LUTHER

[ii]

Nihil Obstat

C. Schut, s.t.d.,

Censor Deputatus.

Imprimatur

Edm. Can. Surmont,

Vic. Gen.

Westmonasterii, die 10 Julii, 1913.

[iii]

LUTHER

BY

HARTMANN GRISAR, S. J.

PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF INNSBRUCK

AUTHORISED TRANSLATION FROM THE GERMAN BY

E. M. LAMOND

EDITED BY

LUIGI CAPPADELTA

Volume IV

LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO., Ltd. BROADWAY HOUSE, 68-74 CARTER LANE, E.C. 1915

[iv]

A FEW PRESS OPINIONS OF VOLUMES I-III.

“His most elaborate and systematic biography ... is not merely a book to be reckoned with; it is one with which we cannot dispense, if only for its minute examination of Luther’s theological writings.”—The Athenæum (Vol. I).

“The second volume of Dr. Grisar’s ‘Life of Luther’ is fully as interesting as the first. There is the same minuteness of criticism and the same width of survey.” The Athenæum (Vol. II).

“Its interest increases. As we see the great Reformer in the thick of his work, and the heyday of his life, the absorbing attraction of his personality takes hold of us more and more strongly. His stupendous force, his amazing vitality, his superhuman interest in life, impress themselves upon us with redoubled effect. We find him the most multiform, the most paradoxical of men.... The present volume, which is admirably translated, deals rather with the moral, social, and personal side of Luther’s career than with his theology.”—The Athenæum (Vol. III).

“There is no room for any sort of question as to the welcome ready among English-speaking Roman Catholics for this admirably made translation of the first volume of the German monograph by Professor Grisar on the protagonist of the Reformation in Europe.... The book is so studiously scientific, so careful to base its teaching upon documents, and so determined to eschew controversies that are only theological, that it cannot but deeply interest Protestant readers.”—The Scotsman.

“Father Grisar has gained a high reputation in this country through the translation of his monumental work on the History of Rome and the Popes in the Middle Ages, and this first instalment of his ‘Life of Luther’ bears fresh witness to his unwearied industry, wide learning, and scrupulous anxiety to be impartial in his judgments as well as absolutely accurate in matters of fact.”—Glasgow Herald.

“This ‘Life of Luther’ is bound to become standard ... a model of every literary, critical, and scholarly virtue.”—The Month.

“Like its two predecessors, Volume III excels in the minute analysis not merely of Luther’s actions, but also of his writings; indeed, this feature is the outstanding merit of the author’s patient labours.”—The Irish Times.

“This third volume of Father Grisar’s monumental ‘Life’ is full of interest for the theologian. And not less for the psychologist; for here more than ever the author allows himself to probe into the mind and motives and understanding of Luther, so as to get at the significance of his development.”—The Tablet.

CONTENTS

VOL. IV.

THE REFORMER (II)

[2]
[3]

LUTHER

CHAPTER XXI

PRINCELY MARRIAGES

1. Luther and Henry VIII of England. Bigamy instead of Divorce

In King Henry the Eighth’s celebrated matrimonial controversy the Roman See by its final decision was energetically to vindicate the cause of justice, in spite of the fear that this might lead to the loss of England to Catholicism. The considered judgment was clear and definite: Rather than countenance the King’s divorce from Queen Catherine, or admit bigamy as lawful, the Roman Church was prepared to see the falling away of the King and larger portion of the realm.[1]

In the summer, 1531, Luther was drawn into the controversy raging round the King’s marriage, by an agent of King Henry’s. Robert Barnes, an English Doctor of Divinity who had apostatised from the Church and was residing at Wittenberg, requested of Luther, probably at the King’s instigation, an opinion regarding the lawfulness of his sovereign’s divorce.

To Luther it was clear enough that there was no possibility of questioning the validity of Catherine’s marriage. It rightly appeared to him impossible that the Papal dispensation, by virtue of which Catherine of Aragon had married the King after having been the spouse of his deceased brother, should be represented as sufficient ground for a^[4] divorce. This view he expressed with praiseworthy frankness in the written answer he gave Barnes.[2]

At the same time, however, Luther pointed out to the King a loophole by which he might be able to succeed in obtaining the object of his desire; by this concession, unfortunately, he branded his action as a pandering to the passions of an adulterous King. At the conclusion of his memorandum to Barnes he has the following: “Should the Queen be unable to prevent the divorce, she must accept the great evil and most insulting injustice as a cross, but not in any way acquiesce in it or consent to it. Better were it for her to allow the King to wed another Queen, after the example of the Patriarchs, who, in the ages previous to the law, had many wives; but she must not consent to being excluded from her conjugal rights or to forfeiting the title of Queen of England.”[3]

It has been already pointed out that Luther, in consequence of his one-sided study of the Old Testament, had accustomed himself more and more to regard bigamy as something lawful.[4] That, however, he had so far ever given his formal consent to it in any particular instance there is no proof. In the case of Henry VIII, Luther felt less restraint than usual. His plain hint at bigamy as a way out of the difficulty was intended as a counsel (“suasimus”). Hence we can understand why he was anxious that his opinion should not be made too public.[5] When, in the same year (1531), he forwarded to the Landgrave of Hesse what purported to be a copy of the memorandum, the incriminating passage was carefully omitted.[6]

Melanchthon, too, had intervened in the affair, and had gone considerably further than Luther in recommending[5] recourse to bigamy and in answering possible objections to polygamy.

In a memorandum of Aug. 23, Melanchthon declared that the King was entirely justified in seeking to obtain the male heirs with whom Catherine had failed to present him; this was demanded by the interests of the State. He endeavours to show that polygamy is not forbidden by Divine law; in order to avoid scandal it was, however, desirable that the King “should request the Pope to sanction his bigamy, permission being granted readily enough at Rome.” Should the Pope refuse to give the dispensation, then the King was simply and of his own authority to have recourse to bigamy, because in that case the Pope was not doing his duty, for he was “bound in charity to grant this dispensation.”[7] “Although I should be loath to allow polygamy generally, yet, in the present case, on account of the great advantage to the kingdom and perhaps to the King’s conscience, I would say: The King may, with a good conscience (‘tutissimum est regi’), take a second wife while retaining the first, because it is certain that polygamy is not forbidden by the Divine law, nor is it so very unusual.” Melanchthon’s ruthless manner of proceeding undoubtedly had a great influence on the other Wittenbergers, even though it cannot be maintained, as has been done, that he, and not Luther, was the originator of the whole theory; there are too many clear and definite earlier statements of Luther’s in favour of polygamy to disprove this. Still, it is true that the lax opinion broached by Melanchthon in favour of the King of England played a great part later in the matter of the bigamy of the Landgrave of Hesse.[8]

In the same year, however, there appeared a work on matrimony by the Lutheran theologian Johann Brenz in which, speaking generally and without reference to this[6] particular case, he expressed himself very strongly against the lawfulness of polygamy. “The secular authorities,” so Brenz insists, “must not allow any of their subjects to have two or more wives,” they must, on the contrary, put into motion the “penalties of the Imperial Laws” against polygamy; no pastor may “bless or ratify” such marriages, but is bound to excommunicate the offenders.[9] Strange to say, the work appeared with a Preface by Luther in which, however, he neither praises nor blames this opinion.[10]

The Strasburg theologians, Bucer and Capito, as well as the Constance preacher, Ambrosius Blaurer, also stood up for the lawfulness of bigamy. When, however, this reached the ears of the Swiss theologians, Œcolampadius, in a letter of Aug. 20, exclaimed: “They were inclined to consent to the King’s bigamy! But far be it from us to hearken more to Mohammed in this matter than to Christ!”[11]

In spite of the alluring hint thrown out at Wittenberg, the adulterous King, as everyone knows, did not resort to bigamy. It was Henry the Eighth’s wish to be rid of his wife, and, having had her removed, he regarded himself as divorced. After the King had repudiated Catherine, Luther told his friends: “The Universities [i.e. those which sided with the English King] have declared that there must be a divorce. We, however, and the University of Louvain, decided differently.... We [viz. Luther and Melanchthon] advised the Englishman that it would be better for him to take a concubine than to distract his country and nation; yet in the end he put her away.”[12]

When Clement VII declared the first marriage to be valid and indissoluble, and also refused to countenance any bigamy, Henry VIII retorted by breaking with the Church of Rome, carrying his country with him. For a while Clement had hesitated on the question of bigamy, since, in view of Cardinal Cajetan’s opinion to the contrary, he found it difficult to convince himself that a dispensation could not[7] be given, and because he was personally inclined to be indulgent and friendly; finally, however, he gave Bennet, the English envoy, clearly to understand that the dispensation was not in his power to grant.[13] That he himself was not sufficiently versed in Canon Law, the Pope repeatedly admitted. “It will never be possible to allege the attitude of Clement VII as any excuse for the Hessian affair” (Ehses). It is equally impossible to trace the suggestion of bigamy back to the opinions prevailing in mediæval Catholicism.[14] No mediæval pope or confessor can be instanced who sanctioned bigamy, while there are numbers of theologians who deny the Pope’s power to grant such dispensations; many even describe this negative opinion as the “sententia communis.”[15]

Of Cardinal Cajetan, the only theologian of note on the opposite side (see above, vol. iii., p. 261), W. Köhler remarks, alluding particularly to the recent researches of N. Paulus: “It never entered Cardinal Cajetan’s head to deny that the ecclesiastical law categorically forbids polygamy.”[16] Further: “Like Paulus, we may unhesitatingly admit that, in this case, it would have been better for Luther had he had behind him the guiding authority of the Church.”[17]

Henry VIII, as was only natural, sought to make the best use of the friendship of the Wittenberg professors and Princes of the Schmalkalden League, against Rome and the Emperor. He despatched an embassy, though his overtures were not as successful as he might have wished.

We may describe briefly the facts of the case.

[8]

Though Luther and the Princes set great store on the projected alliance, on account of the increase of strength it would have brought the German Evangelicals, yet their hopes were to be shattered, for the articles above referred to did not find acceptance in England. Luther was later on to declare that everything had come to nought because King Henry wished to be head of the Protestants in Germany, which the Elector of Saxony would not permit: “Let the devil take the great Lords! This rogue (‘is nebulo’) wanted to be proclaimed head of our religion, but to this the Elector would in no wise agree; we did not even know what sort of belief he had.”[30] Probably the King demanded a paramount influence in the Schmalkalden League, and the German Princes were loath to be deprived of the direction of affairs.

After all hopes of an agreement had vanished Henry VIII made no secret of his antipathy for the Lutheran teaching.

The quondam Defender of the Faith even allowed himself to be carried away to acts of bloodshed. In 1540 he caused Luther’s friend, Robert Barnes, the agent already referred to, to be burnt at the stake as a heretic. Barnes had adopted the Lutheran doctrine of Justification. It was not on this account alone, however, that he was obnoxious to the King,[12] but also because the latter had grown weary of Anne of Cleves, whom Barnes and Thomas Cromwell, the King’s favourite, had given him as a fourth consort, after Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour. Cromwell, though not favourably disposed to Lutheranism, was executed a few days before. On April 9, 1536, Luther had written to Cromwell a very polite letter, couched in general terms,[31] in answer to a courteous missive from that statesman handed to him by Barnes. From Luther’s letter we see that Cromwell “had been described to him in too favourable a light,”[32] as though predisposed to the Lutheran doctrine or to regard Luther as a divinely sent teacher. Luther deceived himself if he fancied that Cromwell was ready to “work for the cause”; the latter remained as unfriendly to Lutheranism proper as the King himself.

In the year of Barnes’s execution Melanchthon wrote the letter to Veit Dietrich in which he expresses the pious wish, that God would send a brave murderer to bring the King to the end he deserved.[33]

Luther, on his side, declared: “The devil himself rides astride this King”; “I am glad that we have no part in his blasphemy.” He boasted, so Luther says, of being head of the Church of England, a title which no bishop, much less a King, had any right to, more particularly one who with his crew had “vexed and tortured Christ and His Church.”[34] In 1540 Luther spoke sarcastically of the King’s official title: “Under Christ the supreme head on earth of the English Church,”[35] remarking, that, in that case, “even the angels are excluded.”[36] Of Melanchthon’s dedication of some of his books to the King, Luther says, that this had been of little service. “In future I am not going to dedicate any of my books to anyone. It brought Philip no good in the case of the bishop [Albert of Mayence], of the Englishman, or of the Hessian [the Landgrave Philip].”[37] Still more fierce became his hatred and disappointment when he found the King consorting with his sworn enemies, Duke George, and Albert, Elector of Mayence.[38][13] When he heard the news of Barnes having been cast into prison, he said: “This King wants to make himself God. He lays down articles of faith and forbids marriage under pain of death, a thing which even the Pope scrupled to do. I am something of a prophet and, as what I prophesy comes true, I shall refrain from saying more.”[39]

Luther never expressed any regret regarding his readiness to humour the King’s lusts or regarding his suggestion of bigamy.

The Landgrave Philip of Hesse, however, referred directly to the proposal of bigamy made to the King of England, when he requested Luther’s consent to his own project of taking a second wife. The Landgrave had got to hear of the proposal in spite of the unlucky passage having been struck out of the deed.

The history of the Hessian bigamy is an incident which throws a curious light on Luther’s exceptional indulgence towards princely patrons of the Evangel in Germany.

2. The Bigamy of Philip of Hesse

As early as 1526 Philip of Hesse, whose conduct was far from being conspicuous for morality, had submitted to Luther the question whether Christians were allowed to have more than one wife. The Wittenberg Professor gave a reply tallying with his principles as already described;[40] instead of pointing out clearly that such a thing was divinely forbidden to all Christians, was not to be dispensed from by any earthly authority, and that such extra marriages would be entirely invalid, Luther refused to admit unconditionally the invalidity of such unions. Such marriages, he stated, gave scandal to Christians, “for without due cause and necessity even the old Patriarchs did not take more than one wife”; it was incumbent that we should be able “to appeal to the Word of God,” but no such Word existed in favour of polygamy, “by which the same could[14] be proved to be well pleasing to God in the case of Christians”; “hence I am unable to recommend it, but would rather dissuade from it, especially for Christians, unless some great necessity existed, for instance were the wife to contract leprosy or become otherwise unfit.”[41] It is not clear whether Philip was interested in the matter for personal reasons, or simply because some of his subjects were believers in polygamy.

Luther’s communication, far from diverting the Prince from his project, could but serve to make him regard it as feasible; provided that the “great necessity” obtained and that he had “the Word of God on his side,” then the step could “not be prevented.” By dint of a judicious interpretation of Scripture and with expert theological aid, the obstacles might easily be removed.

The Hessian Prince also became acquainted with Luther’s statements on bigamy in his Commentary on Genesis published in the following year. To them the Landgrave Philip appealed expressly in 1540; the preacher Anton Corvinus having suggested that he should deny having committed bigamy, he replied indignantly: “Since you are so afraid of it, why do you not suppress what Luther wrote more than ten years ago on Genesis; did he and others not write publicly concerning bigamy: ‘Advise it I do not, forbid it I cannot’? If you are allowed to write thus of it publicly, you must expect that people will act up to your teaching.”[42]

The question became a pressing one for Luther, and began to cast a shadow over his wayward and utterly untraditional interpretation of the Bible, when, in 1539, the Landgrave resolved to take as an additional wife, besides Christina the daughter of George of Saxony, who had now grown distasteful to him, the more youthful Margeret von der Sale. From Luther Margeret’s mother desired a favourable pronouncement, in order to be able with a good conscience to give her consent to her daughter’s wedding.

[15]

Philip Seeks the Permission of Wittenberg.

Early in Nov., 1539, Gereon Sailer, an Augsburg physician famous for his skill in handling venereal cases, who had treated the Landgrave at Cassel, was sent by Philip to Bucer at Strasburg to instruct the latter to bring the matter before the theologians of Wittenberg. Sailer was a friend of the innovations, and Bucer was highly esteemed by the Landgrave as a theologian and clever diplomatist.

Bucer was at first sorely troubled in conscience and hesitated to undertake the commission; Sailer reported to the Landgrave that, on hearing of the plan, he had been “quite horrified” and had objected “the scandal such an innovation in a matter of so great importance and difficulty might cause among the weak followers of the Evangel.”[43] After thinking the matter over for three days Bucer, however, agreed to visit the Landgrave on Nov. 16 and receive his directions. A copy of the secret and elaborate instructions given him by Philip concerning the appeal he was to make to Luther still exists in the handwriting of Simon Bing, the Hessian Secretary, in the Marburg Archives together with several old copies,[44] as also the original rough draft in Philip’s own hand.[45] The envoy first betook himself to the meeting of the Schmalkalden Leaguers, held at Arnstadt on Nov. 20, to confer upon a new mission to be sent to England; on Dec. 4 he was at Weimar with the Elector of Saxony and on the 9th he had reached Wittenberg.

The assenting answer given by Luther and Melanchthon bears the date of the following day.[46] It is therefore quite true that the matter was settled “in haste,” as indeed the text of the reply states. Bucer doubtless did his utmost to[16] prevent the theologians from having recourse to subterfuge or delay.

The above-mentioned instructions contain a sad account of the “dire necessity” which seemed to justify the second marriage: The Landgrave would otherwise be unable to lead a moral life; he was urged on by deep distress of conscience; not merely did he endure temptations of the flesh beyond all measure, but, so runs his actual confession, he was quite unable to refrain from “fornication, unchastity and adultery.”[47] The confession dealt with matters which were notorious. It also contains the admission, that he had not remained true to his wife for long, in fact not for more than “three weeks”; on account of his sense of sin he had “not been to the Sacrament.” As a matter of fact he had abstained from Communion from 1526 to 1539, viz. for thirteen years, and until his last attack of the venereal disease.

But were the scruples of conscience thus detailed to the Wittenbergers at all real? Recently they have been characterised as the “outcome of a bodily wreck.”

“I am unable to practise self-restraint,” Philip of Hesse had declared on another occasion, “I am forced to commit fornication or worse, with women.” His sister Elisabeth had already advised him to take a concubine in place of so many prostitutes. In all probability Philip would have abducted Margaret von der Sale had he not hoped to obtain her in marriage through the intervention of her relations and with Luther’s consent. A Protestant historian has recently pointed this out when dealing with Philip’s alleged “distress of conscience.”[48]

Bucer was well able to paint in dismal hues the weakness of his princely client; he pointed out, “how the Landgrave, owing to his wife’s deficiencies, was unable to remain chaste; how he had previously lived so and so, which was neither good nor Evangelical, especially in one of the mainstays of the party.”[49] In that very year Philip of Hesse had, as a matter of fact, been ailing from a certain[17] malady brought upon him by his excesses; he himself spoke of it as a “severe attack of the French sickness [syphilis], which is the penalty of an immoral life.”[50]

After again stating that he “took his stand on the Word of God” he concludes with a request for the desired “Christian, written” testimony, “in order that thereby I may amend my life, go to the Sacrament with a good conscience and further all the affairs of our religion with greater freedom and contentment. Given at Milsungen on the Sunday post Catharine anno etc. 39.”

The Wittenberg theologians now found themselves in a quandary. Luther says: “We were greatly taken aback at such a declaration on account of the frightful scandal which would follow.”[52] Apart from other considerations, the Landgrave had already been married sixteen years and had a number of sons and daughters by his wife; the execution of the project would also necessarily lead to difficulties at the Courts of the Duke of Saxony and of the Elector, and also, possibly, at that of the Duke of Würtemberg. They were unaware that Margaret von Sale had already been chosen as a second wife, that Philip had secured the consent of his wife Christina, and that the way[19] for a settlement with the bride’s mother had already been paved.[53]

The view taken by Rockwell, viz. that the form of the memorandum to be signed by Luther and Melanchthon had already been drawn up in Hesse by order of Philip, is, however, erroneous; nor was the document they signed a copy of such a draft.[54]

It is much more likely that the lengthy favourable reply of the Wittenbergers was composed by Melanchthon. It was signed with the formula: “Wittenberg, Wednesday after St. Nicholas, 1539. Your Serene Highness’s willing and obedient servants [and the signatures] Martinus Luther, Philippus Melanchthon, Martinus Bucerus.”[55] The document is now among the Marburg archives.

A paragraph appended to the memorandum is, according to recent investigation, from Luther’s own pen and, at any rate, is quite in his style.[60] It refers to Philip’s threat to seek the Emperor’s intervention, a step which would not have been at all to the taste of the Wittenbergers, for it was obvious that this would cripple Philip’s action as Protector of the Evangelicals. This menace had plainly excited and troubled Luther. He declares in the concluding sentences, that the Emperor before whom the Prince threatened to lay the case, was a man who looked upon adultery as a[22] small sin; there was great reason to fear that he shared the faith of the Pope, Cardinals, Italians, Spaniards and Saracens; he would pay no heed to the Prince’s request but only use him as a cat’s-paw. They had found him out to be a false and faithless man, who had forgotten the true German spirit. The Emperor, as the Landgrave might see for himself, did not trouble himself about any Christian concerns, left the Turks unopposed and was only interested in fomenting plots in Germany for the increase of the Burgundian power. Hence it was to be hoped that pious German Princes would have nothing to do with his faithless practices.

Such are the contents of Luther and Melanchthon’s written reply. Bucer, glad of the success achieved, at once proceeded with the memorandum to the Electoral Court.

This theological document, the like of which had never been seen, is unparalleled in the whole of Church history. Seldom indeed has exegetical waywardness been made to serve a more momentous purpose. The Elector, Johann Frederick of Saxony, was, at a later date, quite horrified, as he said, at “a business the like of which had not been heard of for many ages.”[61] Sidonie, the youthful Duchess of Saxony, complained subsequently, that, “since the Birth of Christ, no one had done such a thing.”[62] Bucer’s fears had not been groundless “of the scandal of such an innovation in a matter of so great importance and difficulty among the weak followers of the Evangel.”[63]

Besides this, the sanction of bigamy given in the document in question is treated almost as though it denoted the commencement of a more respectable mode of life incapable of giving any “particular scandal”; for amongst the common people the newly wedded wife would be looked upon as a concubine, and such it was quite usual for Princes to keep. Great stress is laid on the fact that the secret bigamy would prevent adultery and other immorality. Apart, however, from these circumstances, the sanctioning, largely on the strength of political considerations, of an[23] exception to the universal New-Testament prohibition, is painful. Anyone, however desirous of finding extenuating circumstances for Luther’s decision, can scarcely fail to be shocked at this fact. The only excuse that might be advanced would be, that Philip, by his determination to take this step and his threat of becoming reconciled to the Emperor, exercised pressure tantamount to violence, and that the weight of years, his scorn for the Church’s matrimonial legislation and his excessive regard for his own interpretation of the Old Testament helped Luther to signify his assent to a plan so portentous.

The Bigamy is Consummated and made Public.

The object of Bucer’s hasty departure for the Court of the Elector Johann Frederick of Saxony was to dispose him favourably towards the impending marriage. In accordance with his instructions from Hesse, he was to submit to this Prince the same arguments which had served him with the two Wittenbergers, for the superscription of the instructions ran: “What Dr. Martin Bucer is to demand of D. Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon, and, should he see fit, after that also of the Elector.”[64] In addition to this he had in the meantime received special instructions for this delicate mission to Weimar.[65]

The Landgrave looked upon an understanding with the Elector as necessary, not merely on account of his relationship with him and out of consideration for Christina his first wife, who belonged to the House of Saxony, but also on account of the ecclesiastico-political alliance in which they stood, which made the Elector’s support seem to him quite as essential as the sanction of the Wittenberg theologians.

Bucer treated with Johann Frederick at Weimar on 15 or 16 Dec. and reached some sort of understanding, as we learn from the Elector’s written reply to the Landgrave bearing the latter date. Bucer represents him as saying: If it is impossible to remove the scandal caused by the Landgrave’s life in any other way, he would ask, as a[24] brother, that the plan should not be executed in any other way than “that contained in our—Dr. Luther’s, Philip’s and my own—writing”; upon this he was unable to improve; he was also ready to “lend him fraternal assistance in every way” should any complications arise from this step.[66] In return, in accordance with the special instructions given to Bucer, he received from the Landgrave various political concessions of great importance: viz. support in the matter of the Duke of Cleves, help in his difficulties about Magdeburg, the eventual renunciation of Philip’s title to the inheritance of his father-in-law, Duke George, and, finally, the promise to push his claims to the Imperial crown after the death of Charles V, or in the event of the partitioning of the Empire.

The Elector, like his theologians, was not aware that the “lady” (she is never actually named) had already been chosen. Margaret von der Sale, who was then only seventeen years of age, was the daughter of a lady-in-waiting to Philip’s sister, Elisabeth, Duchess of Rochlitz. Her mother, Anna von der Sale, an ambitious lady of the lower nobility, had informed the Landgrave that she must stipulate for certain privileges. As soon as Philip had received the replies from Wittenberg and Weimar, on Dec. 23, 1539, the demands of the mother were at once settled by persons vested with the necessary authority. Even before this, on the very day of the negotiations with Luther, Dec. 11, the Landgrave and his wife Christina had each drawn up a formal deed concerning what was about to take place: Christina agreed to Philip’s “taking another wedded wife” and promised that she would never on that account be unfriendly to the Landgrave, his second wife, or her children; Philip pledged himself not to countenance any claim to the Landgraviate on the part of any issue by the second wife during the lifetime of Christina’s two sons, but to provide for such issue by means of territories situated outside his own dominions.[67] Such was the assurance with which he proceeded towards the cherished goal.

Several Hessian theologians of the new faith, for instance, the preacher Dionysius Melander, a personal friend of the Landgrave’s, and Johann Lening were on his side.[68] To the[25] memorandum composed by Luther and Melanchthon the signatures of both the above-mentioned were subsequently added, as well as those of Anton Corvinus, then pastor at Witzenhausen, of Adam Fuldensis (Kraft), then Superintendent at Marburg, of Justus Winther—since 1532 Court Schoolmaster at Cassel and, from 1542, Superintendent at Rotenburg on the Fulda—and of Balthasar Rhaide (Raid), pastor at Hersfeld, who, as Imperial Notary, certified the marriage. The signature of the last was, however, subsequently erased.[69]

About the middle of Jan., 1540, Philip informed the more prominent Councillors and theologians that he would soon carry out his project. When everything was ready the marriage was celebrated on March 4 in the Castle of Rotenburg on the Fulda by the Court Chaplain, Dionysius Melander, in the presence of Bucer and Melanchthon; were also present the Commandant of the Wartburg, Eberhard von der Thann, representing the Elector of Saxony, Pastor Balthasar Rhaide, the Hessian Chancellor Johann Feige of Lichtenau, the Marshal Hermann von Hundelshausen, Rudolf Schenk zu Schweinsberg (Landvogt of Eschwege on the Werra), Hermann von der Malsburg, a nobleman, and the mother of the bride, Anna von der Sale.[70] The draft of the short discourse still exists with which the Landgrave intended to open the ceremony. Melander delivered the formal wedding address. On the following day Melanchthon handed the Landgrave an “admonition,” i.e. a sort of petition, in which he warmly recommended to his care the welfare of education. It is possible that when summoned, to Rotenburg from a meeting of the Schmalkalden League at which he had been assisting, he was unaware of the object of the invitation. Subsequent explanations, furnished at the last moment, by Melander and Lening, seem to have drawn a protest from Melanchthon which roused the anger of the two preachers. This shows that “everything did not pass off smoothly at Rotenburg.”[71] Both were, not long after, stigmatised by Melanchthon as “ineruditi homines” and made chiefly responsible for the lax principles of the Landgrave.[72] Luther tried later to represent Lening, the[26] “monster,” as the man by whom the idea of the bigamy, a source of extreme embarrassment to the Wittenbergers, had first been hatched.[73]

Although the Landgrave was careful to preserve secrecy concerning the new marriage—already known to so many persons,—permitting only the initiate to visit the “lady,” and even forbidding her to attend Divine Worship, still the news of what had taken place soon leaked out. “Palpable signs appeared in the building operations commenced at Weissenstein, and also in the despatch of a cask of wine to Luther.”[74] At Weissenstein, in the former monastery near Cassel, now Wilhelmshöhe, an imposing residence was fitted up for Margaret von der Sale. In a letter of May 24, 1540, to Philip, Luther expresses his thanks for the gift of wine: “I have received your Serene Highness’s present of the cask of Rhine wine and thank your Serene Highness most humbly. May our dear Lord God keep and preserve you body and soul. Amen.”[75] Katey also received a gift from the Prince, for which Luther returned thanks on Aug. 22, though without mentioning its nature.[76] On the cask of wine and its destination the Schultheiss of Lohra spoke “openly before all the peasants,” so Anton Corvinus informed the Landgrave on May 25, saying that: “Your Serene Highness has taken another wife, of which he was perfectly sure, and your Serene Highness is now sending a cask of wine to Luther because he gave your Serene Highness permission to do such a thing.”[77]

Philip of Hesse, who was already in disgrace with the Emperor on account of his expedition into Würtemberg and his support of Duke Ulrich, knew the penalties which he might expect unless he found some means of escape. The “Carolina” (1532) decreed “capital punishment” against bigamists, no less than against adulterers.[84] The Landgrave himself was even fully prepared to forfeit one-third of his possessions should it be impossible to arrive otherwise at a settlement.[85] He now openly declared—as he had already hinted he would—that, in case of necessity, he would make humble submission to the Emperor; if the worst came to the worst, then he would also make public the memorandum he had received from Wittenberg in order to exculpate himself—a threat which filled the Elector with alarm on account of his University and of Luther.

Bucer, the first to be summoned to the aid of the Hessian Court, advised the Landgrave to escape from his unfortunate predicament by downright lying. He wrote: If concealment and equivocation should prove of no avail, he was to state in writing that false rumours concerning his person had come into circulation, and that no Christian was allowed to have two wives at the same time; he was also to replace the marriage-contract by another contract in[29] which Margaret might be described as a concubine—such as God had allowed to His beloved friends—and not as a wife within the meaning of the calamitous Imperial Law; an effort was also to be made to induce the Court of Dresden to keep silence, or to deny any knowledge of the business, and, in the meantime, the “lady” might be kept even more carefully secluded than before.[86]

The Landgrave’s reply was violent in the extreme. He indignantly rejected Bucer’s suggestion; the dissimulation alleged to have been practised by others, notably by the Patriarchs, Judges, Kings and Prophets, etc., in no wise proved the lawfulness of lying; Bucer had “been instigated to make such proposals by some worldly-wise persons and jurists whom we know well.”[87] Philip wrote to the same effect to the Lutheran theologians, Schnepf, Osiander and Brenz, who urged him to deny that Margaret was his lawful wife: “That, when once the matter has become quite public, we should assert that it was invalid, this we cannot bring ourselves to do. We cannot tell a lie, for to lie does not become any man. And, moreover, God has forbidden lying. So long as it is possible we shall certainly reply ‘dubitative’ or ‘per amphibologiam,’ but to say that it is invalid, such advice you may give to another, but not to us.”[88]

The “amphibologia” had been advised by the Hessian theologians, who had pointed out that Margaret could best be described to the Imperial Court of Justice as a “concubina,” since, in the language of the Old Testament, as also in that of the ancient Church, this word had sometimes been employed to describe a lawful wife.[89] They also wrote to Luther and Melanchthon, fearing that they might desert the Landgrave, telling them that they were expected to stand by their memorandum. Although they were in favour of secrecy, yet they wished that, in case of necessity, the Wittenbergers should publicly admit their share. Good care would be taken to guard against the general introduction of polygamy.[90]

[30]

Dispensation; Advice in Confession; a Confessor’s Secret?

Was the document signed by Luther, Melanchthon and Bucer a dispensation for bigamy?

It has been so described. But, even according to the very wording of the memorandum, the signatories had no intention of issuing a dispensation. On the contrary, according to the text, they, as learned theologians, declared that the Divine Law, as they understood it, gave a general sanction, according to which, in cases such as that of Philip of Hesse, polygamy was allowed. It is true that they and Philip himself repeatedly use the word “dispensation,” but by this they meant to describe the alleged general sanction in accordance with which the law admitted of exceptions in certain cases, hence their preference for the term “to use” the dispensation, instead of the more usual “to beg” or “to grant.” Philip is firmly resolved “to use” the dispensation brought to his knowledge by Luther’s writings, and the theologians, taking their cue from him, likewise speak of his “using” it in his own case.[91]

It was the same with the “dispensation” which the Wittenbergers proposed to Henry VIII of England. (See above, p. 4 f.) They had no wish to invest him with an authority which, according to their ideas, he did not possess, but they simply drew his attention to the freedom common to all, and declared by them to be bestowed by God, viz. in his case, of taking a second wife, telling him that he was free to have recourse to this dispensation. In other words, they gave him the power to dispense himself, regardless of ecclesiastical laws and authorities.

Another question: How far was the substance of the advice given in the Hessian case to be regarded as a secret? Can it really be spoken of as a “counsel given in confession,” or as a “secret of the confessional”?

This question later became of importance in the negotiations which turned upon the memorandum. In order to answer it without prejudice it is essential in the first place to point out, that the subsequent interpretations and evasions must not here be taken into account. The actual[31] wording of the document and its attendant historical circumstances have alone to be taken into consideration, abstraction being made of the fine distinctions and meanings afterwards read into it.

First, there is no doubt that both the Landgrave’s request for the Wittenberg testimony and its granting were intended to be confidential and not public. Philip naturally assumed that the most punctilious secrecy would be preserved so long as no decision had been arrived at, seeing that he had made confidential disclosures concerning his immorality in pleading for a second marriage. The Wittenbergers, as they explicitly state, gave their reply not merely unwillingly, with repugnance and with great apprehension of the scandal which might ensue, but also most urgently recommended Philip to keep the bigamy to himself. Both the request and the theological testimony accordingly came under the natural obligation of silence, i.e. under the so-called confidential seal of secrecy. This, however, was of course broken when the suppliant on his part allowed the matter to become public; in such a case no one could grudge the theologians the natural right of bringing forward everything that was required for their justification, even to the reasons which had determined them to give their consent, though of course they were in honour bound to show the utmost consideration; for this the petitioner himself was alone to blame.

As a matter of fact, however, strange though it may seem, Philip’s intention all along had been ultimately to make the marriage public. It cannot be proved that he ever made any written promise to observe the recommendation of absolute secrecy made by the theologians. Those who drew up the memorandum disregarded his wish for publicity, and, on the contrary, “advised” that the matter should be kept a dead secret. Yet ought they not to have foreseen that a Prince so notoriously unscrupulous would be likely to disregard their “advice”? The theologians were certainly no men of the world if they really believed that the Landgrave’s bigamy—and their memorandum by which it was justified—would or could remain concealed. They themselves had allowed a number of other parties to be initiated into the secret, nor was it difficult to foresee that Philip, and Margaret’s ambitious mother, would not allow[32] the stigma of concubinage to rest permanently on the newly wedded bride. The mother had expressly stipulated that Margaret should be treated as a lawful wife and given this title, and not as a concubine, though of this the Wittenbergers were not aware.

Further, the theological grounds for the Wittenberg “advice” must not be lost sight of in considering the question of the obligation of silence or secrecy. The theologians based their decision on a doctrine which they had already openly proclaimed. Nor did Luther ever withdraw from the standpoint that polygamy was lawful; he even proclaimed it during the height of the controversy raised by the Hessian bigamy, though he was careful to restrict it to very rare and exceptional cases and to make its use dependent on the consent of the authorities. Thus the grounds for the step he had taken in Philip’s favour were universally and publicly known just as much as his other theological doctrines. If, however, his teaching on this matter was true, then, strictly speaking, people had as much right to it as to every other piece of truth; in fact, it was the more urgent that this Evangelical discovery should not be put under a bushel, seeing that it would have been a veritable godsend to many who groaned in the bonds of matrimony. Hence everything, both on Philip’s side and on that of the theologians, pointed to publicity. But may, perhaps, the Wittenberg “advice” have been esteemed a sort of “counsel given in Confession,” and did its contents accordingly fall under the “secret of Confession”?

The word “Confession,” in its sacramental meaning, was never used in connection with the affair dealt with at Wittenberg, either in Philip’s instructions to Bucer or in the theologians’ memorandum, nor does it occur in any of the few documents relating to the bigamy until about six months later. “Confession” is first alleged in the letter of excuse given below which Luther addressed to the Elector of Saxony. It is true that the expression “in the way of Confession” occurs once in the memorandum, but there it is used in an entirely different sense and in no way stamps the business as a matter of Confession. There it is stated (above, p. 21), that those who were to be apprised of the bigamy were to learn it “in the way of Confession.”[33] Here the word Confession is employed by metonymy and merely emphasises the need of discretion. Here there was naturally no idea of the sacramental seal, or of the making of a real Confession. In the Middle Ages the term Confession was not seldom used to denote the imparting of an ordinary confidential secret, just as the word to confess originally meant to admit, to acknowledge, or to communicate something secret. This, however, was not the meaning attached to it by those who sought to shelter themselves behind the term in the controversies which ensued after the bigamy had become generally known. To vindicate the keeping secret of his so-called “advice in Confession,” Luther falls back upon his Catholic recollections of the entire secrecy required of the Confessor, in other words, on the sacramental “seal.”

Undoubtedly the Seal of Confession is inexorable; according to the Catholic view it possesses a sacramental sanction and surrounds, like a protecting rampart, the sanctuary of the Sacrament of Penance, which otherwise would be shunned by all. But this absolute and sacramental obligation of silence attends only the administration of the Sacrament of Penance.

The idea that Luther and his comrades when signing the “advice” were dispensing the Sacrament of Penance cannot but raise a smile. In connection with this matter non-Catholic theologians and historians would never have spoken as they have done of Luther as a Confessor, had they been better acquainted with the usages of the older Church. In the case of such writers all that is known of the system of Confession is often a few distorted quotations from casuists. Even under its altered form, as then in use among the Protestants, Confession could only mean an admission of one’s sins, made to obtain absolution. In Lutheranism, confession, so far as it was retained at all, meant the awakening and animating of faith by means of some sort of self-accusation completed by the assurance given by the preacher of the Divine promise and forgiveness, a process which bears no analogy to the “testimony” given by the theologians to Philip of Hesse. In the Catholic Church, moreover, in whose practice Luther seems anxious to take refuge, Confession involves an accusation of all grievous sins, contrition, a firm resolve to amend, satisfaction and absolution. What[34] was there of all this in the Landgrave’s so-called Confession?[92] Where was the authority to absolve, even had this been what the Landgrave sought? How then could there come into play the Seal of Confession, i.e. any sacramental obligation apart from the purely natural obligation of keeping silence concerning a communication made in confidence? Again, Confession, even according to Lutheran ideas, is not made at a distance, or to several persons simultaneously, or with the object of securing a signed document.

Apart from all this one may even question whether the Landgrave’s disclosures were really honestly meant. Not everyone would have taken them from the outset as intended seriously, or have regarded them as above suspicion. Melanchthon, for instance, soon began to have doubts. (See below.) The readiness, nay, eagerness, shown by Philip later to repeat his Confession to others, to reinforce it by even more appalling admissions of wickedness, and to give it the fullest publicity, is really not favourable to the “Confession” idea; on the contrary, it reminds us of the morbid pleasure which persons habituated to vice and who have lost all respect whether for themselves or for the virtue of others, take in speaking openly of their moral lapses. The most important point to bear in mind is, however, the fact, that with Philip of Hesse it was a question of a marriage which he intended should be kept secret only for a time, and further that the Wittenbergers were aware of Philip’s readiness to lay his case before the Emperor, nay, even the Pope should necessity arise.[93] Owing to this they could not be blind to the possibility of the marriage, and, incidentally, of the Landgrave’s admission of moral necessity, and further of their own “advice” being all disclosed. Thus the “Seal of Confession” was threatened from the very first. Philip himself never recognised a binding obligation of secrecy on the part of the Wittenbergers; on the contrary, his invitation to them was: Speak out freely, now that the step has been taken with your sanction! What was Luther’s answer? He appealed to the Secret of the Confessional and refused to defend the act before[35] the world and the Empire, but merely “before God”; all he was willing to do was to vindicate it “before God, by examples such as that of Abraham, etc., and to conceal it as much as possible.” And yet, to forestall what will be related below, full publicity would surely have been the best thing for himself, as then the world would at least have learnt that he was not desirous of introducing polygamy generally, and that the whole business had only been made common property through Philip’s disregard of the recommendation of secrecy. Instead of this, however, he preferred to profess his readiness (it was probably no more than a threat) to admit publicly that he had been in the wrong all along and had acted foolishly; here again, had he been true to his word, the “Secret of the Confessional” would assuredly have fared badly.

Even in his letter of excuse to the Elector Johann Frederick concerning his sanction of the bigamy, Luther explained so much of the incident, that the “Seal of Confession” was practically violated; quite unmindful of the inviolability of the Seal he here declared, that he would have preferred to say nothing of the “counsel given in Confession had not necessity” forced him to do so. But what kind of Seal of Confession was this, we may ask, which could thus be set aside in case of necessity?

Melanchthon acted differently. He, without any necessity, at once recounted everything that had happened to a friend in a letter eloquent with grief. He, the author of the “Counsel of Confession,” felt under no obligation to regard the Seal. He considers himself liberated, by Philip’s behaviour, from the obligation even of confidential secrecy.[94] Bucer expressed himself on Aug. 8, 1540, in a similar fashion concerning the counsel given to the Landgrave “in Confession”: Luther would certainly publish and defend it, should the “marriage have to be admitted” through no fault of the Landgrave’s.[95] No one, in fact, displayed the slightest scruple regarding the secrecy of the Confession—except Luther and those who re-echo his sentiments.

[36]

According to the above we are justified in saying that the term “Counsel given in Confession” is in no wise descriptive of the Wittenberg document. The word “testimony,” or “certificate,” used both in Philip’s instructions and in an important passage of the document signed by Luther, Melanchthon and Bucer, is historically more correct; the terms “opinion” or “memorandum” are equally applicable.

The Wittenbergers gave their testimony or opinion—such is the upshot of the matter—but no Dispensation or Counsel in Confession in the sense just determined. They gave a testimony, which was asked for that it might be made public, but which was given in confidence, which was moreover based on their openly expressed teaching, though it actually dealt only with Philip’s own case, a testimony which no longer involved them in any obligation of secrecy once the marriage had been made public by Philip, and once the latter had declared his intention of making the testimony public should circumstances demand it.

Luther’s Embarrassment on the Bigamy becoming Public.

At the commencement of June, 1540, Luther was in great distress on account of the Hessian bigamy. His embarrassment and excitement increased as the tidings flew far and wide, particularly when the Court of Dresden and his own Elector began to take fright at the scandal, and the danger of complications arising with the Emperor. On the other hand, Luther was not unaware of the Landgrave’s doubts as to whether he would stand by his written declaration. Jonas wrote from Wittenberg on June 10 to George of Anhalt: “Philip is much upset and Dr. Martin full of thought.”[96]

On that very day Brück, the Electoral Chancellor, discussed the matter with both of them at Wittenberg. He acquainted them with his sovereign’s fears. They had gone too far, and the publication of the affair had had the most disastrous results; a young Princess and Landgravine had appeared on the scene, which was not at all what the Elector had expected; the Court of Dresden was loud in its complaints and spared not even the Elector; the Dresden[37] people were bringing forward against Luther what he had taught in favour of polygamy thirteen years before; the door had now been opened wide to polygamists.

Not long after Luther wrote, that, were it necessary, he would know how to “extricate himself.”[97] Even before dropping this curious remark he had shown himself very anxious to make his position secure. It was with this object in view, that, after his interview with Brück, probably on the same day, he proceeded to explain the case to his sovereign in the lengthy letter[98] in which he appeals to Confession and its secrecy.

“Before the world and against the laws of the Empire it cannot be defended,” but “we were desirous of glossing it over before God as much as possible with examples, such as that of Abraham, etc. All this was done and treated of as in Confession, so that we cannot be charged as though we had done it willingly and gladly, or with joy and pleasure.... I took into consideration the unavoidable necessity and weakness, and the danger to his conscience which Master Bucer had set forth.”

This uncalled-for introduction of Confession was intended to save him from being obliged to admit his consent publicly; it was meant to reassure so weak a theologian as the Elector, who dreaded the scandal arising from Luther’s advice to commit bigamy, and the discussion of the case before the Imperial Court of Justice; possibly he also hoped it would serve against that other princely theologian, viz. the Landgrave, and cause him to withdraw his demand for a public acknowledgment of the sanction given. His tactics here remind us of Luther’s later denial, when he professed himself ready simply to deny the bigamy and his share in it—because everything had been merely a matter of Confession.

Even in this first letter dealing with the question, he is clearly on the look-out for a loophole by which he may escape from the calamitous business.

The publication of the “testimony” was to be prevented at all costs. But, as a matter of fact, not only did the “Seal of Confession” present no obstacle, but even the common secrecy referred to above (p. 31) was no longer binding. This had been cancelled by the indiscretion of the Landgrave. Moreover, apart from this, the natural obligation of secrecy did not extend to certain extreme cases which might have been foreseen by both parties and in the[40] event of which both would recover their freedom. It should be noted, that Luther hardly made any appeal to this natural obligation of secrecy, probably because it could not be turned to account so easily. The Seal of Confession promised to serve him better in circles so little acquainted with theology.

In the second letter dealing with the bigamy, dated June 27, 1540, and addressed to Philip’s intimate, Eberhard von der Thann, Luther speaks with an eye on Hesse.[101] Thann, through Chancellor Brück, had informed him of what was being said of him there, and had asked what Luther would advise the Hessian Prince, and whether, in order to obviate other cases of polygamy in Hesse, it would be advisable for the authorities to issue an edict against the universal lawfulness of having several wives. Luther replied, that he agreed with the Landgrave’s intention as announced by Thann concerning his second marriage, viz. to wait until the Emperor “should approach His Serene Highness on the subject”; and then to write to the Emperor: “That he had taken a concubine but that he would be perfectly ready to put her away again if other Princes and Lords would set a good example.” If the Emperor were compelled “to regard the ‘lady’ as a concubine,” “no one else would dare to speak or think differently”; in this wise the real state of things would be “covered over and kept secret.” On the other hand, it would not be at all advisable to issue any edict, or to speak of the matter, for then “there would be no end or limit to gossip and suspicions.”

Here belongs the third letter of Luther’s which we have on the subject and which was despatched to Hesse before the middle of July. It is addressed to “a Hessian Councillor” who has been identified, with some probability, as the Hessian Chancellor Johann Feige.[102]

To the addressee, who was acquainted with the whole matter and had applied to Luther for his opinion on behalf of the Landgrave, the writer defines his own position still more clearly; if people say openly that the Landgrave has contracted a second marriage, all one need answer is, that this is not true, although it is true that he has contracted a secret union; hence he himself was wont to say, “the Landgrave’s other marriage is all nonsense.”

Hence if the Landgrave, so Luther concludes, “will not forsake the sweetheart” on whom “he has so set his heart that she has become a need to him,” and if, moreover, he will “keep her out of the way,” then “we theologians and confessors shall vindicate it before God, as a case of necessity to be excused by the examples of Genesis. But defend it before the world and ‘iure nunc regente,’ that we cannot and shall not do. Short of this the Landgrave may count upon our best service.”

The Landgrave was, however, not satisfied with either of these letters, both of which came into his hands. He[43] wanted from Luther a clear and public admission of his share in the business, which, to the Prince’s peril, had now become as good as public, and threatened to constitute a precedent. By this invitation the Prince naturally released Luther from all obligation of secrecy. Even the making public of the immorality, which had served as a pretext for the new marriage, he did not mind in the least, for his laxity in morals was already a matter of common knowledge; he discussed his lapses with the theologians as openly as though all of them had been his confessors and spiritual directors; he was also quite ready to repeat his admissions, “as in Confession,” before secular witnesses. Such was the depth of depravity into which his passions had brought him.

Yielding to pressure brought to bear on him by Saxony, Luther had meanwhile conceived the idea of publishing a work against polygamy. The new expedient had indeed been foreshadowed in his last letter. On June 17, 1540, Jonas wrote to George of Anhalt that Luther might be expected to write a work “Contra polygamiam.”[104] Martin Beyer of Schaffhausen, on his return from Wittenberg, also brought the news, so Bullinger was informed, that “Luther was being compelled by the Hessian business to write a work against the plurality of wives.”[105]

The project was, however, never realised, probably on account of the insuperable difficulties it involved.

But though this work never saw the light, history has preserved for us a number of Luther’s familiar conversations, dating from this period and taken down directly from his lips, utterances which have every claim to consideration and faithfully mirror his thoughts.

Luther’s Private Utterances Regarding the Bigamy.

The Table-Talk, dating from the height of the hubbub caused by the bigamy, affords us a vivid psychological picture of Luther.

Of this Table-Talk we have the detailed and authentic notes from the pen of Johann Mathesius, who was present. These notes, in their best form, became known only in 1903,[44] thanks to Kroker’s edition, but, for the better understanding of Luther’s personality, his intimate descriptions of what was passing in his mind are of inestimable value. Conjointly with the principal passage, which probably dates from June 18, 1540, other sayings dropped regarding the same matter may be considered.[106]

“Should the Landgrave fall away from us.”—This fear lest Philip should desert their party Luther had expressed in some rather earlier utterances in 1540, when he had described more particularly the Landgrave’s character and attitude. “A strange man!” he says of him. “He was born under a star. He is bent upon having his own way, and so fancies he will obtain the approval of Emperor and Pope. It may be that he will fall away from us on account of this affair.... He is a real Hessian; he cannot be still nor does he know how to yield. When once this business is over he will be hatching something else. But perhaps[47] death will carry him, or her (Margaret), off before.” A Hessian Councillor who was present quite bore out what Luther had said: Nothing was of any avail with the Landgrave, “what he once undertakes he cannot be induced to give up.” In proof of this those present instanced the violence and utter injustice of the raid made on Würtemberg. “Because he is such a strange character,” Luther remarked, “I must let it pass. The Emperor, moreover, will certainly not let him have his way.”[113] “No sensible man would have undertaken that campaign, but he, carried away by fury, managed it quite well. Only wait a little! It [the new scandal] will pass!” Luther was also ready to acknowledge that the Landgrave, in spite of the promises and offers of the Emperor and Duke of Saxony, had remained so far “very faithful” to the Evangel.[114]

Meanwhile the remarkably speedy recovery of his friend Melanchthon consoled him. Soon after the arrival of the letters mentioned above Luther set out for Weimar. His attentions to the sick man, and particularly his words of encouragement, succeeded, so to say, in recalling him to life. Luther speaks of it in his letters at that time as a “manifest miracle of God,” which puts our unbelief to shame.[118] The fanciful embellishment which he gave to the incident when narrating it, making it into a sort of miracle, has left its traces in his friend Ratzeberger’s account.[119]

Confident as Luther’s language here seems, when it is a question of infusing new courage into himself, still he admits plainly enough one point, concerning which he has not a word to say in his correspondence with strangers or in his public utterances: A sin, over and above all his previous crimes, now weighed upon the Hessian and his party owing to what had taken place. He repeatedly uses the words “sin,” “scandal,” “offence” when speaking of the bigamy; he feels the need of seeking consolation in the “unpardonable” sins of the Catholics for the moral failings of his own party, which, after all, would be remitted by God. Nor[49] does the Landgrave’s sin consist in his carelessness about keeping the matter secret. Luther compares his sin to David’s, whose adultery had been forgiven by God, and reckons Philip’s new sin amongst the sins of his co-religionists, who, for all their failings, were destined, with God’s help, to overthrow the Papal Antichrist. “Would that I could alter it!” Such an admission he would not at any price make before the princely Courts concerned, or before the world. Still less would he have admitted publicly, that they were obliged “to put up with the devil’s filth.” It is therefore quite correct when Köstlin, in his Biography of Luther, points out, speaking of the Table-Talk: “That there had been sin and scandal, his words by no means deny.”[120] Concerning the whole affair Köstlin moreover remarks: “Philip’s bigamy is the greatest blot on the history of the Reformation, and remains a blot in Luther’s life in spite of everything that can be alleged in explanation or excuse.”[121]

F. W. Hassencamp, another Protestant, says in his “Hessische Kirchengeschichte”: “His statements at that time concerning his share in the Landgrave’s bigamy prove that, mentally, he was on the verge of despair. Low pleasantry and vulgarity are mixed up with threats and words of prayer.” “Nowhere does the great Reformer appear so small as here.”[122]—In the “Historisch-politische Blätter,” in 1846, K. E. Jarcke wrote of the Table-Talk concerning the bigamy: “Rarely has any man, however coarse-minded, however blinded by hate and hardened by years of combat against his own conscience, expressed himself more hideously or with greater vulgarity.”[123]

“After so repeatedly describing himself as the prophet of the Germans,” says A. Hausrath, “he ought not to have had the weakness to seek a compromise between morality and policy, but, like the preacher robed in camels’ hair, he should have boldly told the Hessian Princelet: It is not lawful for you to have her.” Hausrath, in 1904, is voicing the opinion of many earlier Protestant historians when he regrets “that, owing to weariness and pressure from without,”[50] Luther “sanctioned an exception to God’s unconditional command.” “The band of Protestant leaders, once so valiant and upright,” so he says, “had for once been caught sleeping. Evening was approaching and the day was drawing in, and the Lord their God had left them.”[124]

Luther at the Conference of Eisenach.
The Landgrave’s Indignation.

An official conference of theologians and Councillors from Hesse and the Electorate of Saxony met at Eisenach at the instance of Philip on July 15, 1540, in order to deliberate on the best means of escaping the legal difficulty and of satisfying Philip’s demand, that the theologians should give him their open support. Luther, too, put in an appearance and lost no time in entering into the debate with his wonted bluster.

According to one account, on their first arrival, he bitterly reproached (“acerbissimis verbis”)[125] the Hessian theologians. The report of the Landgrave’s sister says, that his long talk with Philip’s Chancellor so affected the latter that the “tears streamed down his cheeks,” particularly when Luther rounded on the Hessian Court officials for their too great inclination towards polygamy.[126] Though these reports of the effect of his strictures and exhortations may be exaggerated, no less than the remark of Jonas, who says, that the “Hessians went home from Eisenach with long faces,”[127] still it is quite likely that Luther made a great impression on many by his behaviour, particularly by the energy with which he now stood up for the cause of monogamy and appealed to the New Testament on its behalf.

Without denying the possibility of an exception in certain rare cases, he now insisted very strongly on the general prohibition.

The instructions given to the Hessians showed him plainly that the Landgrave was determined not to conceal his bigamy any longer, or to have it branded as mere concubinage; the theologians, so the document declares, would surely never have advised him to have recourse to sinful[51] concubinage. That he was not married to his second wife was a lie, which he would not consent to tell were he to be asked point-blank; his bigamy was really a dispensation “permitted by God, admitted by the learned, and consented to by his wife.” If “hard pressed” he must disclose it. To introduce polygamy generally was of course quite a different matter, and was not to be thought of.[128]—Needless to say, Luther was ready enough to back up this last stipulation, for his own sake as much as for the Landgrave’s.

During the first session of the conference, held in the Rathaus at Eisenach, Luther formally and publicly committed himself to the expedient at which he had faintly hinted even previously. He unreservedly proposed the telling of a lie. Should a situation arise where it was necessary to reply “yes” or “no,” then they must resign themselves to a downright “No.” “What harm would it do,” he said on July 15, according to quite trustworthy notes,[129] “if a man told a good, lusty lie in a worthy cause and for the sake of the Christian Churches?” Similarly he said on July 17: “To lie in case of necessity, or for convenience, or in excuse, such lying would not be against God; He was ready to take such lies on Himself.”[130]

The Protestant historian of the Hessian Bigamy says in excuse of this: “Luther was faced by the problem whether a lie told in case of necessity could be regarded as a sin at all”; he did not have recourse to the “expedient of a mental reservation [as he had done when recommending an ambiguous reply]”; he merely absolved “the ‘mendacium officiosum’ [the useful lie] of sinfulness. This done, Luther could with a good conscience advise the telling of such a lie.”[131]

Nevertheless Luther felt called upon again to return to[52] the alleged Confession made. He is even anxious to make out that his memorandum had been an Absolution coming under the Seal of Confession, and that the Absolution might not be “revealed”: “If the Confession was to be regarded as secret, then the Absolution also must be secret.”[132] “He considered the reply given in Confession as an Absolution,” says Rockwell.[133] Moreover he gave it to be understood, that, should the Landgrave say he had committed bigamy as a right to which he was entitled, and not as a favour, then he, Luther, was quit of all responsibility; it was not the confessor’s business to give public testimony concerning what had taken place in Confession.[134]

Practically, however, according to the notes of the conference, his advice still was that the Landgrave should conceal the bigamy behind the ambiguous declaration that: “Margaret is a concubine.” Under the influence of the hostility to the bigamy shown by the Saxon Courts he urged so strongly the Bible arguments against polygamy, that the Hessians began to fear his withdrawal from his older standpoint.

The Saxon representatives present at the Conference[55] were, however, ready to follow the course indicated by Luther in case of necessity, viz. to tell a downright lie; rather than that the Prince should be forced to vindicate openly his position it was better to deny it flatly. They declared, without, however, convincing the Conference, “that a flat denial was less culpable before God and in conscience—as could be proved by many examples from Scripture—than to cause a great scandal and lamentable falling away of many good people by a plain and open admission and vindication.”[139]

Philip of Hesse was not particularly edified by the result of the Eisenach Conference. Of all the reports which gradually reached him, those which most aroused his resentment were, first, that Luther should expect him to tell a lie and deny the second marriage, and, secondly, his threat to withdraw the testimony, as issued in error.

Luther had, so far, avoided all direct correspondence with the Landgrave concerning the disastrous affair. Now, however, he was forced to make some statement in reply to a not very friendly letter addressed to him by the Prince.[140]

In this Philip, alluding to the invitation to tell a lie, says: “I will not lie, for lying has an evil sound and no Apostle or even Christian has ever taught it, nay, Christ has forbidden it and said we should keep to yea and nay. That I should declare the lady to be a whore, that I refuse to do, for your advice does not permit of it. I should surely have had no need of your advice to take a whore, neither does it do you credit.” Yet he declares himself ready to give an “obscure reply,” i.e. an ambiguous one; without need he would not disclose the marriage.

Nor does Luther’s threat of retracting the advice and of saying that he had “acted foolishly” affright him. The threat he unceremoniously calls a bit of foolery. “As to what you told my Councillors, viz. that, rather than reveal my reasons, you would say you had acted foolishly, please don’t commit such folly on my account, for then I will confess the reasons, and, in case of necessity, prove them now or later, unless the witnesses die in the meantime.” “Nothing more dreadful has ever come to my ears than that[56] it should have occurred to a brave man to retract what he had granted by a written dispensation to a troubled conscience. If you can answer for it to God, why do you fear and shrink from the world? If the matter is right ‘in conscientia’ before the Almighty, the Eternal and Immortal God, what does the accursed, sodomitic, usurious and besotted world matter?” Here he is using the very words in which Luther was wont to speak of the world and of the contempt with which it should be met. He proceeds with a touch of sarcasm: “Would to God that you and your like would inveigh against and punish those in whom you see such things daily, i.e. adultery, usury and drunkenness—and who yet are supposed to be members of the Church—not merely in writings and sermons but with serious considerations and the ban which the Apostles employed, in order that the whole world may not be scandalised. You see these things, yet what do you and the others do?” In thus finding fault with the Wittenberg habits, he would appear to include the Elector of Saxony, who had a reputation for intemperance. He knew that Luther’s present attitude was in part determined by consideration for his sovereign. In his irritation he also has a sly hit at the Wittenberg theologians: At Eisenach his love for the “lady” (Margaret) had been looked upon askance; “I confess that I love her, but in all honour.... But that I should have taken her because she pleased me, that is only natural, for I see that you holy people also take those that please you. Therefore you may well bear with me, a poor sinner.”

Luther replied on July 24,[141] that he had not deserved that the Landgrave should write to him in so angry a tone. The latter was wrong in supposing, that he wanted to get his neck out of the noose and was not doing all that he could to “serve the Prince humbly and faithfully.” It was not no his own account that he wished to keep his advice secret; “for though all the devils wished the advice to be made public, I would give them by God’s Grace such an answer that they would not find any fault in it.”

Faced by such unbounded defiance Philip and his luckless bigamy, in spite of the assurance he saw fit to assume, seemed indeed in a bad way. One can feel how Luther despised the man. In spite of his painful embarrassment, he is aware of his advantage. He indeed stood in need of the Landgrave’s assistance in the matter of the new Church system, but the latter was entirely dependent on Luther’s help in his disastrous affair.

Hence Philip, in his reply, is more amiable, though he really demolishes Luther’s objections. This reply he sent the day after receiving Luther’s letter.[142]

Certain words which had been let fall at Eisenach had “enraged and maddened” him (Philip). He had, however, good “scriptural warrant for his action,” and Luther should not forget that, “what we did, we did with a good conscience.” There was thus no need for the Prince to bow before the Wittenbergers. “We are well aware that you and Philip [Melanchthon] cannot defend us against the secular powers, nor have we ever asked this of you.” “That Margaret should not be looked upon as a prostitute, this we[59] demand and insist upon, and the presence of pious men [Melanchthon, etc.] at the wedding, your advice, and the marriage contract, will prove what she is.” “In fine, we will allow it to remain a secret marriage and dispensation, and will give a reply which shall conceal the matter, and be neither yea nor nay, as long as we can and may.” He insists, however, that, “if we cannot prevent it,” then we shall bring the Wittenberg advice “into the light of day.”

As to telling a downright lie, that was impossible, because the marriage contract was in the hands of his second wife’s friends, who would at once take him to task.

“It was not our intention to enter upon a wordy conflict, or to set your pen to work.” Luther had said, that he would know how to get out of a tight corner, but what business was that of Philip’s: “We care not whether you get out or in.” As to Luther’s malicious allusion to his love for the beautiful Margaret, he says: “Since she took a fancy to us, we were fonder of her than of another, but, had she not liked us, then we should have taken another.” Hence he would have committed bigamy in any case. He waxes sarcastic about Luther’s remark, that the world would never acknowledge her as his wife, hinting that Luther’s own wife, and the consorts of the other preachers who had formerly been monks or priests, were likewise not regarded by the imperial lawyers as lawful wedded wives. He looked upon Margaret as his “wife according to God’s Word and your advice; such is God’s will; the world may regard our wife, yours and the other preachers’ as it pleases.”

Philip, however, was diplomatic enough to temper all this with friendly assurances. “We esteem you,” he says, “as a very eminent theologian, nor shall we doubt you, so long as God continues to give you His Spirit, which Spirit we still recognise in you.... We find no fault with you personally and consider you a man who looks to God. As to our other thoughts, they are just thoughts, and come and go duty free.”

These “duty-free” thoughts, as we readily gather from the letter, concerned the Courts of Saxony, whose influence on Luther was a thorn in the Landgrave’s flesh. There was the “haughty old Vashti” at Dresden (Duchess Catherine), without whom the “matter would not have gone so far”; then, again, there was Luther’s “Lord, the Elector.” The[60] “cunning of the children of the world,” which the Landgrave feared would infect Luther, had its head-quarters at these Courts. But if it came to the point, such things would be “disclosed and manifested” by him, the Landgrave, to the Elector and “many other princes and nobles,” that “you would have to excuse us, because what we did was not done merely from love, but for conscience’s sake and in order to escape eternal damnation; and your Lord, the Elector, will have to admit it too and be our witness.” And in still stronger language, he “cites” the Elector, or, rather, both the Elector and himself, to appear before Luther: “If this be not sufficient, then demand of us, and of your master, that we tell you in confession such things as will satisfy you concerning us. They would, however, sound ill, so help me God, and we hope to God that He will by all means preserve us from such in future. You wish to learn it, then learn it, and do not look for anything good but for the worst, and if we do not speak the truth, may God strike us”; “to prove it” we are quite ready. Other things (see below, xxiv., 2) make it probable, that the Elector is here accused as being Philip’s partner in some very serious sin. It looks as though Philip’s intention was to frighten him and prevent his proceeding further against him. Since Luther in all probability brought the letter to the cognisance of the Elector, the step was, politically, well thought out.

Melanchthon’s Complaints.

Melanchthon, as was usual with him, adopted a different tone from Luther’s in the matter. He was very sad, and wrote lengthy letters of advice.

As early as June 15, to ease his mind, he sent one to the Elector Johann Frederick, containing numerous arguments against polygamy, but leaving open the possibility of secret bigamy.[143] Friends informed the Landgrave that anxiety about the bigamy was the cause of Melanchthon’s serious illness. Philip, on the other hand, wrote, that it was the Saxon Courts which were worrying him.[144] Owing to his weakness he was unable to take part in the negotiations at Eisenach. On his return to Wittenberg he declared aloud[61] that he and Luther had been outwitted by the malice of Philip of Hesse. The latter’s want of secrecy seemed to show the treasonable character of the intrigue. To Camerarius he wrote on Aug. 24: “We are disgraced by a horrid business concerning which I must say nothing. I will give you the details in due time.”[145] On Sep. 1, he admits in a letter to Veit Dietrich: “We have been deceived, under a semblance of piety, by another Jason, who protested conscientious motives in seeking our assistance, and who even swore that this expedient was essential for him.”[146] He thus gives his friend a peep into the Wittenberg advice, of which he was the draughtsman, and in which he, unlike Luther, could see nothing that came under the Seal of Confession. The name of the deceitful polygamist Jason he borrows from Terence, on whom he was then lecturing. Since Luther, about the same time, also quotes from Terence when speaking at table about Philip’s bigamy, we may infer that he and Melanchthon had exchanged ideas on the work in question (the “Adelphi”). Melanchthon was also fond of dubbing the Hessian “Alcibiades” on account of his dissembling and cunning.[147]

Most remarkable, however, is the assertion he makes in his annoyance, viz. that the Landgrave was on the point of losing his reason: “This is the beginning of his insanity.”[148] Luther, too, had said he feared he was going crazy, as it ran in the family.[149] Philip’s father, Landgrave William II, had succumbed to melancholia as the result of syphilis. The latter’s brother, William I, had also been insane. Philip’s son, William IV, sought to explain the family trouble by a spell cast over one of his ancestors by the “courtisans” at Venice.[150] In 1538, previous to the bigamy scandal, Henry of Brunswick had written, that the Landgrave, owing to the French disease, was able to sleep but little, and would soon go mad.[151]

Melanchthon became very sensitive to any mention of the Hessian bigamy. At table, on one occasion in Aug., 1540,[62] Luther spoke of love; no one was quite devoid of love because all at least desired enjoyment; one loved his wife, another his children, others, like Carlstadt, loved honour. When Bugenhagen, with an allusion to the Landgrave, quoted the passage from Virgil’s “Bucolica”: “Omnia vincit amor et nos cedamus amori,” Melanchthon jumped up and cried: “Pastor, leave out that passage.”[152]

Brooding over the permission given, the scholar sought earnestly for grounds of excuse for the bigamy. “I looked well into it beforehand,” he writes in 1543, “I also told the Doctor [Luther] to weigh well whether he could be mixed up in the affair. There are, however, circumstances of which the women [their Ducal opponents at Meissen] are not aware, and understand not. The man [the Landgrave] has many strange ideas on the Deity. He also confided to me things which I have told no one but Dr. Martin; on account of all this we have had no small trouble.”[153] We must not press the contradiction this presents to Melanchthon’s other statement concerning the Prince’s hypocrisy.

Melanchthon’s earlier letter dated Sep. 1, 1540, Camerarius ventured to publish in the collection of his friend’s letters only with omissions and additions which altered the meaning.

Literary Feud with Duke Henry of Brunswick.

Prominent amongst those who censured the bigamy was the Landgrave’s violent opponent Duke Henry of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. The Duke, a leader of the Catholic Alliance formed to resist the Schmalkalden Leaguers in North Germany, published in the early ‘forties several controversial works against Philip of Hesse. This brisk and active opponent, whose own character was, however, by no means unblemished, seems to have had a hand in the attacks of other penmen upon the Landgrave. Little by little he secured fairly accurate accounts of the proceedings in Hesse and at Wittenberg, and, as early as July 22, 1540, made a general and public reference to what had taken place.[155]

In a tract published on Nov. 3, he said quite openly that the Landgrave had “two wives at the same time, and had thus rendered himself liable to the penalties against double marriage.” The Elector of Saxony had, however, permitted “his biblical experts at the University of Wittenberg to assist in dealing with these nice affairs,” nay, had himself concurred in the bigamy.[156]

[64]

In consequence of these and other charges contained in the Duke’s screed, Luther wrote the violent libel entitled “Wider Hans Worst,” of which the still existing manuscript shows in what haste and frame of mind the work was dashed off. All his exasperation at the events connected with the bigamy now become public boils up in his attack on the “Bloodhound, and incendiary Harry” of Brunswick, and the “clerical devil’s whores in the Popish robbers’ cave.”[157] Of Henry’s charge he speaks in a way which is almost more than a mere concealing of the bigamy.[158] He adds: “The very name of Harry stinks like devil’s ordure freshly dropped in Germany. Did he perchance desire that not he alone should stink so horribly in the nostrils of others, but that he should make other honourable princes to stink also?” He was a renegade and a coward, who did everything like an assassin. “He ought to be set up like a eunuch, dressed in cap and bells, with a feather-brush in his hand to guard the women and that part on account of which they are called women, as the rude Germans say.” “Assassin-adultery, assassin-arson indeed became this ‘wild cat,’” etc.

Even before this work was finished, in February, 1541, a pseudonymous attack upon the Landgrave appeared which “horrified Cruciger,”[159] who was with Luther at Wittenberg. The Landgrave is here upbraided with the bigamy, the reproaches culminating in the following: “I cannot but believe that the devil resides in your Serene Highness, and[65] that the Münster habit has infected your S.H., so that your S.H. thinks that you may take as many wives as you please, even as the King of Münster did.”

An anonymous reply to this screed penned by the pastor of Melsungen, Johann Lening, is the first attempt at a public justification of Philip’s bigamy. The author only disclaims the charge that the Landgrave had intended to “introduce a new ‘ius.’”[160]

Henry of Brunswick replied to “Hans Worst” and to this vindication of the bigamy in his “Quadruplicæ” of May 31, 1541. He said there of Luther’s “Hans Worst”: “That we should have roused Luther, the arch-knave, arch-heretic, desperate scoundrel and godless arch-miscreant, to put forth his impious, false, unchristian, lousy and rascally work is due to the scamp [on the throne] of Saxony.” “We have told the truth so plainly to his Münsterite brother, the Landgrave, concerning his bigamy, that he has been unable to deny it, but admits it, only that he considers that he did not act dishonourably, but rightly and in a Christian fashion, which, however, is a lie and utterly untrue.” In some of his allegations then and later, such as that the Landgrave was thinking of taking a third wife “in addition to his numerous concubines,” and that he had submitted to re-baptism, the princely knight-errant was going too far. A reply and defence of the Landgrave, published in 1544, asserts with unconscious humour that the Landgrave knew how to take seriously “to heart what God had commanded concerning marriage ... and also the demands of conjugal fidelity and love.”

Johann Lening, pastor of Melsungen, formerly a Carthusian in the monastery of Eppenberg, had been the most zealous promoter of the bigamy. He was also very active in rendering literary service in its defence. The string of Bible proofs alleged by Philip in his letter to Luther of July 18 (above, p. 55 f.) can undoubtedly be traced to his inspiration. In October, 1541, he was at Augsburg with Gereon Sailer,[161] the physician so skilled in the treatment of syphilis; a little later Veit Dietrich informed Melanchthon of his venereal trouble.[162] He was much disliked by the Saxons and the Wittenbergers on account of his defence of[66] his master. Chancellor Brück speaks of him as a “violent, bitter man”; Luther calls him the “Melsingen nebulo” and the “monstrum Carthusianum”;[163] Frederick Myconius speaks of the “lenones Leningi” and fears he will catch the “Dionysiorum vesania.”

Such was the author of the “Dialogue of Huldericus Neobulus,” which has become famous in the history of the Hessian Bigamy; it appeared in 1541, towards the end of summer, being printed at Marburg at Philip’s expense.

The book was to answer in the affirmative the question contained in the sub-title: “Whether it be in accordance with or contrary to the Divine, natural, Imperial and ecclesiastical law, to have simultaneously more than one wife.” The author, however, clothed his affirmation in so pedantic and involved a form as to make it unintelligible to the uninitiate so that Philip could say that, “it would be a temptation to nobody to follow his example,” and that it tended rather to dissuade from bigamy than to induce people to commit it.[164]

This work was very distasteful to the Courts of Saxony, and Luther soon made up his mind to write against it.

He wrote on Jan. 10, 1542, to Justus Menius, who had sent him a reply of his own, intended for the press: “Your book will go to the printers, but mine is already waiting publication; your turn will come next.... How this man disgusts me with the insipid, foolish and worthless arguments he excretes.” To this Pandora all the Hessian gods must have contributed. “Bucer smells bad enough already on account of the Ratisbon dealings.... May Christ keep us well disposed towards Him and steadfast in His Holy Word. Amen.”[165] From what Luther says he was not incensed at the Dialogue of Neobulus so much on account of its favouring polygamy itself, but because, not content with allowing bigamy conditionally, and before the tribunal[67] of conscience, it sought also to erect it into a public law. When, however, both Elector and Landgrave[166] begged him to refrain from publishing his reply, he agreed and stopped the printers, though only after a part of it had already left the press.[167]

His opinion concerning the permissibility of bigamy in certain cases he never changed in spite of the opposition it met with. But, in Luther’s life, hardly an instance can be cited of his having shrunk back when attacked. Rarely if ever did his defiance—which some admire—prove more momentous than on this occasion. An upright man is not unwilling to allow that he may have been mistaken in a given instance, and, when better informed, to retract. Luther, too, might well have appealed to the shortness of the time allowed him for the consideration of the counsel he had given at Wittenberg. Without a doubt his hand had been forced. Further, it might have been alleged in excuse for his act, that misapprehension of the Bible story of the patriarchs had dragged him to consequences which he had not foreseen. It would have been necessary for him to revise completely his Old-Testament exegesis on this point, and to free it from the influence of his disregard of ecclesiastical tradition and the existing limitations on matrimony. In place of this, consideration for the exalted rank of his petitioners induced him to yield to the plausible reasons brought forward by a smooth-tongued agent and to remain silent.

The tract of Menius, on the same political grounds, was likewise either not published at all or withdrawn later. The truth was, that it was desirable that the Hessian affair should come under discussion as little as possible, so that no grounds should be given “to increase the gossip,” as Luther put it in 1542; “I would rather it were left to settle as it began, than that the filth should be stirred up under the noses of the whole world.”[168]

[68]

The work of Neobulus caused much heart-burning among the Swiss reformers; of this we hear from Bullinger, who also, in his Commentary on Matthew, in 1542, expressed himself strongly against the tract.[169] His successor, Rudolf Gualther, Zwingli’s son-in-law, wrote that it was shocking that a Christian Prince should have been guilty of such a thing and that theologians should have been found to father, advocate and defend it.[170]

In time, however, less was heard of the matter and the rumours died down. A peace was even patched up between the Landgrave and the Emperor, chiefly because the Elector of Saxony was against the Schmalkalden League being involved in the Hessian affair. Without admitting the reality of the bigamy, and without even mentioning it, Philip concluded with Charles V a treaty which secured for him safety. Therein he made to the Emperor political concessions of such importance[171] as to arouse great discontent and grave suspicions in the ranks of the Evangelicals. At a time when the German Protestants were on the point of appealing to France for assistance against Charles V, he promised to do his best to hinder the French and to support the Imperial interests. In the matter of the Emperor’s feud with Jülich, he pledged himself to neutrality, thus ensuring the Emperor’s success. After receiving the Imperial pardon on Jan. 24, 1541, his complete reconciliation was guaranteed by the secret compact of Ratisbon on June 13 of the same year. He had every reason to be content, and as the editor of Philip’s correspondence with Bucer writes,[172] what better could even the Emperor desire? The great danger which threatened was a league of the German Protestants with France. And now the Prince, who alone was able to bring this about, withdrew from the opposition party, laid his cards on the table, left the road open to Guelders, offered[69] his powerful support both within and outside of the Empire, and, in return, asked for nothing but the Emperor’s favour. The Landgrave’s princely allies in the faith were pained to see him forsake “the opposition [to the Emperor]. For their success the political situation was far more promising than in the preceding winter. An alliance with France offered [the Protestants] a much greater prospect of success than one with England, for François I was far more opposed to the Emperor than was Henry VIII.... Of the German Princes, William of Jülich had already pledged himself absolutely to the French King.”[173]

Philip was even secretly set on obtaining the Pope’s sanction to the bigamy. Through Georg von Carlowitz and Julius Pflug he sought to enter into negotiations with Rome; they were not to grudge an outlay of from 3000 to 4000 gulden as an “offering.”[174] As early as the end of 1541 Chancellor Feige received definite instructions in the matter.

The Hessian Court had, however, in the meantime been informed, that Cardinal Contarini had given it to be understood that “no advice or assistance need be looked for from the Pope.”[175]

Landgravine Christina died in 1549, and, after her death, the unfortunate marriage was gradually buried in oblivion.—But did Landgrave Philip, after the conclusion of the second marriage, cease from immoral intercourse with women as he had so solemnly promised Luther he would?

So meagre were the proofs made public of Luther’s share in the step which Philip of Hesse had taken, that, even in Hesse, the Giessen professor Michael Siricius was able to declare in a writing of 1679, entitled “Uxor una” that Luther’s supposed memorandum was an invention.[181]

Of the Wittenberg “advice” only one, fairly long, but quite apocryphal version, was put in circulation during[71] Melanchthon’s lifetime; it appeared in the work of Erasmus Sarcerius, “On the holy married state,” of which the Preface is dated in 1553. It is so worded as to leave the reader under the impression that its authors had refused outright to give their consent. Out of caution, moreover, neither the authors nor the addressee are named.[182] In this version, supposed to be Luther’s actual text, it was embodied, in 1661, in the Altenburg edition of his works, then in the Leipzig reprint of the same (1729 ff.) and again in Walch’s edition (Halle, 1740 ff.).[183] Yet Lorenz Beger, in his work “Daphnæus Arcuarius” (1679), had supplied the real text, together with Bucer’s instructions and the marriage contract, from “a prominent Imperial Chancery.” The importance of these documents was first perceived in France. Bossuet used them in his “Histoire des variations des églises protestantes” (1688).[184] He was also aware that Landgrave Ernest, of Hesse-Rheinfels-Rotenburg, who returned to the Catholic Church in 1652, had supplied copies of the three documents (to Elector Carl Ludwig of the Palatine). In more recent times Max Lenz’s publication of the Hessian archives has verified these documents and supplied a wealth of other material which we have duly utilised in the above.

Opinions Old and New Regarding the Bigamy.

As more light began to be thrown on the history of the bigamy, Protestant historians, even apart from those already mentioned, were not slow in expressing their strong condemnation, as indeed was only to be expected.

Yet, notably in modern theological literature, some Protestants have seemed anxious to palliate the affair. An attempt is made to place the Wittenberg advice and Luther’s subsequent conduct in a more favourable light by emphasising more than heretofore the secrecy of the advice given,[73] which Luther did not consider himself justified in revealing under any circumstances, and the publication of which the Landgrave was unjustly demanding. It is also urged, that the ecclesiastical influence of the Middle Ages played its part in Luther’s sanction of the bigamy. One author even writes: “the determining factor may have been,” that “at the critical moment the reformer made way for the priest and confessor”; elsewhere the same author says: “Thus the Reformation begins with a mediæval scene.” Another Protestant theologian thinks that “the tendency, taken over from the Catholic Church,” to treat the marriage prohibitions as aspects of the natural law was really responsible; in Luther’s evangelical morality “there was a good lump of Romish morality, worthless quartz mingled with good metal”; “Catholic scruples” had dimmed Luther’s judgment in the matter of polygamy; to us the idea of bigamy appears “simply monstrous,” “but this is a result of age-long habits”; in the 16th century people thought “very differently.”

In the face of the detailed quotations from actual sources already given in the present chapter, all such opinions—not merely Luther’s own appeal to a “secret of confession,” invented by himself—are seen to be utterly unhistorical. Particularly so is the reference to the Catholic Middle Ages. It was just the Middle Ages, and the ecclesiastical tradition of earlier times, which excited among Luther’s contemporaries, even those of his own party, such opposition to the bigamy wherever news of the same penetrated in any shape or form.[190]

In the following we shall quote a few opinions of 16th-century Protestants not yet mentioned. With the historian their unanimous verdict must weigh more heavily in the scale than modern theories, which, other considerations apart, labour under the disadvantage of having been brought forward long after the event and the expressions of opinion which accompanied it, to bolster up views commonly held to-day.[191]

[74]

All there now remains to do is to illustrate, by statements made by Protestants in earlier and more recent times, two important points connected with the Hessian episode; viz. the unhappy part which politics played in Luther’s attitude, and what he said on lying. Here, again, during the last ten years there has been a movement in Luther’s favour amongst many Protestant theologians.

Concerning the part of politics W. Rockwell, the historian of the bigamy, openly admits, that: “By his threat of seeking protection from the Emperor for his bigamy, Philip overcame the unwillingness of the Wittenbergers to grant the requested dispensation.”[201] “It is clear,” he also says, “that political pressure was brought to bear on the Wittenbergers by the Landgrave, and that to this pressure they yielded.”[202]

That consideration for the effect his decision was likely to have on the attitude of the Landgrave weighed heavily in the balance with Luther in the matter of his “testimony,” it is scarcely possible to deny, after what we have seen. “The Hessian may fall away from us” (above, p. 46), such was one of the fears which undoubtedly had something to do with his compliance. To inspire such fear was plainly the object of Philip’s threat, that, should the Wittenbergers not prove amenable, he would make advances to the Emperor and the Pope, and the repeated allusions made by Luther and his friends to their dread of such a step, and of his falling away, show how his threat continued to ring in their ears.[203]

[76]

The result was all the more tragic. The compliance wrung from the Wittenbergers failed to protect the party from the evil they were so desirous of warding off. Philip’s reconciliation with the Emperor, as already pointed out, was very detrimental to the Schmalkalden League, however insincere his motives may have been.

This indignant language on the part of the Heidelberg historian of the Church has recently been described by a learned theologian on the Protestant side as both “offensive” and uncalled for. Considering Luther’s bold character it is surely very improbable, that an attempt to intimidate him would have had any effect except “to arouse his spirit of defiance”; not under the influence of mere “opportunism” did he act, but, rather, after having, as a confessor, heard “the cry of deep distress” he sought to come to “the aid of a suffering conscience.”—In answer to this we must refer the reader to what has gone before, where this view, which seems a favourite with some moderns, has already sufficiently been dealt with. It need only be added, that the learned author says of the bigamy, that “a fatal blunder” was made by Luther ... but only because the mediæval confessor intervened. “The reformer was not able in every season and situation to assert the new religious principle which we owe to him; hence we have merely one of many instances of failure, though one that may well be termed grotesque and is scarcely to be matched.” “Nothing[78] did more to hinder the triumphal progress of the Reformation than the Landgrave’s ‘Turkish marriage.’” As to the argument drawn from Luther’s boldness and defiance, a Protestant has pointed out, that we are not compelled to regard any compliance from motives of policy as “absolutely precluded”; to say that “political expediency played no part whatever in Luther’s case” is “going a little too far.” “Did then Luther never allow any room to political considerations? Even, for instance, in the question of armed resistance to the Emperor?”[211]

Referring to Luther’s notorious utterance on lying, G. Ellinger, the Protestant biographer of Melanchthon, says: Luther’s readiness to deny what had taken place is “one of the most unpleasing episodes in his life and bears sad testimony to the frailty of human nature.” His statements at the Eisenach Conference “show how even a great man was driven from the path of rectitude by the blending of politics with religion. He advised a ‘good, downright lie’ that the world might be saved from a scandal.... It is sad to see a great man thus led astray, though at the same time we must remember, that, from the very start, the whole transaction had been falsified by the proposal to conceal it.”[212]

Th. Kolde says in a similar strain, in a work which is otherwise decidedly favourable to Luther, “Greater offence than that given by the ‘advice’ itself is given by the attitude which the reformers took up towards it at a later date.”[213]

CHAPTER XXII

LUTHER AND LYING

1. A Battery of Assertions.[216]

Luther’s frank admission of his readiness to make use of a “good big lie” in the complications consequent on Philip’s bigamy, and his invitation to the Landgrave to escape from the dilemma in this way, may serve as a plea for the present chapter. “What harm is there,” he asks, “if, in a good cause and for the sake of the Christian Churches, a man tells a good, downright lie?” “A lie of necessity, of convenience, or of excuse, all such lies are not against God and for such He will Himself answer”; “that the Landgrave was unable to lie strongly, didn’t matter in the least.”[217]

It is worth while ascertaining how Luther—who has so often been represented as the embodiment of German integrity and uprightness—behaved in general as regards the obligation of speaking with truth and honesty. Quite recently a Protestant author, writing with the sole object of exonerating his hero in this particular, bestowed on him the title of “Luther the Truthful.” “Only in one single instance,” so he has it, “did Luther advise the use of a lie of necessity at which exception might be taken.” In order not to run to the opposite extreme and make mountains out of mole-hills we shall do well to bear in mind how great was the temptation, during so titanic a struggle as his, for Luther to ignore at times the rigorous demands of truth and justice, particularly when he saw his opponents occasionally making light of them. We must likewise take into consideration the vividness of Luther’s imagination, the[81] strength of the ideas which dominated him, his tendency to exaggeration and other mitigating circumstances.

There was a time when Luther’s foes were ready to describe as lies every false statement or erroneous quotation made by Luther, as though involuntary errors and mistakes due to forgetfulness were not liable to creep into his works, written as they were in great haste.

On the other hand, some of Luther’s admirers are ready enough to make admissions such as the following: “In point of fact we find Luther holding opinions concerning truthfulness which are not shared by every Christian, not even by every evangelical Christian.” “Luther unhesitatingly taught that there might be occasions when it was a Christian’s duty to depart from the truth.”[218]

To this we must, however, add that Luther, repeatedly and with the utmost decision, urged the claims of truthfulness, branded lying as “the devil’s own image,”[219] and extolled as one of the excellencies of the Germans—in which they differed from Italians and Greeks—their reputation for ever being “loyal, truthful and reliable people”; he also adds—and the words do him credit—“To my mind there is no more shameful vice on earth than lying.”[220]

This, however, does not dispense us from the duty of carefully examining the particular instances which seem to militate against the opinion here expressed.

We find Luther’s relations with truth very strained even at the beginning of his career, and that, too, in the most important and momentous explanations he gave of his attitude towards the Church and the Pope. Frequently enough, by simply placing his statements side by side, striking falsehoods and evasions become apparent.[221]

At length the Church intervened with the Ban and Luther was summoned before the Emperor at the Diet of Worms. Three years later, at the cost of truth, he had already contrived to cast a halo of glory around his public appearance there. For instance, we know how, contrary to the true state of the case, he wrote: “I went to Worms although I knew that the safe conduct given me by the Emperor would be broken”; for the German Princes, otherwise so staunch and true, had, he says, learned nothing better from the Roman idol than to disregard their plighted word; when he entered Worms he had “taken a jump into the gaping jaws of the monster Behemoth.”[245] Yet he knew well enough that the promise of a safe conduct was to be kept most conscientiously. Only on the return journey did he express the fear lest, by preaching in defiance of the prohibition, he might make people say that he had thereby forfeited his safe conduct.[246]

Yet again it was no tribute to truth and probity, when, after the arrival in Germany of the Bull of Excommunication, though perfectly aware that it was genuine, he nevertheless feigned in print to regard it as a forgery concocted by his enemies, to the detriment of the Evangel. In confidence[86] he declared that he “believed the Bull to be real and authentic,”[247] and yet at that very time, in his “Von den newen Eckischenn Bullen und Lugen,” he brought forward four reasons for its being a forgery, and strove to make out that the document was, not the work of the Pope, but a “tissue of lies” woven by Eck.[248]

His tactics had been the same in the case of an edict directed against him by the Bishop of Meissen, the first of the German episcopate to take action. He knew very well that the enactment was genuine. Yet he wrote in reply the “Antwort auff die Tzedel sso unter des Officials tzu Stolpen Sigel ist aussgangen,” as though the writer were some unknown opponent, who ... “had lost his wits on the Gecksberg.”[249]

A similar artifice was made to serve his purpose in the matter of the Papal Brief of Aug. 23, 1518, in which Cardinal Cajetan received full powers to proceed against him. He insisted that this was a malicious fabrication of his foes in Germany; and yet he was well aware of the facts of the case; he cannot have doubted its authenticity, seeing that the Brief had been officially transmitted to him from the Saxon Court through Spalatin.[250]

While, however, accusing others of deception, even occasionally by name, as in Eck’s case, he saw no wrong in antedating his letter to Leo X; for this neither he nor his adviser Miltitz was to be called to account; it sufficed that by dating it earlier the letter appeared to have been written in ignorance of the Excommunication, and thereby served Luther’s interests better.[251]

In fact, right through the period previous to his open breach with Rome, we see him ever labouring to postpone the decision, though a great gulf already separated him from the Church of yore. Across the phantom bridge which still spanned the chasm, he saw with satisfaction thousands passing into his own camp. When on the very point of[87] raising the standard of revolt he seemed at pains to prove it anything but an emblem of uprightness, probity and truth.

Passing now to the struggle of his later life, similar phenomena can scarcely escape the eyes of the unprejudiced observer.

He was proposing untruth and deception when, in 1520, he advised candidates to qualify for major Orders by a fictitious vow of celibacy. Whoever was to be ordained subdeacon was to urge the Bishop not to demand continency, but should the Bishop insist upon the law and call for such a promise, then the candidates were quietly to give it with the proviso: “quantum fragilitas humana permittit”; then, says Luther, “each one is free to take these words in a negative sense, i.e. I do not vow chastity because human frailty does not allow of a man living chastely.”[252]

To what lengths he was prepared to go, even where members of Reformed sects were concerned, may be seen in one of his many unjust outbursts against Zwingli and Œcolampadius. Although they were suffering injustice and violence, yet he denounced them mercilessly. They were to be proclaimed “damned,” even though this led to “violence being offered them”; this was the best way to make people shrink from their false doctrines.[253] His own doctrines, on the other hand, he says, are such that not even Catholics dared to condemn them. On his return to Wittenberg from the Coburg he preached, that the Papists had been forced to admit that his doctrine did not offend against a single article of the Faith.[254]—Of Carlstadt, his theological child of trouble, he asserted, that he wished to play the part of teacher of Holy Scripture though he had never in all his life even seen the Bible,[255] and yet all, Luther inclusive, knew that Carlstadt was not so ignorant of the Bible and that he could even boast of a considerable acquaintance with Hebrew. Concerning Luther’s persecution of Carlstadt, a Protestant researcher has pointed to the “ever-recurring[88] flood of misrepresentations, suspicions, vituperation and abuse which the Reformer poured upon his opponent.”[256]

Such being his licence of speech, what treatment could Catholics expect at his hands? One instance is to be found in the use he makes against the Catholics of a well-known passage of St. Bernard’s.

Again, what things were not circulated by Luther, in the stress of his warfare, concerning the history of the Popes and the Church? Here, again, some of his statements were not simply errors made in good faith, but, as has been pointed out by Protestant historians, malicious inventions going far beyond the matter contained in the sources which we know to have been at his command. The Popes “poisoned several Emperors, beheaded or otherwise betrayed others and put them to death, as became the diabolical spectre of the Papacy.”[262] The bloodthirsty Popes were desirous of “slaying the German Emperors, as Clement IV did with Conradin, the last Duke of Suabia and hereditary King of Naples, whom he caused to be publicly put to death by the sword.”[263] Of this E. Schäfer rightly says, that the historian Sabellicus, whom Luther was utilising, simply (and truly) records that: “Conradin was taken while attempting to escape and was put to death by order of Charles [of Anjou]”; Clement IV Sabellicus does not mention at all, although it is true that the Pope was a strong opponent of the Staufen house.[264]

The so-called letter of St. Ulrich of Augsburg against clerical celibacy, with the account of 3000 (6000) babies’ heads found in a pond belonging to St. Gregory’s nunnery in Rome, is admittedly one of the most impudent forgeries found in history and emanated from some foe of Gregory VII and opponent of the ancient law of celibacy. Luther brought it out as a weapon in his struggle against celibacy, and, according to Köstlin-Kawerau, most probably the Preface to the printed text published at Wittenberg in 1520[90] came from his pen.[265] The manuscript had been sent to Luther from Holland. Emser took him to task and proved the forgery, though on not very substantial grounds. Luther demurred to one of his arguments but declared that he did not build merely on a doubtful letter. In spite of this, however, the seditious and alluring fable was not only not withdrawn from circulation but actually reprinted. When Luther said later that celibacy had first been introduced in the time of St. Ulrich, he is again speaking on the authority of the supposititious letter. This letter was also worked for all it was worth by those who later took up the defence of Luther’s teaching.[266]

To take one single example of Luther’s waywardness in speaking of Popes who were almost contemporaries: He tells us with the utmost assurance that Alexander VI had been an “unbelieving Marane.” However much we may execrate the memory of the Borgia Pope, still so extraordinary an assertion has never been made by any sensible historian. Alexander VI, the pretended Jewish convert and “infidel” on the Papal throne! Who could read his heart so well as to detect an infidelity, which, needless to say, he never acknowledged? Who can credit the tale of his being a Marane?

When, in July 14, 1537, Pope Paul III issued a Bull granting an indulgence for the war against the Turks, Luther at once published it with misleading notes in which he sought to show that the Popes, instead of linking up the Christian powers against their foes, had ever done their best to promote dissensions amongst the great monarchs of Christendom.[267]

In 1538 he sent to the press his Schmalkalden “Artickel” against the Pope and the prospective Council, adding observations of a questionable character regarding their[91] history and meaning. He certainly was exalting unduly the Articles when he declared in the Introduction, that “they have been unanimously accepted and approved by our people.” It is a matter of common knowledge, that, owing to Melanchthon’s machinations, they had never even been discussed. (See vol. iii., p. 434.) They were nevertheless published as though they had been the official scheme drafted for presentation to the Council. Luther also put into the printed Artickel words which are not to be found in the original.[268] The following excuse of his statement as to their having been accepted at Schmalkalden has been made: “It is evident, that, owing to his grave illness at Schmalkalden, he never learnt the exact fate of his Articles.” Yet who can believe, that, after his recovery, he did not make enquiries into what had become of the Articles on which he laid so much weight, or that he “never learnt” their fate, though the matter was one well known to both the Princes and the theologians? Only after his death were these Articles embodied in the official Confessions.[269]

Seeing that he was ready to misrepresent even the official proceedings of his own party, we cannot be surprised if, in his controversies, he was careless about the truth where the person of an opponent was concerned. Here it is not always possible to find even a shadow of excuse behind which he can take refuge. Of Erasmus’s end he had received accounts from two quarters, both friendly to his cause, but they did not strike him as sufficiently damning. Accordingly he at once set in currency reports concerning the scholar’s death utterly at variance with what he had learnt from the letters in question.[270] He accused the Catholics, particularly the Catholic Princes, of attempting to murder him, and frequently speaks of the hired braves sent out against him. Nor were his friends and pupils slow to take his words literally and to hurl such charges, more particularly against Duke George of Saxony.[271] Yet not a single attempt on his life can be proved, and even Protestants have admitted concerning the Duke that “nothing credible is known of[92] any attempt on George’s part to assassinate Luther.”[272] Cochlæus merely relates that murderers had offered their services to Duke George;[273] beyond that nothing.

Far more serious than such misrepresenting of individuals was the injustice he did to the whole ecclesiastical life of the Middle Ages, which he would fain have made out to have entirely fallen away from the true standard of Christian faith and practice. Seen through his new glasses, mediæval life was distorted beyond all recognition. Walter Köhler gives a warning which is to the point: “Protestant historians must beware of looking at the Middle Ages from Luther’s standpoint.”[274] In particular was mediæval Scholasticism selected by Luther and his friends as a butt for attack and misrepresentation. Bucer admits in a letter to Bullinger how far they had gone in this respect: “We have treated all the Schoolmen in such a way as to shock many good and worthy men, who see that we have not read their works but are merely anxious to slander them out of prudence.”[275]

However desirous we may be of crediting the later Luther with good faith in his distorted views of Catholic practices and doctrines, still he frequently goes so far in this respect as to make it extremely difficult to believe that his misrepresentations were based on mere error or actual conviction. One would have thought that he would at least have noticed the blatant contrast between his insinuations and the text of the Breviary and Missal—books with which he was thoroughly conversant—and even of the rule of his Order. As a monk and priest he was perfectly familiar with them; only at the cost of a violent wrench could he have passed from this so different theological world to think as he ultimately did of the doctrines of Catholicism. Döllinger was quite right when he wrote: “As a controversialist Luther combined undeniably dialectic and rhetorical talent with a degree of unscrupulousness such as is rarely met with in this domain. One of his most ordinary methods was to distort a doctrine or institution into a mere caricature of itself, and then, forgetful of[93] the fact that what he was fighting was a simple creation of his fancy, to launch out into righteous abuse of it.... So soon as he touches a theological question, he confuses it, often of set purpose, and as for the reasons of his opponents, they are mutilated and distorted out of all recognition.”[276] The untruthfulness of his polemics is peculiarly apparent in his attack on free-will. It is impossible, even with the best of intentions, to put it all, or practically all, to the account “of the method of disputation” then in use. That method, the syllogistic one, called for a clear and accurate statement of the opponent’s standpoint. The controversy round “De servo arbitrio” (fully dealt with in vol. ii., pp. 223-294) has recently been studied by two scholars, one a Protestant, the other a Catholic, and both authors on the whole agree at least on one point, viz. that Luther ascribed to his opponent a denial of the necessity of Grace, such as the latter never defended, and such as is quite unknown to Catholics.[277] Indeed, at a later juncture in that same controversy Luther even declared of the author of the “Hyperaspistes” that he denied the Trinity![278]

Instead of instancing anew all the many minor misrepresentations of the dogmas and practices of the older Church for which Luther was responsible, and which are found scattered throughout this work, we may confine ourselves to recalling his bold assertion, that all earlier expositors had taken the passage concerning “God’s justice,” in Rom. i. 17, as referring to punitive justice.[279] This was what[94] he taught from his professor’s chair and what we find vouched for in the notes of a zealous pupil of whose fidelity there can be no question. And yet it has been proved, that, with the possible exception of Abelard, not one can be found who thus explained the passage of which Luther speaks (“hunc locum”), whilst Luther himself was acquainted with some at least of the more than sixty commentators who interpret it otherwise. Significant enough is the fact that he only reached this false interpretation gradually.

Luther also says that he and all the others had been told it was a mortal sin to leave their cell without their scapular, though he never attempts to prove that this was the general opinion, or was even held by anybody. The rule of his Order rejected such exaggeration. All theologians were agreed that such trifles did not constitute a grievous sin. Luther was perfectly aware that Gerson, who was much read in the monasteries, was one of these theologians; he praised him, because, though looked at askance at Rome, he set consciences free from over-great scrupulosity and refused to brand the non-wearing of the scapular as a crime.[280] Gerson was indeed not favourably regarded in Rome, but this was for other reasons, not, as Luther makes out, on account of such common-sense teaching as the above.

Then again we have the untruth he is never tired of reiterating, viz. that in the older Church people thought they could be saved only by means of works, and that, through want of faith in Christ, the “Church had become a whore.”[281] Yet ecclesiastical literature in Luther’s day no less than in ours, and likewise an abundance of documents bearing on the point teach quite the contrary and make faith in Christ the basis of all the good works enjoined.[282] All were aware, as Luther himself once had been, that outward works taken by themselves were worthless. And yet Luther, in one of the charges which he repeated again and again, though at the outset he cannot have believed it, says: “The question is, how we are to become pious. The Grey Friar says: Wear a grey hood, a rope and the tonsure. The Black Friar says: Put on a black frock. The Papist: Do[95] this or that good work, hear Mass, pray, fast, give alms, etc., and each one whatever he fancies will help him to be saved. But the Christian says: Only by faith in Christ can you become pious, and righteous and secure salvation; only through Grace alone, without any work or merits of your own. Now look and see which is true righteousness.”[283]

Let us listen for a moment to the indignant voice of a learned Catholic contemporary, viz. the Saxon Dominican, Bartholomew Kleindienst, himself for a while not unfavourable to the new errors, who, in 1560, replied to Luther’s misrepresentations: “Some of the leaders of sects are such impudent liars as, contrary to their own conscience, to persuade the poor people to believe, that we Catholics of the present day, or as they term us Papists, do not believe what the old Papists believed; we no longer think anything of Christ, but worship the Saints, not merely as the friends of God but as gods themselves; nay, we look upon the Pope as our God; we wish to gain heaven by means of our works, without God’s Grace; we do not believe in Holy Writ; have no proper Bible and should be unable to read it if we had; trust more in holy water than in the blood of Christ.... Numberless such-like horrible, blasphemous and hitherto unheard-of lies they invent and use against us. The initiate are well aware that this is the chief trick of the sects, whereby they render the Papacy an abomination to simple and otherwise well-disposed folk.”[284]

But had not Luther, carried away by his zeal against the Papists, taken his stand on the assumption, that, against the deception and depravity of the Papal Antichrist, every weapon was good provided only that it helped to save souls? Such at any rate was his plea in justification of his work “An den christlichen Adel.”[285] Again, during the menacing[96] Diet of Augsburg, when recommending the use of the questionable “Gospel-proviso,” he let fall the following in a letter: Even “tricks and failings” (“doli et lapsus”), should they occur amongst his followers in their resistance to the Papists, “can easily be atoned for once we have escaped the danger.”[286] He even adds: “For God’s Mercy watches over us.”

In the midst of the double-dealing then in progress Luther again appealed to Christ in his letter to Wenceslaus Link on Sep. 20, 1530, where he says: Christ “would be well pleased with such deceit and would scornfully cheat the [Papist] deceivers, as he hoped,” i.e. raise false hopes that the Lutherans would yield; later they would find out their mistake, and that they had been fooled. Here is my view of the matter, he continues, “I am secure, that without my consent, their consent [the concessions of Melanchthon and his friends at the Diet] is invalid. Even were I too to agree with these blasphemers, murderers and faithless monsters, yet the Church and [above all] the teaching of the Gospel would not consent.” This was his “Gospel-proviso,” thanks to which all the concessions, doctrinal or moral, however solemnly granted by him or by his followers, might be declared invalid—“once we have escaped the danger.” (See vol. iii., p. 337 ff.)

The underhandedness which he advocated in order that the people might not be made aware of the abrogation of the Mass, has been considered above (vol. ii., p. 321). Another strange trick on his part—likewise for the better furtherance of his cause—was his attempt to persuade the Bishop of Samland, George von Polenz, who had fallen away from the Church and joined him, “to proceed with caution”;[97] “therefore that it would be useful for him [the Bishop] to appear to suspend his judgment (“ut velut suspendens sententiam appareret”); to wait until the people had consented, and then throw in his weight as though he had been conquered by their arguments.”[287] Couched in Luther’s ordinary language this would mean that the Bishop was to pretend to be wavering between Christ and Antichrist, between hell and the Evangel, though any such wavering, to say nothing of any actual yielding, would have been a capital crime against religion. At the best the Bishop could only hypocritically feign to be wavering in spite of the other public steps he had taken in Luther’s favour and of which the latter was well aware.

Later, in 1545, considering the “deception and depravity” of the Papacy Luther thought himself justified in insinuating in a writing against the Catholic Duke Henry of Brunswick,[288] then a prisoner, that the Pope had furnished him supplies for his unfortunate warlike enterprise against the allies of the evangelical confession.

While Luther was himself playing fast and loose with truth, he was not slow to accuse his opponents of lying even when they presented matters as they really were. When Eck published the Bull of Excommunication, which Luther himself knew to be authentic, he was roundly rated for saying that his “tissue of lies” was “the Pope’s work.”[297] In fact, in all and everything that Catholics undertake against his cause, they are seeking “to deceive us and the common people, though well aware of the contrary.... You see how they seek the truth.... They are rascals incarnate.”[298] In fighting against the lies of his opponents Luther, once,—curiously enough—in his writing “Widder die hymelischen Propheten” actually takes the Pope under[99] his protection against the calumnies of his Wittenberg opponent Carlstadt; seeking to brand him as a liar, he declares that he “was notoriously telling lies of the Pope.”

We already know how much Carlstadt had to complain of Luther’s lying and fickleness.

This leads to a short review of the remarks made by Luther’s then opponents and friends concerning his want of truthfulness.

2. Opinions of Contemporaries in either Camp

Luther’s work against Duke Henry of Brunswick entitled “Wider Hans Worst” was so crammed with malice and falsehoods that even some of Luther’s followers were disposed to complain of its unseemliness. Simon Wilde, who was then studying medicine at Wittenberg, wrote on April 8, 1541, when forwarding to his uncle the Town Clerk, Stephen Roth of Zwickau, a copy of the booklet which had just appeared: “I am sending you a little work of Dr. Martin against the Duke of Brunswick which bristles with calumnies, but which also [so he says] contains much that is good, and may be productive of something amongst the virtuous.”[299]

Statements adverse to Luther’s truthfulness emanating from the Protestant side are not rare; particularly are they met with in the case of theologians who had had to suffer from his violence; nor can their complaints be entirely disallowed simply because they came from men who were in conflict with him, though the circumstance would call for caution in making use of them were the complaints not otherwise corroborated.

Œcolampadius in his letter to Zwingli of April 20, 1525, calls Luther a “master in calumny, and prince of sophists.”[300]

The Strasburg preachers Bucer and Capito, though reputed for their comparative moderation, wrote of one of Luther’s works on the Sacrament, that “never had anything more sophistical and calumnious seen the light.”[301]

[100]

Thomas Münzer repeatedly calls his enemy Luther “Dr. Liar” and “Dr. Lyinglips,”[302] on account of the unkindness of his polemics; more picturesquely he has it on one occasion, that “he lied from the bottom of his gullet.”[303]

3. The Psychological Problem Self-suggestion and Scriptural Grounds of Excuse

Not merely isolated statements, but whole series of regularly recurring assertions in Luther’s works, constitute a real problem, and, instead of challenging refutation make one ask how their author could possibly have come to utter and make such things his own.

A Curious Mania.

[103]

But enough of such extravagant assertions, which to Catholics stand self-condemned, but were intended by their author to be taken literally. He flung such wild sayings broadcast among the masses, until it became a second nature with him. For we must bear in mind that grotesque and virulent misstatements such as the above occur not merely now and again, but simply teem in his books, sermons and conversations. It would be an endless task to enumerate his deliberate falsehoods. He declares, for instance, that the Papists, in all their collects and prayers, extolled merely the merits of the Saints; yet this aspersion which he saw fit to cast upon the Church in the interests of his polemics, he well knew to be false, having been familiar from his monastic days with another and better aspect of the prayers he here reviles. He knew that the merits of the Saints were referred to only in some of the collects; he knew, moreover, why they were mentioned there, and that they were never alleged alone but always in subordination to the merits and the mediation of our Saviour (“Per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum,” etc.).

A favourite allegation of Luther’s, viz. that the Church of the past had regarded Christ exclusively as a stern Judge, was crushingly confuted in Denifle’s work. The importance of this brilliant and scholarly refutation lies in the fact, that it is principally founded on texts and usages of the older Church with which Luther was perfectly familiar, which, for instance, he himself had recited in the liturgy and more especially in the Office of his Order year after year, and which thus bear striking testimony against his good faith in the matter of his monstrous charge.[321]

It is a matter of common knowledge that, also in other branches of the history of theology and ecclesiastical life, Denifle has refuted with rare learning, though with too sharp a pen, Luther’s paradoxical “lies” concerning mediæval Catholicism. It is to be hoped that this may be followed by other well-grounded and impartial comments from the pen of other writers, for, in spite of their monstrous[104] character, some of Luther’s accusations still live, partly no doubt owing to the respect in which he is held. Some of them will be examined more closely below. The principal aim of these pages is, however, to seek the psychological explanation of the strange peculiarity which manifests itself in Luther’s intellectual life, viz. the abnormal tendency to level far-fetched charges, sometimes bordering on the insane.

An Attempt at a Psychological Explanation.

A key to some of these dishonest exaggerations is to be found in the need which Luther experienced of arming himself against the Papacy and the older Church by ever more extravagant assertions. Realising how unjust and untenable much of his position was, and oppressed by those doubts to which he often confessed, a man of his temper was sorely tempted to have recourse to the expedient of insisting yet more obstinately on his pet ideas. The defiance which was characteristic of him led him to pile up one assertion on the other which his rhetorical talent enabled him to clothe in his wonted language. Throughout he was acting on impulse rather than from reflection.

To this must be added—incredible as it may appear in connection with the gravest questions of life—his tendency to make fun. Jest, irony, sarcasm were so natural to him as to obtrude themselves almost unconsciously whenever he had to do with opponents whom he wished to crush and on whom he wished to impose by a show of merriment which should display the strength of his position and his comfortable sense of security, and at the same time duly impress his own followers. Those who looked beneath the surface, however, must often have rejoiced to see Luther so often blunting the point of his hyperboles by the drolleries by which he accompanies them, which made it evident that he was not speaking seriously. To-day, too, it would be wrong to take all he says as spoken in dead earnest; at the same time it is often impossible to determine where exactly the serious ends and the trivial, vulgar jest begins; probably even Luther himself did not always know. A few further examples may be given.

Lastly, we must point to another psychological, or, more accurately, pathological, element which may avail to explain falsehoods so glaring concerning the Church of former times. Experience teaches, that sometimes a man soaked in prejudice will calumniate or otherwise assail a foe, at first from an evil motive and with deliberate injustice, and then, become gradually persuaded, thanks to the habit thus formed, of the truth of his calumnies and of the justice of his proceedings. Instances of such a thing are not seldom met with in history, especially among those engaged in mighty conflicts in the arena of the world. Injustice and falsehood, not indeed entirely, but with regard to the matter in hand, are travestied, become matters of indifference, or are even transformed in their eyes into justice and truth.

In Luther’s case the phenomenon in question assumes a pathological guise. We cannot but perceive in him a kind of self-suggestion by which he imposed upon himself. Constituted as he was, such suggestion was possible, nay probable, and was furthermore abetted by his nervous excitement, the result of his never-ceasing struggle.[334]

It is in part to his power of suggestion that must also be attributed his success in making his disciples and followers accept even his most extravagant views and become in their turn missioners of the same.

[108]

The New Theology of Lying.

Another explanation, this time a theological one, of Luther’s disregard for the laws of truth is to be found in the theory he set up of the permissibility of lies.

Previously, even in 1517, he, like all theologians, had regarded every kind of lie as forbidden. Theologians of earlier times, when dealing with this subject, usually agreed with Augustine and Peter Lombard, the “Magister Sententiarum” and likewise with Gratian, that all lies, even lies of excuse, are forbidden. After the commencement of his public controversy, however, strange as it may appear, Luther gradually came to assert in so many words that lies of excuse, of convenience, or of necessity were not reprehensible, but often good and to be counselled. How far this view concerning the lawfulness of lying might be carried, remained, however, a question to be decided by each one individually.

Meanwhile, however, his peculiar reading of the Old Testament, and possibly no less the urgent demands of his[109] controversy, had exerted an unfortunate influence on his opinion concerning lies of convenience or necessity.

It was reserved for Luther to revive the wrong view concerning the lawfulness of such lies, and to a certain extent to impose it on his followers. Theologically this spelt retrogression and a lowering of the standard of morality hitherto upheld. “Luther here forsook his beloved Augustine,” says Stäudlin, a Protestant, “and declared certain lies to be right and allowable. This opinion, though not universally accepted in the Evangelical Church, became nevertheless a dominant one.”[346]

[111]

It must be specially noted that Luther does not justify lies of convenience, merely when told in the interests of our neighbour, but also when made use of for our own advantage when such is well pleasing in God’s sight. This he states explicitly when speaking of Isaac, who denied his marriage with Rebecca so as to save his life: “This is no sin, but a serviceable lie by which he escaped being put to death by those with whom he was staying; for this would have happened had he said Rebecca was his wife.”[347] And not only the lawful motive of personal advantage justifies, according to him, such untruths as do not injure others, but much more the love of God or of our neighbour, i.e. regard for God’s honour; the latter motive it was, according to him, which influenced Abraham, when he gave out that Sarah was his sister. Abraham had to co-operate in accomplishing the great promise made by God to him and his progeny; hence he had to preserve his life, “in order that he might honour and glorify God thereby, and not give the lie to God’s promises.” Many Catholic interpreters of the Bible have sought to find expedients whereby, without justifying his lie, they might yet exonerate the great Patriarch of any fault. Luther, on the contrary, following[112] his own arbitrary interpretation of the Bible, approves, nay, even glories in the fault. “If,” he says, “the text be taken thus [according to his interpretation] no one can be scandalised at it; for what is done for God’s honour, for the glory and furtherance of His Word, that is right and well done and deserving of all praise.”[348]

On such principles as these, what was there that Luther could not justify in his polemics with the older Church?

In his eyes everything he undertook was done for “God’s glory.” “For the sake of the Christian Church,” he was ready, to tell “a downright lie” (above, p. 51) in the Hessian affair. “Against the deception and depravity of the Papal Antichrist,” he regarded everything “as permissible” for the salvation of souls (above, p. 95); moreover, was not the war he was waging part of his divine mission? The public welfare and the exalted interests of his work might therefore at any time call for a violation of the truth. Was he to be deterred, perhaps, by the injury his opponents might thereby suffer? By no means. They suffered no real injury; on the contrary, it all redounded to their spiritual good, for by ending the reign of prejudice and error their souls would be saved from imminent peril and the way paved for the accomplishment of the ancient promises “to the glory and furtherance of the Word.”

We do not mean to say that Luther actually formed his conscience thus in any particular instance. Of this we cannot judge and it would be too much to expect from him any statement on the subject. But the danger of his doing so was sufficiently proximate.

The above may possibly throw a new light on his famous words: “We consider everything allowable against the deception and depravity of the Papal Antichrist.”[349]

Luther’s Influence on His Circle.

Our remarks on Luther and lying would be incomplete were we not to refer to the influence his example and theory exercised on his surroundings and on those who assisted him in establishing the new Church system.

Melanchthon not only incurred, and justly too, the reproach of frequently playing the dishonest diplomatist, particularly[113] at the Diet of Augsburg,[350] but even advocated in his doctrinal works the Lutheran view that lying is in many cases lawful.

Like Luther, Martin Bucer, too, urged the Landgrave to tell a deliberate lie and openly deny his bigamy. Though at first unwilling, he had undertaken to advocate the Landgrave’s bigamy with Luther and had defended it personally (above, p. 28). In spite of this, however, when complications arose on its becoming public, he declared in a letter of 1541 to the preachers of Memmingen, which so far has received little attention, that the Landgrave’s wrong step, some rumours of which had reached his ears, should it prove to be true, could not be laid to his charge or to that of the Wittenbergers. “I declare before God (‘coram Deo affirmo’) that no one has given the Prince such advice, neither I, nor Luther, nor Philip, nor, so far as I know, any Hessian preacher, nor has anyone taught that Christians may keep concubines as well as their wives, or declared himself ready to defend such a step.”[356] And, again calling God to witness (“hæc ego ut coram Deo scripta”), he declares that he had never written or signed anything in defence of the bigamy.[357] In the following year he appeared before the magistrates of Strasburg and, in the presence of two colleagues, “took God to witness concerning the suspicion of having advised the Landgrave the other marriage,” “that the latter had consulted neither him nor any preacher concerning the matter”; he and Capito had “throughout been opposed to it” (the bigamy), “although his help had been sought for in such matters by honourable and highly placed persons.”[358] The reference here is to Henry VIII of England, to whom, however, he had never expressed his disapproval of bigamy; in fact he, like Capito and the two Wittenbergers (above, p. 4), had declared his preference for Henry’s taking an extra wife rather than divorcing his first.

Bucer (who had so strongly inveighed against Luther’s lies, above, p. 99), where it was a question of a Catholic opponent like the Augustinian Johann Hoffmeister, had[115] himself recourse to notorious calumnies concerning this man, whom even Protestant historians now allow to have been of blameless life and the “greatest enemy of immorality.”[359] He accused him of “dancing with nuns,” of “wallowing in vice,” and of being “an utterly abandoned, infamous and dissolute knave,” all of them groundless charges at very most based upon mere hearsay.[360]—This same Bucer, who accused the Catholic Princes of being double-tongued and pursuing dubious policies, was himself notorious amongst his own party for his wiliness, deceit and cunning.

Johann Bugenhagen, the Pastor of Wittenberg, when called upon to acknowledge his share in a certain questionable memorandum of a semi-political character also laid himself open to the charge of being wanting in truthfulness (vol. iii., p. 74 f.).

P. Kalkoff has recently made clear some of Wolfgang Capito’s double-dealings and his dishonest behaviour, though he hesitates to condemn him for them. Capito had worked in Luther’s interests at the Court of Archbishop Albert of Mayence, and there, with the Archbishop’s help, “rendered incalculable services to the Evangelical cause.” In extenuation of his behaviour Kalkoff says: “In no way was it more immoral than the intrigues” of the Elector Frederick. On the strength of the material he has collected J. Greving rightly describes Capito as a “thoroughbred hypocrite and schemer.”[361] The dealings of this “eminent diplomatist,” as Greving also terms him, remind us only too often of Luther’s own dealings with highly placed ecclesiastics and seculars during the first period of his apostasy. If, in those early days, Luther’s theory had already won many friends and imitators, in the thick of the fight it made even more converts amongst the new preachers, men ready to make full use of the alluring principle, that, against the depravity of the Papacy everything is licit.

From vituperation to the violation of truth there was but a step amidst the passion which prevailed. How Luther’s abuse—ostensibly all for the love of his neighbour—infected his pupils is plain from a letter in the newly published[116] correspondence of the Brothers Blaurer. This letter, written from Wittenberg on Oct. 8, 1522, by Thomas Blaurer, to Ulrich Zasius, contains the following: “Not even from the most filthy and shameful vituperation [of the hateful Papacy] shall we shrink, until we see it everywhere despised and abhorred.” What had to be done was to vindicate the doctrine that, “Christ is our merit and our satisfaction.”[362] Luther, he says, poured forth abuse (“convicia”), but only to God’s glory, and for the “salvation and encouragement of the little ones.”[363]

4. Some Leading Slanders on the Mediæval Church Historically Considered

“In Luther’s view the Middle Ages, whose history was fashioned by the Popes, was a period of darkest night.... This view of the Middle Ages, particularly of the chief factor in mediæval life, viz. the Church in which it found its highest expression, is one-sided and distorted.” Such is the opinion of a modern Protestant historian. He is sorry that false ideas of the mediæval Church and theology “have been sheltered so long under the ægis of the reformer’s name.”[364]—“It will not do,” a lay Protestant historian, as early as 1874, had told the theologians of his faith, speaking of Köstlin’s work “Luthers Theologie,” “to ignore the contemporary Catholic literature when considering Luther and the writings of the reformers.... It is indispensable that the condition of theology from about 1490 to 1510 should be carefully examined. We must at all costs rid ourselves of the caricatures we meet with in the writings of the reformers, and of the misunderstandings to which they gave rise, and learn from their own writings what the theologians of that time actually thought and taught.” “Paradoxical as it may sound, it is just the theological side of the history of the Reformation which, at the present day, is least known.”[365]

[117]

During the last fifty years German scholars have devoted themselves with zeal and enthusiasm to the external and social aspect of the Middle Ages. That great undertaking, the “Monumenta Germaniæ historica,” its periodical the “Archiv,” and a number of others dealing largely with mediæval history brought Protestants to a juster and more objective appreciation of the past. Yet the theological, and even in some respects the ecclesiastical, side has been too much neglected, chiefly because so many Protestant theologians were scrupulous about submitting the subject to a new and unprejudiced study. Hence the astonishment of so many when Johannes Janssen, with his “History of the German People,” and, to pass over others, Heinrich Denifle with his work on Luther entered the field and demonstrated how incorrect had been the views prevalent since Luther’s time concerning the doctrine and the ecclesiastical life of his age. Astonishment in many soon made way for indignation; in Denifle’s case, particularly, annoyance was caused by a certain attitude adopted by this author which led some to reject in their entirety the theologico-historical consequences at which he arrived, whilst even Janssen was charged with being biassed. Other Protestants, however, have learned something from the Catholic works which have since made their appearance in greater numbers, have acknowledged that the ideas hitherto in vogue were behind the times and have invited scholars to undertake a more exact study of the materials.

In returning here to some of Luther’s legends mentioned above (p. 92 f.) concerning the Catholic past and the religious views then prevailing, our object is merely to show by a few striking examples how wrong Luther was in charging the Middle Ages with errors in theology and morals.

One of his most frequently repeated accusations was, that the Church before his day had merely taught a hollow “holiness by works”; all exhortations to piety uttered by[119] preachers and writers insisted solely on outward good works; of the need of cultivating an inward religious spirit, interior virtues or true righteousness of heart no one had any conception.

Against this we may set a few Catholic statements made during the years shortly before Luther’s appearance.

Thus we find in the writings of that period, language by no means wanting in vigour used in denunciation of the so-called “holiness-by-works”; hence Luther was certainly not first in the field to raise a protest.

From their preachers, too, the people frequently heard this same teaching.

Johann Herolt, a Dominican preacher, very celebrated at the commencement of the 15th century, points out clearly and definitely in his sermons on the Sunday Epistles, that every work must be inspired by and permeated with charity if man’s actions are not to deteriorate into a mere “holiness-by-works”; a poor man who, with a pure conscience, performs the meanest good work, is, according to him, of “far greater worth in God’s sight than the richest Prince who erects churches and monasteries while in a state of mortal sin”; the outward work was of small account.[373] Herolt thus becomes a spokesman of “inwardness” in the matter of the fulfilment of the duties of the Christian life;[374] many others spoke as he did.

Sound instruction concerning “holiness-by-works” and the necessary “inwardness” was to be found in the most popular works of devotion at the close of the Middle Ages.

[121]

The “Evangelibuch,” for instance, a sermon-book with glosses on the Sunday Gospels, has the following for those who are too much devoted to outward works: “It matters not how good a man may be or how many good works he performs unless, at the same time, he loves God.” The author even goes too far in his requirements concerning the interior disposition, and, agreeably with a view then held by many, will not admit as a motive for love a wholesome fear of the loss of God; he says a man must love God, simply because “he is the most excellent, highest and most worthy Good; ... for a man filled with Divine love does not desire the good which God possesses, but merely God Himself”; thus, in his repudiation of all so-called “holiness-by-works,” he actually goes to the opposite extreme.[375]

Man becomes pleasing to God not by reason of the number or greatness of his works, but through the interior justice wrought in him by grace; such is the opinion of the Dominican, Johann Mensing. He protests against being accused of disparaging God’s grace because at the same time he emphasises the value of works; he declares that he exalts the importance of God’s sanctifying Grace even more than his opponents (the Lutherans) did, because, so he says, “we admit (what they deny, thereby disparaging the grace of God), viz. that we are not simply saved by God, but that He so raises and glorifies our nature by the bestowal of grace, that we are able ourselves to merit our salvation and attain to it of our own free will, which, without His Grace, would be impossible. Hence our belief is not that we are led and driven like cattle who know not whither they go. We say: God gives us His grace, faith and charity, at first without any merit on our part; then follow good works and merits, all flowing from the same Grace, and finally eternal happiness for such works as bring down Grace.”[376]

This was the usual language in use in olden time, particularly in the years just previous to Luther, and it was in accordance with this that most of the faithful obediently shaped their lives. If abuses occurred—and it is quite true that we often do meet with a certain degree of formalism in the customs of the people—they cannot be regarded as the[122] rule and were reproved by zealous and clear-sighted churchmen.

A favourite work at that time was the “Imitation of Christ” by Thomas à Kempis. Thousands, more particularly amongst the clergy and religious, were edified by the fervent and touching expositions of the author to permeate all works with the spirit of interior piety.[377] We know how strongly he condemns formalism as exemplified in frequent pilgrimages devoid of virtue and the spirit of penance, and how he does not spare even the religious; “the habit and the tonsure make but little alteration, but the moral change and the entire mortification of the passions make a true religious.”[378]

The practice of works of charity, which at that time flourished exceedingly among both clergy and laity, offered a field for the realisation of these principles of the true spirit in which good works are to be performed. We have countless proofs of how the faithful in Germany despoiled themselves of their temporal goods from the most sincere religious motives—out of love for their neighbour, or to promote the public Divine worship—“for the love of God our Lord,” as a common phrase, used in the case of numerous foundations, expresses it.

G. Uhlhorn, the Protestant author of the “Geschichte der christlichen Liebestätigkeit,” also pays a tribute to the spirit which preserved charity from degenerating into mere “holiness-by-works.” “We should be doing injustice to that period,” he says of the Middle Ages generally, “were we to think that it considered as efficacious, i.e. as satisfactory, mere external works apart from the motive which inspired them, for instance, alms without love.” In support he quotes Thomas of Aquin and Pope Innocent III, remarking, however, that even such alms as were bestowed without this spirit of love were regarded, by the standard authorities, as predisposing a man for the reception of Grace, and as deserving of temporal reward from God, hence not as altogether “worthless and unproductive.”[379]

Another fable concerning the Middle Ages, sedulously fostered by Luther in his writings, was, that, in those days[123] man had never come into direct relations with God, that the hierarchy had constituted a partition between him and Christ, and that, thanks only to the new Evangel, had the Lord been restored to each man, as his personal Saviour and the object of all his hopes; Luther was wont to say that the new preaching had at length brought each one into touch with Christ the Lamb, Who taketh away our sin; Melanchthon, in his funeral oration on Luther, also said of him, that he had pointed out to every sinner the Lamb in Whom he would find salvation.

To keep to the symbol of the Lamb: The whole Church of the past had never ceased to tell each individual that he must seek in the Lamb of God purgation from his guilt and confirmation of his personal love of God. The Lamb was to her the very symbol of that confidence in Christ’s Redemption which she sought to arouse in each one’s breast. On the front of Old St. Peter’s, for instance, the Lamb was shown in brilliant mosaic, with the gentle Mother of the Redeemer on its right and the Key-bearer on its left, and this figure, in yet older times, had been preceded by the ancient “Agnus Dei.”[380]

Every Litany recited by the faithful in Luther’s day, no less than in earlier ages and in our own, concluded with the trustful invocation of the “Lamb of God”; the waxen “Agnus Dei,” blessed by the Pope, and so highly prized by the people, was but its symbol.[381] The Lamb of God was, and still is, solemnly invoked by priest and people in the Canon of the Mass for the obtaining of mercy and peace.

The centre of daily worship in the Catholic Church, in Luther’s day as in the remoter past, was ever the Eucharistic Sacrifice. The Lamb of God, which, according to Catholic belief, is there offered to the Father under the mystic elements, and mysteriously renews the sacrifice of the Cross, was as a well, daily opened, in which souls athirst for God might find wherewith to unite themselves in love and confidence with their Redeemer.

[124]

In spite of this Luther succeeded in bequeathing to posterity the opinion that it was he who delivered people from that “alienation from God” imposed on the world in the Middle Ages; “who broke down the prohibition of the mediæval Church against anyone concerning himself on his own account with matters of religion”; and who gave back “personal religion” to the Christian.

Were Protestants to bestow more attention on the religious literature of the Later Middle Ages, such statements would be simply impossible. One of those best acquainted with this literature writes: “During the last few months the present writer has gone carefully, pen in hand, through more than one hundred printed and manuscript religious works, written in German and belonging to the end of the Middle Ages: catechetical handbooks, general works of piety, confession manuals, postils, prayer-books, booklets on preparation for death and German sermonaries. In this way he has learnt from the most reliable sources not only how in those days people were guided to devout intercourse with God, but also with what fervent piety the faithful were accustomed to converse with their Saviour.” Let Protestants, he adds, at least attempt to vindicate their pet assertions “scientifically, i.e. from trustworthy sources.”[386]

The relations between the individual and God were by no means suppressed because the priesthood stood as an intermediary between the faithful and God, or because ecclesiastical superiors watched over and directed public worship and the lines along which the life of faith was to move. If the union of the individual with God was endangered by such interference on the part of the clergy, then it was endangered just as much by Luther, who insists so strongly[126] on the preachers being listened to, and on the ministers taking the lead in things pertaining to God.

Thus we find Luther, on the one hand insisting upon an authority, and, on the other, demanding freedom for the interpretation of Scripture. How he sought to harmonise the two is reserved for later examination. At any rate, it is to misapprehend both the Catholic Church and Luther’s own theological attitude, to say that “independent study of religious questions” had been forbidden in the Middle Ages and was “reintroduced” only by Luther, that he removed the “blinkers” which the Church had placed over people’s eyes and that henceforward “the representatives of the Church had no more call to assume the place of the Living God in man’s regard.”

Luther also laid claim to having revived respect for the secular authorities, who, during the Middle Ages, had been despised owing to the one-sided regard shown to the monks and clergy. He declares that he had again brought people to esteem the earthly calling, family life and all worldly employments as being a true serving of God. Boldly he asserts, that, before my time, “the authorities did not know they were serving God”; “before my time nobody knew ... what the secular power, what matrimony, parents, children, master, servant, wife or maid really signified.” On the strength of his assertions it has been stated, that he revived the “ideal of life” by discovering the “true meaning of vocation,” which then became the “common property of the civilised world”; on this account he was “the creator of those theories which form the foundation upon which the modern State and modern civilisation rest.”

The fact is, however, the Church of past ages fully[128] recognised the value of the secular state and spheres of activity, saw in them a Divine institution, and respected and cherished them accordingly.

Although Luther must have been well aware of the views really held on this subject, some excuse for his wild charges may perhaps be found in his small practical experience, prior to his apostasy, of Christian life in the world. His poverty had forced him, even in childhood, into irregular ways; he had been deprived of the blessings of a truly Christian family-life. His solitary studies had left him a stranger to the active life of good Catholics engaged in secular callings; the fact of his being a monk banished him alike from the society of the bad and impious and from that of the good and virtuous. Thus in many respects he was out of touch with the stimulating influence of the world; the versatility which results from experience was still lacking, when, in his early years at Wittenberg, he began to think out his new theories on God and sin, Grace and the Fall.

“Whoever wishes to please God let him stick to the order [state] in which God has placed him.” These words of Gross, the Carthusian, quoted above, remind us of a comparison instituted by Herolt the Dominican between religious Orders and the “Order” of matrimony. Commending the secular calling of matrimony, he says here, that it was instituted by God Himself, whereas the religious Orders had been founded by men: “We must know that[130] God first honoured matrimony by Himself instituting it. In this wise the Order of matrimony excels all other Orders (‘ordo matrimonialis præcellit olios ordines’); for just as St. Benedict founded the Black Monks, St. Francis the Order of Friars Minor and St. Dominic the Order of Friars Preacher, so God founded matrimony.”[400]

True Christian perfection, according to the ancient teaching of the Church, is not bound up with any particular state, but may be attained by all, no matter their profession, even by the married.

Luther, and many after him, even down to the present day, have represented, that, according to the Catholic view, perfection was incapable of attainment save in the religious life, this alone being termed the “state of perfection.” In his work “On Monkish Vows” he declares: “The monks have divided Christian life into a state of perfection and one of imperfection. To the great majority they have assigned the state of imperfection, to themselves, that of perfection.”[401]

As a matter of fact the “state of perfection” only means, that, religious, by taking upon themselves, publicly and before the Church, the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, bind themselves to strive after perfection along this path as one leading most surely to the goal; it doesn’t imply that they are already in possession of perfection, still less that they alone possess it. By undertaking to follow all their life a Rule approved by the Church, under the guidance of Superiors appointed by the Church, they form a “state” or corporation of which perfection is the aim, and, in this sense alone, are said to belong to the “state of perfection.” In addition, it was always believed that equal, in fact the highest, perfection might be attained to in any state of life. Though the difficulties to be encountered in the worldly state were regarded as greater, yet the conquest they involved was looked upon as the fruit of an even greater love of God, the victory as more splendid, and the degree of perfection attained as so much the more exalted.

It is the love of God which, according to the constant teaching of the Church, constitutes the essence of perfection.

The most perfect Christian is he who fulfils the law of charity most perfectly, and this—notwithstanding whatever[131] Luther may say—according to what has ever been the teaching of the Church, the ordinary Christian may quite well do in his everyday calling, and in the married as much as in the religious state. Even should the religious follow the severest of Rules, yet if he does not make use of the more abundant means of perfection at his command but lives in tepidity, then the ordinary Christian approaches more closely than he to the ideal standard of life if only he fulfils his duties in the home with greater love of God.

The Bavarian Franciscan, Caspar Schatzgeyer, Luther’s contemporary, is right when he says in his work “Scrutinium divinæ scripturæ”: “We do not set up a twofold standard of perfection, one for people in the world and another for the religious. For all Christians there is but one order, one mode of worshipping God, one evangelical perfection.... But we do say this, that in cloistral life the attainment of perfection is easier, though a Christian living in the world may excel all religious in perfection.”[402] For—such is the ground he gives in a German work—“it may well happen that in the ordinary Christian state a man runs so hotly and eagerly towards God as to outstrip all religious in all the essentials of Christian perfection, just as a sculptor may with a blunt chisel produce a masterpiece far superior to that carved by an unskilful apprentice even with the best and sharpest of tools.”[403]

This may suffice to elucidate the question of the Catholic ideal of life in respect of Luther’s statements, a question much debated in recent controversies but not always set in as clear a light as it deserved.

The preceding remarks on Luther’s misrepresentations of the Church’s teaching concerning worldly callings lead us to consider his utterances on the Church’s depreciation of the female sex and of matrimony.

5. Was Luther the Liberator of Womankind from “Mediæval Degradation”?

Luther maintained that he had raised the dignity of woman from the depths to which it had fallen in previous ages and had revived due respect for married life. What the Church had defined on this subject in the past he[132] regarded as all rubbish. Indeed, “not one of the Fathers,” he says, “ever wrote anything notable or particularly good concerning the married state.”[404] But, as in the case of the secular authority and the preaching office, so God, before the coming of the Judgment Day, by His special Grace and through His Word, i.e. through the new Evangel, had restored married life to its rightful dignity, “as He had at first instituted and ordained it.” Marriage, so Luther asserts, had been regarded as “a usage and practice rather than as a thing ordained by God. In the same way the secular authorities did not know that they were serving God, but were all tied up in ceremonies. The preaching office, too, was nothing but a sham consisting of cowls, tonsures, oilings,” etc.[405]

In short, by his teaching on marriage he had ennobled woman, whereas the Catholics had represented matrimony as an “unchristian” state, only permitted out of necessity, even though they called it a Sacrament.[406]

Conspectus of Luther’s Distortion of the Catholic View of Marriage.

Luther based his charges chiefly on the canonical enforcement of clerical celibacy and on the favour shown by the Church to the vow of chastity and the monastic life. How this proved his contention it is not easy to see. Further, he will have it, that the Church taught that true service of God was to be found only in the monastic state, and that vows were a sure warrant of salvation—though, as a matter of fact, neither Church nor theologians had ever said anything of the sort.[407]

The olden Church had painted an ideal picture of the virgin. By this, though not alone by this, she voiced her respect for woman, from that Christian standpoint which differs so much from that of the world. From the earliest[135] times she, like the Gospel and the Apostle of the Gentiles, set up voluntary virginity as a praiseworthy state of life. Hereby she awakened in the female sex a noble emulation for virtue, in particular for seclusion, purity and morality—woman’s finest ornaments—and amongst men a high respect for woman, upon whom, even in the wedded state, the ideal of chastity cast a radiance which subdued the impulse of passion. Virgin and mother alike were recommended by the Church to see their model and their guide in the Virgin Mother of our Saviour. Where true devotion to Mary flourished the female sex possessed a guarantee of its dignity, from both the religious and the human point of view, a pledge of enduring respect and honour.

How the Church of olden days continued to prize matrimony and to view it in the light of a true Sacrament is evident from the whole literature of the Middle Ages. Such being its teaching it is incomprehensible how a well-known Protestant encyclopædia, as late as 1898, could still venture to say: “As against the contempt for marriage displayed in both religious and secular circles, and to counteract the immorality to which this had given rise, Luther vindicated the honour of matrimony and placed it in an entirely new light.”

Against such assertions some of Luther’s finest sayings on woman’s dignity deserve to be pitted.

Luther’s Discordant Utterances on the Value of Marriage in his Sermons and Writings.

Any objective examination of Luther’s attitude towards woman and marriage must reveal the fact, that he frequently seeks to invest Christian marriage, as he conceived it, with a religious character and a spiritual dignity. This he does in language witty and sympathetic, representing it as a close bond of love, though devoid of any sacramental character. Nor does he hesitate to use the noble imagery of the Church when describing his substitute for the Christian marriage of the past.

“It is no small honour for the married state,” he says in a sermon of 1536, “that God should represent it under the type and figure of the unspeakable grace and love which He manifests and bestows on us in Christ, and as the surest and most gracious sign of the intimate union between Himself and Christendom and all its members, a union than which nothing more intimate can be imagined.”[452]

Not infrequently, however, instead of praising the dignity of woman and the purity of married life, Luther speaks in a far from respectful, nay, offensive manner of woman, though without perhaps meaning all that his words would[144] seem to convey. He thereby exposes woman, in her relations with man, to the danger of contempt, and thus forfeits the right of posing as the defender of feminine dignity and of the married state against alleged detractors among the Catholics. His false aspersions on former days thus stand out in a still more unpleasant light.

In a sermon of 1524, where it is true he has some fine words on the indulgent treatment to be meted out to the wife, he says: St. Peter calls woman the “weaker vessel” (1 Peter iii. 7); he “had given faint praise to woman,” for “woman’s body is not strong and her spirit, as a general rule, is even weaker; whether she is wild or mild depends on God’s choice of man’s helpmate. Woman is half a child; whoever takes a wife must look upon himself as the guardian of a child.... She is also a crazy beast. Recognise her weakness. If she does not always follow the straight path, bear with her frailty. A woman will ever remain a woman.... But the married state is nevertheless the best, because God is there with His Word and Work and Cross.”[458]

With those who complain of the sufferings of the mother in pregnancy and childbirth he is very angry, and, in one sermon, goes so far as to say: “Even though they grow weary and wear themselves out with child-bearing, that is of no consequence; let them go on bearing children till they die, that is what they are there for.”[459]

His description of marriage “as an outward, material thing, like any other worldly business,[460] was certainly not calculated to raise its repute;” and in the same passage he proceeds: “Just as I may eat and drink, sleep and walk, ride, talk and do business with a heathen or a Jew, a Turk or a heretic, so also I may contract marriage with him.”[461]

Matrimonial cases had formerly belonged to the ecclesiastical courts, but Luther now drives the parties concerned to the secular judge, telling them that he will give them “a good hog,” i.e. a sound trouncing, for having sought to “involve and entangle him in such matters” which “really concerned the secular authority.”[462] “Marriage questions,”[145] he says, “do not touch the conscience, but come within the province of the secular judge.”[463] Previously, parties whose rights had been infringed were able to seek redress from the ecclesiastical tribunals, the sentences of which were enforced by Canon Law under spiritual penalties, to the advantage of the injured party. Luther, on the other hand, after having secularised marriage, finds himself unable to cope with the flood of people clamouring for justice: “I am tired of them [the matrimonial squabbles] and I have thrown them overboard; let them do as they like in the name of all the devils.”[464] He is also determined to rid the preachers of this business; the injured parties are, he says, to seek for justice and protection “in the latrines of the lawyers”; his own conduct, he hopes, will serve as a model to the preachers, who will now repel all who solicit their help.[465]

The increase in the number of matrimonial misunderstandings and quarrels, the haste with which marriage was entered upon and then dissolved, particularly in the Saxon Electorate and at Wittenberg, was not merely the result of the new Evangelical freedom, as Luther and his friends sadly admitted, but was due above all to the altered views on marriage. In the new preaching on marriage the gratification of the sensual impulse was, as will be shown below, placed too much in the foreground, owing partly to the fanatical reaction against clerical celibacy and religious vows. “To marry is a remedy for fornication”; these words of Luther’s were again and again repeated by himself and others in one form or another, as though they characterised the main object of marriage. Nature was persistently painted as excessively weak in the matter of chastity, and as quite captive under the yoke of passion. People were indeed admonished to curb their passions with the help of Grace, but such means of acquiring God’s Grace as mortification and self-conquest were only too frequently scoffed at as mere holiness-by-works, while as for the means of grace sought by Catholics in the Sacraments, they had simply been “abolished.”

[146]

By his patronage of polygamy, forced on him by his wrong interpretation of the Bible, Luther put the crowning touch on his contempt for Christian marriage.[466] This was to relinquish the position of privilege in which Christianity had established marriage, when, following the Creator’s intention, it insisted on monogamy.

Birth of the New Views on Marriage during the Controversy on the Vow of Chastity.

How did Luther reach his opinion and succeed in endowing it with credibility and life? A glance at its birth and growth will give us an instructive insight into Luther’s manner of proceeding.

He had already long been engaged in his struggle with “Popish abuses” and had already set up all the essential points of his new theology, before becoming in the least conscious of the supposed contempt in which marriage was held by the Roman Church. In his exposition of the Ten Commandments, in 1518, he still speaks of it in the respectful language of his earlier years; in his sermon on the Married State, in 1519, he still terms it a Sacrament, without hinting in any way that it had hitherto been considered disreputable. Whether he uses the term Sacrament in its traditional meaning we do not, of course, know. At any rate, he says: “Matrimony is a Sacrament, an outward, holy sign of the greatest, most sacred, worthy and exalted thing that ever has been, or ever will be, viz. of the union of the Divine and human nature in Christ.”[467] Enumerating the spiritual advantages of marriage, which counteract the “sinful lusts therewith intermingled,” he expressly appeals to the “Doctors” of the Church, and the three benefits they perceived in matrimony; “first, marriage is a Sacrament,” “secondly, it is a bond of fidelity,” “thirdly, it brings offspring, which is the end and principal office of marriage”; a further benefit must be added, viz. the “training of the offspring in the service of God.”[468]

In his book “On the Babylonish Captivity” (1520) he has already arrived at the explicit denial to marriage of the name and character of a sacrament.

[147]

But it was only in the war he waged against his own vow of chastity that the idea arose in his mind, and even then only gradually, that the true value and excellence of marriage had never hitherto been recognised. The more he sought for theological grounds on which to prove the worthlessness of religious celibacy and the nullity of the vow of chastity, the more deeply he persuaded himself that proofs existed in abundance of the utter perversity of the prevailing opinions on matrimony. He began to impute to the Church extravagant views on virginity, of which neither he nor anyone else had ever thought. He now accused her of teaching the following: That virginity was the only state in which God could be served perfectly; that marriage was forbidden to the clergy because it was disreputable and a thing soiled with sin; finally, that family life with its petty tasks must be regarded as something degrading, while woman herself, to whom the chief share in these tasks belongs and who, moreover, so often tempts man to sins of incontinence, is a contemptible creature.

All these untruths concerning the ancient Church were purely the outcome of Luther’s personal polemics.

His system of attack exhibits no trace of any dispassionate examination of the testimonies of antiquity. But his false and revolting charges seemed some sort of justification for his attack on religious vows and clerical celibacy. From such theoretical charges there was but a step to charges of a more practical character and to his boundless exaggerations concerning the hideous vices supposed to have been engendered by the perversion of the divinely appointed order, and to have devastated the Church as a chastisement for her contempt for marriage.

In the second edition of the sermon of 1519 on the Married State he places virginity on at least an equal footing with matrimony. Towards the end of the sermon he (like the earlier writers) calls matrimony “a noble, exalted and blessed state” if rightly observed, but otherwise “a wretched, fearful and dangerous” one; he proceeds: Whoever bears this in mind “will know what to think of the sting of the flesh, and, possibly, will be as ready to accept the virginal state as the conjugal.”[469] Even during his[148] Wartburg days, when under the influence of the burning spirit of revolt, and already straining at the vows which bound him, he still declared in the theses he sent Melanchthon, that “Marriage is good, but virginity better” (“Bonum coniugium, melior virginitas”),[470] a thesis, which, like St. Paul, he bases mainly on the immunity from worldly cares. This idea impressed Melanchthon so deeply, that he re-echoes it in his praise of virginity in the “Apology for the Confession of Augsburg”: “We do not make virginity and marriage equal. For, as one gift is better than another, prophecy better than eloquence, strategy better than agriculture, eloquence better than architecture, so virginity is a gift excelling marriage.”[471]

But this great gift, to Luther’s mind, was a moral impossibility, the rarest of God’s Graces, nay, a “miracle” of the Almighty. Hence he teaches that such a privilege must not be laid claim to, that the monastic vow of chastity was therefore utterly immoral, and clerical celibacy too, to say nothing of private vows of virginity; in all such there lurked a presumptuous demand for the rarest and most marvellous of Divine Graces; even to pray for this was not allowed.

At the conclusion of his theses for Melanchthon, Luther enforces what he had said by the vilest calumnies against all who, in the name of the Church, had pledged themselves to remain unmarried. Were it known what manner of persons those who profess such great chastity really are, their “greatly extolled chastity” would not be considered fit “for a prostitute to wipe her boots on.”

Then follow his further unhappy outbursts at the Wartburg on religious vows (vol. ii., p. 83 ff.) consummating his perversion of the Church’s teaching and practice regarding celibacy and marriage. In marriage he sees from that time forward nothing by the gratification of the natural impulse; to it every man must have recourse unless he enjoys the extraordinary grace of God; the ancient Church, with her hatred of marriage, her professed religious and celibate clergy, assumes in his imagination the most execrable shape. He fancies that, thanks to his new notions,[149] he has risen far above the Christianity of the past, albeit the Church had ever striven to guard the sanctity of marriage as the very apple of her eye, by enacting many laws and establishing marriage-courts of her own under special judges. He becomes ever more reckless in casting marriage matters on the shoulders of the State. In the Preface to his “Trawbüchlin,” in 1529, he says, for instance, “Since wedlock and marriage are a worldly business, we clergy and ministers of the Church have nothing to order or decree about it, but must leave each town and country to follow its own usage and custom.”[472]

From that time forward, particularly when the Diet of Augsburg had embittered the controversy, Luther pours out all the vials of his terrible eloquence on the bondage in which marriage had been held formerly, and on the contempt displayed by Rome for it. He peremptorily demands its complete secularisation.

And yet he ostentatiously extols marriage as “holy and Divine,” and even says that wedlock is most pleasing to God, a mystery and Sacrament in the highest sense of the word. Of one of these passages Emil Friedberg, the Protestant canonist, remarks in his “Recht der Eheschliessung”: “Luther’s views as here expressed completely contradict other passages, and this same discrepancy is apparent throughout the later literature, and, even now, prevents [Protestants] from appreciating truly the nature of marriage.”[473]

Every impartial observer could have seen that the preference given to virginity by the Catholic Church, her defence of the manner of life of those whom God had called[150] to the cloister, and her guardianship of the celibacy of the priesthood, handed down from the earliest ages, did not in the least imply any undervaluing of marriage on her part—unless indeed, as Joseph Mausbach remarks, he was prepared to admit that, “because one thing is better, its opposite must needs be bad.”

“Who thinks,” continues the same writer, that “preference for gold involves contempt for silver, or preference for the rose a depreciation of all other flowers? But these very comparisons are to be met with even amongst the ancient Fathers.... Why should the Church’s praise of virginity be always misconstrued as a reproach against matrimony? All this is mere thoughtlessness, when it is not blind prejudice, for the Church did everything to prevent any misunderstanding of her praise of virginity, and certainly taught and defended the sanctity of marriage with all her power.”[474]

Luther’s judgment was not due so much to mere thoughtlessness as to his burning hatred of the Papacy; this we see from the vulgar abuse which, whenever he comes to speak of marriage and celibacy, he showers on the Pope, the supreme champion of the Evangelical Counsels and of the priestly ideal of life; on the other hand, it was also to some extent due to his deeply rooted and instinctive aversion for everything whereby zealous Christians do violence to nature out of love for God, from the motive of penance and from a desire to obtain merit.

The Natural Impulse and the Honour of Marriage.

Ecclesiastical writers before Luther’s day speak frequently and plainly enough of the impulse of nature, but, as a rule, only in order to recommend its control, to point out the means of combating excesses, and to insist on the Sacrament which sanctifies conjugal intercourse and brings down the blessings we require if the earthly and eternal purpose of marriage is to be fulfilled.

With the above, all Luther’s statements on the inevitable strength of the impulse of nature agree. Though the union of husband and wife is a rule of the natural law applying to the majority rather than to the individual, Luther practically makes it binding upon all. In this connection he seems to be unable to view the moral relation of the sexes in any other light than as existing for the gratification of mutual lust, since without marriage they must inevitably[153] fall into every sort of carnal sin. “It is a necessary and natural thing, that every man should have a wife,” he says in the lengthy passage already quoted, where he concludes, “it is more necessary than eating and drinking, sleeping and waking, or passing the natural motions of the body.”[481] Elsewhere, in a characteristic comparison, he says: “Were a man compelled to close his bowels and bladder—surely an utter impossibility—what would become of him?”[482] According to him, “man must be fruitful, and multiply, and breed,” “like all other animals, since God has created him thereto, so that, of necessity, a man must seek a wife, and a woman a husband, unless God works a miracle.”[483]

Many were they who, during the controversies which accompanied the schism, listened to such teaching and believed it and were ready to forgo the miracle in order to follow the impulse of nature; were ready to indulge their weakness did their state of life prohibit marriage, or to dissolve the marriage already contracted when it did not turn out to their taste, or when they fancied they could advance one of the numerous reasons proclaimed by Luther for its annulment. The evil effects of such morality in the 16th century (see below, p. 164 ff. and xxiv. 1 and 2), witnessed to on all sides by Lutherans as well as Catholics, prove conclusively that the originator of the new matrimonial theories was the last man qualified to reproach the ancient Church with a want of appreciation for marriage or for woman.

Nor must we look merely at the results. The man’s very character, his mode of thought and his speech, suffice to banish him from the society of the olden, earnest moralists. Albeit unwillingly, we must add here some further statements to those already adduced.[484]

Practical Consequences of the New View of Woman:
Matrimonial Impediments, Divorce.

The readiness shown by Luther to annul valid marriages, and the wayward manner in which he disposed of the impediments fixed by the Church, were not calculated to enhance respect either for marriage or for woman.

As regards the impediments to marriage we shall here merely refer to the practical and not uncommon case where a person wished to marry a niece. Whereas Canon Law, at one with Roman Law, regarded this relationship as constituting an impediment, which might, however, be dispensed from by the Pope, Luther at first saw fit to declare it no impediment at all; he even issued memoranda to this effect, one of which was printed in 1526 and circulated widely.[499] “If the Pope was able to dispense,” he said later on concerning this, “why can’t I too?”[500] In favour of the lawfulness of such marriages he appealed to the example of Abraham, and in reply to objections declared: “If they blame the work and example of the holy Patriarch Abraham, then let them be scandalised.”[501] At a later date, nevertheless,[157] he changed his mind and held such marriages to be unlawful. His previous statements he explained by saying that once he had indeed given a different decision, not in order to lead others into excesses but in order “to assist consciences at the hour of death against the Pope”; he had merely given advice in Confession to troubled consciences, and had not laid down any law; to make laws was not within his province, either in the State or in the Church. His former memoranda were not to be alleged now; a certain man of the name of Borner, who, on the strength of them, had married his niece, had acted very ill and done injustice to his (Luther’s) decision. The Pope alone, so Luther says, was to blame for his previous advice—because many, owing to his laws, were reduced to despair and had come to Luther for help. “It is true that in Confession and in order to pacify consciences I have advised differently, but I made a mistake in allowing such counsels to be made public. Now, however, it is done. This is a matter for Confession only.”[502]

When speaking in this way, in 1544, he probably had in mind his so-called advice in Confession to Philip of Hesse. He was still acting on the principle, that advice given in Confession might afterwards be publicly repudiated as quite wrong; he failed somehow to see that the case of marriage of uncle and niece was of its very nature something public.

The multitude of divorces caused him great anxiety. Even the preachers of the new faith were setting a bad example by putting away their spouses and contracting fresh marriages. Melander, for instance, who blessed Philip’s second marriage, after deserting “two wives in succession without even seeking legal aid, married a third.”[503] At Gotha, as Luther himself relates, a woman deserted her[158] husband and her three children, and sent him a message to tell him he might take another wife. When, however, he had done so the woman again asserted her claims. “Our lawyers,” Luther complains, “at once took her part, but the Elector decided she should quit the country. My own decision would have been to have her done to death by drowning.”[504]

In a still existing letter of 1525, Luther permitted Michael Kramer, preacher at Domitsch, near Torgau, to contract a third marriage, two previous ones having turned out unfortunate. Kramer, as a Catholic priest, had first married a servant maid and, for this, had been sent to jail by Duke George his sovereign. When the maid proved unfaithful and married another, Luther, to whom Kramer had attached himself, declared her to be really “deceased” and told the preacher he might use his “Christian freedom.” Kramer thereupon married a girl from Domitsch, where he had been in the meantime appointed Lutheran pastor. This new wife likewise ran away from him three weeks later. He now addressed himself to the local board of magistrates, who, conjointly with him, wrote to Luther, pointing out how the poor man “could not do without a wife.” Luther thereupon sent a memorandum, addressed to the “magistrates and the preacher of Domitsch,” in which he allowed a divorce from the second wife and gave permission for a third marriage, which, apparently, was more of a success. During the Visitations in 1528 this preacher, who had since been transferred to Lucka, got into trouble on account of his three marriages, but saved his skin by appealing to Luther’s letter.[505]

The reader already knows that, according to Luther, a woman who has no children by her husband, may, with the latter’s consent, quietly dissolve the marriage and cohabit with another, for instance, with her brother-in-law; this, however, was to be secret, because the children were to be regarded as her first husband’s. Should he refuse his consent, says Luther, “rather than suffer her to burn or have recourse to adultery, I would advise her to marry another and flee to some place where she is unknown. What[159] other advice can be given to one who is in constant danger from carnal lusts?”[506] Duke George of Saxony, referring to a similar passage in Luther’s work “On Conjugal Life” (1522),[507] said in a letter to Luther which was immediately printed: “When was it ever heard of that wives should be taken from their husbands and given to other men, as we now find it stated in your Evangel? Has adultery ever been more common than since you wrote: If a woman has no children by her husband, then let her go to another and bear children whom her husband must provide for as though he were the father? This is the fruit of the precious Evangel which you dragged forth out of the gutter. You were quite right when you said you found it in the gutter; what we want to know is, why you didn’t leave it there.”[508]

[161]

Respect for the Female Sex in Luther’s Conversations.

Had Luther, as the legend he set on foot would make us believe, really raised the dignity of woman and the married state to a higher level, we might naturally expect, that, when he has to speak of matters sexual or otherwise repugnant to modesty, he would at least be reticent and dignified in his language. We should expect to find him surrounded at Wittenberg by a certain nobility of thought, a higher, purer atmosphere, a nobler general tone, in some degree of harmony with his extraordinary claims. Instead we are confronted with something very different. Luther’s whole mode of speech, his conversations and ethical trend, are characterised by traits which even the most indulgent of later writers found it difficult to excuse, and which, particularly his want of delicacy towards women, must necessarily prove offensive to all.[514]

Luther was possibly not aware that the word “nun” comes from the Low Latin “nonna,” i.e. woman, and was originally the name given to those who dwelt in the numerous convents of Upper Egypt; he knew, however, well enough that the word “monk” was but a variant of “monachus.” He jestingly gives to both the former and the latter an odious derivation. “The word nun,” he says, “comes from the German, and cloistered women are thus called, because that is the term for unsexed sows; in the same way the word monk is derived from the horses [viz. the gelded horses]. But the operation was not altogether successful, for they are obliged to wear breeches just like other people.”[515] It may be that Catherine, the ex-nun, was present when this was said; at any rate she is frequently mentioned in the Table-Talk as assisting.[516]

The Pope, he says, had forbidden the married state; he and his followers, “the monks and Papists,” “burn with evil lust and love of fornication, though they refuse to take upon themselves the trouble and labour of matrimony.”[534] “With the help of the Papacy Satan has horribly soiled matrimony, God’s own ordinance”; the fact was, the clergy had been too much afraid of woman; “and so it goes on: If[164] a man fears fornication he falls into secret sin, as seems to have been the case with St. Jerome.”[535]

He saw sexual excesses increasing to an alarming extent among the youth of his own party. At table a friend of the “young fellows” sought to excuse their “wild, immoral life and fornication” on the ground of their youth; Luther sighed, at the state of things revealed, and said: “Alas, that is how they learn contempt for the female sex.” Contempt will simply lead to abuse; the true remedy for immorality was prayerfully to hold conjugal love in honour.[536]

Luther, however, preferred to dwell upon the deep-seated vice of an anti-matrimonial Papacy rather than on the results of his teaching upon the young.

“Every false religion,” he once exclaimed in 1542 in his Table-Talk,[537] “has been defiled by sensuality! Just look at the |!”—[He must here have used, says Kroker, “a term for phallus, or something similar,” which Caspar Heydenreich the reporter has suppressed.][538] “What else were the pilgrimages,” Luther goes on, “but opportunities for coming together? What does the Pope do but wallow unceasingly in his lusts?... The heathen held marriage in far higher honour than do the Pope and the Turk. The Pope hates marriage, and the Turk despises it. But it is the devil’s nature to hate God’s Word. What God loves, e.g. the Church, marriage, civic order, that he hates. He desires fornication and impurity; for if he has these, he knows well that people will no longer trouble themselves about God.”

The New Matrimonial Conditions and the Slandered Opponents.

It is a fact witnessed to by contemporaries, particularly by Catholics, that Luther’s unrestraint when writing on sexual subjects, his open allusions to organs and functions, not usually referred to, and, especially, the stress he laid on the irresistibility of the natural impulse, were not without notable effect on the minds of the people, already excited as they were.

[165]

In 1522, after having explained his new views on divorce, he puts himself the question, whether this “would not make it easy for wicked men and women to desert each other, and betake themselves to foreign parts”? His reply is: “How can I help it? It is the fault of the authorities. Why do they not strangle adulterers?”[539]

Certain preachers of Lutheranism made matters worse by the fanaticism with which they preached the freedom of the Evangel. So compromising was their support, that other of Luther’s followers found fault with it, for instance, the preacher Urbanus Rhegius[540] It was, however, impossible for these more cautious preachers to prevent Luther’s principles being carried to their consequences, in spite of all the care they took to emphasise his reserves and his stricter admonitions.

The list of testimonies such as these might be considerably lengthened.[553]

[168]

It would, however, be unfair, in view of the large number of such statements, to shut our eyes to the remarkable increase, at that time, in the immorality already prevalent even in Catholic circles, though this was due in great measure to the malignant influence of the unhappy new idea of freedom, and to that contempt for ecclesiastical regulations as mere human inventions, which had penetrated even into regions still faithful to the Church.[554] Owing to the general confusion, ecclesiastical discipline was at a standstill, evil-doers went unpunished, nor could moral obligations be so regularly and zealously enforced. It is true that favourable testimonies arc not lacking on both sides, but they chiefly refer to remote Catholic and Protestant localities. As is usual, such reports are less noticeable than the unfavourable ones, the good being ever less likely to attract attention than the evil. Staphylus complains bitterly of both parties, as the very title of his book proves.[555] Finally, all the unfavourable accounts of the state of married life under Lutheranism are not quite so bad as those given above, in which moreover, maybe, the sad personal experience of the writers made them see things with a jaundiced eye.

That, in the matter of clerical morals, there was a great difference between the end of the 15th and the middle of the 16th centuries can be proved by such ecclesiastical archives as still survive; the condemnations pronounced in the 16th century are considerably more numerous than in earlier times.

The results furnished by such painstaking research are more reliable than the vague accounts and complaints of contemporaries.[560] Should the examination be continued in other dioceses it will undoubtedly do as much to clear up the question as the Visitation reports did for the condition of affairs in the 16th century under Lutheranism, though probably the final result will be different. The Lutheran Visitation reports mostly corroborate the unfavourable testimony of olden writers, whereas the fewness of the culprits shown in the Catholic lists of fines would seem to bear out, at least with regard to certain localities, those contemporaries who report favourably of the clergy at the close of the Middle Ages. One such favourable contemporary testimony comes from the Humanist, Jacob Wimpfeling, and concerns the clergy of the Rhine Lands. The statement of this writer, usually a very severe critic of the clergy, runs quite counter to Luther’s general and greatly exaggerated charges.[561] “God knows, I am acquainted with many, yea,[170] countless pastors amongst the secular clergy in the six dioceses of the Rhine, who are richly equipped with all the knowledge requisite for the cure of souls and whose lives are blameless. I know excellent prelates, canons and vicars both at the Cathedrals and the Collegiate Churches, not a few in number but many, men of unblemished reputation, full of piety and generous and humble-minded towards the poor.”

Luther himself made statements which deprive his accusations of their point. Even what he says of the respect paid to the clerical state militates against him. Of the first Mass said by the newly ordained priest he relates, that “it was thought much of”; that the people on such occasions brought offerings and gifts; that the “bridegroom’s” “Hours” were celebrated by torchlight, and that he, together with his mother, if still living, was led through the streets with music and dancing, “the people looking on and weeping for joy.”[562] It is true that he is loud in his blame of the avarice displayed at such first Masses, but the respect shown by the people, and here described by him, would never have been exhibited towards the clergy had they rendered themselves so utterly contemptible by their immorality as he makes out.

In a sermon of 1521, speaking of the “majority of the clergy,” he admits that most of them “work, pray and fast a great deal”; that they “sing, speak and preach of the law and lead men to many works”; that they fancy they will gain heaven by means of “pretty works,” though all in vain, so he thinks, owing to their lack of knowledge of the Evangel.[563] During the earlier period of his change of opinions he was quite convinced, that a pernicious self-righteousness (that of the “iustitiarii”) was rampant amongst both clergy and religious; not only in the houses of his own Congregation, but throughout the Church, a painstaking observance of the law and a scrupulous fulfilment of their duty by the clergy and monks constituted a danger to the true spirit of the Gospel, as he understood it. It was his polemics which then caused him to be obsessed with the idea, that the whole world had been seized upon by[171] the self-righteous. It was his polemics again, which, later, made him regard the whole world as full of immoral clerics.

The extravagance of Luther’s utterances in his fight against clerical celibacy might perhaps be regarded as due to the secluded life he had led at Wittenberg during the years he was a monk, which prevented him from knowing the true state of things. Experience gained by more extensive travel and intercourse with others might indeed have corrected his views. But, as a matter of fact, he was not altogether untravelled; besides visiting Rome and Southern Germany he had been to Heidelberg, Worms and Cologne. His stay at the latter city is particularly noteworthy, for there he was in the heart of the very region of which Wimpfeling had given so favourable an account. Can he, during the long journey on foot and in his conversations with his brother monks there, not have convinced himself, that the clergy residing in that city were by no means sunk in immorality and viciousness? His visit to Cologne coincided in all probability with the general Chapter which Staupitz had summoned there at the commencement of May, 1512. Luther only recalls incidentally having seen there the bodies of the Three Kings; having swallowed all the legends told him concerning them; and having drunk such wine as he had never drunk before.[564]

[172]

Two Concluding Pictures towards the History of Woman.

We may, in conclusion, give two pictures which cast a new and lurid light on what has gone before.

Luther’s standpoint, and, no less, the confusion which had arisen in married life and the humiliations to which many women were exposed, come out clearly in the story of his relations with the preacher Jodocus Kern and his spouse. Kern, an apostate monk, had wedded at Nuremberg Ursula Tagler, an ex-nun from the convent of Engelthal. On Dec. 24, 1524, Luther joyously commended him as “a monk, metamorphosed into a married man,” to the care of Spalatin.[565] When Kern went to Saxony in search of a post the girl refused to accompany him until he had found employment. During his absence she began to regret the step she had taken, and the letters she received from her former Prioress determined her to return no more to her husband. The persuasion of her Lutheran relatives indeed induced her to go to Allstedt after Kern had been appointed successor to Thomas Münzer in that town, but there her horror only grew for the sacrilegious union she had contracted. Coercion was quite fruitless. The minister, at the advice of her own relatives, treated her very roughly, forced her to eat meat on Good Friday and refused to listen when she urged him to return to the Catholic Church. Having made an attempt to escape to Mansfeld, her case was brought before the secular Courts; she was examined by the commissioner of Allstedt on January 11, 1526, when she declared, that it was against her conscience to look upon Kern as her husband, that her soul was dearer to her than her body and that she would rather die than continue to endure any longer the bonds of sin. This the commissioner reported to the Elector Johann, and the latter, on Jan. 17, forwarded her statement to Luther, together with Kern’s account, for the purpose of hearing from one so “learned in Scripture” “how the matter ought to be treated and disposed of in accordance with God’s Holy Writ.”[566]

Luther took a week to reply: The Allstedt woman was suffering such “temptations from the devil and men, that it would verily be a wonder if she could resist them.” The only means of keeping her true to the Evangel and to her[173] duty would be to send her to her people at Nuremberg. Should, even there, “the devil refuse to yield to God’s good exhortation” then she would have to “be allowed to go,” and “be reckoned as dead,” and then the pastor might marry another. Out of the scandal that the wanton spirit had given through her God might yet work some good. “The Evangel neither will nor can be exempt from scandals.”[567]

The unhappy nun was, as a matter of fact, forcibly brought to Nuremberg and placed amongst Lutheran surroundings instead of being conveyed to her convent at Engelthal, as the laws of the Empire demanded. From thence she never returned to Allstedt. Kern, during the proceedings, had declared that he did not want her against her conscience, and was ready to submit to the Word of God and to comply exactly with whatever this imposed. In accordance therewith he soon found a fresh bride. During the Visitations, in 1533, he was charged with bigamy and was reprimanded for being a “drinker and gambler,” although his industry and talents were at the same time recognised. Nothing is known of his later doings.[568]

Two open letters addressed to Luther by Catholics in 1528 form a companion picture to the above. They portray the view taken by many faithful Catholics of Luther’s own marriage.

In that year two Professors at the Leipzig University, Johann Hasenberg and Joachim von der Heyden, published printed circulars addressed to Luther and Catherine von Bora, admonishing them—now that ten years had elapsed since Luther first attacked the Church—on their breaking of their vows, their desecration of the Sacrament of Matrimony and their falling away from the Catholic faith.[569] It is probable that Duke George of Saxony had something to do with this joint attack.[570] It is also likely that hopes of[174] sterner measures on the part of the Imperial authorities also helped to induce the writers to put pen to paper.[571] In any case it was their plan, vigorously and before all the world, to attack the author of the schism in his most vulnerable spot, where it would not be easy for him to defend himself publicly. Master Hasenberg, a Bohemian, was one of George’s favourites, who had made him three years previously Dean of the Faculty of Arts. He addressed his open letter to “Martinus Luderus,” the “destroyer of the public peace and piety.” Von der Heyden, known in Latin as Myricianus or Phrisomynensis (a Frisian by birth), was likewise a Master, and Papal and academic Notary at Leipzig. Of the two he was the younger. His letter was addressed to “Khete von Bhore, Luther’s pretended wife,” and served as preface to a printed translation he had made of the work: “De lapsu virginis consecratæ,” then attributed to St. Ambrose.[572] Both epistles, according to one of the answers, must have been despatched by special messenger and delivered at Luther’s house. They drew forth printed replies, some of which can be traced to Luther himself, while Euricius Cordus ridiculed the writers in a screed full of biting epigram.

The Leipzig letters, the first of which was also published in German, made a great sensation in German circles and constituted an urgent exhortation to thousands of apostates estranged from the Church by Luther’s new doctrine on Christian freedom and on the nullity of vows.

We catch a glimpse of the gulf which divided people’s minds at that time in the very title of the reply by Euricius Cordus: “The Marburg literary society’s peal of laughter over the screed against Luther of two Leipzig poets.”[574]

[177]

Two satirical and anonymous replies immediately appeared in print at Wittenberg, the one entitled: “New-Zeittung von Leyptzig,” of which Luther “was not entirely innocent,” and the other quite certainly his work, viz. “Ein newe Fabel Esopi newlich verdeudscht gefunden.”[575] In the first reply spurious epistles are made to relate how the two Leipzig letters had been brought by a messenger to Luther’s house, and had then been carried by the servants unread to the “back-chamber where it stinketh.” “The paper having duly been submitted to the most ignominious of uses it was again packed into a bundle and despatched back to the original senders by the same messenger.”[576]

In his “Newe Fabel” (of the Lion and the Ass) Luther implicitly includes von der Heyden, all the defenders of the Pope, and the Pope himself under the figure of the Ass (with the cross on its back); “there is nothing about the Ass that is not worthy of royal and papal honours.”[577] The author of the letter he calls an ass’s head and sniveller; the very stones of Leipzig would spit upon him; he was the “horse-droppings in which the apples were packed”; his art had brought on him “such an attack of diarrhœa that all of us have been bespattered with his filth”; “If you wish to devour us, you might begin downstairs at the commode,” etc.[578]

We find nothing in either writing in the nature of a reply—of which indeed he considered the Leipzig authors unworthy—except the two following statements: firstly, Luther had sufficiently instructed his faithful wife, and the world in general, “that the religious life was wrong”;[579] secondly, Ambrose, Jerome, or whoever wrote the booklet, “had stormed and raved like a demon” in that work, which was “more heretical than Catholic, against the nun who had yielded to her sexual instincts; he had not spoken like a Doctor, ... but as one who wished to drive the poor prostitute into the abyss of hell; a murderer of souls pitted against a poor, feeble, female vessel.”[580] Hence Luther’s views are fairly apparent in the replies.

[178]

The Church, yea, even the Church of the earliest times, was made to bear the curse of having degraded woman and of having, by the religious life, declared war on marriage.

A contemporary, Petrus Silvius, who read Luther’s writings with indignation and disgust, wrote, in 1530: “Luther, with his usual lies and blasphemy, calumniates the Christian Church and now says, that she entirely rejected and condemned matrimony.”[581]

In what has gone before these falsehoods concerning the earlier degradation and his own exaltation of woman have been refuted at some length; the detailed manner in which this was done may find its vindication in the words of yet another opponent of Luther’s, H. Sedulius, who says: “It must be repeated again and again, that it is an impudent lie to say we condemn marriage.”[582]

CHAPTER XXIII

FRESH CONTROVERSIES WITH ERASMUS (1534, 1536) AND DUKE GEORGE († 1539)

1. Luther and Erasmus Again

In reply to Luther’s “De servo arbitrio” against Erasmus the latter had published, in 1526, a sharp retort entitled “Hyperaspistes,” which, in the following year, he enlarged by adding to it a second part.[583] In this work the author’s able pen brings into the light of day the weakness of Luther’s objections, his distortion of the Church’s teaching, his frequent misrepresentations of Erasmus and his own self-contradictions.

Luther did not then reply to the work of the chief of the Humanists. In the ensuing years, however, he became painfully aware that the hostility of Erasmus had lost him many adherents belonging to the Erasmian school. A great cleavage had become apparent in the scholar’s circle of friends till then so closely united, the greater number taking their master’s side against the smaller group which remained true to Luther. It was in vain that several of Erasmus’s admirers intervened and besought Luther to spare the feelings of the elder man. The Wittenberg professor made many cutting allusions to his opponent and assumed more and more an attitude which foreboded another open outburst of furious controversy.

With the art peculiar to him, he came to persuade himself, that the champion of free-will was hostile to the idea of any Divine supremacy over the human will, scoffed at all religion, denied the Godhead and was worse than any persecutor of the Church; he was confirmed in this belief by the sarcastic sayings about his Evangel, to which Erasmus gave vent in his correspondence and conversations, and which occasionally came to Luther’s knowledge. It is true[180] that if we look at the matter through Luther’s spectacles we can understand how certain darker sides of Erasmus and his Humanist school repelled him. Luther fixed on these, and, as was his wont, harshly exaggerated and misrepresented them. The too-great attention bestowed on the outward form, seemingly to the detriment of the Christian contents, displeased him greatly; still more so did the undeniable frivolity with which sacred things, still dear to him, were treated. At the same time it was strange to him, and rightly so, how little heed the Humanists who remained faithful to the Church paid to the principle of authority and of ecclesiastical obedience, preferring to follow the lax example set by Erasmus himself, more particularly during the first period of his career; they appeared to submit to the yoke of the Church merely formally and from force of habit, and showed none of that heart-felt conviction and respect for her visible supremacy which alone could win the respect of those without.[584]

Luther’s pent-up wrath at length vented itself in print. He had received a letter sent him from Magdeburg, on Jan. 28, 1534, by Nicholas Amsdorf, the old friend who knew so well how to fan the flames of enthusiasm for the new teaching, and who now pointed out Erasmus as the source whence George Wicel had drawn all his material for his latest attack on Lutheranism.[590] It was high time, he wrote, that Luther should paint Erasmus “in his true colours and show that he was full of ignorance and malice.” This he would best do in a tract “On the Church,” for this was the Erasmians’ weak point: They stick to the Church, because “bishops and cardinals make them presents of golden vessels,” and then “they cry out: Luther’s teaching is heresy, having been condemned by Emperor and Pope.” “I, on the other hand, see all about me the intervention and the wonders of God; I see that faith is a gift of God Who works when and where He wills, just as he raised His Son Christ from the dead. Oh, that you could see the country folk here and admire in them the glory of Christ!”

The letter pleased Luther so well that he determined to print it, appending to it a lengthy answer to Amsdorf, both being published together.[591]

In this answer, before launching out into invective against[182] Erasmus he joins in his friend’s enthusiastic praise of the Evangel which has dawned: “Our cause was heard at Augsburg before the Emperor and the whole world, and has been found blameless; they could not but recognise the purity of our teaching.... We have confessed Christ before the evil generation of our day, and He too will confess us before God the Father and His angels.” “Wicel, I shall vanquish by silence and contempt, as my custom is. How many books I have disposed of and utterly annihilated merely by my silence, Eck, Faber, Emser, Cochlæus and many others could tell. Had I to fight with filth, I should, even if victorious, get dirty in the process. Hence I leave them to revel in their blasphemy, their lying and their calumny.”

He might, he proceeds, leave Erasmus too to dissolve into smoke like those others. For a long time past he had looked on him as one crazy (“delirus”); since he had given birth to the “viperaspides” (i.e. “brood of vipers,” a play on the title of the “Hyperaspistes”) he had given up all hopes of his theology, but would follow Amsdorf’s advice and expose his malice and ignorance to the world.

In contradiction to the facts he goes on to declare, that, in his “Explanatio symboli,” of 1533, Erasmus had “slyly planned” to undermine all respect for the Christian doctrines, and for this purpose ingratiated himself with his readers and sought to befool them, as the serpent did in Paradise. The Creed was nothing to him but a “fable,”—in support of which Luther adduces what purports to be a verbal quotation—nothing but the “mouthpiece and organ of Satan”; his method was but “a mockery of Christ”; according to him, the Redeemer had come into the world simply to give an example of holiness; His taking flesh of a virgin Erasmus described in obscene and blasphemous language; naturally the Apostles fared no better at his hands, and he even said of John the Evangelist, “meros crepat mundos” (because he mentions the “world” too often): there were endless examples of this sort to be met with in the writings of Erasmus. He was another Democrites or Epicurus; even what was doubtful in his statements had to be taken in the worst sense, and he himself (Luther) would be unable to believe this serpent even[183] should he come to him with the most outspoken confession of Christianity.

All this he wrote seemingly with the utmost conviction, as though it were absolutely certain. At about that same time he sent a warning to his friend Amsdorf not to allege anything against Erasmus, which was not certain, should he be tempted to write against him.[592] Yet Luther’s fresh charges were undoubtedly unjust to his opponent, although his letter really does forcibly portray much that was blame-worthy in Erasmus, particularly in his earlier work, for instance, his ambiguous style of writing, so often intentionally vague and calculated to engender scepticism.[593]

Not even in Luther’s immediate circle did this letter meet with general approval. Melanchthon wrote, on March 11, 1534, to Camerarius: “Our Arcesilaus [Luther] is starting again his campaign against Erasmus; this I regret; the senile excitement of the pair disquiets me.”[594] On May 12, 1535, he even expressed himself as follows to Erasmus, referring to the fresh outbreak of hostilities: “The writings published here against you displease me, not merely on account of my private relations with you, but also because they do no public good.”[595]

Boniface Amerbach, a friend of Erasmus’s, sent Luther’s letter to his brother, calling it a “parum sana epistola,” and adding, “Hervagius [the Basle printer] told me recently that Luther, for more than a year, had been suffering from softening of the brain (‘cephalæa’), I think the letter proves this, and also that he has not yet recovered, for in it there is no trace of a sound mind.”[596]

Recent Protestant historians speak of the letter as “on the whole hasty and dictated by jealousy,”[597] and as based “in part on inaccurate knowledge and a misapprehension of Erasmus’s writings.”[598]

[184]

Shortly after this Luther expressed himself with rather more moderation in a Preface which he composed for Anton Corvinus’s reply to Erasmus’s proposals for restoring the Church to unity. In this writing he sought to make his own the more moderate tone which dominated Corvinus’s works. He represented as the chief obstacle to reunion the opinion prevalent amongst his opponents of the consideration due to the Church. Their one cry was “the Church, the Church, the Church”; this has confirmed Erasmus in his unfounded opposition to the true Evangel, in spite of his having himself thrown doubt on all the doctrines of the Church.[599] He could not as yet well undertake a work on the subject of the Church, such as Amsdorf wished, as he was fully occupied with his translation of the Bible. In the Preface referred to above he announced, however, his intention of doing so later. The result was his “Von den Conciliis und Kirchen,” of 1539, which will be treated of below.[600]

Erasmus was unwilling to go down to the grave bearing the calumnies against his faith which Luther had heaped upon him. He owed it to his reputation to free himself from these unjust charges. This he did in a writing which must be accounted one of the most forcible and sharpest which ever left his pen. The displeasure and annoyance which he naturally felt did not, however, interfere with his argument or prevent him from indulging in sparkling outbursts of wit. Amerbach had judged Luther’s attack “insane”; Erasmus, for his part, addressed his biting reply to “one not sober.” The title of the writing, published at Basle in 1534, runs: “Purgatio adversus epistolam non sobriam M. Lutheri.”[601]

It was an easy matter for Erasmus to convict the author of manifest misrepresentation and falsehood.

Luther took good care to say nothing in public about the rebuff he had received from Erasmus; nor did he ever make any attempt to refute the charge of having “lied.”

In the circle of his intimate friends, however, he inveighed all the more against the leader of the Humanists as a sceptic and seducer to infidelity.

An obvious weapon, one constantly employed against Luther by his foes, was to twit him with his lies; a reply addressed to him in 1531 by a friend of George of Saxony, Franz Arnoldi of Cöllen, near Meissen, was no exception to the rule. In this little work entitled “Antwort auf das Büchlein,” etc., it is not merely stated that Luther, in his “Auff das vermeint Keiserlich Edict,” had put forward “as many lies as there were words,”[607] but it is also pointed out that the Augsburg Edict, “which is truly Christian and requires no glosses,” had been explained by him most abominably and shamefully, and given a meaning such as His Imperial Majesty and those who promulgated or executed it had never even dreamt of.[608] “He promises us white and gives us black. This has come down to him from his ancestor, the raging devil, who is the father of lies.... With such lies does Martin Luther seek to deck out his former vices.”[609]

[187]

2. Luther on George of Saxony and George on Luther

The hostile relations between Luther and Duke George of Saxony found expression at the end of 1525 in a correspondence, which throws some light on the origin and extent of the tension and on the character of both men. The letters exchanged were at once printed and spread rapidly through the German lands, one serving to enlist recruits to Luther’s standard, the other constituting a furious attack on the innovations.[610]

Luther’s letter of Dec. 21, 1525, to the Duke, “his gracious master,” was “an exhortation to join the Word of God,” as the printed title runs. Sent at a time when the peasants, after their defeat, had deserted Luther, and when the latter was attaching himself all the more closely to those Royal Courts which were well disposed towards him, the purpose of the letter was to admonish the chief opponent of the cause, “not so barbarously to attack Christ, the corner-stone,” but to accept the Evangel “brought to light by me.” He bases his “exhortation” on nothing less than the absolute certainty of his mission and teaching. “Because I know it, and am sure of it, therefore I must, under pain of the loss of my own soul, care, beg and implore for your Serene Highness’s soul.” He had already diligently prayed to God to “turn his heart,” and he was loath now “to pray against him for the needs of the cause”; his prayers and those of his followers were invincibly powerful, yea, “stronger than the devil himself,” as the failure of all George’s and his friends’ previous persecutions proved, “though men do not see or mark God’s great wonders in me.”

It is hard to believe that the author, in spite of all he says, really expected his letter to effect the conversion of so energetic and resolute an opponent; nevertheless, his assurances of his peaceable disposition were calculated to promote the Lutheran cause in the public eye, whatever the answer might be. He will, he says in this letter, once again “beseech the Prince in a humble and friendly manner, perhaps for the last time”; George and Luther might soon be called away by God; “I have now no more to lose in[188] this world but my carcase, which each day draws closer to the grave.” Formerly he had, it is true, spoken “harshly and crossly” to him, as God also does “to those whom He afterwards blesses and consoles”; he had, however, also published “many kindlier sermons and booklets in which everyone might discern that I mean ill to no one but desire to serve every man to the best of my ability.”

The letter partook of the nature of a manifesto, intended to place the Catholic-minded Prince publicly in the wrong, if it did not, as was hardly to be expected, draw him over to the side of the innovators.

The Duke replied, on Dec. 28, in a manner worthy of his status in the Empire and of the firm attitude he had maintained so far. “As a layman” he refused to enter upon a “Scriptural disputation” with Luther; it was not untrue that Luther had attacked him “harshly and contrary to the ordinance of God and the command of the Gospel”; Luther might, if he chose, compare his former severity with that of God, but he certainly would not find, “in the Gospels or anywhere in Scripture,” abusive epithets such as he employed; for him, as a sovereign, to have had to put up with such treatment from a man under the ban of the Empire, had cost him much; he had been compelled to put pressure on himself to accept “persecution for justice’ sake.” Luther’s “utterly shameful abuse of our most gracious Lord, the Roman Emperor,” made it impossible for him to be Luther’s “gracious master.”

Few Princes were to suffer worse treatment at Luther’s hands than Duke George. The Duke frequently retaliated by charging Luther with being a liar.

He wrote, for instance, in 1531, that Luther simply bore witness to the fact that the “spirit of lying” dwelt in him, “who speaks nothing but his own fabrications and falsehood.” “You forsworn Luther,” he says to him, “you who treacherously and falsely calumniate His Imperial Majesty.”[612]

Luther’s anger against the most influential Prince in the Catholic League was not diminished by the fact, that the Duke severely censured the real evils on the Catholic side, was himself inclined to introduce reforms on his own, and even, at times, to go too far. Such action on George’s part annoyed Luther all the more, because in all this the Duke would not hear of any relinquishing of ancient dogma. Hence we find Luther, quite contrary to the real state of the[190] case, abusing George as follows: The Duke was secretly in favour of the new teaching and his resistance was merely assumed; he was opposed to the reception of the Sacrament under both kinds, only because he wished to tread under foot the whole teaching of Christ, to forbid Holy Scripture altogether and particularly to condemn St. Paul;[613] if he, Luther, were not allowed to abuse the Duke, then neither might he call the devil a murderer and a liar.[614] “He is my sworn, personal enemy,” he says, and proceeds in the same vein: “Had I written in favour of the Pope, he would now be against the Pope, but because I write against the Pope, he fights for him and defends him.”[615]

Luther, as his manner was, announced as early as 1522 that “the Judgment of God would inevitably overtake him.”[616] When the Duke, in 1539, had died the death of a Christian, Luther said: “It is a judgment on those who despise the one true God.” “It is an example when a father and two fine grown-up sons sink into the grave in so short a time, but I, Dr. Luther, prophesied that Duke George and his race would perish.”[617] There was, according to Luther, only one ray of hope for the eternal happiness of the Duke, viz. that, when his son Hans lay dying in 1537, not so long before his own death, it was reported he had consoled him in the Lutheran fashion. According to Luther he had encouraged him with the article on Justification by Faith in Christ and reminded him, “that he must look only to Christ, the Saviour of the world, and forget his own works and merits.”[618] Needless to say the pious thoughts suggested to the dying man were simply those usually placed before the mind of faithful Catholics at the hour of death.

Luther’s imagination and his polemics combine to trace a picture of Duke George which is as characteristic of himself as it is at variance with the figure of the Duke, as recorded in history. He accused the Duke of misgovernment and tyranny and incited his subjects against him; and, in his worst fit of indignation, launched against the Duke[191] the booklet “Widder den Meuchler zu Dresen” (1531).[619] Yet the Saxons generally did not regard the Duke’s government as tyrannical or look upon him as an “assassin,” not even the Lutherans who formed the majority. On the contrary, they were later on to acknowledge, that, under the Duke’s reign, they had enjoyed “prosperity and peace” with the Emperor, amongst themselves and with their neighbours. His firmness and honour were no secret to all who knew him. The King of France admired his disinterestedness, when, in 1532, he rejected the proffered yearly pension of at least 5000 Gulden which was to detach him from the Empire. At the Diet of Worms this Catholic Duke had been the most outspoken in condemning the proposal made, that Luther should be refused a safe conduct for his return journey; he pointed out how much at variance this was with German ways and what a lasting shame it would bring on the German Princes. As for the rest he favoured the use of strong measures to safeguard Germany from religious and political revolution. He also befriended, more than any other German Prince or Bishop, those scholars who attacked Luther in print.

After the appearance of the libel “Widder den Meuchler zu Dresen,” he wrote a reply entitled “About the insulting booklet which Martin Luther has published against the Dresden murderer,” though it was issued in 1531, not under his own name, but under that of Franz Arnoldi.[620]

The work is more a vindication of the Empire’s Catholic standpoint and of the honour of the Catholics against Luther’s foul suspicions and calumnies, than a personal defence of his own cause. It is couched in the language we might expect from a fighter and a sovereign pelted with filth before the eyes of his own subjects. It hails expressions of the roughest against Luther, the convicted “rebel against the Emperor and all authority,” the inventor of “slimy fabrications and palpable lies” not worth an answer, amongst which was the “downright false” assertion, that “the Papists are up in arms” against the Protestant Estates.[621] In order to understand its tone we must bear in mind Luther’s own method of belabouring all his foes with the coarsest language at his command.

[192]

It has been said, that, among the defenders of Catholicism, no voice was raised which could compare in any way in emphasis and power with that of Luther. Döllinger in later life considered that, in comparison with Luther, his opponents could only “stammer”; what they advanced sounded “feeble, weak and colourless.”[624] Yet, what we have just quoted from Duke George cannot in fairness be charged with weakness. Their indignation and fiery zeal inspired other Catholics too to express with eloquence and rudeness their conviction of the evil consequences of Luther’s action.

CHAPTER XXIV

MORAL CONDITIONS ACCOMPANYING THE REFORMATION PRINCELY PATRONS

1. Reports from various Lutheran Districts

After Duke George of Saxony had been carried off by death on April 17, 1539, a sudden revulsion in favour of Lutheranism took place in his land. Duke Henry, his brother, who succeeded him, introduced the new teaching to which he had long been favourable. Luther came at once to Leipzig with Melanchthon, Jonas and Cruciger to render at least temporary assistance, by preaching and private counsel. In July of that same year an Evangelical Visitation was already arranged by Duke Henry on the lines of that in the Saxon Electorate; this was carried out by Luther’s preachers.

Many abuses dating from Catholic times were prevalent amongst both people and parochial clergy. Concubinage in particular had increased greatly in the clerical ranks under the influence of the new ideas. Luther himself boasted of having advised “several parish-priests under Duke George to marry their cook secretly.”[625] But much greater disorders than had previously existed crept in everywhere at the commencement of the change.

The unexpected and apparently so favourable change in the Duchy really did little to dispel his gloom, though he occasionally intones a hymn of gratitude and admiration for the working of Providence displayed in the change of rulers.

About this time (1539), in Brandenburg, the Elector Joachim II. also ushered in the innovations. The rights and possessions of the ancient Church fell a prey to the spoilers. Luther praised the ruler for going forward so bravely “to the welfare and salvation of many souls.” He was, however, apprehensive lest the “roaring of the lion in high places” might influence the Elector; with the Divine assistance, however, he would not fear even this.[629] He showed himself strangely lenient in regard to the Elector’s prudent retention of much more of the Catholic ceremonial than had been preserved in any other German land. Even the Elevation of the Sacrament at Mass (or rather at the sham Mass still in use) was tolerated by Luther; he writes: “We had good reasons for doing away with the elevation [of the Sacrament] here at Wittenberg, but perhaps at Berlin you have not.”[630]

[196]

In the Duchy of Prussia, formerly ecclesiastical property of the Teutonic Knights, the way had been paved for the apostasy of these Knights, all bound by the vow of chastity, by Luther’s alluring tract “An die Herrn Deutschs Ordens, das sic falsche Keuscheyt meyden und zur rechten ehlichen Keuscheyt greyffen.”[631] Albert, the Grand Master, who had visited Luther twice, as already narrated, seized upon the lands of the Order belonging to the Church and caused himself to be solemnly invested and proclaimed hereditary Duke of Prussia on April 10, 1525; thereupon Luther sent him his congratulations that God should have so graciously called him to this new Estate. The Grand Master, himself a married man, with the assistance of the two apostate Bishops of Samland and Pomerania, then established Lutheranism. As chief Bishop he assumed the position of head of the territorial Church, agreeably with the Protestant practice in the other German lands. The episcopal jurisdiction was transferred to the civil Consistorial Courts.

Violent appropriation of alien property, as well as illegal assumption of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, also characterised the advent of the new faith in Würtemberg. Duke Ulrich, who had been raised to the throne in 1534 by a breach of the peace of the Empire and contrary to all law and justice, thanks to the successful raid of Philip of Hesse (above, p. 47; vol. iii., p. 67 f.), continued to labour under the stigma attaching to the manner in which he had obtained the Duchy, in spite of the peace he had patched up with the Emperor. The religious transformation of the country was however, soon accomplished, thanks to his pressure.

The chief part in this, so far as Upper Würtemberg was concerned, devolved on the preacher, Ambrosius Blaurer (Blarer), who favoured the Zwinglian leanings of Bucer.

In the Würtemberg lowlands, north of Stuttgart, a zealous Lutheran, Erhard Schnepf, laboured for the destruction of the old Church system; Duke Ulrich also summoned Johann Brenz, the Schwäbisch-Hall preacher, to his land for two years.

At Christmas, 1535, Ulrich gave orders to all the prelates in his realm to dismiss the Catholic clergy in their districts and appoint men of the new faith, as the former “did nothing but blaspheme and abuse the Divine truth.”[637] Even[198] the assisting at Mass in neighbouring districts was prohibited by the regulation issued in the summer of 1536, which at the same time prescribed the attendance of Catholics at least once every Sunday and Holiday at the preaching of the new ministers of the Word; under this intolerable system of compulsion Catholics were reduced to performing all their religious exercises in their own homes.[638] The violent suppression of the monasteries and the sequestration of monastic property went hand in hand with the above. In the convents of women, which still existed, the nuns were forced against their will to listen to the sermons of the preachers. Church property was everywhere confiscated so far as the ancient Austrian law did not prevent it. The public needs and the scarcity of money were alleged as pretexts for this robbery. The Mass vestments and church vessels were allotted to the so-called poor-boxes. At Stuttgart, for instance, the costly church vestments were sold for the benefit of the poor. In the troubles many noble works of art perished, for “all precious metal was melted down and minted, nor were cases of embezzlement altogether unknown.” “The Prince, with the approach of old age, manifested pitiable miserliness and cupidity.”[639] Unfortunately he was left a free hand in the use of the great wealth that poured into his coffers. But, not even in the interests of the new worship, would he expend what was necessary, so that the vicarages fell into a deplorable state. In other matters, too, the new Church of the country suffered in consequence of the way in which Church property was handled. The inevitable consequence was the rise of many quarrels, complaints were heard on all sides and even the Schmalkalden League was moved to remonstrate with Ulrich.[640]

The relentless work of religious subversion bore everywhere a political stamp. The leaders were simply tools of the Court. Frequently they were at variance amongst themselves in matters of theology, and their people, too, were dragged into the controversy. To the magistrates it was left to decide such differences unless indeed some dictatorial official forestalled them, as was the case when the Vogt of Herrenberg took it into his own hands to settle a matter of faith. In the struggles between Lutherans and Zwinglians, the highest court of appeal above the town-Councillors and the officials was the Ducal Chancery.

Ulrich himself did not explicitly side either with the Confession of Augsburg or with the “Confessio Tetrapolitana,” viz. with the more Zwinglian form of faith agreed upon at the Diet of Augsburg by the four South-German townships of Strasburg, Constance, Memmingen and Lindau.

Few bright spots are to be seen in the accounts of the early days of the Reformation in Würtemberg, if we except the lives of one or two blameless ministers. It is no fault of the historian’s that there is nothing better to chronicle. Even the Protestant historians of Würtemberg, albeit predisposed to paint the change of religion in bright colours, have to admit this. They seek to explain the facts on the score that the period was one of restless and seething transition, and to throw the blame on earlier times and on the questionable elements among the Catholic clergy from whose ranks most of the preachers were recruited.[647] But though grave responsibility may rest on earlier times, not only here but in the other districts which fell away from the Church, and though those of the clergy who forgot their duty and the honour of their calling may have contributed even more than usual to damage the fair reputation of[201] Protestantism, yet the increase of immorality which has been proved to have endured for a long course of years, brings the historian face to face with a question not lightly to be dismissed: Why did the preaching of the new Evangel, with its supposedly higher standard of religion and morality, especially at the springtide of its existence and in its full vigour, not bring about an improvement, but rather the reverse?

This question applies, however, equally to other countries which were then torn from the Church, and to the persons principally instrumental in the work.

In Hesse the religious upheaval, as even Protestant contemporaries conceded, also promoted a great decline of morals.

The bad example given by Landgrave Philip tended to increase the evil.[648] A harmful influence was exercised not only by the Landgrave’s Court but also by certain preachers, such as Johann Lening,[649] who enjoyed Philip’s favour. Elisabeth, Duchess of Rochlitz, the Landgrave’s sister, and a zealous patron of the Evangel, like the Prince himself, cherished rather lax views on morality. At first she was indignant at the bigamy, though not on purely moral grounds. The sovereign met her anger with a threat of telling the world what she herself had done during her widowhood. The result was that the Duchess said no more.[650] The Landgrave’s Court-preacher, Dionysius Melander, who performed the marriage ceremony with the second wife, had, five years before, laid down his office as preacher and leader of the innovations at Frankfort on the Maine, “having fallen out with his fellows and personally compromised himself by carrying on with his housekeeper.” He was a “violent, despotic and, at times, coarse and obscene, popular orator whose personal record was not unblemished.”[651]

2. At the Centre of the New Faith

If we glance at the Saxon Electorate we shall find the deep despondency frequently displayed by Luther concerning the deplorable moral decadence prevailing there only too well justified.

The downward trend appeared to have set in in earnest and all hope of remedying affairs seemed lost.[657]

The Court and those in authority not only did little to check the evil but, by their example, even tended to promote many disorders. The Elector, Johann Frederick “the Magnanimous” (1532-1547), was addicted to drink. The banquets which he[203] gave to his friends—in which wine was indulged in to an extent unusual even in those days when men were accustomed to heavy drinking—became a byword. Luther himself came to speak strongly on his excessive drinking. “His only faults,” he laments in the Table-Talk, “are his drinking and routing too much with his companions.”[658] “He has all the virtues—but just fancy him swilling like that!”[659] Yet Luther has an excuse ready: “He is a stout man and can stand a deep draught; what he must needs drink would make another man dead drunk.”[660] “Unfortunately not only our Court here but the whole of Germany is plagued with this vice of drunkenness. It is a bad old custom in the German lands which has gone on growing and will continue to grow. Henry, Duke of [Brunswick] Wolfenbüttel calls our Elector a drunkard and very Nabal with whom Abigail could not speak until he had slept off his carouse.”[661] We have the Elector’s own comment on this in a letter to Chancellor Brück: “If the Brunswick fellow writes that we are a drunken Nabal and Benadad, we cannot entirely deny that we sometimes follow the German custom”; at any rate the Brunswicker was not the man to find fault, for he was an even harder drinker.[662]

Whatever the truth may be concerning this particular charge which involves them both,[669] both Landgrave and Elector certainly left behind them so bad a record that Adolf Hausrath could say: The pair (but the Landgrave even more than the Elector) did their best “to make mockery of the claim of the Evangelicals that their Evangel would revive the morality of the German nation.” He instances in particular the bigamy, “which put any belief in the reality of their piety to a severe test and prepared the way for a great moral defeat of Luther’s cause.”[670]

In the matter of the bigamy attempts were made to exculpate the Elector Johann Frederick by alleging, that[205] he regarded the Landgrave’s step not as a real new marriage but as mere concubinage. The fact is, however, he was sufficiently well informed by Bucer in Dec. 1539, i.e. from the very beginning, learnt further details two months later from the Landgrave’s own lips, and declared himself “satisfied with everything.” When, later, the Elector began to take an unfavourable view of the business, Philip wrote to Bucer (July 24, 1540), pointing out that he had nevertheless sent his representative to the wedding. It is, however, true that the Elector had all along been against any making public of so compromising an affair and had backed up his theologians when they urged the Landgrave to deny it.[671]

There is no more ground for crediting Johann Frederick with “strictness of morals” than for saying that the Elector Frederick the Wise (1486-1525), under whose reign Lutheranism took root in the land, was upright and truthful in his dealings with the Pope and the Empire.

The diplomatic artifices by which the latter protected Luther whilst pretending not to do so, the dissembling and double-dealing of his policy throws a slur on the memory of one who was a powerful patron of Lutheranism. Even in Köstlin-Kawerau[672] we find his behaviour characterised as “one long subterfuge, seeing, that, whilst giving Luther a free hand, he persisted in making out that Luther’s cause was not his”; his declaration, that “it did not become him as a layman to decide in such a controversy,” is rightly branded as misleading.

The Protestant Pietists were loudest in their complaints. In his “Kirchenhistorie,” Gottfried Arnold, who was one of them, blamed, in 1699, this Elector for the “cunning and the political intrigues” of which he was suspected; he is angry that this so undevout promoter of Lutheranism should have written to Duke George, his cousin, “that he never undertook nor ever would undertake to defend Luther’s sermons or his controversial writings,” and that he should have sent to his minister at Rome the following instructions, simply to pacify the Pope: “It did not become him as a secular Prince to judge of these matters, and he left Luther to answer for everything at his own[206] risk.”[673] The same historian also points out with dissatisfaction that the Elector Frederick, “though always unmarried, had, by a certain female, two sons called Frederick and Sebastian. How he explained this to his spiritual directors is nowhere recorded.”[674] The “female” in question was Anna Weller, by whom he had, besides these two sons, also a daughter.[675]

Against his brother and successor, Johann, surnamed the Constant (1525-1532), Luther’s friends brought forward no such complaints, but merely reproached him with letting things take their course. Arnold instances a statement of Melanchthon’s according to which this good Lutheran Prince “had been very negligent in examining this thing and that,” so that grave disorders now called for a remedy. Luther, too, whilst praising the Elector’s good qualities, declares, that “he was far too indulgent.”[676] “I interfere with no one,” was his favourite saying, “but merely trust more in God’s Word than in man.” The protests of the Emperor and the representations of the Catholics, politics and threats of war left him quite unmoved, whence his title of “the Constant”; “he was just the right man for Luther,” says Hausrath,[677] “for the latter did not like to see the gentlemen of the Saxon Chancery, Brück, Beyer, Planitz and the rest, interfering and urging considerations of European politics. ‘Our dear old father, the Elector,’ Luther said of him in 1530, ‘has broad shoulders, and must now bear everything.’”

The favour of these Princes caused Luther frequently to overstep the bounds of courtesy in his behaviour towards them. Julius Boehmer, who is sorry for this, in the Introduction to his selection of Luther’s works remarks, that he was guilty of “want of respect, nay, of rudeness, towards the Elector Frederick and his successor Johann.”[678] Of Luther’s relations with Johann Frederick, Hausrath says: “It is by no means certain that the Duke’s [Henry of Brunswick’s] opinion [viz. that Luther used to speak of his own Elector as Hans Wurst (i.e. Jack Pudding)] was without foundation; in any case, it was not far from the mark. With his eternal plans and his narrow-minded obstinacy,[207] Luther’s corpulent master was a thorn in the side of the aged Reformer.... ‘He works like a donkey,’ Luther once said of him, and, unfortunately, this was perfectly true.”[679]

In his will, dated 1537, Luther addressed the following words of consolation to the princely patrons and promoters of his work, the Landgrave and the Elector Johann Frederick: It was true they were not quite stainless, but the Papists were even worse; they had indeed trespassed on the rights and possessions of others, but this was of no great consequence; they must continue to work for the Evangel, though in what way he would not presume to dictate to them.[680]—Melanchthon, who was so often distressed at the way the Princes behaved on the pretext of defending the Evangel, complains that “the sophistry and wickedness of our Princes are bringing the Empire to ruin,” in which “bitter cry,” writes a Protestant historian, “he sums up the result of his own unhappy experiences.”[681]

From the accounts of the Visitations in the Electorate we learn more details of the condition of morality, law and order in this the focus of the new Evangel. The proximity and influence of Luther and of his best and most faithful preachers did not constitute any bulwark against the growing corruption of morals, which clear-sighted men indeed attributed mainly to the new doctrines on good works, on faith alone and on Evangelical freedom.

3. Luther’s Attempts to Explain the Decline in Morals

From his writings a long, dreary list of sins might be compiled, of which each of the classes here mentioned had been guilty. In the last ten years of his life such lamentations give the tone to most of what he wrote.

To the question whence the moral decline amongst the adherents of the new teaching came, Luther was wont to give various answers. Their difference and his occasional self-contradictions show how his consciousness of the disorders and the complaints they drew from every side drive him into a corner.

[212]

The most correct explanation was, of course, that the mischief was due to the nature of his teaching on faith and good works; to this, involuntarily, he comes back often enough.

“The devil’s malice!” This is another explanation to which Luther and others not unfrequently had recourse. The devil could do such extraordinary and apparently contradictory things! He could even teach men to “pray fervently.” In the Table-Talk, for instance, when asked by his wife why it was, that, whereas in Popery “we prayed so diligently and frequently, we are now so cold and pray so seldom,” Luther put it down to the devil. “The devil made us fervent,” he says; “he ever urges on his servants, but the Holy Ghost teaches and exhorts us how to pray aright; yet we are so tepid and slothful in prayer that nothing comes of it.”[700] Thus it might well be the devil who was answerable for the misuse of the Evangel.

On another occasion, in order to counteract the bad impression made on his contemporaries by the fruits of his preaching, he says: “Our morals only look so bad on account of the sanctity of the Evangel; in Catholic times they stood very low and many vices prevailed, but all this was unperceived amidst the general darkness which shrouded doctrine and the moral standards which then held; now, on the other hand, our eyes have been opened by a purer faith and even small abuses are seen in their true colours.” His words on this subject will be given below.

It even seemed to Luther that the decay of almsgiving and the parsimony displayed towards the churches and the preachers proved the truth of the Evangel (“signum est, verum esse evangelium nostrum”), for, so he teaches in a sermon preached at Wittenberg in 1527, “the devil is the Prince of this world and all its riches, as we learn from the story of Christ’s Temptation. He is now defending his kingdom from the Evangel which has risen up against him. He does not now allow us so many possessions and gifts as he formerly did to those who served him (i.e. the Papists), for their Masses, Vigils, etc.; nay, he robs us of everything and spends it on himself. Formerly we supported many hundred monks and now we cannot raise the needful for one Evangelical preacher, a sign that our Evangel is the[214] true one and that the Pope’s empire was the devil’s own, where he bestowed gifts on his followers with open hands and incited them to luxury, avarice, fornication and gluttony. And their teaching was in conformity therewith, for they urged those works which pleased them.”[701]

The observer may well marvel at such strange trains of thought. Luther’s doctrine has become to him like a pole-star around which the whole firmament must revolve. Experience and logic alike must perforce be moulded at his pleasure to suit the idea which dominates him.

It was impossible to suppress the inexorable question put by his opponents, and the faint-hearted doubts of many of his own followers: Since our Saviour taught: “By their fruits shall you know them,” how can you be a Divinely sent teacher if these are the moral effects of your new Evangel? And yet Luther, to the very close of his career, in tones ever more confident, insists on his higher, nay, Divine, calling, and on his election to “reveal” hidden doctrines of faith, strange to say, those very doctrines to which he, like others too, attributed the decline.

Concerning his Divine mission he had not hesitated to say in so many words: Unless God calls a man to do a work no one who does not wish to be a fool may venture to undertake it; “for a certain Divine call and not a mere whim” is essential to every good work.[702] Hence he frequently sees in success the best test of a good work. In his own case, however, he could point only to one great result, and that a negative one, viz. the harm done to Popery; the Papacy had been no match for him and had failed to check the apostasy. The Papists’ undertaking, such is his proof, is not a success; it goes sideways “after the fashion of the crab.” “Even for those who had a sure Divine vocation it was difficult to undertake and carry through anything good, though God was with them and assisted them; what then could those silly fools, who wished to undertake it without being called, expect to do?” “But I, Dr. Martin, was called and compelled to become a Doctor.... Thus I was obliged to accept the office of a Doctor. Hence, owing to my work, this which you see[215] has befallen the Papacy, and worse things are yet in store for it.” To those who still refused to acknowledge Luther’s call to teach he addresses a sort of command: St. Paul, 1 Cor. xiv., 30, commanded all, even superiors, to be silent and obey “when some other than the chief teacher receives a revelation.” “The work that Luther undertakes,” “the great work of the Reformation,” he assures all, was given not to the other side, but to him alone.[703]—It is no wonder that his gainsayers and the doubters on his own side refused to be convinced by such arguments and appeals to the work of destruction accomplished, but continued to harp on the words: “By their fruits you shall know them,” which text they took literally, viz. as referring to actual fruits of moral improvement.

The “great work of the Reformation,” i.e. of real reform, to which Luther appeals—unless he was prepared to regard it as consisting solely in the damage done to the Roman Church—surely demanded that, at least at Wittenberg and in Luther’s immediate sphere, some definite fruits in the shape of real moral amelioration should be apparent. Yet it was precisely of Wittenberg and his own surroundings that Luther complained so loudly. The increase of every kind of disorder caused him to write to George of Anhalt: “We live in Sodom and Babylon, or rather must die there; the good men, our Lots and Daniels, whom we so urgently need now that things are daily becoming worse, are snatched from us by death.”[704] So bad were matters that Luther was at last driven to flee from Wittenberg. The sight of the immorality, the vexation and the complaints to which he was exposed became too much for him; perhaps Wittenberg would catch the “Beggars’ dance, or Beelzebub’s dance,” he wrote; “at any rate get us gone from this Sodom.”[705]

In view of the above it cannot surprise us that Luther gradually became a victim to habitual discouragement and melancholy, particularly towards the end of his life. Proofs of the depression from which he suffered during the latter years of his life will be brought forward in a later volume.

Such fits of depression were, however, in those days more than usually common everywhere.

4. A Malady of the Age: Doubts and Melancholy

One of the phenomena which accompanied the religious revulsion and which it is impossible to pass over, was, as contemporary writers relate, the sadness, discontent and depression, in a word “melancholy,” so widespread under the new Evangel even amongst its zealous promoters.

[219]

Melanchthon, one of Luther’s most intimate friends, furnished on many occasions of his life a sad spectacle of interior dejection. Of a weaker and more timid mental build than Luther, he appeared at times ready to succumb under the weight of faint-heartedness and scruples, doubts and self-reproaches. (Cp. vol. iii., p. 363 ff.) We may recall how his anxieties, caused by the scandal subsequent on his sanctioning of Philip’s bigamy, almost cost him his life. So many are the records he left behind of discouragement and despondency that his death must appear in the light of a welcome deliverance. Luther sought again and again to revive in him the waning consciousness of the Divine character of their work. It is just in these letters of Luther to Melanchthon that we find him most emphatic in his assertion that their common mission is from God. It was to Melanchthon, that, next to himself, Luther applied the words already quoted, spoken to comfort a dejected pupil: “There must be some in the Church as ready to slap Satan as we three; but not all are able or willing to endure this.”[725]

Spalatin, who has so frequently been referred to as Luther’s go-between at the Electoral Court, and who afterwards became pastor of Altenburg, towards the end of his life fell into incurable despondency.[726] Justus Jonas, likewise, was for a considerable time a prey to melancholy.[727] Hieronymus Weller, one of Luther’s best friends, confessed to having suffered at times such violent doubts and fears as would have driven a heathen to commit suicide.[728] The preachers George Mohr[729] and Nicholas Hausmann (a very intimate friend of Luther’s[730]) had to endure dreadful pangs of soul; the same was the case with Johann Beltzius, Pastor[220] at Allerstedt in Thuringia,[731] and with Simon Musæus, who died at Mansfeld in 1576 as Superintendent and who composed two works against the devil of melancholy.[732] Nicholas Selnecker, who died Superintendent at Leipzig, was responsible for the rearranged edition of Luther’s Table-Talk; according to the title his hope was to produce a work “which it might console all Christians to read, especially in these wretched last days.” Elsewhere he confirms the need of such consolation when he says: “We experience in our own selves” that sadness is of frequent occurrence.[733]

Wolfgang Capito, the Strasburg preacher, wrote in 1536 to Luther that his experience of the want of agreement in doctrine had caused him such distress of mind that he was on the verge of the “malady of melancholia”; he trusted he would succeed in reaching a better frame of mind; the burden of gloom, so he comforts himself, was, after all, not without its purpose in God’s plan in the case of many under the Evangel. With Capito, too, melancholy was a “frequent guest.”[734] Bucer wrote in 1532 to A. Blaurer that Capito had often bemoaned “his rejection by God.”[735]

Joachim Camerarius, the celebrated Humanist and writer, confessed in a letter to Luther, that he was oppressed and reduced to despair by the sight of the decline in morals “in people of every age and sex, in every condition and grade of life”; everything, in both public and private life,[221] was so corrupt that he felt all piety and virtue was done for. Of the Schools in particular he woefully exclaimed that it would perhaps be better to have none than to have “such haunts of godlessness and vice.” At the same time, however, he makes admissions concerning faults of his own which may have served to increase his dejection: He himself, in his young days, had, like others, disgraced himself by a very vicious life (“turpissime in adolescentia deformatum”).[736]

The Nuremberg preacher, George Besler, fell into a state of melancholia, declared “in his ravings that things were not going right in the Church,” began to see hidden enemies everywhere and finally committed suicide with a “hogspear” in 1536.[737] William Bidembach, preacher at Stuttgart, and his brother Balthasar, Abbot of Bebenhausen, both became a prey to melancholia towards the end of their life.[738]

It would, of course, be foolish to think that many good souls, in the simplicity of their heart, found no consolation in the new teaching and in working for its furtherance. Of the preachers, for instance, Beltzius, who has just been mentioned, declares, that, amidst his sadness Luther’s consolations had “saved him from the abyss of hell.”[739] Amongst those who adhered in good faith to the innovations there were some who highly lauded the solace of the Evangel. But, notwithstanding all that may be alleged to the contrary, we cannot get over such testimonies as the following.

Felix, son of the above-mentioned William Bidembach, and Court preacher in Würtemberg, declared in a “Handbook for young church ministers”: “It happens more and more frequently that many pious people fall into distressing sadness and real melancholia, to such an extent that they constantly experience in their hearts fear, apprehension, dread and despair”; in the course of his ministry he had met with both persons of position and common folk who were oppressed with such melancholia.[740] Nicholas Selnecker (above, p. 220) assures us that not only were theologians[222] perplexed with many “melancholy and anxious souls and consciences whom nothing could console,” but physicians, too, “never remembered such prevalence of evil melancholia, depression and sadness, even in the young, and of other maladies arising therefrom, as during these few years, and such misfortune continues still to grow and increase.”[741]

The Leipzig Pastor, Erasmus Sarcerius, speaks in a similar strain of the “general faint-heartedness prevalent in every class,” who are acquainted with nothing but “fear and apprehension”;[742] Victorinus Strigel, Professor at the University of Leipzig, of the “many persons who in our day have died simply and solely of grief”;[743] Michael Sachse, preacher at Wechmar, of people generally as being “timid and anxious, trembling and despairing from fear.”[744]

When the preacher Leonard Beyer related to Luther how in his great “temptations” the devil had tried to induce him to stab himself, Luther consoled him by telling him that the same had happened in his own case.[745]

We are told that in latter life Luther’s pupil Mathesius was a prey to a “hellish fear” which lasted almost three months; “he could not even look at a knife because the sight tempted him to suicide.”[746] Later, his condition improved. The same Mathesius relates how Pastor Musa found consolation in his gloomy doubts on faith in Luther’s account of his own similar storms of doubt.[747]

In the 16th century we hear many lamentations in Protestant circles concerning the unheard-of increase in the number of suicides.

[224]

Among the Lutheran preachers the expected end of the world was made to play a part and to explain the increase of faint-heartedness and despair.

Luther’s example proved catching, and the end of the world became a favourite topic both in the pulpit and in books, one on which the preachers’ own gloom could aptly find vent. The end of all was thought to be imminent. Such forebodings are voiced, for instance, in the following: “No consolation is of any help to consciences”;[757] “many pine away in dejection and die of grief”;[758] “in these latter days the wicked one by his tyranny drives men into fear and fright”;[759] “many despair for very dejection and sadness”;[760] “many pious hearts wax cowardly, seeing their sins and the wickedness of the world”;[761] “the people hang their heads as though they were walking corpses and live in a constant dread”;[762] “all joy is dead and all consolation from God’s Word has become as weak as water”;[763] the number of those “possessed of the devil body and soul” is growing beyond all measure.[764]

[225]

Though the special advantage claimed for the new Evangel lay in the sure comfort it afforded troubled consciences, many found themselves unable to arouse within them the necessary faith in the forgiveness of their sins. Luther’s own experience, viz. that “faith won’t come,”[765] was also that of many of the preachers in the case of their own uneasy and tortured parishioners; their complaints of the fruitlessness of their labours sound almost like an echo of some of Luther’s own utterances.

CHAPTER XXV

IN THE NARROWER CIRCLE OF THE PROFESSION AND FAMILY LUTHER’S BETTER FEATURES

1. The University Professor, the Preacher, the Pastor

Relations with the Wittenberg Students.

Among the pleasing traits in Luther’s picture a prominent one is the care he evinced for the students at Wittenberg.

The disagreeable impression caused by the decline of the University town is to some extent mitigated by the efforts Luther made to check the corruption amongst the scholars of the University. He saw that they were supervised, so far as academic freedom permitted, and never hesitated to blame their excesses from the pulpit. At the same time, in spite of the growing multiplicity of his labours and cares, he showed himself a helpful father to them even in temporal matters, for instance, when he inveighed in a sermon against their exploitation at the hands of burghers and peasants: They were being sucked dry and could scarcely be treated worse; this he had heard from all he knew.[777]

The respect he enjoyed and the example of his own simple life lent emphasis to his moral exhortations. His eloquent lectures were eagerly listened to; his delivery was vivid and impressive. People knew that he did not lecture for the sake of money and, even at the height of his fame, they gladly pointed to the unassuming life he led at home. He did not expect any marks of respect from the students, greatly as they, and not only those of the theological Faculty, esteemed him. Melanchthon had introduced the custom of making the students stand when Luther entered the class-room; Luther, however, was not at all pleased with this innovation and said petulently: “Doxa, doxa est magna noxa; who runs after glory never gets it.”[778]

[229]

Oldecop, the Catholic chronicler and Luther’s former pupil, who, as a youth and before the apostasy, had listened to him at Wittenberg, remembered in his old age how Luther, without setting himself in opposition to their youthful jollifications had known how to restrain them; just as he “reproved sin fearlessly from the pulpit,”[779] so he earnestly sought to banish temptation from the pleasures of the students.

We may here recall, that, as early as 1520, Luther had urged that all bordels should be done away with, those “public, heathenish haunts of sin,” as he termed them, at the same time using their existence as a weapon against the Catholic past.[780] The fact that many such houses were closed down at that time was, however, to some extent due to fear of the prevalent “French disease.”

When, in his old age, in 1543, the arrival of certain light women threatened new danger to the morals of the Wittenberg students, already exposed to the ordinary temptations of the town, Luther decided to interfere and make a public onslaught at the University. This attack supplies us with a striking example of his forcefulness, whilst also showing us what curious ideas and expressions he was wont to intermingle with his well-meant admonitions.

The Preacher and Catechist.

As a preacher Luther was hard-working, nay, indefatigable; in this department his readiness of speech, his familiarity with Holy Scripture and above all his popular ways stood him in good stead. At first he preached in the church attached to the monastery; later on his sermons were frequently preached in the parish church, and, so long as his health stood the strain, he sometimes even delivered several sermons a day.[783] Even when not feeling well he took advantage of every opportunity to mount the pulpit. In 1528 he took over the parochial sermons during Bugenhagen’s absence from Wittenberg,[784] in spite of being already overworked and ill in body.

All were loud in their praise of the power and vigour of his style. Mathesius in his “Historien” records a remark to this effect of Melanchthon’s.[785] Luther frequently laid down, after his own fashion, the rules which should guide those who preach to the little ones and the poor in spirit: “Cursed and anathema be all preachers who treat of high,[231] difficult and subtle matters in the churches, put them to the people and preach on them, seeking their own glory or to please one or two ambitious members of the congregation. When I preach here I make myself as small as possible, nor do I look at the Doctors and Masters, of whom perhaps forty may be present, but at the throng of young people, children and common folk, from a hundred to a thousand strong; it is to them that I preach, of them that I think, for it is they who stand in need.”[786] And elsewhere: “Like a mother who quiets her babe, dandles it and plays with it, but who must give it milk from her breast, and on no account wine or Malmsey, so preachers must do the same; they ought so to preach in all simplicity that even the simple-minded may hear, grasp and retain their words. But when they come to me, to Master Philip, to Dr. Pommer, etc., then they may show off their learning—and get a good drubbing and be put to shame.” But when they parade their learning in the pulpit this is merely done “to impose on and earn the praise of the poor, simple lay-folk. Ah, they say, that is a great scholar and a fine speaker, though, probably, they neither understood nor learnt anything.”[787]

“Nor should a preacher consider individual members of his congregation and speak to them words of comfort or reproof; what he must seek to benefit is the whole congregation. St. Paul teaches this important doctrine [2 Cor. ii. 17]: ‘We speak with sincerity in Christ as from God and before God.’ God, Christ and the angels are our hearers, and if we please them that is enough. Let us not trouble ourselves about the world and about private persons! We will not speak in order to please any man nor allow our mouth to be made the ‘Arschloch’ of another. But when we have certain persons up before us, then we may reprove them privately and without any rancour.”[788]

As a preacher he was able often enough to tell the various classes quite frankly what he found to censure in them. At the Court, for instance, he could, when occasion arose, reprove the nobles for their drunkenness, and that in language not of the choicest.[789] He was not the man to wear[232] kid gloves, or, as an old German proverb he himself quoted said, to let a spider spin its web over his mouth. A saying attributed to him characterises him very well, save perhaps in its latter end: Come up bravely, speak out boldly, leave off speedily.[790] “I have warned you often enough,” so we read in the notes of a Wittenberg sermon of Sep. 24, 1531,[791] “to flee fornication, and yet I see that it is again on the increase. It is getting so bad that I shall be obliged to say: Bistu do zurissen, sso lop dich der Teuffl.”[792] The preacher then turns to the older hearers, begging them to use their influence with the younger generation, to prevail on them to abstain from this vice.

As to his subject-matter, he was fond of urging Biblical texts and quotations, wherein he displayed great skill and dexterity. In general, however, his attacks on Popery are always much the same; he dwells with tiresome monotony on the holiness-by-works and the moral depravity of the Papists. Though his theory of Justification may have proved to him a never-failing source of delight, yet his hearers were inclined to grow weary of it. He himself says once: “When we preach the ‘articulum justificationis’ the people sleep or cough”; and before this: “No one in the people’s opinion is eloquent if he speaks on justification; then they simply close their ears.” Had it been a question of retailing stories, examples and allegories he could have been as proficient as any man.[793]

Mathesius has incorporated in his work some of Luther’s directions on preaching which might prove a good guide to any pulpit orator desirous of being of practical service to his hearers.[794] Some of these directions and hints have recently appeared in their vigorous original in the Table-Talk edited by Kroker.

It was his wish that religious addresses in the shape of simple, hearty instructions on the Epistles and Gospels should be given weekly by every father to his family.[795] He himself, in his private capacity, set the example as early[233] as 1532 by holding forth in his own home on Sundays, when unable to preach in the church, before his assembled household and other guests. This he did, so he said, from a sense of duty towards his family, because it was as necessary to check neglect of the Divine Word in the home as in the Church at large.[796]

He also himself catechised the children at home, in order, as he declared, to fulfil the duties of a Christian father; on rising in the morning he was also in the habit of reciting the “Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Our Father and some Psalm as well” with the children.

He even expressed the opinion that catechetical instruction in church was of little use to children, but that in the home it was more successful and was therefore not to be omitted, however much trouble it might give. When, however, he adds, that the Papists had neglected such home teaching and had sacrificed the flock of Christ,[797] he is quite wrong. The fact is, that, before his day, it was left far too much to the family to give religious instruction to the children, there being as yet no properly organised Catechism in schools and churches. It was only the opposition aroused among Catholics by the religious changes that led to religious teaching becoming more widespread in the Catholic schools, and to a catechetical system being organised; a fuller religious education then served to check the falling away.[798] How highly, in spite of such apparent depreciation, he valued the ministerial teaching of the Catechism we learn from some words recorded by Mathesius: “If I had to establish order, I should see that no preacher was nominated who had not previously taught the ‘bonæ artes’ and the Catechism in the schools for from one to three years. Schools are also temples of God, hence the olden prophets were at once pastors and schoolmasters.”[799] “There is no better way,” he writes, “of keeping people devout and faithful to the Church than by the Catechism.”[800]

At Wittenberg an arrangement existed, at any rate as[234] early as 1528,[801] by which, every quarter, certain days were set apart for special sermons on the articles of the Catechism.[802] The Larger and the Smaller Catechism published by Luther (see vol. v., xxxiv., 2) were intended to form the basis of the verbal teaching everywhere. The three courses of sermons preached by Luther at Wittenberg in May, Sep. and Nov., 1528, and since edited by George Buchwald, were arranged to suit the contents of the Greater Catechism and to some extent served Luther as a preparation for this publication. Luther, in the first instance, brought out the Smaller Catechism, as we see from certain letters given by Buchwald, not in book form, but, agreeably with an earlier ecclesiastical practice, on separate sheets in the shape of tablets to hang upon the walls; hence what he said on Dec. 18, 1537, of his being the author of the Catechism, the “tabulæ” and the Confession of Augsburg.[803]

He displayed great talent and dexterity in choosing the language best suited to his subject. We hear him denouncing with fire and power the vice of usury which was on the increase.[804] He knows how to portray the past and future judgments of God in such colours as to arouse the luke-warm. When treating of the different professions and ways of ordinary life he is in his own element and exhibits a rare gift of observation. On the virtues of the home, the education of children, obedience towards superiors, patience in bearing crosses and any similar ethical topics which presented themselves to him, his language is as a rule sympathetic, touching and impressive; in three wedding sermons which we have of him he speaks in fine and moving words on love and fidelity in the married state.[805]

In addition to his printed sermons, which were polished and amended for the press and from which we have already given many quotations on all sorts of subjects, the hasty, abbreviated notes of his sermons, made by zealous pupils, give us an insight into a series of addresses full of originality,[235] outspokenness and striking thoughts. Indeed these notes, which are becoming better known at the present day, frequently render the sermons in all their primitive simplicity far better than do the more carefully arranged printed editions.

Excerpts from Luther’s Sermons on Our Lady.

Statements to Luther’s advantage from various Instructions. His Language.

In his sermons Luther was so firm in upholding the Divinity of Christ, in opposition to the scepticism he thought he detected in other circles, that one cannot but be favourably impressed. He was filled with the liveliest sense of man’s duty of submitting his reason to this mystery; he even goes too far, in recommending abdication of the intellect and in his disparagement of human reason; what[239] he is anxious to do is to make all his religious feeling culminate in a trusting faith in the words: “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son for us.”

In his sermons and instructions he demands a similar yielding of reason to faith with regard to the mystery of Christ’s Presence in the Sacrament, though in this case he had not shrunk from twisting the doctrine to suit his own ideas. It would hardly be possible to maintain more victoriously against all gainsayers the need of standing by the literal sense, or at least of excluding any figurative interpretation of, the words of institution “This is My Body,” than Luther did in many of his pronouncements against the Sacramentarians.[810]

With advancing years, and in view of the dissensions and confusion prevailing in the Reformed camp, he came to insist more and more on those positive elements, which, for all his aversion for the ancient Church, he had never ceased to defend. Of this we have a monument in one of his last works, viz. the “Kurtz Bekentnis,” to which we shall return later. Embittered by the scepticism apparent in Zwinglianism and elsewhere, which, as he thought, threatened to sap all religion, he there obeys his heart’s instincts and gives the fullest expression to his faith in general and not merely to his belief in Christ’s presence in the Sacrament.[811]

Concerning the Sacrament of the Altar he gave the following noteworthy answer to a question put to him jointly, in 1544, by the three princely brothers of Anhalt, viz. whether they should do away with the Elevation of the Sacrament in the liturgy. “By no means,” he replied, “for such abrogation would tend to diminish respect for the Sacrament and cause it to be undervalued. When Dr. Pommer abolished the Elevation [at Wittenberg, in 1542] during my absence, I did not approve of it, and now I am even thinking of re-introducing it. For the Elevation is one thing, the carrying about of the Sacrament in procession quite another [at Wittenberg Luther would not allow such processions of the Sacrament]. If Christ is truly present in the Bread (‘in pane’), why should He not be treated with the utmost respect and even be adored?”—Joachim, Prince of Anhalt, added, when relating this:[240] “We saw how Luther bowed low at the Elevation with great devotion and reverently worshipped Christ.”[812]

By his retention of the belief in the three Divine Persons and in the Divinity of the Redeemer, Luther was instrumental in preserving among his future followers a treasure inherited from past ages, in which not a few have found their consolation. We must not be unmindful of how he strove to defend it from the assaults of unbelief, in his time still personified in Judaism. He did not sin by debasing the Second Person of the Trinity, but rather by foisting on God Incarnate attributes which are not really His; for instance, by arguing that, owing to the intimacy of the two Natures, Divine and Human, in Christ, His Human Nature must be as omnipresent as His Divine; or, again, by teaching that mere belief in one’s redemption and sanctification suffices to destroy sin; or, again, when his too lively eschatological fancy led him to see Christ, the Almighty conqueror of the devil and his world, already on the point of coming to the Judgment. And just as Christ’s Godhead was the very fulcrum of all his teaching, so he defended likewise the other Articles of the Apostles’ Creed with such courage, force and eloquence, as, since his death, few of his followers have found themselves capable of. About the Person of the Redeemer he wove all the usual Christological doctrines, His Virgin Birth, His truly miraculous Resurrection, His descent into Hell, His Ascension and Second Advent; finally, also, the resurrection of the dead, the future Judgment, and the everlasting Heaven and everlasting Hell. From the well-spring of the ancient creed, under God’s Grace, Lutherans without number have drawn and still continue to draw motives for doing what is good, consolation amidst affliction and strength to lead pious lives.

“What holiness, devotion and heroic virtue do we not find among non-Catholics. God’s Grace is not confined within the four walls of the Catholic Church, but breathes even in the hearts of outsiders, working in them, when opportunity affords, the miracle of justification and adoption, and thus ensuring the eternal salvation of countless multitudes who are either entirely ignorant of the true Church, as are the upright heathen, or mistake her true form and nature as do countless Protestants, brought up amidst the[242] crassest prejudice. To all such as these the Church does not close the gates of Heaven” (J. Pohle).

It would be superfluous to enumerate amongst Luther’s favourable traits the respect he always paid to Holy Scripture as the Word of God, demanding for its infallible revelations a willing faith and the sacrifice of one’s own whims.

In the field of scriptural activity his German translation of the whole Bible has procured for him enduring fame. Since the birth of Humanism not a few scholars had drawn attention to the languages in which the Bible was originally written; Luther, however, was the first who ventured to make a serious attempt to produce a complete translation of all the Sacred Books on the basis of the original text.

Thanks to his German version, from the linguistic point of view so excellent, Protestants down to our own day have been familiar with the Bible. His rendering of the Bible[243] stories and doctrines, at once so able and so natural, was a gain not only to the language of religion but even to profane literature, just as his writings generally have without question largely contributed to the furtherance of the German tongue.

Luther’s translation of the Bible will be treated of more in detail elsewhere (vol. v., xxxiv., 3). Here, however, mention may be made of the fine quality of the German used in his sermons, his theological and polemical writings, as well as in his popular works of devotion.

[244]

The figures and comparisons in which his sparkling fancy delights, particularly in the devotional booklets intended for the common people, his popular, sympathetic and often thoughtful adaptation of his language to the subject and to the personality of the reader, the truly German stamp of his phraseology, lending to the most difficult as well as to the most ordinary subjects just the clothing they require—all this no one can observe and enjoy without paying tribute to his gift of description and language.

The Spiritual Guide.

Not merely as professor, preacher and writer, but also as spiritual leader, did Luther exhibit many qualities which add to the attraction of his picture. Whatever may be the habits of polemical writers, the historian who wishes to acquit himself properly of his task must not in so momentous[245] a matter evade the duty of depicting the favourable as well as the unfavourable sides of Luther’s character.

Though Luther did not regard himself as the pastor of Wittenberg, yet as much depended on him there as if he had actually been the regular minister; moreover, as was only to be expected, throughout the Saxon Electorate as well as in other districts won over to him, he exercised a certain sway. As can be proved from his letters and other documents, he freely offered his best services, if only for the good repute of the Evangel, to abolish scandals, to punish preachers who led bad lives, to promote attendance at public worship and the reception of communion, to help on the cause of the schools and the education of the young, and in every other way to amend the Christian life.

In order to revive discipline at Wittenberg, he tried the effect of excommunication, though with no very conspicuous success. He took the brave step of placing the Town Commandant, Hans Metzsch, under a sort of ban for his notorious disregard of the Church.[825] What he then told the congregation was calculated to inspire a wholesome dread, and to recall them to their duties towards God and their neighbour. The incident was likely to prove all the more effectual seeing that Luther had on his side both Town Council and congregation, Metzsch having previously fallen out with them, a fact which undoubtedly emboldened Luther.[826]

When Antinomianism, with its perilous teaching against the binding character of the Divine Law, strove to strike root in the Saxon Electorate, he set himself with unusual vigour to combat the evil, and in his writings, sermons and letters set forth principles worthy of being taken to heart concerning the importance of the Commandments and the perils of self-will. Similar edifying traits are apparent in his struggle with other “Rotters.” In the elimination of the sectarian element from the heart of the new faith and in instancing its dangers, he shows himself very emphatic, and, at times, the force of his reasoning is inimitable. Neither was he slow to find practical measures to ensure its extirpation, especially when it threatened the good name and stability of his work.[827]

[246]

He exercised many of the other labours of his ministry by means of his writings; with the help of his pen and the press, he, in his quality of spiritual guide, attacked all the many-sided questions of life, seeking to impart instruction to his followers wherever they might chance to be. No one so far had made such use of the newly invented art of printing for the purpose of exerting religious influence and for spiritual government.

He despatched a vast number of circular-letters to the congregations, some with detailed and fervent exhortations; his Postils on the scriptural Lessons for the Sundays and Feast Days he scattered far and wide amongst the masses; he was also interested in good books on profane subjects, and exhorted all to assist in the suppression of obscene romances and tales;[828] he also set to work to purify Æsop’s Fables—which, under Humanist influence, had become a source of corruption—from filthy accretions so that they might be of use in the education of the young.[829] The collection of German Proverbs which he commenced was also intended to serve for the instruction of youth.[830]

He justly regretted that amongst the Legends of the Saints current amongst the people there were many historical untruths and impossibilities. Many of his remarks on these stories do credit to his critical sense, particularly as in his time very few had as yet concerned themselves with the revision of these legends. It was far from advantageous to ecclesiastical literature, that, in spite of the well-grounded objections raised by Luther and by some Catholic scholars, deference to old-standing tradition allowed such fictions to be retained and even further enhanced. “It is the devil’s own plague,” Luther groans, “that we have no reliable legends of the Saints.... To correct them is an onerous task.” “The legend of St. Catherine,” he says on the same occasion to his friends, “is quite at variance with Roman history. Whoever concocted such a tale must now assuredly be sitting in the depths of hell.”[831] He goes, however, too far when he says that the inaccuracies were intentional, “infamous” lies devised by Popery, and adds: “We never dared to protest against them.”—As though such literary and[247] often poetic outgrowths of a more childlike age were not to be regarded as merely harmless, and as though criticism had been prohibited by the Church. It is true, nevertheless, that criticism had not been sufficiently exercised, and if Luther’s undertaking and the controversies of the 16th century helped to arouse it, or, rather, to quicken the efforts already made in this direction, first in the field of Bible-study and Church-history and then, more gradually, in that of popular legendary and devotional literature, no wise man can see therein any cause for grief.

“An die Radherrn aller Stedte deutsches Lands, das sie christliche Schulen auffrichten und halten sollen” is the title of one of Luther’s writings of 1524, in which he urges the erection of schools with such vigour that the circular in question must be assigned a high place among his hortatory works: “With this writing Luther will recapture the affection of many of his opponents,” wrote a Zwickau schoolmaster after reading it.[832] “Ob Kriegsleutte auch ynn seligem Stande seyn künden” (1526) is the heading of another broadsheet of his, dealing with the secular sword, the divinely established “office of war” and the rights of the authorities. For this Luther made use of Augustine’s work “Contra Faustum manichæum.”[833] It is said that part of the proofs, without any author’s name, was put into the hands of Duke George of Saxony; thereupon he remarked to Lucas Cranach: “See, I have here a booklet which is better than anything Luther could do.”[834] At a later date Luther urged the people in eloquent words to take up arms against the Turk, though he had at first been opposed to resistance; nevertheless, he ever maintained his unfavourable attitude towards the Empire, already described in vol. iii., even on this question of such vital importance to Germany. He was relentless in his criticism of German unpreparedness for war, of the fatal habit of disregarding danger and of other possible sources of disaster; he also advanced religious motives for joining in the war, and exhorted all the faithful bravely to assist by their prayers.

Whilst these and other writings deal with practical[248] questions affecting public life in which his position and religious ideas entitled him to interfere, a large number of works and pamphlets are devoted to domestic and private needs. In his “Trost fur die Weibern welchen es ungerat gegangen ist mit Kinder Geberen” (1542) he even has a kind word for such wives as had had a miscarriage, and consoles those who were troubled about the fate of their unbaptised infants. From the theological point of view this subject had, however, been treated better and more correctly by others before his day. He was also at his post with words of direction and sympathy when pestilence threatened, as his writing “Ob man fur dem Sterben fliehen muge” (1527) bears witness. He frequently composed Prefaces to books written by others, in order to encourage the authors and to help on what he considered useful works; thus, for instance, he wrote a commendatory Introduction to Justus Menius’s “Œconomia Christiana” (1529).

The New Form of Confession.

Luther’s pastoral experience convinced him that Confession was conducive to the maintenance and furtherance of religious life. He accordingly determined to re-introduce it in a new shape, i.e. without invalidating the doctrines he had preached concerning faith and freedom. Hence, at times we find him speaking almost like an apologist of the Church concerning this practice of earlier ages and its wholesome effects. He insists, however, that no confession of all mortal sins must be required, nor ought Confession to be made a duty, but merely counselled.

In his work “Von der Beicht, ob der Bapst Macht habe zu gepieten” (1521) he begins one section with the words: “Two reasons ought to make us ready and willing to confess,” which he then proceeds to expound quite in the manner of the olden Catholic works of instruction.[835] Elsewhere he expresses his joy that Confession had been bestowed on the Church of Christ, especially for the relief of troubled consciences; Confession and Absolution must not be allowed to fall into disuse; to despise so costly a treasure would be criminal.

Of Luther himself it is related again and again, that, after[249] having confessed, he received “Absolution,” either from Pastor Bugenhagen of Wittenberg or from someone else.

The words Absolution and Confession must not, however, as already hinted, be allowed to mislead those accustomed to their Catholic sense. Sometimes in Catholic works we read quotations from Luther which convey the wrong impression, that he had either retained the older doctrine practically entire, or at least wished to do so. So little is this the case, that, on the contrary, when he mentions Confession it is usually only to rail at the “slavery” of conscience and the spiritual tyranny of the past.[836] Absolution, according to him, could be received “from the lips of the pastor, or of some other brother.”[837] Even the ordinary preaching of the Gospel to the faithful he considers as “fundamentally and at bottom an ‘absolutio’ wherein forgiveness of sins is proclaimed.”[838] In Confession there was no “Sacrament” in the sense that Baptism and the Supper were Sacraments, but merely “an exercise of the virtue of Baptism,” an act in which the simple Word became a means of grace. The Word was to arouse and awaken in the heart of the Christian the assurance of forgiveness. The faith of the penitent is the sole condition for the appropriation of the Divine promises.[839] Of the way in which Luther in the Smaller Catechism nevertheless emphasises the significance of the Absolution given by the confessor,[840] Julius Köstlin says: “These statements of Luther’s are in several ways lacking in clearness.”[841]

It is in the light of such explanations that we must appreciate the fine things in praise of Confession, so frequently quoted, which Luther says in his letter to Frankfurt.

Luther goes on to make an admission which certainly does him honour: “And for this [the consolation and strength it affords] I myself stand most in need of Confession, and neither will nor can do without it; for it has given me, and still gives me daily, great comfort when I am sad and in trouble. But the fanatics, because they trust in themselves and are unacquainted with sadness, are ready to despise this medicine and solace.”

He had already said: “If thousands and thousands of worlds were mine, I should still prefer to lose everything rather than that one little bit of this Confession should be lost to the churches. Nay, I would prefer the Popish tyranny, with its feasts, fasts, vestments, holy places, tonsures, cowls and whatever I might bear without damage to the faith, rather than that Christians should be deprived of Confession. For it is the Christian’s first, most necessary and useful school, where he learns to understand and to practise God’s Word and his faith, which cannot be so thoroughly done in public lectures and sermons.”[852]

“Christians are not to be deprived of Confession.” On this, and for the same reasons, Luther had already insisted in the booklet on Confession he had published in 1529. The booklet first appeared as an appendix to an edition of his Greater Catechism published in that year, and is little more than an amended version of Rörer’s notes of his Palm Sunday sermon in 1529.[853]

In this booklet on Confession, also entitled “A Short Exhortation to Confession,”[854] he says of the “secret Confession made to a brother alone”: “Where there is something special that oppresses or troubles us, worries us and[253] will give us no rest, or if we find ourselves halting in our faith,” we should “complain of this to a brother and seek counsel, consolation and strength.” “Where a heart feels its sinfulness and is desirous of comfort, it has here a sure refuge where it may find and hear God’s Word.” “Whoever is a Christian, or wishes to become one, is hereby given the good advice to go and fetch the precious treasure.” “Thus we teach now what an excellent, costly and consoling thing Confession is, and admonish all not to despise so fine a possession.” As the “parched and hunted hart” panteth after the fountains, so ought our soul to pant after “God’s Word or Absolution.”—The zeal expected of the penitent is well described, but here, as is so often the case with Luther, we again find the mistake resulting from his false idealism, viz. that, after doing away with all obligation properly so called, personal fervour and the faith he preached would continue to supply the needful.

Before Luther’s day Confession had been extolled on higher grounds than merely on account of the comfort and instruction it afforded. It had been recognised as a true Sacrament instituted by Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and committed by Him with the words “Whose sins you shall forgive,” etc. (John xx. 22 f.), to the exercise of duly appointed ministers. Yet the earlier religious literature had not been behindhand in pointing out how great a boon it was for the human heart to be able to pour its troubles into the ears of a wise and kindly guide, who could impart a true absolution and pour the balm of consolation and the light of instruction into the soul kneeling humbly before him as God’s own representative.

Luther, however, even in the early days of his change, under the influence of a certain distaste and prejudice in favour of his own pet ideas, had conceived an aversion for Confession. Here again his opposition was based on purely personal, psychological grounds. The terrors he had endured in Confession owing to his curious mental constitution, his enmity to all so-called holiness-by-works—leading him to undervalue the Church’s ancient institution of Confession—and the steadily growing influence of his prejudices and polemics, alone explain how he descended so often to the most odious and untrue misrepresentations of Confession as practised by the Papists.

What in the depths of his heart he really desired, and what he openly called for, viz. a Confession which should heal the wounds of the soul and, by an enlightened faith, promote moral betterment—that, alas, he himself had destroyed with a violent hand.

In his letter to Frankfurt quoted above he abuses the Catholic system of Confession because it requires the admission of all mortal sins, and calls it “a great and everlasting martyrdom,” “trumped up as a good work whereby God may be placated.” He calumniates the Catholic past by declaring it did nothing but “count up sins” and that “the insufferable burden, and the impossibility of obeying the Papal law caused such fear and distress to timorous souls that they were driven to despair.” And, in order that the most odious charge may not be wanting, he concludes: “This brought in money and goods, so that it became an idol throughout the whole world, but it was no doctrine, examination or exercise leading to the confession and acknowledgment of Christ.”[859] The fables which he bolstered[256] up on certain abuses, of which even the Papal penitentiary was guilty, were only too readily believed by the masses.[860]

Church Music.

In order to enliven the church services Luther greatly favoured congregational singing. Of his important and successful labours in this direction we shall merely say here, that he himself composed canticles instinct with melody and force, which were either set to music by others or sung to olden Catholic tunes, and became hugely popular among Protestants, chiefly because their wording expresses so well the feelings of the assembled congregation. One of Luther’s Hymnbooks, with twenty-four hymns composed by himself, appeared in 1524.[861]

Music, particularly religious music, he loved and cherished, yielding himself entirely to the enjoyment of its inspiring and ennobling influence. As a schoolboy he had earned his bread by singing; at the University he delighted his comrades by his playing on the lute; later he never willingly relinquished music, and took care that the hours of recreation should be gladdened by the singing of various motets.[862] Music, he said, dispelled sad thoughts and was a marvellous cure for melancholy. In his Table-Talk he describes the moral influence of music in language truly striking.[863] “My heart overflows and expands to music; it has so often refreshed and delivered me amidst the worst troubles,” thus to the musician Senfl at Munich when asking him to compose a motet.[864] He supplied an Introduction in the shape of a poem entitled “Dame Music” to Johann Walther’s “The Praise and Prize of the lovely art of Music” (1538). It commences:[865] There can be no ill-will here—Where all sing with voices clear—Hate or envy, wrath or rage,—When sweet strains our minds engage. Being himself conversant with musical composition, he took pleasure in Walther’s[257] description of counterpoint and in his ingenious comparison of the sequence of melodies to a troop of boys at play.

Grauert admirably groups together “Luther’s poetic talent, the gift of language, which enabled him so to master German, his work for German hymnology, his enthusiastic love of music, of which he well knew the importance as a moral factor, and his familiarity with the higher forms of polyphonic composition.” He also remarks quite rightly that these favourable traits had been admitted unreservedly by Johannes Janssen.[866]

2. Emotional Character and Intellectual Gifts

The traits mentioned above could hardly be duly appreciated unless we also took into account certain natural qualities in Luther from which his depth of feeling sprang.

A Catholic has recently called him an “emotional man,” and, so far as thereby his great gifts of intellect and will are not called into question, the description may be allowed to stand.[867] Especially is this apparent in his peculiar humour, which cannot fail to charm by its freshness and spontaneity all who know his writings and his Table-Talk, even though his witticisms quite clearly often served to screen his bitter vexation, or to help him to react against depression, and were frequently disfigured by obscenity and malice.[868] It is a more grateful task to observe the deep feeling expressed in his popular treatment of religious topics. Johannes Janssen declares that he finds in him “more than once a depth of religious grasp which reminds one of the days of German mysticism,”[869] while George Evers, in a work otherwise hostile to Luther, admits: “We must acknowledge that a truly Christian credulity peeps out everywhere, and, particularly in the Table-Talk, is so simple and childlike as to appeal to every heart.” Evers even adds: “His religious life as pictured there gives the impression of a man of prayer.”[870]

[258]

The circumstantial and reliable account given by Johann Cochlæus of an interview which he had with Luther at Worms in 1521 gives us a certain glimpse into the latter’s feelings at that critical juncture. After holding a lengthy disputation together, the pair withdrew into another room where Cochlæus implored his opponent to admit his errors and to make an end of the scandal he was giving to souls. Both were so much moved that the tears came to their eyes. “I call God to witness,” writes Cochlæus, “that I spoke to him faithfully and with absolute conviction.” He pointed out to him as a friend how willing the Pope and all his opponents were to forgive him; he was perfectly ready to admit and condemn the abuses in connection with the indulgences against which Luther had protested; his religious apostasy and the revolt of the peasants whom he was leading astray were, however, a different matter. The matter was frankly discussed between the two, partly in German, partly in Latin. Luther finally mastered the storm obviously raging within and brought the conversation to an end by stating that it did not rest with him to undo what had been done, and that greater and more learned men than he were behind it. On bidding him farewell, Cochlæus assured him with honest regret that he would continue the literary feud; Luther, for his part, promised to answer him vigorously.[871]

Luther’s mental endowments were great and unique.

Nature had bestowed on him such mental gifts as must astonish all, the more they study his personality. His extraordinary success was due in great part to these rare qualities, which were certainly calculated to make of him a man truly illustrious had he not abused them. His lively reason, quick grasp and ready tongue, his mind, so well stocked with ideas, and, particularly, the inexhaustible fertility of his imagination, allowing him to express himself with such ease and originality, enchanted all who came into contact with him.

To his temperamental and intellectual qualities, which undoubtedly stamped his works with the impress of a “giant,” we must add his obstinate strength of will and his extraordinary tenacity of purpose.

[260]

Were it possible to separate his will from his aims and means, and to appreciate it apart, then one could scarcely rate it high enough. Thousands, even of the bravest, would have quailed before the difficulties he had to face both without and within his camp. The secret of his success lay simply in his ability to rise superior to every difficulty, thanks to his defiance and power of will. Humanly it is hard to understand how all attacks and defeats only served to embolden him. Protestants have spoken of the “demoniacal greatness” manifest in Luther, have called him a man of “huge proportions and power” in whose “breast two worlds wrestled,” and, on account of his “heroic character,” have even claimed that history should overlook “the vices proper to heroes.”[878]

Among Catholic writers the earlier Döllinger, for all his aversion for Luther’s purpose and the weapons he employed, nevertheless says of him: “If such a one is justly to be styled a great man, who, thanks to his mighty gifts and powers, accomplishes great things and brings millions of minds under his sway—then the son of the peasant of Möhra must be reckoned among the great, yea, among the greatest of men.”[879] Upon the disputed definition of “greatness” we cannot enter here. (See vol. vi., xl., 1.) Yet, in view of the intellectual gifts lavished on Luther, Döllinger’s words are undoubtedly not far away from the mark, particularly when we consider his gigantic capacity for work and the amazing extent of his literary labours, distracted though he was by other cares.

We have already had occasion to give the long list of the works he penned in 1529 and 1530,[880] and we may add some further examples. In 1521, in which year he lost over five weeks in travelling, not to speak of the correspondence and other business which claimed his attention in that exciting period of his life, he still found time to write more than twenty works of varying length which in the Weimar edition cover 985 large octavo pages; he also translated a book by Melanchthon into German, commenced his translation of the Bible and his church Postils. In 1523 he produced no less than twenty-four books and pamphlets, and,[261] besides this, his lectures on Deuteronomy (247 pages in the Weimar edition) and a German translation of the whole Pentateuch. He also preached about 150 sermons, planned other works and wrote the usual flood of letters, of which only a few, viz. 112, have been preserved, amongst them being some practically treatises in themselves and which duly appeared in print. Even in 1545, when already quite broken down in health and when two months were spent in travelling, he managed with a last effort, inspired by his deadly hate, to compose even so considerable a book as his “Wider das Bapstum zu Rom vom Teuffel gestifft,” as well as other smaller writings and the usual number of private letters, circulars, and memoranda.[881] At the very end he told his friend, the preacher Jacob Probst, that he meant to work without intermission though old and weary, with a failing eyesight and a body racked with pain.

These labours, of which the simple enumeration of his books gives us an inkling, even the most fertile mind could have performed only by utilising every moment of his time and by renouncing all the allurements to distraction and repose. The early hours of the morning found Luther regularly in his study, and, in the evening, after his conversation with his friends, he was wont to betake himself early to bed so as to be able to enjoy that good sleep, without which, he declared, he could not meet the demands made upon him.

That, however, behind all his fiery zeal for work, certain moral influences not of the highest also had a share is obvious from what has been said previously.

3. Intercourse with Friends. The Interior of the former Augustinian Monastery

Hitherto we have been considering the favourable traits in Luther’s character as a public man; turning to his quieter life at Wittenberg, we shall find no lack of similar evidences.[882] We must begin by asking impartially whether[262] the notorious Table-Talk does not reveal a better side of his character.

The question must be answered in the affirmative by every unprejudiced reader of those notes. Luther’s gifts of mind and temperament, his versatility, liveliness of imagination, easy use of Scripture and insight even into worldly matters; further his rare talent of simple narration, and not seldom the very subjects he chooses give a real worth to Luther’s Table-Talk, notwithstanding all that may be urged against it. It is accordingly the historian’s duty faithfully to portray its better side.

The more favourable side of the Table-Talk.

Any comprehensive judgment on the Table-Talk as a whole is out of the question; with its changing forms and colours and its treatment of the subjects it is altogether too[263] kaleidoscopic. Again, in conjunction with what is good and attractive, frivolous, nay, even offensive and objectionable subjects are dealt with, for which the reader is in no wise prepared.[883]

It is necessary to emphasise the fact—which may be new to some—that to regard the Table-Talk as a hotch-potch of foul sayings is to do it an injustice. Catholics, as a matter of course, are used to finding in anti-Lutheran polemics plentiful quotations from it not at all to Luther’s credit; of its better contents, a knowledge of which is of even greater importance in forming an opinion of his character, no hint is contained in this sort of literature. Some are even ignorant that Protestant writers have more than compensated for this undue stress on the unfavourable side of the Table-Talk by the attractive selection they give from its finer parts.

In point of fact the subject of Luther’s conversations is, not infrequently, the attributes of God; for instance, His mercy and love; the duties of the faithful towards God and their moral obligations in whatever state of life they be placed; hints to the clergy on the best way to preach or to instruct the young; not to speak of other observations regarding neighbourly charity, the vices of the age and the virtues or faults of great personages of that day, or of the past. Luther was fond of discoursing on subjects which, in his opinion, would prove profitable to those present, though often his object was merely to enliven and amuse the company.

The tone and the choice of his more serious discourses frequently show us that he was not unmindful of the fact, that his words would be heard by others beyond the narrow circle of his private guests; he was aware that what he said was noted down, and not unfrequently requested the reporters to commit this or that to writing, knowing very well that such notes would circulate.[884] At times, however, he seemed to become forgetful of this, and allowed observations to escape him which caused many of his oldest admirers to regret the publication of the Table-Talk. A large number of statements made by him on the spur of the moment must, moreover, not be taken too seriously, for they are either[264] in contradiction with other utterances or are practically explained away elsewhere.

In these pages of the Table-Talk unseemly speeches or expressions such as call for censure elsewhere do not occur, though the Pope and the Papacy are repeatedly made the butt of misrepresentation and abuse (610, 616, 619); as was only to be expected, we find here again Luther’s favourite assertion that the Roman doctrine of works is a gross error very harmful to souls (623); in support of his opinion Luther gives a long string of Bible texts.

Apart from the abuse just referred to and some other details these few leaves, taken at haphazard from the Table-Talk, are certainly not discreditable to Luther. Beside these might moreover be placed, as we have already admitted elsewhere, many other pages the contents of which are equally unexceptionable.

It is naturally not the task or duty of Catholic controversialists to fill their works with statements from the Table-Talk such as the above; they would nevertheless do well always to bear in mind that many such favourable utterances occur in Luther’s works with which moreover the Protestants are as a rule perfectly familiar. The latter, indeed, who often are acquainted only with these better excerpts from Luther’s books, sermons, letters or Table-Talk, are not unnaturally disposed to view with suspicion those writers who bestow undue prominence on unfavourable portions of his works, torn from their context.

[268]

Unless Catholic polemics contrive to look at things from their opponents’ point of view, their success must always be limited; short of this they run the risk of being accused of being ignorant of what tells in Luther’s favour, or of not giving it due weight. All controversy should in reality be conducted in a friendly spirit, and, in the discussion of Luther, such a spirit joined with a broad-minded appreciation of what is good in the opposite party cannot fail to be productive of happy results. How far Protestants have acted in this spirit is, alas, plain to all who have had dealings with them. There can be no question but that certain excesses perpetrated on the opposite side go far to explain, if not to excuse, the methods adopted by some of the champions of Catholicism.

Kindlier Traits Evinced by Luther.

The great veneration felt for Luther by most of his pupils, particularly by those who were intimate with him, enables us to see the impression his talents made on others. It is, of course, probable that their mental submission to him was in part due to the feeling, that it was an exceptional honour to be accounted friends of a man famous throughout the world and so distinguished by his extraordinary success; yet it is equally certain that it was his own peculiar charm which caused not merely young students, such as those who noted down the Table-Talk, but even mature and experienced men, to look up to him with respect and affection and voluntarily to subject themselves to his mind and his will. The fact is, in Luther a powerful and domineering talent existed side by side with great familiarity in consorting with others and a natural gift of making himself loved. The unshakable confidence in God on which he and his followers seemed to lean in every reverse they met, perhaps impressed people more than anything else.

Luther was often to prove that the strong impression made by his personality was alone able to gain the day in[270] cases of difficulty, to break down opposition and to ensure the successful carrying out of hardy plans. Seldom indeed did those about him offer any objection, for he possessed that gift, so frequently observed in men of strong character, of exercising, in every matter great or small, a kind of suggestive influence over those who approached him. He possessed an inner, unseen power which seemed to triumph over all, ... even over the claims of truthfulness and logic;[900] besides this, he was gifted with an imposing presence and an uncanny glance. He was by no means curt in his answers, but spoke freely to everyone in a manner calculated to awaken the confidence and unlock the hearts of his hearers. Of his talkativeness he himself once said: “I don’t believe the Emperor [Charles V.] says so much in a year as I do in a day.”[901]

His “disinterestedness which led him to care but little about money and worldly goods”[902] increased the respect felt for him and his work. So little did he care about heaping up riches, that, when scolding the Wittenbergers on account of their avarice, he could say that “though poor, he found more pleasure in what was given him for his needs than the rich and opulent amongst them did in their own possessions.”[903] So entirely was he absorbed in his public controversy that he paid too little attention to his own requirements, particularly in his bachelor days; he even relates how, before he took a wife, he had for a whole year not made his bed, or had it made for him, so that his sweat caused it to rot. “I was so weary, overworked all the day, that I threw myself on the bed and knew nothing about it.”[904] He was never used to excessive comfort or to indulgence in the finer pleasures of the table. In every respect, in conversation and intercourse with others and in domestic life, he was a lover of simplicity. In this he was ever anxious to set a good example to his fellow-workers.

Although he frequently accepted with gratitude presents[271] from the great, yet on occasion he was not above cautioning givers of the danger such gifts involved, when the “eyes of the whole world are upon us.”[905] In 1542, when there was a prospect of his receiving from his friend Amsdorf, the new “bishop” of Naumburg, presents out of the estates of the bishopric, he twice wrote to him to refrain from sending him anything, even a single hare, because “our courtly centaurs [the selfish and rapacious nobles] must be given no pretext for venting their glowing hate against us on the trumped-up charge that we were desirous of securing gain through you.” “They have gulped down everything without compunction, but still would blame us were we to accept a paltry gift of game. Let them feed in God’s or another’s [the devil’s] name, so long as we are not accused of greed.”[906] Döllinger speaks of Luther as “a sympathetic friend, devoid of avarice and greed of money, and a willing helper of others.”[907]

He was always ready to assist the poor with open-handed and kindly liberality, and his friends especially, when in trouble or distress, could reckon on his charity.

When his own means were insufficient he sought by word of mouth or by letter to enlist the sympathy of others, of friends in the town, or even of the Elector himself, in the cause of the indigent. On more than one occasion his good nature was unfairly taken advantage of. This, however, did not prevent his pleading for the poor who flocked to Wittenberg from all quarters and were wont to address themselves to him. Thus, for instance, in 1539 we have a note in which he appealed to certain “dear gentlemen” to save a “pious and scholarly youth” from the “pangs of hunger” by furnishing him with 30 Gulden; he himself was no longer able to afford the gifts he had daily to bestow, though he would be willing, in case of necessity, to contribute half the sum.[908]

Many of the feeble and oppressed experienced his help in the law. He reminds the lawyers how hard it is for the poor to comply with the legal formalities necessary for their protection. On one occasion, when it was a question of the defence of a poor woman, he says: “You know Dr. Martin is not only a theologian and the champion of the[272] faith, but also an advocate of the poor, who troop to him from every place and corner and demand his aid and his intercession with the authorities, so that he would have enough to do even if no other burden rested on his shoulders. But Dr. Martin loves to serve the poor.”[909]

In 1527, when the plague reached Wittenberg, he stayed on in the town with Bugenhagen in order at least to comfort the people by his presence. The University was transferred for the time being to Jena (and then to Schlieben) and the Elector accordingly urged him to migrate to Jena with his wife and family. Luther however insisted on remaining, above all on account of the urgent need of setting an example to his preachers, who were too much preoccupied with the safety of their own families. It was then that he wrote the tract “Ob man fur dem Sterben fliehen muge” (Whether one may flee from death), answering the question in the negative so far as the ministers were concerned. In such dire trouble the flock were more than ever in need of spiritual help; the preachers were to exhort the people to learn diligently from the Word of God how to live and how to die, also, by Confession, reception of the Supper, reconciliation with their neighbours, etc., to “prepare themselves in advance should the Lord knock speedily.”[910] He displayed the same courage during the epidemic of the so-called “English sweat,” a fever which, in 1529, broke out at Wittenberg, and in other German towns, and carried off many victims. Again in 1538 and in 1539 he braved new outbreaks of the plague at Wittenberg. His wish was, that, in such cases, one or two preachers should be specially appointed to look after those stricken with the malady. “Should the lot fall on me,” he says in 1542, “I should not be afraid. I have now been through three pestilences and mixed with some who suffered from it ... and am none the worse.”[911] “God usually protects the ministers of His[273] Word,” he writes in 1538, “if one does not run in and out of the inns and lie in the beds; confessions there is no need to hear, for we bring the Word of Life.”[912] The fact that he could boast of having braved the plague and remained at his post naturally tended to increase his influence with his congregation.[913]

He had passed through a severe mental struggle previous to the epidemic of 1529. Only by dint of despairing efforts was he able to overcome his terrors of conscience concerning his doctrine and his own personal salvation. This inner combat so hardened him that he was fearless where others were terrified and fled. Of his own qualms of conscience he wrote to a friend in April, 1529: If it be an apostolic gift to fight with devils and to lie frequently at the point of death, then he was indeed in this a very Peter or Paul, however much he might lack the other apostolic characters.[914] Here we have the idea of his Divine calling, always most to the front in times of danger, which both strengthens him and enables him to inspire others with a little of his own confidence. “I and Bugenhagen alone remain here,” he wrote during the days of the plague, “but we are not alone, for Christ is with us and will triumph in us and shelter us from Satan, as we hope and trust.”[915]

We already are acquainted with some of his admissions of his own weakness and acknowledgments of the greater gifts and achievements of others—confessions which have been extolled as a proof of his real humility.

His statements belittling his own powers and achievements, coming from a man whose apparently overmastering self-confidence had, from the beginning, prepossessed so many of his followers in his favour, afford a subject for psychological study. He seems the more ready to give full play to his confidence the more he feels his weakness face to face with the menace of danger, and the more he experiences in the depths of his soul the raging of doubts which he attributes to the devil.

In the humble admissions he makes he never conceals how much he stands in need of assistance. He does not hide from himself the fact that he dreads outward troubles, and is deficient in strong and exalted virtue. But side by side with his faults, he is fond of gazing on and extolling God’s gifts in his person. His peculiar form of humility, his prayer and his trust in God find expression in certain utterances and experiences, on which no judgment can be passed until we have before us a larger selection of them, particularly of such as seem to be less premeditated.

Prayer and Confidence in God.

Luther’s strangely undaunted confidence and the personal nature of his reliance on God’s help form part of his mental physiognomy.

[275]

Luther often had recourse to prayer, especially when he found himself in difficulty, or in an awkward situation from which he could see no escape; in his letters he also as a rule asks for prayers for himself and for the common cause of the new Evangel. It is impossible to take such requests as a mere formality; his way of making them is usually so full of feeling that they must have been meant in earnest.

In 1534 he wrote a special instruction for the simple and[276] unlearned on the way to pray.[920] Many parts of this booklet recall the teaching of the great masters of prayer, though unfortunately it is imbued with his peculiar tenets.

Anyone who has followed Luther’s development and understands his character will know where to find the key to these remarkable, and at first sight puzzling, declarations of trust in God and zeal in prayer.

When once the herald of the new religion had contrived to persuade himself of his Divine call, such blindly confident prayer and trust in God no longer involve anything wonderful. His utterances, undoubtedly, have a good side, for instance, his frank admission of his weakness, of his want of virtue and of the parlous condition of his cause, should God forsake it. All his difficulties he casts into the lap of the Almighty and of Christ, in the true Divine sonship of whom he declares he believes firmly. It must, however, strike anyone who examines his prayers that he never once expresses the idea which should accompany all true prayer, viz. resignation into the hands of God and entire willingness to follow Him, to go forward, or turn back whithersoever God wills; never do we find him imploring light so as to know whether the course he is pursuing and the work he has undertaken is indeed right and pleasing to God. On the contrary, in his prayers, in his thoughts and amidst all his inner conflicts, he resolutely sets aside as out of the question any idea of changing the religious attitude he has once assumed.[928] All his striving is directed towards this one end, viz. that God will vouchsafe to further his cause and grant him victory. He, as it were, foists his cause on Heaven.[278] Hence there is lacking a property imperatively demanded by prayer, viz. that holy indifference and readiness to serve God in the way pleasing to Him to which the Psalmist alludes when he says: “Teach me to do Thy Will, O Lord.”

The dominating idea which both animates his confidence and gives it its peculiar stamp, also furnishes him with a sword against the Papacy, with which he lays about him all the more vigorously the more fervently he prays. In praying he blows into a flame his hatred of all who stand up for the ancient Church; in his prayers he seems to find all the monstrous accusations he intends to hurl against her. Yet he himself elsewhere reminds his hearers, that, as a preparation for prayer, they must put away all bad feeling, since our Lord warns the man who is at variance with his brother first to be reconciled to him before coming with his offering. Luther also impresses on the monks and clergy that they must not pray for what is displeasing to God ... for instance, for strength to fulfil their obligation of celibacy or their vows.—Might they not justly have retorted that he, too, should not insist so blindly that God should establish his work? And might not the fanatics and Anabaptists have urged a tu quoque against him when he accused them of spiritual pride and blind presumption because of their fervent prayers?

We shall not go out of our way to repeat again what we have already said of his pseudo-mysticism. But in order to understand rightly Luther’s prayers and trustfulness, so frequently reminiscent of the best men of the Catholic past, it is necessary to bear in mind his peculiar mystic leanings.

Other Personal Traits. His Family Life.

Luther was able to combine in a remarkable manner his pseudo-mysticism with practical and sober common sense.

Where it is not a question of his Divine mission, of the rights of the new Evangel or of politics—of which by nature he was unfitted to judge—we usually find him eminently practical in his views. His intercourse with others was characterised by simplicity and directness, and the tone of his conversation was both vigorous and original. It was most fortunate for him that his practical insight into things so soon enabled him to detect the exaggeration and peril of[279] the movement set on foot by the fanatics. Had he been as incautious as they, the State authorities would soon have crushed his plans. This he clearly perceived from the very outset of the movement. Something similar, though on a smaller scale, happened later in the case of the Antinomians. Luther was opposed to such extravagance, and, when friendly admonition proved of no avail, was perfectly ready to resort to force. Whether, from his own standpoint, he was in a position to set matters straight in the case of either of the two movements is another question; the truth is that his standpoint had suspiciously much in common with both. At any rate his encounter with the fanatics taught him to lay much less stress than formerly on the “Spirit,” and to insist more on the outward Word and the preaching of the “Evangel.”

It must also be noted, that, though accustomed to go forward bravely and beat down all difficulties by main strength, yet in many instances he was quite open to accommodate himself to circumstances, and to yield in the interests of his cause, displaying likewise considerable ingenuity in the choice of the means to be employed. We have already had occasion more than once to see that he was by no means deficient in the wisdom of the serpent. He knew how to give favourably disposed Princes astute advice, particularly as to how they might best encourage and promote the new Church system. To settle their quarrels and to restore concord among them he had recourse sometimes to fiery and even gross language, sometimes to more diplomatic measures. When the Elector and the Duke of Saxony became estranged by the Wurzen quarrel Luther frankly advised the former to give way, and jestingly added that sometimes there might be good reason to “light a couple of tapers at the devil’s altar.”

He did not, however, possess any talent as an organiser and was, generally speaking, a very imperfect judge of the social conditions of his time. (See vol. vi., xxxv.)

Heinrich Böhmer remarks justly: “Luther was no organiser. Not that he was devoid of interest in or comprehension for the practical needs of life. He was neither a secluded scholar nor a stiff-necked pedant.... His practical vein, though strong enough to enable him readily to detect the weak spot in the proposals and creations of[280] others, was, however, not equal to any independent, creative and efficient action. However bold, energetic and original as a thinker and writer, as an organiser he was clumsy, diffident and poor in ideas. In this domain he is entirely lacking in initiative, decision and, above all, in any theory he could call his own.” “His regulations for public worship are no new creation but, more often than not, merely the old, Catholic ones, reduced and arranged to meet the needs of the evangelical congregation.... Where he is original he not seldom ceases to be practical. For instance, his extraordinary proposal that the Latin service should be retained for the benefit and edification of those familiar with the language, and his regret that it was no longer possible to arrange a service in Greek or Hebrew, can scarcely be characterised as anything but a professor’s whim.”[929]

His domestic life, owing to the simplicity, frugality and industry which reigned there, presents the picture of an unpretentious family home.[930]

With Catherine Bora and the children she bore him, he[281] led—apart from the disturbances arising from his outward controversies and inward combats—a regular life conducive to his labours. His relations with his life’s partner, who was absorbed in the management of the little household, were, so it would appear, never seriously disturbed; he was as devoted to her as she was to him, striving as she did to serve him and to lighten his cares. As to her failings, viz. a certain haughtiness and masterfulness, he winked at them.

Both took their share in the troublesome and unpretentious work of educating and instructing the children. Luther rightly extols such labours as great and meritorious in God’s sight, just as he frequently describes the seemingly lowly callings, which, in the eyes of the world, are of no account, e.g. marriage, as ennobled by God when performed by pious Christians in accordance with His Will and to the benefit of body and soul. (Above, p. 142 f.)

By means of a fairly well-ordered division of the day he found time, in the intervals of the demands made by his domestic duties, to devote long hours to the multifarious and exhausting labours of which we know something. Self-denial in the interests of the cause he had espoused, renunciation of ease and enjoyment so as better to serve an end for which he was impassioned, disregard even of the pressing claims of health—all this is not easily to be matched in any other writer of eminence and talent occupying so historic a position in public life. Luther, plagued as he was by extraneous difficulties, with his professorship, his pulpit and his care for souls, seemed to revolve the wheel of time. Without unheard-of energy and a fiery, overmastering[283] enthusiasm for the cause his achievements would indeed be incomprehensible.

The Catholic, however, when contemplating these traits so far as they redound to Luther’s credit must deeply regret, that such energy was not employed in a well-ordered amelioration of the ecclesiastical system on the basis of the true Christian doctrine and in harmony with the authority divinely appointed. If he considers these favourable sides of Luther’s character with befitting broad-mindedness, his grief can only deepen at the action, characterised by such perversity and contradiction, by which Luther sought utterly to destroy the existing Church and her faith as revealed and handed down.

CHAPTER XXVI

LUTHER’S MODE OF CONTROVERSY A COUNTERPART OF HIS SOUL

1. Luther’s Anger. His Attitude towards the Jews, the Lawyers and the Princes

What above all strikes one in Luther’s mode of controversy is his utter unrestraint in his scolding and abuse. Particularly remarkable, especially in his later years, is the language which he has in readiness for two groups of foes, viz. for Jews and Lawyers; then, again, we have the invective which, throughout his career, he was fond of hurling at such Princes and scholars as did not submit to his teaching.

As, in what follows, and in studying the psychology of his anti-Papal abuse, we shall have again occasion to encounter unpleasant passages, we may well make our own the words of Sir Thomas More in his “Responsio ad convitia Lutheri,” where he trounces Luther for his handling of Henry VIII.: “The gentle reader must forgive me if much that occurs offends his feelings. Nothing has been more painful to me than to be compelled to pour such things into decent ears. The only other alternative would, however, have been to leave the unclean book untouched.”[936]

The Jews.

In his earlier days Luther had been more friendly towards the Jews, and had even cherished the childish hope that many of them would embrace the new Evangel and help him in his warfare against the Papal Antichrist. When this failed to come about Luther became more and more angered with their blasphemy against Christ, their art of seducing the faithful and their cunning literary attacks on Christian doctrine. He was also greatly vexed because his Elector, in spite of having, in 1536, ordered all Jews to leave the country,[285] nevertheless, in 1538, granted them a conditional permit to travel through it; he was still more exasperated with Ferdinand the German King who had curtailed the disabilities of the Jews. Luther’s opinion was that the only thing to do was to break their pride; he now relinquished all hope of convincing any large number of them of the truth of Christianity; even the biblical statements, according to which the Jews were to be converted before the end of the world, appeared to him to have been shorn of their value.[937]

Hence Luther was, above all, desirous of proving to the faithful that the objections brought forward by the Jews against Christian doctrine and their interpretation of the Old Testament so as to exclude the Christian Messias were all wrong. This he did in three writings which followed each other at short intervals: “Von den Jüden und jren Lügen,” “Vom Schem Hamphoras,” both dating from 1542, and “Von den letzten Worten Davids” (1543). Owing to his indignation these writings are no mere works of instruction, but in parts are crammed with libel and scurrilous abuse.[938]

Such passages as the above are frequently to be met with in Luther’s writings against the Jews. In them his object plainly was to confute the misinterpretation of the Bible and the scoffing objections to which Jewish scholars were given. Yet so utterly ungovernable was the author’s passion that it spoiled the execution of his noble task. He scarcely knew how to conduct a controversy without introducing sows, devils and such like.

Was it really to Luther’s credit that the sty should loom so large in his struggle with his foes?

The devil, however, plays the chief part. Luther’s considered judgment on the Zwinglians, for instance, is, that they are “soul-cannibals and soul-assassins,” are “endeviled, devilish, yea, ultra-devilish and possessed of blasphemous hearts and lying lips.”[961]

The Lawyers.

Luther’s aversion for the “Jurists” grew yearly more intense. His chief complaint against them was that they kept to the Canon Law and put hindrances in his way. Their standpoint, however, as regards Canon Law was not without justification. “Any downright abrogation of Canon Law as a whole was out of the question. The law as then practised, not only in the ecclesiastical but even in the secular courts, was too much bound up with Canon Law; when it was discarded, for instance, in the matrimonial cases, dire legal complications threatened throughout the whole of the German Empire.”[962] To this Luther’s eyes were not sufficiently open.

[289]

His crusade against the validity of clandestine engagements which he entered upon in opposition to his friend and co-religionist, Hieronymus Schurf, his colleague in the faculty of jurisprudence at the University of Wittenberg, was merely one episode in his resistance to those who represented legalism as then established.

In another and wider sphere his relations with those lawyers, who were the advisers at the Court of his Elector and the other Princes, became more strained. This was as a result of their having a hand in the ordering of Church business. Here again his action was scarcely logical, for he himself, forced by circumstances, had handed over to the State the outward guidance of the Church; that the statesmen would intervene and settle matters according to their own ideas was but natural; and if their way of looking at things failed to agree with Luther’s, this was only what might have been foreseen all along.

The Princes.

With what scant respect Luther could treat the Princes is shown in his work “Von welltlicher Uberkeytt, wie weyt man yhr Gehorsam schuldig sey” (1523).[967]

Here he is not attacking individual Princes as was the case, for instance, in his writings against King Henry of England, Duke George of Saxony and Duke Henry of Brunswick, hence there was here no occasion for the abuse with which these polemical tracts are so brimful. Here Luther is dealing theologically with the relations which should obtain between Princes and subjects and, according to the title and the dedicatory note to Johann of Saxony, professes to discuss calmly and judicially the respective duties of both. Yet, carried away by vexation, because the Princes and the nobles had not complied with his request in his “An den christlichen Adel” that they should rise in a body against Rome, and reform the Church as he desired, he bitterly assails them as a class.

A Protestant writer, in extenuation of such dangerous language against the rulers, recently remarked: “It never entered Luther’s head that such words might bring the Princes into contempt and thus, indirectly, promote rebellion.... If we are to draw a just conclusion from his blindness to the obvious psychological consequences of his words, it can only be, that Luther was no politician.”[973]

It may, indeed, be that he did not then sufficiently weigh the consequences. Nevertheless, in his scurrilous writings against individual Princes he was perfectly ready to brave every possible outcome of his vituperation. “What Luther wrote against the German Princes,” justly remarks Döllinger, “against Albert, Elector of Mayence, against the Duke of Brunswick and Duke George of Saxony, puts into the shade all the libels and screeds of the more recent European literature.”[974]

One of the chief targets for his shafts was the Archbishop of Mayence.

[292]

An incident of his controversy with the Duke of Brunswick may serve to complete the picture. In 1540, during the hot summer, numerous fires broke out in North and Central Germany, causing widespread alarm; certain alleged incendiaries who were apprehended were reported to have confessed under torture that this was the doing of Duke Henry of Brunswick and the Pope. Before even investigations had commenced Luther had already jumped to the conclusion that the real author was his enemy, the Catholic Duke, backed up by the Pope and the monks; for had not the Duke (according to Luther) explained to the burghers of Goslar that he recognised no duties with regard to heretics?[979] The Franciscans had been expelled and were now in disguise everywhere “plotting vengeance”; they it was who had done it all with the assistance of the Duke of Brunswick and the Elector of Mayence, who, of course, remained behind the scenes.[980] “If this be proved, then there is nothing left for us but to take up arms against the monks and priests; and I too shall go, for miscreants must be slain like mad dogs.”[981] Hieronymus Schurf, as the cautious lawyer he was, expressed himself in Luther’s presence against the misuse of torture in the case of those accused and against their being condemned too hastily. Luther interrupted him: “This is no time for mercy but for rage!” According to St. Augustine many must suffer in order that many may be at peace; so is it also in the law courts, “now and again some must suffer injustice, so long as it is not done knowingly and intentionally by the judge. In troublous times excessive severity[294] must be overlooked.”[982] He became little by little so convinced of the guilt of Henry the “incendiary” and his Papists, that, in October, 1540, he refers half-jestingly to the reputation he was acquiring as “prophet and apostle” by so correctly discerning in the Papists a mere band of criminals.[983] He also informed other Courts of the supposed truth of his surmise, viz. that “Harry of Brunswick has now been convicted as an arch-incendiary-assassin and the greatest scoundrel on whom the sun has ever shone. May God give the bloodhound and werewolf his reward. Amen.” Thus to Duke Albert of Prussia on April 20, 1541.[984]

Considerably before this, in a letter to the same princely patron, he expressly implicates in these absurd charges the Pope, the chief object of his hate: After telling Albert of the report, that the Duke of Brunswick “had sent out many hundred incendiaries against the Evangelical Estates” of whom more than 300 had been “brought to justice,” many of them making confessions implicating the Duke, the Bishop of Mayence and others, Luther goes on to say that the business must necessarily have been set on foot “by great people, for there is plenty of money.”

“The Pope is said to have given 80,000 ducats towards it. This is the sort of thing we are compelled to hear and endure; but God will repay them abundantly ... in hell, in the fire beneath our feet.”[985]

“The Doctor said,” we read in the Table-Talk, taken down by Mathesius in September (2-17), 1540: “The greatest wonder of our day is that the majesty of the Pope—who was a terror to all monarchs and against whom they dared not move a muscle, seeing that a glance from him or a movement of his finger sufficed to keep them all in a state of fear and obedience—that this god should have collapsed so utterly that even his defenders loathe him. Those who still take his part, without exception do this simply for money’s sake and their own advantage, otherwise they would treat him even worse than we do. His malice has now been thoroughly exposed, since it is certain that he sent eighteen[295] thousand crowns for the hiring of incendiaries.”[986] The perfect seriousness with which he relates this in the circle of his friends furnishes an enigma.

His consciousness of all that he had accomplished against the Pope, combined with his hatred of Catholicism, seems often to cloud his mind.

2. Luther’s Excuse: “We MUST Curse the Pope and His Kingdom”[987]

In Luther’s polemics against the Pope and the Papists it is psychologically of importance to bear in mind the depth of the passion which underlies his furious and incessant abuse.

The further we see into Luther’s soul, thanks especially to his familiar utterances recorded in the Table-Talk, the more plainly does this overwhelming enmity stand revealed. In what he said privately to his friends we find his unvarnished thought and real feelings. Far from being in any sense artificial, the intense annoyance which rings throughout his abuse seems to rise spontaneously from the very bottom of his soul. That he should have pictured to himself the Papacy as a dragon may be termed a piece of folly, nevertheless it was thus that it ever hovered before his mind, by day and by night, whether in the cheery circle of his friends or in his solitary study, in the midst of ecclesiastical or ecclesiastico-political business, when engaged in quiet correspondence with admirers and even when he sought in prayer help and comfort in his troubles.

[300]

What we have quoted from Luther’s familiar talks and from his disputations affords overwhelming proof, were such wanting, that the frenzied outbursts against the Pope we find even in his public writings, were, not merely assumed, but really sprang from the depths of his soul. It is true that at times they were regarded as rhetorical effusions or even as little more than jokes, but as a matter of fact they bear the clearest stamp of his glowing hate. They indicate a persistent and eminently suspicious frame of mind, which deserves to be considered seriously as a psychological, if not pathological, condition; what we must ask ourselves is, how far the mere hint of Popery sufficed to call forth in him a delirium of abuse.

In his tract of 1531 against Duke George he boasted, that people would in future say, that “his mouth was full of angry words, vituperation and curses on the Papists”; that “he intended to go down to his grave cursing and abusing the miscreants”;[1034] that as long as breath remained in him he would “pursue them to their grave with his thunders and lightnings”;[1035] again, he says he will take refuge in his maledictory prayer against the Papists in order to “kindle righteous hatred in his heart,” and even expounds and recommends this prayer in mockery to his opponent[1036]—in all this we detect an abnormal feature which characterises his life and temper. This abnormity is apparent not only in the intense seriousness with which he utters the most outrageous things, more befitting a madman than a reasonable being, but also at times in the very satires to which he has recourse. That the Papacy would have still more to suffer from him after he was dead, is a prophecy on which he is ever harping: “When I die,” he remarks, “I shall turn into a spirit that will so plague the bishops, parsons and godless monks, that one dead Luther will give them more trouble than a thousand living Luthers.”[1037]

No theological simile is too strange for him in this morbid state of mind and feeling. As in the case of those obsessed by a fixed idea the delusion is ever obtruding itself under every possible shape, so, in a similar way, every thought, all[301] his studies, his practice, learning, theology and exegesis, even when its bearing seems most remote, leads up to this central and all-dominating conviction: “I believe that the Pope is a devil incarnate in disguise, for he is Endchrist. For as Christ is true God and true man, so also is Antichrist a devil incarnate.”[1038] And yet, in the past, so he adds with a deep sigh, “we worshipped all his lies and idolatry.”

The strength of Luther’s delusion that the Pope was Antichrist and shared the diabolical nature furnishes the chief explanation of the hopelessly bitter way in which he deals with all those who ventured to defend the Papacy. On all such he heaps abuse and assails them with that worst of the weapons at his command, viz. with calumny, calling into question their good faith and denying to them the character of Christians.

In a more serious and tragic tone he points out, how many of his foes and opponents had been carried off suddenly by a Divine judgment. He even drafted a long list of such instances, supplied with hateful glosses of his[304] own, which he alleged as a proof of the “visible action of God” in support of his cause.[1052] Johann Koss, the “preacher of blasphemy,” mentioned above, was given a place in this libellous catalogue after he had been seized with a stroke of apoplexy in the pulpit (Dec. 29, 1532). At the instance of Duke George he had been appointed assistant preacher under Hieronymus Dungersheim, that, by means of his elocutionary talent, he might defend the town of Leipzig against the inroads of the new teaching. What particularly incensed Luther was the use this preacher made of his Postils to refute him by his own words. The stroke came on him while he was vindicating the Catholic doctrine of good works. This circumstance, taken in conjunction with the “place, time and individual,” was for Luther an irrefutable proof of the intervention of “God’s anger.” “Christ,” he says, “struck down His enemy, the Leipzig shouter, in the very midst of his blasphemy.”[1053] The zealous preacher died about a month later.

“None are more pitiable,” Luther says elsewhere of this incident, “than the presumptuous, such as are all the Papists.”[1054] It was impossible for him to inveigh with sufficient severity against the presumption which threatened him on all sides, despite the excessive kindliness and moderation with which he occasionally credits himself; for were not those who confronted him “the devil and his hirelings”? He was forced to combat the frightful presumption of these men who acted as though they were “steeped in holiness”; for in reality they are “dirty pig-snouts”; as Papists they are “at the very least, murderers, thieves and persecutors”; hence let all rise up against the “servers of idols.”[1055]

“We must curse the Pope and his kingdom and revile and[305] abuse it, and not close our jaws but preach against it without ceasing. There are some now who say we are capable of nothing else but of damning, scolding and slandering the Pope and his followers.” “Yes, and so it must be.”[1056]

Elsewhere he hints which vilely vulgar terms of opprobrium were to be applied to the Pope, and, after instancing them, adds: “It is thus that we should learn to make use of these words.” The Catholic Princes were also aimed at in this instruction which occurs in one of his sermons. This discourse, pronounced on Jan. 12, 1531, at a time when the intervention of the hostile secular powers was feared, was printed ten years later under the title “Ein trostlich Unterricht wie man sich gegen den Tyrannen, so Christum und sein Wort verfolgen halten soll.”[1057]

“Our mad and raving Princes,” he says, “are now raging and blustering and planning to root out this teaching. Whoever is desirous of devoting himself to Christ must daily be ready to suffer any peril to life and limb.” Amongst the grounds for encouragement he adduces is the fact that even his very foes admitted, “that we preach and teach God’s Word; the only thing amiss being, that it was not done at their bidding, but that we at Wittenberg started it all unknown to them.” He calls the angry Princes “great merd-pots,” who are “kings and rulers of the pig-sty of the earth where the belly, the universal cesspool, reigns supreme.” “But we will be of good cheer and put our fingers to our noses at them”; because we hold fast to Christ therefore we suffer persecution from the world. “Who is the Pope, that he should be angry?... A sickly, smelly scarecrow.” “The Pope says: I will excommunicate you, thrust you down to the abyss of hell. [I tell him] Stick your tongue in my——. I am holy, am baptised, have God’s Word and His Promises to proclaim, but you are a sickly, syphilitic sack of maggots. It is thus that we should learn to make use of these words.”[1058]

[306]

3. The Psychology of Luther’s Abusive Language

Various Psychological Factors.

Psychologically to appreciate the phenomenon in question we must first of all take into account Luther’s temperament.

To every unprejudiced observer it must be clear, that, without the unusual excitability natural to him, many of his utterances would be quite inexplicable; even when we have given due weight to Luther’s ungovernable temper and all too powerful imagination they still present many difficult questions to the observer. Luther himself, as early as 1520, excuses to Spalatin his offensive language on the ground of his natural “hot-bloodedness”; as everybody knew what his temper was, his opponents ought not to annoy him as they did; yet these “monsters” only provoked him the more, and made him “overstep the bounds of modesty and decency.”[1059] It is perfectly true that some of his foes did provoke him by their mode of attack, yet on the other hand his own violence usually put theirs in the shade. (See below, xxvii., 4.)

In addition to his natural impetuosity which furnishes the chief basis of the phenomenon under consideration, several other factors must also be envisaged, depending on the objects or persons arousing his indignation.

It is clear that he was within his rights when he scourged the anti-Christian blasphemy and seductive wiles of the Jews, however much he may have been in the wrong in allowing himself to be carried away by fanaticism so far as to demand their actual persecution. The same holds good of many of the instances of his ungenerous and violent behaviour towards “heretics” in his own fold. As against the many and oftentimes very palpable defects of their position, he knew how to stand up for truth and logic, though his way of doing so was not always happy, nor his strictures untouched by his own theological errors.

Nor can it be denied that he was in the right when he assailed the real, and, alas, all too many abuses of the olden Church. The lively sense that, at least in this respect, he was in the right may quite possibly have fed the inward fire of his animosity to Catholics, all the more owing to his[307] being in the wrong in those new doctrines which were his principal concern. To the assurance, and the offensive manner in which he insisted on a reform, his visit to Rome, a distorted recollection of which ever remained with him, no doubt contributed. His mind was ever reverting to the dismal picture—by no means an altogether imaginary one—of the immorality prevailing in even the highest ecclesiastical circles of Rome.

Rome’s unworthy treatment of the system of indulgences, which had afforded the occasion of his action in 1517, continued to supply new fuel for his indignation; to it he was fond of tracing back his whole undertaking. What increased his anger was the thought that it was this same Rome, whose ignoble practices both in the matter of indulgences and in other fields was notorious, who had called him to judgment. It is painful to the Catholic to have to confess that many of Luther’s complaints were by no means unfounded. He will, however, call to mind the better churchmen of those days, who, though indignant at the sad corruption then prevalent, never dreamt of apostasy, knowing as they did, that even far worse scandals could never justify a revolt against the institution appointed by Christ for the salvation of souls.

Even when voicing his real grievances Luther was seldom either prudent or moderate. He never seems to have quite taken to heart the scriptural injunction: “Let every man be slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man worketh not the justice of God.” He expounds in his Postils the Epistle where the admonition in question occurs,[1060] but it is curious to note how cursorily he dismisses the words, with which, maybe, he felt somewhat out of sympathy, though here, as elsewhere, he refers to the evil consequences of any proneness to anger. On the other hand, he insists, that “our censures and rebukes” must be in accordance with the “right and true Word,” i.e. with theology as he understood it.[1061] He prefers to devote far the greater portion of the exposition to proving his favourite thesis, that, thanks to the Evangel now proclaimed, “we have a good and cheerful conscience, stronger than all fear, sin and temptation, and containing the sure hope of life everlasting”;[1062] “it[308] is a Word that has power to save your souls; what more can you desire?”[1063] He seems averse to inculcating that meekness which the text requires.

One factor which frequently fanned the flames was jealousy, when, for instance, he had to deal with theological opponents who appeared to be making too small account of him. The new Evangel, he said, was endangered by none more than by the “fanatics and sacramentarians”; to defend his personal position against them had cost him the hardest struggle of his whole life; no wonder that against them he opened wide the sluice-gates of his eloquence. He was keenly sensitive to any slight. “Things are going all wrong in the world,” he sighed in 1532. “We are already looked upon with contempt, but let us gather up the fragments when they are cheapest, that is what I advise.”[1064] Of Carlstadt twelve years previous he had written: “If he has no respect for me, which of us then will he respect? And what is the good of admonishing him? I believe he reckons me one of the most learned men in Wittenberg, and yet he actually tells me to my very face that I am nobody.... He writes right and left just as he chooses and looks on poor Wittenberg as quite beneath his notice.”[1065] Luther’s vexation explains his language. A pity one of the Princes did not let him taste cold steel; if Carlstadt believed in a God in heaven, then might Christ never more be gracious to him (Luther); he was no man, but an incarnation of the evil spirit, etc.

Not merely his former friend Carlstadt but others too he accused of inordinate ambition because they wished to discredit his discoveries and his position. “It is the ‘gloria’ that does the mischief,” he said in 1540 in his Table-Talk, “Zwingli was greedy of honour, as we see from what he wrote, viz. that he had learnt nothing from me. I should indeed be sorry had he learnt from me, for he went astray. Œcolampadius thought himself too learned to listen to me or to learn from me; of course, he too, surpassed me. Carlstadt also declares: ‘I care nothing for you,’ and Münzer actually declaimed against two Popes, the new one[309] [myself] and the old.[1066] All who shun us and attack us secretly have departed from the faith, like Jeckel and Grickel [Jakob Schenk and Johann Agricola]; they reached their understanding by their own efforts and learnt nothing from us! Just like Zwingli.” Yet twenty-five years before (i.e. previous to his great discovery in 1515) no one “knew anything,” and, twenty-one years before, he, all alone, under the Divine guidance had put the ball in motion. “Ah, κενοδοξία [vainglory], that’s the mischief.”[1067]

Jealousy played its part also, when, in 1525, he rounded so violently upon Zwingli and the Zwinglians at Strasburg. Zwingli’s crime in his eyes lay not merely in his having, like Œcolampadius, adopted a divergent doctrine on the Eucharist, but in his claim to have been before Luther in preaching the Gospel of Christ openly according to its true meaning.[1068] Both circumstances contributed to Luther’s ire, which, after finding vent in many angry words, culminated at last in the rudest abuse of Zwingli and his “devilish” crew. Already in 1525, he wrote in the instruction for the people of Strasburg which he gave to Gregory Casel, who had come to Wittenberg to negotiate:[1069] “One of the parties must be the tool of Satan, i.e. either they or we.”[1070] “Christ can have no part with Belial.” And, before this: “They [Zwingli and Œcolampadius] disturb our Church and weaken our repute. Hence we cannot remain silent. If they would be vexed to see their own reputation suffer, let them also think of ours.” “They ought to have held their tongues long ago [on the question of the Sacrament]; now silence comes too late.” He concludes with the assurance, that their error was refuted by “the Spirit,” and that it was impossible they could have any certainty concerning their doctrine, whereas he could justly boast, that he had the experience of the faith and the testimony of the Spirit (“experimentum fidei et spiritus testimonium”). “They will never win the day. It pains me that Zwingli and his followers take offence at my saying that ‘What I write must be true.’”

[310]

Apart from the doctrine on the Sacrament, the other thing which helped to annoy him stands revealed more plainly in the letter addressed on the same day to the Strasburg preachers: “We dare to boast that Christ was first made known by us, and now Zwingli actually comes and accuses us of denying Christ.”[1071] Bossuet was quite right in arguing that such petty jealousy on Luther’s part is scarcely to his credit.[1072] He quotes a criticism on Luther’s behaviour by George Calixt, the famous Lutheran professor of theology at Helmstädt: “The sweetness of vainglory is so seductive and human weakness so great, that even those who despise all things and risk their goods, yea life itself, may succumb to inordinate ambition.” Luther, too, had high aims; “we cannot be surprised that, even a man so large-minded as Luther, should have written such things to the people of Strasburg.”[1073]

Offended vanity played a part as great and even more obvious in Luther’s furious polemics against the literary defenders of the Church. One cannot help noticing how, especially when they had succeeded in making out a clear case against him, his answer was a torrent of most unsparing abuse.

The eloquence which he had at his command also constituted a temptation. He was well aware of the force with which his impassioned language carried others away. Very little was thus needed to induce him to take up this formidable weapon which at least ensured his success among the masses. He himself revelled in the unquenchable wealth of his vituperative vocabulary, and with it he caught the fancy of thousands who loved nothing more than a quarrel. If it be true that all popular orators are exposed to the temptation to exaggerate, to say things which are striking rather than correct, and, generally, to court the applause of the crowd, this danger was even greater in Luther’s case owing to the whole character of the controversy he had stirred up. In the midst of a stormy sea one does not speak softly.[311] Luther’s abuse was, however, powerful enough to be heard above even the most furious tempest.

For his work Luther required an extraordinary stimulus. He would have succumbed under the countless and burdensome labours which devolved on him had he not constantly aroused himself anew by the exercise of a sort of violence. Vituperation thus became to him a real need. When he had succeeded thereby in working himself up into a passion his mind grew clearer and his imagination more vigorous, so that he found it all the easier to borrow from the lips of the mob that rude language of which he makes such fell use. He kindles his animation by dwelling on the “vermin and running sores of Popery.”

In the same way from time to time he found the need of unburdening himself of his ill-humour. The small success of his labours for the reform of morals and his other annoying experiences gave him many an unhappy hour. His bad humour found an outlet in abuse and vituperation, particularly against the enemies of the Evangel. He himself was unable to conceal the real grounds of the vexation which he vented on the Papacy, for, often enough, after storming against the Papists, he complains bitterly of his own followers’ contempt for the “Word” and of their evil lives.

Lastly, his outbursts against the Papacy served to cover his own anxiety of conscience.

[313]

We have just heard Luther promise to hold up the Pope’s abomination to the devil’s nose. This saying brings us to the principal explanation of the phenomenon under consideration.

Connection of Luther’s Abusiveness with his Mystic Persuasion of his Special Call.

Luther had brought himself to such a pitch as to see in the existing Church the devil’s kingdom, to overthrow which, with its Antichrist, was his own sublime mission. This theological, anti-diabolical motive for his anger and boundless invective, throws all others into the shade.

As compared with the interior force with which the idea of his mission inspired him, all his violence, particularly in his polemics with the Catholic theologians and statesmen, appeared to him far too weak. Thus his “Wider Hans Worst” against the Catholic Duke of Brunswick, though reeking of blood and hate, seemed to him to fall short of the mark and to be all too moderate, so at least he told Melanchthon, to all appearance quite seriously.[1083] His inability ever to exhaust his indignation goes back to the idea expressed by him in the same letter with such startling candour and conviction as to remind one of the ravings of a man possessed by a fixed delusion: “It is certain that it is God Who is fighting.” “Our cause is directed by the hand of God, not by our own wisdom. The Word makes its way and prayer glows ... hence we might well sleep in peace were we not mere flesh.” His hint at the near approach of the Last Judgment, the many signs of which could not escape notice, more than confirms the pseudo-mystic character both of his confidence and of his hate.[1084]

On other occasions traces of his pet superstitions are apparent, and, when we take them together, prove beyond a doubt the unhealthy state of the mind from which they[315] sprang. For instance, Luther professes to know particulars of the approaching end of the world concerning which the Bible says nothing; he also has that curious list of opponents miraculously slain by the Divine hand, and even fancies he can increase it by praying for the death of those who, not sharing his opinions, stood in his way: “This year we must pray Duke Maurice to death; we must slay him by our prayers, for he is likely to prove a wicked man.” On the same occasion he also attributes to himself a sort of prophetic gift: “I am a prophet.”[1085] The foretelling of future events and the fulfilment in his own person of olden prophecies and visions, and again the many miracles and expulsions of the devil which accompany the spread of his teaching, confirm his Evangel and impress the stamp of Divine approbation on his hatred of Antichrist.[1086] Divine portents, which, however, no one but Luther would have recognised as such, were also exploited: the birth of the monstrous Monk-Calf; the Pope-Ass fished from the Tiber; signs in the heavens and on the earth. The Book of Daniel and St. John’s Apocalypse supplied him when necessary with the wished-for interpretation, though his far-fetched speculations would better become a mystic dreamer than a sober theologian and spiritual guide of thousands. All this was crowned by the diabolical manifestations which he himself experienced, though what he took for apparitions of the devil was merely the outcome of an overwrought mind.[1087]

This enables us to seize that second nature of his, made up of superhuman storming and vituperation, and to understand, how, in his hands, wild abuse of the Papacy became quite a system.

[318]

Nevertheless, at times he appears to have had some slight qualms. Yet after having described the Papists as “Pope-Asses, slaves of the Mass, blasphemers, miscreants and murderers of souls,”[1097] he continues: “Should anyone here say that I confine myself to flinging coarse epithets about me and can do nothing but slander and abuse, I would reply, firstly, that such abuse is nothing compared with the unspeakable wickedness. For what is it if I abuse the devil as a murderer, miscreant, traitor, blasphemer and liar? To him all this is but a gentle breeze! But what else are the Pope-Asses but devils incarnate, who know not penance, whose hearts are hardened and who knowingly defend their palpable blasphemy.... Hence my abuse is not abuse at all, but just the same as were I to call a turnip a turnip, an apple an apple, or a pear a pear.”[1098]

A psychological explanation of Luther’s mania for invective is also to be looked for in the admixture of vile ingredients which went to make up his abuse. So frequently had he recourse to such when in a state of excitement that they must be familiar to every observer of Luther’s development and general behaviour; it is, however, our duty here to incorporate this element, so characteristic of his polemics, in our sketch of the angry Luther.

The Unpleasant Seasoning of Luther’s Abuse.

The filthy expressions, to which Luther was so prone when angry, are psychologically interesting, throwing light as they do on the depth of his passion and on the all too earthly atmosphere which pervades his abuse. Had Luther’s one object, as writer and teacher, been to vindicate spiritual treasures he would surely have scorned to make use of such adjuncts as these in his teaching or his polemics. Even when desirous of speaking forcibly, as beseemed a man of his stamp, he would have done so without introducing these disreputable and often repulsive elements of speech. He was, however, carried away by an imagination only too familiar with such vulgar imagery, and a tongue and pen much too ready to speak or write of things of that sort. Unless he places pressure on himself a man’s writings[319] give a true picture of his inner standards, and pressure was something which Luther’s genius could never endure.

Luther had, moreover, a special motive for drawing his creations from this polluted well. He wished to arouse the lower classes and to ingratiate himself with those who, the less capable they were of thinking for themselves or of forming a true judgment, were all the readier to welcome coarseness, banter and the tone of the gutter. Amidst their derisive laughter he flings his filth in the face of his opponents, of the Catholics throughout the world, the Pope, the hierarchy and the German past.

Amidst these unavoidable quotations from Luther’s unpleasant vocabulary of abuse the historian is confronted again and again with the question: What relation does this coarser side of Luther’s style bear to the manners of his times? We have already pointed out how great the distance is between him and all other writers, particularly such as treat of religious subjects in a popular or polemical vein; obviously it is with the latter category of writings that his should be compared, rather than with the isolated aberrations of certain writers of romance or the lascivious works produced by the Humanists.[1139] Various quotations from contemporaries of Luther’s, even from friends of the innovations, have shown that his language both astonished and shocked them.[1140] It was felt that none other could pretend to measure himself beside this giant of invective.

Duke George of Saxony on one occasion told Luther in no kindly way that he knew peasants who spoke just the same, “particularly when the worse for drink”; indeed they went one better and “knew how to use their fists”; among them Luther would be taken for a swine-herd.[1141]

[323]

“Their inexhaustible passion for abuse,” wrote a Catholic contemporary in 1526, “makes me not a little suspicious of the teaching of this sect. No one is accounted a good pupil of Luther’s who is not an adept in abusive language; Luther’s own abuse knows no bounds.... Who can put up with such vituperation the like of which has not been heard for ages?... Read all this man’s writings and you will hardly find a page that is not sullied with vile abuse.”[1142]

It is true that the lowest classes, particularly in Saxony, as it would appear, were addicted to the use of smutty language in which they couched their resentment or their wit; this, however, was among themselves. In the writings of the Wittenberg professor of theology, on the other hand, this native failing emerges unabashed into the light of day, and the foul sayings which Luther—in his anxiety to achieve popularity—gathered from the lips of the rabble swept like a flood over the whole of the German literary field. Foul language became habitual, and, during the polemics subsequent on Luther’s death, whether against the Catholics or among the members of the Protestant fold, was a favourite weapon of attack with those who admired Luther’s drastic ways.

As early as 1522 Thomas Blaurer, a youthful student at Wittenberg, wrote: “No abuse, however low and shameful,” must be spared until Popery is loathed by all.[1143] Thus the object in view was to besmirch the Papacy by pelting it with mire. When, in 1558, Tilman Hesshusen, an old Wittenberg student, became Professor of Theology and General Superintendent at Heidelberg and thundered with much invective against his opponents and in favour of the Confession of Augsburg, even his friends asked the question, “whether the thousand devils he was wont to purvey from the pulpit helped to promote the pure cause of the Lutheran Evangel?” At Bremen, preaching against Hardenberg, a follower of Melanchthon’s, he declared, that he had turned the Cathedral into a den of murderers.[1144] In 1593[324] Nigrinus incited the people to abuse the Papists with the words: “Up against them boldly and fan the flames so that things may be made right warm for them!” George Steinhausen remarks in this connection in his History of German Civilisation: “Luther became quite a pattern of violent abuse and set the tone for the anti-popish ranters, who, most of them, belonged to the lowest class. On their side the Catholics, for instance, Hans Salat of Lucern or the convert Johann Engerd, were also not behindhand in this respect.... The preachers, however, were always intent on egging them on to yet worse attacks.”[1145]

The manner in which Luther in his polemics treated his opponents, wrote Döllinger in his “Sketch of Luther,” “is really quite unparalleled. He never displays any of that kindly charity, which, while hating the error, seeks to win over those who err; on the contrary, with him all is abuse and anger, defiance and contemptuous scorn voiced in a tempest of invective, often of a most personal and vulgar kind.... It is quite wrong to say that Luther in this respect merely followed in the wake of his contemporaries; this is clear enough to everyone familiar with the literature of that age and the one which preceded it; the virulence of Luther’s writings astonished everybody; those who did not owe him allegiance were not slow to express their amazement, to blame him and to emphasise the harmful effects of these outbursts of abuse, whilst his disciples and admirers were wont to appeal to Luther’s ‘heroic spirit’ which lifted him above the common herd and, as it were, dispensed him from the observance of the moral law and allowed him to say things that would have been immoral and criminal in others.”[1146]

Especially his obscene abuse of the Pope did those of Luther’s contemporaries who remained faithful to the Church brand as wicked, immoral and altogether unchristian. “What ears can listen to these words without being offended?” wrote Emser, “or who is the pious Christian who is not cut to the quick by this cruel insult and blasphemy offered to the vicar of Christ? Is this sort of thing Christian or Evangelical?”[1147]

[325]

Protestant Opinions Old and New.

Erasmus’s complaints concerning Luther’s abusiveness were re-echoed, though with bated breath, by those of the new faith whose passion had not entirely carried them away. The great scholar, speaking of Luther’s slanders on him and his faith, had even said that they were such as to compel a reasonable reader to come to the conclusion that he was either completely blinded by hate, or suffering from some mental malady, or else possessed by the devil.[1148] Many of Luther’s own party agreed with Erasmus, at any rate when he wrote: “This unbridled abuse showered upon all, poisons the reader’s mind, particularly in the case of the uneducated, and can promote only anger and dissension.”[1149]

Fresh light is thrown on the psychological side of Luther’s controversial methods when we bring together those utterances in which his sense of his own greatness finds expression. We must observe a little more closely Luther’s inner thoughts and feelings from the standpoint of his own ideal.

[327]

4. Luther on his own Greatness and Superiority to Criticism The art of “Rhetoric”

Characteristic utterances of Luther’s regarding his own gifts and excellencies, the wisdom and courage displayed in his undertaking and the important place he would occupy in history as the discoverer and proclaimer of the Evangelical truth, are to be met with in such plenty, both in his works and in the authentic notes of his conversations, that we have merely to select some of the most striking and bring them together. They form a link connecting his whole public career; he never ceased to regard all his labours from the point of view of his Divine mission, and what he says merely varies in tone and colour with the progress which took place in his work as time went on.

It is true that he knew perfectly well that it was impossible to figure a Divine mission without the pediment and shield of humility. How indeed could those words of profound humility, so frequent with St. Paul, have rung in Luther’s ears without finding some echo? Hence we find Luther, too, from time to time making such his own; and this he did, not out of mere hypocrisy, but from a real wish to identify his feelings with those of the Apostle; in almost every instance, however, his egotism destroys any good impulse and drives him in the opposite direction.

In order to know Luther as he really was we should observe him amongst his pupils at Wittenberg, for instance, as he left the Schlosskirche after one of his powerful sermons to the people, and familiarly addressed those who pressed about him on the steps of the church. There were the burghers and students whose faults he had just been scourging; the theologians of his circle crowding with pride around their master; the lawyers, privy councillors and Court officials in the background, probably grumbling under their breath at Luther’s peculiarities and harsh words. His friends wish him many years of health and strength that he may continue his great work in the pulpit and press; he, on the other hand, thinks only of death; he insists on speaking of his Last Will and Testament, of the chances of his cause, of his enemies and of the threatened Council which he so dreaded.[1157]

[329]

“Let me be,” Luther cries, turning to the lawyers, “even in my Last Will, the man I really am, one well known both in heaven and on earth, and not unknown in hell, standing in sufficient esteem and authority to be trusted and believed in more than any notary; for God, the Father of Mercies, has entrusted to me, poor, unworthy, wretched sinner that I am, the Gospel of His Dear Son and has made and hitherto kept me faithful and true to it, so that many in the world have accepted it through me, and consider me a teacher of the truth in spite of the Pope’s ban and the wrath of Emperors, Kings, Princes, priests and all the devils.... Dr. Martin Luther, God’s own notary and the witness of His Gospel.”[1158]

I am “Our Lord Jesus Christ’s unworthy evangelist.”[1159]

I am “the Prophet of the Germans, for such is the haughty title I must henceforth assume.”[1160]

“I am Ecclesiastes by the Grace of God”; “Evangelist by the Grace of God.”[1161]

“I must not deny the gifts of Jesus Christ, viz. that, however small be my acquaintance with Holy Scripture, I understand it a great deal better than the Pope and all his people.”[1162]

“I believe that we are the last trump that sounds before Christ’s coming.”[1163]

Many arise against me, but with “a breath of my mouth” I blow them over.—All their prints are mere “autumn leaves.”[1164]

“One only of my opponents, viz. Latomus, is worth his salt, he is the scribe who writes best against me. Latomus alone has really written against Luther, make a note of that! All the others, like Erasmus, were but frogs. Not one of them really meant it seriously. Yes indeed all, Erasmus included, were just croaking frogs.”[1165]

[330]

I have been tried in the school of temptations; “these are the exalted temptations which no Pope has ever understood,” I mean, “being tempted to blasphemy and to question God’s Judgments when we know nothing either of sin or of the remedy.”[1166]

Because I have destroyed the devil’s kingdom “many say I was the man foretold by the Prophet of Lichtenberg; for in their opinion I must be he. This was a prophecy of the devil, who well saw that the kingdom he had founded on lies must fall. Hence he beheld a monk, though he could not tell to which Order he belonged.”[1167]

“Be assured of this, that no one will give you a Doctor of Holy Scripture save only the Holy Ghost who is in heaven.... He indeed testified aforetimes against the prophet by the mouth of the she-ass on which the prophet rode. Would to God we were worthy to have such doctors sent us!”[1168]

“I have become a great Doctor, this I am justified in saying; I would not have thought this possible in the days of my temptations” when Staupitz comforted me with the assurance, “that God would make use of me as His assistant in mighty things.”[1169]

“St. John Hus” was not alone in prophesying of me that ... “they will perforce have to listen to the singing of a swan,” but likewise the prophet at Rome foretold “the coming hermit who would lay waste the Papacy.”[1170]

When I was a young monk and lay sick at Erfurt they said to me: “Be consoled, good bachelor ... our God will still make a great man of you. This has been fulfilled.”[1171]

“On one occasion when I was consoling a man on the loss of his son he, too, said to me: ‘You will see, Martin, you will become a great man!’ I often call this to mind, for such words have something of the omen or oracle about them.”[1172]

“Small and insignificant as they [Luther’s and the preachers’ reforms] are, they have done more good in the[331] Churches than all the Popes and lawyers with all their decrees.”[1173]

“No one has expounded St. Paul better” than you, Philip (Melanchthon). “The commentaries of St. Jerome and Origen are the merest trash in comparison with your annotations” (on Romans and Corinthians). “Be humble if you like, but at least let me be proud of you.” “Be content that you come so near to St. Paul himself.”[1174]

“In Popery such darkness prevailed that they taught neither the Ten Commandments, nor the Creed, nor the Our Father; such knowledge was considered quite superfluous.”[1175]

“The blindness was excessive, and unless those days had been shortened we should all have grown into beasts! I fear, however, that after us it will be still worse, owing to the dreadful contempt for the Word.”[1176]

“Before my day nothing was known,” not even “what parents or children were, or what wife or maid.”[1177]

“Such was then the state of things: No one taught, or had heard or knew what secular authority was, whence it came, or what its office and task was, or how it must serve God.”—“But I wrote so usefully and splendidly concerning the secular authorities as no teacher has ever done since Apostolic times, save perhaps St. Augustine; of this I may boast with a good conscience, relying on the testimony of the whole world.”[1178]

Similarly, “we could prove before the whole world that we have preached much more grandly and powerfully of good works than those very people who abuse us.”[1179]

“Not one of the Fathers ever wrote anything remarkable or particularly good concerning matrimony.... In marriage they saw only evil luxury.... They fell into the ocean of sensuality and evil lusts.” “But [by my preaching] God with His Word and by His peculiar Grace has restored, before the Last Day, matrimony, secular authority and the preaching office to their rightful position, as He[332] instituted and ordained them, in order that we might behold His own institutions in what hitherto had been but shams.”[1180]

The Papists “know nothing about Holy Scripture, or what God is ... or what Baptism or the Sacrament.”[1181] But thanks to me “we now have the Gospel almost as pure and undefiled as the Apostles had it.”[1182]

“Not for a thousand years has God bestowed such great gifts on any bishop as He has on me; for it is our duty to extol God’s gifts.”[1183]

“God has appointed me for the whole of the German land,” Luther continues, “and I boldly vouch and declare that when you obey me in this [the founding of Evangelical schools] you are without a doubt obeying not me but Christ, and that, whoever obeys me not, despises, not me, but Christ [Luke xx. 16]. For I know well and am certain of what and whereto I speak and teach.”[1186]

“And now, dear Germans, I have told you enough; you have heard your prophet; God grant we may obey His words.”[1187]

As Germany does not obey “misery” must needs overtake it; “when I pray for my beloved Germany I feel that my prayer recoils on me and will not ascend upwards as it does when I pray for other things.... God grant that I be wrong and a false prophet in this matter.”[1188]

[334]

“Our Lord God had to summon Moses six times; me, too, He has led in the same way.... Others who lived before me attacked the wicked and scandalous life of the Pope; but I assailed his very doctrine and stormed in upon the monkery and the Mass, on which two pillars the whole Papacy rests. I could never have foreseen that these two pillars would fall, for it was almost like declaring war on God and all creation.”[1189]

“I picked the first fruits of the knowledge and faith of Christ, viz. that we are justified by faith in Christ and not by works.”[1190]

“I am he to whom God first revealed it.”[1191]

“Show me a single passage on justification by faith in the Decrees, Decretals, Clementines, ‘Liber Sextus’ or ‘Extravagantes’” in any of the Summas, books of Sentences, monkish sermons, synodal definitions, collegial or monastic Rules, in any Postils, in any work of Jerome and Gregory, in any decisions of the Councils, in any disputations of the theologians, in any lectures of any University, in any Mass or Vigil of any Church, in any “Cæremoniale Episcoporum,” in the institutes of any monastery, in any manual of any confraternity or guild, in any pilgrims’ book anywhere, in the pious exercises of any Saint, in any Indulgence, Bull, anywhere in the Papal Chancery or the Roman Curia or in the Curia of any bishop. And yet it was there that the doctrine of faith should have been expressed in all its fulness.[1192]

“My Evangel,” that was what was wanting. “I have, praise be to God, achieved more reformation by my Evangel than they probably would have done even by five Councils.... Here comes our Evangel ... and works wonders, which they themselves accept and make use of, but which they could not have secured by any Councils.”[1193]

“I believe I have summoned such a Council and effected such a reformation as will make the ears of the Papists tingle and their heart burst with malice.... In brief: It is Luther’s own Reformation.”[1194]

[335]

“I, who am nothing, may say with truth that during the [twenty] years that I have served my dear Lord Christ in the preaching office, I have had more than twenty factions opposing me”; but now they are, some of them, extirpated, others, “like worms with their heads trodden off.”[1195]

“I have now become a wonderful monk, who, by God’s grace, has deposed the Roman devil, viz. the Pope; yet not I, but God through me, His poor, weak instrument; no emperor or potentate could have done that.”[1196]

In point of fact “the devil is not angry with me without good reason, for I have rent his kingdom asunder. What not one of the kings and princes was able to do, that God has effected, through me, a poor beggar and lonely monk.”[1197]

How poor are the ancient Fathers in comparison! “Chrysostom was a mere gossip. Jerome, the good Father, and lauder of nuns, understood precious little of Christianity. Ambrose has indeed some good sayings. If Peter Lombard had only happened upon the Bible he would have excelled all the Fathers.”[1198]

“See what darkness prevailed among the Fathers of the Church concerning faith! Once the article concerning justification was obscured it became impossible to stem the course of error. St. Jerome writes on Matthew, on Galatians and on Titus, but how paltry it all is! Ambrose wrote six books on Genesis, but what poor stuff they are! Augustine never writes powerfully on faith except when assailing the Pelagians.... They left not a single commentary on Romans and Galatians that is worth anything. Oh, how great, on the other hand, is our age in purity of doctrine, and yet, alas, we despise it! The holy Fathers taught better than they wrote; we, God be praised, write better than we live.” Had Gregory the Great at least refrained from spoiling what remained! “He broke in with his pestilent traditions, bound men down to observances concerning flesh-meat, cowls and Masses, and imposed on them his filthy, merdiferous law. And in the event this dreadful state of things grew from day to day worse.”[1199]

“On the other hand, it is plain that I may venture to[336] boast in God, without arrogance or untruth, that, when it comes to the writing of books I am not far behind many of the Fathers.”[1200]

“In short the fault lay in this, that [before I came], even in the Universities the Bible was not read; when it was read at all it had to be interpreted in accordance with Aristotle. What blindness that was!”[1201]

But then my translation of Holy Scripture appeared. Whereas the Schoolmen never were acquainted with Scripture, indeed “never were at home even in the Catechism,”[1202] all admit my Bible scholarship. On one occasion “Carlstadt said to the Doctors at Wittenberg: My dear sirs, Dr. Martin is far too learned for us; he read the Bible ten years ago and now if we read it for ten years, he will then have read it for twenty; in any case, therefore, we are lost.” “Don’t start disputing with him.”[1203]

“Nevertheless I never should have attained to the great abundance of Divine gifts, which I am forced to confess and admit, unless Satan had tried me with temptations; without these temptations pride would have cast me into the abyss of hell.”[1204]

“The Papists are blind to the clear light of truth because it was revealed by a man. As though Elias, who wrought such great things against the servants of Baal, was not likewise a man and a beggar. As though John the Baptist, who so brilliantly put to flight the Pharisees, was not a man too. One’s being a man does not matter provided one be a man of God. For heroes are not merely men.”[1205]

Luther concludes his address to his followers by replying first of all to the frequent objection we have just heard Zasius bring forward:

“I, Dr. Martin Luther by name, have taken it upon me to prove for further instruction each and every article in a well-grounded work.... But first I must answer certain imputations made by some against me.” “They twit me with coming forward all alone and seeking to teach everybody. To this I reply that I have never put myself forward and would have been glad to creep into a corner; they it is who dragged me out by force and cunning.”[1208]

“But who knows whether God has not raised me up and called me to this, and whether they have not cause to fear that they are condemning God in me? Do we not read in the Old Testament that God, as a rule, raised up only one prophet at a time? Moses was alone when he led the people out of Egypt; Helias was alone in the time of King Achab; later on Helisæus was also alone; Isaias was alone in Jerusalem, Oseas in Israel, Hieremias in Judea, Ezechiel in Babylon, and so on.”[1209]

“The dear Saints have always had to preach against and reprove the great ones, the kings, princes, priests and scholars.”[1210]

“I do not say that I am a prophet, but I do say that the Papists have the more reason to fear I am one, the more they despise me and esteem themselves. God is wonderful in His works and judgments.... If I am not a prophet yet I am certain within myself that the Word of God is with me and not with them; for I have Scripture on my side, but they, only their own doctrine.”[1211]

“There were plenty donkeys in the world in Balaam’s time, yet God did not speak through all of them, but only through Balaam’s ass.”[1212] “They also say that I bring forward new things, and that it is not to be supposed that[338] all others were in the wrong for so long. To this reproof the ancient prophets also had to listen.... Christ’s teaching was different from what the Jews had heard for a thousand years. On the strength of this objection the heathen, too, might well have despised the Apostles, seeing that their ancestors had believed otherwise for more than three thousand years.”[1213]

“I say that all Christian truth had perished amongst those who ought to have been its upholders, viz. the bishops and learned men. Yet I do not doubt that the truth has survived in some hearts, even though only in those of babes in the cradle.”[1214]

“I do not reject them [all the Doctors of the Church] ... but I refuse to believe them except in so far as they prove their contentions from that Scripture which has never erred.... Necessity forces us to test every Doctor’s writings by the Bible and to judge and decide upon them. The standing as well as the number of my foes is to me a proof that I am in the right.”[1215]

“Were I opposed only by a few insignificant men I should know that what I wrote and taught was not from God.... Truth has ever caused disturbance, and false teachers have ever cried ‘Peace, peace.’”[1216]

“They say they don’t want to be reformed by such a beggar....” “Daniel has arisen in his place and is determined to perform what the angel Gabriel has pointed out to him; for the same prophet told us how he would rise up at the end of the world. That he is now doing.” “God has made Luther a Samson over them; He is God and His ways are wonderful.... Let good people say the best they can of me and let the Papists talk and lie to their hearts’ content.”[1217]

Neither councils nor reformations will help them. “They wish to reform and govern the Church according to their own lights and by human wisdom; but that is something that lies far above the counsel of men. When our Lord God wished to reform His Church He did so ‘divinitus,’ not by human methods; thus it was at the time of Josue, of the Judges, Samuel, the Apostles and also in my own time.”[1218]

[339]

Even should our work be frustrated, yet the “power of the Almighty could make a new Luther out of nothing.” In this wise “God raised up Noe when He was obliged to destroy the world by the deluge. And, in Abraham’s time, when the whole world was plunged in darkness and under the empire of Satan, Abraham and his seed came as a great light; and He drowned King Pharao and slew seven great nations in Canaan. And again when Caiphas crucified the Son of God ... He rose again from the dead and Caiphas was brought to nought.”[1219]

“Christ was not so greatly considered, nor had He ever such a number of hearers as the Apostles had and we now have; Christ Himself said to His disciples: ‘You will do greater works than I,’ and, truly enough, at the time of the Apostles, and now amongst us, the Gospel and the Divine Word is preached much more powerfully and is more widely spread than at the time of Christ.”[1220]

It is true that “my conviction is, that, for a thousand years, the world has never loathed anyone so much as me. I return its hatred.”[1221]

It “is probable that my name stinks in the nostrils of many who wish to belong to us, but you [Bugenhagen] will put things right without my troubling.” Formerly the decisions of the Councils ranked above God’s Word, “but now, thank God, this would not be believed among us even by ducks or geese, mice or lice.” “God has no liking for the ‘expectants’ [those who looked for a Council], for He will have His Word honoured above all angels, let alone men or Councils, and will have no waiting or expectancy. Our best plan will be to send them to the devil in the abyss of hell, to do their waiting there.”[1222]

“So the Council is going to be held at Trent. Tridentum, however, signifies in German, ‘divided, torn asunder, dissolved,’ for God will scatter it and its Legates. I believe they do not know what they are doing or what they mean to do. God has cursed them with blindness.”[1223] “Nay, under Satan’s rule they have all gone mad; they condemn us and then want our approval.”[1224] “The Council is worthy of its monsters. May misfortune fall upon them; the wrath[340] of God is verily at their heels.”[1225] “They look upon us as donkeys, and yet do not realise their own dense stupidity and malice.”[1226]

“Should we fall, then Christ will fall with us, the ruler of the world. Granted, however, that He is to fall, I would rather fall with Christ than stand with the Emperor.” “Put your trust in your Emperor and we will put our trust in ours [in Christ], and wait and see who holds the field. Let them do their best, they have not yet got their way.” They shall perish. “I fear they wish to hear those words of Julius Cæsar: ‘They themselves have willed it!’”[1227]

Should I be carried to the grave, for instance, as a victim of the religious war, people will say at the sight of the Popish rout that will ensue: “Dr. Martin was escorted to his grave by a great procession. For he was a great Doctor, above all bishops, monks and parsons, therefore it was fitting that they should all follow him into the grave, and furnish a subject for talk and song. And to end up, we shall all make a little pilgrimage together; they, the Papists, to the bottomless pit to their god of lying and murder, whom they have served with lies and murders; I to my Lord, Jesus Christ, Whom I have served in truth and peace; ... they to hell in the name of all the devils, I to heaven in God’s name.”[1228]

No mortal ever spoke of himself as Luther did. He reveals himself as a man immeasurably different from that insipid portrait which depicts him as one who made no claim on people’s submission to his higher light and higher authority, but who humbly advanced what he fancied he had discovered, an ordinary human being, even though a great one, who was only at pains to convince others by the usual means in all wisdom and charity. Everyday psychology does not avail to explain the language Luther used, and we are faced by the graver question of the actual condition of such a mind, raised so far above the normal level. “We have,” says Adolf Harnack, “to choose between two alternatives: Either he suffered from the[341] mania of greatness, or his self-reliance really corresponded with his task and achievements.”[1229]

Luther, at the very commencement of the tract which he published soon after leaving the Wartburg, and in which he describes himself as “Ecclesiastes by the grace of God,” says: “Should you, dear Sirs, look upon me as a fool for my assumption of so haughty a title,” I should not be in the least surprised; he adds, however: “I am convinced of this, that Christ Himself, Who is the Master of my teaching, calls me thus and regards me as such”; his “Word, office and work” had come to him “from God,” and his “judgment was God’s own” no less than his doctrine.[1230] The bishops of the Catholic world may well have raised their eyebrows at the tone of this work, couched in the form of a Bull and addressed to all the “Popish bishops”; the following year it was even reprinted in Latin at Wittenberg in order to make it known throughout the world. Bossuet’s words on the opening lines of the tract well render the feeling of apprehension they must have created: “Hence Luther’s is the same call as St. Paul’s, no less direct and no less extraordinary!... And on the strength of this Divine mission Luther proceeds to reform the Church!”[1231]—We should, however, note that Luther, in his extraordinary demands, goes far beyond any mere claim to a Divine call. A heavenly vocation might perfectly well have been present without any such haughty treading under foot of the past, without any such conceit as to his own and his fellow-workers’ achievements, and without all this boasting of prophecies, of victories over fanatics and devils, and of world-wide fame, rather, a true vocation would dread anything of the kind. Hence, in the whole series of statements we have quoted, commencing with the title of Ecclesiastes by the Grace of God, which he adopted soon after his Wartburg[342] “baptism,” we find not only the consciousness of a mission conferred on him at the Wartburg, but also an altogether unique idea of his own greatness which no one who wishes to study Luther’s character must lose sight of. We shall have, later on, to ask ourselves whether those were in the right who looked upon this manifestation as a sign of disease.

Luther’s language would be even more puzzling were it not certain that much that he said was not really meant seriously. With him rhetoric plays a greater rôle than is commonly admitted, and even some of his utterances regarding his own greatness are clearly flowers of rhetoric written half in jest.

Luther himself ingenuously called his art of abusing all opponents with the utmost vigour, “rhetorica mea.” This he did in those difficult days when it was a question of finding some means of escape in connection with the threatening Diet of Augsburg: “By my rhetoric I will show the Papists that they, who pretend to be the champions of the faith and the Gospel, have there [at Augsburg] made demands of us which are contrary to the Gospel; verily I shall fall upon them tooth and nail.... Come, Luther most certainly will, and with great pomp set free the eagle [the Evangel] now held caught in the snare (‘aquilam liberaturus magnifice’).”[1232] So much did he trust his rhetorical talent that on another occasion he told the lawyers: “If I have painted you white, then I can equally well paint you black again and make you look like regular devils.”[1233] Amidst the embarrassments subsequent on Landgrave Philip’s bigamy Luther’s one ray of hope was in his consciousness, that he could easily manage to “extricate” himself with the help of his pen; at the same time, when confiding this to the Landgrave, he also told him quite openly, that, should he, the Landgrave, “start a literary feud” with him, Luther would soon “leave him sticking in the mud.”[1234]

A particular quality of Luther’s “rhetoric” was its exaggeration. By his exaggeration his controversy becomes a strangely glaring picture of his mind; nor was it merely in controversy that his boundless exaggeration shows itself.[344] Sometimes, apparently, without his being aware of it, but likewise even in the course of his literary labours and his preaching, things had a tendency to assume gigantic proportions and fantastic shapes in his eyes. Among his friends the aberrations into which his fondness for vigorous and far-fetched language led him were well known. It was certain of his own followers who dubbed him “Doctor Hyperbolicus” and declared that “he made a camel of a flea, and said a thousand when he meant less than five.” This is related by the Lutheran zealot, Cyriacus Spangenberg, who dutifully seeks to refute the “many, who, though disciples of his,” were in the habit of making such complaints.[1239]

His “rhetoric,” in spite of a literary style in many respects excellent, occasionally becomes grotesque and insipid owing to the utter want of taste he shows in his choice of expressions. This was particularly the case in his old age, when he no longer had at his command the figures of speech in which to clothe decently those all too vigorous words to which, as the years went by, he became more and more addicted. In the last year of his life, for instance, writing to his Elector and the Hessian Landgrave concerning the “Defensive league” of those who stood up for “the old religion,” he says: God Himself has intervened to oppose this league, not being unaware of its aims; “God and all His angels must indeed have had a terrible cold in the head not to have been able to smell, even until this 21st day of October, the savoury dish that goes by the name of Defensive league; but then He took some sneeze-wort and cleared His brain and gave them to understand pretty plainly that His catarrh was gone and that He now knew very well what Defensive league was.”[1240] Luther does not seem to feel how much out of place such buffoonery was in a theologian, let alone in the founder of a new religion. Even in some of his earlier writings and in those which he prized the most, e.g. in the Commentary on Galatians, a similar want of taste is noticeable. It is also unnecessary to repeat that even his “best” writings, among them the work on Galatians, are frequently rendered highly[345] unpalatable by an excess of useless repetitions. Everybody can see that the monotony of Luther’s works is chiefly due to the haste and carelessness with which they were written and then rushed through the press.

In considering Luther’s “rhetoric,” however, our attention perforce wanders from the form to the matter, for Luther based his claim to originality on his art of bringing forward striking and effective thoughts and thus charming and captivating the reader. In his thoughts the same glaring, grotesque and contradictory element is apparent as in his literary style and outward conduct. Much is mere impressionism, useful indeed for his present purposes, but contradicted or modified by statements elsewhere. Whatever comes to his pen must needs be put on paper and worked for all it is worth. Thus in many instances his thoughts stray into the region of paradox. Thereby he seemed indeed to be rendering easier the task of opponents who wished to refute him, but as a matter of fact he only increased the difficulty of dealing with him owing to his elusiveness.

Even down to the present day the incautious reader or historian is all too frequently exposed to the temptation of taking Luther at his word in passages where in point of fact his thoughts are the plaything of his “rhetoric.” Anybody seeking to portray Luther’s train of thought is liable to be confronted with passages, whether from the same writing or from another composed under different influences, where statements to an entirely different effect occur. Hence, when attempting to describe his views, it is essential to lay stress only on statements that are clear, devoid of any hyperbolical vesture and frequently reiterated.

[347]

The strange controversial methods of his rhetoric give, however, a true picture of his soul.

All this inconstancy and self-contradiction, this restless upheaval of assertions, now rendered doubtful by their palpable exaggeration, now uncertain owing to the admixture of humour they contain, now questionable because already rejected elsewhere by their author, all this mirrors the unrest of his soul, the zigzag course of his thought, in short a mind unenlightened by the truth, which thrives only amidst the excitement of conflict and contradiction. Moderation in resolve and deed is as little to his taste as any consistent submission of his word to the yoke of reflection and truthfulness. He abandons his actions as well as his most powerful organ, his voice, to the impulse and the aims of the moment. He finds no difficulty, for instance, even in his early days, in soundly rating his fellow-monks even in the most insulting and haughty manner, and in assuring them in the same breath of his “peaceable heart” and his “perfect calm,” or in shifting the responsibility for his earlier outbursts of anger on God, Who so willed it and Whose action cannot be withstood. All this we find in his letter in 1514 to the Erfurt Augustinians, where his singular disposition already reveals itself.[1244] No less easy was it to him at the commencement of his struggle to protest most extravagant humility towards both Pope and Emperor, to liken himself to a “flea,” and yet to promise resistance to the uttermost. He was guilty of exaggeration in his championship of the downtrodden peasants before the war, and, when it was over, was again extravagant in his demand for their punishment. With an all too lavish hand he abandons Holy Scripture to each one’s private interpretation, even to the “miller’s maid,” and yet, as soon as anyone, without the support of “miracles,” attempted to bring forward some new doctrine differing from his own, he withdrew it with the utmost imperiousness as a treasure reserved.

As in style, so in deed, he was a chameleon. This he was in his inmost feelings, and not less in his theology.[1245]

In one matter only did he remain always the same, on[348] one point only is his language always consistent and clear, viz. in his hatred and defiance of the Church of Rome. Some have praised his straightforwardness, and it must be admitted, that, in this particular, he certainly always shows his true character with entire unrestraint. This hate permeates all his thoughts, his prayer, all his exalted reflections, his good wishes for others, his sighs at the approach of death. Even in his serious illness in 1527 he was, at least according to the account of his friend Jonas, principally concerned that God should not magnify his enemies, the Papists, but exalt His name “against the enemies of His most holy Word”; he recalls to mind that John the Evangelist, too, “had written a good, strong book against the Pope” (the Apocalypse); as John did not die a martyr, he also would be content without martyrdom. Above all, he was not in the least contrite for what he had printed against the doctrines of the Pope, “even though some thought he had been too outspoken and bitter.”[1246] In his second dangerous illness, in 1537, Luther declared even more emphatically, that he had “done right” in “storming the Papacy,” and that if he could live longer he would undertake still “worse things against that beast.”[1247]

Luther’s over-estimation of himself was partly due to the seductive effect of the exaggerated praise and admiration of his friends, amongst whom Jonas must also be reckoned. They, like Jonas, could see in him nothing but the “inspiration of the Holy Ghost.”[1248] Luther’s responsibility must appear less to those who lay due stress on the surroundings amidst which he lived. He was good-natured enough to give credence to such eulogies. Just as, moved by sympathy, he was prone to lavish alms on the undeserving, so he was too apt to be influenced by the exaggerations of his admirers and the applause of the masses, though, occasionally, he did not fail to protest.

Not his admirers only, but even his literary opponents contributed, at least indirectly, to inflate his rhetoric and his assurance; his sense of his own superiority grew in the measure that he saw his foes lagging far behind him both in language and in vigour.

Amongst the Catholic theologians of Germany there were too few able to compete with him in point of literary dexterity. Luther stood on a pinnacle and carried away the multitude by the war-cry he hurled over the heads of the Catholic polemists and apologists who bore witness to the ancient truths, some well and creditably, others more humbly and awkwardly. The apparent disadvantage under which the Catholic writers laboured, was, that they were not so relentless in treading under foot considerations of charity and decency; unlike him, they could not address fiery appeals to the passions in order to enlist them as their[350] allies, though traces far too many of the violence of the conflict are found even in their polemics. Amongst them were men of high culture and refinement, who stood far above the turmoils of the day and knew how to estimate them at their true worth. They felt themselves supported by the Catholics throughout the world, whose most sacred possessions were being so unjustly attacked.

CHAPTER XXVII

VOICES FROM THE CAMP OF THE DEFENDERS OF THE CHURCH

1. Luther’s “demoniacal” storming. A man “possessed”

We have plenty descriptions of Luther from the pen of literary opponents, and they have a perfect right to be taken into account, for they are so many voices courageously raised in defence of the heirloom of the faith. What has led to this being so often passed over is the fear lest their censure should be taken as prejudice, and, needless to say, what they tell us must be carefully weighed. Much depends on the circumstances in which they wrote, on the character of the writers, on the content of their statements and on how far they differ from or agree with other witnesses and the known facts. Several striking passages from their writings, in so far as they are confirmed either by Luther himself or by his followers, have already been utilised in the present work and have served to complete our picture of Luther’s mind.

Catholic polemists all agree on one point, viz. that the bitter and unkindly ways of their adversary were a clear proof that he had no Divine call. Like Erasmus, they too contend that no man who excited such great commotion and was so insatiable in abuse and vituperation could be honestly furthering God’s cause. Like Erasmus, they too question whether such unheard-of presumption could “be combined with an apostolic spirit or did not rather denote madness.” They compare his inconstancy, his passion and his fickleness to a “restless, stormy sea.” His slanderous tongue, which so unsparingly lashed the olden Church and its doctrines, reminds them of the “roaring lion,” who, according to St. Peter, “goeth about seeking whom he may devour,” or of the “fiery darts” of the wicked one against whom St. Paul utters a warning. With pain and horror they call to mind the seven-headed beast of the Apocalypse,[352] that rises out of the deep, bearing names of blasphemy and with a “mouth that speaks great things and profanities.”

Their strictures cannot be examined in detail here, but we may instance a trait which is common to many of these writers and which, though kept in the background as not altogether relevant to the discussion, yet deserves consideration as a proof of the effect that Luther’s unbounded hate, his abuse and his arrogance had on the feelings and judgment of contemporaries. Their keen sense of religion made them ascribe his behaviour to the devil, and to assume, or at least to suspect, that he was in some way possessed. It is curious to note how many unhesitatingly have recourse to this explanation.

The silly story ought to have made all Luther’s later critics more cautious, even with regard to the statements regarding Luther’s obsession by the Evil One. The few Catholic writers, who have ventured even in our own day to assert that Luther was possessed, should have been deterred from entering a region so obscure and where the danger of missing one’s way is so great. Even in the case of persons still living it is rash and often morally impossible to diagnose a case of possession; much more is this the case when the person in question has so long been dead.

[360]

2. Voices of Converts

Of the Catholic writers, those in particular were sure of a hearing amongst the educated, who for a long while and until it revealed itself in its true colours, had been inclined to Lutheranism. Such was, for instance, the case with several of the pupils and admirers of Erasmus. Among these were Ulrich Zasius and Silvius Egranus, who, though ready to criticise Luther severely, were not wanting in words of praise. The latter was a good type of the half-fledged convert.

Silvius Egranus (see vol. iii., p. 402), for instance, wrote: “I do not deny that Luther has spirit and inventive genius, but I find him utterly wanting in judgment, learning and prudence.... Luther’s foolhardy abuse, his defiance and violence, breed nothing but unutterable confusion. Nowhere do I see Christian godliness flourishing in the hearts of men, nay, owing to Luther, it is not safe even to speak of the Gospel of Christ or of Paul.”[1293] “I declare that Luther’s doctrine is a web of sophisms, is neither ecclesiastical nor Apostolic, but closely related to that sophistical buffoonery and strong language to which he is ever having recourse.”[1294]—Ulrich Zasius, a Humanist, and at the same time learned in the law, after changing his views, publicly took the field against Luther even in official academical discourses; he maintained nevertheless that he had been led by Luther to a deeper knowledge of the spirit of Christ; his skill and talent he never even questioned; he declared: “There is something in Luther’s spirit that meets with my approval.”[1295] What alienated him from Luther was not only his attack on the authority of the Pope—with the grounds of which Zasius was well acquainted from his study of Canon Law—but his denial of the merit of good works. This contention seemed to him diametrically opposed to Holy Scripture. “You reject [meritorious] good works,” he says to Luther’s followers, “and yet I know One Who says: Their works shall follow them.”[1296] He finds it necessary to reprove Luther[361] sharply for his unmeasured, nay, shameless boasting of his gifts, for exciting enmity, strife, dissension and factions, and for inciting to ill-will and murder. “What shall I say,” he exclaims, “of the boldness and impudence with which Luther interprets the Testaments, both Old and New, from the first chapter of Genesis to the very end, as a tissue of menaces and imprecations against Popes, bishops and priests, as though through all the ages God had had nothing to do but to thunder at the priesthood.”[1297] Elsewhere he bewails with noble indignation the fate of his beloved fatherland: “Luther, the foe of peace, and the most worthless of men, has let loose the furies over Germany so that we must regard it as a real mercy if speedy destruction does not ensue. I should have much to write upon the subject if only my grief allowed me.”[1298]

Zasius and Egranus, however, like others in a similar walk of life and who were disposed to seek a compromise, never attacked the new teachers, their reputation and their supposed wisdom as decidedly as did those whose deeper knowledge of theology taught them how dangerous the errors were.

One well equipped for the literary struggle with Luther was the convert George Wicel, a priest who had married and settled down as a Lutheran pastor and then, after a thorough study of holy Scripture and the Fathers, had resigned his post and published an “Apologia” at Leipzig in 1533 to justify his return to the Church of his Fathers.

Another convert, Veit Amerbach (Amorbach), one of the most capable Humanists of the day, after abandoning the Catholic communion lectured first at Eisleben and then in the philosophical faculty at Wittenberg, till, owing to his patristic studies and after personal conferences with Luther and Melanchthon, he returned to the bosom of the Church in 1543, and at once found a post as lecturer at the University of Ingolstadt. As he declared in a written statement handed to Melanchthon, it was particularly the doctrines of Justification and of the Primacy of the Bishop of Rome that compelled him to side with antiquity and to oppose the innovations.

Too high-minded to abuse his former associates (he even refrained from writing against them), Luther nevertheless, on hearing of his conversion, declared that he would surely turn out later a blasphemer.

3. Lamentations over the Wounds of the Church and over Her Persecutions

With the defenders of the Church the depravity of Luther’s teaching, and the immense injury which his work of apostasy was doing to souls, weighed far more heavily than any of the charges we have heard advanced against his person.

In the beginning, it is true, they were chiefly concerned in refuting his new and daring propositions. But, as the years passed and the ruin increased, startling accounts of the sad state of religion more and more often find a place in their polemics, the writers urging against Lutheranism the decay of faith and morals which had followed in its train. In their words we can feel even to-day the fervour and the profound anxiety with which they sought to admonish their contemporaries against the destroyer of the Sanctuary and his seductive ways.

[370]

4. The Literary Opposition

Most of those who opposed Luther in the literary field have already made their appearance in the various episodes narrated in the foregoing pages. In the present section, which is in the nature of a retrospect and amplification of certain points, we must first touch on the charge frequently put forward by Luther, viz. that it was the furious polemics of his foes which drew from him his violent rejoinders, and, particularly in the earlier part of his career, drove him to take the field against Rome.

We have already repeatedly admitted the too great acrimony of some of the writings against Luther, the exasperation they frequently ill conceal and their needlessly strong and insulting language; of this we saw instances in the case of Tetzel, Eck, Prierias, Emser and many others.[1329]

It can, however, readily be proved by a comparison with Luther’s own writings, that the champions of the Church fell far short of their opponent, generally speaking, in the matter of violence and contemptuous satire. Luther not only maintained in this respect his supremacy as a speaker, but the small account he made of truth[1330] lent an immense advantage to his overwhelming invective. It is also easy to discern a difference in the writings directed against his revolutionary movement, according as they were written earlier or later. At first, when it was merely a question of exposing his theological errors, his opponents were comparatively calm; the first counter theses and the discussions to which they led are replete with the ponderous learning of the Schoolmen, though, even there, we find occasional traces of the indignation felt that the sanctuary of the faith should have been attacked in so wanton a fashion. But after the actual subversion of the Church had begun and the social peril of the radical innovations had revealed itself, the voices of Luther’s opponents grow much harsher. Many, in their anguish at the growing evil, do not spare the person of the man responsible for it all, whose own methods of controversy, unfortunately, became a pattern even to his foes. At no time, not even in a warfare such as that then going on, can all the things be justified which were said by Augustine Alveld, Franz Arnoldi, Johann[371] Cochlæus, Paul Bachmann, Duke George, King Henry VIII and even, occasionally, by Sir Thomas More.

What helped to poison the language was, on the one hand, the coarse tone then generally prevalent amongst the German people, which contrived to find its way into the literary treatment of theological questions to an extent never heard of before, and, on the other, the love of the Humanists for mockery and satire, to which end they ransacked the storehouse of antiquity, classical or otherwise. Among earnest Catholics the most powerful factor was overpowering indignation at the sight of such ruthless trampling under foot of the religion of their forefathers and of a faith so closely bound up with the greatness of the fatherland and with every phase of life. Their indignation led them to utter things that were less praiseworthy than the feeling which inspired them.

Besides this, there was a great temptation to use, as the best way of testifying to their abhorrence for the opponent of religious truth, that drastic language handed down by past ages, indeed largely borrowed from the Bible, particularly from the Prophets of the Old Testament. Of this, not theological writers only, but even official ecclesiastical documents, had made such liberal use, that scholars had it at their finger-tips. Even in our own day such mediæval thunders are still sometimes heard rumbling, particularly among the Latin races. When dealing with the Bull of Excommunication against Luther, we already had occasion to remark that much in it was due to the after-effects of the older habits of speech usual in earlier condemnations.[1331] It may be mentioned of Hadrian VI that in a stern missive addressed in 1522 to Frederick the Elector of Saxony, he denounced Luther as a “serpent” infecting heaven and earth with the venom of its tongue, as a “boar” laying waste the vineyard of the Lord, as a “thief” who broke in pieces the cross of Christ, as a man with “diabolical, impious and pestilential lips.” He also, in the words of Scripture, tells the Prince that Luther, whom he was protecting, is a devil who has assumed the appearance of an angel of light.[1332]

[372]

As regards the beginnings of the controversy, both series of Theses advanced by Johann Tetzel in 1517 against Luther’s attack on the system of indulgences, are exclusively of a technical nature and never even mention by name the originator of the controversy.[1333]

Luther, on the other hand, after the publication of the ninety-five Theses, in his German sermon on Indulgences and Grace,[1334] addressed himself directly to the populace. He poured out his scorn on the school-opinions of the theologians and the “bawling” of the envious; they seek, he says, your “pennies,” not your souls, and preach for the sake of their “money-box.” He appealed very cleverly to their more sordid instincts, hinting that the money might be better spent on the poor in their own neighbourhood than on the building of St. Peter’s; at the end, sure of his success with the multitude, he abused those who called him a heretic, as “darkened intellects who had never even sniffed a Bible ... and had never grasped their own teaching.”

What was the nature of Tetzel’s reply? His “Vorlegung” of the Sermon,[1335] being intended for the people, was naturally written in German, but in the wearisome style of the Latin theology of the Schools. In point of matter and logical accuracy it was indeed far superior to Luther’s superficialities, but the clumsy German in which it was couched and the number of quotations it borrowed from the Fathers could only make it distasteful to the reader. It is hardly possible to recognise in its language the popular orator who was such a favourite with the people. The seriousness of his tone contrasts strangely with Luther’s airy style. It is easy to believe his honest assurance, that he was ready to submit his views to the judgment of the learned and to the ecclesiastical authorities, and to risk even life itself for the holy Faith of the Catholic past. Only towards the end of the short work, when refuting Luther’s twentieth proposition, does Tetzel, not very skilfully, retaliate upon his opponent—though even here he does not name him—for the coarse and abusive language he had used[373] in this thesis. Tetzel says, it would be seen from a consideration of their reasons which of the two it was who had “never sniffed a Bible,” never grasped his own teaching and applied to the study of theology “a brain like a sieve”; which of the two was the schismatic, heretic, etc.

In his reply to the “Vorlegung,” which he published in his own name under the title “Eyn Freiheyt dess Sermons Bebstlichen Ablass,”[1336] Luther spared no venom: Sun and moon might well wonder at the light of wisdom displayed by such a poetaster; evidently he had a superabundance of paper and leisure; but his artificial flowers and withered leaves must be scattered to the winds; he had dared to treat “the scriptural text, which is our comfort (Rom. xv. 4), as a sow would treat a sack of oats.” His opponent’s offer to risk a trial by fire or water for the Faith, he treats with the utmost scorn and derision: “My honest advice to him would be, modestly to restrict himself to the juice of the grape and to the steam that arises from the roast goose to which he is so partial.”—Some Protestants have urged that Luther’s rudeness of tone, here displayed for the first time, may be explained by his opponent’s example. How little this defence of Luther accords with the true state of the case is plain from the above.

As regards Silvester Prierias the matter stands somewhat differently. The “Dialogus,” composed by the Master of the Palace in hot haste in reply to Luther’s “arrogant Theses on the power of the Pope” (the ninety-five Indulgence Theses he had nailed to the door of the Castle Church at Wittenberg), a work written with all the weighty scholarship of the Schoolmen and criticising each thesis in detail, contained in its thirty-three octavo pages a number of exaggerations and words calculated to offend.

In the Reply of 1518 now under consideration, Luther, in view of the person and position of his opponent, and of the possible consequences, is more restrained in his abuse than in other writings soon to follow. Yet, anxious as he was to furnish a real answer to the criticisms of an author so weighty, we find irony, rudeness and attempts to render ridiculous the “senile” objections of the “Thomaster,”[375] the “sophist” and all his “taratantara,” intermingled with unwarrantable attacks on “Thomistic” theology, that storehouse whence his opponent purloined “his phrases and his shouting.” The reply opens with the words: “Your Dialogue, Reverend Father, has reached me; it is a rather high-flown writing, quite Italian and Thomistic.” It also ends in the same vein. “If for the future you don’t bring into the arena a Thomas armed with better weapons, then don’t expect to find again such consideration as I have just shown you. I have bridled myself so as not to return evil for evil. Good-bye.”

When, in 1519, the Dominican whom he had thus insulted published, first a “Replica” in the form of a short letter addressed to Luther, and then the “Epitome” (an abstract of his investigations into the theological questions then under discussion), it was impossible for Luther to complain of any too harsh treatment; the tone of the “Replica,” although dealing with Luther’s attacks on the person of the Roman scholar, falls immeasurably short of his assailant’s in point of bitterness. It is conciliatory, indeed proffers an olive-branch, should the Wittenberg professor retract the new doctrines which Rome was determined to condemn.[1343] As for the “Epitome,” it is merely a theological review of the doctrines involved, which it clearly states and establishes whilst vigorously refuting all opinions to the contrary. It is accompanied by a grave warning to Luther not to impugn the authority of the Roman Church.[1344]

This was, however, sufficient to let loose the anger of the German Reformer, who meanwhile had advanced considerably, and whose wrath now manifested itself in his rejoinders. Such was his presumption that he actually reprinted in Germany both works of Prierias as soon as they had been published; the “Replica” he introduced with the derisive remark, that, as the author had threatened to give birth to more, they must pray that he might suffer no abortions.[1345] His reprint of the “Epitome” in 1520 was accompanied by contemptuous and satirical annotations, and by a preface and postscript where he breaks out into the language already described, about Antichrist seated in[376] the Temple of God in the Roman Babylon, about the happiness of the separated Greeks and Bohemians and about the washing of hands in the blood of the Popish Sodom.[1346] It was the seething ferment in Luther’s own mind, not anything that Prierias had said, that was really responsible for such outbursts. The flood-gates had now been thrown open, and even from the Catholic side came many a wave of indignation to lend acrimony to the contest.

Referring to Luther’s words on bloodshed, we hear, for instance, Thomas Murner speaking of “the furious bloodhound, Martin Luther of execrable memory, the blasphemous, runaway monk and murderous bloodhound, who wants to wash his hands in the blood of the priests!”[1347]

How far Hieronymus Emser allowed himself to go in his hostility to Luther is plain from his first tract, “A venatione Luteriana Ægocerotis assertio,” of Nov., 1519, in which he replies to an attack of Luther’s on an epistle he (Emser) had sent to Provost Johann Zack. Luther, in the title, had addressed him as the “he-goat” (“ad Ægocerotem”) on account of the goat’s head figuring in his coat of arms. Emser retorts: “It is plainly beyond your ability to send out into the world any writing of yours that is not replete with houndish fury and bristles, as it were, with canine fangs. Your father is Belial, the ancestor of all insolent monks.” He paints a frightful picture of Luther’s career and character the better to prove that such a man had no right to sit in judgment on him.

Luther’s “An den Bock zu Leyptzck,” dating from the beginning of 1520, was replied to by Emser in his “An den Stier zu Wittenberg,” whereupon Luther retorted with “Auff des Bocks zu Leypczick Antwort,” to which Emser replied in his pamphlet: “Auff des Stieres tzu Wiettenberg wiettende Replica,” and his larger work “Against the Unchristian book of M. Luther to the German Nobility”; this Luther countered by his “Auff das ubirchristlich ... Buch Bocks Emssers.”

During the years 1521-1522 Emser wrote no less than eight tracts against the Wittenberg Professor. The Humanist and clever man of letters has left therein many a witty[377] page; a refreshing sincerity is one of his characteristics.[1348] On the whole, however, what F. A. Scharpff says applies to these and the later polemics of this zealous champion of the Church: They “are composed in a tone of violent personality, nor does either combatant seek any longer to restrain the ‘Old Adam,’ as both at the outset had pledged themselves to do.”[1349]

Another of Luther’s earliest literary opponents was Johann Eck, the author of the “Obelisks,” on the Indulgence Theses. Like the works of Tetzel and Prierias, this tract is chiefly concerned in a calm discussion of the matter in dispute, though it does not refrain from occasionally describing this or that opinion of Luther’s as a “rash, corrupt, impudent assertion,” as an insipid, unblushing error, a ridiculous mistake, etc. The severest remark, however, and that which incensed Luther beyond all the rest was, that certain passages in the Indulgence Theses, owing to a confusion of ideas, made admissions “containing Bohemian poison,” i.e. savouring of the errors of Hus.[1350] Subsequent to this Eck, however, wrote to Carlstadt a letter which was intended for Luther, where he says in a conciliatory tone: “To offend Martin was never my intention.”[1351] Nor did he at first print his “Obelisks,” but merely sent the tract to his bishop and his friends. Luther, on the other hand, had the work printed in August, 1518, together with his own “Asterisks,” and, after circulating them privately among his acquaintances, finally published them together. In the “Asterisci” he speaks of the behaviour of Eck, his quondam “friend,” as most insidious and iniquitous (“insidiossissimum iniquissimum”), and mocks at his “grand, not to say high-flown,” preface. He says: “Hardly was I able to refrain from laughter”; Eck must have written his “Obelisks” during the Carnival; wearing the mask of genius he had produced a chaos. His[378] writing adduced nothing concerning the Bible, the Fathers and the Canons, but was all arch-scholastic; had he, Luther, wished to peripateticise he could, with one puff, have blown away all these musty cobwebs, etc.[1352]

Johann Eck, who was professor of theology at the University of Ingolstadt and at the same time parish-priest and preacher, enjoyed a great reputation among the Catholics on account of his works against Luther, particularly those on the Primacy, on Purgatory, the Mass and other Catholic doctrines and practices, no less than on account of his printed sermons and his general activity on behalf of the Church.

The indefatigable defender of the Church composed amongst other writings the “Enchiridion locorum communium adv. Lutherum et alios hostes ecclesiæ” (1525). The work was of great service and formed an excellent guide to many.

Eck’s writings in defence of the faith include learned as well as popular works, and he was also indefatigable in his labours in the ministry.[1354]

Johann Cochlæus, who like Eck was one of the more[381] famous of Luther’s opponents, had a keen and versatile mind († 1552). He first made Luther’s personal acquaintance at Worms,[1355] and entered the lists against him in 1522 with his “De gratia sacramentorum”; from that time forward he kept a watch on all that Luther wrote, so as to be in readiness to reply to or refute it as occasion arose. He himself gives us the long list of his publications against Luther, in his “Commentaria de actis ... Lutheri,” the work in which he sums up his recollections of the struggles of his time.

From these “Commentaria” of Cochlæus, despite the disparaging treatment accorded them by Sleidanus, “more is to be gleaned concerning the history of the Reformation than from many bungling Protestant eulogies.” Such, at least, is the opinion of C. Krafft, himself a Protestant.[1356]

The writer sought after the truth and wrote with honest indignation. In spite of disappointments, and even privations, he remained faithful to the Church, making during his career many a sacrifice for his cherished convictions; he himself relates how he could not find a printer for his works against Luther and was forced himself to defray a part of the expense of publication, whereas every press was eager to print Luther’s books owing to the demand anticipated.

If, in Cochlæus’s writings, too great passion is often apparent, this may well have been due to that depraved humanism and neo-classicism under the influence of which, more perhaps than any other Catholic man of letters, he stood. We have an instance of this in his “Seven-headed Luther,” which he composed in 1529 at Dresden, whither he had been summoned on Emser’s death.[1357] This book, like his later “Commentaries,” denotes the climax of his polemics. In the dedication he says that the seven-headed monster could not have been born either of God or of Nature, since neither God nor Nature was capable of such an abortion; rather, it must be an offspring of the evil one, who had deceived man and worked him harm, in Paradise under the guise of a serpent, and, often later, under the form[382] of fauns, satyrs, Sileni and various enchantments. In Africa, according to the ancients, there had been a dragon with three or four heads, and Geryon, whom Hercules slew, had also had three heads. But a monster with seven heads, such as was Luther with his sevenfold doctrine, had never been ushered into the world by any country, but must be a creation of the devil. The wicked, perverse, insane apostate monk, long since destined to damnation, had no scruple in deceiving and assailing every upright man with lies, mockery, blasphemy and every kind of nastiness, or in pouring forth seditious falsehoods and insults like an infuriated lioness. The seven-headed hoodman, or hooded dragon, was causing all too much confusion in Germany with his seven heads and was polluting it all with his deadly poison. King Saul, he continues, had sinned in not rooting out the people of Amalek. But to whom did the name of Amalek apply more aptly than to the Lutherans? For Amalek’s was a bestial nation, living bestially according to the flesh, just as the Lutherans—particularly their idol, viz. this monk with his nun—were now doing. In this mad devil’s minister not one crumb of any kind of virtue remained, etc.[1358]

Apart from his too rhetorical and acrimonious tone other unsympathetic features met with in Cochlæus are his frequent petitions to high dignitaries of the Church, in Germany and even in Rome, for material assistance; his complaints that he was not taken seriously enough; his too great eagerness, during the first years of the struggle, to hold a disputation with Luther; too much pushfulness and sometimes a certain credulity, not to speak of occasional lapses into a frivolity which, like his rhetoric, recalls the more blatant faults of Humanism and ill beseemed a man anxious to censure the morals of his opponents. He deemed it right and proper, for instance, to write under an assumed name a work against the Reformers’ wives and matrimonial relationships, where, in colloquial form and in a manner highly offensive, he introduces much that was mere tittle-tattle and quite without foundation. His authorship of this “Private Conversation” has been proved up to the hilt in recent times.[1359]

[383]

Among the ranks of the opponents of Lutheranism Johann Faber and Frederick Nausea, both of them bishops of Vienna, hold a high place. The efforts of these two theologians to elucidate controverted points and to refute Luther were much appreciated in the Catholic circles of that day.

In the more popular field quite a number of good speakers and writers belonging to various Religious Orders, particularly the German Dominicans, distinguished themselves for their zeal in the campaign against Lutheranism. Johann Mensing, who became a licentiate at Wittenberg in 1517 and was Luther’s best-hated opponent, was a member of the Order of St. Dominic; so also was Augustine von Getelen, of whose sermons the Lutheran preacher Martin Undermark admitted, that, “with his tongue he was able to sway the people as he pleased”;[1360] Matthias Sittardus, Johann Dietenberger and Ambrosius Pelargus were also all Dominicans, nor did they confine themselves to preaching, but were all of them authors of publications suited to the times. Michael Vehe, another Dominican, was renowned for his ability to wield the pen in German not less than for his Latin discourses from the pulpit. His brother friar, Johann Fabri, earned praise as a preacher and as a clever popular writer. The Protestant preacher H. Rocholl wrote of him: “The turn of what he writes gives proof of great eloquence and his language is oratorically fine; his exhortations are also from an homiletic point of view quite excellent.”[1361] Antonius Pirata of the Dominican friary at Constance received the following encomium from Erasmus in a letter to Laurinus: “He is a respected man of good morals and profound learning, who displays in his sermons an eloquence truly wonderful.”[1362] Conrad Köllin and Jacob Hoogstraaten also adorned the Dominican Order in Germany at that time with their learning, though their interest lay more in scholastic theology than in popular works.

All the above belonged to the German province of a single Order, and, altogether, quite thirty Dominicans might be enumerated who engaged in controversy with Luther. Amongst the polemists hailing from other Orders and[384] deserving honourable mention was the zealous and scholarly Franciscan Caspar Schatzgeyer, also another Franciscan, Thomas Murner, to whom we shall return immediately, the Augustinian Johann Hoffmeister and the Carmelite Eberhard Billick.[1363]

The reason that the old Orders, with the exception of the Dominicans, did not furnish more controversialists was in great part due to the disastrous effect of the apostasy on their houses. Many of their subjects, deluded by Lutheranism, forsook their cells, and those who remained were frequently exposed to severe persecution. Many monasteries were not only deprived of their means of subsistence, but, owing to the new spirit of the age and the material difficulties of the monastic life, the supply of novices began to run short.

During this period of the German Church’s distress the secular clergy were not behindhand in furnishing tried combatants, though the influence of the new ideas and the decline in morals, particularly during the preceding thirty or forty years, had brought ecclesiastical life and learning to an even lower level than before. There were, however, still some cheering examples to be met with. Conspicuous amongst the veterans who opposed Luther’s teaching and innovations, were, in addition to those already mentioned, Michael Helding, auxiliary bishop and preacher at Mayence (later bishop of Merseburg), and Conrad Wimpina of Leipzig and Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, the author of a good Latin collection of works against Luther entitled “On the sects and errors,” etc. (1528).[1364] The Lutheran cause suffered considerably at the hands of these writers.

Thomas Murner, the famous Alsatian preacher and writer, a new Sebastian Brant even mightier than the former, entered the lists against Luther and made full use of the satirical style he had cultivated even earlier. Even Protestants have admitted his principal work against Luther (1522) to be a highly incisive and significant production, whilst a recent editor of his works describes him as the most weighty of Luther’s literary opponents in Germany.[1365][385] There is certainly no question of his “wanton, cheerful, nay, bacchantic humour,” and of his wealth of caustic irony; he enters into Luther’s arguments and proofs, and refutes them, more particularly those taken from the Bible. Murner speaks a very simple and pithy language, though not loath to have recourse occasionally to coarse words, of which an example has been given above (p. 376). Luther paid him out by “amusing his readers with an account of the lice on Murner’s cowl, and by circulating a lampoon alleged to have been sent him from the Rhine, but, at any rate, printed at Luther’s own instance.”[1366]

Not one of those who took the field against Luther and pitted their strength against his was really a match for him in energy, in ability to handle the language, in wealth of fancy or in power over the people. To every clear-sighted observer it must have been apparent that truth and logic were on the side of the Catholic controversialists, but, unfortunately, not one of them was able to rival in effectiveness the writings of the Wittenberg Professor.

Here and there, in certain ruder passages, we can easily see how his opponents are clumsily endeavouring to retort upon their readier and more inventive foe in language almost identical with his own. Luther, however, stands alone in the originality of his abuse. But if his adversaries, as was too often the case, overstepped the bounds of moderation of language, we must bear in mind their pain and indignation at the unspeakable injustice done to the Church of their fathers. In those rude encounters people were only too apt to forget that, according to Christ’s command, charity must be displayed even towards those who err. Yet the Church had received as part of her heirloom the injunction set by her Founder against the practice of the Jewish synagogue and its saying, “Hate thy enemy” (Mt. v. 42). “But I say to you: Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you.”

It was on principles such as these that, for all his glowing zeal for the glory of God, Bl. Pierre Favre (Faber) acted, that gentle and enlightened preacher of the true Catholic reformation, who, since 1540, had been labouring in the[386] dioceses of Spires, of Mayence and of Cologne. It was on these principles that he formed his gifted pupil Bl. Peter Canisius, the first German Jesuit, who completed the Exercises under him at Mayence, and, three years before Luther’s death, on May 8, 1543, joined the Society which had now been approved by the Church. Of the followers of the new religion, Favre expresses himself as follows: “May Jesus Christ, the Saviour of all men, Who knows that His written Word does not suffice to touch the human mind, soften and move their hearts by His divine Grace.” “No other arguments promote their conversion better than good works and self-sacrifice, even to laying down one’s life.”[1367] “I never cease grieving,” so he wrote to Ignatius, the General of the Order, “at the fall of the noble German nation, once the incomparable pearl of the Church and the glory of Christendom.” Through the head of the Society he sought to convince its members that his own way of dealing with the apostasy was the best. “Those who wish to be of service to the false teachers of to-day,” he writes, “must above all be distinguished by charity and real esteem for their opponents, and banish from their minds every thought that might in any way lessen their regard for them.”[1368]

When Pierre Favre set about his work for the preservation of the German Church, Luther was already at the heyday of his success. Favre accompanied the Spanish ambassador Ortiz to the religious Conference at Worms in 1540, and to the Diet of Ratisbon in 1541. Those two years bore convincing witness to the fact, that the progress of the innovations could no longer be checked by the authority either of Church or State.

But, before proceeding to examine Luther’s work at its zenith, we must scrutinise his doctrine a little more closely.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE NEW DOGMAS IN AN HISTORICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL LIGHT

1. The Bible text and the Spirit as the “True Tests of Doctrine”

Luther’s theological opinions present an attractive field to the psychologist desirous of studying his character. They are in great part, as has been several times shown, the result of his experiences, inward or outward, and appear peculiarly suited to meet his own case. Hence an examination of his doctrines will be of great value, particularly towards an understanding of his inner history.

The specifically Lutheran doctrine of the Bible as sole judge in matters of faith, i.e. the old, so-called “formal principle” of Protestantism, deserves to be considered first, though, in point of time, it was not the first to be reached by Luther. Actually it was first broached by the author of the schism only when the opposition between his newly discovered views and the Church’s teaching determined him to set aside both her claim to act as judge, and all other outward authority on doctrine. Refusing to be bound by the Church, in place of the teaching office with its gift of infallibility, which, according to the belief of the ancient Church, guards the treasure of revelation and therefore also decides on the sense of Holy Scripture, Luther set up as supreme arbiter the letter of the Bible. From this source, so he teaches, the faithful draw the doctrines of the faith, each one according to his ability and enlightenment.

The interpretation of the Sacred Books, in his view, takes place under the illumination of the Holy Ghost, and such an illumination he claimed first and foremost for himself. “Any believer who has better grounds and authority from Scripture on his side, is more to be believed than the Pope or a whole Council.”[1369]

[388]

Liberty for the Examination of Scripture and Luther’s Autonomy.

Luther only gradually reached his teaching concerning the supremacy of Holy Scripture.

From that time forward Luther gives the most varied expression to the principle of the free interpretation of Scripture: He declares, that the Bible may be interpreted by everyone, even by the “humble miller’s maid, nay, by a child of nine if it has the faith.”[1377] “The sheep must judge whether the pastors teach in Christ’s own tone.”[1378] “Christ alone, and none other than the Crucified, do we acknowledge as our Master. Paul will not have us believe him or an angel (Gal. i. 8, 12) unless Christ lives and speaks in him.” He is at pains to inform “the senseless Sophists, the unlearned bishops, monks and priests, the Pope and all his Gomorrahs” that we were baptised, not in the name of any Father of the Church, “but in the name of Jesus Christ.”[1379]

“That a Christian assembly or congregation has the right and the power to judge of doctrine and to appoint and dismiss preachers” is the title of one of Luther’s writings of 1523.[1380] Later we meet the downright declaration: “Neither Church, nor Fathers, nor Apostles, nor angels are to be listened to except so far as they teach the pure Word of God (‘nisi afferant et doceant purum verbum Dei’).”[1381]

In his bias against his foes he does not pause to consider that the very point at issue is to discern what the “pure Word of God” is, for, where it exists, any opposition on the[390] part of “Church, Fathers and Apostles” is surely inconceivable. It is merely an echo of his early mystic theories when, in a dreamy sort of way, he hints, that the pure Word manifests itself to each believer and reveals itself to the world without the intervention of any outward authority. It was clearly mere prejudice in his own favour which led him to be ruled by the one idea that the “pure Word of God” was to be found nowhere but in his own reading of the Bible.

How greatly he allowed himself to be deceived by such fancies is already apparent in Luther’s earliest known statements on Scripture at the very beginning of the public controversy. His devotion to Biblical study from his youth, and the academic laurels he had won in this branch of learning, led him, consciously or not, to find in himself an embodiment of Holy Scripture. Only in this way can we explain his strange language concerning the Bible in his “Eyn Freiheyt dess Sermons” against Tetzel. Here, at the very commencement, instead of setting quietly about his task, which was to defend his new interpretation against the tradition, objected by his opponent, he sings a pæan in praise of the unassailable Divine Word. “All who blaspheme Scripture with their false glosses,” he writes, “shall perish by their own sword, like Goliath (1 Kings xvii. 51).... Christ’s doctrine is His Divine Word. Whence it is forbidden, not only to this blasphemer [Tetzel], but to any angel in heaven, to change one letter of it. For it is written: ‘God does not deny what He has once said,’ Job xiii. [xiv.], and in the Psalter [cxviii. 89]: ‘For ever, O Lord, Thy word standeth firm.’ Not a jot or tittle of the most insignificant letter of the law of God shall pass; everything must be fulfilled.”[1382] Here Tetzel becomes a rude ass, “who brays at Luther,” reminding the latter of a “sow” that defiles the venerable Scripture.[1383]

How uncalled for his emphatic words quoted above on the value of the Bible really were can be more readily perceived now from a distance; for his opponents’ esteem and that of the Church generally for the Word of God was certainly not behind his, whilst the Church provided a safeguard for Holy Scripture which Luther was unwilling[391] to admit. But in those days, in the midst of the struggle, such praises showered by Luther on Holy Writ served to make people think—not at all to his disadvantage—that he was the herald and champion of the Bible, which the Popish Church did not reckon at its true worth, whereas, all the while, he should have been striving to show that his contentions really had the support of Scripture. Even later his misleading cry was ever: Back to the sacred stronghold of the Bible! Back to the “true, pure and undefiled Word of God!”

“Thy Word is the Truth” was his habitual battle-shout, though about this there had never been the least dispute.

“Against all the sayings of the Fathers,” he says in 1522 in his reply to King Henry VIII, “against all the arts and words of angels, men and devils I set the Scriptures and the Gospel.... Here I stand and here I defy them.... The Word of God I count above all else and the Divine Majesty supports me; hence I should not turn a hair were a thousand Augustines against me, and am certain that the true Church adheres with me to God’s Word.” “Here Harry of England must hold his tongue.” Harry would see how Luther “stood upon his rock” and that he, Harry, “twaddled” like a “silly fool.”[1384]

Experience given by the Spirit.

The “rock” on which Luther’s interpretation of the Bible rests is a certain inward feeling and perception by the individual of the Bible’s teaching.

In the last resort it is on an inward experience of having been taught by the Spirit the truth and meaning of the Divine words that the Christian must firmly take his stand. Just as Luther believed himself to have passed through such an experience, so, according to him, all others must first reach it and then make it their starting-point.

This is the Spirit from on High that co-operates with the Word of Scripture.

When his friend Carlstadt, together with whom Luther had at first insisted on Scripture only, later struck out a path of his own in doctrine and ecclesiastical practice while continuing to appeal to Scripture and to his own enlightenment, even the controversy with him and the “fanatics” failed to make Luther relinquish in theory his standpoint concerning the Bible and the Spirit as the one source and rule of faith. He became, however, more cautious in formulating it and endeavoured at least to leave a back door open. He was less insistent in his assertion that the Spirit instructed, by the inward Word, each one who read the[393] Scriptures; so much the more did he emphasise the supposed “clearness of the outward Word,” viz. the Bible, and deprecate any wanton treatment of it (by anyone save himself); at the same time he began to lay stress on the outward side of the Church, on the preaching office and the administration of the Sacraments.[1390] The fanatics he reproves for “merely gaping at the Spirit in their hearts,” whereas the outward articles must necessarily precede this.[1391] At times what he says almost looks like a repudiation of his earlier theory of enlightenment through the Spirit; for instance, when he describes how the fanatics wait “till the heavenly voice comes and God speaks to them.”[1392] Now, the outward Word of the Gospel, proclaimed by men truly “called,” is to be the guiding star amidst the mischief wrought by the sectarians; this outward Word, so he now fancies, will surely avail to decide every issue, seeing that it is so clear; only by dint of juggling could the sense of the Bible, as manifest in the outward Word, be distorted; looked at fairly it at once settled every question—needless to say in Luther’s favour; to understand it, all that was needed was the “natural language,” the “Lady Empress who far excels all subtle inventions.”[1393]

As to the alleged clearness of the word of Scripture it is sufficient to recall that he himself indirectly challenged it by accusing the whole Church of having misunderstood the Bible, and to consider the abyss that separated his interpretation, even of the most vital texts, from that of the scholars of the past. “Though we had the Bible and read it,” he says, “yet we understood nothing of it.”[1394]—Nevertheless he fancied he could save his theory by appealing to the clearness of the text and the assistance rendered by a knowledge of languages. “St. Paul wills” (1 Cor. xiv. 29), so Luther says, in a writing on the schools, “that Christians should judge all doctrine, though for this we must needs be acquainted with the language. For the preacher or teacher may indeed read the Bible through and through as much as he chooses, but he will sometimes be right and sometimes[394] wrong, if there be no one there to judge whether he is doing it well or ill. Thus in order to judge there must be skill or a knowledge of tongues, otherwise it is all to no purpose.”[1395]

But above all, as he impresses on the reader in the same tract, he himself had thrown light on the Bible by his knowledge of languages; his interpretation, thanks to the “light” of the languages, had effected “such great things that all the world marvels and must confess that now we have the Gospel almost as pure and undefiled as the Apostles had it, that it is restored to its pristine purity, and is even more undefiled than at the time of St. Jerome or Augustine.”[1396] His willingness, expressed from time to time, to submit himself or any other teacher to the judgment of anyone possessed of greater learning and a more profound spiritual sense, attracted many enlightened minds to his party.[1397]

Luther’s self-contradiction in speaking, first, of the great clearness of the Bible, and then of its great obscurity, cannot fail to strike one.

[395]

“Whoever now wants to become a theologian,” he says, for instance, “enjoys a great advantage. For, first, he has the Bible which is now so clear that he can read it without any difficulty.” “Should anyone say that it is necessary to have the interpretation of the Fathers and that Scripture is obscure, you must reply, that that is untrue. There is no book on earth more plainly written than Holy Scripture; in comparison with all other books it is as the sun to any other light.”[1398] Elsewhere he says: “The ungodly sophists [the Schoolmen] have asserted, that in Holy Scripture there is much that is obscure and not yet clearly explained,” but according to him they were not able to bring forward one vestige of proof; “if the words are obscure in one passage, they are clear in another,” and a comparison makes everything plain, particularly to one who is learned in languages.[1399]—Thus the Bible, according to a further statement, is “clearer, easier and more certain than any other writing.”[1400] “It is in itself quite certain, quite easy and quite plain; it is its own explanation; it is the universal argument, judge and enlightener, and makes all clear to all.”[1401]

Later, however, the idea that Holy Scripture was obscure preponderated with him. Two days before his death Luther wrote in Latin on a piece of paper, which was subsequently found on his table, his thoughts on the difficulty of understanding Scripture: “No one can understand the Bucolics of Virgil who has not been a herdsman for five years; nor his Georgics unless he has laboured five years in the fields. In order to understand aright the epistles of Cicero a man must have been full twenty years in the public service of a great State. No one need fancy he has tasted Holy Scripture who has not ruled Churches for a hundred years with prophets like Elias and Eliseus, with John the Baptist, Christ and the Apostles.”[1402] In all likelihood his experiences with the sectarians in his own camp led him towards the end of his life to lay more stress on the difficulty of understanding the Bible.

Even with the “plain, arid Scripture” and a clear brain[396] it may easily happen, as he says, to a man to fall into danger through the Bible, by looking at it from “his own conceit,” as “through a painted glass,” and “seeing no other colour than that of the glass.”[1403] Such people cannot then be set right, but become “masters of heresy.”[1404] All heresy seems to him to come from Scripture and to be based on it. There is no heretic, he says in a sermon in 1528, who does not appeal to Scripture; hence it came about that people called the Bible a heresy-book.[1405] The “heresy-book” was a favourite topic with him. Two years earlier he had used the expression twice on one day,[1406] and in 1525, when complaining in a sermon that the fanatics decked themselves out with Scripture, he said: “Thus it is true what people say, viz. that Holy Scripture is a heresy-book, i.e. a book that the heretics claim for themselves; there is no other book that they misuse so much as this book, and there has never been a heresy so bad or so gross that it has not sheltered itself behind Scripture.”[1407] These preachers from among the fanatics, he says, boast of the voice of God and of the Spirit, but they were never sent; let them prove by miracles their Divine mission![1408]

Thus he had retracted nothing of his strange doctrine concerning private enlightenment; on the contrary, when not actually dealing with the sectarians, he still declared with that persistence of which he was such a master and which shrank from no self-contradictions, that the Spirit alone taught man how to understand the Scriptures, now that man, owing to original sin, was quite unable to grasp even the plainest passages. “In it [the Bible] not one word is of so small account as to allow of our understanding it by reason.”[1409] Only by virtue of the higher light by which he understood Scripture could a man “impartially prove and judge the different spirits and their doctrines.” This he wrote in his “De servo arbitrio” at a time when he had already engaged upon the struggle with the “Heavenly[397] Prophets.”[1410] And to these principles he remained faithful till death without, however, as a Protestant scholar repeatedly points out of the several sides of Luther’s theology, “explaining more clearly” their relation to the difficulties involved.

Concerning the inward Word or the enlightenment by the Spirit some words of Luther’s in 1531 may be given here.

In what follows, for the better understanding of Luther’s attitude towards the Bible, we shall examine two consequences of his subjective ways, viz. their effect on the inspiration and the Canon of Scripture, and the exegetical disagreement which was the result of the principle of inward experience, also the means he chose to remedy it.

Inspiration and the Canon of Scripture.

In the matter of the inspiration of Scripture Luther never went so far as the fanatical enthusiasts of later Lutheranism, who, in their systems, taught an actual verbal inspiration, according to which the writers of the Bible had not merely been impelled, enlightened, and infallibly preserved from error, but had received every word from God. On the contrary, owing to his wanton handling of the Bible, he takes the inspiration of its writers so widely and vaguely that the very idea of inspiration is practically[399] evaporated. The Bible is indeed, according to him, an outcome of the inspiration of God and is the writing and Word of the Holy Ghost (“Spiritus auctor est libri”),[1420] and may accordingly be described as “the Holy Ghost’s own especial book, writing and Word”—which he sometimes explains almost as though he had been a believer in verbal inspiration.[1421]

The fact is, however, that he sees “in the sacred writers no other form of spiritual illumination than that displayed in the verbal preaching of the Divine witnesses.”[1422] “Moreover we occasionally find him questioning whether in certain passages the Holy Ghost ... is really so unquestionably present as in other parts of Scripture.” The truth is “he never formulated any detailed theory of Scriptural inspiration. With Luther the action of the Holy Ghost, on the witnesses of both Old Testament and New, is always one and the same, whether they proclaim the Word verbally or by writing; nowhere do we meet with the thought that they were under the influence of any other inspiration when they wrote.”[1423]

The freedom he allowed himself, no less in the matter of inspiration than in the principle of the Bible only, explains the distinction he so often makes between the character and importance of the various parts of the “Word of God,” which he will have one keep in view when searching in Scripture for the truths of faith. In passages where religion is not concerned, particularly in historical statements, he believes that the tools of the Holy Ghost both could and did err.[1424] He thinks that “the predictions of the prophets concerning the Kings and secular affairs often turned out wrong.”[1425] The inspiration of the Apostles (and Evangelists) in the New-Testament writings was merely a part of their general “office,” not a “special inspiration” in the nature[400] of a “second power added to and independent of it.” “The predominant importance of the Apostles he traces back to their general inspiration in the sense described above.”[1426]

Catholic doctors before Luther’s day had showed themselves far more jealous of the sacredness of the Bible, as regards both the idea of inspiration and the equal value of all the books, and their every part. In spite of this Luther would have it that he had been the first to make the Bible respected.

One point deserving of consideration as an instance of Luther’s wantonness is his attitude towards the Canon of the Sacred Books.

How was he to prove that this or that book was to be included amongst the writings which constituted the Word of God, now that he had rejected the testimony of ecclesiastical tradition? According to the teaching of the ancient Church, it was tradition and the authority of the Church which vouched for the canonical character of the books of the Bible. Luther was confronted with this objection by Johann Eck at the Leipzig Disputation, who quoted the well-known words of St. Augustine, that he was compelled “to believe the Gospel only on the authority of the Catholic Church.”[1427] No longer recognising the authority of the Church, Luther met the objection by some strange evasions.[1428] When at last he saw that no other meaning could be read into the passage he threw it overboard and wrote: “If this meaning be not in St. Augustine’s words then it were better to repudiate his saying. For it is contrary to Scripture, to the Spirit and to all experience.”[1429] Even for the inspired value of the books included in the Canon he appealed in his arbitrary fashion, not to the infallible Church, but to the “inward testimony of the Spirit.”

He could hardly escape being thus thrown back on this inward, mystical attestation, seeing that, according to him, human reason is of little assistance in the matter. Here the “inner sense” has to come in and, just as under the[401] illumination of the Spirit of God, it imparts certainty concerning the meaning of the Bible, so also it discerns the dignity and godly value of Scripture. For obvious reasons, here again, he fails to favour us with any “clearer explanation” of his theory. One thing, however, emerges clearly, viz. that the feeling of certainty regarding both the meaning and the contents is practically identical with the feeling that the writing in question is Divine; since the Spirit from on High teaches me the truth which lies in the sense of Scripture, so also it must teach me that it is Scripture; the apprehension of the sense and of the Divine character of the sacred pages is one and the same.[1430]

It is thus that Luther clothes in intangible, mystical language the vital question of religion here involved; at the Leipzig Disputation he had used terms no less elusive: Every book that really belongs to the Canon has authority and certainty “per se ipsum.”[1431] His mystical words were the outcome of deep-seated tendencies within him; Tauler’s language, which Luther had so skilfully made his own, was to assist him in concealing the obscurity and lack of logic inherent in his views.

In reality, nevertheless, like the Catholics, he accepted the Canon of Holy Scripture as handed down by antiquity; only that he granted to the subjective influence of the “testimony of the Spirit” a far-reaching and destructive force. He arbitrarily struck out of the Canon quite a number of authentic writings,[1432] which will be enumerated elsewhere[1433] together with his statements concerning them.[402] His literary opponents had a right to represent to him that so “strange and arbitrary”[1434] a proceeding was merely a result of his theory that the sacred books must prove their[403] character and value to each man individually. At any rate, his attitude towards the Bible cannot be regarded as at all logical.[1435]

Inward Assurance and Disagreements Without.

The second consequence of Luther’s biblical subjectivism which we have to consider lies outside him. It is the disconcerting divergence in interpretation which was the immediate result of his doctrine of “inward experience,” to correct which he had recourse to some curious remedies.

First of all we may append some further quotations from his writings to those already adduced. The significance of this remarkable side of the psychology of his doctrine is often not fully appreciated, because it seems scarcely believable that Luther should have ventured so far into the airy region of idealism. And yet, on the other hand, we have here the principal reason for describing the new doctrine as something interior, and as one doing better justice to our feelings and personality, which was Luther’s own claim and, after him, that of Protestants generally. The difficulty, however, is that almost every sentence of Luther’s regarding the part played by “inward assurance” in respect of the Bible, raises the question how that oneness of interpretation which he ever presupposes, is to escape shipwreck, even in the case of essential doctrines.

Remedies against Disagreement. The Outward Word.

Since the harmony of the “Spirit,” which Luther had so confidently looked for, failed to show itself in people’s minds[408] and not a glimmer of hope of any future agreement was visible, he found it necessary to insist far more strongly than heretofore on the outward Word;[1458] this was to check unwelcome inward revelations, to put everything in order and to be a bulwark against unusual views. “Now that the Apostles have preached the Word,” so runs one of his most interesting pronouncements on this subject,[1459] “and left us their writings, so that there is nothing more to reveal than what they have written, there is no need of any special new revelation, or miracles. This we know from the writings of the Apostles.” It would be a different matter if all were filled with the Holy Ghost and His gifts; “were this so it would be an easy thing to preach and to govern and all would go on quite smoothly and well, as indeed it ought. But unfortunately this is not the case, and those who have the Holy Ghost and a right understanding are not so common,” but “there are plenty who fancy they have mastered Scripture and have the Holy Ghost without measure.” These want to be thought “far more deeply and profoundly initiated” than Luther himself, and “much more learned than we are.” This he is not unwilling to allow, but on one thing he must insist, viz. on the “Word!” “This old and tried doctrine of the Apostles” he has “again brought to light,” having found “all this darkened by the Pope and his human teaching”; “by the Grace of God we have brought it to light once more”; “it is the very same as the Apostles first taught. But it has not been brought to light again without a revelation of the Holy Ghost.... He had to illumine our minds that Holy Scripture might be rightly viewed and understood”; hence “no other word or revelation is to be expected” “contrary to this doctrine, even were an angel from heaven visibly to bring” a new doctrine. Everyone can see “that God is tempting the people, particularly in these latter days of which it is said, that the devil shall rule mightily over Christendom by means of Antichrist.”—Here, consequently, his teaching is put on a level with the “outward Word.”

The outward Word, according to other passages where Luther is rather more reticent concerning the “revelation” he had received, was that plain and unassailable Bible[409] teaching on which all “Spirits” must agree without any danger of divergency. This Word he now identifies with preaching. Preaching, however, is part of the office, and both office and preaching were controlled by Luther; indeed the office had been instituted chiefly by him and his sovereign. Hence, in effect, the outward Word is still Luther’s word.

“Faith,” we read of the outward Word, seemingly contradicting the freedom Luther had formerly proclaimed, “comes of hearing, i.e. from preaching, or from the outward Word. This is the order established by God and He will not derogate from it. Hence contempt for the outward Word and for Scripture is rank blasphemy, which the secular authorities are bound to punish, according to the second Commandment which enjoins the punishment of blasphemy.” This occurs in the booklet officially circulated in 1536 among the pastors of the Saxon Electorate.[1460] A Protestant researcher who has recently made a special study of the “Inquisition” in the Saxon Electorate has the following remark concerning this statement, which is by no means without a parallel in Luther’s works: “Thus even contempt for Scripture—here meaning contempt for Luther’s interpretation of the Bible text—was already regarded as ‘rank blasphemy’ which it was the duty of the authorities to punish. To such a pass had Evangelical freedom already come.”[1461]

In order to uphold his own reading of the Bible against others which differed from his, Luther incidentally appealed with the utmost vigour, as the above examples show, to the Church, to tradition and to the Fathers, whose authority he had nevertheless solemnly renounced.

Thus, in his attitude towards Scripture, the Wittenberg Professor wavers between tradition, to which he frequently appeals almost against his will, and that principle of independent study of the Bible under enlightenment from on high, which is ever obtruding itself on him. The latter principle he never denied, in spite of his sad experiences with the doctrine that everyone who is taught by the Holy Ghost can draw from Scripture his own belief, and, according to St. Paul, with the help of this light, test the teaching and opinions of all.[1466] Yet—strange as it may seem on the part of an assailant of authority—the last word on matters of faith belongs, according to him, to authority. This is his opinion for practical reasons, because not everyone can be expected, and but few are able, to undertake the task of finding their belief for themselves in the Bible. Moreover, what one may possibly have learnt from Scripture at the cost of toil and with the help of inspiration, cannot so readily become the common property of all. On the other hand, according to Luther, the “exterius iudicium” which is supported by the “externa claritas” of Scripture, as interpreted by himself and proclaimed with authority by the preachers, was intended for all.[1467]

[412]

The Way of Settling Doubts Concerning Faith. Assurance of Salvation and Belief in Dogma.

When we come to examine Luther’s teaching on the nature of the faith which is based on the Bible and to enquire how doubts regarding this Bible teaching were to be quieted, we are again faced by the utmost waywardness.

He thus leaves the anxious man “to himself” at the most awful of moments; elsewhere, too, he does the same. When he invites every man to “taste the Word of God” betimes and to “feel” how directly “the Master speaks within his heart,” this is merely a roundabout way of repeating the comfortless warning that “each one must fight for himself.” In other words, what he means is: I have no sure warrant to give in the stead of the Church’s authority; you must find out for yourself whether you have received the true Word of Christ by consulting your own feelings.

In addition to this, in the opinion of many Protestant theologians, the faith to be derived from the Bible which everyone must necessarily arrive at was very much circumscribed by Luther. “Man’s attitude towards Christ and His saving Grace” loomed so large with him, that it “decided the question whether a man was, or was not, a believer.” If, in the Protestantism of to-day, Luther’s “idea of faith” is frequently taken rather narrowly, it must be admitted that in many of his statements and demands he himself goes even further. We have here to do with that “two-sidedness in his attitude towards Scripture,” which “is apparent at every period of his life.”[1471] If we keep to the earlier and more “liberal” side of his “Evangelical conception of faith,” then indeed the trusting and confident assumption of such a relationship with Christ would[414] certainly be “decisive in the question whether a man was a believer or not, and Luther himself frequently used this criterion, for instance, when he answers as follows the question: Who is a member of the Church and whom must one regard as a dear brother in Christ: ‘All who confess Christ as sent by God the Father in order to reconcile us by His death and to obtain grace for us’; or again elsewhere: ‘All those who cling to Christ alone and confess Him in faith,’ or, yet again: All those ‘who seek the Lord with all their heart and soul, and trust only in God’s mercy.’[1472] In such utterances we have the purely religious conception of Evangelical faith clearly summarised.” (Cp. above, vol. iii., p. 13.)

Agreeably with this conception of faith, some Protestants have contended that Luther should have been much more broad-minded with regard to doubts and to doctrines which differed from his own; his opposition to other views, notably to those of the Zwinglians, brought him, however, to another conception of faith, to one more closely related to the Catholic theory. According to Catholic doctrine, faith is a firm assent to all that God has revealed and the Church proposes for belief. It is made up of many articles, not one of which can be set aside without injury to the whole. Luther, so we are told, “owing to his controversy with Zwingli, ran the risk of exchanging his conception of faith for this one [the Catholic one], according to which faith is the acceptance of a whole series of articles of faith.”

In reality he did not merely “run the risk” of reaching such a doctrine; he had, all along, even in earlier days, been moving on these same lines, albeit in contradiction with himself. It was in fact nothing altogether new when he wrote in the Articles of Schwabach: “Such a Church is nothing else than the faithful in Christ, who believe, hold and teach the above Articles.”[1473] The faith for which he[415] wishes to stand always comprised the contents of the oldest Creeds, and he prefers to close his eyes to the fact that they were really undermined by his other propositions. By these articles he is determined to abide. Hence it is hardly fair to appeal to him in favour of their abrogation, and any such appeal would only serve to emphasise his self-contradiction. Luther himself, when dealing with opponents, frequently speaks of the breaking of a single link as being sufficient to make the whole chain fall apart. “All or nothing” was his cry, viz. the very same as Catholics had used against his own innovations. In short, in his “two-sidedness,” he, quite generally, seeks a sure foothold against difficulties from within and from without in the principle of authority in its widest meaning, and, when trying to safeguard the Apostles’ Creed and the “œcumenical symbols,” he appeals expressly to the Catholic past. He says that by thus vindicating the Apostles’ Creed and that of Nicæa he wished to show that he “was true to the rightful, Christian Church, which had retained them till that day.”[1474] The Fathers preserved them and, as in the case of the Athanasian Creed, supplemented and enlarged the traditional formulas, the better to counter heretics; Luther is even willing to accept new terms not found in Scripture, but coined by the Church, such as “peccatum originale” or “consubstantialis” ὁμοούσιος,[1475] since they might profitably be employed against false teachers.

Protestant Objections to Luther’s so-called “Formal Principle.”

“It is not for us to tone down or conceal the contradictions which present themselves,” writes a Protestant theologian who has made Luther’s attitude towards Scripture the subject of particular study. “... Even judged by the standard of his own day Luther does not display that uniformity which we are entitled to expect.... The psychological motives in particular are very involved and spring from different sources. The very fact that throughout his life he exhibited a certain obstinacy and violence towards both himself and others, must render doubtful any attempt to trace everything back to a single source.[416] Obstinacy always points to contradictions.” This author goes so far as to say: “We might almost give vent to the paradox, that only in these contradictions is uniformity apparent; such a proposition would, however, hold good only before the court of psychology.” “To-day it is not possible to embrace Luther’s view in its entirety.”[1476]

In an historical account of Luther’s teaching (and it is in this that most Protestant scholars are interested) we must, as we advance, ever keep in view Luther’s whole individuality with all its warring elements. The difficulty thus presented to our becoming better acquainted with his views is, however, apparent from the words already quoted from one of Luther’s biographers concerning Luther’s wealth of ideas, which also, to some extent, apply even to his statements on dogma: “Every word Luther utters plays in a hundred lights and every eye meets with a different radiance which it would gladly fix.”[1477]

In spite of the difficulties arising from this character of the Wittenberg Doctor, early orthodox Lutheranism taught that he had set up the “sola scriptura” as the “formal principle” of the new doctrine. According to eminent authorities in modern Protestantism, however, this formal principle was stillborn; it was never capable in practice of supporting an edifice of doctrine, still less of forming a community of believers. Hence the tendency has been to make it subservient to the “Evangelical” understanding of the Bible.

2. Luther as a Bible-Expositor

“Luther in his quality of Bible-expositor is one of the most extraordinary and puzzling figures in the domain of religious psychology.”[1494]

Some Characteristics of Luther’s Exegesis.

It is true that some of Luther’s principles of exegesis are excellent, and that he has a better perception than many of his predecessors of the need of first ascertaining the literal sense, and, for this purpose, of studying languages. He is aware that the fourfold sense of Holy Scripture, so often wrongly appealed to, must retire before the literal meaning, and that we must ever seek what the sacred writer really and obviously meant, in whatever dress we find his ideas clothed. Some quite excellent observations occur in his works on the danger of having recourse to allegorical interpretations and of not taking the text literally.

Luther himself, it is true, in his earlier postils, frequently makes use of the allegory so dear to mediæval writers, often investing what he says in poetic and fantastic forms. Later on, however, he grew more cautious. Here again the abuse of allegory by the fanatics had its effect. In addition to this his constant efforts to prove his doctrine against theological gainsayers within and without his camp, forced him in his arguments to use the literal sense of the Bible, or at least what he considered such. The advantages of his German translation of the Bible will be spoken of elsewhere (see vol. v., xxxiv., 3).

Yet he lacked one thing essentially required of an expositor, viz. theological impartiality, nor was he fair to those means by which the Church’s interpreters were guided in determining the sense of Scripture.

Concerning the latter, it is enough to remember how lightheartedly he threw overboard the interpretation of the whole of the Christian past. His wantonness, which led him to esteem as of no account all the expositions and teachings of previous ages, deprived his exegesis of much help and[421] also of any stable foundation. Even considered from the merely natural standpoint, real progress in religious knowledge must surely be made quietly and without any sudden break with what has already been won by the best minds by dint of diligent labour.

The rock on which Luther suffered shipwreck was however above all his complete lack of impartiality. In his work as expositor his concern was not to do homage to the truth in whatever shape he might encounter it in the texts he was interpreting, but to introduce into the texts his own ideas. Bearing in mind his controversy and his natural temperament, this cannot, however, surprise us. Hence it is not necessary to take too tragically the tricks he occasionally plays with Bible texts. Some of these have been most painstakingly examined,[1495] and, indeed, it was not without its advantages to have the general complaints raised thus verified in individual instances. Thanks to his investigations Döllinger was able to write: “False interpretations of the most obvious and arbitrary kind are quite the usual thing in his polemics. It would hardly be possible to carry this further than he did in his writings against Erasmus in the instances quoted even by Planck. Indeed, examples of utter wilfulness and violence to the text can be adduced in great number from his writings.” Most frequently, as Döllinger points out, “his interpretation is false, because he foists his own peculiar ideas on the biblical passages, ideas which on his own admission he reached not by a calm and dispassionate study of the Bible, but under conditions of painful mental disturbance and anxiety of conscience.” To this he was urged by the unrest certain Bible-sayings excited in him; in such cases, as Döllinger remarks, he knew how “to pacify his exegetical conscience by telling himself, that all this disquiet was merely a temptation of the devil, who wanted to puzzle him with passages from Scripture and thus drive him to despair.”[1496]

The whole of his exegesis is pervaded by his doctrine of Justification. In this sense he says in the preface to Galatians, the largest of his exegetico-dogmatic works: “Within me this one article of faith in Christ reigns[422] supreme. Day and night all my ideas on theology spring from it and return thereto.”[1497]

Thus, in all questions of exegesis the “preaching of Christ” is conclusive. We must, first of all, see whether each book commonly reckoned to form part of the Bible really “preaches Christ,” and, where this is so, the same thoughts will control everything else.[1505]

In the question of the relation of faith to the interpretation of Scripture, Luther hobbles strangely. On the one hand the Bible is to be interpreted strictly according to faith, on the other, faith is to be won solely from the Bible. The former proposition he thus explains in a sermon: It is a command that the interpretation of Scripture must “rhyme with faith and not teach anything contrary to or differing from what faith teaches.” True faith, however, is that which is directed against the power of works, so that any interpretation of the Bible which contradicts this is wrong. Whatever teaches us “to have a good conscience towards God, except by faith alone and without any works, neither resembles nor rhymes with faith.”[1506] Of the content of faith we are assured above all by inward experience and the Spirit. It is indeed on the “feeling and sentiment” that, in the case of faith, i.e. the acceptance of the Gospel[424] message of salvation, Luther lays the chief stress.[1507] “If you feel it not, you have not the faith, the Word merely rings in your ears and hovers on your lips like foam on water.”[1508]

Luther is just as determined in proving faith from Scripture as he is in making Scripture subservient to and dependent on faith. “Without Scripture faith soon goes,” he exclaims after labouring to bring forward arguments from the Bible in support of the new faith in Christ.[1509] “Whatever is advanced without being attested by Scripture or a revelation need not be believed.”[1510] “To this wine no water must be added”;[1511] to this sun no lantern must be held up![1512] “You must take your stand on a plain, clear and strong word of Scripture, which will then be your support.”[1513]

The worst of it is, as O. Scheel aptly remarks, that Luther pits his Christ against Scripture and thus makes the latter void.[1514]

On the one hand, according to Adolf Harnack, Luther, when making faith the rule of Bible interpretation, becomes a “mediæval exegete” and borrows from the past even his types and allegories. Yet he cuts himself adrift in the most decided fashion from the mediæval exegesis, “not merely when it is a question of Justification,” but even “in[425] regard to such Scripture passages as contain nothing whatever about the doctrine of Justification and faith, or only alien matter.”[1515]

For instance, he finds righteousness by works condemned and faith exalted in the very first pages of the Bible; for Cain, his brother’s murderer, “clung to works and lost the faith,” that was his misfortune; whereas Abel held aloof “from free-will and the merit of works” and “kept the faith in a pure conscience.” “The same thing happened later with Isaac and Ismael, Jacob and Esau, and others.”—Yet, in spite of such condemnation of works, many passages, particularly in the New Testament, seem to tell in favour of works. This, however, is only due to the fact that at the time of the New Testament writers it was desirable to raise up a bulwark against any too great esteem for faith. Thus it was really not meant quite seriously; in the same way even he himself, so he says, had been obliged to oppose this excessive esteem for faith, because, in his day, and owing to his preaching, the people “wanted merely to believe, to the neglect of the power and fruit of faith” (in good actions).[1516]

Owing to his habit of ever reading the Bible through the glass of his doctrine of Justification, his handling of Rom. xi. 32 (in the Vulgate: “Conclusit Deus omnia in incredulitate ut omnium misereatur”) was such that Döllinger found in it no less than “three falsifications of the words of Paul.”[1517]

Luther’s marginal glosses to his translation of the Bible are open to plentiful objections, for their purpose is to recall the reader as often as possible to the basic theories of his doctrine.[1518]

Some Protestants have been exceedingly frank in characterising the strained relations often noticeable between Luther’s exegesis and true scholarship.

Luther’s Exegesis in the Light of His Early Development.

With the help of the newly published Commentary on Romans, written by Luther in his youth (vol. i., p. 184 ff.), we can trace the beginnings of his curious exegesis more easily than was possible before.

What we want first of all is a key to that more than human confidence which prompts the new teacher to blend in one his own interpretation and the actual text of the Bible and to say, “My word is the truth.” This key is to be found in his early history. It was then, in those youthful days when he began morbidly to brood over the mysteries of the Epistle to the Romans, all unable to grasp the profound thoughts it contained, that the phenomenon in question made its first appearance.

In the matter of private interpretation as against the Church’s, in these earliest exegetical efforts, he remained, outwardly at least, true to the traditional standpoint, until, little by little, he forsook it, as already described (above, p. 387 ff.). Even his academic Theses of Sept., 1517 (“Against the Theology of the Schools”), based though they were on a misapprehension of Scripture, conclude with the[430] assurance, that, “throughout, he neither intended nor had said anything contrary to the Church or at variance with her doctrines.”[1530]—Then, however, with startling suddenness the change set in.

When, after the storm aroused by the publication of the Indulgence Theses, he wrote his German “Sermon von dem Ablass und Gnade,”[1531] he appealed in it repeatedly to the Bible as against the “new teachers,” i.e. the Schoolmen, and indeed in as confident a manner as though he alone were learned in Scripture. He says on the first page: “This I say: That it cannot be proved from any Scripture, etc. Much should I like to hear anyone who can testify to the contrary in spite of the fact that some doctors have thought so.” And at the end he sums up as follows: “On these points I have no doubt, and they have sufficient warrant in Scripture. Therefore you too should have no doubt and send the Scholastic doctors about their business!” Shortly before this, in a letter about the Scholastic theologians of his day, particularly those of Leipzig, he declares: “I could almost swear that they understand not a single chapter of the Gospel or Bible.”[1532] He was, however, greatly cheered to hear that, thanks to his new interpretation of the Bible, prelates, as well as the burghers of Wittenberg, were all saying “that formerly they had neither known nor heard anything of Christ or of His Gospel.”[1533]

After Tetzel had attacked his Sermon and accused Luther of falsifying the sacred text, and of cherishing heretical opinions, the latter indited his “Eyn Freiheyt dess Sermons Bepstlichen Ablass und Gnad belangend,” where he emphasises even more strongly and pathetically the supremacy of Holy Scripture over all outward authority: “Even though all these and a thousand others of the holiest of doctors had held this or that, yet their opinion is of no account compared with a single verse of Holy Writ.... They are not in the least to be believed, because the Scripture says: The Word of God no one may set aside or alter.”[1534]

Carlstadt, whom Luther himself had instructed, outdid[431] his master and advocated entire freedom for the private interpretation of Scripture before Luther could make up his mind to do this. He did not shrink from making his own the following defiant Thesis: “The text of the Bible does not take precedence merely of one or several Doctors of the Church, but even of the authority of the whole Church.”[1535] It was only after Luther, thanks to his obstinacy and curious methods of reasoning, had extricated himself from his examination at Augsburg, and fled, that he admitted in the statements already given (p. 388) that the word of Scripture was to be set in the first place, and, that, in its interpretation, no account need be made of ecclesiastical authority.[1536] This prelude to Luther’s new exegetical standpoint, more particularly towards the end, was marked by much fear, doubt and anxiety of conscience. He was worried, to such an extent that his “heart quaked for fear,” by a number of Scripture passages and still more by the question: Could the Author of Scripture hitherto have really left His work open to such dire misunderstanding?

While his powerful rhetoric, particularly when it came to polemics, was able to conceal all the failings of his exposition of the Bible, his real eloquence, his fervour and his popular ways of dealing with non-controversial things imparted to his pulpit-commentaries no less than to his written ones a freshness of tone which improved, stimulated and inspired his followers with love for Holy Scripture and also brought them Bible consolation amidst the trials of life.

3. The Sola Fides. Justification and Assurance of Salvation

The two propositions considered above, fundamental though they are, of the Bible being under the enlightenment of the Spirit the sole rule of faith, and of the untrustworthiness of ecclesiastical authority and tradition, far from having been the first elements to find their place in Luther’s scheme, were only advanced by him at a later date and in order to protect his pet dogma.

His doctrine of Justification was the outcome of his dislike for “holiness-by-works,” which led him to the[432] theory of salvation by faith alone, through the imputation of the merits of Christ without any co-operation on man’s part, or any human works of merit. This doctrine, from the very first as well as later, was everything to him. This it was which he made it his earliest task to elaborate, and about it he then proceeded to hang the other theories into which he was forced by his conflict with the Church and her teaching, some of which were logically connected with his main article, whilst, in the case of others, the connection was only artificial. Later exponents of Lutheranism termed his doctrine of Justification the material principle of his theology, no doubt in the same sense as he himself reckons it, in a sermon of 1530 in his postils, as: “the only element, article or doctrine by which we become Christians and are called such.”

This Evangel, Luther’s consoling doctrine, as a matter of fact was simply the record of his own inner past, the most subjective doctrine assuredly that ever sought to enlist followers. As we know, it is already found entire in his Commentary on Romans of 1515-1516.

In order to strengthen, in himself first and then in others, the assurance of salvation it comprised, he amplified it by asserting the believer’s absolute certainty of salvation; this was lacking in his Commentary on Romans, though even then he was drifting towards it. It was only in 1518-1519 that he developed the doctrine of the so-called “special faith,” by which the individual assures himself of pardon and secures salvation. Thereby he transformed faith into trust, for what he termed fiducial faith partook more of the nature of a strong, artificially stimulated hope; it really amounted to an intense confidence that the merits of Christ obliterated every sin.

Of faith in this new sense he says that it is the faith. “To have the Faith is assentingly to accept the promises of God, laying hold on God’s gracious disposition towards us and trusting in it.”[1537] In spite of this he continues in the old style to define faith as the submission of reason to all the truths revealed, and even to make it the practical basis of all his religious demands: Whoever throws overboard[433] even one single article of faith will be damned; faith being one whole, every article must be believed.[1538] We can understand how opponents within his own camp, of whom he demanded faith in the doctrines he had discovered in the Bible, when they themselves failed to find them there, ventured to remind him of his first definition of faith, viz. the fiducial, and to ask him whether a trustful appropriation of the merits of Christ did not really meet all the demands of “faith.” Recent Protestant biographers of Luther point out that Zwingli was quite justified in urging this against Luther. Attacked by Luther on account of his discordant teaching on the Lord’s Supper, and that on the score of faith, Zwingli rudely retorted: “It is a pestilential doctrine, by a perversion of the word faith which really means trust in Christ, to lower it to the level of an opinion”; with this behaviour on Luther’s part went “hand in hand a similar change in his conception of the Church founded on faith.”[1539]

Some Characteristics of the New Doctrine of Justification.

If we take Luther’s saving faith we find that, according to him, it produces justification without the help of any other work or act on man’s part, and without contrition or charity contributing anything to the appropriation of righteousness on the part of the man to be justified.

Any contrition proceeding from the love of God, or at least from that incipient love of God such as Catholicism required agreeably with both revelation and human psychology, appeared to Luther superfluous; in view of the power of man’s ingrained concupiscence it amounted almost to a contradiction; only the fear of God’s Judgments (“timor servilis”), so he declares (vol. i., p. 291), with palpable exaggeration, had ruled his own confessions made in the monastery. At any rate, he was in error when he[434] declared that this same fear had been the motive in the case of Catholics generally. He persuaded himself that this fear must be overcome by the Evangel of the imputed merits of Christ, because otherwise man can find no peace. The part played by the law is, according to him, almost confined to threatening and reducing man to despair, just as he himself had so often verged on hopelessness through thinking of his own inevitable reprobation; the assurance of salvation by faith, however, appears to every Christian as an angel of help and consolation even minus any repudiation of sin on the part of man’s will, for, owing to the Fall, sin cannot but persist.

When he attempts to prove this by his “experiences,” we must remind the reader how uncertain his statements are, concerning his own “inward feelings” during his monastic days. It will be pointed out elsewhere (vol. vi., xxxvii.) that these “recollections,” with their polemical animus, were of comparatively late growth, though they would have been of far greater service at the outset when still quite fresh.

A more solid basis for estimating the value of his doctrine of Justification is afforded by its connection with his other theological views. As we know, he regarded original sin and the concupiscence resulting from it as actual sin, still persisting in spite of baptism; he exaggerated beyond measure man’s powerlessness to withstand the concupiscence which remains with him to the end. Owing to the unfreedom of the will, the devil, according to Luther, holds the field in man’s heart and rules over all his spiritual faculties. The Divine Omnipotence alone is able to vanquish this redoubtable master by bestowing on the unhappy soul pardon and salvation; yet sin still reigns in the depths of the heart. No act of man has any part in the work of salvation. Actual grace is no less unknown to him than sanctifying grace. Good works are of no avail for salvation and of no importance for heaven, though, accidentally, they may accompany the state of grace, God working them in the man on whom He has cast His eye by choosing him to be a recipient of faith and salvation. Such election and predestination is, however, purely God’s work which man himself can do absolutely nothing to deserve.—Thanks to these errors, the “sola fides” and assurance of salvation stand bereft of their theological support.

[435]

We must, however, revert to one point again and examine it more closely on account of its historical and psychological importance. This is Luther’s doctrine of the slavery of the will, and of God’s being the sole agent in man.

[437]

From such a standpoint all that was possible was a mere outward imputation of the merits of Christ, no Justification in the sense in which it was taken by the ancient Church, viz. as a supernatural regeneration by means of sanctifying grace.

Any reliable proofs, theological or biblical, in support of this altogether novel view of Justification will be sought for in vain in the works of Melanchthon and Luther. When Luther speaks of the power of faith in the merits of Christ and of the promises of faith concerning eternal life, as he does, for instance, in the written defence which he handed to Cardinal Cajetan at Augsburg, his words and the Bible passages he quotes merely express what the Church had always taught concerning the necessity and efficacy of faith as the condition of the supernatural life to be further developed in the soul by God’s Grace and man’s co-operation.[1549] In spite of this, in that very writing he alleges that he has satisfactorily proved that Justification is effected by fiducial faith.

“No one can be justified,” he there writes, “but by faith, in the sense that he must needs believe with a firm faith (‘certa fide credere’) that he is justified, and not doubt in any way that he is to attain to grace; for if he doubts and is uncertain, he will not be justified, rather he spits out the grace.”[1550]

His doctrine of faith alone and of the imputed merits of Christ, was, of all his theological opinions, the one which underwent the least change during his lifetime.[1551] Until old age he continued to lay great stress on it both in the University Disputations and in his sermons and writings.[1552] Even the inferences drawn from it by Johann Agricola in his Antinomian theses did not cause Luther to waver in the least.

[438]

In the Schmalkalden Articles he declares explicitly that Justification consists merely in God’s “looking upon” the sinner “as righteous and holy.”[1553] According to one of his sermons our righteousness comes “altogether from without and rests solely on Christ and His work”;[1554] elsewhere he says, with the utmost assurance: The Christian is “righteous and holy by virtue of a foreign or outward holiness.”[1555]

In view of such statements undue stress must not be laid on that Luther says in another passage, which recalls the teaching of the olden Church, viz. that the Spirit of God dwells in the righteous, and fills him with His gifts, nay, with His very “substance,”[1556] and that it was this Spirit which gave him the “feeling and the certainty” of being in a state of grace.[1557] This is much the same as when Luther describes man’s active love of God whereby he becomes united and “one kitchen” with God,[1558] whilst, nevertheless, insisting that the strength of the sola fides must never be the least diminished by work. “No work must be added to this” (to faith), he says in his postils, “for whoever preaches that guilt and penalty can be atoned for by works has already denied the Evangel.”[1559] Only at times does he allow himself to follow the voice of nature speaking on behalf of man’s co-operation; this he does, for instance, in the passage just referred to, where he admits that human reason is ever inviting man to take a share in working out his salvation by means of his own works.[1560]

The forgiveness which God offers “must be seized and believed. If you believe it you are rid of sin and all is right.” “This all the Gospels teach.”[1561] Unfortunately there are “many abandoned people who misuse the Gospel[439] ... who think that no one must punish them because the Gospel preaches nothing but forgiveness of sins. To such the Gospel is not preached.... To whom is it preached? To those who feel their misery,” i.e. to those who are sunk in remorse of conscience and in fears, similar to, or at least faintly resembling, those he had himself once endured. When he applies the words of Psalm 50 to the yearning, the prayers and the struggles of those who thirst for salvation: “A contrite and humbled heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise,” he finds himself again, all unconsciously, on the road to the Church’s olden view on man’s share in repentance.

What we read in the important notes “De iustificatione,” written during Luther’s stay in the fortress of Coburg and only recently published, differs not at all from his ordinary, purely mechanical view of Justification.[1562] These notes are from Luther’s amanuensis, Veit Dietrich, and record some conversations concerning a work Luther had planned in reply to the objections against the new doctrine of Justification. Dietrich entitled the collection “Rhapsodia.”[1563]

The Striving after Absolute Certainty of Salvation.

Luther was chiefly concerned in emphasising the indispensable necessity of particular faith in personal justification and personal salvation.

Whereas the Church had required faith in our real, objective redemption by Christ, Luther demanded over and above a further faith in one’s subjective redemption, in spite of the difficulty which circumstances might present to the attaining of this assurance. It was something very different when the olden theologians taught that there were signs from which the good man’s state of grace might be inferred with moral certainty, and that such signs were, for instance, the determination to commit no grievous sin, the desire to perform good works more especially such as were difficult, joy and peace of soul in God, and, above all, the consciousness of having done everything that was necessary for reconciliation with God. That, by such marks, it was “possible to arrive at the practical certainty of being in a state of grace” had been taught by Gabriel Biel, with whom Luther was acquainted.[1567] Later on, the Council of Trent laid down as the Catholic doctrine, against the Lutheran theory of absolute faith in personal justification, “that no good Christian may doubt of the mercy of God, of the merits of Christ or the efficacy of grace,” but that at the same time “no one can know with the certainty of faith which precludes all possibility of error that he has attained to God’s grace.”[1568]

Luther’s teaching was quite different.

We are already acquainted to some extent with the struggle against himself, and the better voices within him, which the unhappy man had to wage; this distress of soul remains to be treated of more in detail later (vol. v., xxxii.). It may, however, be pointed out here that he knew how to make this struggle part of his system; even when depressed by one’s painful inability to reach this unshaken consciousness of salvation he still insists that one must feel certain; faced by doubts and fears on account of his sins, man must summon defiance to his aid, then, finally, he will come to rest secure of his personal salvation.

[442]

Luther, according to the legend which he evolved later when defending his doctrine of faith alone and Justification, had started from the intense inward need he felt of certainty of salvation, and with the object, as he says, of “finding a Gracious God.” By his discovery regarding Justification,[443] so his admirers say, he at last found and retained for the rest of his life the sense of a merciful God. The strange thing is, however, that in his severe and protracted struggles of conscience he should, at a later date, have again arrived at this very question: “How can I find a Gracious God?”

[445]

The “Article on which the Church Stands or Falls”: According to Modern Protestants.

Protestant scholars are far from sharing Luther’s high regard for his dogma of Justification, and what they say throws a curious light on the fashion in which he deceived himself.

The objections on this point, raised against Luther in his own camp, are all the more significant seeing he made all religion to consist in the cloaking of sin and the pacifying assurance of forgiveness; his Evangel had come as a “solace for troubled consciences”; it is “nothing else but forgiveness, and is concerned only with sin, which it blots out, covers over, sweeps away and cleanses so long as we live.”[1604] Thanks to it the long-forgotten true conception of the Kingdom of God had at last been happily brought again to light.

The title of a sermon of Luther’s printed in 1525 expresses this idea as follows: “A Sermon on the Kingdom of Christ, which consists in the Forgiveness of Sins,” etc. The words of Christ to the man sick of the palsy (Mat. ix. 2) form the subject: “Be of good heart, son, thy sins are forgiven thee.” “These words,” the preacher says, “indicate and sum up shortly what the Kingdom of Christ is.” Since the Kingdom of Christ must be defined in relation to the question: “How must we behave with regard to God?” it cannot and must “not be regarded otherwise” than according to these words: “Thy sins are forgiven thee”; for “this is the chief thing, viz. that which can quiet the conscience.” “Whence it follows that the Kingdom of Christ is so constituted that it contains nothing but comfort and forgiveness of sins.” The chief fault of our reason is its “inclination, everywhere manifest, to forsake this faith and knowledge and to fall back upon works.”

In Holy Scripture the object of the Kingdom of Christ is differently given. There it culminates in the glory of God. God’s glorification is the real aim of Christ’s coming, and must also be the supreme object of every believer. This does not in the least tally with that trumped-up holiness-by-works[449] which Luther saw in Catholicism. This far higher, general, Catholic thought of God’s glory pervades the first petitions of the prayer taught by our Saviour Himself in the Our Father: “Hallowed be Thy Name,” etc.; only in the fifth petition do we hear of the forgiveness of sins for which, indeed, every human creature must implore. In the Our Father we acknowledge first of all our obligation to serve God with all our powers and strive to comply with our duty of glorifying His name. Hence Catholic religious instructions have never commenced with “the simple forgiveness of sin,” with attempts to cloak it and to induce a fancied security in the sinner; their purpose has ever been to show that man is created to serve God and to honour Him, and that he can best do so by imitation and love of Christ.

This high object, the only one worthy of man and his spiritual powers, leads us to consider the doctrine of good works.

4. Good Works in Theory and Practice

Man is naturally disposed to believe that, built as he is, he must take his share in working out his salvation, if he be in sin, by preparing himself with God’s help to enter the state of grace and then by seeking to retain it by means of good works.

The Church before Luther had taught, as she still does, and that on the strength of Holy Writ, that such co-operation on man’s part, under God’s assistance, is quite essential. Though the attaining to and the perseverance in the Divine sonship is chiefly the work of God, yet it is also man’s, carried out with the aid of grace. She assured the faithful, that, according to the order graciously established by God and warranted by Scripture, all good works have their value for temporal and eternal reward. She sought indeed to kindle religious fervour by pointing to the promises held out, yet she had no wish to see man stop short at the thought of his reward, but rather expected him to rise to a more perfect love. Generosity, so she taught, was in no way impaired by the prospect of reward, on the contrary such hopes served as stepping-stones to facilitate the ascent.[1605]

[450]

Luther, owing to his implacable, personal aversion to any good works or human co-operation, laid violent hands on this so reasonable scheme of salvation.

Nature and Origin of the New Doctrine of Works.

Luther demanded that no importance should be set on co-operation by means of works in the business of Justification, because salvation was to be looked for from on high with simple faith and blind confidence. After reconciliation, too, man must not vainly fancy that he is capable of deserving anything by good works even by the greatest penances, sacrifices or deeds of love, but the doing of good must be allowed to follow simply as the effect of the Spirit of Christ now received, in those feelings towards God which Christ produces in us and in that love of our neighbour which is indispensable to human society.

Further light may be thrown on this standpoint of Luther’s by some traits from his inward history and writings.

Here we cannot fail to notice echoes of his transition period, of his conflict with his brother-monks and those pious folk who were intent on good works and the heaping up of merits; of his subsequent remissness in his vocation and in the performance of his duties as a monk; finally of his later prejudice, largely a result of his polemics, against so many of the Church’s public and private practices, of penance, of devotion and of the love of God. He closed his eyes to the fact, that he could have found no more effectual means of increasing amongst his followers the growing contempt for moral effort, neglect of good works and the gradual decline in religious feeling.

His estrangement from what he was pleased to call “holiness-by-works” always remained Luther’s principal, ruling idea, just as it had been the starting-point of his change of mind in his monastic days.[1606]

His chief discovery, viz. the doctrine of Justification, he was fond of parading as an attack upon works. It is only necessary to observe how persistently, how eagerly and instinctively he seizes the smallest pretext to launch in his sermons and writings a torrent of abuse on the Catholic works. It is as though some unseen hand were ever ready to open the sluice-gates, that, whether relevant or not to[451] the matter on hand, his anger might pour forth against fasting, and the ancient works of penance, against “cowls and tonsures,” against the recitation of the Office in choir, rules, collections, pilgrimages and Jubilees, against taking the discipline, vows, veneration of the Saints and so many other religious practices.[1607] In his habitual slanders on works, found on his lips from the beginning[1608] to within a few weeks of his death, we can hardly fail to see the real link which binds together his whole activity. As against the Popish doctrine of works he is never weary of pointing out that his own doctrine of works is based on Christ; “it allows God to be our Lord God and gives Him the glory,” a thought that pleased him all the more because it concealed the error under a mantle of piety; this deceptive idea already casts its shadow over the very first letter in his correspondence which touches on the new doctrine.[1609]

Johann Eck could well answer: “Luther is doing us an injustice when he declares that we by our works exclude Christ as Mediator.... On the contrary, we teach, that, without Christ, works are nothing.... Therefore let him keep his lies to himself; the works that are done without faith, he may indeed talk of as he likes, but, as for ours, they proceed from the bottom rock of faith and are performed with the aid of Divine grace.”[1610]

Equally deceptive was the idea, so alluring in itself, that[452] Luther’s doctrine of works bore the stamp of true freedom, viz. the freedom of the Gospel. Here, again, we can only see a new expression of his profound alienation from works and from the sacrifice entailed by self-conquest. He is desirous, so he says, of hoisting on the shield the freedom of the man who is guided solely by God’s Spirit. But will this not serve as an excuse for weakness? Here we seem to find an after-effect of that late-mediæval pseudo-mysticism which had once been a danger to him, which went so far as to demand of the righteous complete indifference to works, and, that, in language apparently most affecting and sublime.

These two thoughts, that Christ would thus be restored to His place of honour and man secure evangelical freedom, were a great temptation to many hearers of Luther’s call to leave the Catholic Church. In all great intellectual revolutions there are always at work certain impelling ideas, either true ones which rightly prove attractive, or false ones which yet assume the appearance of truth and thus move people’s minds. Without the intervention of the two thoughts just referred to, the spread of the religious movement in the 16th century is not fully to be explained.

How many of the apostles and followers of the new preaching were really moved by these two thoughts must even then have been difficult to determine. Noble and privileged souls may not have been wanting amongst them. The masses, however, introduced so earthly an element into these better and pious ideals that the ideals only remained as a pretext, a very effective pretext indeed, to allege for their own pacification and in extenuation of their other aims. Great watchwords, once put forward, often serve as a useful cloak for other things. In this respect the demand for the freedom of the Gospel proved very popular. The age clamoured to be set free from bonds which were proving irksome, for instance, to mention but one point, from exorbitant ecclesiastical dues and spiritual penalties. Hence evangelical freedom was readily accepted as synonymous with deliverance, and, in time, ceased to be “evangelical” at all.

That Luther’s doctrine of works and of the freedom bestowed by Christ the fulfiller of the Law, embodied a great moral danger, is now recognised even by Protestants.

[453]

Before quoting the opinion of other critics of the preaching against works in his own time, we may give Luther the chance to describe the extent of his opposition to the olden doctrine.

If all the faithful are, as the new Evangel teaches, by virtue of their right of primogeniture great Lords and Kings, then that fear of God’s chastisements is no longer justified which the ancient Church had always put forward as one of the motives for performing good works and leading a moral life. On the contrary, we are not to open our hearts too readily to such fear. Luther’s injunctions concerning fear of the Judge go to form a further chapter in the psychological and historical criticism of his doctrine of works. Here we see plainly his instinctive aversion to the views and practice of the olden Church.

Luther’s attitude here was as ambiguous as elsewhere, for instance, in the case of his whole doctrine of grace and justification, no less than in its premises, viz. unfreedom, concupiscence and original sin. Everywhere we meet with contradictions, which make it almost impossible to furnish any connected description of his doctrinal system.

Augustine as the Authority for the New Doctrine of Works.

We have an example of Luther’s want of theological acumen in his appeal to Augustine in support of his doctrine of works.

In order to understand this we must recollect that, from the beginning, Luther had described his new theology as simply that of Augustine the great Father of the Church. Of Augustine’s—of whom he said in 1516 that he had not felt the slightest leaning towards him until he had “tumbled on” his writings[1626]—he had merely read in 1509 a small number of works, and he became acquainted with what were for him the more important of this Father’s writings only after he had already largely deviated from the Church’s[458] doctrine.[1627] Even later, his knowledge of Augustine was scanty. He was, however, as a monk, fond of identifying his own new doctrine of grace with Augustine’s;[1628] he tried to enlist the help of his colleague, Amsdorf, by a present of St. Augustine’s works; in this he was completely successful.[1629] On May 18, 1517, he wrote to Lang on the state of things at Wittenberg, the triumphant words already quoted: “Our theology and St. Augustine are making happy progress with God’s help and are now paramount at the University,” etc.[1630] From that time forward he was fond of saying, that Augustine was opposed “to Gabriel Biel, Thomas of Aquin and the whole crowd of Sententiaries, and would hold the field against them because he was grounded on the pure Gospel, particularly on the testimony of Paul.”[1631] To what extent he really in his heart believed this of Augustine must remain a moot question.

“Luther,” says Julius Köstlin, one of the best-known authorities on Luther’s theology, “could, indeed, appeal to St. Augustine in support of the thesis that man becomes righteous and is saved purely by God’s gracious decree and the working of His Grace and not by any natural powers and achievements [which is the Catholic doctrine], but not for the further theory that man is regarded by God as just purely by virtue of faith ... nor that the Christian thus justified can never perform anything meritorious in God’s sight but is saved merely by the pardoning grace of God which must ever anew be laid hold of by faith” [i.e. the specifically Lutheran theses on faith and works]. The same author adds: “Only gradually did the fundamental difference between the Augustinian view, his own and that of Paul become entirely clear to Luther.”[1632]

When this happened it is hard to say; at any rate, his strictures on Augustine and the Fathers in his lectures of 1527 on the 1st Epistle of St. John, and in his later Table-Talk prove, that, as time went on he had given up all idea of[459] finding in these authorities any confirmation of his doctrine on faith alone and works.[1633]

The real teaching of St. Augustine is best seen in his anxiety that man should co-operate with all the power furnished by the assistance of God’s grace, in the attainment of his salvation. The wholesome fear of God he reckons first, after the necessary condition of faith has been fulfilled. Of the acts of moral preparation (fear, hope, love, penance and good resolutions) for obtaining the grace of[462] Justification from God, he regards fear as the element, without which a man “never, or hardly ever,” reaches God.[1646] To show the necessity of works and a good intention he appeals to texts in the Epistle of St. James rejected by Luther, where we read: “You see that by works a man is justified and not by faith only” (ii. 24). Here he goes so far as to suggest that James probably spoke so explicitly of works because the passages on faith in Paul’s Epistles had been misunderstood by some.[1647]

The voice of the bishop of Hippo, supported by the whole Church whose doctrine was also his, was re-echoed by later ecclesiastical writers who made greedy use of his works; nor were the exhortations of the Fathers without result among the faithful. Later Fathers frequently discourse on the testimony of Holy Writ in favour of works just as Augustine had done; the following texts were frequently adduced: “God will render to every man according to his works”; “Not the hearers of the law are just before God,[464] but the doers of the law shall be justified”; “The Son of Man will come and render to every man according to his works” (Rom. ii. 6, 13; Mat. xvi. 27).

Gregory the Great, who trained himself on Augustine’s model, states, in a homily to his congregation: “Possibly we may say to ourselves: I believe, hence I shall be saved. This is only true when we prove our faith by our works.” “Then are we true believers when we execute in work what we confess in our faith.”[1659]

A faith proved by works was the sign manual of the Middle Ages. Nor did Luther and his preachers ever complain of the lack of works of piety in the days previous to the Reformation, although they thought it their duty to blame the spirit in which those works had been performed.

What, however, did Luther and his followers think of the moral consequences of the preaching directed against all merit of good works?

The New Doctrine of Works in Practice, as Judged by Lutheran Opinion in the 16th Century.

We have already listened to Luther’s own complaints and those of many of his contemporaries concerning the parlous state of morals amongst the adherents of the new teaching, and the almost entire absence of any practical fruits of piety under the amended Gospel.[1660] Since the mainstay of the innovations was the doctrine of grace and works it is necessary to seek out more closely the connection between the new doctrine of works and the sad moral results of the revolt against the Church. Luther himself makes no odds about referring to these results and their real cause: “The surer we are of the freedom won by Christ, the more indolent do we become”; “because we teach that man attains to grace without any works whatever, we grow lazy”; he almost wishes “that the old teaching again came into its own.”[1661] Only his shortsightedness and the psychological effect of his passionate temper prevented his foreseeing the inevitable consequences of his theory of the all-sufficiency of faith and of his reckless denunciation of the regard for commandments and works previously obtaining. How little his own frequent exhortations to lead a moral life and to[465] perform works of Christian charity (see below, p. 472 ff.) could prevail against the fell charm of the doctrine of Evangelical freedom, remained hid from his eyes, until the extent of the moral corruption and the growing savagery of the people in certain regions began to frighten him and to cause him to long ardently for the end of the world and even to predict its imminence.

There was some truth in what he said, viz. that, as the world was constituted, if one preached faith (i.e. the justifying faith so much belauded by him) works went to the wall, and that, on the other hand, “faith” must needs perish wherever works were preached.[1662] The two were indeed self-exclusive, however much, in his recommendation of works, he might affirm the contrary.

This is not the place to point out anew the dangers inherent in Luther’s doctrine of justification, for we have already seen the necessary result of one of its presuppositions, viz. the denial of free-will, and how right Erasmus was when he urged against Luther, that, on this assumption, all laws and commandments, even those of Scripture, were simply superfluous. A Protestant has aptly remarked, that, in the last instance, “the difference between good and evil becomes quite illusory”; we might well ask: “How can we feel ourselves responsible towards God ... if we do nothing and God works all in all?” Luther himself even goes so far as to make Scripture teach that “the will not only desires nothing good, but is even unaware of how much evil it does and of what good is.”[1663] Since the imputed merits of Christ are, as a matter of fact, merely like a screen set up[466] in front of the soul, many might naturally feel tempted to extenuate and excuse all that the sin which persists in man still does behind it.

To appreciate the peculiar nature of the danger it is necessary to take Luther’s teaching, not by itself, but in conjunction with the mental atmosphere of the day. We must of course take it for granted that many of his followers refrained from putting into practice Luther’s teaching in its entirety, for instance, his peculiar doctrine of the lack of free-will. Many well-disposed Lutherans whose good faith was above suspicion, doubtless remained more or less outside the influence of such ideas, were actuated by good religious motives and expressed them in Christian works. Assisted by the grace of God, which is at the disposal of all men of good-will, they, all unknowingly, were gaining merit in heaven. On the other hand, the ill-disposed, those who sought the enjoyments of life—and of such there were thousands—found a sanction in the Wittenberg doctrine for neglecting good works. In the case of many the “joyful tidings” could not under the circumstances of the age be expected to produce any other result. We have only to think of what was going on all about; of the prevalent yearning after release from irksome bonds; of the unkindly feeling towards rulers, both ecclesiastical and secular; of the seething discontent among the peasants on account of their oppression and toilsome duties; of the spirit of independence so vigorous in the towns; of the boundless ambition of the mighty; of the influence, sometimes sceptical, sometimes immoral, of Humanism, and of the worldliness and degradation of so many of the clergy and monks, to be able to understand how momentous was the effect of Luther’s doctrine of justification and his preaching concerning works.

We know on the one hand from many examples with what zest the newly-won promoters of Lutheranism—for the most part former ministers of the Church who had discarded their calling—concentrated their attacks on the practice of good works, and, on the other, how the better-disposed followers of the new doctrine admitted the danger to works accruing from Luther’s views and even their actually evil consequences.

The above is sufficient to show that there was a consensus of opinion in tracing back the moral decadence to the Lutheran doctrine of works. As against this there is a certain strangeness in the explanation variously given by Protestants of this real retrogression: The complaints of Luther and his preachers, so they aver, only prove that they were dissatisfied, as it was their right and duty to be, with what had been achieved in the moral order.—At any rate, the distressing results of the doctrine of faith alone proved strikingly how ineffectual had been all Luther’s exhortations to good works.

Luther’s Utterances in Favour of Good Works.

Many and earnest are Luther’s exhortations to prove our faith by works of love towards God and our neighbour; to sinners he frequently speaks of the path of penance which they must tread; conversion he wishes to be accomplished with lively faith and the state of grace preserved by practical piety. It was assuredly not the lack of such counsels which occasioned the decline described above; this was rather due to the system itself, combined with the evil effects of the general overthrow of the old ecclesiastical law and practice which safeguarded morals, and with the contempt aroused for the sacraments, for public worship and the spiritual authorities. History must, however, allow Luther’s exhortations on behalf of good works and the keeping of the commandments to speak for themselves.

Nicholas Amsdorf, Luther’s intimate friend and most docile pupil, published in 1559 a tract entitled “That the proposition ‘Good works are harmful to salvation’ is a good and Christian one preached both by St. Paul and by Luther.” Their “harmfulness” resided in their being regarded as meritorious for salvation. We may wonder what Luther would have thought of this writing had he been alive? In any case the Lutheran Formula of Concord of 1577 contains a mild protest against it: “The assertion that good works are necessary is not to be reprehended, seeing that it may be understood in a favourable sense”;[1693] it also appeals to what had been laid down in the Augsburg[476] Confession; it could “not be gainsaid that, in both the Confession and the ‘Apologia,’ the words: ‘Good works are necessary,’ are frequently used.”[1694]

As for the attitude of the Augsburg Confession, it declares concerning works—a declaration for which Melanchthon’s cautious pen was solely responsible—“We also teach that such faith [in Christ, whereby man is justified] must produce good fruit and good works, and that we must perform all manner of good works which God has commanded, for God’s sake.”[1695]

No one was so much concerned as Melanchthon in insisting that the performance of good works should be represented as indispensable to the people, particularly from the pulpit. It vexed him, the more prudent of the two, to hear Luther again and again, and that often in hyperbolical and paradoxical form, laying such stress on faith alone. How far Melanchthon’s name may justifiably be quoted against what was undesirable in the olden Protestant teaching on works, should be clear from what has already been said concerning this theological henchman of Luther’s (cp. vol. iii., p. 347 ff.).

Luther’s admirers are wont to quote the following utterance of his when praising his attitude towards works: “Good, pious works never made a good, pious man, but a good, pious man performs good, pious works. Wicked works never made a wicked man, but wicked men perform wicked works.”[1696] That “wicked deeds never made a wicked man” he probably found some difficulty in really convincing many. If Luther meant that an unjust man or sinner, who is not cleansed by faith in Christ, can never act but wickedly, then it is the same error as we find in other passages and which is repeated in connection with the words just quoted: “Unless a man believes beforehand and is a Christian [’consecrated by faith’] all his works are of no account, but are vain, foolish, criminal and damnably sinful.” This is surely as much beside the mark as the above statement of Luther’s concerning the relation between a “pious man” and “pious works.” Of supernatural works that are meritorious for heaven what Luther adds is indeed correct:[477] “Hence, in every instance the person must first be good and pious previous to all works, and the good works follow and proceed from a good and pious person.” We must, however, decline to accept Luther’s other inferences, viz. that the sinner is not in a position to perform natural good works of his own, and that the just man does not become more righteous through good works.

Hence Luther’s statement, however apparently ingenious, cannot remove the unfavourable impression produced by his doctrine of works. That it was highly valued by its author is plain from the number of times he repeats it under different forms. “Works do not make a Christian, but a Christian performs works,” so he exclaimed in a sermon in 1523, summing up in these specious words the instruction he had just given, viz. that the faithful must struggle to remove whatever of evil there is in them, and that they must “work good to their neighbour,” but not on any account try “to blot out sin by works, for this would be to shame and blaspheme God and Christ and to disgrace their own heritage,” viz. Justification by faith alone.[1697]

Works of Charity. Luther and the Ages of the Past.

For the purpose of recommending the Lutheran doctrine of works it is sometimes urged that Luther, while slighting other works of less account, assigned a place of honour to active works of charity, done for the sake of our neighbour, that he placed them on a firmer moral basis than they had hitherto occupied and promoted them so far as the unfavourable circumstances of his age allowed. A few words on the conception and particularly on the practice of charity as advocated by him may serve as a fit conclusion to the present section.

First, we may mention that Luther is disposed to exaggerate the importance of works of charity done to our neighbour.

It was an unjustifiable and paralysing restriction on the pious impulse towards works pleasing to God that Luther embodied in the rule he repeatedly lays down regarding works, viz. that they must be directed exclusively towards the benefit of others. “On this earth,” so he teaches in his Church postils, “man does not live for the sake of works,[478] nor that they may profit him, for he has no need of them, but all works must be done for the sake of our neighbour.” “Thus must all works be done, that we see to it that they tend to the service of other people, impart to them the right faith and bring them to Christ’s Kingdom.” They bring them the “right faith” when they serve to “quiet their conscience.” Thus even here the Kingdom of God, which consists in the forgiveness of sins, must also play its part.

Catholic doctrine recognises a wider field for good works. It regards as such even the works which the faithful perform directly for their own soul without any reference to their neighbour, such as self-conquest in contending against one’s own passions, or those works which are concerned primarily with honouring God whether in public worship or in the private life of the Christian. Luther himself, at least incidentally, also knows how to speak of the value of such works, though thereby he contradicts his other statements like the above.

If, however, we neglect the principle, we have to admit, that Luther’s frequent exhortations to neighbourly charity and kindness contain some fine and truly Evangelical thoughts. With deep feeling he expresses his sorrow that his admonitions are not heeded to the extent he would have wished.

In his statements already quoted concerning the corruption of morals consequent on the change of religion, we have heard him several times lamenting the notorious falling off in private benevolence and the quite remarkable decrease of public works of Christian charity. Everywhere avarice reigns supreme, so we have heard Luther repeatedly exclaim, and a reprehensible indolence in the doing of what is good has spread far and wide; everything is now different from what it had been “in the time of the monks and parsons,” when people “founded and built” right and left, and when even the poorest was anxious to contribute.[1698]

His defenders now declare, that he “unlocked the true[479] source of charity” by denying any meritorious character to works, thus sending to limbo the imperfect, mediæval motive of charity and substituting a better one in its place, viz. a “grateful love springing from faith.” Luther’s own words have been used to decry earlier ages, as though charity then had “merely had itself in view,” people in those days having been intent solely on laying up merit “for them and theirs.”

[482]

5. Other Innovations in Religious Doctrine

The absence of any logical system in Luther’s theological and moral views is so far from being denied by Protestants who know his theology that they even reproach Luther’s opponents for expecting to find logic in him. No system, but merely “the thought-world of a great religious man” is, so they say, all that we may look for in his works; it is true that he had a “general religious theory,” but it was “faulty, in its details not seldom contradictory, and devised for a practical and polemical object.” “Luther was no dogmatic theologian or man of system,” hence his individual sayings must not always be treated as though they were parts of a system.

There can be no doubt that this is a defect in a teacher who comes forward as the founder of a denomination and as the restorer of Christian doctrine, and who, in his quality of “Prophet of the Germans,” declares: “Before me people knew nothing.” After all, precision and coherence of doctrines form a test of their truth.

In reality the facts of the case are only indicated in a veiled way in the Protestant admissions just recorded. The truth is, as the reader has already had many an occasion to see, that, with Luther, one assertion frequently invalidates the other. Even in the field of moral teaching we find him at utter variance with himself, and his contradictions become particularly glaring as soon as he passes from theory to practice. Here it is easy to seize the “consummate contradictions of his theology,” of which a present-day Protestant theologian ventures boldly to speak; we may also subscribe to what this same writer says, viz. that Luther hardened his heart against certain consequences of his own religious principles.[1707] (Cp. p. 415, 447; vol. ii., p. 312, etc.)

The Regula Fidei.

Such a denial of the consequences of the principles of his doctrine lies first and foremost in the fact that Luther summed up in a Rule of Faith the various dogmas to which it was his intention to remain true. The “regula fidei,” such as he wished to bequeath to posterity, he saw expressed[483] in the Confession of Augsburg, and in the oldest Œcumenical Creeds of the Church.

It has already been seen that the radicalism involved in his religious attitude should by rights have issued in a freedom, nay, licence, which would have rendered impossible any binding formularies of faith.

It is also the opinion of most modern Protestant theologians that the definition of doctrine which began with the Confession of Augsburg, or in fact with the Articles of Marburg, really constituted an unjustifiable encroachment on the freedom of religious thought inaugurated by Luther. Luther indeed invested these doctrinal formularies with all the weight of his authority, yet, according to these theologians, they represented a “narrowing” of the Evangelical ideas advocated by him; nor can it be gainsaid that the revolutionary ideas for which Luther stood from about 1520 to 1523 justify such strictures.[1708]

Some Peculiarities of the New Doctrine on the Sacraments, Particularly on Baptism.

The theological pillars of the edifice of public worship are the seven sacraments, the visible signs ordained by Christ by which grace is given to our souls. Held in honour even by the Nestorians and Monophysites as witnesses to ecclesiastical antiquity, they enfold and hallow all the chief events of human life. Luther debased the effect of the sacraments by making it something wholly subjective, produced by the recipients themselves in virtue of the faith infused into them by God, whereas the Church has ever recognised the sacraments as sublime and mysterious signs, which of themselves work in the receiver (“ex opere operato”) according to the extent of his preparation, Christ having made the grace promised dependent on the outward signs instituted by Himself. Luther, on the other hand, by declaring the sacraments mere symbols whereby faith is strengthened, operative only by virtue of the recipient’s faith in the pardon and forgiveness of his sins, reduced them to the status of empty pledges for soothing and consoling consciences. Only later did he again come nearer to the Catholic doctrine of the “opus operatum.” With his view, however, that the sole object of the sacraments is to increase the “fides specialis,” we arrive again at the point which for Luther is the sum total of religion, viz.: “mere forgiveness.”

He was not at all conscious of the contradiction involved in his vigorous insistence on the absolute necessity of the sacraments for salvation. From his standpoint Carlstadt was far more logical when he said: “If Christ [alone] is peace and assurance [of salvation], then lifeless creatures [the sacramental, outward signs] can surely not satisfy or make secure.”[1717]

[487]

Luther raised no objection to infant baptism. He also wished it, and baptism in general, to be given in the usual way in the name of the Trinity. But how did he try to solve the difficulty arising from his theory of the sacraments: If the sacrament only works in virtue of the faith of the receiver and the effect is merely an increase of faith, of what advantage can it be to the infant who is incapable of belief? He endeavoured to remedy the defect with the help of the faith of the congregation.

Meeting difficulties on this line he did not shrink from claiming a perpetually recurring miracle, and proposed to assume that, during the act of baptism, the new-born infant was momentarily endowed by God with the use of reason and filled with faith.

In his “De captivitate babylonica” he had already attempted to cut the Gordian knot presented by infant baptism by this assumption, which, however arbitrary, is quite intelligible from his psychological standpoint. Thanks to the believing prayer of the congregation who present the children for baptism, so he said, faith is infused into them and they thus become regenerate. In 1523 he states that children have a hidden faith. “From that time onwards the tendency of his teaching was to require faith from candidates for baptism.... Even after the Concord he continued to speak exactly as before.”[1718] The Bible teaches nothing about infant baptism. Yet Luther declares in 1545 in a set of theses: “It is false and outrageous to say that little children do not believe, or are unworthy,” while at the head of the theses these words stand: “Everything that in the Church, which is God’s people, is taught without the Word of God, is assuredly false and unchristian.”[1719]

It is of interest to follow up his arguments for the faith of infants. In 1522 already he had attempted in a letter to prove to Melanchthon the possibility of such unconscious faith. He referred him to the circumstance, which, however, is irrelevant, “that we retain the faith while asleep or otherwise engaged.” Moreover, since to him who believes, everything is possible with God, so, too, to the congregation which prays for the children; the children are presented[488] by the congregation to the Lord of all, and He, by His Omnipotence, kindles faith in them. In the same letter, aimed at the Anabaptists, who were then beginning to be heard of, we find an emphatic appeal to the authority and belief of the Church (“totius orbis constans confessio”), which, as a rule, Luther was so ruthless in opposing. “It would be quite impious to deny that infant baptism agrees with the belief of the Church; to do so would be tantamount to denying the Church”; it was a special miracle that infant baptism had never been attacked by heretics; there was therefore good reason to hope that Christ, now, would trample the new foemen “under our feet.” Luther forgets that the ancient Church was not hampered by such a heel of Achilles as was his own teaching, viz. that the sacraments owed all their efficacy to faith. We can, however, quite understand his admission to Melanchthon: “I have always expected that Satan would lay violent hands on this weak spot, but he has chosen to stir up this pernicious quarrel, not through the Papists, but with the help of our own people.”[1720] The rise of the Anabaptist heresy was indeed merely a natural reaction against Luther’s doctrine of baptism.

Seeing that the doctrine of baptism is of such importance to the Christian Church, we may be permitted to consider the inferences regarding the sacrament of baptism drawn in modern times from Luther’s conception of it, and from his whole attitude towards faith and Christianity. A domestic dispute among the Protestants at Bremen in 1905 on the validity of baptism not administered according to the usages of the Church, led to a remarkable discussion among theologians of broader views, some of whom went so far as to argue in Luther’s name and that of his Reformation, that baptism should be abolished.

Luther arbitrarily reduced the sacraments to two; “there remain,” he says, “two sacraments; baptism and the Supper.”[1731] With regard to Penance his attitude was wavering and full of contradiction. In later years he again came nearer to the Catholic teaching, arguing that Penance must also be a sacrament because, as he said in 1545, “it contains the promise of and belief in the forgiveness of sins.”[1732] He had much at heart the retention of confession and absolution under some shape or form as a remedy against the moral disorders that were creeping in.[1733] Yet, according to him, Penance was only to be regarded as the “exercise and virtue of baptism,”[1734] so that the number of the sacraments underwent no actual increase.

Here, as everywhere else, the changeableness of Luther’s[492] doctrinal opinions is deserving of notice. The numerous instances where he relinquishes a position previously held and virtually betakes himself to another, are scarcely to the credit either of his logic or of his foresight. Such wavering and groping hither and thither is the stamp of error. In the “Histoire des variations” which might be written on the fate of Luther’s views even during his lifetime, much would be found truly characteristic of them.

One sacramentarian doctrine, which to the end of his life he would never consent to relinquish, was, as we know, the Presence of Christ in the Supper. And relentless as he was in combating the Sacrifice of the Mass (see below, p. 506 ff.), yet he insisted steadfastly on the literal acceptance of Christ’s words of institution: “This is My Body.”

His Teaching on the Supper.

Luther’s retention of the Presence of Christ in the Eucharist may to some extent be explained by the influence which, side by side with the Bible, tradition and the authority of the Church still exercised over him, at least on such points as did not call for modification on account of his new doctrine of Justification. He had grown up in this faith, and was accustomed to give practical proof of it even when on other scores he had already broken with the Church. In this matter Scripture presented no difficulty. Had he shared Zwingli’s rationalistic leanings it is likely that, like him, he might have sought for some other interpretation of the words of institution than the obvious and literal one. It is also possible that the mysticism to which he was addicted in early years may have contributed to make him acknowledge the “mysterium tremendum” of the Sacrament, as he terms it in the language of olden days.

It is true there came a time—according to him the year 1519-1520—when he felt strongly tempted to throw the Sacrament overboard, because, as he says in the well-known words, “I could thus have given a great smack in the face to Popery.” At that time I “wrestled and struggled and would gladly have escaped.” But from the plain text of the Bible, he had, so he declares, been unable to free himself. This statement, which is on the whole worthy of[493] belief, we find in “Eyn Brieff an die Christen zu Straspurg” which he published in 1525, and it is further corroborated by the fact, that he there refers to two men who had been anxious to move him to the denial of the Presence of Christ, but who had failed to convince him. The two, whose names he does not mention, were probably Cornelius Hendriks Hoen, a Dutchman, and Franz Kolb of Baden, whose letters to Luther, in 1522 and 1524, trying to induce him to accept the Zwinglian sense of the Sacrament, still exist.[1735]

When Carlstadt began his attack on the Real Presence, this, in view of the then situation, so Luther declares in his letter to the people of Strasburg, merely “confirmed his opinion.” “Even had I not believed it before, I should at once have known that his opinions were nought, because of his worthless, feeble stuff, devoid of any Scripture and based only on reason and conceit.” Offended vanity and annoyance with Carlstadt were here not without their effect on Luther; to deny this would argue a poor acquaintance with Luther’s psychology. It is true that the arguments of his opponent were very weak; it was not without reason that Luther speaks of his “stuff and nonsense” and “ridiculous tales.” He ranks the objections of the two letter-writers mentioned above higher than the proofs adduced by Carlstadt; at least they “wrote more skilfully and did not mangle the Word quite so badly.” Luther was, however, tactless enough to give the Strasburgers a glimpse of the secondary motives which led him to defend the Presence of Christ so strongly and defiantly from that time forward. He complains that Carlstadt was making such an ado as though he wanted “to darken the sun and light of the Evangel,” so “that the world might forget everything that had been taught them by us [by Luther] hitherto.” “I have up till now managed well and rightly in all the main points, and whoever says the contrary has no good spirit; I trust I shall not spoil it in the matter of the externals on which alone prophets such as these lay stress.”[1736]

It is unnecessary to show anew here how Luther’s later defence of the Real Presence in the Eucharist against the Zwinglians contains indubitable evidence in its virulence[494] that Luther felt hurt. This personal element is, however, quite insufficient for one to base upon it any suspicion as to the genuineness of his convictions.

If, on the other hand, we consider the strange and arbitrary form he gave to the doctrine of the Supper, more particularly by insisting that the sole aim and effect of communion is to inspire faith in the personal forgiveness of sins, then his belief in the presence of Christ appears to a certain extent to harmonise with his peculiar theological views. Amidst the storm of his struggle after certainty of salvation the pledge of it which Christ bestows in the Sacrament seems to him like a blessed anchor. That this Body was “given” for us, and this blood shed for us, and that the celebration is in memory of the saving death of Christ, as the very words of institution declare, was frequently brought forward by him as a means to reassure anxious souls. The need of strengthening our faith should, according to him, impel us to receive the Sacrament.

He demands accordingly of others the same traditional faith in the Eucharist in which he found his own stay and support. While clinging to the literal interpretation of the words of the Bible, he, as we already know, is quite ready to appeal to the “dear Fathers” and to the whole of the Church’s past, at least when thereby he hopes to make an impression.[1737] To such lengths does he go in the interests of the confirmation of faith to which he strives to attain by means of this indispensable Sacrament.

He overlooks the fact, however, that his view of the Supper, according to which its only purpose is to be a sign for the stimulating of saving faith, in reality undermines the doctrine of the Real Presence. True to his theory of the Sacrament and of faith he reduces the Supper to an outward sign destined to confirm the forgiveness of sins. One might ask: If it is merely a sign, is so sublime a mystery as the Real Presence at all called for? And, if it is a question of assurance, how can we be rendered secure of our salvation by something which is so far removed above the senses as the belief in the Real Presence of Christ, or by an act which makes such great demands on human reason? Luther’s theory requires a sign which should appeal to the senses and vividly remind the mind of the Redemption and thus[495] awaken faith. This is scarcely the case in the Eucharist where Christ is invisibly present and only to be apprehended by “the Word.” If bread and wine are merely to call forth a remembrance of Christ which inspires faith, then the Zwinglian doctrine of the Sacrament fulfils all that is required. Luther does not face this difficulty, but Protestants were not slow to urge it against him.[1738]

A peculiarity of Luther’s teaching on the Sacrament is to be found in his two theories of Impanation and Ubiquity. Impanation, viz. the opinion that the substance of the bread persists in the Sacrament and that Christ is present together with the bread, served him as a means to escape the Catholic doctrine of a change of substance (Transubstantiation). With the help of the theory of Ubiquity which affirmed the presence everywhere of the Body of Christ, he fancied he could extricate himself from certain difficulties raised by opponents of the Sacrament. The[496] history of both opinions presents much that is instructive. Here, however, we shall consider only the second, viz. the ubiquity of Christ’s Body.

The theory of the omnipresence of the Body of Christ which Luther reached together with his doctrine of the Supper, like his other theory of the faith of infants, shows plainly not only of how much his imagination was capable, but also what curious theses he could propound in all calmness and serenity. Thus we hear him asserting that the Redeemer, the Lord of Creation, is present, in His spiritualised Body, everywhere and penetrates all things! He is present bodily at the right hand of God according to the Scriptures; but the right hand of God is everywhere, hence also in the consecrated Bread and Wine lying on the altar; consequently the Body and Blood of Christ must be there too.[1739] To the question how this comes about, he replies: “It is not for us to know,” nor does reason even understand how God can be in every creature.

Much more important is it, so he says, that we should learn to seize, grasp and appropriate this ever-present Christ. “For though Christ is everywhere present, He does not everywhere allow Himself to be seized and laid hold of.... Why? Because it is one thing for God to be present and another for Him to be present to you. He is present to you then when He pledges His Word to it and binds Himself by it and says: Here you shall find Me. When you have His Word for it, then you can truly seize Him and say: Here I have Thee, as Thou hast said.”[1740] In this way Christ assures us of His presence in the Sacrament, and invites us, so Luther teaches, to partake of Him in the Bread of the Supper. This, however, is practically to explain away the presence of Christ in the Bread (to which Luther adheres so firmly) and to dissolve it into a purely subjective apprehension. Nevertheless, at least according to certain passages, he was anxious to see the Sacrament adored and did not hesitate to do so himself.[1741]

To the belief that Christ’s Body is truly received in Communion he held fast, as already stated, till the end of his life.

[497]

Though Luther was unflinching in his advocacy of the Presence of Christ together with his pet theories of Impanation and Ubiquity, yet he waged an implacable war on the[499] Sacrifice of the Mass. As, however, we have reserved this for later consideration we shall here only point out, that both his doctrine and his practice with regard to the Sacrament of the Altar suffered by his unhappy opposition to the Mass in which it is celebrated and offered, even more so than by the modifications he had already introduced into the older doctrine.

Invocation of the Saints.

Among those doctrines of the Church from which Luther cut himself adrift only little by little and at the expense of a wrench, must be numbered those dealing with the invocation of the Saints and with Purgatory.

The grand and inspiring belief of the Church in the Communion of Saints, which weaves a close and common band between the living and those souls who have already passed into heaven and those, again, who are still undergoing purification, had at first taken deep root in Luther’s mind. Later on, however, the foundations of this doctrine became more and more undermined, partly owing to his theories on the Church and the Mediatorship of Christ, partly and even more so by his ardent wish to strike a deadly blow at the practical life of the Catholic Church and all that “Popish” worship had erected on this particular doctrine. Veneration of the Saints and intercession for the dead loomed very large among the religious practices dear to the Christian people, though, at that time, they were disfigured by abuses. Luther adroitly used the abuses as a lever for his work.

Mary.

As long as he admitted the invocation of Saints, Luther assigned a prominent place to that of the Blessed Virgin. “She is to be invoked,” he writes in 1521, “that God may give and do according to her will what we ask.”[1758] After he had changed his mind concerning the saints, he was unwilling to allow this any longer.

Owing, however, to the after effects of his Catholic education, here particularly noticeable in him, we meet with many beautiful sayings of his in support of the worship of Mary, although as time went on he grew ever more hostile to it.

[504]

Purgatory.

In the Schmalkalden Articles the olden doctrine of Purgatory was rejected by Luther as follows: Purgatory, “with all its pomp, worship and traffic, must be held to be nothing more than a mere phantom of the devil,” born of “that dragon’s tail” the Mass.[1775]

Although in this condemnation Luther’s customary polemical exaggeration of abuses clearly plays a part, yet from his Indulgence Theses and “Resolutions” down to the sentence in the Articles of Schmalkalden the working of his mind can clearly be traced, expressed as it is, now in rejection on principle, and on theological or biblical grounds, now in opportunist and cynical attacks on the Church’s ancient doctrine of Purgatory. The temporal penalties which, according to the teaching of the Church, must be paid by the suffering souls notwithstanding their state of grace, found no place in Luther’s new theory of a faith which covered over everything. According to the usual view venial sins also are forgiven in the next world, thanks to the purifying pains of Purgatory. But of venial sins as distinct from grievous sins Luther refused to hear. He had nothing but evasive replies to the objection which presented itself of its own accord, viz. that mortals when they die often seem ripe neither for heaven nor for hell.[1776]

At first Luther was content to modify merely the doctrine of Purgatory which is so deeply implanted in the consciousness of the Christian, by denying that it was capable of making satisfaction while nevertheless asserting his belief in the existence of a place of purgation (“mihi certissimum est, purgatorium esse”);[1777] then he devoted himself to countering the many legends and popular tales of the appearance of ghosts, a comparatively easy task.[1778] The Pope, he went on to say, had merely made Purgatory an article of faith in order to enrich himself and his followers[505] by Masses for the Dead, though in fact “it may be that only very few souls go there.”

Later he preferred to think, that God had in reality told us practically nothing about the existence or non-existence of Purgatory, or of the condition of the Saints in heaven; the preachers would do well, he says, gradually to wean the people from their practices in this regard; they had merely to decline to discuss the question of the dead and of the Saints in heaven. He was indeed unwilling to sever the close ties, so dear to the Catholic, binding the faithful to the deceased members of his family and to the beloved patterns and heroes of former days, yet his writings do tend in that direction.

From 1522 onward he inclined strongly to the idea that those who passed away fell into a deep sleep, from which they would awaken only on the day of Judgment; those who had breathed their last in the faith of Christ would all, so he fancies, sleep as in Abraham’s bosom; but since this depended on the “good pleasure of God,” it was not forbidden “to pray for the dead”; the petition must, however, be cautiously worded, for instance, as follows: “I beseech Thee for this soul which may be sleeping or suffering; if it be suffering, I implore Thee, if it be Thy Divine Will, to deliver it.” After praying thus once or twice, then “let it be.”[1779] In 1528 we still meet, in his writings, with similar concessions to the olden teaching and practice.[1780]

In 1530, however, his writing “Widderruff vom Fegefeur,”[1781] made an end of all concessions; here he is compelled to combat the “shouting and boasting of the Papists,” for the “lies and abominations of the sophists with regard to Purgatory” had passed all endurance. He now wants the sleep of the soul to be understood as a state of happy peace, and when it becomes a question of answering the Bible passage alleged by the Catholics, viz. 2 Machabees xii. 45 f., where it is said of the offering made for the fallen, that it is “a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from sins,” Luther simply strikes[506] out this book from the Canon of Scripture, as indeed he had done even previously; the Church, so his curious argument ran, could not bestow more authority and force on a book than it possessed of itself, because the sacred books must themselves bear witness to their inspiration.

It would be superfluous to enumerate in detail the other points of theology on which he set himself to oppose the Catholic teaching he had himself in earlier days advocated, sometimes on excellent grounds. We know his exclamation: Were I to teach to-day everything that I formerly taught, particularly in the beginning, then “I should be obliged to worship the Pope.” Moreover, not only were there contradictions due to his falling away from doctrines of the Church which he had formerly vindicated, but also many others resulting from his modification of his own views, or implied in his new opinions.

His views on indulgences, satisfaction, penance and contrition, original sin and predestination, on marriage, priestly ordination, spiritual jurisdiction and secular authority, on Councils and the Roman Primacy, have already been dealt with historically in what has gone before. Other points of doctrine will have to be discussed elsewhere in a different connection; for instance, the far-reaching question of the Church and her visibility and invisibility, and—what is of no less importance for a due appreciation of the man—the end of all and the devil.

One only point, on which indeed Luther opposed the doctrine and practice of the Church with all his heart and soul, must here be considered more closely.

6. Luther’s Attack on the Sacrifice of the Mass

All Luther’s new doctrines referred to above might be regarded in the light of attacks on the Church’s teaching and practice. None of his theological views were put forward by him merely to be discussed in the calm domain of thought. They are always quickened by his hatred of the Church and the antichristian Papacy. This holds good in particular of his antagonism to the sacrificial character of the Mass.

By his violent assault on the Mass he robbed the churches[507] and public worship of the Holy Sacrifice,[1782] and removed the very focus of Divine service in the Church.

Whereas to the Catholic Church the celebration of the Sacrament of the Altar was always a true sacrifice of praise, thanksgiving and atonement, which Christ, as the High Priest, offers to the Eternal Father through the instrumentality of a priest, according to Luther it is merely a memorial on the part of the congregation, which stimulates faith and gives a public testimony to God’s glory.[1783] In 1538 he characterised the struggle against the Mass as one vital to the new faith;[1784] he was very well aware how closely allied it was with the worship to which he himself had once been devoted: “Had any man twenty years ago tried to rob me of the Mass, I should have come to blows with him.”[1785]

Sacrifice is the supreme and at the same time the most popular expression of the worship of God. “From the rising of the sun even to the going down,” the Prophet Malachias had prophesied (i. 11), “my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation,” viz. the Eucharist. The common oblation throughout Christendom formed a sublime bond uniting all the Christian nations of the earth in one holy family. The words of Christ concerning the “Body that is given for you,” and “Blood that is shed for you” were rightly regarded as proving both the institution of the common sacrifice and its atoning power.

[508]

Luther not only burst asunder the bond of unity, but also overthrew the altar of sacrifice. It is against the correct idea of Divine worship to deprive it of all sacrifice, and to make its principal object consist in the edification and instruction of the congregation, as Luther decreed. Here again we see Luther’s individualism and the stress he laid on the subjective side, even to the extent of robbing religion of the sacrifice of the Lamb, which had the misfortune to be independent of fortuitous piety. The very walls of his temples seemed to utter a chill protest against being given over to a worship so entirely at the mercy of the feelings of the visitor. Luther was against the abuses connected with the Mass, and so were all well-instructed Catholics. But the latter argued, that, in spite of the abuses, the Mass must be honoured as the sacrifice on which the spiritual life rests. To the many contradictions of which he was guilty Luther added a further one, viz. of advocating as a purer and higher worship, one that does not even come up to the true standard of worship. (See vol. v., xxix., 9).

Luther’s deep-seated and almost instinctive antipathy to the Sacrifice of the Mass affords us, in its various phases, a good insight into his plan of campaign. On no other point does his hate flame forth so luridly, nowhere else is he so defiant, so contemptuous and so noisy—save perhaps when attacking Popery—as when assailing the Sacrifice of the Mass, that main bulwark of the Papacy. One thing is certain; of all the religious practices sacred to Catholics none was branded by him with such hideous and common abuse as this, the sublimest mystery of faith and of Divine Love.

First Attacks. “On the Abomination of the Silent Mass.”

In spite of Luther’s assurance given above of his former high regard for the Mass, he must quite early have grown averse to it, probably at the time when his zeal in the religious life first began to flag.

Even in 1516 we learn from his correspondence that he rarely found time for its celebration or for the recitation of the Canonical Hours.[1786] At a much later date he lets fall the remark, that he had never liked saying Mass.[1787] In view of his disturbed state of soul we can readily credit what he says, viz. that, in the monastery Gabriel Biel’s book on the[509] Mass, in which the dignity of the Holy Sacrifice is extolled with the voices of antiquity, had often made his heart bleed.[1788] It is rather curious, that, according to his own account, it was on the occasion of his first Mass after ordination that his morbid state of fear showed itself strongly for the first time.[1789] No less remarkable is it that his most extravagant self-reproaches for his past life had reference to his saying Mass. He tells us how, even long after his apostasy, he had often been brought to the verge of despair by the recollection of the terrible sin of saying Mass whereby he had at one time openly defied and offended God. He morbidly persuades himself that he had been guilty of the most frightful idolatry; that, as a priest and monk, he had performed the most criminal of actions, one subversive of all religion, in spite of his having done so in ignorance and in perfect good faith.[1790]

In his sermons on the Commandments, published in 1518, we still find a tribute to the Sacrifice of the Mass as Catholics understood it.[1791] But in his “Sermon von dem hochwirdigen Sacrament des heyligen waren Leychnams Christi” of 1519 he is curiously reticent concerning the nature of the Mass, whilst expressly recommending and praising the communion of the congregation—under both kinds—as the work of that faith “wherein strength lies.”[1792]

The first open attack on the Holy Sacrifice was made in his “Sermon von dem newen Testament das ist von der heyligen Messe” (1520). The latter appeared almost simultaneously with his “An den christlichen Adel” and prepared the way for his subversive treatment of the Mass in his “De captivitate babylonica.” In the Sermon he[510] declared that it was “almost the worst abuse,” that in the older Church the Eucharistic celebration had been turned into a sacrifice to be offered to God.[1793] Statements such as these predominate in the virulent chapter devoted to the Mass in the “De captivitate babylonica”: Christ’s sacrifice on the cross had been made out to be insufficient and the Sacrifice of the Mass set up in its place; the Supper was the Lord’s work for us, but, by ascribing a sacrificial value to the Mass, it becomes a work of man for God, whereby man hopes to please God.

The close ties connecting the Sacrifice of the Mass with both the Church’s ancient traditions and the institution of Christ are here ruthlessly torn asunder. A lurid and grossly exaggerated account of the abuses which had arisen in connection with the money-offerings for Masses served to stimulate the struggle, essentials faring as badly as what was merely accidental.

At the Wartburg the “Spirit” of the place further excited Luther’s hatred of the Mass. He poked fun at the “Mass-priest” who served the stronghold and wrote to Melanchthon: “Never to all eternity shall I say another Low Mass.”[1794] This he says in the same letter which witnesses to his inner contest with the monastic vows, and in which we find the sentence: “Be a sinner and sin boldly but believe more boldly still.”[1795] At the time of his spiritual baptism in the Wartburg he also wrote both his “De abroganda missa” and his “De votis monasticis.” The former he published in 1522, also in a German version entitled “Vom Missbrauch der Messen.”

This was the bugle-call to the struggle he immediately commenced at Wittenberg against the continued celebration of Mass by the Catholic clergy in the Castle and Collegiate churches of the town. We have already treated of the phases of that campaign in which his impetuosity and intolerance manifested itself in all its nakedness.[1796] From the inglorious combat, thanks to the help of the mob, he was to come forth victorious. On Christmas Day, 1524, for the first time, there was no Mass, and in the following year Justus Jonas wrote of the completion of the work: “On the[511] Saturday after the Feast of St. Matthew the Apostle and Evangelist, the whole Pope ... was flung out of All Saints’ church at Wittenberg, together with the stoles, albs, etc.; the olden ceremonies were replaced by pious ones such as accord with Scripture.”[1797]

Luther was convinced that the “whole Pope” could not be destroyed throughout the world save by the abolition everywhere of the Mass. “When once the Mass has been put away,” he declares in 1522, in his screed against Henry VIII., “then I shall think I have overthrown the Pope completely.”[1798]

In this writing his consciousness of his mission and his defiant insistence on the new teaching were largely directed against that palladium of the old Church: “Through me Christ has begun to reveal the abomination standing in the Holy Place” (Dn. ix. 27). It is in denying the sacrificial character of the Mass that he uses those odd words of bravado: “Here I stand, here I sit, here I remain, here I defy with contempt the whole assembly of the Papists,” etc.[1799]

The last act in his warfare on the Mass at the Collegiate church of Wittenberg had been anticipated by Luther’s stormy sermon against the Canon of the Mass (Nov. 27, 1524).[1800] This identical sermon, taken down by his pupil George Rörer, formed the groundwork of the writing he published in 1525, “Von dem Grewel der Stillmesse so man den Canon nennet.”[1801]

When Johann Eck took up his pen to refute Luther’s “Von dem Grewel der Stillmesse” he felt it almost superfluous to prove how unfounded the latter’s assertions were, that, by the sacrifice of the Mass, Catholics “denied in deed and in their heart that Christ had blotted out sin”[1809] by His Sacrifice on Golgotha, or that they maintained, that, not the merits of Christ, but rather “our works, must effect this.”[1810] He enters at greater length into the theological proofs of the truly sacrificial character of the consecration and of the correctness and value of the Canon, supplementing the biblical passages on the Sacrifice of the New Covenant by the clear and definite witness of tradition.[1811]

He and his Catholic readers were, however, quite prepared to find Luther refusing even to listen to such proofs taken from tradition. “Ah, bah, tradition this way, tradition that!” he had already cried, with regard to this very question, when striving to shake himself free of the fetters of the Church’s doctrine.

Eck, however, also attacked Luther from another point. Luther had placed in the very forefront of his writing the assertion, that he had never advised the people to have recourse to violent measures, whether with regard to the Mass or the Catholic worship generally, or invited them to revolt; in the preface Eck accordingly promises to take him to task both concerning the Canon and for his responsibility in the rising. “I shall, please God, prove Luther a liar on both counts.” He convicts him of inciting to revolt on the strength of “five proofs” taken from various works of his.

The pecuniary aspect of the Mass supplied Luther and the preachers with an effective means of exciting the people which they were not slow to seize. The abuses, real or apparent, of the system of Mass-stipends, were worked to their utmost by the demagogues.

[514]

[515]

The peaceable union of Christians before the Altar of Sacrifice in the “Mystery of Faith” had made way for warfare. The absence of the sacrifice avenged itself, however, in the Churches given over to the new religion by the dreariness and utter desolation of the sacred buildings once so full of life; not to mention the dreadful controversies, the bare “ministry of the Word” and the one-sided effort to make of the Supper simply a source of edification and increase of faith, could not suffice to attract the multitude to the Eucharistic celebration. The great sacrifice, which by its own infinite worth and quite independently of its power to edify, glorifies God in His Temple, and so powerfully stimulates the faithful to unite their offering with the sacramental oblation, had been torn from the midst of the congregation.

If we seek here for the connecting link between Luther’s bitter hostility to the Mass and his system as a whole, we shall find, that, granted the doctrine of the imputation of the merits of Christ by faith alone, the Eucharistic Sacrifice had no real place left. Luther said in 1540: “Where the ‘locus’ [’iustificationis’] is rightly taught and stands, there can be nothing evil; for the antecedens, ‘faith alone justifies,’ spells the fall of the Mass,” etc.[1817]

In the new faith everything turned on the saving and the pacification of the sinner by virtue of a sort of amnesty furnished by the merits of Christ’s death on the cross. Faith alone secures all the fulness of the Redeemer’s work of satisfaction; no ordinance of Christ, sacrament, sacrifice or priesthood can assist in the work of clothing the soul with the mantle of these Divine merits; anything of the sort would only diminish the dignity and the efficacy of the confidence of faith. Only what promotes the personal faith which saves—that master-key to the forgiveness, or better, to the cloaking of sin—is here admitted, but no work, no “opus operatum” of Christ’s institution, which, through sacrament and sacrifice, imparts grace to the faithful Christian who is duly prepared to seek salvation; on the contrary, according to Luther, such institutions, which the ancient Church looked upon as sacred, only detract from the merits of Christ.

[516]

And since, in his view, every Christian by his faith is a priest, the hierarchy falls, and thus sacrifice too, at least as the prerogative of a special sacerdotal class, also ceases to exist.

Hence the warfare on behalf of the Evangel of faith alone and against sacerdotalism, naturally, and of necessity, led to the warfare against the Mass. This particular combat, in which (as in the attack on the Church’s visible head, viz. the Pope) Luther’s animosity against the Catholics reached its culminating point, necessarily occupied a place in the forefront, because the Mass, which united the congregation before the altar, was the most public and most tangible expression of Catholic life and the one most frequently seen.

Luther’s theological perversions of the Church’s doctrine of the sacrifice of the Mass, in the above works and elsewhere, are all the more astonishing, seeing that Gabriel Biel, the theologian, with whom he was so well acquainted and whose “Sacri canonis missæ expositio” he had studied with keen interest, had, in his exposition of the ancient doctrine of the Mass, forestalled these very misrepresentations, almost as though he had actually foreseen them.[1818] The respected Tübingen University-Professor, in this explanation of the Mass, which appeared in 1488, was frequently reprinted, and was much used by both parish clergy and preachers, insists, in close unison with the past, that there was but one great and atoning sacrifice of the cross, and that the sacrifice of the Mass did not in the least detract from it but rather applied it to the individual believer. He points out with great emphasis the uniquely sublime character of the sacrifice on Calvary (“unica oblatio et perfectissimum sacrificium”), in its fourfold aspect as a sacrifice of praise, thanksgiving, petition and atonement. In support of this he quotes a number of passages from the Bible: “By it [the sacrifice on the cross] our sins are blotted out (Romans iv.). Through it we have found grace whereby we are saved (Hebrews v.): for, being consummated[517] by suffering, He (Christ) became to all who obey Him the cause of eternal life. By the one oblation of the cross He hath for ever perfected them that are sanctified (Hebrews x.),” etc. “If you seek the blotting out of sins, behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world; if you seek thanksgiving, Christ gives thanks to the Father; if you seek for deliverance from evil, He heals and sets us free.”[1819] In several passages he dwells in detail on the idea of the saving Lamb of God, once in connection with the thrice-repeated Agnus Dei of the Mass.

But, a comparatively short time after, another was to come, who would assert that the world had long ago lost the Lamb of God, and who presumed to take upon himself the task of pointing Him out anew to all men and of making Him profitable to souls.

In unison with Fathers and theologians, Biel sums up the mutual relations between the Sacrifice of the Mass and the Sacrifice on the Cross in the words: “Although Christ was once only offered visibly in the flesh, yet He is daily offered concealed under the appearances of bread and wine, though painlessly, for the Sacrifice of the Mass is the representation and memorial of the sacrifice consummated on the Cross and produces the same effects.”[1820]

[518]

When describing more minutely its efficacy for the obtaining of grace and forgiveness of sins he dwells on the thought, that it has no quasi-magical effect, but acts “according to man’s preparation and capacity,” so that the Holy Sacrifice does not by any means blot out sin if man’s heart is still turned away from God: to souls that show themselves well-disposed it brings contrition and sorrow for sin and finally forgiveness.[1821] Unlike Baptism and Penance, it does not reconcile the soul with God directly, but only indirectly, by arousing the spirit of penance which leads to the wholesome use of the sacraments and appeases the anger of the Heavenly Father by the offering of His Son, and prevents Him withdrawing the help of His grace. Biel elucidates the idea of sacrifice, deals with the figurative sacrifices of the Old Testament, which found their fulfilment in the clean oblation (Mal. i. 10 f.) to be offered from the rising of the sun even to the going down, with the twofold efficacy of the Mass (“ex opere operato” and “ex opere operante”)[1822] and many other points which Luther unjustly attacks; with the lawfulness of private Masses, with or without any Communion of the faithful, with the advantage of Masses for the souls of the faithful departed, with Mass-stipends[1823] which he defends against the charge of simony, and with the practice of repeating silently certain portions of the Mass, an ancient usage for which he gives the reasons.[1824]

“On the Corner-Mass.” Continuation of the Conflict.

In his war against the Mass Luther was never to yield an inch. His “Von dem Grewel der Stillmesse” was followed[519] by fresh pronouncements and writings which bear witness to the intensity of his hatred.

The occasion for another lengthy writing against the Mass and the hierarchy seems to have been furnished in 1533 by the religious conditions in the province of Anhalt, where the Princes, under pressure from their Catholic neighbours, had begun to tolerate the former worship and the saying of Mass. In Dec. of that year Luther published his booklet “Von der Winckelmesse und Pfaffen Weihe.”[1825]

It was designed primarily as a protest against “the ecclesiastical jurisdiction and Ordination,” i.e. against the hierarchy and priesthood, and broadly hinted to the “bishops and priests” that their Order was doomed to destruction. At the Diet of Augsburg he declared his followers had “very humbly informed the Pope and the bishops, that we had no wish forcibly to infringe on their rights and authority in ecclesiastical matters, but that, so long as they did not compel us to any unchristian doctrines, we were quite ready to be ordained and governed by them, and even to assist them in their administration,” but his overtures having been rejected, nothing remained for him but to await the end of the priesthood when God should “in good time” so dispose. “God is wonderful”; He had “overthrown by His word” so much “papistical Mammon-service and idolatry”; “He would also be able to wipe away the rancid Chresam,” i.e. to make an end of the bishops and priests in whose ordination Chrism was used.[1826] Towards the end of the tract he returns to the attack on priestly ordination. He is determined “again to adjudge and commit to the Churches the call, or true ordination and consecration to the office of pastor.” The members of the Church must have the “right and authority to appoint people to the office,” and to entrust it to simple believers of blameless lives, even “without Chrism or butter, grease or lard.”[1827]

The greater portion of the writing is, however, devoted to the “Corner-Mass,” i.e. the Mass generally, which according to the Catholic doctrine is equally valid whether celebrated by the priest alone in a lonely chapel or amid a[520] concourse of faithful who unite their prayers with his and communicate. For reasons readily understood, Luther prefers to use the contemptuous term “Corner-Mass.”

The book on the “Winckelmesse” is celebrated for the disputation between Luther and the devil which it describes. The devil sets forth the proofs against the Mass with marvellous skill, and, by his reproaches, drives the quondam monk into desperate straits. Here Luther is describing the deep remorse of conscience which he will have it he had[521] to endure on account of his Masses. He is, however, merely using a literary artifice when he introduces the devil as the speaker; of this there will be more to say later.[1829] Here, in addition to a letter, which so far has received but little attention, in which he himself furnishes the key to the form in which he casts his argument,[1830] we may mention the fact that Luther’s first draft of his writing on the “Winckelmesse,” which has recently been examined, gives a portion of the devil’s arguments against the Mass and without any reference to the devil, as the author’s own; only later on was the devil made the spokesman for Luther’s ideas.[1831] We can see that it was only as the work proceeded that there occurred to Luther the happy thought of making the devil himself speak, not so much to reveal to the world the worthlessness of the Mass, as to cast if possible poor Luther into despair, because of his former Mass-sayings, and to reveal the utter perversity of the Papists, who, far from being in despair, actually boasted of the Mass.

Luther expected great things from his ruthless attack and from the scene in which the devil appears. It would be, so he fancied, a “test of the wisdom and power of the Papacy.”[1832] His friend Jonas, in a letter of Oct. 26, 1533, speaking of the yet unpublished “Winckelmesse,” calls it a real “battering-ram” to be used against the Papacy; it was long since the Professor had been heard speaking in such a way of the Mass, the Pope and the priests.[1833] Those[522] of the preachers who were fallen priests rejoiced at the advice they found in the book for the quieting of their consciences when tempted by the devil, and at its hint that they should rub their anointed hands with soap and lye the better to obliterate the mark of the Beast.

The writing was translated by Jonas into Latin, but his rendering was a very free and rhetorical one.

The interest it aroused was increased by the negative attitude which Luther seemed to assume towards the Real Presence. To many of his followers Luther seemed to come to an opinion not far removed from the Zwinglian denial of the Presence. Luther learned that Prince Johann of Anhalt and others had expressed their anxiety lest the booklet “should be understood as though I agreed with the fanatics and enemies of the Sacrament.” Hence he at once issued a fresh writing entitled: “A Letter of D. Mart. Luther to a good friend concerning his book on the Corner-Masses” (1534).[1834]

To attack the Sacrament and the Real Presence was, he there declared, far from his thoughts. I shall prove “that I do not hold, nor ever shall hold to all eternity, with the wrong doctrine of the foes of the Sacrament—or to speak quite plainly—with that of Carlstadt, Zwingli and their followers.”[1835] But by this he stood: “Whoever, like the Papists, did not celebrate the Sacrament according to the ordinance of Christ, had no right to say Christ was there”; “a counterfeit florin, struck contrary to the King’s order, can never be a good one.”[1836] “May God bestow on all pious Christians such a mind, that, when they hear the Mass spoken of, they quake with fear and cross themselves as they would at the sight of some abomination of the devil.”[1837]

Johann Cochlæus at once replied to the “Winckelmesse” with an appeal to the correctness of ecclesiastical tradition. In the same year he published Innocent the Third’s “De sacro altaris mysterio” and Isidore of Sevilla’s “De ecclesiasticis officiis.” These venerable witnesses of Christian antiquity had, he declared, “a better claim to be believed than Luther’s furies.” In addition to this he also wrote a popular theological defence in the vernacular “On the Holy[523] Mass and Priestly ordination” (Leipzig, 1534). In this writing he begins by emphasising the claims of ecclesiastical tradition and the teaching office of the Church: “The Church understands Scripture far better and more surely, thanks to the Holy Spirit promised by Christ and duly sent her, than Luther does by his evil spirit.” He laid down the principle which he urged was the only true and reliable guide in the controversies of the age: Hold fast to the teaching of the Church rather than to the subjective interpretations of the Bible, which are often so divergent. He was not, however, altogether happy in his choice of expressions, for instance, when he exclaims: “Bible hither, Bible thither!” for this might well have given the impression, that, on his side, small account was made of the Bible. In reality this was merely his way of retorting on Luther’s: “Tradition hither, Tradition thither.” The theologian, who elsewhere is careful to set its true value on the Bible, seeks in this way to brand the tricks played with the Bible; similar phrases then in use were the one we already know, “Bible, Babble, Bubble,” and Luther’s own sarcastic saying: “The Bible is a heresy-book.”[1838]

Cochlæus not only brought forward, in support of the Mass, besides Holy Scripture, that tradition which Luther had treated so scornfully, but also replied to his opponent’s perversions and charges on all the other counts. Of the grievous disorders which Luther said had come under his notice during his stay in Rome, what Cochlæus says is much to the point: “It is quite possible, that, among so many thousands from all lands, there may have been some such desperate villains. But it is not seemly that Luther on that score should seek to calumniate pious and devout monks and priests and make the people distrustful of them.”[1839]

In his familiar conversations Luther repeatedly reveals the psychological side of his attack on the Mass.

Denunciation of the Mass naturally occupies a place in Luther’s Articles of Schmalkalden.[1852] Since the latter were incorporated in the “Symbolic Books” of the Lutheran Evangelical Church and figure in the Book of Concord with the three oldest Œcumenical Creeds, the Confession of Augsburg, etc., as writings “recognised and accepted as godly truths by our blessed forefathers and by us,” condemnation of the Mass became as much a traditional canon within the Protestant fold as Luther himself could have desired.

In the Schmalkalden Articles we find, after the first article on Justification by Faith alone, a second article on the office and work of Jesus Christ which declares: “That the Mass among the Papists must be the greatest and most frightful abomination” because it is “in direct and violent opposition” to the first article, according to which the Lamb of God alone delivers man from sin, not “a wicked or pious minister of the Mass by his work.” The Mass is a “work of men, yea, of wicked knaves,” a source “of unspeakable abuses by the buying and selling of Masses,” defended by the Papists only because they “know very well, that if the Mass falls, the Papacy too must perish.” Over and above all this, that dragon’s tail, which is the Mass, has produced much filth and vermin and many forms of idolatry: First of all Purgatory; for the execrable market of Masses[526] for the dead produced that “devilish spectre” of Purgatory. Secondly, “on account of it evil spirits have performed much trickery by appearing as the souls of men”; the devils “with unspeakable roguery” demanded Masses, etc. “Thirdly, pilgrimages, whereby people ran after Masses, forgiveness of sins, and the Grace of God, for the Mass ruled everything” and caused men to run after “hurtful, devilish will-o’-the-wisps.” “Fourthly, the brotherhoods” with their Masses, etc., are also “contrary to the first article of the Atonement.” “Fifthly, the holy things” (relics) were also “supposed to effect forgiveness of sin as being a good work and worship of God like the Mass.” “Sixthly, here belong also the beloved Indulgence” in which “Judas incarnate, i.e. the Pope, sells the merits of Christ.”—Hence even Indulgences are made out to be one of the unhappy consequences of the Mass!

It is a relief, after such lamentable utterances which could only have been accepted by people whom prejudice in Luther’s favour had rendered blind, to recall the clear statements—so full of conviction—on the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament, which occur in the very writings in which Luther attacks the Mass. Our second volume concluded with a cheering confession on the part of the Wittenberg Professor of his faith in the Trinity and Incarnation, a confession which both did him honour and expressed those consoling and incontrovertible truths which constitute the common treasure of the Christian creeds. The present volume also, after the sad pictures of dissent of which it is only too full, may charitably end with the words in which Luther voices his belief in the Sacrament of the Altar, the lasting memorial of Divine Love, in which our Lord never ceases to pray for unity amongst those bidden as guests to His table.

“I hereby confess before God and the whole world that I believe and do not doubt, and with the help and grace of my dear Lord Jesus Christ will maintain even to that Day, that where Mass is celebrated according to Christ’s ordinance whether amongst us Lutherans or in the Papacy, or in Greece or in India (even though under one kind only—though that is wrong and an abuse), there is present under the species of the Bread, the true Body of Christ given for[527] us on the cross, and, under the species of wine, the true Blood of Christ shed for us; nor is it a spiritual or fictitious Body and Blood, but the true natural Body and Blood taken of the holy, virginal, and really human body of Mary, without the intervention of any man but conceived of the Holy Ghost alone; which Body and Blood of Christ now sitteth at the right hand of the Majesty of God in the Divine Person, which is Christ Jesus, true, real, and eternal God, with the Father of Whom He is begotten from all eternity, etc. And that same Body and Blood of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, not only the Saints and those who are worthy, but also sinners and the unworthy truly handle and receive, bodily though invisibly, with hands, mouth, chalice, paten, corporal, or whatever else be used when it is given and received in the Mass.”

“This is my faith, this I know, and no one shall take it from me.”

He had always, so he insists, by his testimony upheld the “clear, plain text of the Gospel” against heresies old and new, and withstood the “devil’s malice and work in the service and for the betterment of my dear brothers and sisters, in accordance with Christian charity.”[1853]

END OF VOL. IV

FOOTNOTES: