To follow up the above statement emanating from a Protestant

source, concerning the “huge decline” in moral ideals and practical

Christianity involved in Luther’s work, we shall go on to consider how

greatly he did in point of fact narrow and restrict ethical effort in

comparison with what was required by the ethics of earlier days. In so

doing he was following the psychological impulse discernible even in

the first beginnings of his dislike for the austerity of his Order and

the precepts of the Church.

_Lower Moral Standards_

1. The only works of obligation in the service of God are faith, praise

and thanksgiving. God, he says, demands only our faith, our praise

and our gratitude. Of our works He has no need.[164] He restricts our

“deeds towards God” to the praise-offering or thank-offering for the

good received, and to the prayer-offering “or Our Father, against the

evil and badness we would wish to be rid of.”[165] This service is the

duty of each individual Christian and is practised in common in Divine

worship. The latter is fixed and controlled with the tacit consent of

the congregation by the ministers who represent the people; in this we

find the trace of Luther’s innate aversion to any law or obligation

which leads him to avoid anything savouring of legislative action.[166]

In the preface to his instructions to the Visitors in 1528 he declares,

for instance, that the rules laid down were not meant to “found new

Papal Decretals”; they were rather to be taken as a “history of and

witness to our faith” and not as “strict commands.”[167] This well

expresses his antipathy to the visible Catholic Church, her hierarchy

and her so-called man-made ordinances for public worship.

Since, to his mind, it is impossible to offer God anything but love,

thanksgiving and prayer, it follows that, firstly, the Eucharistic

Sacrifice falls, and, with it, all the sacrifices made to the greater

glory of God by self-denial and abnegation, obedience or bodily

penances, together with all those works—practised in imitation of

Christ by noble souls—done over and above the bounden duties of each

one’s calling. He held that it was wrong to say of such sacrifices,

made by contrite and loving hearts, that they were both to God’s

glory and to our own advantage, or to endeavour to justify them by

arguing that: Whoever does not do great things for God must expect

small recompense. Among the things which fell before him were: vows,

processions, pilgrimages, veneration of relics and of the Saints,

ecclesiastical blessings and sacramentals, not to speak of holy

days and prescribed fasts. With good reason can one speak of a “huge

decline.”

He justifies as follows his radical opposition to the Catholic forms

of Divine worship: “The only good we can do in God’s service is to

praise and thank Him, in which in fact the only true worship of God

consists.... If any other worship of God be proposed to you, know that

it is error and deception.”[168] “It is a rank scandal that the Papists

should encourage people to toil for God with works so as thereby to

expiate their sins and secure grace.... If you wish to believe aright

and really to lay hold on Christ, you must discard all works whereby

you may think you labour for God; all such are nothing but scandals

leading you away from Christ and from God; in God’s sight no work is of

any value except Christ’s own; this you must leave to toil for you in

God’s sight; you yourself must perform no other work for Him than to

believe that Christ does His work for you.”[169]

In the same passage he attempts to vindicate this species of Quietism

with the help of some recollections from his own earlier career, viz.

by the mystic principle which had at one time ruled him: “You must be

blind and lame, deaf and dead, poor and leprous, or else you will be

scandalised in Christ. This is what it means to know Christ aright and

to accept Him; this is to believe as befits a true Christian.”[170]

2. “All other works, apart from faith, must be directed towards our

neighbour.”[171] As we know, besides that faith, gratitude and love

which are God’s due, Luther admits no good works but those of charity

towards our neighbour. By our faith we give to God all that He asks of

us. “After this, think only of doing for your neighbour what Christ

has done for you, and let all your works and all your life go to the

service of your neighbour.”[172]—God, he says elsewhere, asks only for

our thank-offering; “look upon Me as a Gracious God and I am content”;

“thereafter serve your neighbour, freely and for nothing.”[173] Good

works in his eyes are only “good when they are profitable to others and

not to yourself.” Indeed he goes so far as to assert: “If you find

yourself performing a work for God, or for His Saints, or for yourself

and not alone for your neighbour, know that the work is not good.”[174]

The only explanation of such sentences, as already hinted, is to be

found in his passionate polemics against the worship and the pious

exercises of the Catholics. It is true that such practices were sullied

at that time by certain blemishes, owing to the abuses rampant in the

Church; yet the Catholic could confidently answer in self-defence in

the words Luther proceeds to put on his lips: Such “works are spiritual

and profitable to the soul of our neighbour, and God thereby is served

and propitiated and His Grace obtained.”

Luther rudely retorts: “You lie in your throat; God is served not

by works but by faith; faith must do everything that is to be done

as between God and ourselves.” That the priests and monks should

vaunt their religious exercises as spiritual treasures, he brands as

a “Satanic lie.” “The works of the Papists such as organ-playing,

chanting, vesting, ringing, smoking [incensation], sprinkling,

pilgriming and fasting, etc., are doubtless fine and many, grand and

long, broad and thick works, but about them there is nothing good,

useful or profitable.”

3. “Know that there are no good works but such as God has commanded.”

What, apart from faith, makes a work a good one is solely God’s express

command. Luther, while finding fault with the self-chosen works of the

Catholics, points to the Ten Commandments as summing up every good

work willed by God. “There used to be ecclesiastical precepts which

were to supersede the Decalogue.” “The commandments of the Church were

invented and set up by men in addition to and beyond God’s Word. Luther

therefore deals with the true worship of God in the light of the Ten

Commandments.”[175] As for the Evangelical Counsels so solemnly enacted

in the New Testament, viz. the striving after a perfection which is

not of obligation, Luther, urged on by his theory that only what is

actually commanded partakes of the nature of a good work, came very

near branding them as an invention of the Papists.

They have “made the Counsels twelve” in number,[176] he says, “and

twist the Gospel as they please.” They have split the Gospel into two,

into “_Consilia et præcepta_.” “Christ,” so he teaches, “gave only

one Counsel in the whole of the Gospel, viz. that of chastity, which

even a layman can preserve, assuming him to have the grace.” He sneers

at the Pope and the Doctors because they had established not only a

clerical order which should be superior to the laity, but also an

order of the counsels the duty of whose members it was to portray the

Evangelical perfection by the keeping of the three vows of poverty,

chastity and obedience. “By this the common Christian life and faith

became like flat, sour beer; everyone rubbed his eyes, despised the

commandments and ran after the counsels. And after a good while they

at last discovered man-made ordinances in the shape of habits, foods,

chants, lessons, tonsures, etc., and thus God’s Law went the way of

faith, both being blotted out and forgotten, so that, henceforth,

to be perfect and to live according to the counsels means to wear a

black, white, grey or coloured cowl, to bawl in church, wear a tonsure

and to abstain from eggs, meat, butter, etc.”[177]

In the heat of his excitement he even goes so far as to deny the

necessity of any service in the churches, because God demands only the

praise and thanks of the heart, and “this may be given ... equally

well in the home, in the field, or anywhere else.” “If they should

force any other service upon you, know that it is error and deception;

just as hitherto the world has been crazy, with its houses, churches

and monasteries set aside for the worship of God, and its vestments of

gold and silk, etc. ... which expenditure had better been used to help

our neighbour, if it was really meant for God.”[178]

It was of course impossible for him to vindicate in the long run so

radical a standpoint concerning the churches, and, elsewhere, he

allows people their own way on the question of liturgical vestments

and other matters connected with worship.

4. The good works which are performed where there is no “faith” amount

to sin. This strangely unethical assertion Luther is fond of repeating

in so extravagant a form as can only be explained psychologically by

the utter blindness of his bias in favour of the “_fides specialis_”

by him discovered. True morality belongs solely to those who have been

justified after his own fashion, and no others have the slightest right

to credit themselves with anything of the sort.

When, in 1528, in his “Great Confession” he expounded his “belief

bit by bit,” declaring that he had “most diligently weighed all

these articles” as in the presence of death and judgment, he there

wrote: “Herewith I reject and condemn as rank error every doctrine

that exalts our free-will, which is directly opposed to the help

and grace of our Saviour Jesus Christ. For seeing, that, outside

of Christ, death and sin are our masters and the devil our God and

sovereign, there can be no power or might, no wit or understanding

whereby we could make ourselves fit for, or could even strive after,

righteousness and life, but on the contrary we must remain blind

and captive, slaves of sin and the devil, and must do what pleases

them and runs counter to God and His Commandments.”[179] Even the

most pious of the Papists, he goes on to say, since they lack Christ

and the “Faith,” have “merely a great semblance of holiness,” and

although “there seem to be many good works” among them, “yet all is

lost”; chastity, poverty and obedience as practised in the convents

is nothing but “blasphemous holiness,” and “what is horrible is that

thereby they refuse Christ’s help and grace.”[180]

This, his favourite idea, finds its full expression in his learned

Latin Commentary on Galatians (1535): “In the man who does not believe

in Christ not only are all sins mortal, but even his good works are

sins”;[181] for the benefit of the people he enunciates the same

in his Church-Postils. “The works performed without faith are sins

... for such works of ours are soiled and foul in God’s eyes, nay,

He looks on them with horror and loathing.” As a matter of course

he thinks that God looks upon concupiscence as sin, even in its

permissible manifestations, e.g. in the “_opus conjugalis_.” Amongst

the heathen even virtues such as patriotism, continence, justice and

courage in which, owing to the divine impulses (“_divini motus_”),

they may shine, are tainted by the presence in them of original sin

(“_in ipsis heroicis virtutibus depravata_”).[182] As to whether such

men were saved, Luther refuses to say anything definite; he holds fast

to the text that without faith it is impossible to please God. Only

those who, in the days of Noe, did not believe may, so he declares, be

saved in accordance with his reading of 1 Peter iii. 19 by Christ’s

preaching of salvation on the occasion of His descent into hell. He

is also disposed to include among those saved by this supposed course

of sermons delivered “_in inferis_,” such fine men of every nation as

Scipio, Fabius and others of their like.[183]

In general, however, the following holds good: Before “faith and

grace” are infused into the heart “by the Spirit alone,” “as the work

of God which He works in us”—everything in man is the “work of the

Law, of no value for justification, but unholy and opposed to God

owing to the unbelief in which it is performed.”[184]

_Annulment of the Supernatural and Abasement of the Natural Order_

From the above statements it is clear that Luther, in doing away with

the distinction between the natural and supernatural order, also did

away with the olden doctrine of virtue, and without setting up anything

positive in its place. He admits no naturally good action different

from that performed “by faith and grace”; no such thing exists as a

natural, moral virtue of justice. This opinion is closely bound up with

his whole warfare on man’s natural character and endowments in respect

of what is good. Moreover, what he terms the state of grace is not the

supernatural state the Church had always understood, but an outward

imputation by God; it is indeed God’s goodness towards man, but no new

vital principle thanks to which we act justly.[185]

Not only does he deny the distinction between natural and supernatural

goodness, essential as it is for forming an ethical estimate of man,

but he practically destroys both the natural and supernatural order.

Even in other points of Luther’s doctrine we can notice the abrogation

of the fundamental difference between the two orders; for instance

in his view of Adam’s original state, which, according to him, was

a natural not a supernatural one, “no gift,” as he says, “apart

from man’s nature, and bestowed on him from without, but a natural

righteousness so that it came natural to him to love God [as he did],

to believe in Him and to acknowledge Him.”[186] It is, however, in the

moral domain that this peculiarity of his new theology comes out most

glaringly. Owing to his way of proceeding and the heat of his polemics

he seems never to have become fully conscious of how far-reaching the

consequences were of his destruction of all distinction between the

natural and the supernatural order.

Natural morality, viz. that to which man attains by means of his

unaided powers, appears to him simply an invention of the pagan

Aristotle. He rounds on all the theologians of his day for having

swallowed so dangerous an error in their Aristotelian schools to the

manifest detriment of the divine teaching. This he does, for instance,

at the commencement of his recently published Commentary on Romans. He

calls it a “righteousness of the philosophers and lawyers” in itself

utterly worthless.[187] A year later, in his manuscript Commentary

on Hebrews, he has already reached the opinion, that, “the virtues

of all the philosophers, nay, of all men, whether they be lawyers or

theologians, have only a semblance of virtue, but in reality are vices

(‘_vitia_’).”[188]

But what would be quite incomprehensible, had he actually read the

scholastic theologians whose “civil, Aristotelian doctrine of justice”

he was so constantly attacking, is, that he charges them with having

stopped short at this natural justice and with not having taught

anything higher; this higher justice was what he himself had brought

to light, this was the “Scriptural justice which depended more on the

Divine imputation than on the nature of things,”[189] and was not

acquired by deeds but bestowed by God. The fact is, however, that

the Schoolmen did not rest content merely with natural justice, but

insist that true justice is something higher, supernatural and only

to be attained to with the help of grace; it is only in some few

later theologians with whom Luther may possibly have been acquainted,

that this truth fails to find clear expression. Thomas of Aquin, for

instance, distinguishes between the civil virtue of justice and the

justice infused in the act of justification. He says expressly: “A man

may be termed just in two ways, on account of civil [natural] justice

and on account of infused justice. Civil justice is attained to without

the grace which comes to the assistance of the natural powers, but

infused justice is the work of grace. Neither the one nor the other,

however, consists in the mere doing of what is good, for not everyone

who does what is good is just, but only he who does it as do the

just.”[190]

With regard to supernatural (infused) justice, the Church’s

representatives, quite differently from Luther, had taught that man by

his natural powers could only attain to God as the Author of nature

but not to God as He is in Himself, i.e. to God as He has revealed and

will communicate Himself in heaven; it is infused, sanctifying grace

alone that places us in a higher order than that of nature and raises

us to the status of being children of God; in it we love God, by

virtue of the “habit” of love bestowed upon us, as He is in Himself,

i.e. as He wills to be loved; sanctifying grace it is that brings

us into a true relation with our supernatural and final end, viz.

the vision of God in heaven, in which sense it may be called a vital

principle infused into the soul.[191]

This language Luther either did not or would not understand. On this

point particularly he had to suffer for his ignorance of the better

class of theologians. He first embraced Occam’s hypothesis of the

_possibility_ of an imputation of justice, and then, going further

along the wrong road, he changed this possibility into a reality;

soon, owing to his belief in the entire corruption of the natural

man, imputed justice became, to him, the only justice. In this way

he deprived theology of supernatural as well as of natural justice;

for imputed justice is really no justice at all, but merely an alien

one. “With Luther we have the end of the supernatural. His basic view,

of justifying faith as the work of God in us performed without our

co-operation, bears indeed a semblance of the supernatural.... But the

supernatural is ever something alien.”[192]

What he had in his mind was always a foreign righteousness produced,

not by man’s own works and acts performed under the help of grace,

but only by the work of another; this we are told by Luther in so

many words: “True and real piety which is of worth in God’s sight

consists in alien works and not in our own.”[193] “If we wish to work

for God we must not approach Him with our own works but with foreign

ones.” “These are the works of Our Lord Jesus Christ.” “All that He

has is ours.... I may attribute to myself all His works as though I

had actually done them, if only I believe in Christ.... Our works

will not suffice, all our powers together are too weak to resist even

the smallest sin.... Hence when the Law comes and accuses you of not

having kept it, send it to Christ and say: There is the Man who has

fulfilled it, to Him I cling, He has fulfilled it for me and bestowed

His fulfilment of it upon me; then the Law will have to hold its

tongue.”[194]

_The Book of Concord on the Curtailment of Free-Will._

When orthodox Lutheranism gained a local and temporary victory in 1580

with the so-called Book of Concord, the authors of the book deplored

the inferences drawn from Luther’s moral teaching, particularly from

his denial of free-will, the dangers of which had already long been

apparent.

“It is not unknown to us,” they say, “that this holy doctrine of the

malice and impotence of free-will, the doctrine whereby our conversion

and regeneration is ascribed solely to God and in no way to our own

powers, has been godlessly, shamelessly and hatefully abused.... Many

are becoming immoral and savage and neglectful of all pious exercises;

they say: ‘Since we cannot turn to God of our own natural powers, let

us remain hostile to God or wait until He converts us by force and

against our will.’” “It is true that they possess no power to act in

spiritual things, and that the whole business of conversion is merely

the work of the Holy Ghost. And thus they refuse to listen to the Word

of God, or to study it, or to receive the Sacraments; they prefer to

wait until God infuses His gifts into them directly from above, and

until they feel and are certain by inward experience that they have

been converted by God.”

“Others,” they continue, speaking of the case as a possibility and

not as a sad reality, “may possibly give themselves up to sad and

dangerous doubts as to whether they have been predestined by God to

heaven, and as to whether God will really work His gifts in them by

the help of the Holy Ghost. Being weak and troubled in mind they

do not grasp aright our pious doctrine of free-will, and they are

confirmed in their doubts by the fact that they do not find within

themselves any firm and ardent faith or hearty devotion to God, but

only weakness, misery and fear.” The authors then proceed to deal with

the widespread fear of predestination to hell.[195]

We have as it were a sad monument set up to the morality of the

enslaved will and the doctrine of imputation, when the Book of

Concord, in spite of the sad results it has just admitted, goes on

in the same chapter to insist that all Luther’s principles should be

preserved intact. “This matter Dr. Luther settled most excellently

and thoroughly in his ‘_De servo arbitrio_’ against Erasmus, where he

showed this opinion to be pious and irrefutable. Later on he repeated

and further explained the same doctrine in his splendid Commentary

on Genesis, particularly in his exposition of ch. xxvi. There, too,

he made other matters clear—e.g. the doctrine of the ‘_absoluta

necessitas_’—defended them against the objections of Erasmus and,

by his pious explanations, set them above all evil insinuations and

misrepresentations. All of which we here corroborate and commend to the

diligent study of all.”[196]

Melanchthon’s and his school’s modifications of these extreme doctrines

are here sharply repudiated, though Luther himself “never spoke with

open disapproval” of Melanchthon’s Synergism.[197]

“From our doctrinal standpoint,” we there read, “it is plain that the

teaching of the Synergists is false, who allege that man in spiritual

things is not _altogether_ dead to what is good but merely badly

wounded and _half_ dead.... They teach wrongly, that after the Holy

Spirit has given us, through the Evangel, grace, forgiveness and

salvation, then free-will is able to meet God by its natural powers

and ... co-operate with the Holy Ghost. In reality the ability to lay

hold upon grace (‘_facultas applicandi se ad gratiam_’) is solely due

to the working of the Holy Ghost.”

What then is man to do, and how are the consequences described above

to be obviated, on the one hand libertinism, on the other fear of

predestination to hell?

Man still possesses a certain freedom, so the Book of Concord teaches,

e.g. “to be present or not at the Church’s assemblies, to listen or

close his ears to the Word of God.”

“The preaching of the Word of God is however the tool whereby the Holy

Ghost seeks to effect man’s conversion and to make him ready to will

and to work (‘_in ipsis et velle et perficere operari vult_’).” “Man

is free to open his ears to the Word of God or to read it even when

not yet converted to God or born again. In some way or other man still

has free-will in such outward things even since Adam’s Fall.” Hence,

by the Word, “by the preaching and contemplation of the sweet Evangel

of the forgiveness of sins, the spark of ‘faith’ is enkindled in his

heart.”[198]

“Although all effort without the power and work of the Holy Spirit is

worthless, yet neither the preacher nor the hearer must doubt of this

grace or work of the Holy Spirit,” so long as the preacher proceeds

according to God’s will and command and “the hearer listens earnestly

and diligently and dwells on what he hears.” We are not to judge of

the working of the Holy Ghost by our feelings, but “agreeably with

the promises of God’s Word.” We must hold that “the Word preached is

the organ of the Holy Ghost whereby He truly works and acts in our

hearts.”[199]

With the help of this queer, misty doctrine which, as we may notice,

makes of preaching a sort of Sacrament working “_ex opere operato_,”

Luther’s followers attempted to construct a system out of their

master’s varying and often so arbitrary statements. At any rate

they upheld his denial of any natural order of morality distinct

from the order of grace. It was to remain true that man, “previous

to conversion, possesses indeed an understanding, but not of divine

things, and a will, though not for anything good and wholesome.” In

this respect man stands far below even a stock or stone, because

he resists the Word and Will of God (which they cannot do) until

God raises him up from the death of sin, enlightens and creates him

anew.[200]

Nevertheless several theses, undoubtedly Luther’s own, are here

glossed over or quietly bettered. If, for instance, according to

Luther everything takes place of absolute necessity (a fact to which

the Formula of Concord draws attention), if man, even in the natural

acts of the mind, is bound by what is fore-ordained,[201] then even

the listening to a sermon and the dwelling on it cannot be matters of

real freedom. Moreover the man troubled with fears on predestination,

is comforted by the well-known Bible texts, which teach that it is

the Will of God that all should be saved; whilst nothing is said of

Luther’s doctrine that it is only the revealed God who speaks thus,

whereas the hidden God acts quite otherwise, plans and carries out

the very opposite, “damns even those who have not deserved it—and,

yet, does not thereby become unjust.”[202] Reference is made to

Adam’s Fall, whereby nature has been depraved; but nothing is said

of Luther’s view that Adam himself simply could not avoid falling

because God did not then “bestow on him the spirit of obedience.”[203]

But, though these things are passed over in silence, due prominence

is given to those ideas of Luther’s of which the result is the

destruction of all moral order, natural as well as supernatural.

According to the Formula of Concord the natural order was shattered

by Adam’s Fall; as for the supernatural order it is replaced by the

alien, mechanical order of imputation.

_Christianity merely Inward. The Church Sundered from the World_

Among the things which Luther did to the detriment of the moral

principle must be numbered his merciless tearing asunder of spiritual

and temporal, of Christian and secular life.

The olden Church sought to permeate the world with the religious

spirit. Luther’s trend was in a great measure towards making the

secular state and its office altogether independent; this, indeed,

the more up-to-date sort of ethics is disposed to reckon among his

greatest achievements. Luther even went so far as to seek to erect into

a regular system this inward, necessary opposition of world and Church.

Of this we have a plain example in certain of his instructions to the

authorities.[204] Whereas the Church had exhorted people in power to

temper with Christianity their administration of civil justice and

their use of physical force—urging that the sovereign was a Christian

not merely in his private but also in his official capacity,—Luther

tells the ruler: The Kingdom of Christ wholly belongs to the order of

grace, but the kingdom of the world and worldly life belong to the

order of the Law; the two kingdoms are of a different species and

belong to different worlds. To the one you belong as a Christian, to

the other as a man and a ruler. Christ has nothing to do with the

regulations of worldly life, but leaves them to the world; earthly

life stands in no need of being outwardly hallowed by the Church.[205]

Certain statements to a different effect will be considered elsewhere.

“A great distinction,” Luther said in 1523, “must be made between a

worldling and a Christian, i.e. between a Christian and a worldly

man. For a Christian is neither man nor woman ... must know nothing

and possess nothing in the world.... A prince may indeed be a

Christian, but he must not rule as a Christian, and when he rules

he does so not as a Christian but as a prince. As an individual he

is indeed a Christian, but his office or princedom is no business

of his Christianity.” This seems to him proved by his mystical

theory that a Christian “must not harm or punish anyone or revenge

himself, but forgive everyone and endure patiently all injustice or

evil that befalls him.” The theory, needless to say, is based on

his misapprehension of the Evangelical Counsels which he makes into

commands.[206] On such principles as these, he concludes, it was

impossible for any prince to rule, hence “his being a Christian had

nothing to do with land and subjects.”[207]

For the same reason he holds that “every man on this earth” comprises

two “practically antagonistic personalities,” for “each one has at the

same time to suffer, and not to suffer, everything.”[208] The dualism

which Luther here creates is due to his extravagant over-statement of

the Christian law. The Counsels of Perfection given by Christ in the

Sermon on the Mount, with which Luther is here dealing (not to resist

evil, not to go to law, etc., Mt. v. 19 ff.), are not an invitation

addressed to all Christians, and if higher considerations or some

duty stands in the way it would certainly denote no perfection to

follow them. Luther’s misinterpretation necessarily led him to make a

cleavage between Christian life and life in the world.

The dualism, however, in so far as it concerned the authorities

had, however, yet another source. For polemical reasons Luther was

determined to make an end of the great influence that the olden

Church had acquired over public life. Hence he absolves the secular

power from all dependence as the latter had itself sought to do

even before his time. He refused to see that, in spite of all the

abuses which had followed on the Church’s interference in politics

during the Middle Ages, mankind had gained hugely by the guidance of

religion. To swallow up the secular power in the spiritual had never

been part of the Church’s teaching, nor was it ever the ideal of her

enlightened representatives; but, for the morality of the great, for

the observance of maxims of justice and for the improvement of the

nations the principle that religion must not be separated from the

life of the State and from the office of those in authority, but

must permeate and spiritualise them was, as history proved, truly

vital. Subsequent to Luther’s day the tendency to separate the two

undoubtedly made unchecked progress. He himself, however, was not

consistent in his attitude. On the contrary, he came more and more

to desiderate the establishment of the closest possible bond between

the civil authorities and religion—provided only that the ruler’s

faith was the same as Luther’s. Nevertheless, generally speaking, the

separation he had advocated of secular from spiritual became the rule

in the Protestant fold.

“Lutheranism,” as Friedrich Paulsen said on the strength of his own

observations in regions partly Catholic and partly Protestant, “which

is commonly said to have introduced religion into the world and to

have reconciled public worship with life and the duties of each one’s

calling has, as a matter of fact, led to the complete alienation and

isolation of the Church from real life; on the contrary, the older

Church, despite all her ‘over-worldliness,’ has contrived to make

herself quite at home in the world, and has spun a thousand threads

in and around the fabric of its life.” He thinks himself justified in

stating: “Protestantism is a religion of the individual, Catholicism

is the religion of the people; the former seeks seclusion, the latter

publicity. In the one even public worship bears a private character

and appears as foreign to the world as the pulpit rhetoric of a

Lutheran preacher of the old school; the [Protestant] Church stands

outside the bustle of the workaday world in a world of her own.”[209]

We may pass over the fact, that, Luther, by discarding the so-called

Counsels reduced morality to a dead level. In the case of all the

faithful he abased it to the standard of the Law, doing away with that

generous, voluntary service of God which the Church had ever approved

and blessed. We have already shown this elsewhere, more particularly in

connection with the status of the Evangelical Counsels and the striving

after Christian perfection in the monastic life. According to him there

are practically no Counsels for those who wish to pass beyond the

letter of the Law; there is but one uniform moral Law, and, on the true

Christian, even the so-called Counsels are strictly binding.[210]

Life in the world, however, according to his theory has very different

laws; here quite another order obtains, which is, often enough, quite

the opposite to what man, as a Christian, recognises in his heart to

be the true standard. As a Christian he _must_ offer his cheek to the

smiter; as a member of the civil order he may not do so, but, on the

contrary, must everywhere vindicate his rights. Thus his Christianity,

so long as he lives in the world, must perforce be reduced to a matter

of inward feeling; it is constantly exposed to the severest tests, or,

more accurately, constantly in the need of being explained away. The

believer is faced by a twofold order of things, and the regulating of

his moral conduct becomes a problem which can never be satisfactorily

solved.

“Next to the doctrine of Justification there is hardly any other

doctrine which Luther urges so frequently and so diligently as that of

the inward character and nature of Christ’s kingdom, and the difference

thus existing between it and the kingdom of the world, i.e. the domain

of our natural life.”[211]

Let us listen to Luther’s utterances at various periods on the dualism

in the moral life of the individual: “The twin kingdoms must be kept

wide asunder: the spiritual where sin is punished and forgiven,

and the secular where justice is demanded and dealt out. In God’s

kingdom which He rules according to the Gospel there is no demanding

of justice, but all is forgiveness, remission and bestowal, nor is

there any anger, or punishment, but nothing save brotherly charity

and service.”[212]—“No rights, anger, or punishment,” this certainly

would have befitted the invisible, spiritual Church which Luther had

originally planned to set up in place of the visible one.[213]

“Christ’s everlasting kingdom ... is to be an eternal spiritual

kingdom in the hearts of men by the preaching of the Gospel and by

the Holy Spirit.”[214] “For your own part, hold fast to the Gospel

and to the Word of Christ so as to be ready to offer the other cheek

to the smiter, to give your mantle as well as your coat whenever

it is a question of yourself and your cause.”[215] It is a strict

command, though at utter variance with the civil law, in which your

neighbour also is greatly concerned. In so far, therefore, you must

resist. “Thus you manage perfectly to satisfy at the same time both

the Kingdom of God and that of the world, both the outward and the

inward; you suffer evil and injustice and yet at the same time punish

evil and injustice; you do not resist evil, and yet at the same time

you resist it; for according to the one you look to yourself and to

yours, and, according to the other, to your neighbour and to his

rights. As regards yourself and yours, you act according to the Gospel

and suffer injustice as a true Christian; as regards your neighbour

and his rights, you act in accordance with charity and permit no

injustice.”[216]

If, as is but natural, we ask, how Christ came so strictly to enjoin

what was almost impossible, Luther replies that He gave His command

only for Christians, and that real Christians were few in number: “In

point of fact Christ is speaking only to His dear Christians [when He

says, ‘that Christians must not go to law,’ etc.], and it is they

alone who take it and carry it out; they make no mere Counsel of it

as the Sophists do, but are so transformed by the Spirit that they do

evil to no one and are ready willingly to suffer evil from anyone.”

But the world is full of non-Christians and “them the Word does not

concern at all.”[217] Worldlings must needs tread a very different

way: “All who are not Christians belong to the kingdom of the world

and are under the law.” Since they know not the command “Resist not

evil,” “God has given them another government different from the

Christian estate, and the Kingdom of God.” There ruleth coercion,

severity, and, in a word, the Law, “seeing, that, amongst a thousand,

there is barely one true Christian.” “If anyone wished to govern the

world according to the Gospel ... dear heart, what would the result

be! He would be loosening the leashes and chains of the wild and

savage beasts, and turning them astray to bite and tear everybody....

Then the wicked would abuse the Christian freedom of the Gospel and

work their own knavery.”[218]

Luther clung to the very end of his life to this congeries of

contradictory theories, which he advocated in 1523, in his passionate

aversion to the ancient doctrine of perfection. In 1539 or 1540 he put

forth a declaration against the “Sophists” in defence of his theory of

the “Counsels,” directed more particularly against the Sorbonne, which

had insisted that the “_consilia evangelica_,” “were they regarded as

precepts, would be too heavy a burden for religion.”[219] “They make

out the Counsels,” he says, “i.e. the commandments of God, to be not

necessary for eternal life and invite people to take idolatrous, nay,

diabolical vows. To lower the Divine precepts to the level of counsels

is a horrible, Satanic blasphemy.” As a Christian “you must rather

forsake and sacrifice everything”; to this the first table of the Law

(of Moses, the Law of the love of God) binds you, but, on account of

the second table (the law of social life), you may and must preserve

your own for the sake of your family. As a Christian, too, you must

be willing to suffer at the hands of every man, “but, apart from your

Christian profession, you must resist evil if you wish to be a good

citizen of this world.”[220]

“Hence you see, O Christian brother,” he concludes, “how much you

owe to the doctrine which has been revived in our day, as against a

Pharisaical theology which leaves us nothing even of Moses and the Ten

Commandments, and still less of Christ.”

“Such honour and glory have I by the grace of God—whether it be to

the taste or not of the devil and his brood—that, since the days of

the Apostles, no doctor, scribe, theologian or lawyer has confirmed,

instructed and comforted the consciences of the secular Estates so well

and lucidly as I have done by the peculiar grace of God. Of this I

am confident. For neither St. Augustine nor St. Ambrose, who are the

greatest authorities in this field, are here equal to me.... Such fame

as this must be and remain known to God and to men even should they go

raving mad over it.”[221]

It is true that his theories contain many an element of good and, had

he not been able to appeal to this, he could never have spoken so

feelingly on the subject.

The good which lies buried in his teaching had, however, always

received its due in Catholicism. Luther, when contrasting the Church’s

alleged aversion for secular life with his own exaltation of the

dignity of the worldly calling, frequently speaks in language both

powerful and fine of the worldly office which God has assigned to

each one, not only to the prince but even to the humble workman and

tiller of the field, and of the noble moral tasks which thus devolve

on the Christian. Yet any aversion to the world as he conceives it had

never been a principle within the Church, though individual writers

may indeed have erred in this direction. The assertion that the olden

Church, owing to her teaching concerning the state of perfection and

the Counsels, had not made sufficient allowance for the dignity of the

secular calling, has already been fully dealt with.

It is true that Luther, to the admiration of his followers, confronted

the old Orders founded by the Church with three new Orders, all

Divinely instituted, viz. the home, the State and the Church.[222] But,

so far from “notably improving” on the “scholastic ethics” of the past,

he did not even contrive to couch his thoughts on these “Orders” in

language as lucid as that used long before his day by the theologians

and moralists of the Church in voicing the same idea; what he says of

these “Orders” also falls short of the past on the score of wealth

and variety.[223] Nevertheless the popular ways he had of depicting

things as he fain would see them, proved alluring, and this gift of

appealing to the people’s fancy and of charming them by the contrast

of new and old, helped to build up the esteem in which he has been

held ever since; his inclination, moreover, to promote the independence

of the individual in the three “Orders,” and to deliver him from all

hierarchical influence must from the outset have won him many friends.

_Divorce of Religion and Morals_

Glancing back at what has already been said concerning Luther’s

abasement of morality and considering it in the light of his theories

of the Law and Gospel, of assurance of salvation and morality, we find

as a main characteristic of Luther’s ethics a far-reaching, dangerous

rift between religion and morals. Morality no longer stands in its old

position at the side of faith.

Faith and the religion which springs from it are by nature closely and

intimately bound up with morality. This is shown by the history of

heathenism in general, of modern unbelief in particular. Heathenism or

unbelief in national life always signifies a moral decline; even in

private life morality reacts on the life of faith and the religious

feeling, and _vice versa_. The harmony between religion and morality

arises from the fact that the love of God proceeds from faith in His

dominion and Fatherly kindness.

Luther, in spite of his assurances concerning the stimulus of the

life of faith and of love, severed the connection between faith and

morality and placed the latter far below the former. His statements

concerning faith working by love, had they been more than mere words,

would, in themselves, have led him back to the very standpoint of the

Church he hated. In reality he regards the “Law” as something utterly

hostile to the “pious” soul; before the true “believer” the Law shrinks

back, though, to the man not yet justified by “faith,” it serves as a

taskmaster and a hangman. The “Law” thus loses the heavenly virtue with

which it was stamped. In Luther’s eyes the only thing of any real value

is that religion which consists in faith in the forgiveness of sins.

“This,” he says, “is the ‘_Summa Summarum_’ of a truly Christian life,

to know that in Christ you have a Gracious God ready to forgive you

your sins and never to think of them again, and that you are now a

child of everlasting happiness, reigning with Christ over heaven and

earth.”

It is true he hastens to add, that, from this saving faith, works of

morality would “assuredly” flow.[224]

“Assuredly”? Since Albert Ritschl it has been repeated countless times

that Luther did no more than “assert that faith by its very nature is

productive of good works.” As a matter of fact “he is wont to speak in

much too uncertain a way of the good works which follow faith”; with

him “faith” is the whole man, whereas the Bible says: “Fear God _and_

keep His commandments [i.e. religion _plus_ morality]; this is the

whole man.”[225]

Luther’s one-sided insistence on a confiding, trusting faith in God,

at the cost of the moral work, has its root in his theory of the utter

depravity of man and his entire lack of freedom, in his low esteem

for the presuppositions of morality, in his conviction that nature

is capable of nothing, and, owing to its want of self-determination,

is unable on its own even to be moral at all. If we desire, so he

says frankly, to honour God’s sublime majesty and to humble fallen

creatures as they deserve, then let us recognise that God works all

in all without any possibility of any resistance whatsoever on man’s

part, God’s action being like to that of the potter on his clay. Just

as Luther was unable to recognise justification in the sense in which

it had been taught of yore, so also he entirely failed to appreciate

the profounder conception of morality.

His strictures on morality—which had ever been esteemed as the

voluntary keeping of the Law by man, who by a generous obedience

renders to God the freedom received—point plainly to the cause of

his upheaval of the whole field of dogma. At the outset he had set

himself to oppose self-righteousness, but in doing so he dealt a blow

at righteousness itself; he had attacked justice by works, but justice

itself had suffered; he declared war on the wholly imaginary phantom

of a self-chosen morality based on man-made ordinances and thereby

degraded morality, if he did not indeed undermine its very foundations.

What Möhler says of the reformers and their tendency to set aside

the commands of morality applies in particular to Luther and his

passionate campaign. It is true he writes, that “the moral freedom

they had destroyed came to involve the existence of a freedom from

that moral law which concerns only the seen, bounded world of time,

but fails to apply in the eternal world, set high above all time and

space. This does not mean, however, that the reformers were conscious

of what lay at the base of their system; on the contrary, had they

seen it, had they perceived whither their doctrines were necessarily

leading, they would have rejected them as quite unchristian.”[226]

The following reflection of the famous author of “Catholic Symbolism”

may also be set on record, the better to safeguard against

misapprehension anything that may have been said, particularly as it

touches upon a matter to which we repeatedly have had occasion to

allude.

“No one can fail to see the religious element in Protestantism,” he

says, “who calls to mind the idea of Divine Providence held by Luther

and Melanchthon when they started the work of the Reformation.... All

the phenomena of this world [according to it] are God’s own particular

work and man is merely His instrument. Everything in the history of

the world is God’s invisible doing which man’s agency merely makes

visible. Who can fail to see in this a truly religious outlook on all

things? All is referred back to God, Who is all in all.... In the

same way the Redeemer also is all in all in the sense that He and His

Spirit are alone active, and faith and regeneration are solely due to

Him.”[227]

Möhler here relates how, according to Luther, Staupitz had said of

the new teaching at its inception, “What most consoles me is that it

has again been brought to light how all honour and praise belong to

God alone, but, to man, nothing at all.” This statement is quite in

keeping with the vague, mystical world of thought in which Staupitz,

who was no master of theology or philosophy, lived. But it also

reflects the impression of many of Luther’s contemporaries who,

unaware of his misrepresentation of the subject, were attracted by

the advantage to religion and morality which seemed to accrue from

Luther’s effort to ascribe all things solely to God.

Where this tendency to subordinate all to God and to exalt the merits

of Christ finds more chastened expression in Luther’s writings, when,

in his hearty, homely fashion, he paints the love of the Master or

His virtues as the pattern of all morality, or pictures in his own

peculiar realistic style the conditions of everyday life the better to

lash abuses, then the reader is able to appreciate the better side of

his ethics and the truly classic example he sometimes sets of moral

exhortations. It would surely be inexplicable how so many earnest

Protestant souls, from his day to our own, should have found and still

find a stimulus in his practical works, for instance, in his Postils,

did these works not really contain a substratum of truth, food for

thought and a certain gift of inspiration. Even the man who studies

the long list of Luther’s practical writings simply from the standpoint

of the scholar and historian—though he may not always share Luther’s

opinions—cannot fail to acknowledge that the warmth with which Luther

speaks of those Christian truths accepted by all, leaves a deep

impression and re-echoes within the soul like a voice from our common

home.

On the one hand Luther rightly retained many profoundly religious

elements of the mediæval theology, indeed, owing to his curious way of

looking at things, he actually outdid in mediævalism the Middle Ages

themselves, for he merged all human freedom in the Divine action, a

thing those Ages had not dared to do.

And yet, on the other hand, to conclude our survey of his “abasement of

practical Christianity,” he is so ultramodern on a capital point of his

ethics as to merit being styled the precursor of modern subjectivism as

applied to morals. For all his new ethical precepts and rules, beyond

the Decalogue and the Natural Law, are devoid of objective obligation;

they lack the sanction which alone would have rendered them capable of

guiding the human conscience.

_The Lack of Obligation and Sanction_

Luther’s moral instructions differed in one weighty particular from

those of the olden Church.

As he himself insists at needless length, they were a collection of

personal opinions and exhortations which appeared to him to be based

on Holy Scripture or the Law of Nature—and in many instances, though

not always, actually did rest on this foundation. When he issued new

pronouncements of a practical character, for instance, concerning

clandestine espousals, or annulled the olden order of public worship,

the sacraments, or the Commandments of the Church, he was wont to

say, that, it was his intention merely to advise consciences and to

arouse the Evangelical consciousness. He took this line partly because

he was conscious of having no personal authority, partly because he

wished to act according to the principles proclaimed in his “Von der

Freyheyt eynes Christen Menschen,” or, again, in order to prevent the

rise of dissent and the resistance he always dreaded to any attempt

to lay down categorical injunctions. Thus his ethical regulations,

so far as they differed from the olden ones, amounted merely to so

many invitations to act according to the standard set up, whereas the

character of the ethical legislation of Catholicism is essentially

binding. Having destroyed the outward authority of the Church, he

had nothing more to count upon than the “ministry of the Word,” and

everything now depended on the minister’s being able to convince the

believer, now freed from the ancient trammels.

He himself, for instance, once declared that he would “assume no

authority or right to coerce, for I neither have nor desire any

such. Let him rule who will or must; I shall instruct and console

consciences as far as I am able. Who can or wants to obey, let him do

so; who won’t or can’t, let him leave it alone.”[228]

He would act “by way of counsel,” so he teaches, “as in conscience

he would wish to serve good friends, and whoever likes to follow

his advice must do so at his own risk.”[229] “He gives advice

agreeably to his own conscience,” writes Luthardt in “Luthers Ethik,”

“leaving it to others to accept his advice or not on their own

responsibility.”[230]

Nor can one well argue that the requisite sanction for the new moral

rules was the general sanction found in the Scriptural threats of

Divine chastisements to overtake transgressors. The question is

whether the Law laid down in the Bible or written in man’s heart is

really identical with Luther’s. Those who were unable of themselves to

prove that this was the case were ultimately (so Luther implies) to

believe it on his authority and conform themselves to his “Evangelical

consciousness”; thus, for instance, in the matter of religious vows,

held by Luther to be utterly detestable, and by the Church to be both

permissible and praiseworthy.

In but few points does the purely subjective character of the new

religion and morality advocated by Luther stand out so clearly as

in this absence of any objective sanction or higher authority for

his new ethics. Christianity hitherto had appealed to the divine,

unchangeable dignity of the Church, which, by her infallible teaching,

her discipline and power to punish, insured the observance of law and

order in the religious domain. But, now, according to the new teaching,

man—who so sadly needs a clear and definite lead for his moral

life—besides the Decalogue, “clear” Bible text and Natural Law, is

left with nothing but “recommendations” devoid of any binding force;

views are dinned into his ears the carrying out of which is left solely

to his feelings, or, as Luther says, to his “conscience.”

Deprived of the quieting guidance of an authority which proclaims

moral obligations and sees that they are carried out, conscience and

personality tend in his system to assume quite a new rôle.

6. The part played by Conscience and Personality. Luther’s warfare with

his old friend Caspar Schwenckfeld

Protestants have confidently opined, that “Luther mastered anew the

personal foundation of morality by reinstating conscience in its

rights”; by insisting on feeling he came to restore to “personality

the dignity” which in previous ages it had lost under the ban of a

“legalism” devoid of “morality.”

To counter such views it may be of use to give some account of the way

in which Luther taught conscience to exercise her rights. The part he

assigns to the voice within which judges of good and evil, scarcely

bears out the contention that he really strengthened the “foundation

of morality.” The vague idea of “personality” may for the while be

identified with conscience, especially as in the present connection

“person” stands for the medium of conscience.[231]

_On Conscience and its Exercise in General_

To quiet the conscience, to find some inward support for one’s actions

in the exercise of one’s own will, this is what Luther constantly

insists on in the moral instructions he gives, at the same time

pointing to his own example.[232] What was the nature of his own

example? His rebellion against the Church’s authority was to him the

cause of a long, fierce struggle with himself. He sought to allay the

anxiety which stirred his soul to its depths by the reassuring thought,

that all doubts were from the devil from whom alone all scruples

come; he sternly bade his soul rest secure and as resolutely refused

to hearken to any doubts regarding the truth of his new Evangel. His

new and quite subjective doctrines he defended in the most subjective

way imaginable and, to those of his friends whose consciences were

troubled, he recommends a similar course of action; he even on

several occasions told people thus disturbed in mind whom he wished

to reassure, that they must listen to his, Luther’s, voice as though

it were the voice of God. This was his express advice to his pupil

Schlaginhaufen[233] and, in later days, to his friend Spalatin, who

also had become a prey to melancholy.[234] He himself claimed to have

been delivered from his terrors by having simply accepted as a God-sent

message the encouraging words of Bugenhagen.[235]

“Conscience is death’s own cruel hangman,” so he told Spalatin; from

Ambrose and Augustine the latter should learn to place all his trust

not in conscience but in Christ.[236] It scarcely needs stating that

here he is misapplying the fine sayings of both these Fathers. They

would have repudiated with indignation the words of consolation

which not long after he offered the man suffering from remorse of

conscience, assuring him that he was as yet a novice in struggling

against conscience, and had hitherto been “too tender a sinner”; “join

yourself to us real, big, tough sinners, that you may not belittle

and put down Christ, Who is the Saviour, not of small, imaginary

sinners, but of great and real ones”; thus it was that he, Luther,

had once been consoled in his sadness by Staupitz.[237] Here he is

applying wrongly a perfectly correct thought of his former Superior.

Not perhaps quite false, but at any rate thoroughly Lutheran, is the

accompanying assurance: “I stand firm [in my conscience] and maintain

my attitude, that you may lean on me in your struggle against Satan

and be supported by me.”

Thus does he direct Spalatin, “who was tormented by remorse, to

comfort himself _against_ his conscience.”[238]

“To comfort oneself against one’s conscience,” such is the task which

Luther, in many of his writings, proposes to the believer. Indeed, in

his eyes the chief thing of all is to “get the better of sin, death,

hell and our own conscience”; in spite of the opposition of reason to

Luther’s view of Christ’s satisfaction, we must learn, “through Him

[Christ] to possess nothing but grace and forgiveness,” of course, in

the sense taught at Wittenberg.[239]

A former brother monk, Link, the apostate Augustinian of Nuremberg,

Luther also encourages, like Spalatin the fallen priest, to kick

against the prick of conscience: “These are devil’s thoughts and not

from us, which make us despair,” they must be “left to the devil,” the

latter always “keeps closest to those who are most pious”; to yield

to such despairing thoughts “is as bad as giving in and leaving Satan

supreme.”[240]

When praising the “sole” help and consolation of the grace of Christ

he does not omit to point out, directly or otherwise, how, “when in

despair of himself,” and enduring frightful inward “sufferings” of

conscience, he had hacked his way through them all and had reached

a firm faith in Christ minus all works, and had thus become a

“theologian of the Cross.”[241]

Even at the commencement of the struggle, in order to encourage

wavering followers, he allowed to each man’s conscience the right

to defy any confessor who should forbid Luther’s writings to such

of his parishioners who came to him: “Absolve me at my own risk,”

they were to say to him, “I shall not give up the books, for then I

should be sinning against my conscience.” He argues that, according

to Rom. xiv. 1, the confessor might not “urge them against their

conscience.” Was it then enough for a man to have formed himself a

conscience, for the precept no longer to hold? His admonition was,

however, intended merely as a counsel for “strong and courageous

consciences.” If the confessor did not prove amenable, they were

simply to “go without scruple to the Sacrament,” and if this, too, was

refused them then they had only to send “Sacrament and Church” about

their business.[242] Should the confessor require contrition for sins

committed, this, according to another of his statements, was a clear

attack on conscience which does not require contrition for absolution,

but merely faith in Christ; such a priest ought to have the keys taken

out of his hands and be given a pitchfork instead.[243]

In the above instances the Catholic could find support for his

conscience in the infallible authority of the Church. It was this

authority which forbade him Luther’s writings as heretical, and, in the

case of contrition—which Luther also brings forward—it was likewise

his religious faith, which, consonantly with man’s natural feeling,

demanded such sorrow for sin. In earlier days authority and faith were

the reliable guides of conscience without which it was impossible

to do. Luther left conscience to itself or referred it to his own

words and his reading of Scripture, though this again, as he himself

acknowledged, was not an absolute rule; thus he leaves it a prey to

a most unhappy uncertainty—unless, indeed, it was able to “find

assurance” in the way he wishes.

Quite early in his career he also gave the following instruction to

those of the clergy who were living in concubinage on how to form

their conscience; they were “to salve their conscience” and take the

female to their “wedded wife,” even though this were against the law,

fleshly or ghostly. “Your soul’s salvation is of more account than

any tyrannical laws.... Let him who has the faith to take the risk

follow me boldly.” “I will not deceive him,” he adds apologetically,

but at least he had “the power to advise him regarding his sins and

dangers”; he will show them how they may do what they are doing, “but

with a good conscience.”[244] For as Luther points out in another

passage, even though their discarding of their supposed obligation of

celibacy had taken place with a bad conscience, still the Bible-texts

subsequently brought forward, read according to the interpretation

of the new Evangelist, avail to heal their conscience.[245] At any

rate, so he tells the Teutonic Knights when inviting them to break

their vow of chastity: “on the Word of God we will risk it and do it

in the teeth of and contrary to all Councils and Churches! Close eyes

and ears and take God’s Word to heart.”[246] Better, he cries, go on

keeping two or three prostitutes than seek of a Council permission to

marry![247]

These were matters for “those to risk who have the faith,” so we have

heard him say. In reality all did depend on people’s faith ... in

Luther, on their conviction that his doctrine and his moral system

were right.

But what voice was to decide in the case of those who were wavering?

On the profoundest questions of moral teaching, it is, according to

Luther, the “inward judgment” that is to decide what “spirit” must

be followed. “For every Christian,” he writes, “is enlightened in

heart and conscience by the Holy Ghost and by God’s Grace in such

a way as to be able to judge and decide with the utmost certainty

on all doctrines.” It is to this that the Apostle refers when he

says: “A spiritual man judges all things” (1 Cor. iii. 15). Beyond

this, moreover, Scripture constitutes an “outward judgment” whereby

the Spirit is able to convince men, it being a “ghostly light, much

brighter than the sun.”[248] It is highly important “to be certain” of

the meaning of the Bible,[249] though here Luther’s own interpretation

was, needless to say, to hold the field. The preachers instructed by

him were to say: “I know that the doctrine is right in God’s sight” and

“boast” of the inward certainty they shared with him.[250]

Luther’s rules for the guidance of conscience in other matters were

quite similar. Subjectivism becomes a regular system for the guidance

of conscience. In this sense it was to the person that the final

decision was left. But whether this isolation of man from man, this

snatching of the individual from dutiful submission to an authority

holding God’s place, was really a gain to the individual, to religion

and to society, or not rather the reverse, is only to be settled in

the light of the history of private judgment which was the outcome of

Luther’s new principle.

Of himself Luther repeats again and again, that his knowledge and

conscience alone sufficed to prove the truth of his position;[251]

that he had won this assurance at the cost of his struggles with

conscience and the devil. Ulenberg, the old writer, speaking of these

utterances in his “Life of Luther,”[252] says that his hero mastered

his conscience when at the Wartburg, and, from that time, believed

more firmly than ever that he had gained this assurance by a Divine

revelation (“_cœlesti quadam revelatione_”), for which reason he had

then written to his Elector that he had received his lead solely from

heaven.[253]

In matters of conscience wherever the troublesome “Law” comes in we

can always trace the devil’s influence; we “must come to grips with

him and fight him,”[254] only the man who has been through the mill,

as he himself had, could boast of having any certainty: “The devil is

a juggler. Unless God helps us, our work and counsel is of no account;

whether we turn right or left he remains the Prince of this world. Let

him who does not know this just try. I have had some experience of

this. But let no one believe me until he too has experienced it.”[255]

Not merely in the case of his life-work in general, but even in

individual matters of importance, the inward struggles and “agonies”

through which he had passed were signs by which to recognise that he

was in the right. Thus, for instance, referring to his hostile action

in Agricola’s case, Luther says: “Oh, how many pangs and agonies did I

endure about this business. I almost died of anxiety before I brought

these propositions out into the light of day.”[256] Hence it was

plain, he argued, how far he was from the palpable arrogance displayed

by his Antinomian foe, and how evidently his present conduct was

willed by God.

_The Help of Conscience at Critical Junctures_

It was the part played by subjectivism in Luther’s ethics that led

him in certain circumstances to extend suspiciously the rights of

“conscience.”

In the matter of the bigamy of Philip of Hesse he soothed the Elector

of Saxony by telling him he must ignore the general outcry, since the

Landgrave had acted “from his need of conscience”; in his “conscience”

the Prince regarded his “wedded concubine” as “no mere prostitute.” “By

God’s Grace I am well able to distinguish between what by way of grace

and before God may be permitted in the case of a troubled conscience

and what, apart from such need of conscience, is not right before God

in outward matters.”[257] In his extreme embarrassment, consequent

on this matrimonial tangle, Luther deemed it necessary to make so

hair-splitting a distinction between lawfulness and permissibility when

need of conscience required it. The explanation—that, in such cases,

something must be conceded “before God and by way of grace”—which he

offers together with the Old-Testament texts as justifying the bigamy,

must look like a fatal concession to laxity.

He also appealed to conscience in another marriage question where he

made the lawfulness of bigamy depend entirely on the conscience.

A man, who, owing to his wife’s illness was prevented from matrimonial

intercourse, wished, on the strength of Carlstadt’s advice, to take a

second wife. Luther thereupon wrote to Chancellor Brück, on Jan. 27,

1524, telling him the Prince should reply as follows: “The husband

must be sure and convinced in his own conscience by means of the Word

of God that it is lawful in his case. Therefore let him seek out such

men as may convince him by the Word of God, whether Carlstadt [who was

then in disgrace at Court], or some other, matters not at all to the

Prince. For if the fellow is not sure of his case, then the permission

of the Prince will not make him so; nor is it for the Prince to decide

on this point, for it is the priests’ business to expound the Word

of God, and, as Zacharias says, from their lips the Law of the Lord

must be learned. I, for my part, admit I can raise no objection if a

man wishes to take several wives since Holy Scripture does not forbid

this; but I should not like to see this example introduced amongst

Christians.... It does not beseem Christians to seize greedily and

for their own advantage on everything to which their freedom gives

them a right.... No Christian surely is so God-forsaken as not to be

able to practise continence when his partner, owing to the Divine

dispensation, proves unfit for matrimony. Still, we may well let

things take their course.”[258]

On the occasion of his own marriage with Bora we may remember how he

had declared with that defiance of which he was a past master, that

he would take the step the better to withstand the devil and all his

foes. (Vol. ii., p. 175 ff.)

A curious echo of the way in which he could set conscience at defiance

is to be met with in his instructions to his assistant Justus Jonas,

who, as soon as his first wife was dead, cast about for a second.

Luther at first was aghast, owing to Biblical scruples, at the scandal

which second marriages on the part of the regents of the Church would

give and entreated him at least to wait a while. When he found it

impossible to dissuade Jonas, he warned him of the “malicious gossip

of our foes,” “who are ever eager to make capital out of our example”;

nevertheless, he goes on to say that he had nothing else to urge

against another union, so long as Jonas “felt within himself that

spirit of defiance which would enable him, after the step, to ignore

all the outcry and the hate of all the devils and of men, and not to

attempt, nay, to scorn any effort to stop the mouths of men, or to

crave their favour.”[259]

The “spirit of defiance” which he here requires as a condition for the

step becomes elsewhere a sort of mystical inspiration which may justify

an action of doubtful morality.

Granted the presence of this inspiration he regards as permissible

what otherwise would not be so. In a note sent to the Elector of

Saxony at the time of the Diet of Augsburg regarding the question

whether it was allowed to offer armed resistance to the Emperor, we

find this idea expressed in remarkable words. Till then Luther had

looked upon resistance as forbidden. The predicament of his cause, now

endangered by the warlike threats of the Emperor, led him to think of

resistance. He writes: If the Elector wishes to take up arms “he must

do so under the influence of a singular spirit and faith (‘_vocante

aliquo singulari spiritu et fide_’). Otherwise he must yield to

superior force and suffer death together with the other Christians of

his faith.”[260] It is plain that there would have been but little

difficulty in finding the peculiar mystical inspiration required;

no less plain is it, that, once this back door had been opened

“inspiration” would soon usurp the place of conscience and justify

steps, that, in themselves, were of a questionable character.

_Conscience in the Religious Question of the Day_

The new method of dealing with conscience is more closely connected

with Luther’s new method of inducing faith than might at first sight

appear.

The individualism he proclaimed in matters of faith embodied the

principle, that “each one must, in his own way, lay hold on religious

experience and thus attain religious conviction.”[261] Luther often

says, in his idealistic way, that only thus is it possible to arrive

at the supreme goal, viz. to feel one’s faith within as a kind of

inspiration; our aim must ever be to feel it “surely and immutably”

in our conscience and in all the powers of our soul.[262] Everything

must depend on this experience, the more so as to him faith means

something very different from what it means to Catholics; it is, he

says, “no taking it all for true”; “for that would not be Christian

faith but more an opinion than faith”; on the contrary, each one

must believe that “he is one of those on whom such grace and mercy

is bestowed.”[263] Now, such a faith, no matter how profound and

immutable the feeling be, cannot be reached except at the cost of a

certain violence to conscience; such coercion is, in fact, essential

owing to the nature of this faith in personal salvation.

What, according to Luther, is the general character of faith? Fear and

struggles, so he teaches, are not merely its usual accompaniments,

but are also the “sure sign that the Word has touched and moved

you, that it exercises, urges and compels you”; nay, Confession and

Communion are really meant only for such troubled ones, “otherwise

there would be no need of them”—i.e. they would not be necessary

unless there existed despair of conscience and anxiety concerning

faith. It was a mistaken practice, he continues, for many to refrain

from receiving the Sacrament, “preferring to wait until they feel

the faith within their heart”; in this way all desire to receive is

extinguished; people should rather approach even when they feel not at

all their faith; then “you will feel more and more attracted towards

it”[264]—though this again, according to Luther, is by no means quite

certain.

The “inward experience of faith” too often becomes simply the dictate

of one’s whim. But a whim and order to oneself to think this or that

does not constitute faith as the word is used in revelation, nor does

a command imposed on the inward sense of right and wrong amount to a

pronouncement of conscience.

Though Luther often held up himself and his temptations regarding

faith, as an example which might comfort waverers, Protestants have

nevertheless praised him for the supposed firmness of his faith and

for his joy of conscience. But was not his “defiant faith” really

identical with that imposition he was wont to practise on his

conscience and to dignify by the name of inspiration?

Yet, in spite of all, he never found a secure foundation. “I know

what it costs me, for I have daily to struggle with myself,” he told

his friends in 1538.[265] “I was scarcely able to bring myself to

believe,” he said in a sermon of the same year, “that the doctrine

of the Pope and the Fathers was all wrong.”[266] His faith was as

insecurely fixed, so he quaintly bewailed on another occasion, “as

the fur trimming on his sleeve.”[267] “Who believes such things?”

he asks, wildly implicating all people in general, at the conclusion

of a note jotted down in a Bible and alluding to the hope of life

everlasting.[268] In 1529 he repeatedly describes to his friends how

Satan tempts him (“_Satanas fatigat_”) with lack of faith and despair,

how he was sunk in unspeakable “bitterness of soul,” and, how, for

this reason as he once says, he was scarce able “with a trembling

hand” to write to them.[269]

Calvin, too, was aware of the frequent terrors Luther endured. When

Pighius, the Catholic writer, alleged Luther’s struggles of conscience

and temptations concerning the faith as disproving his authority,

Calvin took good care not to deny them. He boldly replied that this

only redounded to Luther’s honour since it was the experience of all

devout people, and particularly of the most famous divines.[270]

Was it possible, according to Luther, to be conscientiously opposed

to his teaching on faith and morals? At least in theory, he does go

so far in certain statements as to recognise the possibility of such

conscientious scruples. In these utterances he would even appear to

surrender the whole weight and authority of his theological and ethical

discoveries, fundamental though they were to his innovations. “I have

served the Church zealously with what God has given me and what I owe

to Him. Whoever does not care for it, let him read or listen to others.

It matters but little should they feel no need of me.”[271] With regard

to public worship, it is left “to each one to make up his conscience

as to how he shall use his freedom.” “I am not your preacher,” so he

wrote to the “Strasburg Christians,” who were inclined to distrust his

exclusiveness; “no one is bound to believe me; let each man look to

himself”;[272] all are to be referred “from Luther,” “to Christ.”[273]

Such statements, however, cannot stand against his constant insistence

on his Divine mission; they are rather of psychological interest as

showing how suddenly he passes from one idea to another. Moreover, his

statement last mentioned, often instanced by Protestants as testifying

to his breadth of mind, is nullified almost on the same page by the

solemn assurance, that, his “Gospel is the true Gospel” and that

everything that contradicts it is “heresy,” for, indeed, as had been

foretold by the Apostle Paul (1 Cor. xi. 19), “heresies” must needs

arise.[274]

And, in point of fact, those teachers who felt themselves bound in

conscience to differ from him and go their own way—for instance,

the “Sacramentarians” in their interpretation of the words of

consecration—were made to smart. Of this the example of Schwenckfeld

was a new and striking proof.

The contradiction presented on the one hand by Luther’s disposition

to grant the most absolute freedom of conscience, and on the other

by his rigid exclusiveness, is aptly described by Friedrich Paulsen:

“In the region of morals Luther leaves the decision to the individual

conscience as instructed by the Word of God. To rely on human

authority in questions of morals appeared to him not much better than

blasphemy.... True enough, however, this very Luther, at a later date,

attacked those whose conscience found in God’s Word doctrines at all

different from those taught at Wittenberg.”[275]

Hence, neither to the heretics in his own camp nor to the adherents

of the olden faith would he allow the right of private judgment, so

greatly extolled both by himself and his followers. Nothing had been

dearer to the people of mediæval times, who for all their love of

freedom were faithful children of the Church, than regard and esteem

for the rights of personality in its own domain. Personality, denoting

man’s unfettered and reasonable nature stamped with its own peculiar

individuality, is assuredly something noble. The Catholic Church,

far from setting limits to the development of personality, promoted

both its real freedom and the growth of individuality in ways suited

to man’s nature and his supernatural vocation. Even the monastic

life, so odious to Luther, was anything but “hostile to the ideal of

personality.” An impartial observer, prepared to disregard fortuitous

abuses, could have seen even then, that the religious life strives

after the fairest fruits of ethical personality, which are fostered by

the very sacrifice of self-will: Obedience is but a sacrifice “made in

the interests of personality.”[276] Mere wilfulness and the spirit of

“defiance,” ever ready to overstep the bounds set by reason and grace,

creates, not a person, but a “superman,” whose existence we could well

spare; of such a being Luther’s behaviour reminds us more than once.

After all we have said it would be superfluous to deal in detail with

the opinion expressed above (p. 66) by certain Protestant judges, viz.

that Luther reinstated conscience, which had fallen into the toils

of “legalism,” and set it again on its “true basis,” insisting on

“feeling” and on real “morality.” Nor shall we enquire whether it is

seriously implied, that, before Luther’s day, people were not aware

that the mere “legality” of a deed did not suffice unless first of all

morality was recognised as the true guide of conduct.

We may repeat yet once again that Luther was not the first to brand

“outward holiness-by-works” in the sphere of morality.[277] Berthold

of Ratisbon, whose voice re-echoed through the whole of Germany,

summing up the teaching of the mediæval moral theologians, reprobates

most sternly any false confidence in outward deeds. No heaping up of

external works, no matter how eager, can, according to him, prove

of any profit to the soul, not even if the sinner, after unheard-of

macerations, goes loaded with chains on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and

there lays himself down to die within the very sepulchre of the Lord;

all that, so he points out with an eloquence all his own, would be

thrown away were there lacking the inward spirit of love and contrition

for the sins committed.

The doctrine on contrition of the earlier Catholic theologians and

popular writers, which we have already had occasion to review, forms

an excellent test when compared with Luther’s own, by which to decide

the question: Which is the outward and which the inward morality?

Their doctrine is based both on Scripture and on the traditions of

antiquity. Similarly the Catholic teaching on moral self-adaptation to

Christ, such as we find it, for instance, in St. Benedict’s Prologue

to his world-famous Rule, that textbook of the mediæval ascetics, in

the models and examples of the Fathers and even in the popular Catholic

works of piety so widely read in Luther’s day, strikingly confutes

the charge, that, by the stress it laid on certain commandments and

practices, Catholicism proved it had lost sight of “the existence of

a living personal morality” and that it fell to Luther once more to

recall to life this ideal. The imitation of Christ in the spirit of

love was undoubtedly regarded as the highest aim of morality, and this

aim necessarily included “personal morality” in its most real sense,

and Luther was not in the least necessity of inaugurating any new

ideals of virtue.

_Luther’s Warfare with his old friend Caspar Schwenckfeld_

Caspar Schwenckfeld, a man of noble birth hailing from Ossig near Lüben

in Silesia, after having studied at Cologne, Frankfurt-on-the-Oder and

perhaps also at Erfurt, was, in 1519, won over by Luther’s writings

to the religious innovations. Being idealistically inclined, the

Wittenberg preaching against formalism in religion and on the need of

returning to a truly spiritual understanding of the Bible roused him to

enthusiasm. He attempted, with rather more logic than Luther, to put

in practice the latter’s admonitions concerning the inward life and

therefore started a movement, half pietist, half mystic, for bringing

together those who had been really awakened.

Schwenckfeld was a man of broad mind, with considerable independence

of judgment and of a noble and generous disposition. His good position

in the world gave him what many of the other Lutheran leaders lacked,

viz. a free hand. His frank criticism did not spare the faults in

their preaching. The sight of the sordid elements which attached

themselves to Luther strengthened him in his resolve to establish

communities—first of all in Silesia—modelled on the very lines

roughly sketched by Luther, which should present a picture of the

apostolic age of the Church. The Duke of Silesia and many of the

nobility were induced to desert Catholicism, and a wide field was won

in Silesia for the new ideals of Wittenberg.

In spite of his high esteem for Luther, Schwenckfeld wrote, in 1523:

It is evident “that little improvement can be discerned emerging from

the new teaching, and that those who boast of the Evangel lead a bad

and scandalous life.... This moves us not a little, indeed pierces our

heart when we hear of it.”[278] To the Duke he dedicated, in 1524,

a writing entitled: “An exhortation regarding the misuse of sundry

notable Articles of the Evangel, through the wrong understanding

of which the common man is led into the freedom of the flesh and

into error.” The book forms a valuable source of information on the

religious state of the people at the time of the rise of Lutheranism.

Therein he laments, with deep feeling and with an able pen, that so

many Lutherans were being influenced by the most worldly of motives,

and that a pernicious tendency towards freedom from social restrictions

was rife amongst them.[279]

Though Schwenckfeld was all his life equally averse to the demagogue

Anabaptist movement and to Zwinglianism with its rationalistic

tendency, yet his fate led him into ways very much like theirs.

Together with his associate Valentine Krautwald, a former precentor,

he attacked the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament, giving,

however, a new interpretation of the words of Institution., different

from that of Zwingli and Œcolampadius. To the fanaticism of the

Anabaptists he approximated by his opposition to any organised Church,

to the sacraments as means of grace, and to all that appeared to him to

deviate from the spirit of the Apostolic Church.

He besought Luther in a personal interview at Wittenberg, on Dec. 1,

1525, to agree to his doctrine of the Sacrament, explaining to him at

the same time its affinity with his supposedly profounder conception

of the atonement, the sacraments and the life of Christ as followed

in his communities; he also invited him in fiery words to throw over

the popular churches in which all the people received the Supper and

rather to establish congregations of awakened Christians. Luther,

though in no unfriendly manner, put him off; throughout the interview

he addressed him as “Dear Caspar,” but he flatly refused to give any

opinion. According to Schwenckfeld’s own account he even allowed that

his doctrine of the Sacrament was “plausible” ... if only it could

be proved, and, on parting, whispered in his ear: “Keep quiet for a

while.”[280]

When, however, the Sacramentarian movement began to assume alarming

dimensions, and the Swiss started quoting Schwenckfeld in favour of

their view of the Sacrament, Luther was exasperated and began to

assail his Silesian fellow-worker. His indignation was increased by

certain charges against the nobleman which reached him from outside

sources. He replied on April 14, 1526, to certain writings sent him by

Schwenckfeld and Krautwald by an unconditional refusal to agree, though

he did so briefly and with reserve.[281] On Jan. 4, of the same year,

referring to Zwingli, Œcolampadius and Schwenckfeld in a writing to

the “Christians of Reutlingen” directed against the Sacramentarians he

said: “Just behold and comprehend the devil and his coarseness”; in it

he had included Schwenckfeld, though without naming him, as a “spirit

and head” among the three who were attacking the Sacrament.[282]

From that time onward the Silesian appeared to him one of the most

dangerous of heretics. He no longer admitted in his case the rights

of conscience and private judgment which Luther claimed so loudly

for himself and defended in the case of his friends, and to which

Schwenckfeld now appealed. It was nothing to him that on many

occasions, and even till his death, Schwenckfeld expressed the highest

esteem for Luther and gratitude for his services in opening up a better

way of theology.

“Dr. Martin,” Schwenckfeld wrote in 1528, “I would most gladly have

spared, if only my conscience had allowed it, for I know, praise be to

God, what I owe to him.”[283]

It was his purpose to pursue the paths along which Luther had at first

striven to reach a new world. “A new world is being born and the old

is dying,” so he wrote in 1528.[284] This new world he sought within

man, but with the same mistaken enthusiasm with which he taught the

new resurrection to life. The Divine powers there at work he fancied

were the Holy Ghost, the Word of God and the Blood of the all-powerful

Jesus. The latter he wished to reinstate in person as the sole ruler

of the Church; in raising up to life and in supporting it, Jesus

was ministering personally. According to him Christ’s manhood was

not the same as a creature’s; he deified it to such an extent as to

dissolve it, thus laying himself open to the charge of Eutychianism.

Regeneration in baptism to him seemed nothing, compared with Christ’s

raising up of the adult to life.

He would have it that he himself had passed, in 1527, through an

overwhelming spiritual experience, the chief crisis of his life,

when God, as he says, made him “partaker of the heavenly calling,

received him into His favour, and bestowed upon him a good and joyful

conscience and knowledge.”[285] On his “conscience and knowledge”

he insisted from that time with blinded prejudice, and taught

his followers, likewise with a joyful conscience to embrace the

illumination from on high. He adhered with greater consistency than

Luther to the thesis that everyone who has been enlightened has the

right to judge of doctrine; no “outward office or preaching” might

stand in the way of such a one. To each there comes some upheaval

of his earthly destiny; it is then that we receive the infusion of

the knowledge of salvation given by the Spirit, and of faith in the

presence of Christ the God-man; it is a spiritual revelation which

fortifies the conscience by the absolute certainty of salvation and

guides a man in the freedom of the Spirit through all the scruples of

conscience he meets in his moral life. His system also comprises a

theory of practically complete immunity from sin.[286]

No other mind has given such bold expression as Schwenckfeld to the

individualism or subjectivism which Luther originally taught; no one

has ever attempted to calm consciences and fortify them against the

arbitrariness of religious feeling in words more sympathetic and

moving.

Carl Ecke,[287] his most recent biographer, who is full of

admiration for him, says quite truly of the close connection between

Schwenckfeld and the earlier Luther, that the chief leaders of the

incipient Protestant Church, estimable men though some of them were,

nevertheless misunderstood and repulsed one of the most promising

Christians of the Reformation age. When he charged them with want of

logic in their reforming efforts they regarded it as the fanaticism of

an ignoramus.... In Schwenckfeld 16th-century Protestantism nipped in

the bud the Christian individualism of the early ages rediscovered by

Luther, in which lay the hope of a higher unity.[288]

In 1529, two years after his great interior experience, Schwenckfeld

left his home, and, on a hint from the Duke of Silesia, severed his

connection with him, being unwilling to expose him to the risk of

persecution. Thereafter he led a wandering existence for thirty years;

until his seventy-second year he lived with strangers at Strasburg,

Esslingen, Augsburg, Spires, Ulm and elsewhere. After 1540, when

the Lutheran theologians at Schmalkalden published an admonition

against him, his history was more that of a “fugitive” than a mere

“wanderer.”[289]

Still, he was untiringly active in furthering his cause by means of

lectures and circular letters, as well as by an extensive private

correspondence. He scattered the seeds of his peculiar doctrines

amongst the nobility in particular and their dependents in country

parts. Many people of standing either belonged or were well-disposed to

his school, as Duke Christopher of Würtemberg wrote in 1564; according

to him there were many at Augsburg and Nuremberg, in the Tyrol,

in Allgäu, Silesia and one part of the Mark.[290] “The well-known

intolerance of the Reformation and of its preachers,” remarks the

Protestant historian of Schwenckfeld, “could not endure in their body a

man who had his own views on the Sacraments and refused for conscience

sake to take part in the practices of their Church.... He wandered,

like a hunted deer, without hearth or home, through the cities and

forests of South Germany, pursued by Luther and the preachers.”[291] As

late as 1558 Melanchthon incited the authorities against him, declaring

that “such sophistry as his requires to be severely dealt with by the

princes.”[292]

Not long after Schwenckfeld departed this life at Ulm in 1561. His

numerous following in Silesia migrated, first to Saxony, then to

Holland and England, and finally to Pennsylvania, where they still

exist to this day.

Luther’s indignation against Schwenckfeld knew no bounds. In

conversation he spoke of him as Swinesfield,[293] and, in his addresses

and writings, still more commonly as Stinkfield, a name which was also

repeatedly applied by his followers to the man they so disliked.[294]

In his Table-Talk Luther refers to that “rascal Schwenckfeld,” who

was the instigator of numerous errors and deceives many people with

his “honeyed words.”[295] He, like the fanatics, so Luther complains,

despises “the spoken word,” and yet God willed “to deal with and work

in us by such means.”[296]

In 1540 he told his friends that Schwenckfeld was unworthy of being

refuted by him, no less unworthy than Sebastian Frank, another gifted

and independent critic of Luther and Lutheranism.[297]

In 1543, when Schwenckfeld attempted to make advances to Luther

and sent him a tract together with a letter, Luther sent down to

the messenger a card on which he acknowledged the receipt of the

book, but declared that “the senseless fool, beset as he is by the

devil, understands nothing and does not even know what he is talking

about.” He had better leave him, Luther, alone and not worry him with

his “booklets, which the devil himself discharges through him.” In

the last lines he invokes a sort of curse on Schwenckfeld, and all

“Sacramentarians and Eutychians” of whom it had been said in the Bible

(Jer. xxiii. 21): “I did not send prophets, yet they ran: I have not

spoken to them, yet they prophesy.”[298]