CHAPTER XIV

FROM THE PEASANT WAR TO THE DIET OF AUGSBURG (1525-1530)

1. Luther’s Marriage

WHEN, in November, 1524, Spalatin, on the occasion of an enquiry made

by a lady, ventured to broach the question when Luther proposed taking

a wife, he received the following answer: He was to tell the enquirer

(Argula), that Luther was “in the hands of God, as a creature whose

heart He could fashion as He would; whom He was able to kill or to

make alive at any hour and any moment.” His feelings were yet foreign

to matrimony. “But I shall neither set bounds to God’s action in my

regard, nor listen to my own heart.”[463] By these words, which were

addressed to all observers and critics, he not only left himself an

open door, but attempted to describe his state in the terms of that

pseudo-mysticism of man’s bondage and lack of free will as regards

God’s designs to which at times he was wont to abandon himself more or

less completely, according to the varying circumstances of his life.

About March or April, 1525, a definite intention to marry begins to

appear. The letter to Spalatin referred to above, on p. 140, was

written on April 16, and, though in it he does not yet admit his

determination to marry, he speaks of himself jestingly as a famous

lover, who had had at one time three wives in his hands. His eye

fell on Catherine von Bora, who after her flight from the convent at

Nimbschen, had found a home in the house of the Town-clerk, Reichenbach

(above, p. 138). He speaks of her in a letter of May 4 as “my Katey”

and declares that he is about to marry her.[464] Owing to his intimacy

with her all sorts of stories went the rounds in the town during the

following months, to which intercourse with the ex-nuns referred to

above (p. 145) gave all the more colour.

Then, suddenly, without consulting any of his friends and with a haste

which surprised even his own followers, on the evening of June 13,

he celebrated his wedding with Bora in his own house, with all the

formalities then usual. Besides Bugenhagen and Jonas, Luther’s friends,

only the painter Lucas Cranach and his wife, and the Professor of

Jurisprudence, Dr. Apel, were summoned as witnesses. The consummation

of the marriage seems to have been duly witnessed by Bugenhagen as

Pastor of Wittenberg. The public wedding did not take place until June

27, according to the custom common in that district of dividing the

actual marriage from the public ceremony. During the interval Luther

invited several guests to be present, as we see from his letters,

which are still extant. From June 13 he speaks of himself already as

“_copulatus_,”[465] and as a “husband.”[466]

On June 14 Jonas sent by special messenger to Spalatin a letter,

evidently written under the stress of very mixed feelings: “Luther has

taken Catherine von Bora to wife. Yesterday I was there and saw the

betrothed on the bridal couch. I could not restrain my tears at the

sight; I know not what strong emotion stirred my soul; now that it has

taken place and is the Will of God, I wish the excellent, honest man

and our beloved father in the Lord, every happiness. God is wonderful

in His decrees!”[467]

Luther also was at pains to represent the incident as divinely

ordained, a high and holy act.

At a later date he said: “God willed that I should take pity on her

[Catherine].”[468] Even before taking the step, he had thought out

the plan of impressing upon his union with “Katey,” the ex-nun, the

character of a “reforming work.” “Because our enemies do not cease

to condemn matrimony,” he writes, and “our ‘little wiseacres’ daily

scoff at it,” he feels himself for that very reason attracted to it;

being determined to give celebrity to the true teaching of the Gospel

concerning marriage.[469] He had informed Albert, the archiepiscopal

Elector, that before quitting this life he would enter the married

state, which he considered as enjoined by God,[470] and somewhat

earlier he had confided to a friend that, if he could manage it before

he died, he meant “to take his Katey to wife in order to spite the

devil.”[471] This agrees in part with what he wrote shortly after his

marriage: “The Lord plunged me suddenly, while I still clung to quite

other views, into matrimony.”[472]

As a matter of fact it was the unpleasant rumours aroused when his

intimacy with Bora became known, which hastened the step. This is

what Bugenhagen, an authentic witness, says with evident displeasure:

Evil tales were the cause of Dr. Martin’s becoming a married man so

unexpectedly.[473] Luther himself admits this in a confidential letter

to Spalatin three days after the step. He informs him of his marriage

as follows: “I have shut the mouth of those who slandered me and

Catherine von Bora.”[474]

In the same letter Luther also refers to the reproach he had at first

dreaded, viz. of degrading himself by his marriage. He scoffs at

this: “I have become so low and despicable by this marriage,” he says

jokingly, “that I hope the angels will laugh and all the devils weep.

The world and its ‘wise ones’ do not yet recognise the pious and holy

work of God and in me they regard it as something impious and devilish.

Hence it pleases me greatly that, by my marriage, the opinion of

those who continue to persevere in their ignorance of divine things is

brought in question and condemned. Farewell, and pray for me.”[475]

Such utterances were directed also against many of the friends of

the Evangel. Hieronymus Schurf, the lawyer, and otherwise Luther’s

confidant, had been one of those opposed to his marriage. He had said:

“If this Monk takes a wife all the world and the devil himself will

laugh, and Luther will undo the whole of his previous work.”[476]

Melanchthon, too, expressed his deep displeasure at the marriage in the

remarkable Greek letter already once referred to (p. 145) addressed to

his friend Joachim Camerarius, and dated June 16, 1525.

The true wording of this Greek letter, which Camerarius saw fit to

modify, as is proved by the original in the Chigi Library in Rome, with

his “corrections” in red pencil, only became known in 1876.[477] He

revised it completely for his edition of Melanchthon’s letters because

he feared to make the severe censure it contained public; thus the

letter was formerly only known in the altered shape in which it was

also published in 1834 in the “_Corpus Reformatorum_,” which begins

with Melanchthon’s letters. A similar fate has befallen several other

letters of Melanchthon in the Camerarius editions, and consequently

also in the “_Corpus_.”

Melanchthon, according to the real text of the letter (which we give

in full in the note), commences with these words: “Since you have

probably received divergent accounts concerning Luther’s marriage, I

judge it well to send you my views on his wedding.” After detailing

the external circumstances already referred to, and pointing out

that Luther “had not consulted any of his friends beforehand,” he

continues: “You will perhaps be surprised that, at this unhappy time

when upright and right-thinking men are everywhere being oppressed,

he is not also suffering, but, to all appearance, leads a more easy

life (_μᾶλλον τρυφᾶν_) and endangers his reputation, notwithstanding

the fact that the German nation stands in need of all his wisdom

and strength. It appears to me, however, that this is how it has

happened.” And here Melanchthon brings forward the complaints already

related (p. 145) of the imprudent intimacy between a “man otherwise

noble and high-minded” and the escaped nuns, who had made use of every

art to attract him and thus had rendered him effeminate and inflamed

his passions. “He seems after this fashion to have been drawn into

the untimely change in his mode of life. It is clear, however, that

the gossip concerning his previous criminal intercourse with her

[Bora] was false. Now the thing is done it is useless to find fault

with it, or to take it amiss, for I believe that nature impels man

to matrimony. Even though this life is low, yet it is holy, and more

pleasing to God than the unmarried state. And since I see that Luther

is to some extent sad and troubled about this change in his way of

life, I seek very earnestly to encourage him by representing to him

that he has done nothing which, in my opinion, can be made a subject

of reproach to him.”

In spite of his misgivings Melanchthon seeks to console himself with

two strange reflections: Advancement and honour are dangerous to

all men, even to those who fear God as Luther does, and therefore

this “low” way of life is good for him. And again, “I am in hopes

that he will now lay aside the buffoonery[478] for which we have so

often found fault with him.” Camerarius must not allow himself to be

disconcerted by Luther’s unexpected mode of proceeding, even though

he may be painfully aware that it is injurious to him. “I exhort

you to bear this with patience ... God has shown us by the numerous

mistakes (_πταίσματα_) the Saints committed in earlier ages, that He

wishes us to prove His Word and not to rely upon the reputation of

any man, but only on His Word. He would, indeed, be a very godless

man who, on account of the mistake (_πταῖσμα_) of the doctor, should

judge slightingly of his doctrine....” Melanchthon then reiterates his

statement that nature impels a man to matrimony, adding to it the word

“verily.”[479]

The letter, which was not intended for publication and, probably

for this reason, was written in Greek, contains a strange admixture

of blame and dissatisfaction coupled with recognition and praise

of Luther’s good qualities. We see clearly how Melanchthon tries

to overcome the bitterness he feels by means of these reflections,

which however reveal him as the learned and timid Humanist he really

was, rather than as a theologian and man of the world. Protestants

have attempted to moderate the impression created by this letter of

Melanchthon’s by representing it as written hastily in a passing

fit of temper. As a matter of fact, however, it does not bear the

impress of having been so written, and, considering how the writer is

evidently at pains to find some justification for Luther’s conduct, it

cannot be described as written hastily and without due thought. The

writer, in spite of all he says, is anxious that “what has taken place

should not be blamed”; Luther to him is still “a noble and high-minded

man,” one, too, who has given proof of his fear of God.

One of the most recent of Luther admirers accordingly abandons

this excuse, and merely speaks of the letter as a “hateful” one,

“written in an extremely uncomfortable frame of mind.” After various

reflections thereon he arrives at the following surprising conclusion:

“If we place ourselves in poor Melanchthon’s position and realise the

slight offered him in not having been apprised of the matter until

after the wedding had taken place, and his grief that his friend

should thus expose the cause of the evangel to slander, we must admit

that, after all, the letter was quite amiable.” If, however, there

was any question of slight in the matter, Melanchthon was certainly

not the only one who had cause for complaint; accustomed as he was to

such treatment on Luther’s part, he scarcely even refers to it, his

objection being based on far more serious grounds. He showed no sign

of having been slighted when, shortly after, he invited Wenceslaus

Link to the public “_nuptiæ_,” expressing his good wishes that

Luther’s marriage “may turn out well.”[480] The scruples which he

shared with Camerarius concerning Luther’s intimacy with the ex-nuns

were not new, but had long disquieted him. We may notice over and over

again his secret esteem for celibacy, which he ranks above matrimony,

and such thoughts may well have animated him when composing the

letter, even though he repels them and praises the married state. “It

is plain,” says Kawerau, “that a shudder passes through his frame at

the very thought of marriage between a monk and a nun.”[481] We can

only regard it as due to his state of indecision when he says in the

letter in question, first that Luther “had done nothing that called

for reproach,” and then, that “he had made a mistake.”

We may nevertheless grant to the Protestant author, mentioned at the

commencement of the previous paragraph, that Melanchthon--who was

not, as a matter of fact, apprised by Luther of his thoughts at that

time--“did not rightly understand the motive which caused him to enter

the married state at such a moment.” Indeed, the motive was not to be

readily understood. Luther’s intention, so our author thinks, was to

set his enemies at defiance by his marriage and to show them “that he

would pay less attention to them than ever”; being apprehensive of his

approaching end, he determined to set the last touch to his doctrine

on matrimony by a solemn and manly act.

Many others, like Melanchthon, have been unable to appreciate this

“great motive,” or at any rate the disadvantages of marriage in

Luther’s case seem to have weighed more heavily with them than its

compensating advantages in the service of the Reformation.

This explanation, nevertheless, appears so convincing to our author

that he does not insist further upon another reason which he hints at,

viz. that Catherine von Bora “was unkindly disposed to Melanchthon,”

and that he much feared she would alienate his friend’s heart from

him. The same writer mildly remarks concerning the falsification of

the letter committed by Camerarius: “it was not with the intention of

falsifying, that he made various alterations, but in order to prevent

disedification.” Camerarius has, however, unfortunately aggravated

one passage in the letter, for where Melanchthon speaks for the first

time of man’s natural inclination for marriage, Camerarius adds the

word _αὐτόν_, thus referring directly to Luther what the writer

intended for men in general: “I believe _he_ was forced by nature to

marry,” which, following immediately upon the passage referring to

his frivolous intercourse with the nuns and the calumnies about Bora,

gives a still more unfavourable impression of Luther. This at any rate

may serve to exculpate the Catholic controversialists, who erroneously

referred this passage, and the other one which resembles it, directly

to Luther, whereas he is comprised in it only indirectly.

According to what we have seen, the circumstance of Luther’s sudden

marriage occurring just at the time of the panic of the Peasant War,

made an especially deep impression on Melanchthon, who was ever

inclined to circumspection and prudence.

In point of fact, a more unsuitable time, and one in more glaring

contrast with nuptial festivities, it would have been impossible for

Luther to select. The flames of the conflagration raging throughout

Germany and even in the vicinity of Wittenberg, and the battlefields

strewn with the dead, slain by the rebels or the supporters of the

Knights and Princes, formed a terrible background to the Wittenberg

wedding.

The precipitancy of his action was the more remarkable because at that

time Luther himself was living in a state of keen anxiety concerning

the outcome of the great social and religious upheaval.

Seeing that he was looked upon, by both lord and peasant, as the prime

instigator of the trouble, he had grave cause to fear for his own

safety. About five weeks later, writing from Seeburg, near Mansfeld,

after a preaching tour through the rebels’ country, he says: “I, who am

also affected by it, for the devil is intent upon my death, know that

he is angered because so far he has been unable either by cunning or by

force to harm me and is determined to be rid of me even should he be

forced to do his worst and set the whole world in an uproar; so that I

really believe, and it appears to me, that it is on my account that he

does such things in the world in order that God may plague the world.

If I reach home safe and sound, I shall, with God’s help, prepare

myself for death.”[482]

Whereas he had written not long before, that he was not thinking

of marrying because he awaited death, i.e. the death-penalty for

heresy,[483] according to his statements after his marriage it was the

thought of death which had led him to contract the union; God’s work

was unmistakable, God was shaming his adversaries. He repeatedly makes

statements to this effect, which we shall gather together with some of

his other assertions to form a picture of his mental state then.

In one of the letters of invitation to the public wedding he writes:

“The lords, priests and peasants are all against me and threaten me

with death; well, as they are so mad and foolish I shall take care to

be found at my end in the state [matrimony] ordained by God.”[484] He

is forced, however, to brace himself up in order not to lose heart

and be vexed at the falling away of the people from him; “to resign

favour, honour and followers”[485] caused him grief of heart and an

inward struggle.

His conviction that the end of the world was approaching, also did its

part in exciting him; “the destruction of the world may be expected

any hour,” he writes.[486]

Hence he is determined, as he declares, to marry “in order to defy

the devil,”[487] i.e. he defies all his afflictions and anxieties,

all the accusations of others as well as of his own conscience, and

surrenders himself to the feeling, which, since the Wartburg days,

ever stirred the depths of his soul on such occasions and made him

hope to recover all the ground lost by means of force and violence.

Peace and contentment of soul were not, however, the immediate result,

for Melanchthon writes, that, after his marriage, Luther had been “sad

and troubled.”[488]

Luther will, however, have it that it was God Who had shown him the

road he had taken.

“God is pleased to work wonders in order to mock me and the world

and to make fools of us.”[489] “That it is God’s work even the ‘wise

ones’ among us are forced to acknowledge, though they are greatly

vexed. The picture their fancy paints of me and the girl makes them

lose their wits so that they think and speak godlessly. But the Lord

liveth and is greater in us than he [the devil] that is in the world

(1 John iv. 4).”[490] “God willed it and carried it out” (“_Sic Deus

voluit et fecit_”).[491] “On account of this work of God I have, it

is true, to suffer much abuse and many calumnies.”[492] “Thus, so far

as I am able, I have [by my marriage] thrown away the last remnant

of my former popish life; I am determined to make them [my foes]

still madder and more foolish; this is the stirrup-cup and my last

good-bye.”[493]

“Were the world not scandalised at us, I should be scandalised at the

world, for I should be afraid lest what we undertake is not of God;

but as the world is scandalised and withstands me, I am edified and

comfort myself in God; do you likewise.”[494]

“The cause of the Evangel has been greatly wronged by Münzer and the

peasants,” he declares, therefore he wished to strengthen it by his

marriage, in spite of the Papists who were shouting in triumph (“_ne

videar cessisse_”), “and I shall do more still which will grieve them

and bring them to the recognition of the Word.”[495]

If, to the motives for his marriage which he enumerates above, we add

a further reason, also alleged by him, viz. that he wished to show

himself obedient to his father, who desired the marriage, we arrive at

the stately number of seven reasons. They may be arranged as follows:

1. Because it was necessary to shut the mouth of those who spoke evil

of him on account of his relations with Bora. 2. Because he was obliged

to take pity on the forsaken nun. 3. Because his father wished it. 4.

Because the Catholics represented matrimony as contrary to the Gospel.

5. Because even his friends laughed at his plan of marrying. 6. Because

the peasants and the priests threatened him with death and he must

therefore defy the terrors raised by the devil. 7. Because God’s will

was plainly apparent in the circumstances. Melanchthon’s reason, viz.

that man is impelled to marriage by nature, Luther does not himself

bring forward.

We must not lose sight of the circumstance that the marriage took

place barely five weeks after the death of the Saxon Elector Frederick

the Wise. His successor was more openly favourable towards the

ecclesiastical innovations. Frederick would have nothing to do with the

marriage of the clergy, particularly with nuns, although he did not

permit any steps to be taken against those who had married. He wrote

to his Councillors at Torgau on October 4, 1523, that to undertake any

alteration or innovation would be difficult, more particularly in these

days when he had to anticipate trouble “for our country and people”

from the opponents of Lutheranism; “he did not think that a clergyman

ought to earn his stipend by idleness and the taking of wives, and by

works which he himself condemned.”[496] In May, 1524, we see from one

of Luther’s letters to Spalatin that difficulties had been raised at

the Court concerning the remuneration of the married clergy by the

Government. In this letter he recommends Johann Apel, formerly Canon

of Würzburg, who had married a nun, for a post at the University of

Wittenberg, and gives special advice in case his marriage should prove

an obstacle (“_quod si uxorcula obstet_,” etc.). He here condemns the

faint-hearted action of the Elector, and remarks, that he will not

thereby escape the animosity of his foes, seeing that he notoriously

“favours heretics and provides for them.”[497]

Luther did not lose his habit of jesting with his friends, though his

witticisms are neither proper nor edifying: “I am bound in the meshes

of my mistress’s tresses,” he writes to one,[498] and to another, that

it all seemed “very strange” to him and he could hardly realise he had

“become a married man, but the evidence was so strong that he was in

honour bound to believe it”; and to a third, since God had taken him

captive unawares in the bonds of holy matrimony, he would be obliged to

confirm this with a “collation” [dinner-party], therefore he and Mrs.

Catherine begged him to send a cask of the best Torgau beer for a good

drink; should “it turn out not to be good, the sender would have to

drink it all himself as a penalty.”[499] He speaks later in the same

jocose fashion of his “Katey” as the “Kette” [chain] to which he is

tied, and rather indelicately plays on his wife’s maiden name: “I lie

on the bier [’Bore’ = mod. Germ. ‘Bahre’], i.e. I am dead to the world.

My Catena [Kette, or chain] rattles her greetings to you and your

Catena.” This to Wenceslaus Link, the former Vicar of the Augustinians,

who was already married.[500]

Such jokes were likely to be best appreciated in the circle of apostate

priests and monks.

But many earnest men of Luther’s own party, who like Melanchthon

and Schurf, feared evil consequences from the marriage, were little

disposed for such trifling.

Luther jestingly complains of such critics: “The wise men who

surrounded him” were greatly incensed at his marriage;[501] he says he

knew beforehand that “evil tongues would wag” and, in order that the

marriage might “not be hindered,” he had “made all haste to consummate

it.”[502]

Friends and followers living at a distance expressed strong disapproval

of his conduct when it was already too late. The Frankfurt Patrician,

Hamman von Holzhausen, wrote on July 16, 1525, to his son Justinian,

who was studying at Wittenberg: “I have read your letter telling me

that Martinus Lutherus has entered the conjugal state; I fear he will

be evil spoken of and that it may cost him a great falling off.”[503]

It was, however, useless for the new husband to attempt to defend

himself against the consequences by excuses such as the following:

“I am neither in love nor consumed by passion, but I esteem my wife

highly.”[504] According to his own assertion the step had not been

taken under stress of sensual passion, seeing that it was closely bound

up with his theology. “I had firmly determined, for the honour of

matrimony,” he says in the Table-Talk, “before ever I took a wife, that

had I had to die unexpectedly, or were lying on my death-bed, I would

have wedded some pious maiden.”[505] He again assures us, that even

when an old man and incapable of begetting children, he would still

have taken a wife “merely in order to do honour to the married state

and testify to his contempt for the shameful immorality and evil living

of the Papacy.”[506]

We are here confronted with a strange psychological phenomenon, a

candidate for death who is at the same time one for marriage.

Luther, however, speaks so frequently of this abnormal idea of marrying

at the hour of death, that he may gradually have come to look upon it

as something grand. In the case of most people death draws the thoughts

to the severing of all earthly ties, but Luther, on the contrary,

is desirous of forming new ones at the very moment of dissolution.

He arrives at this paradox only by means of two highly questionable

ideas, viz. that he must exhibit the utmost defiance and at the same

time vindicate the sacred character of marriage. It would have been

quite possible for him without a wife to show his defiant spirit, and

he had already asserted his doctrine concerning marriage so loudly and

bluntly, that this fresh corroboration by means of such a marriage was

quite unnecessary. What was wanted was, that he should vindicate his

own act, which appeared to many of his friends both troublesome and

detrimental. Hence his endeavours to conceal its true character by

ingenious excuses.

Luther’s Catholic opponents were loud in the expression of their lively

indignation at the sacrilegious breaking of their vows by monk and

nun; some embodied the same in satires designed to check the spread of

the movement and to open the eyes of Luther’s followers. One saying

of Erasmus has frequently been quoted: A wedding was the usual end of

a comedy, but here it was the termination of a tragedy. The actual

wording of the somewhat lengthy passage runs thus: “In the comic opera

the fuss usually ends in a wedding and then all is quiet; in the

case of sovereigns their tragedies also frequently come to a similar

conclusion, which is not particularly advantageous to the people, but

is better than a war.... Luther’s tragedy seems likely to end in the

same way. The Monk has taken a nun to wife.... Luther has now become

calmer and his pen no longer makes the same noise. There is none so

wild but that a wife can tame him.”[507] Erasmus, however, speedily

withdrew his last words, writing that Luther has become more virulent

than ever.[508]

More in place than such satires were the serious expressions of

disapproval and regret on the part of Catholics concerning the terrible

fall of the quondam monk and minister of the altar, by reason of his

invalid marriage with the nun. Hieronymus Dungersheim of Leipzig was

later to raise his voice in a protest of this sort, addressed to

Luther, which may be considered as an echo of the feeling awakened in

the minds of many by the news of Luther’s marriage and as such may

serve as a striking historical testimony: “O unhappy, thrice unhappy

man! Once you zealously taught, supported by Divine testimonies and

agreeably with the Church of God, that the insolence of the flesh must

be withstood by penance and prayer; now you have the fallen woman

living with you and give yourself up to serve the flesh under the

pretence of marriage, blinded as you are by self-indulgence, pride and

passion; by your example you lead others to similar wickedness.... What

a startling change, what inconstancy! Formerly a monk, now in the midst

of a world you once forsook; formerly a priest, now, as you yourself

believe, without any priestly character and altogether laicised;

formerly in a monk’s habit, now dressed as a secular; formerly a

Christian, now a Husite; formerly in the true faith, now a mere Picard;

formerly exhorting the devout to chastity and perseverance, now

enticing them to tread their vow under foot and to deliver themselves

without compunction into the hands of the Evil One!”[509]

* * * * *

In the above, light has been thrown upon the numerous legends attaching

to Luther’s wedding at Wittenberg, and their true value may now be

better appreciated.

It is clear, for instance, from the facts recorded, that it is

incorrect to accuse Luther of not having complied with the then

formalities, and of having consummated the marriage before even

attempting to conclude these. The distinction mentioned above between

the two acts of June 13 and 27, each of which had its special

significance, was either unknown to or ignored by these objectors.

Were we merely to consider the due observance of the formalities, then

there is no doubt that these were complied with, save that objection

might be raised as to the legal status of the pastor. But, on the other

hand, Canon Law was plainly and distinctly opposed to the validity of

a marriage contracted between parties bound by solemn monastic vows.

Thus from the point of view of civil law the regularity of Luther’s new

status was very doubtful, as both Canon Law and the Law of the Empire

did not recognise the marriages of priests and monks, and lawyers were

forced to base their decisions upon such laws. We shall have to speak

later of Luther’s anger at the “quibbles” of the lawyers, and his anger

had some reason, viz. his well-founded fear lest his marriage should

not be recognised as valid by the lawyers, and hence that his children

would be stamped as illegitimate and as incapable of inheriting.

The false though frequently repeated statement, that Catherine von

Bora was confined a fortnight after her marriage with Luther can be

traced back to a letter of Erasmus, dated December 24, 1525, giving

too hasty credence to malicious reports.[510] Erasmus himself,

however, distinctly retracted this statement in another letter of

March 13, 1526: “The previous report of the woman’s delivery,”

he writes, “was untrue, but now it is said she is in a certain

condition.”[511] As his previous statement was thought to be correct,

doubts were raised as to the authenticity of the second letter; the

objections are, however, worthless; both letters are taken from the

same set of the oldest collection of the correspondence of Erasmus,

and, from their first appearance, were ever held to be genuine.

Indeed, the assumption that Luther had unlawful intercourse with

Catherine von Bora before his marriage is founded solely and entirely

on certain reports already discussed, viz. his intimacy with the

escaped nuns generally.

It is true that soon after the marriage Luther speaks of Catherine von

Bora as his “Mistress” (“Metze”) in whose tresses he is bound,[512]

but the word he uses had not at that time the opprobrious meaning it

conveys in modern German; it simply meant a girl or woman, and was a

term of endearment in common use.

An assertion made by Joachim von der Heyden, a Leipzig Master, has

also been quoted; in a public writing of August 10, 1525, addressed to

Catherine von Bora, he reproached her with having conducted herself

like a dancing-girl in her flight from the convent to Wittenberg,

and there, as was said, having lived in an open and shameless manner

with Luther before she took him as her husband.[513] A circumstance

which must not be overlooked is, that these words were intended

for Catherine herself, and appear to come from a man who believed

what he was saying. Yet on examination we see that he rests his

assertion merely on hearsay: “as was said.” The “dancing-girl,”

again, was adduced merely by way of comparison, though assuredly not

a complimentary one, and refers either to the very worldly manners

of the escaped nun, or to the secular, perhaps even scarcely modest

dress, for which she exchanged her habit on her flight or afterwards.

It is probable that at Leipzig, where Heyden lived, and which was

one of the headquarters of anti-Lutheranism, something more definite

would have been urged, had anything really been known of any actual

immorality between Catherine and Luther.

Another bitter opponent of Luther’s, Simon Lemnius, who has also been

appealed to, likewise adduces no positive or definite facts. Among the

inventions of his fancy contained in the “Monachopornomachia” he left

us, he does not even mention any illicit intercourse of Luther with

Bora before his marriage, though in this satire he makes the wives

of Luther, Spalatin, and Justus Jonas give vent to plentiful obscene

remarks touching other matters. He merely relates--and this only by

poet’s licence--how Bora, after overwhelming Luther with reproaches on

account of his alleged attempt to jilt her, finally dragged him away

with her to the wedding.[514]

Since in this work it is history in the strict sense which speaks,

only such evidence can be admitted against Luther as would be

accepted as proof in a court of law, and mere conjectures would be out

of place. We have seen the historic complaint made by Melanchthon of

Luther’s “effeminacy” and the “exciting of his passions by the nuns

who pursued him with the utmost cunning,”[515] and have some idea of

the scandal created by the quondam monk through his light-hearted

intercourse with these women who had quitted their seclusion; we

can now understand how natural was the gossip to which he himself

and his friends bear witness. It is true that men like Eberlin of

Günzburg, the apostate Franciscan, said at the time that the devil

was busy everywhere stirring up “wicked and vexatious suspicions and

calumnies” against Luther, etc.[516] Others gave vent to their spite

against the manners of the ex-nuns, who were bringing the evangel into

dispute.[517] We can comprehend such reflections as the following,

made at a later date by indignant Catholic observers, even though in

an historical work such as this we cannot make them our own. “To have

remained spotless amidst such dangers Luther would have to have been

an angel. Whoever has any knowledge of human nature, and knows that

God as a rule punishes pride and haughtiness by this particular vice,

will not wonder that many have their doubts as to Luther’s unblemished

life before he took a wife.”[518]

2. The Peasant-War. Polemics

That the preaching of the new Evangel had a great part in the origin of

the frightful peasant rising of 1525 is a fact, which has been admitted

even by many non-Catholic historians in modern days.

“We are of opinion,” P. Schreckenbach writes in 1895, “that Luther had

a large share in the revolution,” and he endorses his opinion by his

observations on “Luther’s warfare against the greatest conservative

power of the day,” and the “ways and means he chose with which to

carry on his war.”[519] Fr. v. Bezold, in 1890, in his “History of

the German Reformation,” remarked concerning Luther’s answer to the

hostile treatment he received from the Diet at Nuremberg (1524), and

his allusions to “the mad, tipsy Princes”: “Luther should never have

written in such a way had he not already made up his mind to act

as leader of a Revolution. That he should have expected the German

nation of those days to listen to such passionate language from the

mouth of its ‘Evangelist’ and ‘Elias’ without being carried beyond

the bounds of law and order, was a _naïveté_ only to be explained

by his ignorance of the world and his exclusive attention to

religious interests. Herein lies his greatness and his weakness.”[520]

Concerning the effects of such language upon the people, the same

historian wrote, as late as 1908: “How else but in a material sense

was the plain man to interpret Luther’s proclamation of Christian

freedom and his extravagant strictures on the parsons and nobles?”[521]

Luther’s Catholic contemporaries condemned in the strongest manner

his share in the unchaining of the revolt; they failed entirely to

appreciate the “greatness” referred to above.

One who was well acquainted with his writings and published a

polemical work in Latin against him at that time, referring to certain

passages, some of which we have already met, makes the following

representations to him on his responsibility in the Peasant War. It

was he who first raised the call to arms, and it was impossible for

him to wash his hands of all share in the revolt, even though he had

told the people that they were not to make use of force without the

consent of the authorities and had subsequently condemned the rising

with violence. “The common people pay no attention to that,” he tells

him, “but merely obey what pleases them in Luther’s writings and

sermons.” “You declared in your public writings,[522] that they were

to assail the Pope and the Cardinals with every weapon available, and

wash their hands in their blood. You called all the bishops who would

not follow your teaching, idolatrous priests and ministers of the

devil; you said that the bishops deserved to be wiped off the face of

the earth in a great rising.” “You called those, ‘dear children of God

and true Christians,’ who make every effort for the destruction of the

bishoprics and the extermination of episcopal rule. You said also that

whoever obeyed the bishops was the devil’s own servant. You called the

monasteries dens of murderers, and incited the people to pull them

down.”[523]

A strong wave of anticlerical and of politico-social commotion due

to unjust oppression prevailed among the peasantry in many parts of

Germany even before Luther came forward. But it was the gospel of

freedom, the mistaken approbation found in biblical passages for the

desire for equality among the classes and a juster distribution of

property, as well as the example of the great spiritual upheaval then

going on, which rendered the crisis acute, and incited the peasants to

make their extravagant and violent demands.

An attempt was made to conceal the revolutionary character of the

movement by explaining it as mainly religious.

The “Twelve Articles of the Peasants of Swabia,” was headed, for

instance, by a demand for liberty to preach the Gospel and for

congregations to have the right of choosing their own pastors.[524] It

was believed by those who drew up these Articles that all the claims,

even those relating to the tithes, to hunting, fishing, forest rights,

etc., could be proved from Holy Scripture; only then, they said, were

they ready to abandon them when they were refuted by Holy Writ; at the

same time, however, they reserved to themselves the right to make in

the future such additional demands as they might come to recognise as

being in accordance with Scripture. Luther’s ideas were also embodied

in the thirty Articles of “Squire Helferich and the Knights Heinz und

Karsthanns,” indeed, they were for the most part couched in the very

words of Luther’s writings and the 28th Article swore deadly hostility

to all his foes.[525]

The peasants in the Rhine province and about Mayence in their rising

in May, 1525, demanded not merely the liberty to choose their own

pastors and to preach the Gospel, but also that the preachers of the

new faith imprisoned in Mayence should be set free. Their claim to

choose their pastors, which was likewise made elsewhere, for instance,

in the “Twelve Articles of the Peasants of Swabia,” signified nothing

less than the intention to fill the posts with preachers of the new

faith.[526]

“The rebels everywhere either supported or opposed the Evangelical

demands, those of Evangelical views joining the rebels with the idea

that they would be able to enforce their wishes by this means.”

This explains why, after the rising had been put down, the Catholic

lords were disposed “to look on Lutheranism as no better than

rebellion.”[527] These words, written by a Protestant historian, refer

to the Rhine Province, but they are equally applicable elsewhere. So,

too, what he says of this district may also be said generally, viz.

that the enthusiastic expectation, which was widespread in Lutheran

circles, of a great change before the approaching end of the world,

helped to make of the followers of the new faith supporters of the

peasants. Luther encouraged such fanatical ideas among his readers till

the very outbreak of the revolt. (See below, p. 200 f.)

“What wonder,” the same historian says, “that when the social

revolution broke out in the spring, Luther’s persecuted followers

thought they recognised the beginning of the change, and in many

instances made common cause with the peasants and the lower classes of

the towns. Luther himself had no wish to carry through his religious

enterprise with the help either of the knights or of the peasants,

but his followers were not equal to making the necessary distinction

between the spiritual and the temporal.”[528]

Luther and his preachers had so frequently brought forward such

disparaging and degrading charges against the secular, and still

more against the spiritual authorities,[529] that clear-sighted

contemporaries, such as Bartholomew von Usingen, foretold a

revolution[530] as the result of such discourses and writings. The

destruction of the episcopal power, which, under the conditions then

prevailing, was so closely bound up with the secular, meant a radical

revolution in the law of property obtaining in the German Empire.

The “Christian freedom” of all, the equality of high and low in the

common priesthood, was proclaimed in the most incautious and seductive

terms. The peasants were taught by itinerant and often fanatical

preachers, concerning their real or alleged rights as vouched for by

Holy Scripture. Thus the esteemed Strasburg preacher, Caspar Hedio, of

the Rhinegau, in a sermon which he delivered on the Wachholder Heide,

near Erbach, explained to the people his views on the customary payment

of tithes; his words acting like a charm: He thought the peasants

should pay tithes only under protest, though they were nevertheless

not to attempt to abrogate the payment by force. Once roused, however,

who was to keep the crowd within these limits? In 1524 Hedio had two

sermons, preached on this subject in Strasburg, printed together with a

circular letter addressed to the inhabitants of the Rhinegau, “which,

there can be no doubt, exercised a certain influence upon the rising

there.”[531] In the circular he proposed, that the people themselves

should go in search of capable preachers if the ecclesiastical

authorities did not send such.[532]

A far-reaching social movement had been at work among the peasants,

more particularly in many districts of the south-west of Germany, even

previous to the rise of Lutheranism. They raised protests, which in

many instances were justifiable, against the oppression under which

they laboured. A crisis seemed imminent there as early as 1513 and

1514, and the feeling was general that a settlement of the difficulties

could only be brought about by violence. The ferment in many places

assumed an anticlerical character, which was all the more natural

seeing that the landowners and gentry who were the chief cause of

the dissatisfaction were either clergymen, like the Prince-Bishops,

or closely allied with the Church and her multifarious secular

institutions. The ill-feeling against the clergy was even then being

stirred up by exaggerated descriptions of their idle life, their luxury

and their unworthy conduct.

To seek to represent the movement, as has been done, as an exclusively

social one, is, even for the period before Luther, not quite correct,

although it certainly was mainly social. Yet it was, as a matter of

fact, the new ideas scattered among the people by Luther and Zwingli,

and the preaching of the apostasy, which brought the unrest so quickly

to a head. The anticlerical ideas of the religious innovators, combined

with social class antagonism, lent an irresistible force to the rising.

Hence the Peasant War has recently been described on the Protestant

side as a “religious movement,” called forth by the discussion of first

principles to which the Reformation gave rise, and which owed its

violent character to the religious contrast which it brought out.[533]

The expert on this period who writes thus, proves and justifies his

opinion, showing that Zwingli and Luther “were the primary cause” of

the War, not indeed directly, but because once the peasants had become

familiar with the new “biblical” ideas, which were so favourable to

their cause, they refused to stand by and see such doctrines suppressed

by violence, and preferred to take up arms against the Catholic rulers

and their energetic anti-Reformation measures.[534] According to the

same writer it is necessary to distinguish carefully between what the

peasants themselves represented in the course of the revolt as the

moving cause, i.e. the social disabilities of which they complained

(for instance in the Twelve Articles), and that which actually produced

the rising.

Nor must it be overlooked that, at the moment when passions were

already stirred up to their highest pitch, many attempts were made

on the Lutheran side to pacify the people. The catastrophe foreseen

affrighted those who were on the spot, and who feared lest the

responsibility might fall upon their shoulders. Quite recently a

forgotten pamphlet, written by an anonymous Lutheran preacher and

dating from the commencement of the movement, has been republished,

in which, after some pious exhortations, the author expresses his

firm hope that the fear of God would succeed in triumphing over the

excited passions; even biblical quotations against misuse of the

new evangelical freedom are to be found in this well-intentioned

booklet.[535] Then as now attention was drawn to Luther’s doctrine

concerning obedience to the powers that be, which required of “the true

Christian” that he should even “allow himself to be flayed,” and out of

love of the cross renounce all desire for revenge (xiv. 4).

Notwithstanding all this, the great responsibility which Lutheranism

shares in the matter remains. “It is no purely historical and objective

view,” says another Protestant historian, “but rather an apologetic

and false assumption, which attempts to deny the fact, that Luther’s

evangelical preaching most strongly encouraged and brought to a crisis

the social excitement which had been simmering among the lowest classes

since the fifteenth century. The agitation stirred up by the preachers

who followed in Luther’s footsteps contributed in a still greater

degree towards this result.”[536]

Special research in the different parts of the wide area covered by

the rising has to-day confirmed even more completely the opinion that

the accusations urged against Lutheranism by the olden supporters of

the Church were, after all, not so unjust in this particular. The

much-abused Johann Cochlæus, who made such charges, is rightly spoken

of by the last-mentioned historian as being “more suited” to depict

that revolutionary period than the diplomatic and cautious Sleidanus,

or the Protestant theological admirers and worshippers of Luther.[537]

The learned Hieronymus Emser wrote, in the stormy year 1525, a work

“Against Luther’s abominations,” a large part of which is devoted to

proving what is already explained in the sub-title of the book, “How,

and why, and in what words, Luther, in his books, urges and exhorts to

rebellion.” Emser also gave indignant expression to his conviction in

some verses intended for general circulation.

Luther was directly implicated in the beginning of the rising when the

“Twelve Articles of the Peasants of Swabia” was forwarded to him by the

insurgents. The peasants invited him, with confidence, “to declare what

was of Divine right.”[538] Luther’s honoured name came first in the

list of learned men who were to be consulted. The Wittenberg professor

grasped the full importance of the moment; he felt that the direction

of German affairs had been placed in his hands. Naturally he did not

wish to be the one to let loose the terrible storm, nor did he, as

the representative and “deliverer” of the people, wish to repulse the

movement which had been so long favourable to him, and the demands of

which were, in part at least, perfectly justifiable. He found himself

in a position exactly similar to that which he had occupied formerly

in regard to the Knights, who were anxious to take up arms, and with

whom he had, up to a certain point, made common cause, but whose

project afterwards appeared to him too dangerous and compromising to

the cause of the evangel. In the question of the Twelve Articles it

was difficult, nay, impossible, for him not to give offence either to

the gentry or to the populace, or to avoid barring the way for the new

evangel in one direction or the other. He determined to seek a middle

course. But the tragic consequences of the position he had always

assumed, the circumstances of the day and his unrestrained temper,

caused him to give mortal offence to both sides, to the lords as well

as to the peasants.

First, he flung his “Exhortation to Peace” on the field of battle--no

mere figure of speech, as, at the time of writing, the tumult had

already broken out and the horrors of Weinsberg been enacted (April

16, 1525), though of this Luther was ignorant when he composed the

pamphlet. Formerly this writing was thought to have been written in

May, but as a matter of fact it belongs to the period just after April

18.[539]

In this writing, as well as in the two following which treat of the

rising, certain sides of Luther’s character are displayed which must be

examined from the historical and psychological standpoint. The second,

which was the outcome of the impressions made by the bloody contest,

consists of only one sheet and is entitled “Against the murderous,

thieving hordes of Peasants,” or more shortly, “Against the insurgent

Peasants”; it, too, was written before the complete defeat of the

rebels in the decisive days of May.[540] The third is the “Circular

letter concerning the stern booklet against the Peasants,” of the

same year, and belongs to the time when the conquerors, flushed with

victory, were raging against the vanquished.[541]

The three writings must be considered in conjunction with the

circumstances which called them forth. Written in the very thick of

the seething ferment, they glow with all the fire of their author,

whose personal concern in the matter was so great. Whoever weighs their

contents at the present day will be carried back to the storm of that

period, and will marvel at the strength of the spirit which inspires

them, but at the same time be surprised at the picture the three

together present. He will ask, and not without cause, which of the

three is most to be regretted; surely the third, for the unmistakable

blunders of the author, who gives the fullest play to feeling and fancy

to the detriment of calm reason, go on increasing in each pamphlet.

In the first, the “Exhortation,” the author seeks to put the truth

before, and to pacify the Princes and gentry, more particularly those

Catholics who, subsequent to the Diet of Nuremberg, in 1524, had

entered the lists against the innovations. He also would fain instruct

and calm the peasants, his “dear Masters and Brothers.” Had Luther

been endowed with a clear perception of the position of affairs, and

seen the utter uselessness of any attempt merely to stem the movement,

he would not at this critical juncture have still further irritated the

rebels by the attacks upon the gentry, into which he allowed himself to

break out, and which were at once taken advantage of.

He cries, for instance, to the authorities: “Your government consists

in nothing else but fleecing and oppressing the poor common people

in order to support your own magnificence and arrogance, till they

neither can nor will endure it. The sword is at your throat; you think

you sit fast in the saddle and that it will be impossible to overthrow

you. But you will find that your self-confidence and obstinacy will be

the breaking of your necks.” “You are bringing it upon yourselves and

wish to get your heads broken. There is no use in any further warning

or admonishing.” “God has so ordained it that your furious raging

neither can nor shall any longer be endured. You must become different

and give way to the Word of God; if you refuse to do so willingly,

then you will be forced to it by violence and riot. If these peasants

do not accomplish it, others must.”[542]

He admonishes the peasants to suffer in a Christian manner, and to be

ready to endure even persecution and oppression willingly. Such is

the spirit of the evangel which he has always preached. The gospel

made the material life to consist in nothing else but suffering,

injustice, crosses, patience and contempt for all temporal goods,

even life itself. Hence they must not base their earthly claims on

the gospel. “Murderous prophets” had, however, come amongst them who,

by their false interpretation of the Bible, injured the cause of the

gospel and incited men to the use of force, which was forbidden. He

himself had been so successful and yet had abhorred violence, which

made the spread of his doctrine so much the more marvellous. “Now you

interfere,” you wish to help the cause of the evangel, but you “are

damaging it” by your violent action. The effect of these words which

form the central point of his train of thought he destroys by fresh

attacks upon the lords and Princes: If they “forbid the preaching of

the gospel and oppress the people so unbearably, then they deserve

that God should cast them from their thrones.”[543] Luther fancies

he already sees the hands stretched out to execute the sentence, and

concludes by addressing the Princes thus: “Tyrants seldom die in their

beds, as a rule they perish by a bloody death. Since it is certain

that you govern tyrannically and savagely, forbidding the preaching of

the gospel and fleecing and oppressing the people, there is no comfort

or hope for you but to perish as those like you have perished.”[544]

Such words as these were scarcely in place on the very eve of the

terrible struggle. Luther, in his excitement and his anxiety concerning

his teaching, was not a fit judge of the condition of things. It is

true that he fully realised that many of the burdens on account of

which the peasants had risen in revolt were far too oppressive,[545]

and the thoughts which he expresses on this matter are such as might

well be taken to heart for all time. But he places the interests of his

interpretation of the Bible so much in the foreground that he declares,

at the very outset, that what pleased him best in the Peasants’

“Articles,” was their “readiness to be guided by clear, plain,

undeniable passages of Scripture; since it is right and fair that no

man’s conscience should be instructed and guided otherwise than by Holy

Writ.”[546]

Never has the liberty of Bible interpretation been proclaimed under

circumstances more momentous. Luther could not have been ignorant of

the fact, that the armed multitude and their preachers, particularly

the fanatical Anabaptists, had also, like him, set up a new

interpretation of their own of the Bible, one, however, which agreed so

well with their leanings that they would never relinquish it for any

other.

Owing to the divergence of their teaching, and to the fact that they

were led by fanatics of Münzer’s persuasion, Luther came to see in the

warlike disturbances a mere work of the devil; hence he himself, the

chief foe of hell, feels it his duty to enter the lists against Satan;

the latter is seeking “to destroy and devour” both him and his evangel,

using the bloodthirsty spirit of revolt as his instrument, but let the

devil devour him and the result will be a belly-cramp.[547] In his

excitement he fancies he sees signs and wonders. “I and my friends will

pray to God that He may either reconcile you or else graciously prevent

events from taking the course you wish, though the terrible signs and

wonders of this time make me sad of heart.”[548] Like the end of the

world, which was supposed to be approaching, the “signs in the heavens

and the wonders on the earth” play their part in his mind. “They

forebode no good to you,” he prophesies to the authorities, “and no

good will come to you,” for “the many gruesome signs which have taken

place till now in the heavens and on the earth point to some great

misfortune and a striking change in the German land.”[549]

Shortly after the publication of the so-called “Exhortation to Peace,”

the news reached Wittenberg of the sanguinary encounters which had

already taken place. Everything was upside down. What dire confusion

would ensue should the peasants prove victorious? Luther now asked

himself what the new evangel could win supposing the populace gained

the upper hand, and also how the rulers who had hitherto protected his

cause would fare in the event of the rebels being successful in the

Saxon Electorate and at Wittenberg. Says the most recent Protestant

biographer of Luther: “Now that the rebellion was directed against

the Princes whose kindness and pure intention were so well known to

him, passionate rage with the rabble took the place of discriminating

justice.”[550] The fanatical mob that accompanied Thomas Münzer whetted

his tongue. We can understand how Luther, now thoroughly alarmed

by what he saw on his journeys and preaching-tours throughout the

insurgent districts, and by the daily accounts of unheard-of atrocities

committed by the rebels, was anxious to take a vigorous part in the

attempt to quench the flame. To his mind, with its constitutional

disability to perceive more than one thing at a time, nothing is

visible but the horrors of the armed rebellion. In “furious wrath” he

now mercilessly assails the rebels, allying himself entirely with the

Princes. The tract “Against the murderous Peasants,” comprising only

four pages, was composed about May 4.[551]

“Pure devilry,” he says in this passionate and hurriedly composed

pamphlet, is urging on the peasants; they “rob and rage and behave

like mad dogs.” “Therefore let all who are able, hew them down,

slaughter and stab them, openly or in secret, and remember that there

is nothing more poisonous, noxious and utterly devilish than a rebel.

You must kill him as you would a mad dog; if you do not fall upon

him, he will fall upon you and the whole land.”[552]

He now will have it that they are not fighting for the Lutheran

teaching, nor serving the evangel. “They serve the devil under the

appearance of the evangel ... I believe that the devil feels the

approach of the Last Day and therefore has recourse to such unheard-of

trickery.... Behold what a powerful prince the devil is, how he holds

the world in his hands and can knead it as he pleases.” “I believe

that there are no devils left in hell, but all of them have entered

into the peasants.”[553]

He therefore invites the authorities to intervene with all their

strength. “Whatever peasants are killed in the fray, are lost body and

soul and are the devil’s own for all eternity.” The authorities must

resolve to “chastise and slay” so long as they can raise a finger:

“Thou, O God, must judge and act. It may be that whoever is killed on

the side of the authorities is really a martyr in God’s cause.”[554] A

happier death no man could die. So strange are the times that a Prince

may merit heaven more certainly by shedding blood than by saying

prayers.

Luther does not forget to exhort the evangelically-minded rulers to

remember to offer the “mad peasants,” even at the last, “terms, but

where this is of no avail to have recourse at once to the sword.”

Before this, however, he says: “I will not forbid such rulers as are

able, to chastise and slay the peasants without previously offering

them terms, even though the gospel does not permit it.”[555]

He is not opposed to indulgence being shown those who have been led

astray. He recommends, that the many “pious folk” who, against their

will, were compelled to join the diabolical league, should be spared.

At the same time, however, he declares, that they like the others, are

“going to the devil.... For a pious Christian ought to be willing to

endure a hundred deaths rather than yield one hair’s breadth to the

cause of the peasants.”[556]

It has been said it was for the purpose of liberating those who had

been compelled to join the insurgents, that he admonished the Princes

in such strong terms, even promising them heaven as the reward for

their shedding of blood, and that the overthrow of the revolt by

every possible means was, though in this sense only, “for Luther a

real work of charity.” This, however, is incorrect, for he does

not speak of saving and sparing those who had been led astray until

after the passage where he says that the Princes might gain heaven

by the shedding of blood; nor is there any inner connection between

the passages; he simply says: “There is still one matter to which

the authorities might well give attention.” “Even had they no other

cause for whetting their sword against the peasants, this [the saving

of those who had been led astray] would be a more than sufficient

reason.” After the appeal for mercy towards those who had been forced

to fight, there follows the cry: “Let whoever is able help in the

slaughter; should you die in the struggle, you could not have a more

blessed death.” He concludes with Romans xiii. 4; concerning the

authorities: “who bear not the sword in vain, avengers to execute

wrath upon him that doth evil.”[557]

While his indignant pen stormed over the paper, he had been thinking

with terror of the consequences of the bloody contest, and of the

likelihood of the peasants coming off victorious. He writes, “We

know not whether God may not intend to prelude the Last Day, which

cannot be far distant, by allowing the devil to destroy all order and

government, and to reduce the world to a scene of desolation, so that

Satan may obtain the ‘Kingdom of this world.’”[558]

The rebels, who had burnt the monasteries and demolished the

strongholds and castles in Thuringia and in Luther’s own country, were

soon to suffer a succession of great reverses. Münzer, the prophet,

was defeated in the battle of Frankenhausen on May 15, 1525, and after

being put to the torture, made his confession and was executed. Before

his end he with great composure implored the Princes to have mercy

on the poor, oppressed people. Luther said of his death, that his

confession was “mere devilish stupidity” and that his torture should

have been made much more severe; Melanchthon, in his history of Münzer,

also regretted that he had not been forced to confess that he received

his “Revelations” from the devil; he, too, did not think it enough that

he should have been tortured only once. Luther, however, was not sorry

to see the last of him. “Münzer, with some thousands of others, has

unexpectedly been made to bite the dust.”[559]

The open supporters of the rising, on account of his second tract,

called Luther a hypocrite and flatterer of the Princes.[560] Even some

of his best friends could not understand his ferocity in inciting the

lords against the peasants, more especially as it seemed to encourage

the victors in their savage treatment of the prisoners, which in some

places resembled a massacre.

Luther’s friend, Johann Rühel, the Mansfeld councillor, wrote to him,

at the time when the pamphlet against the peasants was making the

greatest sensation, expressing his misgivings. He reminded him of the

words he made use of in the passage last quoted concerning the “scene

of desolation” into which the world seemed about to be transformed.

This prophecy might prove only too true. “I am sore afraid,” he says,

“and really it seems as though you were playing the prophet to the

gentry, for, indeed, they will leave nothing but a desolate land to

their heirs; the people are being chastised so severely that I fear

the land of Thuringia and the County [of Mansfeld] will recover from

it but slowly.... Here they [the victorious party] give themselves up

to nothing but robbery and murder.”[561] Five days later Rühel again

wrote to Luther in tones of warning, saying that he meant well by him,

but must nevertheless point out the effect his pamphlet “Against the

Peasants” had had on the minds of some: “Be it as it may, it still

appears strange to many who are favourably disposed towards you that

you should allow the tyrants to slaughter without mercy and tell them

that they may thus become martyrs; it is openly said at Leipzig that

because the Elector has just died [May 5, 1525] you fear for your own

skin and flatter Duke George by approving his undertaking [i.e. his

energetic steps against the rising] out of fear for your own skin. I

will not presume to judge, but commit it to your own spirit, for I know

the saying: ‘_qui accipit gladium gladio peribit_,’ and, again, that

the secular power ‘beareth not the sword in vain ... an avenger to

execute wrath’ [Rom. xiii. 4].... I mean well, and beg you to remember

me in your prayers.”[562] The writer tells Luther that “the result

may well be that the victors in thus slaughtering without mercy will

appeal to Luther, and that thus even the innocent will be condemned

in Luther’s name.”[563] Rühel was a good Lutheran, and his words bear

witness to a deep-seated devotion to Luther’s spirit and guidance. In

his strange zeal for the evangel he urges Luther in this same letter to

invite the Archbishop of Mayence and Magdeburg to secularise himself

and take a wife.[564]

Luther’s intimate friend, Nicholas Hausmann, was also “rather horrified

and amazed” at the writing.[565] Complaints came from Zwickau that

not only the common people but also many of the learned were falling

away from him; it was thought that his manner of writing was very

unbecoming, and that he had been unmindful of the poor. The burgomaster

of Zwickau maintained that the tract against the peasants was “not

theological,” i.e. not worthy of a theologian.[566] “A storm of

displeasure broke out against Luther ... his ‘stab, slay, hew down’

sounded like mockery in the ears of the people when the aristocratic

bands were bathing in the blood of the vanquished.... The fact is

that Luther was not in his heart so indifferent as he made himself

out to be in the circular-letter he wrote in defence of his ‘severe

booklet.’”[567]

Before composing the circular-letter Luther sent a lively letter to

Rühel protesting that he was ready to stand by all he had written, and

that his conscience was “right in the sight of God.” “If there are

some innocent people among them, God will surely take care to save and

preserve them. But there is cockle among the peasantry. They do not

listen to the Word [but to Münzer], and are mad, so that they must

be made to listen to the _virga_ and the muskets, and ... serve them

right!” “Whoever has seen Münzer may well say that he has seen the

devil incarnate, in his utmost fury. O Lord God, where such a spirit

prevails among the peasants it is high time for them to be slaughtered

like mad dogs. Perhaps the devil feels the approach of the Last Day,

therefore he stirs up all this strife.... But God is mightier and

wiser.”[568]

Elsewhere Luther declares that owing to this booklet everything God

had wrought for the world by his means was now forgotten; all were

against him and threatened him with death. He had even lived to see the

phrase, that “the lords might merit heaven by shedding their blood,”

regarded--though perhaps only ironically--as a denial of his doctrine

that there was no possibility of deserving heaven by works. “God help

us,” they cried, “how has Luther so far forgotten himself! He who

formerly taught that a man could arrive at grace and be saved only by

faith alone!”[569]

The effect of the reproaches of excessive severity showed itself,

nevertheless, to a certain extent in the pamphlet which Luther composed

between the 17th and 22nd May on the defeat of Thomas Münzer. The

title runs: “A terrible account of the judgment of God on Thomas

Münzer, wherein God plainly gives the lie to his spirit and condemns

it.”[570] This writing, it is true, does not deal so directly with the

peasant rising as the two previous ones, and the “circular-letter”

to be treated of below; its chief object is to cite the unfortunate

termination of Münzer’s enterprise as a practical refutation of the

prophetical office he had assumed. But, after the warning which the

author addresses to “all dear Germans,” not excluding the rebellious

peasants, against Münzer’s co-religionists, as the “noxious, false

prophets,” he concludes with this timely exhortation: “Of the lords

and authorities I would make two requests, first that if they prove

victorious they be not over-elated, but fear God, in whose sight they

are very culpable, and secondly, that they be merciful to the prisoners

and to those who surrender, as God is merciful to everyone who resigns

himself into His hands and humbles himself.”

The writing referred to on Münzer’s defeat gives examples of some of

the fanatical letters written by the leader of the Anabaptists. It

was an easy task for Luther to expose their fanaticism and danger.

The fellow’s end “made it plain that God had condemned the spirit of

revolt, and also the rebels themselves.” With bitter mockery he puts

these words into Münzer’s mouth: “I, a befouled prophet, am borne along

on a hurdle to the tower of Heldrungen.” (Luther knew nothing as yet of

Münzer’s death, but only of his imprisonment in Heldrungen.) Therefore

they ought to slay these “dangerous false prophets whom the judgment

of God had unmasked, and return to peace and obedience.” The fanatics

“who teach wrongly and falsely” are not to be regarded as leaders of

the people; “in future the people must beware of them, and strive to

preserve body and soul through the true Word of God.”

In order, however, to give an answer to all the “wiseacres, who wished

to teach him how he should write,”[571] he at once composed the third

work on the subject of the rising, which was now practically at an

end. This is the “Circular-letter on the severe booklet against the

Peasants,” dedicated to the Mansfeld Chancellor, Caspar Müller, one of

those who had informed him of the numerous complaints made against him.

The concluding words, in which we hear the real Luther speaking, mark

its purpose: “What I teach and write, remains true, though the whole

world should fall to pieces over it. If people choose to take up a

strange attitude towards it, then I will do the same, and we shall see

who is right in the end.”[572] Such words are sufficient of themselves

to give an idea of the tone which he adopts in this work, in which he

goes beyond anything he had already said.

At the commencement he bravely grapples with the opposition he has

encountered. “‘There, there,’ they boast, ‘we see Luther’s spirit,

and that he teaches the shedding of blood without mercy; it must

be the devil who speaks through him!’” Thus everybody is ready to

fall on him, such is the ingratitude displayed towards the “great,

and bright light of the evangel.” “Who is able to gag a fool?” His

accusers were “doubtless also rebels.” But “a rebel does not deserve a

reasonable answer, for he will not accept it; the only way to answer

such foul-mouthed rascals is with the fist, till their noses dribble.

The peasants would not listen to him or let him speak, therefore their

ears must be opened by musket bullets so that their heads fly into the

air.... I will not listen to any talk of mercy, but will give heed to

what God’s Word demands.”

“Therefore my booklet is right and true though all the world should be

scandalised at it.”[573]

He attacks those who “advocate mercy so beautifully, now that the

peasants have been defeated.” “It is easy to detect you, you ugly

black devil”; every robber might as well come, and, after having been

“sentenced by the judge to be beheaded, cry: ‘But Christ teaches

that you are to be merciful.’” “This is just what the defenders of

the peasants are doing” when they “sing their song of mercy”; they

themselves are the “veriest bloodhounds, for they wish vice to go

unpunished.”[574]

“Here, as in many other places, where Luther has to defend his

standpoint against attack,” Köstlin says of this writing, “he draws

the reins tighter instead of easing them.” “Here he no longer sees fit

to say even one word on behalf of the peasants, notwithstanding the

real grievances which had caused the rising.”[575]

At a time, when, after their victory, many of the lords, both Catholic

and Lutheran, were raging with the utmost cruelty against all the

vanquished, even against those who had been drawn into the rising

through no fault of their own, at a time when the loudest exhortations

to mercy would have been far more in place, he unthinkingly pours

forth such passionate words as these: “If wrath prevails in the Empire

then we must be resigned and endure the punishment, or humbly sue for

pardon.” It is true that those “who are of God’s Kingdom [viz. true

Christians] must show mercy towards all and pray for them,” but they

must not “interfere with the secular power and its work, but rather

assist and further it”; “this wrath of the secular power [this at

the moment entirely engrosses his thoughts] is not the least part of

the Divine mercy.” “What a fine sort of mercy would that be, to show

pity to thieves and murderers and to allow myself to be murdered,

dishonoured and robbed?” “What more naughty was ever heard of than

a mad rabble and a peasant gorged with food and drink and grown

powerful?”[576]

“As I wrote then, so I write now: Let no one take pity on the

hardened, obstinate and blinded peasants, who will not listen: let

whoever can and is able, hew down, stab and slay them as one would

a mad dog.” “It is plain that they are traitorous, disobedient and

rebellious thieves, robbers, murderers and blasphemers, so that there

is not one of them who has not deserved to suffer death ten times over

without mercy.” “The masters have learnt what there is behind a rebel

... an ass must be beaten and the rabble be governed by force.”[577]

The inflammatory letter proceeds to deal with the objections brought

against the writer; in any case, gainsayers argued, innocent persons

who had been dragged into the rising by the peasants would “suffer

injustice in God’s sight by being executed.” Even on this point, on

which previously he had spoken with more mildness, he now refuses to

surrender. “First I say that no injustice is done them,” for that no

Christian man stayed in the ranks of the rebels; and even if such

fellows had fought only under compulsion, “do you think they are

thereby excused?” “Why did they allow themselves to be coerced?” They

ought rather to have suffered death at the hands of the peasants

than accompany them; owing to the general contempt for the evangel

God ordains that even the innocent should be punished; besides, the

innocent ever had to suffer in time of war. “We Germans, who are much

worse than the olden Jews, and yet are not exiled and slaughtered, are

the first to murmur, become impatient and seek to justify ourselves,

refusing to allow even a portion of our nation to be slaughtered.”[578]

He then boldly confesses his more profound theological view of the

sanguinary war: “The intention of the devil was to lay Germany waste,

because he was unable to prevent in any other way the spread of the

evangel.”[579]

Some of the excuses scattered throughout the pamphlet in reply to the

objections, whether of his foes, or of critics among the adherents of

the new faith, are decidedly unfortunate. Offence had been given by

his inciting “everyone who could and was able” against the rebels,

and setting up every man as at once “judge and executioner,”[580]

instead of leaving this to the authorities. Needless to say he sticks

to his guns. With rhetorical vehemence, he declares that rebels

“fall upon the Lord with swords drawn.” Rebellion deserves neither

judgment nor mercy, there is nothing for it but to slaughter without

compunction.”[581]

He now says he had never taught, “that mercy was not to be shown to

the prisoners and those who surrendered, as I am accused of having

done; my booklet proves the contrary.”[582] In point of fact his

“booklet,” i.e. the pamphlet “Against the murderous Peasants,” does

not prove the “contrary.”

So far he had said nothing concerning mercy towards the prisoners;

this he was to do only later. In his circular-letter he protests--it

is to be hoped to some purpose--“I do not wish to encourage the

ferocious tyrants, or to approve their raging, for I hear that some

of my young squires are behaving beyond measure cruelly to the poor

people.” Now, he speaks strongly, though rather late in the day,

against the “ferocious, raging, senseless tyrants who even after

the battle are not sated with blood,” and even threatens to write

a special pamphlet against such tyrants. “But such as these,” so

he excuses himself concerning his previous utterances, “I did not

undertake to instruct,” but merely “the pious Christian authorities.”

His opponents, who sympathised with the lot of the vanquished, asked

why he did not also admonish the authorities who were not pious. He

replies that this was not part of his duty: “I say once more, for the

third time, that I wrote merely for the benefit of those authorities

who were disposed to act rightly and in a Christian manner.”[583] Even

in this letter he again incites against the peasants, everyone who

can and by whatever means: he allows, as stated above, anyone to kill

the rebels, openly or by stealth, nor does he retract the sentence,

that “every man” who would and was able ought to act towards them as

both “judge and executioner”; finally he declares that he is unable to

blame the severity of such authorities as do not act in a Christian

manner, i.e. “without first offering terms.” In a word, he absolutely

refuses to remedy the mistakes into which his passion had hurried him,

but takes pleasure in still further exaggerating them in spite of the

scandal caused.

“The Catholic bishops at once laid the blame of the peasant rising at

the door of the ‘great murderer’ of Wittenberg,” so writes Luther’s

most recent biographer, “as having been his work.[584] The peasants

themselves in many instances believed this, while Luther himself

admitted a certain complicity. ‘They went out from us; but they are

not of us,’ he says in the words of the First Epistle of St. John (ii.

19). The natural connection of ideas necessarily implied that the

spirit of reform which had been let loose was not to work on the Church

alone. If all that was rotten in the Church was to fall, why should

so much that was rotten in the Empire remain? If all the demands of

the Papacy were to be rejected, why should those of squiredom be held

sacred? If Luther might treat Duke George of Saxony and King Henry

VIII of England as fools and scoundrels, why should more regard be

shown to the smaller fry, the petty counts and lords? If the peasant,

by virtue of the common priesthood of all Christians, was capable of

reforming the Church, why should he not have his say in the question of

hunting-rights and the right of pasture? The kernel of the Wittenberg

preaching was that all man-made ordinances were worthless, and that one

thing only was to be considered, viz. the Word of God. The Pope was

Antichrist, the Emperor a scarecrow, the Princes and Bishops simple

dummies. How could such words of Luther fail to be seized on with

avidity by the oppressed, down-trodden, and shamelessly victimised

peasantry? The forces which, owing to the religious disturbances, now

broke loose, would, however, have done their work even without Luther’s

teaching.”

It was not only the “Catholic bishops,” however, who accused Luther of

being the instigator of the rising, but also intelligent laymen who

were observing the times with a watchful eye. The jurist Ulrich Zasius,

who at one time had been inclined to favour Luther, wrote in the year

of the revolt to his friend Amerbach: “Luther, the destroyer of peace,

the most pernicious of men, has plunged the whole of Germany into such

madness, that we now consider ourselves lucky if we are not slain on

the spot.” He regrets the treaty made on May 24, 1525, at Freiburg

im Breisgau, where he lived, on its capitulation to the rebels, in

which provision was made for the “Disclosure of the Holy Evangel of

godly truth and the defence of godly righteousness.” That the “holy

evangel” and “godly truth” should only now be disclosed at Freiburg,

called forth his sarcasm. In the treaty, he says, “There is much that

is in bad taste and ridiculous, as we might expect from peasants,

for instance, their demand that the gospel be esteemed, or, as they

say, ‘upheld’; as though this had not been done long before by every

Christian.”[585]

In 1525 Cochlæus published a criticism on Luther’s work “Against

the murderous Peasants,” where he says, “Now that the poor, unhappy

peasants have lost the wager, you go over to the princes. But in the

previous booklet, when there was still a good chance of their success,

you wrote very differently.”[586]

Erasmus, who was closely observing Luther, says to him, in view of

the fighting which still continued spasmodically: “We are now reaping

the fruit of your spirit. You do not acknowledge the rebels, but they

acknowledge you, and it is well known that many who boast of the name

of the evangel have been instigators of the horrible revolt. It is

true you have attempted in your grim booklet against the peasants to

allay this suspicion, but nevertheless you cannot dispel the general

conviction that this mischief was caused by the books you sent forth

against the monks and bishops, in favour of evangelical freedom, and

against the tyrants, more especially by those written in German.”[587]

It would appear that Luther himself had no difficulty whatever in

forming his conscience and accepting the responsibility. On one

occasion in later years, looking back upon the events of the unhappy

rising, he declared, that he was completely at ease concerning the

advice he had given to the authorities against the peasants, in spite

of the sanguinary results. “Preachers,” he says, in his usual drastic

mode of expression, “are the biggest murderers about, for they admonish

the authorities to fulfil their duty and to punish the wicked. I,

Martin Luther, slew all the peasants in the rebellion, for I said

they should be slain; all their blood is upon my head. But I cast it

on our Lord God, Who commanded me to speak in this way.” His usual

persuasion, viz. that he was God’s instrument, here again helps him.

He gives us, however, a further reason: The devil and the ungodly also

slew not a few, but it is a very different matter when the authorities

punish the wicked, for they are fulfilling a duty.[588]

Luther, after the appearance of these pamphlets, in various other

publications asked that leniency should be shown towards the peasants

who had been handled all too severely. In a private letter on behalf of

the son of a citizen of Eisleben, who had been taken prisoner, we also

meet with some fine recommendations in this sense.[589]

He was not, however, successful in calming the general ill-feeling

aroused by his violent invective against the “murderous peasants.”

His former popularity and his power over the masses were gone. After

1525 he lost his close touch with the people, and was obliged more and

more to seek the assistance necessary for his cause in the camp of the

Princes. For this change of front he was branded as a “hypocrite,” and

“slave of Princes,” by many of the discontented.[590] “The springtime

of the reformation was over,” says Hausrath. “Luther no longer passed

from one triumph to another as he had during the first seven years of

his career. He himself says: ‘Had not the revolted peasants fouled the

water for my fishing, things would look very different for the Papacy!’

The hope to overthrow completely the Roman rule in Germany by means of

a united, overwhelmingly powerful, popular movement had become a mere

dream.”[591]

* * * * *

The Catholic princes of North Germany chose that very time to bind

themselves more closely together for self-defence against the social

revolution, and to repel Lutheranism. By the league of Dessau on July

19, 1525, they followed the example set by the bishops and dukes of

South Germany, who had likewise, at Ratisbon, taken common measures for

self-protection. The soul of the league was Duke George of Saxony;

Joachim of Brandenburg, Albert of Mayence and Magdeburg, and Henry and

Erich of Brunswick also joined him. An account given by Duke George,

at the period when the league was established, throws a clearer light

upon the motives which inspired it. Written under the influence of

the horrors of the previous weeks, it breathes the indignation of its

author at the part which Lutheranism had played in the misfortune,

and looks around for some means by which the “root of the rebellion,

the damned Lutheran sect, may be extirpated; the revolt inspired by

the Lutheran evangel had led to the diminution of the honour and

service of God, and had been undertaken with a view to damaging the

clergy, prelates and the lower orders of the aristocracy, nor could

it well be completely quelled except by the rooting out of these same

Lutherans.”[592] Duke George at that time entertained hopes--not

justified by events--of being able, by appealing to the experiences of

the Peasant-War, to alienate from Luther, Philip, Landgrave of Hesse,

and Johann, Elector of Saxony, who had just commenced his reign.

The above-mentioned Princes, who were Catholic in their views, met

together in Leipzig at Christmas, 1525, in order--as representatives

of the Catholic faith, the principles of which were being endangered

in Germany--to induce the Emperor to provide some remedy in accordance

with the provisions of the Diet of Worms.

The prolonged absence of the Emperor Charles from Germany, due to

his concern in European politics, was one of the principal causes of

the growing disturbances. To recall him to Germany and invite him to

interfere was the object of a measure taken by certain ecclesiastics

at a meeting held at Mayence on November 14, 1525. Delegates from the

twelve provinces of Mayence assembled at the instance of the Chapter

of Spires. It was a remarkable fact that the bishops themselves,

who by the indifference they displayed had, as a body, roused the

dissatisfaction of zealous Churchmen, did not attend, but only members

of the Chapters. They determined to insist upon their bishops making

a stand against the revolutionary Lutheran preaching, to send a

deputation to the Pope and the Emperor with an account of the general

mischief which had befallen Germany by reason of the apostasy, and

finally to urge the Emperor to return to Germany, and meanwhile to

name executors for carrying out the orders he might give for the

preservation of religion according to law. George of Saxony, Archduke

Ferdinand of Austria and the Bavarian Dukes were to be proposed to

the Emperor as such executors. The deputation from the Chapters

was, however, never sent, owing apparently to the lack of interest

displayed by those Chapters which assembled, and by those which were

invited but did not send the necessary funds. The zealous Dean of

Mayence Cathedral, Lorenz Truchsess von Pommersfelden, found himself

practically left single-handed.[593]

Upon learning what resolutions had been passed, Luther wrote, in March,

1526, a tract of frightful violence against the “Mayence Proposal”; it

was, however, suppressed by the Electoral Court of Saxony, owing to

the intervention of Duke George.[594] The Emperor, notwithstanding his

promise to arrive speedily, did not reach Germany until 1530, after

having achieved great success abroad. He came with the firm intention

to oppose the religious revolution with the utmost vigour, and to place

the Imperial authority on a firmer footing.

Meanwhile, the Courts of Saxony and Hesse, whose sympathies were with

the Lutheran party, had, however, at Gotha entered into a defensive

alliance which was finally concluded at Torgau on May 2, 1526.

The Emperor’s threats, which had become known, did their part in

bringing this about; and a further result of the Emperor’s letters

against the “wicked Lutheran cause and errors” was, that the Dukes

of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Philip of Brunswick-Grubenhagen, Henry of

Mecklenburg, Wolfgang of Anhalt and Albert of Mansfeld also joined the

league.

Luther was greatly rejoiced at this proof of the favour of the Princes,

but, as yet, he refused to commit himself on the question as to whether

force might be used against the Emperor and the Empire. (See vol. iii.,

xv. 3.)

As a consequence of the Peasant-War the Princes grew in power, while

the people lost many rights and liberties which they had previously

enjoyed.

“The practical outcome of the great popular movement was deplorable,”

writes F. G. Ward. “The condition of the common people became even

worse than before, and the national feeling which had begun to arise

again degenerated into particularism in the vast number of small,

independent States.”[595] Just as the common people ascribed their

misfortunes to Luther, who, at the critical moment, had deserted the

cause of the peasants, so likewise many of the nobility were angry

with him because of the discontent which his teaching fostered. The

confiscation of Church property by the nobility roused the hatred of

many of the powerful against Luther, whose aim it was to favour the

rapacity only of such as were favourable to his cause.

When, in February, 1530, Luther’s father lay on his death-bed, the fear

of his enemies prevented the son undertaking the journey through the

flat country to see him. He accordingly wrote to him, explaining why

he was unable to leave Wittenberg: “My good friends have dissuaded me

from it, and I myself am forced to believe that I may not tempt God by

venturing into this peril, for you know the kind of favour I may expect

from lord or peasant.”[596]

This dislike on the part of both the peasants and the lords, which

he frequently admits, has been taken as a proof that he did his duty

towards both in an impartial manner. It would, however, be more correct

to say, that he failed in his duty towards both parties, first to the

lords and then to the peasants, and that on both occasions his mistake

was closely bound up with his public position, i.e. with his preaching

of the new faith. He advocated the cause of the peasants with the

intention of thereby introducing the evangel amongst the people, while

he supported the lords in order to counteract the pernicious results

of the socio-religious movement which resulted, and to exonerate the

evangel from the charge of preaching revolt. There is, as a matter of

fact, no ground for the charge of “duplicity” brought against him

by his opponents; the changing circumstances determined his varying

action, and so little did he disguise his thoughts, that on both

occasions his strong language increased the evil.[597]

The unfavourable feeling which prevailed towards the peasants at once

influenced his views concerning the duty of the authorities. That the

authorities should meet every transgression of the law on the part of

the people by severe measures, appears to him more and more as one of

their principal obligations.

In 1526, at the instance of a stranger, he caused one of his sermons

to be printed, in which he says to the people: “Because God has given

a law and knows that no one keeps it, He has also appointed lictors,

drivers and overseers, for Scripture speaks thus of the authorities in

a parable; like the donkey-drivers who have to lie on the neck of their

beasts and whip them to make them go. In the same way the authorities

must drive, beat and slay the people, Messrs. Omnes, hang, burn, behead

and break them on the wheel, that they may be kept in awe.” “As the

swine and wild beasts have to be driven and restrained by force,” so

the authorities must insist upon the keeping of the laws.[598] So far

does he go as to declare that the best thing that could come about

would be the revival of serfdom and slavery.[599]

At a later date he frequently depicted the peasants, quite generally,

as rascals, and poured forth bitter words of anger against them. “A

peasant is a hog,” he says in 1532, “for when a hog is slaughtered

it is dead, and in the same way the peasant does not think about the

next life, for otherwise he would behave very differently.”[600] The

following date also from the same period: “The peasant remains a

boor, do what you will”; they have, so he says, their mouth, nose,

eyes and everything else in the wrong place.[601] “I believe that the

devil does not mind the peasants”; he “despises them as he does leaden

pennies”; he thinks “he can easily manage to secure them for himself,

as they will assuredly be claimed by no one.”[602] “A peasant who is a

Christian is like a wooden poker.”[603] To a candidate for marriage he

wrote: “My Katey sends you this friendly warning, to beware of marrying

a country lass, for they are rude and proud, cannot get on well with

their husbands and know neither how to cook nor to brew.”[604]

* * * * *

“The peasants as well as the nobles throughout the country,” he

complains in 1533, in a letter to Spalatin, “have entered into a

conspiracy against the evangel, though they make use of the liberty of

the gospel in the most outrageous manner. It is not surprising that the

Papists persecute us. God will be our Judge in this matter!” “Oh, the

awful ingratitude of our age. We can only hope and pray for the speedy

coming of our Lord and Saviour [the Last Day].”[605]

* * * * *

The psychological picture presented by Luther during the whole of the

year 1525 reveals more plainly than at any other time his state of

morbid excitement. The nervous tension which had been increasing in him

ever since 1517, together with his mental anxiety and the spirit of

defiance, reached their culminating point in the year of his marriage,

a year filled with the most acute struggles.

“His enemies called the temper of the strong man demoniacal,” says a

Protestant historian of the Peasant-War, “and, as a matter of fact,” he

adds, “the Luther we meet with in the writings of the years 1517-1525

bears but little resemblance to the earnest, but cheerful and kindly

husband and father whom Protestants are wont to picture as their

reformer.”[606]

This remark applies with special force to the year 1525 when he

actually became a husband, though more stress should be laid upon

the mental strain he was undergoing. Luther undoubtedly acted at that

time, not only in the matter of the Peasant-War, but also in many other

complex questions, under the influence of an overwrought temper. It

was a period of combined internal and external conflict, which, so

to speak, raised his troubled spirit above the normal conditions of

existence. With the fanatics he had to struggle for the very existence

of his evangel; the contradictions and dissensions within the new fold

also caused him constant anxiety. His controversy with the learned

Erasmus on the subject of Free-Will angered him beyond measure, for

Erasmus, as Luther says, “held the knife to his throat”[607] by his

book in defence of the freedom of the human will. Luther was also at

war with the “wiseacres” who disapproved of his marriage, and had to

vindicate his action also to himself. In feverish delirium he fancies

he sees the jaws of death gaping for him, and feels that the devil

in all his strength has been let loose to seize upon his person, as

the one through whom alone, as he says, truth and salvation are to

be proclaimed to the world. He marries, and then exclaims with fear:

“Perhaps as soon as I am dead my teaching will be overthrown; then my

example may be a source of encouragement to the weak.”[608] “I see

the rabble as well as the nobles raging against me,” but this comfort

remains to me, “however hostile they may be to me on account of my

marriage or other matters, yet their hostility is only a sign that I

am in the right”; “were the world not scandalised at me, then I should

indeed fear that what we do was not from God.”[609]

The idea of his own divine mission, raising him far above the reach of

his enemies, finds expression to quite a marked degree in the letters

he wrote to his friends at that time. In these he is certainly not

speaking of mere fancies, but of views which he was earnestly desirous

of inculcating.

“God has so often trodden Satan under my feet, He has cast down the

lion and the dragon beneath me, He will not allow the basilisk to harm

me!” “Christ began without our counsel, and He will assuredly bring

His work to its completion even contrary to what we would advise....

God works above, and against, and under, and beyond all that we can

conceive.” “It is, however, a grief to me now that these blasphemous

enemies [certain of the preachers] should have been raised to the

ministry and the knowledge of the [Divine] Word through us. May God

convert them and instruct them, or else provide for their removal.

Amen.” He writes thus to his friend Nicholas Amsdorf, the later

“bishop,” who, perhaps of all his friends, was the one most likely to

have a real comprehension for language of this stamp.[610]

In utter contrast to the opinion Luther here expressed of himself

stands the description sketched by Hieronymus Emser of his person and

his work.

One of Luther’s humanistic followers, Euricius Cordus, had published

in 1525, in Latin verse, the so-called “Antilutheromastix” (scourge

of the antilutherans), in which he heaped scorn upon those literary

men who defended the Church against Luther. Emser himself was attacked

in the work for his championship of the older Church. Emser, however,

replied in a work, also couched in Latin hexameters and entitled

“Justification of the Catholics in reply to the invective of the

physician Euricius Cordus, and his Antilutheromastix.”[611] Under the

influence of the strong impression made upon him by Luther’s marriage

and the Peasant-War he has therein inserted some verses expressing his

indignation against Luther; from these we quote here some extracts.

The language reflects plainly Luther’s personality as it appeared in

the eyes of Emser and many of the Catholic controversialists of that

day, and thus serves to mirror the development and progress of the

intellectual struggle.[612]

“God commanded vows to be kept, but Luther tears them to pieces.

Christ commended those who renounced matrimony, but Luther praises

those who wantonly violate chastity. Purity is pleasing in the sight

of heaven, but to this height Luther cannot raise himself. Luther

at one time renounced matrimony by a sacred promise made in the

presence of God, but now he plunges into it because he, the monk,

has been led astray by his passion for a nun. Whereas our Saviour

lived unmarried, he, the unhappy and faithless man, desires to take a

wife. Christ gave an example of humility, this man is proud and even

rises in impudent rebellion against the authorities. He launches out

into torrents of abuse and vituperation (“_Maledictorum plaustris

iniurius_”). He heaps up mountains of insults, he burns the sacred

laws and mocks at God and man in the same way as did the old tyrants

of Sicily. Christ is the friend of peace, but this fellow calls to

arms. He invites the raging mob to wash their hands in the blood of

the clergy. He provokes and incites the masses under the screen of

a false freedom so that they audaciously refuse to pay tithes, dues

and taxes, and ruthlessly conspire against the life of the lords.” In

Emser’s opinion it was Luther’s word and writings which caused the

conflagration. “He persuaded the people to look on him as a prophet,

and to set his foolish fancies on a level with the oracles of heaven.

The German people, as though stupefied with drink, rise and follow

him in a terrible tumult, turning their blood-stained weapons against

themselves.”

The poet then directs the attention of the reader to the crowds of

people massacred and the strongholds consumed by fire. “The priest,

robbed of his means of livelihood and without a church, wanders to

and fro; in the families grief and dissension reign; the nun who has

forfeited her honour and her chastity, weeps. This, Luther, is the

result of your fine writings. Whoever says that you took them from the

Word of Christ and that the clear light of the gospel shines through

them, must indeed have been struck with blindness. None is more fickle

than Luther; nowhere does he remain true to himself; first he commits

his cause to the appointed judge, then he refuses to abide by the

decision or to acknowledge any jurisdiction on earth. At one time he

recognises all the seven Sacraments, at another only three, and no

doubt he will soon admit none at all.”

This man, Emser continues, Cordus presumes to compare with Moses, the

sublime, divinely appointed leader of the Israelites! This audacious

comparison he is at pains to disprove by setting the qualities of the

one side by side with those of the other. He says for instance: Moses

sanctified the people, “but your Luther gives the reins to sinful

lusts. The people, after casting off all the wholesome restrictions

of the ancient laws of morality, are bereft of all discipline, of all

fear either of God or the authorities; virtue disappears, law and

justice totter.... The heart of the German race has been hardened

to stone; sunk in the mire, and given over to their passions, they

despise all the gifts they have received of God. The children suck in

the errors of their parents with their mothers’ milk and follow their

example, learn to blaspheme, are proud and thankless and thus become

the ruin of their country. To this has your unhappy Moses brought

them.” And now Luther was seeking to make further conquests by means

of a flood of popular writings, embellished with pictures, verses and

songs so as to penetrate more easily into the minds of the unwary;

with this aim in view he did not even spare the Bible, circulating

false translations and explaining it by venomous glosses. “How many

thousand souls have not his writings already brought to eternal

perdition! They fancied that in them they found the truth, and were

miserably deceived by such doctrines.” What confusion, he says, will

not be occasioned in the future among those who hang upon his words,

by his translation of the Bible.

“Go now, Cordus, and compare this man with Moses, the liar with

the truth-loving saint, the wild stormer with the meek and patient

leader of the people. Luther, desirous of leading us out of the Roman

bondage, casts us into an unhappy spiritual bondage; he drags us from

light into darkness, from heaven down to hell.”

What is pleasing in the long poem, apart from the smooth Latin verse,

is the generous recognition which Emser bestows on the numerous other

defenders of the Church, who, like himself, as he says, have withstood

Luther vigorously and successfully with their pen. Among these he

singles out for special mention Eck, Faber, Cochlæus, Dietenberger and

others. His frank admission that much in the Church stood in need of

improvement and that a real Catholic reformer would be welcome to all,

is also worthy of notice. He shares the desire, which at that time was

making itself so strongly felt in Catholic circles, that the Emperor,

as the highest temporal authority, should now lend his assistance to

the Church and give the impetus necessary towards the accomplishment of

the longed-for renewal. “ But though we do not defend the old abuses,

yet we condemn Luther’s foolish new doctrines. The rule of the earlier

ages of the Church ought to shine in front of us to guide our life as

well as to determine dogma. We must cling to the narrow way of the

gospel and to the apostolic precepts, the decrees of the Fathers and

the written and unwritten tradition as taught by the Holy Ghost who

guides the Church. For the success of the reform it is certainly not

necessary to overthrow the existing human and divine order of things,

or to fill the weary world with noisy strife. The Emperor has it in his

hands, let him only follow the example of so many of his predecessors

who helped the Church to renew her youth, particularly Charles the

Great and his pious son Lewis.”

Luther, meanwhile, was straining every nerve in the cause of the

intellectual revolution of which the plan floated in his mind. It

seemed as though he were incapable of fatigue.

His numerous labours, his constant cares and the excessive mental

strain are apparent from his letters. He writes of a supposed portent

in the world of nature. “The omen fills me with fear, it can presage

nothing but evil.” “I am altogether immersed in Erasmus,” he says,

“I shall take care not to let anything slip, for not a single word

of his is true:” he writes thus to Spalatin.[613] “Every day I am

overwhelmed with complaints from our parishes,” he laments to the

pastor of Zwickau: “Satan is busy in our midst. The people absolutely

refuse to pay anything towards the support of the preachers.” He

intends, he says, to persuade the Elector to organise a visitation of

all the churches throughout the land, he is also anxious to introduce

uniformity in matters of ritual; all this involves him in a hundred

difficulties.[614] Disagreements with the Zwinglians of Strasburg cause

some trouble. At the same time the negotiations with the Teutonic Order

call for his whole care and attention, the apostasy and marriage of

Albert, the Grand Master, greatly raising his hopes.

It was in this frame of mind, and in the midst of all this manifold

business, that Luther threw himself into the controversy on man’s

free-will. It was his object to establish a literary foundation for his

new doctrines as a whole by vindicating a pet doctrine on account of

which he had been so mercilessly attacked.[615]

3. The Religion of the Enslaved Will. The Controversy between Luther

and Erasmus (1524-1525)

That the will is free is one of the most indisputable facts of our

inner consciousness. Where there is reason there must needs be a

corresponding freedom, i.e. freedom from interior necessity.

Freedom is the basis of all worship of God, and if external compulsion

is rightly excluded from the idea of religion, surely still more

opposed to it is the assumption that the will lacks freedom when it

seeks and serves God. The true dignity of the soul’s worship of God

consists in the voluntary payment of homage to the highest of all

beings in the natural as well as the supernatural order. “God has made

you without your co-operation,” says Augustine, “but He will not save

you without it.”[616] God’s greatness and omnipotence are enhanced by

His creation of beings gifted with the power of self-determination,

who can will or not, who are free to choose this or that and are in a

position to embrace what is good instead of what is evil.

The consensus of the human race as a whole in the belief in free-will

finds its expression in the acknowledgment of the sense of duty.

Virtue and vice, command and prohibition are written on every page of

history since the world began. If however there is such a thing as a

moral order, then free-will must exist. The misuse of the latter is

followed, owing to the spontaneous protest on the part of nature, by a

feeling of guilt and remorse, whence Augustine, the champion of grace

and free-will, could say: “The feeling of remorse is a witness both to

the fact that the individual who feels it has acted wrongly and that

he might have acted aright.”[617]

The doctrine of the Church before Luther’s time was, that free-will

had not been destroyed by original sin, and that, in one who acts

aright, it is not interfered with by God’s grace. The fall of our

first parents did not obliterate but merely weakened and warped the

freedom of moral choice by giving rise to concupiscence and the

movements of passion. Among the many proofs of this appealed to in

Holy Scripture were the words spoken by God to Cain: “Why art thou

angry?... If thou do well, shalt thou not receive? but if ill, shall

not sin forthwith be present at the door? but the lust thereof shall

be under thee, and thou shalt have dominion over it.”[618] It was well

known that Scripture always credited even the fallen will with power

over the lower impulses, as well as with the choice between good and

evil, life and death, the service of God and the service of idols.

Seeing that Luther, in teaching the contrary, appealed to the power of

divine grace which ostensibly does all, obliterating every free deed,

it is worth our while to point out the scriptural proofs by which the

Church vindicated man’s liberty even under the action of grace.

Ecclesiastical writers, even in the days immediately before Luther’s

time, were fond of laying stress on the words of the Apostle of the

Gentiles: “We exhort you that you receive not the grace of God in

vain”; or, again, on that other passage where he says of himself: “His

grace in me was not void, but I laboured more than they all, yet not

I, but the grace of God in me.” It was because he was conscious of

freedom and of the power of abusing grace that the Apostle exhorted

the Philippians as follows: “Work out your salvation with fear and

trembling.”[619] Catholic writers likewise pointed out that the same

inspired teaching concerning the liberty of choice in those called to

the state of grace was also to be found in the Old Testament: “Choose

therefore life that thou mayst love the Lord thy God,” an exhortation

prefaced by the most solemn assurance: “I call heaven and earth to

witness this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing

and cursing.”[620]

True Catholic mysticism also laid great stress on free-will, and if

some mystical writers, led astray by semi-pantheistic or quietistic

ideas, erred from the right path, at any rate their views were

never sanctioned by the Church. Some mystics also were not rightly

understood and the denial of free-will was attributed to them, whereas

all there is to censure in them is their vague mode of expression.

This is the case with the “Theologia Deutsch,” which Luther esteemed

so highly but did not rightly comprehend. What the Frankfurt knight

of the Teutonic Order says in this work, viz.: “When a man is in the

state of grace and agreeable to God, he wills and yet it is not he

who wills, but God, and there the will is not its own,” may sound

equivocal, though it really is perfectly harmless, for the words which

follow show that he does not deny man’s will, and that when he says

that God Himself wills in man he is merely emphasising the harmony

between the human and the Divine will: “And there nothing else is

willed but what God wills, for there God wills and not man, the will

being united to the Eternal Will.”[621] The will which thus acts in

union with the Eternal Will is the free-will of man on earth.

If Luther, instead of endeavouring to find support for his opinions

on such misunderstood passages, had examined with an open mind the

teaching of the Church as expressed by Augustine, the greatest

teacher on grace, he would have found, that Augustine holds fast

to the liberty of the will notwithstanding that in his defence of

grace he had to lay greater stress on the latter than on free-will.

This Doctor of the Church brilliantly refutes the assertion of the

Pelagians, that the Catholic doctrine did not allow to free-will its

full rights. “We also, teach freedom of choice (‘_liberum in hominibus

esse arbitrium_’),” he says, for instance. “On this point at least

there is no difference between us and you. It is not on account

of this doctrine that you are Pelagians, but because you exclude

from free-will the co-operation of grace in the performance of good

works.”[622]

The Catholic doctrine represented all good-doing on man’s part--by

which he rendered himself pleasing to God, attained to the state

of justification and the right to an eternal reward--as an act

organically one, effected equally by God’s Grace and by man’s free

co-operation. Even in the preparation for the state of grace both

elements were held to be essential, actual grace, and human effort

supported and carried on by such grace. Concerning such preparation,

theology taught that man thereby made himself in some way worthy of

justification and of heaven, that he merited both, though not indeed

in the strict sense, rather that, so to speak, he rendered himself

deserving of justification as an unmerited reward, bestowed through

the bountiful goodness of God (i.e. not “_de condigno_” but “_de

congruo_”). Further examination of the scholastic teaching on this

point would here be out of place, nor can we discuss the principle

to which the Church ever adhered so firmly, viz. that God gives

His grace to all without exception, because He wills to make all

without exception eternally happy, according to the assurance of Holy

Scripture: “God wills that all men be saved and come to the knowledge

of the truth.” But as regards man’s free-will or want of free-will

under the action of grace, which is the background of the present

phase of Luther’s history, according to the Church and her Doctors

man’s freedom of choice, far from being deranged by the action of

God’s grace, is, on the contrary, thereby assisted to arrive at a

wholesome and unfettered decision. “Free-will,” says Augustine, in his

striking and thoughtful way, “is not destroyed because it is assisted

by grace; it is assisted because it has not been destroyed.”[623]

The position which Luther had assumed in the Commentary on Romans

in 1515-1516 concerning the doctrine of human free-will has already

been discussed in detail (vol. i., p. 202 ff.). It is of the utmost

importance to follow up his other statements on free-will dating

from that period, and the subsequent advance in his views during his

public struggle till the publication of the decisive book “_De servo

arbitrio_” in 1525. It not only affords a deep, psychological and

theological insight into his train of thought, but also shows how his

denial of free-will was the central point of his whole teaching. At the

same time we shall notice certain emphatic statements which he makes,

but which do not usually occupy a due place in descriptions of his

theology and which accordingly might easily be regarded by our readers

as not his at all, were they not attested conscientiously and in detail

by Luther’s own writings. We refer to such assertions as the following:

“Everything happens of necessity”; “Man, when he does what is evil, is

not master of himself”; “Man does evil because God ceases to work in

him”; “By virtue of His nature God’s ineluctable concursus determines

everything, even the most trivial,” hence “inevitable necessity”

compels us in “all that we do and everything that happens,” “God alone

moves and impels all that He has made” (“_movet agit, rapit_”), nay,

“He decrees all things in advance by His infallible will,” including

the inevitable damnation of those who are damned.--We shall hear these

views expounded below by Luther himself as the core and kernel of his

teaching (“_summa causæ_”); with spirit and energy he advocates them

through some hundred pages in one of his principal works, against the

greatest of the Humanists, who had dared to attack him; to question his

fundamental dogma was, says Luther, to “place the knife at his throat.”

_The Development of Luther’s Opposition to Free-Will from 1516 to 1524_

What Luther advanced in his Commentary on Romans, against man’s power

of choice for what is good, has been summed up as follows by Johann

Ficker, the editor of the Commentary: Luther allowed nothing to deter

him from following up his new theories, nor did he even shrink from

setting up the proposition of “the absolute impossibility of any

good in the natural sphere,” or from “stating in the strongest terms

of determinism the exclusive power and action of the salutary and

unconditional Divine Will.”[624]

In his sermon on the Feast of St. Stephen, in 1515, Luther had spoken

of the inward voice in man (“_synteresis_”), which urges him towards

what is good and to true happiness, thereby implying the admission of

free-will in man. This, he says, is capable of accepting or refusing

God’s grace, though he is careful to add that the remnant of vital

force represented by the synteresis does not indicate a condition

of health nor afford any cause for boasting in God’s sight, the

whole state of man being one of corruption; the synteresis, in fact,

constitutes a danger to us because it leads us to trust in our own

powers (“_voluntas, sapientia_”), so that we are readily induced to

regard our restoration by grace as unnecessary. Such confidence in

his own powers leads man to place himself on the side of those who

crucified Christ, for such a one has a wrong opinion of righteousness

and looks on Christ as superfluous, who is the source of righteousness.

“Thus it comes about,” he cries, “that grace is most strongly opposed

by those who boast most of it”; a paradoxical saying which often occurs

in Luther’s early sermons and which plainly owes its origin to his

quarrel with the “Little Saints.”[625]

Not here alone, but frequently in the sermons of those days, we

hear Luther warning the people against misusing the synteresis. His

opposition to man’s natural powers leads him at times so far that he

represents the synteresis merely as a vague and practically worthless

faculty. It is true he declares that he simply wishes to obviate an

irreligious over-esteem of free-will, but he really goes further,

now admitting, now rejecting it; his explanations let us see that

“here there is an unsolved contradiction in his theology. He fails

to explain how the remnant of vital force still in us is to be made

use of by Divine grace so as to produce health,” and how “it can be

of any importance or worth for the attainment of salvation in the

domain of reason and will.” “Is there, then, no right use for the

synteresis? Luther not only tells us nothing of this, but the natural

consequence of much that he says is an answer to the question in the

negative, although it should undoubtedly have been answered in the

affirmative.”[626]

If we cast a glance at the other sermons which coincide in point of

time with his Commentary on Romans, we shall find in certain remarks

on the regeneration of man a foretaste of his later teaching regarding

free-will. He says, for instance, of the attainment of the state

of grace, that here regeneration takes place not only “without our

seeking, praying, knocking, simply by the mercy of God,” but also that

it resembles natural generation, where the child does nothing (“_ipso

nihil agente_”); no man can be born for heaven by his own operation

and merits (“_sua opera suoque merito_”). He contrasts those who are

generated of God “in the spirit” with those who live after the flesh,

and who often “make a great show of spirituality”: they are, he says,

“carnal-spiritual” and, “with their horrid, hypocritical spirituality,

are doomed to destruction.”[627]

According to these sermons it is plain that God is the only worker in

the man who is thus born of God. In him free-will for doing what is

good does not come into account, for the good works of the righteous

man are God’s works, and his virtues and excellence are really God’s.

“He works all in all, all is His, He, the One Almighty Being, does all

things,” so we read in Luther’s sermon on August 15, 1516, the Feast

of the Assumption, i.e. at a time when by his study of the Epistle to

the Romans he had been confirmed in his bias against man’s natural

powers.[628]

The Wittenberg Disputation in 1516, “On man’s powers and will without

grace,” immediately followed his lectures on the Epistle to the

Romans; here we find it stated in plain words, that “man’s will

without grace is not free, but captive, though not unwillingly.”[629]

To complete what has already been said (vol. i., p. 310 ff.) we

may add that the proof of this is sought in that the will sins in

everything, and that, according to Scripture, “Whoever sins is the

slave of sin.” We learn also from the Bible, we read, that we are

then truly free when the Son (of God) makes us free. The natural man

without grace is an evil tree, as such he can only desire and do what

is evil. This degradation of the human will was intended to form the

basis for a new appreciation of the grace and merits of Christ.

It is probable that the three fragments, “On the unfreedom of the

human will,” etc., which are in agreement with this last Disputation,

date from the late autumn of 1516. Here “the captivity and slavery

of the will” (“_voluntas necessario serva et captiva_”) with regard

to the doing of what is good, i.e. “to merit and demerit,” is again

emphasised. Freedom in respect of “those other, lower matters which

come under the dominion of the will” is indeed conceded.[630] But as

the modern Protestant editor of the texts in question remarks, “even

this freedom is merely apparent,”[631] for Luther says briefly but

meaningly: “I do not deny that the will is free, or rather _seems

to itself_ to be free (‘_imo videatur sibi libera_’)[632] by the

freedom of contrariety and of contradiction with regard to its lower

objects.” Here we already have a clear indication of the determinism

which Luther was to advocate at a later date, according to which God’s

Omnipotence works all things in man, even indifferent matters.[633] In

these fragments it is, however, chiefly a question of moral actions.

Where it is a question of acts having some moral value Luther’s answer

is already quite definite: “The will when confronted with temptation

cannot without grace avoid falling; by its own powers it is able to

will only what is evil.”[634]

A year later the “Disputation against the theology of the Schoolmen”

of September 4, 1517, which has been already described generally (vol.

i., p. 312), laid the axe at the root of free-will in respect of what

is good; its tenor is even more decided, and it greatly exaggerates

the corruption of man by original sin: “It is false that the will is

free to choose between a thing and its contrary [in the moral order];

without grace the human will must of necessity do what is opposed to

the will of God.” Hence nature “must be put to death absolutely.”[635]

Concerning the Heidelberg Disputation in April, 1518, we need only

recall the fact, that Luther caused the thesis to be defended, that,

after the Fall, free-will is but a name, and that when man does the

best he can, he simply commits a mortal sin. The doctrine of the

sinfulness of the works performed by the natural man, which he had

held even previously, he now supplements by an addition, in the nature

of a challenge: “_Liberum arbitrium post peccatum res est de solo

titulo_.”[636]