CHAPTER XIII

THE RISE OF THE REFORMED CHURCHES

1. Against the Fanatics. Congregational Churches?

Luther quitted the Wartburg March 1, 1522, after having previously paid

a secret visit to Wittenberg between December 3 and 11. He now made his

appearance at the birthplace of the Evangel in order to recommence his

vigorous and incisive sermons, which had become imperatively necessary

for his cause.

The action of Carlstadt, even more than that of the “Prophets of

the Kingdom of God,” who had come over from Zwickau, called for his

presence in order that he might resist their attacks. In his absence

the Mass had already been forcibly abolished, sermons had been preached

against confession and infant baptism, and the destruction of the

images had commenced. Like Luther himself, those who incited the people

to these proceedings, appealed on the one hand to the plain testimony

of Holy Scripture as the source of their inspiration, and on the other

to direct illumination from above.

Infant baptism, argued the Zwickauers, was not taught in Holy

Scripture, but was opposed to the actual words of the Saviour: “He that

believes and is baptised.” The “prophets” met, however, with little

encouragement. Carlstadt had not yet taken their side either in this

matter or in their pseudo-mysticism.

Against the Elector, Carlstadt, however, appealed expressly, as Luther

had done, to his duty of proclaiming the understanding of the Bible

which he had been granted.

“Woe to me,” he cried with the Apostle St. Paul, “if I do not preach”

(1 Cor. ix. 16). He declared that the diversions arose merely from the

fact that all did not follow Holy Scripture; but he, at least, obeyed

it and death itself would not shift him from this firm foundation; he

would remain “firmly grounded on the Word of God.” In demanding the

removal of the images he cried: “God’s voice says briefly and clearly

in Scripture: ‘Thou shalt not adore them nor serve them’; and hence it

is useless to argue: ‘I do not worship the images, I do not honour them

for their own sake, but on account of the Saints whom they represent.’”

Carlstadt, it is true, also suggested that it was for “the supreme

secular power to decree and effect the removal of the abuse.”[239] When

occasion arose he also advised “proceeding without causing a tumult and

without giving the foes cause for calumny.” That was his advice,[240]

but most of those who thought as he did were little disposed to wait

until the authorities, or the “priests of Baal themselves, removed

their vessels and idols.”

The first step towards liturgical change in Wittenberg was, however,

taken by Melanchthon when, September 29, 1521, he and his pupils

received the Sacrament in the Parish Church, the words of institution

being spoken aloud and the cup being passed to the laity, because

Christ had so ordained it. A few days later the Augustinians,

particularly Gabriel Zwilling, commenced active steps against the

Mass as a sacrifice, ceasing to say it any longer. Melanchthon and

the Augustinians knew that in this they had Luther’s sympathy. As

those who agreed with Luther followed Melanchthon’s example concerning

the Mass and the Supper, and ceased to take any part in the Catholic

Mass, introducing preachers of their own instead, a new order of

Divine worship was soon the result. “Alongside of the congregation

with the old Popish rites rose the new evangelical community.”[241]

But here Carlstadt stepped forward and gave a new turn to events;

he was determined not to see the followers of the Gospel left in a

corner, and without delay he set about altering the principal service

at Wittenberg, which was still celebrated in accordance with Catholic

usage, so as to bring it into agreement with the “institution of

Christ.” This new service was first celebrated at Christmas, 1521.

Those portions which express the sacrificial character of the Mass were

omitted, and a new Communion service introduced instead, the laity

partaking of the chalice and the words of institution being spoken

aloud. Confession was not required of the communicants. The novelty and

the ease of receiving communion attracted crowds to the new ritual,

which was first held in All Saints’ Church, then in the parish church,

and was subsequently introduced by his followers, such as Zwilling, for

instance, in the neighbouring parishes.

Great disorders occurred at the very first service of this sort.

Many communicated after eating and drinking freely. In January, 1522,

a noisy rabble forced its way into the church at Wittenberg, destroyed

all altars, and the statues of the saints, and cast them, together with

the clergy, into the street.

The Elector and his Councillors, for instance Hieronymus Schurf, were

very angry with the business and with the “pseudo-prophets,” i.e.

Carlstadt and his followers; the Zwickauers, who, as a matter of

fact constituted an even greater source of danger, held back on this

occasion.

Melanchthon, then at Wittenberg, inclined to the belief that the

Zwickauers were possessed by a higher spirit, but it was, he thought,

for Luther to determine the nature of this spirit. The prophets, on the

other hand, argued that Luther was certainly right in most he said and

did, though not always, and that another, having a higher spirit, would

take his place.

The purer and more profound view of the Evangel upon which they

secretly prided themselves was a consequence of their eminently

reasonable opposition to Luther’s altogether outward doctrine of

justification and the state of grace. To them the idea of a purely

mechanical covering over of our sinfulness by the imputation of

Christ’s merits, seemed totally inadequate. They wanted to be in a

more living communion with Christ, and having once seceded from the

Church, they arrived by the path of pseudo-mysticism at the delusion

of a direct intercourse with the other world; thereby, however, they

brought a danger on the field, viz. religious radicalism and political

revolution. “It seems to me a very suspicious circumstance,” so Luther

writes of the Zwickau prophets, “that they should boast of speaking

face to face with the Divine Majesty.”[242]

Luther, after his period of study at the Wartburg, had at once to

define and prove his position, particularly as he disapproved of much

of the doctrines of Carlstadt’s party, as well as of his over-hasty

action. Without delay, he mounted the pulpit at Wittenberg and staked

all the powers of his personality and eloquence against the movement;

he was unwilling that the whole work of the Evangel which had begun

should end in chaos. In a course of eight sermons he traced back the

disorders to “a misapprehension of Christian freedom.” It grieved him

deeply, he declared, that, without his order, so much was being altered

instead of proceeding cautiously and allowing the faith to mature

first. “Follow me,” he cried, “I have never yet failed; I was the first

whom God set to work on this plan; I cannot escape from God, but must

remain so long as it pleases my Lord God; I was also the first to whom

God gave the revelation to preach and proclaim this His Word to you. I

am also well assured that you have the pure Word of God.”[243]

What he says is, however, rather spoilt by a dangerous admission.

“Should there be anyone who has something better to offer and to whom

more has been revealed than to me, I am ready to submit to him my sense

and reason and not to force my opinion upon him, but to obey him.”[244]

He, of course, felt that he could convict the so-called “fanatics” of

error, and was sure beforehand that his professed readiness to submit

to others would not endanger his position. His whole cause depended on

the maintenance of outward order and his own authority at Wittenberg;

he knew, moreover, that he was backed by the Elector.

His success against his adversaries, who, to tell the truth, were no

match for him, was complete. Wittenberg was saved from the danger of

open adherence to “fanaticism,” though the movement was still to give

Luther much trouble secretly at Wittenberg and more openly elsewhere,

particularly as Carlstadt, in his disappointment, came more and more

after 1522 to make common cause with the Zwickauers.[245]

* * * * *

The success of his efforts against the fanatics secured for Luther the

favour of his Ruler and his protection against the consequences of his

outlawry by the Empire. Luther was thus enabled to carry on his work

as professor and preacher at Wittenberg in defiance of the Emperor and

the Empire; from thence, till the very end of his life, he was able,

unmolested, to spread abroad, with the help of the Press, his ideas of

ecclesiastical revolution.

In view of the movement just described, and of others of a like nature,

he published towards the close of his Patmos sojourn the work entitled

“A True Admonition to all Spirits to Avoid Riot and Revolt.”[246] This,

however, did not prevent him shortly after from furthering the idea

of the use of force with all his habitual incautious violence in the

tract “Against the Falsely-called Spiritual Estate of the Pope and

the Bishops” (1522),[247] in which, in language the effect of which

upon the masses it was impossible to gauge, he incites the people to

overthrow the existing Church government.

“Better were it,” he cries in the latter work, “that all bishops

were put to death, and all foundations and convents rooted out, than

that one soul should suffer. What then must we say when all souls

are lost for the sake of vain mummery and idols? Of what use are

they but to live in pleasure on the sweat and toil of others and to

hinder the Word of God?” A revolt against such tyrants could not, he

says, be wicked; its cause would not be the Word of God, but their

own obstinate disobedience and rebellion against God. “What better

do they deserve than to be stamped out by a great revolt? Such a

thing, should it occur, would only give cause for laughter, as the

Divine Wisdom says, Proverbs i. 25-26: ‘You have despised all my

counsel and have neglected my reprehensions. I also will laugh in your

destruction.’”[248]

Expressing similar sentiments, the so-called “Bull of Reformation,”

comprised in the last-mentioned tract, has it that “all who assist in

any way, or venture life or limb, goods or honour in the enterprise

of destroying bishoprics and exterminating episcopal rule, are

dear children of God and true Christians.... On the other hand

all who hold with the rule of the bishops ... are the devil’s own

servants.”[249] Such is the teaching of “Ecclesiastes, by the Grace

of God,” as Luther calls himself here and frequently elsewhere. They

must listen to him; the bishops, for the sake of their idol the Pope,

abused, condemned and consigned to the flames him and his noble cause,

refusing either to listen to or to answer him, but now he will, so he

says, “put on his horns and risk his head for his master,” in defiance

of the “idolatrous, licentious, shameless, accursed seducers and

wolves.”

As a demolisher Luther proved himself great and strong. Was he an

equally good builder?

* * * * *

The decisive question of how to proceed to the construction of a new

ecclesiastical system seems to have been scarcely considered at all by

Luther, either at the Wartburg, or even for some time after his return.

His mind was full of one idea, viz. how best to fight the Church of

Antichrist. He had no real conception of the Church which might have

assisted him in an attempt to plan out a new system; his notion of the

Church was altogether too dim and indefinite to serve as the basis of

a new organisation. Even to-day Protestant theologians and historians

are unable to tell us with any sort of unanimity how his ideas of the

Church are to be understood; this holds good of him throughout life,

but most of all during the earliest days of Protestantism, when the

first attempts were made to consolidate it.

One of the most recent explorers in the field of the history of

theology in those years, H. Hermelink, concludes a paper on the

subject with the words: “Let us hope that we Protestant theologians

may gradually reach some agreement concerning Luther’s idea of the

Church and concerning the Reformer’s plans for the reorganisation of

the Church.”[250]

K. Rieker, K. Sohm, W. Köhler, Karl Müller, P. Drews, Fr. Loofs and

many others who have recently devoted themselves to these studies

which have aroused so much interest in our day, all differ more or

less from each other in their views on the subject.

The fact must not be forgotten that the Apocalyptic tendency of

Luther’s mind at that time prevented his dwelling on matters of

practical organisation. The reign of Antichrist at Rome seemed to him

to portend the end of the world. Apocalyptic influences oppressed him,

particularly in the years 1522 and 1523, and we find their traces at

intervals even afterwards, for instance, in the years following 1527

and just before his death;[251] in each case they were due to outward

and interior “trials.” In the first crisis, at the commencement of the

third decade of the sixteenth century, his false eschatology, based

on an erroneous understanding of the Bible, led him, for instance, to

anticipate the coming of the Last Day in 1524, in consequence of a

remarkable conjunction of the planets which was confidently expected

to bring about a deluge. His sermon on the 2nd Sunday in Advent fixes

the year 1524 as the latest on which this event could occur.[252]

In his work “To the Nobility on the Improving of the Christian State,”

Luther still took it for granted that the Emperor, Princes and

influential laity would forcibly rescue Christendom from the state

of corruption in which it was sunk, and that after Christendom had

accepted the evangel, the pre-existing order of things would continue

very much as before under a reformed episcopate; should the bishops

refuse to come over to the Gospel, plenty “idle parsons” would be

found to take their place. As a matter of fact, he had no clear idea

in his mind regarding the future shaping of affairs.

At the Diet of Worms it became evident that his fantastic dreams

were not to be realised, for the Empire, instead of welcoming

him, proclaimed him an outlaw. Luther, accordingly, trusting to

his mystical ideas, now persuaded himself that his cause and the

reorganisation of Christendom would be undertaken by Christ alone.

In the Wartburg Luther received the fullest and most definite assurance

that the temporal powers who were opposed to him at Worms would submit

themselves in these latter days to the Word which he preached, and that

the weakening of the Church’s authority which had been begun had not

proceeded nearly far enough. It was revealed to him that his work was

yet at its beginning and that there yet remained to be established new

communities of Christians sharing his views. Hence we find him writing

to Frederick, his Elector, on March 7, 1522: “The spiritual tyranny

has been weakened, to do which has been the sole aim of my writings;

now I perceive that God wills to carry it still further as He did with

Jerusalem and its twofold government. I have recently learnt that not

only the spiritual but also the temporal power must give way to the

Evangel, willingly or unwillingly; this is plainly shown in all the

Bible narratives.”[253] With the Bible in his hand he seeks to prove,

from the passages relating to the end of the world, and the reign of

Antichrist, that, before the end of all, Christ will overthrow the

anti-Christian powers by the “breath of His mouth.”

“It is the mouth of Christ which must do this.” “Now may I and everyone

who speaks the word of Christ freely boast that his mouth is the mouth

of Christ.” “Another man, one whom the Papists cannot see, is driving

the wheel, and therefore they attribute it all to us, but they shall

yet be convinced of it.”[254]

Meanwhile some practical action was necessary, for, as yet, the

Evangelicals formed only small groups and unorganised congregations

which might at any time drift apart, whilst elsewhere they were

scattered among the masses, almost unnoticed and utterly powerless.

The mere attacking of Popery was not sufficient to consolidate

them. The “meetings” of those who had been touched by the “Word,”

Gospel-preaching and a new liturgy, did not suffice. The further growth

and permanent organisation of the congregations Luther hoped to see

effected by the help of the authorities, by the Town-councillors, who

were to play so great a part later, and, better still, by the Princes

whom he expected to win over to the new teaching as he had already done

in the case of Frederick, the Elector of Saxony. It is true he would

have preferred the setting up of churches to have been the work of the

newly converted Faithful, i.e. to have taken place from below upwards.

Those who had been converted by the Gospel, “the troubled consciences”

as he calls them, who were united in faith and charity, were ever to

form the nucleus around which he would fain have seen everywhere the

congregations growing, without the intervention of the worldly power.

The force of circumstances, however, even from the commencement,

compelled him to fall back on the authorities.

In short, the ideas he advanced concerning organisation were, not

only various, but frequently contradictory. His favourite idea, to

which we shall return later, of a community of perfect Christians was

utterly incapable of realisation. “To maintain within the Congregation

a more select company forming a corporation apart was hardly feasible

in the long run.”[255] At the back of his various plans was always

the persuasion that the power of the Gospel would in the end do

its own work and reveal the right way for the building up of a new

organisation, just as of its own power it had shattered the edifice of

Antichrist. Instead of searching for the link connecting his discordant

utterances, as Protestant[256] theologians have been at pains to do, it

will be more practical and more in accordance with history to present

them here in disconnected groups. For any lack of clearness which may

be the result Luther must be held responsible.

In one and the same work, shortly after his visit to Wittenberg from

the Wartburg, the destruction of the Papacy is depicted first as the

result of the action of the governments (who accordingly are bound

to provide a new, even if only temporary, organisation), then as

taking place through no human agency and without a single blow being

struck.[257] In writing thus, he was the plaything of those “states

of excitement” which constitute a marked feature of his “religious

psychology.”[258] Luther was then aware of the threatening movement at

Wittenberg and elsewhere, and attempted to stem it with the assurance

that the kingdom of Antichrist was already crumbling to pieces; he does

not, however, omit to point to the governments as the real agents of

which Christ was to make use to achieve the victory: “Hearken to the

government; so long as it does not interfere and give the command, keep

your hands, your mouth and your heart quiet and say and do nothing. But

if you are in a position to move the authorities to intervene and to

give the order, you may do so.”[259]

It would seem from all this as though he expected the help necessary

for the change of faith to come solely from those in authority, an

opinion which he had expressed in his pamphlet to the nobility, the

Princes and the gentry; the secular power after making its “submission”

to the Evangel was to do all that was required in the interests of the

Evangel; it was its duty to see that uniformity prevailed in the “true

worship” throughout its dominions, to watch over the public services

and exclude false worship. But whether the “Kingdom of God was to

be introduced by the Princes, or to rise up spontaneously from the

Christian Congregation, he does not clearly state.”[260] From 1522 to

1525 he frequently speaks as though it were to proceed solely from the

congregation, which by reason of the common priesthood of its members

was possessed of the necessary qualifications.

In any case, we may gather the following regarding Church organisation:

no outward government, no power or legislative authority exists in the

Church itself; on earth there is but one outward authority, viz. the

secular; the Church lives only by the Word of God and supports and

governs itself by this alone.

If legislation and external authority were called for in the Church,

then this would have to be borrowed from the State, or, as Rudolf

Sohm expresses it: “If legislation and judicial authority were needed

in the Church of Christ, then, according to Luther’s principles,

the government of the Church would have to be set up by the ruler

of the land.” For, according to Luther, the authority of the Church

is intended merely to foster piety,[261] and a spiritual governing

authority would result in compulsion and simply make people “impious.”

“The ecclesiastical authority to rule of the parson, i.e. his teaching

office, is not a legal power.” In his treatise on canon law, Sohm

is one of the principal supporters of this principle.[262] To judge

from the praise bestowed upon him by Hermelink, he had “penetrated

deeply into Luther’s thought,” and “on the whole saw things in a right

light,” although he was possibly too fond of simplifying them in the

interests of a system.[263] It is perfectly true that in Sohm and

other Protestant Canonists, the contradictions in Luther’s opinions

are left in the background; Luther’s views of the formation of

congregations having their own rights and their own authority, which

appear side by side with his other schemes, receive, as a rule, little

attention.

In any case, Luther at that time made use of “every artifice to prove

that it was the right of each individual Christian to judge of the

preaching of the Gospel and of the avoiding of false prophets.”[264]

In those early days Luther was so full of the ideal of the

congregation that, in order to support it, he even appeals to the

natural law. In order to save souls every congregation, government or

individual has by nature the right to make every effort to drive away

the wolves, i.e. the clergy of Antichrist; no apathy can be permitted

where it is a question of eternal salvation; the alleged rights and

the handed-down possessions of the foes, on which they base their

corruptive influence, must not be spared: “We must not fall upon

and seize the temporal possessions of others, above all not of our

superiors--except where it is a question of doctrine and the salvation

of souls; but if the Gospel is not preached, the spiritual authorities

have no right to the revenues.”[265] “According to Luther,” says

Hermelink, “the authorities of Altenburg had a perfect right to drive

away the Provost and his people from Altenburg as ravening wolves”;

they were only to wait “a little” to see whether the monks would hold

their tongues or perhaps even preach the pure Gospel. When thereupon

Luther cries: “Their authority is at an end, abrogated by God Himself,

if it be in conflict with the Gospel,”[266] Hermelink admits the

presence of a certain “antagonism between the right of each individual

Christian and the common law of society.”

Luther, however, generally prefers to give expression to other less

violent thoughts anent the building up of the congregations to be

formed from the Church of Antichrist.

The holy Brotherhood of the Spirit, he says in his idealistic way,

was to arise, knowing no constraint but only charity, and having a

ministry (“_ministerium_”), but no “power.”[267] “The freedom of the

Spirit which must reign, makes things which are merely corporal and

earthly, indifferent and not necessary.” “All things are indifferent

and free (‘_omnia sunt indifferentia et libera_’).” “Paul demands the

preservation of unity, but this is unity of the spirit, not of place,

of persons, of things or of bodies.”[268] We here again note the advent

of that mysticism which had formerly dragged him down to the depths

of a passive indifference. How these pseudo-mystical ideas were to

further the building up of the new ecclesiastical system it is hard to

understand.

The Brotherhood, however, is not intended to introduce an altogether

new ecclesiastical system. We are simply “Christians,” the true

Christians, members of the Churches which have always existed, but

purified from a thousand years of deformation. “To create sects is

stupid and useless”;[269] according to Luther, it is not even necessary

for the task of uniting under the Christian name, before the end of

the world, all the faithful and the pious consciences elected from the

Kingdom of Antichrist.

At that time he wished all his followers to be known simply as

“Christians”; and in the first days of the Protestant Churches he very

frequently makes use of this term.[270] Even at a later date he was

loath to hear them called after himself, in spite of his practical

action to the contrary, because they “share with the rest the common

teaching of Christ.”[271] The term “Evangelicals” does not appear

to have been much in use in Luther’s immediate surroundings.[272]

As “Christians” and “Evangelicals” they had not left the “Church,”

indeed, Luther always insists on the fact that it was they who really

constituted and represented the “Church.” According to the Augsburg

Confession in 1530 they belonged to the Catholic Church; they wished

to define their position rather as that of a party within the Church,

fighting for its existence, a party which accepted the Church’s

recognised articles of belief, sheltered itself under the testimony

of recognised Catholic authorities, and which had merely introduced

certain innovations for the removal of the abuses which had crept

in.[273]

Although, according to Luther, the inward organisation of the

Brotherhood referred to above was a matter of indifference, and the

approaching end of the world admonished him to suffer and wait to see

what Christ willed to do with it, yet we read in other passages of

his writings that it is necessary to work and to make great efforts

to provide every city with a bishop or elder to preach the Gospel;

“every Christian” is bound to help towards this end, both by personal

exertion and with his goods, and more particularly the secular power,

the authorities, whose duty it is to protect the pious. Those who are

now already parsons may, indeed must, at once “withdraw from their

obedience, seeing that they promised obedience to the devil and not to

God.”[274]

This is certainly “something more than passive suffering and waiting

for the end.”[275]

The apostasy of the clergy, which had begun, made the question of

definite, external organisation a pressing one, for the new preachers

and the clergy who were coming over had, after all, to be responsible

to someone and had also to be maintained; it was also necessary that

they and their followers should receive external recognition for

their Churches and extricate themselves from the numerous ties which

united so closely the spiritual with the secular in Catholic life. The

appointment of pastors and the representation of the faithful by them

was one of the factors which called for further organisation of the

Churches: another factor, as we may notice in the case of Wittenberg,

was the manner of celebrating the Supper. It was, as a matter of fact,

the trouble at Wittenberg under Carlstadt which impelled Luther to

take into serious consideration the establishment of an independent

ecclesiastical organisation in that town, and which called for a

definite system of appointing the Lutheran pastors even elsewhere,

so as to prevent Carlstadt’s followers from getting the upper hand

throughout the country.

After Luther had set aside Carlstadt’s innovations at Wittenberg, with

the approval of the Elector who had forbidden them, he appointed the

celebration of the Supper for those of the new faith at Wittenberg on

the lines previously followed by Melanchthon; the communion became the

principal part of the ceremony, the offertory was omitted and the words

of consecration were spoken aloud either with or without certain of the

prayers of the Mass. Thus the abuses introduced by Carlstadt were, in

his opinion, removed, and the swarms of worldly minded and fanatical

nominal Christians, “Christian in name but almost heathen at heart,”

were no longer brought in contact with the true Evangelicals; the

employment of force towards those weak in the faith, whose convictions

Luther did not consider ripe for the purely congregational ritual of

Carlstadt, was also put an end to. All the external forms which had

been introduced, and to which, Luther feared, the people would have

clung in an unevangelical fashion as had formerly been the case in

Popery, were removed.

In order more particularly to avoid any compromising abuse of the

Sacrament of the Altar, Luther sought to establish a Christian

congregation in which confession should exist, though not as a

compulsory practice, and in which a certain supervision was exercised.

In order to proceed cautiously and in accordance with the Elector’s

ideas, he refrained from directing the bestowal of the chalice in the

order of Divine Service drawn up for the use of his followers; at

any rate, this was the case at Easter, 1522, though in the autumn of

that same year the chalice was again in general use.[276] In spite

of this, up to 1523, a special form of communion with the cup was in

use for true Evangelical believers, who were subject to a special

form of supervision. This arrangement agreed with Luther’s idea of an

“Assembly of true Christians,” on which he was to enlarge in 1523 in

his Maundy-Thursday sermon (see below). The special communion was, it

is true, speedily abandoned, but the idea of the select Assembly ever

remained dear to him.[277]

The other factor which called even more urgently for internal

organisation was the appointment of pastors.

The induction of new pastors could not well take place independently of

the authorities, indeed, it imperatively demanded their co-operation.

At Wittenberg the later alteration in the liturgy and the final

prohibition of the Mass, after it had been insisted on by Luther,

was carried out by a threatening mob with the connivance of the

Government.[278] Yet, in spite of the impossibility of dispensing

with the secular power, until 1525, Luther was for various reasons

more inclined to the Congregational ideal, which was less subject to

Government interference.

This congregational ideal tended to promote his plan of an “Assembly of

true Christians.”

In the newly erected congregations the “true believers,” according

to what Luther repeatedly says, formed the nucleus. It is to these

that he appeals in his instructions in 1523 (“_iis qui credunt,

hæc scribimus_”); “those whose hearts God has touched are to meet

together,” so he says, in order to choose a “bishop,” i.e. “a minister

or pastor.” Even though the congregation numbers only half a dozen, yet

they will draw after them others “who have not yet received the Word”;

the half a dozen, though but a handful and perhaps not distinguished

by piety, so long as they do not live as obstinate and open sinners,

are the real representatives of the true Church at their home. They

must also rest assured, that if in their choice they have prayed to

God for enlightenment, they “will be moved, and not act of themselves

(‘_vos agi in hac causa, non agere_’).” “That Christ acts through

them is quite certain (‘_plane certum_’).”[279] “Hence even a small

minority of the truly pious among the congregation possess not only the

right but also the duty to act; for to stand by and let things take

their course is contrary to the faith.”[280] The election derives

its “true validity solely from the half-dozen.”[281] Of any election

by the remaining members of the congregation or of any action of the

magistracy Luther says nothing whatever; he is speaking only to those

within the body of the congregation whose hearts God has touched.

The above thoughts find their first expression in the writing “_De

instituendis ministris ecclesiæ_,” which Luther sent to the Utraquists

or Calixtines of Prague.[282]

The Utraquists of Bohemia acknowledged the Primacy of the Holy See

and obeyed the Catholic Hierarchy, though certain Lutheran tendencies

prevailed amongst them, which, however, had been grossly exaggerated

by Cahera, who informed Luther of the fact; Cahera even represented

the greater part of the Council of Prague as predisposed in Luther’s

favour, which was certainly not true. In instructing the burghers, and

more particularly the Council of Prague, how to proceed in founding

congregations of their own by means of elections, Luther was also

thinking of Germany, and above all of Saxony. This explains why,

without delay, he had the Latin writing published also in German.

To the people of Prague he wrote that those whose hearts God had

touched were to assemble in the city for the election. They were first

to remind themselves in prayer that the Lord had promised that where

two or three were gathered together in His name, there He would be

in the midst of them; then they were to select capable persons for

the clerical state and the ministry of the Word, who were then to

officiate in the name of all; these were then to lay their hands on

the best amongst them (“_potiores inter vos_”), thus confirming them,

after which they might be presented to “the people and the Church or

congregation as bishops, servants or pastors, Amen.” “It all depends

on your making the venture in the Lord, then the Lord will be with

you.” In the congregations scattered throughout the land the faithful

were to proceed in like manner, firing others by their example; if

they were few in number, there was all the more reason why they should

make the venture. But as all was to be done spontaneously and under

the influence of the Spirit of God, such Councils as were favourably

disposed were not to exercise any constraint. He, too, for his own

part, merely gave “advice and exhortation.”[283] Where a large number

of congregations had appointed their “ministers” in this way, then

these latter might, if they so desired, meet to elect Superintendents

who would make the visitation of their Churches, “until Bohemia

finally returns to the legitimate and evangelical Archiepiscopate.”

At about that same time, in a writing intended for the congregation

at Leisnig, Luther expressed his views on the congregational Churches

to be established by the people. The confusion of his mind is no less

apparent in this work; under the influence of his idealism he fails to

perceive the endless practical difficulties inherent in his scheme,

and above all the impossibility of establishing any real congregation

when every member had a right to criticise the preacher and to

interpret Scripture according to his own mind.[284]

He here assumes that the liberty to preach the Word, and likewise

the right of judging doctrines, is part of the common priesthood

of Christians. Whoever preaches publicly can only do this “as the

deputy and minister of the others,” i.e. of the whole body.[285] The

congregation must see that no one seduces them with the doctrines of

men, and therefore no one may be a preacher except by their choice.

Where there is no bishop to provide for them, who holds Christian and

evangelical views, they are themselves to give the call to the right

preacher; but if they catch him erring in his doctrine, then anyone

may get up and correct him, so long as “all done is done decently and

in order.”[286] For St. Paul says concerning those who speak during

Divine Worship [St. Paul is really alluding to the charismata of the

early Christians], “If anything be revealed to another sitting, let

the first hold his peace” (1 Cor. xiv. 30). “Indeed, a Christian has

such authority that he might well rise up and teach uncalled even in

the midst of the Christians.... For this reason, that necessity knows

no law.” Therefore to preserve the purity of the evangelical teaching,

“every man may come forward, stand up and teach, to the best of his

ability.”[287]

The experience with the fanatics which speedily followed was

calculated to dispel such platonic ideas. Luther does not appear to

have asked himself on which side the “Christian congregation” and the

Church was to be sought when dissensions, doctrinal or other, at that

period inevitable, should have riven the fold in twain. The “Christian

congregation” he teaches--merely restating the difficulty--“is most

surely to be recognised where the pure Gospel is preached.... From the

Gospel we may tell where Christ stands with His army.”[288]

How bold the edifice was which he had planned in the evangelical

Churches is plain from other statements contained in the writing

addressed to the Leisnig Assembly.

The president was indeed to preside, but all the members were to rule.

“Whoever is chosen for the office of preacher is thereby raised to the

most exalted office in Christendom; he is then authorised to baptise,

to say Mass and to hold the cure of souls.”[289] Yet he is subject

both to the community and to every member of it. “In the world the

masters command what they please and their servants obey. But amongst

you, Christ says, it shall not be so; amongst Christians each one is

judge of the other, and in his turn subject to the rest.”[290]

He might say what he pleased against the abuses of the old Church,

such systematic disorder never prevailed within her as that each one

should teach as he pleased and even correct the preacher publicly, or

that the Demos should be acknowledged as supreme. It is in vain that,

in the writing above referred to, he mocks at this city set on a hill,

with her firmly established hierarchy, saying: “Bishops and Councils

determine and settle what they please, but where we have God’s Word

on our side it is for us to decide what is right or wrong and not

for them, and they shall yield to us and obey our word.”[291] We may

well explain the saying “to obey our word” by Luther’s own eloquent

paraphrase: “Pay no heed to the commandments of men, law, tradition,

custom, usage and so forth, whether established by Pope or Emperor,

Prince or Bishop, whether observed by half the world or by the whole,

whether in force for one year or for a thousand!” “Obey our word!” For

we declare that we have the “Word of God on our side.”[292]

The new congregations will, in spite of their own and every member’s

freedom to teach, agree with Luther, so he assures them with the most

astounding confidence, because “his mouth is the mouth of Christ,”

and because he knows that his word is not his, but Christ’s. We must

emphasise the fact, that here we have the key to many of the strange

trains of thought already met with in Luther, and also a proof of the

endurance of his unpractical ultra-spiritualism.

Luther, in fact, declares that he had “not merely received his teaching

from heaven, but on behalf of one who had more power in his little

finger than a thousand popes, kings, princes and doctors.”[293] Before

receiving his enlightenment he had had to learn what was meant by

being “born of God, dying often and surviving the pains of hell.”[294]

Whoever differed from him, as the fanatics did, had not been through

such an experience. “Wouldst thou know where, when and how we are

vouchsafed the divine communications? When that which is written takes

place: ‘As a lion, so hath He broken all my bones’ (Isa. xxxviii.

13).... God’s Majesty cannot speak in confidence with the old man

without previously slaying.... The dreams and visions of the saints are

dreadful.”[295] Such was the mysticism of the Wartburg.

2. Against Celibacy. Doubtful Auxiliaries from the Clergy and the

Convents

In establishing his new ecclesiastical organisation Luther thought it

his duty to wage war relentlessly on the celibacy of the clergy and on

monastic vows in general. Was he more successful herein than in his

project of reforming the articles of faith and the structure of the

Church?

According to Catholic ideas his war against vows and sacerdotal

celibacy constituted an unwarrantable and sacrilegious interference

with the most sacred promises by which a man can bind himself to the

Almighty, for it is in this light that a Catholic considers vows

or the voluntary acceptance of celibacy upon receipt of the major

orders. Luther was, moreover, tampering with institutions which are

most closely bound up with the life of the Church and which alone

render possible the observance of that high standard of life and that

independence which should distinguish the clergy. Yet his mistaken

principles served to attract to his camp all the frivolous elements

among the clergy and religious, i.e. all those who were dissatisfied

with their state and longed for a life of freedom. As a matter of fact,

experience speedily showed that nothing was more calculated to bring

the Reformation into disrepute. Lutheranism threw open the doors of the

convents, burst the bonds imposed by vows, and reduced hundreds of the

clergy to a moral debasement against which their own conscience raised

a protest. In outward appearance it was thereby the gainer, for by this

means it secured new adherents in the shape of preachers to spread the

cause, but in reality the positive gain was _nil_; in fact, the most

vital interests of the new work were endangered owing to the low moral

standard of so many of its advocates. Apart from the preachers, many

followers of the new Evangelical teaching, fugitive religious and more

especially escaped nuns, played a very lamentable part.

In various writings and letters Luther sought to familiarise the clergy

and monks with the seductive principles contained in his books “On

the Clerical State” and “On Monastic Vows.” His assurances all went

to prove that the observance of priestly celibacy and the monastic

state was impossible. He forgot what he had once learnt and cheerfully

practised, viz. that the sexual renunciation demanded in both

professions was not merely possible, but a sacrifice willingly offered

to God by all who are diligent in prayer and make use of the means

necessary for preserving their virtue, and the numerous spiritual helps

afforded by their state.

The powerful and seductive language he knows how to employ appears,

for instance, in his letter to Wolfgang Reissenbusch, an Antonine

monk,[296] who was already wavering, and in whose case Luther’s

strenuous efforts were crowned with success. The letter, which is

dated March 27, 1525, was written shortly before Luther’s union with

Catharine von Bora.

The writer in the very first lines takes pains to convince this

religious, that “he had been created by God for the married state

and was forced and impelled by Him thereto.” The religious vow was

worthless, because it required what was impossible, since “chastity

is as little within our power as the working of miracles”; man was

utterly unable to resist his natural attraction to woman; “whoever

wishes to remain single let him put away his human name and fashion

himself into an angel or a spirit, for to a man God does not give this

grace.”

Elsewhere Luther, nevertheless, admits that some few by the help of

God were able to live unmarried and chaste. In view of the sublime

figures to be found in the history of the Church, and which it was

impossible to impeach, he declares that “it is rightly said of the

holy virgins that they lived an angelical and not a human life, and

that by the grace of the Almighty they lived indeed in the flesh yet

not according to it.”

He proceeds to heap up imaginary objections against the vow of

chastity, saying that whoever makes such a vow is building “upon works

and not solely on the grace of God”; trusting to “works and the law”

and denying “Christ and the faith.” In the case of Reissenbusch, the

only obstacle lay in his “bashfulness and diffidence.” “Therefore

there is all the more need to keep you up to it, to exhort, drive and

urge you and so render you bold. Now, my dear Sir, I ask of you, why

delay and think about it so long, etc.? It is so, must be and ever

shall be so! Pocket your scruples and be a man cheerfully. Your body

demands and needs it. God wills it and forces you to it. How are you

to set that aside?” He points out to the wavering monk the “noble

and excellent example which he will give”; he will become the “cloak

of marriage” to many others. “Did not Christ become the covering of

our shame?... Among the raving madmen [the Papists], it is accounted

a shameful thing, and though they do not make any difficulty about

fornication they nevertheless scoff at the married state, the work

and Word of God. If it is a shameful thing to take a wife, then why

are we not ashamed to eat and drink, since both are equally necessary

and God wills both?” Thus he attributes to the Catholics, at least in

his rhetorical outbursts, the view that it was a “shameful thing to

take a wife,” and accuses them of scoffing at the “married state,”

and of “not objecting to fornication.” He did not see that if anyone

strives to observe chastity in accordance with the Counsel of Christ

without breaking his word and perjuring himself, this constancy is far

from being a disgrace, but that the disgrace falls rather on him who

endeavours to entice the monk to forsake his vows.

“The devil is the ruler of the world,” Luther continues. “He it is who

has caused the married state to be so shamefully calumniated and yet

permits adulterers, feminine whores and masculine scamps to be held in

great honour; verily it would be right to marry, were it only to bid

defiance to the devil and his world.”

In the closing sentence he aims his last bolt at the monk’s sense of

honour: “It is merely a question of one little hour of shame to be

succeeded by years of honour. May Christ, our Lord, impart His grace

so that this letter ... may bring forth fruit to the glory of His name

and word, Amen.”

The letter was not intended merely for the unimportant person to whom

it was addressed, and whose subsequent marriage with the daughter of a

poor tailor’s widow in Torgau did not render him any the more famous.

Publicity was the object aimed at in this writing, which was at

once printed in German and Latin and distributed that it might “bear

fruit.” The lengthier “_Epistola gratulatoria_ to one about to marry,”

immediately reprinted in German, was despatched by Luther’s Wittenberg

friend Bugenhagen at the time of Reissenbusch’s wedding. It had been

agreed upon to utilise the action of Reissenbusch for all it was worth

in the propaganda in favour of the breaking of vows and priestly

celibacy.

Luther was then in the habit of employing the strongest and most

extravagant language in order to show the need of marriage in

opposition to the celibacy practised by the priests and monks. It is

only with repulsion that one can follow him here.

“It is quite true,” he says, in 1522, to the German people, “that

whoever does not marry must misconduct himself ... for God created

man and woman to be fruitful and multiply. But why is not fornication

obviated by marriage? For where no extraordinary grace is vouchsafed,

nature must needs be fruitful and multiply, and if not in marriage,

where will it find its satisfaction save in harlotry or even worse

sins?”[297] Luther carefully refrained from mentioning the countless

number who were able to control the impulses of nature without in any

way touching the moral filth to which, in his cynicism, he is so fond

of referring. What he said filled with indignation those who were

zealous for the Church, and called forth angry rejoinders, especially

in view of the countless numbers, particularly of women, to whom

marriage was denied owing to social conditions.

It is true that after such strong outbursts as the above, Luther would

often moderate his language. Thus he says, shortly after the utterance

just quoted: “I do not wish to disparage virginity nor to tempt people

away from it to the conjugal state. Let each one do as he is able and

as he feels God has ordained for him.... The state of chastity is

probably better on earth as having less of trouble and care, and not

for its own sake only, but in order to allow one to preach and wait

upon the Word of God, as St. Paul says 1 Corinthians vii. 34.”[298]

But then he continues, following up the idea which possesses him: “He

who desires to live single undertakes an impossible struggle”; such

people become “full of harlotry and all impurity of the flesh, and at

last drown themselves therein and fall into despair; therefore such a

vow is invalid, being contrary to the Word and work of God.”[299] Most

of the younger religious, he declares elsewhere in a description which

is as repulsive as it is untrue, were unable to control themselves,

for it is not possible to take from fire its power of burning; among

them, and the clergy, there prevailed “either harlotry under the name

of a spiritual and chaste life, or an impure, unwilling, wretched,

forlorn chastity, so that the wretchedness is greater than anyone

could believe or tell.”[300]

What Luther says would leave us under the impression--to put the

most charitable interpretation upon his words--that he had lived in

sad surroundings; yet what we know of the Augustinian monasteries at

Erfurt and Wittenberg affords as little ground for such an assumption

as the conditions prevailing in the other friaries, whether Franciscan

or Dominican, with which he was acquainted. He speaks again and again

as though he knew nothing of the satisfaction with their profession

which filled whole multitudes who were faithful to their vows, and

which was the result of serious discipline and a devout mind. He goes

on: “They extol chastity loudly, but live in the midst of impurity....

These pious foundations and convents, where the faith [according

to his teaching] is not practised stoutly and heartily,”[301] must

surely be gates of hell. Those who refrain from marriage for the sake

of the Kingdom of Heaven are, he considers, “so rare, that among

a thousand men there is scarcely to be found one, for they are a

special miracle of God’s own.”[302] He who enters a monastery, he

writes (not in the least afraid of speaking as though this had been

his own experience), can, in reality, never avoid sinning against his

vow. The Pope leaves such a one to be, as it were, burnt and roasted

in the fire; he accordingly might well be compared to the sacrifice

which the children of Israel offered to Moloch the fiery idol. “What a

Sodom and Gomorrha,” he cries in another passage, “has the devil set

up by such laws and vows, making of that rare gift chastity a thing

of utter wretchedness. Neither public houses of ill fame, nor indeed

any form of allurement to vice, is so pernicious as are these vows and

commandments invented by Satan himself.”[303] Such are his words in

his “Postils,” written for general, practical use.

His “larger Catechism” was also used as a means to render popular his

most extravagant polemics on this subject. The sixth Commandment makes

of chastity a duty, and Christ’s counsel of voluntary continence was

to serve for the preserving and honouring of this very command. Yet

Luther says: “By this commandment all vows of unmarried chastity are

condemned, and all poor, enslaved consciences which have been deceived

by their monastic vows are thereby permitted, nay ordered, to pass

from the unchaste to the conjugal state, seeing that even though the

monastic life were in other particulars divine, it is not in their

power to preserve their chastity intact.”[304] Thus “the married

state” is, at least, according to this passage, prescribed for all

without exception in the Ten Commandments.

Still further to strengthen his seductive appeals to the clergy and

religious, Luther, as he himself informs us, advised those who were

unable to marry openly “at least to wed their cook secretly.”[305]

To the Prince-Abbots he gave the advice that on account of the laws of

the Empire they should, for the time being, “take a wife in secret,”

“until God, the Lord, shall dispose matters otherwise.” In 1523 he

advised all the Knights of the Teutonic Order, who were vowed to

chastity, “not to worry” about their “weakness and sin” even though

they had contracted some “illicit connections”; such connections

contracted outside of matrimony were “less sinful” than to “take a

lawful wife” with the consent of a Council, supposing such a permission

were given.[306] This last letter, too, was at once printed by Luther

for distribution.[307]

His spirit of defiance led him to clothe his demands in outrageous

forms. On one occasion he declared in language resembling that which he

made use of concerning the laws of fasting: “Even though a man has no

mind to take a wife he ought, nevertheless, to do so in order to spite

and vex the devil and his doctrine.”[308]

The Fathers of the Church accordingly found little favour with him when

they required of the clergy, monks and nuns, not merely the observance

of celibacy, but also the use of the means enjoined by asceticism for

the preservation of chastity; or when they betrayed their preference

for the vow of chastity, though without by any means disparaging

marriage. They quoted what Our Lord had said of this doctrine: “He that

can take it, let him take it” (Matt. xix. 12). The Fathers, in the

spirit of St. Paul, who, as one “having obtained mercy of the Lord,”

joyfully acquiesced in His “Counsel” of chastity (1 Cor. vii. 25),

frequently advocated the doctrine of holy continence. But Luther asks:

Of what use were their penitential practices for the preservation of

their chastity to the Fathers, even to Augustine, Jerome, Benedict,

Bernard, etc., since they themselves allow that they were constantly

troubled by temptations of the flesh? In his opinion, as we already

know, the attacks of sensuality, the movements of the carnal man and

the enduring sense of our own concupiscence are really sins.

Jerome in particular, the zealous advocate of virginity, received

at Luther’s hands the roughest treatment. This saint is erroneously

reckoned among the Fathers of the Church; he is of no account at

all except for the histories he compiled; he was madly in love with

the virgin Eustochium; his writings give no proof of faith or true

religion; he had not the least idea of the difference between the

law and the Gospel, and writes of it as a blind man might write of

colour, etc. His invitations to the monastic life are described by

Luther as impious, unbelieving and sacrilegious. Scoffing at the

Saint’s humble admission of his temptations in his old age and the

severe mortifications he practised to overcome them, Luther says: The

virgin Eustochium would have been the proper remedy for him. “I am

astounded that the holy Fathers tormented themselves so greatly about

such childish temptations and never experienced the exalted, spiritual

trials [those regarding faith], seeing that they were rulers in the

Church and filled high offices. This temptation of evil passions may

easily be remedied if there are only virgins or women available.”[309]

All these fell doctrines and allurements which without intermission

were poured into the ears of clergy and religious alike, many of whom

were uneducated, already tainted with worldliness, or had entered

upon their profession without due earnestness, were productive of

the expected result in the case of the weak. The sudden force of

Luther’s powerful and well-calculated attack upon the clergy and upon

monasticism has been aptly compared to the effect of dynamite. But

whoever fell, did so of his own free will. Such language was nothing

but the bewitching song of the Siren addressed to the basest though

most powerful instincts of man.

The historic importance of the attack upon ecclesiastical celibacy

is by no means fully gauged if we merely regard it as an effective

method of securing preachers, allies and patrons for the new Evangel.

It was, indeed, closely bound up with Luther’s whole system, and his

early theories on holiness by works and self-righteousness. His war on

vows was too spontaneous, too closely connected with his own personal

experience, to be accounted for merely by the desire of increasing the

number of his followers. The aversion to the practice of good works

which marked the commencement of his growth, his loathing for the

sacrifices entailed by self-denial, the very stress he lays on the

desires of nature as opposed to the promptings of grace, the delusion

of evangelical freedom and finally his hatred of those institutions of

the old Church which inspired her adherents with such vigorous life

wherever they were rightly understood and practised--all this served as

an incentive in the struggle.

A strange element which, according to his own statements, formed

an undercurrent to all this and which indicates his peculiar state

of mind, was that he looked upon the temptations of the flesh as

something altogether insignificant in comparison with the exalted

spiritual assaults of “blasphemy and despair” of which he had had

personal experience.[310] In the passage already referred to, where

he chides the Fathers with their “childish temptations,” he says: Why

on earth did they make such efforts for the preservation of their

beloved chastity, or exert themselves for something entirely, or

almost entirely, impossible of attainment? The temptations of the

flesh are nothing at all, he proceeds, “compared with the Angel of

Satan who buffets us; then indeed we are nailed to the cross, then

indeed childish things such as the temptations which worried Jerome and

others become of small account.” In Paul’s case, according to him, the

“_angelus colaphizans_” (the angel who buffeted him, 2 Cor. xii. 7) was

not a sting of the flesh at all, but exalted pangs of the soul, such

as those to which the Psalmist alluded when he said: “God, my God, why

hast Thou forsaken me?” where he really means: “God, Thou art become my

enemy without a cause,” or again, that a sword has pierced his bowels

(pains of the soul). He himself, Luther, had endured such-like things,

but “Jerome and the other Fathers never experienced anything of the

sort.”[311]

* * * * *

Luther complains as early as 1522, i.e. at the very outset of this

“Evangelical” movement, of the character of the auxiliaries who had

been attracted to him by his attack on priestly and monastic continence.

In a letter sent to Erfurt he expresses his great dissatisfaction at

the fact that, where apostate Augustinians had become pastors, their

behaviour, like that of the other preachers drawn from the ranks of

the priesthood, had “given occasion to their adversaries to blaspheme”

against the evangel. He says he intends sending a circular letter to

the “Church at Erfurt” on account of the bad example given.[312] The

person to whom these bitter words were addressed, Luther’s intimate

friend, Johann Lang, the Erfurt Augustinian, had himself shortly

before forsaken the monastery. The circumstances attending his leaving

were very distasteful to Luther.

The evangelical life at Erfurt, where many of the priests were taking

wives, must be improved, so he writes, even though the “understanding

of the Word” had increased greatly there. “The power of the Word

is either still hidden” he says, of the new evangel, “or it is far

too weak in us all; for we are the same as before, hard, unfeeling,

impatient, foolhardy, drunken, dissolute, quarrelsome; in short, the

mark of a Christian, viz. abundant charity, is nowhere apparent; on

the contrary, the words of Paul are fulfilled, ‘we possess the kingdom

of God in speech, but not in power’” (1 Cor. iv. 20).[313] In the

same letter he complains of the monks who had left their convents to

reinforce the ranks of his party: “I see that many of our monks have

left their priory for no other reason than that which brought them in:

they follow their bellies and the freedom of the flesh. By them Satan

will set up a great stench against the good odour of our work. But

what can we do? They are idle people who seek their own, so that it

is better they should sin and go to destruction without the cowl than

with it.”

Luther complained still more definitely of his “parsons and preachers”

in the Preface to the “Larger Catechism” which he composed for them

in 1529: Many, he says, despise their office and good doctrine: some

simply treated the matter as though they had become “parsons and

preachers solely for their belly’s sake”; he would exhort such “lazy

paunches or presumptuous saints” to diligence in their office.[314]

What he had predicted in 1522 became more and more plainly fulfilled:

“It is true that I fear some will take wives or run away, not from

Christian conviction, but because they rejoice to find a cloak and

reason for their wickedness in the freedom of the evangel.” His

consolation, however, is, that it was just as bad and even worse in

Popery, and if needs be “we still have the gallows, the wheel, sword

and water to deal with such as will not do what is right.”[315]

In later years, as his pupil Mathesius relates in the “Historien” of

his conversations with him, Luther was anxious to induce the Elector

to erect a “Priests’ Tower” “in which such wild and untamed persons

might be shut up as in a prison; for many of them would not allow

themselves to be controlled by the Evangel; ... all who once had run

to the monasteries for the sake of their belly and an easy life were

now running out again for the sake of the freedom of the flesh.”[316]

According to Lauterbach’s “Tagebuch,” however (1538), the Elector had

before this decided to rebuild the University prison as a jail for such

of the clergy of Luther’s camp who misbehaved themselves,[317] and the

Notes of Mathesius recently edited by Kroker allow us to infer that the

prison had already been built in 1540.[318] Thus the account given by

Mathesius in the “Historien” and quoted by him in sermons at a later

date must be amended and amplified accordingly.

Even Luther’s own followers looked askance at many of the recruits from

the clergy and the monasteries, who came to swell the ranks of the

preachers and adherents of the new Evangel. We are in possession of

statements on this subject made by Eberlin, Hessus and Cordus.

“Scarcely has a monk or nun been three days out of the convent,”

writes Eberlin of Günzburg, “than they make haste to marry some woman

or knave from the streets, without any godly counsel or prayer; in

the same way the parsons too take whom they please, and then, after a

short honeymoon, follows a long year of trouble.”[319]

Eobanus Hessus, the Humanist, writes in 1523 from Erfurt to J. Draco

that the runaway monks neglected education and learning and preached

their own stupidities as wisdom; the number of such priests and

nuns was increasing endlessly. “I cannot sufficiently execrate these

fugitives. No Phyllis is more wanton than our nuns.”[320]

A third witness, also from Erfurt, Euritius Cordus, complains in

similar fashion in a letter written in 1522 to Draco: No one here has

been improved one little bit by the evangel; “on the contrary, avarice

has increased and likewise the opportunities for the worst freedom of

the flesh”; priests and monks were everywhere set upon marrying, which

in itself is not to be disapproved of, and the young students were

more lawless than soldiers in camp.[321]

Protestant historians are fond of limiting the moral evils to the

period which followed the Peasant Wars of 1525 as though they had been

caused by the disorders of the time. The above accounts, given by

followers of the new movement, extend, however, to earlier years, and

to these many others previous to 1525 will be added in the course of

our narrative.

It has also frequently been said that the confusion which always

accompanies popular movements which stir men’s minds must be taken into

account when considering the disastrous moral effects so evident in the

camp of the Reformers. But this view of the matter, if not false, is

at least open to doubt. The disorders just described were not at all

creditable to a work undertaken in the name of religion. The results

were also felt long after. If all revolutions easily led to such

consequences, in this instance the lamentable moral outcome was all the

more inevitable, seeing that “freedom” was the watchword.

The undeniable fact of the existence of such a state of things was all

the more disagreeable to its authors, i.e. Luther and his friends,

since they were well aware that the great ecclesiastical movements in

former days, which had really been inspired by God, usually exhibited,

more particularly in their beginnings, abundant moral benefits. “The

first fruits of the Spirit,” as they had been manifested in the

Church, were very different from those attending the efforts of the

Wittenberg Professor, who, nevertheless, had himself designated this

period as the “_primitiæ spiritus_.”[322] It was but poor comfort in

their difficulty to strive to reassure themselves by considerations

such as Cordus brings forward to meet the complaints we quoted above:

“Maybe the Word of God has only now opened our eyes to see clearly,

to recognise as sin, and abhor with fear, what formerly we scarcely

heeded.” This strange fashion of soothing his conscience he had learnt

from Luther. (See vol. iv., xxiv.)

It is worth while to observe the impression which the facts just

mentioned made on Luther’s foes.

Erasmus, who at the commencement was not unfavourably disposed towards

the movement, turned away from it with disgust, influenced, in part

at least, by the tales he heard concerning the apostate priests and

religious. “They seek two things,” he wrote, “an income (_censum_)

and a wife; besides, the evangel affords them freedom to live as they

please.”[323] In a letter to the Strasburg preacher, Martin Bucer, he

said: “Those who have given up the recital of the Canonical Hours do

not now pray at all; many who have laid aside the pharisaical dress

are really worse than they were before.”[324] And again: “The first

thing that makes me draw back from this company is, that I see so

many among this troop becoming altogether estranged from the purity

of the Gospel. Some I knew as excellent men before they joined this

sect; what they are now, I know not, but I hear that many have become

worse, and none better.”--The evangel now prospers, he says elsewhere,

“because priests and monks take wives contrary to human laws, or at

any rate contrary to their vow. Look around and see whether their

marriages are more chaste than those of others upon whom they look as

heathen.”[325]

Valentine Ickelsamer, an Anabaptist opponent of Luther’s, reminds

him in his writing in defence of Carlstadt in 1525,[326] that Holy

Scripture says: “By their works you shall know them.” Even while

studying at Wittenberg [a few years before] he had been obliged to

appeal to this “text of Matthew septimo,” out of disgust at the

riotous life people led there; “they had, however, always found a

convenient method of explaining it away, or got out of the difficulty

by the help of some paltry gloss.” “You also,” he says to Luther,

“loudly complained that we blamed only the faults on your side. No,

we do not judge, or blame any sinner as you do; but what we do say is

that where Christian faith is not productive of Christian works, there

the faith is neither rightly preached nor rightly accepted.”

It is true that this corrector of the public morals could only point

to a pretence of works among his own party, and in weighing his

evidence against Luther allowance must be made for his prejudice

against him. Still, his words give some idea of the character of

the protests made against the Wittenberg preachers in the prints of

that time. He approves of the marriage of the clergy who had joined

Luther’s party, and refuses to open his eyes to what was taking

place among the Anabaptists themselves: “They” [your preachers], he

says, “threaten and force the poor people by fair, or rather foul

and tyrannical, means, to feed their prostitutes, for these clerical

fellows judge it better to keep a light woman than a wedded wife,

because they are anxious about their external appearance.... Such

declare that whoever accuses them of keeping prostitutes lies like a

scoundrel.... But if such are not the worst fornicators and knaves,

let the fiend fly away with me. I often wonder whether the devil is

ever out of temper now, for he has the whole of the preacher folk

on his side; on their part there has been nothing but deception.”

Were the people to seize the preachers “by the scruff of their neck”

on account of their wickedness, then they would call themselves

martyrs, and say that Christ had foretold their persecution; true

enough the other mad priests [the Catholics] were “clearly messengers

and satellites of the devil”; nevertheless he could not help being

angered by Luther’s “rich, uncouth, effeminate, whoremongering mob

of preachers,” who were so uncharitable in their ways and “who yet

pretended to be Christians.”[327]

It is obvious that Ickelsamer and his party went too far when they

asserted that not one man who led an honest life was to be found

among the Lutheran preachers, for in reality there was no lack of

well-meaning men who, like Willibald Pirkheimer and Albrecht Dürer,

were bent on making use of their powers in the interests of what they

took to be the pure Gospel. This, however, was less frequently the case

with the apostate priests and monks. The thoughts of the impartial

historian revert of their own accord to the moral disorders prevalent

in the older Church. We are not at liberty to ignore the fact that it

was impossible for the Catholics at that time to point to any shining

examples on their side which might have shamed the Lutherans. They

were obliged to admit that the abuses rampant in clerical and monastic

life had, as a matter of fact, prepared the way for and facilitated the

apostasy of many of those who went over to Luther and became preachers

of the new faith. The Church had to lament not only the fate of those

who turned their back on her, but the earlier decay of many of her own

institutions; under the influence of the spirit of the age this decay

was hourly growing worse. At the same time the secession of so many

undesirable elements was itself a reason for not despairing of recovery.

A great contrast to the lives of the apostate monks and clergy is

nevertheless presented in an account which has been preserved by one of

the adherents of the new faith of the conditions prevailing in certain

monasteries where the friars, true to the Rule of their founder, kept

their vows in the right spirit. The Franciscan Observants of the

Province of Higher Germany were then governed by Caspar Schatzgeyer, a

capable Bavarian Friar Minor, and, notwithstanding many difficulties,

numbered in 1523 no less than 28 friaries and 560 members. In the

course of the fifteenth century the Franciscan Observantines had spread

far and wide as a result of the reform inaugurated within the Order

and approved of by Rome. The Franciscan foundations at Heidelberg,

Basle, Tübingen, Nuremberg, Mayence, Ulm, Ingoldstadt, Munich and other

cities had one after the other made common cause with the Observants

and, unlike the Conventuals, observed the old Rule in all its primitive

strictness.

It was Johann Eberlin of Günzburg, a Franciscan who had apostatised

to Lutheranism, who, in 1523, in a tract “Against those spurious

clergymen of the Christian flock known as barefooted friars or

Franciscans,” was compelled to bear witness to the pure and mortified

life of these monks with whom he was so well acquainted, though

he urges that the devil was artfully using for his own purposes

their piety, which was altogether devoid of true faith, “in order

to entangle the best and most zealous souls in the meshes of his

diabolical net.” “They lead a chaste life in words, works and

behaviour,” says Eberlin, speaking of them generally; “if amongst a

hundred one should act otherwise, this is not to be wondered at. If

he transgresses [in the matter of chastity], he is severely punished

as a warning to others. Their rough grey frock and hempen girdle,

the absence of boots, breeches, vest, woollen or linen shirt, their

not being allowed to bathe, being obliged to sleep in their clothes

and not on feather-beds but on straw, their fasts which last half

the year, their lengthy services in choir, etc., all this shows

everyone that they have little or no care for their own body. Their

simplicity in dress and adornment, their great obedience, their not

assuming any titles at the University however learned they may be,

their seldom riding or driving luxuriously, shows that they are not

desirous of pomp or honour. Their possessing nothing, whether in

common or individually, their taking no money and refusing even to

touch it, their not extorting offerings or dues from the people, but

living only on alms with which the people supply them of their own

accord; this shows their contempt for the riches of the world. The

world is astonished at these men who do not indulge in any of the

pleasures of feminine company, or in eating and drinking--for they

fast much and never eat flesh meat--or in soft clothing, or long

sleep, etc. Hence the world believes them to be more than human; it

also sees how these virtuous men preach and hear confessions, scare

others from sin, exhort them to virtue, move them to fear hell and

God’s judgments, and to desire the Kingdom of Heaven; ever with the

Word of God and His judgments on their lips, so that they appear to be

well-versed in Scripture, and to be carrying out in their whole life

and practice what they teach.... Countless godly men have entered this

state; from all ranks, places and countries, people have hastened to

join this Order; every corner of Christendom is full of Franciscan

friaries.”[328]

3. Reaction of the Apostasy on its Author. His Private Life (1522-1525)

The moral results of Luther’s undertaking and its effect upon himself

have been very variously represented. The character of the originator

of so gigantic a movement in the realm of ideas could not escape

experiencing deeply the reaction of the events in progress; yet the

opinion even of his contemporaries concerning Luther’s morals in the

critical years immediately preceding his marriage differ widely,

according to the view they take of his enterprise. While by his

adherents he is hailed as a second Elias,[329] some of his opponents do

not hesitate to accuse him of the worst moral aberrations. Ickelsamer,

however, one of the spokesmen of the “fanatics,” who did not scruple

to raise an angry voice against Luther’s preachers, and even against

Luther himself, was unable to adduce against him any evidence of

sexual misconduct during those years. It is also very remarkable

that Ickelsamer’s friend, Thomas Münzer, in his violent and bitter

controversial attack upon Luther dating from that time, was also unable

to bring forward charges of immorality. Both would doubtless have

gladly availed themselves of any offences against the moral code of

which Luther might have been guilty between 1522 and 1524, but in spite

of their watchfulness they failed to detect any such.

Nevertheless, accusations of Ickelsamer’s, in which he speaks more in

detail of Luther’s “faulty life,” are not lacking.

He finds fault with his “defiant teaching and his wilful disposition,”

also with the frightful violence of the abuse with which in his

writings he overwhelms his adversaries; recklessly and defiantly he

flung abroad books filled with blasphemies. He blames him for the

proud and tyrannical manner in which he sets up a “Papal Chair” for

himself so as to suppress without mercy the new teachers who differ

from him. Concerning his administration, he admits that Luther

“exerted himself vigorously to put down evil living, in which efforts

it was easy to detect the working of the Christian faith,” but he

adds that the “public fornication” of certain masters and college

fellows, as well as others who were in high favour, was winked

at;[330] he, Ickelsamer, would say of the Wittenberg Professors what

had long before been said of Rome: the nearer they live to Wittenberg

the worse Christians are. He also reminds Luther of the “scandal and

offence” the latter had given him by his excuses for the “mad and

immoral goings on” at Wittenberg: “You said, ‘We can’t be angels.’”

Of his private life he merely remarks that it annoyed him that

Luther, “neglectful of so many urgent matters,” “could sit in the

pleasant room overlooking the water,” “drinking cheerfully,” “among

the beer-swillers.” Finally, with the usual hypocritical severity

of the Anabaptists, he reproaches him concerning other matters, his

extravagance in dress, and the pomp displayed at the promotion of

Doctors.[331]

Thomas Münzer in his violent “Schutzrede”[332] speaks at great length

of Luther’s pride, who, he says, wished to be a new Pope while making

a show of humility; he “excited and urged on the people like a hound

of hell,” though protesting that he did not wish to raise a revolt,

“like a serpent that glides over the rocks.” Luther, in the very

title of his work, he describes, as “that dull, effeminate lump of

flesh at Wittenberg.” In the course of the same work he speaks of

him scornfully as “Martin, the virgin,” and exclaims, “Ah, the chaste

Babylonian virgin.” He classes him, on account of his sermons on

“freedom,” with those teachers “who are pleasing to the world, which

likes an easy life”; he speaks of him sarcastically as a “new Christ”

with a “fine subject for his preaching,” viz. “that priests may take

wives.”[333] He does not accuse him of any particular moral excess,

but nevertheless remarks that “the disgraced monk” was not likely

to suffer very severely under the persecution of which he boasted

“when enjoying good Malvasian and feasting with light women.”[334]

The latter allusion probably refers merely to Luther’s love of a good

dinner, and his merry ways at his meals, which, to a strict Anabaptist

like Münzer, seemed as deserving of execration as feasting with

dissolute women.

It has recently been asserted by an eminent Protestant controversialist

that Luther’s contemporaries never accused him of moral laxity or of

offences against chastity, and that it was only after his death that

people ventured to bring forward such charges; so long as he lived “the

Romans,” so we read, “accused him of one only deed against the sixth

commandment, viz. with his marriage”; Pistorius, Ulenberg and “Jesuits

like Weislinger who copied them,” were the first to enter the lists

with such accusations.

To start with, we may remark that Weislinger was not a Jesuit and that

Ulenberg does not mention any moral offence committed by Luther apart

from his matrimony. In fact the whole statement of the controversialist

just quoted must be treated as a legend. As a matter of fact, serious

charges regarding this matter were brought against Luther even in his

lifetime and in the years previous to his union with Catherine von Bora.

In 1867 a less timorous Protestant writer, who had studied Luther’s

history, brought forward the following passage from a manuscript letter

written in 1522 by a Catholic, Count Hoyer von Mansfeld, to Count

Ulrich von Helfenstein: “He had been a good Lutheran before that time

and at Worms, but had come to see that Luther was a thorough scoundrel,

who drank deeply, as was the custom at Mansfeld, liked the company of

beautiful women, played the lute and led a frivolous life; therefore he

[the Count] had abandoned his cause.”[335] From that time Hoyer von

Mansfeld resolutely opposed Luther, caused a disputation to be held

against him in 1526, and, to the end of his life (1540), kept a part of

the Mansfeld estates loyal to the Catholic faith. Hoyer was an opponent

of Luther when he wrote the above, but he must have received a very bad

impression of Luther’s private life during the period subsequent to the

latter’s stay at the Wartburg if this was the reason of his deserting

Luther’s cause. It is conceivable that at the time of the Diet of

Worms, when Hoyer declares he was still a “good Lutheran,” the contrast

between Luther’s behaviour and the monastic habits of his earlier

life had not yet become so conspicuous. (See above, p. 79.) After his

stay at the Wartburg and subsequent to his attacks both literary and

practical on the vow of chastity and on celibacy, a change such as that

which Hoyer so distinctly refers to may have taken place. Wittenberg,

the rallying point of so many questionable allies and escaped nuns

in search of a refuge, was, in view of Luther’s social, not to say

jovial, disposition, scarcely a suitable place for him. His want of

self-restraint and the levity of his bearing were censured at that time

by others, and even by Melanchthon. (See below, p. 144.)

The following year, 1523, after the arrival at Wittenberg of the nuns

who had been “liberated” from their convents, there is no doubt that

grave, though grossly exaggerated reports, unfavourable to Luther’s

life and behaviour, were circulated both in Catholic circles and at the

Court of Ferdinand the German King. Luther’s attacks upon the Church

caused these reports to be readily accepted. An echo from the Court

reached Luther’s ears, and he gives some account of it in a letter of

January 14, 1524. According to this, it had been said in the King’s

surroundings “that he frequented the company of light women, played

dice and spent his time in the public-houses”; also that he was fond of

going about armed and accompanied by a stately retinue; likewise, that

he occupied a post of honour at the Court of his sovereign Prince. The

tale regarding his bearing arms and occupying posts of honour Luther

was able easily to repudiate by the testimony of his friends. He also

confidently declared the remaining statements to be merely lies.[336]

Proof is wanting to substantiate the charge of “fornication” contained

in a letter written from Rome by Jacob Ziegler to Erasmus on February

16, 1522. Ziegler there relates that he had been invited by a bishop

to dinner and that the conversation turned on Luther: “The opinion was

expressed that he was given to fornication and tippling, vices to which

the Germans were greatly addicted.”[337] Abroad, and more particularly

in the great Catholic centres, such reports met with a more favourable

reception than elsewhere. The Germans were always held up as examples

of drunkenness, and, regarding Luther, such accusations were at a later

date certainly carried too far. (See vol. iii., xvii. 7, “The Good

Drink.”)

In order to judge objectively of Luther’s behaviour, greater stress

must be laid upon the circumstances which imposed caution and reticence

upon him than has been done so far by his accusers.

Luther, both at that time and later, frequently declared that he

himself, as well as his followers, must carefully avoid every action

which might give public scandal and so prejudice the new Evangel,

seeing that his adversaries were kept well informed of everything that

concerned him. He ever endeavoured to live up to this principle, for

on this his whole undertaking to some extent depended. “The eyes of

the whole world are on us,” he cries in a sermon in 1524.[338] “We are

a spectacle to the whole world,” he says; “therefore how necessary

it is that our word should be blameless, as St. Paul demands (Tit.

ii. 8)!”[339] “In order that worthless men may have no opportunity

to blaspheme,” he refuses later, for instance, to accept anything

at all as a present out of the Church property of the bishopric

of Naumburg,[340] and he reprimands a drunken relative, sternly

admonishing him: On your account I am evil spoken of; my foes seek out

everything that concerns me; therefore it was his duty, Luther tells

him, “to consider his family, the town he lived in, the Church and the

Gospel of God.”[341] Mathesius also relates the following remark made

by Luther when advanced in years: “Calumniators overlook the virtues

of great men, but where they see a fault or stain in any, they busy

themselves in raking it up and making it known.” “The devil keeps a

sharp eye on me in order to render my teaching of bad repute or to

attach some shameful stain to it.”[342]