, as with Luther, Adam’s fall was inevitable, owing to
the divine Predestination, and so was the consequent enthralling of
the whole of the human race under the bondage of sin.[1593]
On the elect, however, more particularly on those who follow Calvin’s
doctrines and admonitions, the assurance of salvation is infallibly
bestowed, just as he possesses it himself. Those thus predestined
cannot be lost, while such as are predestined to hell must inevitably
incur the penalty of eternal suffering; amongst the latter are not
only all the heathen, but also those who oppose the new belief; they
are a reprobate mass of humanity who have forfeited all right to live
by rising up against God and the authorities.[1594] In his doctrine of
predestination Calvin, who is the more logical of the two, sets aside
the distinction insisted on by Luther between the Revealed Will of God
that all men should be saved and His Hidden Will which nullifies it.
The predestinarian ideas of both are at bottom identical, but with
Luther, as Friedrich Loofs expresses it, “reprobation tends to recede
more and more into the background and thus to hold only a secondary
place; Calvin, on the other hand, is ever and of set purpose dwelling
on this background, because (according to him) it is also part of the
revealed doctrine of salvation, and also because it is only another
aspect of predestination.”[1595]
Calvin taught Justification in the same way as Luther, and, like him,
denied entirely any merit to good works.
It was with unmixed joy that Luther saw “so able a mind” coming forward
as a champion of the new theology against the Roman errors.
* * * * *
This explains how Melanchthon could announce to Bucer at Strasburg,
in a note evidently intended for Calvin himself, that, though certain
persons had tried to incite Luther against Calvin on account of a
statement [on the Supper] which was at variance with Luther’s views,
“Calvin stands in high favour [with Luther]” (“_magnam gratiam
iniit_”). Calvin himself with great satisfaction quoted this passage
in a letter to Farel.[1596] As for Luther, writing to Bucer on Oct.
14, 1539, he sent his “respectful greetings” to Calvin and mentioned
that he had perused “with peculiar pleasure”[1597] his writing (the
“_Responsio_” against Jacopo Sadoleto in which was the incriminated
statement).
When, in April, 1545, Luther glanced through a newly published Latin
translation of Calvin’s principal work on the Supper, “Petit traicté de
la sainte cene” (1541), he observed, that the author was a learned and
pious man; had Œcolampadius and Zwingli expressed themselves in this
way from the beginning, then no such quarrel would have arisen. Thus
Luther accepted the Genevese theologian’s essay “in a friendly way and
without misgiving”—though “in it, Calvin recognised a bodily presence
in Luther’s sense as little as before.”[1598] On the contrary, Calvin
agrees in the main with Zwingli’s denial of the Real Presence, though
he insists very strongly on the spiritual working of the Body of
Christ enthroned in heaven on the recipients of the Supper, so strongly
indeed as to speak of the “real substance of His Body and Blood” which
Christ communicates.[1599] As Loofs puts it: “He had come nearer to
Luther’s view, at least so far as terminology went.” Later on, however,
so Loofs adds, “the delusive terminological approximation to Luther
disappeared”; in support of this Loofs quotes from the 1559 edition
of the “_Institutio_”: “Christ breathes life into our souls from the
substance of His Flesh ... though the flesh of Christ does not enter
us.”[1600]
It was fortunate for the relations between the leaders at Wittenberg
and Geneva that Luther was no longer amongst the living when Calvin
expressed such a view of the Supper.
The amenities and courtesies between the two heads would have ceased
and Luther’s wrath would have once again asserted itself. As a
matter of fact the ambiguity of which Calvin had learnt the use in
Bucer’s school came to an end very shortly after Luther’s death, when
Calvin and Farel reached an agreement with Bullinger of Zürich (The
“_Consensus Tigurinus_”); here the Genevese without any reservation put
forward the theses: “Any idea of a local presence of Christ [in the
Sacrament] must be set aside ... it is a wrong and godless superstition
to circumscribe Christ as man under elements of this world.”[1601]
The words “This is My Body” are, on the contrary, to be understood by
metonymy, the name of the thing represented being transferred to the
“sign.”—Now it was just the fact that Zwingli and the sacramentarians
made of the Eucharist nothing more than a “sign” that had kept alive
Luther’s indignation against them even till his last hour.
“_On the Jews and their Lies._” “_On Shem Hammephorash_,” 1543
Amongst the prominent events of the day in Central Germany the Jewish
movement deserves a place; on the one hand there was an increase in
the influence and power of the Jews, and, on the other, repressive
measures secured their banishment from several territories. In this
movement Luther took a leading part.
In the Saxon Electorate the expulsion of the Jews had taken place
in 1536 by virtue of an edict of Johann Frederick’s. They were even
refused the usual safe conduct through the country and threatened
with the severest penalties should they be caught within the borders.
In the matter of this regulation Luther sided with the sovereign.
When the Jew, Josel Rosheim, a zealous advocate of his race, besought
Luther repeatedly in the most urgent manner by letter to procure him
an audience with the Elector, Luther not only refused to do anything
for him, on the grounds that the Jews were hostile to Christianity, but
even declared his intention to attack their obstinacy in print as soon
as God granted him time and opportunity.[1602]
It was the accounts he received towards the close of 1542 of the
intrigues and the spread of the so-called Sabbatarians, a sect of
Christians settled in Moravia who had been led astray by the Jews to
introduce circumcision, the observance of the Saturday-Sabbath and
other Mosaic ceremonies, which prompted him to undertake a slashing
work against the Jews.
He had been acquainted with the sect since 1532. In his lectures on
Genesis he lamented that the plague of Sabbatarianism was flourishing
greatly in those districts where the madness of the Catholic rulers
would not permit of the Evangel taking root; the Sabbatarians were
the very apes of the Jews and were busy Judaising Austria and
Moravia.[1603] In March, 1538, he had sent to the press his “Brieff.
... wider die Sabbather” in which he proves that the Messias had
already come and had abrogated the Mosaic law.[1604] In the preface
which Justus Jonas prefixed to his Latin translation of the letter it
was pointed out, that the treasure of Holy Scripture had been unlocked
in this age by the preaching of the Evangel; that it was the duty of
the Evangelical teachers to strive to bring the Jews into the right
path by means of the new light; and that the Jews in every country
would be well advised to be guided by Luther’s booklet.[1605]
The idea of defending Christianity in detail by the light of the new
knowledge of the Scriptures against the madness of the Jews took firm
hold on Luther’s imagination; he cherished the idea that “perchance
some among them might be won over.”[1606] He was greatly incensed
against Ferdinand, the German King, who, as he said, was laying waste
the Evangelical Churches, while permitting the Jews—who in their
insolence oppress the Christians—to reside in his lands.[1607] On
May 18, 1542, he received news of the expulsion of the Jews from
Bohemia and other territories. But later in the year a writing of the
Sabbatarians was sent him, which, in dialogue form, attacked him and
proselytised for the sect. This Jewish movement began also to gain
ground outside the borders of Moravia.
This gave the necessary stimulus “to the fanatical campaign against the
Jews which the Reformer started in the winter of 1542.”[1608]
At the end of 1542 he published his “Von den Jüden und jren Lügen,” and
in March, 1543, his “Vom Schem Hamphoras.”[1609]
In the first he begins by proving against the Jews the Messianic
character of Christ, answers their objections and lays bare their
falsehoods, after which he considers how the Jews should be dealt
with. In the second he discusses the Jewish legend concerning Christ’s
miracles, and in particular scourges the superstitions connected with
the use of the “Shem Hammephorash”; he then examines the genealogies
of Christ in the Gospels in order to refute the objections of the Jews
in this connection, and again discusses the proofs that Christ was the
Messias, at the same time defending in detail His birth of a Virgin.
Both writings he addresses to the Christians in order to strengthen
them in the faith in view of the dangers which threatened from Judaism.
Full of zeal for the defence of the fundamental doctrines of
Christianity, the coming and the benefits bestowed by the Messias,
he refutes at great length the supposed learned proofs of his Jewish
opponents. On the other hand, he thunders furiously against the
blasphemies, the unseemly behaviour and the usury of the Jews who
stood in high favour at several of the Courts; he even demands with
“great earnestness” that their synagogues and private houses, the
scene of their blasphemies, be set on fire and levelled to the ground
(“Let whoever can, throw brimstone and pitch upon them”[1610]), that
their books be taken away from them and “not one page left,” that
their Rabbis be forbidden on pain of death to teach henceforth, and
that all be hindered from “praising God publicly, thanking Him,
praying or teaching”;[1611] further, that the streets and highways be
closed against them, that they be forbidden to practise usury, and be
expelled from the land unless indeed willing to earn their bread at
the sweat of their brow with axe and spade, spindle and distaff. All
these counsels were, of course, addressed primarily to the authorities,
but, such was their nature, that they might easily have provoked the
people to an unchristian persecution of their Jewish fellow-citizens.
These writings, with their unmeasured vituperation and their obscenity,
also bear painful witness to the deterioration of his language with
advancing years.
“Fie on you,” he cries, “fie on you wherever you be, you damned Jews,
who dare to clasp this earnest, glorious, consoling Word of God to
your maggoty, mortal, miserly belly, and are not ashamed to display
your greed so openly.”[1612]—“Whenever you see or think of a Jew, say
to yourself: Look, that mouth that I see before me has every Saturday
cursed, execrated and spat upon my dear Lord Jesus Christ Who redeemed
me with His precious Blood, and also invoked malediction on my wife
and child and all Christians that they might be murdered and perish
miserably; he himself would gladly do it if he could, if only in order
to get hold of our goods; mayhap he has already to-day many times spat
on the ground, as it is their custom to do, when the name of Jesus is
mentioned, so that his venomous spittle still hangs about his mouth
and beard and leaves scarcely room to spit again. Were I to eat, drink
or speak with such a devilish mouth, I might as well eat and drink
out of a can or vessel brimful of devils, and thus become partaker
with the devils who dwell in the Jews and spit at the Precious Blood
of Christ. From which may God preserve me.”[1613]
“I, accursed ‘Goi’ that I am, cannot understand whence they [the Jews]
have this great art, unless it is, that, when Judas Scharioth hanged
himself and his bowels gushed forth, and, as happens in such cases,
his bladder also burst, the Jews were ready to catch the Judas-water
and the other precious things, and that then they gorged and swilled
on the merd among themselves, and were thereby endowed with such a
keenness of sight that they can perceive glosses in the Scripture
such as neither Matthew, nor Isaias himself, nor all the angels, not
to speak of us accursed ‘Goiim,’ would be able to detect; or perhaps
they looked into the loins of their God ‘Shed’ and found these things
written in that smokehole.”[1614]
“Where are they now, those dissolute Christians who have been made or
wish to become Jews? Here for a kiss! The devil has eased himself and
emptied his belly again. That is a real halidom for Jews and would-be
Jews to kiss, batten on, swill and adore; and then the devil in his
turn also devours and swills what these good pupils spue and eject
from above and from below. Hosts and guests are indeed well met and
the dishes are well-cooked and served.” The devil should have been an
angel but “became a devil, who with his angelic snout devours what
exudes from the oral and anal apertures of the Jews; this is indeed
his favourite dish on which he battens like a sow behind the hedge
about St. Margaret’s Day; that is just as he would have it! Therefore
the Jews have got their deserts.” They renounced their dignity as the
chosen mouthpiece of God, therefore the “devil defiles and bespatters
them so much that nothing but devil’s ordure bursts forth from him
everywhere; this indeed is quite to their taste, and they wallow in it
like the swine.”[1615]
In this way Luther unloads himself of his fury against both devil and
Jews; two things are characteristic of his hatred of the Jews; first,
that the devil is made to bear the greater share,[1616] though the
latter promptly shifts the burden back on to the shoulders of the Jews;
secondly, that the presumption of the Jews in seeking to be first
everywhere is castigated with all Luther’s native coarseness.
“It is thus that the wicked, scoundrelly foe mocks at his captive
Jews; he makes them say ‘Schem Hamphoras’ and believe and expect
great things from it; he, however, means ‘Scham Hamperes,’ i.e.
‘hither filth,’ not that which lies in the gutters, but that which
forthcomes from the belly.... The devil has taken the Jews captive
so that they must do his will (as St. Paul says) and deceive, lie,
blaspheme as also curse God and everything that is God’s. In return
for this he makes a mock of them with his ‘Scham Hamperes,’ and leads
them to believe that this and all their other lying and tomfoolery is
something precious.”[1617]
The blinded presumption of the Jews is nevertheless so great that they
fancy themselves far superior to the Christians. “Do you think a Jew
is so badly off? God in heaven and all the angels must laugh and dance
when they hear a Jew ructate, that you, accursed ‘Goi,’ may know for
the future how fine a thing it is to be a Jew.” And yet they lie and
use bad language if a man ventures to hold up to public obloquy, as
an “arch prostitute,” one of his pious cousins.[1618]—“Have I not
told you above, what a grand and precious gem a Jew is; he has but to
break wind, for God to dance and all His angels, and even were he to
do something even grosser, it would still be looked upon as a golden
Talmud; what such a man voids, whether from above or from below, that
the accursed ‘Goiim’ are forsooth to regard as a holy thing.”[1619]
“Nay, were a Rabbi to ease himself into a vessel under your nose, both
thick and thin, and to say: ‘Here you have a delicious conserve, you
would have to say you had never tasted a better dish in your life.
Risk your neck and say differently! For if a man has the power to say
[like the Rabbis] that right is left and left right, regardless of God
and all His creatures, he can just as well say that his anus is his
mouth, that his belly is a pudding-dish and that a pudding-dish is his
belly.”[1620]
In exoneration of Luther it has been said that, in this case, in making
use of such “shocking comparisons,” he was not merely following his
natural bent, on the contrary, “in his angry zeal he deliberately
sought for them.” It is perfectly true that neither his angry zeal nor
his deliberate intention can be denied any more than his desire to
“stir up the world against what was in itself shameful and disgusting,”
and his longing to do something towards its removal. But surely there
was another kind of language and a different tone with the help of
which he might have effected more, such, for instance, as had been used
by great and pious men in the past whose inspired and glowing words
contrast glaringly with Luther’s hideous obscenities.
The results achieved by Luther with these two writings were but of
trifling importance.
We hear practically nothing of any conversions of Jews or apostate
Christians being due to them. Luther had been wise himself to declare
that he did not expect any conversions to result from them. In the
Saxon Electorate, however, the unjust enactment of 1536 was, on May
6, 1543, revived against the Jews by a public mandate abrogating
that mitigation of it which Josel Rosheim had been successful in
obtaining. “Official reports go to prove that the cruel persecution
of the Jews [in the Saxon Electorate] was no mere paper measure; only
after Luther’s death did things settle down.”[1621] In Hesse a severe
decree against the Jews, issued in 1543, seems to have owed its origin
“to the writings of the Reformer. This being so the rebuff with which
Luther met in the Electorate of Brandenburg must have been all the more
annoying.”[1622]
One of the lasting effects of these two screeds was, that, in the
subsequent anti-Jewish risings the charges there contained, and couched
in language so fervid and eloquent, were constantly appealed to in
vindication of the measures used. No distinction was made between what
was true and what was false, or between the horrible exaggerations and
the actual fact, though the unreliability of many of the statements is
often quite palpable.
Even in the few passages we had room to quote the reader may have seen
how Luther’s charges against the Jews amount to calumnies; the Jews,
he alleges, were in the habit of cursing and blaspheming God and all
that is God’s; “regardless of God” they made out right to be left and
left right. His love of exaggeration leads him to say that all Jews
curse the Christians every Sabbath, and are ever desirous of stabbing
them and their wives and children. Theft and robbery he makes into
crimes common to every Jew; all of them he accuses indiscriminately
of murder; “all their most heartfelt sighing, hopes and longings are
set on this, viz. to be able to treat us heathen as they treated the
heathen in Persia in the days of Esther ... for they fancy they are
the chosen people in order that they may murder and slay the heathen
... just as they had made this plain to the world by the way they had
treated us Christians in the beginning, and would still gladly do even
now were they able, yea, have often done so.”[1623]
It is true he refuses credulously to believe all the crimes with
which rumour charged them, for instance, their poisoning of the
wells.[1624] The calumnies he made his own were, nevertheless, so
great, that, after the magistrates of Strasburg had been repeatedly
approached by Josel von Rosheim with the proposal to forbid the
circulation of the two writings, they finally decided to prohibit
their being printed in the city. The councillors were of opinion that
the very enormity of the assertions would prove the best refutation.
They wrote, that it was better to keep silence and to leave the
calumnies to sink into oblivion; to this the petitioner agreed.[1625]
Josel von Rosheim, the zealous spokesman of the Jews, achieved a
brilliant success with the Emperor Charles V. Certain extensive
privileges were guaranteed him on April 3, 1544, and were made public
in 1546, whereby all the rights and liberties of the Jews were
confirmed.
Nor was there any lack of condemnation of these two writings of Luther
at the hands of the Protestants themselves.
On Dec. 8, 1543, Bullinger of Zürich made to Bucer his complaint
already referred to, concerning the “lewd and houndish eloquence”
of the Wittenberger; he adds that such effusions were unseemly in a
theologian already advanced in years; no one could tolerate a work
so obscenely (“_impurissime_”) written, as “Vom Schem Hamphoras”;
Reuchlin, were he still alive, would declare, that, in Luther, all the
old foes of the Jews—Tungern, Hoogstraaten and Pfefferkorn—had come
to life again [though their language fell short of Luther’s]: he was
sorry for Luther’s murderous hatred of the Hebrew commentators and for
the undue stress he laid on his own German translation, which was far
from being devoid of prejudice.[1626] Bullinger expressed himself much
more strongly, in 1545, when the split between Zürich and Wittenberg
had been accentuated by Luther’s “Kurtz Bekentnis”: No one writing on
questions of faith and matters of grave importance had ever expressed
himself in a way so utterly at variance with propriety and modesty as
Luther, etc.[1627]
The Nuremberg preacher, Andreas Osiander, at that time one of the
greatest authorities on Hebrew and on Rabbinic writings, wrote so
strong a letter about the untruth of certain of Luther’s anti-Jewish
strictures that no one ventured to bring it under the Reformer’s
notice. Cruciger relates that Osiander afterwards withdrew some of
the strongest things he had said in the letter, but that he still
maintained that Luther had not in the least understood what the Shem
Hammephorash meant to educated Jews.[1628]
The Shem Hammephorash or “peculiar name” was, according to Luther, a
cabalistic formula of the Jews, supposed to be endowed with the most
marvellous magic power; it was made up of seventy-two three-lettered
names of angels, themselves formed from a rearrangement of the letters
of the Scripture text, Ex. xiv. 19-21, concerning the pillar of cloud
that went before the Jews on their departure from Egypt. To each of
these angelic names was appended a verse from the Psalter with the
“great name of God, Jehovah, also called the Tetragrammaton.” So great
was the power of this magic formula that it could strike blind or dumb
all Christians everywhere in the world, could drive them mad, nay,
kill them outright, if only the words were rightly uttered and in a
mood pious enough. Even the superstitious use of the Tetragrammaton
alone, was, according to Luther, responsible, in the case “of the
devil and the Jews,” for “much sorcery and all kinds of abuse and
idolatry.”[1629] They call it the Tetragrammaton because they are
chary of pronouncing the four consonants of the all-too-sacred name of
Jehovah, but, “in their heart they abuse and blaspheme God.” They do
not see that they are “using the Holy Name in the shameful abuse they
practise with their ‘Scham Hamperes.’”[1630]
The cause of the mad aberrations of the Jews is, however, in Luther’s
eyes, due to the “Word of God not enlightening them and showing them
the way.” Now, however, God’s Word has risen and shines brightly;
it even casts its beam into those parts where the Papacy reigns ...
for there “thick darkness, lies and abominations were worshipped
with Masses, Purgatory, Invocation of Saints, monkery and one’s own
works.”[1631] It was a great and godly work that he had undertaken in
unmasking not only these but also the many Jewish abominations.
* * * * *
As to the sources whence Luther derived his information, he
uncritically took his material mainly from anti-Jewish writings. The
book “_Victoria adversus impios Hebrœos_” of the Carthusian, Porchetus
de Salvaticis, dating from the beginning of the 14th century, provided
him with the Jewish blasphemies against Christ, and in particular with
the supposed mysteries of the Shem Hammephorash; Antonius Margaritha
supplied him with more recent material in his work “Der gantz
jüdisch Glaub” of 1530. It is probable that he also made use of the
“_Dialogus_” against the Jews by Paul of Burgos (1350-1435), which he
quotes in his lectures on Genesis. He also mentions incidentally as his
authorities Jerome, Eusebius, and Sebastian Münster.[1632]
_Comparison with an earlier Jewish writing of Luther’s_
A more accurate insight into the psychological and historical
significance of the two screeds against Judaism is obtained by
comparing them with an earlier writing of Luther’s, dating from 1523,
which is perfectly fair to the Jews. The comparison will lead the
reader to ask what was the real reason for his extraordinary change of
attitude.
Filled as yet with great and unrealisable hopes of that conversion of
the whole Jewish race which he fancied he saw coming, Luther had, in
1523, published a booklet entitled “Das Jhesus Christus eyn geborner
Jude sey.”[1633]
In it he points out that the Jews were blood-relations, cousins and
kinsmen of the Saviour. No other people, so he warmly declared, had
been so marked out by God, hence they must be dealt with amicably and
soberly instructed out of Holy Scripture and not be scared away by
pride and contempt, as had hitherto been the wont; the fools, Popes,
bishops, sophists and monks, the great dunderheads, had hitherto
indeed behaved in such a way that any good Christian would have
preferred to become a Jew. Hence he exerts himself in this work, in a
calm and friendly way, to prove to the Jews from the Bible, that their
Messias had already come. At the same time he indignantly scourges
“the lying tales” and false charges brought against them, as for
instance, that, “to repress their stench they must have the blood of
Christians.” The main thing was to treat them according to Christian,
not Popish, charity.
So far was he disposed to go the better to win over the Jews, that he
was even desirous that Christ should not at the outset be put before
them as the God-man, but merely as the Messias. He also declared
in a sermon shortly after, that, when instructing a Jew on Christ,
the catechumen was only to be told that Christ was a man like other
men, sent by God to do good to mankind; only when the heart had been
stirred to love of Him was mention to be made of His Godhead.[1634]
“The Jews merely interest him,” says Reinhold Lewin, speaking of this
book, “as subjects for conversion; this is the standpoint from which
he regards the whole Jewish question.” “Should the new method not
succeed and kindness prove of no avail ... then it will not be worth
while any longer to make use of it; harsher measures will then serve
the purpose better.”[1635] The same writer also quotes the preface to
the Latin translation by Justus Jonas as expressive of the wish of the
Wittenbergers: “May the Jewish business speed its way as rapidly as
the outspreading of the Word of God which has wrought so marvellous a
change and so sublime a work of God.”[1636]
It is perfectly true that, had the optimistic expectations of Luther
and his friends been realised, it would have been of incalculable
advantage to their cause, for they would have succeeded where the
ancient Church had failed. “The conversion of the Jews,” says Lewin,
“an idea which can be read between Luther’s lines without any danger
of forcing them—is to be the coping-stone of the grand edifice he had
erected; the Papacy [in Luther’s view] had failed, not merely because
it had recourse to wrong methods but above all because its foundations
rested on forgery and falsehood.”[1637]
The fact is, however, that no increase in the number of conversions
took place. This disappointing experience, the sight of the growing
insolence of the Jews, their pride and usury, not to speak of personal
motives, such as certain attempts he suspected them to have made on his
life at the instigation of the Papists, brought about a complete change
in Luther’s opinions in the course of a few years. As early as 1531
or 1532, when a Hebrew baptised at Wittenberg had brought discredit
upon him by relapsing into Judaism, he gave vent to the angry threat,
that, should he find another pious Jew to baptise he would take him
to the bridge over the Elbe, hang a stone round his neck and push him
over with the words: I baptise thee in the name of Abraham; for “those
scoundrels,” so he adds, “scoff at us all and at our religion.”[1638]
From that time he begins to put the Jews in the same category with the
Turks and the Papists.
The more he studies the text of the Old Testament, and the Old Jewish
commentators, the more indignant he grows at the misrepresentations
and trivialities to be met with in the works of the Rabbis. According
to him, they are oxen and donkeys; they are as bad as the monks; with
their droppings they make of Holy Scripture, as it were, a sink into
which to empty their obscenity and stupid imaginings.[1639] He is also
aghast to discover that they led astray even great churchmen like St.
Jerome, and Nicholas of Lyra of whom he was particularly fond.[1640]
What was even worse, they were ensnaring learned contemporaries who
were familiar with Hebrew, particularly those who fancied they could
improve upon Luther’s translation of the Old Testament thanks to their
closer acquaintance with the original text, men, for instance, of the
type of Sebastian Münster of Basle (the pupil of the Jewish grammarian
Elia Levita). Münster, according to Luther, was a regular “Judaiser,”
seeing that he paid heed neither to the faith, nor to the words, nor
to their setting; albeit hostile to the Jews, he, too, was undermining
the New Testament. Much of Luther’s anger in his writings against the
Jews was intended for their Judaising pupils. Hence on the publication
of the work “Von den Jüden und jren Lügen” we hear him declaring: “We
have been at great pains with the Bible and been careful that the sense
should agree with the grammar. This has not pleased Münster. Oh, those
Hebrews—including even our own—are great Judaisers; hence I had them
also in mind when I wrote my booklet against the Jews.”[1641]
_Some special motives for his Polemics against the Jews_
The real cause of Luther’s deadly hostility, voiced in his later
writings against the Jews, was the blasphemous infidelity displayed in
their treatment of Scripture and in their life as a whole.
“The Jews with their exegesis,” he says, “are like swine that break
into the Scripture”; the end and object of their life and intercourse
with us, is, as the movement started in Moravia proves, to make us
all Jews; “they never cease trying to entice Christians over.”[1642]
They are quite at liberty to prefer, as indeed they do, the law of
Moses to the Papal decretals and their mad articles,[1643] but they
have no right to prefer it to the pure Evangel. Sooner than this let
us have a struggle to the death!—Such were the thoughts uppermost in
his mind when he sat down to pen those two writings which constitute a
phenomenon in the history of literature.
On the other hand, Luther’s most recent biographer is wrong when he
explains the whole controversy by saying: “There can be no doubt that
the radical change in his attitude on the Jewish question was an
outcome of his increasing depression.”[1644] That, on the contrary, it
was Luther’s religious excitement which was the prime psychological
mover is plain from many of the effusions contained in both these
writings. That, however, his state of depression had some share in it
is perfectly true.
“The wrath of God has come upon them,” he writes in one such passage,
“of which I do not like to think, nor has this book been a cheerful
one for me to write, for I have been forced to avert my eyes from the
terrible picture, sometimes in anger, sometimes in scorn; and it is
painful to me to have to speak of their horrible blasphemies against
our Lord and His dear Mother, to which we Christians are loath indeed
to listen; I can well understand what St. Paul means in Romans x. 1,
when he says that his heart was sore when he thought of them; such
is the case with every Christian who earnestly dwells, not on the
temporal misery and misfortune of which the Jews complain, but on
their addiction to blasphemy, to cursing, to spitting at God Himself
and all that is God’s, even to their eternal damnation, and who yet
refuse to listen or lend an ear but will have it that all they do
is done out of zeal for God. O God, our Heavenly Father, turn aside
Thy wrath and let there be an end of it for the sake of Thy dear Son.
Amen.”[1645]
“O my God,” he groans elsewhere, “my beloved Creator and Father, do
Thou graciously take into account my unwillingness to have to speak
so shamefully of Thine accursed enemies, the devil and the Jews. Thou
knowest I do so out of the ardour of my faith and to the glory of Thy
Divine Majesty, for it pierces me to the very quick.”[1646]
If, however, we look more closely into the matter we shall see that the
“ardour of his faith” was also fed from other sources. There was, for
instance, the reaction of his own protracted struggle in defence of the
new doctrines and against the Papacy, a struggle which left deep marks
on all his labours and on all his writings.
Towards the end of a career which had worked such untold disaster to
the Christianity of the past he feels keenly the need of vindicating
the dignity of Christ if only to soothe his own conscience; he was
resolved to hammer it in with the utmost defiance, just as formerly
he had clung to the idea that, by his doctrine, he was defending the
rights of Christ against the Pope. He is now resolved again to take
his stand on this, his efforts becoming the more violent the more the
sight of the ruin wrought by his own work affrights him. Hence his
eagerness to take advantage of Jewish attacks on the pillars of the
faith in order, while triumphing over them, to enjoy the sense of
his comradeship with Christ, the Son of God now so soon to come in
Judgment. Here again he allows his vanity to mislead him and to paint
his intervention on behalf of the great truth of Christianity as far
more successful than that of any of the Popes; this helps him to close
his eyes to the wounds which the inner voice tells him he had inflicted
on the Christian truths and on the public life of Christendom. For was
he not doing for Christ what the Pope was quite unable to do? Indeed,
“the world, the Turk, the Jew and the Pope are all raging blasphemously
against the name of the Lord, laying waste His Kingdom and deriding
His Will; but ‘greater is He that is with us than he that is with
the world’; He triumphs,” so he wrote at that time to some foreign
sympathisers, “and will triumph in you to all eternity; may He console
you by His Holy Spirit in which He has called you to oneness with His
Body.”[1647]
It is true, so he says elsewhere, that the Pope admits the existence
of Christ, but, in spite of this, neither Jews nor Turks are quite
so bad; the Jews have far better arguments than the Papists for
themselves and their religion; the foundations of the latter are
easily shaken; the Papist Church is a worse “den of murderers” than
Turks, Tartars, or Jews.[1648]
All the more glorious and creditable to the new Evangel is therefore
the victory won by Luther over the Jews; it may serve to show the
world that his school’s study of the Bible could furnish the weapons
to bring about such a result. The Pope, with his unbiblical treatment
of the Jews, had merely succeeded in making them doubly un-Christian;
but to us God has unlocked the Holy Books, hence on us devolves
the duty of pointing out to the Jews their errors.[1649] Luther
accordingly claims, that his “Von den Jüden” was the first real
work of instruction on Judaism, one which “might teach us Germans
from history what a Jew is and warn our Christians against them as
against veriest devils.” It was only fitting that he who had unearthed
Scripture should also “wipe clean the holy old Bible from Jewish
‘Hamperes’ and ‘Judas-water.’”[1650]
Nevertheless everything else—even his yeoman service in the cause of
the Bible, and his shaming of the Papacy, which had so ineffectively
struggled against the Jews—recedes into the background before his
determination to crown his whole life-work by snatching from the Jewish
devil the honour of Christ our one Salvation.
This was admittedly his motive for taking up his pen yet a third time.
_The Third Work against the Jews, 1543_
As early as June, 1543, Luther was engaged on a new polemical work
against the Jews entitled “On the last words of David.”[1651] It is
a lengthy essay on 2 Kings xxiii. 1-7, and certain other striking
passages, with the object of proving that the Messias was to be a
God-man and of vindicating the mystery of the Trinity.
He intended to show by these examples how helpful Hebrew learning
and Bible study can be in defending Scripture against the attacks
of unbelievers; he also wanted to establish that neither Jews nor
Papists possessed the real key to the Bible, viz. the knowledge of
Christ; “for in this all sticks, and lies, and rests: Whosoever has
not or will not have this man called Jesus Christ, the Son of God,
whom we Christians preach [the new Evangel undefiled], let him avoid
the Bible; such is my conscientious advice, else he will certainly
come a cropper, and become ever blinder and more crazy the more he
studies.”[1652]
In David’s final words on the Messias, Luther saw something peculiarly
solemn; David, when “about to die and depart,” gives his parting
injunction and adds: “This is my firm belief; on this I stand fast and
immoveable.... Hence I am joyful, and will gladly live or die as and
when God wills.”[1653]
“Whoever can boast [like David] that the Spirit of the Lord speaks
through him, and that His word is on his tongue, must indeed be very
sure of his cause.”[1654]
In this writing the Jews are not attacked in such unmeasured language
as in the two others just considered; the tone of the whole is much
calmer, indeed comparatively kind. It may be that the representations
made to him concerning his violence had not been without some effect.
The end, like the beginning, expresses the wish that, without suffering
ourselves to be led astray by the false readings of the Jews, we should
“plainly and clearly find and recognise our dear Lord and Saviour in
Holy Writ.”[1655] This is what leads Melanchthon to praise the work
as enjoyable reading, because there is nothing sweeter to the pious
than to deepen their knowledge of the God-man and to learn the art of
real prayer so different from that of the heathen, the Jew and the
Turk.[1656]
_Against the Turks_
The honour of Christianity and of its Divine Founder was also what
Luther had at heart in the two books which in his later years he was
instrumental in publishing against the Turks, viz. his “Vermanunge zum
Gebet wider den Türcken” (1541) and his new edition (1542) of an old
work against the Koran, the “Verlegung des Alcoran Bruder Richardi.”
In one passage of the Vermanunge he even couches this thought in the
form of a prayer:
“Yes, indeed, this is our offence against them [the Turks], that we
preach, believe and confess Thee, God the Father, as the only True
God, and Thy Beloved Son our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost as
one eternal God.” “Thou knowest, God the Father Almighty, that we have
not sinned in any other way against the devil, Pope or Turk and that
they have no right or power to punish us.” Most fervently, as in the
very presence of God, he declares that he must withstand the devil who
is helping the Turk to set up “his Mahmed in the stead of Jesus Christ
Thy Beloved Son.”[1657] Speaking of prayer against the Turk he makes
every Christian say to God: “Thou tellest, nay, compellest, me to pray
in the name of Thy Beloved Son Our Lord Jesus Christ.”[1658]
In this writing he strongly reprobates both the public disorders on
the side of the new Evangel and the Papists’ obstinate resistance to
the Word of God; both would be terribly punished by means of the Turks
unless people set about amending their lives and giving themselves up
to earnest prayer. Now, after the Evangel had been preached for so
many years, “everyone knew, thank God, what each class and individual
man should do or leave undone, which, alas, formerly we did not know,
though we would gladly have done it.”[1659] Should our prayer fail to
achieve the desired object, “then let us say a longer and a better
one.” “How happy should we be were our prayers against the Turk again
to prove of no avail, but, instead, the Last Day came—which indeed
cannot any longer be far off—spelling the end of both Turk and Pope as
I do not for a moment doubt.”[1660]
At any rate Luther might have used better weapons against the Turks
than he actually did in this so-called admonition.
About the time he wrote it we hear Luther occasionally expressing a
hope that the Turks may be converted to the Evangel, now shining so
brightly and convincingly.
“I should like to see the Evangel make its way amongst the Turks, which
may indeed very well happen.” “It is quite in God’s power to work a
miracle and make them listen to the Evangel.... If a ‘Wascha’ [Pasha]
were to accept the Gospel we should soon see what effect it would have
on the Grand Turk; and as he has many sons it is quite likely one of
them might reach it.”—He despaired of the overthrow of the Turkish
empire, but was fond of dreaming of the coming of a “good man who
should withstand the dogma of Mohamed.”[1661]
“The Turk rules more mightily by his religion than by arms”; such was
Luther’s opinion. He had to be confronted with the belief in Christ,
that belief which Luther had learnt “amidst the bitter pangs of death,”
viz. “that Christ is God”; in great temptations nothing could help us
but this faith, “the most powerful consolation that is bestowed on
us”; this same article of faith God was vindicating, even by miracles,
against Turk and Pope. To this he too would cleave in spite of any
objections of reason.[1662]
He did not, however, patiently wait till the “good man” came who was to
oppose the dogma of the Turks; he himself set about this undertaking
in March, 1542.[1663] After having, shortly before, become acquainted
with the Koran in a poor translation, he proceeded himself to translate
into German a work against the Koran, written in 1300, by the Dominican
Richardus (Ricoldus). To it he appended a preface of his own and a
“Treue Warnung.”[1664]
He had undertaken, so he says, to disclose and answer the
devil-inspired “infamies” contained in the Alcoran, “the better to
strengthen us in our Christian faith.”[1665]—This out-of-date book
of a mediæval theologian was, however, hardly the work to furnish an
insight into the Koran, particularly as it built far too much on badly
read texts and doubtful stories uncritically taken for granted; from
such defects the refutation was bound to suffer.
Some of Luther’s own additions are characteristic.
Here he gives up all hope of any conversion of the Moslem; he likewise
despairs of the success of the Christian armies.[1666]—“Mahmet,” so
he teaches, “leads people to eternal damnation as the Pope also did
and still does.” He reigns “in the Levant” as the Pope does “in the
land of the setting sun,” thanks to a system of “wilful lying.”[1667]
“Oh, Lord God! Let all who can, pray, sigh and implore that of God’s
anger we may see an end,” as Daniel says (Dan. xi. 36).[1668]
Bad as Mahmet was, Luther was loath to see in him Antichrist; “the
Pope, whom we have with us, he is the real Antichrist, with his
‘Drecktal,’ Alcoran and man-made doctrines.” “The chaste Pope takes
no wife, but all women are his.... Obscene Mahmet at least makes no
pretence of chastity.... As for the other points such as murder,
avarice and pride, I will not enumerate them, but here again the Pope
far outdoes Mahmet.” “May God give us His grace and punish both the
Pope and Mahmet together with their devils. I have done my part as a
faithful prophet and preacher.”[1669]
Words such as these were certainly as little calculated to further
the common cause of the Christians against the Turks as had been the
somewhat similar thoughts which, at an earlier date, he had been wont
to weave into his exhortations to resist the Turks.[1670]
As a last straw Luther in the “Treue Warnung” goes on to declare,
that, unless Christians mend their life, are converted to the Evangel
and live up to it, it is to be hoped that the Turkish arms will prove
victorious.
For amongst those who “pretend to be Christians and to constitute
the holy Church” there are, so he declares, so many who “knowingly
and wantonly despise and persecute the known truth and vindicate
their open and notorious idolatry, lying and unrighteousness.” Such
Christians, of whom the forces that had been raised chiefly consisted,
formed, so he thought, an army which might itself well be styled
Turkish. “If then two such ‘Turkish’ armies were to advance against
one another, the one called Mahmetish and the other dubbing itself
Christian, then, good friend, I should suggest you might give Our
Lord God some advice, for He would assuredly need it, as to which
Turks He is to help and carry to victory. I, the worst of advisers,
would counsel Him to give the victory to the Mahmetish Turks over the
Christian Turks, as indeed He has done hitherto without any advice
from us and even contrary to our prayers and complaints. The reason
is, that the Mahmetish Turks have neither God’s Word nor those who
might preach it.... Had they preachers of the Godly Word they might
perhaps, some of them at least, be presently changed from swine into
men. But our Christian Turks have the Word of God and preachers, and
yet they refuse to listen, and from men become mere swine.”[1671]
The public danger which threatened owing to the advance of the Turks
caused Luther, however, about this time to promote the sale of the
Latin translation and confutation of the Koran brought out under
Melanchthon’s auspices by Bibliander (Buchmann) of Zürich. In a popular
hymn which he composed he also took care to couple the Turkish danger
with that to be apprehended from the Papists. This short hymn, “which
became a favourite with the German Evangelicals” (Köstlin), begins:
“In Thy Word preserve us, Lord,
Ward off Pope and Turkish sword.”
The picture which Luther incidentally paints of himself in his
effusions against the Jews and the Turks, receives its final touch in
his last great and solemn pronouncement against Popery which the lines
just quoted may serve to introduce.
_The Hideous Caricatures of “Popery Pictured”_
One cannot contemplate without sadness Luther’s last efforts against
the Papacy.
Fortunately for literature the projected continuation of the frightful
book “Wider das Bapstum vom Teuffel gestifft” never saw the light;
Luther’s intention had been to make it even worse than the first part.
His final labours, aimed directly at the Pope and the Council
of Trent, consisted in suggesting the subjects and drafting the
versified letterpress for a number of woodcuts, designed expressly
to ridicule and defame the Papal office in the eyes of the lower
classes. Even apart from the verses the caricatures were vulgar enough
in all conscience. Nudities in the grossest postures alternate with
comicalities the better to ensure success with the populace.
An attempt has been made to exonerate him of direct responsibility for
the pictures, and to set them down to the account of the draughtsman
who, according to a passage in a letter of Luther’s, was believed to be
his friend, the famous painter Lucas Cranach.
That the whole was really a child of Luther’s own mind is proved,
however, by the very title-page “Popery Pictured by Dr. M. Luther,”
Wittenberg, 1545, as well as by his clear and outspoken statement
shortly before his death to Pastor Matthias Wanckel of Halle. “I
still have much that ought to be told the world concerning the Pope
and his kingdom, and for this reason I have published these images
and figures, each of which stands for a separate book to be written
against the Pope and his kingdom. I wanted to witness before the
whole world what I thought of the Pope and his devil’s kingdom; let
them be my last Will and Testament.” “I have greatly vexed the Pope
with these nasty pictures,” “Oh, how the sow will lift her tail! But,
even should they kill me, they must gorge on the filth that the Pope
holds in his hand. I have placed a golden thing in the Pope’s hands
[i.e. in the picture to be described immediately] that he may pledge
them in it.”[1672]—Again, in a letter to Amsdorf, he alludes to a
scene in which the Furies figure, saying that he had designed them
(“_appingerem_”), and describing in detail what he meant the figures to
stand for.[1673]
Hence it is impossible to contest Luther’s real authorship.
It is true that, on one occasion, he speaks of Cranach the painter as
the draughtsman of one of the pictures; he may, however, have simply
meant that it originated in his studio. According to expert opinion the
technique of the woodcuts differs so much from the master’s that they
cannot be attributed to him; they may, however, have been executed by
one of his pupils under his direction.[1674]
We may now glance at the nine pictures which make up the “Abbildung des
Bapstum,” commencing with that just referred to.[1675]
The picture with the Furies to which Luther refers is that which
represents the “birth and origin of the Pope,” as the Latin
superscription describes it. Here is depicted, in a peculiarly
revolting way, what Luther says in his “Wider das Bapstum vom Teuffel
gestifft,” viz. the Pope’s being born from the “devil’s behind.” The
devil-mother is portrayed as a hideous woman with a tail, from under
which Pope and Cardinals are emerging head foremost. Of the Furies one
is suckling, another carrying, and the third rocking the cradle of
the Papal infant, whom the draughtsman everywhere depicts wearing the
tiara. These are the Furies Megæra, Alecto and Tisiphone.[1676]
Another picture shows the “Worship of the Pope as God of the World.”
This, too, expresses a thought contained in the “Wider das Bapstum,”
where Luther says: “We may also with a safe conscience take to the
closet his coat of arms with the Papal keys and his crown, and use
them for the relief of nature.”[1677] As a matter of fact in this
picture we see on a stool decorated with the papal insignia a crown or
tiara set upside down on which a man-at-arms is seated in the action
of easing himself; a second, with his breeches undone, prepares to do
the same, while a third who has already done so is adjusting his dress.
The picture with the title “The Pope gives a Council in Germany”
shows the Pope in his tiara riding on a sow and digging his spurs
into her sides. The sow is Germany which is obliged to submit to such
ignominious treatment from the Papists; as for the Council which the
Pope is giving to the German people it is depicted as his own, the
Pope’s, excrement, which he holds in his hand pledging the Germans
in it, as Luther says in the passage quoted above (p. 422). The Pope
blesses the steaming object while the sow noses it with her snout.
Underneath stands the ribald verse:
“Sow, I want to have a ride,
Spur you well on either side.
Did you say ‘Concilium’?
Take instead my ‘merdrum.’”[1678]
“Here the Pope’s feet are kissed,” are the words over another picture,
and, from the Pope who is seated on his throne with the Bull of
Excommunication in his hand, two men are seen running away, showing
him, as Köstlin says, “their tongues and hinder parts with the utmost
indecency.”[1679] The inscription below runs:
“Pope, don’t scare us so with your ban;
Please don’t be so angry a man;
Or else we shall take good care
To show you the ‘Belvedere.’”
Köstlin’s description must be supplemented by adding that the two men,
whose faces and bared posteriors are turned towards the Pope, are
depicted as emitting wind in his direction in the shape of puffs of
smoke; from the Pope’s Bull fire, flames and stones are bursting forth.
Of the remaining woodcuts one reproduces the scene which formed the
title-page to the first edition of the “Wider das Bapstum,” viz. the
gaping jaws of hell, between the teeth of which is seen the Pope
surrounded by a cohort of devils, some of whom are crowning him with
the tiara; another portrays the famous Pope-Ass, said to have been
cast up by the Tiber near Rome; it shows “what God Himself thinks
of Popery,”[1680] yet another depicts a pet idea of Luther’s,[1681]
viz. the “reward of the ‘_Papa satanissimus_’ and his cardinals,”
i.e. their being hanged, while their tongues, which had been torn out
by the root, are nailed fast to the gallows. “How the Pope teaches
faith and theology”; here the Pope is shown as a robed donkey sitting
upright on a throne and playing the bagpipes with the help of his
hoofs. “How the Pope thanks the Emperors for their boundless favours”
introduces a scene where Clement IV with his own hand strikes off the
head of Conradin. “How the Pope, following Peter’s example, honours
the King” is the title of a woodcut where a Pope (probably Alexander
III) sets his foot on the neck of the Emperor (Frederick Barbarossa
at Venice).[1682] It is not necessary to waste words on the notorious
falsehoods embodied in the last two pictures. Luther, moreover,
further embellished the accounts he found, for not even the bitterest
antagonist of the Papacy had ever dared to accuse Clement IV of having
slain with his own hand the last of the Staufens. Among the ignorant
masses to whom these pictures and verses were intended to appeal,
there were, nevertheless, many who were prepared to accept such tales
as true on the word of one known as the “man of God,” the Evangelist,
the new Elias and the Prophet of Germany.
* * * * *
In the “Historien des ehrwirdigen in Gott seligen thewren Mannes
Gottes,” Mathesius says of Luther: “In the year [15]45 he brought out
the mighty, earnest book against the Papacy founded by the devil
and maintained and bolstered up by lying signs, and, in the same
year, also caused many scathing pictures to be struck off in which he
portrayed for the benefit of those unable to read, the true nature and
monstrosity of Antichrist, just as the Spirit of God in the Apocalypse
of St. John depicted the red bride of Babylon, or as Master John Hus
summed up his teaching in pictures for the people, of the Lord Christ
and of Antichrist.” “The Holy Ghost is well able to be severe and
cutting,” says Mathesius of this book and the caricatures: “God is a
jealous God and a burning fire, and those who are driven and inflamed
by His Spirit to wage a ghostly warfare against the foes of God
show themselves worthy foemen of those who withstand their Lord and
Saviour.”[1683] Mathesius, like many others, was full of admiration
for the work.
The woodcuts pleased Luther so well that he himself wrote autograph
inscriptions above and below a proof set, and hung them up in his
room.[1684]
“The devil knows well, that, when the foolish people hear high-sounding
words of abuse, they are taken in and blindly believe them without
asking for any further grounds or reasons.” The words are Luther’s own,
though written at an earlier date.[1685] That they applied even more to
caricatures Luther was well aware, nor was this the first time that he
had flung such pictures amongst the masses the better to excite them.
As early as 1521, at Luther’s instigation, with the help of Cranach’s
pencil, Melanchthon and Schwertfeger had done something of the sort in
the “Passional Christi und Antichristi.”[1686] In a booklet of 1526,
“Das Bapstum mit seinen Gliedern,” containing sixty-five caricatures
and scurrilous doggerel verses composed by Luther, everything
religious, from the Pope down to the monks and nuns, was held up to
ridicule.[1687]
The use of caricature was, it is true, not unusual in those days of
violent controversy, nor were Catholics slow to have recourse to it
against Luther; Cochlæus, for instance, in his “_Lutherus Septiceps_”
has a crude illustration of a figure with seven heads. But everything
of this nature, his own earlier productions included, was put into the
shade by Luther’s final pictures of the Papacy.
At the end of his “Wider das Bapstum” Luther had ventured to hope that
he would be able to go even further in another booklet, and, that,
should he die in the meantime, God would raise up another man who
would “make things a thousand times hotter.” His threat he practically
carried out in his “Popery Pictured,” in what Paul Lehfeldt calls
his “highly offensive and revolting woodcuts,” which “certainly
made things a thousand times worse seeing the appeal they made to
the imagination.”[1688] The fact, that, “in spite of the numerous
reprints,” very few copies indeed have survived is attributed by
Lehfeldt to the indignation felt in both camps, Lutheran and Catholic,
which led to the wholesale destruction of the book.
So pleased was the Elector of Saxony with the “Wider das Bapstum”
that he helped to push it; he bought twenty florins’ worth of copies
and had them distributed; this Luther hastened to tell Amsdorf with
all the greater satisfaction, seeing that he had heard that others
were expressing their disapproval of the book.[1689] It may be that
the Elector also helped to spread the caricatures. If we may believe
a sermon by Cyriacus Spangenberg, some of Luther’s own friends
nevertheless made representations and begged him “to desist from
publishing such figures, as of late he had caused to be circulated
against the Pope.”[1690] Yet three years after Luther’s death the
fanatical Flacius Illyricus, in bringing out a new edition of the
caricature of the Pope on the sow, with a fresh description of it,
characterised it as a “prophetic picture by Elias the Third of blessed
memory,” and took severely to task all who felt otherwise.[1691] He
has it, that “Many who walk according to the flesh rather than in the
wisdom, piety and retirement of the spirit, did a few years ago [1545]
actually dare to call these and certain other like figures shameless
prints, and fancies of a brainless old fool.” The writer thinks he
has proved, that, “far from being an outcome of wanton stupidity they
proceeded from a ghostly, godly wisdom and zeal.”[1692]
Such attempts at vindication only prove that Luther was not alone in
allowing himself to be dominated, and his mind darkened by such morbid
fancies.
* * * * *
The psychology reflected in these much-debated woodcuts deserves more
careful scrutiny.
Those undoubtedly take too superficial a view of the matter, who, in
their desire to exonerate Luther, refuse to see in these caricatures
anything more than the exuberant effusions of ridicule gone mad. On the
other hand, some of Luther’s enemies are no less wrong in failing to
see that the indignation which speaks from these drawings is meant in
bitter earnest.
If, as is only right, we view this frivolous imagery in the light of
Luther’s mental state at the time and of his whole attitude then, it
will stand out as a sort of confession of faith on the part of the
author, appalling indeed, but absolutely truthful, a picture of his
deepest thoughts and feelings, steeped as they were in his sombre
pseudo-mysticism and devil-craze. The same holds good likewise of the
“Wider das Bapstum” of which this set of illustrations is a sort of
supplement.
The revolting images which rise before his mind like bubbles to the
surface of the fermenting tan, seem to him so true to fact that he
protests that the cuts are in no sense defamatory; “should anyone feel
offended or hurt in his feelings by them I am ready to answer for their
publication before the whole Empire.”[1693]
So much had he brooded over the illustrations, that, as is shown by
his answer to Amsdorf concerning the Furies, he could describe their
every detail with an enthusiasm and minuteness such as few artists
could equal, even when descanting on their own work. In the midst of
his sufferings of body and mind and of all his toil, he finds leisure
to explain to his friend how: The first Fury, Megæra, assists at the
birth of the Pope-Antichrist, because she is the incarnation of hate
and envy and thus shows that the Pope “as the true imitator, nay, ape,
of Satan hinders all that is good”; the second, Alecto, according to
classic teaching, has the special task of symbolising that “the Pope
works all that is evil”; in this he is helped by the “old serpent of
Paradise”; the latter it is who is to blame for all the misfortunes
of the human race from the beginning, and for still “daily filling
the world with new misfortunes by means of the Pope, Mohamed, the
Cardinals, the Archbishop of Mayence, etc.; and who simply can’t
cease its sad abominations”; as for the third Fury, Tisiphone, she
is passive, she arouses God’s anger, whereby the tyrants and the
wicked, as, for instance, Cain, Saul and Absalom, are punished for
the doings of the two other Furies, etc. “Such is the devil of those
possessed and of the insane, who also blaspheme God. This Fury rules
more particularly in the opinions of the Pope and the heretics
and in their blasphemous doctrines which fall under a well-merited
reprobation.”[1694]
It is characteristic of the mental attitude of the writer that, in
the very next letter to the same friend, he replies to a question of
Amsdorf’s regarding a fox of abnormal shape recently caught; according
to Luther “it might well portend the end of all things”; this end he
will “pray for and await”; but “of any Council or negotiations” he is
determined “to hear nothing, believe nothing, hope nothing and think
nothing.” “Vanity of vanities,” such is his greeting to Trent; as for
Germany, he can only discern “the spark of the coming fire prepared
for its chastisement, the decline of all justice, the undermining of
law and order and the end of the Empire.” “May God remove us and ours
before the desolation comes!”[1695]
When in such a mood he is convinced that the fresh revelation of
Antichrist in the new engravings constitute a grand service to the
Kingdom of God. He knows already the exalted reward of their faith
prepared for himself and his faithful followers. “I have this great
advantage: my Master is called Shevlimini [see above, vol. iv., p.
46]; He told us: ‘I will raise you up at the last day’; then He will
say: ‘Dr. Martin, Dr. Jonas, Mr. Michael, come forth,’ and summon us
all by our names as Christ says in John: ‘And He calls them all by
name.’ Therefore be not affrighted.” This he said shortly before his
death, reviewing his last publications.[1696]
By a similar misuse of the words of the Bible he invites all his
followers, and that too in the name of the “Spirit,” to do to the Pope
just what the three rude fellows are doing over the inverted tiara of
the Pope in the woodcut entitled “The worship of the Pope as God of
the world.” The verses below the picture are scarcely credible:
“To Christ’s dear Kingdom the Pope has done
What they are doing to his own crown.
Says the Spirit: Give him quits,
Fill it brimful as God bids.”
In the margin express reference is made to the solemn words of God
(Apoc. xviii. 6), where the voice from heaven proclaims judgment on
Babylon: “Render to her as she also hath rendered to you, and double
unto her double according to her works: in the cup wherein she hath
mingled, mingle ye double unto her.”
It would surely be hard to find anywhere so filthy a parody of the
sacred text as Luther here permits himself.
The same must be said of the utter hatred which gleams from every
one of the pictures. Into it we gain some insight from a letter of
Luther’s to Jonas: To console his suffering colleague he has a fling
at the Council of Trent: “God has cursed them as it is written:
‘Cursed be he who trusts in man.’” God, says he, will surely destroy
the Council, legates and all.[1697] Jonas was ailing from stone,
besides being tormented with “dire fancies.”[1698] Luther, who himself
suffered severely from stone, exclaimed to his friend Amsdorf:
Would that the stone would pass into the Pope and these Gomorrhaic
cardinals![1699] A prey to anger and depression, to hatred, defiance
and fear of the devil, he is yet determined to mock at Satan who is
ever at his heels in small matters as well as in great. “I shall,
please God, laugh at Satan though he seeks to deride me and my
Church.”[1700]
Such, judging by the letters he wrote in that period, was the soil
which produced both the caricatures and the “Wider das Bapstum vom
Teuffel gestifft.”
So deeply seated in Luther’s devil-lore, not to say devil-mania,
was the tendency that inspired the woodcuts, that, when once his
conscience pricked him on account of the excessive coarseness of one
of the scenes, he could not be moved to admit any more than that the
drawing might be improved on the score of decency and be made to look
... “more diabolical.” The picture in question was that of the “Birth
of the Pope-Antichrist.” Evidently some friends had protested against
the cynical boldness of the birth-scene. Luther writes to Amsdorf:
“Your nephew George has shown me the picture of the Pope, but Master
Lucas is a coarse painter. He might have spared the female sex as the
creature of God and for the sake of our own mothers. He could well
design other figures more worthy of the Pope, i.e. more diabolical;
but do you be judge.”[1701] Later on, when Amsdorf still betrayed some
scruple, Luther promised him: “I shall take diligent steps should I
survive to see that Lucas the painter substitutes for this obscene
picture a more seemly one.”[1702] So far as is known, however, no such
substitution took place, and still less was the caricature withdrawn
from circulation; nor, again, would it have been at all easy even for
the cleverest painter to produce something “more diabolical.”
For the coarseness of the drawings there exists no shred of excuse.
Luther had indeed never disdained to be coarse and vulgar when this
served his purpose; as time went on, however, his love for the
language of the gutter became much more noticeable, at least in his
controversial writings. To some extent this was the reaction of the
impression he saw produced on the masses by his words, his growing
sense of the power of his tongue being in part responsible for the ever
more frequent recourse he had to this “original” mode of speech; to
some extent too his obscene language and imagery were simply an outcome
of his devil-craze, with which, indeed, they were in perfect keeping.
Certain admirers have sought to excuse Luther by pointing out
that, after all, none of his obscenities was of a nature to excite
concupiscence; this we must indeed allow, but the admission affords but
a small crumb of comfort. Without finding anything actually lascivious,
either in the draughtsmanship of these pictures or in the filthy
language to which Luther was generally addicted, one can still regret
his “peculiarity” in this respect.
That, in those days, people were more inured than our refined
contemporaries to the controversial use of such revolting coarseness
has been stated and is indeed perfectly true. The fact is, however,
that what contributed to harden the people was the frequency with
which the Protestants in their polemics had recourse to the weapon of
obscenity. Who had more responsibility in the decline in the sense of
modesty and propriety among German folk than the Wittenberg writer
whose works enjoyed so wide a circulation? It has been pointed out
elsewhere that though certain Catholic writers of that age, and even of
earlier times, were not entirely innocent of a tendency to indelicacy,
Luther outdid them all in this respect.[1703] Nevertheless, however
great the lack of refinement may have been, though the lowest classes
then may have been even more prone than now to speak with alarming
frankness of certain functions of the body, and though even the better
classes and the writers may have followed suit, yet so far did Luther
venture to go, that the humanist Willibald Pirkheimer was expressing
the feeling of very many when he said, in 1529: “Such is the audacity
of his unwashed tongue that Luther cannot hide what is in his heart; he
seems either to have completely gone off his head or to be egged on by
some evil demon.”[1704]
As day is to night so is the contrast between such strictures and the
praise bestowed on Luther by his own side, not indeed so much for
the works last mentioned as for his literary labours in general. The
unprejudiced historian must admit that there is some ground for such
praise (cp. xxxiv., 2). That Luther’s popular writings must contain
much that is really instructive and edifying amidst a deal of dross is
surely clear from the favourable reception they met even in quarters
not at all blinded by prejudice. In what has gone before we ourselves
have repeatedly dwelt on the better elements often to be found in the
non-polemical portion of Luther’s literary legacy.
CHAPTER XXXIV
END OF LUTHER’S LITERARY LABOURS. THE WHOLE REVIEWED
1. Towards a Christianity void of Dogma. Protestant Opinions
With the concluding years of Luther’s life we reach a point whence
may be undertaken with advantage a survey of the character of his
theological and literary labours from several sides from which we have
not as yet had opportunity to approach them.
We naturally turn first of all to the religious content of his literary
life-work; here it may be advisable to hear what Protestant theologians
have to say.
These theologians will tell us how many of the olden dogmas Luther,
explicitly or implicitly, relinquishes, and whether and how he
undermines the very idea of faith as known to Christians of old; we
shall also have to consider the Protestant strictures which assert that
the doctrines, which he either retained or set up for the first time,
were fraught with so much that was illogical that they may be said to
bear within them the seeds of dissolution. The conclusions reached will
show whether or not he was actually heading for a “Christianity void of
dogma.”
_(a) Protestant Critics on Luther’s Abandonment of Individual Christian
Dogmas and of the Olden Conception of Faith_
It is hard to deny that a certain amount of truth lurks in the
contention of a certain modern school of Protestant thought which
insists that Luther practically made an end of “the old, dogmatic
Christianity.”[1705] Luther did not, of course, look so far ahead, nor
were the consequences of his own action at all clear to him, and when
Catholics took pains to point them out he was not slow to repel them
with the utmost indignation. Still, logic is inexorable in demanding
its rights.[1706]
Here we are happily able to state the case almost entirely in the words
of Protestant theologians of the modern school, such as, for instance,
Adolf Harnack.
“The acknowledged authorities on dogma,” says Harnack, speaking of
Luther’s attitude towards the pillars of the Church’s teaching, “have
been torn down, and thereby dogma itself, _qua_ dogma, i.e. the
unfailing teaching institution ordained by the Holy Ghost, has been
done away with.... The revision has been extended even beyond the
second century of the Church’s history and up to its very beginnings,
and has everywhere been carried out radically. An end has been made
of that history of dogma which started in the age of the apologists,
nay, of the Apostolic Fathers.”[1707] Harnack therefore, in his
detailed work on the history of dogma, refrained from dealing with any
theologians later than Luther, instead of following the usual course
among Protestant authors, and giving an account of the development
of doctrine in later Protestantism and among Luther’s followers. He
pertinently asked: “How can there be in Protestantism any history
of dogma after Luther’s Prefaces to the New Testament and his great
reformation writings?”[1708]
Addressing the representatives of Lutheran “dogmatic theology,” Harnack
says: “Luther’s reformation created a new point of departure for the
development of the Christian belief in the Word of God”; “it set
aside every form of infallibility that might have offered an outward
assurance for one’s belief, the Church’s infallible organisation and
infallible tradition and the infallible code of Scripture. Thus an end
was made of the conception of Christianity from which dogma had sprung,
viz. the Christian faith, the sure knowledge of the final causes of
all things and thus of the whole Divine scheme of salvation. Christian
faith has now become merely a firm assurance of receiving forgiveness
of sins from God, as the Father of Jesus Christ, and of living under
Him in His kingdom. This at the same time spells the ruin of any
infallible dogma; for how can any dogma be unchangeable and authentic,
thought out and formulated as it was by finite men, living in sin,
and devoid of every outward guarantee?” If, nevertheless, Luther
accepted and maintained certain aspects of ancient dogma, he did so,
not as establishing “side by side with faith a law of faith based on
particular outward promises,” but rather “from his unshaken conviction
that much of this dogma corresponded exactly with the Gospel or Word of
God, and that this correspondence was self-evident”; “as dogma, it did
not constitute a rule.”[1709]
In some respects, for instance in this very matter, what Harnack says
stands in need of correction. He is at times too fond of making out
his own Christianity without dogma to have been also that of Luther.
We just heard him say that the remnant of olden dogma which Luther
preserved, “as dogma, did not constitute a rule.” He would, however,
have been nearer the truth in saying that, _logically_, as dogma, _it
ought not to have_ constituted a rule. There can be no doubt that
Luther—as will be shown below—insists, though in contradiction with
other “basic ideas and with the spirit of his reformation,” that
the Christian verities which he leaves standing must be embraced as
revealed articles of the Christian belief and indubitable truths of
faith. Even where he does not insist upon this he still takes it for
granted that faith in the whole of revelation (“_fides historica_”)
precedes that faith which consists in the assurance of the forgiveness
of sins. Even Harnack has to admit, that, with Luther, “dogma _qua_
dogma, remains to some extent in force” owing “to the logic of
things.”[1710]
Luther, according to another passage in Harnack, “under the pressure
of circumstances” and the storms raised against him by the fanatics
and the Anabaptists, was drawn into a dogmatising current of which
the issue was the Augsburg Confession. To the question: Did Luther’s
reformation do away with the ancient dogma? we must reply, that, at
least, it “demolished its foundation—as indeed our Catholic opponents
rightly object against us—that it was a mighty principle rather than
a new doctrine, and that its subsequent history through the age of
Orthodoxy, Pietism and Rationalism down to the present day is less a
falling away than a natural development.”[1711]
Even before Harnack’s day this was virtually the standpoint of some
of the best Protestant judges. It had been perceived long before that
the purely Evangelical theory led much further from the ancient dogmas
than Protestant orthodoxy was disposed to admit. Even according to so
conservative a theologian as Johann August Neander, “the spirit of the
Reformation did not at once attain to a clear consciousness of itself”;
Luther indeed, even here, “had reached the consciousness of the pure
Evangelical belief, thanks to the principle of a faith which is a free
outgrowth of the Divine power within; yet, owing to the controversies
on the Supper and to the Peasant War, this clear consciousness
again became eclipsed.”[1712] Neander finds the best statement of
Luther’s new ideas in those works which are most radically opposed to
the traditional teaching of the Church of old. Albert Ritschl, the
well-known leader of the free Protestant school, likewise declared:
“The Lutheran theory of life has not remained true to itself; it has
been hemmed in and dulled by the stress laid on objective dogma. The
pure doctrine as taught in the schools is in reality merely a passing,
not the final, form of Protestantism.”[1713]
All these critics, Harnack in particular, though blaming Luther for
not drawing the right conclusions, are nevertheless at one in their
outspoken admiration of the powerful thinker and brave spokesman of
the new belief, and particularly of those theses of his which approach
most closely their own ideal of an unfettered theology. In their
opinion Luther is to remain the hero of yore, though his garb and
attitude will no longer be the same as those to which Protestantism had
previously been accustomed. It is perhaps not superfluous to mention
this because otherwise the strong things some of the critics say might,
taken together, give the impression that their main aim and endeavour
was to decry Luther. Probably enough Harnack and his friends failed
to foresee how unfavourable a view their censures, taken in the lump,
might produce of Luther’s person and work. Harnack, however, in one
passage, pays a strange tribute to Luther’s conservatism, one, no
doubt, which would appeal to the Reformer’s more old-fashioned friends.
He points out, that, “we owe it to him, that, even to the present
day, these formularies [the olden creeds] are still in Protestantism
a living power”; nay, such is his ignorance of the state of things in
Catholicism, that he is convinced that it is only in Protestantism that
these creeds still “live,” whereas, “in the Roman Church, they are but
a dead and obsolete heirloom”; Luther, according to one bold dictum of
Harnack’s, was really “the restorer of ancient dogma.”[1714]
* * * * *
Among the olden doctrines thrown over by Luther his Protestant critics
rightly instance the Canon of Scripture and the right of the Church to
interpret the Bible. They corroborate strikingly from Luther’s writings
the results which we reached above,[1715] a circumstance which may
surprise Protestant readers.
If, according to Luther, the doctrine of the oldest confessions of
faith are only to be retained because they can be directly proved
from the Bible, then the Bible itself with all its books, so such
Protestants argue, must stand firm and inviolable. Now, awkwardly
enough, Luther himself saps the authority of the Canon.
“If the attitude is justified which Luther takes up in his famous
Prefaces to the various books of the New Testament,” says Harnack (cp.
prefaces to the Epistle of James, to the Epistle to the Hebrews and
to the Apocalypse), “then an end is made of the infallible Canon of
Scripture. It is here of the utmost importance historically, though
in itself a matter of indifference, that we find Luther, especially
after the controversy on the Supper, making statements to the effect
that every letter of Scripture is fundamental to the Christian faith;
the flagrant contradiction involved in the assertion that a thing
holds and at the same time does not hold can only be solved by saying
that it does not. The same follows from Luther’s views on faith, for,
according to him, this is produced by the Holy Ghost through the
_preaching_ of the Word of God. To-day too, all Protestants are agreed
that historical criticism of Scripture is not unevangelical, though
this unanimity of opinion extends only as far as the ‘principle,’ and
many refuse to carry it out in practice.”[1716]—“Luther, at the
very time when he was waging so brave a war against the authority of
the Councils, also opposed Scriptural infallibility, and, indeed, how
could he do otherwise?... There can be no doubt that Luther’s attitude
towards the New Testament, as we find it set forth in the Prefaces
and in one or two other passages, is the correct one, i.e. that which
really tallies with his belief.”[1717]
As F. Loofs points out, Luther leaves us without any outward guarantee
for the authority of the Canon of the Bible.[1718] Loofs quotes, for
instance, Luther’s saying: “Hence God must tell you within your heart:
This is God’s Word.”[1719] “Luther’s criticism,” the same writer
says, “did not spare even those books which he allowed to be truly
prophetic or apostolic.... He frankly admitted the human element in
Scripture.”[1720]
If Luther’s fundamental opposition to the faith once delivered is
already apparent from his criticism of the Bible, still more is this
the case when we come to look into the freedom he allowed in the
interpretation of the sense of the Bible.
As Harnack puts it: In Luther’s view “the Church is based on something
which every Christian, no matter how humble, can see and test, viz.
on the Word of God as apprehended by pure reason. This, of course,
was tantamount to a claim to ascertain the true verbal sense of
Holy Scripture.... But Luther never foresaw how far this rule would
lead.”[1721]
Luther himself often put his principle to such arbitrary usage as
to prove a warning to others (above, vol. iv., pp. 406 f., 418 f.),
and to exclude the possibility of any settled dogma. “The flagrant
contradiction,” says Harnack, “into which he was led by criticising
the Bible whilst all the time holding the idea he did about its
inspiration, he contrived to explain away by reading the Evangel
itself into texts which presented a difficulty.”[1722] “In Holy
Scripture, the infallible authority, only that was to be found, which
on other grounds was already established as the true doctrine.”[1723]
Hence in the matter of the Bible, so Harnack has it, “Criticism, in
order to be according to Luther’s mind, would have to go against him
in the interests of faith.”[1724]
Luther’s abandonment of the Church’s standpoint with regard to the
Bible is closely bound up with his renunciation of the Church’s
teaching office, of the hierarchy and of all respect for tradition.
This meant, as modern Protestant critics admit, the destruction of
the whole theory of tradition and, in fact, of all ecclesiastical
authority, though, on Harnack’s own admission, ancient Church writers,
especially “subsequent to Irenæus,” rely much on such authority.
“Luther was antagonistic to all these authorities,” says the same
scholar, “to the infallibility of Church, Pope, and Councils, to every
constitutional right of the Church to pronounce on the truth and, on
principle, to all the doctrinal formularies of the past.”[1725] His
later writing: “Von den Conciliis,” etc. (1539) proves this.
Nor have we yet exhausted the list of grievances against Luther. Not
only did he forsake the ancient teaching on justification, merit and
works, but he even declared war on human free will, though belief in
its existence is a truth of natural philosophy and though the Church
had ever held it in the highest esteem. He put aside in its primitive
form the basic dogma of original sin. The doctrine of actual sin and
its distinction into mortal and venial found no favour with him,[1726]
nor did the related doctrine of the existence of a purgatory. He
completely destroyed the teaching of antiquity on Grace by his new
discovery of the law of absolute necessity which rules all things,
not excluding even the actions of the human mind and heart; according
to Luther “Grace is the fatherly disposition of God towards us, Who
for Christ’s sake calls sinful man to Him, accepts him and wins his
confidence through faith in the _Christus passus_.”[1727] This fatherly
disposition of God no man can ever in the least resist if destined by
the Divine Omnipotence to receive the faith; those, however, who are
not numbered among the elect, know not any such invitation, or rather
constraint, for the secret Will of God unfailingly dooms them to
damnation.[1728]
After giving the above definition of Grace, Harnack asks, “What room
then is there for a Sacrament?” For Catholics the Sacraments were
pillars of the Church’s life and of her teaching. With them Luther was
perfectly willing to dispense.
“He not only strove,” says Harnack, “to break away completely from
the ancient or mediaeval conception, but he actually brought it to
nought by his doctrine of the one sacrament, which is the Word.”[1729]
The Sacraments being to him a “peculiar form of the saving Word of
God, viz. of the realisation of the ‘_promissio Dei_,’ he reduces
them to two (three), or, indeed, to one, viz. the Word of God. He
showed that even the most enlightened Fathers had had but a dim notion
of this so important matter.... Having practically laid the whole
system in ruins, he rests again on the one, simple grand act, which
is constantly being repeated in every Christian’s life, viz. the
awakening of faith thanks to the ‘_gratia_.’”[1730]
Luther turned his back not only on the ancient teaching concerning the
Sacraments, particularly the Sacrifice of the Mass, but also on the
whole outward worship of the Church.
“His attitude towards Divine Worship in the Church was a radical one.
Here too he destroyed not only the mediaeval tradition, but even that
of the ancient Church such as we may trace it back right into the
2nd century. The public worship of the Church, to him, is nothing
more than the worship of individuals united in time and place.... The
priest and the sacrifice in the usual sense of the terms are done
away with, and all worth is denied to those specific ecclesiastical
actions which were formerly held to be both wholesome and necessary.”
“The ‘divine service,’ particularly that of the Word, in which he
nevertheless wished the congregation to take part,” “can have no other
motive ... than to promote individual worship, for God deals with
us only through the Word which is not tied up with any particular
persons.”[1731] Hence public worship does no more than “edify faith
through the preaching of the Divine Word and the common offering of
prayer and praise.”[1732]
Of vast importance in this change and even more far-reaching in its
consequences was Luther’s abrogation of the ancient conception of the
Church. As bound up with it, he also harshly set aside the invocation
of Saints, that vital element of the olden worship.
The ancient teaching on perfection had to make room for new theories,
for it seemed to him to lay too much stress on man’s own works.[1733]
And yet “we cannot but admit,” says Harnack, “that Luther’s efforts
to create a new ideal of life were not characterised by any clear
discrimination.” The reason may be “that the times were not yet ripe
for it.” In those days of public stress “religion’s chief business was
to bring consolation amidst the miseries of life. To heal the soul
oppressed with sorrow for sin and to alleviate the evils in the world,”
this was what was mainly aimed at.[1734] This, however, was scarcely to
do justice to religion and to its sublime tasks.
According to Luther the Church had, even from the outset, given to
human reason a larger sphere than was due to it. Even at the cradle
of the Church Christian philosophy had taken her stand, and, with her
torch of reason, had pointed out the road to faith. Luther, however,
conceived “a distrust of reason itself not to be explained simply by
his distrust of it as the main prop of self-righteousness. He grew
hardened in his bold defiance of reason, surrendering himself to that
suspicious Catholic [!] way of looking at things, which reveres the
wisdom of God and sees the stamp of the divine truth in paradox and
in the _contradictio in adiecto...._ No one, however, can despise
reason and learning with impunity, and Luther himself was punished by
the darkening of his own views on faith.”[1735] “That is a dangerous
kind of theologism which fancies that the knowledge which comes from
worldly education may simply be ignored. The reformers were too ready
to cut themselves adrift from worldly culture where the latter seemed
to trench on the domain of faith.... The Reformation buried beneath
a mass of hatred and injustice much of the valuable learning the age
possessed and thereby made itself responsible for the later crises of
Protestantism.”[1736]
“Luther,” says Loofs, “by laying stress on that antithesis between
human reason and the divine ‘foolishness,’ which was so intimately
bound up with his own deepest and most fundamental views (and who ever
thundered more loudly against the ‘Frau Hulda’ of natural reason,
that ‘devil’s whore’ and ‘arch enemy of the faith’ than did Luther?),
imposed on his following the old Catholic idea (which he himself had
overthrown) of the verbal inspiration of the Canon, and did so so
thoroughly that after-ages were unable to shake themselves free of
it. Nay, by rightly proscribing any allegorical exegesis, he made
the burden of this old Catholic heritage even more oppressive in
Protestantism than it had ever been before.”[1737]
Depreciation of reason, had, in Luther’s case, a bad effect on his
whole teaching concerning God. As far back as theology went this
had formed the centre of religious discussion. The Fathers had by
preference dwelt on questions which concerned God, His Oneness and
Triunity, His attributes and His relations with the world and man.
Luther, according to the admission of Protestant critics, introduced
here certain arbitrary and very unfair limitations. It was his wish,
as he frequently declares, that God should be meditated on only as
Jesus Christ our Consoler and our Saviour. He has a strange and
seemingly instinctive aversion to concerning himself with the Almighty
Being, in Whom nevertheless “we live, and move, and are.” The _Deus
absconditus_ appals him. According to him it is impossible to “treat
of Predestination without being crucified and suffering the pains of
death, or without loss to ourselves and secret anger against God.”
Predestination “determines in the first instance who is and who is not
to believe, who is and who is not to be saved from sin”; of this Luther
cannot speak without at the same time solemnly emphasising that it is
only thanks to it that we can “hope to conquer sin,” as otherwise the
devil, “as we know, would soon overpower us all.” Yet we ought not,
like the “reprobate spirits,” “explore the abyss of Divine Providence,”
because otherwise we shall either “be brought to despair or kick over
the traces.” The old Adam must “have been put to death before being
able to endure this and to drink the strong wine,” i.e. a man must
first have learnt, like Luther, “to stake all in God,” and “defy” all
things in Him.[1738]
Thus it comes about that Luther ladles out reproaches indiscriminately
to the philosophers who occupy themselves with God as known to reason,
and the theologians who pursue the supernatural knowledge of God.
“Often enough did Luther deride as a product of blind reason,” writes
Harnack, “that knowledge of God, which instead of thinking of God in
Christ alone, ‘sophistically’ enumerates His attributes and speculates
on His will, viz. the whole ‘metaphysical’ doctrine of God.”[1739] If
“God be considered apart from Christ,” then He appears, according to
Luther, merely as the “terrible Judge from Whom we can await nothing
but punishment.”[1740]
According to Luther, “there is, outside of Christ, no certainty
concerning the Will of God”; for the secret Will of God threatens us
with the dreadful sword of predestination to hell. Hence Harnack even
goes so far as to say, that what is presupposed in Luther’s theories
on the assurance of salvation is a belief “not in God _in se_—for God
_in se_ belongs to the Aristotelians—but rather in the God Whom the
Holy Ghost reveals to the soul as manifest in Christ.”[1741]
“God _in se_” and “God _quoad nos_” are two different things. By
establishing such a distinction Luther “sets himself at variance with
all theology as it had existed since the days of the apologists; here
his aversion to the olden dogma is even more evident than in his
reprobation of certain of its parts. Again and again, whenever the
occasion arises, he repudiates what the olden theology had said of
God and Christ, of the Will and Attributes of God, of the two natures
in Christ, etc., with the remark: ‘This He has _in se_. Thereupon
he immediately proceeds, with the words ‘But, _quoad nos_,’ to
introduce his own new view, which to him is the main thing, if not the
whole.”[1742]
Such doctrines as have nothing to do with the justification of the
sinner or the “confession of faith, as a personal experience,” recede
so much into the background that Harnack feels justified in saying:
“Though, under the formulas ‘God _in se_,’ ‘the Hidden God,’ ‘God’s
Hidden Will,’ Luther left these old ideas standing, still they had
practically ceased to exist as doctrines of faith. Of this there can
be no doubt. That he did not throw them over completely is due to two
facts, on the one hand to his impression that he found them in the
Bible, and, on the other, to his never having systematically thought
out the problems involved.”[1743] It must, however, be noted, that,
as will be seen more clearly when we come to discuss Luther’s idea of
faith, he was by no means ready to allow that such dogmas were not
real “articles of faith.” This may be what leads Harnack here to say
that they had “practically” ceased to exist as “actual articles of
faith.”
In connection with the dogmas touching God it must not be lost to
sight that Luther, by his doctrine of predestination, of man’s
unfreedom and of the inevitability of all that occurs, really
endangered, if indeed he did not actually destroy, the Church’s olden
conception of God as the Highest and Most Perfect Being. The cruel God
of absolute predestination to hell is no longer a God worthy of the
name.
“Nor can it be gainsaid,” writes the Protestant theologian Arnold
Taube, “that, given Luther’s idea of God and His Omnipotence, the
negation of man’s free-will is a simple and natural consequence.”
“Luther’s conception of God is at variance with the ethical
personality of the God of Christianity, just as Schleiermacher’s
whole pantheistic scheme of theology is useless in enabling us to
grasp a religion so eminently moral as Christianity.” “Schleiermacher
was quite logical in carrying to their consequences Luther’s ideas
on predestination and free-will.” Luther’s idea of God, according
to Taube, is simply “determinist.” “The negation [of free-will] can
be escaped only by a theory of the Divine Omnipotence which regards
God as controlling His own Power and thus as practically exercising
restraint over Himself and limiting His Power. This, however, was not
Luther’s theory, who takes the Divine Omnipotence to signify that
which works all in all.”[1744]
To an outsider it sounds strange to hear Harnack and others affirm
that Luther swept away all the positive doctrines of antiquity; no
less strange is it to see Luther, the furious opponent of Catholicism,
being made by men who call themselves his followers into an advocate
of the Rationalism which they themselves profess. In the interests
of Rationalism these theologians take as their watchword Wilhelm
Herrmann’s dictum of Luther’s doctrine of penance: “We must strive to
push ahead with what Luther began and left undone.” The least they
demand is, that, as Ferdinand Kattenbusch puts it, Protestant theology
should hold fast to the “earlier” Luther, to those days “when Luther’s
genius was as yet unbroken.” In this wise they contrive to wrench away
Luther from the foundations of that faith to which he still wished to
remain true and which the “orthodox” at a later date claimed him to
have ever retained.[1745]
It is well known how, following in Ritschl’s footsteps, Harnack’s
ability, learning, and outspokenness have proved extremely awkward to
the more conservative theologians. He “carried on Luther’s interrupted
work,” declares Herrmann, and set up again in all its purity Luther’s
early conception of faith against a theology which had been stifled in
orthodoxy and pietism.[1746]
We must, however, in the light of Protestant criticism, examine a
little more closely Luther’s attitude towards the ancient Christian
conception of faith.
Starting first of all from faith subjectively considered and examining
Luther’s doctrine of the personal appropriation of the content of
faith, we immediately find ourselves brought face to face with his
doctrine of justification, for he has scarcely anything to say of
the faith of the individual save in so far as this faith operates
justification. Here all the other truths to be believed tend to
disappear from his purview and one only truth remains, viz.: Through
Christ I am pleasing to God. It is no wonder if many of his followers,
even to the present day, see in this doctrine of the certainty of
having in Christ a Gracious God, the only dogma handed down by Luther.
Does he not, for instance, in one of the most widely read passages of
his works, viz., in the Preface to Romans in his translation of the
New Testament, concisely define faith as a “daring and lively trust in
the grace of God, so strong that one would be ready to die for it a
thousand times over”? “Such a trust makes a man cheerful, defiant and
light-hearted in his attitude towards God and all creatures; such is
the working of the Holy Ghost by faith.” “Faith is the work of God in
us whereby we are transformed and born anew in God.”[1747]
Again, if we take faith objectively, i.e. as the sum-total of
revelation, then again, at least according to many passages, faith
must be merged in the one consoling conviction that we receive the
forgiveness of sins from God in Christ.
“The Reformation,” says Harnack quite rightly, regarded all the rest
of dogma as little more than “a grand testimony to God, Who has sent
Jesus Christ, His Son, to liberate us from sin, to save us and set
us free. Finding this testimony in dogma, every other incentive to
determine it more accurately disappeared.” It is, however, important
to note, that “ancient dogma was not merely the witness of the Gospel
to a Gracious God, to Christ the Saviour, and to the forgiveness
of sins”; it comprised a number of other profound and far-reaching
doctrines also binding upon all, “above all a certain knowledge of God
and of the world, and a law of belief.” According to Harnack, however,
“faith and this knowledge of God and law of belief were unguardedly
jumbled up.” In short, “a conservative attitude towards olden dogma is
not imposed on the Reformation by its principles.”[1748]
“The orthodoxy of the Luther-zealots of the 16th century had its
basis in the reformers’ retention of a series of old Catholic
presuppositions and dogmas which were really in disagreement with
their own fundamental ideas.”[1749] “Thus,” proceeds Harnack, “the
Reformation, i.e. the conception of the Evangelical faith, spells
the end of dogma unless indeed, in the stead of the old-time dogma,
we put a sort of phantom dogma.” The Reformation replaced the demand
for faith, which corresponds with the law, by the freedom of the
children of God, who are not under the constraint of the law of belief
but rejoice in the gift bestowed on them, viz. in the promise of the
forgiveness of sins in Christ.[1750]
In this, again, there is much that is true, even though we may not
be willing to subscribe to all the author says. Luther undoubtedly
lays undue stress on those tenets of the faith which seem to him
to refer to justification and spiritual freedom, and he does so to
the detriment of what remains. “Hence the Gospel,” Luther says for
instance, “is nothing else but the preaching of Christ, the Son of
God and the Son of David, true God and Man, Who by His death and
again-rising from the dead has overcome sin, death and hell for all
those who believe in Him.” The Evangelists, so he says, describe
the conquest of “Sin, death and hell” at great length, the others
“more briefly like St. Peter and St. Paul”; at any rate the “Gospel
must not be made into a code of laws or a handbook.”[1751] This was
indeed to raise the standard of revolt against doctrine. Well might
Adolf Hausrath, in a passage already quoted, speak of Luther as “the
greatest revolutionary of the 16th century.”
The question touched upon above deserves, however, to be looked into
still more closely in the light of what other more moderate Protestant
theologians say.
Gustav Kawerau, speaking from such a standpoint, points out that
Luther “runs the risk of confusing the Evangelical view of faith with
that which sees in faith the acceptance of a string of doctrinal
propositions, i.e. with that faith which is made up of so and so many
articles, all of such importance that to reject one involves the
dropping of the others.”[1752]
This is so true that the historian and theologian in question rather
understates the case by saying that Luther merely “runs the risk.”
It is no difficult task in this connection to instance definite
statements to this effect made by him, or even to enumerate the
actual “articles” of faith he regarded as essential. In No. 12 of the
articles of Schwabach (Torgau) he says, as Kawerau himself points out:
“Such a Church is nothing else than the faithful who hold, believe and
teach the above articles and propositions.... For where the Gospel is
preached and the Sacraments are rightly used, there we have the holy
Christian Church.”[1753]
Amongst such articles Luther, following the example of the oldest
Creeds, includes even the Virginity of Mary.[1754]
It was to this that the theologian, Otto Scheel, recently alluded when
compelled to make a stand against those theologians who, particularly
during the years 1519-1523, miss in Luther any adherence to the
articles of the faith. Scheel appeals to what Luther says of Mary’s
Virginity in his German version of his “_De votis monasticis_” (1521
and 1522). In one passage Luther, referring to the thesis that every
single article of faith must be believed, otherwise, no matter how
earnest and virtuous be one’s life, everlasting damnation is certain,
brings forward as an instance our Lady’s virginity: The religious, in
their “bawdy-houses of Satan” [the monasteries], by their blasphemous
vows deny the whole Gospel truth, consequently far more than merely
that article concerning Mary. Hence they cannot be saved even did
they possess “Mary’s virginity and holiness.” “Here we have,” rightly
concludes Scheel, “even as early as 1521-22 a view of faith which does
not differ materially from that which we meet with in Luther after the
controversies on the Sacrament.” This, however, means, according to
him, “that we must regard Luther’s development in a light different
from that now usual.”[1755]
Which then does Scheel hold to be the correct view? He finds in
Luther at all times contradictions which admit of no escape: “The
contradictions which clearly exist at a later date in Luther’s
life’s work were, in point of fact, always latent within him....
This is equivalent to saying that we must regard Luther’s work as a
whole, and that, too, just in its most vital parts, as one marred by
contradictions which it is impossible to explain away.”[1756]
Since Luther’s demand that all the articles of faith should be
accepted without distinction was one which he had taken over from
Catholicism, we should, continues Scheel, “seek in the Middle Ages
the clue to his attitude instead of assigning to him the solution of
modern problems as some are disposed to do.” In this, however, Scheel
is proposing nothing new, but rather something that stands to reason;
the method he suggests has, moreover, always been followed by Catholic
critics of Luther’s theology.
Catholics found without difficulty plentiful statements of Luther’s
in support of the inviolability of the whole chain of olden dogma,
so great had been the influence exerted over him by the convictions
of his youth. It was an easy matter for controversialists to turn
such statements of his against Luther himself, the more so, since,
eminently justified though they were within Catholicism, they were
utterly out of place on his mouth and furnish a striking condemnation
of his own rash undertaking—a fact to which he, however, refused to
open his eyes. For instance, in the very evening of his days when he
himself could look back on his destruction of so many of the dogmas of
the olden Church, speaking to the Sacramentarians, Luther says of the
traditional doctrines: “This is what I thought, yea and said too, viz.
that the devil is never idle; no sooner has he started one heresy than
he must needs start others so that no error ever remains alone. When
the ring has once been broken it is no longer a ring; it has lost its
strength and is ever snapping anew.... Whoever does not or will not
believe aright one article assuredly does not believe any article with
a true and earnest faith.... Hence we may say straight out: Believe
all, or nothing! The Holy Ghost will not allow Himself to be divided
or sundered, so as to teach or make us believe one article aright
and another awry.” “Otherwise,” so he concludes, all unconsciously
justifying his Catholic critics, “no heretic would ever be condemned
nor would there be a heretic on all the earth; for it is the nature of
heretics to tamper first with one article only and then bit by bit to
deny them all.... If the bell have but a single crack, it no longer
rings true and is quite useless.”[1757]
It was on the strength of this principle of the absolutely binding
character of all the truths of religion (at least of those which he
himself retained) that he ventured to depict Zwingli as the biggest
rebel against the faith.
“Zwingel, who was miserably slain on the battlefield, and Œcolampadius
who died of grief on that account, perished in their sins because
they obstinately persisted in their errors.”[1758] He could not “but
despair of Zwingel’s salvation,” for the latter was an arch-heretic.
So harsh a judgment on Zwingli is, however, quite unjustifiable if
we start from the more liberal conception of faith which Luther had
once advocated together with the stricter view, and which indeed he
never in so many words retracted. On such grounds Kawerau may well
take Zwingli under his wing against Luther. His words will be quoted
a little further on. Meanwhile, however, it must be pointed out that
Luther’s unkindly criticism of Zwingli is not to be explained merely
by the above view of faith. In his Life of Luther Adolf Hausrath
throws some light on its psychological side. “Language so insulting as
Luther’s,” he says, “no bishop had ever used against Zwingli,”[1759]
and he lays his hand boldly on the weak spot with the object of
bringing out Luther’s astounding want of logic. He had proclaimed
the right of examining Scripture freely and without being tied down
by the teaching of the Church, yet he refused to allow Zwingli such
freedom; the latter “had applied the principle indiscriminately to
everything (?) handed down by the Church, whereas Luther wished to put
aside merely what was contrary to his convictions on justification
by faith alone, or to the plain sense of Scripture.”[1760] Luther
“fancied he could guess who had inspired the Sacramentarians with
their blasphemies. Thereby he envenomed the controversy from the very
outset. For him there could be no truce with the devil.”[1761] “In
any sign of life given by the Swiss he at once sniffed the ‘devil’s
breeches.’”[1762] Luther himself admits that “to begin with, it
was Zwingli’s wrong doctrine and the fact ‘that the Swiss wished
to be first,’”[1763] which had led to the estrangement. The “wrong
doctrine” he detected, thanks to that gift of infallibility which led
the Sacramentarians to call his behaviour “papistic.” We have here,
according to Hausrath, a “religious genius, who, by the force of his
personality and word, sought to make all others bow to the law of his
mind.” “We must resign ourselves to the fact that this great man had
the shortcomings which belong to his virtues. Disputatiousness and
love to pick a quarrel, faults which simply represented the other
side of his firm faith, and which some had already deplored in the
young monk at Erfurt, Wittenberg and Leipzig, had naturally not been
abated by his many victorious combats, and, now, more than ever,
Oldecop’s words were true: ‘He wanted to be in the right in all the
disputations and was fond of quarrelling.’ The fact is that Luther was
no exception to the rule, that man finds nothing harder to bear well
than success.”[1764]
Nevertheless, to return to the question of faith, Luther had already
laid down in his writings certain marks by which it might be
ascertained whether a man is a believer or not, and which at any rate
scarcely tally with the criteria he applies to Zwingli. Judged by
these Zwingli would emerge quite blameless.
Kawerau points this out in defence of Zwingli: “The idea of faith,” he
says, “which Luther had newly evolved, in opposition to the Catholic
assent to the teaching of the Bible and the Church, led logically to
determining from a man’s attitude towards Christ and His saving Grace
whether he was a true believer or not; Luther himself frequently made
this his criterion; for instance, in answer to the question: Who is
a member of the Church, and whom must I regard as my dear brother in
Christ? He replies, all those ‘Who confess Christ as sent by God the
Father in order to reconcile us to Him by His death and to obtain for
us grace’; or again: All ‘those who put their trust in Christ alone
and confess Him in faith,’ or yet again: ‘All those who seek the Lord
with their whole heart and soul ... and who trust in nothing but in
God’s mercy.’”[1765] But had not Zwingli loudly proclaimed himself to
be one of these?
“In such utterances of Luther’s we find,” according to Kawerau,
“summed up the purely religious and Evangelical conception of faith.”
Here there is no question of any accepting of the several articles of
faith, of any submission to a “string of doctrinal propositions,” of
any “faith made up of so and so many ‘articles’ all of such importance
that to reject one involves the dropping of the others.”[1766]
According to this theologian Luther was untrue to his own basic
theories when he assailed Zwingli as he did. Kawerau also agrees with
Hausrath in holding that the principal cause of Luther’s estrangement
was a psychological one which indeed constituted the weakest spot in
his whole position, viz. his identification of his own theological
outbuilding of an article of faith, with its religious content,[1767]
or, to speak more plainly, his setting himself up as the sole
authority after having set aside that of the Church.
(_b_) _The Melting away of Luther’s Dogmas viewed in the Light of
Protestant Criticism_
We have already put on record those doctrines of the olden Church,
which, inclusive of the idea of faith itself, Luther threw overboard;
we now come to the doctrines which he retained, which deserve to be
considered in connection with the strictures of modern Protestant
theologians, particularly of Harnack. At least these strictures bring
out very clearly their contradictory and illogical character. Evidently
Harnack is not altogether wrong when he uses as a page-heading the
words “Exit dogma in Protestantism,”[1768] and elsewhere:[1769]
“Embarrassments and problems in Luther’s heritage.”
Luther, to quote Harnack, “frequently hardened his heart against
certain consequences of his own religious principles.”[1770] But
“if ‘the whole Luther’ is to be set up as the law of faith for
the Evangelical Church, then, where it is a question of matters of
history, such consequences cannot be simply ignored.” “The Lutheran
Reformation,” writes Fr. Loofs, “would have ended otherwise as regards
the history of dogma, had Luther braved tradition and followed up his
theories to their logical conclusion. The shreds of the old which
remained hampered the growth of the new ideas, even in Luther’s own
case.”[1771]
_Original Sin and Unfreedom; Law and Gospel; Penance_
Luther took over from the olden Church the doctrine of the existence
of original sin, but he so changed it, particularly by affirming that
it resulted in the destruction of free-will, that the doctrine itself
becomes untenable.
Of this all-important groundwork of his anthropology the theologian
Taube says: “It is not surprising that Luther fails to remain faithful
to the attitude he has assumed. It is as impossible to him, as to any
other thinking mind, to fail to find freedom presupposed in every
corner, in his personal Christianity, and in his own work as pastor,
preacher or reformer. Facts are stronger than theories and _a priori_
reasonings.... Either the _data_ of experience must be held to be
mere illusion, or absolute determinism must be thrown over. We cannot
answer the same question both in the negative and in the affirmative
and then declare it to be a mystery; it would be no mystery but simply
a contradiction.”[1772]
Still, Luther found it easier than Taube thinks to proclaim things to
be mysteries which palpably were nothing but contradictions. A glance
at Köstlin’s “Luthers Theologie” shows how often Luther attempts to
distract the reader from the difficulties he himself enumerates with
the consoling words: This we must not seek to pry into.—Taube too is
optimistic with regard to the fate of the doctrine of unfreedom in
modern Protestant theology; appealing to the above contradictions,
he writes: “It is not surprising that the Lutheran theology, closely
as it keeps to Luther’s views in many other matters, has never
ventured to follow him on this all-important point, and, in fact, has
departed ever further from him.”[1773] The truth is that the period of
withdrawal inaugurated by Melanchthon in 1527 has been succeeded in
our own day by one of closer approximation. (Cp. above, vol. ii., p.
292, n. 4.)
Apart from the theory of man’s absolute depravity and lack of
free-will there are other things which are damaging to Luther’s
doctrine of original sin, particularly his opinion that original sin
persists after baptism.
“The doctrine of original sin as taught by the olden Church,” says
Harnack, “was amended by Luther and made to agree with his own
principles,” but it was against his principles “to make of such
things articles of faith. His own sense of sin and the need he felt
of pacifying his conscience occupied in it so large a place that he
transformed what was in reality a piece of Christian self-judgment
into an historical fact of universal appliance concerning the
beginnings of the human race.” At any rate Luther’s exaggeration of
the impotence of fallen man served “as a ground of excuse for our own
guilt.”[1774]
As regards his doctrine of the Law and the Gospel; Luther hoped, by
contrasting it with the Gospel, to bring the Law into prominence. By
the Law he understood the sum-total of what was commanded not merely
in the Old but also in the New Testament; the teaching of the Gospel,
on the other hand, contained only consoling thoughts on the fulfilment
of the Law by Christ and the appropriation of Christ’s merits by
faith.[1775]
“Plain as it is,” says Harnack, “what Luther really desired by his
distinction between the Law and the Gospel, still, coming to details,
we find that the Reformer’s statements do not always agree. Thus it
is partly left to our own private judgment to select those utterances
which we consider more important; Luther himself nevertheless gives
the preference to certain ideas which _in perpetuum_ invest the Law
with a peculiar independent significance. Is it not, however, our
duty to depict the Reformer in accordance with his most original
ideas?”[1776]
Such an “original” idea is that of the abrogation of the Law for the
Christian who is really redeemed and who voluntarily and without
compulsion leaves faith to express itself in action. “Certainty of
the abrogation of the Law constitutes a certain demand which can be
met only in one way.” Luther carries the paradox so far as to say:
The Law is given to be broken. And yet ... Luther ever cherishes the
“assumption that the Law is the expression of God’s immutable will,
and, in this sense, has its own enduring sphere of action side by
side with the Gospel, as though the Will of God were not implicitly
contained in the latter. But this admission involved a place being
found for the Law even in Christianity.” Of this difficulty Luther was
perfectly conscious, but he was deft enough in circumventing it. “The
Law _qua lex_ is undoubtedly abrogated for the Christian; whoever
tries to act up to the Law must needs go to hell; but in God’s sight
it still holds good, i.e. God’s Will remains expressed therein and He
must watch over its fulfilment.” If the law is not fulfilled God must
demand penance.[1777]
In the question of penance we again see Luther assume an attitude which
is, as a matter of fact, subversive of his own doctrine. His ideas on
this point are so contradictory that Protestant writers on dogma have
not been able to agree in their accounts, and needless to say, still
less in their judgments.
Alfred Galley, one of the most recent writers on “Luther’s doctrine of
penance,” admits: “The various attempts made to solve the matter have
so far yielded no satisfactory result.”[1778] And yet for ten years
Lipsius, Herrmann and others had been carefully exploring this central
point of Luther’s practical theology. Galley’s own efforts, kindly
disposed as he is to Luther, and in spite of his mastery of the texts,
have not as yet rallied other theologians to his opinion.
Luther’s original doctrine of Penance, to which frequent allusion
has already been made, started, according to Loofs, (1906) with
the assumption that contrition is produced solely by the “love of
righteousness,” and that true penance “does not come from the Law,”
because the latter does nothing but “kill, curse, render guilty
and pronounce judgment”; penance produced by the Law led only to
hypocrisy. “Thus, before one has faith, to think of sin and of
the Law is harmful.” Luther, however, gradually acquiesced in the
modifications introduced by Melanchthon in favour of the Law and of
that sorrow which arises from the thought of the penalties. That
“Luther to a certain extent adopted Melanchthon’s ideas on penance
is still more apparent in the Antinomian controversy [1537-1540],”
yet the ideas of his opponent, Agricola, bore some “resemblance” to
“Luther’s earlier ideas” on Christian penance.[1779]
As for Harnack, he emphasises the confusion which arose in the
Lutheran theology owing to Luther’s illogical attitude towards so
eminently practical a question as the doctrine of penance; even during
Luther’s lifetime the doctrine of penance had been a real “labyrinth.”
“Here too,” says Harnack, “Luther himself took the lead, and then
quietly winked at what was contrary to his own early principles,
which, moreover, he had never retracted. That the mediaeval Catholic
view had its after effect on him ought not to be denied.” “He was
convinced that faith works penance, the ‘dying daily,’ which indeed is
but the negative side of faith,” and that “only such penance as comes
from faith [from the Gospel] is of value in God’s sight.... This is
certainly a view which may easily grow into its dreadful opposite,
viz. the comfortable presuming on salvation.... If people are told
that they must always be performing penance, and that particular acts
of penance are of no avail, few will ever have recourse to penance at
all.”[1780]
Hence, according to Harnack, Luther made a change in the doctrine of
penance and more importance was given to the Law; “for each separate
act of sin on the part of the baptised” satisfaction must be made, and
“Christ must intervene anew with His fulfilment of the Law.”[1781]
By this means, by the creative action of God, “faith” is constantly
revived in the man who has fallen, and God, as Luther now assumes,
works by means of the Law. In this wise, faith, however, becomes,
says Harnack, “a meritorious work,” seeing that it is the seal of our
reconciliation; moreover “personal responsibility and personal action
must play some part.”[1782] But how is man to do this, devoid as he is
of any freedom of the will?
Again, for all his alteration of his doctrine of penance Luther
failed to “attain the object he was after, viz. to check laxity
and frivolity. On the contrary, the new doctrine tended, in its
later developments, to promote and foster them.”[1783] Nor was much
gained, when, in order to promote penance and greater earnestness
of life the Law was “placed before the Gospel. This Melanchthon did
with Luther’s consent in the ‘Instructions for the Visitors.’[1784]
Occasion was taken at the same time to insist strongly on the use of
the confessional in order to check at least the worst sins.” “The
intervention of the clergyman, which was undoubtedly needed by the
‘common people,’” constituted merely “a Lutheran counterpart of the
Catholic sacrament of penance,” though, adds Harnack, “minus its
burdensome Romish additions.”[1785]
_Luther’s Doctrine of Justification and Good Works, as seen by
Protestant Critics_
According to Harnack, “the idea of justification,” the central point of
Luther’s teaching, “shrinks into a merely outward act of God’s designed
to quieten consciences. Here again the superiority of the Catholic
doctrine could not fail to appear; for to be content with the ‘_fides
sola_’ could not but involve a very questionable laxity. It would,
from this point of view, have been far better to have represented the
‘_fides caritate formata_’ as alone of any value in God’s sight.”[1786]
In his doctrine of justification by faith alone, Luther never got over
the weak point, viz. his exclusion of charity, at least a commencement
of which, together with faith, hope and repentance, had been required
by the olden Church as a preparation for justification. Some return
to the Catholic requirements was called for. “Hence it is not in the
least surprising, ... that Melanchthon at a later date abandoned the
‘_sola fides_’ and came to advocate a modified form of synergism. The
Luther-zealots were thrown into hopeless confusion by the necessity
in which they found themselves, of harmonizing the older Evangelical
theory with the doctrine of penance whilst avoiding the pitfall of
Melanchthon’s synergism.” They found themselves, so Harnack says, face
to face with two “_iustificationes_,” that by faith alone, and that
by law and penance, not to speak of a third, the “_iustificatio_” of
infants by the act of baptism. “These contradictions become still
further accentuated when the ‘_regeneratio_’ was taken into account,”
etc.[1787] It is not worth while to pursue any further Harnack’s
criticism which at times tends to become carping.
As regards the doctrine of good works, Protestant theology of late has
been disposed to take offence at Luther’s undue extension of freedom,
which seems to endanger good works and the zealous keeping of the Law.
It is the Christian’s art, so Loofs sums up Luther’s teaching, to
allow no thought of the Law to trouble his conscience, but simply to
regard Christ as the bearer of his sins. “Here the one-sided view of
the ‘Law,’ seen only from the standpoint of the need of acquiring
merit by works, has a disturbing effect”; such is Loofs’s opinion.
According to Luther such contempt for the Law is often impossible,
hence he determined to conquer the “dualism of the old-new man” of
which we like St. Paul (Gal. ii. 20) are conscious: I live, and
yet I do not; I am dead, and yet I am not; a sinner, and yet no
sinner; I have the Law and yet I have it not. We ought, according to
Luther, to say to ourselves: There is a time to die and a time to
live, a Law to be obeyed and a Law to be despised. “Even during the
Antinomian controversy,” concludes Loofs, “Luther did not abandon such
thoughts.”[1788]
Luther’s want of discrimination is most apparent, he says, in the
fact, that, owing to his “peculiar interest in the preaching of the
grace of God,” he depreciated works and the Law as the very fount of
self-righteousness.[1789]
Loofs rightly refers to a sermon in the Church-postils where Luther
inveighs against the “Papists, Anabaptists and other sects” who scream
against us: “What is the use of your preaching so much of faith and
Christ? What good does it do the people?”[1790] Luther could not in
fact “sufficiently decry the Law or urge too strongly that it was
useless to Christians.”[1791]
In the passage quoted Luther says of the exhortations to works and the
preaching of the Commandments: “This preaching does nothing else but
kill, i.e. far from being good or useful it is only harmful ... rank
poison and death.”
And he goes on: “All our works, however precious they may be, are
nothing but poison and death.... People may indeed boast loudly and
say: ‘If you live in this way, take pains to keep the Law and perform
many good works, you will be saved.’ But that these are only vain
words, nay, a harmful doctrine, will soon be apparent.”[1792] It
is not in man’s power to keep the Commandments by the performance
of the right and necessary works, hence he becomes troubled and
at last despairs if he strives after works. “The human race is so
depraved that no one can be found who does not transgress all God’s
commandments even though the wrath of God and his eternal damnation
be held up before him and preached to him daily; indeed if this is
impressed upon a man over much he only begins to rage against it more
horribly.”[1793] It is merely “reason with its human ideas” which
“cannot get beyond this, viz. that God is gracious to all who live in
this manner and do what the Ten Commandments require; for reason knows
nothing of the misery of our depraved nature, nor does it know that
no one is able to keep God’s command.” For this cause Luther had at
last brought to light and taught “that other doctrine in which grace
and reconciliation are proclaimed” to us according to the “spirit and
letter of St. Paul, whereas even the old doctors, Origen, Jerome and
others, had not grasped St. Paul’s meaning.”[1794]
In Popery “Scripture and St. Paul’s Epistles” were pushed under the
bench, and, instead, we wallowed in human foolishness like the swine
in their sties.[1795]
“Of what use is it to us that Moses and the Law say: This shalt thou
do, this would God have of thee? Yes, good Moses, I know this well
and it is indeed quite true. But do you tell me how it is that,
unfortunately, I neither keep it nor am able to keep it? It is no easy
thing to spend money with an empty purse or to drink out of an empty
can; if I am to pay my debts and to quench my thirst, then please
tell me how I may come by a full purse and a brimming can. To this the
babblers have no answer,” etc.[1796]
And yet the Catholic writers whom he dubs babblers, Erasmus and Eck
for instance, had demonstrated from Scripture and tradition that
first, man is by no means so helpless and depraved as Luther assumes,
and, secondly, that the grace of God is at his disposal every moment
in order, by supernatural assistance, to enable his natural powers to
keep the Law. While pointing this out they appeal at the same time to
those passages of Scripture which spur us on to good works, and even
make our heavenly reward dependent on them.
Of these latter passages Loofs also asks: “In reality are not those
alone saved who, besides their faith, can point to good works or at
least to their fulfilment of the first Commandment? Does not Scripture
over and over again speak of our being judged according to our works,
and of the eternal _reward_?” Luther, however, so he remarks, got over
the difficulty “by assuming, that, in such passages, faith is meant
even when they speak of good works”; Luther actually finds a parallel
in the “rule of the ‘_communicatio idiomatum_’” which deals with the
Divine attributes of Christ made man.[1797]
Another attempt to evade the difficulty, so Loofs declares, is found
in Luther’s statement regarding the reward promised in the Bible to
the just for their works. He argued that there must be some difference
between the saved in their “degree of brightness and glory,” and thus,
“_accidentaliter_,” he makes some account of the reward.[1798] Loofs,
however, also draws attention to the fact that in the same sermons on
Matthew, when touching cursorily on this, Luther “pokes fun at the
idea of God setting some ‘particular Saint’ in a topmost place in
heaven, and inveighs against the traditional idea of the ‘_præmium
accidentale_.’”[1799] This is quite true, for Luther’s statements
do not agree even here. In the passage quoted he is explaining his
doctrine according to which, in this world, all the justified are
equal in sanctity, the sinner who has just been converted being
as pleasing to God as the Apostles. “For were St. Peter a better
Christian than I am, he would have to have a better Christ, a better
Gospel and a better baptism. But, seeing that the heritage we enjoy is
one and the same, we must all be equal in this.”[1800]
There are few sayings of Luther’s where the wholly mechanical nature
of the forgiveness and sanctification taught by him, stands out more
clearly.
That, in spite of all this, he does not exclude works, is sufficiently
remarkable. In the very passage where Luther brings forward the
objection of the Papists and Anabaptists: It must be _done_, i.e.
good works, must be performed, he hastens to reply: “We have the Ten
Commandments which we teach and keep as well as they”;[1801] the only
difference was, that, he by his Evangelical preaching taught how the
Commandments were really to be honoured.
Loofs can even say that Luther proclaims the need of good works. He
quotes the following utterances, for instance, from Luther’s later
years: “_Opera habent suam necessitatem_”; “they, too, must be
there”; “On account of the hypocrites we must say that good works
are requisite for salvation (‘_necessaria ad salutem_’),”[1802] “he
did not shrink from speaking in this way when giving counsel.”[1803]
It is quite true, that, when preaching to the people, mindful of
their faults and vices, he is fond, as Loofs shows, of recalling
how Christ says “drily and clearly”: “If thou wilt enter into life,
keep the commandments [Mt. xix. 17]; item, Do this and thou shalt
live, etc. [Luke x. 28]. This must be taken as it stands and without
debate.”[1804] Hence Luther even calls those folk “mad” who say:
“‘Only believe and you will be saved.’ No, good fellow, that will not
do, and you will never get to the kingdom of heaven unless you keep
the Commandments.... For it is written plainly enough: ‘If thou wilt
enter into life, keep the commandments.’”[1805] And Luther supports
this text by others which speak of works, of their merit and demerit,
their reward and punishment.[1806]
And yet immediately after he goes on to complain: “How are we to do
what the Law perpetually urges and requires, seeing that we are unable
to comply with its demands?”[1807]
Finally he reaches his usual answer: “I will do it, says Christ, and
fulfil it”; first of all He again and again obtains forgiveness for
us, “seeing that we are unable to keep the Law”; Christ, however,
did not wish us “to continue sinning”; on the contrary, the grace He
infuses makes us keep the Law “willingly and gladly”; good works,
more particularly those of charity towards our neighbour, spring
up of themselves after “we have crept beneath Christ’s mantle and
wing.”[1808] Where faith is present “it cannot but work unceasingly
what is good. It does not ask whether there be a call to do good
works, but even before the question is put it has already done them,
and is ever after doing them.”[1809] Those Christians—presumably the
majority—who fail to find themselves in such a state receive but poor
consolation: “Whoever does not perform such works is an unbelieving
man, who gropes and looks about for faith and good works but knows
neither the one nor the other.”[1810]
Luther did not see that he was endangering both faith and works and
undermining their very foundations.
For, as his opponents objected, the last category of Christians,
however careless they might be in the matter of good works, and
however much they might fail to keep the Commandments, could,
nevertheless, for the most part, at least boast of having the faith,
whether regarded in the light of a “loving confidence in God’s grace”
or in the more usual and ordinary sense of an acceptance of the divine
revelation as true. Their faith, it was urged, was according to Luther
at the outset very closely in touch with sin, indeed they had been
justified by faith without either repentance or change of heart,
faith having merely spread a cloak over their evil deeds; and yet now
here was Luther telling them that they had lost the faith unless they
lived by it, or if they transgressed the Commandments even by a venial
sin—for Luther sees no distinction between mortal sin and venial.
Loofs is certainly not overstating things when he says that, “Luther
was not clear in his own mind”[1811] as to his doctrine on the great
questions of works and the Law, and that his “opinion comprised much
that did not tally.”[1812]
Loofs adds: “How far Luther himself was aware that much of what he said
voiced merely his own personal opinion it would be hard to tell....
Without his wealth of ideas and his ability to insist now on one, now
on another side of a subject Luther would not have been so successful
as a reformer. But he was hampered by his own qualities so soon as it
became a question of putting his new views in didactic form.”[1813]
Loofs, like Harnack, spares no praise when speaking of Luther’s
“qualities” and the “happy intuition” which enabled him to overthrow
the olden order and to call into being a new, “religious,”
Christianity.
_Luther’s Doctrine of Merit in the Eyes of Protestant Critics_
One such “happy intuition” Loofs sees in the fact, that, in the
question of works and merit Luther “clearly perceived and got the
better of the opinion, untenable in religion, that a scale of merit
exists as between God and man.”[1814] The critic abstains from
discussing the Catholic teaching on supernatural merit. Its earlier
no less than its later defenders rightly emphasised, in opposition to
Luther, that the olden doctrine of merit rested on the express promise
of God to reward faithful service, and not, as Luther insinuated, on
any absolute right of the works in themselves to such reward. The act
which was to meet with such a reward must, they said, be not only good
in itself but also supernaturally good, i.e. it must be performed by
man’s powers aided by supernatural grace; even this, however, would not
suffice were there not the gracious promise on God’s part, guaranteed
by revelation, that such an act would be requited by a heavenly reward.
Yet this was not to deny a certain “_condignitas in actu primo_”
inherent in the act itself.
Luther, it is true, laughs to scorn the Popish doctrine of merit
which makes God Himself our debtor. Yet long before St. Augustine had
answered the objection: “God has become our debtor, not as though
He has received something from us, but because He has promised what
pleased Him. It is a different thing when we say to a man: You are my
debtor because I have given you something, and when we say to God:
Give us what Thou hast promised, for we have done what Thou didst
command.”[1815]
In the fragments of the ancient doctrine of religious morality which
Luther saw fit to retain he put germs of disintegration owing to his
failure to recognise the above truth. Because he would hear nothing
of merit and everywhere scented righteousness-by-works, he built up
a theory of good works which lacks a foundation. In the last resort
everything is coloured by his dread of self-righteousness and of any
human co-operation. “The ‘Law,’ to Luther, seemed conditioned by
that ‘_condicio meriti_,’” says Loofs, “which belonged to the Law
of Moses, and, which, owing to the craving of the natural man for
self-righteousness, also becomes part of the natural law.”[1816]
So strongly does Luther denounce merit and self-righteousness that he
practically does away with his own doctrine of works.
First, his denial of free-will and the absolute determinism of his
doctrine makes an end of all spontaneous, meritorious action on man’s
part. Further, he is untrue to his position, repudiating it in his
sermons and popular writings as far as possible, and replacing it
by one morally more defensible. In later years we find him casting
over his own teaching even in his theological disputations; in his
anxiety to counter the Antinomians, he goes so far as to declare works
necessary for salvation.
Even earlier the fanatics and Anabaptists had helped to some extent in
the work of demolition. Their conclusions as to the dangers of Luther’s
system and their protests against its evil moral consequences are
really much more vigorous and damaging than might appear from Luther’s
bitter rejoinders. “The unjust attitude of the reformers towards the
‘fanatics,’” says Harnack, “was disastrous to themselves and their
cause. How much might they not have learnt from these despised people
even though obliged to repudiate their principles.”[1817]
The work of demolition was, moreover, being carried out under Luther’s
very eye by Philip Melanchthon and his friends. Luther’s doctrine,
as has already been pointed out, was not at all to the taste of the
dialectician of Lutheranism. “The Philippists,” says Loofs, “were
very far from holding Luther’s own views,” “as far removed as” the
Antinomians. Luther himself, however, “was partly to blame for the
confusion.” From the standpoint adopted by Melanchthon “it was
impossible to comply” with Luther’s demand for a clear “distinction
to be made between Law and Gospel”;[1818] yet, according to Luther,
this was one of “the things on which theology hinges.”[1819] According
to Loofs, Melanchthon’s theology was a means of spoiling some
“valuable reformation truths,” nay, “the most priceless of Luther’s
new ideas.”[1820] As for Melanchthon’s allegation, viz. that he had
merely put Luther’s doctrine more mildly, Loofs says bluntly: “If he
meant this, then he deceived himself.”[1821] As to the points under
discussion, Luther not only thought differently from Melanchthon at an
earlier date, but persisted in so doing till his very death. Luther,
nevertheless, never expressed any disapproval of Melanchthon’s ideas,
widely as they differed from his own.
_Luther’s teaching on the Sacraments and on the Supper according to
Protestant Teaching_
In Harnack’s opinion Luther, by his teaching on the one sacrament,
viz. the Word, “destroyed the olden ecclesiastical view. Yet he
unconsciously retained a certain remnant ... which had fatal results on
the development of his doctrine. Though here again we find truth and
error side by side in Luther, we may not shut our eyes to the fact that
he opened the door to errors of a grave character.”[1822]
The principal error in his doctrine of the sacraments consisted,
according to Harnack, in his having made his own a reminiscence of
the Catholic view. Instead of teaching that the Holy Ghost acts
by the Word alone, he came, as his statements subsequent to 1525
show, to regard this Spirit as operating by the “Word _and_ the
Sacraments.”[1823]
“In his teaching on the sacraments he forsook the attitude he had once
adopted as a reformer and accepted views which tended to confuse his
own doctrine of faith and still more the theology of his followers. In
his efforts to thwart the fanatics he came to embrace ... some highly
questionable propositions.... This relapse in his views on the means
of grace wrought untold damage to Lutheranism.”[1824] Here his desire
to get the better of the fanatics played a part, and so did likewise
the psychological starting-point of his whole teaching. He reverted
to the means of grace, “because he wished to provide real consolation
for troubled consciences, and to preserve them from the hell of
uncertainty concerning that state of grace of which the fanatics
appeared to make so small account.... It was, however, not merely
by his rejection of certain definite acts as means of grace that
Luther returned to the narrow views of the Middle Ages which he had
previously forsaken—the spirit lives not (as Luther knew better than
any other man), thanks to any means of grace, but thanks rather to
that close union with its God on Whom it lays hold through Christ—he
did so still more by seeking, first, to vindicate Infant Baptism as
a means of grace in the strict sense; secondly, by accepting Penance
as at least a preparation for grace, and, thirdly, by maintaining
that the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Supper
constitutes the essential part of this sacrament.”[1825] It is true
he “never ceased to maintain that the means of grace were nothing
but the Word whereby faith is awakened,” but, in spite of this, the
“_opus operatum_” of the olden Church “had again made its appearance
and weakened or obscured the strict relations between Gospel and
faith.”[1826]
Of Infant Baptism in Luther’s system Harnack rightly says: “If
Luther’s Evangelical theory holds good, viz. that grace and faith
are inseparably linked,[1827] then Infant Baptism is in itself no
sacrament, and can be no more than an ecclesiastical rite; if it is a
sacrament in the strict sense, then evidently his theory is at fault.
We cannot escape the dilemma, either by appealing to the faith of the
parents or god-parents [as Luther, to begin with, did]—for this is
the worst kind of the ‘_fides implicita_’—or by assuming that faith
is given in baptism,[1828] for an unconscious faith is almost as bad
as that other ‘_fides implicita_.’ Hence the proper thing for Luther
to have done would have been either to abolish Infant Baptism ... or
to admit that it was a mere rite to be completed later.... Luther,
however, did neither; on the contrary, he retained Infant Baptism
as the sacrament of regeneration and accepted as an efficacious act
what should, given his theory, have at most been a symbol of God’s
preventing grace. This was, however much he might deny it, to hark
back to the ‘_opus operatum_’ and to dissolve the link between faith
and the working of grace.”[1829]
Again, according to Harnack, the mould in which Luther cast his
doctrine of the Supper once more involved him in contradictions which
rendered his position untenable.
On the one hand, by so strenuously insisting on the belief in the
Real Presence as a binding doctrinal formula he was untrue to his own
theory that doctrine was not to be formulated; on the other hand, his
restatement of the doctrine of the Supper emptied it of all content.
It was “in part the fault of his formulating of the faith that the
later Lutheran Church, with its Christology, its teaching on the
Sacrament ... and the false standard by which it judged divergent
doctrines and pronounced them heretical, threatened for a while to
become a sort of caricature of the Catholic Church.”[1830]
Harnack notes how Luther, the better to reach the real meaning of the
words “This is My Body,” actually called tradition to his aid, in his
case an extremely illogical thing to do. His consciousness that in
holding fast to the Real Presence he was backed by the whole Church
of yore lends his words unusual power. “Even were a hundred thousand
devils and all the fanatics to fall upon it, still the doctrine must
stand firm.”[1831] We may add, that, with regard to this sacrament,
Luther outdid his adversaries in his attachment to tradition and
antiquity, reintroducing communion under both kinds as being alone in
strict accord with Scripture.
There was also much that was personal and arbitrary in the doctrine of
the Sacrament of the Altar as shaped anew and established by Luther.
For one thing, he dwelt far too exclusively on this sacrament being
the pledge of the forgiveness of sins. Again, in his desire to counter
Zwingli, he put forward theories on the sacrament, which embody all
sorts of disadvantages and contradictions not to be found in the
teaching of the earlier Church. He, indeed, denied Transubstantiation,
but the “Swiss could not for the life of them see why he did, since he
admits that a stupendous miracle takes place in the Supper.”[1832]
For the Church’s ancient doctrine of Transubstantiation he substituted
Impanation, and even this he admitted only in the actual celebration
and reception.[1833] “The awkward part was,” says Harnack, “that,
according to Luther, the Body and Blood of Christ were present in
the Supper only for the purpose of reception, though they might
be partaken of even by an unbeliever or a heathen.”[1834] The
concomitance (presence of both Body and Blood under either kind)
taught by the olden Church, which, indeed, was a natural corollary
of the Real Presence, he set aside, urged thereto by his theory that
in Communion both kinds must be received; the only result was to
introduce a new and uncalled-for miracle. To this must be added what
Harnack calls the “crazy speculations on the ubiquity of the Body
of Christ,”[1835] which furnished Melanchthon his principal reason
for giving up Luther’s doctrine of the Supper, and, like Zwingli and
Bucer, denying the Real Presence. According to Luther, the ubiquity of
the Body of Christ rested on the supposed “real communication of the
Divine ‘_idiomata_’ (and consequently of the Divine omnipresence) to
the humanity of Christ.”[1836]
Nor does the Real Presence, according to Luther, begin at the
consecration; as to when it does, he leaves the faithful in the dark;
nor does he enlighten them as to when it ceases in the remains left
over after communion; in the latter regard his practice was full of
contradictions.—In allowing communion to be carried to the sick in
their own houses he was again unfaithful to his tenets.[1837] To any
processions of the sacrament he was averse, because Christ was only
present at the time of reception.
He proposed, as the better plan, that the sacrament should not be
adored save by bending the knee when receiving it, and yet his own
behaviour did not tally with his proposal.[1838] It was enacted at
Wittenberg, in 1542, that there should be no elevation, and yet Luther
had retained this rite at an earlier date, in order to defy Carlstadt,
as he says, and so as not to seem in this “indifferent matter” to
sanction by his attitude Carlstadt’s attack on the sacrament.[1839] He
was, to say the least, verbally illogical when he termed the Eucharist
the “_sacrificium eucharisticum_,” meaning of course thereby that it
was a “thank-offering” on the part of the faithful.
It is not surprising that belief in the Real Presence, though so
strongly defended by Luther, gradually evaporated in his Church
largely owing to the inconsistencies just noticed. Eventually the
Lutherans made their own the views of Zwingli and Melanchthon on
the sacrament, though they retained an affection for certain vague
and elastic terms concerning the reception of the Body and Blood of
Christ.[1840] Luther spoke of the attempts to introduce Zwingli’s
rationalistic doctrine of the sacrament at Frankfurt-on-the-Main as “a
diabolical jugglery with the words of Christ,” “whereby simple souls
are shamefully duped and robbed of their sacrament.” The thing was
“handled in such a way that no one was certain what was meant or what
to believe.”[1841]
_Luther’s views on the Church and on Divine Worship according to
Protestant Criticism_
A mass of inconsequence lies in the doctrine on the Church, which he is
supposed to have retained, though, as a matter of fact, he completely
altered it. Thanks to his conception of the Church as a practically
invisible body his view of it was so broad as to leave far behind the
old, Catholic idea; nevertheless, by and by his conception of the
Church grew so narrow, that, as Harnack justly remarks, “in comparison,
even the Roman view of it seems in many respects more elastic and
consequently superior.... The Church threatened to become a mere
school, viz. the school of ‘pure [Wittenberg] doctrine.’” In this way
arose “the Christianity of the theologians and pastors.... Luther on
his own side repeatedly broke away from this view.”[1842] It is quite
true that many contradictions are here apparent, as we shall have
occasion to see later (vol. vi., xxxviii.). “His idea of the Church
became obscured. The conception of the Church (communion of faith and
communion of pure doctrine) became as ambiguous as the conception of
the ‘_doctrina evangelii_.’”
Then, with regard to his teaching on public worship. Though, as
remarked above (p. 147 f.), he had in principle abandoned the view held
by the olden Church regarding the necessity of external worship, and
had robbed it of its focus, viz. the Sacrifice of the Altar, yet he was
very far from logically following this out in practice.
His standpoint, according to Harnack, was originally this: “If it is
certain that man may not, and indeed cannot do anything for God’s
sake, if the very idea of moving God by our works is the death of
true piety, if the whole relationship between God and man depends on
a believing disposition, i.e. on unshakable trust in Him, humility
and constant prayer, if lastly no ceremony has any worth, then
there can be no ‘Divine Service’ in the true sense of the term. The
only direct service of God there is, is faith, otherwise the rule
that obtains everywhere is that we serve God by charity towards our
neighbour.”[1843]
Very soon, however, we find that in practice Luther reverts to some
sort of common worship for the sake of the “common man,” who requires
to hear the Word, to assist at public prayers, and who must also
have some kind of liturgy. At times Luther seems to speak of public
worship as merely a “school for the imperfect,” and, occasionally, he
may really have meant it (above, p. 149 f.). By reforming the Mass
and by the other directions he gave concerning public worship, scanty
and faltering though they be, he introduced a practice which is at
variance with his principles. “The seemingly conservative attitude he
adopted in his emendation of the Missal, and his refusal to undertake
a thorough reconstruction of divine worship led to many ‘Lutherans’
in the 16th, and again in the 19th century, entertaining questionable
views on the specific religious value of public worship, its object
and its practice. How very unlike Luther this is—seeing that Luther
here can, and must, be corrected in his own light—and what a vast
difference exists between the Evangelical and the Catholic doctrine
of divine worship.”[1844] Harnack appeals to Gottschick’s “Luthers
Anschauungen vom christlichen Gottesdienst” (1887), as clearly
demonstrating this. According to Gottschick the old Lutheran liturgy
is not “even relatively a genuine product of the real spirit of the
Reformation.” In this theologian’s opinion, Luther “really adopted the
Roman Mass, contenting himself with a few alterations.” Gottschick
urges that an attempt should be made to construct “an entirely new
edifice on the basis of the principles embodied in Luther’s reforming
views,” etc.[1845]
Gottschick is also right when he points out, that Luther “took
but little interest in liturgy.”[1846] He was, however, set on
bringing the people into the new faith and Church with the utmost
circumspection and with as little fuss as possible. It is not
necessary to recall here how successful was his policy of retaining
the external forms, particularly on the unschooled masses who were
unable to see below the surface. (Cp. vol. ii., p. 319 ff.)
Luther declared that he himself, “with a few friends, really
constituted the ancient Church”—“a remarkable point of view,” says
Harnack, “explicable only by the idealism of his faith.”[1847]
This enabled him, so Harnack continues, “to abandon and assail the
Catholic Church, and nevertheless all the while to protest that he
stood with the olden Church. Though in assuming this attitude his
faith was so strong that it mattered nothing to him how great or how
small was the number of those who refused to bend the knee to Baal,
yet it was of the greatest interest to him to show that he was a true
member of that Church which had existed through the ages. Hence, he was
compelled to prove the historical continuity of his position. But how
could this be proved more surely than by means of the old creeds of the
ancient Church still in force?”[1848]
Here, again, we are confronted by the contradiction which runs through
the whole of Luther’s theology.
Even the very Creeds he had undermined by that subjectivism which he
had exalted into a principle. Every Creed must submit to being tested
by the Word of God, either by Luther himself or by any other man who
considered himself equal to the task. Furthermore, the Word of God
is subservient to the Canon set up by Luther or any other Christian
scholar, and its sense may be determined by any Christian sufficiently
enlightened to understand it. This was to open up the road to a
Christianity minus any creed or dogma.
Luther’s claims, whether to represent the olden Church or to have
furnished a better and firmer basis for the future, have never been
more vigorously questioned by any Protestant theologian of modern days
than by Adolf Harnack.
If we sum up in Harnack’s words the results of modern Protestant
criticism exercised on Luther’s teaching, we find that they do not in
the least countenance the obsolete view of some of Luther’s latest
admirers, viz. that he preserved what was good and “wholesome” of
the existing dogmas and merely added “one, or two supplementary
doctrines.”[1849] Even to-day we still hear it said that his belief
and the “ancient dogma” were really “in complete harmony”; people, in
support of this statement, appeal to what might naturally be considered
the best witness, viz. to Luther himself, who was quite of this
opinion. But when the defenders of this view begin to speak of Luther’s
“alteration” of dogma and of his having “reconstructed” it, then,
says Harnack, it becomes “hard to tell what the words are intended to
convey,” in any case, it is an admission that “Luther’s conception of
faith in some way or other modified the whole of dogma.”[1850]
It would be more correct, according to Harnack, to say, that
“Luther overthrew the whole doctrine of the olden and mediæval
Church, retaining only a few fragments.”[1851] His own “attitude of
mind towards ancient dogma” was not “altogether consistent.” His
“Christianity” is, as a matter of fact, “no longer inwardly bound up”
with ancient dogma; his “conception of faith, i.e. what admittedly
constituted his main contribution,” stands in no need of the olden
doctrinal baggage.[1852] “In Luther’s Reformation the old, dogmatic
Christianity was set aside and replaced by a new, Evangelical
conception. The Reformation is really [for Harnack’s Protestantism]
the end of the history of dogma.... If Luther agrees with this or that
definition of the ancient or mediæval Church, the agreement, seen
from this standpoint, is partly only apparent, partly a coincidence
which can never be the result of any _a priori_ submission to
tradition.”[1853]
“So far as Luther left a ‘Theology’ to his followers it appears as
an extremely complicated affair.... He did not therein give its
final expression to Evangelical Christianity, but merely inaugurated
it.”[1854] A philosopher may, at a pinch, find the dogmas of the
Greek Church wise and profound, but no philosopher could possibly
find any savour in Luther’s faith. Luther himself was not aware of
the chasm that separated him from the ancient dogma, partly because
he interpreted it in his own sense, partly because he retained some
vestige of respect for the definitions of the Councils, partly, too,
because he was only too pleased to be able to confront the Turks,
heathen, Jews and fanatics with something definite, assured, exalted
and incomprehensible.[1855]
We may well make Harnack’s concluding words our own: “It has been shown
that the scraps of the olden belief which he retained do not tally with
his views as a whole.... The whole does not merely rise above this or
that dogma, but above all dogmatic Christianity in general,”[1856] i.e.
the doctrines of the Christian faith are no longer binding.
2. Luther as a Popular Religious Writer. The Catechism
During the last years of his life Luther was able to put the last touch
to his literary labours by undertaking a new revision of some of his
more important earlier works, and by assisting in the compilation of
complete editions of his writings.
Thanks partly to his own literary labours, partly to the help and
support of friends and pupils, he succeeded in gathering together those
works which he desired to see handed down to posterity.
In 1541 and 1545 Luther’s German translation of the Bible also
received its finishing touch, and a new, amended edition was brought
out, which, though slightly altered, still serves the Protestant
congregations to-day. Moreover, the sermons of the Postils were
revised afresh in order to furnish reading matter for the people and
to help the preachers. In 1540 he himself published the first part
of the Church-Postils (the winter term) and, in 1543, appeared the
second portion, previously revised by Cruciger.[1857] The Home-Postils
appeared for the first time in 1544, edited by Veit Dietrich. At the
same time a beginning was made with the complete editions of his
literary works, the first volume of the German edition appearing in
1539 and the first volume of the Latin edition in 1545.
_His Collected Works; his New Edition of the Church-Postils_
Luther’s German writings were collected by Cruciger and Rörer and
printed at Wittenberg. The second volume was published only in 1548,
after Luther’s death. The compilation of the Latin writings was carried
out with the aid of various friends, for instance, of Spalatin and
Rörer, and also first saw the light at Wittenberg. Both these editions
were eagerly sought after by the booksellers and a great sale was
anticipated.
In the introductions which Luther prefixed to both collections he
not only followed the then universal fashion of seeking to make
a favourable impression on the reader by an extravagant display
of humility, but also gave free play to his love for grotesque
exaggerations. He had no intention of writing any “Retractations,”
as St. Augustine had done, however much such might be called for.
Instead of this he professes to repudiate his books wholesale—though
only, of course, to bring them forward again all the more vigorously.
Whoever is familiar with Luther’s ways will not need to be told how to
interpret and appreciate what he here says. There is no doubt, however,
that countless readers of these introductions fell into the trap and
exclaimed: How great and yet how humble is the man who speaks in these
pages!
Luther begins the prefaces to his German works[1858] with the wish,
which we have heard him express before: “Gladly would I see all my
books unwritten or destroyed.”[1859] Why? “That Holy Scripture might
be read and studied the more,” that Word of God, “which so long lay
forgotten under the bench.” Because, in the Church, “many books and
large libraries” had been collected “apart from and in addition to
Scripture,” and “without any discrimination,” the “true understanding
of the Divine Word had at last been lost.” At any rate it was “good
and profitable that the writings of some of the Fathers and Councils
had remained as witnesses and histories.” I myself, he says, “may
venture to boast without pride or lying that I do not fall far short
of some of the Fathers in the matter of the making of books; my life,
however, I would not dare to liken to theirs.” It is, however, his
books that “provide the ‘pure knowledge’ of the Word.” Nevertheless,
he seeks comfort in the thought, “that, in time, my books, too, will
lie dusty and forgotten,” “particularly now that it has begun to rain
and hail books.” But whoever reads them, “let him see well to it that
they do not prove a hindrance to his studying Scripture itself.”
He then goes on to give some quite excellent directions as to how best
to study Holy Scripture. He himself had pursued this method, and were
the reader too to make it his own he would be able, “if necessary, to
compose as good books as the Fathers and the Councils.”
In the first place you must “altogether renounce your own judgment and
reason,” and rather beg God “humbly and earnestly to ... enlighten
you”; but if anyone “falls on it with his reason” ... then the result
is only a new crop of fanatics. Secondly, he recommends that the text
of the Bible, i.e. “the literal words of the book, should be ever
studied, read and re-read with diligent attention and reflection as
to what the Holy Ghost means thereby.” Thirdly, temptations: “As soon
as the Word of God is being made known to you, the devil will attack
you, make a real doctor of you, and, by his temptations, teach you to
seek and love God’s Word.” He, too, had to thank his Papists and the
raging of the devil at their bidding for having made him “a pretty
fair theologian.” Hence “_oratio, meditatio, tentatio_.”
But if anyone seeks to win praise by writing books, then let him pull
his own ears and he will find “a fine long pair of big rough donkey’s
ears”; these he may adorn with golden bells so that everyone may
point at him and say: “There goes the elegant animal who writes such
precious books.” No, so he concludes his preface, “in this book all
the praise is God’s.”
In the preface to the first volume of his Latin works Luther seeks, not
so much to enhance his knowledge of Scripture as he does in the German
preface, but rather to explain in his own way how he was led to take up
the position he did.
He represents the indulgence controversy as the sole cause of his
breach with Catholicism and does so in language in which readers,
unacquainted with the real state of the case, would detect simply a
defence of his struggle against the “fury and wrath of Satan.” Of the
real motive of the struggle, viz. his rupture with the doctrines of
the Church even previous to the Leipzig Disputation, or, indeed, to
the Theses against Tetzel, he says never a word. On the other hand,
he launches out into a dissertation on his Popish views at that time,
which he urges had been deeper and more ingrained than those of Eck
and all his opponents, and, which, unfortunately, had disfigured his
earliest writings. He had been terribly afraid of the Last Judgment
but at the same time had longed ardently to be eternally saved. God
knew that it was only by the merest chance that he had been drawn
into public controversy (“_casu, non voluntate nec studio_”). Only
when beginning his second exposition of the Psalms (1518-19) had the
knowledge dawned upon him of that “Justice of God,” whereby we are
justified; before this he had hated the term “Justice of God.”[1860]
He is at great pains to impress on the reader that he had “gradually
advanced, thanks to much writing and teaching,” and was not one of
those, “who [like the fanatics], from nothing, become all at once the
greatest of men ... without labour, or temptations, or experience.”
No great stress need be laid on the statement he again makes at the
commencement of this preface, viz. that he would fain see all his
books “buried in oblivion,” and that only the urgent entreaties of
friends had won his consent to their bringing out a complete edition
of his “muddled books.”
In the evening of his life Luther could look back with a certain
satisfaction on the numerous popular works he had composed for the
instruction and edification of the masses and the “simple,” and on the
success with which they had been crowned. Again and again his fondness
for thus instructing the populace had drawn him into this sphere of
work; he had always striven with great perseverance and patience to
better, both as to their language and their matter, the little tracts
he composed. How highly he valued such works of instruction we can see
from the writings which appeared from time to time as precursors of
his Catechisms. They show how diligent he was in dealing with popular
religious subjects.
He himself bears witness to his laborious literary labours and their
results in the preface to his Church-Postils of 1543.[1861] Conscious
of what he had achieved he there quotes the passage where St. Paul says
that the faithful were “enriched in all things, in all knowledge and
understanding,” etc. (1 Cor. i. 5). “In the same way we may say to our
Germans that God has richly given us His Word in the German tongue....
For what more can we have or desire?” He points to the catechism which
he has preached “clearly and with power,” to his exposition of the
Commandments, of the Our Father and the Creed; in his writings they
would find explained “Holy Baptism, the Sacrament of the Body and
Blood of our Lord, the keys, the ban, and absolution. We have been
instructed definitely how each one is to understand his own state and
calling and behave himself; whether he be a cleric or a layman, or
of high or low estate. We know what conjugal life is, what widowhood
and maidenhood, and how we are to live and act therein in a Christian
manner.”—Although the people were already sufficiently instructed
on these points, and though Luther’s teaching in so far as it was
something new cannot meet with our approval, yet it must be admitted
that in his writings for the people Luther treated of these things,
according to his light, in language both popular and forcible.
Herewith, so he says in the same preface, you receive from my friend
Cruciger the Church-Postils amended and enlarged, with its “lucid and
amusing” explanations of the Gospel-lessons. Just as a mother pulps the
food for her baby, so the Epistles and Gospels of the year have been
pulped for you. As now they had already in print a corrected edition
of the lives of the Saints, a German version of the Psalter and, in
particular, the whole Bible in “good German,” the preachers should be
better able to teach the people how to be saved. “We have done our part
faithfully and in full measure; let us therefore be for ever thankful
to God, the Father of all mercies.” Luther’s allusion to his Postils as
being “lucid and amusing,” and to the “good German” of his translation
of the Bible, are perfectly justified.
* * * * *
Luther, in 1527, spoke of his Church-Postils as the “best book I ever
wrote ... which, indeed, pleases even the Papists.”[1862] It is obvious
that he bestowed this praise upon it in view of its positive contents.
It is true that, some eight or nine years later, he declared with his
customary exaggeration, he wished the “whole of this book could be
blotted out”; this was, however, at a time when he was already planning
a new edition to be undertaken by Cruciger, “which might be useful to
the whole Church.”[1863] The work, however, even in its first dress,
undoubtedly contained much that was good.
_Good Points and Shortcomings of Luther’s Popular Works_
Not only is the number of popular writings Luther composed surprising,
but they are distinguished by the energy and originality of their
style, and, in many passages where no fault is to be found with what
he says, his instructions and exhortations are admittedly seasoned
with much that is truly thoughtful and edifying. In spite of all the
admixture of falsehood to the ancient treasure of doctrine a certain
current of believing Christianity flows through these popular writings
and contrasts agreeably with both the more or less infidel literature
of recent times and the shallow religious productions of an earlier
date.
The mediæval language, feelings and world of thought, all so instinct
with faith and piety, find a splendid exponent in Luther as soon as,
putting controversy aside, he seeks to seize the hearts of the people;
such passages even make the reader ask whether the author can really
be one and the same with the writer who elsewhere fulminates with
such revolting malice against the Church of the past. Then, again,
the plentiful quotations from the Bible in which he was so much at
home, impart a devout tone to what he says without, however, in the
least rendering it insipid or unnatural. From the latter fault he was
preserved by a certain soberness of outlook, by his native realistic
coarseness and his general tendency to be rude rather than sentimental.
Nor would it by any means be right were Luther’s opponents to
attribute the above favourable traits in his writings exclusively to
the influence of the Catholic past. It is true that it is the latter
which is mainly responsible for the elements of truth found in his
writings, and also, not seldom, for the attractive and sympathetic way
in which he presents his matter to the reader; but to deny that the
author’s peculiar talent for speaking to the people and his rare gift
of adapting himself to his German readers had also its share, would
be to go too far. Luther, who hailed from among the lower class and
had ever been in touch with it, knew the German character as well as
any man (see vol. iii., p. 93 ff.). In his style he embodied to some
extent the nation’s mode of thought and speech. Hence his success
with the Germans, whom he drew by the strongest ties, viz. those of
nationalism, into circles where the motherly warnings of the Church
were no longer heard.
We are, however, unable to discern in his writings the mystical
qualities which some of his admirers find everywhere. Echoes of the
sayings of the olden mystics, such as we have had occasion to quote
from his earlier works, obviously do not suffice to prove his own
mystic gifts. Moreover, these echoes tend to become feebler as time
goes on, and the nearer his literary labours draw to their close the
less can they be considered to bear the character of true mystical
productions. Certain leanings met with in Luther at the beginning, and
even later, we have already had to characterise as the outcome of an
untheological pseudo-mysticism.[1864]
In his Exposition of the Magnificat (1521), for instance, we meet with
trains of thought expressed in words which by their beauty recall
those of the mystics of old. One cannot read without being edified
what he says at the commencement of this little work, of the love of
God which makes “the heart overflow with joy,”[1865] or of the glories
of Mary; of her, nothing greater can be said than that she was the
Mother of God, “even had one as many tongues as there are leaves on
the trees, blades of grass in the field, stars in heaven, or grains of
sand on the sea-shore.”[1866]—Akin to this is the touching conclusion
of his little writing on the Our Father, where he pictures the soul as
pouring forth its desires to God the Father.[1867] Such jewels are,
however, not offered to his readers as frequently as his talent in
this respect would have rendered desirable.
To what good account he put this gift in his earlier years is well
seen even in his controversial “Von der Freyheyt eynes Christen
Menschen” (1520), where he is at pains to expound the sum of the
Christian life, though “only for the plain man.” Our present subject
invites us to return once more to this side of the writing.[1868]
Of works of charity Luther there speaks as follows: “The inward man is
at one with God, is joyful and merry by reason of Christ Who has done
so much for him, and all his joy is in wishing to serve God in return
freely and out of pure love. In his flesh, however, he finds a will
which is quite other and which wishes to serve the world and to seek
what it pleases. But this, faith cannot bear, and it sets vigorously
to work to check and restrain it. As St. Paul says, Rom. vii. [23]: I
see another law in my members fighting against the law of my mind and
ensnaring me in the law of sin.”[1869]
Later, coming to the works imposed upon man by self-restraint, he
says: “So much of works in general, such as it suits a Christian to
practise against his own flesh. Now we have to speak of works which
he does for other men. For on this earth man does not live by himself
but among other folk. Hence he cannot live without performing works
for them, for he has to speak and have dealings with them.... Look
how plainly Paul makes the Christian life to consist in works done
for the good of our neighbour.... He instances Christ as our example
and says [Phil. ii. 6-7]: ‘Let this mind be in you which was also in
Christ Jesus, Who being in the form of God thought it no robbery to be
equal to God, and yet emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant,’
and doing and suffering all things for our sakes alone. In the same
way the Christian man, though he is free, ought willingly to become a
slave in his neighbour’s service, and treat him as God through Christ
has treated us, and all this, too, without reward; to seek nothing
thereby but to be well-pleasing to God, and to think thus: See, God in
and through Christ has bestowed on me, unworthy and guilty wretch that
I am, without any merit, and solely out of pure mercy, an abundance
of riches, piety and salvation.... Hence, in my turn, I will readily,
gladly and without reward do what is well-pleasing to such a Father
Who has heaped upon me His unspeakable riches, and be a Christ to my
neighbour as Christ was to me; only what I see him to need and what
is useful and profitable to him, will I do, now that, by my faith, I
myself have all things abundantly in Christ. See, how joy and love of
God spring from faith, and, how, from love comes a ready, willing,
cheerful life of service towards our neighbour.”[1870]—“It is thus
that God’s gifts must flow from the one to the other and become common
to all, so that each one cares as much for his neighbour as he does
for himself. They flow to us from Christ, Who, in His life, took us
on Him as though He had been what we are. From us they should flow to
those who need them.”[1871]
Though, intermingled with such excellent matter, we find
ever-recurring allusions to his peculiar doctrine of justification by
faith alone, and though he fails to see the true organic connection
between good works and the life of faith and thus condemns to inanity
all works not performed out of perfect charity, yet it cannot be
gainsaid that certain aspects of neighbourly love are here admirably
portrayed.
Later on we often miss this sympathetic tone, for it was blighted
by his polemics. As for his aptitude for instructing the people he
retained it, however, to the end.
In the Exposition of the Our Father, of which the dialogue of the
soul with God forms a part, he lays down at the outset in striking,
popular guise the need of prayer, the value of the simple Paternoster,
the profit to be derived from weighing well its contents, and also the
beauty of the virtue of humility.[1872] His explanation of the Hail
Mary, for all its brevity, contains practical and valuable hints as to
how God is to be honoured in all.[1873]
In a very useful booklet entitled “Einfeltige Weise zu beten”[1874]
(1534), Luther assumes the garb of an instructor on prayer and attempts
to show how the forms in common use, the Our Father, Ten Commandments
and Creed, provide matter for prayer even for busy laymen, and how the
latter, by meditating on each separate word or clause, may rise to
perfect prayer. “When good thoughts press in upon us,” he says, for
instance, explaining the latter practice, “then the other prayers may
be neglected and all our attention given to such thoughts which should
be listened to in silence and on no account be thwarted, for then the
Holy Ghost Himself is preaching to us; one word of His sermon is far
better than a thousand prayers of ours. And I, too,” he adds, “have
often learnt more in one such prayer than I could from much reading and
composing.”[1875]
* * * * *
In the “Vermanunge zum Gebet wider den Türcken,”[1876] exhorting
all to pray for the public needs, he speaks alluringly and with
great religious fervour. Urging his readers to pray for the divine
assistance, he takes one by one, as was indeed his wont, the thoughts
suggested by the Our Father.[1877] “Our comfort and defiance, our
pride, our daring and our arrogance, our insistence, our victory and
our life, our joy, our honour and our glory are seated at the right
hand of God the Father Almighty. There, devil, just you touch a hair
of His!” The power of his words is heightened by his references to
the nearness of the Last Day, the advent of which was foreshadowed
in the downfall of both Papal and Turkish power. He even declares
that the certainty of being heard depended on the spiritual struggle
being waged in defence of the Evangel against the popish “blasphemers,
persecutors and God-forsaken children of the devil”; where these had
their way and were fighting, there nothing was to be looked for save
ruin; there God’s “angry hand was raised in vengeance against all
the devils and Turks, against Mahmed, Pope, Meinz, Heinz and all the
miscreants.”[1878] Hence, even in a tract intended as an exhortation to
prayer and to promote a great work of Christian charity, quite other
sentiments gain for the time the upper hand.
This brings us back to the remark we have frequently had to make when
describing other writings of Luther’s meant for the common people.
All too often his exhortations are disfigured by unmeasured
vituperation or uncalled-for controversy of the most bitter kind.
In the “Vermanunge zum Gebet wider den Türcken,” referred to above,
Luther is seen at his worst in the excursion he makes therein against
the abuses—then indeed very bad—of the usurers, particularly because
they had ventured to say that “Luther does not even know what usury
is.”[1879] He, altogether forgetful of meekness, also attacks the
ungrateful Evangelicals in a highly unseemly manner, because they
refused to submit to the stern reproofs of their preachers: “Let
them fare to the devil and die like pigs and dogs, without grace or
sacrament, and be buried on the carrion-heap.... Those men who wish
to go unreproved thereby admit that they are downright rogues....
They deserve to hear Mahmed, the Turk, the Pope and the devil and his
mother rather than God. Amen, Amen, if they will have it so.”[1880]
Of the Catholics he says in the same “Vermanunge,” that the foes of
the Evangel among the Catholic princes, “traitors, murderers and
incendiaries that they are,” knew full well that his was the “true
Word of God,” yet, instead of accepting it, they would “much prefer to
behave towards us like Turks, or were it possible, like very devils,
not to speak of their being ready to serve, aid, counsel and abet the
Turks”; they said, “If God in heaven won’t help us, then let us call
in all the devils from hell.... This I know to be true.”[1881]
It was no mere passing fit of temper that induced him in his old
age so to disfigure his exhortations. In another pious writing, the
“Circular Letter to the Pastors,” sent around two years previous, and
also dealing with the war against the Turks, he says: “The Papists do
not pray and are so bloodthirsty that they cannot pray”; hence let
_us_ pray, he says; “but, when they start with their bloodthirsty
designs against the Evangel, then all must fall upon them as upon a
pack of mad dogs.”[1882] Such words scattered broadcast over Germany
could not possibly serve to promote union or to strengthen the
resistance to be offered to the danger looming from the East. They
merely throw a lurid light on the chasm Luther cleft in the heart of
the nation, and on the internal dissensions which were weakening the
Empire and making it an object of ridicule to the Turkish unbelievers.
In the preface to his Church-Postils (1543), Luther exhorts the
pastors to leave those, who “wish to be left unpunished,” to “die like
dogs”; the rooks and ravens, jackdaws and wolves would sing the best
vigils and dirges for the souls of such proud wiselings.[1883] He not
only wishes them to fulminate against such men but also desires, that,
in the sermons, “certain instances of the Papal tyranny under which we
once groaned in misery be introduced.”[1884]
Such was his anger with his foes that Luther even goes so far as to
say in his exposition of the Hail Mary, that the Papists “cursed”
instead of blessed, the fruit of Mary’s womb.[1885]—In the tract “How
to pray” “Peter Balbier” is warned to bear in mind the “idolatry of
the Turk, the Pope and all false teachers”;[1886] nor is ridicule of
the praying priestlings wanting;[1887] he then exhorts Peter in the
most pious of language to imitate his example, viz. “to suck at the
Paternoster like a baby, and to eat and drink it like a man,” “never
wearying of it”; he was also “very fond of the Psalter,” turning
“the whole as far as possible into a prayer,”[1888] and, when he had
“grown cold and disgusted with saying prayers,” would take his “little
Psalter and escape into his own room,” etc.[1889]—But even his homely
exposition of the Our Father is not free from a polemical bias.[1890]
With the beautiful and useful thoughts contained in his preface to
the Larger Catechism, to the annoyance of the thoughtful reader, he
mingles abuse of the “lazy bellies and presumptuous saints” of his
own party,[1891] to say nothing of the inevitable outbursts against
Catholic practices. Here, too, the thought of the devil, by which he
is ever obsessed, makes him represent Satan’s wiles as the best and
most powerful incentive to the study of the Catechism.
Even his earlier Exposition of the Magnificat is spoilt by a
controversial colouring,[1892] and, moreover, is overclouded by the
circumstance that he wrote it at the very time when the menace of the
Diet of Worms was at its worse. Looking out for a powerful protector,
he dedicated his writing to Duke Johann Frederick of Saxony, the
future Elector, who had wished him luck in his crusade against the
Papal Ban. Luther extols the Duke’s piety at the beginning of the
work. But was he not anxious to make a good impression himself by his
Exposition of the Magnificat? To impress his readers that he was a man
enlightened by God and living in union with Him? We may notice how
pathetically he depicts the righteous man (and we naturally think of
him) submitting to be persecuted for the Word of God, and awaiting
with heavenly resignation succour from on high, without in the least
striving to protect himself. He who is persecuted, he writes, “must
humble himself before God as unworthy that such great things should be
done through him and commend everything to His mercy with prayer and
supplication.”[1893]
Another motive which inspired the publication of his works of
edification was, as he himself admits, to wrest the Catholic
prayer-books from the people’s hands. It is true, he says, his
intention is “simply and honestly” to supply the people with spiritual
food. But he also alludes to the “manifold wretchedness arising out
of confession and sin,” and the “unchristian stupidity found in the
little prayers offered to God and His Saints,” which he is obliged
to assail. Even where his peculiar doctrine makes no appearance in
his instructions he is not oblivious of its interest, even though he
assures us, seemingly with the utmost sincerity, that he was going
to see whether, by his writings, “he could not do his very foes a
service. For my object is ever to be helpful to all and harmful to
none.”[1894] He saw well of what help the mere existence of pious
books would prove to his party; the more pious and innocent they were,
the more they would promote his cause and smooth the way for him. The
simplicity of the dove thus openly flaunted, nevertheless contrasts
unpleasantly with the wisdom of the serpent which is only too apparent.
As to what is lacking in Luther’s religious writings: Any reader
familiar with the manuals of instruction and piety in use towards the
close of the Middle Ages will at once perceive a great difference
between the importance they attach to self-denial, self-conquest and
the struggle against the evil inclinations of nature and that attached
to them by Luther.
In the “Imitation of Christ,” for instance, the great stress laid
on self-denial gives an effective spur to every inward virtue. In
Luther, with his twin ideas of faith alone and the irresistible power
of grace, this main feature of the religious warfare falls decidedly
into the background. Is it a mere coincidence that in the Larger
Catechism self-denial and penance are not mentioned among the means
for preserving chastity?[1895] Chastity itself is there dealt with
in a curiously grudging fashion. The so-called Evangelical Counsels,
which fell from our Lord’s own lips and had been eagerly pursued in
the past by those seeking to lead a life of perfection, are naturally
altogether ignored by Luther. With him, too, the wholesome incentive to
good provided by the hope of supernatural merit for heaven had also,
owing to his theory, to be set aside. The appeals to the motive of holy
fear which he makes are too rare and too powerless to be of much avail.
He had clipped with a rude hand the two wings of the spiritual life,
viz. fear and the hope of reward, which bear it upwards and without
which man cannot rise above the things of sense.
In Luther’s works of edification, as pointed out above, we miss the
school of virtue, the advance from one step of virtue and perfection
to another, such as had grown up into a wise and recognised system,
thanks to the experience of antiquity and the Middle Ages.[1896] With
him everything begins with a rash breach with the past. Even the use
made of the example of the Saints is painfully defective. An easy-going
tendency hides the poverty of the aims and a shallow mediocrity lames
the upward flight. Here, again, the fact that the author turns his
back so rudely on the traditions of the earliest ages and the holy
practices of his fathers, brings its own punishment. For a multitude of
inspiring and perfectly legitimate acts of prayer and virtue in which
the Christian heart had found strength and gladness are passed over by
him in dead silence, or else scoffed at as mere “holiness-by-works.”
While this is true of his practice, his theory, too, was wanting in
that clear and solid justification and development which the theology
of the older divines had enabled them to introduce into their teaching.
Lovers of Luther can, however, claim that in him two qualities were
united which are rarely to be found combined, and possibly belong to
no other popular religious writer of the age, viz. first, a wealth of
ideas suggested by reminiscences, now of the Bible, now from the pages
of human life; secondly, the writer’s wonderful imagination, which
enables him to clothe all things in the best dress in order the more
easily to win his way into the hearts of his readers.
In consequence of this his writings will always find approving friends,
not only in Lutheran circles but also among those who for literary or
historical reasons are interested in a form of literature bearing so
individual a stamp, and know how to overlook their imperfections. The
reasons, however, are sufficiently obvious why the Church by a general
prohibition (though it does admit of exceptions) has set up a barrier
against the study of any of Luther’s works by her children, and why
she bids her faithful to seek spiritual food only in those books of
instruction and edification which she sanctions.
_The Catechism_
The ignorance of the people in religious things, of which Luther was
made aware during the Visitation in the Saxon Electorate in 1527, led
him to compose a sort of Catechism, “which should be a short abstract
and recapitulation of Holy Scripture.”[1897] He was desirous of
providing in this way a manual for the “instruction of the children and
the simple,” and more particularly of supplying fathers of families
with an easy means “of questioning and catechising their children and
dependents at least once a week (as was their duty), and seeing what
they knew or had learnt of it.”[1898]
Thus, at the commencement of 1529, or possibly as early as 1528, he was
at work, first, on the (Shorter) Catechism “for the rude country-folk,”
as he writes to a friend,[1899] and also preparing mural tablets
(“_tabulæ_”) which set out the matter “in the shortest and baldest
way.”[1900] Of these tablets his pupil Rörer says, on Jan. 20, that
some of them hung on his walls while the Catechism (“_prædicatus pro
rudibus et simplicibus_”) was still in process of making.[1901] It was
in this form that the “Shorter Catechism” first appeared, but, in the
same year (1528) these tablets were collected into a booklet entitled
the “Enchiridion.”[1902]
Luther was at the same time at work on a fuller German Catechism which
was intended to supply the heads of families, and more particularly
the preachers, with further matter for their instructions. This work,
under the title of “Deudsch Catechismus,” was finished and printed in
April, 1529,[1903] and in May appeared a Latin translation of the same.
This was what was eventually termed the Larger Catechism.
In the preface to the Shorter Catechism Luther puts on the shoulders
of the Catholic bishops the blame for the fact, that, the “common
folk, particularly in the villages, knew nothing whatever of Christian
doctrine.” He also admits, however, that, among the Evangelicals,
there were “unfortunately many pastors who are quite unskilled and
incapable of teaching.” Hence it came about that the people “knew
neither the Our Father, the Creed nor the Ten Commandments,” and
“lived like so many brute beasts and senseless swine.” “And how can
it be otherwise,” he asks the pastor and preacher, “seeing that
you snooze and hold your tongue?” He accordingly requires of the
ministers, first, that, in their teaching, they should keep to one
form of the “Ten Commandments, Creed, Our Father and Sacrament,” etc.,
and not “alter a syllable”; and “further, that, when they had taught
the text thoroughly, they should see that the meaning of it is also
understood”; finally, the pastor was to take the Larger Catechism
and study it and then “explain things still more fully to his flock”
according to their needs and their power of comprehension.
In spite of all this he has no wish that the particular method and
form of his Catechism should be made obligatory; here again, according
to his principle, everything must be spontaneous and voluntary.
“Choose whatever form you please and then stick to it for ever.”
Nevertheless whoever refuses to “learn by heart” the text selected
is to be treated as a denier of Christ, “shall be allowed not a
shred of Christian freedom, but simply be handed over to the Pope
and his officers, nay, to the devil himself. Parents and masters
are also to refuse them food and drink and to warn them that the
sovereigns will drive such rude clowns out of the land,” etc. This
agrees with a letter Luther wrote to Joseph Levin Metzsch on August
26, 1529, in which he says that those who despise the Catechism and
the Evangel are to be driven to church by force, that they may at
least learn the outward work of the Law from the preaching of the Ten
Commandments.[1904]
Filled with anxiety for the future of his Church he warmly exhorts
the pastors to provide for a constant supply of preachers and worthy
officials. They were to tell the authorities and the parents, “of what
a gruesome crime they were guilty, when they neglected to help to
educate children as pastors, preachers, and writers, etc.... The sin
now being committed in this respect by both parents and authorities is
quite beyond words; this is one way the devil has of displaying his
cruelty.” We see from this that Luther’s solicitude for the teaching
of the Catechism had a practical motive beyond that lying on the
surface. He wished to erect not only a bulwark but also a nursery for
the Church to come; for this same reason, in his efforts about this
time on behalf of the schools (see vol. vi., xxxv., 3), what he had
in view was, that, with the help of the Bible and the Catechism, they
should become _seminaria ecclesiarum_.
In the preface to the Larger Catechism of 1530 Luther lashes those
among his preachers who turned up their noses at the Catechism.
Many, he says, despise “their office and this teaching, some because
they are so very learned, others out of laziness and belly-love”;
they will not buy or read such books; “they are, in fact, shameful
gluttons and belly-servers, better fitted to look after the pigs and
the hounds than to be pastors having the cure of souls.” To them he
holds up his own example. He too was “a Doctor and preacher, nay,
as learned and experienced as any of them,” and yet he read and
recited every morning, and whenever he had time, “like a child, the
Ten Commandments, Creed, Our Father, Psalms, etc.”; he never ceased
being a student of the Catechism. “Therefore I beg these lazy bellies
or presumptuous saints, that, for God’s sake, they let themselves be
persuaded, and open their eyes to see that they are not in reality so
learned and such great Doctors as they imagine.”
The exhortations in this preface, to all the clergy to make use of and
teach the Catechism diligently, contain much that is useful and to the
point.
In other passages he nevertheless sees fit to emphasise what he says
by false and odious reflections on the Papacy. “Our office is now
quite other from what it was under the Pope; now it is serious and
wholesome, and thus much more arduous and laborious and full of danger
and temptation.”[1905] Before him “no Doctor on earth had known the
whole of the Catechism, that is the Our Father, Ten Commandments
and Creed, much less understood them and taught them as now, God
be praised, they are taught and learnt even by little children. In
support of this I appeal to all their books, those of the theologians
as well as those of the lawyers. If even one article of the Catechism
can be learnt aright from them, then I am willing to let myself be
broken on the wheel or bled to death.”[1906]
In the plan of both the Larger and Smaller Catechism Luther keeps
to the traditional threefold division, viz. the Ten Commandments,
Apostles’ Creed and Our Father. To these he appends a fourth part
on baptism and a fifth on the Supper, the only two sacraments he
recognises. He also slipped in a short supplementary instruction on
the new form of Confession before the chapter on the Supper.[1907] The
Smaller Catechism was provided from the very first with morning and
evening prayers, grace for meals and an eminently practical “Household
Table of Texts,” consisting of appropriate verses for pastors, for
their subordinates and pupils in general, for temporal authorities, for
subjects, married people, parents, masters, children and also for the
“young in general, for widows and for the parishes.”
The language, more particularly of the Shorter Catechism, is throughout
a model of simplicity and clearness.
We may find an example of his brevity and concision at the end of the
“Creed”; the passage will also serve to show how greatly his teaching
differed from that of the Church. After the words: “I believe in the
Holy Ghost, the Holy _Christian_ Church, the communion of saints, the
forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the dead and life everlasting,
Amen,” there follows in the Catechism the usual question: “What means
this?” and the answer, with regard to the Church, is that the Holy
Ghost “calls, gathers together, enlightens, hallows and holds the whole
body of Christians on earth in Jesus Christ in one true faith; in which
body of Christendom He free-handedly forgives me and all the faithful
all our sins daily,” etc. The paragraph ends, as do all the articles on
the Creed, in the usual form: “This is true.”
In spite of all peculiarity of doctrine in the Shorter Catechism all
polemical attacks on the olden Church are carefully eschewed. In the
Larger Catechism, on the contrary, they abound. Even under the First
Commandment, speaking of the worship of God, the author alludes to what
“hitherto we have in our blindness been in the habit of practising in
Popery”; “the worst idolatry” had held sway, seeing that we sought
“help, consolation and salvation in our own works.” In the explanation
of the article on the “Holy Christian Church, the Communion of Saints”
it is set forth at the outset, that, “in Popery,” “faith had been
stuck under the bench,” “no one having acknowledged Christ as Lord.”
“Formerly, before we came to hear [God’s Word] we were the devil’s own,
knowing nothing of God or of Christ.”[1908]
On the other hand, several of Luther’s doctrines find no place whatever
in either of the Catechisms. For instance, those, which, according to
the testimony of Protestant scholars quoted above, necessarily lead
to a “Christianity void of dogma” (above, p. 432 ff.). The people and
the pastors learn nothing here of their right of private judgment
with regard to the text of the Bible and the articles of faith. Nor
is anything said of that view of original sin which constituted the
very basis of the new system, viz. that it is destructive of every
predisposition to what is good; nor of the enslaved will, which is
ridden now by God, now by the devil; nor of the fact that man’s actions
have only the value imputed to them by God; nor, finally, do we find
anything of predestination to hell, of the “Hidden God” Who quashes the
Will of the “Revealed God” that all men be saved, and Who, to manifest
His “Justice,” gloats over the endless torment of the countless
multitudes whom He infallibly predestined to suffer eternally.[1909]
The reason for the suppression of these doctrines in catechisms
intended for the general reader is patent. The dogmas they embody, in
so far as they vary from the traditional, are too contradictory to
form a solid theological structure. To what dangers would not the new
doctrine have been exposed, and what would have been the bad impression
on the reader, had mention been made in the Catechisms of such
theories, even though, in reality, they formed the very backbone of the
new theology?
Luther’s Catechisms were well received and were frequently
reprinted.[1910] Many enactments of the secular rulers, particularly
in the Saxon lands, insisted that his Shorter Catechism should be
learnt by heart and his Larger Catechism be made the basis of the
sermons.[1911]
Mathesius wrote: “If Dr. Luther during his career had done nothing
more than introduce the two Catechisms into the homes, the schools and
the pulpits, reviving prayers before and after meals and on rising
and going to bed, even then the whole world could not sufficiently
thank or repay him.”[1912]—“Luther’s booklet,” declares O. Albrecht,
“became a practical guide to pious patriarchal discipline in the home,
and the very foundation of the education of the people in those German
lands which had come under the influence of his Reformation.... Even
in the Latin schools his _Parvus catechismus_ became, in the 16th
century, one of the most widely disseminated handbooks.”[1913]
In the heyday of their triumph the Catechisms were incorporated in
the Book of Concord, first in German in 1580 and then in Latin in
1584, and were thus bodily incorporated in the Creed of the Lutheran
Evangelical Church. They were accepted “as the layman’s Bible in which
all is comprised that is dealt with in Holy Scripture and which it
is necessary for a Christian man to know.”[1914] Highly as Luther
valued his Catechism,[1915] still he certainly had never intended it
to be enforced as a rule of faith, for we have heard him express his
readiness to sanction the use of any other short and concise form of
instruction. (See above, p. 484.)
Luther had nevertheless taken great pains over his work.
He had been thinking of it long before he actually set to work on it.
As early as 1526 he had spoken in his “Deudsche Messe und Ordnung
Gottis Diensts” of the need of a “rude, homely, simple and good work
on the Catechism” for the congregation of true Christians which he was
planning; indeed, he had already dealt with certain portions of the
Catechism in his “Kurcz Form der czehen Gepott” (1520), and in his
“Betbüchlin” (1522). It was probably owing to his influence that Jonas
and Agricola were entrusted with the drafting of a catechism for boys.
While engaged on this work, in 1528, he, as a final preparation for
it, preached three courses of sermons on the Catechism. These sermons
were first published in 1894 by G. Buchwald in “Die Entstehung der
Katechismen Luthers,” being taken from the notes by Rörer; Buchwald
draws attention to the close connection existing between the sermons
and the text of the Catechism.[1916]
So well did Luther promote the teaching of the elementary truths of
religion, that, in a notice given from the pulpit on Nov. 29, 1528,
he was able to speak of a rule according to which it was the custom
at Wittenberg four times in the year to preach four sermons on the
Catechism spread over a fortnight.[1917]
This custom lasted long and spread to other places.[1918] Bugenhagen,
so it is said on reliable authority, always carried Luther’s Catechism
with him.[1919] He declared, in 1542, that he had already preached
about fifty times on the Catechism,[1920] and he seems to have
organised and kept up the practice of the “catechism weeks” when pastor
of Wittenberg; at any rate the rules he drew up subsequent to 1528
insist repeatedly on such sermons being preached on the Catechism.[1921]
_Luther’s Catechism and Ecclesiastical Antiquity_
In the passage of his “Deudsche Messe” where he speaks of his idea on
the teaching of the Catechism, Luther says, that he knew no better way
to give such instruction than “that in which it had been given from
the earliest days of Christianity and until now, viz. under the three
heads: The Ten Commandments, the Creed and the Our Father”; these three
things contained all that was called for.[1922] Hence he himself was
far from sharing the opinion of certain later Protestants, viz. that,
in the selection and methodical treatment of these three points he had
struck out an entirely new line. He simply adapted the existing form of
instruction to his new doctrines, which he cast into a shape suitable
for popular consumption.
The Decalogue, together with Confession with which it naturally goes
hand in hand, had assumed, ever since the 13th century, an ever-growing
importance in the instructions intended for the people. In esteeming,
as he did, the Ten Commandments, the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer,
Luther was simply following in the footsteps of the 14th and 15th
century. Johann Wolff, the Frankfurt preacher, who is described on
his tombstone as “_Doctor decem præceptorum_,” as his Handbook for
Confession of 1478 shows, was quite indefatigable in his propaganda
on behalf of the use of the Decalogue in confession and in popular
instructions.[1923]
We must here call attention, above all, to the instruction habitually
given in the home by parents and god-parents before Luther’s day;
this “consisted chiefly in teaching the Creed and the Our Father, two
points belonging to the oldest catechetical formularies of the ancient
Church.”[1924] Luther himself had learnt these in the Latin school with
the rest contained in the hornbooks, and on them in turn he based his
own Catechism.[1925]
Melanchthon speaks, in 1528, of the “Children’s manual containing the
Alphabet, the Our Father, the Creed and other prayers,”[1926] as the
first school primer which had come down from the past.
Even Mathesius admits that, “parents and schoolmasters taught their
children the Ten Commandments, the Creed and the Our Father, as I
in my childhood learnt them at school and often repeated them with
the other children, as was the custom in the olden schools”; he
adds, however, that the “tiresome devil” had smuggled additions into
the Catholic “A.B.C. book” and corrupted it with Popish doctrine,
whereby servitors are “turned” towards the Mass; the devil “had also
introduced into the school primer the idolatrous ‘_Salve Regina_’
which detracted from the honour due to Jesus Christ, our one Mediator
and Intercessor.”[1927]
In the 15th and 16th century priests were often urged to recite from
the pulpit every Sunday the Creed and Our Father, sometimes also
the Hail Mary, and the Decalogue was not unfrequently added.[1928]
A work by the Basle parish-priest, Johann Surgant, which appeared
in 1502 and was many times republished, deals exclusively with the
expounding of the above points to the people, supplies each with
explanatory notes, and requires, in accordance with the existing
rules, that the priests should carefully instruct the people in them
(“_diligenter informent_”). It was an old custom to preach on the
Catechism during Lent as Luther also had done in his younger days,
taking for his subject the Ten Commandments and the Our Father; this
custom, too, had probably been handed down from the time, when, during
the weeks preceding the great day for baptism, viz. Holy Saturday,
the catechumens were instructed in the Creed and the Our Father
(“_traditio symboli et orationis dominicæ_”).
The courses of sermons preached four times a year at Wittenberg also
had their analogy in the Church’s past. As early as 1281, a synod
meeting in London under Archbishop Peckham of Canterbury had required,
in the 10th Canon, that the parish-priest should rehearse every three
months the principal doctrines of the Christian faith and morals
simply and concisely.
Even in his Confession or examination before Communion of 1523[1929]
Luther had merely revived, under another form, an institution of the
Mediæval Church, for, in the Confession before Communion, it had been
customary to recite the principal articles of Christian faith.[1930]
As to what Luther says, viz. that the instruction given to the people
had formerly borne only on the three points named above, and that of
the two sacraments treated of in his Catechism “sad to say nothing
had hitherto been taught,”[1931] it is only necessary to say that
numerous prayer-books and manuals on confession dating from the close
of the Middle Ages contain abundant matter both on the sacraments and
on other things touching doctrine.[1932]
Before Luther’s day the term Catechism had not been taken to mean the
book itself, but the subject-matter which was taught by word of mouth
and was confined to the points indicated above. It was in this sense
that he said, for instance in the Table-Talk: “The Catechism must
remain and be supreme in the Christian Church.”[1933] It was he and
Melanchthon[1934] who initiated the custom of applying the term not
only to the contents of the volume but also to the volume itself.[1935]
Hence, it is verbally true, that, before Luther’s day, there existed no
“Catechism”; the religious writings dealing with the subject bore other
and different titles. Nor was the arrangement of question and answer
regarded as essential to the body of instructions which went under
the term of Catechism, a circumstance which also seemed to favour the
assertion, that, before Luther’s day, no such thing was known. But if
question and answer be essential, then, even his own Larger Catechism
could not rightly have borne the title, seeing that it has not this
form. Nevertheless the system of question and answer had always been
highly prized and had sometimes been made use of on the model of the
questions put at baptism.
Amongst the older writings that most nearly approach the ideal of the
Catholic Catechism, deserve to be mentioned two books then widely known
which are constantly making their appearance in the thirty years before
Luther’s day, viz. the “_Fundamentum æternæ felicitatis_” and the
“_Discipulus de eruditione Christi—fidelium compendiosus_,” the second
of which also contains questions and objections. Both go beyond the
three main points given above and include a popular summary, intended
for the use of the clergy, of the seven sacraments, the nine sins, the
works of mercy and the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost.[1936] It was
also the usual thing for books on the Decalogue to include other points
of importance, and thus to deal with almost the whole of the matter
treated of in the Catechism. In fact, as Zezschwitz says, there was
rather an “over-abundance of material in the domain of catechetics”
than any dearth.
Finally, the use of the so-called tables, i.e. sheets printed only on
one side and each giving a different point of the Catechism, which,
as we saw, was the form under which Luther’s Shorter Catechism first
appeared (above, p. 483), was nothing new either. “Luther followed
in this respect a custom then widespread,”[1937] as is shown by the
studies of Geffcken, Cohrs and Falk (1908); Falk, in particular,
carefully sought out the Catholic tablets of the kind still in
existence. So far only one example of Luther’s printed tablets, and
that in Low German, has been brought to light.[1938]
Hence the statement that Luther’s Catechism was his own “creation”
calls for considerable revision.
The directness and concision of his style must, however, always commend
themselves to the reader, even to those who regret that in this work
he tampered with the doctrines of the olden Church. But, as regards
the division, the work rests on a foundation hallowed by centuries of
ecclesiastical usage. This even Protestants have now begun to see.
According to F. Cohrs, even in Luther’s “Kurcz Form,” we see
“Evangelical catechetics springing up on the soil of the popular
religious literature of the Middle Ages.”[1939]
Otto Albrecht, like others, admits, that, in his appreciation of
the three chief points of instruction, and more particularly of
the Decalogue, Luther “is in agreement with the similar efforts
made in the 14th and 15th century.” It was according to him “only
natural” that Luther, in his “Kurcz Form” of 1520 and again in his
“Deudsche Messe” of 1526, should protest, that, “in these three
points, he was safeguarding the heirloom of the Church.” In this
instance his critical attitude towards the past comes out only in
his exclusion of the Hail Mary, in his rearrangement of the three
parts, and, of course, above all, in the new meaning he gives to them.
Moreover, according to Albrecht, Luther’s gradual enlargement of his
“Betbüchlin” shows that the latter was but an “Evangelical version
of the mediæval prayer and confession handbooks, which themselves, in
turn, had led up to the Catechisms of the 16th century.”[1940]
Such a view also fits in with Luther’s own words far better than did
the exaggerations formerly current. He says, for instance, in 1532,
in his “Brieff an die zu Franckfort am Meyn”: “This we have received
even from the first beginnings of Christianity. For there we see that
the Creed, the Our Father and the Ten Commandments were summarised as
a short form of doctrine for the young and the simple, and were, even
from the very first, termed the Catechism.”[1941] Even in the original
preface to the Larger Catechism he had declared that, “for the sake of
the common people he was keeping to the three points which have ever
been the rule in Christendom in ages past.”[1942]
3. The German Bible
Already at the Wartburg Luther had begun the great work of substituting
for the existing vernacular translations of Holy Scripture one written
in good German and based on the original languages of the books of the
Bible.
The idea seems to have dawned on him during his enforced rest at the
Wartburg, when, as he tells a friend, he passed his time reading the
Bible in Greek and Hebrew and in studying these two languages.[1943]
Just then he was entirely under the sway of those new views of
his which prompted him to set up the Bible in the stead of all
ecclesiastical authority. Melanchthon, too, so it would appear, had
also some share in his resolution.
_The Work of Translation and its Conclusion_
In his solitude Luther first broached the New Testament, first because
its contents more nearly touched the controversy in which he was
engaged, and, secondly, because the New Testament could be translated
more easily without learned assistance. When first announcing his
plan, on Dec. 18, 1521, he mentions, that, “our people are asking
for it.”[1944] “I shall put the Bible into German,” so he tells his
Wittenberg colleague, Canon Nicholas Amsdorf, on Jan. 13, 1522, “though
in so doing I am taking upon myself a burden beyond my strength. Now
I see what translating means, and, why, so far, no one who undertook
it ever put his name to it. As for the Old Testament I cannot touch it
unless you are here and give me your help. Could I find a hiding-place
with one of you, I would come at once so as to start the work of
translation from the outset with your assistance. The result ought to
be a translation worthy of being read by all Christians. I hope we
shall give our German folk a better one than that which the Latins
have. It is a great and glorious work at which we all should toil, for
it is a public matter and is meant to serve the common weal. Tell me
what hopes you have of it.”[1945]
In barely three months, with the aid of the few helpers he was able
to secure in his Patmos, he had finished the first rough draft of
the New Testament, which he took with him on leaving the Wartburg
for revision among his friends at Wittenberg. “Philip and I,” so he
wrote from Wittenberg, on March 30, 1522, to Spalatin, who was then
Court preacher, “have now begun to furbish the translation of the New
Testament; it will, please God, turn out a fine work. We shall need
your help too, here and there, for the choice of words; hence get
ready. But send us simple words, not the language of the men-at-arms
or of the Court; the translation must, above all, be a homely one.
May I ask you to send me straightaway the [German] names and the
colours of the precious stones mentioned in Apocalypse xxi., or better
still the stones themselves, if you can get hold of them at Court or
elsewhere.”[1946] Luther finally received specimens of the stones
through the good offices of Cranach. In order the better to understand
certain texts, he also wrote to Spalatin, Mutian and Dr. George
Sturz on the subject of ancient coinage.[1947] He also incidentally
consulted the Court preacher as to the exact German translation of the
names of various wild animals with which the latter would probably
be acquainted owing to the hunts indulged in by the Court in that
neighbourhood.[1948]
The printing of the New Testament was begun at Wittenberg by Melchior
Lotther in the first days of May. Proofsheets were sent to Spalatin
and Duke Johann of Saxony. From the beginning of July three printing
presses are said to have run off daily 10,000 “chartæ,” i.e. 5000
folio sheets, so as to produce an edition of 3000 copies. On Sep. 21,
1522, the New Testament appeared with a frontispiece and a number of
woodcuts by Lucas Cranach; the title-page bore the words: “Das Newe
Testament Deutzsch. Vuittemberg.” Neither year nor printer’s name were
given, nor even the name of the translator, probably in order not to
prejudice the sale of the book in those regions where Luther stood in
bad odour. Luther received no fee for the work any more than for his
other writings. As the first edition was at once sold out a new and
amended one was published in Dec.; the two editions afterwards became
known as the September and December Bibles. Editions still further
amended were published at Wittenberg in 1526 and 1530. Altogether some
sixteen editions of the New Testament were printed in this town before
1557, while at the same time more than fifty reprints saw the light in
Germany, for instance, fourteen at Augsburg, thirteen at Strasburg and
twelve at Basle.
While still busy on the New Testament Luther set to work on the Old,
this time with the regular and expert assistance of Melanchthon and
Matthæus Aurogallus, the Wittenberg Professor of Hebrew. Owing to the
difficulty of the work and the constant hindrances encountered by the
author, the work did not appear all at once, but only piecemeal. As
early as 1523 the Books of the Pentateuch were published at Augsburg
and Basle in two successive editions, four times reprinted in the same
year. The historical books from Josue to Esther followed in 1524. The
remainder, comprehensively described as the “Prophets,” followed in
separate parts, Job, the Psalms and the “Books of Solomon” in 1524, and
the Prophets, properly so-called, only at longer intervals.[1949]
The difficulties of the work and the unwearied pains taken by the
compiler are frequently apparent in Luther’s letters to his friends.
He writes, for instance, to Spalatin: “Job gives us much trouble
owing to the exceptional grandeur of his style; he seems as reluctant
to submit to our translation as to the consolations of his friends;
he refuses to march and wants to remain for ever seated on his
dunghill; it almost seems as though the writer of the book had wished
to make a translation impossible. For this reason the printing of
the third part of the Bible [i.e. of the Old Testament] proceeds but
slowly.”[1950]—Later, in the preface to the Book of Job, he said:
“In our work on ‘Hiob,’ we, Master Philip, Aurogallus and I, were
sometimes barely able to get through three lines in four days. But
now, my friend, that it is translated into German everyone can read
it and master it and run his eyes over three or four pages without
meeting a single obstacle, nor does he perceive what hindrances and
stumbling-blocks lay in the path he now glides along as easily as down
a greasy pole; to us, however, it cost much toil and sweat to remove
all the hindrances and stumbling-blocks.”[1951]
He writes to his friend Wenceslaus Link of his difficulties with
the prophet Isaias on which, with Melanchthon,[1952] he was hard at
work in June, 1528: “We are now sweating at the translation of the
prophets. Good God, what a great and arduous task it is to cram the
Hebrew writers into a German mould! They absolutely refuse to submit
to the barbarism of the German tongue. It is as though a nightingale
were being forced to exchange its sweet melodies for the call of the
cuckoo.”[1953]
With particular care did Luther devote himself to polishing up
each new edition of the Psalms; it is easy to see his efforts, not
merely to render the words accurately, but also to breathe into his
translation some of the fervour and poetic feeling of the sacred text.
As to the prophets; with the exception of Isaias, he set to work on
them only in 1530, beginning with Ezechiel during his stay at the
Coburg. In Feb., 1532, he had finished the prophets, which appeared
in a volume apart. He was now at last able to set to work on what
he called the “Apocrypha”; regarding them as popular tales his
translation of them was very free. Among these he included Judith, the
Book of Wisdom, Tobias, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, the first and second
Book of the Machabees, portions of Esther, etc. They found a place at
the end of his Old Testament.
At the commencement of 1534 his Bible, which was now finished, was
published for the first time as a complete work under the title:
“Biblia, das ist die gantze Heilige Schrift Deudsch,” with his name
and that of the printer, Hans Luft (Lufft). The Old, like the New
Testament, was illustrated by Lucas Cranach, the subjects having been
selected and distributed by Luther himself. The Old Testament was also
furnished by Luther with marginal glosses in the form of short notes
explanatory of the text, or giving his own commentary on it. Prefaces
were prefixed to each division. A new edition of the Old Testament was
ready as early as 1535.
New reprints of the whole Bible or of portions of it were constantly
making their appearance, those appearing at Wittenberg always embodying
the author’s latest emendations. From 1530-40 the latest bibliographer
of Luther’s Bible enumerates thirty-four Wittenberg editions and
seventy-two reprints in other parts of Germany; from 1541-46 there were
eighteen Wittenberg editions and twenty-six similar reprints.[1954]
According to a fairly reliable authority no less than 100,000 complete
Bibles left Lotther’s press at Wittenberg between 1534 and 1584.[1955]
The same bibliographer describes in the Weimar edition eighty-four
original editions and 253 reprints as having appeared during Luther’s
lifetime. Since each edition may be reckoned to have comprised from one
to five thousand copies, one is almost justified in saying that Germany
was flooded with the new work or portions of it. Half the South-German
printers found a living in printing Bibles. In this respect the history
of Luther’s works supplies the best data for the history of the
printing and bookselling trade in that age.
It is true, no doubt, that many bought Bibles, because, among
Protestants, it was considered the right thing for every man of
means to have his Family-Bible. In the case of many alienated from
the practices of the Church, the possession and the reading of the
Bible constituted, as a Protestant recently put it, a sort of “_opus
operatum_,” yet, according to the same writer, “the contradiction
between the Bible and the moral behaviour” of some of its most zealous
readers “cannot in many instances be questioned.”[1956] Others,
however, no doubt provided themselves with the new Bible from really
religious motives and interests, and refreshed and fortified themselves
with its sublime and edifying eloquence. We may assume this to have
been the effect of Luther’s Bible in the case of the simple folk who
had been led unconsciously into Lutheranism, or had grown up in it, and
who owed their acquaintance with the work to its use in public worship,
though they themselves may have been unable to read, or, maybe, not
rich enough to purchase a Bible of their own.[1957]
His success encouraged Luther, diligently to revise his work. So far,
not a single edition had appeared without some alterations, and, as
we see from certain recently discovered data, he again went through
the Psalter in 1531, “with great pains and labour,” and also set about
revising the whole of his Bible subsequent to Jan. 24, 1534—being
assisted in both these undertakings by Melanchthon and Cruciger.
Nevertheless another revision of the Bible on a large scale was
begun in 1539, as we have fully learnt only in our own day from two
witnesses and from the notes in Luther’s own private copy.
One of the witnesses is George Rörer, the Wittenberg deacon who
corrected the Bible proofs, and who declares: “In 1539 they went
through the Bible once more, from the beginning even to the Apocrypha
[i.e. the Old Testament], and gave a clearer German rendering to
certain words and phrases, as may be seen from the book with the
sermons [i.e. the notes] delivered by this same man in 1541-2.”[1958]
The other witness is Mathesius, who had been a guest at Luther’s
table in the spring of 1540 and whose detailed account was already
generally known, though, owing to the fresh data discovered, it now
appears in a stronger light. “When first the whole German Bible had
appeared and temptations had improved it day by day, the Doctor
once more gathered the Holy Books, and, with great earnestness,
diligence and prayer, went through them again; and ... D. Luther
formed a sort of Sanhedrin of his own, composed of the best men
then to be had, who met for several hours once a week before supper
in the Doctor’s monastery, namely, D. Johann Bugenhagen, D. Justus
Jonas, D. Cruciger, Master Philip, Matthæus Aurogallus and also M.
George Rörer, the proof-reader. Doctors and learned men from outside
frequently took part in this sublime work, for instance, Dr. Bernard
Ziegler [Professor of Hebrew at Leipzig], D. Forstemius [Professor at
Tübingen, who in 1540 became Provost of Nuremberg].... The Doctor,
having first gone through the Bible already published, ... came into
the consistory with his old Latin and new German Bibles, always
bringing also the Hebrew text along with him. Mr. Philip brought with
him the Greek text, and Dr. Cruciger both the Chaldean and the Hebrew
Bible. The professors had also their Rabbinic books with them. D.
Pommer had also a Latin copy before him with which he was very well
acquainted. Each one had prepared beforehand the text to be discussed
and had consulted the commentators, Greek, Latin and Jewish. Then the
President propounded a text and listened to what each one in turn
had to say on the peculiarity of the language or on the commentaries
of the ancient doctors. Beautiful and instructive things are said to
have been said during this work, some of which M. George [Rörer] noted
down, which were afterwards printed as short glosses and notes in the
margin of the text.”[1959]
At the meetings the minutes were taken by Rörer, a capable amanuensis.
What has been preserved of them gives us a glimpse into the workshop,
where, from 1539 to 1541, the revision of the Bible undertaken by
Luther was carried out. Of Rörer’s minutes those are still extant
which record the conferences on the revision of the translation of the
Psalms, and also a considerable portion of those on the work of 1539 on
the Old Testament of which Mathesius speaks.[1960]
The account, as is so often the case with the Table-Talk, is written
in a mixture of Latin and German; it is also distinguished by the
same spontaneity and absence of constraint. It records discussions on
all the books of the Old Testament saving Chronicles, Esdras and the
“Apocrypha.” We have, in all, notes of meetings held on thirty-two
various dates. Very often the sessions were broken owing to the
members being otherwise engaged, or absent on journeys. The speakers
mentioned by name, Luther in particular, often give their views on the
sense of the original or on its German rendering. As a rule Luther
first submits his proposals or difficulties and then listens to the
views of the rest. At times interesting side-lights are thrown on
contemporary history, and we also meet some noteworthy _obiter dicta_.
On Genesis xii. 11 ff. Melanchthon, alluding to Abraham’s lie in Egypt
when he declared his wife to be his sister, says: “I think he did
this rather out of greatness than out of weakness of faith.” Luther,
who elsewhere does not blame Abraham for this[1961] and also sees
its reason in the greatness of his faith,[1962] here nevertheless
disagrees with Melanchthon and says, “I prefer to regard it as
weakness, for, we are all of us in the same hospital.”
Regarding the building of Solomon’s Temple (3 Kings vi.), he says: “We
shall have much trouble over this horrid building. I should like to
know where the seventy or eighty thousand carpenters with their axes
came from. Did the whole land ever hold so many inhabitants? It is a
queer business. Maybe the Jews corrupted the text. They cannot have
had any carts but must have carried everything. I wish I had done with
the book. I am a very unwilling builder at Solomon’s Temple.... It was
finished about Pentecost. It must have been very lofty, some hundred
cubits in height; our tower here is not much over sixty cubits.”
Now and then Luther brings the words of the Bible into relation with
his own experiences. This he does especially in the minutes of the
meetings held for the revision of the Psalter, which, of course, lends
itself more easily to such application. In one passage (Ps. xviii.
[xvii.] 15) he says, referring to his “combats”: “At the Coburg I
saw my devils flying over the forest.” When discussing Ps. lxxiv.
(lxxiii.) he lets fall the words: “I will send this as a farewell to
my Papists and hope they will howl Amen to it, if God so will. Amen.”
Of Ps. ciii. (cii.) he remarks: “I recite this Psalm daily when I
am merry; it is a fine, cheerful Psalm for a poor soul.” Of Isaias
xi. he says, extolling the prophet: “No prophet speaks so grandly as
‘Jesaia,’” and, on 1 Kings iii., again having a fling at the Papists:
“Things went on pretty much the same as they do in Popery; nobody
studied and the Bible was thrust aside.”
Only excerpts of the records of these meetings have so far appeared
in print. They are, however, to be published in the Weimar edition of
Luther’s works.[1963]
Besides the minutes, a small copy of both Testaments with notes
which Luther made use of in his revision has been discovered at
Jena. It is an edition printed in 1538-9, or possibly in 1540, then
the most recent edition. The notes show a great many alterations in
the text, chiefly such as had been agreed upon at the meetings, in
Genesis, for instance, no less than two hundred. The entries, so far
as they represent the result of the conferences, constitute the link
between Rörer’s minutes and the new edition subsequently published.
The alterations in the latter seem to be taken, sometimes from the
minutes, sometimes from Luther’s copy. “The Jena Old Testament,” says
O. Reichert, is “a document that exemplifies Luther’s way of working;
it proves that he felt he had never done enough for his best work,
that he was always busy at it and was indefatigable in his efforts to
produce a German Bible from the original text.”[1964]
The outcome of the work of revision was a great improvement in the
Wittenberg Bible of 1540 and 1541 printed by Hans Lufft. Another
edition, dating from 1542, embodied in the main most of the new
emendations. The edition most highly prized is, however, the last
that appeared during Luther’s lifetime, viz. that of 1545, which also
contains new corrections. It has been called the “_editio typica_” of
Luther’s Bible, though, possibly, that of 1546, with new alterations by
Rörer, to which Luther is supposed to have given his approval, should
be regarded as such.
The detailed account of this revision is not the only witness we have
to the care and pains Luther bestowed on the work, for we have also
the recently discovered manuscript copy of his translation, which
Luther sent to the printers. The latter consists of portions of the
Old Testament written with his own hand: Part of the Book of Judges,
then Ruth, Kings, Paralipomena, Esdras, Nehemias and Esther, also Job,
the Psalter, Proverbs, the Preacher and the Canticle of Canticles.
They were published by the Magdeburg pastor, E. Thiele, in the Weimar
edition from two MSS. at Zerbst and Berlin.[1965] Here we see how
assiduously Luther corrects and deletes, how frequently he wrestles,
so to speak, after the correct expression and cannot at times satisfy
himself.[1966] Luther’s manuscript copy of the New Testament has not so
far been discovered.
In consequence of the above publications the examination into the
origin of the text of Luther’s Bible and into the principles which
determined its compilation enters upon a new phase. In the same way the
significance of the text for the history of the German language stands
out more clearly because such discoveries bear the strongest testimony
to Luther’s untiring endeavours to adapt himself to the true German
mode of expression, to his dexterity in finding synonyms and to his
skill in construing.
_On the Language and the Learning Displayed in Luther’s Bible_
The excellence of Luther’s translation of the Bible from the point of
view of its German is unquestionable.
For, what the author above all aimed at, viz. a popular rendering of
the text which should harmonise with the peculiarities of the German
language, that he certainly achieved. Through his Bible, too, owing to
its general use throughout so large a portion of the nation, he exerted
a greater influence on the upbuilding of the German tongue than by all
his other vernacular works.
In his other writings, in which he was ever striving to improve his
mode of speech, we may often find real models of good German, which,
consciously or not, had a widespread influence on the language. In the
case of his Bible, however, this was far more noticeable, for not only
was his language there more polished, but the fact of the text being so
frequently committed to memory, quoted from the pulpit and surrounded
by that halo which befits the Word of God, helped to extend its sway.
Not only did he take infinite pains to translate aright such phrases as
ring unfamiliar to Western ears, but he was also assisted by his happy
gift of observation and his knack of catching the true idiom. His habit
of noting the words that fell from the lips of the populace, or, as he
says, of “looking into the jaw of the man in the street,”[1967] was of
the utmost service to him in his choice and use of terms. “No German
talks like that,” “that is not put ‘_germanice_,’” “the German tongue
won’t stand that,” and similar utterances, frequently recur in the
minutes of the conferences when he is finding fault with the renderings
proposed by others or even with his own earlier ones.
It was fortunate for him, that, as his medium of intercourse, he chose
to use a kind of German, not indeed unknown before, but, which, with
his rare gifts, he exploited with greater independence and vigour.
Wittenberg was favourably situated from the geographical point of view,
and the students who flocked thither from every part of Germany were
ever bringing Luther fresh elements, thus enabling him to select among
the various dialects what was common to all. The short journeys he made
and his correspondence with so many people in every part of Germany
were also of assistance to him.
“I have,” Luther says himself, “no particular, special German language
of my own, but I use the common German language so that both the Upper
and the Lower Lands may understand me. I write according to the speech
of the Saxon Chancery which is used by all the princes and kings of
Germany. All the Imperial Cities and Royal Courts in writing make use
of the language of the Saxon Chancery and of our sovereign; hence this
is the kind of German most widely spoken. The Emperor Maximilian, the
Elector Frederick and the Duke of Saxony, etc., have fused all the
different modes of German speech in the whole Roman Empire into a
uniform language.”[1968] Hence, on his own admission, the language was
not new. “The language of Upper Germany,” he says, “is not the real
German; it is broad and uncouth and sounds harsh. But the Saxon tongue
flows quietly and easily.”[1969]
When we try to determine in detail the language of which Luther made
use, and how much he actually did to further its development, we are
met by great difficulties. German philologists have not yet been able
thoroughly to explore this domain, because so little is known of the
German prints of the 15th century, of the manuscripts and the various
groups of writers.[1970] Protestant theologians have often contented
themselves with a few quotations from certain German philologists and
historians, which exaggerate the case in Luther’s favour.[1971] Of such
exaggerations Protestant scholars had been guilty even in the 16th
century;[1972] for instance, the German preacher and grammarian, Johann
Clajus, says, in 1578: “As the Holy Ghost spoke pure Hebrew through
Moses and Greek through the Apostles, so He spoke pure German through
His chosen instrument Martin Luther. It would not otherwise have been
possible for a man to speak so accurately.”[1973]
In answer to the question, “What is the task imposed upon learned
research by Luther’s Bible?” Risch, an authority on this subject,
remarks: “The historical connection of the language used by Luther in
his Bible with the German language of yore has still to be brought
to light”; the studies undertaken so far have dealt too exclusively
with one particular side of the question, viz. with the vowel sounds
used by Luther and by his predecessors; too much stress has also been
laid on the Middle-High German diphthongs (î, û, ìu[ü], becoming
ei, au, eu).[1974] Luther’s relations with the past in the matter
of the construction of sentences and arrangement of words, and more
particularly in his vocabulary and the meaning he gives to his words,
have not been set forth scientifically enough, though abundant material
for so doing is to be found in Grimm’s German dictionary, in Hermann
Paul’s and elsewhere.
Then again, as Paul Pietsch points out in the introduction to the 1st
volume of Luther’s Bible in the Weimar series, we have not been sure
hitherto even of the exact text of Luther’s translation. Owing to the
divergencies in the text it was “not possible, with the help of the
various editions scattered throughout the world, to arrive at any
final opinion concerning the language employed in the Bible or the
alterations it underwent.” Hence, only on the completion of the Weimar
series shall we be able to form “an adequate idea of the position
Luther’s translation holds in the history of New High German.”[1975]
Finally, there is still some doubt as to what Luther actually meant
by his statement concerning the German of the Chanceries of Saxony,
the Empire and the Imperial Cities being the model on which his own
language was based, and as to how far he was speaking the truth. We
must in all probability go much further back than the time of the
Emperor Maximilian of whom Luther speaks, viz. to the Chancery of the
Luxemburg kings of Bohemia, for it was the latter who established,
about the middle of the 14th century, a sort of New High German which
later on spread to Silesia, to Upper and Lower Lusatia, and, then,
thanks to the Emperor Frederick III, to the Chancery of the Hapsburgs
and to those of the Saxon Electorate, Hesse and Mayence. In those
early days the new language was a mixture of the dialects of Upper and
Central Germany, of those of Austria and of Meissen.[1976]
Chancery German, however, restricted as it was by its very nature
within certain well-defined limits and hampered by the stiffness of the
Court, was not likely to prove of much service to Luther, who sought
a language which should be understood by the people and be full of
strength and variety. Hence we are driven to surmise that it was rather
in the homes of the people that he sought his language, turning to good
account his gift for coining what he needed from the various German
dialects.
As regards the state of the language in Germany at that time, E.
Gutjahr has recently endeavoured to prove that the efforts at
colonisation and the movement of the people, more particularly from
the 12th to the 14th century, had paved the way in Saxony for the rise
and spread of a new, common language (New High German), and that in
towns like Halle a new patrician type of language had sprung up which
Luther had only to assimilate. In his “Anfänge der neuhochdeutschen
Sprache vor Luther” (1910), the author gives us an outline of the
conclusions he has reached and which he hopes to set forth at greater
length later. Whether he will succeed in making out his case remains,
however, to be seen.
The language of the Saxon Chancery was, according to Gutjahr, even in
Luther’s day, not merely the “polite language of general intercourse,”
but one in which all the German Courts were versed, the Imperial,
Austrian one of Maximilian, as much as that of the Saxon Electorate
under Frederick the Wise.[1977] From this language, “into which he
infused new elements taken from the mouth of the people,” Luther
forged a mighty weapon for his work, being all the more readily led
to do so seeing that the “reforming movement found its mainstay among
the patrician classes of the Saxon Electorate.”[1978] Nevertheless we
must not assume the existence in Luther’s day of any common written
language in the modern sense. The foundation for such a common
language had indeed been laid, but as yet it did not exist. Before our
nation could lay claim to a common language of its own—our Modern
High German as written—a long time had still to elapse.[1979]
The language used by Luther in his Bible was made still more widely
known owing to the work being at once reprinted even where other
dialects prevailed, though as a rule some alterations were made to
bring it into line with the idiom in use; at times the printers did no
more than append a short vocabulary explaining such Saxon phrases as
might be strange to the reader. In this way the new Bible, the language
of which was so admirably suited to become a common one, penetrated
everywhere, even into out of the way districts where the most divergent
dialects obtained.[1980]
Its influence was all the more important now that small principalities
were springing up at the expense of the unity of Germany and threatened
the language with further disintegration. The Lutherans were the first
to perceive and work against this danger, though the Catholics were by
no means unmindful of it too. Catholics, too, sought to take advantage
of the translation, and, in some cases, even went too far in this.
Luther once declares in his usual vein: “Our opponents read it more
than do our own people”;[1981] he also mentions that Duke George had
said: “Let the monk finish translating the Bible into German and then
get himself gone.”[1982]
What in the case of Protestants favoured the influence Luther’s Bible
exerted on the language, was, on the one hand the profound interest
aroused in the reader by his inspiring pen, and, on the other, its
appearance at a time when, though the art of printing had been
invented, the whole world, and more particularly Germany, judged from
a literary, theological standpoint, was still lying to a large extent
fallow and was thus more readily dominated by such a work as his,
and that not merely as regards the matter but also as regards the
style. Men of learning, owing to humanistic influences, wrote almost
exclusively in Latin. The use of the German language for theological
and religious subjects, save in sermons and popular writings, was
something unusual; in fact, such a thing was rather discountenanced
owing largely to the publication of German works which had made a wrong
use of Scripture.
In Lutheranism the New High German of the Bible found its way not only
into educated, ecclesiastical circles but also to the common folk, into
whose ears the preachers assiduously dinned countless favourite texts
in their new form; it also became familiar to the teachers and children
in the schools. No more powerful lever for the furtherance of New High
German could have been found. A century after, New High German had
become the language of the churches and schools in the regions subject
to Luther’s influence, whilst the South German and Low German dialects
had largely lost their hold.
When all is said, however, the secret of such success is not to be
entirely understood unless we also take into account the religious
position Luther occupied in the eyes of his followers. All who
venerated him as having thrown a new light on religion, valued and
honoured the language used by a mind so imperious, so strong and
versatile, and, when it so pleased, so sympathetic. H. Böhmer says very
truly of the old German Protestants: “Luther became for the Germans the
authority on speech because he was their supreme authority on faith
and personal conduct. Had he not been a religious reformer and had he
not bequeathed to Evangelical Germany in his Bible a book, which,
on account of its religious importance was bound to be looked upon
as a model of language, he would never have exercised so powerful an
influence on the written and spoken language.”[1983]
Nevertheless, to assert, that, by his German Bible and his other
writings Luther was the actual founder of New High German is to go
too far, quite apart from the fact that German, as now written, is no
longer identical with the German of Luther’s Bible and other writings.
We cannot take seriously Grimm’s assertions that “New High German may
in point of fact be called the Protestant dialect,” or that “Luther’s
language, owing to its noble, almost marvellous purity and its mighty
influence, was both the germ and the foundation of the New High German
tongue.”[1984]
“Protestants,” says Pastor Risch, “have hitherto been disposed to
undervalue the literary use made of the German language before Luther’s
day, particularly in the religious domain, and to exaggerate Luther’s
importance in the history of the tongue. Only in so far as he succeeded
in seizing upon and bringing out all the forces and possibilities
latent in the language, was it possible for his work to be truly
creative and epoch-making. To catch the idiom of the people, not to
force a new language upon it with his German Bible, was, on his own
admission, Luther’s aim. The German language prepared the way for
Luther to a greater extent than at first sight appears.”[1985]
Two other considerations will serve still further to curtail the
importance of Luther’s services to the German tongue.
First of all it must be pointed out that many very coarse elements
found their way into his popular works, and thus, unhappily, into the
written language, and, secondly, that a large number of words and
phrases peculiar to South Germany and which were accordingly unknown to
Luther, find, for this reason, no place in works, with the result that
the German language suffered.
We may speak with less reserve of the merits of the new translation
so far as it is based on the original languages of the Bible, and on
the Latin Vulgate then in general use. Even before Luther started on
his work attention had been called to the original text; indeed,
as it happens, the scholar who was the primary cause of Luther’s
studying the original language was his Catholic opponent, Erasmus, who
himself brought out the Greek edition of the New Testament. To Luther,
however, belongs the honour of having been the first to tread the new
philological paths with a German version.
In his somewhat hurried version of the New Testament he used the Greek
text as well as the Vulgate. In the same way, in his translation of the
Old Testament, he went back to the original so far as his knowledge of
Hebrew allowed, and, where this was insufficient, sought the help of
others.
* * * * *
The principle he followed, viz. to make the Bible plain to the German
reader by explaining its meaning, so far as this can be done by a
translation, brings us, however, face to face with other questions.
Luther had a high opinion of the accuracy and clearness of his work.
He says of it: “I can with a good conscience testify that I have shown
the utmost fidelity and diligence therein, and have never thought to
deceive.”[1986]
“No one would believe what labour it has cost except those who worked
with us,” so he said in his last years according to Mathesius, when
looking back on the success of his undertaking. “This Bible—not that
I would praise myself but the work speaks for itself—is so good that
it is better than the Greek or Latin translation, and more is to be
found in it than in all the commentaries. For we remove the hindrances
and stumbling-blocks out of the way so that other people may be able
to read without difficulty.”[1987] Reducing this eulogy to its proper
proportions we may indeed allow that Luther eliminated the “hindrances
and stumbling-blocks” from his German translation, being no literalist,
but anxious above all to put into plain German what sounded strange or
difficult.
Yet such a system of translation can only within certain limits be
regarded as the right one. As to whether Luther always kept within
these limits, and as to how we are to regard the use he made of this
freedom in particular instances, is a point on which even the greatest
admirers of the German Bible disagree. Pastor Risch, the expert
repeatedly referred to above, remarks pessimistically: “Scarcely any
of those who have written on Luther’s method of translating have gone
beyond mere generalities. They are satisfied with dishing up again
more or less skilfully Luther’s principles as set forth in his ‘Von
Dolmetzscheñ.’ Not even my own work on the German Bible (1907) do
I exempt from this criticism. Research must bring us by inductive
reasoning to the recognition of the root principle which alone can
explain the many thousand variant readings we meet with to-day in the
[Weimar] German Bible (vols. i. and ii.), and in Bindseil’s critical
edition,”[1988]—It is, however, to be feared that in very many
instances the “root principle” supposed to underlie Luther’s work
will fail in practice. His hasty, precipitate work in the Wartburg
(the completion of the New Testament in three months) puts any real
scholarly method out of the question. The fact that barely a week
was allotted to each Gospel precludes the use of any well-considered
principles in the work of translation.
Again, Luther often deviates far too much from the original text and
takes too many liberties in his efforts to be plain. To this must be
added the fact, that, owing to his insufficient linguistic attainments,
he fails in many instances to reach the real sense of the original
sacred text, to say nothing, of course, of the numerous critical
emendations made at a later date in the texts. Hence Protestants have
sometimes judged the scholarship of Luther’s Bible rather harshly.
Josias Bunsen, for instance, called Luther’s translation “one of
the most inaccurate, though showing signs of great genius,” and
declared that, in it, there are “three thousand passages which call
for revision.”[1989] E. Nestle, the Protestant philologist and Bible
expert, referring to the revision which had taken place in Germany,
says of the defects of Luther’s Bible: “A comparison with the English
or Swiss work of revision shows how much further we might and ought to
have gone.”[1990]
The most outspoken critic is, however, Paul de Lagarde, the Protestant
theologian and Orientalist of Göttingen. In an article likewise
dealing with the so-called “Revised Bible” of 1883,[1991] he devotes
more than five pages to a list of passages from Isaias, the Book of
Proverbs and the Psalms, which Franz Delitzsch had been compelled to
retranslate even earlier.[1992] To this list he appends another long
one of passages, which he holds to be manifestly mistranslations of
the original.
Thus, to quote only one important instance, the Messianic prophecy of
Jacob in Genesis xlix. 10, should be rendered: “The sceptre shaשll not
be taken away from Juda ... till he come that is to be sent,” or “that
is prayed for” (ילתש), whereas Luther translates תלש֗ incorrectly
by “hero” and thus robs the wonderful text of some of its force. De
Lagarde notes, that elsewhere Luther himself renders Malachias iii.
1: “The Lord Whom you seek shall speedily come to His temple, and the
angel of the covenant whom you desire.” Beside such mistakes Luther’s
allusion to the hedgehog that builds nests and lays eggs (Isaias
xxxiv. 15) can only be regarded as a curiosity and a slip on his part.
This hedgehog was among the victims sacrificed in the revised Bible of
1883.
The same critic also complains, that, Rom. iii. 23, even in the
revised Bible, has: “For they are sinners,” whereas the Aorist demands
the translation: “They all have sinned.” He shows how, as early as
1839, Tholuck had drawn attention to the vast dogmatic importance of
Luther’s suppression of this Aorist.[1993]
With still greater show of reason De Lagarde finds fault with other
wilful deviations from the text; he refers to those pointed out by
Döllinger in “Die Reformation” and again insisted on by Janssen, and
then by Paulsen in his “Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts.” These
false renderings have, however, out of a wrong regard for Luther, been
retained in the Lutheran Bible even to the present day.
Luther’s scant concern for the text where it runs counter to his ideas
calls for further discussion.
_Luther’s German Bible Considered Theologically_
Bearing in mind Luther’s character we can well understand how sorely
he was tempted during his work to make the text square with his own
doctrine, the more so since the translation was intended as a popular
explanation of the Bible. When, moreover, one remembers his arbitrary
way of proving his doctrine, and the entire freedom with which he was
wont to handle other religious matters connected with antiquity, which,
though not in the Word of God, were nevertheless historical facts easy
of verification, it will not greatly surprise even those readers who
are prejudiced in his favour to find, that, in his treatment of the
original text of Holy Scripture—which most people are not able to
verify—he did not scruple here and there to introduce ideas of his
own. “What does it matter,” so he said later in his blind conviction of
being in the right, in reply to those who accused him of having altered
the text, “so long as at bottom the thing is clear,” so long as “it
evidently is so,” and “is demanded by the state of the case?” “Not only
is it right but even highly necessary that it should be set forth in
the clearest and fullest manner,” etc.[1994]
It is chiefly in the question of justification by faith alone that he
twists his text so much that his version ceases in reality to be a
translation. He indeed speaks of his additions as “commentaries,” but
no one could thus have “commented” on the passages who was not, like
Luther, entirely taken up with the new dogma of grace, justification
and faith.
In his efforts to provide his doctrine with a firm foundation in the
eyes of his readers, he added the word “only” in Rom. iv. 15 and
Rom. iii. 20, thus making these Pauline texts into a condemnation of
the Law: “The law worketh _only_ wrath,” “by the law _only_ is the
knowledge of sin.”
Again, in Rom. iii. 25 f., the Apostle speaks of Christ “whom God
hath proposed to be a propitiation through faith in his blood to
the showing of his justice for the remission of former sins through
the forbearance of God for the showing of his justice in this time,
that he himself may be just and the justification of him who is of
the faith of Jesus Christ.” Luther, however, in the interests of his
new doctrine, makes him say that God had “set up Christ as a mercy
seat through faith in his Blood, in order that he may present the
righteousness which is acceptable to him, forgiving the sins which
had remained till then under divine forbearance, that he might in his
season offer the righteousness which is acceptable to him that he
might himself alone be just and the justifier of him that is of the
faith of Jesus.” The offering of the righteousness that is acceptable
to God—an expression twice repeated—is not found in the original
text, but of course is highly favourable to Luther’s doctrine of a
merely imputed righteousness.[1995] In the same way he here speaks of
God as “alone” being just, an interpolation of which the origin must
also be sought in the translator’s theology.[1996]
Another passage falsely rendered is Rom. viii. 3: “He condemned sin in
the flesh by sin,” instead of “on account of sin” (the Son of God was
sent) as the Greek text (περὶ ἁμαρτίας) plainly states.
The frequent substitution of the word “pious” for “just” would seem
innocent enough, but this too was done purposely. Here a pet term
of Luther’s theology is made to replace the right word in order the
better to represent holiness as something merely imputed. “To be
pious,” according to Luther, is to have faith, and, through faith,
imputed justice.[1997] Thus Noe becomes a “pious man without reproach”
(Gen. vi. 9) instead of a “just and perfect man.” Zachary and
Elizabeth are described as “pious,” but not as “just” before God (Luke
i. 6), and similarly with Simeon (_ib._, ii. 25), and Joseph, the
husband of Mary (Mt. i. 19). Job, too, is not asked, as in the Sacred
text: “What doth it profit God if thou be just?” but “What pleasure is
it to the Almighty if thou makest thyself pious?” (Job xxii. 3). The
exhortation in Apoc. xxii. 11: “He that is just let him be justified
still,” appears in the weakened form: “He that is pious let him be
pious still.”[1998]
From his constant use of the word “congregation” instead of “Church”
the latter conception unquestionably suffers. In Luther’s translation
the word church is used only of the heathen temples and illegal
sanctuaries of the Israelites. He also terms the heathen priests
and soothsayers “parsons,” and unmistakably likens them and their
practices to those of Catholicism. Baruch vi. 30, for instance, which
describes the heathen priests is rendered as follows: “And the priests
sit in their temples in their voluminous copes [!]; with shaven faces
and wearing tonsures they sit there bareheaded and howl and cry aloud
before their idols.” “It is perfectly obvious at whom this is aimed,”
remarks a Protestant critic.[1999]
The licence of the translator here is, however, of less importance
than in his treatment of the passages on faith and justice, of which
we shall give two further instances. These also show how Luther, even
where he does not essentially alter the text, nevertheless succeeds
in construing the words of Holy Scripture in such a way as to favour
his own doctrine. When Paul’s statements were obscure they should have
been left in their obscurity, or, at any rate, they should not have
been translated in such a way as to contradict the doctrine elsewhere
taught by the Apostle.
And yet this is just what Luther does in Rom. x. 4. The passage
according to the Greek runs: “For the aim of the law is Christ unto
the justice of everyone that believeth,” whereas Luther’s version is:
“For Christ is the end of the law, and whoever believeth in Him is
just.”
The same is the case with the oft-quoted text Rom. iii. 28, of which
Luther’s Bible makes a kind of palladium for the new teaching by the
arbitrary addition of the word “alone.” The text has been immortalised
in its Lutheran shape even to our own day in inscriptions on
Protestant churches and pulpits. There Luther makes the Apostle say:
“Thus we hold that a man is justified by faith alone without the works
of the law,” whereas the old Latin of the Vulgate rightly rendered it:
“_Arbitramur enim iustificari hominem per fidem sine operibus_.”
The word “alone” is not called for either by the text or the context.
It is indeed true that the Apostle wishes to emphasise the exclusive
action of faith, nevertheless, if we take this faith as he understands
it, i.e. as a strong and vivifying faith and no mere dead thing,
then it naturally comprises the works wrought by faith and man’s
co-operation under the influence of grace. Of this faith to which the
Apostle expressly refers, for instance in Romans ii. 6 ff. and in
Galatians v. 6, he might quite well have said in the above passage
that it justifies without works, i.e. without such as are performed
apart from faith and grace. In fact, taken in this sense, Luther’s
interpolation of the word “alone” is not reprehensible, though in
the sense in which he intended it it is altogether inadmissible; for
he would fain make the Apostle say, that faith “alone,” without any
works of the law, operates justification, the works being merely
an aspect of faith. The addition of the word “alone” amounted to a
quite unjustifiable usurpation of the famous Pauline dictum for the
uses of his own party. It must also at least be termed a subjective
falsification, even though, objectively, it be capable of a better
interpretation. If, as we have heard Luther say, he really wished
to show in his translation “the utmost fidelity and industry and had
never a thought of deception,” then he should not have made St. Paul
say more than he does in the original, viz. that man is justified by
faith without works.
Contemporary Catholic pens were not slow in assailing in the
strongest terms Luther’s translation on account of his surreptitious
introduction of the word “alone.” The translator also regarded the
protest as of sufficient importance to warrant his devoting his
leisure in the Coburg in September, 1530, to composing a reply. The
tract in question, entitled “Sendbrieff von Dolmetzscheñ,” he sent to
his friend Wenceslaus Link at Nuremberg instructing him to have it
printed.[2000]
In it he gives two reasons in vindication of his arbitrary action: He
had been obliged in this instance to add the word “alone” in order
first of all to render the Apostle’s meaning in correct German, for
it was the German usage to use the word “alone” or “only,” when,
of two things, people wanted to deny one and affirm the other, for
instance, if one wished to say that a peasant had brought the wheat
asked for but not the money, then he would not say “he has brought
the wheat but not the money,” but “he has brought no money but only
corn.”[2001] Luther, however, was only able to show that this was in
accordance with the spirit of the language in certain instances, not
that it was necessary or indispensable in every case, particularly in
the instance in question; still less could he prove that there were
not circumstances affecting the words and the meaning where such a use
of “alone” or “only” must be avoided in order not to change the tenor
of the sentence. It might rightly have been urged against him that
fidelity was far more important a matter than good phraseology.—The
second reason he alleges in support of the interpolation bears
directly on his erroneous view of the Apostle’s doctrine: “I have
not followed merely linguistic considerations, for the text and the
meaning of St. Paul absolutely demand it.” “He deliberately cuts
away all works.” “Whoever would speak bluntly and plainly of such
a dismissal of works must say: faith alone,” etc. If “this be so
obvious,” “why then not say so”?[2002] Thus he makes the word “alone”
a sort of hall-mark of his own “public” teaching.
He is determined to defy his opponents and to challenge them yet
again. “And I repent me,” he cries, “that I did not add thereto the
word _all_, thus: without _all_ works, _all_ law whatsoever, so that
it might be spoken out with a full, round sound. Thus therefore it
shall remain in my New Testament, and though all Pope-asses should go
raving mad they will not alter my decision.”[2003]—In a similar way
and with redoubled energy he turns on those who had found fault with
his translation of the Hail Mary because he had discarded “full of
grace” in favour of “gracious.” “The Papists are furious with me for
having spoilt the Angelical Salutation, but, as a matter of fact, in
good German I ought to have said, ‘God greet thee, dear Mary.’ I shall
translate, not as _they_, but as _I_ please!”[2004]
The remarkable “Sendbrieff,” other portions of which are of the
highest psychological interest, must be regarded as in reality a
product of the author’s mental overstrain at that time. On the one
hand he was on tenterhooks wondering what the fate of the new Evangel
would be, threatened as it was by the Diet of Augsburg; on the other
hand he was overmastered by the sight of his own achievements,
particularly his much-belauded translation of the Bible. He was
also profoundly exasperated by the translation of the New Testament
published by Emser (see below, p. 519), the “Dresen [Dresden]
Scribbler” as Luther called him,[2005] and by the prohibition issued
at Leipzig against the sale of his German Bible in the duchy of Saxony.
Hence he relieves his feelings in his usual way by an outburst of
noisy vituperation: “All the Papists in a lump” are not “clever enough
to understand or translate a single chapter of Scripture aright, no,
not even the first two words.” Their braying, their “he-haw, he-haw,
is too weak to harm my translation. I know full well what art,
industry, reason and common sense go to make a good translation, but,
as for them, they understand this less even than the miller’s beast.”
It is quite true, so he says, that the four letters, _s_ _o_ _l_ _a_,
do not occur in Romans, “which letters these blockheads stare at as
stupidly as a cow does at a new gate”; but, so he goes on, it is not
our business to inquire “of the Latin letters how to speak German,
as these donkeys do.” “No Pope-ass or mule-ass, who has never even
attempted it himself, shall I suffer to be my judge, or to find fault
with me in this matter. Whoever does not want my version has simply to
let it alone and ... be rewarded with the devil’s thanks.”[2006] “For
the future I shall simply despise them and get others to do the same,
so long as they remain such people, I beg your pardon, donkeys.”[2007]
In his efforts to express his contempt in the strongest words at his
command we have the key to what he says in conclusion, which some of
his opponents took too seriously. The famous “_Sic volo, sic iubeo_”
with which his tract ends, though of course not meant in earnest, is
nevertheless very characteristic of him.
“If,” he writes, “your new Papist makes much ado about the word
_sola_, just say straight out to him: Dr. Martin Luther _will_ have
it so and says Papist and donkey are one and the same thing.... _Sic
volo, sic iubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas._” He too would boast for
once and rail against the blockheads as St. Paul [!] had done against
his crazy saints. Hence he parodies St. Paul’s words and scoffs at the
Papists who wished to make themselves out to be doctors, preachers,
theologians and disputants, reiterating for each category the words
“And so am I.” He then goes further: “I am able to interpret the
Psalms and the Prophets, which they cannot do. I can translate, which
they can’t. I can read Holy Scripture, they cannot. And to come to
other matters: I am better acquainted with their dialectics and their
philosophy than the whole lot of them together, and know for certain
that not one of them understands his Aristotle. And if there is one
among them who understands one introduction or chapter of Aristotle,
then I am ready to be tossed in a blanket.”[2008]
The whole tract is one of the most extravagant examples of this stamp
of polemical satire. It is hardly possible to determine where exactly
the “great doctor” ceases and the satirical rhetorician begins.
In addition to the mistakes and the wilfulness of the translation,
the character of the glosses appended by Luther, and still more
his attitude towards the Canon of the Bible, laid his work open to
objections of the most serious kind.
In the glosses on many passages he shows wonderful skill in
manipulating the text in favour of his wrong views. This is carried
so far that, to the account of the anointing of Our Lord’s feet by
the Magdalen (Mat. xxvi. 10), he adds the marginal gloss: “Thus one
sees that faith alone makes the work good,” because only faith could
transform this seeming waste into a good work.[2009] Of Mat. xvi. 18:
“Thou art Peter and on this rock I will build my church,” he gives the
following explanation, which plainly rests on his own partisan and
anti-Papal standpoint: By Peter all Christians together with Peter are
meant, and their confession is the rock. “All Christians are Peters on
account of the confession which here Peter makes, which also is the
rock on which Peter and all the other Peters are built. The confession
is common to all; hence also the name.”[2010]
It was partly the defects of the translation itself, partly the
cleverly calculated and thus all the more dangerous marginal glosses,
which called forth objections and warnings from Catholic writers as
soon as the work was published.
Hier. Emser complains that Luther “made Scripture to turn everywhere
on faith and works, even when neither faith nor works are thought of.”
Emser speaks of more than 1400 passages which Luther had rendered in
a false and heretical sense, though many of the passages he instances
are not of any great importance.[2011]
Johann Hasenberg, the Leipzig Professor, even went so far as to
enumerate three thousand passages badly rendered in the German
Bible.[2012]
The theological faculty at Leipzig had declared as early as Jan. 6,
1523, that Luther had introduced his erroneous doctrines into the
German Bible, a verdict on which Duke George took his stand when
issuing his prohibition. Emser now set to work to carry out the
Duke’s further instructions, viz. that “he should revise anew the New
Testament in accordance with the tenor and arrangement of the old,
authentic text, and restore it and set it in order throughout.”[2013]
His purpose was mainly to weed out the theological errors. His new
edition of Luther’s text was revised according to the Vulgate and
provided with notes on the Greek. He also bought from Cranach the
blocks for the illustrations (see below, p. 528), rejecting, however,
such of the cuts as were too insulting, for instance, those in which
the Papal tiara appears. The many excellencies of the language of
Luther’s version, and almost all the fruits of his labours, thus
passed into Emser’s edition, which appeared at Leipzig in 1527.
Absence of copyright laws explains to some extent Emser’s action.
Emser’s Bible, which was also made up to resemble Luther’s folio
volumes, bore no translator’s name and was simply entitled: “Das Naw
Testament nach Lawt der christlichen Kirchen bewertem Text corrigiert
un wiederumb zurecht gebracht,” and thus made no claim to being a new
or original translation. As, however, Luther, the original translator,
had been severely censured in Duke George’s Introduction we can
readily understand that he was much vexed at the revision of his work
and accused the editor of plagiarism.[2014] As Kawerau, however,
remarks, “had he (Emser) laid claim to being an actual ‘translator,’
then his work would indeed have deserved to be styled a piece of
plagiarism, as it has even down to our own day; but this he did not
do, and merely wished to be regarded as the corrector of the Lutheran
translation; hence this charge may be dismissed as unfair.”[2015]
The second edition, however, which appeared after his death, bore
Emser’s name as the translator: “Das New Testament, so Emser säliger
verdeutscht.” This second edition was brought out by Augustine Alveld,
as recent research has proved.[2016] In it certain coarse expressions
which Emser had borrowed from Luther’s Bible were supplanted by more
“seemly” words “for the sake of the maidens and the pure of heart,” a
circumstance which incidentally shows that even Luther’s more moderate
style of writing, as we find it in his Bible, was felt to be unusual
and not always quite proper.
Johann Dietenberger, a Bible expert and contemporary of Luther’s,
wrote: Although Luther constantly appeals to Holy Scripture, yet
there is no one who takes away from or adds to it more than he. “Of
the Bible he rejects and adds what he pleases in order to establish
his errors.”[2017] Dietenberger, a Mayence Dominican, published a
complete translation of Holy Scripture in 1534, making considerable
use for this purpose of Luther’s German Bible. He says in his Preface,
in explanation of this, that he had been urgently requested to “go
through the recent German translation of the Bible (Luther’s) and
remove all that was not in accordance with the faith.”[2018]
Johann Eck, who undertook a new translation of the whole Bible (1537),
acted more independently; but, however good as a critic of Luther’s
Bible, his own work met with but little success. His stilted German
translation found but few readers.[2019]
Even to the followers of the new faith Luther’s translation gave
offence owing to its want of fidelity. Bullinger, writing to Bucer
on a certain question, remarks: “Luther admits that he has not been
faithful in his translation of the Bible, in fact he is almost
inclined to withdraw it.”[2020] J. L. Holler, who in 1654 wrote a
pamphlet about his return from Protestantism to the Catholic Church,
says that what moved him to take this step was his discovery of
Luther’s dishonest rendering. He gave a long list of passages where
Luther’s Bible departs from the true text.[2021]
In his treatment of the Canon of the Bible Luther proceeds with his
customary licence. Those books of the Bible in which he thought he
found his own doctrines most clearly enunciated he speaks of in
the Prefaces as “the best,” viz. the Gospel and 1st Epistle of St.
John, the Epistles of St. Paul, particularly those to the Romans,
the Galatians and the Ephesians, and the 1st Epistle of Peter; the
remaining books he arbitrarily ranks below these, and sometimes goes so
far in depreciating them that their biblical character is jeopardised
(below, p. 522, n. 6).
“The standard by which the greater or lesser value of each book
is determined,” says Adolf Hausrath, is the degree of clearness
with which the doctrine of justification by faith is proclaimed.
“Protestant Bible criticism had its originator in Luther, only that
his successors shrank from persevering in his footsteps.”[2022]
Of 2 Machabees he had said even at the Leipzig Disputation that it did
not belong to the Canon, simply because of the difficulty presented by
the passage quoted by Eck concerning Purgatory which Luther denied.
Of this book and the book of Esther, which also found no favour
in his eyes, he said later in the Table-Talk, that “they were too
much inclined to judaise and contained much heathen naughtiness.”
The so-called deuterocanonical books, though they are found in the
Septuagint, were practically denied the status of inspired books by
the very way in which he grouped them; in his translation they appear
as a mere appendix to the rest of Scripture. According to the Preface,
they were “not to be regarded as equal to the Bible, though good and
profitable to read.”
He denied that the Epistle to the Hebrews emanated from an Apostle;
it was “a made-up Epistle,” consisting of fragments amongst which,
“mayhap, there is wood, hay and chaff.”[2023]
The Apocalypse he regarded as neither “apostolic nor prophetic.”[2024]
“Let each one judge of it as he thinks fit; my spirit cannot find its
way in the book.”[2025] In the Preface to the Epistle of Jude he is
very unfair to this portion of Holy Scripture.[2026] He regards it as
merely an excerpt from the 2nd Epistle of Peter and says it was “an
unnecessary missive and should be ranked below the main books [of the
Bible].”[2027] The words of approval he elsewhere bestows on these
books do not avail to undo his criticism in this instance.
As regards his animosity to the Epistle of James; Luther questions
its authenticity chiefly because, so he says, this Epistle, “in
direct contrast to St. Paul and the rest of Scripture, attributes
righteousness to works.”[2028] As further grounds for doubting its
genuineness, he points out, that, though “it undertakes to teach
Christian people, yet throughout its whole length it never once
considers the sufferings, the resurrection and the spirit of Christ,”
further, it uses the language of the apostolic writings in such a way,
“that it is plain that he [the author] lived long after St. Peter and
St. Paul.”[2029]—On these grounds, at the close of his preface to
the New Testament of 1522, he characterised it as an epistle of straw
compared with the other canonical writings: “Hence the Epistle of
James is nothing but an epistle of straw in comparison with them, for
it has nothing evangelical about it.”[2030]—In 1515 and 1516, when he
wrote his unprinted commentary on Romans, he had as yet no objection
to raise against the canonical character of the Epistle of James. On
the contrary he sought to combine the doctrine of this epistle on good
works with that of St. Paul; he wrote: “When James and Paul say a man
is justified by works, they are refuting the false views of those who
imagine that faith suffices without its works.”[2031] But as early
as the Leipzig Disputation in 1519 he expressed himself unfavourably
concerning the Epistle of James. He repeats his condemnation in the
commentary on Genesis and even goes so far as to remark bitterly, that
James was mad (_delirat_) with his crazy doctrine of works;[2032] in
the same way, in the marginal notes to his private copy of the New
Testament he says, in 1530 for instance, of James ii. 12: “Oh what
a chaos!”[2033] That he eventually altered his opinion, as has been
asserted, cannot be proved merely from the circumstance that the
later editions of his translation of the Bible do not contain the
above words concerning the Epistle of straw. Although he occasionally
expresses himself more favourably to this Epistle, still, against
this, must be set other unfavourable utterances, nor did he ever
retract his severe public condemnation.[2034]
Even in his own day many who favoured the innovations spoke out
against his condemnation of the Epistle of James. Carlstadt in his
“_De canonicis scripturis_” objected in the strongest terms to the
attacks on the Epistle, though he refrains from naming Luther.
Luther’s opinion at that time, viz. that Jerome might be the
author, was characterised quite openly by Carlstadt as “a baseless
supposition,” and his proofs as “frivolous arguments by which he
sought to discredit the Epistle of James.”[2035] Zwingli, Calvin and
H. Bullinger also disclaimed Luther’s views. “In the 17th and 18th
centuries James stood in high favour with Protestants,” and they
even sought to exonerate Luther as best they could, sometimes on
very strange grounds.[2036] The following is the final judgment of a
Protestant critic of modern times who had also vainly tried to excuse
Luther’s action: “It remains an act of injustice no less natural than
regrettable.”[2037]
Says Carlstadt’s biographer: “What lent Carlstadt a decided advantage
in his polemics (against Luther’s attitude towards the Epistle of
James) was the utter inconsistency of Luther’s critical attitude
towards Holy Scripture at that time.”[2038] Luther “read his theology
into the Bible,” remarks another Protestant critic, “just as his
mediæval predecessors had done with theirs.”[2039] “With a wondrous
pertinacity he pitted his theology and his Christ against everything
that did not accord with it, against Popery, against Tradition, yea,
against the Bible itself.”[2040]
The halo of learning that had so long surrounded Luther’s German Bible
seemed to threaten to fade when, after long preparation, the revised
edition was published at Halle in 1883 (and, with new emendations, in
1892). A commission of learned Protestant theologians “of various
shades of opinion” was entrusted by the German-Evangelical Conference
of Eisenach with the work. Out of too great respect for Luther the
alterations made were, however, all too few; veneration for his memory
explains why the translation was not raised to the present standard
of learning. The result was that many Protestant congregations, more
particularly in North Germany, looked askance at the new edition and
it was not generally introduced.[2041] A proposal was made, but to no
purpose, that an exact counterpart of the Luther Bible of 1545 should
be reproduced as a literary monument which would best serve to honour
the author’s memory. The severe objections which scholars have brought
against the revised edition cause it to resemble already a ruin, which,
having had the misfortune to date from a period when the demands made
by learning were less insistent than to-day, now towers lonely and
forsaken in our midst.
It is true that the revised Bible, with its heavy type showing exactly
where it departs from the wording of the old Luther Bible, exhibits
a huge number of freshly hewn stones built into the old, crumbling
fabric. Nevertheless De Lagarde could say of the scholars who had taken
part in the work:
“These theologians of acknowledged standing have given us a Bible in a
language which is not our own, a Bible in which one seeks in vain for
the indispensable emendations with which the revisers were familiar, a
Bible the revisers of which have of set purpose ignored the labours of
their most painstaking and self-sacrificing colleagues, a Bible which
passes over in silence all the essential developments in theology and
religion.”[2042]
“A language that is not ours,” is also the main complaint of the
Protestant theologian S. Oettli concerning this Bible; he also numbers
among its failings its retention of certain old German words and of
Luther’s German rendering of the Divine names and the expressions
Scheol, Hades, Daemon, etc. The principles which ruled the revision
were “anything but unexceptionable,” and the result of the work seemed
“unsatisfactory.” Oettli demonstrates the “backwardness” of the church
Bible by comparing portions of the Bible taken from the revised text
with exact translations of the same passages.[2043]
All the surreptitious alterations and ambiguities we have alluded
to above, for which Luther’s theology was responsible, have been
left untouched, save for the few exceptions already mentioned. And
yet the introduction which tells the story of the revision and is
printed at the beginning of the edition of 1883 admits, though with
extreme caution, that, in places, Luther “had been led to put his
own explanations into his translation of certain passages.”[2044] In
spite of the admitted incorrectness of the renderings in question the
revisers chose to be governed by the strange principle, that “texts
to which the people have become attached under the form given them
by Luther, owing to their use in the church and in works of piety,
are, as far as possible, to be retained unchanged, or only to undergo
slight alteration.”[2045] Owing to their laxity in this respect they
were to hear from their co-religionists that, in the new Bible, they
had “sacrificed their understanding” to Luther,[2046] and again: “If
the [Lutheran] Church after three and a half centuries, with the help
of her best-esteemed theologians, can produce nothing better than this
revision of her principal treasure, then sentence has already been
passed on her. What can flourish in the Lutheran Church if the study
of the Word of God does not?”[2047]
We may add: How much better would not the results have been, and
with what emulation would not the work have been undertaken had
Protestant scholars been summoned to labour in unison to supply
the members of their communion with a brand new translation, quite
independent of Luther’s, which should tally with the best present-day
knowledge? In asking this question we are, of course, ignoring the
inward difficulties presented by the difference of standpoint. In any
case, however, the unprejudiced observer will see in the history of
this revision and of similar attempts at revision made in the past,
how heavily the burden of a single great name may weigh on whole
generations.
A result of greater importance for the present subject is, however,
that Luther’s German Bible, in spite of all the pains taken by its
author, falls far short of the ideal of scholarship and impartial
fidelity. For these defects the real merits of its German garb cannot
compensate.
_Psychological Aspects of Luther’s Work on the German Bible_
In Protestant works on Luther written in a pious vein we often find
him depicted as animated solely by the desire to enjoy the heavenly
consolation of the holy Word of God and to make it known to his fellow
Germans. In such works all his secondary, personal and polemical
motives tend to disappear from view, and his guiding star during the
three and twenty long years during which he was busy on the Bible seems
to be nothing but the desire to satisfy the soul that craves for God
and the glory of the Master.
Were this the case, then the task chosen was certainly of an eminently
peaceful and religious character. Yet we find often enough in Luther
allusions to purposes of a different kind to which too little attention
is generally paid in Protestant literature of the sort we are referring
to. Indeed the question arises whether, psychologically, the secondary
aims are not to be regarded as quite as powerful as his supposed
leading motive.
The tendencies which his statements betray are various; first and
foremost we have those of a polemical nature, also his desire to
enhance his own personal position. As we are here dealing with the
German Bible, which a recent writer has described as the “crown of
Luther’s creations,” we are amply justified in looking into these
psychological motives, the more so since they throw a new light on the
alterations in the sacred text referred to above which Luther undertook
in the interests of his theology.
The Bible, so he declares in his “Von den letzten Worten Davids” in
1543, could not be interpreted by Papists or Jews but only by those
who “truly and rightly” possess Christ. Speaking from the standpoint
of his own teaching he says: “Whoever does not really and truly hold,
or wish to hold, this man Who is called Jesus Christ, the Son of God,
Whom we Christians preach, let him leave the Bible alone.... What else
did the Pope lack? Had they not the sure, bright and mighty word of
the New Testament? What else is wanting to our sects at the present
time?”[2048] Since the Papists will not join those who had rediscovered
the “mind of Christ”[2049] and revealed it to humanity, let them keep
their hands off the Bible. Another will interpret it for them.
But, even apart from the “mind of Christ,” something else was wanting
to the Papists which Luther could boast of possessing, viz. learning
and a knowledge of the German language: “If I, Dr. Luther, could have
felt sure,” so he wrote in his “Sendbrieff von Dolmetzscheñ” of 1530,
“that all the Papists taken in a lump were sufficiently skilful to be
able to translate even one chapter of the Bible into German faithfully
and rightly I should in good sooth have been humble enough to beg their
help and assistance in translating the New Testament into German. But
because I knew and still see with my own eyes that not one of them
knows how to translate or to speak German aright, I have not troubled
about it.”[2050]
It was now his intention, as he declares at the beginning of his
preface to the German New Testament, that the great work he had
produced should make an end of the “old delusion” in which the whole
world was sunk, viz. “that men do not really know what is the Law
or the Gospel, or what the New or the Old Testament.”[2051] He is
determined, so he tells us, by popularising his New Testament to show
the people that the Gospel is not to be turned into a “code of laws
or a handbook,” as had “hitherto been the case and as certain earlier
prefaces even by St. Jerome” had proposed. For the Gospel does not
really require our works that we may become devout and thus be saved,
nay, it condemns such works, but it does demand that we should believe
that Christ has overcome sin, death and hell for us and therefore
that He makes us pious, vivifies us and saves us, not by our own
works but by His work, _i.e._ by His death and passion. “Hence it is,
that, no Law is given to the believer whereby he may be justified
before God.”[2052] It was his old antagonism to the importance of
man’s co-operation with grace and to good works that made him place
at the head of both his German Testaments his motto against works, so
indicative of his tendency. In the beginning of the preface to the
first part of the Old Testament (1523) we read that Moses, in his 1st
Book, taught that “it was not by the Law or by our own works that sin
and death were to be vanquished,” but only by the seed of the woman,
that is Christ; “in order that faith may be exalted from the beginning
of Scripture above all works, Law or merit. Thus the 1st Book of Moses
contains hardly anything but examples of faith and unbelief, and of
the fruits of faith and unbelief, and is thus almost an evangelical
book.”[2053]
That the German Bible was intended as a bulwark of the Evangel was
also plain from the illustrations. For the New Testament contained,
as Duke George complained when interdicting it, “many disgraceful
pictures, ridiculing and deriding His Holiness the Pope and fortifying
his [Luther’s] doctrines.”[2054] Emser, too, refers to these pictures
in his protest: “How should Christians accept the work of one who has
been openly branded as a heretic, a work which lacks the approbation
of the church, and, moreover, insults and reviles the Pope in abusive
figures, pictures, words and insinuations?”[2055] Thus, for instance,
in the woodcuts appended to the Apocalypse the scarlet woman of Babylon
and likewise the dragon, the monster from the pit, both wear the papal
tiara. In Apoc. xiv. Babylon is depicted as Rome, Sant’ Angelo, St.
Peter’s, the Belvedere of the Pope’s palace and Santa Maria Rotunda are
all collapsing, whilst in chapter xviii. these same buildings are shown
in flames.[2056]
In Luther’s Bible the Catholic rulers were directly attacked in the
heading chosen in 1529 for the book of Wisdom: “The Wisdom of Solomon
for the Tyrants.” “The book should above all be read,” he here says,
“by the big Johnnies who rage against their subjects and against the
guiltless on account of the Word of God”; for “in this book the tyrants
are violently taken to task and scourged.” “Hence this book is very
much in place in our day.”[2057]
The introduction to Romans (1522) not only exposes at length the
doctrine of faith alone, which Luther supposed Paul to have taught
in this Epistle, but also warns all against the “verminous medley of
men-made laws and ordinances under which the whole world groans.”
Rightly enough had Paul said of the makers of these laws, that their
God is their belly.[2058]
As we are here less concerned with the theological importance of
Luther’s German Bible than with the spirit which inspired its
composition, we shall only remind the reader briefly, that the work
of translation was intended as a solemn expression of the author’s
root ideas according to which the Bible was the only true source of
faith. From the Bible alone, so he taught, all must derive their
faith and find the way of salvation under the direct inspiration of
the spirit from on high; it ought to be in the hands of all, even of
the unlearned. Hence, in his “To the German Nobility” of 1520, he had
declared that the Bible, and particularly the Gospel, ought to be in
the hands of everybody, even of the boys and girls.[2059]
We find Luther, says Risch, regarding the Bible and its use from “a
new standpoint diametrically opposed to the Catholic, and which found
its ripest expression in his German Bible.”[2060]
O. Reichert likewise has it, that the “chief incentive to his
translation of the Bible,” was the determination in which his whole
life’s work centred, of unlocking for the German people by means of a
thoroughly German translation, that book with the help of which “each
one could live up to his faith and be assured of his salvation.”[2061]
“Only now,” says Hausrath, speaking of the spread of Luther’s
Bible,[2062] “could the burghers feel that they had attained to
manhood in the matter of religion, and that the universal priesthood
had become a reality. The head of each household had now the
well-spring of all religious truth brought to his very door. To the
Papists this seemed an abomination, as Cochlæus admits when he says,
that every cobbler and old crony was poring over the New Testament
as a source of all truth.[2063] Even the populace took part in the
controversies of the learned, having now begun to see that the faith
concerned them too. For a while this could lead to strange excesses,
as the theology of the New Prophets showed.” Still, “the advent of the
German Bible was the dawn of freedom.”
Johann Fabri, who had recognised Luther’s aims, was at one with
Cochlæus and Emser in lending support to the prohibition issued
against the German Bible. To Luther he said: “Your Testament works
more harm than all the idolatrous books of Ephesus (Acts xix. 19),
nay, than the hail in Egypt.”[2064] This was, as it were, his answer
to the wish Luther had expressed to his friend Lang as early as Dec.
18, 1521: “Oh, that every little town had its translator! Oh, that
this book might be found on the lips of all, in their hands, before
their eyes, and in their ears and hearts.”[2065]
A surprising psychological trait is the haughty self-satisfaction
evinced by Luther with his grand achievement when objections were
raised.
He had repeatedly proclaimed that he intended everything solely for the
honour of God.[2066] But woe to anyone who in any way attacked his own
honour! For, by this work, Luther had vindicated his mission as the
appointed preacher to the Germans; only at Wittenberg, where the Bible
was taken really seriously, were people able to fathom the secrets of
this sealed book.
“What is needed,” he says in 1530, in his “Sendbrieff von
Dolmetzscheñ,” speaking of the work of translation, “is a truly pious,
faithful, God-fearing, Christian, learned, tried and experienced
heart. Hence I hold that no false Christian or sectarian can translate
faithfully.”[2067] Not only does he deem himself qualified for
the task, but, as he declares in 1523, he knows nobody else who
“can, within a twentieth part,” do as well as he, though many find
fault with his Bible. “I know that I am more learned than all the
Universities, those sophists by the grace of God.” True enough, “even
if we all set to work with a will, we should still have enough to do
to bring the Bible to light, one by means of his reason, another by
his knowledge of languages.” But all these critics, “who blame me here
and there,” “know that they themselves are unable to do it, yet they
would fain make themselves out to be proficient in an art that is
entirely foreign to them.” To him their objections were but “the mud
that clings to the wheels.”[2068]
Thanks to himself, he says, “the German language has now a better
Bible than the Latin [the Vulgate]; in support of this I appeal to the
reader.”[2069]
Of the superiority of his Bible over the Latin Vulgate in the
matter of accuracy he had not the slightest doubt. “St. Jerome,” he
wrote in 1533, “and many others from among the masses, have made
more mistakes in translating than we, both in the Latin and in the
Greek.”[2070]—Should anyone attempt to translate the Psalms and
refuse to be guided in his work by Luther’s German Psalter, so he
says in the same passage, “he would translate the Psalter in such a
way that precious little would remain in it either of German or of
Hebrew.” “But a man who is unable to do anything good himself likes
to court praise and to appear an adept by abusing and crying down the
good work of others.”[2071]
Of Emser he remarked, that he had admitted by his amended edition of
the German Bible that, “my German is good and sweet; he saw plainly
that he could not better it, and yet he wished to dishonour it, hence
he took my Testament and copied it almost word for word.” “I am glad
to see even my very foes compelled to further my work.”[2072]
“If anyone will translate me 72 or 73 verses aright,” he assures his
friends, “I will give him 50 florins. But, for this, he must not make
use of our translation.”[2073]—“Since the heathen Church has existed
we have never had a Bible that could be read and understood so easily
and readily as that which we have produced at Wittenberg, and, praise
be to God, put into German.”[2074]
To irritate (“_irritare_”) the Papists by his work, to rouse them to
fury (“_furiam concitare_”) and to let loose their “calumnious attacks”
on his translation, was a real pleasure to him.[2075] As in the case of
the Papists, so also in that of rivals within his fold, his work for
the Bible spelt their undoing. This it was which justified him against
all opponents.
People like Osiander, he told his friends in 1540, single out one
word of my translation “in order to find a ground for disagreeing
with us. They dispute about a single word but they are after more.
They should be compelled to translate the whole Bible and then we
should see what they are able to do. And Amsdorf said: If I were the
sovereign I should clap these wiseacres into cells and order them to
translate Holy Scripture without making use of Luther’s Bible. Then we
should soon see what they could do.”[2076] “When we were at Marburg
[at the religious Conference in 1529],” Luther once remarked, “Zwingli
always spoke in Greek”; he declared he had studied the Greek Testament
for thirteen years; “Oh, no, something more is needed than the mere
reading of the Testament, but these people are blinded by ambition”;
that was why Zwingli had used Greek and Hebrew when preaching at
Marburg.[2077] Carlstadt, too, was always making a display of his
Greek and Hebrew,[2078] but all of them were only able to “pick holes
in the Scriptures” which Luther had translated.[2079]
He was determined that nobody should be allowed to interfere in his
Bible and protests in his own way against any alterations. He wrote
in 1539: “I beg all my friends, foes, masters, printers and readers
to look upon this New Testament as my own; if they have any fault to
find with it, then let them make a new one for themselves. I know
full well what I am about, and I can also see what others are able to
do. But this Testament is to be Luther’s own German Testament! For of
criticism and cavilling there is now no end.”[2080]
Which of his rivals had ever had to contend with “temptations” when
engaged on the Bible? He, however, had to thank his “combats” for
having been his instructors.[2081] Münster, so Luther said in 1536,
accused him of making certain mistakes in his translation of the
book of Jonas. “Yes, dear Münster, you have never been through these
temptations. I, like Jonas, have looked into the belly of the whale
where all seemed given over to despair.”[2082] “The pious are like
unto Jonas; they are cast into the sea of despair, nay, into hell
itself.”[2083]
Discontent and vexation—temptations of another kind—frequently
overwhelmed him whilst engaged on his Bible. Even his unprecedented
success did not satisfy him; the Bible did not seem to him to be
selling quick enough, nor to be made use of to the extent he wished;
again, he feared, that in the future, it would lose its interest.
“I fear,” he said in Nov., 1540, “that the Bible will not be much
read, for people are very weary of it and no one reprints it
now.”[2084] His views regarding the future were even more gloomy:
“When I die there will not be a curate, teacher or sacristan who will
not set to work to render the Bible on his own. Our version will
no longer be valued. All our works will be thrown aside, yea, even
the Bible and the Postils, for the world ever yearns for something
new.”[2085]—“I am sick of Holy Scripture; see that you make a good
use of it after my death. It has cost us enough toil yet is but little
regarded by our own people.”[2086] “So profitable is the German Bible
that no one knows how to esteem it high enough; no one sees what
knowledge it has unlocked to the world. What formerly we sought with
much trouble and constant study and even then were unable to find, is
now offered to us in the plainest language; though we looked for it in
vain in the obscurity of the olden version.”[2087]—He does not tell
us whether it is the Vulgate or the mediæval German Bible which he
here refers to as so obscure in comparison with his own Bible.
What appears to have afforded him most satisfaction was that he had
been able to counteract the false translations and commentaries of the
Jews. Often does he mention this as one of the advantages of his Bible,
and it is perfectly true that his felicitous and correct exposition
particularly of the Messianic predictions based on the Hebrew text is
deserving of all praise.
He pointed out incidentally to his friends, that, in his Bible, he had
“protested very strongly against the Rabbis,”[2088] and, in his “On
the Last Words of David,” he congratulated himself when comparing his
own interpretation with that of the Jews: “The Jews, because they do
not accept Christ, cannot know or understand what is said by Moses,
the Prophets and the Psalms.... Scripture must seem to them as an
epistle does to a man who cannot read.” “Unless we devote our energies
to bringing the Hebrew Bible, wherever this is possible, into touch
with the New Testament in a sense contrary to the Rabbinists, then it
would be better to keep to the old version [the Vulgate] which, after
all, is the best.”[2089]—His statement here, provided of course that
the proviso “wherever this is possible,” be rigidly observed, is not
altogether devoid of truth.
In spite of this, however, his conscience often told him that
his acquaintance with Hebrew was not equal to that of the Jewish
commentators. He admitted even in later years that he was no
“grammatical or regular Hebraist.”[2090] “His familiarity with the
language of the Old Testament was due, for the most part, as he
himself says, to his constant reading of it and to his comparing
together the different passages in order to arrive at their true
meaning.”[2091]
Julius Köstlin, Luther’s best-known biographer, from whom the words
just quoted are taken, declares, that, in his translation of the Bible,
Luther “bestowed on his German people the greatest possible gift”;
Luther wished to make of the Book of Books “an heirloom of the whole
German nation.”[2092] Similar enthusiastic allusions to “the gift to
the nation” are often met with in Protestant writers. They, however,
overlook the fact that it was only to a fraction of the German nation,
viz. to his co-religionists, that Luther offered this gift; moreover,
they seem forgetful of a remark once made by Luther to a very intimate
friend, which is far from enthusiastic and anything but complimentary
to his German fellow-countrymen. The remark in question occurs in a
letter of Luther’s dated Feb. 4, 1527, and addressed to Johann Lang
of Erfurt; evidently he was extremely annoyed at the time. It runs
as follows: “I am busy with Zacharias [the translation of which was
then in the press] and have begun the translation of the Prophets, a
work that is quite in keeping with the gratitude I have hitherto met
with from this heathenish, nay, utterly bestial nation.”[2093] Even so
severe a stricture must not be lost to sight by the historian desirous
of tracing a psychological picture of the author’s feelings at the time
he was engaged on the translation.
Finally it is instructive from the psychological standpoint to trace
the development in Luther’s mind of the fable—to be dealt with more
fully below—that, under Popery, the Bible had been discarded and that
he, Luther, had brought it once more to light.[2094]
To begin with, he merely claimed to have discovered the true meaning
of Scripture on the controversial points he himself had raised.[2095]
It was the more easy for him to attribute to his Catholic
contemporaries ignorance of the Bible, seeing that in those years the
exegetical side of sacred learning had been to some extent neglected
in favour of the discussions of the schoolmen. When afterwards he had
been dazed by his great success with his translation of the Bible he
was led to fancy that he was the first to open up the domain of Holy
Scripture. This impression is closely bound up with the arbitrary
pronouncements, even on the weightiest questions of the Canon, which
we find scattered throughout his prefaces to the books of the Bible.
He frequently repeats that he had forced all his opponents to take up
the study of the Bible and that it was he alone who had made them see
the need of their devoting themselves to this branch of learning—so
as to be able to refute him. Here of course he is exaggerating the
facts of the case. Accustomed as he was to hyperbole, we soon find him
declaring, first as a paradox and then as actual fact, that the Bible
had been buried in oblivion among the Catholics. The Papal Antichrist
had destroyed all reverence for the Bible and all understanding of
it; only that all men without exception might not run headlong to
spiritual destruction had Christ, as it were by “force,” preserved the
“simple text of the Gospel on the lecterns” “even under the rule of
Antichrist.”[2096]
Luther utterly discarded the principles of antiquity concerning the
Bible, but nevertheless he made abundant use in his translation of the
literary assistance afforded him by the Catholic past.
In the Old Testament, the Church’s Latin translation, viz. the Vulgate,
and the Greek Septuagint were of great service to him, but he also made
use of the Latin translation of Santes Pagninus (not to speak of that
of the Protestant, Seb. Münster) and likewise of the Commentaries, as,
for instance, of the “_Glossa ordinaria_” and the works of Nicholas of
Lyra († 1340).
An unkindly saying current at a later date in Catholic circles
concerning Lyra’s widely-known Bible Postils declared: “_Si Lyra
non lyrasset, Lutherus non saltasset_.” The saying is, however, met
with under another form even before Luther’s day, and in this older
guise serves to show the high esteem in which Lyra’s Commentary was
held; here it runs: “_Nisi Lyra lyrasset, nemo doctorum in bibliam
saltasset_.”[2097] Not only Lyra but many other Bible commentators
stood in high favour among Catholic scholars at the close of the Middle
Ages, nor was there before Luther’s day any such absence of respect for
the Bible or ignorance of its contents, whether in the original text or
in German translations as he would have us believe.
_The Bible in the Ages before Luther_
It would be to perpetuate a prejudice all too long current among
Protestants, founded on Luther’s often false or at least exaggerated
statements, were one to fail to recognise how widely the Bible was
known even before Luther’s day and to what an extent it was studied
among educated people. Modern research, not seldom carried out by
open-minded Protestants, has furnished some surprising results in this
respect, so that one of the most recent and diligent of the Protestant
workers in this field could write: “If everything be taken into account
it will no longer be possible to say as the old polemics did, that the
Bible was a sealed book to both theologians and laity. The more we
study the Middle Ages, the more does this fable tend to dissolve into
thin air.” “The Middle Ages concerned themselves with Bible translation
much more than was formerly supposed.”[2098]
According to a careful summary recently published by Franz Falk no
less than 156 different Latin editions of the Bible were printed in
the period between the discovery of the art of printing and the year
of Luther’s excommunication, i.e. from 1450 to 1520. To this must also
be added at that time many translations of the whole Bible, many of
them emanating from what was to be the home of the innovations, viz.
17 German, 11 Italian, 10 French, 2 Bohemian, 1 Belgian, 1 Limousine
and 1 Russian edition, making in all, with the 6 Hebrew editions also
known, 199 editions of the complete Bible. Of the German editions 14
are in the dialect of Upper Germany.[2099]
Besides this the common people also possessed extracts of the Sacred
Book, the purchase of the entire Bible being beyond their slender
means. The Psalter and the Postils were widely known and both played
a great part in the religious life of the Middle Ages. The Psalter,
or German translation of the 150 Psalms, was used as a manual of
instruction and a prayer-book for both clergy and laity. Twenty-two
translations dating from the Middle Ages are extant, and the latter
editions extend from the ‘seventies of the 15th to the ‘twenties of
the 16th century. The Postils was the collection of lessons from both
Old and New Testaments, prescribed to be read on the Sundays. This
collection sufficed for the people and provided them with useful
reading matter, with which, moreover, they were rendered even more
familiar owing to the homilies on these very excerpts usually given
on the Sundays. The early printers soon helped to spread this form of
literature. We still have no fewer than 103 printed German editions
of the Postils (often known as Plenaries) dating from the above
period.[2100]
Of the importance of the Plenaries Risch remarks very aptly: “In
them the ideal of a popular exposition and translation of the Bible
before Luther’s day finds its first actual expression. That these
Plenaries—it would be interesting to know which kind—were the
first incentive to Luther’s popular works of piety, and, at times,
thanks to his good memory, supplied him with a ready-made German
translation of the Bible, appears to me beyond question.” “Thanks to
these Gospel-Books, as they were frequently called, a kind of German
‘Vulgate’ covering certain portions of the Sacred text may have grown
up even before Luther’s day.”[2101] “Even a superficial glance at the
Middle Ages,” says Risch, “cannot fail to show us the gradual upgrowth
of a fixed German Biblical vocabulary. Luther here could dip into a
rich treasure-house and select the best.... In laying such stress
on Luther’s indebtedness to the past we have no wish to call into
question the real originality of his translation.”[2102]
“That, during the Middle Ages,” says another Protestant scholar,
“more particularly in the years which immediately preceded Luther’s
appearance, the Bible was a well-spring completely choked up, and the
entrance to which was jealously guarded, used to be, and probably
still is, the prevailing opinion. The question is, however, whether
this opinion is correct.” “We have before us to-day so complete a
history of the Bible in the various modern languages that it can no
longer be said that the Vulgate alone was in use and that the laity
consequently were ignorant of Scripture. It greatly redounds to the
credit of Protestant theologians, that they, more than any others,
took so large a part in collecting this enormous store of material.”
“We must admit that the Middle Ages possessed a quite surprising and
extremely praiseworthy knowledge of the Bible, such as might in many
respects put our own age to shame.” “We have to acknowledge that
the Bible at the present day no longer forms the foundation of our
knowledge and civilisation to the same extent as it did in the Middle
Ages.”[2103]
Who, however, was responsible for the prevalent belief that the Middle
Ages knew nothing of the Bible? Who was it who so repeatedly asserted
this, that he misled the people into believing that nobody before him
had studied Holy Scripture, and that it was only through him that the
“Word of God had been drawn forth from under the bench”? A Protestant
quite rightly reproves the “bad habit” of accepting the estimate of
ecclesiastical conditions, particularly of divine worship, current
“with Luther and in his circle”;[2104] it is, however, to fall short
of the mark, to describe merely as a “bad habit” Luther’s flagrant
and insulting falsehoods against the ecclesiastical conditions at
the close of the Middle Ages, falsehoods for which his own polemical
interests were solely responsible.
The psychology of Luther’s gradual approach to the statement that the
Bible before his day lay under the bench, has already been described
(p. 534 f.). As some Protestants have sought to clear him of the
authorship of so glaring a fable and to insinuate that the expression
belongs rather to his pupil Mathesius, we must here look a little more
closely into the words.
Luther himself uses the saying, for instance, when claiming credit
in his Commentary on the Prophet Zacharias (chap, viii.) with having
rendered the greatest possible service to Scripture. He says: “They
[the Papists] are still angry and refuse to listen when people say,
that, with them, Scripture lay under the bench, and that their mad
delusions alone prevailed.” In this connection the Weimar editor of the
Commentary refers to a work of the former Dominican, Petrus Sylvius,
aimed at Luther and entitled “Von den vier Evangelein, so eine lange
Zeit unter der Bank sein gelegen.”[2105]—Popery, Luther says in
another passage, “kicked Scripture under the bench.”[2106] He speaks
repeatedly in the Table-Talk[2107] of the “Bible under the bench,”
which, since “it lay forgotten in the dust,” he had been obliged to
drag again into the light of day.[2108]
Elsewhere he describes in detail the trouble he had in pulling the
Bible from “under the bench,” particularly owing to his theological
rivals and the sectarians within the camp; on this occasion his black
outlook as to the future of the Bible he had thus set free scarcely
redounds to the credit of his achievement. He says in his tract against
Zwingli (“That the words of Christ, ‘This is My Body,’ still stand
fast,” 1527): “When in our own day we saw how Scripture lay under the
bench, and how the devil was deluding us and taking us captive with
the hay and straw of men-made prayers, we tried, by the Grace of God,
to mend matters, and have indeed with great and bitter pains brought
Scripture back to light once more, and, sending human ordinances to the
winds, set ourselves free and escaped from the devil.” But then, so he
goes on, others [on his own side] fell upon him, raised up an uproar
and raged against him; Zwingli, in particular, had riddled a single
line of Scripture “with ten holes,” “so that I have never read of a
more disgraceful heresy”; which, even in the beginning, “comprised as
many factions and divisions as it had heads.” There would, however,
in future “be such a turmoil in Scripture, such dissensions and so
many factions, that we might well say with St. Paul ‘the mystery of
ungodliness is already at work’” (2 Thess. ii. 7). “He [the devil] will
bring about factions and dissensions in Scripture so that you will
not know what is Scripture, or faith, or Christ, or even where you
stand.”[2109]
Words of Luther’s such as these, which we meet with repeatedly
under various shapes, point indirectly to the reason why the Church
preferred to see, in the hands of people unversed in theology, only
those extracts from Holy Scripture approved by herself, in particular
the Postils and Plenaries; for the dangers of misunderstanding
and disagreement were very real, especially in an age so prone to
sectarianism.
“To put into the people’s hands the complete Bible,” says Franz
Falk bluntly enough, “was to give them something both dangerous and
superfluous. The Postils were amply sufficient for the Christian
people. Even in Protestant circles to-day people are deciding
in favour of an expurgated Bible for use in the school and the
home.”[2110] W. Walther in his “Deutsche Bibelübersetzungen des
Mittelalters” gives a favourable account of the Catholic practice:
“According to what we have stated the attitude of the mediæval Church
to the German Bible appears to have been quite definite. Janssen
seems perfectly right when he says, ‘The Church opposed no resistance
to its spread so long as strifes and divisions within her own body
brought no pet abuses to light.’”[2111] “Men of insight,” continues
Janssen, “such as Geiler von Kaysersberg and Sebastian Brant doubted
from the beginning the advisability of putting the entire Scriptures
in the hands of the people. They feared, and rightly feared, that the
Bible would be grossly and wilfully perverted by the ignorant and the
light-minded, and be made to uphold all sorts of doctrinal and moral
teaching. God Himself had not placed His Divine Word indiscriminately
in the hands of all, for He had not made the reading of it a condition
of salvation. All errors had sprung out of false interpretation of
Holy Scripture. Even to learned commentators the Scriptures presented
difficulties enough, how much more to the ignorant masses?”
No one to whom it might prove of use was debarred access to the
complete German translation or to the Sacred Text in the original
languages; in their case restrictions were waived. The large number
of complete editions would in fact be inexplicable except on the
assumption of a certain freedom in this respect. Numerous instances
might also be cited where educated people during the Middle Ages made
use of the complete Bible.[2112]
Sebastian Brant says in the “Narrenschiff”: “Every country is now
filled with Holy Scripture.” “The rapidity with which the different
editions followed each other,” wrote Janssen,[2113] “and the testimony
of contemporary writers point to a wide distribution of German Bibles
among the people.”
As regards other countries, too, there is no lack of sufficient data
for arriving at a like conclusion, viz. that the Bible was already
widely disseminated before the religious revulsion came. We may
instance the recent works of A. C. Paues and A. Gasquet on England and
those of the Dominican Mandonnet on his own Order’s relations with the
Bible during the Middle Ages, from which we may see how familiar the
Bible must have been in certain circles.[2114]
The honest admission made by a Protestant, viz. “that, so far as
outward acquaintance with the Bible went, it would be untrue to say
that it lay under the bench before the Reformation,”[2115] does not,
however, sufficiently counter what Luther says, for his grievance in
reality was, that, among the Papists, it was rather the true meaning of
the Bible that “lay under the bench.”
It is plain that they “abuse and revile Scripture, thrust it under
the bench, pretend that it is shrouded in thick fog, that the
interpretation of the Fathers is needed and that light must be sought
in the darkness.” Thus did he write against Emser in 1521.[2116] A
recent champion of Luther has also thought it worth while to write:
“The Bible before Luther’s day was not regarded as in Luther’s opinion
it should have been regarded, or treated as it should have been
treated; it was indeed studied by the learned but only in the same way
as people studied Augustine, Jerome and Thomas Aquinas—and, moreover,
not with the same zeal or to the same extent.”
Did one wish to deal adequately with the standing thus taken up by
Luther and his defenders there would be a whole book to be written
full of interesting facts; for what Luther presupposes in such
repeated statements is that his theology was right and that of the
Church all wrong. Sufficient light has, however, already been thrown
in this work on the value of this assertion of Luther’s.
Denifle, who, thanks to his expert acquaintance with the material, was
able to examine so many of Luther’s theological assertions concerning
the Middle Ages, deals amongst other things with the question, whether
Luther was really the first to advance the theory, “that Christ is the
whole content of Scripture,”[2117] the enunciation of which had been
claimed as “the greatest service rendered by Luther to the Church and
to theology.”—The truth is, however, that the Church of old was so
full of the idea that the “Holy Scriptures before Christ were written
only to proclaim Him and His Church,” that it was an easy task for
Denifle to overwhelm his adversaries beneath a mass of quotations, for
instance, from Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and J. Perez of Valencia (the
latter representing Luther’s older contemporaries).
Catholics have rightly gone even further, and asked whether it
was not Luther himself, who, by his arbitrary treatment of some
parts of Scripture, and its actual words,—to say nothing of its
interpretation—thrust the Bible under the bench? Surely, his
destruction of the Canon of Scripture, his alterations in the text
and the liberty he arrogated to himself in his glosses[2118] are
but little calculated to qualify him to be called the saviour and
liberator of the Bible.—It is nothing more than an appeal to the
imagination of the populace, when, in connection with this, popular
works on Luther refer to the Bible, which the youthful Luther when
still a student in the world, found chained in the library at Erfurt
(though this itself is a matter of history). To hear of the Bible
having been “bound in chains before Luther’s day” may sound very
dreadful, but, as all should know, the only reason why valuable
books were chained in those days was to guarantee their preservation
for the use of the reader. Scholars are well aware that the printed
works which were then so costly, and still more the manuscripts,
were usually kept chained in the libraries in order to prevent
visitors carrying them off; the custom still obtains in Rome to-day
in the parlours of some of the convents, where books are displayed
for the perusal of those waiting. Wattenbach in his “Schriftwesen
des Mittelalters”[2119] enumerates a whole series of instances from
earlier centuries. One of the most remarkable which goes back to about
Luther’s day, is that of the Medicean library of manuscripts, the
so-called Laurentiana at Florence, where, even to-day, the valuable
MSS. in their splendid book-cases are fastened by chains and have
to be unlocked when called for for use in the Reading-Room. In his
catalogue of the Greek Codices in the Laurentiana Bandini gives an
interesting sketch of these curious book-cases. Even under the Elector
Johann Frederick of Saxony, in 1535, in Luther’s own time, the books
belonging to the Princely Library at Wittenberg were chained.[2120]
On the other hand, the copy of Holy Scripture which Luther was given
during his student years at the Erfurt monastery, and the diligent
study of which was enjoined upon him both by the rule of his Order and
the words of his Superior, was evidently not thus chained.
Finally as regards the German translations of the Bible before Luther’s
day. Of the seventeen printed editions of the whole Bible referred to
above (p. 536) as dating from the years 1450-1520, the oldest is the
so-called Mendel edition of Strasburg, probably dating from 1466,[2121]
in which year the copy was purchased which now lies in the Munich
State Library. The German Plenaries commence with the year 1470. We
hear, for instance, of a printed German Bible being bought for nine
florins.[2122] The lower price of the Plenaries, on the other hand,
made them easier to obtain. Thus according to the data collected by
Franz Falk, Johann Schöffer, a printer, in 1510, sent from Mayence to
the Easter fair at Leipzig, amongst other books, seventy-three German
Postils (Plenaries), priced at five copies a florin. In the following
year Schöffer’s agent had to render an account after the Michaelmas
fair for the sale of seventy-two postils.[2123] The German postils in
those days served much the same purpose as Goffine does to-day.
Besides the printed editions, the manuscript translations still
preserved must also be taken into account. Some twenty years ago
Wilhelm Walther, the Protestant theologian, devoted a study to this
particular branch of research.[2124] The results he then arrived at
have since been amplified and corrected by Franz Jostes and others, and
still await further additions. Walther examined 202 MSS. German Bibles,
or portions of Bibles, and came to the conclusion that they represented
no less than thirty-four various forms of translation. They have indeed
much in common, though they differ slightly according to the dialect of
the locality they hail from, or the alterations made by their writers.
The translations are, in every case, made on the Latin Vulgate.
Yet all the printed German Bibles dating from before Luther’s time
resemble each other so much in the translation that we can, in
reality, speak only of one German Bible. They all sprang originally
from a single MS. translation and practically constitute a sort of
German vulgate. The type was not, however, of Waldensian origin, as
some formerly thought owing to the fact that the Tepler Bible, which
had been placed first on the list, shows traces of that heresy. The
earliest German translation is, on the contrary, as orthodox as the
printed editions. This is probably the fragmentary Bible translated by
Master Johann Rellach. It seems to be older than the Tepler Bible, and
the first Mendel edition and all the others might well go back to it.
Franz Jostes was the first to suppose that “the pre-Lutheran printed
version of the Bible is the work of Master Johann Rellach.”[2125] The
translator was, so he opines, a Dominican belonging to a convent in the
diocese of Constance. He happened to be in Rome in 1450, the Jubilee
year, and, hearing from Bishop Leonard of Chios of the destruction of
the magnificent library at Constantinople he and his brethren were
led to vow to make good this loss to the best of their ability by
translating the Bible into German. They doubtless made use of even
older translations in their work.
As for the slight difference shown in the seventeen printed editions of
this translation still extant, they are easily explained. The printers,
out of consideration for their readers, were pretty free in introducing
dialect forms.
If we glance at the language, we shall find here some good points, but
as the original manuscripts of which Johann Rellach made use were not
all equally good, the same holds of all the printed translations. Of
the different varieties which never appeared in print at all, Walther
praises some on account of their excellent German, for instance, the
one he places second on his list, and which may date from the second
half of the 14th century. As a whole, however, particularly in the
printed translation, the language suffers from a too slavish adherence
to the style of the Latin text. A more exact classification, according
to the excellence of the language, is, however, impossible until the
whole field has been explored by our German philologists.[2126]
* * * * *
Owing to the matter not having yet been sufficiently investigated, we
cannot determine accurately what influence the earlier translations had
on the German Bible published by Luther. Luther himself says never a
word of having used them.
It would, however, be just as bad to say, on the one hand, that Luther
made no use whatever of the older version and had not even a copy of it
to refer to in the Wartburg during his work on the New Testament or,
on the other, as some have done, that Luther stole the best part of his
work from earlier German translators.
When he wrote from the Wartburg that now he knew what it was to
translate, and why, hitherto, no translator had dared to put his name
to his work,[2127] he proves that he was aware that all previous German
translations were anonymous, a fact which presupposes some acquaintance
with them. Older translations cannot have been inaccessible to him at
the Wartburg, and might well have been sent him by friends at Eisenach
or Wittenberg, who, as we know, did occasionally send him books; when
he had returned home, moreover, he could easily have found copies in
his old monastery or at the University. Portions of the Bible, viz. the
Plenaries, were doubtless within his reach from the first, and since
he finished his translation of the New Testament in so short a time as
three months, though all the while engaged on a number of other works,
it is only natural to suppose that he lightened his labours by the use
of other versions within his reach as any other scholar would have
done, though undoubtedly he used his own judgment in his selection.
That, in the work of revision at Wittenberg at a much later date, the
mediæval text was employed, appears quite plain from the alterations
introduced by Luther.
J. Geffcken was probably not far wrong when he wrote in 1855 in
“Der Bilderkatechismus des 15. Jahrhunderts,” “that the similarity
between Luther’s version and the old translations could not be merely
fortuitous.”[2128]
The same was repeated with still greater emphasis by Krafft in 1883
after he had instituted fresh comparisons: “Whoever compares these
passages can no longer doubt that the agreement between Luther’s work
and the mediæval German Bible is not merely accidental.”[2129] The
result of further research will probably be to confirm the guarded
opinion expressed as long ago as 1803 by G. W. Meyer of Göttingen
in his “Geschichte der Schrifterklärung”: to assume that “the older
translation was not unknown to him,” “that he consulted it here and
there,” and even “made his own some of its happy renderings,” is quite
compatible with a high esteem for Luther’s translation.[2130]
Modern Protestant writers in this field are also somewhat sceptical
about the theory of Luther’s complete ignorance of the older
translation of the Bible, and the assertion that he made no use
whatever of it. O. Reichert, for instance, in his new work “Luthers
deutsche Bibel” makes the following remarks on Luther’s work in the
Wartburg, with which we may fittingly conclude this section: “Although
he probably was able to make use of Lang’s translation of 1521 in his
rendering of Matthew, and as a matter of fact did have recourse to it,
and though he most likely also had the old German translation at his
elbow, as is apparent from many coincidences, nevertheless, what Luther
accomplished is an achievement worthy of all admiration.”[2131]
4. Luther’s Hymns
Amongst the means to be employed for the spread and consolidation of
the new Evangel Luther included, in addition to his Bible, German hymns
for use in public worship.
In 1523 and 1524 especially, he busied himself in the making of verses.
In his _Formula Missæ_ (1523) he expresses the wish that as many German
hymns as possible be introduced into the revised service of the Mass
and sung, not only by the choir, but by the whole congregation, though,
for the nonce, the customary Latin hymns might be used.[2132] With his
wonted energy and industry he at once entrusted the work of composing
hymns to some of his Wittenberg friends, and despatched letters so as
to obtain help even from afar. He was particularly anxious to see the
Psalms in a German dress. His translation of the Psalter, which he had
just completed, naturally drew his thoughts to the Psalms which so
admirably express all the religious emotions of the soul, especially
its trusting reliance upon God. He was not very confident of his own
powers of composition: “I have not the knack of doing this as well
as I wish to have it done,” he writes to his old friend Spalatin at
Nuremberg.[2133] He asks him and his other friends for an eminently
simple, popular versification of the Psalms, in pure German, “free
from the new-fangled words used at Court”; it should keep as closely
as possible to the sense and yet not be stilted. For this Spalatin was
qualified by “a rich flow of eloquence, and by many years’ experience.”
Luther sends him at the same time a poetic effort of his own.
In view of the beauty and the deep albeit simple grandeur of the olden
Catholic hymns the task Luther had undertaken of composing something
new was naturally not an easy one. He himself had much to say in praise
of the magnificent old hymns in which the faithful praised their
Creator or poured forth their griefs before Him. “In Popery,” he once
said in a sermon, “they used to sing some fine hymns: ‘He who broke the
might of Hell,’ item ‘Jesus Christ to-day is risen.’ This comes from
the heart.”[2134] “A beautiful sequence is also sung in Advent,” he
says, thus paying tribute even to a Latin hymn, viz. the _Mittitur ad
Virginem_. “It is well done and not too barbarous.”[2135]
Luther nevertheless persevered in his own efforts in spite of his
misgivings, especially as the contributions of his assistants failed
to reach his standards. Of the eight hymns contained in the so-called
Wittenberg “Achtliederbuch” four were composed by Luther, while of
the twenty-five in the Erfurt “Enchiridion” eighteen were his; the
collection, however, which he characterised as having been started by
himself, the “Geistliche Gesangbüchlein” of Johann Walther, consisting
chiefly of translations or adaptations, contained thirty-two hymns,
twenty-four of them being written by Luther. This was the result of his
efforts up to the end of 1524.[2136]
In later years only twelve other hymns were published by him, of which
some, like the familiar “A safe stronghold,” and that intended in
the first instance for children: “In Thy Word preserve us, Lord,”
were not originally meant for use in public worship. A hymn, likewise
not written for public worship, yet one of the oldest, as it dates
from the summer of 1523, is the one where Luther extols the glorious
martyrdom of two of his followers, who were executed in the Netherlands
as heretics. Including this the number of his compositions rises to
thirty-seven.
The number is not excessive considering how prolific his genius as a
rule was, but among them are hymns, which, owing to their simple vigour
and fine wording, bear witness to the author’s real talent for this
form of literature. Thus, for instance, “From highest heaven on joyous
wing,” “Ah God, look down from heaven and see,” “Dear is to me the Holy
Maid” (the Church), finally and above all the hymn “A safe stronghold
our God is still” (“Ein’ feste Burg”), which for ages has had so
stimulating an effect on his followers. When, in these compositions,
Luther shakes off the trammels of pedantry and leaves his spirit to
go its own way, he often strikes the true poetic note.[2137] He was
endowed with a powerful fancy, nor was there ever any lack of warmth,
nay passion, in his expression of his inward experiences; in addition
to this there was his rare gift of language, his keen appreciation
of music and song, which he regarded as the “very gift of God” and
to which, “next to theology,” he allotted the first place;[2138] the
art he possessed of making the whole congregation to share in what
he himself felt, and his careful avoidance of any conscious striving
after originality contributed to render many of these productions
acknowledged works of genius.
Most characteristic of all in this respect is the rousing hymn “Ein’
feste Burg.” The result, as shown above,[2139] of outward circumstances
as well as of inward experiences, it gives the fullest expression to
Luther’s own defiance. In so far as Luther succeeded in depicting his
cause as that of all his followers, and, with rare power, made his
own defiant spirit ring from every lip, we may accept the opinion of
a recent Luther biographer on the hymn in question, viz. that it
expresses the “defiance of Protestantism.” “So entirely does Luther’s
hymn spring from the feeling common to the whole of Protestantism, that
we seem to hear Protestants yet unborn joining in it. The trumpets of
Gustavus Adolphus and the cannon of Lützen are audible in this hymn
of defiance. It reminds us of Torstensson and Coligny, of Cromwell
and William of Orange.”[2140] We must, however, remember that part
of the impression it creates must be attributed to the powerful
pre-reformation melody to which the words are set.
We give the hymn below in Carlyle’s fine rendering[2141]:
PSALM XLVI. (XLV.)
_Deus Nosier Refugium et Virtus_
1. A safe stronghold our God is still,
A trusty shield and weapon.
He’ll help us clear from all the ill
That hath us now o’ertaken.
The ancient Prince of Hell
Hath risen with purpose fell,
Strong mail of Craft and Power
He weareth in this hour,
On Earth is not his fellow.
2. With force of arms we nothing can,
Full soon were we down-ridden.
But for us fights the proper Man
Whom God Himself hath bidden.
Ask ye, Who is this name?
Christ Jesus is His name,
The Lord Zebaoth’s Son,
He and no other one
Shall conquer in the battle.
3. And were this world all Devils o’er
And watching to devour us,
We lay it not to heart so sore
Not they can overpower us.
And let the Prince of Ill
Look grim, as e’er he will,
He harms us not a whit,
For why? His doom is writ,
A word shall quickly slay him.
4. God’s Word, for all their craft and force,
One moment shall not linger,
But, spite of Hell, shall have its course,
’Tis written by His finger.
And though they take our life,
Goods, honour, children, wife,
Yet is their profit small.
These things shall vanish all,
The City of God remaineth.
Though Protestants are fond of extolling the sincere faith expressed
in Luther’s hymns (nay even speak of the “overwhelming fervour of his
faith”[2142]) we must not forget, that in some of them bitter polemics
strike a harsh and very unpoetic note, quite out of harmony with the
otherwise good and pious thoughts. The “Children’s Hymn” to be sung
against the two arch-enemies of Christ and His holy Church, viz. the
Pope and the Turk, dating from 1541 at the latest, begins with the
verse:
Lord, by Thy Word deliverance work
And stay the hand of Pope and Turk
Who Jesus Christ Thy Son
Would hurl down from His throne.[2143]
This hymn became ultimately “One of the principal hymns of the
Evangelical flock.”[2144]
No less noticeable is Luther’s anti-Catholic prejudice in his “Song of
the Two Martyrs of Christ at Brussels” and in the hymn “To new strains
we raise our voices.” But even when the words do not sound directly
controversial the substance often serves as a weapon against the old
faith and was thus understood by his followers; this was the case, for
instance, with the hymn just referred to on the Church. The hymns, in
fact, were intended, as he says in his preface to Johann Walther’s
collection, “to advance and further the Holy Gospel which by the grace
of God has once more dawned.” To this end he would gladly see “all
the arts, more particularly that of music, employed in the service
of Him Who created them and bestowed them on us.”[2145] The more he
was animated by the fighting instinct, the better he fancies he can
compose. “If I am to compose, write, pray or preach well, I must be
angry.” “Then my blood boils and my understanding grows keener.”[2146]
His opponents complained that his popular hymns against the Church
excited the people and that they “sang themselves into” the new faith.
Just as the polemics of their author detracts from the real poetic
value of some of the hymns, so, in spite of all his good-will, there
are other defects to decrease the value of his work. Owing to hasty
workmanship his poesy has suffered. His roughness explains how “much
in his work sounds harsh and clumsy.”[2147] Nevertheless the very fact
that they were Luther’s own made them praiseworthy in the eyes of his
olden admirers.[2148]
Owing to their hearty reception in Protestant circles, to their use
both in public worship and elsewhere, and also because they served as
a model and exerted a powerful influence on later Protestant efforts
to promote hymnology, they won for their author the proud title of
the Father of Protestant psalmody. The earliest Protestants, in their
ignorance of what obtained in Catholicism previous to his day, even
pushed their esteem for his labours so far as to call him simply the
Father of Hymnology. “What made him the great poet of our nation,” a
modern Protestant historian declares, “was his individuality and the
boldness of his expression. He was not, nor did he wish to be, the
Father of German psalmody, but he was in very truth the Father of
_Evangelical_ psalmody.”[2149]
When the introduction of hymns in the new form of public worship
came up for discussion, Luther, owing to the exigencies of the case,
showed himself by no means intolerant of the numerous hymns dating from
Catholic times then still in use.
We can the more readily understand this seeing the praise he himself
lavished on these hymns, the inspiring strains of which still rang in
his ears from the days of his youth. It is true that not many of them
appeared to him to have the “true spirit.” In his service of the Mass
where this remark occurs he wished only three of these to be retained
for the time being, viz. the Communion hymn, “Praised be God and blest,
Who Himself becomes our Guest,” the Whitsun hymn, “Now we crave of
the Holy Ghost” and the Christmas hymn, “A tender Child is born To us
this very morn.” The Whitsun hymn and the Communion hymn were enlarged
later, i.e. revised. He also took from an older model the first verse
of another Whitsun hymn which he composed. His Easter hymn, “Christ
lay in His Winding-sheet,” was a revision of the older Catholic hymn,
“Jesus Christ to-day is risen,” into which he has introduced part of
the Latin Easter sequence. His hymns, “In the midst of life cruel death
surrounds us” and “God our Father bide with us” are also adaptations
of older Catholic hymns for use in processions. In his rendering of
the Ten Commandments into German verse he seems to have taken as his
model a similar composition dating from earlier days and also used
in processions. “Heirlooms of Catholicism” are also three old chants
which he translated from the Latin, “Come, Holy Ghost, Creator, come,”
“Saviour of the heathen known” and “Now praise we Christ the Holy
One.”[2150]
The Middle Ages had always been noted for their renderings of the
Psalms and hymns of the Church, and their productions compare
favourably with Luther’s compositions, the more so since he is seldom
at his best when he is not free to develop his own thoughts.[2151]
Speaking of translations and alluding to those made by his colleagues
Luther declared in 1529: “Some have now given proof of their ability
and have increased the number of hymns; they far outstrip me and
must be regarded as experts in this field.”[2152] Many had been the
poets who had turned the old Latin hymns into German; particularly
worthy of mention were the monk of Salzburg in the 14th and Heinrich
of Laufenberg in the 15th century. Many of these hymns can take their
place beside Luther’s rendering of Psalm xlvi. (xlv.), “Ein’ feste
Burg,” though the trust in God they express and the unshaken faith of
their childlike language is far removed from any presumptuous reliance
on private judgment in religious matters or subjective revelations.
Of the use of German hymns Provost Gerhoch of Reichersberg wrote as
early as the 12th century: “The whole people breaks out into praise
of the Saviour in the hymns of their mother tongue; especially is
this the case with the Germans whose language lends itself so well to
melody.”[2153] At the close of the Middle Ages it might be said with
truth: “The German nation possessed a hoard of hymns, such as no other
nation in the world could show.”[2154]
It is not only Luther who frequently admits that he had “included in
his hymnbook some of the songs of our forefathers” as “bearing witness
to the good Christians who lived before our day,”[2155] but even the
_Apologia_ for the Confession of Augsburg had to admit in its defence
of the Protestant ritual: “The use [of German hymns] has always been
regarded as praiseworthy in the churches; though more German hymns are
sung in some places than in others, nevertheless, in all the churches
the people have always sung something in German, hence the practice is
not at all novel.”[2156]
That _something_ was always sung in German is perfectly correct; in
the liturgy properly so-called, viz. the Mass, the rule was to sing
in Latin the Proper, Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, etc. Hence the standing
of vernacular hymns was different in the case of Catholics from
what it was with Protestants. With the latter the edification of the
congregation was the principal thing, whereas, for the Catholic, public
worship had in the eucharistic sacrifice something quite independent
of private devotion; it was in keeping with the character of this
universal sacrifice offered by all nations and tongues that its rites
should be conducted in Latin, the universal language. The only strictly
liturgical Psalmody in the Middle Ages was the Latin Gregorian chant.
The German hymn held only a subordinate place in the liturgy, being
inserted sometimes in connection with the sequence after the Gradual,
or, more usually, before and after the sermon. On the other hand,
recourse to German hymns was usual in extra-liturgical devotions, in
processions, pilgrimages and in pious gatherings of the people whether
at home or in the church.
The hymn tunes made use of in the Middle Ages were also in every case
either Gregorian or quasi-Gregorian. Thus the musical language of
popular piety was able to maintain its dignity, was preserved faithful
to the traditions of the great ages of the Church and secure from the
inroads of private fancy.
The melodies to which Luther set his own compositions and those of
his friends had also been handed down from earlier times. Some of
them were purely Gregorian, others were those of older Catholic hymns
or of popular ditties. The melody of “A Safe Stronghold,” as already
observed, is derived from the Latin chant, and so is that of “Jesaia
dem Propheten” and others. Even the setting of the versified creed
“We all believe in one true God” is borrowed from a 15th-century
composition.
Protestant admiration for Luther has indeed led “to his being
represented as a notable composer,[2157] and thus many of these
tunes bear his name. Careful research has, however, shattered this
delusion.... Many other melodies, which so far it has been impossible
to trace to the Middle Ages, probably form part of the pre-reformation
treasury of hymns.... Whether, as modern research is inclined to think,
the simple new melody to ‘Saviour of the heathen known,’ ... is
Luther’s own, it is not possible to determine.”[2158]
The traditional fondness of Germans for song was used to spread
erroneous doctrines not by Luther alone, but also by others of the
New Believers; this was particularly the case with the followers of
Schwenckfeld, who exploited it in the interests of their sect. Luther’s
hymnbook even stood in danger of being “spoilt” by outside additions,
hence the precaution he took of appending the authors’ names to the
various hymns; he also prefixed a special “Warnung” to the Preface of
an edition brought out towards the end of his life (1542).[2159]
Among the songs falsely attributed to Luther is one on the
“Out-driving of Antichrist.” In old editions this “Song for the
Children, wherewith to drive out the Pope in Mid-Lent”[2160] is indeed
ascribed to Luther, but we learn from Mathesius’s “Historien” that
it was he who brought the text of it to Luther in the spring of 1545
on the occasion of his last visit. The song is a modification of an
older one still sung in places even to-day, on Laetare Sunday, for
the chasing away of winter. The unknown versifier, who was perhaps
Mathesius himself, has transferred to the Pope-Antichrist what was
intended for the winter. Luther was pleased with the verses and
himself undertook their publication.[2161] There is a great difference
between the cheerful, innocent verses still sung by children to-day:
“Now let us drive the Winter out,” etc.,[2162] and the malicious
version which Luther popularised and which was even included in many
of the Lutheran hymn-books, for instance in the collection dating from
1547, “Etliche tröstliche Gebet, Psalmen und geistliche Lieder,” etc.
There it is entitled “A Christian song for Children.” It occurs in
the Königsberg Enchiridion of 1560, together with another Old German
children’s song, to be sung on the way home.[2163]
The first lines of the hymn for the Out-driving of Antichrist run as
follows:[2164]
1. Now let us drive the Pope from out
Christ’s kingdom and God’s house devout,
For murderously he has ruled,
And countless souls to ruin fooled.
2. Be off with you, you damnéd son,
You scarlet bride of Babylon;
Horror and antichrist thou art,
Lies, murder, cunning fill thy heart.
CHAPTER XXXV
LUTHER’S ATTITUDE TOWARDS SOCIETY AND EDUCATION
1. Historical Outlines for Judging of his Social Work
IT would be beyond our present scope to examine in detail all the views
advanced concerning Luther’s social and economic attitude. Recent
research in social economics has already rectified many of these.
What the historian of sociology chiefly misses is any appreciation
of Luther in the light of the theories and conditions prevailing at
the close of the Middle Ages. It has been remarked quite rightly,
that, from the way in which the matter is dealt with in Protestant
Church-history and “practical theology,” it is perfectly clear that,
hitherto, the Middle Ages have in many instances been altogether
misjudged.[2165]
There is still much for historical research to do in this field.
Neglect to study as they deserved whole centuries of our history,
prolific though they were in great things, has avenged itself by the
one-sided character of the prevalent views concerning them. In the case
of many writers too much attention to the verdicts pronounced by Luther
on every possible occasion against the Church of the past is what is
chiefly responsible for their disinclination to pursue the matter
further; they are too prone to regard things from the watch-tower of
Lutheran theology. It is not so very long since hardly any paradox or
calumny against the social “disorders” prevalent amongst the clergy and
the monks, in family life and the commonwealth under Popery, was too
monstrous, provided it had been uttered by the Wittenberg Professor, to
be dished up again, though possibly under somewhat politer form, by the
occupants of Protestant pulpits and chairs of theology.
Statements such as the following, taken word for word from recent
works, which, following our habit, we shall refrain from naming, are
based on the traditional assertions of controversy and on insufficient
acquaintance with the Middle Ages.
“Luther accomplished something eminently positive when he put the
State-idea on those lines which it was ultimately to follow in his
own country.” For, “according to him, the duty of the State is
the promotion of the general welfare.” “We have the fullest right
to appeal to the spirit of his State policy, above all, because,
in opposition to the mediæval view, it conceded to the State an
independent status.” “The State, according to him, was to put in
practice in social life the principle of ‘serving our neighbour.’”
We often find all “political” as well as all “civil freedom” traced
back to Luther. He it was, so we are told, who introduced, or laid
the foundations for, the real mutual tolerance displayed by citizens
in the State, just as he did for the principle of nationality, for
scientific freedom, for the freedom for invention, and, finally, for
the freedom of the Press.
He “laid constant stress on charity towards our neighbour in direct
contrast to the individualism of the Middle Ages, when even almsgiving
resolved itself ultimately into mere selfish interest, the giver
living in hope of a heavenly reward.” “He proclaimed that: Mendicancy
was to be done away with.... The number of the destitute, and their
claim on public benevolence he reduced to a minimum. These principles
are in direct contrast with the devout and indiscriminate almsgiving
of the Middle Ages and paved the way for the modern poor-law system.”
“The sanctity of the home and the family had suffered severely
under the influence of monasticism.” Luther had to “reorganise the
methods of education in order to make, of the home and the family,
institutions for the public welfare.” He became the “father of the
modern National Schools.”
“In his plans for the maintenance and direction of civic affairs
Luther once more brought into their own the ‘principles of social
responsibility.’”
He set aside the mediæval “contempt for material things and for
labour as a means of production.” Luther performed a signal service
to economics by restoring respect for work; for, “maybe, there was
no phenomenon of mediæval life which presented a greater obstacle to
material happiness than laziness.” “Economic progress was impossible”
where the theory prevailed, that “the contemplative life was of
greater value than the active.” “Luther bestowed new dignity not only
on work in general, but also on its every branch”; according to him
“no work is degrading which serves the interests of mankind.”
He was the “guardian and promoter of the interests of society,” and
the “importance of his influence is still more enhanced by the fact
that he showed himself a conservative and guiding spirit in the midst
of social disorder and confusion of ideas.”
If this holds good of the service he rendered to society as a whole,
he was also within narrower limits the “reformer and restorer” of
family life. His own marriage was “one of his greatest reforming acts,
by which he confirmed his rehabilitation of the conjugal state, and,
by his labours as a whole, he secured to marriage, and thus to the
very foundation of family life, the prerogative of being a ‘divine
institution.’” He brought the duties of the family into respect,
whereas, formerly, “the Church, which permeated everything, had been
the cause of their neglect.”
“It remains an historical truth that the greatness of the German
people in politics, economics and intellectual life may be traced
back to those divine powers which the Reformation set free by its
recognition of the free grace of God in Christ.”
There are, however, other Protestant scholars, who are not theologians,
who regard such praise of Luther’s social importance as either quite
mistaken or at least greatly exaggerated; in their opinion Luther’s
services lay rather in his work for religion, and on behalf of the
knowledge of God and union with Him by faith.
L. Feuchtwanger, for instance, a representative sociologist, recently
spoke in tones almost ironical of the view held “by most [Protestant]
Church-historians,” who praise “the religion of Luther as having
produced autonomous ethics, the modern State, a society that despises
idleness, the German family, in short all that is great and good.”
He is of opinion that such views call for “revision”; nor would such
a revision, so he says, “detract from the eminent importance of the
reformation.”[2166] We shall speak later on of the proofs he adduces
to show the error of the “obstinate opinion,” as he terms it, “that
Protestantism created the modern system of public charity,”[2167] and
that Luther brought about the regeneration of benevolence.
E. Troeltsch, the Heidelberg theologian, says in “Die Bedeutung des
Protestantismus für die Entstehung der modernen Welt”: “As a matter
of fact, the importance of Protestantism must not be one-sidedly
exaggerated. The foundations of the modern world in the State, in
society, in economics, learning and art were established in a great
measure independently of Protestantism, partly as an outgrowth of
the later Middle Ages, partly as the result of the Renaissance,
particularly of the Renaissance as assimilated by Protestantism,
partly—as in the case of the Catholic countries, Spain, Austria,
Italy and especially France—after the rise of Protestantism and
concurrently with it.” “With the principle of nationalism,” writes
Troeltsch, “his [Luther’s] system of an established Church had
no connection. The latter merely promoted the solidification and
centralisation of the chief authorities, whereas the former is a
product of the entirely modern democratic awakening of the masses
and the romantic idea of a national spirit.” In another passage he
says: “There can be no question of [Protestantism] having paved the
way for the modern idea of freedom—of science, of thought, or of the
press—nor of its having inspired the scholarship which it controlled
with new aims, or led it to break new ground.”[2168]
There are even Protestants who are disposed to deny that Luther
took any interest in the State and in public affairs. “It follows
from Luther’s views of life,” writes Erich Brandenburg, the author
of “Luthers Anschauung vom Staate und der Gesellschaft,” that a
Christian neither can nor ought to care for the outbuilding of the
existing order of the State and society. For “God has thrown us into
the world and put us under the rule of the devil, so that here we
have no paradise but look forward hourly to every kind of misfortune
to life and limb, wife and child, goods and honour.’[2169]... By the
fact of his birth the Christian [according to Luther] has been given
a definite place.... To seek for a better one, or to wish to create
an entirely different state of things would be to rebel against the
Will of God. Far from its being the Christian’s duty to strive after
an improvement in the order of the State or of society, any such
striving would be really sinful.” “He [Luther] regards civil life as
merely one aspect of the probation which he has to endure on earth”;
in his eyes the struggle for political freedom simply implies an
“unlawful devotion to earthly aims, an absence of trust in God, and
an attempt to create a paradise on earth by our own strength.”[2170]
Where tyranny prevails one is not even allowed to emigrate, so Luther
insists, unless indeed the ruler will not suffer the Evangel, when
it became lawful and advisable, to seek another home.[2171] Nowadays
people have a different conception, so Brandenburg points out, of
national greatness and political freedom.[2172]
Albert Kalthoff, a Bremen preacher, who belongs to the extreme left
of the Protestant party, goes still further: “There is a considerable
amount of conceit sticking to our Protestant churches, indeed the
Reformation festival seems to afford it a fitting occasion for
celebrating each year its orgy. What is not Protestantism supposed to
have brought to the world? National freedom and prosperity, modern
science and technicology, all this we hear described as the fruit of
the tree of Protestant life; not long since I even read of a German
professor who quite seriously ascribed the whole of our present-day
civilisation to Luther.”[2173]
Luther’s favourable traits in respect of social conditions, his
eloquent admonitions on family life and love of our neighbour deserve a
high place. There is no call again to bring forward examples after all
we have quoted elsewhere. Luther is even fond of including under the
“neighbourly love” of which he so frequently speaks the whole of our
social activity on behalf of our fellow men.[2174]
His struggle against voluntary celibacy and renunciation of the
world, however ill advised, had at least one good result, viz. that
it afforded him an opportunity to speak strongly on the duties of the
home, which were so often neglected, on the importance of the humble,
everyday tasks involved in matrimony and the training of children,
on work at home and for the community, whether in a private or a
public capacity. That plentiful children were a blessing, a principle
which had always been recognised in the Christian world, he insisted
upon emphatically in connection with his advocacy of marriage. The
keeping of the fourth commandment, which had always been regarded as
the corner-stone of society, was warmly emphasised by him as regards
the relations both to parents and to other secular authorities.
It would be hard to gainsay that his teaching has bequeathed to
Protestantism a wealth of instructions on the cultivation of family
affection and the maintenance of a well-ordered household. From the
first it was beneficial to the social foundations of society, and its
good influence has been apparent even down to our own times. Luther’s
writings and sermons, as we soon shall see, also contain some excellent
admonitions against usury as well as against begging; he preaches
contentment with our lot as well as honest industry; he has also much
to say of relief of the poor and education of the young either for
the learned professions or for life in general. In the same way that
he sought to interest the community more and more in the relief of
the indigent—though by rather novel means, which it seemed to him
might take the place of the help formerly afforded by the churches,
monasteries and private charity—so also his appeals on behalf of the
schools were addressed more to the congregation, the authorities and
the State than had been customary in the days of the Church schools.
The increased share now taken by these bodies in this work, if kept
within reasonable bounds, might indeed turn out advantageous, though
the results did not reach his expectations, and in fact did not show
themselves until much later, and then were due to factors altogether
independent of Protestantism.
It must also be pointed out to Luther’s credit that he at once
vigorously withstood the communistic views which had begun to make
their appearance even before his day, as soon as experience had opened
his eyes to their dangers. He perceived the radical trend of the
Anabaptists—which it is true was not without some affinity with his
own doctrines. He came after a while to oppose in popular writings the
extravagant social demands of the peasants, and, in spite of the crass
exaggeration of his language, his tracts give many a useful hint for
the improvement of existing conditions on Christian lines.
The charge he brings against earlier times, viz. that, owing to the
too great number of clergy and religious a premium had been placed on
idleness,[2175] is perhaps not devoid of a grain of truth; nor was
his complaint that the indolence of so many people who lived by the
Church endangered the welfare of the State and was opposed to the
interests of the community altogether unjustified.[2176] The strongly
worded passages where Luther speaks in favour of work and exhorts the
authorities to cultivate and promote labour were quite in place, though
it is true they can be matched by a whole row of equally vigorous
admonitions by Catholic writers, dating from the Middle Ages and from
the years immediately preceding Luther’s day.[2177]
Owing to his having by his attacks on ecclesiastical institutions
dried up many of the existing sources of charity there can be no doubt
that indirectly he contributed to awaken those who were less well off
to a sense of their duty to work for their own living. In this wise
the sense of responsibility was aroused in the masses. The secular
authorities were also obliged to intervene more frequently owing to
the falling off in the support afforded by the Church to the needy and
oppressed, particularly in cases where all the labour and exertion of
the individual were insufficient to guarantee subsistence or legal
protection. In so far therefore, viz. in regard of the growing needs of
social life, it has been truly remarked that the religious revolution
of the 16th century smoothed the way for the material conditions of
modern society and new cultural problems; in this sense Luther assisted
in bringing about the economic conditions of the present day. We shall
say nothing here of the rise of the modern spirit with its rejection of
authority and its principle of unrestrained intellectual freedom.
Luther also helped in a certain sense to set the worldly authorities on
their own feet and to make them more independent. This was an outcome
of his violent struggle against the influence previously exerted over
the State by the olden Church, or to speak more accurately of his
assault on the Church as such, albeit it was attended by the other
eminently unfortunate results. In the course of history, according to
the Divine plan, new and useful elements not seldom spring up from evil
seed. Owing to a too close union of the two powers and the assumption
of many worldly functions by the Church, the representatives of the
latter were too often exposed in their work to a not unjustifiable
criticism. The Church was charged with being inefficient in her
management of outward business and this detracted from the respect
due to her spiritual functions; unnecessary jealousy was aroused and
social developments in themselves desirable were frequently retarded.
Thus, though the storm let loose by Luther wrought great devastation,
yet it is not to be regretted that since then many temporal forces now
transferred from the Church to the State have been set to work with
satisfactory results such as might otherwise not have been attained. In
some places certainly they had come into operation long before this,
but speaking generally, things in this respect were still in a backward
state.
* * * * *
Important factors for judging of Luther’s social work are two ideas on
which he laid great stress and which we have already discussed. One is
the separation of the Church from the world, which, albeit, in very
contradictory fashion, he attempted to carry out; the other is his plea
that the Church, which he sought to divest of all legislative power,
possessed no authority to make binding laws. What has been said already
may here be summed up anew with a few more quotations to the point.
We have in the first place the separation of the spiritual and
supernatural. Luther’s work did great harm in the sphere of the
supernatural and, so far as his influence extended, alienated society
from it.[2178] His doctrine, particularly concerning the state of man,
grace and good works was of such a nature as in reality to withdraw
society from the supernatural atmosphere, however much he might extol
the “knowledge of the free grace of God in Christ,” which he claimed
had been won by his exertions.
The detachment of the supernatural life expressed itself also in a
systematic, jealous exclusion of any worldly meddling in the spiritual
domain, for the rule of the Gospel must, according to Luther, be
something quite distinct from the worldly rule. By his principles
and his writings he materially contributed to the secularisation of
society and the State. According to him Christ simply says without any
reservation: “My kingdom is no business of the Roman Emperor.” The
spiritual rule must be as far apart from the temporal rule “as heaven
is from earth.”[2179]
“What is most characteristic of the kingdom of grace,” so writes E.
Luthardt, one of the best-known Lutheran moralists, who, however, fails
to point out its want of clearness, “is the order of grace, whilst what
is most characteristic of the kingdom of the world and the world’s life
is the order of law; they are quite different in kind nor do they run
on the same lines but belong to entirely different worlds. To the one
I belong as a Christian, to the other as a man; for we live at once in
two different spheres of life, and are at the same time in heaven and
on earth.” “Each one must keep within his own limits,” and “not make of
the Gospel outward laws for life in the world, for Jesus gave His law
only for Christians, not for the rest.”[2180]
Luthardt rightly appeals to Luther’s words: “This is what the Gospel
teaches you: It has nothing to do with worldly things, but leaves
them as God has already disposed them by means of the worldly
authorities.” “The kingdom of Christ has nothing to do with outward
things, but leaves them all unaltered to follow their own order.”
“In God’s kingdom in which He rules through the Gospel there is no
going to law, nor have we anything to do with law, but everything
is summed up in forgiveness, remission and bestowing, and there is
no anger or punishment, nothing but benevolence and service of our
neighbour.” As to the temporal matters, “there the lawyers are free
to help and advise how things are to be.” “If anyone were to try and
rule the world according to the Gospel, just think, my good friend,
what the result would be. He would break the chains and bonds that
hold back the wild and savage beasts.”[2181]—It is true that he here
altogether overlooks the fact that religion has, on the contrary, to
help in governing the world by her moral laws, restraining the “wild
and savage” elements by means of her laws, her authority and her means
of grace; just as when speaking above of the two spheres of life
in which man is placed he forgets that we are endowed with but one
conscience and one responsibility, viz. that of the Christian, which
is inseparable from man as he is at present constituted.
“Now, praise be to God, all the world knows,” says Luther, of his
sundering of the two spheres of life, “with what diligence and pains I
have laboured and still labour to distinguish between the two offices
or rules, the temporal and the spiritual, and to keep them, apart;
each one now is instructed as to his own work and kept to it, whereas
in Popery it was all so entangled and in such confusion that no one
kept within his own powers, dominion and rights.”[2182]
Protestants have found the essential difference between Protestantism
and Catholicism to consist in the fact, that, according to Luther’s
directions, Protestantism separates “religion and theology, faith
and knowledge, morality and politics, Christianity and art,” whereas
Catholicism, according to the motto of Pius X, seeks to “renew all
things in Christ.” “We know that revelation has only an inward mission
to the individual soul; the Catholic believes in its public mission
for universal civilisation.” “We should fear for the purity of our
faith and no less for morality and civilised order should these
domains ever be christianised.”[2183]
The result of forbidding the “spiritual rule” ever to encroach on the
temporal domain was so to enfeeble the precepts of ethics as to deprive
them of any real authority for making themselves felt as a power in
secular government.
With Luther everything is constructed without any basis of authority;
he proffers, as he is fond of saying, “opinions and advice,”[2184] and
even this he does without a trace of theory or method; as for binding
regulations he has none; nor has he any Church behind him that can set
up an obligatory ethical standard; he recognises indeed the universal
priesthood, but no Church with any paramount authority in spiritual
things, no hierarchy and no social institution such as the Catholic
Church is. This is the chief reason why his moral instructions lack
any definite and binding force over people’s minds. The great mass of
mankind must be guided by clear and fixed rules, counsels which address
themselves to man’s good-will are in themselves practically useless for
the direction or guidance of the masses, constituted as they are. The
Gospel, moreover, in spite of what Luther says to the contrary, though
it brings the glad tidings of salvation and forgiveness, also contains
a large number of strict moral precepts; the Divine Founder of the
Church, in His wisdom, also equipped her with full power to issue, on
the lines traced out by Himself, the commands called for by the needs
of every age. She disposes of spiritual penalties and has the right to
excommunicate offenders when this is necessary to emphasise her laws.
With Luther the last resource lay in the system of the State-Church.
The “Christian authorities” became the authorities of the congregations
(see below, p. 579 ff.).[2185] Thus the founder of the new religion
frequently requires the rulers who had rallied to his system to make
use of their power in order to lend their sanction and authority to the
ethical regulations he gave to his followers, and which he himself was
unable to enforce.
Here we shall only consider one class of cases where it was of great
importance to him to see his “opinion and advice” followed. According
to him, as Luthardt himself admits in his “Ethik Luthers,”[2186] “The
authorities were to serve and promote the cause of the Evangel....
From this Luther went on, however, to give advice which really was at
variance with his fundamental views. It is true when he demands that
the rulers should not suffer any such sects as deny the rights, etc.,
of the authorities, he was merely imposing on them the fulfilment of
one of the duties of the State,[2187] but when he requires the rulers
to make use of their powers to check the scandal of heresy and false
worship, which was the most horrible and dangerous form of scandal; or,
when heresy had been proved from Scripture, to forbid its preaching;
‘to insist on the true worship, to punish and forbid false doctrine
and idolatry and to risk everything rather than allow themselves
and their people to be forced into idolatry and falsehood’; or ‘to
banish from the land those who deny such articles as the Divinity of
Christ and the redemption,’ etc.; or again, when two opposing parties
confront each other, as, for instance, the Lutherans and the Papists,
to decide according to Scripture and forbid the party that failed to
agree with Scripture to preach,[2188]—all these and similar matters
are plainly based on the assumption that the ruler had a right to
form an independent opinion as to whether a doctrine was or was not
in accordance with Scripture, an assumption which Luther, as a matter
of fact, strongly deprecates in theory. When Luther speaks in this
way he is taking it for granted that he has to do with a Christian
ruler, who as such does not merely perform his office of ruler like the
heathen Emperor or the Grand Turk, but is influenced by the Gospel and
recognises the Word of God.”
Expressed in different words Luthardt’s ideas would amount to this:
According to Luther it is imperative that the rulers should be good
Lutherans and accept the Evangel and the Word of God as he taught it.
No other Christian ruler may venture to put the above measures in
force, for the truth is he is no Christian at all.
This leads us to look closer into Luther’s ideas on the secular
authority and the State-Church.
2. The State and the State Church
Most Protestant writers become very eloquent and go into great detail
when dealing with the main ideas Luther is supposed to have expressed
on the State and on social order.
He maintained, so they assert, and impressed strongly on all ages
to come, that the purpose of the State was to keep the peace and
uphold the right against the wicked by means of legislation and
penalties: “_Magistratus instrumentum, per quod Deus pacem et iura
conservat_.”[2189] This temporal peace was the best earthly possession
and comprised all temporal blessings; in point of fact the “true
preaching office” should, so he declared, bring peace, but with the
greater number “this is not the case,”[2190] so that the authority
of the ruler was necessary for the maintenance of outward peace.
“This worldly government,” according to him, “preserves temporal
peace, rights and life,” indeed he says it makes wild beasts into men
and saves men from becoming wild beasts.[2191] The true Evangelical
doctrine, unlike the earlier one, leads to the secular government
being regarded as “the great gift of God and His own gracious
order,”[2192] notwithstanding that all authority was instituted by God
on account of the sin that reigns in man. Human reason and experience,
and also the Holy Ghost, must teach the authorities how to fulfil
their duty. They must, so far as this is possible, work for the common
welfare of their subjects in this world. Since, according to Luther,
they must punish what is evil in their subjects’ external behaviour
and take care that “all public scandal be banished and removed,”[2193]
their task seems to trench on morals and on religion. Good sovereigns
instruct their people concerning temporal things, “how to manage
their homes and farms, how to rule the land and the people, how to
make money and secure possessions, how to become rich and powerful,”
further, “how we are to till the fields, plough, sow, reap and keep
our house.”[2194] In short the ruler must interest himself in the
needs of his subjects as “though they were his very own.”[2195] The
worldly rulers must provide for the support of their subjects, and
particularly for the poor, the widows and orphans, and extend to them
their fatherly protection.
Other fine sayings of Luther’s on this subject and on the duties he
assigns to the rulers are instanced in plenty.
The ruler “holds the place of a father, only that his sway is more
extensive, for he is not merely the father of one family, as it were,
but of as many as there are inhabitants, citizens or subjects in his
country.... And because they bear this name and title and look upon it
as in all honour their greatest treasure, it is our duty to respect
them and regard them as our dearest, most precious possession on
earth.”[2196] Luther insisted in the strongest terms on the duty of
obedience, more particularly after his experiences during the Peasant
War. He emphasises very strongly, in opposition to the fanatics, that
the secular Courts must rule and their authority be recognised, and
also that the oath must be taken when required.
He even tells the rebels: “God would rather suffer the rulers who do
what is wrong than the mob whose cause is just. The reason is that
when Master Omnes wields the sword and makes war on the pretence
that he is in the right, things fare badly. For a Prince, if he is
to remain a Prince, cannot well chop off the heads of all, though he
may act unjustly and cut off the heads of some.” For he must needs
retain some about him, continues Luther with a touch of humour; but
when the mob is in revolt then “off go all the heads.”[2197] “Even
where a ruler has pledged himself to govern his subjects in accordance
with a constitution—‘according to prearranged articles’—Luther will
not admit that it is lawful to deprive him of his authority should he
disregard his oath.... No one has the right or the command from God to
enforce a penalty in the case of the authorities.”[2198] But things
ought not to reach such a pass in the case of the prince’s government.
Obedience should make everything smooth for him. He cherishes and
provides for all, as many as he has subjects, and may thus be called
the father of them all, just as in old days the heathen called their
pious rulers the fathers and saviours of the country.[2199]
These ideas are not, however, peculiar to Luther. They were current
long before his time and had been discussed from every point of view by
Christian writers who, in turn, had borrowed them from antiquity.
In all this, which, furthermore, Luther never summed up in a theory,
all that is new is his original and forcible manner of putting forward
his ideas. “It is hardly possible to argue,” says Frank G. Ward, one of
the latest Protestant writers in this field, “that his view of the duty
of the State contained anything very new.... The opinion that the State
had an educational duty was held even in classical antiquity.”[2200]
If it was held in Pagan times, still more so was this the case in the
Christian Middle Ages. It is to classical antiquity that we just heard
Luther appeal when he referred to the “_pater patriæ_.” He had become
acquainted in the Catholic schools with the ideas of antiquity purified
by Christian philosophy.
Still, there is much that is really new in Luther’s views on the State
and the rulers which does not come out in the passage quoted above;
what is new, however, far from being applauded by modern Protestant
judges, is often reprehended by them.
As the accounts we had to give elsewhere were already so full it will
not be necessary again to go into details; it is, however, worth while
again to emphasise the conclusions already arrived at by calling
attention to some data not as yet taken into consideration.
In the first place one thing that was new was the energetic application
made by Luther in his earlier years of his peculiar principle of the
complete separation of world and Church. The State, or, rather, ordered
society (for there was as yet no political State in the modern sense),
was consequently de-Christianised by him, at least in principle, at
least if we ignore the change which soon took place in Luther himself
(see below, p. 576 f.). The proof of this de-Christianisation is
found in his own statements. In his writing of 1523, “Von welltlicher
Uberkeytt,” he expressly told the rulers of the land that they had no
concern with good people and “that it was not their business to make
them pious,” but that they were only there to rule a world estranged
from God, and to maintain order by force when the peace was disturbed
or men suffered injustice. Amongst real Christians there would,
according to Luther, be no secular rulers.[2201] Even when Luther,
in this tract of which he thought so highly, is instructing a pious
Christian ruler on his duties, he has nothing to say of his duty to
protect and further the Church, though in earlier days all admonitions
to the princes had insisted mainly on this.
His view of the two powers at work in the social order was new,
particularly as regards the spiritual sphere and the position of those
holding authority in the Church. The believing Christians in Luther’s
eyes formed merely a union of souls,[2202] without any hierarchy or a
jot of spiritual authority or power; there is in fact only one power
on earth qualified to issue regulations, viz. the secular power; the
combination of the two powers, which had formed the basis of public
order previously, was thrown over, any spiritual ruler being out of
place where all the faithful were priests. There is but a “ministry”
of the word, conferred by election of the faithful, and its one duty is
to bring the Gospel home to souls; it knows nothing of law, vengeance
or punishment.[2203] The ministry of the Word must indeed stand, but
is by no means a supervising body, in spite of the “neo-Lutheran
conception of the office,” as some Protestant theologians of the
present day disapprovingly call it.
Carl Holl, in his “Luther und das landesherrliche Kirchenregiment”
(1911), says with some truth: “Luther knows as little of a Christian
State as he does of a Christian shoemaking trade”; “Our life here
below is only Christian in so far as the individuals concerned are
Christians. Their sphere of action is not prescribed to Christians by
Christianity but rather by the divine order of nature.”[2204]—Hence
the whole public congregational system, so far as it needs laws to
govern it, must remain on a purely natural basis.
This view is confirmed by the following odd-sounding statements of
Luther’s:
Among Christians the sword can have no place, “hence you cannot make
use of it on or among Christians, who have no need of it”; still
the world “cannot and may not do without it” (this power); in other
words, as Christians, both subjects and rulers suffer injustice gladly
according to the Gospel, but, for the sake of their neighbours and
for the keeping of order in the world, both favour the use of force.
Secular rule does not extend beyond “life and limb and what is outward
on this earth.”[2205] “Our squires, our princes and our bishops,
shall see what fools they are,” when they “order us to believe the
Church, the Fathers and the Councils though there is no Word of God in
them. It is the apostles of the devil who order such things, not the
Church.” And yet “our Emperor and the clever princes are doing this
now.”[2206] Hence the princes must keep to their own outward sphere,
viz. only coerce the wicked, and not seek to rule over Christians.
“Christians can be governed by nothing but the Word of God. For
Christians must be ruled by faith, not by outward works.... Those who
do not believe are not Christians, nor do they belong to the kingdom
of Christ, but to the kingdom of the world, hence they must be coerced
and driven with the sword and by the outward government. Christians
do everything that is good of their own accord and without being
compelled, and God’s Word is enough for them.”[2207]
When Luther contrasts in this way the kingdom of Christ and the true
life of a Christian with the temporal kingdom and the functions of
the authorities, he goes so far in his “Von welltlicher Uberkeytt,”
and even in his sermons, as strongly to depreciate the secular or
civil power. He teaches, for instance, that the Christian who holds
the office of ruler, must do things that are forbidden to Christians
as such, for instance, pronounce sentence, put to death and use other
strong measures against the unruly. But all this belongs in reality to
hell.—“Whoever is under the secular rule,” so we read in a curious
sermon in Luther’s Church-Postils, “is still far from the kingdom of
heaven, for the place where all this belongs is hell; for instance,
the prince who governs his people in such a way as to allow none to
suffer injustice, and no evildoer to go unrequited, does well and
receives praise.... Nevertheless, as explained above, this is not
appointed for those who belong to heaven but merely in order that
people may not sink yet deeper into hell and make things even worse.
Therefore no one who is under the secular government can boast that he
is acting rightly before God; in His sight it is still all wrong”; for
of Christians more is required; whoever wishes to act according to the
Gospel must ever be ready to suffer injustice.[2208] But the secular
authority must, either “of its own initiative or at the instance of
others, without any complaint, entreaty or exertion of his, help and
protect him. Where it does not he must allow himself to be fleeced
and abused, and not resist evil, according to the words of Christ.
And be assured that this is no counsel of perfection as our sophists
lyingly and blasphemously assert, but a strict command binding on all
Christians.”[2209] There is a huge gulf between the kingdom of such a
Christian and that of the “jailers, hangmen, lawyers, advocates and
such-like rabble.”
Such are the epithets Luther flings at the secular power, the State
and its ministers, whose task it is to “seek out the wicked, convict
them, strangle and put them to death.”[2210] These authorities must
indeed exist and a Christian must submit to them willingly—not for
his own sake but for that of his neighbour, i.e. for the sake of the
common good; he himself has no need of them; the behaviour of the
Christian towards this secular power must be dictated by his Christian
love for his neighbour.
A Protestant critic writes: “Luther hardly recognises any so-called
Christian State.... We find Luther warning his hearers against
seeing anything particularly useful or indispensable behind the work
of the government. The ruler’s sense of responsibility was to be
something purely human.... The Christian in fact has no need of any
ruler.”[2211] “Luther’s interest in things political (see below) is
practically nil; where the State can be of any use to him he welcomes
it and even gives it its meed of praise.... His appreciation of the
State is usually just a matter of feeling.”[2212] We come to see that
“he took no independent interest in politics.... He even goes so far
as to characterise the outward order of the State as a necessary evil.
State organisation in his eyes is simply a kind of enforced charity
towards our neighbour.”[2213]
“Luther knows no Christian State,” says another Protestant writer
of Luther’s theories. “The State is as worldly a thing as eating
and drinking”; indeed its commands and its deeds “all belong to
hell.”[2214]
This worldly bond of union is good, when, with God’s help, it follows
the dictates of reason. It is the only union that exists, for Luther
does not recognise State and Church as two unions. This, says Holl, is
now regarded “as an axiom.”[2215] We may, it is true, admit with Holl
that Luther is not quite consistent in this, but this is only because
he reverts inadvertently to the old ideas, and, even in his “Von
welltlicher Uberkeytt,” incidentally speaks of a spiritual authority
and of bishops in whom it is invested.[2216]
Some Protestant writers, quite erroneously, extol the “Christendom”
equipped with both spiritual and secular authority which Luther
substituted for the twin powers of yore. It was only owing to his want
of logic, and out of practical considerations for the interests of his
religion (see below), that he was able to endow as he did the State
with spiritual authority. And, besides, “Christendom,” to which indeed
he often enough refers, had, in reality, been completely abrogated by
him at least in the traditional sense, viz. of the kingdom of God on
earth which embraces as in one family all the baptised. For had he
not deprived baptism of its dignity and made membership of the Church
dependent on the faith of the adult?
“Luther drags away the corner stone on which the whole edifice [of
Christendom] rests,” says Holl. “According to his teaching we are
not simply baptised into the Church as was the case according to
the Catholic doctrine. Baptism, indeed, even to him, constitutes
the foundation of Christianity, but the grace of the sacrament is
only effective in those who believe in the promises offered therein
(‘_Sacramenta non implentur dum fiunt, sed dum creduntur_’).... Luther,
by making admission into the spiritual society dependent on a personal
condition, destroyed the idea of Christendom in the mediæval Catholic
sense”;[2217] this Holl regards as his chief merit.
This is undoubtedly so true, that, in the case of the wars against the
Turks, Luther refused to hear of any “Christendom” in the traditional
sense which might be pitted against the Crescent, and this on the
ground that but few of the combatants were real Christians, i.e. real
believers in the Evangel he preached.[2218] He also reserves the
honourable title of Christians, as the headings of many of his writings
show, for those who personally professed the new faith.[2219]
_Was Luther the Founder of the Modern State?_
The question seems so extraordinary, that we must hasten to say that
some of Luther’s more passionate admirers have actually claimed for him
that he prepared the way for the modern State.
The difficulty of proving that he is really entitled to such an honour
becomes obvious as soon as we recall that all modern theories of
government agree in seeing the ideal community in a well-knit body with
equal rights and equal liberties for all, religious freedom included.
The same standard of justice applies without exception to every citizen
and all religions (such at least is the programme) are esteemed alike;
moreover, to this standard of justice, all, even the monarch or the
supreme representative of the republic, must bow, seeing that the heads
of the State have ceased to be absolute.
But what, according to Luther’s theory and practice, was the position
of the Lutheran ruler in respect of his civil and religious authority?
How did it stand with the freedom and independence of his subjects,
particularly where different religious practices co-existed?
It is true that, taking his instructions to the rulers just discussed,
which he derived from his principle of the separation of Church and
world, we should expect him to recognise freedom of conscience. The
instructions, however, though seemingly addressed to all, sprang from
his opposition to the Catholic rulers. The latter, particularly in
the infancy of Protestantism, were above all to be urged to grant
entire liberty and not to trouble about religion; what Luther wished
to impress upon them was that they had no right to interfere with the
Lutheran movement within their jurisdiction.[2220]
Luther spoke quite otherwise when dealing with princes who were
favourable to his preaching, or who had introduced the new religious
system. In proportion as the rulers and municipalities that favoured
his cause grew more numerous, he came to confer on them full powers to
stamp out the Catholic faith, and even made it their duty so to do.
He also perceived all too well the extent to which zealous Protestant
princes, such as Johann of Saxony and Philip of Hesse, could further
his innovations. From that time forward he promoted the growing
authority of the sovereigns over the Churches, above all by warmly
defending the principle that in every country uniformity of worship and
doctrine must prevail, short of which there would always be “revolts
and sects,” as he said in 1526.[2221]
This was, however, to destroy the main groundwork of the modern State
theory, viz. the personal freedom of the individual. It was to
interfere with the evenness of justice and with the sacred right of
conscience. What other rights of the subject would the sovereign regard
as sacred once the door had been opened to arbitrary action in the
domain of religious practice?[2222]
The argument with which Luther conceals his selfish aim of securing new
fields for his own religious system, and veils the real motive of his
struggle against Popery, is deserving of special attention in spite of
all its frivolity.
According to Luther’s new modification of his views each locality
was to have but one form of worship. Any divergency in preaching or
worship must always sow the seeds of dissension, revolt and mob-law;
the authorities ought not to permit such a state of things if they
valued the preservation of order; so as to insure uniformity of
preaching and worship dissenting preachers must be removed. It was
for this reason that the inhabitants of Nuremberg had “silenced their
monks and shut up their monasteries.”[2223] In this way, encouraged
by the wisdom of a “prudent” town-council, which did not look beyond
the city walls, Luther came to make his notorious request to his
sovereign, viz. that Catholics who remained true to their faith
should be banished from the country; for “madcaps,” who refuse to
take the proposed arrangement in good part and in the spirit of
Christian charity, are not to be suffered among Christians but must
be swept away like “chaff from the threshing floor.”[2224] As though
the secular power had not even then ample means at its disposal for
checking or punishing any real disturbance of the peace on the part
of a congregation. At the present day we can afford to smile at the
strange reason assigned for measures so far-reaching against innocent
citizens of the State; the assertion that difference of worship gives
rise to unendurable discord sounds ridiculous to one used to the
principles of liberty paramount in the civilised States of to-day. At
any rate, this dictum did not make of Luther the founder of the modern
State.
In strange contrast with the modern ideas of justice is the excuse he
brings forward to vindicate the violent conversion to Protestantism
so often practised by the magistrates or petty rulers in their own
territories. “What is done by the regular authorities is not to be
regarded as revolt.”[2225] Is it really a fact that subversion and
violence cease to be wrong when practised by the regular authorities?
The modern State—in theory at any rate—recognises no such principle.
It must be added, that both Luther and the princes devoted to him
were fond of declaring that the really Christian rulers were bound to
put an end to insults and blasphemies against God, regardless of any
disturbance of civil life which might ensue. Luther made a beginning
by exhorting the sovereign and the congregation to abolish the Mass at
Wittenberg which, like Catholic worship in general, was a perpetual
blasphemy of God. “The regular authorities” must rise up against
“such blasphemy.” The scandal given being public, no indulgence was
to be shown by Christians.[2226] Eventually every false doctrine was
accounted a public scandal, i.e. every opinion expressed in writings
or sermons which deviated from the true Evangel. “It is the duty” of
the authorities, he says, “to punish public blasphemers ... and in
the same way they should punish, or at least not brook, those who
teach that Christ did not die for our sins, but that each one must
make satisfaction for himself.”[2227] This, according to him, was
notoriously the teaching of the Catholics.
But if the Papists and the Lutherans as they are called, “preach
against each other in a parish, town or district” and neither party
will yield, “then let the authorities step in and try the case, and
whichever party does not agree with Scripture, let him be ordered
to hold his tongue.”[2228] Thus the official delegated by the
prince—where the prince himself was loath to take the chair—is to
decide which is the true meaning of the Bible, and which party really
conforms to it.
How opposed this was to the ground principles of the modern State
it is scarcely necessary to point out here. The freedom postulated
by the latter was absolutely unknown to Luther; had his mind ever
risen to such heights he would never have proposed the farcical Bible
examination to be held by the authorities.
The relation between such demands as these and Luther’s own former
attitude has not escaped the censure of Protestant writers.
“Luther here contradicts himself,” remarks Drews;[2229] “as late as
1524 he had said that men must be allowed to disagree, and a year
later that the authorities have no right to prevent every man from
‘teaching and believing whatever he wished, whether it be Gospel or
lie’; it was sufficient if they checked the preaching of rebellion and
any disturbance of the peace.”[2230]
The Elector Johann Frederick of Saxony adopted the view that
uniformity of doctrine was called for. He would, so he declared,
“recognise or tolerate no sects or divisions in his lands or
principalities,” in order the better “to prevent harmful revolt and
other unrighteousness.” But at the same time he assured his subjects
that it was not his intention to “prescribe to anyone what he should
hold or believe.”[2231]
_The Prince as Absolute Patriarch_
Things drifted, thanks to Luther’s own action, slowly but surely
towards an entire control of the Church by the State. Luther knew of
no better means of stimulating the Evangelical rulers to take action
in ecclesiastical things than by setting up before them the example of
King David.
He describes in 1534, in his exposition of Psalm ci. (c.),[2232] how,
in order to exterminate false doctrine, David “made a visitation of
the whole of his kingdom.” “He always checked any public inroads of
heresy. For the devil never idles or sleeps, hence neither must the
spiritual authorities be idle or slumber.” “Oh what a great number of
false teachers, idolaters and heretics was he not obliged to expel,
or in other ways stop their mouths.... The true teachers on the other
hand he had everywhere sought out, promoted, called, appointed and
commanded to preach the Word of God purely and simply.... He himself
diligently instituted, ordered and appointed true teachers everywhere,
himself writing Psalms in which he points out how they are to teach
and praise God.” “David in this was a pattern and masterpiece to all
pious kings and lords ... showing them how they must not allow wicked
men to lead souls astray.”[2233] “I say again, let whoever can, be
another David and follow his example, more particularly the princes
and lords.”[2234] David, so he continues later, led “pious kings
and princes rightly and in a Christian manner to the churches,” but
he was also a “model in secular government,” which “can have its own
rule apart from the kingdom of God”; to this all Popish princes should
restrict themselves and not try to instruct Christ how to rule His
Church and spiritual realm.[2235]
Hence all that he had once written quite generally of the separation
of the kingdom of God with “its own rule” from the “worldly
government” was in fact, as he now says more outspokenly, only to
apply to the “false priestlings,” and their princes.
But when according to David’s example a Lutheran preacher “by virtue
of his office,” or a Lutheran prince, demanded the suppression of the
false teaching, this “spiritual rule is nothing more than a service
offered to God’s own supremacy”; the Lutheran prince is not thereby
intruding on the “spiritual or divine authority but remains humbly
submissive to it and its servant.”
“For, when directed towards God and the service of His Sovereignty,
everything must be equal and made to intermingle, whether it be
termed spiritual or secular.” “Thus they must be united in the same
obedience and kneaded together as it were in one cake.”[2236]—It is
hardly possible to believe our eyes when we meet with such phrases
coming from the same pen that had formerly so strongly championed the
complete sundering of the spiritual from the temporal. Yet Luther even
seeks to justify the contradiction on more serious grounds. When it
was a case of the true Word of God and of the Evangel, then matters
stood quite otherwise.
“The secular and spiritual government” are most improperly confused,
so he declares, when “spiritual or secular princes and lords seek
to change and control the Word of God and to lay down what is to
be taught or preached”; here he is referring to the non-Lutheran
authorities. Quite a different thing is it “when David concerns
himself with the divine or spiritual government,” and really restores
God’s glory. Had David said: “My good people, act differently from
what God has taught you,” then this would indeed have spelt a
“confusion of the spiritual and temporal, of the divine and human
government”—such as Luther’s opponents are now guilty of. But David,
the servant of God and pattern of all pious princes and kings, because
he acted otherwise, was adorned with such high and kingly virtues even
in his temporal government that it must have been the work of God,
i.e. His peculiar grace; but this same grace is with all pious princes
in order that, under their sway and in spite of the hatred of the
devil, the temporal rule and “God’s own Rule” may prosper. Supported
by such grace David could say of the two authorities he combined: “I
suffer neither ungodly men in the spiritual domain nor yet evildoers
in the temporal.”[2237]
Thus, in the hands of a pious Evangelical prince, the co-existence of
these two rules involves no disturbance of order. And they may all
the more readily be put into the hand of one who serves God according
to His “Word” seeing that there is in reality but a single power;
according to Luther, the hierarchy having been destroyed, there was
no one holding spiritual authority; as for the semblance of spiritual
authority which the congregation had once possessed it had willingly
resigned it into the hands of the Christian David on the princely
throne. There is but one authority that embraces everything temporal
and spiritual and that works in the two “governments” (read: spheres
of life), i.e. in the temporal life of the subjects, which is founded
on reason and earthly laws, and in the spiritual domain to which the
Gospel lifts them up. In both orders man is admonished to obedience
towards God by the pious ruler who regulates everything either himself
or by means of the preachers.
Thus Luther’s conception of the State finally grows into a kind of
theocracy.
The theocracy of the Israelites is therefore held up to the rulers
in the example not only of David but also of the other pious Jewish
kings. In the political sphere Old Testament imagery exercised far
too great an influence on Luther and his arbitrary new creations. How
widely different from the Jewish theocracy was it to see the Father
of the country made the highest authority not merely on practical
questions of Church government but even on differences concerning
faith? The “absolute patriarch”[2238] at Luther’s express demand drives
his negligent or reluctant subjects to hear the preachers; on him
depends the introduction and use of the greater excommunication, should
this weapon ever become necessary; he removes from their posts those
professors of the theological or other faculties who oppose the ruling
faith, just as he makes his authority felt on the preacher who forsakes
the right path. He is, according to Luther, the chief guardian of the
young and of all who need his protection, in order, that, where his
subjects do not take thought for their salvation and act accordingly,
he may “force them to do so, in the same way as he obliges them to
give their services for the repair of bridges, roads and ways, or to
render such other services as their country may require.”[2239]
On one occasion Luther points out, that in the past, the Pope of Rome
had been all in all. Now it is the sovereign of the land, who, as God’s
own Vicar, is all in all.
Thus we have here, writes Frank Ward in his “Darstellung der Ansichten
Luthers vom Staat,” “almost the counterpart of the old ecclesiastical
absolutism, seeing that all ecclesiastical functions and conditions
so far as they belong to the outward domain are put under the
State.”[2240] Instead of its being “almost the counterpart,” it would
be better to say that it was an absolute caricature of the supposed
ecclesiastical absolutism of the past. Ward, however, goes on to say
that in the chapter in question he had only shown how, “Luther gave the
State an independent dignity and position, and how he had enlarged and
strengthened its claims.”
In direct contrast to those writers who see in Luther’s political
theory the foundation of the modern State, is a recent statement of
Heinrich Boehmer’s.
“Luther’s political and social views,” says this author,[2241] “are
in every essential point quite mediæval, antiquated and unmodern.
People speak of ‘Luther’s views’ or even of ‘Luther’s teaching on
the State and society.’ But it would be better to refrain from using
such terms which can only serve to arouse false expectations. As
little as the reformer was familiar with the words state and society,
so little did he know their meaning. For no State or society in the
modern sense of the word existed at the time in central or northern
Germany, but merely a large number of bodies somewhat resembling
States, all of which, however, fell far short of the ideal of a
State.” He goes on to explain, that, for this reason, Luther always
speaks to the “authorities,” they being in his eyes the most potent
factor in the political organisations he knew; yet, in determining
their duties, “his mind moves on quite mediæval lines”; “in the
matter of political theory he is far behind even Thomas of Aquin,
for Thomas had, in the Italian cities, an example of a far more
highly developed State, whilst in the school of Aristotle he had made
acquaintance with a number of political ideas and views which had led
him to a very thorough study of politics.” Boehmer points out that,
according to Luther, the Natural Law upbears the outward order with
which alone he was conversant—viz. the landed-aristocratic society
which predominated at the time of the reformation—until it came to
appear as almost a divine institution, any attempt to overthrow which
amounted to a crime, “a view which indeed explains much of the success
of Lutheranism, but which is anything but modern.”[2242]
Luther’s “Patriarchal theory,” according to H. Boehmer, had an even
greater influence on the political conditions of Lutheran countries
than his other theory of the rights of the nobility. The princes
within the domain of the new church system entered eagerly into the
theory of their supposed paternal rights and finally built it out
into a quite insufferable absolutism. Such an undue growth of the
secular power was the more to be feared seeing that any independent
spiritual power, which might, as in the Middle Ages, have served as
a counterweight, no longer existed, having been swallowed up in the
authority of the prince. Everything had indeed been secularised, and,
to the Lutheran ruler, as God’s own representative, it now was left to
direct the religious and temporal concerns of the population on the
lines laid down in the Bible.
“The Lutheran prince,” says Boehmer, “as father of the country,
undertook to provide for his subjects in every department of life; his
rule was absolute, though indeed patriarchal, an ideal of the State
quite in accordance with Luther’s views.”[2243]
“Any separation or division of Church and State Luther neither
recognised nor desired,” now that he had invested the Evangelical
princes with the supreme episcopate.[2244]
The term “Zwangskultur,” often used of the absolutism obtaining in
the Lutheran order of society, is not altogether incorrect, in spite
of the protests of Protestant theologians. Other Protestant authors
find a parallel between Luther’s view of the State and certain late
mediæval ones; both, according to them, have been influenced by
humanism, with its Cæsarean conception of unfreedom, and by theocratic
absolutism.
Carl Sell notes how the Reformation, “in its own way, put new
life into the mediæval idea of a new theocracy.” “How deeply the
theocratical idea was rooted in the Protestant State-system may
be seen from the time it took before the States would consent to
surrender their religious character.”[2245]
After the Reformation, says G. Steinhausen, “the theological spirit
more than ever laid hold of the world and mankind and fettered the
ardent longing for freedom. Herein lies the chief harm wrought by the
Reformation.”[2246]
“It was the Reformation,” so O. Gierke says, “that brought about
the energetic revival of the theocratic ideal. In spite of all
their differences Luther, Melanchthon, Zwingli and Calvin agree in
emphasising the Christian call, and, consequently, the divine right
of the secular authority. Indeed, on the one hand by subordinating
the Church more or less to the State, and on the other by making the
State’s authority dependent on its fulfilling its religious duties,
they give to the Pauline dictum ‘All authority comes from God’ a far
wider scope than it had ever had before.”[2247]
_Luther’s Real Merit and his Claims_
If anyone ever really believed that the modern State was in any way
embodied in Luther’s ideal or that he paved the way for it, the
easiest way to disprove such an assumption would be to show that the
most essential feature of the modern State is entirely wanting in the
Lutheran, patriarchal one, viz. freedom and the political co-operation
of the people, and, above all, the vital atmosphere of personal and
corporate independence in religious matters.
In point of fact the most that can be argued is that Luther to some
extent, though in an entirely negative way, paved the road for the
modern conception of the State.
This he did by his relentless opposition to the Church, which had so
long held sway. As early as the days of Boniface VIII attempts had been
made to curtail her action in politics. The efforts of some of the
Catholic sovereigns, who, without denying the inherent rights of the
spiritual authority, laboured to establish State-Churches also tended
in the same direction. Luther was, however, the first who sought to
destroy all ecclesiastical authority, as a mere symbol of Antichrist.
Hence, for those rulers who took his part, one of the chief obstacles
that had withstood the growth of modern conditions was swept away.
Nevertheless, wellnigh three hundred years, full of gloomy experiences,
had to elapse before a way could be found out of the new labyrinth of
despotism, indolence and disorder; and, all this while, the theocratic
patriarch of Lutheranism almost invariably stood as an obstacle in the
way of development.
Frank Ward may indeed assert, that it is possible “to appeal at
least to the spirit of his theory of the State, if not to its every
detail.”[2248] This, however, is only possible if by “its spirit”
we understand not what was new but the old, wholesome, traditional
elements which Luther retained, i.e. the political ideas handed down
by antiquity and the Christian philosophy of the past, on which he so
skilfully impressed his own drastic touch. To these olden elements
Luther was, however, scarcely fair.
According to what he says and reiterates there had devolved on him
alone the incredibly onerous task of finding a way out of the gruesome
darkness into which the relations between prince and hierarchy, State
and Church, spiritual and temporal order had been plunged in the
past: “This is how things stood then. No one had heard or taught, nor
did anyone know anything concerning the secular authority, whence
it came, what its office or work was, or how it should serve God.
The most learned men—I will not name them—looked upon the secular
power as a heathen, human and ungodly thing, as a state dangerous to
salvation.... In short princes and lords, even such as wished to be
pious, regarded their station and office as of no account.... Thus the
Pope and the clergy were at that time all in all, over all and in all,
like a very god in the world, and the secular power lay unknown and
uncared for in the darkness.”[2249]
Yet he himself had abased the authorities by reducing them in his
writing of 1523 to the position of “jailers and hangmen,” working in a
domain foreign to all that was spiritual.[2250] This, of course, was
at a time when he had not as yet found patrons amongst the rulers as
he was to do later. According to him, those who wielded the secular
power, i.e. the princes, were no Christians. In 1522 he complains of
the princes to whom he had appealed in vain: “Now they let everything
go and one stands in the way of the other. Some even help and further
the cause of Antichrist. They are at loggerheads and do not show
themselves at all willing to help matters on.”[2251] Thus, according
to him, Christ is left to Himself; but “He is the Lord of life and
death.... Together with Him we too shall conquer and despise even the
princes.”[2252] “God Himself will shortly make an end of Popery by His
Word.... A new Church will arise but not by the doing of the princes
but of those in whom the Word of God has really taken root.”[2253]
Luther then wished, as we have already shown, to bring about the
establishment of a Congregational Church; later on he even dreamed
of assembling together only the true believers. As, however, the
Congregational Churches did not thrive and as it proved impossible
to carry out the scheme of a Church apart, he allowed the State to
intervene, and, with its help, there came the National Church; this
soon grew into a State-Church with the sovereign at its head.
Luther still remained, however, the great teacher. He continued to
vaunt his ambiguous “Von welltlicher Uberkeytt.” In 1529 he even
related how Duke Frederick had caused this writing to be copied and
“specially bound; he was very fond of it because it showed him what
his position was.”[2254] In 1533, looking back on the whole of his
writings concerning the authorities he says: “In Popery such views
of the secular power lay under the bench”; “since the time of the
Apostles no doctor or scribe” has instructed the worldly estates so
“well and outspokenly” as he, not even “Ambrose and Augustine.”[2255]
We may here recall the sober and perfectly true remark of Fr. v.
Bezold. Luther may have plumed himself on having been the first to
revive a right understanding of and respect for the secular authority,
but that “the indefensibility of this and similar claims has long
since been demonstrated.”[2256]
Luther’s error is evident, though unfortunately not to all, as we can
convince ourselves by reading the eulogies of Luther which are still so
common under the pen of Protestant writers; for instance, that Luther
had “deepened Augustine’s view of the State”; that he was ever moving
forward “in a straight line,” expanding and perfecting the knowledge
already acquired; and that even in his “Von welltlicher Uberkeytt” “he
was already at his best,” etc.
It may, therefore, be all the more useful to look a little more closely
into one side of the present subject which has not yet been dealt with
but which leads to interesting disclosures, viz. into the question of
the various circumstances, some outward, some inward and personal,
which led Luther to evolve his theory of the patriarchal, absolutist
State. Here the Visitation of 1527-28 stands out as a milestone on the
road of his development.
_Other Factors which assisted in the Establishment of the State-Church_
It was a common phenomenon in all the earlier struggles against the
ecclesiastical hierarchy for the separatists to seek for support and
assistance from the secular power and the State. From the time of the
earliest controversies in the Church this tendency had been noticed
among those who broke away. Luther too, from the time of his first
public rupture, had cast his eyes on the secular power; nay, even
earlier, in his Commentary on Romans, he betrays a tendency to put the
secular before the spiritual.[2257]
To these ideas he gave full play in the call to reform the Church which
he addressed “To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation.”
For the next few years, however, the ideas are less to the fore. Luther
was very well aware that a quiet and gradual procedure would appeal
far more to the then Elector, Frederick the Wise, than any urging on
of the innovations at high pressure and with State interference. The
Elector was in fact so averse to taking any strong measures, that on
the contrary he frequently impressed on the Wittenberg leaders the need
there was for caution.
Matters assumed another aspect, when, in 1525, there came a change of
ruler. The Elector Johann of Saxony was a zealous friend of Luther’s
and soon became the real patron of Lutheranism. His attitude towards
the innovations, taken with Luther’s new tendencies, constituted a
prime factor in the rise of a State-governed Church.
Another factor was the condition of the Lutheran congregations which
had so far sprung up. They were scattered and devoid of organisation.
Not seldom they bore within them seeds of dissension born as they had
been out of quarrels within the parishes, and maintained for the most
part only by the violent action of a majority of the council. The
petty rulers naturally sought to link themselves up with the greater
powers so as to maintain both the ecclesiastical innovations and their
newly acquired rights. The sovereign was a pillar of strength on whom
they leaned, when in doubt, when it was a question of defending the
preachers they had appointed, of removing persons they regarded with
disfavour, or of allaying disputes amongst the burghers.
To all this, however, must be added a further circumstance which
contributed to bring about the State supremacy of a later date, viz.,
the corruption of many of the newly formed congregations, a corruption
which urgently called for a strong hand and adequate means of coercion.
“When, after the Peasant War,” writes Carl Müller, “the dreadful
decline in things ecclesiastical made itself felt, the parsonages and
schools threatening to fall into ruins and the agricultural population
to relapse into savagery, the time arrived for the rulers of the land
to come into greater prominence. It was now no longer a question of
individual congregations but rather of the whole country, and above all
of the rising generation.”[2258]
The intervention of the prince subsequent to the victory over the
peasants in 1525 also greatly promoted the increased devotion with
which men of influence, Luther included, attached themselves to the
authority of the ruler as a bulwark against revolution. The arrogance
of the country folk had to be broken by strengthening the power of the
sovereign; this Luther repeated so often and so loudly that his foes
began to call him a footlicker of the princes.
_Significance of the Visitation and Inquisition held in the Saxon
Electorate_
The decisive importance, for the inward development of the new Church
system and for Luther’s position, of the Visitation of the churches
of the Saxon Electorate held in 1528 has already been pointed out
cursorily.[2259] The Visitation brought to a head a growth which had
long been in process. The princely supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs
which then came about and was formally sanctioned in Saxony became,
with Luther’s consent, which was partly given freely, partly wrung
from him, something permanent in the birthplace of the new Church, the
Visitations continuing to be carried out in the same way by the prince
of the land. Saxony provided a model which was gradually followed in
other districts where Lutheranism prevailed, while the then tendency
to strengthen the reigning houses so as to enable them to hold their
own against Emperor and Empire also exercised a powerful influence.
The Electoral Visitation which Luther had counselled and to which
he most zealously lent his help, had for its aim, according to
his own words, which we must take in their most literal sense,
“the constituting of the churches” because “everything is now so
mangled.”[2260] So much did he expect from it that he even expressed
the hope that it would clear up for the future the whole problem of
the new “Church” and its organisation, which, strange to say, he had
never seen fit to think out theoretically. As a matter of fact it
was “cleared up,” and that by the very programme for the Visitation
issued by the Court. What was to be instituted was to be neither a
Church apart, nor a number of free Congregational Churches, nor a great
independent National Church, but a State Establishment, a compulsory
Church in fact, though calling itself a National Church upheld by the
charity of the State.[2261]
We have the programme of the Visitation in the three documents
which follow in chronological order, the “Instructions” for the
Visitors themselves issued by the Elector on June 16, 1527,[2262] the
“Instructions of the Visitors addressed to the ministers of the Saxon
Electorate” and the Preface to the same which Luther composed, both of
which appeared in print together in March, 1528.[2263]
It can scarcely be doubted that Luther had a hand in the drafting
of the Electoral Instructions, which form a sort of Magna Charta
of princely supremacy in Church matters. All his previous written
communications with the Court had been tending towards this end. In his
earliest efforts to bring about the Visitation he had told the ruler
that it pertained to his “office” to see that the Evangelical workers
were remunerated, that, into his hands “as the supreme head” had fallen
“all the monasteries and foundations” and, with them, the “duty and
obligation of seeing into a matter in which no one else could or had a
right to interfere.” “Not God’s command alone but our own needs require
that some step should here be taken.” Thus he demands that the prince,
by virtue of his own authority as “one appointed by God for the matter
and empowered to act,” should nominate four persons as Visitors, who by
his “orders should arrange for the erection and support of schools and
parsonages where this was wanted”; of these persons, two were to attend
to the material needs, and two who had had a theological training were
to examine into the doctrine, preaching and performance of spiritual
duties.[2264]
Such were the “principles which were eventually carried into practice.
For ages after, the Lutheran sovereigns asserted their right to
draw up rules concerning the doctrine and constitution of their
National Churches, and, to this end, not only laid claim to the old
ecclesiastical revenues but also to the right to levy special taxes on
their subjects.”[2265]
Luther was moved to take up his new standpoint not merely by the needs
of the day but also by pious Lutherans, such as Nicholas Hausmann, the
pastor of Zwickau, who by examples taken from the Bible had pointed
out to the Elector himself what his rights and duties were in this
field;[2266] an even stronger influence was, maybe, exerted on him
by the lawyers of the Court, who were intent on making the most of
the rights of the sovereign, especially by Chancellor Brück, their
spokesman, with whom Luther was brought into closer contact when
seeking to remedy the existing distress. He himself, as we shall see,
hesitated a little about entering upon this new course. The supremacy
of the prince nevertheless seemed inevitably called for by the
secularisation of Church property, also for the appointment and payment
of the pastors, for the removal of incapable preachers and those who
excited the mob,—especially those of “fanatic” inclinations—and,
lastly, for the final and violent uprooting of Catholic worship where
it still lingered.
A Visitation was begun in the Electorate in Feb., 1527, by a very
characteristic commission appointed by the sovereign assisted by the
University of Wittenberg; it was composed of the following members: the
lawyer, Hieronymus Schurff, the two noblemen Hans von der Planitz and
Asmus von Haubitz, and Melanchthon. The Electoral Instructions of June,
1527, referred to above were the result of previous experience, and had
the approval of both Luther and Melanchthon. The practical experience
already gained also proved useful in the drawing up of the “Unterricht
der Visitatorn an die Pharhern” which was of a more theological and
practical character. It is almost entirely the work of Melanchthon,
though it was formally approved and accepted by Luther after some
slight alterations. It was sent to Luther by the Elector, who had
carefully gone into its details, and who directed him to look through
it and also write an historical preface (“narration”) to it, though
the work as a whole was to appear to come from the Court. In due time
both the “Instructions” and the Preface were sent to the press by the
Elector.
What had transpired of the contents of the “Unterricht” had already
aroused considerable opposition within the Lutheran camp; it was
displeasing to the zealots to find Melanchthon again returning half-way
to the Catholic doctrine in the matter of penance, free-will and good
works. They openly declared that official Lutheranism was “slinking
back.” After its appearance further criticism was aroused among both
Protestants and Catholics. Of the Catholic writers, Cochlæus ironically
drew attention in his “_Lutherus septiceps_” to the withdrawal that had
taken place from Luther’s former crass assertions. He also incidentally
describes the strange appearance of the State Visitors: “Here comes the
Visitor wearing a new kind of mitre, setting up a new form of Papacy,
prescribing new laws for divine worship, and reviving what had long
since fallen into disuse and dragging it forth into the light once
more.”[2267] Joachim von der Heyden in his printed letter to Catherine
Bora even declared, that, in the rules for the Visitation, Luther “had
resumed the Imperial rights,” which he had “for a while discarded.”
He is referring to certain of the rules dealing with Church property,
which were to Luther’s personal interest.[2268]
The Elector’s Instruction to the Visitors themselves is, however, of
even greater importance in the history of the rise of the Lutheran
State Church.
“In this Instruction, not only do we meet everywhere with traces of
Luther’s wishes,” but it also follows him “in applying the property of
monasteries and pious foundations to the support of the churches and
schools. In all this, true to Luther’s ideas, it sees the duty of the
sovereign who constitutes the Christian authority.”[2269]
In this Instruction the attitude adopted by the Elector with regard to
doctrine is, that, in view of the Word of God,[2270] he, the supreme
lord, is not free to brook the practice of false worship and the
teaching of false dogma in his lands. What the true doctrine really
is, is taken for granted as known, though it is never expressly
stated. On the other hand, in the Preface to the “Unterricht,” Luther
tells, how, “now, by the unspeakable grace of God the Gospel has
mercifully been brought back to us once more, or, rather, has dawned
on us for the first time.”[2271] It was the duty of the sovereign, so
the Instruction says, to abolish public scandals and hence to remove
unworthy clerics. He must proclaim the Gospel to his subjects by means
of those called to do so, and admonish them through the Visitors to
take the same to heart. The congregations must, when necessary, assist
in supporting the preachers. The Visitors had the right to insist in
the sovereign’s name on the contributions called for by the law, and
into their hands the Elector committed the management of the Church
property.
The ruler must take steps, as the divinely appointed authority, in
obedience to the Word of God, and in the interests of his country to
abolish the remnants of Popish error by means of a Visitation. Those
ministers who were papistically inclined were simply to be removed and
all the preachers “who advocate, preach or hold any erroneous doctrine
are to be told to quit our lands in all haste and also, that, should
they return, they will be severely dealt with.” Whoever refuses to
abide by the regulations of the sovereign in the dispensing of the
sacraments, is to leave the Electorate. For, “though it is not our
intention to prescribe to anyone what he is to hold or believe, yet
we will not tolerate any sect or division in our principality in order
to prevent harmful revolt and other mischief.”[2272]
Thus a formal “Inquisition” was introduced, even to the very name,
which was to be undertaken by the Visitors in respect not merely
of the clergy but even of the laity, attention being paid to the
information laid before the Visitors by the officials and members
of the nobility. Any layman who refused to desist from his “error”
when summoned to do so was obliged within a certain term to sell out
and leave the country “with a warning of being severely dealt with”
similar to that addressed to clergymen.
Hence by means of this “Instruction” the foundation was laid for
the State supremacy in religious matters. “Spalatin’s wish was now
fulfilled,” says N. Paulus; “the sovereign had now put the ‘Christian
bit’ in the mouth of all the clergy, and they could now preach nothing
else than the Lutheran doctrine.”[2273] “Oh, what a noble work it
would be,” Spalatin had written in 1525, when first proposing such
a use of the ‘bit,’ “and what great good would result for the whole
of Christendom.”[2274] “Spalatin’s pious wish,” drily remarks Th.
Kolde, “was to be more thoroughly realised than probably he bargained
for.”[2275]
Luther himself was pleased with the Instructions. He never ventured to
bring forward any real objection against it, greatly as the document
ran counter to his earlier principles; after the appearance of the
“Unterricht” addressed to the pastors, headed by Luther’s remarkable
preface, it was once more printed without any protest. Yet the Preface
bears witness to his misgivings.
_Luther’s Misgivings in the Preface to the Visitors’ Directions_
The standpoint taken up by the Wittenberg Professor in his Preface
to the “Unterricht” is so curious that it has even been said that a
“manifest contradiction” exists between it and the Instructions which
follow.[2276]
In it, albeit cautiously, he made certain reservations, which show
that the absolutist system of Church government proposed by the Prince
did not really appeal to him. It is clear he did not feel quite at
ease about the Instructions, because of his former advocacy of the
independence of the congregations in ecclesiastical matters, because of
the future subserviency of Church to State and because the directions
were at variance with honest convictions deeply rooted in his mind from
the days of his youth. At the same time his misgivings are expressed
only with the greatest restraint.
He says: “Although His Electoral Highness is not commanded to
teach and to exercise a spiritual rule, yet it is his duty as the
secular authority to insist that no dissensions, factions and
revolt take place among his subjects”; for which reason too the
Emperor Constantine had exhorted the Christians to unity in faith
and doctrine. He adds: His Highness, the Prince, had settled on the
Visitation at Luther’s request “out of Christian charity and for God’s
sake, though this was not indeed required of him as a secular ruler.”
These, however, were mere Platonic excuses by which he sought to
reassure himself, to explain the contradictions involved in his
position, and, probably, to defeat those who looked askance at this
Visitation ordained by the State.
It is easy to perceive from the language of the Preface that one of
the writer’s objects was to meet the objections he feared from his own
party. Among the ministers were some, who, it was to be apprehended,
would “ungratefully and proudly despise” the action of the Prince;
“madcaps, who out of utter malice cannot tolerate anything that is
common and applies to all.” These he reminds of the sovereign’s powers
of coercion by which they would be “sundered.” Seemingly he also tries
to defend himself from the very natural charge of having introduced
an incompetent authority into the Church Visitation; this he does by
limiting the sovereign power as we just heard him do. The charge, that
the Instructions of the Visitors were untrue to his former doctrine
(he means more particularly that of good works) he answers by a
rhetorical assertion to the contrary.
He also thinks it necessary to defend the measures aimed at those
whose belief is different; this he does by a reference to the “unity
of the spirit,” which sounds rather strange coming from him. To
the Catholics who were obliged to quit their country since, for the
sake of peace, conformity was required, Luther sends the following
greeting: “Be careful to keep, as Paul teaches, the unity of the
spirit in the bond of peace and charity Amen” (Eph. iv. 3).
When judging the Preface the fact must be taken into account
that the “Unterricht” which Luther is launching on the public
introduces amongst other things the office of the “super-attendents”
(superintendents). In these directions coercion is defended in the
strongest terms. Whoever preaches or teaches “against the Word of
God,” what is “conducive to revolt against the authorities,” is to be
“prohibited” from doing so by the Superintendent; if this be of no
avail then the matter is to be “notified at once to the officer, in
order that His Electoral Highness may take further steps.” All this
simply on the authority of the sovereign.
Hence had Luther really wished, as has been asserted, to protest
against the powers claimed by the sovereign and his Visitors this
should have been very differently worded.
The passage regarding the “super-attendent” in itself shows that
Luther did not regard the “Unterricht” merely as a spiritual guide,
as has been recently asserted, or as representing that purely
spiritual function which, according to him, is concerned only with
the conscience, with doctrine and advice, and knows nothing of any
law or command. This naturally follows from the above, even though
the elastic Preface contains a qualifying statement, viz. that he
could not allow the directions in the “Unterricht to be issued as a
strict law lest we set up new Papal Decretals”; it is his intention to
send them forth as a “history or account, and also as a testimony and
confession of our faith.” In this, again, we can only see his desire
to explain away the disagreeable expedient into which he had been
forced by circumstances.
Since the beginning of the Church, he goes on, there had always been
an episcopal Visitation though now this had ceased and “Christendom
lay torn and distracted”; none of us (the Wittenberg Professors)
having been called or definitely appointed to this, he had come “to
play the part of conscience” and had moved the sovereign to take this
step. In other words, no one on earth has the right to “constitute”
new churches, not even the man who discovered the new Evangel; it was
merely a venture on Luther’s part, when, owing to the urgency of the
case, he called in the assistance of the secular power. Such a mental
process, is, to say the least, highly involved.
It is sufficiently evident that this Preface, inscribed, so to speak,
over the portals of the new State-governed Church, may lay claim to
great psychological interest.
The interest deepens if we turn our attention to the demonological
ideas Luther here brings into play. At that time he was suffering from
the after-effects of his dreadful struggles with the “devil” (1527-28)
and with his own conscience. That, here too, the devil might not be
absent, he shows in the Preface how Satan had wrought all sorts of
mischief amongst the Papists (this is Luther’s consolation) by neglect
of the Visitations, and had set up nothing but “spiritual delusions and
monk-calves.”[2277] The “idle, lazy bellies” had been forced to serve
Satan. He gives this warning for the future: “The Devil has not grown
good or devout this year, nor will he ever do so.” “Christ says in John
viii. that the devil is a murderer.”[2278]
The words Luther uses when he characterises the intervention of the
secular authorities in Church matters as merely a work of necessity
or charity on the part of the chief member of the Church, are of
psychological rather than of doctrinal importance.
What Luther says of the rights of the State authorities in Church
affairs reveals how little his heart was in this abandonment of
ecclesiastical authority to the secular arm. It shows the need he
felt of concealing beneath fair words the road he had thus opened up
to State-administration of the Church.[2279] The Saxon Elector is a
“Christian member”; he is a “Christian brother” in the Church, who,
as sovereign, must play his part; his intervention here appears as a
service performed by the ruler towards the Christian community. “Our
emergency Bishop,” such is the title Luther once bestows on Johann
Frederick. The state of financial confusion amongst the Protestants
is what chiefly demands, he says, that “His Electoral Highness, the
embodiment of the secular authority, should look into and settle
things.” On the other hand, it is not of his _secular_ authority,
but simply of his authority, that Luther speaks in the writing he
addressed to the Elector on Nov. 22, 1526, where he appeals to him to
make an end of the material and spiritual mischief by establishing
“schools, pulpits and parsonages.” He says, “Now that all spiritual
order and restraint have come to an end in the principality and all
the monasteries and institutions have fallen into the hands of Your
Electoral Highness as the supreme head, this brings with it the duty
and labour of regulating this matter, which no one else either can or
ought to undertake.” “God has in this case called and empowered Your
Electoral Highness to do this.”[2280] The supervision of the doctrine
as well as of the personal conduct of the ministers, and not merely
the providing for their material wants, all come within the ordinary
province of the “supreme head.”
_Divergent Currents_
The psychological significance of Luther’s hesitation to sanction the
ruler’s supremacy in church government lies in its affording us a fresh
insight into the various drifts of his mind and temperament.
On the one hand, he helped to raise State-ecclesiasticism into the
saddle, and, on the other, he would fain see it off again and looks at
it with the unfriendliest of eyes. He not only gives us to understand
in the most unmistakable manner that it is not his ideal, but, up to
the very last, he says things of it which ring almost like an anathema;
nor does he forbear to heap reproaches on the natural consequences of
an institution of which notwithstanding he himself was the father. Only
error, with its ambiguity and want of logic, combined with an obstinate
will, could issue in such contradictions.
His earlier and truer recognition of the independence of the spiritual
power refused to be entirely extinguished. It was the same here as
with Luther’s doctrine of faith alone, of justification and good
works; again and again the old, wholesome views break out from under
the crust of the new errors and, all involuntarily, find expression
in quite excellent moral admonitions. So too his former orthodox
views concerning the dignity of the Bible are at variance with the
liberties he takes with the Word of God, and, even according to
Protestant divines, lead him to an ambiguous theory and to a practice
full of contradictions.[2281] Yet again, his call to make use of armed
force against the Emperor is contrary to what he had taught for long
years regarding the unlawfulness of such resistance; the disquiet and
perturbation, the consciousness of this causes him he seeks to drown
beneath ever louder battle cries.[2282] We find something similar
throughout the whole field of his psychology: everywhere we can detect
gainstriving currents.
In the questions bearing on the rights of the State and the Church,
his temperament, which was so susceptible to sudden changes, needed
only some strong impulse from without in order to bring to light one or
other of these opposing trends. One powerful stimulus of the sort was
afforded by the attractive outlook of bettering the frightful condition
of the Lutheran congregations in Saxony, making his disputed cause
victorious, and at the same time getting rid of the remaining Papists.
By this alluring prospect he was taken captive. It would seem to have
led him to shut his eyes to the iron fetters which State supremacy in
Church matters would forge about his Church system not merely in Saxony
but far beyond its borders. When, afterwards, he would willingly have
retraced his steps, it was already too late. He was condemned to make
statements extolling freedom in spiritual matters, the futility of
which was plain to himself, and which, therefore, Protestants should
not take so seriously as some of them do.
It is not sufficiently realised how such opposing tendencies run side
by side from the very outset of his career.
Even in his “An den christlichen Adel,” in spite of the violence with
which he incites the nobility against the Church’s administration
we can see that he wishes to set his new allies more against the
alleged “robberies and exactions” of the Church and the abuses which
he supposed to be beyond remedy, than against the Church as such. It
is true, that, by his universal priesthood, he breaks down the walls
which mark the field of her sway; God can speak “through the mouth of
any pious man against the Pope”; “in principle every Christian has
the right to summon a Council”;[2283] but, should the secular powers
gather together the Council he desired, they would, according to him,
do so simply at the will and command of the Christian congregation
which he also takes into account and which he admits possesses a
certain spiritual “sword” which exists side by side with the secular
sword, though only for the benefit of souls. Thus the spiritual power
still exists as a dream. Only a Christian ruler, a “brother Christian,
brother priest and sharer in the same spirit-world” may demand that
violent reformation for which Luther yearns.[2284]—Thus, even in this
stormy work, the two contrary drifts are to some extent discernible.
With the same desire to retain intact some sort of spiritual order
distinct from the secular, Luther here and elsewhere seeks to reserve
to the Christian congregation the right of choosing their pastors;
circumstances were, however, to prove too strong for him.
“Throughout Christendom things should be so ordered that every town
chooses from amongst its congregation a learned and pious burgher,
commits to him the office of pastor and sees that he is given enough
for his upkeep.”[2285] The congregation is also to have the right to
depose him should his preaching not turn out in accordance with the
Word of God. What Luther has in mind is united action on the part
of all the true believers. But here, again, he has perforce to lean
rather on the authorities. For, in the congregation, we have first of
all the Town-Council, which, even when only a minority of the burghers
is in favour of the religious reform, receives from Luther a power
which does not belong to it, viz. of seeing that the people it rules
are supplied with the right preachers. Above the Council, moreover,
stands the supreme authority, viz. the sovereign. The latter must
naturally assist the Council in choosing good Evangelical preachers
and must himself take steps when dissensions cause the Council to
refuse to move. Luther, again, will do nothing in opposition to the
Court; for instance, he will not allow any pastor to enter upon his
office who is not a “_persona grata_” at the Court, even though
he should have been duly called by the congregation.[2286] Every
parish is indeed independent by divine right, but the prince also
acts by divine right when, as protector and defender, he intervenes,
regardless of the traditional rights of patron and warden, etc.[2287]
In Saxony, where the ruler was favourable to Lutheranism, his
authority was indispensable for the establishment of the Church. On
the other hand, where the conditions were less favourable to Luther,
there, according to his “_De instituendis ministris_,” the principal
work must devolve on the town councillors and the patrons as well as
on the preachers appointed by them to the congregations;[2288] to
these it falls to elect bishops, so that everything may be put on
independent ecclesiastical lines.—Thus Luther was not so averse to
changing both methods and principles.
The change in Luther’s views comes out most clearly in the leave he
gives to the highest secular power to annul the choice made by the
congregation. The instructions for the Visitation prescribed that,
on the bare authority of the prince and regardless of the rights of
the congregation, those pastors who taught what was erroneous or who
had proved otherwise unsatisfactory were to be deposed and replaced
by others. This held even of those who were strongly backed by
their congregation. “In point of fact,” says Carl Müller, “this was
practically to shift the responsibility from the congregation and its
authorities to the sovereign. It is also clear, that, where there was
a divergency of opinion concerning the orthodoxy of a preacher, the
sovereign naturally had his own way.”[2289] But, even before this,
Luther had refused to sanction the demand of the Erfurt burghers, viz.
that the parishes should themselves appoint their pastors even against
the wishes of the Town-Council; it was “seditious,” so he wrote in
1525, “that the parishes should seek to choose or dismiss their
pastors regardless of the Council.”[2290] Here the Council happened to
be on his side; where this was not the case, Luther was just as ready
to set aside its rights in favour of those of the ruler.
In this wise the right of the congregation to elect its pastor, a
right which he had once praised so highly, even in his own day was so
whittled away as to become quite meaningless. Of the two tendencies
which had been apparent in him from the first, one inclining towards
the authorities and the other towards freedom of election, the former
had won the day.
We already know that Luther inclined for a long while to the
establishment of a Church-Apart or assembly of true believers. Yet,
at the same time, he was working for a National Church, albeit he was
convinced that such a Church would for the most part be composed of
non-Christians. Eventually the latter was to hold the field owing to
the force of outward circumstances.[2291]
He was in favour of a Church which should be entirely free, and at the
same time of a confessional Church with binding dogmas. So strongly
did he stand for freedom in all ecclesiastical matters that he not
only refused to recognise the existence of any spiritual “authority”
among his followers, but also declared no Pope, no angel, no man had
the power to rob the faithful of this freedom or to impose anything on
him.[2292] At the same time, however, he was in favour of that strict
disciplinary government which finds its expression in the regulations
for the Visitation.
According to Luther there is no real Canon Law. He refuses to recognise
State and Church as two bodies which exist side by side.[2293] And yet
he complains of the way in which the rights of the Church, i.e. of his
Church, were being thwarted by the lawyers.[2294]
He wished a distinction to be drawn between the Prince and the
Christian, and declared: “His princely authority has nothing to do with
his Christianity”; and yet he himself united the spiritual and the
secular power in the prince’s hands so closely that they were never
afterwards to be wrenched apart. As Carl Müller truly remarks, we must
not “press too much the term ‘emergency bishop for the time being’
which Luther applies to the secular ruler.”[2295]
True to one of his ruling tendencies, he based on the Bible the rights
and duties of the authorities in every department of the spiritual
sphere. “If the authorities do not wish it, then neither must you.”
Nevertheless, almost in the same breath, he scoffs at the claims of
the authorities when they did not happen to fall in with his wishes,
or when they proved an obstacle to the expulsion of Popery: “Why pay
attention to him [the Elector]? He has no right to command except in
worldly things.”[2296]
He stood for the Consistories and promoted their establishment in
spite of Spalatin’s objections; and yet, on the other hand, he opposed
them, saying, that the Courts were after ruling the Churches as they
pleased, and that Satan was bent on introducing the secular power
into the Church.[2297] Hence, from about 1540, he attempted to set
up Protestant bishops as in the case of Nicholas Amsdorf.[2298] The
Consistories displeased him and made life unbearable. Still, because
the ecclesiastical edifice he had erected could not do without them,
he bridled his tongue; very different is the picture of Luther from
that of the champions of the Church’s independence in the early days of
Christianity, for instance, Ambrose or Chrysostom, who, regardless of
self, staked all they had in the struggle against the oppressors of the
Church. His habit of making the naughty lawyers of the Court the butt
of his complaints is significant enough, for the really responsible
party was the Court itself and the Elector in person, who used his
newly acquired power to rule more autocratically in Church matters than
any Pope had ever done.
_Conclusion_
The prince did not rule as a member of a religious commonwealth which
also had rights of its own, but rather as one holding the highest
powers of the episcopate; he nominated the pastors and provided for
their support; he watched over the lives and behaviour of the clergy,
and, at Luther’s instance, took proceedings against the false teachers
and the remnants of Popery; he alone controlled the consistory which
acted in his name; matrimonial cases were already being dealt with
by his lawyers and the disposal and management of the property which
had formerly belonged to the Church depended entirely on the Court.
The right of the congregations “to appoint and dismiss preachers and
to pronounce on doctrine” seemed now forgotten. If a layman dared to
call a preacher to task the authorities were bound to take proceedings
against him for disturbance of the public peace and order.
Not that Luther hesitated to complain or express his displeasure with
the State-Church system whenever he found it in his way, or when he
saw Catholic princes make use of his principles, or when he thought
the cause of the new religion compromised. On such occasions we hear
him bewailing: “The worldly rulers, the princes, kings and nobles
throughout the land, not to speak of the magistrates in the villages,
want to wield the sword of the Word and teach the pastors how and
what they are to preach and how they must govern their Churches. But
do you boldly say to such: You fool, you brainless dolt, look to your
own calling and don’t try to preach; leave that to your pastor.” He
declares in the same way: “The secular government does not extend over
the conscience, though there are many crazy princes who seek to raise
their power and influence over the welkin itself and even to rule
consciences, also to settle what is to be believed or not; yet, the
worldly power has only to do with that which reason grasps.”[2299]
He considered that the interests of his new Church were endangered
when, in 1533, the Hessian theologians advocated the enforcement of
the greater excommunication by the sovereign; he saw in this a real
peril in the then state of things; he wrote: “I would not have the
temporal authorities meddle in this office; they should let it be, in
order that the real distinction between the two powers be upheld (‘_ut
staret vera et certa distinctio utriusque potestatis_’).”[2300]
But where in the domain of Protestantism at that time, was there to be
found any real ecclesiastical ruler who could act with “power”?
The only factor that kept his anger from breaking forth was his
consciousness that he owed everything he had achieved to the ruler of
the land. But “at heart he saw only too well,” remarks a Protestant
Church-historian whom we have repeatedly quoted, “that the Princes,
under the cloak of the Christian name which they did not deserve to
bear, were solely intent on their own aggrandisement when they laid
their hands on ecclesiastical authority. He also saw that he himself,
in his ‘Unterricht,’ was to blame for this.”[2301] Hence it is all the
stranger to hear Luther declaring when at odds with the officials,
that they must never tire of “insisting, impressing, urging and
driving home the distinction between the secular and the spiritual
rule ... for the troublesome devil will not cease cooking and brewing
up the two kingdoms together.” And yet we have heard him say that the
two should form “one cake.”[2302]
Concerning his attitude towards the authorities some recent
theologians of his own camp have expressed themselves very differently
from what might have been expected:
“Thus, with Luther, the end tallies with the beginning,” they write;
“everything has been thought out clearly and is in perfect agreement.”
And similarly: “The principles which guided him [in his scheme and
arrangement of the Visitation] are precisely the same as appear in his
earlier writings.” “It is evident that Luther’s opinions, though ever
in a state of growth, were yet in their fundamental lines always the
same.”
The opinion expressed by another Protestant theologian comes closer
to the truth; he declares openly: The want of logic in Luther’s mode
of thought is perhaps “nowhere more apparent than in his views on
the authorities and their duty towards religion.... It will never
be possible to get away from the contradictions in his theory and
between his theory and his practice.”[2303]
It only remains to add, that, of the diverging currents, that one is
always the strongest which seems most likely to promote his work, the
diffusion of his doctrine and the growth of his Church. A glance at the
weathercock of expediency will tell us which tendency we may expect to
find predominant, for, as a rule, it is the prospect of success that
decides him. At the same time it must be admitted, that, in his zeal
for his cause, he is at times hardly aware of the extent to which he is
proving untrue to his original plans.
The present-day observer of such vacillation even in matters so
far-reaching and fundamental will naturally ask himself how it was that
Luther’s fickleness failed to discourage his followers. The answer is,
however, not far to seek. He himself, as a general rule, concealed
the actual state of the case under the veil of his eloquence, and his
partisans were either not aware of how things really stood or else
followed him with a blind enthusiasm for the common aims and the common
struggle which all his changes and contradictions could not avail
to quench. This was the origin of the picture which so many German
Protestants cherish of Luther. To them he was a champion of the Church
and the State, faithful to his principles to the last. Such a portrait
differs widely from that which the historian draws from an impartial
study of Luther’s writings and correspondence.[2304]
A Protestant Church-historian, H. Hermelink, recently attempted to
place Luther side by side with the “greatest politicians” of our
nation.[2305] Although worldly diplomacy and organisation were not
Luther’s strong point, still there is much truth in this idea. All that
we have said tends to confirm this, though possibly not quite in the
sense intended by Hermelink. At the same time what Carl Müller says is
also not without its justification: “Luther lacked an insight into the
character of the secular government, which, once it has been pushed
in a given direction, cannot be expected to stand still at the point
which he fixes as the limit of its powers. Thus the longer he lived the
more reason he had to complain of the lawyers, and, when he was dead,
the process went on even further.”[2306]
END OF VOL. V.
PRINTED BY
WM. BRENDON AND SON, LTD,
PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] “Gesch. der Moral,” Göttingen, 1908, p. 209.
[2] Cp. the passages quoted in Möhler, “Symbolik,” § 11.
[3] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 24, p. 516; Erl. ed., 34, p. 138.
[4] _Ib._, 10, 2, p. 295=16², p. 532.
[5] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 7.
[6] Vol. ii., p. 239 f. and vol. iv., p. 435. Cp. Luther’s own words,
_passim_, in our previous volumes.
[7] Comm. on Gal., Weim. ed., 40, 1, p. 557; Irmischer, 2, p. 144.
[8] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 36, p. 495; Erl. ed., 51, p. 90. Cp. our vol.
iv., p. 436.
[9] _Ib._, p. 495=91.
[10] To Hier. Weller (July?), 1530, “Briefwechsel,” 8, p. 159.
[11] W. Braun, “Die Bedeutung der Concupiscenz in Luthers Leben und
Lehre,” Berlin, 1908, p. 310.
[12] Braun, _ib._, p. 310-312.
[13] “Comm. on Gal.,” Weim. ed., 40, 1, p. 207; Irmischer, 1, p. 172.
[14] “Leitfaden zum Stud. der DG,” Halle, 1906, p. 722.
[15] _Ib._, pp. 770 f., 773 f., 778.
[16] Cp. Loofs, _ib._, p. 771, n. 4.
[17] But cp. what Loofs says, _ib._, p. 772, n. 5.
[18] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 13², p. 153.
[19] _Ib._, 10², p. 96.
[20] Cp. Loofs, _ib._, p. 721 f.
[21] “Disput.,” ed. P. Drews, p. 159; cp. _ib._, pp. 126, 136 f., 156.
[22] “_Dixi ... quod christianus nullam prorsus legem habeat, sed quod
tota illi lex abrogata sit cum suis terroribus et vexationibus._”
“Comm. on Gal.,” Weim. ed., 40, 1, p. 668 f.; Irmischer, 2, p. 263.
[23] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 9², p. 238 f.
[24] _Ib._, Weim. ed., 24, p. 10; Erl. ed., 33, p. 13. Cp. Loofs,
_ib._, p. 764, n. 2.
[25] Loofs, _ib._, p. 773, where he cites the “Comm. on Gal.” (1535),
Weim. ed., 40, 1, p. 209; Irmischer, 1, p. 174.
[26] “_Quia Paulus hic versatur in loco iustificationis, ... necessitas
postulabat, ut de lege tamquam de re contemptissima loqueretur, neque
satis viliter et odiose, cum in hoc argumento versamur, de ea loqui
possumus._” “Comm. on Gal.,” Weim. ed., 40, 1, p. 557; Irmischer, 2,
p. 144. “_Conscientia perterrefacta ... nihil de lege et peccato scire
debet, sed tantum de Christo._” _Ib._, p. 207 f.=p. 173 _sq._ Cp.
“Werke,” Erl. ed., 58, p. 279 f. (“Tischreden”) and “Opp. lat. var.” 4,
p. 427.
[27] Cp. Loofs, _ib._, p. 775. Luther here refers to Rom. v. 20; vii.
9, etc.
[28] “_Contritus lege tantum abest ut perveniat ad gratiam, ut longius
ab ea discedat._” “Disput.,” ed. P. Drews, p. 284.
[29] “Comm. on Gal.,” Weim. ed., 2, p. 498; 40, 1, p. 208; Irmischer,
3, p. 236; 1, p. 173.
[30] Loofs, _ib._, p. 775 f.
[31] “_Quæ (conscientia) sæpe ad desperationem, ad gladium et ad
laqueum homines adigit._” “Werke,” Weim. ed., 25, p. 330; “Opp. lat.
exeg.,” 23, p. 141 _sq._
[32] P. 737, n.
[33] Mt. xi. 30; Ps. cxviii. 165.
[34] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 1, p. 357; “Opp. lat. var.,” 1, p. 392. Luther
frequently uses the term “_conteri lege_.”
[35] “_Dices enim: Peccata mea non sunt mea, quia non sunt in me, sed
sunt aliena, Christi videlicet; non ergo me lædere poterunt._” “Werke,”
Weim. ed., 25, p. 330; “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 23, p. 141.
[36] “Comm. on Gal.,” Weim. ed., 40, 1, p. 436; Irmischer, 2, p. 17.
[37] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 2, p. 723; Erl. ed., 16², p. 48.
[38] _Ib._, 10, 1, l. p. 338 f. = 7², p. 259 ff.
[39] See, however, below, vol. vi., xxxvii., 2.
[40] Vol. i., p. 317 f. and _passim_.
[41] Cp. Mathesius, “Tischreden,” ed. Kroker, p. 260.—Ammon (“Hdb. der
chr. Sittenlehre,” 1, 1823, p. 76) laments that Luther “regarded the
moral law merely as a vision of terror,” and that according to him “the
essence of the Christian religion consisted, not in moral perfection,
but in faith.” De Wette, “Christl. Sittenlehre,” 2, 2, 1821, p. 280 f.,
thinks that an ethical system might have been erected on the antithesis
set up by Luther between the Law and the Gospel and on his theories of
Christian freedom, “but that Luther was not equal to doing so. He was
too much taken up with his fight against the Catholic holiness-by-works
to devote all the attention he should to the moral side of the question
and not enough of a scholar even to dream of any connection between
faith and morality being feasible.”
[42] Mathesius, _ib._ The Note in question is by Caspar Heydenreich.
[43] “Christl. Sittlichkeit nach Luther,” 1909, p. 91 f.
[44] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 261.
[45] Cp. the passages cited above, p. 9 ff., and vols. iii. and iv.
_passim_.
[46] It was Luther himself who published the Antinomian theses in two
series on Dec. 1, 1537. Cp. “Opp. lat. var.,” 4, p. 420 _sqq._ The
most offensive of these theses Luther described as the outcome of
Agricola’s teaching and attributed them to one of the latter’s pupils;
Agricola, however, refused to admit that the propositions were his.
Cp. Köstlin-Kawerau (2, p. 458), who, after attempting to harmonise
Luther’s earlier and later teaching on the Law, proceeds: “He paid
no heed to the fact that Agricola was seeking to root sin out of the
heart of the believer, though in a way all his own, and which Luther
distrusted, nor did he make any distinction between what Agricola
merely hinted at and what others carried to extremes: in the one he
already saw the other embodied. All this was characteristic enough of
Luther’s way of conducting controversy.”
[47] “Opp. lat. var.,” 4, p. 434 (Thes. 17), 428 (Thes. 10).
[48] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 352.
[49] _Ib._
[50] _Ib._, p. 357.
[51] _Ib._, p. 403.
[52] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 13², p. 153, Sermon of July 1, 5th Sunday after
Trinity, and _ib._, 14², p. 178, Sermon of Sep. 30, 18th Sunday after
Trinity. Cp. Buchwald, “Ungedruckte Predigten Luthers,” 3, p. 108 ff.
Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 457.
[53] “Briefwechsel,” 11, p. 323.
[54] Cp. Drews, “Disputationen Luthers,” pp. 382, 388, 394; G. Kawerau,
“Joh. Agricola,” 1881, p. 194.
[55] “Opp. lat. var.,” 4, p. 430 _sq._
[56] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 32, p. 1 ff. (publ. early in 1539). Also
“Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 5, p. 147 ff.
[57] “Briefe,” _ib._, p. 154.
[58] To Melanchthon, Feb. 2, 1539, “Briefwechsel,” 12, p. 84.
[59] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 61, p. 35 (Table-Talk). Cp. Köstlin-Kawerau, 2,
p. 462 f.
[60] (In March, 1540) see C. E. Förstemann, “N. Urkundenbuch zur Gesch.
der Kirchenreformation,” 1, 1842, reprinted, p. 317 ff.
[61] _Ib._, p. 321 ff.; also in “Werke,” ed. Walch, 20, p. 2061 ff.,
and “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 6, p. 256 ff.
[62] Förstemann, _ib._, p. 325. The quotation is from G. Kawerau, “Joh.
Agricola,” “RE. f. prot. Theol.”
[63] Förstemann, _ib._, p. 349.
[64] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 464.
[65] E. Kroker, “Katharina von Bora,” 1906, p. 280, from Agricola’s
Notes, pub. by E. Thiele.
[66] Cp. Kawerau in the Article referred to above, p. 20, n. 3.
[67] “Luthers Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 6, p. 256 ff.
[68] Melanchthon to Willibald Ransberck (Ramsbeck), Jan. 26, 1560,
publ. by Nic. Müller in “Zeitschr. für KG.,” 14, 1894, p. 139.
[69] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 90. For other statements of Luther’s
see our vol. iii., p. 401.
[70] Loofs, _ib._, p. 858.
[71] On Luther’s attitude towards penance see our vol. iii., pp. 184
ff., 196.
[72] “Opp. lat. var.,” 4, p. 424.
[73] See above, p. 11, n. 2.
[74] “DG.,” 3^[4], p. 842.
[75] Cp. Loofs, _ib._, p. 860, n. 2 and 4; 790, n. 7, and Harnack, _ib._
[76] Harnack (_loc. cit._) points out that Luther’s statements on the
subject do not agree when examined in detail.
[77] E.g., Lipsius, “Luthers Lehre von der Busse,” 1892.
[78] E.g., Galley, “Die Busslehre Luthers und ihre Darstellung in
neuester Zeit,” 1900.
[79] To the latter passage (“Werke,” Erl. ed., 32, p. 7) E. F. Fischer
draws attention (“Luthers Sermo de pœnitentia von 1518,” 1906, p. 36).
Galley (_loc. cit._, p. 20) had also referred to the same as being
a further development of Luther’s doctrine on penance.—On Luther’s
shifting attitude in regard to the motive of fear see our vol. iv., p.
455 f.
[80] “Disputationes,” ed. Drews, p. 452.
[81] _Ib._, p. 402.
[82] _Ib._, pp. 402-404.
[83] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 6, p. 206 f.; Erl. ed., 16², p. 127.
[84] _Ib._, Erl. ed., 15², p. 40.
[85] _Ib._, Weim. ed., 7, p. 36; Erl. ed., 27, p. 196.
[86] _Ib._, p. 30=189.
[87] “Comm. in ep. ad. Gal.,” 3, p. 365 (Irmischer).
[88] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 49, p. 114 f., Exposition of John xiv.-xvi.
[89] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 7, p. 30 f.; Erl. ed., 27, p. 189 f.
[90] _Ib._, 6, p. 269 f.=16², p. 212, “Sermon von den guten Wercken,”
1520.
[91] Our account is from Walther (above, p. 14, n. 1), p. 75 ff. His
faithful rendering of Luther’s thought shows how actual grace is
excluded.
[92] 3^[4], p. 460.
[93] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 7, p. 29 f.; Erl. ed., 27, p. 188. “Von der
Freyheyt eynes Christen Menschen.” Cp. _ib._, Erl. ed., 7², p. 257.
[94] Walther, _ib._, p. 99.
[95] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 6, p. 249; Erl. ed., 16², p. 184.
[96] Cp. “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, where the idea that faith “then does
all the needful,” and that works are a natural product of faith is
summed up thus: “_Opera propter fidem fiunt_.”
[97] Cp. “Werke,” Weim. ed., 12, p. 386; Erl. ed., 51, p. 479, in 1523,
on 1 Peter iv. 19. Cp. also Erl. ed., 18², pp. 330, 333 f., in 1532, on
1 John iv. 17.
[98] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 9², p. 273.
[99] _Ib._, 13², p. 97.
[100] Cp. our vol. iv., p. 442.
[101] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 11², p. 219 f.
[102] _Ib._, 14², p. 257.
[103] Cp. Loofs, “DG.,” ^[4], p. 737. Hence Luther also says: “_Dum bonus
aut malus quisquam efficitur, non hoc ab operibus, sed a fide vel
incredulitate oritur_.” “Werke,” Weim. ed., 7, p. 62; “Opp. lat. var.,”
4, p. 239.
[104] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 11², p. 220.
[105] See below, ch. xxxii., 6.
[106] Printed, in “Werke,” Erl. ed., 20², 2, p. 524.
[107] The first revised by Cruciger. Aurifaber published his notes four
months after the sermons, which, as the Preface points out, “might well
be taken as a standing witness to his [Luther’s] doctrine.” “Werke,”
Erl. ed., 20², 2, p. 501.
[108] “Werke,” Erl. ed., _ib._, p. 551.
[109] _Ib._, p. 552.
[110] _Ib._, p. 551.
[111] _Ib._, p. 554.
[112] “Comm. on Gal.,” 1, p. 196 (Irmischer).
[113] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 12, p. 559; Erl. ed., 12², p. 175. “Comm. on
Gal.” (Irmischer), 1, p. 196.
[114] _Ib._, Erl. ed., 17², p. 94; 49, p. 348.
[115] _Ib._, 58, pp. 343, 347.
[116] See above, p. 26 f., and vol. ii., p. 27 ff.
[117] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 20², 2, p. 553.
[118] _Ib._, p. 548.
[119] _Ib._
[120] _Ib._, p. 549.
[121] _Ib._, p. 554.
[122] _Ib._, p. 555.
[123] Cp. p. 552: “Help me that I may, with gratitude, praise and exalt
Thy Son.”
[124] Köstlin’s summary, _ib._, p. 206.
[125] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 15², p. 40. Cp. “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 13, p. 144.
[126] Köstlin, _ib._, p. 207.
[127] Cp. vol. i., _passim_.
[128] Köstlin, _ib._, p. 204.
[129] In the Eisleben Sermons, p. 548.
[130] On Luther’s attitude towards the supernatural moral order, see
xxix., 5.
[131] Cp. vol. ii., p. 223 ff., particularly p. 240 ff.
[132] See above, p. 32, n. 4.
[133] Köstlin, _ib._, p. 206.
[134] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 58, p. 346.
[135] _Ib._, 20², 2, p. 548.
[136] _Ib._, p. 545.
[137] _Ib._, p. 549 f.
[138] _Ib._, p. 551.
[139] Luther’s opposite doctrine, which is of importance to the matter
under consideration, is expressed by Köstlin (_ib._, p. 126 f.) as
follows: Luther “does not make guilt and condemnation follow on the
act which is contrary to God’s will, nor even on the determination to
commit such an act, but on the inward motion, or concupiscence, nay, in
the inborn evil propensity [even of the baptised] which exists prior
to any conscious motion.... We do not find in his writings any further
information on the other questions here involved” (e.g. of the children
who die unbaptised, etc.).
[140] In the Eisleben sermons, _ib._, p. 551.
[141] _Ib._, p. 546.
[142] “Disputationes,” ed. Drews, p. 159. Cp. “Corp. ref.,” 3, p. 385.
Loofs, “DG.,”^[4], p. 857, n. 4, and 770, n. 4.
[143] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 19², p. 153.
[144] _Ib._, 13², p. 307.
[145] _Ib._, p. 305 ff.
[146] _Ib._, 15², p. 524. Köstlin, _ib._, p. 213.
[147] Cp. _ib._, 43, p. 362 ff.
[148] The headings in W. Walther’s “Die Sittlichkeit nach Luther,” pp.
100, 106, 120, 125 are as above.
[149] Above, p. 32 f.
[150] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 13², p. 304 f.
[151] Walther, _ib._, p. 102.
[152] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 20², 2, p. 553.
[153] _Ib._, 12², p. 219.
[154] _Ib._, 8², p. 119, in the exposition of 1 Cor. xiii. 2: “And
though I had all faith and could remove mountains and had not charity,
I am nothing.”
[155] _Ib._, 15², p. 40.
[156] Willibald Pirkheimer confronted Luther with the following
statement of the Catholic teaching: “We know that free-will of itself
without grace cannot suffice. We refer all things back to the Divine
grace, but we believe, that, after the reception of that grace without
which we are nothing, we still have to perform our rightful service. We
are ever subject to the action of grace and always unite our efforts
with grace.... But whoever believes that grace alone suffices even
without any exercise of our will or subduing of our desire, such a
one does nothing else but declare that no one is obliged to pray,
watch, fast, take pity on the needy, or perform works of mercy,” etc.
“Opp.,” ed. Goldast, p. 375 _sqq._, in Drews, “Pirkheimers Stellung zur
Reformation,” Leipzig, 1884, p. 119.
[157] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 16², p. 131.
[158] Feb. 2, 1519, “Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 408.
[159] See vol. iii., p. 462 ff.
[160] Adolf Harnack, “DG.,” 3^[4], p. 850.
[161] Loofs, “DG.,”^[4], p. 698, n. 1, p. 737.
[162] Harnack, _ib._, p. 831 f.
[163] “Confutatio calumn. resp.,” E 2a. Döllinger, “Reformation,” 1, p.
39.
[164] Köstlin, “Luthers Theol.,” 2², p. 208.
[165] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 9², p. 33.
[166] Köstlin, _ib._, pp. 284, 295.
[167] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 26, p. 200; Erl. ed., 23, p. 9. Köstlin,
however (p. 275 f.), points out that Luther nevertheless threatens
those who refuse to accept his injunctions. Cp. below, xxix., 9.
[168] “Werke,” _ib._, 7², p. 68.
[169] _Ib._, 10², p. 108.
[170] On dying spiritually, cp. vol. i., p. 169 and _passim_.
[171] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 10², p. 108.
[172] _Ib._
[173] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 13², p. 206.
[174] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 10², p. 25. Cp. on Luther’s restriction of
good works to practical love of our neighbour, vol. iv., p. 477 ff.,
and above, p. 26, 38 f.
[175] Chr. E. Luthardt, “Die Ethik Luthers in ihren Grundzügen,”²,
1875, p. 70.
[176] Cp. “Compend. totius theol. Hugonis Argentorat. O.P.,” V. cap.
ult.
[177] Quoted from Luthardt, _ib._, pp. 70-73.
[178] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 7², p. 68.
[179] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 26, p. 502 f.; Erl. ed., 30, p. 365.
[180] _Ib._, pp. 507, 509=370, 372.
[181] Ed. Irmischer, 3, p. 25. Cp. Loofs, “DG.,”^[4], p. 705.
[182] “Werke,” Erl. ed. 15², p. 60. “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 2, p. 273
_sqq._; 19, p. 18; 24, p. 463, _sq._ “Disputationes,” ed. Drews, pp.
115, 172.
[183] Cp. Köstlin, “Luthers Theol.,” 2², p. 169 f., the passages quoted.
[184] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 10, 1, 1, p. 340; Erl. ed., 7², p. 261.—For
the theological and psychological influences which led him to these
statements, see vol. i., pp. 72 ff., 149 ff.
[185] Cp. what Luther says in his Comm. on Romans in 1515-16: It
depends entirely “on the gracious Will of God whether a thing is to be
good or evil,” and “Nothing is of its own nature good, nothing of its
own nature evil,” etc., vol. i., p. 211 f.
[186] “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 1, p. 109, “In Genesim,” c. 3.
[187] See vol. i., p. 148 f. Cp. Denifle-Weiss, 1², p. 527, n. 1.
[188] Denifle-Weiss, _ib._, p. 528, n. 2.
[189] Denifle-Weiss, _ib._, p. 527. Cp. our vol. i., p. 148 f.
[190] “In 2 Sent.,” dist. 28, a. 1 ad 4. Denifle-Weiss, _ib._, p. 482,
n. 1. Cp. Luther’s frequent statement, already sufficiently considered
in our vol. iv., p. 476 f., in which he sums up his new standpoint:
Good works never make a good man, but good men perform good works.
[191] Cp. Denifle-Weiss, _ib._, p. 598.
[192] Denifle-Weiss, p. 604. Cp. also p. 600, n. 2, where Denifle
remarks: “Being an Occamist he never understood actual grace.”
[193] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 15², p. 60. After the words quoted above
follows the remarkable passage: One builds churches, another makes
pilgrimages, etc. “These are self-chosen works which God has not
commanded.... Such self-chosen works are nought ... are sin.”
[194] _Ib._, p. 61 f.
[195] “Symb. Bücher,” ed. Müller-Kolde,^[10], p. 599 f.
[196] _Ib._ The Thesis of man’s lack of freedom is bluntly expressed
on p. 589, and in the sequel it is pointed out that in Luther’s larger
Catechism not one word is found concerning free-will. Reference is made
to his comparison of man with the lifeless pillar of salt (p. 593), and
to Augustine’s “Confessions” (p. 596).
[197] The last remark is from Loofs, “DG.,”^[4], p. 857. Cp. our vol.
iii., p. 348 ff. and _passim_.
[198] “Symb. Bücher,” _ib._, p. 601.
[199] _Ib._
[200] _Ib._, p. 602.
[201] Cp. vol. ii., pp. 232, 265 f., 290.
[202] Quoted from Loofs, “DG.,”^[4], p. 758. On the statement “without on
that account being unjust” see vol. i., p. 187 ff., vol. ii, p. 268 f.
[203] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 18, p. 675; “Opp. lat. var.,” 7, p. 207. Cp.
Loofs, _ib._, p. 757.
[204] Cp. vol. ii., p. 294 ff, and below, xxxv., 2.
[205] The above largely reproduces Luthardt, “Luthers Ethik,”², p. 81
ff.
[206] See our vol. ii., p. 298 f.
[207] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 32, p. 439; Erl. ed., 43, p. 211. Exposition
of Mt. v.-vii. Cp. our vol. ii., p. 297 f., and vol. iii., pp. 52 f.,
60: A prince, as a Christian, must not even defend himself, since a
Christian is dead to the world.
[208] “Werke,” _ib._
[209] “Jugenderinnerungen aus seinem Nachlasse,” Jena, 1909, p. 155 f.
[210] Cp. vol. ii., p. 140 ff.; vol. iii., p. 187 ff.; vol. iv., p. 130
f.
[211] Luthardt, “Luthers Ethik,”², p. 81.
[212] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 14², p. 280 f.
[213] Cp. vol. ii., p. 107 for Luther’s earlier idea of the “holy
brotherhood of spirits,” in which “_omnia sunt indifferentia et
libera_.” See also vol. vi., xxxviii., 3.
[214] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 1², p. 108.
[215] _Ib._, Weim. ed., 11, p. 255; Erl. ed., 22, p. 73. “Von
welltlicher Uberkeytt,” 1523.
[216] _Ib._
[217] _Ib._, p. 252=70.
[218] _Ib._, p. 251=68.
[219] “Opp. lat. var.,” 4, p. 451.
[220] _Ib._, p. 445.
[221] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 31, p. 236. Verantwortung der auffgelegten
Auffrur, 1533. Cp. our vol. ii., p. 294, and vol. iv., p. 331.
[222] Luthardt, “Luthers Ethik,”², pp. 93-96.
[223] Cp. vol. iv., p. 127 ff., on the high esteem of worldly callings
in the period previous to Luther’s. Cp. N. Paulus, “Die Wertung der
weltlichen Berufe im MA.” (“Hist. Jahrb.,” 1911, p. 725 ff.).
[224] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 15², p. 42 f.
[225] Cp. W. Walther, “Die christliche Sittlichkeit nach Luther,”
1909, p. 50, where Ritschl’s opinion is disputed. The above complaint
of Luther’s “uncertain way” is from Ritschl, who was not the first to
make it; the Bible objection is also much older. It matters nothing
that in addition to the faith usually extolled as the source of works,
Luther also mentions the Holy Ghost (see passages in Walther, p. 46 f.)
and once even speaks of the new feeling as though it were a gift of
the Spirit dwelling in His very substance in the believer. (“Opp. lat.
exeg,.” 19, p. 109 _sq._) These are reminiscences of his Catholic days
and have in reality nothing to do with his doctrine of Imputation.
[226] “Symbolik,” § 25.
[227] _Ib._, § 26.
[228] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 3, p. 206; Erl. ed., 23, p. 95.
[229] _Ib._
[230] p. 111.
[231] Owing to his assertion of man’s unfreedom and passivity, Luther
found it very difficult to retain the true meaning of conscience. So
long as he thought in any way as a Catholic he recognised the inner
voice, the “synteresis,” that urges us to what is good and reproves
what is evil, leaving man freedom of choice; this we see from his
first Commentary on the Psalms, above, vol. i., p. 76 f. But already
in his Commentary on Romans he characterised the “synteresis,” and the
assumption of any freedom of choice on man’s part, as the loophole
through which the old theology had dragged in its errors concerning
grace. (Above, vol. i., p. 233 f.)
[232] Cp. W. Walther, “Die christl. Sittlichkeit,” p. 31.
[233] Above, vol. iv., p. 227. “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.”
[234] Letter of Aug. 21, 1544, “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 5, p. 680:
“Believe me, Christ speaks through me.”
[235] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 3, p. 220: “_persuasi mihi, esse de
coelo vocem Dei_.”
[236] Letter of March 8, 1544, “Briefe,” _ib._, p. 636.
[237] In the letter quoted in n. 2, _ib._, p. 679 f.
[238] _Ib._
[239] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 18², p. 337.
[240] On July 14, 1528, “Briefwechsel,” ed. Enders, 6, p. 300 f.
[241] Cp. “Werke,” Weim. ed., 1, p. 354; “Opp. lat. var.,” 1, p. 388.
Cp. vol. i., p. 319.
[242] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 7, p. 290 f.; Erl. ed., 24², p. 209. For
fuller quotations see vol. ii., p. 58 f.
[243] _Ib._, Weim. ed., 4, p. 658.
[244] _Ib._, Erl. ed., 21, p. 324.
[245] _Ib._, 28, p. 224.
[246] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 12, p. 237; Erl. ed., 29, p. 25.
[247] _Ib._, Erl. ed., 29, p. 23; cp. above, vol. iii., p. 262 ff.
[248] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 18, p. 653; “Opp. lat. var.,” 7, p. 176 _sq._
[249] _Ib._, Erl. ed., 58, pp. 394-398.
[250] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 17, 1, p. 232; Erl. ed., 39, p. 111. Should a
preacher be unable thus to “boast,” he is to “hold his tongue,” so we
read there.
[251] See, e.g., vol. iii., pp. 110 ff.-158 f.
[252] “Vita Lutheri,” Coloniæ, 1622, p. 141.
[253] Above, vol. iii., p. 111.
[254] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 23, p. 69 f.; Erl. ed., 30, p. 19.
[255] _Ib._, p. 70=20.
[256] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 22.
[257] On July 24, 1540, “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 6, p. 274. Above, vol.
iv., p. 13 ff.
[258] To Chancellor Brück, “Briefwechsel,” 4, p. 282: “_Oportere ipsum
maritum sua propria conscientia esse firmum ac certum per verbum Dei,
sibi hæc licere_.” Cp. above, vol. iii., p. 259 f.
[259] Letter to Jonas, May 4, 1543, “Briefe,” 5, p. 556.
[260] Text in G. Berbig (“Quellen und Darstellungen aus der Gesch.
des Reformationszeitalters,” Leipzig, 1908), p. 277 (cp. Enders,
“Briefwechsel,” 4, p. 76 f.). This statement completes what was said in
vol. iii., p. 55.
[261] Karl Stange, “Die ältesten ethischen Disputationen Luthers,”
1904, p. vii.
[262] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 10, 2, p. 23; Erl. ed., 28, p. 298.—“He
ventured, relying on Christ,” says Adolf Harnack (“DG.,” 3^[4], p. 824),
“to lay hold on God Himself, and, by this exercise of his faith, in
which he saw God’s work, his whole being gained in independence and
firmness, and he acquired such confidence and joy as no man in the
Middle Ages had ever known.” Of Luther’s struggles of conscience, to
be examined more closely in ch. xxxii., Harnack says nothing. On the
other hand, however, he quotes, on p. 825, n. 1, the following words of
Luther’s: “Such a faith alone makes a Christian which risks all on God
whether in life or death.”
[263] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 7², p. 253 f.
[264] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 11², p. 248 f.
[265] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch”: “_in quotidiana versor lucta_.” On Feb.
26.
[266] “Luthers ungedruckte Predigten,” ed. G. Buchwald, Leipzig, 1885,
3, p. 245. Sermon of March 16, 1538.
[267] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p. 56.
[268] “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 6, p. 411.
[269] To Amsdorf, Oct. 18(?), 1529, “Briefwechsel,” 7, p. 173.
[270] Cp. A. Zahn, “Calvins Urteile über Luther” (“Theol. Stud. aus
Württemberg,” 4, 1883), p. 187. Pighius had written against Luther in
1543 on the servitude of the will. Cp., _ib._, p. 193, Calvin’s remark
against Gabriel de Saconay.
[271] The words can be better understood when we bear in mind that they
occur in the dedication to Duke Johann of Saxony, of his “Sermon von
den guten Wercken” (March 29, 1520). “Werke,” Weim. ed., 6, p. 203;
Erl. ed., 16², p. 122 f.
[272] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 53, p. 273 (“Briefwechsel,” 5, p. 83). Here
also we must remember that he is speaking to preachers, some of whom
differed from him.
[273] _Ib._, 53, p. 276.
[274] _Ib._, p. 272.
[275] “Gesch. des gelehrten Unterrichtes,” 1², 1896, p. 174, n.
[276] F. Sawicki, “Kath. Kirche und sittliche Persönlichkeit,”
Cologne, 1907, pp. 86, 88, and “Das Problem der Persönlichkeit und des
Übermenschen,” Paderborn, 1909; J. Mausbach, “Die kath. Moral und ihre
Gegner,³”, Cologne, 1911. Part 2, particularly pp. 125 ff., 223 ff.
[277] See vol. iv., p. 118 ff.
[278] “A study of the earliest Letters of C. Schwenckfeld,” Leipzig,
1907 (vol. i. of the “Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum”), p. 268. Karl Ecke,
“Schwenckfeld, Luther und der Gedanke einer apostolischen Reformation,”
Berlin, 1911, p. 58.
[279] Cp. Ecke, _ib._, p. 59. Ecke (p. viii.) speaks of this writing as
a “first-rate source.”
[280] “Epistolar Schwenckfelds,” 2, 2, 1570, p. 94 ff. For full title
see Ecke, _ib._, p. 11. Cp. Th. Kolde, “Zeitschr. für KG.,” 13, p. 552
ff. Cp. below, p. 138 f.
[281] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 53, p. 383 (“Briefwechsel,” 5, p. 337).
[282] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 19, p. 123; Erl. ed., 53, p. 362
(“Briefwechsel,” 5, p. 302).
[283] “Epistolar,” _ib._, p. 645. Ecke, p. 87.
[284] Ecke takes these words as his motto on the title-page.
[285] “Epistolar,” 1, 1566, p. 200. Cp. on the “experience,” Ecke, p.
48 ff.
[286] Ecke, p. 118 f.
[287] See above, p. 79, n. 1.
[288] P. 222.
[289] Thus G. Kawerau in his sketch of Schwenckfeld in Möller’s “KG.,”
3³, p. 475.
[290] _Ib._, p. 478.
[291] Ecke, p. 217.
[292] “Corp. ref.,” 9, p. 579: “_Heri Stenckfeldianum librum contra me
scriptum accepi.... Talis sophistica principum severitate compescenda
est._” To G. Buchholzer, Aug. 5, 1558.
[293] Cordatus, “Tagebuch,” p. 337.
[294] Cp. below, and above, p. 82, n. 5; also Ecke, p. 218.
[295] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 61, p. 54.
[296] _Ib._, 57, p. 51.
[297] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” ed. Kroker, p. 167.
[298] “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 5, p. 613. “Werke,” Erl. ed., 58, p. 29.
Cp. Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 335.
[299] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” _ib._
[300] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 32, p. 397.
[301] “Werke,” _ib._, 32, p. 411.
[302] 1520 or beginning of 1521. “Briefwechsel,” 3, p. 37. Cp.,
however, Ender’s remark on the authorship.
[303] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 6, p. 204; Erl. ed., 16² p. 123.
[304] On March 25, 1520, “Briefwechsel,” 2, p. 366.
[305] Köstlin-Kawerau, 1, p. 291.
[306] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 6, p. 209; Erl. ed., 16², p. 131.
[307] Cp. Köstlin-Kawerau, 1, p. 288.
[308] “Werke,” _ib._, p. 214=138.
[309] Much the same in the Exposition of the Ten Commandments (1528),
“Werke,” Weim. ed., 16, p. 485; Erl. ed., 36, p. 100.
[310] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 6, p. 203; Erl. ed., 16², p. 122.
[311] _Ib._, pp. 243-245=177-179.
[312] _Ib._, p. 247 f.=182 f. Cp. the similar statements in the
Exposition of the Ten Commandments (1528), pp. 480 f., 484 f.=93 f., 96
f.
[313] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 6, p. 245 f.; Erl. ed., 16², p. 180.
[314] Cp. _ib._, p. 246=181.
[315] P. 247=182.
[316] Elsewhere, however, he treats of the other forms of prayer.
[317] Cp. p. 237=168 f., 238 f.=170 f., 247 f.=182 f.
[318] See vol. iv., p. 501 f.
[319] P. 232=162.
[320] P. 262=202.
[321] P. 258=197.
[322] P. 246=180.
[323] P. 207=127.
[324] _Ib._
[325] P. 236.
[326] P. 271.
[327] Kaftan speaks of a theological want which he had attempted to
supply in his own “Dogmatik.” In reality, however, he has practice
equally in view, and, from his statements we may infer that the want
which had been apparent from Luther’s day was more than a mere defect
in the theory.
[328] P. 281.
[329] P. 276.
[330] P. 278.
[331] Cp. the letter to Hier. Weller, July (?), 1530, “Briefwechsel,”
8, p. 159; Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichnungen,” pp. 11, 89, etc.;
Cordatus, “Tagebuch,” p. 450; “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 2, p. 299. See
our vol. iii., p. 175 ff.
[332] See vol. ii., p. 339; iii., p. 180 ff.; above, p. 9 ff.
[333] Above, vol. iii., p. 185 f.
[334] “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 6, p. 155 ff.
[335] Cp. our vol. iii., p. 176 f.
[336] Vol. iii., p. 213 f.
[337] Cp. on Luther’s prayer, vol. iii., p. 206 f.; iv., p. 274 ff.
[338] Vol. iii., p. 213 f.
[339] Vol. iii., p. 207 f.; iv., p. 311.
[340] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 20², 2, p. 553. Cp. pp. 554, 558.
[341] _Ib._, p. 552.
[342] W. Walther, “Die Sittlichkeit nach Luther,” p. 63.
[343] The Explanation of the Our Father in 1518, “Werke,” Weim. ed.,
2, p. 74 ff; 9, p. 122 ff; Erl. ed., 21, p. 156 ff; 45, p. 203 ff.
Noteworthy additions to it were made by Luther in 1519, _ib._, 6, pp. 8
ff., 20 ff.=45, p. 208 ff. Cp. Köstlin-Kawerau, 1, pp. 116 f., 291 f.
[344] Above, vol. iii., pp. 169 f., 211 f.
[345] Vol. iii., p. 200 ff.
[346] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 36, pp. 416-477; Erl. ed., 18², pp. 304-361.
[347] _Ib._, pp. 420=308 f.
[348] P. 448 f.=335 f.
[349] P. 444=331.
[350] P. 452=339.
[351] P. 449 ff.=336 ff.
[352] P. 447=334.
[353] To Melanchthon from the Coburg, July 31, 1530, “Briefwechsel,” 8,
p. 157: “_ex arce dæmonibus plena_.”
[354] To the same, April 23, 1530, _ib._, 7, p. 308: “_Hæc satis pro
ioco, sed serio et necessario ioco, qui mihi irruentes cogitationes
repelleret, si tamen repellet_.”
[355] To the same, May 12, 1530, _ib._, 7, p. 333: “_Eo die, quo literæ
tuæ e Norimberga venerunt, habuit satan legationem suam apud me_,” etc.
See vol. ii., p. 390. Cp. to the same, June, 1530 (“Briefwechsel,” 8,
p. 43), where he calls the devil his torturer, and to the same, June
30, 1530, _ib._, p. 51, where he speaks of his “private struggles with
the devil.”
[356] To the same, July 31, 1530, _ib._, 8, p. 157.
[357] Cp. to the same, April 23, 1530, _ib._, 7, p. 303.
[358] To the same, May 12, 1530, _ib._, p. 333.
[359] To the same, May 15, 1530, _ib._, p. 335.
[360] To the same, Aug. 15, 1530, _ib._, 8, p. 190: “_Christus vivit et
regnat. Fiant sane dæmones, si ita volunt, monachi vel nonnæ quoque.
Nec forma melior eos decet, quam qua sese mundo hactenus vendiderunt
adorandos._” The “monks or nuns” is an allusion to the appearance of
the “spectre-monks” at Spires just before the Diet of Augsburg; see
vol. ii., p. 389 f.
[361] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 36, p. 424; Erl. ed., 18², p. 313 f.
[362] _Ib._, p. 423=312.—The so-called “Sermon on Love” (above, p.
96 f.) seeks to demonstrate in the above words the value of love of
our neighbour, and, that this necessarily resulted from true faith.
It abounds in beautiful sayings concerning the advantage of this
virtue. Cruciger had his reasons for publishing it, one being, as he
says in the dedication, to stop the mouths of those who never cease to
cry out against our people as though we neither taught nor practised
anything concerning love and good works. (Erl. ed., 18², p. 305.)
Köstlin-Kawerau remarks (2, p. 273): “The fundamental evil was that the
new Church included amongst its members so many who were indifferent to
such preaching; they had joined it not merely without any real interior
conversion, but without any spiritual awakening or sympathy, purely by
reason of outward circumstances.” It must be added that the Sermon,
though intended as a remedy, suffers from the defect of being permeated
through and through with a spirit of bitter hate against the Church
Catholic; in the very first pages we find the speaker complaining, that
the devil, “who cannot bear the Word,” “attacks us ... in order to
murder us by means of his tyrants”; “we are, however, forced to have
the devil for our guest,” who molests us “with his crew.” Weim. ed.,
36, p. 417 f.; Erl. ed., 18², p. 306 f.
[363] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 24², p. 356 ff.
[364] To Melanchthon, May 12, 1530, “Briefwechsel,” 7, p. 332.
[365] To the same, April 29, 1530, _ib._, p. 313: “_Oratio mea ad
clerum procedit; crescit inter manus et materia et impetus, ut plurimos
Landsknechtos prorsus vi repellere cogar, qui insalutati non cessant
obstrepere_.” Cp. Kolde, “Luther,” 2, p. 330.
[366] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 199.
[367] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 24², p. 391 ff.
[368] _Ib._, p. 395 f.
[369] _Ib._, p. 406.
[370] _Ib._, p. 396 f.
[371] Cp. our vol. iii., p. 435.
[372] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 10, 2, p. 107; Erl. ed., 28, p. 144.
[373] To Eobanus Hessus, April 23, 1530, “Briefwechsel,” 7, p. 301. Cp.
n. 2 in Enders, who suggests the above translation of “_tu habes malam
vocem_.” We read in Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 199: “We must admit, that,
judging by the tone of this tract [the ‘Vermanũg’] Luther’s ‘voice’
would have been out of place at Augsburg, as he admits in his letter to
Eobanus Hessus.”
[374] On June 5, 1530, “Briefwechsel,” 8, p. 367.
[375] See vol. iv., p. 338 f.
[376] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 24², p. 364.
[377] Cordatus, “Tagebuch,” p. 363 f.
[378] “Werke,” _ib._, p. 361; cp. p. 396.
[379] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 24, p. 313; Erl. ed., 33, p. 331. Sermons on
Genesis, 1527.
[380] _Ib._, p. 312 f.=330 f.
[381] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 108. From the year 1540.
[382] To Jacob Probst, June 1, 1530, “Briefwechsel,” 7, p. 353 f.
[383] To Bucer, July 12, 1532, in “Anal. Lutherana,” ed. Kolde, p. 203.
[384] “Anal.,” _loc. cit._
[385] Leo Judae, 1. c., 203.
[386] _Ib._, p. 204.
[387] See our vol. iv., p. 87.
[388] H. Barge, “Carlstadt,” see our vol. ii., p. 154.
[389] F. Hülsse, “Card. Albrecht und Hans Schenitz,” “Magdeburger
Geschichtsblätter,” 1889, p. 82; cp. Enders, “Briefwechsel Luthers,”
10, p. 182, who remarks of F. W. E. Roth’s review in the “Hist.-pol.
Bl.,” 118, 1896, p. 160 f.: “The author does not seem to be acquainted
with Hülsse’s work and therefore condemns Albert.”
[390] Enders, _ib._, p. 181.
[391] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 419.
[392] Enders, _ib._
[393] On July 31, 1535, and Jan.-Feb., 1536, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 55, pp.
98 and 125 (“Briefwechsel,” 10, pp. 180 and 296).
[394] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 420.
[395] Enders, “Briefwechsel,” 10, p. 297; Hülsse, p. 61.
[396] On March 10, 1542, “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 5, p. 442.
[397] To Johann Göritz, judge at Leipzig, Jan. 29, 1544, _ib._, p. 625.
Cp. for the account of Rosina, vol. iii., pp. 217 f., 280 f.
[398] Vol. i., p. 59. “_Stupidæ litteræ_” here perhaps means
“indignant” rather than “amazed” letters.
[399] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 483.
[400] Mathesius, “Aufzeichn.” (Loesche), p. 200. Cp. above vol. iii.,
p. 437 f.
[401] To Catherine, end of July, 1545, “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 5, p.
753.
[402] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 127. Cp. above vol. iv., p. 276.
[403] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 3, p. 470; Erl. ed., 25², p. 127. “Widder
den Meuchler zu Dresen,” 1531.
[404] _Ib._, 26², p. 242, “Das Bapstum vom Teuffel gestifft,” 1545.
[405] _Ib._, Weim. ed., 33, p. 605; Erl. ed., 48, p. 342. Expos. of
John vi.-viii., 1530-1532.
[406] _Ib._, p. 341.
[407] Feb. 7, 1521, “Briefwechsel,” 3, p. 83 f.
[408] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 6, pp. 427, 428 f.; Erl. ed., 21, pp. 305 and
307. “An den christl. Adel,” 1520. Cp. above p. 88 f.
[409] “_Utinam haberent plures reges Angliæ, qui illos occiderent._”
Cp. Paulus, “Protestantismus und Toleranz in 16. Jahrh.,” 1911, p. 17
ff.
[410] Dec., 1535, “Briefwechsel” 10, p. 275.
[411] Feb. 3, 1519, “Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 410; cp. to Spalatin, Feb. 7,
1519, _ib._, p. 412.
[412] 4-9 Dec., 1521, _ib._, 3´, p. 253: “_Exacerbabitur mihi spiritus,
ut multo vehementiora deinceps in eam rem nihilominus moliar_.”
[413] Vol. iv., p. 329 ff.
[414] Oswald Myconius to Simon Grynæus, Nov. 8, 1534, in
Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 665, from a MS. source: “_Doctiorem se esse,
quam qui ab eiusmodi hominibus doceri velit_”; this showed his
“_tyrannica superbia_.”
[415] To Amsdorf, April 14, 1545, “Briefe” ed. De Wette, 5, p. 728.
[416] To Caspar Güttel, March 30, 1522, “Briefwechsel,” 3, p. 326.
[417] Vol. iv., p. 13 ff.
[418] _Ib._, p. 3 ff.
[419] Cp. our vol. ii., p. 386: “For when once we have evaded the peril
and are at peace, then we can easily atone for our tricks and lapses
(‘_dolos ac lapsus nostros_’), because His [God’s] mercy is over us,”
etc., for the word _mendacia_ after _dolos_ see vol. iv., p. 96.
[420] See vol. iv., p. 95: “_In cuius [Antichristi] deceptionem et
nequitiam ob salutem animarum nobis omnia licere arbitramur_.”
[421] _Ib._, p. 81 f.
[422] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 24², p. 388 f. Cp. our vol. iv., p. 166 ff.
[423] _Ib._, p. 391. “Even should the Pope, the bishops, the canons and
the people wish to remain in the state of celibacy, or the state of
whores and knaves—and even the heathen poet admits that fornicators
and whoremongers are loath to take wives—still I hope you will take
pity on the poor pastors and those who have the cure of souls and allow
them to marry.”
[424] Cordatus, “Tageb.,” p. 364.
[425] Cp. vol. iv., p. 102 f.
[426] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 27, p. 286.
[427] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 287.
[428] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 24², p. 364.
[429] _Ib._, p. 365.
[430] _Ib._, p. 364.
[431] _Ib._, p. 361.
[432] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 3, p. 291; Erl. ed., 25², p. 23.
[433] _Ib._, p. 285-14 f.
[434] “Wahrhaffte Bekanntnuss,” Bl. 9´.
[435] _Ib._
[436] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 3, p. 290; Erl. ed., 25², p. 22.
[437] “Opp.” 10, col. 1558. “Adv. ep. Lutheri.”
[438] _Ib._, 1555.
[439] _Ib._, 1334. “Hyperaspistes.”
[440] Vol. iv., p. 228 ff.
[441] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 442.
[442] Dec. 8, 1534, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 55, p. 71 (“Briefwechsel,” 10,
p. 88 f.); “Briefe,” 4, p. 567 ff.: “To set ourselves up as judges and
ourselves to judge is assuredly wrong, and the wrath of God will not
leave it unpunished.” “If you desire my advice, as you write, I counsel
you to accept peace, however you reach it, and rather to suffer in
your goods and your honour than to involve yourself further in such an
undertaking where you will have to take upon yourself all the crimes
and wickedness that are committed.... You must consider for how much
your conscience will have to answer if you knowingly bring about the
destruction of so many people.”
[443] Cp. Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 159. “Briefwechsel,” 12, pp.
84-102; 13, p. 13.
[444] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 444.
[445] Cp. C. A. Burkhardt, “Der historische Hans Kohlhase,” 1864.
[446] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 10, 2, p. 140 ff.; Erl. ed., 28, p. 178 ff.
In “Wyder den falsch genantten geystlichen Standt,” 1522.
[447] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 44, p. 84. In the sermons on Mt. xviii.-xxiii.
[448] See xxix., 8.
[449] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 2, p. 651 f.; “Opp. lat. var.,” 2, p. 511. In
the “Defensio contra Eccii iudicium.”
[450] _Ib._, Weim. ed., 15, p. 183; Erl. ed., 24², p. 251. “Widder den
newen Abgott und allten Teuffel der zu Meyssen sol erhaben werden.”
[451] _Ib._, p. 194 f.=264.
[452] _Ib._, p. 175=249.
[453] Cp. vol. iii., p. 191 f.; 211 f. and Joh. Wieser in “Luther und
Ignatius von Loyola” [“Zeitschr. f. kath. Theol.,” 7 (1883) and 8
(1884), particularly 8, p. 365 ff.].
[454] Janssen, “Hist. of the German People” (Engl. Trans.), vi., p. 54.
[455] “Briefwechsel,” 12, p. 231.
[456] Cp. Janssen, _ib._
[457] July, 1539, “Briefwechsel,” 12, p. 188.
[458] Cp. my “Hist. of Rome and the Popes in the Middle Ages” (Engl.
Trans., i., pp. 9-26).
[459] In what follows we have drawn largely on J. Wieser (see above, p.
124, n. 1).
[460] Wieser rightly points out that Luther claimed above all to be
a “National Prophet”; he was fond of saying that he had brought the
Gospel “to the Saxons,” or “to the Germans.” _Ib._, 8, pp. 143 f., 356.
[461] _Ib._, 8, p. 352.
[462] Above, pp. 3 ff. and 66 ff.
[463] Cp. Wieser, _ib._, 8, p. 353.
[464] Wieser, _ib._, 8, p. 387.
[465] “Gesch. des gelehrten Unterrichts,” 1², 1896, p. 174.
[466] See above, vol. iii., p. 25 ff.
[467] Vol. ii., p. 111. “Werke,” Weim. ed., 12, p. 169 ff.; “Opp. lat.
var.,” 6, p. 494 _sqq._
[468] “Werke,” _ib._, p. 192=p. 528.
[469] _Ib._, p. 194=532.
[470] “Entsprach das Staatskirchentum dem Ideale Luthers?” (“Zeitschr.
f. Theol. und Kirche,” 1908, Suppl., p. 38.) The striking new works of
Hermelink, K. Müller, etc., have already been referred to elsewhere.
In addition we must mention K. Holl, “Luther und das landesherrliche
Kirchenregiment” (“Zeitschr. f. Theol. und Kirche,” 1911, Suppl.),
where the writer takes a view of the much-discussed question different
from that of K. Müller.
[471] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 12, p. 484 f.; Erl. ed., 11², p. 205 f. Cp.
_ib._, p. 481=201 f., and Erl. ed., 11², p. 82 f.
[472] _Ib._, Weim. ed., 12, p. 215 f.; “Opp. lat. var.,” 7, 13. On the
“_Formula missæ_,” see below, xxix., 9.
[473] _Ib._, Weim. ed., 11, p. 210. The Latin version reads: “_Si
Dominus dederit in cor vestrum, ut simul probetis_,” etc.
[474] _Ib._, 12, p. 693; cp. 697. On the Wittenberg Poor Box see below,
vol. vi. xxxv., 4.
[475] P. Drews, p. 55.
[476] Vol. ii., p. 113; cp. vol. iii., p. 27.
[477] “Briefwechsel,” 4, p. 70.
[478] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 12, p. 11 ff.; Erl. ed., 22, p. 106 ff.
[479] _Ib._, p. 35 ff=153 ff.
[480] _Ib._, 11, p. 408 ff.=22, p. 141 ff. “Ordenũg eyns gemeynen
Kastens,” 1523. On the date cp. Drews, p. 43.
[481] See below, vol. vi., xxxv., 4.
[482] Above, p. 78 ff.
[483] “Schwenckfelds Epistolar,” 2, 2, 1570, p. 39 ff. Cp. K. Ecke,
“Schwenckfeld, Luther und der Gedanke einer apostolischen Reformation,”
1911, p. 101, where the words of the Epistolar, pp. 24 and 39, are
given, showing that Schwenckfeld “noted down the whole affair from
beginning to end at the inn while it was still fresh in his memory.”
[484] Of these steps and the sermon nothing is known.
[485] “Epistolar,” _ib._, pp. 39, 43.
[486] “Zeitschr. f. KG.,” 13, p. 552 ff.
[487] See below, xxix., 9. The writing is reprinted in “Werke,” Weim.
ed., 19, p. 70 ff.; Erl. ed., 22, p. 227 ff.
[488] Sermon of Dec. 6, 1523, _ib._, Weim. ed., 11, p. 210.
[489] In the “Deudsche Messe,” Weim. ed., 19, p. 75; Erl. ed., 22, p.
231: “In order that no faction may arise as though I had done it of my
own initiative.”
[490] “Entsprach des Staatskirchentum dem Ideale Luthers?” p. 65. Drews
adds: “He was afraid of doing something contrary to God’s will.” That
Luther had not thought out the matter plainly is also stated by K.
Müller (“Luther und Karlstadt,” p. 121).
[491] “Briefwechsel,” 6, p. 10.
[492] As late as June 26, 1533 (“Briefwechsel,” 9, p. 317), he wrote:
“_In hoc sæculo tam turbido et nondum satis pro recipienda disciplina
idoneo non ausim consulere tam subitam innovationem_.” Cp. p. 142,
below.
[493] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 53 (“Briefwechsel,” 6, p. 32), p. 399.
[494] P. 67.
[495] The plan as Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 47 f., rightly points out had
been formed “mainly on elements previously brought forward by Luther.”
[496] Reprinted in A. L. Richter, “Die evang. Kirchenordnungen des 16.
Jahrh.,” 1, 1846, p. 56.
[497] Jan. 7, 1527. “Werke,” Erl. ed., 56, p. 170 (“Briefwechsel,” 6,
p. 9).
[498] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 48.
[499] F. Feuchtwanger: “Gesch. der sozialen Politik ... im Zeitalter
der Reformation” (“Schmollers Jahrb. f. Gesetzgebung N.F.,” 33, 1909),
p. 193.
[500] Cp. Enders, “Luthers Briefwechsel,” 5, p. 73 n.
[501] June 26, 1533, to Schnabel, “Briefwechsel,” 9, p. 316.
[502] _Ib._, p. 68.
[503] Below, xxxv., 2.
[504] To what extent the Elector was following the example of his
Catholic ancestors in Church matters is shown by K. Pallas, “Entstehung
des landesherrlichen Kirchenregiments in Kursachsen” (“N. Mitteilungen
aus dem Gebiet historisch-antiquarischer Forschung”), 24, 2.
[505] To Luther, Nov. 26, 1526, “Briefwechsel,” 5, p. 408.
[506] Proofs of this will be given below when we deal with Luther’s
attitude towards State government of the Church. So ineffectual was
Luther’s reserve and even his formal protest, that Carl Holl (above,
p. 134, n. 4) remarks (p. 59): “These exertions on Luther’s part were
of small avail. Facts proved stronger than his theories. Once the
Visitation had been made in the Elector’s name, then, in spite of all
that might be said, he could not fail to appear as the one to whom
the oversight of spiritual matters belonged. It must have been fairly
difficult for the Electoral Chancery to make the distinction between
the Elector speaking as a brother to other Christians and as a ruler to
his subjects. It was certainly much easier to treat everything on the
same lines.” Cp. W. Friedensburg, above, vol. ii., p. 333, n. 2.
[507] Cp. vol. ii., p. 319 ff.
[508] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 12, p. 205; “Opp. lat. var.,” 7, p. 2 _sqq._
[509] _Ib._, Weim. ed., 19, p. 70 ff.; Erl. ed., 22, p. 227 ff.
[510] To V. Warnbeck, Sep. 30, 1525, see Schlegel, “Vita Spalatini,” p.
222. Cp. Jonas to Spalatin, Sep. 23, 1525, vol. iv., p. 511.
[511] “Since so many from all lands request me to do so, and the
secular power also urges me to it.” “Werke,” Weim. ed., 19, p. 50 f.;
Erl. ed., 14², p. 278, from the Church-postils. Cp. G. Rietschel,
“Lehrb. der Liturgik,” Berlin, 1900, p. 278.
[512] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 19, p. 95; Erl. ed., 22, p. 239.
[513] For Luther’s writing: “Von dem Grewel der Stillmesse so man den
Canon nennet,” see above, vol. iv., p. 511 f.
[514] For the fate of this see our vol. iii., p. 392 f., vol. iv., p.
195, n. 4, p. 239, and Kawerau, in Möller, “KG,” 3³, p. 401.
[515] See below, xxxiv., 4.
[516] Köstlin-Kawerau, 1, p. 532. He also repeatedly complains that the
hymns and prayers of antiquity failed to make sufficient mention of the
Redemption and the Grace of Christ. Even in the “Te Deum” he misses the
doctrine of Redemption, needless to say in the sense in which he taught
it. “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 6, p. 425.
[517] W. Germann, “Johann Forster” (“N. Beitr. zur Gesch. deutschen
Altertums,” Hft. 12), 1894.
[518] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 19, p. 72; Erl. ed., 22, p. 227.
[519] _Ib._, 12, p. 37=22, p. 156.
[520] _Ib._, 19, p. 73=22, p. 228.
[521] _Ib._
[522] _Ib._, p. 75=230 f.
[523] _Ib._, 74 ff.=229 ff.
[524] _Ib._, p. 72=228.
[525] Cp. for instance above, p. 44 f.
[526] Cp. above, p. 45, and “Werke,” Erl. ed., 14², p. 87.
[527] On Luther’s attitude towards such punishment cp. his letter to
Margrave George of Brandenburg (Sep. 14, 1531), “Briefe,” ed. De Wette,
4, p. 308 (“Briefwechsel,” 9, p. 103).
[528] Kawerau in the “Göttinger Gelehrte Anzeigen,” 1888, 1, p. 113 f.,
in his review of Joh. Gottschick, “Luthers Anschauungen vom christl.
Gottesdienst,” Freiburg, 1887: “In practice Luther helped to further a
worship which, though easily to be explained, constituted nevertheless
a questionable concession to the needs of the moment; for he vindicates
the purely pedagogic character of worship and ascribes it to the need
of educating backward Christians or of making real Christians of them.”
Kawerau speaks of this as “an object which, on every side, spells
serious injury to worship itself.” Gottschick had proved convincingly
(p. 19 f.) that “such a conception of worship was on every point at
variance with Luther’s own principles concerning the priestly character
of the congregation and the relation of prayer to faith.” In this view
Gottschick would find himself “in complete harmony with all eminent
liturgical writers at the present day.”
[529] J. Gottschick (see above, n. 1), in concluding, charges Luther’s
reform of divine worship with being merely an adaptation of the Roman
Mass, absolutely worthless for Lutherans, adopted out of too great
consideration for the weak; this form of worship, utterly at variance
with his own liturgical principles, was not to be regarded as a real
Lutheran liturgy.
[530] Cp. Kawerau’s quotations in his article in the “Göttinger Gel.
Anzeigen,” 1888, 1, p. 115.
[531] June 17, 1525, “Werke,” Weim. ed., 18, p. 412 ff.; Erl. ed., 53,
p. 315 ff. (“Briefwechsel,” 5, p. 198). For Bugenhagen’s letter see
“Briefwechsel,” p. 207, for Hofmann’s, _ib._, p. 213.
[532] Kawerau, in Möller, “KG.,” 3³, p. 400; “The influence of the
Catholic past is still evident in the fact, that, in spite of the
predominant position assigned to preaching, the view still prevailed
that Divine worship, in order to be complete, must include the Supper,
and that it culminated in this ‘office.’ This, even in the 16th
century, gave rise to difficulties.”
[533] To Margrave George of Brandenburg in the letter quoted above, p.
145, n. 2.
[534] Kawerau, _ib._, p. 401.
[535] _Ib._, p. 400. Luther says: “_Diligens verbi Dei prædicatio est
proprius cultus novi testamenti_.” “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 19, p. 161.
[536] Gottschick.
[537] This is Kawerau’s opinion, _ib._, p. 401.
[538] See above, p. 146, n. 3.
[539] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 12, p. 35; Erl. ed., 22, p. 153. “Von
Ordenung Gottes Dienst ynn der Gemeyne,” 1523.
[540] Of the most recent studies we need only mention here H. Greving,
“Ecks Pfarrbuch für U.L. Frau in Ingolstadt” (“RGI. Studien”), Hft. 4
and 5, 1908, p. 87 ff. Cp. Janssen, “Hist. of the German People” (Engl.
Trans.), vol. i., _passim_.
[541] This introduction, together with the whole text of the common
Preface, enters into Luther’s Latin Mass. “Werke,” Weim. ed., 12, p.
212; “Opp. lat. var.,” 7, p. 8. In his German Mass it is suppressed.
[542] “Epistolar,” 2, 2, 1570. Ecke (see below, p. 156, n. 1), p. 159.
[543] “Der erste Teil der christl. orthodox. Bücher und Schriften....
Schwenckfelds ... durch Mitbekenner zusammengetragen,” 1564, p. 4.
Ecke, p. 160; cp. p. 10 f.
[544] “Epistolar,” _ib._, p. 228; cp. p. 246.
[545] _Ib._, p. 645.
[546] _Ib._, p. 519.
[547] “Schwenckfeld, Luther und der Gedanke einer apostolischen Ref.,”
Berlin, 1911, p. 161.
[548] Ecke, p. 176. The Protestant author adds in a note: “It must,
however, be pointed out that this criticism does not affect the
apostolic nature of the profound phenomena of Evangelical piety seen
among Lutherans.”
[549] “Christl. Bücher,” etc. (above, p. 155, n. 2), p. 384. Ecke, p.
177.
[550] “Epistolar,” _ib._, p. 602. In 1550. Ecke, p. 196.
[551] See our vol. iv., p. 210 ff., for instance, and below, vol. vi.,
xxxix., 1.
[552] “Die andere Verantwortung,” 1556, Aiii. Ecke, p. 190 f.
[553] “Christl. Bücher,” p. 326 f. Ecke, p. 163.
[554] _Ib._
[555] “Epistolar,” 1, 1566, p. 680. Ecke, p. 164.
[556] “Christl. Bücher,” p. 362. In 1547. Ecke, _ib._
[557] Ecke, p. 164, from a MS.
[558] “Christl. Bücher,” p. 477. Ecke, p. 164.
[559] Thus G. Arnold, “Kirchenhistorie,” Frankfurt a/M., 1729, 1, p.
413.
[560] _Ib._, p. 395. Ecke, p. 170 f., where he quotes in support of
this and what follows, “Luthers Werke,” Erl. ed., 14², pp. 164 f., 174.
[561] _Ib._
[562] _Ib._, p. 325. Ecke, p. 172.
[563] _Ib._, p. 377. Ecke, p. 168.
[564] _Ib._, p. 420. Schwenckfeld’s excuse is, however, worthy of note,
p. 401: “Such doctrine is not the outcome of an evil mind but is due to
misapprehension.” Ecke, p. 168.
[565] _Ib._, p. 421. Ecke, p. 169.
[566] _Ib._
[567] _Ib._, p. 401. Ecke, _ib._
[568] _Ib._ Ecke, p. 170.
[569] _Ib._, p. 361. Ecke quotes “Luthers Werke,” Erl. ed., 11², p. 217.
[570] _Ib._, p. 365. Ecke, p. 166, quotes Erl. ed., 13², p. 218; 14²,
pp. 281 f., 287 ff.
[571] _Ib._
[572] _Ib._
[573] _Ib._
[574] _Ib._, p. 343 f. Cp. “Epistolar,” 2, 2, p. 912. Ecke, p. 176. Cp.
Döllinger, on Schwenckfeld, in “Die Reformation,” 1, p. 254 ff.
[575] “Epistolar,” 2, 2, p. 913. Ecke, p. 55.
[576] _Ib._, p. 427. Cp. “Epistolar,” 1., p. 410.
[577] Ecke’s words, p. 161.
[578] “Epistolar,” 2, 2, p. 513, cp. p. 403 ff.; 1, p. 424. Ecke, _ib._
[579] Ecke, p. 162.
[580] Cp. Ecke, p. 160, n. 3.
[581] _Ib._, p. 222.
[582] Ecke, p. 180 f.; from MS. sources.
[583] “Epistolar,” 2, 2, p. 639. Ecke, p. 179.
[584] “Epistolar,” 1, p. 99. Ecke, p. 181.
[585] _Ib._ Ecke, p. 182.
[586] _Ib._, 1, p. 92. Ecke, p. 181.
[587] _Ib._, p. 736. Ecke, p. 182.
[588] “Christl. Bücher,” p. 363. Ecke, p. 173.
[589] _Ib._
[590] “Epistolar,” 2, 2, p. 1014. Ecke, p. 160.
[591] Ecke, p. 227, MS.
[592] “Christl. Bücher,” pp. 962, 965. Ecke, p. 191.
[593] “Epistolar,” 1, p. 173. “Christl. Bücher,” p. 74 f., 549. Ecke,
_ib._
[594] “Epistolar,” 1, p. iii. B. Ecke, p. 86.
[595] See above, vol. iv., p. 367.
[596] Ch. v. Rommel, “Philipp der Grossmüthige, Landgraf von Hessen,”
1, 1820, p. 517.
[597] Aug. 5, 1543, “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 5, p. 580.
[598] May 7, 1543, “Briefe,” 5, p. 557.
[599] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 562.
[600] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 32, p. 75 ff. Cp. above, vol. iii., p. 91 ff.
[601] Letter to the Emperor Charles V, Aug. 24, 1544, in Raynaldus,
“Annales,” a. 1544; in German in “Luthers Werke,” Walch’s ed., 17,
p. 1253 ff. For the former attitude of the Papacy to the idea of the
Council, cp. our vol. iii., p. 424 ff.
[602] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 172 f.
[603] _Ib._, p. 62.
[604] _Ib._, p. 70.
[605] _Ib._, p. 114.
[606] _Ib._, p. 80.
[607] _Ib._, p. 91 f. Cp. “Colloq.” ed. Bindseil, 3, p. 90 _sq._;
“Werke,” Erl. ed., 62, p. 42 f.
[608] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 101.
[609] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 138.
[610] _Ib._, p. 287.
[611] _Ib._, p. 231.
[612] _Ib._, p. 169.
[613] _Ib._, p. 417.
[614] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 32, p. 474; Erl. ed., 43, p. 263.
[615] _Ib._, p. 475 = 264 f.
[616] In the “Antwort auf das Schmähbüchlein,” etc., “Luthers Werke,”
Erl. ed., 25², p. 146.
[617] April, 1525, “Werke,” Weim. ed., 18, p. 547; Erl. ed., 53, p. 342
“Briefwechsel,” 5, p. 151.
[618] To the Preacher Balthasar Raida of Hersfeld, Jan. 17, 1536,
“Briefwechsel,” 10, p. 288.
[619] April 4, 1541, “Briefwechsel,” 13, p. 291.
[620] To Wenceslaus Link, Sep. 8, 1541, “Briefe,” 5, p. 398.
[621] To the Elector Johann Frederick, Jan. 18, 1545, _ib._, p. 716:
“I will have them [the lawyers] eternally damned and cursed _in my_
Churches.”
[622] To Justus Jonas, Dec. 16, 1543, _ib._, p. 612.
[623] To Jacob Probst, Dec. 5, 1544, _ib._, p. 703.
[624] To Amsdorf, Jan. 8, 1546, _ib._, p. 773 f.
[625] _Ib._, p. 774.
[626] Cp. (E. v. Jarcke) “Studien und Skizzen z. Gesch. d. Ref.,” 1846,
p. 68.
[627] _Ib._
[628] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 158.
[629] _Ib._, p. 198.
[630] _Ib._, p. 200.
[631] “Theander Lutherus,” Ursel s.a., Bl. 59´.
[632] After June 16, 1533, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 55, p. 20.
(“Briefwechsel,” 9, p. 312.) The passage in question in the original
at Weimar is in Melanchthon’s handwriting. Cp. Enders, p. 313, on the
historical connection of the memorandum.
[633] “Corp. ref.,” 3, p. 139 _sqq._ Rommel, “Philipp von Hessen,” 1,
p. 417. Janssen, “Hist. of the German People” (Engl. Trans.), vol.
v., p. 527 ff. Pastor, “Die kirchl. Reunionsbestrebungen während der
Regierung Karls V,” p. 95.
[634] To Brenz, April 14, 1537, “Corp. ref.,” 3, p. 340: “_Ulyssea
philosophia ... multa dissimulantes_.”
[635] Letter of March 10, 1540, in Bindseil, “Melanchthonis epistolæ,
iudicia, etc.,” 1874, p. 146.
[636] Cp. above, vol. iii., p. 421 ff.
[637] Letter of Dec. 28, 1543, in Lenz, “Briefwechsel des Landgrafen
Philipp von Hessen,” 2, p. 227. “_Nihil est quod minus multum_ [_read_
inultum] _relinquerem._”
[638] Lenz, _ib._, p. 241.
[639] Letter of Feb. 25, 1545, Lenz, p. 304.
[640] Letter of Dec. 1, 1545, Lenz, p. 379.
[641] Letter of April 5, 1546, Lenz, p. 426 f.
[642] Letter of May 12, 1545, Lenz, p. 433.
[643] See below, vol. vi., xl., 3.
[644] Seckendorf, “Comm. hist. de Lutheranismo,” 3, Lips., 1694,
p. 468. The disputant, Johannes Marbach, received from Luther this
testimony: “_Amplectitur puram evangelii doctrinam, quam ecclesia
nostra uno spiritu et una voce profitetur_.” “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 5,
p. 543. Cp. Disputationen, ed. Drews, p. 700 ff. Some of Luther’s other
statements concerning unity ring very differently.
[645] Cp. vol. iii., pp. 324, 363, 371 f.
[646] “Corp. ref.,” 3, p. 230; “_Incipiunt de tota religione dubitare_.”
[647] “Pezelii Object. et resp. Melanchtonis,” P. V., p. 289.
Döllinger, “Die Reformation,” 1, p. 373.
[648] Nov., 1536, to Myconius, “Corp. ref.,” 3, p. 187.
[649] _Ib._, pp. 460, 488 (1537 and 1538).
[650] To Prince George of Anhalt, June 10, 1545, “Briefe,” ed. De
Wette, 6, p. 379.
[651] _Ib._
[652] “Corp, ref.,” 1, p. 907.
[653] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, pp. 441, 574.
[654] To Spalatin, Jan. 12, 1541. “Briefwechsel,” 13, p. 246. “Spalatin
foresaw what was to come better than did Luther.” K. Holl, “Luther und
das landesherrliche Kirchenregiment,” 1911, p. 57.
[655] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 61, p. 223, Table-Talk.
[656] To Count Albert of Mansfeld, Oct. 5, 1536, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 55,
p. 147 (“Briefwechsel,” 11, p. 90). Cp. above, vol. iii., 38 f., 263 f.
[657] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 121.
[658] _Ib._, p. 152.
[659] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 82.
[660] To the Visitors in Thuringia, March 25, 1539, “Briefe,” 5, p. 173
“Briefwechsel,” 12, p. 118.
[661] To Daniel Cresser, Oct. 22, 1543, “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 5, p.
596, concerning certain occurrences at Dresden.
[662] See above p. 55, ff., and vol. ii., p. 298.
[663] “Kirchenrecht,” 1, 1892, p. 613.
[664] R. Sohm, _ib._, p. 615.
[665] _Ib._, p. 623.
[666] _Ib._, p. 618.
[667] _Ib._, p. 632. Sohm’s standpoint is, that a Church with powers of
self-government or with a “canon law,” as he calls it, is practically
unthinkable. Cp. Carl Müller, “Die Anfänge der Konsistorialverfassung
in Deutschland” (Hist. Zeitschr. Bd. 102, 3. Folge Bd. 6, p. 1 ff.). He
too arrives at the conclusion, contrary to many previously held views,
viz. that it was only gradually in the course of the 16th century that
the consistories changed, from organs of ecclesiastical jurisdiction,
into organs of State government of the Church. Cp. also O. Mejer, “Zum
KR. des Reformationsjahrh.,” 1891, p. 1 ff.
[668] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p. 66.
[669] “Corp. ref.,” 5, p. 720 _sq._ Memorandum as to whether the
Schmalkalden League should continue, etc., March, 1545, signed by him
first. Cp. “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 6, p. 374.
[670] To Wenceslaus Link, Sep. 8, 1541, “Briefe,” 5, p. 399.
[671] Pars 3, art. 9: “_Maiorem excommunicationem, quam papa ita
nominat, non nisi civilem poenam esse ducimus non pertinentem ad nos
ministros ecclesiæ._” “Symbol. Bücher,” ed. Müller-Kolde^[10], p. 323.
[672] To Tileman Schnabel and the other Hessian clergy, June 26,
1533, “Briefwechsel,” 9, p. 317: “_Hoc sæculo excommunicatio maior ne
potest quidem in nostram potestatem redigi, et ridiculi fieremus, ante
vires, hanc tentantes. Nam quod vos sperare videmini, ut executio vel
per ipsum principem fiat, valde incertum est, nec vellem politicum
magistratum in id officii misceri_,” etc.
[673] N. Paulus, “Hexenwahn und Hexenprozess,” 1911, p. 32, with
reference to “Luthers Werke,” Weim. ed., 29, p. 539, where the note of
the Wittenberg Deacon, George Rörer to Luther’s sermon of Aug. 22 of
that year says: “_Hæc prima fuit excommunicatio ab ipso pronuntiata._”
[674] Luther to Leonhard Beier, 1533, “Briefwechsel,” 9, p. 365.
[675] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 275.
[676] Cp. the passages quoted, _ib._, p. 675, and Lauterbach,
“Tagebuch,” p. 167.
[677] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p. 291 _sqq._ Cp. Köstlin-Kawerau, 2,
p. 440.
[678] On April 2, 1543, “Briefe,” 5, p. 550. Cp. “Werke,” Erl. ed.,
59, pp. 162 ff., 159 f.; “We must set up excommunication again.” In
the latter passage he speaks of his action against the Wittenberg
Commandant, Hans v. Metzsch.
[679] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 42. His words remind us of Luther’s
own; above, p. 139.
[680] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 59, p. 160.
[681] _Ib._, p. 179 f. Cp. Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 185 (in 1540).
[682] _Ib._, p. 169 f.
[683] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 278 (in 1542-1543).
[684] “Kosmographie,” Bl. 44´, 163. Janssen, “Hist. of the German
People” (Engl. Trans.), v., p. 535.
[685] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 2, p. 122.
[686] _Ib._, 1, p. 322.
[687] _Ib._, 3, p. 306.
[688] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 367, Table-Talk.
[689] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 3, p. 306. In the statement the year
given is uncertain. “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 368: “_Anno_ 34,” etc.;
elsewhere 1543.
[690] Rebenstock, in Bindseil, 1. c.
[691] P. Drews, “Die Ordination, Prüfung und Lehrverpflichtung der
Ordinanden in Wittenberg” (“Deutsche Zeitschr. für KR.”), 15, 1905, pp.
66 ff., 274 ff., particularly p. 281 ff.
[692] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 22 f. Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 80:
“_Doctor dixit: Nos qui prædicamus Evangelium, habemus potestatem
ordinandi; papa et episcopi neminem possunt ordinare_” (a. 1540). P.
226: “_Doctor ad Cellarium; Vos estis episcopus, quemadmodum ego sum
papa_” (a. 1540). Johannes Cellarius was Superintendent at Dresden.
[693] Janssen, _ib._ (Engl. Trans.), vi., 181 ff.
[694] Letter of Jan. 24, 1541, “Briefwechsel,” 13, p. 253 f.
[695] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 553 ff.
[696] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 26², p. 126, in the “Exempel” (see below, p.
195).
[697] “Zeitschr. f. KG.,” 3, p. 302, according to MS. Dresdense B 193,
4.
[698] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 554 f.
[699] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 26², p. 125, in the “Exempel.”
[700] On March 26, 1542, “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 5, p. 451:
“_Venerabili in Domino viro Iacobo Probst ecclesiæ Bremensis episcopo
vero_,” etc.
[701] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 26², p. 93 ff.
[702] _Ib._, p. 121.
[703] _Ib._, pp. 99, 100, 118, 113.
[704] P. 124.
[705] P. 125.
[706] P. 115.
[707] P. 126 f.
[708] Feb. 6, 1542, “Briefe,” 5, p. 432.
[709] Letter of Jan. 13, 1543, _ib._, p. 532.
[710] Letter of July 23, 1542, _ib._, p. 485.
[711] To Amsdorf after Jan. 20, 1542, _ib._, p. 430.
[712] To Amsdorf, Feb. 12, 1542, _ib._, p. 433.
[713] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 26², p. 123.
[714] Jan. 8, 1546, “Briefe,” 5, p. 773.
[715] Feb. 7, 1546, “Briefe,” 5, p. 787.
[716] Feb. 10, 1546, _ib._, p. 790.
[717] April 13, 1542, _ib._, p. 464.
[718] To the Elector and the Duke, April 7, 1542, “Werke,” Erl. ed.,
56, p. 15 ff. “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 6, p. 304 ff.
[719] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 567.
[720] April 9, 1542, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 56, p. liii. “Briefe,” _ib._,
p. 311.
[721] Leipzig, 1874, p. 28 f.
[722] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 568.
[723] According to Luther’s report to Brück, April 12, 1542, “Werke,”
Erl. ed., 56, p. liv., “Briefe,” p. 314.
[724] _Ib._
[725] Burkhardt, “Gesch. der sächs. Kirchen- u. Schulvisitationen,
1524-1545,” 1879, p. 209 f. Janssen, “Hist. of the German People”
(Engl. Trans.), vi., p. 192.
[726] G. A. Arndt, “Archiv der sächs. Gesch.,” 2, Leipzig, 1784-1786,
p. 333 ff. C. G. Gersdorf, “Urkundenbuch von Meissen,” 3, Leipzig,
1867, p. 375 f. Janssen, _ib._, p. 193.
[727] April 29, 1544, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 56, p. 91; “Briefe,” 5, p. 646.
[728] In Luther’s household memoranda, “Briefe,” 6, p. 326.
[729] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 55, p. 213 (“Briefwechsel,” 12, p. 34).
[730] July 7, 1544, “Werke,” _ib._, p. 104 f.
[731] Cp. Luther’s attitude at the time when the question of armed
resistance to the Emperor was mooted, vol. iii., 56 ff., and his views
on the relations of Church and State.
[732] To Amsdorf, Nov. 25, 1538, “Briefe,” 5, p. 136 (“Briefwechsel,”
11, p. 38): “_Vides, quantis premor oneribus.... Miserrimis miserior,
ut qui amplius nihil possum præ defectu virium._”
[733] To the Christians at Strasburg, Dec. 15, 1524, “Werke,” Weim.
ed., 15, p. 395; Erl. ed., 53, p. 275 (“Briefwechsel,” 5, p. 83).
[734] See above, vol. ii., p. 370.
[735] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 18, p. 67 f.; Erl. ed., 29, p. 141 f.
“Against the heavenly Prophets.”
[736] _Ib._, p. 68=143.
[737] _Ib._, p. 73=148.
[738] _Ib._, p. 74=149.
[739] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 15², p. 334.
[740] _Ib._, Weim. ed., 10, 3, p. 26; Erl. ed., 28, p. 225 f.
[741] _Ib._, p. 29=228.
[742] _Ib._, 16, p. 440=36, p. 49.
[743] _Ib._, p. 440 f.=50.
[744] _Ib._, p. 444=54. Sermon of 1525.
[745] Cp. Weim. ed., 1, p. 425; “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 12, p. 51 _sq._
(1518, against the strictures of the Bohemians) and Weim. ed., 10, 2,
p. 34; Erl. ed., 28, p. 310.
[746] See above, vol. ii., p. 97 f.; vol. iii., p. 385.
[747] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 10, 3, p. 31 f.; Erl. ed., 28, p. 229 f.
[748] _Ib._, 16, p. 440=36, p. 49. Sermons on the Ten Commandments.
[749] _Ib._, 28, p. 677 f.=36, p. 329 f. Exposition of Deuteronomy.
[750] _Ib._, p. 716=368.
[751] P. 553=206.
[752] P. 715=367.
[753] April 25, 1522, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 53, p. 133 (“Briefwechsel,” 3,
p. 347).
[754] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 18, pp. 74 f., 82 f.; Erl. ed., 29, pp. 149
f., 159.
[755] _Ib._, 26, p. 509=30, p. 372.
[756] _Ib._, 10, 3, p. 114=15², p. 334.
[757] _Ib._, 18, p. 83=29, p. 159.
[758] _Ib._, 63, p. 391 f.
[759] Cp. above, p. 203.
[760] See vol. ii., p. 351 f.
[761] Th. Eitner, “Erfurt u. die Bauernaufstände im 16. Jahrh.,” Halle,
1903, pp. 59, 95.
[762] _Ib._, p. 72.
[763] _Ib._, pp. 74, 84.
[764] _Ib._, p. 75.
[765] _Ib._, pp. 78, 76.
[766] See below, p. 230.
[767] Chr. Falk, “Elbingisch-Preuss. Chronik,” ed. M. Töppen (“Publik.
des Vereins f. die Gesch. der Provinzen Ost- und West-Preussen,”
Leipzig, 1879), p. 157 f. Janssen, “Hist. of the German People” (Engl.
Trans.), v., p. 112 ff.
[768] v. Baczko, “Gesch. Preussens,” 4, p. 173 ff. Janssen, _ib._
[769] Janssen, _ib._
[770] L. Redner’s “Skizzen aus der KG. Danzigs,” Danzig, 1875
(“Marienkirchen”).
[771] Janssen, _ib._, p. 120.
[772] Janssen, _ib._, vol. xi., p. 34 ff.
[773] _Ib._, vol. vi., p. 205.
[774] Whitsuntide Sermon, in Janssen, _ib._, vol. xi., p. 38. Cp.
“Luthers Werke,” Erl. ed., 7², pp. 121, 131, 222 f., 330. Cp. Janssen,
_ib._, p. 37, the passages from the sermons of the superintendent
George Nigrinus.
[775] Janssen, _ib._, v., p. 121.
[776] Beckmann, “Historie des Fürstentums Anhalt,” 6, p. 43.
[777] “Repertorium f. Kunstwissenschaft,” 20, p. 46. Janssen, _ib._,
vol. xi., p. 36.
[778] Oldecop, in 1548. Janssen, _ib._, vol. xi., p. 36.
[779] “Hist.-pol. Bl.,” 9, p. 316 ff.; 10, p. 15 ff. Janssen, “Hist. of
the German People” (Engl. Trans.), vi., p. 209.
[780] “Hist.-pol. Bl.,” 10, p. 17.
[781] Ladurner, “Der Einfall der Schmalkaldener im Tirol, 1546,”
(“Archiv f. Gesch. u. Altertumskunde Tirols,” 1), p. 415 ff. Janssen,
_ib._, vi., 315 ff.
[782] Janssen, _ib._, vi., p. 349.
[783] J. Voigt, “Briefwechsel der Gelehrten des Zeitalters der
Reformation mit Herzog Albrecht von Preussen,” 1841, p. 30.
[784] Janssen, _ib._, vi., p. 434.
[785] Aug. 19, 1548, C. W. Hase, “Mittelalterliche Baudenkmale
Niedersachsens,” Hannover, 1858, Hft., 3, p. 100.
[786] Janssen, _ib._, vi., p. 438 f.
[787] _Ib._, vi., p. 454.
[788] See A. v. Druffel, “Briefe und Akten zur Gesch. des 16. Jahrh.,”
2, 1873 ff., p. 668.
[789] Janssen, _ib._, vi., p. 458.
[790] F. A. Sinnacher, “Beitr. z. Gesch. d. Kirche Säben und Brixen,”
7, 1830, p. 441. D. Schönherr, “Der Einfall des Kurfürsten Moritz in
Tyrol,” 1868, p. 101 ff. Janssen, _ib._, vi., p. 478.
[791] See Schönherr, _ib._, p. 137 ff.
[792] Janssen, _ib._, vi., p. 496.
[793] _Ib._, vi., p. 459.
[794] Melchior von Ossa in his diary, Jan. 1, 1553. F. A. Langenn, “D.
Melchior von Ossa,” 1858, p. 161. Janssen, _ib._, p. 505.
[795] Döllinger, “Reformation,” 2, p. 318.
[796] “Mitteil. der Gesellschaft f. Erhaltung der geschtl. Denkmäler im
Elsass,” 15, 1892, p. 248. Janssen, “Hist. of the German People” (Engl.
Trans.), xi., p. 46.
[797] E. Weller, “Der Volksdichter Hans Sachs u. seine Dichtungen,”
1868, p. 118 ff.
[798] _Ib._
[799] He frequently laments that the churches were too ill-provided
for. Cp. Walch’s Index, s.v. “Kirche,” & “Gotteshäuser.”
[800] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 18, p. 82 f.; Erl. ed., 29, p. 158.
[801] See P. Lehfeldt, “Luthers Verhältnis zu Kunst und Künstlern,”
Berlin, 1892, p. 84. Janssen, _ib._, xi., 39.—On the whole subject see
Janssen, “Hist. of the German People” (Engl. Trans.), vol. xi., ch. ii.
[802] March 26, 1542, “Briefe,” 5, p. 451.
[803] Oct. 9, 1542, _ib._, p. 501.
[804] Oct. 29, 1542, _ib._, p. 502.
[805] Nov. 7, 1543, _ib._, p. 600.
[806] Dec. 3, 1544, _ib._, p. 702.
[807] March 13, 1542, _ib._, p. 444.
[808] Oct. 5, 1542, _ib._, p. 501.
[809] Dec. 16, 1543, _ib._, p. 611 f.
[810] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 144.
[811] _Ib._, p. 105.
[812] _Ib._, p. 140.
[813] _Ib._, p. 122.
[814] _Ib._, p. 113.
[815] _Ib._, p. 132.
[816] Below, xxxii., 6.
[817] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 114, in 1538.
[818] _Ib._, p. 105.
[819] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” ed. Kroker, p. 303.
[820] According to Mathesius (“Historien,” p. 146) he once said even in
the pulpit: “A full belly and ripe dung are easily parted.”
[821] To Anton Lauterbach, Nov. 3, 1543, “Briefe,” 5, p. 598.
[822] _Ib._
[823] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 156; “Aufzeichn.,” p. 117.
[824] To Lauterbach, _ib._
[825] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 303.
[826] “Hist.,” p. 145´ f. Ecebolius, under the Emperor Constantine, a
type of the hypocrite.
[827] To Hans Luther, Feb. 15, 1530, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 24, p. 130
(“Briefwechsel,” 7, p. 230).
[828] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 127.
[829] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 288.
[830] _Ib._, p. 179.
[831] _Ib._, p. 155.
[832] Dec. 7, 1540, “Briefe,” 5, p. 322.
[833] _Ib._
[834] To Justus Jonas, Jan. 26, 1543, _ib._, p. 534.
[835] To Spalatin, Aug. 21, 1544, _ib._, p. 679 f.
[836] To Amsdorf, April 14, 1545, _ib._, p. 728.
[837] June 18, 1543, _ib._, p. 570.
[838] To Justus Jonas, Feb. 25, 1542, ib., p. 439: “_Carlstadii ista
sunt monstra_.”
[839] _Ib._: “_Furiis furiosis aguntur, quia ira Dei pervenit super
eos usque in finem. Quare ergo propter istos perditos nos conficere
volumus? Mitte, vadere sicut vadit._”
[840] To Dr. Ratzeberger, the Elector’s physician, Aug. 6, 1545,
“Briefe,” 5, p. 754.
[841] April 14, 1545, _ib._, a letter not in the least intended as a
joke.
[842] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 3, p. 185. Rebenstock in Bindseil, l.c.
[843] To Amsdorf, Aug. 18, 1543, “Briefe,” 5, p. 584. Cp. p. 789: “_ne
tandem fiat quod ante diluvium factum esse scribit Moises_,” etc.
[844] _Ib._, p. 585.
[845] Sep. 3, 1541, “Briefe,” 5, p. 396.
[846] On the psychology of his humour, see below, xxxi., 5.
[847] To Justus Jonas, April 17, 1544, “Briefe,” 5, p. 642. Cp. p. 629:
“_testes fidelissimi_” report an alliance between the Pope, the Turks,
French and Venetians against the Emperor. “Now give a cheer for the
Pope.”
[848] To Amsdorf, Jan. 9, 1545, “Briefe,” 5, p. 713.
[849] To Amsdorf, July 17, 1545, _ib._, p. 750 f.
[850] Cp. Pastor, “Hist. of the Popes” (Engl. Trans.), vol. x.
[851] June-July, 1541, “Briefe,” 5, p. 379.
[852] June, 22, 1541, _ib._, p. 372.
[853] Vol. iii., pp. 217, 280 f.
[854] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 3, p. 155.
[855] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 423. In 1537.
[856] Above, vol. iii., p. 116.
[857] “Colloq.,” l.c., p. 156. Cp. Rebenstock, in Bindseil, l.c.
[858] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 125.
[859] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 156.
[860] To Melanchthon, April 20, 1541, “Briefe,” 5, p. 346;
“Briefwechsel,” 13, p. 308.
[861] To Melanchthon, March 24, 1541, _ib._, p. 336=279.
[862] To Jakob Probst, Pastor at Bremen, Oct. 9, 1542, “Briefe,” 5, p.
501.
[863] On Feb. 23, 1545, see Döllinger, “Reformation,” 3, p. 269, n.
208, from MS.
[864] Cp. Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 582. On Melanchthon, cp. above, vol.
iii., p. 370.
[865] To Chancellor Brück, 1544, “Briefe,” 5, p. 708.
[866] To Amsdorf, May 2, 1545, _ib._, p. 734.
[867] To Amsdorf, Aug. 18, 1543, _ib._, p. 585: “_an colaphus Satanæ?_”
[868] To Anton Lauterbach, Nov. 3, 1543, “Briefe,” 5, p. 599.
[869] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 20², 2, p. 561 f., in his last sermon, Feb.
14, 1546, on Mt. xi 25 ff.
[870] _Ib._, p. 562 ff.
[871] _Ib._, p. 565.
[872] _Ib._, p. 564.
[873] _Ib._, p. 566 f.
[874] _Ib._, p. 571.
[875] To Ratzeberger, the Elector’s medical adviser, Aug. 6, 1545,
“Briefe,” 5, p. 754: “_Credo nos esse tubam illam novissimam_,” etc.
[876] To Jonas at Halle, Jan. 23, 1542, _ib._, p. 429.
[877] To Lauterbach, July 25, 1542, _ib._, p. 487.
[878] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 385 f. (Dec., 1536).
[879] To Wenceslaus Link, Jan. 14, 1521, “Briefwechsel,” 3, p. 72:
“_videns, rem tumultuosissimo tumultu tumultuantem; forte hæc est
inundatio illa prædicta anno 24 futura_.”
[880] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 423, concluding: “_Videte, tanta
est potentia Sathanæ in deludendis sensibus externis; quid faciet in
animabus?_”
[881] Cp. N. Paulus, “Hexenwahn und Hexenprozess vornehmlich im 16.
Jahrh.,” 1910, particularly pp. 20 f., 48 ff.
[882] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 227.
[883] _Ib._, p. 129.
[884] _Ib._, p. 422, from Lauterbach and Weller’s Notes in the summer,
1537.
[885] To Amsdorf, June 3, 1545, “Briefe,” 5, p. 741. Amsdorf had sent
an inquiry “_de monstro illo vulpium_.”
[886] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 10², p. 69 f. Kirchenpostille.
[887] _Ib._
[888] To Jonas, Dec. 16, 1543, “Briefe,” 5, p. 612: “_congruunt omnia
signa_.”
[889] In the “Chronology of the World,” “Werke,” Walch’s ed., 14, p.
1278, from the Latin MS. See above, vol. iii., p. 147 f.
[890] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 22.
[891] _Ib._, p. 33.
[892] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p. 86.
[893] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 208; “Historien,” p. 143. “Luthers
Werke,” Erl. ed., 62, pp. 18, 25, “Tischreden.”
[894] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1., p. 85.
[895] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 58, p. 206.
[896] _Ib._, 62, p. 23.
[897] _Ib._, p. 24 f.
[898] See above, vol. iii., p. 141 ff., on the rise of his idea of the
Pope as Antichrist.
[899] Cp. the index to Walch’s edition, vol. xxiii., _s.v._
“Antichrist” and “Widerchrist.”
[900] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 8, p. 719; Erl. ed., 24², p. 203, “Bulla Cœnæ
Domini” (1522), appendix.
[901] Cp. Köstlin-Kawerau, 1, p. 646. On the Monk-Calf, see vol. iii.,
p. 149 f.
[902] On this Reply see vol. iii., p. 142.
[903] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 72.
[904] To Jonas, Dec. 16, 1543, “Briefe,” 5, p. 612.
[905] To Link, Sep. 8, 1541, _ib._, p. 398.
[906] To Jonas, March 13, 1542, _ib._, p. 445.
[907] To Jonas, Feb. 25, 1542, _ib._, p. 439.
[908] To Jonas, May 3, 1541, “Briefwechsel,” 13, p. 328: “_Ego et
ægrotus et pæne morosus sum, tædio rerum et morborum. Utinam me Deus
evocet misericorditer ad sese. Satis malorum feci, vidi, passus sum._”
[909] To Lauterbach, April 2, 1543, “Briefe,” 5, p. 551: “_ubique
grassatur licentia et petulantia vulgi_.” Cp. p. 552.
[910] To the Evangelical Brethren at Venice, June 13, 1543, _ib._, p.
569.
[911] To Amsdorf, Aug. 18, 1543, _ib._, p. 584.
[912] To Jonas, June 18, 1543, _ib._, p. 570.
[913] To Lauterbach, Nov. 3, 1543, _ib._, p. 599.
[914] To Jonas, Dec. 16, 1543, _ib._, p. 610.
[915] To Duke George of Anhalt, July 10, 1545, _ib._, 6, p. 370.
[916] _Ib._
[917] Vol. ii., p. 522.
[918] To Lauterbach, Feb. 9, 1544, “Briefe,” 5, p. 629.
[919] To Amsdorf, June 23, 1544, _ib._, p. 670.
[920] To Probst, Dec. 5, 1544, _ib._, p. 703.
[921] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch” (1538), p. 34.
[922] P. 172 f.
[923] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichn.,” (1531 and 1532), p. 17.
[924] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, pp. 85, 86.
[925] _Ib._, p. 86.
[926] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 41, p. 233.
[927] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” ed. Kroker, p. 282. Cp. Mathesius,
“Aufzeichn.,” ed. Lœsche, p. 393.
[928] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 287.
[929] Above, p. 229.
[930] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 131.
[931] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 289.
[932] _Ib._, p. 288.
[933] _Ib._, p. 179.
[934] _Ib._, p. 108.
[935] _Ib._, p. 209.
[936] _Ib._, p. 111.
[937] To Amsdorf, Nov. 7, 1543, “Briefe,” 5, p. 600.
[938] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p. 87.
[939] _Ib._, p. 89.
[940] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 172 f.
[941] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 41, p. 233.
[942] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 130.
[943] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p. 86.
[944] _Ib._, p. 87.
[945] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 57, p. 95 f.
[946] Schlaginhaufen, _ib._, p. 30.
[947] See above, p. 226.
[948] Above, vol. iii., p. 362 ff.
[949] April 28, 1548, “Corp. ref.,” 6, p. 879 _sqq._
[950] G. Kawerau, “Luthers Stellung zu den Zeitgenossen Erasmus,
Zwingli und Melanchthon” (Reprint from “Deutsch-evang. Bl.,” 1906,
1-3), p. 30.
[951] F. Loofs, “DG.,” 4, 1906, p. 866, n. 3.
[952] G. Ellinger, “Melanchthon,” 1902, p. 535 f.
[953] Nov. 12, 1538, “Corp. ref.,” 3, p. 606.
[954] To Gelous, May 20, 1559, _ib._, 9, p. 822: “_Pendeo velut ad
Caucasum adfixus, etsi verius sum ἐπινηθεύς quam προμηθεύς et laceror,
non ut ille vulturibus tantum, sed etiam a cuculis_.”
[955] C. Sell, “Philipp Melanchthon und die deutsche Reformation bis
1531” (“Schriften des Vereins f. RG.,” 14, 3, 1897), p. 117.
[956] Nov. 13, 1536, “Corp. ref.,” 3, p. 187.
[957] Dec. 7, 1537, _ib._, p. 460.
[958] Feb. 13, 1538, _ib._, p. 488.
[959] June 24, 1545, _ib._, 5, p. 776: “_tam atrocia certamina inter
collegas_.”
[960] Dec. 25, 1544, to Camerarius, “Corp. ref.,” 5, p. 554.
[961] “Die Reformation,” 1, p. 376.
[962] Oct. 11, 1538, to Caspar Borner, “Corp. ref.,” 3, p. 596.
[963] April 30, 1550, _ib._, 7, p. 580.
[964] Cp. Döllinger, _ib._, 1, p. 379 f.
[965] From a New-Year’s letter (Jan. 1, 1540) to Veit Dietrich, “Corp.
ref.,” 3, p. 895.
[966] Sept. 9, 1541, to Veit Dietrich, _ib._, 4, p. 654, where he
continues: “_Tegere hæc soleo, sed, mihi crede, manent cicatrices_.”
[967] About July 16, 1537, “Corp. ref.,” 3, p. 390 _sq._ Before this he
had said in humanistic style: “_Video novum quoddam genus sophistarum
nasci; velut ex gigantum sanguine alii gigantes nati sunt.... Metuo
maiores ecclesiæ motus. Hie cum hydra decerto. Uno represso alii multi
exoriuntur._”
[968] “Corp. ref.,” 3, p. 503 _sqq._ Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 451.
[969] Cp. “RE. f. prot. Th.,”³, Art. “Melanchthon,” p. 523.
[970] Cp. Döllinger, “Reformation,” 1, p. 394.
[971] On March 9, 1559, to the Elector August of Saxony, “Corp. ref.,”
9, p. 766 _sq._ Cp. “RE.,” _ib._, p. 525.
[972] As early as Aug. 28, 1535, “Corp. ref.,” 2, p. 917.
[973] Sep. 8, 1544, to Peter Medmann, _ib._, 5, p. 478.
[974] Oct. 6, 1538, _ib._, 3, p. 594.
[975] See Döllinger, “Reformation,” 1, p. 354, and 3, p. 270.
[976] See above, vol. iii., p. 421 f.
[977] Kolde in the Preface to the “Symbol. Bücher,”^[10], p. xxvi.,
No. 3. The Articles of Agreement were published in full by G. Mentz
in 1905, “Die Wittenberger Artikel von 1536” (“Quellenschriften zur
Gesch. des Prot.,” Hft. 2). Letter to the Elector, “Werke,” Erl. ed.,
55, p. 128; “Briefe,” 4, p. 683 (“Briefwechsel,” 10, p. 315, where
Enders, as late as 1903, had to admit: “The doctrinal articles herewith
transmitted are not known”). On the negotiations with the English, see
vol. iv., p. 10 f.
[978] Thus Mentz, the editor, p. 11. Some theses from these Articles of
Agreement proposed by the Wittenbergers but not accepted by the English
deserve to be quoted from the new sources; their divergence from
Luther’s ordinary teaching is self-evident. Of good works: “_Bona opera
non sunt precium pro vita æterna, tamen sunt necessaria ad salutem,
quia sunt debitum, quod necessario reconciliationem sequi debet_.” In
support of this Mt. xix. 17 is quoted: “_Si vis ad vitam ingredi serva
mandata_.” Again: “_Docemus requiri opera a Deo mandata et quidem non
tantum externa civilia opera, sed etiam spirituales motus, timorem Dei,
fiduciam_,” etc. (p. 34).—“_Hæc obedientia in reconciliatis fide iam
reputatur esse iustitia et quædam legis impletio_” (p. 40).—“_Docendæ
sunt ecclesiæ de necessitate et de dignitate huius obedientiæ,
videlicet quod ... hæc obedientia seu iusticia bonæ conscientiæ sit
necessaria quia debitum est, quod necessario sequi reconciliationem
debet_” (p. 42).—Merit, at least in a certain restricted sense, is
also admitted: “_Ad hæc bona opera sunt meritoria iuxta illud_ (1 Cor.
iii. 8): _Unusquisque accipiet mercedem iuxta proprium laborem_.”
(Cp. the Apologia of the Confession of Augsburg, “Symb. Bücher,” pp.
120, 148.) “_Etsi enim conscientia non potest statuere, quod propter
dignitatem operum detur vita æterna, sed nascimur filii Dei et hæredes
per misericordiam_ (which is also the Catholic teaching) _tamen hæc
opera in filiis merentur præmia corporalia et spiritualia et gradus
præmiorum_,” etc. (p. 46). The ambiguity concerning Christ’s Presence
in the Eucharist (p. 62) is due to Melanchthon, not to Luther.
[979] Kolde, _ib._
[980] “Corp. ref.,” 5, p. 497.
[981] To Melanchthon, June 18, 1540, “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 5, p. 293;
“Briefwechsel,” 13, p. 91; “Ratzebergers Gesch.,” p. 102 ff.; “Corp.
ref.,” 3, pp. 1060 _sq._, 1077, 1081. To Johann Lang, July 2, 1540,
“Briefe,” _ib._, p. 297; “Briefwechsel,” 13, p. 109: “_mortuum enim
invenimus; miraculo Dei manifesto vivit_.” See vol. iii., p. 162.
[982] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 689; “Anal. Luth.,” ed. Kolde, p. 402;
“Corp. ref.,” 5, p. 522.
[983] “Corp. ref.,” 5, p. 524.
[984] Cp., for instance, “Luthers Briefwechsel,” 12, pp. 106, 116, 123,
etc.; 13, pp. 282, 318.
[985] Discourse of Feb. 22, 1546, “Corp. ref.,” 11, p. 726 _sqq._
[986] “Corp. ref.,” 6, p. 59.
[987] For further details, see below, vol. vi., xl., 3.
[988] On what follows, see Loofs, “DG.,”^[4], p. 867 f.
[989] Ellinger, “Melanchthon,” p. 554.
[990] _Ib._, p. 569.
[991] Cp. the report of Peter Canisius to Lainez, General of the
Jesuits, Braunsberger, “Epistulæ b. Petri Canisii,” 2, p. 176 _sq._
[992] Ellinger, _ib._, p. 570.
[993] _Ib._, p. 571.
[994] Thus the Protestant theologian Nitzsch, see “RE. f. prot. Th.,”³,
Art. “Melanchthon,” p. 525. Loofs,^[4], p. 904. “The religious conference
suffered shipwreck from want of unity amongst the Evangelicals.” The
Gnesio-Lutherans demanded (Sep. 27) that all errors on “the Supper”
should be condemned, “ whether emanating from Carlstadt, Zwingli,
Œcolampadius, Calvin or others.” Calvin’s doctrine was, however,
substantially identical with Melanchthon’s at that time.
[995] “RE.,” _ib._
[996] To Camerarius, Feb. 16, 1559, “Corp. ref.,” 9, p. 744.
[997] _Ib._, p. 822. As a Humanist he was fond of conjuring up heaven
under the image of the Academy. In his address to the students on
Luther’s death he says, the former had been snatched away “_in æternam
scholam et in æterna gaudia_.”
[998] To Buchholzer, Aug. 10, 1559, _ib._, p. 898.
[999] _Ib._, p. 1098.
[1000] Thus in his “Testament” of April 18, 1560, _ib._, p. 1099.
[1001] Reprinted in “Opera Ph. Melanchtonis,” t. 1, Vitebergæ, 1562, p.
364 _sqq._
[1002] Jan. 28, 1538, “Zeitschr. f. KG.,” 20, p. 247 ff. G. Kawerau,
“Die Versuche Melanchthon zur kathol. Kirche zurückzuführen,” 1902
(“Schriften des Vereins f. RG.,” No. 73), p. 43.
[1003] To Vergerio, June 1, 1534, “Zeitschr. f. KG.,” 19, p. 222.
Kawerau, _ib._, p. 79.
[1004] To Bishop Cricius, June 2, 1534, in his “Velitatio in Apologiam
Ph. Melanchthonis,” 1534, Bl. A. 6 ff. Kawerau, _ib._, p. 23 f.
[1005] “Velitatio,” Bl A. 4. Kawerau, p. 25.
[1006] “Zeitschr. f. KG.,” 18, p. 424. Kawerau, p. 64 f.
[1007] Vol. ii., p. 438 ff., and above, p. 266. Cp. vol. iii., p. 447
(Cologne Book of Reform).
[1008] Cp. above, p. 265, n. 6.
[1009] The authors of the Article on Melanchthon in the “RE. f. prot.
Th.,”³, say, p. 535: “A Humanist mode of thought forms the background
of his theology”; Melanchthon strove for a kind of compromise between
Christian truth and ancient philosophy.
[1010] “Versuche,” p. 83, with the above example taken from “Corp.
ref.,” 12, p. 269.
[1011] Cp., for instance, the letter of May 12, 1536, to Erasmus,
“Corp. ref.,” 3, p. 68 _sq._ Kawerau, _ib._, p. 32.
[1012] Cp. the Article quoted, p. 268, n. 2.
[1013] _Ib._, and pp. 532, 537 of the “Realenzyklopädie.”
[1014] F. X. Funk in the “KL.,”², Art. “Melanchthon,” p. 1212 f.
[1015] For a supposed remark of Luther’s to Catherine Bora which would
seem even more clearly to admit the uncertainty of the new faith, see
below, p. 372 f.
[1016] “L’Histoire de la naissance, progrez et decadence de l’hérésie
de ce siècle,” l. 2, ch. 9 (Rouen, 1648), p. 166: “On éscrit, qu’éstant
sur le poinct de rendre l’âme, l’an 1560, sa mère,” etc. The author is
quite uncritical (see below, p. 271).
[1017] “Corp. ref.,” 1, p. 1083, Melanchthon to Camerarius. C. G.
Strobel, “Melanchthoniana,” 1771, p. 9.
[1018] Cp. N. Müller, “Jakob Schwarzerd,” 1908 (“Schriften des Vereins
f. RG.,” Nos. 96-97), p. 42, on “Corp. ref.,” 2, p. 563. Müller assumes
(p. 41) that the visit took place in 1524.
[1019] “Theol. Stud. und Krit.,” 1, 1830, p. 119 ff., “Die Schwarzerd.”
[1020] P. 122.
[1021] In the collection of essays published by the Wittenberg
“Academy,” “Memoria Ph. Melanchthonis, finito post eius exitum sæculo
II.”
[1022] 3rd ed., Art. “Melanchthon,” p. 531.
[1023] G. Ellinger, “Melanchthon,” 1902, p. 191. F. X. Funk remarks in
the “KL.,”², Art. “Melanchthon,” p. 1212: Melanchthon, “after having
made her [his mother] repeat her prayers, is said to have assured her,
that if she continued thus to believe and to pray, she might well live
in hopes of being saved.”
[1024] “Des Teutschen ... Rekreation,” Munich, 1612, 4, p. 143. The
author, who died in 1620, is no authority on historical matters beyond
his own times and surroundings.
[1025] “Vitæ theologorum,” p. 333.
[1026] “RE. f. prot. Th.,”³, Art. “Melanchthon,” p. 531, with reference
to Melanchthon’s “Postille,” 2, p. 477.
[1027] Above, p. 270, n. 5, p. 41.
[1028] “Historia comitiorum a. 1530 Augustæ celebratorum,” 3, p. 20.
[1029] Gotha, 1876, p. 191.
[1030] J. B. Hablitzel, “Liter. Beil. zur Augsburger Postztng.,” 1905,
No. 40 f.
[1031] Printed in the Jena edition of Luther’s German works, 5, 1557,
p. 41.
[1032] “Apologia,” Ingolstadii, 1542, p. clii.
[1033] Willibald Pirkheimer, who was then on Luther’s side, is usually
regarded as the author of this screed published under the pseudonym
of J. F. Cottalambergius. Like some others, K. Bauer (“Schriften des
Vereins f. RG.,” No. 100, 1910, p. 272) rejects his authorship. The
passage in question appears in Böcking’s edition, “Hutteni opp.,” 4,
1860, p. 533.
[1034] “Johannes Eck,” 1865, p. 275 f.
[1035] 1906, p. 885.
[1036] To Melanchthon, Dec. 7, 1540, “Briefwechsel,” 13, p. 227.
[1037] To Melanchthon, Nov. 21, 1540, _ib._, p. 215.
[1038] To Link, Sep. 8, 1541, “Briefe,” 5, p. 399.
[1039] To Jonas, Jan. 23, 1542, _ib._, p. 429.
[1040] To Lauterbach, April 2, 1543, _ib._, pp. 551, 552.
[1041] To the Evangelical Brethren at Venice, June 13, 1543, _ib._, p.
569.
[1042] To Lauterbach, July 25, 1542, _ib._, p. 487 f.
[1043] To Cordatus, Dec. 3, 1544, _ib._, p. 702.
[1044] To Probst, Jan. 17 (the year of his death), 1546, _ib._, p. 778.
[1045] To Jonas, Sep. 30, 1543, _ib._, p. 591: “_quorum glorias pro
stercore diaboli habeo_.”
[1046] To Justus Menius, Jan. 10, 1542, “Briefe,” 5, p. 426, on “Master
Grickel,” i.e. Agricola.
[1047] To Caspar Schwenckfeld’s messenger (1543), “Briefe,” 5, p. 614:
“_Increpet Dominus in te, Satan_,” etc.
[1048] Cp. for what follows N. Paulus, “Hexenwahn und Hexenprozess
vornehmlich im 16. Jahrh.,” 1910, where not only Luther’s (pp. 20 ff.,
48 ff.) but also the Zwinglians’ and Calvinists’ attitude to the matter
is dealt with.
[1049] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 305.
[1050] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 1, p. 123 ff.; Erl. ed., 21, p. 26 ff.;
cp. p. 127=28 ff.
[1051] _Ib._, p. 211=127.
[1052] _Ib._, p. 205=121.
[1053] _Ib._, p. 134=36.
[1054] _Ib._, Erl. ed., 3², p. 477 f., in the first Sermon on the
Angels.
[1055] _Ib._, Weim. ed., 10, 1, 1, p. 590 f.; Erl. ed., 10², p. 359. In
the editions from 1522 to 1540 the word “conjugal” is inserted before
“members.”
[1056] _Ib._
[1057] _Ib._, 32, p. 112 ff.=18², p. 64 ff.
[1058] _Ib._, p. 120=76.
[1059] _Ib._, 34, 2, p. 263 f.=19², p. 75.
[1060] _Ib._, 32, p. 114=18², p. 68.
[1061] “Drey Sermon, Von den Heiligen Engeln, Vom Teufel, Von der
Menschen Seele,” Wittenberg, 1563. In the sermon “Vom Teufel.” See N.
Paulus, “Augsburger Postztng.,” 1903, May 8.
[1062] July 26, 1540, “Briefwechsel,” 13, p. 147.
[1063] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” ed. Kroker, p. 331.
[1064] On July 14, 1528, “Briefwechsel,” 6, p. 299. Cp. Mathesius,
_ib._, p. 179: “Nothing is more certain than that the insane are not
without their devils; these make them madder; the devil knows those who
are of a melancholy turn, and of this tool he makes use.” Thus Luther
in 1540.
[1065] “_Sic informat [diabolus] animam et corpus, ut obsessi nihil
audiant, videant, sentiant; sed ipse est iis pro anima._” Mathesius,
_ib._, p. 198 (in 1540). Cp. also “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 13, with
reference to 1 Cor. v. 5. The passage occurs in the Table-Talk, ch.
24, No. 68. Cp. Erl. ed., vol. 59, p. 289 to vol. 60, p. 75. This
chapter is followed by others on similar subjects. Demonology occupies
altogether a very large place. Ch. 59, “On the Angels,” comprises
hardly four pages.
[1066] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 326 (in 1543).
[1067] Dec. 1, 1544, “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 5, p. 699 f.
[1068] July 25, 1542: “_quum ipse occiderit eos et imaginatione animis
impressa coegerit eos putare, quod se ipsos suspenderent_.”
[1069] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 59. Mathesius, “Aufzeichn.,” p.
198.
[1070] Mathesius, _ib._ Cp. “Werke,” Erl. ed., 21, p. 127.
[1071] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 24; cp. pp. 25, 27.
[1072] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 269; “Aufzeichn.,” p. 300.
[1073] Mathesius, in both the passages quoted. Cp. Lauterbach,
“Tagebuch,” p. 105 (1538): “_habuit fœdus cum Sathana ipse et pater
eius, et fœdissima scortatione occubuit securissime_.”
[1074] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p. 207, under the heading
“_Spectra_.” In the same volume pp. 218-242 treat of the devil under
the heading “_Diabolus, illius natura, conatus, insidiæ, figura,
expulsio_.” In the second volume the ch. on “_tentationes_,” pp.
287-320, and, in the third, that on “_fascinationes et incantationes_,”
pp. 9-14, are important.
[1075] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 224 f. (1540).
[1076] _Ib._, p. 402: “_dixit de machinis bellicis et bombardis_,” etc.
(1537).
[1077] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 23.
[1078] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 262 (1542-43).
[1079] _Ib._, p. 380 (1536).
[1080] _Ib._, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 32, p. 291: “We see how the milk
thieves and other witches often do great mischief” (1543). Cp.
Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 121.
[1081] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 117 (1532).
[1082] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 59, p. 304.
[1083] _Ib._, 60, p. 73.
[1084] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 322 (1543).
[1085] _Ib._, p. 412 f.
[1086] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 24, p. 130; Erl. ed., 18², p. 70 (1530).
[1087] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 395 f. (1537).
[1088] _Ib._, p. 198 (1540).
[1089] _Ib._, p. 240.
[1090] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 70.
[1091] _Ib._, Weim. ed., 10, 1, 1, p. 585; Erl. ed. 10², p. 354.
[1092] _Ib._, Erl. ed., 60, p. 70. Cp. p. 31 and Weim. ed., 10, 1, 1,
p. 585; Erl. ed., 10², p. 354.
[1093] _Ib._, Erl. ed., 60, p. 63.
[1094] _Ib._, Weim. ed., 10, 1, 1, p. 585; Erl. ed., 10², p. 354.
[1095] _Ib._, Erl. ed., 60, p. 63.
[1096] _Ib._, 59, p. 348.
[1097] _Ib._
[1098] _Ib._, 60, p. 70.
[1099] _Ib._, 59, p. 348.
[1100] _Ib._, Weim. ed., 40, 1, p. 316; Irmischer, 1, p. 279, in the
fuller Commentary on Galatians (1535). Cp. Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p.
357: “_In Antinomis furit Sathan_”(1539). _Ib._, p. 206: “_Anabaptistæ
non intelligunt iram Dei, sic excæcantur a diabolo; quare non anguntur,
ut sancti, qui hæc omnia sentiunt; diabolus enim ipsorum aures et
animos tenet occupatos_,” etc. (1540).
[1101] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 40, 1, p. 316; Irmischer, 1, p. 279.
[1102] _Ib._
[1103] _Ib._, Weim. ed., 2, p. 505 f.; Irmischer, 3, p. 251, in the
first Commentary on Galatians.
[1104] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 97 (1540). Cp. “Werke,” Weim. ed.,
1, p. 409; “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 12, p. 23, in the Exposition of the Ten
Commandments, 1518.
[1105] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 59, p. 321.
[1106] _Ib._, Weim. ed., 40, 1, pp. 315, 317, 319; Irmischer, 1, pp.
278, 280, 283; Erl. ed., 49, p. 19, in the Exposition of St. John
xiv.-xvi. Erl. ed., 59, p. 335.
[1107] Cp., for instance, Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” pp. 55, 111.
Mathesius, “Tischreden,” pp. 97, 130, 174, 198, 279, 380, 436. “Werke,”
Erl. ed., 59, pp. 317, 320-323; 60, pp. 24, 27, 57, 63, 71, etc.
[1108] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 15, p. 560.
[1109] _Ib._, 29, p. 401. Sermon of 1529. Similarly in the sermon of
July 2, 1536, _ib._, 41, p. 633. Cp. N. Paulus, “Hexenwahn” (see above,
p. 278, n. 1), p. 31.
[1110] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 11², p. 136. Sermon on Oculi Sunday.
[1111] Mathesius, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 248.
[1112] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 22. Cp. p. 38 f.
[1113] _Ib._, 11², p. 136.
[1114] _Ib._, 59, p. 287.
[1115] _Ib._, p. 324.
[1116] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 110. “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 2, p.
108.
[1117] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 179; “Aufzeichn.,” pp. 87, 127.
[1118] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 13.
[1119] _Ib._, 59, p. 287. There ever was a widespread tendency to
connect the Evil One with the water.
[1120] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 380 (1536).
[1121] _Ib._, p. 118 (1540).
[1122] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 59, p. 340.
[1123] _Ib._, 60, pp. 64, 66
[1124] _Ib._, 59, p. 138.
[1125] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 129 (1540).
[1126] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 58, p. 129. The account assures us that he
claimed to have seen the apparition himself.
[1127] _Ib._, 31, p. 363.
[1128] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 25, p. 140, in the shorter Exposition of
Isaias iii. 21.
[1129] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 71.
[1130] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 300 (1542-44).
[1131] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 73.
[1132] _Ib._, 59, p. 294; cp. 60, p. 123. “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1,
pp. 235, 318. For an explanation of the word here used see Förstemann,
“Tischreden,” 3, p. 132, n. 3.
[1133] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 19², p. 281 f.
[1134] _Ib._, 32, p. 291 in “Vom Schem Hamphoras,” 1543.
[1135] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 258 (1542-43).
[1136] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p. 208.
[1137] _Ib._, p. 218.
[1138] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 46, p. 211 f., in the Exposition of John i.
and ii. (1537-38).
[1139] _Ib._, 60, p. 70.
[1140] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 40, 1, p. 315; Irmischer, 1, p. 277 _sq._
[1141] “Hexenwahn” (see above, p. 278, n. 1), pp. 45, 67.
[1142] “Theol. Literaturztng.,” 1909, p. 147. Paulus, _ib._, p. 46.
[1143] Leipzig, 1904, p. 518. Cp. Paulus, _ib._, pp. 1-10.
[1144] Cp. Paulus, _ib._, pp. 1-19.
[1145] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 1, p. 398 ff.; “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 12, p. 3
_sqq._
[1146] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 129 (1540): “_hoc malum (sagarum)
invalescit iterum_.” In 1519 he had lamented that “this evil is
noticeably on the increase.” “Werke,” Weim. ed., 2, p. 590; Irmischer,
3, p. 426, first Commentary on Galatians.
[1147] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 1, p. 401; “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 12, p. 7.
[1148] _Ib._, p. 406 f.=16.
[1149] _Ib._, Erl. ed., 60, p. 57 (heading).
[1150] _Ib._, p. 79.
[1151] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 129 (1540).
[1152] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 1, p. 406 f.; “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 12, p. 20.
[1153] _Ib._, 12, p. 345. Sermon of 1523.
[1154] “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 1, p. 190.
[1155] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 2, p. 590; Irmischer, 3, p. 426.
[1156] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 156; Nov. 4, 1538.
[1157] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 40, 1, p. 314 ff.; Irmischer, 1, p. 277
_sqq._, detailed Commentary on Galatians which is fuller on the
question of sorcery than the Commentary of 1519 (“Werke,” Weim. ed., 2,
p. 590; Irmischer, 3, p. 426).
[1158] _Ib._, 40, 1, p. 314; Irmischer, 1, p. 277.
[1159] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 121. Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 380.
“Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 3, p. 12.
[1160] See Lauterbach’s “Tagebuch,” p. 117, for both.
[1161] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 24, p. 162; Erl. ed., 33, p. 161. Cp. Erl.
ed., 60, pp. 37, 39.
[1162] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 198 (1540). “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60,
p. 39 f.
[1163] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 198. “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 40.
[1164] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 129 (1540).
[1165] _Ib._, p. 380 (1536).
[1166] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 121. “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 3, p.
12.
[1167] Lauterbach, _ib._
[1168] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 129.
[1169] _Ib._: there is no “_motus de loco_,” etc., all this
“_phantasmata sunt_.” Similarly in “Werke,” Weim. ed., 1, p. 409; “Opp.
lat. exeg.,” 12, p. 17 _sq._: the metamorphosis of old women into
tom-cats and the nocturnal excursions of the witches to banquets are
“delusions of the devil, not actual occurrences”; he, however, admits
the possibility.
[1170] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 111.
[1171] See Paulus, _ib._, pp. 25 ff., 49.
[1172] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 111.
[1173] _Ib._, p. 117, Aug. 20, 1538.
[1174] _Ib._, p. 121, Aug. 25, 1538. “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 3, p. 12.
[1175] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 79.
[1176] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 16, p. 551 (“_occidantur_,” etc.).
[1177] See Paulus, _ib._, p. 43 f., where he quotes Luther’s “Von
den Conciliis und Kirchen” (1539), in support of the duty of burning
witches on account of their compact with the devil, quite apart from
the harm they may cause—“Werke,” Erl. ed., 25², p. 441 f.: The witches
or “devil’s whores, who are burnt at the stake whenever they are
caught, as is right, not for stealing milk but because of the blasphemy
by which they strengthen the cause of the devil, his sacraments and
Churches.”
[1178] Cp. the Eisleben edition (1569), pp. 280, 280´: “They should
be hurried to the stake. The lawyers require too many witnesses and
proofs, they despise these open, etc.” The same occurs in the Frankfurt
edition (1568), p. 218´.
[1179] “Pythonissa,” Frankfurt, 1660, pp. 471, 472, from Luther’s
Works, Erl. ed., 58, p. 129 (above, p. 287).
[1180] “Hexenwahn,” p. 75 ff.
[1181] _Ib._, p. 54 ff.
[1182] See Janssen, “Hist. of the German People” (Engl. Trans.), vol.
xvi., pp. 269 to 526, a very full account of the Witch trials, etc.
[1183] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 129. From May 21 to June 11, 1540.
See above, p. 290, n. 3.
[1184] Cp. N. Paulus, “Hexenwahn,” pp. 52, 66.
[1185] Karl Adolf Menzel, “Neuere Gesch. der Deutschen,” 3², 1854, p.
65, is of opinion that the reformers of the 16th century lent the whole
weight of their position and convictions to strengthening the belief in
witches. Janssen, “Hist. of the German People,” _loc. cit._: “Through
Luther and his followers belief in the power and influence of the
devil, who was active in all men and who exercised his arts especially
through witches and sorcerers, received an impetus and spread in a
manner never known before.” J. Hansen, “Zauberwahn und Hexenprozess im
MA.,” 1900, p. 536 f., also admits that Protestantism had increased
the readiness to accept such belief. Cp. the admissions of Riezler, v.
Bezold and Steinhausen quoted by Paulus, “Hexenwahn,” p. 48 f.
[1186] Cp. J. Diefenbach, “Der Zauberglaube des 16. Jahrh. nach den
Katechismen Luthers und Canisius,” 1900.
[1187] To Catherine Bora, Feb. 7, 1546, “Briefe,” 5, p. 787.
[1188] See below, vol. vi., xxxvi., 3.
[1189] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 295 (1542). “Werke,” Erl. ed., 61,
p. 117.
[1190] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 317.
[1191] _Ib._, p. 267, speaking of a case of long-continued adulterous
incest between brother and sister (1542): “This was the work of the
devil himself,” etc.
[1192] “_Satanicum tempus et sæculum._” To Jakob Probst, Dec. 5, 1544,
“Briefe,” 5, p. 703.
[1193] To Amsdorf, Jan. 8, 1546, _ib._, p. 774.
[1194] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 174 (1540).
[1195] On the great tragedy between God and Satan in which he
(particularly in 1541) is so prominently entangled, see the letter to
Melanchthon, April 4, 1541, “Briefwechsel,” 13, p. 291.
[1196] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 307 (1542-43).
[1197] To Johann Silvius Egranus, March 24, 1518, “Briefwechsel,” 1, p.
173.
[1198] See above, p. 226 ff.
[1199] Thus as early as June 27, 1522, to Staupitz at Salzburg,
“Briefwechsel,” 3, p. 407, with the emphatic assurance: “_sed Christus,
qui cœpit, conteret eum, frustra renitentibus omnibus portis inferi_.”
[1200] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 61, p. 117.
[1201] _Ib._, 59, p. 342.
[1202] _Ib._, 57, p. 65.
[1203] _Ib._, 58, p. 301.
[1204] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p. 222.
[1205] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, pp. 73, 55. Mathesius, “Aufzeichn.,” ed.
Lœsche, p. 113.
[1206] P. 200. Cp. above, p. 174.
[1207] P. 193´.
[1208] “Cochlæi Acta, etc.” (1549), p. 2: “_quod etiam corporaliter
visus quibusdam fuerit cum eo conversari_.”
[1209] “I feel him well enough.” “Werke,” Erl. ed., 58, p. 301.
[1210] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 198.
[1211] _Ib._, p. 331.
[1212] To Wenceslaus Link, July 14, 1528, “Briefwechsel,” 6, p. 301.
[1213] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 24, p. 51; Erl. ed., 33, p. 55.
[1214] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 51, p. 90 f. (1534).
[1215] _Ib._, cp. above, p. 5.
[1216] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 279.
[1217] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p. 235.
[1218] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 10, 1, 1, p. 586; Erl. ed., 10², p. 355,
Church-postils.
[1219] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 70.
[1220] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 55 f.
[1221] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 59, p. 340. Lauterbach, _ib._, p. 56.
[1222] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p. 228. “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p.
60, under the heading “Satan flees from music”: “It was thus that David
with his harp abated Saul’s temptations when the devil plagued him” (3
Kg. xvi. 23).
[1223] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 2, p. 313.
[1224] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 59, p. 343 f.
[1225] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 56.
[1226] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 3, p. 165.
[1227] Cordatus, “Tagebuch,” p. 27.
[1228] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 3.
[1229] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 82.
[1230] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p. 222.
[1231] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, pp. 55, 73.
[1232] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 30.
[1233] _Ib._, p. 163.
[1234] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 88 f. Cp. “Luthers Werke,” Erl.
ed., 60, p. 101 f., n. 59.
[1235] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 121. Cp. “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 3,
p. 12, and Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 380, from Notes of Lauterbach
and Weller. “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 78.
[1236] Lauterbach, _ib._ In the Latin “Colloquia” as well as in
the German Table-Talk (_ib._), in connection with “the clergy and
schoolmasters” of the past, it is related, that, in their day, the
head of an ox was taken from the fence and thrown into the St. John’s
bonfire, whereby a great number of witches were attracted to the place.
Then follows at once in both passages, in order to emphasise the
advance which had been made: “But Dr. Pommer’s plan is the best,” etc.,
etc. See vol. iii., p. 230, n. 2.
[1237] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p. 218.
[1238] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 59.
[1239] _Ib._, 31, p. 311.
[1240] _Ib._, p. 316 f.
[1241] _Ib._, 60, p. 61.
[1242] _Ib._, and 59, p. 294.
[1243] See below, xxxiii., 4.
[1244] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 129.
[1245] Cordatus, “Tagebuch,” p. 312. Cp. “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 3, p.
160 _sq._, and below, p. 314, n. 3.
[1246] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 179 (1540), where Kroker remarks: “A
favourite saying with Luther,” and quotes Cordatus, “Tagebuch,” pp. 130
and 295. “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p. 215, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p.
124.
[1247] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 6, p. 277 ff.; Erl. ed., 27, p. 86 ff.
[1248] _Ib._, 7, p. 262 ff.=27, p. 200 ff.
[1249] In the writing against Alveld, “Werke,” Weim. ed., 6, p. 286;
Erl. ed., 27, p. 87.
[1250] “Briefe,” 6, p. 321, of 1542. See above, vol. iv., p. 292.
[1251] Nov. 6, 1542, “Briefe,” 5, p. 505; cp. 6, p. 320.
[1252] Feb. 10, 1546, _ib._, 5, p. 789.
[1253] Feb. 7, 1546, _ib._, p. 787.
[1254] Feb. 1, 1546, _ib._, p. 784.
[1255] Above, vol. ii., p. 140 f.; also vol. iii., pp. 233 ff., 264
ff., 301; vol. iv., pp. 161 ff., 318 ff.
[1256] Feb. 6, 1546, “Briefe,” 5, p. 786.
[1257] Above, vol. iii., p. 305.
[1258] _Ib._, p. 268.
[1259] On certain frivolous expressions which Luther was fond of using
of holy things his opponents seized as proofs that he was little better
than an atheist or blasphemer. There is indeed no doubt that religious
reverence suffered by his jests. Do you suppose Christ was drunk, he
repeatedly asks, when He commanded this or that? The Son of Man came to
save what was lost, but He set about it foolishly enough. Unless Our
Lord God understands a joke, then I shouldn’t like to go to heaven.
He even has a jest about the feathers of the Holy Ghost, pokes fun at
the Saints, etc., etc.—On the occasion of his journey to Heidelberg,
in 1518, undertaken at a grave juncture when the penalties of the
Church were hanging over his head, he said jestingly, that he had no
need of contrition, confession or satisfaction, the hardships of the
journey being equal to “_contritio perfecta_,” etc. (“Briefwechsel,” 1,
p. 184). The Pietists were not so far wrong when they asked in their
day: “Who would wish to approve all the jests of that holy man, our
dearly-beloved Luther?” (Cp. Frank, “Luther im Spiegel seiner Kirche”
(“Zeitschr. f. wiss. Theol.,” 1905, p. 473.)) “Some readers may, for
instance, be scandalised at the passages where Luther makes fun of
Scripture texts or articles of faith, e.g. the Trinity.” Thus in the
“Beil. z. M. Allg. Ztng.,” 1904, No. 26.
[1260] See vol. iii., p. 149 ff.
[1261] See vol. ii., p. 137.
[1262] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 6, p. 323; Erl. ed., 27, p. 138.
[1263] _Ib._, p. 391 f.=23.
[1264] March 5, 1522, _ib._, Erl. ed., 53, p. 106 f. (“Briefwechsel,”
3, p. 296).
[1265] _Ib._
[1266] June 27, 1530, “Briefwechsel,” 8, p. 35.
[1267] To the Elector Johann Frederick, July 9, 1535, “Werke,” Erl. ed.
55, p. 95 (“Briefwechsel,” 10, p. 169).
[1268] To Johann Rühel, etc., June 15, 1525, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 53, p.
314 (“Briefwechsel,” 5, p. 195).
[1269] See vol. ii., p. 184.
[1270] Dec. 4, 1539, “Briefwechsel,” 12, p. 317.
[1271] Amsdorf to Spalatin, April 4, 1523, see Kolde, “Anal.
Lutherana,” p. 443.
[1272] May 23, 1534, “Werke,” Erl. ed. 55, p. 54 f. “Briefwechsel,” 10,
p. 48.
[1273] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 249.
[1274] Cordatus, “Tagebuch,” p. 450. For other remedies against sadness
mentioned here or elsewhere see above, p. 92 f., and below, p. 323, and
vol. iii., pp. 175 ff., 305 ff.; vol. iv., p. 311 f.
[1275] Bugenhagen’s account of Luther’s illness and temptations of
1527, from the Latin. Walch’s ed. of Luther’s Works, 21, p. 158*; Vogt,
“Bugenhagens Briefwechsel,” 1888, p. 64 ff.
[1276] April 23, 1530, “Briefwechsel,” 7, p. 308.
[1277] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 61, p. 310.
[1278] To Melanchthon, June 29, 1530, “Briefwechsel,” 8, p. 43.
[1279] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 55, p. 86 ff. (“Briefwechsel,” 10, p. 127).
The preface is addressed to Amsdorf.
[1280] See Dietz, “Wörterbuch, etc.”
[1281] _Ib._, p. 89.
[1282] _Ib._, 26², p. 251.
[1283] _Ib._, p. 275.
[1284] _Ib._
[1285] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 390.
[1286] _Ib._
[1287] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 406: “_Mentionem fecit morbi sui
spiritualis. Nam in 14 diebus nihil edit neque bibit neque dormivit._
‘_Quo tempore sæpius disputavi cum Deo_,’” etc.
[1288] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 144.
[1289] _Ib._, p. 113. Cp. “Werke,” Erl. ed., 62, p. 16.
[1290] To Justus Menius, May 1, 1542, “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 5, p. 467.
[1291] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 159, June 18, 1540: “_tentari de
blasphemia, de iudicio Dei, ibi nec peccatum intelligimus nec remedia
novimus_.” According to other passages he is here speaking from his own
experience.
[1292] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p. 222.
[1293] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 57, p. 65.
[1294] _Ib._, p. 66.
[1295] _Ib._, 60, p. 82 f.
[1296] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 34, 2, p. 266; Erl. ed., 19², p. 76. Sermon
at Michaelmas. In place of the devil’s “raging” (“Rasen”), as in Erl.
ed., the Weim. ed. reads “nosing” (“Nasen”) [?“Nahsein”]. Rorer’s MS.
reads: “_Et in me sentio satanæ nisum_.”
[1297] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 36, p. 476; Erl. ed., 18², p. 359, Sermon on
1 John iv. (16-21).
[1298] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 10, 3, pp. 61 f., 63 f.; Erl. ed., 28, pp.
283, 285, at the end of the eight sermons against Carlstadt.
[1299] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p. 221 _sq._
[1300] _Ib._, 3, p. 154 _sq._ “Werke,” Erl. ed., 58, p. 70. Cordatus,
“Tagebuch,” p. 107. Taken from Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 26,
1532.
[1301] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 59, p. 243.
[1302] Schlaginhaufen, p. 11 (Dec. 14, 1531). Cp. “Werke,” Erl. ed.,
60, p. 46.
[1303] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 128.
[1304] “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 18, p. 223.
[1305] See vol. iii., pp. 175 f., 178 f.
[1306] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 11. Cp. _ib._, Veit Dietrich’s
statement, and vol. iii., p. 177 f.
[1307] Schlaginhaufen, p. 41, Jan.-March, 1532. Cp. Cordatus, p. 131;
“Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 2, p. 298; “Werke,” Erl. ed., 58, p. 402.
[1308] Above, p. 7 ff.
[1309] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 58, p. 301.
[1310] _Ib._, p. 301 f.
[1311] _Ib._, 20², 1, p. 161, Sermon on Gal. i. 4 f. (1538).
[1312] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 48, with the addition: “But the
Law must be preached to those who are well.”
[1313] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p. 222.
[1314] Schlaginhaufen, _ib._, p. 122.
[1315] Mathesius, “Aufzeichn.,” ed. Lœsche, p. 411. Cp. Khummer, in
Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 74.
[1316] Cordatus, “Tagebuch,” p. 363.
[1317] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 58, 301.
[1318] _Ib._
[1319] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 21.
[1320] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 159.
[1321] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 47.
[1322] “Vitæ reformatorum,” ed. Neander, “Vita Lutheri,” c. 4, p. 5.
The text was Rom. xi. 32.
[1323] Cp. above, p. 323.
[1324] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 19 ff.
[1325] _Ib._, p. 9. Cp. above, vol. iii., p. 177 f.
[1326] See vol. ii., p. 180 f. Cp. Melanchthon’s statement, p. 177.
[1327] Schlaginhaufen, _ib._, p. 10.
[1328] Mathesius, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 147 f., June 11-19, 1540. See vol.
iii., p. 203 f.
[1329] Schlaginhaufen, _ib._, p. 39.
[1330] July 14, 1528, “Briefwechsel,” 6, p. 300.
[1331] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 40: “_Tristitiæ spiritus est
ipsa conscientia_.” Cp. “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 2, pp. 296, 298, and
“Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, 108.
[1332] Cp. above, p. 66 ff.
[1333] Schlaginhaufen, _ib._, p. 26, Jan.-March, 1532.
[1334] To Link, July 14, 1528, “Briefwechsel,” 6, p. 301 f.
[1335] March 8, 1544, “Briefe,” 5, p. 635: “_solari contra
conscientiam, quæ est mortis sævissimum ministerium_.” Cp. above, p. 67.
[1336] To the Wittenberg Augustinians, Nov. 1, 1521, in the dedication
of his writing “De abroganda missa privata,” “Werke,” Weim. ed., 8, p.
411 f.; “Opp. lat. var.,” 6, p. 116 (“Briefwechsel,” 3, p. 243). Cp.
above, vol. ii., p. 79 ff.
[1337] “_Furebam ita sæva et perturbata conscientia_,” etc. “Opp. lat.
var.,” 1, p. 22. Vol. i., p. 388 ff.
[1338] From the letter to the Augustinians, p. 411 f.=116.
[1339] To Melanchthon, May 26, 1521, “Briefwechsel,” 3, p. 163.
[1340] Khummer (1539), in Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 36: “_per totum
triennium laboravi omnibus desperationibus_.” The reading “_omnibus
desperantibus_” is excluded by what follows: “_scripserunt quidam ad me
fratres ad constantiam me adhortantes_.”
[1341] To Link, Sep. 8, 1541, “Briefe,” 5, p. 399.
[1342] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 9.
[1343] Cordatus, “Tagebuch,” p. 205. “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p. 80.
“Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 160 f.
[1344] “_Acetissimum mihi acetum_,” speaking of the rapacity of the
despoilers of the churches and of the use of church property for purely
private purposes. To Spalatin, Jan. 1, 1527, “Briefwechsel,” 6, p. 3.
On this illness, see below, vol. vi., xxvi., 1.
[1345] “Luthers Werke,” Walch ed., 21, appendix, p. 158*, from
the Latin. Best rendered in the original Latin text in O. Vogt,
“Briefwechsel Bugenhagens,” 1888, p. 64 ff.
[1346] Cp. the account of Jonas, “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 3, p. 160
_sqq._, and better still, Kawerau, “Briefwechsel des Jonas,” 1,
1884-85, p. 104 ff. The account begins: “_Cum mane, ut ipse fatebatur
nobis, habuisset grandem tentationem spiritualem et tamen utcunque ad
se rediisset_.” Kawerau, _ib._, p. 109: “_Dixit (Lutherus) hesternam
tentationem spiritualem duplo fuisse maiorem, quam hanc ægritudinem ad
vesperam subsecutam_.”
[1347] Aug. 2, 1527, “Briefwechsel,” 6, p. 71: “_Agebar fluctibus et
procellis desperationis et blasphemiae.... Deus eruit animam meam de
inferno inferiori_” (Ps. lxxxv. 13).
[1348] Aug. 12, 1527, _ib._, p. 73, “_Agon iste meus_,” etc.
[1349] _Ib._, p. 78.
[1350] _Ib._, p. 84 f.
[1351] To Michael Stiefel, _ib._, p. 104.
[1352] To Justus Jonas, _ib._, p. 106.
[1353] To Melanchthon, _ib._, p. 110: “_cum aliud non quæram aut sitiam
quam propitium Deum_.”
[1354] _Ib._, p. 111. 2 Cor. vii. 5: “_Foris pugnæ, intus timores_”;
Luther: “_pavores_.”
[1355] To Jonas, _ib._, p. 113. He, however, has a joke even here at
the expense of Bugenhagen, who was then staying in his house: “_Salutat
te Pomeranus, hodie cacator purgandus factus_.”
[1356] Cp. Ps. cviii. 17: “_compunctum corde mortificare_.” Luther,
quoting from memory, says: “_contritum corde ad mortificandum_.”
[1357] “_Novissimus omnium hominum._” Cp. Ps. liii. 3: “_novissimus
virorum_,” of the Messias; 1 Cor. iv. 9: “_novissimos ostendit_,” of
the Apostles.—“_Quem Deus percussit, persequuntur_”; cp. Ps. lxviii.
27.
[1358] For the letters quoted, see “Briefwechsel,” under the dates
given.
[1359] To the Elector Johann of Saxony, Jan. 16, 1528, “Werke,” Erl.
ed., 53, p. 215 (“Briefwechsel,” 6, p. 195).
[1360] Jan. or Feb., 1527, “Werke,” Weim. ed., 23, p. 15; Erl. ed., 53,
p. 412 (“Briefwechsel,” 6, p. 15).
[1361] July 14, 1528, “Briefwechsel,” 6, p. 300.
[1362] Cp. the letter to Link of March 7, 1529, _ib._, 7, p. 63.
[1363] Cp. vol. iii., p. 218 ff.
[1364] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 19², p. 350 f., Sermon on Rom. viii. 31
(1537).
[1365] To Link, “Briefwechsel,” 6, p. 214.
[1366] “Briefwechsel,” 7, p. 52: “_ut Dominus non me deserat in manu
Satanæ_.”
[1367] _Ib._, p. 87.
[1368] To Johann Brismann at Riga, _ib._, p. 139. On the extraordinary
states and temptations of certain Saints which some have likened to
Luther’s “temptations,” see below, vol. vi., xxxv., 5, at the end.
[1369] To Link, Oct. 28, 1529, _ib._, p. 179 f. On the Marburg
Conference, see vol. iii., p. 381 f.
[1370] _Ib._, p. 180. Cp. Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 180.
[1371] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 23, p. 13; Erl. ed., 53, p. 411
(“Briefwechsel,” 6, p. 15). Cp. the article on Kling by N. Paulus,
“Katholik,” 1892, 1, p. 146 ff.
[1372] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 23, p. 322; Erl. ed., 63, p. 259, in the
Preface to the work of Justus Menius against Conrad Kling: “Etlicher
gottloser Lere ... Verlegung,” etc., 1527.
[1373] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 26, p. 530 ff.; Erl. ed., 63, p. 271.
[1374] _Ib._, Erl. ed., 56, p. 343 f. Cp. below, xxxiv., 4. [We give it
above in Carlyle’s rendering, “Miscellanies,” “Luther’s Psalm.”]
[1375] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, pp. 177, 646.
[1376] Cp. vol. iii., pp. 48 f., 325 f.
[1377] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 2, p. 41; Erl. ed., 31, p. 20. “Von
heimlichẽ und gestolen Brieffen,” 1529.
[1378] P. Tschackert, “Die Entstehung des Lutherliedes ‘Ein’ feste,’”
etc. (“Theol. Literaturblatt,” 1905, No. 2, and before, in the “N.
kirchl. Zeitschr.,” 1903, Hft. 10).
[1379] Exposition of John xvii., “Werke,” Weim. ed., 28, p. 91; Erl.
ed., 50, p. 174.
[1380] _Ib._, p. 137=213.
[1381] _Ib._, p. 85 f.=169.
[1382] _Ib._, p. 159 f.=233 f.
[1383] _Ib._, p. 199=264.
[1384] _Ib._, p. 182 ff.=252 f.
[1385] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 28, p. 295 ff.; Erl. ed., 50, p. 328 f.
[1386] To Spalatin, April 23, 1530, “Briefwechsel,” 7, p. 308. See
above, p. 315.
[1387] To Melanchthon, May 12, 1530, _ib._, p. 332 f.
[1388] To Jonas, May 19, 1530, _ib._, p. 338.
[1389] To Melanchthon, May 15, 1530, _ib._, p. 335.
[1390] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 203.
[1391] “_Spiritus ille, qui me colaphizavit hactenus._” Cp. 2 Cor. xii.
7: “_angelus satanæ, qui me colaphizet_.”
[1392] “Briefwechsel,” 8, p. 43.
[1393] Oct. 31, 1530, _ib._, p. 301.
[1394] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 87.
[1395] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 374, Oct. 28-Dec. 12, 1536.
[1396] Schlaginhaufen, _ib._
[1397] See above, vol. ii., pp. 391 ff.; vol. iv., pp. 191 ff.
[1398] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 115, March 21 to June 11, 1540.
[1399] To Jakob Probst, Dec. 31, 1527, “Briefwechsel,” 6, p. 169.
[1400] To Johann Hess, Jan. 27, 1528, _ib._, p. 199 f.
[1401] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 19, p. 609 f.; Erl. ed., 38, p. 445 f.,
“Vier trostliche Psalmen” (1526).
[1402] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 295. In 1542-43.
[1403] _Ib._, p. 317, Spring, 1543. His statement runs, that “no
heresiarch can be converted.” “Werke,” Weim. ed., 26, p. 262; cp. 23,
p. 73; Erl. ed., 30, p. 22.
[1404] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 61, p. 5.
[1405] _Ib._
[1406] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 8, p. 683; Erl. ed., 22, p. 53. “Eyn trew
Vormanung,” etc. Cp. his outbursts against the “obstinacy of the
heretics,” “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 2, p. 37 _sqq._: “_Temeritas
Schwermeriorum pestilentissima est_,” etc. P. 40, under the heading:
“_Quomodo sit cum fanaticis agendum_.”
[1407] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 52, p. 24 f. According to his sermons.
[1408] Cp. below, p. 355 f.
[1409] “There is only one article and rule in theology, viz. true faith
or trust in Christ.... The devil has opposed this article from the
beginning of the world.” “Werke,” Erl. ed., 58, p. 398.—“A Christian
must be quite convinced that a thing is so and not otherwise ... so
that he may be able to withstand every temptation and stand up to the
devil and all his angels, nay, even to God Himself, without wavering.”
_Ib._, p. 394.—“Whoever is not sure of his teaching and faith, and yet
wishes to dispute, is done for.” _Ib._—“Satan comes to accuse what is
best; hence a man must have certainty.” “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p.
221.—“For it is absolutely necessary that consciences should reach
certainty and confidence in all matters; if ever a doubt remains, then
everything wobbles.” To N. Hausmann, Dec. 17, 1533, “Briefwechsel,” 9,
p. 363.
[1410] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 317.
[1411] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 2, p. 38.
[1412] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 406, March 21-28, 1537. Cp. above,
p. 319, n. 1.
[1413] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 144.
[1414] _Ib._, p. 128, Sep. 10.
[1415] _Ib._, p. 4, Jan. 5.
[1416] _Ib._, p. 106.
[1417] See below, p. 369 ff. Cp. the previous passage.
[1418] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 2, p. 315. The passage 2 Cor.
xii. 7: “_Datus est mihi stimulus carnis meæ, angelus satanæ, qui
me colaphizet_,” is generally taken with St. Thomas to refer to
temptations of the flesh.
[1419] Khummer in Lauterbach’s “Tagebuch,” p. 73 f. In 1539.
[1420] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 61, p. 197.
[1421] _Ib._, 58, p. 286.
[1422] Mathesius, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 49.
[1423] _Ib._, p. 97.
[1424] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 39, Jan. to March, 1532.
[1425] _Ib._, p. 214. “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 60. Mathesius,
“Aufzeichn.,” p. 213 f. Leonard Beyer had defended Luther’s Theses as a
young Augustinian at the Heidelberg Disputation in 1518.
[1426] Cordatus, “Tagebuch,” p. 129.
[1427] To Jonas, Dec. 30, 1527, “Briefwechsel,” 6, p. 167.
[1428] Cordatus, “Tagebuch,” p. 450: “_aliquis vehementior affectus_.”
Vol. iii., p. 174, n. 1.
[1429] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 69, p. 129; above, vol. iv., p. 311.
[1430] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 515.
[1431] Cordatus, “Tagebuch,” p. 450. “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 2, p.
299. To Hier. Weller, July (?), 1530, “Briefwechsel,” 8, p. 160.
Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 11. See vol. iii., p. 175 ff.
[1432] From Veit Dietrich’s MS. Notes, in Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 516.
[1433] Mathesius, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 97.
[1434] To Wenceslaus Link, July 14, 1528, “Briefwechsel,” 6, p. 301.
[1435] To Hier. Weller, July (?) 1530, _ib._, 8, p. 160.
[1436] _Ib._
[1437] To Wenceslaus Link, in the passage quoted under n. 7; above, p.
339.
[1438] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 176, from Veit Dietrich.
[1439] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 11, Nov. to Dec., 1531. Same in
Veit Dietrich. Cp. “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 47.
[1440] Schlaginhaufen, _ib._
[1441] To Hier. Weller, June 19, 1530, “Briefwechsel,” 8, p. 5.
[1442] Schlaginhaufen, _ib._, pp. 9, 88. “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 2, p.
316. “Werke,” Erl. ed., 52, p. 24 f.
[1443] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 57, p. 99.
[1444] See vol. iii., p. 13 ff.; vol. iv., pp. 413 ff., 440 ff., 444,
448.
[1445] Above, vol. iv., p. 398 ff.
[1446] Above, vol. iv., p. 403 ff.
[1447] _Ib._, pp. 404 f., 410 ff., 414 f.
[1448] Above, vol. iii., pp. 8 ff., 18 ff., and below, xxxiv., 1.
[1449] The “Süddeutsche Blätter f. Kirche u. freies Christentum” (1911,
No. 24) appealed, as against the deposition of Pastor Jatho by the
Spruchkollegium of Berlin, to Luther’s words in the above writing: “In
this matter, i.e. in judging of doctrine, deposing teachers or those
holding a cure of souls, we must pay no heed to human regulations and
laws, to ancient custom and usage, etc. ... the soul must be ruled and
gripped only by the Eternal Word.” “It is high time,” adds the Editor,
“for us again to call to mind that view of faith which gives to the
soul and the conscience that sacred and inalienable right to which
every man has a claim”; he also points out, again appealing to Luther,
the “impossible state of things” to which any compulsion exercised
under plea of the Creed must lead, of which each of the twelve judges
of the Spruchkollegium has a different opinion. “It is admittedly
allowable to deviate to a certain extent from the Confession of the
Church. In this case, however, the judges suddenly turn on a man and
say: But not so far as this. The question is: How far then may one go?”
[1450] “Süddeutsche Bl.,” _ib._
[1451] See above, vol. iv., p. 441.
[1452] Vol. i., pp. 92, 203 f., 213, 231 f.; vol. ii., pp. 232 ff., 286
ff.; vol. iv., p. 434 f.
[1453] Vol. i., p. 187 ff.; vol. ii., pp. 268 ff., 291.
[1454] Vol. ii., p. 397 ff.; vol. iv., p. 526 f., etc.
[1455] Khummer, in Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 73. For Khummer’s Notes
(which end in 1554) see Kroker, Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. xxii., and
Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” Introduction, p. ix. f.—Cp. “Colloq.,” ed.
Bindseil, 3, p. 219.
[1456] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 128, in 1538.—Cp. “Colloq.,” ed.
Bindseil, 2, p. 229 _sq._
[1457] Lauterbach, _ib._, p. 81 (1538). Cp. “Werke,” Erl. ed., 58, p.
374.
[1458] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 313. Cp. “Historien,” p. 147´.
[1459] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 79. Cp. “Werke,” Erl. ed., 58,
p. 103: “That I eat and drink and am at times merry and a good boon
companion,” etc
[1460] “_Ego non intelligo nec possum credere, et omnes apostoli
crediderunt_” (even before the descent of the Holy Ghost).
[1461] See above, p. 241 ff.
[1462] Dec. 8, 1542, “Briefe,” 5, p. 514 f.
[1463] May 5, 1541, “Briefwechsel,” 13, p. 328.
[1464] To Jakob Probst, Dec. 5, 1544, “Briefe,” 5, p. 703. Above, p.
226 ff.
[1465] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 360.
[1466] To Count Albert of Mansfeld, Dec. 8, 1542, “Briefe,” 5, p. 513.
[1467] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 115.
[1468] Aug. 21, 1544, “Briefe,” 5, p. 680. See above, vol. iii., p.
197, n. 1.
[1469] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 58, pp. 380, 393. “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil,
1, p. 59 _sq._ Cordatus, “Tagebuch,” p. 209. From Schlaginhaufen’s
“Aufzeichn.,” p. 132 f., June to Sept., 1532.
[1470] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 113.
[1471] _Ib._, 58, p. 26.
[1472] _Ib._, p. 308.
[1473] “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 18, p. 223, Expos. of Psalm xlv.
[1474] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 58, p. 159.
[1475] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 1, in 1531.
[1476] _Ib._, p. 84, May, 1532.
[1477] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 45.
[1478] Cordatus, “Tagebuch,” p. 452. Cp. “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 110
f.
[1479] Mathesius, “Historien,” p. 147´.
[1480] _Ib._, p. 147.
[1481] See above, vol. iv., p. 218 ff.
[1482] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 57, p. 209, and similarly, 58, p. 385.
[1483] _Ib._, 58, p. 397.
[1484] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 3, p. 52 _sq._
[1485] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 26, p. 155; Erl. ed., 26², p. 296. “Von der
Widdertauffe.” In this passage he tries to prove that the text: “He
who believes and is baptised shall be saved” (Mk. xvi. 16), could not
be quoted in favour of re-baptism; the person baptising could not be
certain that the adults brought faith with them to baptism, nor could
the adult catechumen always be certain he had the faith.
[1486] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 40, p. 325 f., in 1530.
[1487] According to the MS. in the Vatican Library (Palat. 1825,
fol. 117): “_Dum (conscientia mala) præteritum peccatum non potest
mutare et iram futuram nullo modo vitare, necesse est, ut, quocunque
vertatur, angustetur et tribuletur; nec ab his angustiis liberatur,
nisi per sanguinem Christi, quem si per fidem intuita fuerit, credit
et intelligit, peccata sua in eo abluta et ablata esse. Sic per fidem
purificatur simul et quietatur, ut iam nec pœnas formidet præ gaudio
remissionis peccatorum. Ad hanc igitur munditiam nulla lex, nulla opera
et prorsus nihil nisi unicus sanguis Christi facere potest; ne ipse
quidem, nisi cor hominis crediderit eum esse effusum in remissionem
peccatorum._”—Fol. 117´: “_Quæ (fides remissionis peccatorum) haberi
non potest nisi in verbum Dei, quod prædicat nobis, sanguinem Christi
effusum esse in remissionem peccatorum._”—Fol. 118: “_Unde sequitur,
quod hi qui meditantur Christi passionem, tantum ut compatiantur
aut aliud quam fidem consequantur, prope infructuose et gentiliter
meditantur.... Quo frequentius meditetur, eo plenius credatur,
sanguinem Christi pro suis peccatis effusum. Hoc est enim bibere et
manducare spiritualiter, scilicet hac fide in Christum impinguari et
incorporari._”
[1488] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 20², 2, p. 502 ff.
[1489] _Ib._, p. 548 f.
[1490] _Ib._, p. 547
[1491] _Ib._, p. 573.
[1492] _Ib._, p. 554. It is obvious that words such as: I do not
believe as I ought, and: We cannot rise as high as we ought, may, in
themselves, be taken in the best sense seeing they are to be met with
even on the lips of saints. The prayer “_Credo Domine, sed adiuva
incredulitatem meam_” was a usual one with the faithful, even the
most devout. Nor was Luther alone in envying the children their pious
faith (below, p. 369). These passages are, however, not the most
characteristic of Luther’s faith and doubts, rather all those other
sayings, for which he was first and solely responsible and which are
placed in their true light by his theological doctrines, must be
taken together. The plausible-sounding words given above may well be
accepted as proofs of deep feeling, seeing they stand side by side with
other strong expressions of his belief in certain central truths of
Christianity. The longing for improvement may quite well have remained
alive even though the spirit of faith frequently felt itself slighted.
[1493] _Ib._, p. 549.
[1494] _Ib._, p. 523.
[1495] _Ib._, pp. 568 f., 571.
[1496] Cordatus, “Tagebuch,” p. 209. Cp. “Werke,” Erl. ed., 58, pp. 92,
373.
[1497] “Werke,” _ib._, p. 362.
[1498] _Ib._, 59, p. 245.
[1499] _Ib._, 57, p. 32.
[1500] _Ib._, 58, p. 429.
[1501] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 59, p. 242.
[1502] See above, p. 133 ff.
[1503] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 32, 1 ff. Cp. “Briefe,” 5, pp. 147 ff., 183.
[1504] Cp. “Werke,” Erl. ed., 32, p. 9, in the same work.
[1505] German Trans., Augsburg, 1843, p. 212.
[1506] “_Norma vitæ ad instituendas recte actiones_,” Pragæ, 1685, p.
276. This very rare book has only been found in the Gymnasialbibliothek
at Mariaschein in Bohemia.
[1507] _Op. cit._, Pragæ, 1709, pars II., p. 39. “_Erigebat illos
[oculos] interdum hæresiarcha Lutherus ad cœlum, cum illud sub mortem
scintillantibus stellis pulcherrime rutilaret; sed quia turpissimo
voluptaum cœno animum gerebat immersum, simul ita dicebat: Quam
pulchrum est, Martine, cœlum, sed non est pro te._” The passage occurs
in connection with the Feast of the Ascension. The dialogue with
Catherine was a later addition to the story.
[1508] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 34, 2, p. 266; Erl. ed., 19², p. 76.
[1509] Mathesius, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 411.
[1510] Cp. Döllinger, “Reformation,” 3, p. 259.
[1511] _Ib._, p. 246.
[1512] Louis de Ponte (de la Puente), “Meditaciones,” 1605; Latin ed.
of 1857, t. 2, p. 216.
[1513] Cp. what Suarez says of habit: “_Habitus quidem per se ac
formaliter, seu facta suppositione, minuit libertatem, quia inclinando
magis voluntatem ad alteram partem minuit indifferentiam eius; tamen
moraliter et in ordine ad effectus morales non censetur minuere,
quamdiu illa consuetudo libera ac voluntaria est, propter eandem
rationem, quia dispositio libera, ut sic, non minuit liberum._” “Opp.”
4, Paris., 1856, p. 209, n. 16.
[1514] See vol. iii., p. 430 ff.
[1515] To Amsdorf, July 9, 1546, “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 5, p. 746.
[1516] See vol. iii., p. 59 ff., particularly p. 70.
[1517] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 25², p. 278 ff.
[1518] P. 281.
[1519] P. 282 f.
[1520] P. 408.
[1521] P. 409 f.
[1522] P. 448.
[1523] March 14, 1539: “_mire me piget eius scripti, quod tam
tenue et verbosum sit ... tempus et labor fuit ultra vires meas_.”
“Briefwechsel,” 12, p. 115 f.
[1524] Jan. 17, 1545, “Briefe,” 5, p. 714.
[1525] Jan. 26, 1545, _ib._, p. 720.
[1526] May 7, 1544, _ib._, p. 736.
[1527] Below, p. 383.
[1528] May 7, 1544, “Briefe,” 5, p. 737.
[1529] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 26², p. 131 ff.
[1530] “Corp. ref.,” 5, p. 655, n. 3118.
[1531] Druffel, “Kaiser Karl V und die Römische Kurie 1544-46,” in
the “Abh. Bayr. Akad. der Wiss., hist. Kl.,” vol. 13, Abt. 2, p. 215.
“Werke,” Erl. ed., 26², p. 129 ff.
[1532] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 26², p. 176.
[1533] _Ib._, p. 229.
[1534] P. 230.
[1535] P. 231.
[1536] P. 233.
[1537] P. 235 f.
[1538] P. 242.
[1539] P. 91, n. 6.
[1540] See vol. iii., p. 234 f.
[1541] “Corp. ref.,” 5, p. 662 _sq._, n. 3123.
[1542] “Corp. ref.,” 5, p. 661. In the same letter.
[1543] For text see “Corp. ref.,” 5, p. 461 _sq._; also in “Luthers
Werke,” Walch’s ed., 17, p. 1422 ff.
[1544] To Amsdorf, July 9, 1545, “Briefe,” 5, p. 746.
[1545] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 48.
[1546] _Ib._, p. 68.
[1547] _Ib._, p. 191.
[1548] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 26, p. 530 f.; Erl. ed., 63, p. 271. Preface
to Klingebeyls’ writing. Cp. an equally grotesque enumeration, above,
vol. iv., p. 343.
[1549] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 63, p. 403. Preface to his German writings
(1539).
[1550] _Ib._
[1551] _Ib._, p. 408. German Preface (1548, compiled from Luther’s own
words).
[1552] _Ib._, p. 412.
[1553] _Ib._, p. 297 (1531).
[1554] _Ib._, p. 369.
[1555] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 3, p. 157.
[1556] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 10.
[1557] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 48.
[1558] Vol. iv., p. 329 ff.
[1559] Mathesius, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 49.
[1560] Schlaginhaufen, _ib._, p. 74.
[1561] To Spalatin, Aug. 21, 1544, “Briefe,” 5, p. 680.
[1562] To the same, March 7, 1522, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 53, p. 110
(“Briefwechsel,” 3, p. 298).
[1563] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 36, p. 452; Erl. ed., 18², p. 339, Sermon on
Charity, 1532.
[1564] _Ib._, Erl. ed., 59, p. 141 f.
[1565] To Melanchthon, April 4, 1541, “Briefe,” 5, p. 338.
[1566] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 63, p. 127.
[1567] Cordatus, “Tagebuch,” p. 363.
[1568] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 173.
[1569] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 139.
[1570] _Ib._, from Veit Dietrich’s collection.
[1571] “Enarratio in Ps. xlv.,” “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 18, p. 223 _sq._
[1572] July 10, 1518, to Wenceslaus Link, “Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 211.
[1573] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 10, 2, p. 229 f.; Erl. ed., 28, p. 347.
[1574] _Ib._, p. 107=144.
[1575] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 560.
[1576] Cp. Janssen, “History of the German People” (Engl. Trans.), vi.,
p. 218.
[1577] “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 6, p. 386. After Oct. 24, 1545.
[1578] P. 402.
[1579] P. 391.
[1580] P. 401.
[1581] See vol. iv., p. 68 f.
[1582] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 32, p. 417.
[1583] Above, p. 83.
[1584] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 32, p. 396 ff. See above, p. 260 f., on the
difference between Luther’s doctrine on the Sacrament and that of
Melanchthon.
[1585] P. 415.
[1586] We may compare this with some other true remarks of Luther’s:
“It is the way with all heretics to tamper first with only one article
and then gradually to deny all.” After a comparison with the ring which
on the slightest break ceases to be a ring, and the bell which ever
so small a crack makes to lose its sound, he proceeds: “You may say:
‘Dear Luther, it is to be hoped ... that God will not be so severe
and cruel as to damn men on account of one article if they faithfully
keep all the rest.’ For this is the way not only that the heretics
console themselves, but also other sinners.... In reply to this we must
say that it cannot be hoped that God will overlook His poor, blind,
wretched creatures’ behaving so madly and proudly towards their Creator
and Lord.” He insists that “it is impossible to deny or blaspheme
a single word without thereby accusing the Divine revelation of
falsehood” (p. 419). The heretics are, according to him, godless fools
whom God “will some day judge much more severely,” because they have
His Word on their lips.
[1587] P. 397.
[1588] P. 404.
[1589] P. 402.
[1590] To Martin Bucer, Oct. 14, 1539, “Briefwechsel,” 12, p. 260:
“_salutabis Dn. Ioannem Sturmium et Iohannem Calvinum reverenter,
quorum libellos cum singulari voluptate legi_.” Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p.
577. See below, p. 401.
[1591] F. Loofs, “Leitfaden der DG.,”^[4] p. 881.
[1592] Feb. 26, 1540, “Calvini opp.,” 11 (“Corp. ref.,” p. 24:
“_Si inter se comparantur, scis ipse, quanto intervallo Lutherus
excellat_.”) Calvin finds fault namely with Zwingli’s “profane
doctrine” of the sacraments. “Calvini opp.,” 11, p. 438. Loofs,
“DG.,”^[4] p. 881.
[1593] Loofs, _ib._, p. 887.
[1594] He writes of the treatment of the Catholics in England: that all
the Catholics who had risen in rebellion against Edward VI and refused
to give up their superstition “méritent bien d’être réprimés par le
glaive qui vous est commis, vu qu’ils s’attaquent, non seulement au
roi, mais à Dieu.” “Opp.,” 13 (“Corp. ref.,” 41), p. 68. W. Möller,
“Lehrb. der KG.,” 3³, ed. G. Kawerau, 1907, p. 188, and still better,
N. Paulus, “Protestantismus und Toleranz,” p. 250.
[1595] “DG.,”^[4] p. 889.
[1596] It is known only from Calvin’s letter, Nov. 20, 1539, “Opp.,” 10
(“Corp. ref.,” 38), p. 432. Cp. Enders-Kawerau, “Luthers Briefwechsel,”
12, p. 261.
[1597] To Bucer, “Briefwechsel,” 12, p. 260. Above, p. 399, n. 4.
[1598] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 603 f., which also contains an account of
Luther’s remarks.
[1599] “Jesus Christ nous donne en la cene la propre substance de son
corps et son sang.” “Opp.” 5 (“Corp. ref.” 33), p. 440.
[1600] Loofs, _ib._, p. 890 f., from the “_Institutio_,” l. 4, c. 17,
n. 32, “Opp.,” 2 (“Corp. ref.,” 30), p. 1033: “_quamvis in nos non
ingrediatur ipsa Christi caro_.”
[1601] “Opp. Calvini,” 7 (“Corp. ref.,” 35), p. 689 _sq._ Cp.
Möller-Kawerau,³ p. 185.
[1602] For Josel and the efforts referred to, see Reinhold Lewin,
“Luthers Stellung zu den Juden,” Berlin, 1910 (“Neue Studien zur Gesch.
der Theol. und der Kirche,” ed. N. Bonwetsch and R. Seeberg, 10), p. 62
f.—Luther to Josel, June 11, 1537, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 55, p. 186, also
in Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 419 (“Briefwechsel,” 11, p. 240).
[1603] “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 3, p. 227; cp. 4, p. 46. Lewin, _ib._, p. 73.
[1604] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 31, p. 417 ff.
[1605] Kawerau, “Briefwechsel des Justus Jonas,” 1, p. 322.
[1606] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 23, p. 276. “Die drei Symbola,” printed 1538,
written early in 1537.
[1607] Lewin, _ib._, p. 66. Cp. Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 419.
[1608] Lewin, _ib._, p. 74.
[1609] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 32, pp. 99 ff. and 275 ff.
[1610] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 32, p. 252, in “Von den Jüden.”
[1611] _Ib._
[1612] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 32, p. 177 f., “Von den Jüden.” The rest of
the passage (“that Bible only should you explore,” etc.) is given in
vol. iv., p. 285 f., where we had to quote some of the above writings
against the Jews in describing Luther’s mode of controversy and the
violence of his angry language. Cp. also vol. iii., p. 270. Since in
the selection of these passages the object was to show to what depths
Luther could descend, it is hardly necessary to point out that the
passages quoted are about the strongest to be met with in these two
works, the remainder being written in a somewhat calmer and more seemly
vein.
[1613] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 32, p. 141. “Von den Jüden.”
[1614] _Ib._, p. 342 f. “Vom Schem Hamphoras.”
[1615] _Ib._, p. 282. “Vom Schem Hamphoras.”
[1616] Cp. vol. iv., p. 285 f.
[1617] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 32, p. 298. “Vom Schem Hamphoras.”
[1618] _Ib._, p. 224. “Von den Jüden.”
[1619] _Ib._, p. 226. “Von den Jüden.”
[1620] _Ib._, p. 285 f. “Vom Scham Hamphoras.”
[1621] Lewin, “Luthers Stellung zu den Juden,” p. 103.
[1622] _Ib._, p. 104.
[1623] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 32, p. 120. “Von den Jüden.” Cp. pp. 182 and
230, and Lewin, p. 92.
[1624] P. 182. “Von den Jüden.”
[1625] Enders, “Luthers Briefwechsel,” 11, p. 242.
[1626] Cp. above, vol. iv., p. 325 f. Lenz, “Briefwechsel Philipps von
Hessen mit Bucer,” 2, p. 224, and Lewin, _ib._, p. 98. The latter,
though a Rabbi, does not mind letting his opponents, Luther included,
speak for themselves.—Bullinger in the letter in question says of
Luther’s third writing against the Jews, viz. his “On the Last Words
of David”: “Everyone must be astonished at the harsh and presumptuous
spirit of the man so haughtily displayed in the ‘Last Words of David.’
That such a theologian, after having arrived at his years, should be
guilty of such extravagant acts and writings is a matter that can only
be left to the just Judgment of God. The opinion of posterity will be
that Luther was not only a man, but a man ruled by criminal passions.”
[1627] Cp. above, p. 115, and vol. iv., p. 325. Döllinger,
“Reformation,” 3, p. 262 f.
[1628] Lewin, _ib._, p. 99 f.
[1629] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 32, p. 291 ff., 296, 305.
[1630] _Ib._, p. 308. On the indecent meaning of ‘Scham Hamperes,’ see
above, p. 406.
[1631] P. 309.
[1632] For further particulars, see Lewin, _op. cit._, p. 86.
[1633] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 11, p. 314 ff.; Erl. ed., 29, p. 45 ff.
[1634] Sermon of Feb. 14, 1524, _ib._, 15, p. 447=65, p. 125 f.: He
would “tell them that He [Christ] was a man like any other man, sent by
God”; after this he would lead the would-be converts further. Lewin,
_ib._, p. 36.
[1635] Lewin, _ib._, p. 31.
[1636] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 11, p. 309 f.; Kawerau, “Briefwechsel des
Jonas,” 1, p. 92 f.
[1637] P. 36.
[1638] Cordatus, “Tagebuch,” p. 196. Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichn.,” p.
131. In both the passage begins: “Should I again baptise a Jew,” thus
pointing to an unfortunate experience of Luther’s own, which is related
more in detail in Schlaginhaufen’s report. In the corresponding passage
in “Colloq.,” ed., Bindseil, 1, p. 460, we read further: “_sicut fecit
ille, qui hic Wittebergæ baptizabatur_.”
[1639] Passages in Lewin, _ib._, p. 91.
[1640] _Ib._, p. 57.
[1641] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 296.
[1642] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 32, p. 100. “Von den Jüden.” Cp. the
quotations given by Lewin, p. 89, n. 3.
[1643] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 44, p. 363 ff. Sermon of Sept. 25, 1539.
[1644] Hausrath, “Luthers Leben,” 2, p. 442. But cp. p. 445.
[1645] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 32, p. 259. “Von den Jüden.” Cp. above, vol.
iv., p. 265.
[1646] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 32, p. 303. “Vom Schem Hamphoras.”
[1647] “To the venerable brothers at Venice, Vicenza, and Treviso,”
June 13, 1543, “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 5, p. 569: “_Mundus, Turca,
Iudaeus, Papa furunt blasphemando nomen Domini, vastando regnum eius_,”
etc.
[1648] Lewin, “Luthers Stellung zu den Juden,” p. 45, ns. 2, 3, 4. Cp.
the “murderers’ den” in “Werke,” Erl. ed., 26, p. 40.
[1649] Lewin, _ib._, p. 77.
[1650] _Ib._, p. 72. In “Vom Schem Hamphoras.” See above, p. 406.
[1651] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 37, p. 1 ff.
[1652] _Ib._, p. 3.
[1653] P. 6 f.
[1654] P. 11.
[1655] P. 104.
[1656] “Corp, ref.,” 5, p. 164 _sq._ Lewin, _op. cit._, p. 106.
[1657] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 32, p. 89.
[1658] _Ib._, p. 87.
[1659] _Ib._, p. 80.
[1660] _Ib._, p. 92.
[1661] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 301 f. Winter of 1542-43.
[1662] _Ib._, p. 149. June, 1540.
[1663] “_Versor iam in transferendo libro qui vocatur Confutatio
Alcorani Mahumetis. Deus bone, quanta est ira tua super ecclesiam,
sed maxime contra Turcam et Mahumetem! Superat fidem bestialitas
Mahumetis._” To Jakob Probst, March 26, 1542, “Briefe,” 5, p. 452.
[1664] Preface and Warnung in “Werke,” Erl. ed., 65, p. 189 ff.
[1665] _Ib._, p. 200. Warnung.
[1666] _Ib._
[1667] _Ib._, p. 192.
[1668] P. 199.
[1669] P. 202 ff.
[1670] Cp. our vol. iii., pp. 78 ff., 91 f.
[1671] “Werke,” _ib._, p. 196 f.
[1672] This he said, according to Wanckel’s Notes in the Wittenberg
copy of the caricatures; cp. C. Wendeler, “Archiv f. Literaturgesch.,”
14, 1, 1886, p. 18: “_Et sint meum testamentum_.” From “Unschuldige
Nachrichten,” 1712, p. 951.
[1673] May 8, 1545, “Briefe,” 5, p. 740: “_De tribus furiis nihil
habebam in animo, cum eas papæ appingerem, nisi ut atrocitatem
abominationis papalis atrocissimis verbis in lingua latina
exprimerem_.” The word “_appingere_,” of course, merely means that he
suggested the scene. See below, p. 427 f.
[1674] Cp. P. Lehfeldt, “Luthers Verhältnis zu Kunst und Künstlern,”
Berlin, 1892. This writer says, p. 71: “Unfortunately our knowledge of
Cranach compels us to say that the pictures, as they have come down to
us, cannot be regarded as Cranach’s work,” etc. See allusion below to
“Master Lucas,” p. 429.
[1675] Copies of the set of pictures with nine, or ten, woodcuts are
to be found in the Marienbibliothek at Halle, in the Lutherhalle at
Wittenberg and in the Lutherbibliothek at Worms. No. 562* f. 28 in the
British Museum with _fourteen_ pictures is a made-up copy, four cuts of
which are not uniform with the rest of the set. [Note of the English
Editor.]
[1676] Cp. Köstlin, “M. Luther”², p. 614. In the 5th edition the
passage is worded otherwise.
[1677] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 26², p. 175.
[1678] The picture in Denifle-Weiss, p. 840.
[1679] “Martin Luther”², p. 614, without the verse. The 5th ed., 2, p.
602, again runs differently.
[1680] See vol. iii., pp. 151 f., 355 f. The picture in Denifle-Weiss,
p. 837.
[1681] Cp. “Werke,” Erl. ed., 26², p. 177. Above, p. 383 f.—According
to the Table-Talk (“Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 239) Luther was once
shown a picture of the Pope being hanged on his keys. Possibly this
is the same caricature of the Pope, which, according to Lauterbach’s
“Tagebuch,” p. 64, he altered and amended with “_technæ veraces et
odiosæ_” on Good Friday, 1538. It has no connection with the present
picture on which the keys do not appear.
[1682] Luther wrote a special work in 1545 on the supposed deed of
Alexander III. Others with less reason take the picture to represent
Gregory VII and Henry IV; the verses are of quite a general character.
[Was it not rather suggested by an incident in the pontificate of
Alexander’s English predecessor, viz. Adrian IV? Note to English
Edition.]
[1683] Bl. 177´ and 178.
[1684] Wendeler (above, p. 422, n. 1), p. 33. Lehfeldt (above, p. 422,
n. 3), p. 71.
[1685] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 26, p. 170; Erl. ed., 26², p. 316, in “Von
der Widdertauffe,” 1528.
[1686] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 9, p. 701 ff. _Ib._, the pictures. This
ridicule of the Papacy greatly appealed to him (“_mire placet_”), as he
writes to Melanchthon on May 26, 1521 (“Briefwechsel,” 3, p. 162).
[1687] “Werke,” _ib._, 19, p. 7 ff., with the woodcuts in which the pig
plays a part.
[1688] Pp. 67, 69.
[1689] April 14, 1545, “Briefe,” 5, p. 727.
[1690] Wendeler, p. 30. From Sermon 12 in “Lutherus Theander,” 1569.
[1691] “Erklerung der schendlichen Sünde derjenigen,” etc. Eight pages,
1548.
[1692] Bl. A2. Denifle-Weiss, p. 841.
[1693] He spoke in much the same way to Wanckel according to the
passage cited on p. 422, n. 1.
[1694] The letter cited on p. 422, n. 2. On the strength of this
letter, Lehfeldt (_ib._, p. 71) comes to the conclusion that Luther
gave the draughtsman detailed instructions for his work.
[1695] June 3, 1545, “Briefe,” 5, p. 741.
[1696] Wanckel’s statement, see p. 422, n. 1.
[1697] July 1, 1545, “Briefe,” 5, p. 743. “Unschuldige Nachrichten,”
1712, p. 952.
[1698] “_Imaginationes diræ_,” for which reason Jonas had decided to
give up wine. _Ib._
[1699] June 15, 1545, “Briefe,” _ib._: He had just started on the
continuation of the “Wider das Bapstum” when, “_ecce irruit calculus
meus, utinam non meus sed etiam papæ et Gomorrhæorum cardinalium_!”
[1700] To Lauterbach, July 6, 1545, “Briefe,” 5, p. 745.
[1701] June 3, 1545, “Briefe,” 5, p. 742. When he here speaks of
“Master Lucas” and, in the following letter, of “_Lucas pictor_,” he is
certainly alluding to the celebrated Lucas Cranach. On his part in the
matter see above. Luther’s words mean no more than that the Master had
something to do with the particular woodcut under consideration.
[1702] June 15, 1545, _ib._, p. 743.
[1703] Above, vol. ii., p. 152 f.; iii., p. 233 ff., and in particular,
iv., p. 322 ff.
[1704] To Prior Leib of Rebdorf, 1529, in Döllinger, “Reformation,” 1²,
p. 588, and J. Schlecht, “Kilian Leibs Briefwechsel und Diarien,” 1909,
p. 12.
[1705] A. Harnack, “Lehrb. der Dogmengesch.,” 3^[4], 1910, p. 861.
[1706] Cp. the Protestants already quoted, vol. iii., pp. 8, 15-19;
vol. iv., p. 483 ff.; see also above, p. 9 ff.
[1707] _Ib._, p. 861.
[1708] The words still occur in the 3rd ed. of the “Lehrb. der
Dogmengesch.,” 3, p. 810. In the 4th the ending is different.
[1709] _Ib._, 3^[4], p. 682 ff.
[1710] _Ib._, p. 684.
[1711] P. 685.
[1712] “Evang. Kirchenztng.,” 1830, p. 20.
[1713] “Gesch. des Pietismus,” 2, pp. 88 f., 60 f. Cp. 1, pp. 80 f., 93
f.
[1714] “Lehrb. der DG.,” 3^[4], p. 814. Harnack’s statement concerning
the “life” of the old formulas of the faith in Protestantism is
significant: “We have to thank Luther, that the formulas of the faith
possess a living force in Protestantism to-day, and, indeed, in the
West, nowhere else. Here men live in them, vindicate them or oppose
them.” _Ib._
[1715] See above, p. 356 ff. Cp. vol. iv., p. 398 ff.
[1716] “Lehrb. der DG.,” 3^[4], p. 683, n. 1.
[1717] _Ib._, p. 858.
[1718] “Leitfaden der DG.”^[4], 1906, p. 743.
[1719] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 13², p. 230, Kirchenpostille.
[1720] _Ib._, p. 745 f.
[1721] “Lehrb. der DG.,” 3^[4], p. 827 f.
[1722] _Ib._, p. 868.
[1723] P. 879.
[1724] P. 879.
[1725] P. 858.
[1726] For the reason why, see J. Mausbach, “Die kathol. Moral und ihre
Gegner,” 1911, pp. 215 ff., 229 f.
[1727] “DG.,” 3^[4], p. 852.
[1728] Cp. Mausbach, _ib._, p. 137 ff.
[1729] “DG.,” 3^[4], p. 868.
[1730] P. 851.
[1731] P. 855.
[1732] P. 856.
[1733] Cp. Mausbach, _ib._, p. 243 ff.
[1734] “DG.,” 3^[4], p. 834.
[1735] P. 869.
[1736] P. 870 f. Harnack congratulates Luther on his opposition to the
fanatics, and concludes: “The German Reformation banished the fanatics,
but, in their stead, it had to face the rationalists, the atheists and
modern positive theology,” p. 871.
[1737] “Leitfaden der DG.,”^[4], p. 747.
[1738] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 63, p. 134 f. Preface to the Epistle to the
Romans.
[1739] “DG.,” 3^[4], p. 849.
[1740] _Ib._, p. 835.
[1741] P. 836.
[1742] P. 859 f. Harnack refers here to the passage in Luther’s Works,
Weim. ed., 16, p. 217; Erl. ed., 35, p. 207 f. (Exposition of certain
chapters of Exodus): “The sophists [Schoolmen] depicted Christ as God
and as Man.... But Christ is not called Christ because He has two
natures. What does this matter to me? But He bears this grand and
consoling name on account of the office and work He undertook. That He
is by nature God and Man concerns Himself, but that He is my Saviour
and Redeemer is for my comfort and salvation.”
[1743] “DG.,” 3^[4], p. 860.
[1744] “Luthers Lehre über Freiheit und Ausrüstung des natürlichen
Menschen bis 1525. Eine dogmatische Kritik,” Göttingen, 1901, pp. 19
f., 49.
[1745] Cp. A. Galley, “Die Busslehre Luthers und ihre Darstellung
in neuester Zeit,” 1900, Introd., p. 1 ff., where the quotations in
question occur.
[1746] _Ib._
[1747] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 63, p. 124 f.
[1748] “DG.,” 3^[4], p. 684 f.
[1749] Fr. Loofs, “Leitfaden der DG.,”^[4], p. 463.
[1750] _Ib._, p. 698 f.
[1751] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 63, p. 112. Preface to the New Testament.
[1752] “Luthers Stellung zu Erasmus, Zwingli,” etc. (reprint from the
“Deutsch-evang. Blätter,” 1906, Heft 1-3), p. 28.
[1753] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 3, p. 181; Erl. ed., 24², p. 343.
[1754] Cp. Köstlin, “Luthers Theol.,” 2², p. 136.
[1755] “Luthers Werke,” ed. Buchwald, etc., Suppl. vol. ii., p. 44, N.
54 to Luther’s “De votis monasticis,” “Werke,” Weim. ed., 8, p. 583,
“Opp. lat. var.,” 6, p. 252: “_Si quis Mariam neget virginem, aut alium
quemvis singularem articulum fidei non crediderit, damnatur, etiam si
alioqui ipsius Virginis et virginitatem et sanctitatem haberet_.”
[1756] _Ib._, p. 44 f.
[1757] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 32, p. 414 f. Kurtz Bekenntnis. A similar
passage occurs in “Comm. in Gal.,” ed. Irmischer, 2, pp. 334, _seq._,
336.
[1758] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 32, p. 399.
[1759] “Luthers Leben,” 2, p. 189.
[1760] “Formerly it had not been the way with Martinus Eleutherius
to make eternal salvation depend on agreement with a single dogma,
and even in the Preface to Romans he had meant by justifying faith
something very different.”
[1761] _Ib._, p. 189.
[1762] P. 222.
[1763] P. 197.
[1764] P. 189.
[1765] “Luthers Stellung” (see p. 445, n. 4), p. 28.
[1766] _Ib._, p. 27 f.
[1767] P. 28.
[1768] From p. 808.
[1769] From p. 871.
[1770] “DG.,” 3^[4], p. 864, n.
[1771] “Leitfaden der DG.,”^[4], p. 740 f. Quoted by Harnack, p. 864.
[1772] “Luthers Lehre über Freiheit,” etc. (p. 443, n. 1), p. 47.
[1773] _Ib._, p. 48.
[1774] “DG.,” 3^[4], p. 877 f.
[1775] See above, p. 7 ff.
[1776] P. 843 n.
[1777] P. 884.
[1778] Above, p. 443, n. 2, p. 6.
[1779] “Leitfaden der DG.,”^[4], p. 719 ff.
[1780] “DG.,” 3^[4], p. 883 f.
[1781] _Ib._, p. 884 f.
[1782] P. 887. Harnack here quotes a passage to the point from “Corp.
ref.,” 26, p. 51 _seq._, where the “Instruction” seeks to pacify those
who fancied that, by the above statement, “our previous teaching was
being repudiated.” Melanchthon says that, “the rude, common man” must
learn to accept “commandment, law, fear,” etc., as “articles of faith”
which precede penance.
[1783] “DG.,” 3^[4], p. 884.
[1784] Above vol. iii., p. 323 ff.
[1785] P. 885 f.
[1786] P. 886.
[1787] “DG.,” 3^[4], p. 886.
[1788] “Leitfaden der DG.,”^[4], p. 775 ff.
[1789] Cp. Mausbach, “Die kath. Moral,” pp. 214 ff., 226 ff.
[1790] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 9², p. 237 ff.
[1791] _Ib._, p. 774. Cp. pp. 702, 706, 721, 769.
[1792] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 9², p. 239. Cp. _ib._, 63, p. 112, where
Luther points out that the Gospel condemns works in so far as they are
intended to make us pious and to save us.
[1793] P. 233.
[1794] P. 228.
[1795] P. 237.
[1796] _Ib._
[1797] “Leitfaden der DG.,”^[4], p. 769 f. Cp. “Comm. in Gal.” “Werke,”
Weim. ed., 40, 1, p. 415 f. Irmischer, 1, p. 382 _seq._
[1798] Cp. “Werke,” Erl. ed., 43, p. 367 f.: “Whoever works more and
suffers more will also have a more glorious reward.” _Ib._, 58, p. 354
f.: “Opera ... accidentaliter glorificabunt personam.”
[1799] _Ib._, p. 771, with a reference to “Werke,” Erl. ed., 43, pp.
361, 366.
[1800] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 9², p. 259.
[1801] _Ib._, p. 237.
[1802] And yet Luther, on June 1, 1537, boldly denounced the Thesis
“_Bona opera sunt necessaria ad salutem_.” “Disputationen,” ed. Drews,
_ib._, p. 159. Loofs, _ib._, pp. 770, 857.
[1803] _Ib._, p. 770.
[1804] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 14², p. 178 ff.
[1805] _Ib._, p. 179.
[1806] He also defends the Law in the same way against the Antinomians,
speaking very much in Melanchthon’s style. Cp. Loofs, _ib._, p. 861.
[1807] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 14², p. 181.
[1808] _Ib._, p. 183. Cp. above, p. 26 f.
[1809] Cp. _ib._, 63, pp. 113 ff., 125, 134. Preface to the translation
of Romans.
[1810] Cp. Köstlin-Kawerau, 1, p. 566, on this Preface. See also above,
pp. 39 f., 47 ff.
[1811] _Ib._, p. 771.
[1812] _Ib._, p. 778.
[1813] P. 781 f.
[1814] P. 771.
[1815] Sermo 158, c. 2.
[1816] “Leitfaden,”^[4], p. 773 f.
[1817] “DG.,” 3^[4], p. 870.
[1818] _Ib._, p. 900.
[1819] P. 770.
[1820] P. 856 f. Cp. G. Kruger’s opinion, vol. iii., p. 352, n. 2.
[1821] P. 857.
[1822] P. 868.
[1823] Harnack (p. 880) refers to Müller, _ib._, p. 321 f., i.e.
to Luther’s Schmalkalden Articles of 1537, where we read (“Symbol.
Bücher,” par. 3, Art. 8, ed. Müller-Kolde^[10]): “_Ita præmuniamus nos
adversum enthusiastas ... quod Deus non velit nobiscum aliter agere
nisi per vocale verbum et sacramenta_.” But similar passages occur
in the book Harnack also quotes, “Widder die hymelischen Propheten”
(1525), “Werke,” Weim. ed., 18, p. 62 ff.; Erl. ed., 29, p. 134 ff.,
particularly 136 ff.=208 ff.
[1824] “DG.,” 3^[4], p. 879 f.
[1825] _Ib._, p. 881.
[1826] P. 881 f.
[1827] “Where faith is not present [baptism] remains nothing but a
barren sign.” “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 1, p. 221; Erl. ed., 21, p. 140.
Larger Catechism, Part IV: on Baptism.
[1828] “We bring the child for this [Baptism], thinking and hoping that
it believes, and praying God to give it the faith.”
[1829] _Ib._, p. 882. Cp. above, vol. iv., p. 487 ff., the works of
the Protestant theologians: J. Gottschick, O. Scheel, E. Rietschel, E.
Haupt, W. Herrmann and E. Bunge, on how Baptism suffered in Luther’s
system.
[1830] _Ib._, p. 894.
[1831] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 1, p. 224; Erl. ed., 21, p. 143.
[1832] Hausrath, “Luthers Leben,” 2, p. 223. Cp. on Zwingli, vol. iii.,
p. 379 ff., and below, p. 465, n. 1.
[1833] Of the doctrine of Impanation, Loofs (“Leitfaden,” p. 905) says,
that the famous formulary on the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of
Christ: _sub pane, in pane, cum pane_, cannot be traced to Luther, but
was only gathered after his day from the Larger and Smaller Catechism
(Weim. ed., 30, 1, pp. 223, 315; Erl. ed., 21, p. 143, 19).
[1834] “Dogmengesch.,” 3^[4], p. 894.
[1835] _Ib._, p. 875. Loofs speaks (p. 920) of the “christological
enormities inseparable from Luther’s doctrine of the sacrament.”
[1836] Cp. Loofs, _ib._, p. 811.
[1837] Cp. Luther’s letter to Anton Lauterbach, Nov. 26, 1539,
“Briefwechsel,” 12, p. 295, where he expresses himself opposed to
such private communions, though tolerating them for the time being.
Communion in the church three or four times a year would suffice in
order to be able to die “fortified by the Word.” In a time of public
sickness, such as the plague, the communion of the sick would become
an insupportable burden, and further the Church must not be enslaved
(“_facere servilem_”) to the sacraments, particularly in the case of
those who had previously despised them.
[1838] In the work “Von Anbeten des Sacramẽts” (1523) Luther says
that “each one should be left free to adore or not, and that those
who do not adore the sacrament are not to be termed heretics, for it
is not commanded, Christ not being there in His glory as He is in
heaven.” Those do best who forget “their duty towards the sacrament”
and therefore do not adore, because there is “danger” in adoration.
“Werke,” Weim. ed., 11, p. 448 f.; Erl. ed., 28, p. 410 f.—Still, in
1544, writing to the Princes Johann, George and Joachim of Anhalt, he
says: “_Cum Christus vere adest in pane, cur non ibi summa reverentia
tractaretur et adoraretur etiam?_” Prince Joachim declared that he
“had seen Luther kneel down and reverently adore the sacrament at the
elevation.” Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 341 (Notes by Besold, 1544).
[1839] He told the three princes just referred to not to abolish the
elevation. “_Nam alia res circumferri, alia elevari._” The dignity of
the sacrament might suffer were it carried about. He was even thinking
of reviving the elevation (see vol. iv., p. 195, n. 4, and above, p.
146) which had been abolished by Bugenhagen.
[1840] “If I am right,” says G. Kawerau, “the peculiar Melanchthonian
form of the doctrine of the sacrament is pretty widely spread at the
present time among Evangelicals, whether theologians or laity, as the
form under which Luther’s religious views on the sacrament are to be
accepted,” etc. “Luthers Stellung” (above, p. 445, n. 4), p. 41. On
this point Melanchthon, as is notorious, really agreed with Zwingli. Of
Zwingli, owing to his denial of the Real Presence, Luther wrote: “I,
for my part, regard Zwingli as an unbeliever” (“Werke,” Weim. ed., 26,
p. 342; Erl. ed., 30, p. 225), and for the same cause he “would show
him only that charity which we are bound to display even to our foes.”
To J. Probst, June 1, 1530, “Briefwechsel,” 7, p. 354 f.
[1841] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 3, p. 558 f.; Erl. ed., 26², p. 372 f.
[1842] “DG.,” 3^[4], p. 872.
[1843] P. 830 f. Cp. above, p. 44 ff.
[1844] P. 855, n. 1.
[1845] Freiburg, 1887, p. 3.
[1846] _Ib._
[1847] “DG.,” 3^[4], p. 866.
[1848] _Ib._, cp. p. 865: “Luther believed he was fighting merely
against the errors and abuses of the mediæval Church. It is true
he frequently declared that he was not pleased with the ‘dear
Fathers,’ and that all of them had gone astray; he was not, however,
clear-sighted enough to say to himself, that, if the Fathers of the
Church had erred, then their definitions at the Councils could not
possibly embody the truth.... Unconsciously he himself still laboured
under the after-effects of the theory that the outward Church is the
real authority.”
[1849] _Ib._, p. 834.
[1850] P. 819.
[1851] P. 834.
[1852] P. 820.
[1853] P. 861.
[1854] P. 871.
[1855] P. 875.
[1856] P. 896. Harnack takes great care to prevent his criticism of
Luther giving rise to any impression that he himself is favourably
disposed or indifferent towards Catholic dogma and Catholic life. He
is shocked at the attitude of Erasmus, the defender of the Catholic
view of man’s free will even under Divine Grace, and declares his
Diatribe against the “_servum arbitrium_” a “profoundly irreligious
work,” whereas Luther “had restored religion to religion” (see above,
vol. ii., p. 292, n. 4).—He asks: “What does original sin represent
to Catholics?” (“Dogmengesch.,” 3^[4], p. 749), as though Catholic dogma
discarded it. He mocks at the “whole, half and quarter dogmas” of
Catholics (_ib._, p. 764) and at their handbooks of theology (p. 763).
The Catholic “system of religion,” so Harnack teaches, gave rise to “a
perversion of the moral principles” (p. 749); “this system still works
disaster both in theology and in ethics.... Since the 17th century the
imparting of forgiveness of sins has been made a regular art.” “But
conscience is able to discover God even in its idol” (_ib._). In other
passages he places “devotion to the Sacred Heart” and “Mariolatry” on
a par with the veneration of idols, though he admits that in Catholics
“the Christian sense is not actually stifled by their idols” (p. 748).
Only in these devotions and in the anxiety-breeding confessional does
piety still live (_ib._).
Of the Pope he exclaims: “The Church has an infallible master, she
has no need to trouble about her history, the living voice alone is
right.” He asks whether “the mediæval doctrine, now condemned to
insignificance, would not gradually disappear,” whether in time the
Pope would not be credited “with a peculiar miraculous power,” and
whether ultimately he would not be regarded as a “sort of incarnation
of the Godhead,” etc. (p. 759).
“The saintly and so holy Liguori is the very opposite of Luther....
All his mortifications only entangled him more and more in the
conviction that no conscience can find rest save in the authority of
a confessor.... Thanks to Liguori, absolute ethical scepticism now
prevailed, not only in morals but even in theology.... In a number of
questions, adultery, perjury and murder inclusive, he had known how
to make light of what was really most serious” (p. 755). The doctrine
of Probabilism was to blame for this, according to Harnack. Cp. J.
Mausbach, “Die kath. Moral und ihre Gegner,” 1911, p. 163 ff., and the
“Kölnische Volksztng.,” 1910, Nos. 485 and 571. The latter passage
contains further proofs from Harnack’s “Dogmengesch.” of his insulting
language and his lamentable ignorance of Catholic doctrines, practices
and institutions.
[1857] Of the Church-Postils the first half of the winter part up to
the Epiphany had been published by Luther as early as 1522, and then
continued down to Easter. The second part (summer portion) had been
brought out in 1527 by his friend Stephen Roth. The sermons on the
Epistles were only included in the collection in 1543, when the new
edition appeared. W. Köhler begins his critical edition of the book of
Church-Postils in Weim. ed., 10 (1911).
[1858] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 63, p. 401 ff.
[1859] Cp. his words to Wolfgang Capito, July 9, 1537, “Briefwechsel,”
11, p. 247: “_Magis cuperem eos (libros meos) omnes devoratos. Nullum
enim agnosco meum iustum librum, nisi forte De servo arbitrio et
catechismum._” Cp. above, p. 370 f.
[1860] Cp. above, vol. i., p. 388 ff.
[1861] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 7², p. 18 ff.
[1862] _Ib._, Weim. ed., 23, p. 278 f.; Erl. ed., 30, p. 148. “Das
diese Wort ... noch fest stehen.”
[1863] To Nicholas Gerbel at Strasburg, Nov. 24, 1535 (1536?),
“Briefwechsel,” 11, p. 127.
[1864] Vol. i., p. 175 ff.
[1865] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 7, p. 548; Erl. ed., 45, p. 217.
[1866] _Ib._, p. 573=250.
[1867] _Ib._, 2, pp. 128-130=45, pp. 204-207.
[1868] Cp. above, vol. ii., p. 28 ff.
[1869] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 7, p. 30; Erl. ed., 27, p. 189.
[1870] _Ib._, p. 34 f.=195 f.
[1871] _Ib._, p. 37=199.
[1872] _Ib._, Weim. ed., 2, p. 80 ff., 9, p. 122 ff.; Erl. ed., 21, p.
159 ff.
[1873] _Ib._, 15², p. 318 ff.
[1874] _Ib._, 23, p. 215 ff.
[1875] _Ib._, p. 221.
[1876] _Ib._, 32, p. 75 ff.
[1877] _Ib._, p. 89 f. Cp. above, p. 418 ff.
[1878] _Ib._
[1879] P. 77.
[1880] P. 84.
[1881] P. 97.
[1882] “Briefe,” 5, p. 169, Feb., 1539.
[1883] “Werke,” Erl, ed., 7², p. 21.
[1884] _Ib._, p. 22.
[1885] _Ib._, 15², p. 319.
[1886] _Ib._, 23, p. 217.
[1887] _Ib._, p. 222.
[1888] P. 223.
[1889] P. 215.
[1890] Cp. _ib._, p. 215 f.
[1891] _Ib._, Weim. ed., 30, 1, p. 126; Erl. ed., 21, p. 28.
[1892] _Ib._, 7, pp. 551 ff., 558, 565 f., 568, 580, 596, 599, 602=45,
pp. 222 ff., 231, 240 f., 244, 259, 280, 285, 289.
[1893] _Ib._, p. 584=265; cp. p. 586=267.
[1894] _Ib._, 2, p. 80=21, p. 160.
[1895] Cp. _ib._, 30, 1, p. 160 ff.=21, p. 69 ff.
[1896] Above, p. 84 ff.
[1897] Great Catechism. Preface of 1530. See below, n. 6.
[1898] _Ib._
[1899] To Martin Görlitz, Jan. 15, 1529, “Briefwechsel,” 7, p. 43:
“_pro rudibus paganis_.”
[1900] See above, vol. iv., p. 234.
[1901] The passage first given by G. Buchwald, now in the Weim. Luther
ed., 30, 1, p. 428 f.
[1902] Ed. O. Albrecht, Weim. ed., 30, 1, p. 239 ff. Formerly Erl. ed.,
21, p. 5 ff.; “Symbol. Bücher,”^[10] ed. Müller-Kolde, p. 349 ff., etc.
[1903] Ed. O. Albrecht, Weim. ed., 30, 1, p. 123 ff. Formerly Erl. ed.,
21, p. 26 ff.; “Symbol. Bücher,”^[10] p. 375 ff.
[1904] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 54, p. 97 (“Briefwechsel,” 7, p. 149).
[1905] Preface to the Smaller Catechism.
[1906] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 21, p. 2, quoted by the editor in the
Introduction to the Catechisms.
[1907] Cp. O. Albrecht, Weim. ed., 31, 1, p. 442 f. On the new
Confession see above, vol. iv., p. 248 ff.
[1908] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 31, 1, pp. 134 f., 188, 190; Erl. ed., 21,
pp. 36 f., 101, 103.
[1909] Cp. vol. i., p. 187 ff., etc.
[1910] Cp. the “Bibliographie zum Grossen Katechismus,” by O. Albrecht
and J. Luther, “Werke,” Weim. ed., 31, 1, p. 499 ff.; cp. _ib._, p. 666
ff.
[1911] For proofs, see Th. Kolde, “Symbol. Bücher,”^[10] p. lxiii.
[1912] “Historien,” Bl. 63´.
[1913] Weim. ed., 30, 1, p. 655.
[1914] “Symbol. Bücher,”^[10] p. 518.
[1915] We may recall his statement that he would like to see all his
books destroyed except two: “_Nullum enim agnosco meum iustum librum
nisi forte De servo arbitrio et Catechismum_.” To Capito, July 9, 1537,
“Briefwechsel,” 11, p. 247. See above, p. 471, n. 2.
[1916] New edition by Buchwald, Weim. ed., 31, 1, p. 1 ff.
[1917] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 27, p. 444.
[1918] Mathesius, “Historien,” Bl. 61: “Just as at Wittenberg and in
many other churches the useful custom still prevails of preaching
on this Catechism four times a year for a fortnight, and of daily
assembling for that purpose the children, servants and artisans. Many
ministers also teach the Catechism on Sundays in addition to the
Gospel, and assemble the children in summer for the recitation and
explaining of the Catechism, as is, thanks be to God, the custom with
us to-day.”
[1919] _Ib._, Bl. 62´.
[1920] O. Albrecht, “Der kleine Katechismus Luthers vom Jahre 1536,”
1905, p. 94.
[1921] Albrecht, Weim. ed., 30, 1, p. 441.
[1922] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 19, p. 76; Erl. ed., 22, p. 232 (cp. p.
75=231, and Weim. ed., 30, 1, p. 434).
[1923] Thus Albrecht in his introduction to his new edition of the two
Catechisms of Luther, Weim. ed., p. 435; he refers also to Falk’s and
Battenberg’s editions of Wolff’s “Beichtbüchlein” (see vol. iv., p.
254) and to J. Greving’s “Zum vorreformatorischen Beichtunterricht”
(“Veröffentl. aus dem K.-h. Seminar zu München,” 3, 1, 1907, pp. 46-81).
[1924] Albrecht, _ib._, p. 436.
[1925] _Ib._
[1926] Cp. Weim. ed., 26, p. 237.
[1927] “Historien,” Bl. 63. Mathesius, however, will only admit that,
on the whole, “some fragments of the Catechism” had been retained in
Popery. Luther’s admirer cannot even recall that in Popery he “had ever
heard ... the Ten Commandments, Creed, Our Father or Baptism spoken
of from the pulpit.... Of the absolution and consolation arising from
a believing reception of the Body and Blood of Christ I had to my
knowledge never heard a word all my days before I came to Wittenberg,
either in the churches or the schools, just as I cannot recall having
seen any written or printed explanation of the Catechism in Popery”
(Bl. 63 and 63´).—The ignorance of the facts of the case revealed
in the latter statement is met with elsewhere in the rest of the
passage of Mathesius’s writing; he may have been unfortunate in his
own personal experience, but he certainly exaggerates. That, before
Luther’s day, preaching was not everywhere sufficiently supplemented by
catechetical instruction was undoubtedly to be regretted.
[1928] Albrecht, _ib._, referring to P. Bahlmann, “Deutschlands
Katechismen bis zum Ende des 16. Jahrh.,” 1894, p. 38, and F. Cohrs,
“Evangel. Katechismusversuche vor Luthers Enchiridion,” (“Mon. Germ.
Pædag.,” vol. 20 ff.; vol. 23, 1902, pp. 233, 271). For popular
religious instruction before Luther’s day, see Janssen, “Hist. of the
German People,” Engl. Trans., 1, p. 25 ff.; F. Cohrs, “RE. f. prot.
Th.,” 10³, 1901, p. 135 ff., and F. J. Knecht, “KL.,” 7², 1891, p. 288
ff.; cp. 249 ff.
[1929] See above, p. 134 f., and vol. iv., p. 251.
[1930] Albrecht, _ib._, p. 444.
[1931] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 1, p. 212; Erl. ed., 21, p. 128.
[1932] Albrecht, _ib._, p. 445, referring to Geffcken’s “Der
Bilderkatechismus des ausgehenden MA.,” 1855, pp. 86, 98 f., 108, 177,
etc., and particularly to Thalhofer, “Die katechetischen Lehrstücke
im MA.,” (“Mitteil. der Gesellschaft f. deutsche Erziehungs- und
Schulgesch.,” 15, 1905, p. 188 ff.)
[1933] Cp. Weim. ed., 30, 1, p. 454.
[1934] “Corp. ref.,” 1, p. 643 (1523).
[1935] Albrecht, _ib._, p. 454 f.
[1936] F. J. Knecht, _loc. cit._, p. 292 f. The “Discipulus” was
compiled as early as 1416. Cp. “Zeitschr. f. kath. Th.,” 1902, p. 419
ff.
[1937] Albrecht, _ib._, p. 561.
[1938] Facsimile, _ib._, p. 241, and better still in Otto Albrecht’s
“Der kleine Katechismus Luthers,” 1905.
[1939] “Katechismusversuche” (see above, p. 491, n. 1), p. 241.
[1940] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 31, 1, pp. 435-437.
[1941] _Ib._, 30, 3, p. 567; Erl. ed., 26², p. 383 f.
[1942] _Ib._, 30, 1, p. 130=21, p. 31. Cp. above, p. 147 f., the
passage taken from Luther’s “Deudsche Messe.”
[1943] To Spalatin, May 14, 1521, “Briefwechsel,” 3, p. 154: “_Bibliam
græcam et hebræam lego_.” To the same, June 10, 1521, _ib._, p. 171:
“_Hebraica et Græca disco et sine intermissione scribo_.”
[1944] To Johann Lang, _ib._, p. 256.
[1945] _Ib._, p. 271.
[1946] _Ib._, p. 325.
[1947] Cp. _ib._, n. 4 in Enders.
[1948] Dec. 12 (?), 1522, “Briefwechsel,” 4, p. 37: “_Bestias istas
describas et nomines per species suas_.” There follows the list.
[1949] See the list of Luther’s writings at the end of our vol. vi.
[1950] Feb. 23, 1524, “Briefwechsel,” 4, p. 300.
[1951] “Sendbrieff von Dolmetzscheñ,” 1530, “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 2,
p. 636; Erl. ed., 65, p. 109.
[1952] “Briefwechsel,” 6, p. 277, n. 4.
[1953] June 14, 1528, _ib._, p. 291.
[1954] Paul Pietsch, in “Werke,” Weim. ed., “Deutsche Bibel,” 2.
[1955] _Ib._, p. xxiv, in the preface by K. Drescher, the present chief
editor of the Weimar edition.
[1956] Pastor Risch, “Welche Aufgabe stellt die Lutherbibel der
wissenschaftl. Forschung?” (“N. kirchl. Zeitschr.,” 1911, pp. 59 ff.,
116 ff.), p. 129 f. “Die deutsche Bibel in ihrer gesch. Entwicklung,”
1907, by the same author.
[1957] Cp. Risch, _ib._, p. 121 f. O. Reichert, “Luthers deutsche
Bibel” (“RGl. Volksbücher,” iv., 13, 1910), pp. 8, 14, 24, 31, 44.
[1958] Reichert, “Luthers deutsche Bibel,” p. 32.
[1959] “Historien,” Bl. 160´ ff. G. Lœsche, “Joh. Mathesius’
Ausgewählte Werke,” 3 (“Bibliothek deutscher Schriftsteller aus
Böhmen,” 9), p. 315 ff.
[1960] Discovered at Jena by Buchwald, but only known so far in
extracts. See p. 501, n. 3, and “Briefwechsel,” 13, p. 353, n. 12.
[1961] “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 3, p. 139 _sqq._
[1962] _Ib._, p. 142. See vol. iv., p. 109.
[1963] Cp. what O. Reichert says in “Die Wittenberger
Bibelrevisionskommissionen von 1521 bis 1541,” in Koffmane, “Die hds.
Ueberlieferung von Werken Luthers,” 1, 1907, p. 97 ff., and Risch’s
Articles (above, p. 499, n. 1), p. 78 ff.
[1964] “Luthers deutsche Bibel,” p. 41, where examples are given from
the notes and emendations to be published later.
[1965] Weim. ed., 1 and 2.
[1966] Reichert says, _ib._, p. 26: “There is hardly a more interesting
document to be found in the domain of research concerned with Luther’s
German Bible.” He gives a facsimile of Ps. xlv. (xliv.), xlvi. (xlv.).
Four facsimiles in Thiele, vol. 2.
[1967] _Ib._, 65, p. 110, “Sendbrieff von Dolmetzscheñ,” Sep. 8, 1530.
Cp. Janssen, “Hist. of the German People,” Engl. Trans., 14, p. 401 ff.
[1968] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 62, p. 313. Table-Talk.
[1969] _Ib._, p. 421. Cp. “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p. 378.
[1970] K. Müllenhoff and W. Scherer, “Denkmäler deutscher Poesie und
Prosa, 8-12 Jahrh.,” 1864, p. xxix.
[1971] Cp. Risch, p. 138, in the article mentioned above, p. 499, n. 1.
[1972] H. Stephan, “Luther in den Wandlungen seiner Kirche,” 1907, p.
30, remarks: The orthodox period of Lutheranism venerated “Luther’s
translation of the Bible with an admiration as boundless and naive as
had it been a palladium.”
[1973] Cp. H. Böhmer, “Luther im Lichte der neueren Forschung,” 1906,
p. 143, who there (in the first edition, though not in the second)
points out that even Grimm’s colleagues and successors did not share
his own warm appreciation of the language of the German Bible.
According to Müllenhoff the foundation of New High German had been laid
a century and a half before Luther, who represents, not its beginning
but its zenith period (see pp. 504, note 3). “If in spite of this,”
says Böhmer, “it cannot be denied that the German of Luther played an
important part in reducing the German language to unity, still this was
not Luther’s doing.” “The stress laid by Protestants on the language of
Luther undoubtedly did more to hamper than to further the victory of
the common language” (p. 144). “Luther himself was the first to protest
against being considered the founder of a new German tongue” (p. 145).
[1974] _Ib._, p. 132 f.
[1975] Preface to the first volume of the Bible, p. x.
[1976] Müllenhoff, etc., _ib._, p. xxvii ff.
[1977] P. 223 f.
[1978] P. 224.
[1979] P. 222.
[1980] Cp. Zerener Holm, “Studien über das beginnende Eindringen
der Lutherischen Bibelübersetzung in die deutsche Literatur,” 1911
(“Archiv. f. RG.,” Ergänzungsband, 4).
[1981] Mathesius, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 251.
[1982] _Ib._
[1983] “Luther im Lichte der neueren Forschung,” p. 150.
[1984] Jakob Grimm, “Deutsche Grammatik,” 1, 1², 1870, Preface, p. x.
[1985] In the articles referred to above, p. 499, n. 1 (p. 137 f.).
[1986] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 2, p. 640; Erl. ed., 65, p. 114.
“Sendbrieff von Dolmetzscheñ.” Before this he had said: “Of what an
art and labour translating is I have full experience, and therefore I
will allow no Pope-ass or Mule-ass, who has never attempted it, to set
himself up as judge or critic.... If there is to be any faultfinding, I
will attend to it myself.” And later: “Their abuse is my highest praise
and glory. I am resolved to be a Doctor ... and they shall not rob me
of this title till the Judgment Day; this much I know for certain.”
[1987] “Historien,” p. 82.
[1988] _Ib._
[1989] F. W. Nippold, “Christian Josias Freiherr von Bunsen,” Leipzig,
1868-1871, 3, p. 483.
[1990] “RE. f. prot. Theol.,”³, Art. “Bibelübersetzungen,” p. 72.
[1991] “Mitteilungen,” vol. 3, Göttingen, p. 1899, p. 335 ff. (reprint
of the art. in the “Gött. Gel. Anzeigen,” 1885, 2).
[1992] P. 359 ff.
[1993] P. 365.
[1994] “Sendbrieff von Dolmetzscheñ,” p. 642=117.
[1995] Cp. Döllinger, “Reformation,” 3, p. 142 f. Theodore Zahn the
Protestant exegete says: “Luther by adding the words ‘The righteousness
which is acceptable to God’ (here and iii. 21, x. 3; cp. iii. 22)
exceeded the task of a translator by implying that the recognition of
this righteousness by God is merely the consequence of its origin in
God. ‘A righteousness that comes from God,’ as in Phil. iii. 9, would
be less open to objection, though here again Luther goes beyond his
text.” “Brief des Paulus an die Römer,” Leipzig, 1910, p. 82.
[1996] De Lagarde (p. 358) rightly refers to Döllinger, _ib._, pp.
140-144, where the latter quotes another passage which calls for
revision: “The commandments are given _only_ in order that man may
be made aware of his inability to do what is good and thus learn to
despair of himself.”
[1997] Döllinger, _ib._, p. 144.
[1998] Many other passages could be given where the sense is weakened
owing to Luther’s want of accuracy. For instance, John vi. 56: “My
flesh is the true meat and my blood is the true drink,” whereas Christ
says: “My flesh is meat indeed (ἀληθῶς) and my blood is drink indeed.”
[1999] Riehm, “Luther als Bibelübersetzer,” “Theol. Stud. u. Krit.,”
57, 1884, p. 306; cp. p. 312 f. On the whole subject see Janssen,
“Hist. of the German People” (Engl. Trans.), 14, p. 401 ff.
[2000] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 2, p. 632 ff.; Erl. ed., 65, p.
103 ff.; the accompanying letter to Link dated Sept. 12, 1530, in
“Briefwechsel,” 8, p. 257.
[2001] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 2, p. 637; Erl. ed., 65, p. 110.
[2002] P. 640 ff.=115-117.
[2003] P. 643=118 f.
[2004] P. 638=112.
[2005] P. 634=106.
[2006] P. 633=104 f.
[2007] Pp. 636, 639=108, 109, 113 f.
[2008] P. 635=107. The passage was given verbally above, vol. iv., p.
345 f. The words of St. Paul which he plays upon occur in 2 Cor. xi. 18
ff.: “They are Hebrews, so am I; they are Israelites, so am I; they are
the seed of Abraham, so am I.”
[2009] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 64, p. 197.
[2010] _Ib._, p. 194.
[2011] “Auss was Grund uund Ursach Luthers Dolmatschung über das Newe
Testament dem gemeinen Man billich verbotten worden sey,” Leipzig,
1523, Bl. 3.—In Bl. 2´ Emser, having instanced the formal theological
decision, goes on to remark, that Luther declared the secular
authorities had no right to forbid books concerning the faith, although
he and his preachers were in the habit of teaching that all were
subject to the secular power. “Thus the man can never handle a matter
with moderation, but either goes too far or else not far enough”; the
authorities had a perfect right to punish, in life and property, “those
whom the Church publicly proclaimed to be heretics.” He vainly urged
the German bishops at the end of the book, “to summon one, or ten,
learned, experienced and God-fearing men and to see that a trustworthy,
reliable and uniform German Bible was made from the old and new
[Lutheran] translation.”
[2012] Soffner, “Ein Lutherspiel aus alter Zeit,” 1889, p. 16.
Köstlin-Kawerau, 1, p. 783. On Hasenberg see vol. iv., p. 173 f.
[2013] G. Kawerau, “Hier. Emser” (“Schriften des Vereins f. RG.,” No.
61), 1898, p. 65.
[2014] In the “Sendbrieff von Dolmetzscheñ,” “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30,
2, p. 634; Erl. ed., 65, p. 106 f. Luther’s charge against Emser,
the “Dresen Scribbler,” in which he says: He “wrote his _name_, a
preface and glosses to it and thus sold my New Testament under his own
name,” is not grounded on fact. Still more unjust and insulting to the
deceased was the statement he made later to some of his friends: The
miscreant “knew the truth better than he wrote it”; “he altered a word
here and there against his conscience” in order to retain the favour of
the Duke. Cordatus, “Tagebuch,” p. 79. “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p.
149.
[2015] _Ib._, p. 72.
[2016] L. Lemmens, O.F.M., “Aus ungedruckten Franziskanerbriefen des
16. Jahrh.” (“RGl. Studien,” ed. H. Greving, Hft. 20), 1911, p. 38.
[2017] Janssen, “Hist. of the German People” (Engl. Trans.), 14, p. 429
f.
[2018] Janssen, _ib._
[2019] _Ib._
[2020] Dec. 28, 1534, in Lenz, “Briefwechsel Philipps von Hessen,”
2, p. 224: “_Fatetur se parum syncere biblia vertisse et eam
interpretationem tantum non revocat_.”
[2021] A. Räss, “Die Konvertiten seit der Reformation,” 7, p. 99 f.,
with the list.
[2022] “Luthers Leben,” 2, p. 145 f.
[2023] In the Preface of 1522, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 63, p. 153.
[2024] Preface of 1522, “Werke,” _ib._, p. 169.
[2025] Preface of 1545, _ib._, p. 159. This preface replaced the former
one, but, in it, he still leaves it “doubtful” whether the Apocalypse
was to be taken as one of the books of the Bible or not.
[2026] Zahn, “Einleitung in das N.T.,”² Leipzig, 1900, p. 84.
[2027] Preface of 1522, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 63, p. 158.
[2028] Preface of 1522, _ib._, p. 156.
[2029] _Ib._
[2030] “Truly an Epistle of straw as compared with them” (the Gospel
and 1st Epistle of John, the epistles of Paul, particularly to the
Romans, Ephesians and Galatians, and the 1st Epistle of Peter). These
were the “best” books of the New Testament because in them “faith
in Christ” is “painted in a masterly manner.” _Ib._, 114 f.—The
conclusion of the preface in question was omitted in Luther’s own later
editions but was often reintroduced later.
[2031] M. Meinertz, “Luthers Kritik am Jakobusbriefe nach dem Zeugnis
seiner Anhänger” (“Bibl. Zeitschr.,” 3, 1905), p. 273 ff. Cp. the
same author, “Der Jakobusbrief und sein Verfasser in Schrift und
Überlieferung” (“Bibl. Studien”), 10, Hft. 1-3, 1905.
[2032] “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 5, p. 227, on Gen. xxii. Meinertz, “Luthers
Kritik,” etc., _ib._
[2033] “Werke,” Walchs ed., 9, p. 2774 ff. Cp. Walther, “Theol. Stud.
u. Krit.,” 66, 1, 1893, p. 595 ff. Meinertz, _ib._
[2034] Meinertz, _ib._, p. 278.
[2035] H. Barge, “Andreas Bodenstein von Carlstadt,” 1, p. 197 f.
Carlstadt himself was doubtful as to who was the author.
[2036] Meinertz, _ib._, p. 276.
[2037] Zahn, “Einleitung in das N.T.,”² p. 84.
[2038] Barge, _ib._, p. 197 f.
[2039] His mediæval predecessors, however, usually had behind them
tradition and the authority of the Church.
[2040] W. Köhler, “Theol. Literaturztng.,” 1905, No. 16.
[2041] Nestle, Art. “Bibelübersetzungen, deutsche” in “RE. f. prot.
Theol.,”³ p. 73.
[2042] In the article on the “revised” Luther Bible of 1883, in
“Göttinger Gel. Anziegen,” 1885, Hft. 2, reprinted in De Lagarde’s
“Mitteilungen,” 3, 1889, 335 ff. Cp. above, p. 512.
[2043] Oettli, “Die revidierte Lutherbibel,” 1908.
[2044] P. lix.
[2045] _Ib._
[2046] De Lagarde, art. quoted, p. 524, n. 2.
[2047] _Ib._
[2048] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 37, p. 3.
[2049] _Ib._, p. 5.
[2050] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 2, p. 633; Erl. ed., 65, p. 104.
[2051] Preface of 1522, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 63, p. 108.
[2052] _Ib._, p. 112 f.
[2053] _Ib._, p. 9.
[2054] Cp. Hausrath, “Luthers Leben,” 2, p. 141.
[2055] In the preface to the work “Auss was Grund,” etc. Above, p. 519,
n. 1. G. Kawerau, “Hier. Emser,” p. 60.
[2056] Kawerau, _ib._, p. 66.
[2057] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 63, p. 95 f.
[2058] _Ib._, p. 137.
[2059] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 6, p. 461; Erl. ed., 21, p. 349.
[2060] “N. kirchl. Zeitschr.,” 1911, p. 123.
[2061] “Luthers deutsche Bibel,” p. 6.
[2062] “Luthers Leben,” 1, p. 136.
[2063] “Comment. de actis et scriptis Lutheri,” p. 55. Cochlæus laments
in this passage the disputations which the common people entered upon
with the clergy, and describes the universal Bible reading of the
unlearned as one of the causes of the spread of the apostasy. Nor does
he conceal the fact that some of the laity were able in controversy
to quote Scripture with greater fluency than the Catholic priests and
monks.
[2064] “Christenliche Underrichtung Dr. Johann Fabri,” etc., Dresden,
1528. Bl. Biij., Köstlin-Kawerau, 1, p. 783.
[2065] “Briefwechsel,” 3, p. 256.
[2066] Cp. “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 2, p. 640; Erl. ed., 65, p. 114.
[2067] _Ib._, p. 640=115.
[2068] _Ib._, Erl. ed., 63, p. 24 f. Preface to the Old Testament.
[2069] _Ib._, p. 25.
[2070] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 37, p. 265.
[2071] _Ib._, p. 265 f.
[2072] “Sendbrieff von Dolmetzscheñ,” “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 2, p. 634
f.; Erl. ed., 65, p. 106 f.
[2073] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 2, p. 213.
[2074] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 57, p. 4, Table-Talk.
[2075] To Nic. Hausmann, Jan. 21, 1531, “Briefwechsel,” 8, p. 349:
“_Recudimus iam psalterium germanicum pro calumniatoribus irritandis_.”
Cp. to the same, Feb. 25, 1530, _ib._, 7, p. 232, on the fresh edition
of the New Testament then undertaken with Melanchthon: “_Novam furiam
concitaturi contra nos apud papistas_,” and to Wenceslaus Link, Jan.
15, 1531, _ib._, 8, p. 345: “_Dabimus operam ... ut (David) purius
Germanum sonet, multam occasionem calumniatoribus dantes, ut habeant,
quo in translationem nostram suam rabidam invidiam exerceant et acuant,
nec tamen exsaturent_.”
[2076] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 121.
[2077] _Ib._, p. 121 f.
[2078] _Ib._, p. 175.
[2079] Cp. “Werke,” Weim. ed., 23, p. 69 f.; Erl. ed., 30, p. 19.
[2080] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 63, p. 115.
[2081] Cp. Preface of 1539, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 63, p. 405.
[2082] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 384.
[2083] Do., “Aufzeichn.,” p. 291.
[2084] Do., “Tischreden,” p. 240. Cp. “Aufzeichn.,” p. 82.
[2085] Do., “Tischreden,” p. 273.
[2086] Do., “Aufzeichn.,” p. 251.
[2087] _Ib._, p. 281.
[2088] Do., “Tischreden,” p. 145, 1540.
[2089] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 37, p. 4.
[2090] Köstlin-Kawerau, 1, p. 569.
[2091] _Ib._
[2092] _Ib._
[2093] “_Dignissimum opus gratitudine, qua me hactenus excepit barbara
hæc et vere bestialis natio._”
[2094] See the next section.
[2095] See below, p. 541, his statement against Emser.
[2096] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 2, p. 645; Erl. ed., 65, p. 122,
“Sendbrieff von Dolmetzscheñ.”
[2097] The saying appears in this shape in Reisch’s “Margarita
philosophica,” Argentorati, 1508. See Nestle, “Jahrb. f. deut. Theol.,”
1877, p. 668. In fact it is there described as a common “_proverbium
inter theologos_.” Another later form ran: “_Si Lyra non lyrasset,
totus mundus delyrasset_.”
[2098] Kropatscheck, “Das Schriftprinzip der lutherischen Kirche,” 1,
1904, p. 163.—On the German translations see below, p. 542 ff.
[2099] F. Falk, “Die Bibel am Ausgange des MA. ihre Kenntnis und ihre
Verbreitung,” Cologne, 1905, pp. 24, 91 ff.
[2100] Falk, _ib._, p. 27 ff.
[2101] Cp. Moureck, “SB. der kgl. Böhm. Gesellschaft d. Wissensch.,
Phil. Kl.,” 1892, p. 176 ff.
[2102] “N. kirchl. Zeitschr.,” 1911, p. 141.
[2103] E. v. Dobschütz, “Deutsche Rundschau,” 101, 1900, p. 61 ff.
Falk, _ib._, p. 86.
[2104] E. Schröder, “Gött. Gel. Anzeigen,” 1888, p. 253.
[2105] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 23, p. 606; Erl. ed., 42, p. 280. Cp. N.
Paulus, “Die deutschen Dominikaner im Kampf gegen Luther,” p. 61.
[2106] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 25, p. 444.
[2107] _Ib._, 63, pp. 401, 402.
[2108] Cp. “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 3, p. 270; “_Annis 30 ante biblia
erant incognita, prophetæ innominati_,” etc.
[2109] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 23, p. 69; Erl. ed., 30, p. 19. For similar
predictions see above, p. 169 ff. On the famous “bench” cp. also Weim.
ed., 6, p. 460; Erl. ed., 21, p. 348; also below, p. 541 and vol. iv.,
p. 159.
[2110] “Die Bibel am Ausgange des MA.,” p. 32.
[2111] Walther, p. 742. Janssen, “Hist. of the German People” (Engl.
Trans.), 2, p. 303. Walther also observes: “Thus it was not from the
Church that the translations emanated; it was not the Church that
recommended the study of the Bible to the laity. This would indeed
have been contrary to her principles. But neither did the Church show
herself hostile at the outset to every translation. So long as it
contained nothing to promote ‘divisions’ or to undermine reverence for
the Church and her doctrines she permitted this movement, as she did
every other that did not infringe her authority.” _Ib._
[2112] Cp. Franz Falk, _ib._, pp. 33-66.
[2113] Janssen, _ib._, 1, p. 60.
[2114] Paues, “A Fourteenth Century Biblical Version,” Cambridge,
1902. Gasquet, “The Eve of the Reformation,” 1900, and in the
“Dublin Review,” 1894. Cp. “Stimmen aus Maria Laach,” 66, 1904, p.
349 ff.—Mandonnet, “Dict. de la Bible,” 2, Art. Dominicains. Cp.
“Katholik,” 1902, 2, p. 289 ff.
[2115] W. Köhler, “Katholizismus und Reformation,” p. 13.
[2116] “Auff das ubirchristlich Buch,” etc., 1521, “Werke,” Weim. ed.,
7, p. 641; Erl. ed., 27, p. 247.
[2117] “Luther und Luthertum,” 1¹, p. 376 ff.
[2118] Cochlæus wrote (“Commentarius de actis et scriptis Lutheri,” p.
54): “_Quis satis enarrare queat, quantus dissidiorum turbationumque et
ruinarum fomes et occasio fuerit ea novi Testamenti translatio. In qua
vir iurgiorum data opera contra veterem et probatam ccclesiæ lectionem
multa immutavit, multa decerpsit, multa addidit et in alium sensum
detorsit, multas adiecit in marginibus passim glossas erroneas atque
cavillosas, et in præfationibus nihil malignitatis omisit, ut in partes
suas traheret lectorem._” He concludes by saying that many persons had
collected more than a thousand errors in the translation.
[2119] Second ed., 1875, p. 529.
[2120] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 659 (N. 3, p. 282).
[2121] Franz Falk, “Die Bibel am Ausgange des MA.,” p. 90. Earlier than
this we find five Latin Bibles printed at Mayence, Strasburg, and,
perhaps, Bamberg.
[2122] Falk, “Die Druckkunst im Dienste der Kirche,” 1879, pp. 29 and
80. Do., “Die Bibel,” etc., pp. 32, 61.
[2123] _Ib._, p. 33.
[2124] “Die deutsche Bibelübersetzung des MA.,” 1889-92.
[2125] “Die Waldenserbibeln und Meister Johannes Rellach” (“Hist.
Jahrb.,” 1894, p. 771 ff.), p. 792. On the other side see W. Walther in
the “N. kirchl. Zeitschr.,” 1896, Hft. 3, p. 194 ff. Cp. also Nestle in
the “RE. f. prot. Theol.,”³ Art. “Bibelübersetzungen, deutsche,” and
the work of R. Schellhorn there mentioned.
[2126] G. Grupp gave a critical account of the results of Walther’s
researches in the “Hist.-pol. Blätter,” 115, 1895, p. 931, which
amongst other things considerably raises Walther’s estimate of the
number of manuscript and printed copies.
[2127] See above, p. 495.
[2128] P. 6. See W. Walther, “Luthers Bibelübersetzung kein Plagiat,”
p. 2. This writing appeared previously (without illustrations) in the
“N. kirchl. Zeitschr.,” 1, p. 359 ff., and has been reproduced since in
“Zur Wertung der deutschen Reformation,” 1909, p. 723 f.
[2129] “Über die deutsche Bibel vor Luther,” 1883; cp. Walther, _ib._,
p. 8, as also pp. 2 and 4.
[2130] _Ib._, p. 1.
[2131] “Luthers deutsche Bibel,” p. 23.
[2132] “Opp. lat. var.,” 6, p. 17. “Werke,” Weim. ed., 12, p. 205 ff.
[2133] “Briefwechsel,” 4, p. 273: “_Ego non habeo tantum gratiæ, ut
tale, quid possem quale vellem_.”
[2134] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 5³, p. 23.
[2135] _Ib._, 62, p. 311.
[2136] Köstlin-Kawerau, p. 536 ff. We can hardly concur in the opposite
conclusions arrived at by F. Spitta, “Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott,
Die Lieder Luthers,” Göttingen, 1905, owing to the problematical
character of his chronology.
[2137] Janssen remarks, he not “infrequently revealed himself as a
true poet” (“Hist. of the German People,” Engl. Trans., 11, p. 258),
and, that, “in his work of adapting and expanding, he not seldom shows
himself a true poet.”
[2138] “Werke,” Erl. ed. 62, p. 311. Table-Talk.
[2139] Above, p. 342 ff.
[2140] Hausrath, “Luthers Leben,” 2, pp. 155, 158.
[2141] Ph. Wackernagel, “Das deutsche Kirchenleid von der ältesten Zeit
bis zum 17. Jahr.,” 3, 1870, p. 20. Cp. ‘“Form und Ordnung gaystlicher
Gesang,” etc., Augsburg, 1529. Cp. Wackernagel, _ib._, p. 20, the text
of the first High German reproduction of the Wittenberg Hymnbook, and
the less accurate reprint, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 56, p. 343 f., and Nelle,
“Gesch. des deut. ev. Kirchenliedes,”¹ 1904, p. 24 (2nd ed., 1909).
[2142] In an advertisement of Will Vesper, “Luthers Dichtungen,”
Munich, 1905.
[2143] Wackernagel, _ib._, 3, p. 26. Cp. “Luthers Werke,” Erl. ed., 56,
p. 354.
[2144] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 587.
[2145] At the beginning of the “Geistliche Gesangbüchlein” of Johann
Walther. Köstlin-Kawerau, 1, p. 538.
[2146] Cp. Hausrath, “Luthers Leben,” 2, p. 167.
[2147] Köstlin-Kawerau, 1, p. 541.
[2148] G. Gervinus, “Gesch. der deutschen Dichtung,” 3^5, 1871, p. 20.
[2149] Spitta, “Ein’ feste Burg,” p. 372. W. Bäumker, “Das kathol.
Kirchenlied in seinen Singweisen,” 1, 1886, p. 32, makes a similar
distinction. Cp. p. 16 ff.
[2150] On the above see Köstlin-Kawerau, 1, p. 536 ff.
[2151] In Luther’s hymns for public worship modelled on the Psalms “no
poetic enthusiasm is apparent.” Spitta, _ib._, p. 355. He also assigns
the lowest place to the translations of the Latin hymns.
[2152] In the Preface to the new edition of his hymnbook (1529).
Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 587.
[2153] Migne, “P.L.,” 185, p. 391. E. Michael (“Gesch. des deutschen
Volkes vom 13. Jahrh. bis zum Ausgang des MA.”, 4³, 1906, p. 327 ff.)
shows not only that German psalmody existed in the 13th century, but
also that it can be traced back with certainty to the 11th and 12th
centuries. Cp. also Bäumker, “KL.,” art. “Kirchenlied,” 7², p. 602.
[2154] Bäumker, _ib._, p. 604.
[2155] _Ib._, p. 605.
[2156] “Confess. Aug.,” art. 24 de missa.—Cp. for the foregoing,
Janssen, _ib._ (Engl. Trans.), 1, p. 264 ff.
[2157] According to Heinr. v. Stephan, “Luther als Musiker,” Bielefeld
(1899), p. 16, he was even “the reformer of German music.”
[2158] Köstlin-Kawerau, 1, p. 541 f. Cp. Janssen, _ib._ (Engl. Trans.),
11, p. 242 ff.
[2159]
“Vil falscher Meister itzt Lieder dichten Siehe dich für und lern sie
recht richten. Wo Gott hinbawet sein Kirch und sein Wort, Da wil der
Teuffel sein mit Trug und Mord.”
[2160] Wackernagel, _ib._, 3, p. 30.
[2161] Loesch, “Mathesius,” 2, p. 214 ff. “Historien,” Bl. 179: “I
brought him the song with which the children (in the Joachimsthal)
drive out the Pope in Mid-Lent.... This song he published and
himself wrote the title: ‘_Ex montibus et vallibus, ex sylvis et
campestribus_.’” The broadsheet of 1541 mentioned by Schamelius in
his “Lieder-Commentarius,” 1757, p. 57, if it ever existed, must have
preceded Luther’s publication, and be by some unknown author.
[2162] Cp., for instance, the May-song in the Baden Collection, by A.
Barner, Hft. 2, No. 14, p. 15.
[2163] Wackernagel, _ib._, 3, p. 31.
[2164] Wackernagel, _ib._, p. 30. Cp. Janssen, _ib._ (Engl. Trans.),
11, p. 286.
[2165] Cp., for instance, L. Feuchtwanger, “Gesch. der sozialen
Politik und des Armenwesens im Zeitalter der Reformation,” in “Jahrb.
f. Gesetzgebung,” etc., ed. G. Schmoller, N.F. 32, 1908, p. 168 ff.
and 33, 1909, p. 191 ff., more particularly p. 179 f. (The 2nd art.
is quoted below as II.) With regard to the Protestant theologians (G.
Uhlhorn and others) Feuchtwanger says, p. 180: “In their hands the
question of the care for the poor since 1500 has degenerated into a
sectarian controversy on priority, and thus the way to the solution of
the problem has been blocked by a falsification of the true question.”
He regards Uhlhorn’s work as written from an “extreme sectarian”
standpoint. To Feuchtwanger, as it had been to Strindberg, it is a
marvel, how, “as soon as you begin to speak of God and charity, your
voice grows hard and your eyes become filled with hate.”
[2166] “Gesch. der sozialen Politik,” etc., II., p. 207.
[2167] _Ib._, p. 221.
[2168] (Munich and Berlin, 1906), pp. 13, 41, 49, reprinted from “Hist.
Zeitschr.,” 97, 1906, p. 1 ff., republished in 1911 in an enlarged form.
[2169] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 19, p. 644; Erl. ed., 22, p. 169. “Ob
Kriegsleutte,” etc., 1526.
[2170] _Ib._, 30, 2, p. 138=31, p. 67 f.
[2171] _Ib._, 19, p. 634=22, p. 258. Those who emigrate become
“faithless and break their oath to their rulers”; “they do not bear in
mind the divine command, that they are bound to remain obedient until
they are prevented by force or are put to death”; they are “robbing
their sovereign of his rights and authority” over them. On such general
grounds Luther concludes that it was not lawful to desert and join the
Turks.
[2172] Pages 17, 26.
[2173] “Das Zeitalter der Reformation,” Jena, 1907, p. 1. Cp. “M.
Luthers Werke,” “revised and edited for the German people,” by Julius
Boehmer, Stuttgart, 1907, Introd., p. ix, where the theological editor
says: “With Luther a new era begins. He has been and is considered the
author of a new civilisation, different from that of the Middle Ages
and of antiquity.... The emancipation of the human intellect began in
the domain of religion and has gradually extended thence into other
spheres in spite of obstacles and difficulties.”
[2174] See, for instance, above, pp. 45 f., 476 f., and vol. iv., p.
472 ff.
[2175] See above, vol. i., p. 49 f.
[2176] H. Boehmer, “Luther im Lichte der neueren Forschung,” 1906, p.
133, however, calls it a “great exaggeration” when Eberlin of Günzburg,
the former Franciscan who afterwards became a follower of Luther,
asserts that in Germany only one man in fifteen did any work. He has
also the best of reasons for disbelieving Agricola’s statement, that
the monks and nuns in Germany then numbered over 1,400,000 souls.
[2177] Cp. N. Paulus, “Die Wertung der weltlichen Berufe im MA.”
(“Hist. Jahrb.,” 1911, p. 725 ff), particularly p. 746 ff.
[2178] Cp. above, pp. 49-60.
[2179] E. Luthardt, “Die Ethik Luthers,”² 1875, where the above and
other texts are quoted.
[2180] _Ib._, pp. 81, 88.
[2181] For the passages see Luthardt, _ib._
[2182] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 3, p. 206; Erl. ed., 23, p. 94.
[2183] F. M. Schiele, “Christliche Welt,” 1908, No. 37.
[2184] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 3, p. 206; Erl. ed., 23, p. 95.
[2185] Above, vol. iii., p. 22 ff.
[2186] Second ed., p. 124.
[2187] Luthardt refers here to Luther’s “Werke,” Erl. ed., 39, p. 250
f., where the latter says in his exposition of Psalm lxxxii. (lxxxi.)
1530: “Because the rulers, besides their other duties, must promote
God’s Word and its preachers,” “they must punish public blasphemers”;
among these were the false teachers and those who teach that each one
must himself make satisfaction for his sins (he means the Catholics).
“Whoever wishes to live amongst the burghers must keep the laws of the
borough and not dishonour or abuse them, else they must go,” i.e. the
rulers must compel those Catholics who were living amongst Protestants
to emigrate. “The offender was acting contrary to the Gospel and
the common article of the creed which we recite: ‘I believe in the
forgiveness of sins.’ Such articles held by the whole of Christendom
have already been sufficiently examined, proved and decided by
Scripture and the confession of the whole of Christendom, confirmed by
many miracles and sealed with the blood of the martyrs.”
[2188] In the continuation of the above passage Luther says of
such controversies: “Let the rulers step in and examine the case
and whichever party is not in agreement with Scripture, let him be
commanded to be silent.... For it is not good for the people to hear
contradictory preaching in the parish or district,” etc. Luther,
however, not only demands, as Luthardt says, that these “heretics”
should be banished, but also that they should be punished as public
blasphemers. Cp. below, p. 578.
[2189] “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 20, p. 97.
[2190] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 2, p. 538; Erl. ed., 17², p. 392.
Luther, however, emphasises the true preaching office so much that he
represents his pure Gospel teaching as alone capable of preserving
peace, a fact which is usually passed over. “No University, institution
or monastery” had been able to accomplish what the preaching office was
now able to do; the “blind bloodhounds abandoned the preaching office
and gave themselves up to lies.”
[2191] “Werke,” _ib._, p. 555=402.
[2192] _Ib._, p. 537 f.=392.
[2193] Reference is made here to the passage in the Home-Postils,
“Werke,” Erl. ed., 3², p. 450. Here we read, p. 449, that the “rulers
must promote matrimony and the management of the home, and see that the
young are properly educated”; for this reason theirs was “a divine and
holy state.”
[2194] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 4², p. 388, in the Home-Postils.
[2195] Cp. the passages in Köstlin, “Luthers Theologie,” 2², p. 321.
[2196] Weim. ed., 31, 1, p. 153; Erl. ed., 21, p. 60.
[2197] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 50, p. 294.
[2198] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 10. See below, p. 577, n. 1.
[2199] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 39, p. 240.
[2200] “Darstellung und Würdigung der Ansichten Luthers vom Staat
und seinen wirtschaftlichen Aufgaben,” Jena, 1898, No. 22 (“Sammlung
nationalökonomischer und statistischer Abhandlungen,” 21.)
[2201] See above, vol. ii., pp. 297 ff., 307 f.
[2202] _Ib._, p. 302 f.
[2203] Above, p. 58 f.
[2204] P. 15.
[2205] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 11, p. 255; Erl. ed., 22, p. 73.
[2206] _Ib._, p. 262 f. = 82 ff. Cp. p. 269 ff. = 92 ff.
[2207] _Ib._, p. 271 = p. 94.
[2208] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 14², p. 281. Cp. Weim. ed., 18, p. 307; Erl.
ed., 24², p. 282.
[2209] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 11, p. 259; Erl. ed., 22, p. 78 f. In order
to understand the phrase “let himself be fleeced” it should be noted
that those Lutherans who lived under the rule of Catholic princes were
unable to escape the action of the Edict of Worms.
[2210] He here says: “God hangs, breaks on the wheel, strangles and
makes war; all this is His work.” _Ib._, 19, p. 626 = 22, p. 250.
[2211] Gustav v. Schulthess-Rechberg, “Luther, Zwingli und Calvin
in ihren Ansichten über das Verhältnis von Staat und Kirche,” 1909
(“Zürcher Beiträge zur Rechtswissenschaft,” 24), p. 168.
[2212] _Ib._, p. 57.
[2213] _Ib._, 166.
[2214] E. Brandenburg, “Luthers Anschauungen vom Staate,” 1901, p. 13
f. Cp. “Werke,” Weim. ed., 11, p. 258; Erl. ed., 22, p. 77 f.: “His
kingdom [Christ’s] is not made up of ploughmen, princes, hangmen or
jailers, nor does it include the sword or secular law, but only the
Word of God and His Spirit; by it His subjects are governed in their
hearts inwardly.” All the successors of the Apostles and “spiritual
rulers” were to be satisfied with the Word.—Erl. ed., 39, p. 330:
“The secular government has only to rule over bodily and temporal
possessions.”—P. 331: “Whoever wishes to become learned and wise in
secular government let him study the heathen books and writings, these
have indeed described and painted it most beautifully and fully.”
[2215] K. Holl, “Luther und das landesherrliche Kirchenregiment,” 1911,
p. 20.
[2216] See above, vol. ii., p. 301: The bishops must “restrain
heretics.”
[2217] Holl, _ib._, p. 20 f. Luther’s words are from “De capt, babyl.,”
“Werke,” Weim. ed., 6, p. 533; “Opp. lat. var.,” 5, p. 64. Cp “_Nisi
hæc adsit aut paretur fides, nihil prodest baptismus imo obest, non
solum tum cum suscipitur, sed toto post tempore vitæ_.” _Ib._, p. 527
f.=57. Cp. above, vol. iv., p. 487.
[2218] “He protests against the war with the Turks being carried
on under the pretext of Christianity, ‘as though our people could
be termed an army of Christians fighting the Turks,’ when in ‘the
whole army there are perhaps barely five Christians [real Lutheran
believers].’ ... Thus he deliberately calls into question the
Christianity of the German people and hence demands that the war should
be undertaken as a merely secular thing.” Holl, _ib._, p. 22, with a
reference to “Werke,” Erl. ed., 31, p. 37, and to a letter to Spalatin,
Dec. 21, 1518, “Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 333. Cp. above, p. 402, and vol.
iii., p. 77 ff.
[2219] Above, vol. ii., p. 108.
[2220] See our examination of the “Von welltlicher Uberkeytt” in vol.
ii., pp. 297-306.
[2221] The passages are cited below, p. 577, n. 2.
[2222] Luther’s answer to the question he raises, “Werke,” Erl.
ed., 62, p. 207, in the Table-Talk: “Whether it be lawful to kill a
tyrant, who at his own pleasure acts contrary to right and justice”
is aimed at absolutism. He replies confidently: Yes, where the latter
really oppresses his subjects by crying deeds of wrong and where the
“citizens and subjects unite together” to make an end of him as they
would of any “other murderer or highwayman.” In his “Ob Kriegsleutte
auch ynn seligen Stande seyn künden,” 1526, Luther does not sanction
private revenge nor any disorderly or violent action on the part of
the mob, “whereby the people rise and depose their lord or strangle
him.” He emphasises in this passage as the reason the absence of legal
proceedings: “It does not do to pipe too much to the mob, or it will
only too readily lose its head.” “Werke,” Weim. ed., 19, p. 635; Erl.
ed., 22, p. 259.
[2223] To the Elector Johann, Feb. 9, 1526, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 53, p.
368 (“Briefwechsel,” 5, p. 318), on the introduction of Lutheranism
into Altenburg. Cp. vol. ii., p. 315 f.; the principal reason why the
ruler was to intervene was, that he might not deliberately tolerate
“idolatry.”
[2224] Cp. “Werke,” Weim. ed., 26, p. 200; Erl. ed., 23, p. 9. Luther’s
preface to the Instructions of the Visitors, 1528.
[2225] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 8, p. 679; Erl. ed., 22, p. 48. “Eyn trew
Vormanung ... sich zu vorhuten fur Auffruhr und Emporung,” 1522.
In connection with this the author says: It is not lawful for the
individual to rebel against “Endchrist,” i.e. the Papacy, and to make
use of force, but the secular authorities and the nobles “ought from
a sense of duty to use their regular authority for this purpose, each
prince and ruler in his own land,” etc. This he wrote on the eve of
composing his “Von welltlicher Uberkeytt,” according to which the
prince was not to trouble at all about the religion of his country.
[2226] Above, vol. ii., p. 88 f.; vol. iv., p. 510 f. N. Paulus,
“Protestantismus und Toleranz im 16. Jahrh.,” 1911, p. 7 ff.
[2227] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 39, p. 250 f.
[2228] _Ib._, p. 252.
[2229] Paul Drews, “Entsprach das Staatskirchentum dem Ideale Luthers?”
(“Zeitschr. für Theol. and Kirche,” 1908, Ergänzungsheft), p. 99. Cp.
p. 90.
[2230] Cp. Luther’s statements, in Paulus, _loc. cit._, p. 25 ff.
[2231] Drews, _ib._, p. 100.
[2232] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 39, p. 313 ff.
[2233] _Ib._, p. 320.
[2234] P. 323.
[2235] P. 324 f.
[2236] P. 327 f.
[2237] P. 358 f.
[2238] The expression is H. Boehmer’s (“Luther im Lichte der neueren
Forschung,”¹) 1906, p. 135.
[2239] To the Elector Johann, Nov. 22, 1526, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 53,
p.387 (“Briefwechsel,” 5, p. 406).
[2240] P. 17.
[2241] “Luther im Lichte der neueren Forschung,”² p. 164.
[2242] _Ib._, p. 166; 1st ed., p. 135.
[2243] 1st ed., p. 135.
[2244] Frank Ward, “Darstellung der Ansichten Luthers vom Staat,” p.
15. On p. 17, he says that according to Luther “all ecclesiastical
functions and relations, in so far as they concern external things, are
subject to the State.”
[2245] “Der Zusammenhang von Reformation und politischer Freiheit” in
“Theol. Arbeiten aus dem rhein.—wissensch. Predigerverein, N.F.,” Hft.
12, Tübingen, 1910, p. 47 f.
[2246] “Gesch. der deutschen Kultur,” Leipzig, 1904, p. 504.
[2247] “Joh. Althusius und die Entwicklung der naturrechtlichen
Staatstheorie,”² Breslau, 1902, p. 64 f. Paulus, _ib._, p. 349.
[2248] _Ib._
[2249] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 2, p. 109; Erl. ed., 31, p. 34 f.
[2250] See vol. ii., p. 297 f., from the writing, “Von welltlicher
Uberkeytt.”
[2251] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 8, p. 680; Erl. ed., 22, p. 48 f. Cp. letter
to the Elector Frederick, March 7, 1522, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 53, p. 111
(“Briefwechsel,” 3, p. 298).
[2252] To Wenceslaus Link, March 19, 1522, “Briefwechsel,” 3, p. 315.
“_Ipsos principes vincemus et contemnemus._”
[2253] Words of P. Drews, “Entsprach das Staatskirchentum dem Ideale
Luthers?” p. 28.
[2254] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 2, p. 109; Erl. ed., 31, p. 35.
[2255] _Ib._, Erl. ed., 31, p. 236, “Verantwortung der auffgelegten
Auffrur.” See vol. ii., p. 294. Cp. _ib._, Weim. ed., 19, p. 625; Erl.
ed., 22, p. 248, where he says, already in 1526, in the writing “Ob
Kriegsleutte,” etc.: “So that I should like to boast that, since the
time of the Apostles, the secular sword and authority has never been so
clearly and grandly described and extolled as by me, as even my foes
must admit.”
[2256] See vol. ii., p. 295, n. 1.
[2257] Cp. above, vol. i., p. 284 f.
[2258] “Kirche, Gemeinde und Obrigkeit nach Luther,” Tübingen, 1910, p.
63.
[2259] Above, p. 140 ff.; vol. ii., p. 332 f.
[2260] To Nicholas Hausmann, Jan. 10, 1527, “Briefwechsel,” 6, p. 10:
“_constitutis ecclesiis ... laceris autem ita rebus_,” etc. Only after
the Churches had been constituted could the ban be introduced as his
friend wished.—For earlier Visitations see “Werke,” Weim. ed., 26, p.
176 ff.
[2261] See above, p. 140 ff., and vol. iii., p. 28 ff.
[2262] Printed in E. Sehling, “Die evangel. Kirchenordnungen des 16.
Jahrh.,” 1, 1902, p. 142 ff., and, before this, by A. E. Richter, “Die
evangel. Kirchenordnungen des 16. Jahrh.,” 1, 1846, p. 77 ff.
[2263] Both in Luther’s Works, Weim. ed., 26, p. 195 ff., and Erl. ed.,
23, p. 1 ff.
[2264] Nov. 22, 1526, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 53, p. 386 (“Briefwechsel,”
5, p. 406). Enders says of this work: “Almost all the proposals Luther
makes here with the object of stimulating the project of a Visitation
which had come to a standstill are again found in the Instructions to
the Visitors.” From Luther’s previous letters Müller proves that he
approved the Instructions, _ib._, p. 69 ff.
[2265] Thus the Weimar editors in their Introduction to the
“Instructions of the Visitors,” “Werke,” Weim. ed., 26, p. 179.
[2266] _Ib._, p. 177.
[2267] In the Preface to the reader: “_Visitator nova mitra infulatur,
novum ambiens papatum_,” etc.
[2268] Aug. 10, 1528, “Briefwechsel,” 6, p. 337.
[2269] Words of K. Müller, “Kirche, Gemeinde und Obrigkeit nach
Luther,” p. 71 f. He also gives a survey of the Instructions.
[2270] For the text see Sehling, _ib._, p. 143.
[2271] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 26, p. 197; Erl. ed., 23, p. 5.
[2272] Müller, _ib._, p. 67. N. Paulus, “Protestantismus und Toleranz,”
p. 14.
[2273] _Ib._
[2274] See Th. Kolde, “Friedrich der Weise,” 1881, p. 69 f.
[2275] _Ib._, p. 38.
[2276] Carl Holl, “Luther und das Landesherrliche Kirchenregiment” (“1
Ergänzungsheft zur Zeitschr. für Theol. und Kirche”), Tübingen, 1911,
p. 54, against C. Müller, “Kirche, Gemeinde und Obrigkeit nach Luther.”
Holl says: “The two documents cannot be reconciled, for each attempts
not merely to describe or emphasise one side of the matter, but to
set forth the whole, and this they do from totally different points
of view. One seeks to represent the Visitation as the outcome of the
paternal care of the Elector, the other as an act of self-help on the
part of the Church. It is impossible to harmonise these two points of
view.”
[2277] Reference to the title of his writing, “Deuttung ... des
Munchkalbs zu Freyberg,” 1523. See above, vol. iii., p. 149 f.
[2278] The latter saying occurs in the “Unterricht,” Weim. ed., 26, p.
212; Erl. ed., 23, p. 28.
[2279] There is no call to lay so much stress on the Preface as to
be obliged to say with Holl, _ib._, 54: It “necessarily assumes the
significance of a silent protest.... Luther is defending the Church’s
independence of the State by painting the Visitation in its true
light.” Holl also says, p. 59, that Luther, here, entered upon “a
struggle for the integrity of his whole work.” “To him it was of vital
importance whether the ruler of the land was obeyed as the highest
member of the congregation, or as a Christian Prince.” P. 60: “All the
efforts directed to-day towards greater independence of the Church and
larger liberty within the Church have a good right to appeal to Luther
on this question.”
[2280] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 53, p. 386 (“Briefwechsel,” 5, p. 406). See
above, p. 581. The other passages mentioned here are quoted by P.
Drews, _ib._, pp. 95 ff., 98.
[2281] See above, vol. iv., pp. 413 and 418 f., for the corroborative
statements of Scheel and Seeberg.
[2282] Vol. iii., pp. 48 ff. and 58 ff.
[2283] See Holl, _ib._, p. 9, with a reference to “Werke,” Erl. ed.,
21, p. 289 (Weim. ed., 6, p. 413), on the Christian who, according
to Mt. xviii., summons the culprit before the congregation: “If I
am to accuse him before the congregation, I must first assemble the
congregation.”
[2284] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 6, p. 413; Erl. ed., 21, p. 290.
[2285] _Ib._, p. 440 = 322. Holl, _ib._, p. 16. It is to Holl’s credit
that he so strongly emphasises this tendency of Luther’s in favour of
the independent rights of the congregation.
[2286] Cp. his letter to Spalatin, May 29, 1522, “Briefwechsel,” 3,
p. 378 f.: “_Faciat princeps et aula hac in re quod voluerint, ego
Spiritui sancto non resistam ipsi viderint_.” See also “Briefwechsel,”
3, pp. 381 and 561.
[2287] C. Muller, _ib._, p. 54, who emphasises Luther’s bias towards
the State government of the Church with as much reason as Holl (see
above, p. 596, n. 3) does his ideas on the independence of the Church.
[2288] Müller, _ib._, p. 61.
[2289] P. 79.
[2290] Vol. ii., p. 358.
[2291] Cp. above, pp. 135 f., 139 f.
[2292] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 6, p. 536. “Opp. lat. var.,” 5, p. 68. “De
capt. babylonica.”
[2293] Cp. Holl, _ib._, p. 19 f. Müller, _ib._, p. 74 ff. See above, 55
f.
[2294] See below, p. 602 f.
[2295] P. 77.
[2296] See above, vol. ii., p. 329.
[2297] Cp. above, p. 181 ff.
[2298] See above, p. 191.
[2299] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 46, p. 184.
[2300] To Tileman Schnabel, etc., June 26, 1533, “Briefwechsel,” 9, p.
317.
[2301] P. Drews, _ib._, p. 101 f.
[2302] P. 580.
[2303] Wilhelm Hans, quoted in full, vol. ii., p. 312. What he says is
corroborated by Emil Friedberg, the authority of law, who, speaking
of the work of Carl Müller so often quoted above, says, that it is a
“difficult business to determine Luther’s views,” since they are not
always the same in his various writings, and since, under stress of
circumstances, Luther sometimes said things that went directly against
the principles elsewhere advocated by him. “Deutsche Zeitschr. f. KR.,”
20, 1911, p. 414.
[2304] The vacillation which characterised Luther’s attitude towards
the State-Church system and which came from his early ideas concerning
the true Christians who had no need of any authority over them, has
recently been set forth as follows by the Protestant lawyer and
historian Gustav v. Schulthess-Rechberg: “Luther’s true Christians were
Utopian persons and hence his Church was the same. In his idealistic
confidence in God he had expected too much from them. And thus there
came for his Reformation an era of hesitancy and groping, which refused
for a while to make way for more stable conditions. The Church which
Luther had characterised as a necessary expedient for furthering the
kingdom of God on earth now itself needed to be assisted and supported
from without, if it was to suffice for its task. To achieve this we
find Luther leaving no means untried. But his schemes were not very
satisfactory. He put a patch here and another one there, appealed to
the princes and then to the peasants, seeking to curry favour of one
and the other simply for the sake of some small concession and in order
to interest them in his Church.... At last Luther thought he had found
a remedy: this was that the Church should seek support in the secular
power. When quite at the end of his resources he had begun to remind
the princes of their duties as rulers. From mere occasional allusions
he soon passed on to energetic admonitions addressed to the ‘great
ones,’ accompanied by his customary threats and abuse. It had indeed
gone against the grain to summon the authorities to carry out his
wishes, hence, at every opportunity, he insists on his independence of
them.... Luther had in the event to submit to reproaches which he could
not always honestly shift on to the shoulders of the ‘false priestlings
and factious spirits.’”
Of Luther’s later years Schulthess-Rechberg says: “An era dawns when
Luther can no longer see an ounce of good in the State; when he
even tells the unworthy servant of God [the prince] to mind his own
business. It is then that we find Luther declaring that the secular
authorities have no power to watch over souls or to exercise the
teaching office, that they have no authority over the clergy, etc. Here
we see plainly how he, more than any other reformer, was driven by
force of circumstances, and this again is a proof that Luther’s work
was really more than he had bargained for. Luther ... never succeeded
in viewing the relations between Church and State objectively. This and
his constant efforts to disengage himself from Rome frequently gave an
unexpected turn to his views. For instance, when he insists at times
that heresy and unbelief do not concern the authorities (Erl. ed., 22,
pp. 90, 93). Hardly has he said this than he finds himself compelled to
hedge and practically to eat his words.” “Luther, Zwingli und Calvin,”
etc (above, p. 573, n. 4), pp. 170-172.
[2305] In an article against P. Drews (“Zeitschr. f. KG.,” 29, 1908, p.
478 ff.), p. 488. Hermelink adds: (p. 489) “It is true that the system
of an established Church did not correspond with Luther’s ideal, but
it was a political necessity and therefore seemed to him willed by
God.” Hermelink’s reference to the false ideals and eschatology which
influenced Luther’s theory of Church and State may be admitted as in
part correct. He is also right when he says: Luther, according to his
frequent statement, wished to assemble the Christians from the kingdom
of Antichrist before the end of the world. _Ib._, p. 313.
[2306] “Kirche, Gemeinde und Obrigkeit nach Luther,” p. 81.
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