And yet in remarkable contrast to all this, in his closing words,

spoken with greater ponderance, he exhorts the people “not to despise

their enemies even though they know not Christ, but to have patience

with them.” Yet before this he had declared: “We must crush the

fiendish head of this brood with the Evangel. Then the Pope will

lose his crown.” He had also preached against the secular authority

exercised at Erfurt by the Archbishop of Mayence: “Our Holy Fathers

and reverend lords, who have the spiritual sword as well as the

temporal, want to be our rulers and masters. It is plain they have not

got even the spiritual sword, and certainly God never gave them the

temporal. Therefore it is only right, that, as they have exalted their

government so greatly, it should be greatly humbled.”[1017]

Amidst all this he has not a single word of actual blame for the

former acts of violence, but merely a few futile platitudes on

peaceableness, such as: “We do not wish to preserve the Evangel by

our own efforts,” for it is sufficiently strong to see to itself.

He assures his hearers that, “he was not concerned how to defend

it.”[1018] Yet he sets up each of his followers as “king” and

“yoke-fellow of Christ,” having the Royal Priesthood so that they may

defy the Hierarchy, “who have stolen the sword out of our hands.” All

this while expressly professing to proclaim the great and popular

doctrine of faith and Bible only.

“You have been baptised and endowed with the true faith, therefore

you are spiritual and able to judge of all things by the word of

the Evangel, and are not to be judged of any man.... Say: My faith

is founded on Christ alone and His Word, not on the Pope or on any

Councils.... My faith is here a judge and may say: This doctrine is

true, but that is false and evil. And the Pope and all his crew, nay,

all men on earth, must submit to that decision.... Therefore I say:

Whoever has faith is a spiritual man and judge of all things, and is

himself judged of no man ... the Pope owes him obedience, and, were

he a true Christian, would prostrate himself at his feet, and so too

would every University, learned man or sophist.”[1019]

All depends on one thing, namely, whether this believer “judges

according to the Evangel,” i.e. according to the new interpretation of

Scripture which Luther has disclosed.

We naturally think of Usingen and those Erfurt professors who remained

faithful to the Church when Luther, in the course of his sermon, in

sarcastic language, pits his new interpretation of Scripture against

the “sophists, birettas and skull-caps.” “Bang the mouths of the

sophists to [when they cry]: ‘_Papa, Papa_, _Concilium, Concilium_,

_Patres, Patres_, Universities, Universities.’ What on earth do we

care about that? one word of God is more than all this.”[1020] “Let

them go on with all their sermons and their dreams!” “Let us see what

such bats will do with their feather-brooms!”[1021]

The commanding tone in which he spoke and the persuasive force of his

personality were apt to make his hearers forgetful of the fact, that,

after all, his great pretensions rested on his own testimony alone.

In the general excitement the objections, which he himself had the

courage to bring forward, seemed futile: “Were not Christ and the

Gospel preached before? Do you fancy,” he replies, “that we are not

aware of what is meant by Gospel, Christ and Faith?”[1022]

It was of the utmost importance to him that, on this occasion of his

appearance at Erfurt, he should make the whole weight of his personal

authority felt so as to stem betimes the flood let loose by others who

taught differently; he was determined to impress the seal of his own

spirit upon the new religious system at this important outpost.

Even before this he had let fall some words in confidence to Lang

expressive of his concern that, at Erfurt, as it seemed to him, they

wished to outstrip him in the knowledge of the Word, so that he felt

himself decreasing while others increased (John iii. 30),[1023] and

in the Circular-Letter above mentioned, he had anxiously warned the

Erfurt believers against those who, confiding in their “peculiar

wisdom,” were desirous of teaching “something besides Christ and

beyond our preaching.”[1024] Now, personally present at the place

where danger threatened, he insists from the pulpit with great

emphasis on his mission: “It was not I who put myself forward....

Christ Our Master when sending His apostles out into the world to

preach gave them no other directions than to preach the Gospel ...

when He makes a man a preacher and apostle He also in His gracious

condescension gives him instructions how to speak and what to speak,

even down to the present day.” Those who heard him were therefore to

believe for certain “that he was not preaching what was his, but, like

the apostles, the Word of God.”[1025]

Many of his hearers were all the more likely to overlook the strange

pretensions herein embodied, seeing that a large portion of his

discourse proclaimed the sweet doctrine of evangelical freedom and

denounced good works.

For the latter purpose he very effectively introduces the Catholic

preachers, putting into their mouths the assertion, falsely credited

to them, that “only works and man’s justice” availed anything, not

“Christ and His Justice”; for they say, “faith is not sufficient,

it is also necessary to fast, to pray, to build churches, to found

monasteries, monkeries and nunneries, and so forth.” But “they will

be knocked on the head and recoil, and be convicted of the fact, that

they know nothing whatever of what concerns Christ, the Gospel and

good works.” “We cannot become pious and righteous by our own works,

if we could we should be striking Paul a blow on the mouth.” These

“dream-preachers” speak in vain of “Works, fasting and prayer,” but

you are a Christian if you believe that Christ is for you wisdom

and righteousness. “The doctrine of those who are called Christians

must not come from man, or proceed from man’s efforts.... Therefore

a Christian life is not promoted by our fasting, prayers, cowls or

anything that we may undertake.”[1026]

He returns again and again to the belief, so deeply rooted in the

heart, of the efficacy of good works in order that he may uproot

it completely. The whole Christian system demands, he thinks, the

condemnation of the importance attached hitherto to good works.

“Thus the whole of Christianity consists in your holding fast to the

Evangel, which Christ alone ordains and teaches, not to human words

or works.”[1027] It is a “devil” who speaks to you of the meritorious

power of works, “not indeed a black or painted devil, but a white

devil, who, under a beautiful semblance of life, infuses into you

the poison of eternal death.”[1028] Of the Christian who relies only

on faith, he says, “Christ’s innocence becomes his innocence, and in

the same way Christ’s piety, holiness and salvation become his, and

all that is in Christ is contained in the believing heart together

with Christ.”[1029] “But such faith is awakened in us by God. From it

spring the works by which we assist and serve our neighbour.”[1030]

He speaks at considerable length in the last part of his sermons of

the particular works which he considers allowable and commendable. How

much he wished to imply may, however, be inferred from what has gone

before.

Shall we not do good works? Shall we not pray any more, fast, found

monasteries, become monks or nuns, or do similar works? The answer

is: “There are two kinds of good works, some which are looked upon as

good,” i.e. “our own self-chosen works,” such as “special fasting,

special prayers, wearing a special dress or joining an Order.” “None

of this is ordained by God,” and “Christian faith looks to nothing

save Christ only,” therefore these works we must leave severely alone.

There are, on the other hand, works which are better than these.

“When once we have laid hold upon Christ, then good Christian works

follow, such as God has commanded and which man performs not for

his own advantage but in the service of his neighbour.” But even of

these works Luther is careful to add that they should be performed

“without placing any trust in them for justification.” “Fasting is

a good work,” but then, “the devil himself does not eat too much,”

and sometimes even “a Jew” fasts; “prayer is also a good work,” but

it does not consist in “much mumbling or shouting,” and even “the

Turk prays much with his lips.” “No one may or can bear the name of

Christian except by the work of Christ.”[1031]

Thus, even where he is forced to admit good works, he must needs add a

warning.

Finally, where he is exhorting to the patient bearing of crosses, he

immediately, and most strangely, restricts this exercise of virtue

to the limits of his own experience: One bears the cross when he is

unjustly proclaimed “a heretic and evil-doer,” not “when he is sick in

bed”; to bear the cross is to be “deprived of interior consolation,”

and to be severely tried by “God’s hand and by His anger.”[1032]

In the new congregation at Erfurt it was a question of the very

foundations of the moral life. Yet in Luther’s addresses we miss the

necessary exhortations to a change of heart, to struggle against the

passions and overcome sensuality. Neither is the sinner exhorted to

repentance, penance, contrition, fear of God and a firm purpose of

amendment, nor are the more zealous encouraged to the active exercise

of the love of God, to self-denial according to the virtues of their

state, or to sanctification by the use of those means which Luther

still continued to recognise, at least to a certain extent, such

as the Eucharist. All his exhortations merge into this one thing,

trust in Christ. He preached, indeed, one part of the sermon of the

Precursor, viz. “The Kingdom of God is at hand”; with the other:

“Bring forth therefore fruit worthy of penance,” he would have nothing

to do.

As far as the change at Erfurt went, the moral condition of the town

was to serve more than ever as a refutation of Luther’s expectation

that “the works will follow.”

On January 24, 1524, Eobanus Hessus wrote to Lang: “Immorality,

corruption of youth, contempt of learning and dissensions, such are

the fruits of your Evangel.”[1033] “I dislike being here very much,”

he says, in the same year, to his friend Sturz, “since all is lost,

for there is now no hope of a revival of learning or of a recovery in

public life. Everything is on the road to destruction, and we ourselves

are rendered odious to all classes by reason of some unlearned

deserters. “Oh, unhappy Erfurt,” he cries, in view of the “outrageous

behaviour of these godless men of God”; one seeks to oppress the other;

already the battlefield of passion is tinged with “blood.”[1034]

“You have by your preaching called forth a diabolical life in the

town,” Usingen wrote in 1524 of the preachers at Erfurt, “although this

is now displeasing to you, and you encourage it even up to the present

day; you set the people free from the obedience which, according to the

Divine command, they owe to the authorities of the Church, you deprive

the people of the fear both of God and of man, hence the corruption of

morals, which increases from day to day.”[1035]

Usingen, who continued courageously to vindicate the faith of his

fathers, was depicted by the preachers as a “crazy old man,” just as

they had been advised to do by Luther. “I am quite pleased to hear,”

Luther wrote to Lang some considerable time after his return, “that

this ‘Unsingen’ is still carrying on his fooleries; as the Apostle Paul

says, their folly must be made manifest (2 Tim. iii. 9).”[1036]

The champion of the Church, the alleged fool, was sufficiently

clear-sighted and frank to predict the Peasant-War as the end of all

the godless commotion, and to prophesy that the result of the general

religious subversion would be the ruin of his German Fatherland. A

fanatical preacher in the town had appealed to the mattocks of the

peasants. Him the Augustinian asks: “If the Word of God suffices in the

Church, why have you in your sermons appealed for help to the pickaxes,

mattocks and spades of the peasants?” “Why do you tell the people that

the peasant must come from the field with these weapons to assist

the Evangel, if your own and your comrades’ words prove of no avail?

Do you not know with what audacity the peasants are already rising

against their lords?” “The new preaching,” he complains, even where

it is not directly inflammatory, “renders the people, who are already

desirous of innovations and dearly love the freedom of the flesh, only

too much inclined for tumults, and this daily foments the spirit of

unrest.”[1037] “Do you not know that the mob is a hydra-headed monster,

a monster that thirsts for blood? Are you anxious to promote your cause

with the help of cut-throats?”[1038] Owing to the iconoclasts, the

ancient greatness of Constantinople fell, and the Roman Empire of the

East faded away; in like manner, so gloomily he predicts, the religious

struggle now being waged in Germany will bring about the ruin of the

Western Empire and the loss of its ancient greatness.[1039]

The help which the innovators received from the Erfurt magistrates

induced the leaders of the party to pin their trust on the support

of the secular authorities. Even this was justified by appeals to

Scripture.

Lang, on presenting to Hermann von Hoff, the president of the Erfurt

town-council, a translation which he had made of the Gospel of St.

Matthew, stated in the accompanying letter, that he had done so “in

order that all may know and take heed to the fact, that whatever

they undertake against the Gospel is also directed against you. It

is necessary, unfortunately, to defend the Gospel by means of the

sword.”[1040]

In July, 1521, an agreement had, it is true, been entered into which

brought some guarantee of safety to the clergy, more particularly

the Canons of St. Mary’s and St. Severus, yet in the ensuing years

the Chapters were forced to make endless protests against the

preachers’ interference in their services and the encroachments of the

magistrates on their personal liberty, all in direct contravention of

the agreement.

The council demanded that the oath of obedience should be taken to

itself and not to the Archbishop of Mayence, as heretofore. Priests

were arrested on charges which did not concern the council at all,

and were taken to the Rathaus. The clergy were obliged to pay taxes

like other citizens on all farms and property which belonged to them

or to their churches--which had been exempt from time immemorial--and

likewise on any treasure or cash they might possess. When the

peasants threatened Erfurt, the clergy were advised to bring all

the valuables belonging to their churches to the Rathaus where the

council, in view of the danger of the times, would receive them into

safe custody, giving in return formal receipts. Since the council, as

guardians of several monasteries, including St. Peter’s, had already

appointed laymen who hindered the lawful Superiors from coming to

any independent decision in matters of any moment, and as all the

chalices and other vessels of gold and silver, together with the more

valuable Church vestments, had already been seized at the Servites,

the Brothers of the Rule and the Carthusians, the Canons saw how

futile it would be to reject the “advice” given, and they accordingly

decided to deliver up the more valuable objects belonging to the two

principal churches, St. Mary’s and St. Severus, their decision being

accepted by the council with “hearty thanks.” At the formal surrender

of the vessels the magistrates protested that the Canons were really

not fully aware how well disposed they, the magistrates, were towards

them; that they had no wish to drive away the clergy, “but rather to

show them all charity so that they might return thanks to God.” Yet we

learn also that: Many persons belonging to the council whispered that

it was their intention to make the position of the clergy unbearable

by means of this and other like acts of despoliation.[1041]

On April 27, 1525, on the occasion of the taking over of the treasure,

with the co-operation of persons “distinguished for their strong

Lutheran views,” a strict search was made in both the venerable

churches for anything of any value that might have been left. Not the

least consideration was paid to the private property of the individual

clergy, objects were seized in the most violent manner, locked chests

and cupboards were simply forced open, or, if this took too long,

broken with axes. Every hasp of silver on copes and elsewhere was

torn off. “Unclean fists,” says a contemporary narrator, “seized the

chalices and sacred vessels, which they had no right to touch, and

carried them with loud jeers in buckets and baskets to places where

they were dishonoured.” As in other churches and convents, the books

and papers on which any claims of the clergy against the council might

be based were selected with special care. While precious works of

art were thus being consigned to destruction,[1042] members of the

town-council were consoling the Canons by renewed assurances, that the

council “would protect both their life and their property.” Finally,

the two churches were closely watched for some while after, “lest

something might still be preserved in them, and to prevent such being

taken possession of by the clergy.”[1043]

When, in 1525, on the news of the Peasant Rising in Swabia and

Franconia, meetings were held by the peasants in the Erfurt district,

the adherents of the movement determined to enforce by violence

their demands even at Erfurt. Those in the town who sympathised with

Luther made common cause with the rebels.[1044] The magistrates were

undecided. They were not as yet exclusively Lutheran, but were anxious

to make the town independent of the Archbishop of Mayence, and to

secure for themselves the property and rights of the clergy. For the

most part the lower orders were unfavourable to the magistrates, and

therefore sided with the peasantry.

The peasants from the numerous villages which were politically regarded

as belonging to the Erfurt district demanded that they should be

emancipated from the burdens which they had to bear, and placed on a

footing of social equality with the lower class of Erfurt burghers.

With this they joined, as had been done elsewhere, religious demands

in the sense of Luther’s innovations. The movement was publicly

inaugurated by fourteen villages at a meeting held in a beerhouse on

April 25 or 26, 1525, at which the peasants bound themselves by an

oath taken with “uplifted right hand,” at the risk of their lives “to

support the Word of God and to combine to abolish the old obsolete

imposts.” When warned not to go to Erfurt, one of the leaders replied:

“God has enlightened us, we shall not remain, but go forward.” As soon

as they had come to an agreement as to their demands concerning the

taxes “and other heavy burdens which the Evangel was to assist them to

get rid of,” they collected in arms around the walls of Erfurt.[1045]

The magistrates then took counsel how to divert the threatening storm

and direct it against the clergy and the hated authorities of Mayence.

The remembrance of the “Pfaffensturm” which, in 1521, had served as a

means to allay the social grievances, was an encouragement to adopt a

similar course. As intermediary between council and peasants, Hermann

von Hoff, who has been mentioned above as an opponent of the Catholic

clergy and the rights of Mayence, took a leading part; one of his

principles was that “it is necessary to make use of every means, sweet

as well as bitter, if we are to allay so great a commotion and to avert

further mischief.”[1046]

In their perplexity the magistrates, through the agency of Hoff,

admitted the horde of peasants, only stipulating that they should

spare the property of the burghers, though they were to be free to

plunder the Palace of the Archbishop of Mayence, the “hereditary lord”

of the city, and also the toll-house. The peasants made their entry

on April 28 with that captain of the town whom Lang had invited to

draw the sword in the cause of the Evangel. Not only was the Palace

despoiled and the toll-house utterly destroyed, but the salt warehouses

and almost all the parsonages were attacked and looted. In the name

of “evangelical freedom” the plunderers vented all their fury on the

sacred vessels, pictures and relics they were still able to find.

“In the Archbishop’s Palace Lutheran preachers, for instance, Eberlin

of Günzburg, Mechler and Lang, mixed with the rabble of the town and

country and preached to them.” The preachers made no secret of being

“in league with the peasantry and the proletariate of the town.” The

clergy and religious were, however, to be made “to feel still more

severely”[1047] the effects of the alliance between the three parties.

At the first coming of the peasants, that quarters might be found for

them, “all the convents of monks and nuns were confiscated and their

inhabitants driven out into the street.” “Alas, how wretched did the

poor nuns look passing up and down the alleys of the town,”[1048]

says an eye-witness in an Erfurt chronicle. All those connected with

the Collegiate churches of St. Mary and St. Severus had peasants

billeted on them in numbers out of all proportion to their means. On

the morning of April 28, the service in the church of St. Mary’s was

violently interrupted. On the following Sunday, Eberlin, the apostate

Franciscan, commenced a course of sermons, which he continued for

several days with his customary vehemence and abuse. Exactly a week

after the coming of the peasants they passed a resolution in the

Mainzer Hof that the number of parishes should be reduced to ten,

including the Collegiate church of St. Mary’s, and that in all these

parish churches “the pure Word of God should be preached without any

additions, man-made laws, decrees or doctrines.” As for the pastors,

they were to be appointed and removed by the congregation. This was

equivalent to sentencing the old worship to death. On the same day

an order was issued to all the parish churches and monasteries to

abstain in future from reciting or singing Matins, Vespers or Mass.

The only man who was successful in evading the prohibition was Dr.

Conrad Klinge, the courageous guardian of the Franciscans, who at the

hospital continued to preach in the old way to crowded audiences.

Most of the beneficed clergy now quitted the town, as the council

refused to undertake any responsibility on their behalf; and as they

were forbidden to resume Divine Worship or even to celebrate Mass in

private, at the gate of the town they were subjected to a thorough

search lest they should have any priestly property concealed about

them. The magistrates sought to extort from the clergy who remained,

admissions which might serve as some justification for their conduct.

The post of preacher at the Dom, after it had been refused by Eberlin,

who had at length taken fright at the demagogic spirit now abroad, was

bestowed upon one of Luther’s immediate followers; the new preacher

was Dr. Johann Lang, an “apostate, renegade, uxorious monk,” as a

contemporary chronicler calls him.

All tokens of any authority of the Archbishop of Mayence in the town

were obliterated, and the archiepiscopal jurisdiction was declared

to be at an end. Eobanus Hessus wrote gleefully of the ruin of the

“popish” foe. “We have driven away the Bishop of Mayence, for ever.

All the monks have been expelled, the nuns turned out, the canons

sent away, all the temples and even the money-boxes in the churches

plundered; the commonwealth is now established and taxes and customs

houses have been done away with. Again we are now free.”[1049] Here

the statement that the clergy of Mayence had been expelled “for ever”

proved incorrect, for the rights of the over-lord were soon to be

re-established.

The magistrates were the first to fall; they were deposed, and the

lower-class burghers and the peasants replaced them by two committees,

one to represent the town, the other the country. In the latter

committee the excited ringleaders of the peasantry gave vent to

threatening speeches against the former municipal government, and

such wild words as “Kill these spectres, blow out their brains” were

heard.[1050]

The actual wording of the resolutions passed by both the committees

was principally the work of preachers of the new faith. Eberlin, too,

was consulted as to how best to draw up “the articles in accordance

with the Bible,” but he cautiously declined to have anything to

do with this, and declared that their demands seemed to him to be

exorbitant and that, “the Evangel would not help them.” The Lutheran

preachers also exerted themselves to bring about the reinstatement

of the magistrates. It is said that on April 30, in every quarter of

the town, a minister of the new doctrine preached to the citizens

and country people to the following effect: “You have now by your

good and Christian acts and deeds emancipated yourselves altogether

from the Court at Mayence and its jurisdiction, which, according to

Divine justice and Holy Scripture, should have no temporal authority

whatever. But in order that this freedom may not lead you astray,

there must be some authorities over you, and therefore you must for

the future recognise the worthy magistrates of Erfurt as your rulers,”

etc.[1051]

The words of the preachers prevailed, and the newly elected

councillors became the head of a sort of republic. The burdens of the

town increased to an oppressive extent, however, and the peasants who

had returned to their villages groaned more than ever under the weight

of the taxes. Financial difficulties continued to increase.

Yielding to the pressure of circumstances, the councillors gave their

sanction on May 9, 1525, “under the new seal,” to the amended articles,

twenty-eight in number, which had been drafted by the town and peasant

committees during the days of storm and stress. The very first article

made obligatory the preaching of “the pure Word of God,” and gave to

each congregation the right to choose its own pastors. “The gist of the

remaining articles was the appointment of a permanent administrative

council to give a yearly account, and to impose no new taxes without

the knowledge and sanction of both burghers and country subjects.”

In accepting the articles it was agreed that Luther’s opinion on them

should be ascertained, a decision which seems to show that the peasants

and burghers, though probably not the councillors themselves, reckoned

upon the weighty sanction of Wittenberg. Yet about May 4 Luther had

finished his booklet “Against the murderous Peasants” (above p. 201),

which was far from favourable to seditious movements such as that

of Erfurt. The council invited him by letter, on May 10, to come to

Erfurt with Melanchthon “and establish the government of the town,” as

Melanchthon puts it (“_ad constituendum urbis statum_”).[1052] Luther,

however, did not accept the invitation, and a month later the council

sent him a copy of the articles, requesting a written opinion. It is

difficult to believe that the Erfurt magistrates were not aware of

Luther’s growing bitterness against the peasants, which is attested

by the pamphlets he wrote at the time, or that they were incapable of

drawing the obvious conclusion as to his reply.[1053] “If the council

in taking this step,” says Eitner, “was relying on Luther’s known

attitude towards all revolutionary movements, and hoped to make an end

of the inconvenient demands of the people by means of the Reformer’s

powerful words, then their expectation was fully realised. Both

Luther’s letter (i.e. his answer to the council) and his written notes

on the copy of the articles sent him, are full of irony expressing

the displeasure of one whose advice was so much in request, but whose

interference in the peasant movement, in spite of his good intentions,

had thus far met with so little success.... The very articles which

the authors had most at heart were submitted by Luther to a relentless

and somewhat pointless criticism.... Thus we see in a comparatively

trivial case what has long been acknowledged of his action generally,

viz. that Luther’s interference in the Peasant-War cannot be altogether

justified.... His conduct shattered his reputation, both in the empire

and in his second native town [Erfurt], and paved the way for the

inevitable reaction.”[1054]

Luther, in his reply to the “Honourable, prudent and beloved” members

of the Erfurt council,[1055] declares in the very first sentences that

the Twenty-eight Articles were so “ill-advised” that “little good could

come of them” even were he present himself at Erfurt; he is of opinion

that certain people, who “are better off than they deserve,” are

putting on airs at the expense of the council, constitute a danger to

the common weal, and, with “unheard-of audacity and wickedness,” wish

to “turn things upside down.” Things must never be permitted to come

to such a pass that the councillors fear the common people and become

their servants; the common people must be quiet and entrust all to the

honourable magistrates to be set right, “lest the Princes have occasion

to take up arms against Erfurt on account of such unwarrantable

conduct.” Luther’s new sovereign, the Elector Johann, had just been

assisting in the suppression of the peasant rising. He was in entire

sympathy with the Wittenberg Professor, whom he so openly protected

and favoured, and doubtless they had discussed together the state of

affairs at Erfurt. In his written reply Luther asks whether it is not

“seditious” to refuse to pay the Elector the sum due to him for acting

as protector of the city. “Did they, then, esteem so lightly the Prince

and the security of the town, which, as a matter of fact, was something

not to be paid for in money?” Their demand really signified either that

“no one was to protect the town of Erfurt, or that the Princes were to

relinquish their claim to payment and yet continue to protect the town.”

The demand that the congregations of the parishes should appoint

their own pastors Luther considered particularly inadmissible; it

was “seditious that the parishes should wish to appoint and dismiss

their own pastors without reference to the councillors, as though the

councillors, in whom authority was vested, were not concerned in what

the town might do.” He insists that “the councillors have the right to

know what sort of persons are holding office in the town.”

Concerning some of the articles which dealt with taxes and imposts,

he points out that the business is not his concern, since these

are temporal matters. Of the proposal to re-establish the decayed

University of Erfurt he says: “This article is the best of all.” Of

two of the articles he notes: “Both these will do,” one being that,

for the future, openly immoral persons and prostitutes of all classes

were not to be tolerated, nor the common houses of public women, and

the other, that every debtor, whether to the council or the community,

should be “faithfully admonished no matter who he might be.” Concerning

the former of these two articles, however, we may remark, that a house

of correction for the punishment of light women had existed at Erfurt

under the Archbishop’s rule, but had been razed to the ground by the

very framers of the articles as soon as the peasants entered the town.

The principal thing, in Luther’s opinion, was to place the reins in

the hands of the magistrates, so that they may not sit there like an

“idol,” “bound hand and foot,” “while the horses saddle and bridle

their driver”; on the contrary, the aim of the articles seemed to

him to be, to reduce the councillors to be mere figureheads, and to

let “the rabble manage everything.”[1056] The “rabble” was just then

Luther’s bugbear.

The clergy who had quitted the city addressed, on May 30, a written

complaint to the Cardinal of Mayence, with an account of the

proceedings. On June 8 they also appealed to Johann, the Saxon Elector,

and to Duke George of Saxony, asking for their mediation, since they

were the “protectors and liege lords” of their Church. They also

did all they could with the council to recover their rights. The

councillors were, however, merely rude, and replied that the proud

priests might ask as much as they pleased but would get no redress.

This was what caused them to complain to their secular protectors that

they were being treated worse than the meanest peasant. Duke George

advised them to await the result of the negotiations which, as he knew,

were proceeding between the town of Erfurt and the Cardinal.

The Lutheran Elector, on the other hand, entered into closer relations

with the town-council of Erfurt, accepting with good grace their appeal

for help, their protestation of submission and obedience to his rule,

and the explicit assurance of the councillors at the Weimar conference,

on June 22, “that they would stand by the true and unfeigned Word of

God as pious and faithful Christians, and, in support of the same,

stake life and limb, with the help of God’s grace.” Thereupon the

Elector promised them, on June 23, that, “should they suffer any

inconvenience or attack because of the Word of God,” he, as their

“liege lord, ruler and protector,” would “stand by them and afford

them protection to the best of his ability,” since “the Word of God

and the Holy Evangel were likewise dear to him.” In point of fact he

did espouse the cause of the inhabitants of Erfurt, though, like Duke

George, it was his wish to see a peaceful settlement arrived at between

the town and its rightful over-lord.[1057]

The crafty councillors were actually negotiating with the

representatives of the Cardinal of Mayence at the very time when they

were seeking the protection of Saxony. The over-lord whose rights they

had outraged, through his vicar, had made known his peremptory demands

to the council on May 26, viz. entire restitution, damages, expulsion

of the Lutheran sect, re-establishment of the old worship and payment

of an indemnity. In the event of refusal he threatened them with the

armed interference of the Swabian League. The threat took effect, for

the Swabian League at that time was feared, and disturbers of the peace

had had occasion to feel its strength. The hint of armed interference

proved all the more effective when Duke George advised the inhabitants

of Erfurt to come to terms with the Mayence vicar and abolish

Lutheranism, as otherwise they would have to expect “something further.”

The council therefore assumed a conciliatory attitude towards Mayence,

and negotiations concerning the restitution to be made were commenced

at a conference at Fulda on August 25, 1525. After protracted delays

these terminated with the Treaty of Hammelburg on February 5, 1530.

This was, “from the political point of view, an utter defeat for the

inhabitants of Erfurt.”[1058] The council was not only obliged to

recognise the supremacy of the Archbishop, but also to re-erect all

buildings which had been destroyed, and to return everything that

had been misapplied; in addition to this, for the loss of taxes and

other revenues, the council was to pay the Archbishop 2500 gulden, and

to the two Collegiate churches, for losses sustained, 1200 marks of

fine silver. Both these churches were to be handed over for Catholic

worship. The reinstated over-lord, however, declared, for his part,

that, “As regards the other churches and matters of faith and ritual,

we hereby and on this occasion neither give nor take, sanction nor

forbid, anything to any party.”[1059]

Thus the rescinding of the innovations was for the present deferred,

and Luther had every reason to be satisfied with what had been effected

in a town to which he was attached by many links. How little gratitude

he showed to Archbishop Albert, and how fiercely his hatred and animus

against the cautious Cardinal would occasionally flame up, will be seen

from facts to be mentioned elsewhere.

Among the few Erfurt monks who, though expelled from their monastery,

remained true to their profession and to the Church, there was one who

attained to a great age and who is mentioned incidentally by Flacius

Illyricus. He well remembered the first period of Luther’s life in

Erfurt, his zeal for the Church and solicitude for the observance of

the Rule.[1060]

When considering Luther’s intervention in Erfurt matters, and his

personal action there, one thought obtrudes itself.

When Luther, now quite a different man and in vastly altered

circumstances, returned to Erfurt on the occasion of the visit referred

to above, is it not likely that he recalled his earlier life at Erfurt,

where he had spent happy days of interior contentment, as is shown

by the letters he wrote before his priestly ordination? In one of

the sermons he delivered there, in October, 1522, he refers to his

student days at Erfurt, but it does not appear that he ever seriously

reflected on the contrast presented by the convictions he held at that

time on the Church and his new ideas on faith and works. His allusions

to his Erfurt recollections are neither serious nor grateful towards

his old school. He speaks scoffingly of his learned Erfurt opponents,

some of whom he had been acquainted with previously, as “knights of

straw.” “Yes, they prate, we are Doctors and Masters.... Well, if a

title settles the matter, I also became a Bachelor _here_, and then

a Master and then again a Bachelor. I also went to school with them,

and I know and am convinced that they do not understand their own

books.”[1061]

Another circumstance must be taken into account. Whereas in later life

he can scarcely speak of his early years as a monk without telling his

hearers how he had passed from an excessive though purely exterior

holiness-by-works to his great discovery, viz. to the knowledge of a

gracious God, in 1522 he is absolutely silent regarding these “inward

experiences”; yet his very theme, viz. the contrast between the new

Evangel and the “sophistical holiness-by-works” preferred by Catholics,

and likewise the familiar Erfurt scene of his early life as a monk,

should, one would think, have invited him to speak of the matter

here.[1062]

While Luther was seeking to expel by force the popish “wolves,” more

especially the monks and nuns, from the places within reach of the new

Evangel, an enemy was growing up in his own camp in the shape of the

so-called fanatics; their existence can be traced back as far as his

Wartburg days, and his first misunderstanding with Carlstadt; these, by

their alliance with Carlstadt, who had been won over to their ideas,

and with the help of men like Thomas Münzer, had of late greatly

increased their power, thanks to the social conditions which were so

favourable to their cause.

6. Sharp Encounters with the Fanatics

If, on the one hand, the antagonism which Luther was obliged to display

towards the fanatical Anabaptists endangered his work, on the other the

struggle was in many respects to his advantage.

His being obliged to withstand the claim constantly made by the

fanatics to inspiration by the Holy Ghost served as a warning to him

to exercise caution and moderation in appealing to a higher call in

the case of his own enterprise; being compelled also to invoke the

assistance of the authorities against the fanatics’ subversion of the

existing order of things, he was naturally obliged to be more reticent

himself and to refrain from preaching revolution in the interests of

his own teaching. We even find him at times desisting from his claim to

special inspiration and guidance by the “spirit” in the negotiations

entered into on account of the Münzer business; this, however, he does

with a purpose and in opposition with his well-known and usual view.

In place of his real ideas, as expressed by him both before and after

this period, he, for a while, prefers to deprecate any use of force

or violence, and counsels his sovereign to introduce the innovations

gradually, pointing out the most suitable methods with patience and

prudence.

At first he was anxious that indulgence should be observed even in

dealing with the Anabaptists, but later on he invoked vigorously the

aid of the authorities.

In reality he himself was borne along by principles akin to those of

the fanatics whose ideas were, as a matter of fact, an outcome of his

own undertaking. His own writings exhibit many a trait akin to their

pseudo-mysticism. In the end his practical common sense was more than

a match for these pestering opponents, who for a time gave him so much

trouble. His learning and education raised him far above them and made

the religious notions of the Anabaptists abhorrent to him, while his

public position at the University, as well as his official and personal

relations with the sovereign, ill-disposed him to the demagogism of the

fanatics and their efforts to win over the common people to their side.

The fanatical aim of Thomas Münzer, the quondam Catholic priest who

had worked as a preacher of the new faith at Allstedt, near Eisleben,

since 1523, was the extermination by violence of all impious persons,

and the setting up of a Kingdom of God formed of all the righteous here

on earth, after the ideal of apostolic times. This tenet, rather than

rebaptism, was the mark of his followers. The rebaptism of adults,

which was practised by the sect, was merely due to their belief that an

active faith was essential for the reception of the sacraments, whilst

children of tender years were incapable of any faith at all.

As a beginning of the war against the “idolatry” of the old Church,

Münzer caused the Pilgrimage Chapel at Malderbach, near Eisleben,

where a miraculous picture of Our Lady was venerated, to be destroyed

in April, 1524. He then published a fiery sermon he had recently

preached, in which he exhorted the great ones and all friends of the

Evangel among the people at once to abolish Divine Worship as it had

hitherto been practised. The sermon was sent to the Electoral Court by

persons who were troubled about the rising, and who begged that Münzer

might be called to account. The sermon was also forwarded to Luther by

Spalatin, the Court Chaplain, evidently in order that Luther might take

some steps to obviate the danger. In point of fact, Luther’s eagle eye

took in the situation at a glance, and he at once decided to intervene

with the utmost vigour. With Münzer’s spirit he was already acquainted

through personal observation, so he said, and now he realised yet

more clearly that its effect would be to let the mob loose, with

the consequence that “heavenly spirits” of every sort would soon be

claiming to interfere in the direction of his own enterprise.

Luther at once composed a clever and powerful writing entitled “A

Circular to the Princes of Saxony Concerning the Spirit of Revolt.”

This appeared in the last days of July, 1524. To it we shall return

later, for it is of great psychological interest.

Münzer was dismissed from his situation, and went to Mühlhausen, where

the apostate monk, Heinrich Pfeifer, had already prepared the ground,

and thence to Nuremberg. At Nuremberg he brought out, in September,

1524, his “Hochverursachte Schutzrede und Antwort wider das geistlose

sanftlebende Fleisch zu Wittenberg” in reply to Luther’s Circular,

above mentioned. He then recommenced his restless wanderings through

South Germany and Switzerland. He remained for some time with the

ex-priest and professor of theology, Balthasar Hubmaier, then pastor of

the new faith at Waldshut. On his return to Mühlhausen, in December,

he put into execution his fantastic communistic scheme, which lasted

until he and the seditious peasants were defeated in the encounter

at Frankenhausen on May 15, 1525; his execution for a while put an

end to the endeavours of the fanatics. Nevertheless, in other places,

more particularly at Münster during the famous Reign of Terror from

1532-1535, the fanaticism of the Anabaptists again broke out under even

worse forms.

The short circular, “On the Spirit of Revolt,”[1063] referred to

above as a document curiously illustrative of Luther’s psychology, is

not important in the sense of furnishing a true picture of his inner

thoughts and feelings. Conveying as it does a petition and admonition

to the Princes, it is naturally worded politically and with great

caution, and was also manifestly intended for the general public.

Nevertheless its author, even where he clothes his thoughts in the

strange and carefully chosen dress best calculated to serve the purpose

he had in view, affords us an interesting glimpse into his mode of

action. He also shows throughout the whole circular in what light he

wishes to see his own higher mission regarded.

Luther commences his writing with a complaint regarding Satan. It is

his habit, he says, when nothing else avails, “to attack the Word of

God by means of false spirits and teachers.” Hence, because he now

perceives that the Evangel, though assailed by “raging Princes” (the

opponents of the Saxon Princes), was nevertheless growing and thriving

all the more, he had made a nest at Allstedt and caused his spirits

there to proclaim that, “it was a bad thing that faith and charity and

the Cross of Christ were being preached at Wittenberg. You must hear

God’s voice yourself, they say, and suffer God’s action in you and

feel how heavy your load is. It is all nonsense about the Scriptures

[so Luther makes them say], all ‘Bible, Bubble, Babble,’” etc.

Secondly, a charge which was likely to weigh as much or even more with

the Princes, he proceeds, “the same spirit would not allow the matter

to remain one of words, but intended to strike with the fist, to

oppose the authorities by force and to bring about an actual revolt.”

As against this he points out very skilfully, that, according to God’s

ordinance, the Princes are the “rulers of the world,” and that Christ

had said: “My Kingdom is not of this world” (John xviii. 36). Hence

his urgent exhortation to them is “to prevent such disorders and to

anticipate the revolt.”

As to the spirit on which the fanatics pride themselves, it had not

yet, so Luther declares, been proved, but “goes about working its own

sweet will” without being willing to vindicate itself before two or

three witnesses; Münzer, according to Luther’s previous experience of

him, had no wish to present himself at Wittenberg (to be examined);

“he was afraid of the soup and preferred to stay among his own

followers, who say yes to all his excellent speeches.”

“If I, who am so deficient in the spirit and hear no heavenly voices,”

so he humbly assures the Princes, “had uttered such words against

my Papists, how they would have cried out on me ‘Gewunnen’ and have

stopped my mouth! I cannot glorify myself or defy others with such

great words; I am a poor, wretched man and far from carrying through

my enterprise in a high-handed way, I began it with great fear and

trembling, as St. Paul, who surely might have boasted of the heavenly

voice, confesses concerning himself (1 Cor. ii.).”[1064]

Luther now comes to the proof that, unlike the fanatics, his cause was

from God, that it was very different from Münzer’s enterprise, that he

was being unfairly attacked by this rival, and that consequently his

sovereign should support his undertaking as he had previously done.

Here he undoubtedly meets with greater difficulties than when he made

the off-hand statement that Münzer’s spirit was a “lying devil, and an

evil devil,” and that “storming and fanaticism” and acts of violence by

the rabble “Mr. Omnes” must not be permitted.

From the burden of proof for his own mission from above, consisting

in many instances of mere hints and allusions, we may select the

following considerations submitted by him to his sovereign.

First: I proceed “without boasting and defiance,” with humility,

indeed with “fear.” “How humbly, to begin with, did I attack the Pope,

how I implored and besought, as my first writings testify!”--We have

seen that Luther’s writings and the steps he took from the outset

of the struggle “testify,” as a matter of fact, to something quite

different. Here he says never a word of the communications he believed

he had received from the Spirit of God and his experience of being

carried away by God. We may also add that his appeal to the example

of Paul in the passage of Corinthians referred to above, when speaking

of the “trembling and fear” he endured, was scarcely in place, since

it was no question of actual fear in the case of the Apostle, as

Paul, shortly afterwards, in the sublime consciousness of his Divine

mission goes on to say: we are God’s coadjutors ... according to the

grace of God which is given to me as a wise architect I have laid the

foundation (1 Cor. iii. 9, 10). Paul merely states, that he is unable

to speak to the Corinthians as to spiritual men, because they were

still “babes in Christ,” not as though anything were wanting in him,

for the testimony “of the Spirit and of power” never failed him.

A second point upon which Luther lays great stress is, that, though I

was of so humble and “poor a spirit” I nevertheless performed “noble

and exalted spiritual works,” which Münzer certainly has not done.

I stood up for the Evangel, which I preached in an “honourable and

manly” fashion; indeed “my very life was in danger”: “I have had to

risk life and limb for it and I cannot but glory in it,” he says,

again with reference to Paul, “as St. Paul also was obliged to do;

though it is foolishness and I should prefer to leave it to the lying

spirits.”[1065] What exactly are the instances that he is so unwilling

to relate of his noble scorn for death? “I stood up at Leipzig to

dispute before a most dangerous assembly. I went to Augsburg without

escort to appear before my greatest enemy. And I took my stand at

Worms before the Emperor and the whole realm, knowing well beforehand

that the pledge of a safe conduct would be broken, and that savage

malice and cunning were directed against me. But, poor and weak as I

then was, my will was nevertheless so determined that, had I known

there were as many devils waiting for me as there were tiles on the

roofs of Worms, I should still have ridden thither, and yet I had as

yet heard nothing of heavenly voices and ‘God’s burdens and works’”

(such as the fanatics pretended they had experienced). He commits his

cause to Christ the Lord, so he declares, if He will support him then

all will be well, but “before men and any assembly he is ready to

answer boldly for himself” (as he had done at Leipzig, Augsburg and

Worms).

Münzer, in his “Schutzrede,” was not slow to answer Luther’s

“boasting” concerning his three appearances in public. It must be

touched upon here for the sake of completeness, although it must be

borne in mind that it is the utterance of an opponent. Münzer calls

Luther repeatedly, and not merely on account of this boasting, “Dr.

Liar” and “Lying Luther.” He says to him: “Why do you throw dust in

the eyes of the people? you were very well off indeed at Leipzig. You

rode out of the city crowned with gilly-flowers and drank good wine

at Melchior Lother’s? Nor were you in any danger at Augsburg [as a

matter of fact every precaution had been taken], for Staupitz the

oracle stood at your side.... That you appeared before the Empire at

Worms at all was thanks to the German nobles whom you had cajoled and

honeyed, for they fully expected, that, by your preaching you would

obtain for them Bohemian gifts of monasteries and foundations which

you are now promising to the Princes. Therefore if you had wavered at

Worms, you would have been stabbed by the nobles sooner than allowed

to go free, as everyone knows.... You made use of wiles and cunning

towards your own followers. You allowed yourself to be taken captive

by your own councillors [and brought to the Wartburg] and made out

that you were ill-used. Anyone ignorant of your knavery would no

doubt swear by all the Saints that you were a pious Martin. Sleep

softly, dear lump of flesh. I should prefer to sniff you roasting in

your defiance under the anger of God.”[1066] The falsity of Luther’s

assertion, that the promise of a safe conduct had not been kept

at Worms, has been already pointed out (p. 69). The reason of his

appearing at Augsburg without an escort for the journey there and

back, was, that the Elector trusted Cardinal Cajetan and did not wish

Luther to apply for one.

In proof of his being in the right Luther, in the third place, points

emphatically to his learning and his success. His cause was thus

based on a much firmer foundation than that of the Allstedt fanatic.

“I know and am certain that by the Grace of God I am more learned in

the Scripture than all the sophists and Papists, but God has thus far

graciously preserved me from pride, and will continue to preserve

me.” “I have done more harm to the Pope without the use of fists

than a powerful king could have done”; “my words have emptied many a

convent.” These fanatics “utilise our victory and enjoy it, take wives

and relax papal laws, though it was not they who bore the brunt of the

fighting.”

Fourthly: “I know that we who possess and understand the

Gospel--though we be but poor sinners--have the right spirit, or as

Paul says [Rom. viii: 23] ‘_primitias spiritus_,’ the first-fruits

of the spirit, though we may not have the fulness of the spirit....

We know what faith, charity and the cross are.... Hence we know and

can judge whether a doctrine is true or false, just as we are able to

discern and judge this lying spirit,” etc.

Fifthly we must consider the fruits of our teaching. These are those

mentioned by St. Paul (Gal. v. 22 f., Rom. viii. 13), viz: “charity,

joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity and mildness”;

Paul also says, “that the deeds of the flesh must be mortified and the

old Adam, together with all his works, crucified with Christ. In a

word, the fruit of our spirit is the keeping of the ten commandments

of God.” The Allstedt spirit, he adds, ought really to bring forth yet

higher fruits since it purports to be a higher spirit. If fruits are

lacking then surely we also may admit that, “alas, we do not as much

as we ought.”--It is notorious enough that Luther might have made

still greater admissions of this sort. Nevertheless, he is able to

point to “abundant fruit of the spirit produced by God’s Grace among

our followers,” and is ready, “if it comes to boasting,” to set his

own person, “which is the meanest and most sinful of all, against all

the fruits of the Allstedt spirit, however greatly the fanatics may

blame my life.” In order, however, the better to safeguard himself on

this point, he remarks that, “on account of the life, the doctrine”

must not be condemned, as this spirit “takes offence at our feeble

life.” It appears that Münzer had spoken very strongly against Luther

and the goings on at Wittenberg.

The one sentence in Luther’s writing which must have made the deepest

impression on his princely readers, and on their courtiers, was that

concerning the appropriation of the churches and convents, which had

been surrendered in consequence of the innovations. “Let the Rulers of

the land do what they please with them!” This invitation, in the mind

of those in power, was quite sufficient to make up for the deficiencies

of the other arguments and to be considered as an irrefragable proof of

the justice of the cause.

Luther’s higher mission being in his own opinion so firmly established

that he had no cause to fear any man, he goes so far in his Circular

as to propose that his Anabaptist foes should not be hindered. “Do not

scruple to let them preach freely!” He for his part will gird himself

for the fight, and we know of how much the force and violence of his

eloquence was capable. Confident that no one could stand against his

written or spoken word, he cries: “Let the spirits fall upon one

another and fight it out.... Where there is a struggle and a battle

some must fall and be wounded, but whoever fights manfully receives the

crown.” As a matter of fact, however, he was speedily to withdraw this

too-confident challenge; indeed, as we shall see, he later went so far

as to demand the infliction of the death-penalty upon those who dared

to differ in doctrine from himself, viz. the Anabaptists and fanatics,

establishing the necessity of this on passages from the Old Testament

which speak of the execution of false prophets.[1067]

Münzer’s party too had appealed in defence of their violent work of

destruction to the precepts of the Old Testament (Gen. xi. 2; Deut.

vii. 12; xii. 2, 3: “Destroy the altars and break down the images,”

etc.). Hence Luther deemed it necessary to point out in his Circular

against them, that “a certain Divine command then existed for such acts

of destruction which is not given to us at the present day.”

It was no uncommon thing for the Bible to furnish such matters of

dispute for the warring elements; in the question of the Divine

commission it ever occupied the foreground.

Luther solemnly raised the Bible on high and, to the Anabaptists and

other teachers of the new faith who differed from him, protested that

he and he alone had discovered the Word of God and was the appointed

teacher. Yet all those whom he addressed said the selfsame thing and

even maintained that they could show better proofs of their mission

than Luther. How, then, was the question to be decided?

The Catholic Church has never permitted individual doctors to set up

their own as the authentic interpretation of the Bible; she declared

herself to be the only divinely appointed supreme authority qualified

to determine the true sense of the written Word of God, she herself

having received the living Word of God, together with authorisation

to guard the whole body of Divine teaching, the written inclusive, in

its primitive purity, and to proclaim it with an infallible voice. She

appeals to the words of Christ: “Teach all nations,” “He that hears

you, hears me,” “You shall be witnesses for me to the ends of the

earth,” “I am with you, even to the consummation of the world.”[1068]

Outside this safe rule there is nothing but arbitrary judgment and

confusion. Luther and those he called “heretics” accused each other of

the most flagrant arbitrariness, and not without cause. They applied to

each other in derision the phrase: “Bible, Bubble, Babble,” for indeed

it was a confusion of tongues. It was not merely Luther who applied the

phrase to Münzer’s party, for, according to Agricola, Münzer mocked the

Lutherans with the same words when they ventured to attack him with

biblical texts. The Anabaptist Conrad Grebel, of Zürich, writing to

Münzer on September 5, 1524, says: “You have on your side the Bible,

which Luther derides as ‘Bible, Bubble, Babble, etc.’”[1069]

No one could prevent the fanatics from availing themselves of the

freedom of private interpretation which Luther had set up as a

principle. Münzer, no less than Luther, respected the Bible as such,

and knew how to make use of it skilfully. He also, declared, exactly

as Luther had done, that he taught the people “only according to Holy

Scripture,” and, “please God, never preached his own conceits.”[1070]

According to Luther’s own principles, Münzer’s faction had also a

perfect right to make the “outward Word” (the Bible) agree with the

“inward Word,” which they believed they heard. When Luther, at a later

date, insists so strongly on the need of accepting the outward Word as

well as the inner worth, this was really a retreat on his part (see

vol. iv., xxviii. 1); moreover, by the outward Word he here means the

Bible as he explained it.

To force those who were unwilling to accept the new, purely personal

and subjective interpretation, and to do so without the authority

of the Church, whose claims had been definitively discarded, was to

exercise an intolerable spiritual despotism. We can well understand

how Münzer came to complain, in one of his letters, that Luther in his

Circular-Letter “ramps in as ferociously and hideously as a mighty

tyrant.”[1071] He could well complain in particular of Luther’s

demand, that the spirit which spoke in Münzer should submit to an

examination before the Lutheran tribunal at Wittenberg previous to

being acknowledged as a spirit which had been duly called. This Luther

required, assuring his followers that Münzer’s party was execrated

even by the Papists, that it had no real commission and could show

no miracles on its behalf. He was anxious to retain for himself the

“first-fruits of the Spirit.” To this the retort of his foes was that

the first-fruits of the Spirit were theirs, belonging to them by

virtue of heavenly testimony. This fellow Luther wishes to ascribe the

first-fruits of the Spirit to himself, wrote Grebel to Münzer, and yet

he composes such a “wicked booklet.” I know his intentions; they are

thoroughly tyrannical. “I see he means to give you up to the headsman’s

axe and hand you over to the Princes.”[1072]

And yet, in spite of other differences between himself and the

Anabaptists, Luther found himself in agreement with them not merely

on the principle of free interpretation of the Bible but also in the

stress he lays on the inspiration from above supposed to be bestowed

on all. Luther did not deny that individual inspiration, the “whisper”

from on high, as he termed it, was one of the means by which faith

might be arrived at; on the contrary, the only question for him was how

far this might go.

Luther was fond of insisting that only a heart tried by temptation was

able to arrive at the understanding of the words of Scripture and of

religious truths in general. Münzer, too, demands this preliminary on

the part of the would-be theologian, though he does so in rather more

fantastic language. Study of Tauler’s mysticism had filled his mind,

even more than Luther’s, with confused notions. On the appearance of

Luther’s Circular-Letter, he offered to submit to an examination of

his spirit before the whole of Christendom. Those were to be summoned

from all nations who had “endured overwhelming temptations in matters

of faith and had arrived at despair of heart.” These words we find in

a letter addressed to the Elector of Saxony, August 3, 1524.[1073]

Luther, however, considered himself far better acquainted with the

abyss of interior sufferings than any other; Münzer must not be allowed

to interfere with him here. “We must not be bold in the Word of God,”

but “treat Holy Scripture with reverence and great fear; this the

rabble and the impudent spirits do not do.” Such things (what Christ

says concerning the new birth) “cannot be understood, unless a man has

experienced it, and himself undergone a spiritual regeneration.”[1074]

Luther, in point of fact, met the Anabaptists half-way on that doctrine

of baptism from which they took their name. Rebaptism he naturally

rejected, but he nevertheless advocated the principle for which the

Anabaptists stood, namely, that, for the reception of baptism,

faith is necessary on the part of the catechumen. To overcome the

difficulties which presented themselves in the case of children who

had not yet reached the use of reason, he had recourse to some curious

explanations. There was no help for it; they also must believe.

Probably they are enlightened at the moment of baptism, which, in

accordance with the Church’s ancient usage, must be administered to

them, and, by some Almighty action, are penetrated with that perception

of faith which is essential for the reception of this absolutely

necessary sacrament, After all, he argues, why should reason be

essential for faith? Is not reason really hostile to faith? Strange

indeed were the subterfuges in which he took refuge in order to evade

the consequences which Münzer and his party rightly drew from his

theses.[1075]

But in spite of all they might have in common, and notwithstanding his

being the actual father of the detestable Anabaptist error, he felt

himself removed far above the fanatics by a sense of superiority and

Divine support which no words could adequately express.

His conviction regarding his own supreme mission and his great gifts

and achievements, which increased in strength as he advanced in years,

derived further encouragement from the utter madness of the fanatics

and his success in overthrowing them.

No sooner had the unhappy Münzer been made prisoner and, after a

contrite Catholic confession, been beheaded at Mühlhausen, together

with Heinrich Pfeifer, a priest, and twenty-four rebels, than Luther

proclaimed the event throughout Germany in a pamphlet as a plain

judgment of God, which set a seal on his own Evangel and confirmed him

as the teacher of the truth.

In this work, entitled “A frightful story and Divine Judgment,”[1076]

he says: Had God spoken through him “this [his fall] would not have

occurred. For God does not lie but keeps His Word. Since then Thomas

Münzer has fallen, it is plain that he spoke and acted through the

devil while pretending to do so in the name of God.... More than five

thousand,” he continues, “rushed headlong to destruction of body

and soul. Alas! the pity of it all! This was what the devil wanted,

and what he is seeking in the case of the seditious peasants.” He

protests that, “he feels sorry that the people should thus have

perished in body and soul,” but he cannot help endorsing their eternal

reprobation, as far as in him lies; “to the end they remained hardened

in infidelity, perjury and blasphemy,”[1077] therefore if God has so

manifestly punished these “noxious, false prophets,” this must serve

to teach us to have a great regard for the “true Word of God.”

“I do not boast of an exalted spirit,” Luther says, comparing himself

with the fanatics and their like, but “I do glory in the great gifts

and graces of my God and of His Spirit, and I do so rightly, so I

think, and not without cause.... Münzer is indeed dead, but his spirit

is not yet exterminated.... The devil is not asleep, but continues to

send out sparks.... These preachers cannot control themselves, the

spirit has blinded them and taken them captive, therefore they are not

to be trusted.... Beware and take heed, for Satan has come among the

children of God!”[1078]

His self-confidence makes it as clear as daylight to him that he is the

true interpreter of the Word of God, whether against the survivors of

Münzer’s party or against the fickle phantasies of Carlstadt; this we

see particularly in the caustic, eloquent tracts he launched against

the latter: “To the Christians of Strasburg against the fanatics” and

“Against the heavenly Prophets.”

In the latter, a famous book which will be dealt with later when we

have to speak of Carlstadt (vol. iii., xix. 2), Luther attacks the

fanatics along the whole line and unconditionally lays claim to a

higher authority for his own personal illumination and his Evangel.

Yet he does not omit to point out, in view of the fact that so many

repudiated this Evangel, that its power can only be felt by those whose

consciences have been “humbled and perturbed.”

Never for a moment does he relinquish his claim, that his

interpretation of the Bible is the only true one:--

“What else was wanting in Münzer,” he says, “than that he did not

rightly expound the Word?... He should have taught the pure Gospel!...

It is a great art to be able to distinguish rightly between the Law

and the Gospel.... God’s Word is not all of the same sort, but is

diverse.... Whoever is able to distinguish rightly between the Law

and the Gospel is given a high place and called a Doctor of Holy

Scripture, for without the Holy Ghost it is impossible to make this

distinction. This I have experienced myself.... No Pope, or false

Christian, or fanatic, is able to separate these two [the Law and

the Gospel] one from the other.”[1079] But because he had the “Holy

Spirit,” Luther was able to make this supremely great discovery, and

found thereby the key to the Scriptures, on which alone he builds.

“I, for my part, have, by the grace of God, now effected so much that,

thanks be to God, boys and girls of fifteen know more of Christian

doctrine than all the Universities and Doctors previously did.” “I

have set men’s consciences at rest concerning penance, baptism,

prayer, crosses, life, death and the Sacrament of the Altar, and

also ordered the question of marriage, of secular authority, of the

relations of father and mother, wife and child, father and son, man

and maid--in short, every condition of life, so that all know how to

live and how to serve God according to one’s state.”[1080]

Given his achievements, Luther was not going too far when he spoke of

himself repeatedly as a “great doctor.”[1081] He also showed himself

extremely sensitive, as we shall soon see, to the attempts of the

sectarians and fanatics to deprive him of the honour of the first

place, to discredit his discovery of the Gospel, and either to crown

themselves with his laurels and possess themselves of the fruits of

his struggles, or, at his expense, to invent novelties and launch them

on the world. Seeing that Christ is “destroying the Papacy” through

him and is bringing it to its “_exspiravit_,” i.e. to the last gasp,

he is naturally annoyed to learn that there are other spokesmen of the

new faith who refuse to follow him without question, and who cause

“a great falling away from his preaching and much slanderous talk.

There are some, who after having read a page or two or listened to a

sermon, without further ado take it on themselves to be overbearing

and to reproach others, telling them that their conduct is not that

of the followers of the Gospel.” This, he declares, he himself had

“never taught anyone,” rather, as St. Paul also had done, he had

“strictly forbidden it. They merely act in this way because they are

desirous of novelties.... They misapply Holy Scripture to their own

conceits.”[1082]

All this he says when actually declaring that he has no wish to set

himself above anyone, or to be “any man’s master.”

There was scarcely one among the many teachers of the innovations who

dared to differ from him whom Luther did not liken to the devil. “I

have had more than thirty doctors of the fanatics opposing me,” he

said on one occasion, “all anxious to be my instructors”; all these

he had driven before him like chaff and vanquished the “devil” in

them.[1083]

“Münzer, Carlstadt, Campanus and such fellows, together with the

factious spirits and sects, are merely devils incarnate, for all their

efforts are directed to doing harm and avenging themselves.”[1084]

Himself he looks upon as the champion of God against the devil,

raised, as it were, to the pinnacle of the temple. It is the devil

whom by heavenly power he repels and shames in the fanatics who arise

in his camp. “Satan,” he says to them, “cannot conceal himself.”[1085]

“Such fellows are beguiled by the devil.”[1086] Johann Agricola, a

comrade of his, he delivers over to Satan, because he differed from

him in some points of doctrine: “He goes on his way, all devoted to

Satan as he is, sowing seeds of enmity against us.”[1087] Luther

warns him that he may become a martyr, but like Arius and Satan, whom

Christ punishes. “Good God, what utter malice! These heretics say of

me what the Manichæans said of Christ, viz. that Christ had indeed the

Holy Spirit but only in an imperfect degree, whereas they themselves

possessed it in its perfection.”[1088]

Caspar Schwenckfeld, like Agricola, he esteemed an heretical

theologian desirous of innovations, “a mad fool possessed by the

devil”; “it is the devil who spews and excretes his works.” Luther’s

malediction on this heretical devil runs, “May God’s curse light on

thee, Satan, thy spirit which called thee forth, be with thee to

thy destruction.”[1089] Michael Stiefel, the Lutheran preacher and

fanatic, is also no less possessed of the devil. “It is soon over

with a man,” Luther laments over this old friend, “when the devil

possesses him in this way.”[1090] Even Zwingli and the Zwinglians are

also possessed through and through by the devil and are the servants

of Satan.[1091] All who do not agree with him, but set up their own

ideas, merely show that the devil is at work in the world. “This is

how the work of the devil goes on. In twenty years I have met more

than fifty sectarians desirous of teaching me, but God has preserved

me, He Who said of St. Paul, ‘I will show him how great things he must

suffer for my name’s sake’” (Acts ix. 16).[1092]

It is these men whom the devil [of pride] carries high up “in the air

and sets on the pinnacle of the temple.”[1093]

We must cut short this string of Luther’s utterances and quote some of

the words of his opponents. What Thomas Münzer said in reply is the

reverse of feeble, but at least it gives us a good idea of the way in

which controversies were conducted in those days. Thomas Münzer, in his

printed reply to Luther referred to above,[1094] is manifestly angry

that Luther should stamp all who contradict him as devils.

“That most ambitious, lying scribe Dr. Luther,” he says, becomes, “the

longer he lives, more of an arrogant fool, shields himself behind

Holy Scripture and utilises it to his advantage in the most deceitful

manner.”[1095]

The greatest of all crimes is that “no attention is paid to the

commands of the Pope of Wittenberg,” Münzer remarks sarcastically;

Luther was putting himself up “in place of the Pope,” while at the

same time “he curried favour with the Princes”; “you, you new Pope,

make them presents of convents and churches.” “You have distracted

all Christendom with a false religion and now, when it is necessary,

are unable to control it” except with the help of the rulers. He was

introducing “a new system of logic-chopping with the Word of God”; he

is desirous of “managing everything by the Word” and exalts himself

as though he had not come into the world in the ordinary way but had

“sprung from the brain.” He speaks of “our safeguard and protection”

as though he himself were a Prince; with his “fantastic reason” he was

working mischief, while making a great display of humility; he makes

much of his own “simplicity,” but this resembled that of the fox, or

of an onion which has nine skins. All his adversaries he labelled as

“devils,” but he himself raved and ranted like a hound of hell, and

if he did not raise an open revolt this was merely because, like the

serpent, he glided over the rocks.[1096]

Equally remarkable are the words addressed to Luther by Valentine

Ickelsamer, one of the leaders of the fanatics. He tells Luther that

his preaching only goes half-way, for it proclaims the right of

private judgment in things Divine, but not for all men, and “confuses

the people” by its want of logic and instability. Ickelsamer himself

is determined to speak, “because the Evangel gives us freedom of

belief and the power of judging.” Not only does he find numerous

“Scriptural utterances which are against Luther’s views,” but he also

inveighs strongly against the gigantic pride which leads Luther to

“desire that everyone should look to him”; his self-exaltation leads

him to commit the gravest “injustice and tyranny.” “Settle yourself

comfortably in the Papal Chair” he cries to Luther, “for after all you

only want to listen to your own singing.” Your obstinacy is such, he

says, that you would have no scruple in contradicting the statement

“Christ is God” “were you unfavourably disposed” towards its author.

Would it not be a good thing if “Our Lord God were to smash the idols

and set you up in their place?”[1097]

In spite of all remonstrances Luther continued, nevertheless, to

compare his adversaries to mere devils. The devil beguiles them to

employ their reason, to seek the reason (“_Quare_”) of the articles of

faith. Such words are tantamount to an attack on theology in general.

“The ‘_Quare_,’” he says, “leads us into all the unhappiness and heresy

by which our first parents were deceived by the devil in Paradise....

Verily we deserve to be crowned with coltsfoot for being so foolish and

falling so readily into the snare when the devil comes along with his

old ‘_Quare_.’”[1098]

“They are lost [the fanatics], they are the devil’s own.”[1099]

On the other hand, Luther makes the devil confirm his own mission.

“The devil has been dreading this for years and smelt the roast from

afar; he also sent forth many prophecies against it, some of which

apply to me so that I often marvel at his great malice. He would also

have liked,to kill me.”[1100] The devil desired Luther’s death simply

in order to rid himself of his fine preaching.

Another familiar thought which seemed to have an irresistible

attraction for him frequently intervenes to confirm this theory. My

interior sufferings, he says repeatedly, and my struggles with the

devil, set the seal of most certain assurance on my teaching, and this

seal the fanatics do not possess.

Here comes Campanus, he says of a refractory theologian in his ranks,

and “makes himself out to be the only man who is sure of everything”;

“he prides himself on being certain upon all matters and of never

being at a loss”; Campanus condemns him as a “liar and diabolical

man,” and of this he was “as sure as that God is God.” And yet this

Campanus has “never passed through any struggle, nor had a tussle

with the devil, and actually glories in the fact.”[1101] On the other

hand, he himself, he says, had been “tried by the devil” and proved by

“temptation”; that is the true test and is essential for every real

“student of theology”; “for as soon as God’s Word dawns upon you, the

devil is sure to try you, and in this way you become a doctor in very

truth.”[1102]

“But those whom the devil takes captive by false doctrine and a

factious spirit, he holds tight. He takes possession of their heart,

making them deaf and blind, so that they neither see nor hear

anything, and do not pay any heed to the plain, clear and manifest

testimony of Holy Scripture; for they are so tightly caught in his

clutches that they cannot be torn away.”[1103] At first heretics do

not see where Satan is taking them. “They put forward the antecedent

most devoutly and with a simulated peace of conscience. Thereupon

the devil draws a consequence, which they [the factious spirits] had

never dreamt of. Johann Agricola, for instance, does not see the

consequence. But the devil is a capital dialectician and has already

built up the syllogism, antecedent, consequence and all. And yet we

still lull ourselves into a false security and think that the devil

is not governing the world.”[1104] Luther refers the prejudice of

heretics in favour of their errors to a kind of bewitchment by the

devil, for if the devil is able to bewitch the bodily senses, as

Luther was convinced he could, then he will also be able, “expert and

dangerous adept” as he is, to take captive the hearts and consciences

of men “with still greater ease.” “What is nothing but a lie, heresy

and horrid darkness, they take for plain, pure truth and are not to be

moved from their ideas by any exhortations or remonstrance.... They

behave like those parents in the legend of St. Macarius, who, owing

to a delusion of the devil, took their daughter for a cow, until they

were at last set free from the spell.... Thus the devil in such people

effects by false doctrine what he is otherwise wont to bring about by

means of delusive pictures and fancies.”[1105]

We will here conclude with a family scene. On one occasion, in 1544,

Luther, in the presence of Catherine von Bora, poured out his ire

against Schwenckfeld for his want of acquiescence in his doctrines:

“He is ‘_attonitus_’ [moonstruck], like all the fanatics,” he says of

him. “He spurts the grand name of Christ over the people and wants me

to bow low before him. I thank God I am better off, however, for I know

my Christ well, and have no need of this man’s filth.” Here Catherine

interrupted him: “But, my dear Sir, that is really too rude.” Luther

replied: “They are my masters in rudeness. It is necessary to speak so

to the devil; he can make an end of this fanaticism,” etc.... “He leads

the Churches astray, though from God he has received neither command

nor mission! The mad, devil-possessed fool does not even know what he

is talking about.... Of the muck the devil spews and excretes through

his booklet I have had quite enough.”[1106]

7. Progress of the Apostasy. Diets of Spires (1529) and Augsburg (1530)

The Imperial Edict, issued after the Diet of Nuremberg and dated

February 8, 1523, had decreed, that the Gospel should be preached

agreeably to the teaching of the Christian Church.

At the Diet of Nuremberg, in 1524, it had been enacted that the edict

against Luther promulgated at Worms was to stand and to be enforced

as far as was possible; the Pope was also to be requested to summon

a General Council to meet in Germany, but, before this, it was to be

decided at a religious convention, meeting at Spires in the same year,

what attitude should be assumed towards the doctrines called into

question. Against this decree Luther published an angry, turbulent

pamphlet entitled, “Two unequal and contradictory commands.”[1107] He

therein showed that the orders of the Diet were self-contradictory; for

it was absurd to uphold the Edict of Worms in all its severity and yet

at the same time to reserve the decision regarding Luther’s doctrine to

the assembly at Spires.[1108]

He went, however, much further and attacked the authority of the

Estates and of the Emperor. On the other hand, at the conclusion of the

Diet, the Dukes William and Lewis of Bavaria, and twelve bishops of

South Germany, at the instance of Lorenzo Campeggio, the Papal Legate,

and Archduke Ferdinand, had met together and agreed to carry out the

Edict of Worms as far as they were able, and at the same time to

inaugurate a wholesome reform of morals amongst both clergy and people.

“By means of this agreement the temporal and spiritual Princes hoped

to maintain unimpaired the religious unity of the German Nation and to

insure internal tranquillity in their dominions.”[1109] Dissension for

a while prevented others from joining the league.

The indecision of the Diets was due not only to lack of unity among

the Catholics, but to a variety of other causes: to political

considerations, the state of general unrest, the need of adopting

measures against the Turks, the apprehensions of the Estates, and,

finally, to religious indifference.

The Diet of Spires, in 1526, decreed in language no less ambiguous,

that the Edict of Worms was to remain in force until a General Council

could be summoned, and that the sovereigns and Estates of the Empire

should “live, govern and conduct themselves as they hoped to answer

for it to God and His Majesty [the Emperor].” This cannot be read “as

implying that the evangelicals were given a formal right to separate

themselves from the communion with the Church and to set about the work

of reformation on their own account.”[1110]

The Diet held subsequently at Spires, in 1529, opposed the

anti-Catholic interpretation placed on the resolutions of 1526 and the

way in which they had been enforced. It pointed out the inconveniences

which had been their result, and sought earnestly to improve the

position of affairs.[1111] The article of 1526, it declared, had

been interpreted, during the time that had since elapsed, in a most

regrettable manner, “as an excuse for all sorts of shocking new

doctrines and sects” and had served as a cloak for “apostasy, strife,

dissension and wickedness”; wherefore it was to be rescinded and

certain other enactments put into force.

Then follow the resolutions of the Diet of Spires, accepted by the

Catholic majority and published with the Imperial sanction, against

which the Lutheran Princes and Estates raised the “Protest” from which

Protestantism took its name.

Foremost among these resolutions is the following: Those who had

previously adhered to the Edict of Worms, “are determined to abide by

the same until the future Council shall be convened and to insist upon

their subjects doing so too.” Further, it was enacted by the Estates,

that, “where the new teaching had been introduced and could not be

abolished without notable revolt, trouble and danger,” “novelties”

were to be avoided until the assembly of the Council. Thirdly, in

places where the new teaching was in force the Blessed Sacrament in

particular was not to be assailed or preached against (as it was by

the Zwinglians), neither were people to be hindered from attending

Mass. After more stringent measures had been sanctioned against the

Anabaptists and “those who attempted to stir up the people to revolt

against the authorities,” for the preservation of peace in matters

of religion it was further determined that, “no ruler might take the

subjects of another ruler under his protection whether for reasons of

belief or for any other.” What had been enacted at Worms was to remain

in full force, but “if any Estate should commit a deed of violence”

the Kammergericht was empowered to pronounce sentence of outlawry on

the offenders.

The latter enactments were occasioned by the preparations made by the

Lutheran Estates to unite themselves still more closely in a common

League.

Against these resolutions as a whole the party in the Reichstag which

sided with the promoters of the innovations raised, on April 19, 1529,

the “Protest” which has since become famous; they declared at the same

time that it was impossible for them to countenance any alteration in

the favourable Edict of 1526. Previous to the departure of their rulers

and representatives, the Saxon Electorate, and Hesse, and the cities of

Strasburg, Ulm and Nuremberg entered, on April 22, into the “particular

secret agreement” concerning mutual armed resistance to any attack

which might be made upon them in the “cause of the Word of God” by the

Swabian League, the Kammergericht or the Empire.

In a Memorandum of the same year, also signed by Melanchthon, Luther

approved the action of his Elector and sought to justify it from the

theological point of view; “first, and principally, on the ground, that

His Princely Highness [by accepting the Edict of Spires of 1529] would

have been acting contrary to His Highness’ conscience and condemning

the doctrines which he acknowledged before God to be both Christian

and wholesome.” He also seeks to pacify the Prince by instancing the

terrible abuses of the Papal Church in Germany, which had been so

happily removed by the new teaching and which he ought not to use his

authority to “re-establish or maintain.”[1112]

In the Reichstagsabschied there was, however, no question of the

maintenance of abuses, and, only to Luther, could the retention of

the Mass appear as the maintenance of an “abuse”; it was much more a

question of checking, for a time, the advance of the innovations and

the propaganda of the Lutherans and of securing the legal rights of

Catholics, more particularly in those districts where the new religious

system was already in being.

The protesters might have accepted such a settlement without in any

way sacrificing their claims to equity, had they really been desirous

of justice and of coming to an agreement. Melanchthon himself, in his

own name and that of his friends, could well write: “The Articles in

the Imperial resolution do not press hard upon us.”[1113] Luther’s

opinion, on the other hand, was quite different; it was only his

defiant attitude and their own obstinate determination to resist the

terms offered them which prevented the protesters from accepting the

resolution in question. Their action, however, tended to excite men’s

minds still further. They appealed to their conscience: “What would our

assent be,” they declared in the Protest, “but a public denial of our

Lord and Saviour Christ and His sacred Word, which there is no doubt we

now possess in all its purity, simplicity and justice?”

They then made the attitude they had thus assumed an excuse for

refusing assistance against the Turks, notwithstanding the fact that

news had already reached Spires that the Turkish fleet was cruising

off the coasts of Sicily and threatening Western Christendom. “It

is an undeniable fact, that they would not promise to render aid

against the Turks unless the Catholic Estates of the Empire arrived

at some other conclusion concerning the religious question than that

under discussion, which they declared it was impossible for them to

accept.”[1114]

Such was the position of affairs when, in the summer of 1530, the

much-talked-of Reichstag at Augsburg was entrusted with the task of

bringing about the practical reconciliation of those who had separated

from communion with the Church. In the event of failure the Emperor

held out the prospect of the employment of sterner measures.

Luther and his followers agreed to the negotiations, but with the

so-called “proviso of the Gospel,” i.e. stipulating that the plain

Gospel, the Word of God, should not be tampered with.

What a grand temple of peace the old Augsburg Rathaus, with its

assembly-room for the forty-two members of the Reichstag, might have

become! In that case what significance the solemn procession of the

Blessed Sacrament, which, accompanied by the Catholic Princes and

Estates, passed through the streets of the city on the Feast of

Corpus Christi, would have possessed. Intentionally the feast had

been celebrated with a pomp and concourse of people such as had never

before been witnessed in the city, for was it not to symbolise the

establishment of religious unity? As it was, however, the work of

pacification completely miscarried, owing to the stubbornness of Luther

and his party.

Luther himself remained in the background during the proceedings.

He stayed in a place of safety at the Castle of Coburg, situated on

the Elector’s territory but sufficiently near to the city where the

Reichstag was held. His principal representative at Augsburg was

Melanchthon, who distinguished himself by his supple and politic

behaviour. In the afternoon of June 25, he caused the famous “Augsburg

Confession,” of which he was himself the author, to be read in the

Rathaus in the presence of the Estates of the Empire.[1115] The names

of the Elector and Prince Johann Frederick of Saxony, of Margrave

George of Brandenburg, of Dukes Franz and Ernest of Lüneburg, of

Landgrave Philip of Hesse, of Prince Wolfgang of Anhalt and of the

representatives of the Imperial cities of Nuremberg and Reutlingen were

appended to the document.

When, during the sessions, the new faith and the steps to be taken

towards peace came to be discussed, Melanchthon, greatly to the

surprise of the Catholics, spoke as though the spiritual jurisdiction

of the bishops was to be recognised by the Protestant party. The Papal

Legate wrote letters to Rome which aroused high hopes, at least in the

minds of the more sanguine. It was only gradually that the Catholic

party at Augsburg became convinced of the fact that they must exercise

the utmost caution. The ambiguity of the promises made by Melanchthon

rested on the fact, that acknowledgment of jurisdiction was tacitly

restricted to those bishops who should declare themselves in favour of

the new faith.

Melanchthon also made use of equivocation in the official document

just referred to, i.e. in the Augsburg Confession of Faith (cp. vol.

iii., xviii. 1). In the further negotiations with his opponents he

was “only too much inclined to agree to ambiguous formularies and

to make concessions not honestly compatible with the constantly

repeated ‘proviso,’ that nothing contrary to the Gospel was to be

conceded.”[1116] When, however, he showed himself shaky even with

regard to the sacrificial character of the Mass, the anxious Lutherans

at Augsburg thought it time to draw Luther’s attention to the matter.

It was pointed out to him by Lazarus Spengler that “our representatives

at Augsburg are going rather too far” in their concessions to the

demands of the Catholics.

Luther would not sanction any actual yielding, but was not averse to

a little diplomacy. He replied to Spengler, on August 28: “I have

written to him [Melanchthon] about this once before and am now writing

to him again, but hope that there is no real need. For though Christ

may appear to be somewhat weak, this does not mean that He is pushed

out of His seat.... Though too much may have been conceded--as may

be the case--still, the cause is not lost, on the contrary, a new

struggle has been entered upon that our adversaries may be convinced

how honestly they have acted. For nothing may be conceded above and

beyond the Gospel, whichever party’s ‘_insidiæ_’ hold the field; for,

in the proviso concerning the Gospel, ‘_insidiæ_’ are embodied other

than those which our adversaries can employ against us. For what is the

wisdom of man as compared with that of God? Therefore let your mind

be at rest; we can have conceded nothing contrary to the Gospel. But

if our supporters concede anything against the Gospel, then the devil

himself will seize on that, as you will see.”[1117]

This remarkable letter, with its allusions to the weakness of Christ,

the proviso of the Gospel and the successful “_insidiæ_,” calls for

some further consideration. Luther reckoned on two things, as we

shall see from his instructions to be quoted immediately. First, that

the best way to escape from the difficult situation created by the

Reichstag was to make general statements, which, however, were not

to surrender any part of the new teaching; he was anxious to pursue

this course in order to secure freedom for the Evangel, or at least

some delay in the condemnation of his cause. Secondly, that though at

Augsburg the evangelical spokesmen might be forced to give up some

part of the new teaching, yet this would be invalid, since against the

Gospel nothing can stand.

One can scarcely fail to see that one and the other of these

calculations militated against any serious, practical result of the

negotiations. They could only succeed in retarding any settlement of

the question, though any delay would of course tend to strengthen

Luther’s cause.

We have also a Latin letter of Luther’s to Melanchthon, bearing the

same date (August 28), which throws even more light on their treatment

of the Diet of Augsburg.

The letter describes the painful embarrassment in which Melanchthon

found himself placed as intermediary after the advances and concessions

he had made at Augsburg. Luther encourages him with strange arguments:

“I am reassured by the thought, that you cannot have committed anything

worse than a sin against our own person, so that we may be accused of

perfidy and fickleness. But what then? The constancy and truth of our

cause will soon set that right. I trust this will not be the case,

but I say, should it be, even then we should have no need to despair.

For when once we have evaded the peril and are at peace, then we can

easily atone for our tricks and failings (‘_dolos ac lapsus nostros_’),

because His [God’s] mercy is over us. ‘Expect the Lord, do manfully and

let thy heart take courage, and wait thou for the Lord’” (Psalm xxvi.

14).[1118]

This highly questionable counsel refers to the second of Luther’s

calculations mentioned above. He was not, however, forgetful of

the first, and expressly tells Melanchthon that he will best elude

difficulties by the general statement that “they were ready to give to

God what was God’s, and to the Kaiser what was the Kaiser’s.... Let

them [the opposition] prove what they assert, viz. that God and the

Emperor were on their side.” “Let them show that what they demand is

according to the Word of God”; should they succeed, then they will have

a right to hold the field, because all they were anxious to do was to

obey the Word of God. With Luther, however, the Word of God was not

really the Word of God itself, but what he understood by the Word of

God. We cannot wonder if Catholics stigmatised this form of speaking as

mere “dissimulation.” Nor can it be matter of surprise that far-seeing

Catholic representatives at Augsburg dreaded some snare on the part

of the protesters. Luther’s conception of the “proviso of the Gospel”

which, according to his letter to Spengler, was under any circumstances

to lead to the success of his cause, certainly shows their suspicions

to have been amply justified. Luther was, however, wrong in imputing to

them any wish to make use of similar “_insidiæ_” against his cause.

In a Latin letter of the same date Luther pointed out to his friend

Jonas, who was also one of the theologians then at Augsburg, the course

he himself had pursued at the Diet of Worms as the best example and

rule to be followed at Augsburg. At Worms Luther had appealed in the

presence of the Empire to the Word of God as binding on his conscience.

“Whatever you may concede [to the opposition],” he says to Jonas,

“never forget to except the Gospel, as I did at Worms, for here the

circumstances are quite similar.” Previous to this he had said: “Christ

watches over His honour, though we may perhaps be asleep to our shame.

Let them boast that you have yielded much, for they do not understand

that they have not got the one and only thing for which we really care

[the Gospel]. Let them have their way, those spectre-monks of Spires,”

he adds in German.[1119]

Nevertheless, in his letter of September 23, 1530, to the pastor

of Zwickau, Nicholas Hausmann, Luther speaks of the readiness of

his party to make concessions in the matter of the bishops, as of

a serious and important matter: the Catholic party had required

concessions of them which could only be described as “filthy, shameful

and degrading.” “Our party have rejected their offers absolutely.”

And he continues in the same serious tone: “They offered to admit the

jurisdiction of the bishops again, if these would see that the Gospel

was taught and all abuses done away with; some festivals also were to

be retained. Nothing, however, came of it. Our foes are determined

upon their own destruction; their inevitable fate hangs over their

heads.”[1120]

What he says to the Landgrave Philip of Hesse scarcely a month

later, on looking back upon this matter, is less mystical and more

diplomatic. The latter had expressed his “surprise” at the position

which had been taken up at Augsburg towards the Catholics, and Luther

was forced to seek an excuse. Here he represents the offers made as

a mere pretence and thus comes, as a matter of fact, nearer to the

truth than in the aforesaid letter to his zealous admirer Hausmann,

which was anything but true to fact. We should assuredly have been

guilty of a “fault,” he says, and have acted to the detriment of our

party, had our advances been accepted, but of that there was little

fear; now, however, we profit by our offer, for we can represent

ourselves as having been badly treated and thus we get an advantage

of the Papists. “I trust that Your Highness will not take offence,”

so runs the passage, “that we offered to accept certain things, such

as fasting, festivals, meats and chants, for we knew well that they

could not accept any such offer, and it serves to raise our repute

still further and enables me in my booklet to paint their disrepute

still more forcibly. It would indeed have been a mistake on our part

had the offer been accepted.”[1121] The Protestant author of the

“Hessische Kirchengeschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation” thinks it

necessary to make this extenuating remark: “The fact that Luther was

here seeking to excuse himself will serve to explain the wording of

this letter concerning his behaviour during the negotiations with

the Catholics, which otherwise might be easily misunderstood.” He

thinks there was no question of any original intention of taking

advantage of his opponents’ good faith, but that Luther, merely as an

afterthought, sought “to represent this as having been all along his

intention.”[1122] But does this really suffice to establish Luther’s

honesty and uprightness in the business?

In agreement with what he had said to Philip of Hesse, in his

“Warnunge an seine lieben Deudschen” (below, p. 391), which he was

then writing, or at least thinking of, Luther made every effort “to

enhance our repute” by instancing the ostensibly so conciliatory

attitude of the evangelicals at Augsburg. He there speaks of the

“humility, patience and pleading” which they “exhibited”;[1123] “our

prayers and pleas for peace” were, however, “lost upon these obstinate

men.” “The Papists,” he declared further on, quite untruly, had

refused to hear of peace, truth or reproof, but, “with their heads

down,” insisted upon waging war or raising a revolt. “Our offers, our

prayers, our cries for peace” were all wasted. He gives no details

concerning the spirit in which these “offers” were made.

The Emperor’s attempts to bring about peace at the Diet of Augsburg,

under the circumstances described above, were doomed to failure. It

was impossible for the Reichstag to bridge over the chasm which was

intentionally and artfully kept open by Luther and his party. The

final resolutions which were drawn up in due form and proclaimed by

the Emperor on November 19, declared that in matters of faith no

innovations might be introduced; worship, in particular the ritual of

the sacraments, the Mass and Veneration of the Saints, was to remain as

before until a decision by an Œcumenical Council; any interference with

or injury to churches and convents was forbidden; married priests were

to be removed from their posts and punished; preachers were only to be

appointed by the bishop; books were not to be printed without being

submitted to the censors, etc. The enactment, that Church property

which had been seized by the innovators should be returned without

delay, was a source of particular displeasure to Luther’s friends.

According to Luther the devil had triumphed at the Reichstag. “The

spectre-monks of Spires,” to use his own expression, i.e. the spirits

of hell, according to him, threatened his enterprise with destruction.

The apparition of the phantom monks of Spires was one of the

manifestations of diabolical animosity towards his teaching which

troubled Luther greatly at that time, in his lonely retreat of Coburg.

We here see the curious spirit-world in which he lived. A whole troop

of fiends disguised as monks, so he had been reliably informed, had

come to the Rhine at Spires at the beginning of the Diet of Augsburg

and had been ferried across the river on the pretext that “they were

from Cologne and wished to attend the Diet at Augsburg. But,” so the

story ran, “when they had crossed over, they all suddenly vanished,

so that they are believed to have been nothing but a band of evil

spirits.”[1124] Melanchthon looked upon the apparition of the “monks

of Spires” as the presage of a “terrible revolt.”[1125] His son-in-law,

George Sabinus, wrote a description of the incident in verse. Luther

himself was probably more inclined to look upon these spectres as

devils, because he had personally seen an apparition of the devil at

Coburg, where Satan had appeared in the garden below his window under

the form of a serpentine streak of light (cp. vol. vi., xxxvi. 3).

He was at that time dominated by fear and dread, partly owing to the

proceedings at the Reichstag, partly on account of the unfortunate

termination of the religious conference with Zwingli at Marburg,[1126]

where no understanding had been reached regarding the chief point

under dispute, and partly also because in his solitude his old inward

“temptations” and mental depression were again tormenting him. He

was also suffering much from the result of overwork. A malady due to

nervous exhaustion had, in 1527, so enfeebled him as to bring him to

the verge of the grave. The malady now returned with similar, though

less severe, symptoms. The spiritual desolation and fear, which were

the consequence of his doubts, now again assailed him as they had done

after his previous illness in 1527. Of this condition, Melanchthon, to

whom it was familiar enough, wrote to Dietrich, that one could not hope

to dispel it by human means, but only by recourse to prayer.[1127]

“Satan has sent me his emissaries,” Luther himself says of his

sufferings; “I was alone, Veit and Cyriacus were absent, and Satan was

so far successful as to drive me out of the room and force me to go

amongst the people.” He compares his mental state to a land dried up by

heat and wind and thirsting for water.[1128]

He observed to Melanchthon that as a rule he was weaker in such

personal combats than when it was a question of the common weal, or

of his public work.[1129] This may serve to correct those historians

who have nothing but “praise for Luther’s assurance and cheerfulness”

during the time when at Augsburg his cause stood in such imminent

danger.

Luther’s letters, previous to the breaking off of his followers’

pretended negotiations at Augsburg, certainly do not breathe a

spirit of interior peace. He says, for instance, to Jonas: “I am

actually bursting with anger and indignation (‘_pæne rumpor ira et

indignatione_’). I beseech you to cut the matter short and come back

home. They have our Confession and the Gospel. If they wish they can

accept them, if not let them depart.” Then there follows in the Latin

epistle a characteristic exclamation in German: “If war is to come, let

it come, we have prayed and done enough. The Lord has given them over

to us as a holocaust in order ‘to reward them according to their works’

[2 Tim. iv. 14]; us, His people,” Luther concludes, “He will save even

from the fiery furnace of Babylon. Forgive me, I pray, my Jonas, for

spewing out all this annoyance of mine into your lap; but what I have

written for you is meant for all.”[1130]

That it was indeed meant for all he showed by publishing, in 1531, in

anticipation of the “war” and in order that his party might not become

a “holocaust,” the “Warnunge Doctoris Martini Luther an seine lieben

Deudschen.”[1131] In this work, while indulging in the most virulent

abuse of the Reichstag, he declares, that in the event of a war or

tumult no assistance was to be rendered to the Papists; legitimate

self-defence demanded that such attacks should be met by resistance.

The determination shown by Luther after the Diet of Augsburg to

withstand the whole authority of the Empire is plainly manifest

even now in the vehemence of the tracts which he proceeded to throw

broadcast among the people. His purpose was to foster among the masses

a spirit of opposition which should be a constant menace to peace.

Losing no time, he at once attacked the Imperial Abschied in a special

pamphlet, “Auff das vermeint keiserlich Edict,”[1132] which immediately

followed the “Warnunge” and was soon being read throughout the German

lands.

It is true that at the beginning he here affirms that it is not his

wish to “write against his Imperial Majesty or any of the authorities,

temporal or spiritual.” Yet the whole work is nothing but a piece

of frightful abuse against the decision arrived at by Charles V and

against those Estates of the realm which had confirmed it. It is a

mere artifice when he declares that he is merely inveighing against

“traitors and other miscreants,” whether “Princes or Bishops, who work

their deeds of wickedness in the name of the Emperor,” “particularly

against that arch-knave, Pope Clement [VII] and his servant Campegius,”

for all the while, now with satire, now in deadly earnest, he is

really attacking the Reichstag and the authority of the Empire.

Incidentally we may mention that, quite oblivious of the Imperial

command, he had launched this pamphlet amongst the people without

submitting it to the censorship, and that in the very title he speaks

of the “supposed Edict,” though it was a question of an Edict issued

in due form and signed and sealed by the Emperor. His distortions

and misrepresentations, both of historical truth and of the Catholic

doctrine as put forward at the Reichstag, are so gross that they

deserve to be chronicled here.

Some of his misstatements were at once pointed out to him, in 1531, by

Franz Arnoldi, parish-priest at Cöllen, near Meissen, in the “Antwort

auf das Büchlein,” printed at Dresden, probably at the instance

of Duke George of Saxony.[1133] “As many lies as words,” exclaims

Arnoldi;[1134] “the devil, the father of lies and murderer of the human

race,” was anxious to support Luther by means of the “dissensions,

disagreements and revolts” which had already been stirred up, and, for

this purpose, had sent this shocking booklet among the people through

the agency of his “familiar and customary instrument and tool, Martin

Luther, that barrel brimful of abuse and slander.” Over and over

again Arnoldi expresses his conviction in the strongest and coarsest

language, that “the apostate undoubtedly worked under the devil’s own

direction.”[1135] Luther’s proceedings do not, however, stand out with

sufficient clearness in Arnoldi’s tract; indeed, the author was not

competent to grapple with the task he undertook. For instance, he fails

to show by examples how Luther, all through his pamphlet, makes use of

dishonest devices. Thus Luther represents the Imperial Recess as laying

it down that everything which the Lutherans opposed was certain on

the strength of the Gospel, or of a special inspiration received by

the Pope, and that this applied even to real ecclesiastical abuses, to

say nothing of certain pious customs not affecting the faith. Hoping

to mislead the people, Luther tells them that whoever refuses to take

Holy Water has, according to the Reichstag, fallen under sentence

of death; that, according to the same source, “befoulment with holy

things, pilgrimages and such-like” is a true revelation; that festivals

and fasts, cowls and tonsure, payments to Rome and pious brotherhoods,

come, according to the Papists, from the Gospel, in fact, constitute

their only Gospel. By his “inspirations” the Pope sets himself above

Holy Scripture, just as he makes himself Emperor and sets himself above

the Emperor, particularly in “secular government.” In support of this

last statement he cites the Decretals, though his references prove

nothing of the sort but rather the reverse.[1136]

It will be worth our while to examine rather more closely Luther’s

system of polemics as it appears in his work “Auff das vermeint

keiserlich Edict.” Its utter unfairness was, indeed, calculated to

rouse the masses to a pitch in which deeds of violence were to be

expected.

Seeing that the Edict promulgated by the Reichstag merely leads people

to “blaspheme God day and night,” it were better to be a Turk than

a Christian under such a banner. The Edict “abuses and slanders the

married state”--because it does not tolerate those priests who “live a

dishonourable life or with dishonourable women.” It brings to nought

the Word of God because it will not allow those to preach who teach,

like himself, “that which is in accordance with faith in Christ.” It

entirely degrades the authorities by inciting them only to “murder,

burn, drown, hang and expel” the people. “Let no one,” he says, “be

apprehensive of this Edict which they have so shamefully invented and

promulgated” in the name of the pious Emperor, for in real truth it is

the veriest devil’s dung.

Many other almost incredible misrepresentations accompany his

stream of eloquence. Bishops, cardinals and popes were merely

squandering Church property “on women of easy virtue, on feasting

and debauchery,” whereas Luther and his followers employed for good

purposes such possessions of the Church as they had appropriated.

If they did not hold them in very high esteem this was because so

much “blasphemy” still adhered to them. The monks were stifled in

their holiness-by-works; they were convinced, for instance, that they

had infallibly won heaven by merely donning the religious habit.

The clergy were a mere herd of “hogs and debauchees.” Many of his

statements were made expressly to excite the contempt and laughter

of the masses. The clerical doctrine of good works, for instance,

consisted in believing that whoever inadvertently swallowed a drop of

water or a gnat before communion, was not permitted to approach the

sacrament. According to him the clergy declared that “whoever had a

smudge on his rochet was guilty of a mortal sin.” Of himself and his

preaching on faith he has it, that “he insisted more upon good works

than Popery had ever done”; nevertheless, he would not have men seek

salvation in their works without Christ, as the Pope taught, and as

the sophistical authors of the Edict, “those imperial clerks and

poets,” believed.

Incidentally he seeks to lead the misguided people, who had no

opinions of their own, to believe that the Catholic spokesmen who

had rejected his doctrine of the slavery of the will, did not even

know what the question at issue really was. They do not know “what

free-will is; the Universities still disagree on the subject.... These

great, rude, blockheads condemn what they themselves admit they do not

understand”--as though, forsooth, a difference regarding the exact

definition and meaning involved a doubt as to the existence of freedom.

In their Edict they condemn my doctrine of justification, he cries,

though they themselves clearly recognise the contrary and, in the

secret of their hearts, are on my side, knowing well that their

boasts are but idle lies. In confident tones he asserts that he has

been defamed by sophistical charges of supporting doctrines which

were altogether strange to him and which he had never defended;--in

point of fact, these charges were not levelled at him at all, but

against the Anabaptists and others; he makes out the Edict to contain

contradictions,--of which in reality not the slightest trace is

to be found. The Catholic declaration that to receive communion

under both kinds is in itself allowable, he distorts into a general

permission. Because the giving of the chalice was no longer part of

the discipline of the Church, he calls the Popes spiritual robbers of

the faithful and overt enemies of their salvation. Add to this his

misinterpretation of Bible passages, the pious tone artfully assumed

here and there, his deliberate passing over in silence of certain

questionable points, and his pretence of awaiting the decision of a

general Council.

What has been quoted is sufficient to show the stratagems to which the

author has recourse at the expense of truth, and the doubtful methods

employed by him in his popular controversial writings. Yet this

work is by a long way not the most violent and malicious specimen of

Luther’s literary output.

We may wonder whether Luther, in the stress of his controversial

struggle, was fully aware of the glaring dishonesty of his utterances.

Certain it is that he was frequently carried away by anger and

excitement. Some daring misrepresentations and inventions he reiterated

so often that he may at last have come to believe them. Without some

inward obsession playing upon his imagination such a phenomenon is

almost inexplicable.

Although the contents of Luther’s “Warnunge an die Deudschen” and

“Auff das vermeint keiserlich Edict” incited people to resist

the Emperor,[1137] and thus far agreed with the demands of the

revolutionary party, as made, for instance, by the Landgrave of Hesse,

yet Luther was most careful to guard himself against any accusation of

having preached revolt against the authority of the Empire. Previous

to the publication of the “Warnunge” he had assured the Landgrave that

the greatest caution would be exercised in the work, “so that it may

not be stigmatised as seditious.”[1138] Later, too, he declared, quite

at variance with the actual facts of the case, and notwithstanding the

well-founded complaints of Duke George of Saxony and his own Elector’s

disapproval of the inflammatory character of his work: “In it I have

not treated of anything in a seditious manner and no one will be able

to convict me of stirring up revolt thereby.”[1139] He informs the

Elector, that the two pamphlets were really not “sufficiently severe”

considering the tone of his literary opponents; he was “only sorry

that he had not used stronger and more violent language,” whereas--the

allegation is untrue, but was calculated to produce a powerful effect

on the Elector--“unheard-of threats are contained in this horrible

statute and sentence levelled against Your Electoral Highness and

the members of your house, so that the sword and wrath of the whole

Empire menaces Your Electoral Highness in life and limb, drenching

Germany with innocent blood, making widows and orphans, and bringing

destruction and devastation on the Empire.”[1140] He concludes: “May

Our Merciful Father in Heaven comfort and strengthen Your Electoral

Highness in His Word.”

The Catholic Duke George of Saxony, a clear-headed man and good

politician, owing to the attack made upon him by Luther, descended

into the literary arena at the time when the struggle was at

its height, after the Edict of Augsburg, writing an anonymous

“Gegenwarnung” against Luther’s “Warnunge” and against his “Vermeint

Edict.” This was published by Arnoldi, who added an epilogue of his

own.[1141] The work is written in powerful language and abounds with

good arguments. The Duke commences with the plain statement, that the

innovator is after nothing else than making “us Germans disloyal to the

Emperor and opposed to all authority.” He points out with how great

cunning and malice Luther had gone to work, telling countless lies,

making a loud clamour and using endless artifices; this should be taken

to heart by those who called him a living Saint and vaunted the spirit

of God which spoke through him.

Having learnt the name of the author, Luther replied immediately

in a booklet steeped in hate, entitled, “Widder den Meuchler zu

Dresen gedrückt.”[1142] He fell upon the Duke with such insults,

misrepresentations and calumnies that many Catholics, to whom Luther’s

conduct appeared ever stranger, shared the opinion expressed in

George’s reply, viz. that “Luther is certainly possessed by the devil,

with the whole legion which Christ drove out of the man who was

possessed”; if Paul was right in saying that the spirit was known by

its fruits (Gal. v. 22), then Luther’s spirit was “the spirit of lies,

which spoke fond inventions and untruths through him.”[1143]

Luther, in his pamphlet “Widder den Meuchler, etc.” abuses the

author of the “Gegenwarnung” as an “arch-villain,” a “horrid,

impudent miscreant,” a fellow who tried to deck out and conceal the

“traitorous, murderous tyranny” of the Papists under the mantle of the

charges of “revolt and disobedience” directed against him, Luther. He

stigmatises all his opponents, more particularly the Catholic rulers,

as “bloodthirsty tyrants and priests,” as “bloodhounds” who have gone

raving mad from malice, as “murderers who have shed so much innocent

blood and are still desirous of shedding more.” They were “worthy

offshoots, who believe our teaching to be true and nevertheless

condemn it, and are therefore anxious for war and slaughter.” He also

declares he had never seen a “bigger and more stupid fool” than the

author. “Now then, squire assassin! Speak up and let us hear your

opinion. Shame upon your book, shame upon your brazen effrontery and

malicious heart; how is it that you do not blush to lay bare your

murderous and shameful lies before all the world, to deceive such

pious folk and to praise and vaunt such obstinate bloodhounds? But you

are a Papist, hence the infamies of the Papacy cling to you so that

you have gone mad and spit out such shameful words.”[1144]

To describe the Catholic party at the Diet of Augsburg he makes use of

the word “bloodhounds” six times within a few lines.[1145]

The haste with which he dashed off the pamphlet was only equalled by

his terrible excitement. He says at the end: “I have been forced to

hurry for the Leipzig Fair [the book Fair], but soon I shall lick

his gentle booklet into better shape for him.... I don’t care if he

complains that it contains nothing but evil words and devils, for that

redounds to my honour and glory; I wish it to be said of me in the

future, that I was full of evil words, vituperation and curses on the

Papists. I have humbled myself frequently for more than ten years and

given them nothing but good words.”[1146]

What he really should have done would have been to defend himself

against the charge brought forward by George of stirring up revolt

against the authority of the Empire. He not only failed to vindicate

himself, but assumed a still more threatening and defiant attitude.

* * * * *

After contemplating these far from pleasing pictures we may be allowed

to conclude by referring to one of Luther’s more favourable traits.

While, on the one hand, his soul was filled with deep anger against the

Papists, on the other he was also zealous in inveighing against those

who were threatening the foundations of those articles of the Christian

faith which he still held in common with Catholics, and which he was

ever ready to defend with the fullest conviction.

He foresaw that the freethinking spirit, which was involved in his own

religious movement, would not spare the dogma of the Trinity. He was

painfully alive to the fact that the arbitrariness of the Anabaptists

presaged the ruin of the most fundamental of Christian tenets.

In a sermon preached in 1526, speaking of the doctrine of the Trinity,

he had said: “The devil will not rest until he has managed to do the

same with this dogma as with the Sacrament; because we have snatched it

out of the jaws of the Pope and re-established its right use, turbulent

spirits now want to tread it under foot. The same will happen in the

matter of this article, so that we shall relapse into Judaism.”[1147]

A dangerous example of anti-Trinitarian tendencies had shown itself in

Luther’s immediate circle in the person of Johann Campanus, a native

of the diocese of Liege, who had been a student at Wittenberg since

1528. This man boasted that he was the first since the days of the

Apostles to rediscover the Gospel concerning the true unity or dualism

of God.[1148]