On May 31, 1523, was canonised the venerable bishop Benno of Meissen,

a contemporary of Gregory VII. Luther was incensed to the last degree

at the thought of the special celebration to be held in 1524 in the

town—the Duchy being still Catholic—in honour of the new Saint. He

accordingly published his “Against the new idol and olden devil about

to be set up at Meyssen.”[452] His use of the term “devil” in the

title he vindicates as follows on the very first page: Now, that, “by

the grace of God, the Gospel has again arisen and shines brightly,”

“Satan incarnate” is avenging himself “by means of such foolery” and

is causing himself to be worshipped with great pomp under the name

of Benno. It was not in his power to prevent Duke George setting up

the relics at Meissen and erecting an artistic and costly altar in

their honour. The only result of Luther’s attack was to increase the

devotion of clergy and people, who confidently invoked the saintly

bishop’s protection against the inroads of apostasy. The attack also

led Catholic writers in the Duchy to publish some bitter rejoinders.

The rudeness of their titles bears witness to their indignation.

“Against the Wittenberg idol Martin Luther” was the title of the

pamphlet of Augustine Alveld, a Franciscan Guardian; the work of Paul

Bachmann, Abbot of Alte Zelle, was entitled “Against the fiercely

snorting wild-boar Luther,” and that of Hieronymus Emser, “Reply to

Luther’s slanderous book.” The last writer was to some extent involved

in the matter of the canonisation through having published the Legend

of the famous Bishop. This he had done rather uncritically and without

testing his authorities, and for this reason had been read a severe

lesson by Luther.

Luther’s opposition to this canonisation was, however, by no means

dictated by historical considerations but by his hatred of all

veneration of the Saints and by his aversion to the ideal of Christian

self-denial, submissive obedience to the Church and Catholic activity

of which the canonised Saints are models. He himself makes it easy to

answer the question whether it was zeal for the moral reformation of

the Church which drove him to assail canonisation and the veneration

of the Saints; nowhere else is his attempt to destroy the sublime

ideal of Christian life which he failed to understand and to drag down

to the gutter all that was highest so clearly apparent as here. The

real Saints, so he declared, were his Wittenbergers. Striving after

great holiness on the part of the individual merely tended to derogate

from Christ’s work; the Evangelical Counsels fostered only a mistaken

desertion of the world.

Judging others by his own standard, he attempted to drag down the

Saints of the past to the level of mediocrity. Real Saints must be

“good, lusty sinners who do not blush to insert in the Our Father the

‘forgive us our trespasses.’” It was “consoling” to him to hear, that

the Apostles, too, even after they had received the Holy Ghost, had

at times been shaky in their faith, and “very consoling indeed” that

the Saints of both Old and New Covenant “had fallen into great sins”;

only thus, so he fancies, do we learn to know the “Kingdom of Christ,”

viz. the forgiveness of sins. Even Abraham, agreeably with Luther’s

interpretation of Josue xxiv. 2, was represented to have worshipped

idols, in order that Luther might be able to instance his conversion

and say: Believe like him and you will be as holy as he.[453]

_The Reformation in the Duchy of Saxony considered as typical_

In 1539, after the death of Duke George, at Luther’s instance, the

protestantising of the duchy of Saxony was undertaken with unseemly

haste; to this end Henry, the new sovereign, ordered a Visitation on

the lines of that held in the Saxon Electorate and to be carried out

by preachers placed at his disposal by the Elector. Jonas and Spalatin

now became the visitors for Meissen. Before this, on the occasion

of the canonisation of St. Benno, Spalatin, in a letter to Luther,

had treated the canonisation as a laughing matter. On July 14, the

visitors, alleging the authority of the Duke, summoned the Cathedral

Chapter at Meissen to remove the sepulchre of St. Benno. On this being

met by a refusal armed men were sent to the Cathedral the following

night. “‘They broke into fragments the richly ornamented sepulchre of

the Saint, together with the altar,’ to quote the words of the bishop’s

report to the Emperor, ‘they decapitated a wooden statue of St. Benno

and stuck it up outside as a butt for ridicule.’”[454]

Luther, for his part, in a letter to Jonas of August 14 of the

same year, has his little joke about the visitors’ undoing of the

canonisation of Benno. “You have unsainted Benno and have shown no fear

of Cochlæus, Schmid, nor of the Nausei and Sadoleti, who teach the

contrary. They are indignant with you, ultra-sensitive men that they

are, knowing so little of grammar and so much less of theology.”[455]

Nor did the progress of the overthrow of the Church throughout the

Duchy bear the least stamp of moral reform. The very violence used

forbids our applying such a term to the work. The Catholic worship at

the Cathedral was at once abolished and replaced by Lutheran services

and preaching. The priests were driven into exile, the bishop alone

being permitted to carry on “his godless papistical abominations and

practices openly in his own residence” (the Castle of Stolpen). At the

demand of the Wittenbergers the professors at Leipzig University who

refused to conform to the Lutheran doctrine were dismissed. Melanchthon

insisted, that, if they refused to hold their tongues, they must be

driven out of the land as “blasphemers.” The new preachers publicly

abused the friends, clerical and lay, of the late Duke to such an

extent that the Estates were moved to make a formal complaint. Churches

and monasteries were plundered and the sacred vessels melted down.[456]

Maurice, the son of Duke Henry, who succeeded in 1541, showed himself

even more violent and relentless in extirpating the olden system.

The profoundly immoral character of this reformation, the interference

with the people’s freedom of conscience, the destruction of religious

traditions which the peaceable inhabitants had received a thousand

years before from holy missionaries and bishops, merely on the strength

of the new doctrines of a man who claimed to have a better Gospel—all

this was expressly sanctioned and supported by Luther.

He wrote in a memorandum on the proceedings: “There is not much room

here for discussion. If my gracious Duke Henry wishes to have the

Evangel, then His Highness must abolish idolatry, or not afford it

protection ... otherwise the wrath of heaven will be too great.” As

a “sovereign appointed by God” the ruler “owed it to Him to put down

such horrible, blasphemous idolatry by every means in his power.” This

was nothing more than “defending Christ and damning the devil”; an

example had been given by the “former kings of Juda and Israel,” who

had abolished “Baal and all his idolatry,” and later by Constantine,

Theodosius and Gratian. For it was as much the duty of princes and

lords as of other people to serve God and the Lord Christ to the

utmost of their power. Away, therefore, with the abbots and bishops

“since they are determined to remain blasphemers ... they are blind

leaders of the blind; God’s wrath has come upon them; hence we must

help in the matter as much as we can.”[457]

Yet the Christian emperors here appealed to could have furnished

Luther with an example of forbearance towards heathen Rome and its

religious works of art which might well have shamed him. He did not

know that at Rome the defacing and damaging of temples, altars or

statues was most strictly forbidden, and that, for instance, Pope

Damasus († 384) had been formally assured by the city-prefect that

never had a Christian Roman appeared before his tribunal on such

a charge.[458] Elsewhere, however, such acts of violence were not

unknown.

Luther’s spirit of persecution was quite different from the spirit

which animated those Roman emperors who came over to Christianity.

It was their desire to hasten the end of an outworn religion of

superstition, immorality and idolatry. With them it was a question

of defending and furthering a religion sent from heaven to renew the

world and which had convincingly proved the divinity of its mission by

miracles, by the blood of martyrs and by the striking holiness of so

many thousands of confessors.

It was against the faithful adherents of this very religion that, on

the pretext of the outward corruption under which it groaned, Luther

perpetrated so many acts of violence regardless of the testimony of

a thousand years of beneficent labours. His ingratitude towards the

achievements of the olden Church in the education of the nations, his

deliberate ignoring of the great qualities which distinguished her and

in his day could still have enabled her to carry out her own moral

regeneration from within, are incompatible with his having been a true

moral reformer.

_The Aims of the Reformation and the Currents of the Age_

Looking at the state of the case from the standpoint of the olden

Catholic Church a closer historical examination shows that what she

needed above all was a strengthening of her interior organisation.[459]

In view of the tendency to split up into separate States, in view of

the decay of that outward bond of the nations under the Empire which

had once been her stay, and of the rise of all sorts of new elements

of culture requiring to be exploited for the glory of God and the

spiritual betterment of mankind, a consolidation of the Church’s

structure was essential. The Primacy indeed was there, exercised its

functions and was recognised, but what was needed was a more direct

recognition of a purified Papacy. The bond of unity between the nations

within the Church needed to be more clearly put in evidence. This could

best be done by allowing the significance of a voluntary submission to

the authority appointed by God, and of the Primacy, to sink more deeply

into the consciousness of Christendom. This was all the more called

for, now that the traditional devotion to Rome had suffered so much

owing to the great Schism of the West, to the reforming Councils and

the prevalence of Gallican ideas, and that the splendour of the Papacy

seemed now on the wane. The excessive concern of the Popes in politics

and the struggle they had waged in Italy in the effort to establish

themselves more securely had by no means contributed to increase

respect for the power of the keys in its own peculiar domain, viz. the

spiritual.

Thus any reformer seeking to improve the Church’s condition had

necessarily to face this task first of all.—Many other moral

requirements arising out of the then state of society had, however,

also to be borne in mind.

It was necessary to counteract, by laying stress on what had been

handed down, the false subjectivism and universal scepticism which

the schools of philosophy had let loose on the world; also to oppose

the cynicism, lack of discipline and love of destruction which

characterised Humanism, by infusing into education the true spirit

of the Church. Both these tasks could, however, be accomplished only

by men filled with respect for tradition who while on the one hand

broad-mindedly accepting the new learning, i.e. without questioning

or distrusting reason and its rights, on the other hand possessed the

power and the will to spiritualise the new culture. The disruptive

tendency of the nations, the counterpart in international politics

of the prevalent individualism, required to be corrected by laying

stress on the underlying common ground. The undreamt-of enlargement

of the Church through the discovery of new lands had to be met

by organisations, the members of which were filled with love of

self-denial and zeal for souls. At the same time the materialism, which

was a consequence of the great increase of wealth brought from foreign

lands, had to be checked. To oppose the alarming growth of Turkish

power it was necessary to preach self-sacrifice, manly courage and

above all Christian unity amongst those in power, amongst those who in

former times had sallied forth against the East strong in the feeling

of being one family in the faith. A still worse foe to Christian

society was to be found in moral discouragement and exhaustion; there

was need of a new spirit to awaken the motive force of religious life

and to stir men to a more active use of the means of grace.

If we compare the moral aims and motives which inspired Luther’s

reformation, with the great needs of the times, as just described, we

cannot fail to see how far short he fell of the requirements.

Most of the aims indicated were quite strange to him. Judging from the

standpoint of the olden Church, he frequently sought the very opposite

of what was required. Some few instances may be cited.

So little did Luther’s reformation tend to realise the sublime moral

principle of the union and comradeship of the nations, that, on the

contrary, he encouraged nationalism and separatist tendencies even

in Church matters. Where his idea of a National Church prevailed,

there the strongest bond of union disappeared completely.[460] The

more the authority of the Empire was subverted by the separatists, by

religious Leagues and violent inroads of princes and sovereign towns

within the Empire, the more the idea of unity, which at one time had

been so great a power for good, had to suffer. He complained that the

nations and races were as unfriendly to each other as devils. But for

him, the rude Saxon, to abuse all who dwelt outside his borders in

the most unmeasured terms, and to pour out the vials of his wrath and

vituperation on the Latin nations because they were Catholic could

hardly be regarded as conducive to better harmony. When he persistently

declared in his writings and sermons that the real Turks were to be

found at home, or when he fanned the flames of fraternal hatred against

the Papists within the Fatherland, such action could scarcely promote a

more effectual resistance to the danger looming in the East. The Bible,

according to him, was to serve as the means of uniting the people of

God. He flung it amongst the people at a time when everything was

seething with excitement; yet he himself, in spite of all his praise

of Bible study, was moved to execrate the results. It seemed, so he

declared, as though it had been done merely “in order that each one

might bore a hole where his snout happened to be.”[461]

As to subjectivism, the dominant evil of the age, he himself carried

it to its furthest limits, relentlessly condemning everywhere whatever

did not appeal to him and exalting his personal views and feelings into

a regular law; subjectivism pervades and spoils his whole theology,

and, in the domain of ethics, puts both personality and conscience on

a new and very questionable basis.[462] The subjective principle as

used by him and exalted into an axiom, might be invoked equally by any

religious faction for its own ends. We need only recall Luther’s theory

of the lonely isolation of the individual in the matter of faith.

Again, if that transition period between mediæval and modern times was

suffering from moral and religious exhaustion and was inclined to be

pessimistic concerning spiritual goods, and if, for its moral reform,

what was needed was a leader deeply imbued with faith in revelation,

able by the very strength of his faith to arouse the world of his

day, and to inspire the lame and timid with enthusiasm and delight

in the ancient treasures of religion—then, again, one is forced

to ask whether such a man as Luther, even apart from his new and

erroneous doctrines, had the requisite strong and overbearing devotion

to supernatural truths? Is it not Luther who speaks so often of the

weakness of his faith, of his doubts and his inward trials, and who, in

order to reassure himself, declares that everyone, even the Apostles,

the martyrs and the saints, were acquainted with the like?

Not only did he not fight against pessimism, but, as the years went

by, he even built it into a truly burdensome system. Towards the end

of his life, owing both to his theories and to his experiences, he

became a living embodiment of dejection, constituting himself its

eloquent advocate. His view of the history of the kingdom of Christ

was the gloomiest imaginable. Everywhere he saw the power of the devil

predominant throughout the whole course of the world’s history.

Not only is everything in the world outside of Christ Satanic, but

even the ancient people of God, chosen with a view to the coming

Redeemer, according to Luther, “raged and stormed” against the faith.

But “the fury of the Jews” was exceeded by the “malice” which began

to insinuate itself into the first Church not very long after its

foundation. What the Jews did was “but a joke and mere child’s play”

compared with the corruption of the Christian religion by means of

“human ordinances, councils and Papistry.” Hardly had the light

enkindled by Christ begun to shine before it gradually flickered out,

until lighted again by Luther. In the East prevailed the rule of the

Turks, those devils incarnate, whilst the West groaned under the

Papacy, which far exceeds even the Islam in devilry.[463]

His pessimism sees the origin of the corruption in the Church in the

fact, that, already in the first centuries, “the devil had broken into

Holy Scripture and made such a disturbance as to give rise to many

heresies.” To counteract these the Christians surrendered themselves

to human ordinances; “they knew of no other way out of the difficulty

than to set up a multitude of Councils side by side with Scripture.”

“In short, the devil is too clever and powerful for us; everywhere he

is an obstacle and a hindrance. If we go to Scripture, he arouses so

much dissension and strife that we grow sick of the Word and afraid to

trust to it. Yet if we rely on human councils and counsels, we lose

Scripture altogether and become the devil’s own, body and soul.” This

evil was not solely due to setting up human ordinances in the place of

Scripture, but also to the preference shown in theory to works which

arose when people saw, that “works or deeds did not follow” from the

preaching of the Apostles, “as they should have done.” “Hence the

new disciples set to work to improve upon the Master’s building and

proceeded to confuse two different things, viz. works and faith. This

scandal has been a hindrance to the new doctrine of faith from the

beginning even to the present day.”

From all this one would rather gather that the fault lay more in the

nature of Christianity than in the devil.

Luther’s pessimistic tendency also expresses itself in the conviction,

that it was the “gruesome, frightful and boundless anger of God”

that was the cause of the desolation of Christendom during so many

centuries, though he assigns no reason for such anger on the part of

God.

His gloomy view of the world, exercising an increasing domination over

him, led him to take refuge in fatalistic grounds for consolation,

which, according to his wont, he even attributed to Christ who had

inspired him with them. Haunted by his diabolical visions he finally

became more deeply imbued with pessimism than any present-day

representative of the pessimistic philosophy.

“Here you are living,” so he writes to one of his friends, “in the

devil’s own den of murderers, surrounded by dragons and serpents. Of

two things one must happen; either the people become devils to you, or

you yourself become a devil.”[464]

Formerly he had looked forward with some courage and confidence to

the possibility of a change. But even his courage, particularly at

critical junctures, for instance, at the Coburg and during the Diet of

Augsburg, more resembled the wanton rashness of a man who seeks to set

his own fears at defiance. At any rate his peculiar form of courage in

faith was not calculated to give a fresh stimulus, amid the general

relaxation and exhaustion, to religious enthusiasm and the spirit of

cheerful self-sacrifice for the highest aims of human life. On the

other hand, his success was largely due to the discouragement so widely

prevalent. We meet with a mournful echo of this discouragement in the

sayings of certain contemporary Princes of the Church, who seem to

have given up everything for lost. Many who had been surprised and

overwhelmed by the sudden bursting of the storm were victims of this

depression.

* * * * *

Luther not only failed to direct the unfavourable tendencies of the age

into better channels, but even to some extent allowed himself to be

carried away by them.

Even so strong a man as he, was keenly affected by the spirit of

the age. In some respects it is true his work exercised a lasting

effect on the prevalent currents, but in others he allowed his work

to be dominated by the spirit then abroad. To the nominalistic

school of Occam he owed not only certain of his doctrines but also

his disputatious and subversive ways, and his method of ignoring the

general connection between the truths of faith and of making the most

of the grounds for doubt. Pseudo-mystic influences explain both his

subjectivism and those quietistic principles, traces of which are

long met with in his writings. Humanism increased his aversion to the

old-time scholasticism, his animosity to the principles of authority

and tradition, his contempt for all things mediæval, his lack of

appreciation for, and unfairness to, the religious orders no less

than the paradox and arrogance of his language. A strain of coarse

materialism runs through the Renaissance. In Luther, says Paulsen,

“we are reminded of the Renaissance by a certain coarse naturalism

with which the new Evangel is spiced, and which, in his attacks on

celibacy and the religious life, occasionally leads Luther to speak as

though to abstain from carnal works was to rebel against God’s Will

and command.”[465] To the tendency of the Princes to exalt themselves

Luther yielded, even at the expense of the liberties and well-being of

the people, simply because he stood in need of the rulers’ support. The

spirit of revolt against the hierarchy which was seething amongst the

masses and even among many of the theologians, and which the disorders

censured in the _Gravamina_ of the various Diets had brought almost to

the point of explosion, carried Luther away; even in those writings

which contemporaries and aftercomers were to praise as his greatest

achievement and, in fact, in his whole undertaking in so far as it

involved separation from Rome, he was simply following the trend of his

time.

8. The Church Apart of the True Believers

Luther’s sad experiences in establishing a new Church led him for

several years to cherish a strange idea; his then intention was to

unite the true believers into a special band and to restrict the

preaching of the Gospel to these small congregations which would then

represent the real Church.

This idea of his of gathering together the true Christians has already

been referred to cursorily elsewhere,[466] but it is of such importance

that it may well be dealt with somewhat more in detail.

_Luther’s Theory of the Church Apart prior to 1526_

On the whole the idea which Luther, previous to 1526, expressed over

and over again as clearly as could be desired and never rejected later,

viz. of uniting certain chosen Christians—the true believers—in a

“congregation apart” and of regarding the remainder, i.e. the ordinary

members of the flock which followed him, or popular Church as it was

termed, as a mere lump still to be kneaded, gives us a deep insight

into the development which his conception of the Church underwent and

into his opinion of the position of his congregations generally. The

idea was an outcome more of circumstances than of reflection, more a

fanciful expedient than a consequence of his theories; thus it was that

it suffered shipwreck on the outward conditions which soon showed that

the plan was impossible of realisation. It really originated in the

moral disorders rampant in the new Church, particularly at Wittenberg.

So few of those who followed him allowed their hearts to be touched

by the Evangel, and yet all, none the less, claimed not merely to be

called Evangelicals but even to share in the Supper. Luther saw that

this state of things was compromising the good name of the work he had

started.

After the refusal of the Princes and nobles to listen to his appeal

to amend the state of Christendom, he determined to take his stand

on the congregational principle. He fondly expected that, thanks

to the supposed inward power of reform in the new communities, all

his proposals would soon be put into execution, the old system of

Church government swept away and a new order established more in

accordance with his views. Hence in the writing to the magistrates

and congregation of Prague, “_De instituendis ministris ecclesiæ_”

(Nov., 1523), which, without delay, he caused to be translated into

German,[467] he strove to show, how, everywhere, the new Church system

was to be established from top to bottom by the selection of pastors

by members of the congregation filled with faith (“_iis qui credunt,

hæc scribimus_”).[468] According to this writing, the Visitors and

Archbishop yet to be chosen by the zealous clergy, were to live only

for the sake of the pastors and the congregations, whom they had to

better by means of the Word. The faithful congregations “will indeed

be weak and sinful”—Luther had no hope of setting up a Church of

the perfect—but, “seeing they have the Word, they are at least not

ungodly; they sin indeed, but, far from denying, they confess the

Word.”[469] “Luther’s optimism,” says Paul Drews, “saw already whole

parishes converted into congregations of real Christians, realising

anew the true Church of the Apostolic ideal.”[470]

In the same year, 1523, on Maundy Thursday, he for the first time

spoke publicly, in a sermon delivered at Wittenberg, of the plan he

had long cherished of segregating the “believing” Christians from the

common herd. This was when publishing a new rule on the receiving of

the Supper, making Penance, or at least a general confession of sin,

a condition of reception. In future all were no longer to be allowed

to approach the Sacrament indiscriminately, but only those who were

true Christians; hence communion was to be preceded by an examination

in faith, i.e. by the asking of certain questions on the subject. The

five questions, and the answers, which were printed with a preface

by Bugenhagen, practically constituted an assurance of a sort to the

dispensers of the Sacrament that the communicants approached from

religious motives and that they received the Body and Blood of Christ

as a sign of the forgiveness of their sins.

“It must be a faith,” says Luther in this sermon, “which God works

in you, and you must know and feel that God is working this in you.”

But did it come to a “serious self-examination you would soon see how

few are Christians and how few there would be who would go to the

Sacrament. But it might be arranged and brought about, as I greatly

wish, for those in every place who really believe to be set apart

and distinguished from the others. I should like to have done this

long ago, but it was not feasible; for it has not been sufficiently

preached and urged as yet.” Meanwhile, instead of “separating” the

true believers (later on he speaks of private sermons for them to

be preached in the Augustinian minster) he will still address his

discourse to all, even though it be not possible to know “who is

really touched by it,” i.e. who really accepts the Gospel in faith;

but it was thus that Christ and the Apostles had preached, “to the

masses, to everyone; ... whoever can pick it up, let him do so.... But

the Sacrament ought not thus to be scattered broadcast amongst the

people in the way the Pope did.”[471]

In the “_Formula missæ_” from about the beginning of Dec., 1523, he

again speaks of the examination of the communicants, and adds that

it was enough that this should take place once a year, while, in the

case of educated people, it might well be omitted altogether; the

examination by the “bishop” (i.e. the pastor) must however extend

also to the “life and conduct” of the communicants. “If he sees a

man addicted to fornication, adultery, drunkenness, gambling, usury,

cursing or any other open vice he is to exclude him from the Supper

unless he has given proof of amendment.” Moreover, those admitted

to the Sacrament are to be assigned a special place at the altar

in order that they may be seen by all and their moral conduct more

easily judged of all. He would, however, lay down no commands on such

matters, but leave everything, as was his wont, to the good will of

free Christian men.[472]

The introduction of the innovation was, moreover, to depend entirely

on the consent of the congregation, agreeably with his theory of their

rights. This he said in a sermon of Dec. 6, 1523.[473] It was probably

in that same month that the plan was tried.

These preliminary attempts at the formation of an assembly of true

Christians were no more crowned with success than his plan for the

relief of the poor by means of the so-called common box, or his

efforts to establish a new system of penalties. Hence he declared,

that, owing to the Wittenbergers’ want of preparation, he was obliged

to put off its execution “until our Lord God forms some Christians.”

For the time being “we have not got the necessary persons.” In 1524 he

told them that “neither charity nor the Gospel could make any headway

amongst them.”[474] In the Wittenberg congregation he could “not yet

discern a truly Christian one.”[475] He nevertheless permitted the

whole congregation to take its share, when, in the autumn of 1523,

the town-council appointed Bugenhagen to the office of parish-priest;

this he did agreeably with his ideas concerning the rights of the

congregation.

Meanwhile, however, the ideal of a whole parish of true believers

seemed about to be realised elsewhere. Full of apparent zeal for the

new Evangel, the magistrates and burghers of Leisnig on the Mulde

drafted a scheme for a “common box” and begged Luther to send them

something confirming their right to appoint a minister—the town having

refused to accept the lawfully presented Catholic priest—and also a

reformed order for Divine worship. The instructive incident has already

been mentioned.[476]

Luther seized eagerly on the opportunity of calling into existence at

Leisnig a community which might in turn prove a model elsewhere. From

the establishment of such congregations he believed there would result

a system of new Churches independent indeed, though supported by the

authorities, which might then take the place of the Papal Church now

thought on the point of expiry. The idealistic dreams with which, as

his writings show, the proceedings at Leisnig filled his mind would

seem to have been responsible both for his project for Wittenberg and

for his letter to the Bohemians previously referred to. The fact that

they belonged to the same time is at any rate a remarkable coincidence.

He promised the town-council of Leisnig (Jan. 29, 1523) that he would

have their scheme for the establishment of a common fund printed,[477]

and this he did shortly after, adding an introduction of his own.[478]

In the introduction he expresses his conviction that true

Christianity, the right belief such as he desiderated, had taken up

its abode with them. For had they not made known their willingness to

enforce strict discipline at Leisnig? “By God’s grace,” he tells them,

“you are yourselves enriched by God,” hence you have “no need of my

small powers.” Still, he was far from loath to draw up for them and

for others, too, first the writing which appeared in print in 1523

(possibly at the beginning of March), “Von Ordenung Gottes Dienst

ynn der Gemeyne,”[479] and then, about Easter, 1523, another booklet

destined to become particularly famous and to which we have already

frequently referred, “Das eyn Christliche Versamlung odder Gemeyne

Recht und Macht habe, alle Lere zu urteylen,” etc.[480]

In the first, speaking of public worship “to real, heartfelt,

holy Christians,” he says the model must surely be sought in the

“apostolic age”; at least the clergy and the scholars, if not the

whole congregation, were to assemble daily, and on Sundays all were

to meet; then follow his counsels—he took care to lay down no actual

rules—for the details of public worship, where the Word and the

awakening of faith were to be the chief thing. These matters the

congregation were to arrange on their own authority.

The second booklet lays it down that it is the congregation and not

the bishops, the learned or the councils who have the right and

duty of judging of the preacher and of choosing a true preacher to

replace him who does not proclaim the Word of God aright—needless

to say, regardless of the rights of church patronage. A minority

of true “Christians” is at liberty to reject the parish priest and

appoint a new one of the right kind, whom it then becomes their duty

to support. Even “the best preachers” might not be appointed by the

bishops or patrons “without the consent, choice and call of the

congregation.”—There can be no doubt, that, if every congregation

acted as was here proposed, this would have spelt the doom of the old

church system. This too was what Luther’s vivid fancy anticipated

from the power of that Word which never returns empty-handed,

though he preferred simply to ignore the huge inner difficulties

which the proposal involved. The tidings that new congregations and

town-councils were joining his cause strengthened him in his belief.

His statements then, concerning the near overthrow of the Papacy by

the mere breath of Christ’s mouth, are in part to be explained by this

frame of mind.

At Leisnig, however, events did not in the least justify his sanguine

expectations.

The citizens succeeded in making an end of their irksome dependence on

the neighbouring Cistercian monastery, and the town-council promptly

sequestrated all the belongings and foundations of the Church; it

then became apparent, however, that, particularly on the side of the

council, the prevalent feeling was anything but evangelical; the

councillors, for instance, refused to co-operate in the establishment

of a common poor-box or to apply to this object the endowments it had

appropriated. Grave dissensions soon ensued and Luther sought in vain

the assistance of the Elector. Of any further progress of the new

religious-community ideal we hear nothing. The fact is, the fate at

Leisnig of the model congregation and “common fund” scheme was a great

disappointment to Luther. Elsewhere, too, attempts at establishing a

common poor-box were no less unsuccessful. Of these, however, we shall

treat later.[481]

Luther’s next detailed statements concerning the “assembly of true

Christians” are met in 1525. Towards the end of that year Caspar

Schwenckfeld, a representative of the innovations in Silesia, visited

him, and various theological discussions took place in the presence

of Bugenhagen and Jonas,[482] of which Schwenckfeld took notes which

have come down to us.[483] With the help of what Luther said then,

supplemented by some later explanations, the history of the remarkable

plan can be followed further.

In the discussion then held with Schwenckfeld the latter voiced his

conviction, that true Christians must be separated from the false,

“otherwise there was no hope” of improvement; excommunication, too,

must “ever go hand in hand with the Gospel,” otherwise “the longer

matters went on the worse they would get, for it was easy to see

the trend throughout the world; every man wanted to be Evangelical

and to boast of the name of Christ. To this he [Luther] replied: it

was very painful to him that no one showed any sign of amendment”;

he had, however, already taken steps concerning the separation of

the true believers and had announced “publicly in his sermons” his

intention of keeping a “register of Christians” and of having a watch

set over their conduct, also “of preaching to them in the monastery”

while a “curate preached to the others in the parish.”[484] It was a

disgrace, remarked Luther, how, without such helps, everything went to

rack and ruin. Not even half a gulden had he been able to obtain for

the poor.

Concerning the ban, however, “he refused to give a reply” even when

repeatedly pressed by Schwenckfeld; he merely said: “Yes, dear Caspar,

true Christians are not yet so plentiful; I should even be glad to see

two of them together; for I do not feel even myself to be one.” And

there the matter rested.[485]

Hence, even then, he still had a quite definite intention of forming

such a congregation of true believers at Wittenberg.[486]

During the last months of 1525 Luther concluded a writing entitled

“Deudsche Messe und Ordnung Gottis Diensts,” which was published in

1526, in which he speaks at length of the strange scheme which was

ever before his mind. Its reaction on his plans for Mass and Divine

worship may here be passed over.[487] What more nearly concerns us now

is the distinction he makes between those present at Divine worship.

If the new Mass, so he says, “is held publicly in the churches before

all the people” many are present “who as yet neither believe nor are

Christians.” In the popular Church, such as it yet is, “there is no

ordered or clearly cut assembly where the Christians can be ruled

in accordance with the Gospel”; to them worship is merely “a public

incentive to faith and Christianity.” It would be a different matter

if we had the true Christians assembled together, “with their names

registered and meeting together in some house or other,” where prayer,

reading, and the receiving of the Sacrament would be assiduously

practised, general almsgiving imposed and “penalties, correction,

expulsion or the ban made use of according to the law of Christ.” But

here again we find him complaining: “I have not yet the necessary

number of people for this, nor do I see many who are desirous of

trying it.” “Hence until Christians take the Word seriously, find

their own legs and persevere,” the carrying out of the plan must be

delayed. Nor did he wish, so he says, to set up “anything new in

Christendom.” As he put it in a previous sermon: “It is perfectly true

that I am certain I have and preach the Word, and am called; yet I

hesitate to lay down any rules.”[488]

This hesitation cannot be explained merely by the anxiety to which he

himself refers incidentally lest commands should arouse the spirit

of opposition and give rise to “factions,”[489] for the absence of

authority was evident; it must also have sprung from the author’s own

sense of the indefiniteness of the plan. His pious wish to establish an

organisation on the apostolic model was not conspicuous for practical

insight, however great the stress Luther laid on the passages he

regarded as authoritative (2 Cor. ix., 1 Cor. xiv., Mt. xviii. 2, and

Acts vi.). “This much is clear,” rightly remarks Drews, “that Luther

was uncertain and wavered in the details of his plan. He had but little

bent to sketch out organisations even in his head; to this he did not

feel himself called.”[490]

Others, not alone from the ranks of such as inclined to fanatism,

were also to some extent to blame for the persistence with which he

continued to revert to this pet idea. Nicholas Hausmann, pastor of

Zwickau, and an intimate friend, approached him at the end of 1526 on

the subject of the ban, which he regarded as indispensable for the

cause of order. On Jan. 10, 1527, Luther replied, referring him to

the Visitation which the Elector had promised to have held. “When the

Churches have been constituted (‘_constitutis ecclesiis_’) by it, then

we shall be able to try excommunication. What can you hope to effect so

long as everything is in such disorder?”[491]

Here we reach a fresh stage in the efforts to establish a new system of

Church organisation. Luther waited in vain for the birth of the ideal

community. Everything remained “in disorder.”[492] The intervention of

the State introduced in the Visitation was, however, soon to establish

an organisation and thus to improve discipline.

_The Church Apart replaced by the Popular Church Supported by the State_

Luther hoped much from the Visitation of 1527; it was not merely to

constitute parishes but also to serve the cause of the “assembly of

Christians” and of discipline; the segregation of the true believers

was to be effected within the parishes, at least when the parishes

were not prepared to go over as a whole to the true Church, as, for

instance, Leisnig had once promised to do. Luther again wrote, on

March 29, 1527, to Hausmann, the zealous Zwickau Evangelical: “We hope

that it [the ‘assembly of Christians’] will come about through the

Visitation.” Then, he fancies, “Christians and non-Christians would no

longer be found side by side” as at the ordinary gatherings in church;

but, once they were “separated and formed an assembly where it was the

custom to admonish, reprove and punish,” church discipline could soon

be applied to individuals too.[493]

But the “hope” remained a mere hope even when the Visitation was over.

Nothing whatever is known of any further attempt of Luther in this

direction, though, as Drews points out, “it is evident that he was

unable to understand how Christians who had reached the faith could

fail to feel themselves impelled to assemble in communities organised

on the Apostolic model.”[494] He had to look on helplessly while the

followers of the new preaching formed a great congregation, of which

many of the members were, as he had said, “not Christians at all,” and

whose prayer-gatherings were no more than “an incentive to faith and

Christianity.” (Above, p. 139.)

In Hesse alone had steps been taken—independently of the Visitation

in the Saxon Electorate and previous to it—to bring about a condition

of things more in accordance with Luther’s ideal. Moreover, Luther

himself preferred to remain entirely neutral in respect of this novel

attempt, destined to become famous in the history of Protestant

church-organisation. The prime mover in the Hessian plan was the

preacher, Lambert of Avignon, an apostate Friar Minor; his draft was

submitted to Landgrave Philip by a Synod held at Homberg at the end

of 1526.[495] Philip forwarded it to Luther in order to hear his

opinion. Among the proposals made in the draft were the following:

After preaching for a while to the whole of the people, they were to

be asked individually whether they wished to join the assembly of true

believers and submit themselves to the discipline prevailing amongst

them; those, however few in number, who give in their names are the

Christians; as for the others they must be looked upon as pagans;

the former have their meetings and choose their pastors because it

is the duty of the flock to decide in what voice the shepherds shall

speak. All the clergy were annually to meet the delegates of the

congregations, nobles and princes in synod and to elect a committee

and three Visitors for the direction and supervision of the whole

Church of the land; these were also to ratify the election of all the

clergy chosen by the people.[496]

Luther advised the Landgrave “not as yet to allow this order to appear

in print, for I,” he adds, “dare not yet be so bold as to introduce so

great a number of laws amongst us and with such high-sounding words.”

He did not, however, by any means reject the plan absolutely. On the

contrary he writes, that, in his opinion, it were better to allow

the project to grow up gradually “from force of habit”; a few of the

pastors, “say one, three, six, or nine” might well make a beginning;

otherwise they were sure to find that “the people were not yet ripe

for it,” and that “much would have to be altered.”[497]

As Landgrave Philip, after receiving from Luther this rather

discouraging reply, proceeded no further, the “plan for the

realisation of Luther’s ideas” was carried stillborn to the

grave.[498] “And yet it was the only practical plan which at all

corresponded with the theories of the Reformer prior to 1525.”[499]

Later on Philip adopted the Saxon Reformation-book for the organising

of the Church of Hesse.

That the project of esoteric congregations of true believers still

survived in Luther’s mind long after, in spite of the consolidation

of the popular Church in the form of a State Church, is plain from a

letter of his on June 26, 1533, to Tilemann Schnabel and the other

Hessian clergy (“_episcopi Hassiæ_”), again sitting in assembly at

Homberg. Schnabel was a whilom Provincial of the Saxon Augustinians and

had taken part in the abortive attempt to establish a community of true

Christians at Leisnig of which he was pastor. Finally, want, misery

and his own instability of character drove him from the country.[500]

From 1526 onwards he had been living at Alsfeld in Hesse. The new

assembly at Homberg had submitted to Luther, for his approval, the

draft of a scheme of church discipline, most probably inspired by

Schnabel himself. Luther’s reply is of the utmost importance for the

understanding of his opinion of the conditions then prevailing in the

Church.[501]

He is, at bottom, quite at one with the Hessian preachers, but, on

practical grounds, chiefly on account of the lack of the “_veri

Christiani_,” he rejects the well-meant proposals as too far-reaching

and incapable of execution.

The time, according to him, “is not yet ripe for the introduction of

discipline.” “Verily one must let the peasants run riot a little ...

and then things will right themselves.” We have not as yet taken root

in the earth; when the branches and leaves shall have appeared, then we

shall be better able to oppose the mighty. The Hessian preachers, so

he tells them, instead of rushing in with the Greater Excommunication

involving such serious civil consequences, would do better to begin

with the so-called “Lesser Excommunication” in use at Wittenberg,

simply excluding the unworthy from Communion and from the right to

stand as sponsors; for “the Greater Excommunication does not come

within our jurisdiction (‘_quod non sit nostri iuris_’), and, moreover,

concerns only those who desire to be real Christians; nor are we in

these times in a position to make use of the Greater Excommunication;

it would merely make us look silly were we to attempt it before we have

the necessary power. You seem to hope that the Prince will take the

enforcing of it into his own hands; but this is very uncertain, and it

is better he should have nothing to do with it.”

Thus, though Luther did not believe in the feasibility of a community

of real Christians there and then, or that it was likely soon to be

realised, yet the idea had not quitted his mind. The great mass of

those belonging to his party meanwhile constituted a sort of popular

Church. But such a popular Church was not in Luther’s eyes the real

institution intended by the Gospel. It consisted of the masses “who

must first be left their own way for a while” before the Church can be

established. Drews justly observes of the above statement: “Luther did

not relinquish the ideal of a really Christian congregation because

he had come to see that it was mistaken, the ideal had simply lost

its practical value in his eyes because it now seemed impossible of

realisation. Luther resigned himself to take things as they were. As he

had always regarded it as his mission, not to organise, but merely to

preach the Evangel, he was easily able to console himself. At any rate

it would be quite wrong to say that the popular Churches which now grew

up at all corresponded with his ideal.”[502]

The popular Church throve, nevertheless, and, soon, owing to the

co-operation of numerous factors, became a State institution.

The result was the Lutheran State-Church, to be considered later in

another connection, was something widely different from the original

idea of its founder; he frequently grumbled about it, without, however,

being able to check its development, which, indeed, he himself had been

the first to urge.[503] The sovereigns on their side, particularly the

Saxon Elector in the very birthplace of the innovations, did their best

to make ecclesiastical order, so far as externals, its organisation and

control went, depend upon themselves.[504]

The Visitation of 1527, for which Luther himself had asked, furnished

the Elector Johann with a welcome pretext for such action.

Even when giving his formal consent to the Visitation the Elector says,

speaking of the “erection of parishes”: “We have considered and weighed

the matter and have come to the conclusion that it becomes us as ruler

of the land to see to the business.”[505] Luther, moreover, for the

sake of securing some order in the new Church by the only means at his

command, outdid himself in assurances to the Elector, that, he, being

the principal member of the Church, must take in hand the adjusting of

the parishes and the appointment of suitable clergy; that his very love

of his country obliged him to this, and, that, owing to the pressing

needs of the time, he was a sort of “makeshift bishop” of the Church.

This last title is significant of the reserve Luther still maintained;

he was loath to see the Church’s authority simply merged in that of the

State; he did, nevertheless, speak of the sovereign as the head of the

new congregations and, little by little, allowed him so large a share

in their government that, even in his own day, the secular sovereign

was to all intents and purposes supreme head of the episcopate.[506]

9. Public Worship. Questions of Ritual

The ordering of public worship, particularly at Wittenberg, was a

source of much anxiety to Luther. He was not blind to the difficulties

which his reformation had to face in this department.

The soul of every religion must be sought in its public worship. Hence,

in Catholicism, the bishops, from earliest times, had bestowed the most

diligent and pious care on worship. A proof of this is to be found in

the grand liturgies of antiquity and the prayers, lessons and outward

rites with which they so lovingly surround the eucharistic sacrifice.

To build up a new liturgy from the very foundation was far from

Luther’s thoughts. He was not the “creator” of any new form of

public worship. He preferred to make the best of the Roman Mass,

for one reason, as he so often insists, because of the weak, i.e.

so as not needlessly to alienate the people from the new Church by

the introduction of novelties.[507] From the ancient rite he merely

eliminated all that had reference to the sacrificial character of the

Mass, the Canon, for instance, and the preceding Offertory. He also

thought it best to retain the word “Mass” in both the writings in which

he embodied his adaptation: “_Formula missæ et communionis pro ecclesia

Wittenbergensi_” 1523,[508] and “Deudsche Messe und Ordnung Gottis

Diensts” 1526.[509]

By the introduction of the German Mass in the latter year “the whole

Pope was flung out of the Church,”[510] to use Spalatin’s words. It

is noteworthy that Luther, in announcing this latest innovation to

the inhabitants of Wittenberg, admitted that he had been urged by the

sovereign to make the change.[511]

In Luther’s “German Mass,” as in his even more traditional Latin

one, we find at the beginning the Introit, Kyrie Eleison, Gloria and

a Collect; then follows the Epistle for the Sunday together with a

Gradual or Alleluia or both; then the Gospel and the Credo, followed

by the sermon. “After the sermon the Our Father is to be publicly

explained and an exhortation given to those intending to approach the

Sacrament,”[512] then comes the Consecration. The Secret was omitted

with the Offertory. The Preface was shortened. Of the whole of the

hated “Canon”[513] the “priest” was merely to pronounce aloud over the

Bread and Wine the words of consecration as given in 1 Cor. xi. 23-25,

saying then the Sanctus and Benedictus. The Elevation came during the

Benedictus.[514] The Our Father and the Pax follow, then the communion

of the officiating clergyman and the faithful, under both kinds. To

conclude there was another collect and then the blessing.

* * * * *

Some of the portions mentioned were sung by the congregation and great

use was made of German hymns.[515] Whatever had been retained in Latin

till 1526 was after that date put into German. For the sake of the

scholars who had to learn Latin Luther would have been in favour of

continuing to say the Mass in that language. The old ecclesiastical

order of the excerpts of the Epistles and Gospels read in church was

retained, though the selection was not to Luther’s tastes; it seemed

to him that the passages in Holy Scripture which taught saving faith

were not sufficiently to the fore; he was convinced that the man

who originally made the selection was an ignorant and superstitious

admirer of works;[516] his advice was that the deficiency should at

any rate be made good by the sermon. The celebration of Saints’ days

was abolished, saving the feasts of the Apostles and a few others, and

of the feasts of the Virgin Mary only those were retained which bore

on some mystery of Our Lord’s life. In addition to the Sunday service

short daily services were introduced consisting of the reading and

expounding of Holy Scripture; these were to be attended at least by

the scholars and those preparing themselves for the preaching office.

At these services Communion was not to be dispensed as a general rule

but only to those who needed it.

Alb and chasuble continued to be worn by the clergyman at the “Mass”

in the parish church of Wittenberg, though no longer in the monastic

church. The Swiss who visited Wittenberg were struck by this, and, in

their reports, declared that Luther’s service was still half Popish.

At Augsburg where Zwinglianism was rampant the “puppet show” of

the Saxons, with their priestly vestments, candles, etc., seemed a

“foolish” and scandalous thing.[517] Luther wished the use of lights

and incense to be neither enjoined nor abolished.

As he frequently declared, the utmost freedom was to prevail in

matters of ritual in order to avoid a relapse into the Popish practice

of man-made ordinances. Even the adoption of the “Deudsche Messe,

etc.,” was to be left to the decision of the congregations and the

pastors.[518] If they knew of anything better to set up in its place,

this was not to be excluded; yet in every parish-congregation there

must at least be uniformity. The chief thing is charity, edification

and regard for the weak. Above all, the “Word must have free course and

not be allowed to degenerate into singing and shouting, as was formerly

the case.”[519]

Of the whole of the Wittenberg liturgical service, he says in his

“Deudsche Messe”—to the surprise of his readers who expected to find

in it a work for the believers—that it did not concern true believers

at all: “In short we do not set up such a service for those who are

already Christians.”[520] He is thinking, of course, of the earnest,

convinced Christians whom, as stated above (p. 133 f.), he had long

planned to assemble in special congregations. They alone in his eyes

constituted the true Church, however imperfect and sinful they might

be, provided they displayed faith and good-will.

“They” (the true believers), he here says of his regulations, “need

none of these things, for which indeed we do not live, but rather

they for the sake of us who are not yet Christians, in order that

we may become Christian; true believers have their service in the

spirit.”[521] In the case of the particular assemblies he had in

mind for the latter, they would have to “enter their names and meet

in some house or other for prayer, reading, baptism, receiving of

the Sacrament and other Christian works.” “Here there would be no

need of loud or fine singing. They could descant a while on baptism

and the Sacrament, and direct everything towards the Word and prayer

and charity. All they would need would be a good, short catechism

on faith, the Ten Commandments and the Our Father.” Amongst them

ecclesiastical discipline and particularly excommunication would be

introduced; such assemblies would also be well suited for “common

almsgiving,” all the members helping in replenishing the poor-box.[522]

Until such “congregations apart” had come into being the service, and

particularly the sermon, according to Luther, must needs be addressed

to all. “Such a service there must be for the sake of those who are

yet to become Christians, or need strengthening ... especially for the

sake of the simple-minded and young ... on their account we must read,

sing and preach ... and, where this helps at all, I would have all the

bells rung and all the organs played.” He boasts of having been the

first to impart to public worship this aim and character, “to exercise

the young and to call and incite others to the faith”; the “popish

services,” on the other hand, were “so reprehensible” because of the

absence of any such character.—In his Churches he sees “many who do

not yet believe and are no Christians; the greater part stand there

gaping at the sight of something new, just as though we were holding

an open-air service among the Turks or heathen.” Hence it seems to him

quite necessary to regard the worship in common as simply a public

encouragement to faith and Christianity.[523]

As for those Christians who already believed, Luther cannot loudly

enough assert their freedom.

As his highest principle he sets up the following, which in reality

is subversive of all liturgy: In Divine worship “it is a matter for

each one’s conscience to decide how he is to make use of such freedom

[the freedom of the Christian man given by the Evangel]; the right to

use it is not to be refused or denied to any.... Our conscience is

in no way bound before God by this outward order.”[524] This has the

true Lutheran ring. Beside this must be placed his frequently repeated

assertion, that we can give God nothing that tends to His honour, and

that every effort on our part to give Him anything is merely an attempt

to make something of man and his works, which works are invariably

sinful.[525] He also teaches elsewhere that not only does real and true

worship consist in a life of faith and love, but that the outward

worship given in common is in reality a sacrifice of praise and

thanksgiving (a gift to God after all) made in common solely because

of all people’s need to express their faith and love;[526] he also

calls it a “_sacrificium_,” naturally, not in the Catholic, but in the

widest sense of the word. Even the expression “eucharistic sacrifice,”

i.e. sacrifice of praise, is not inacceptable to him; but at least the

sacrifice must be entirely free.

With such a view the form of worship described above seems scarcely

to tally. A well-defined outward order of worship was first proposed,

and then prescribed; it would, according to Luther’s statement, have

imposed itself even on the assemblies of true believers. It is true,

he says, that only considerations of charity and public order compel

such outward regulations, that it was not his doing nor that of

any other evangelical authority. Still it is a fact that they were

enjoined, that a service according to the choice of the individual

was, even in Luther’s day, regarded with misgivings, and that even in

the 16th century it fell to the secular prince to sanction the form

of worship in church and to punish those who stayed away, those who

failed to communicate and those who did not know their catechism.[527]

We have here another instance of the same contradiction apparent

in matters of dogma, where Luther bound down the free religious

convictions of the individual—supposed to be based on conscience

and the Bible—in cast-iron strands in his catechism and theological

hymns. The catechism, even in the matter of confession, and likewise

the theology of the hymns, closely trenched on the regulations for

Divine worship. The Ten Commandments, the Our Father, etc., were also

put into verse and song. Moreover, those who presented themselves for

communion had to submit at least to a formal examination into their

faith and intentions, and also to a certain scrutiny of their morals—a

strange limitation surely of Evangelical freedom and of the universal

priesthood of all believers.

According to Kawerau, the best Protestant liturgical writers agree,

that a “false, pedagogic conception of worship” finds expression in

Luther’s form of service.[528] To make the aim of the public worship

of the congregation—whatever elements the latter might comprise—a

mere exercise for the young and a method of pressing “Christianity” on

non-believers was in reality to drag down the sublime worship of God,

the “sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving” as Luther himself sometimes

calls it, to an undeservedly low level.

This degradation was, however, intimately bound up with the fact, that

Luther had robbed worship of its most precious and essential portion,

the eucharistic sacrifice, which, according to the Prophet Malachias,

was to be offered to the Lord from the rising till the going down of

the sun as a pure and acceptable oblation. To the Catholic observer

his service of the Mass, owing to the absence of this all-important

liturgical centre, appears like a blank ruin. As early as 1524 he was

told at Wittenberg that his service was “dreary and all too sober.”

Although it was his opposition to the Holy Sacrifice and its ceremonies

which called forth this stricture, yet at the same time his objection

to any veneration of the Saints also contributed to the lifeless

character of the new worship. It was, however, above all, the omission

of the sacrifice which rendered Luther’s clinging to the ancient

service of the Mass so unwarrantable.[529]

Older Protestant liturgical writers like Kliefoth spoke of the

profound, mystical value of Luther’s liturgy and even of certain

elements as being quite original. Recourse to the old scheme of the

Mass, duly expurgated, was, however, a much simpler process than they

imagined. We must also bear in mind, that Luther himself was not so

rigid in restricting the liturgy to the forms he himself had sketched

out as they assumed. On the contrary, he left room for development, and

allowed the claims of freedom. Hence it is not correct to say, that he

curtailed the tendency towards “free liturgical development,” as has

been asserted of him by Protestants in modern times.[530] For it was

no mere pretence on his part when he spoke of freedom to improve. The

progress made in hymnology owing to this freedom is a proof that better

results were actually arrived at.

How easy it was, on the other hand, for liberty to lead to serious

abuses is plain from the history of the Evangelical churches in

Livonia. Melchior Hofmann, the preacher, had come from that country to

Wittenberg complaining that the reformed service had given rise to the

worst discord among both people and clergy. Luther composed a circular

letter addressed to the inhabitants of Livonia, entitled “Eyne

christliche Vormanung von eusserlichem Gottis Dienste unde Eyntracht

an die yn Lieffland,” which was printed together with a letter from

Bugenhagen and another from Hofmann.[531] Therein he admits with

praiseworthy frankness his embarrassment with regard to ceremonial

uniformity.

“As soon as a particular form is chosen and set up,” he says, “people

fall upon it and make it binding, contrary to the freedom brought

by faith.” “But if nothing be set up or appointed, the result is as

many factions as there are heads.... One must, however, give the

best advice one can, albeit everything is not at once carried out

as we speak and teach.” He accordingly encourages those whom he is

addressing to meet together amicably “in order that the devil may not

slink in unawares, owing to this outward quarrel about ceremonies.”

“Come to some agreement as to how you wish these external matters

arranged, that harmony and uniformity may prevail among you in your

region,” otherwise the people would grow “confused and discontented.”

Beyond such general exhortations he does not go and thus refuses to

face the real difficulty.

When seeking to introduce uniformity nothing was to be imposed as

“absolute command,” but merely to “ensure the unity of the Christian

people in such external matters”; in other words, “because you see

that the weak need and desire it.” The people, however, were “to

inure themselves to the breaking out of factions and dissensions. For

who is able to ward off the devil and his satellites?” “When you were

Papists the devil, of course, left you in peace.... But now that you

have the true seed of the divine Word he cannot refrain from sowing

his own seed alongside.”

The writing did no good, for the confusion continued. It was only in

1528 that the Königsberg preacher, Johann Briesmann, at the request

of the authorities and with Luther’s help, established a new form of

church government in Livonia.

Were one to ask which was the principal point in Luther’s Mass, the

Supper or the sermon, it would not be easy to answer.

The term Mass and the adaptation of the olden ritual would seem to

speak in favour of the Supper.[532] If, however, the service was to

consist principally of the celebration of the Supper it was necessary

there should always be communicants. Without communions there was,

according to Luther, no celebration of the Sacrament. Now at Wittenberg

there were not always communicants, nor was there any prospect of the

same presenting themselves at every Sunday service, or that things

would always remain as in 1531 when Luther boasted, that “every Sunday

the hundred or so communicants were always different people.”[533]

At the weekly services, communion in any case was very unusual. The

custom had grown up under Luther’s eyes that, on Sundays, as soon

as the sermon was over, the greater part of the congregation left

the church.[534] From this it is clear that the ritual involved a

misunderstanding. In practice the celebration of the Supper became

something merely supplementary, whereas, according to Luther himself,

it ought to have constituted either the culmination of the service,

or at least an organic part of Divine worship; under him, however,

it was soon put on the same level with the sermon though the organic

connection between the two is not clear. Indeed, it would be more

accurate to say that predominance was assigned to the sermon,[535]

which undoubtedly was only right if, as Luther maintains, worship was

intended only for instruction.

In our own day some have gone so far as to demand that the sermon

should be completely sundered from the Supper; and also to admit, that

the creation of a real Lutheran liturgy constitutes “a problem still to

be solved.”[536]

It is a fact of great ethical importance, that, what was according to

Luther the Sacrament of His Real Presence instituted by Christ Himself,

had to make way for preaching and edification by means of prayers and

hymns. Even the Elevation had to go. From the beginning its retention

had aroused “misgivings,”[537] and, to say the least, Luther’s reason

for insisting on it, viz. to defy Carlstadt who had already abolished

it, was but a poor one. It was abrogated at Wittenberg only in

1542; elsewhere, too, it was discontinued.[538] Thus the Sacrament

receded into the background as compared with other portions of the

service. But, like prayer and hymn-singing, preaching too is human and

subject to imperfections, whereas the Sacrament, even though it be no

sacrifice, is, even according to Luther, the Body of Christ. Luther

was, indeed, ready with an answer, viz. that the sermon was also the

Word of God, and, that, by means of both Sacrament and sermon, God was

working for the strengthening of faith. Whether this reply gets rid of

the difficulty may here be left an open question. At any rate the ideal

Word of God could not be placed on the same footing with the sermons

as frequently delivered at that time by expounders of the new faith,

capable or otherwise, sermons, which, according to Luther’s own loud

complaints, contained anything but the rightful Word of God, and were

anything but worthy of being classed together with the Sacrament as one

of the two component parts of Divine worship.

Three charges of a general character were made by Luther against

Catholic worship. First, “the Word of God had not been preached ...

this was the worst abuse.” Secondly, “many unchristian fables and

lies found their way into the legends, hymns and sermons.” Finally,

“worship was performed as a work whereby to win salvation and God’s

grace; and so faith perished.”[539]

Of these charges it is hard to say which is the most unjust. His

assertion that the Word of God had not been preached and that there

was no Bible-preaching, has been refuted anew by every fresh work

of research in the history of preaching at that time. Nor was the

Bible-element in preaching entirely lacking, though it might not have

been so conspicuous. The truth is, that, in many places, sermons were

extremely frequent.[540]

Luther’s second assertion, viz. that Catholic worship was full

of lying legends, does not contain the faintest trace of truth,

more particularly there where he was most radical in his work

of expurgation, i.e. in the Canon. The Canon was a part of the

Mass-service, which had remained unaltered from the earliest times. It

was only into the sermons that legends had found their way to a great

extent.

If finally, as seems likely, Luther, by his third charge, viz. that

the olden Church sought to “win salvation and God’s Grace” through her

worship, means that this was the sole or principal aim of Catholic

worship, here, too, he is at sea. The real object had always been

the adoration and thanksgiving which are God’s due, offered by means

of the sublime sacrifice united with the spiritual sacrifice of the

whole congregation. Adoration and thanksgiving found their expression

above all in the sublime Prefaces of the Mass. The thought already

appears in the “_Sursum corda_, _Gratias agamus_, etc., _Dignum et

iustum est_,” whereupon the priest, taking up again the “_Dignum et

iustum est_,” proceeds: “_Æquum et salutare, nos tibi semper et ubique

gratias agere ... per Christum Dominum nostrum_.” It is not without

significance that “_dignum_,” “_iustum_” and “_æquum_” stand first,

and that “_salutare_” comes after; praise and thanksgiving are what

it becomes us first of all to offer in presence of God’s Majesty, but

they are also profitable to us because they render God gracious to

us.[541]

The ritual of the Catholic sacrifice, dating as it does from the

Church’s remotest past, expresses adequately the highest thoughts of

Christian ethics, viz. the adoration of the Creator by the creature

through the God-man Christ, Who alone worthily honours Him. To this

idea Luther’s attempt at a liturgy does not do justice.

10. Schwenckfeld as a Critic of the Ethical Results of Luther’s

Life-work

Caspar Schwenckfeld, the Silesian nobleman (see above, p. 78 ff.), is

a type of those men who attached themselves to Lutheranism with the

utmost enthusiasm, but, who, owing to the experience they met with and

in pursuance of those very principles which Luther himself had at first

advocated, came to strike out new paths of their own.

In spite of his pseudo-mystical schemes for the establishment of

a Church on the Apostolic model; in spite of his abandonment of

doctrines to which Luther clung as to an heirloom of the ancient

Church; regardless of his antagonism to Luther—which the latter repaid

with relentless persecution—this cultured fanatic expressed in his

numerous writings and letters his lasting gratitude to, and respect

for, Luther on account of the services which the latter had in his

opinion rendered in the restoration of truth. He extols his “wonderful

trumpet-call,”[542] and without any trace of hypocrisy, says: “What

Martin Luther and others have done aright, for instance in the

expounding of Holy Scripture ... I trust I will, with God’s help, never

underrate.”[543]

At the same time, however, he is not slow to express it as his

conviction, that, “At the beginning of the present Evangel the said

[Lutheran] doctrine was far better, purer and more wholesome than it

is now.”[544] “Dr. Martin led us out of Egypt, through the Red Sea and

into the wilderness, and there he left us to lose ourselves on the

rough roads; yet he seeks to persuade everybody that we are already in

the Promised Land.” This he said in 1528.[545]

“Although Luther has written much that is good,” “that has been and

still may be profitable to believers, for which we give praise and

thanks to God the Lord, still he has also written much that is evil,

and in the end it will be proved that his and his people’s doctrine

or _theologia_ was neither apostolic, nor pure, nor perfect ... which

certainly might have been seen long since by its fruits.”[546]

His criticisms of Luther, which, in spite of his harsh treatment at

the latter’s hands, are throughout temperately expressed and with a

certain aristocratic reticence, deal on the one hand with the fruits

of the Wittenberg Reformation, and, on the other, with certain main

features of the ethical teaching of his master and one-time friend; his

strictures thus form a recapitulation of what has gone before.

_On the hoped-for Moral Revival_

“The reformation of life has not taken place,” this is what Carl Ecke,

Schwenckfeld’s latest biographer, represents as the honest conviction

of the “apostolic” preacher of the faith in Silesia.[547] “The religion

of Lutheranism as it then was did not, in Schwenckfeld’s opinion, as

a whole reach the standard of Bible Christianity.”[548] “The greater

part of the common herd,” says Schwenckfeld, “who are called Lutherans

do not know to-day how they stand, whether with regard to works, or in

relation to God and to their own conscience.”[549]

Schwenckfeld’s own standard was certainly somewhat one-sided and

his own Apostolic Church, so far as it ever saw the light, fell

considerably short of the ideal. His insight into the ethical

conditions and doctrines was, however, keen enough and his judgment was

at least far calmer and clearer than that of Carlstadt and Luther’s

other more hot-headed antagonists. He was also able to base his

definite and oft-repeated statements on the experience he had gained

during his wide travels and in intercourse with all sorts of men.

Thus he writes: “If by God’s grace I see the great common herd and the

poor folk on both sides, as they really are, then I must fain admit,

that, under the Papacy and in spite of all its errors, there are

more pious, godfearing men than in Lutheranism. I also believe that

they might more easily be improved than some of our Evangelicals who

are now trying to hide themselves and their sinful life behind Holy

Scripture, nay, behind a fictitious faith and Christ’s satisfaction,

and in whom no fear of God is left.”[550]

Many of Schwenckfeld’s more specific complaints are supported by

other witnesses. We may compare what Luther himself and his friends

report of the conditions at Wittenberg[551] with what Schwenckfeld

says a little later: “It is credibly asserted concerning their Church

at Wittenberg, that there such a mad, dissolute life prevails as is

woeful to see; there is no discipline whatever, no fear of God, and

the people are wild, impudent and unmannerly, particularly Philip’s

students, so that even Dr. Major not long since (1556) is himself said

to have complained of it there in a sermon, saying: Our Wittenberg is

so widely talked of that strangers fancy there are only angels here;

when, however, they come they find only devils incarnate. If Philip,

who sends out his disciples as Apostles ‘_in omnem terram_’ does not

found any better Churches than these, he has but little to boast of

before God.”[552]

“What harm and damage to consciences such Lutheran teaching has

brought into Christendom it is easier to bewail with many tears than

to describe.” Though Luther’s “Evangel and office has discovered and

made an end of much false worship and a great apostasy, for which we

give thanks to God the Lord,” yet “it has but little of the power of

grace, of the Holy Spirit, or of blessing, for bringing sinners to

repentance and true conversion.”[553]

“Thus we have Schwenckfeld’s witness that he had seen nothing of any

real awakening or revival among the people generally. Whole classes,

the merchant class, for instance, remained inwardly untouched by

the glad tidings; even where the ‘Word’ was preached, there the bad

sermons, of which Schwenckfeld had complained as early as 1524, often

produced evil fruits.” Thus writes Ecke.[554] Schwenckfeld, however,

does not lay all the blame on the preachers, but rather directly on

the ethical principles resulting from Luther’s doctrines, which had

filled the utterances of the new preachers with so much that was

dangerous and misleading. “Oh, how many of our nobles have I heard

say: ‘I cannot help it,’ ‘it is God’s Will,’ ‘God does all, even my

sin, and I am not answerable’; ‘if He has predestined me I shall be

saved.’” “How many have I heard, who all appealed to the Wittenberg

writings, and, who, alas, to-day, are ten times worse than before the

Evangel began to be preached.”[555]

Whenever he exhorted his Lutheran co-religionists to conversion and

holiness of life, so he declares in 1543, he always received some

reply such as the following: “We are poor sinners and can do nothing

good.” “Faith alone without works saves us.” “We cannot keep God’s

law”; “have no free-will.” “Amendment is not in our power.” “Christ

has done enough for us; He has overthrown sin, death, hell and

the devil; that is what we have to believe.”[556] When he preached

sanctification he was dubbed a “Papist.” “That the Lutherans accuse me

of being more a Papist than a Lutheran is due mainly to good works and

the stress I lay on them.”[557]

Even in 1524 he had published an essay on practical ethics entitled,

“An Exhortation regarding the misuse of sundry Articles of the Evangel,

etc.” (Above, 79 f.) In 1547 he found it necessary to publish another

work on the “Misuse of the Evangel.” To this misuse he attributes

most of the above excuses of his “Lutheran co-religionists.” Luther

himself, so he declares here, was much to blame for the confusion that

prevailed. He quotes many passages from Luther’s Church-postils, from

the edition printed at Wittenberg in 1526 with prefaces by Luther and

Stephen Roth. He also makes use of the same work in another book,

“On Holy Scripture,” which he also wrote in 1547.[558] Many of the

incriminated passages were “wickedly omitted” in the next editions of

the Church-postils.[559]

_Further Complaints of Schwenckfeld’s. The Ethical Doctrines_

Schwenckfeld, in his strictures on Luther’s preaching and its results,

deals with the ethical side of the new teaching concerning the Law and

the Gospel.

Luther had said, that, with the law, God “wished to do no more than

make us feel our helplessness, our weakness and our sickness.”[560]

The critic asks: “Why not also to make us eschew evil and do good,

1 Peter iii.?” On the other hand, Luther will have it that the “Law

makes all of us sinners so that not even the smallest tittle of these

commandments can be kept even by the most holy.” “Such is in short

Luther’s doctrine concerning the Law and the Commandments of God. There

he lets it rest, as though the ground and contents of the Law and God’s

intention therein—which was centred on Christ—were nothing.... Of

this doctrine, particularly, the common people can make nothing save

that God has given us His commandments, not in order that we may keep

them by means of His Grace, but only that we may thereby come to the

knowledge of sin.”[561]

“Why should we hate our life in this world ... and follow Christ?

Nay, why take pains at all to enter in at the narrow gate and to seek

the strait way to life everlasting (Mt. vii.) if it is possible to

reach heaven along the broad way on which so many walk who are called

Lutherans, and to enter in through the wide gate which they make for

themselves!”[562]

Two other points of doctrine which in the same connection Schwenckfeld

censures in the strongest terms as real stumbling blocks in ethics, are

the preaching of predestination and the denial of free-will.

How, at the outset, the “learned had soared far too high” with their

article of predestination “and, by means of their human wisdom,

reached a philosophical, heathen conception [presumably the ancient

‘_fatum_’] can readily be seen from their books, especially from

Luther’s against free-will and Melanchthon’s first Commentary on the

Epistle to the Romans.”[563]

“Luther writes that no one is free to plan either good or evil, but

only does as he is obliged; that, as God wills, so we live.... _Item_,

that the man who does evil has no control over himself, that it is

not in man’s power to do evil or not, but that he is forced to do it,

‘_nos coacti facimus_.’” “God,” so Philip tells us, “does all things

by His own power.”[564]

“They have treated of predestination in accordance with heathen

philosophy, forgetful of Christ and the Grace of the Gospel now made

manifest; they wrote of it from a human standpoint; and though Luther

and Philip, after they had seen the evil results, would gladly have

retracted it, yet because what they had formerly taught was very

pleasing to the flesh, it took root in men’s hearts so deeply that

what they afterwards said passed almost unheard.”[565]

“This aberration,” says Ecke, “was to Schwenckfeld a further sign that

their method of reformation was not that of good missionaries.”[566]

Schwenckfeld complains rightly: “Instead of beginning, after the

Apostles’ example, by preaching penance in the name of Christ ...

they preferred vehemently to urge such lofty matters as predestination

and the Divine election together with the denial of free-will.”[567]

The universal priesthood as commonly preached and understood by the

people furnishes Schwenckfeld with a further cause for grumbling. “They

have also been in the habit of preaching and shouting to the multitudes

that all of them were already Christians, children of God and spiritual

kings and princes. What corruption of conscience and abuse of the

Evangel has resulted from all this we see and hear to-day from many ...

who thereby have fallen into a bold and godless manner of life.”[568]

Finally there was Luther’s ethical attitude towards sin. “Look at the

second sermon for Easter Day in Luther’s Church-sermons [where he

says]: ‘Where now is sin? It is nailed to the cross.... If only I hold

fast to this, I shall have a good conscience of being, like Christ

Himself, without sin; then I can defy death, devil, sin and hell.’”

Schwenckfeld continues: “And again: ‘Seeing that Christ allowed

Himself to be put to death for sin, it cannot harm me. Thus does faith

work in the man who believes that Christ has taken away sin; such a

one feels himself to be without sin like Christ, and knows that death,

devil and hell have been conquered and cannot harm him any more.’ _Hæc

ille._ This has proved a scandal to many.”[569]

He is angered by what Luther says in his sermon for the 8th Sunday

after Trinity, that “no work can condemn a man, that unbelief is the

only sin, and that it was the comfort of Christians to know that sins

do not harm them. _Item_, that only sinners belong to the Kingdom of

God.”—He is much shocked at such sayings as, “If you but believe you

are freed from sin.... If we believe then we have a Gracious God and

only need to direct our works to the advantage of our neighbour so

that they may be profitable to him.”[570]

Such a form of neighbourly love does not suffice to reassure

Schwenckfeld as to the method of justification taught by Luther. “We

see here that repentance, the renewal of the heart and the crucifixion

of the flesh with its lusts and concupiscences, as well as the

Christian combat ... are all forgotten.” “How is it possible that such

easy indulgence and soft and honeyed sermons should not lead to little

account being made of sin, seeing the people are told that God winks

at the sins of all those who believe?”[571]

Again and again he returns to the patent fact that “the result of such

shameless preaching and teaching is nothing but a grave and damnable

abuse of the Evangel of Jesus Christ, since people now make but little

account even of many and great sins.”[572]

For Luther to point to the Crucified and tell the believer that “sin

is nothing but a devilish spectre and a mere fancy,” was to speak

“fanatically.” Luther might write what he pleased, but here, at any

rate, he was himself guilty of that fanatism of which he was fond of

accusing others.[573] Schwenckfeld himself had been numbered by the

preachers among the crazy fanatics.

The Silesian also ruthlessly attacked the imputation of the merits of

Christ by means of the _Sola Fides_.

The Lutherans, even the best of them, imagine their righteousness to

be nothing else “but the bare faith, since they believe God accounts

them righteous, even though they remain as they were before.” “They

should, however, be exhorted to search Holy Scripture and to ask

themselves in their hearts whether such faith and righteousness are

not rather a human persuasion, mere imposition and self-delusion ...

which men invent to justify an impenitent life; not a true, living

faith, the gift of the Holy Ghost ... which, as Scripture says,

purifies the heart, Acts xv. ..., reconciles consciences, Rom. v. ...,

and brings Christ into our hearts, Eph. iii., Gal. ii.”[574]

An instructive parallel and at the same time a severe censure on

Luther’s method of building up “faith” on inward assurance is afforded

by Schwenckfeld’s account of the experiences and spiritual trials on

which he himself had founded his faith. The preachers, insisting on

the outward Word, urged that he had no right to appeal to his mere

feelings; yet, as he points out, this very thing had been proclaimed

from Wittenberg as the right, nay the duty of all.

“In addition to all this they reject the ghostly feeling and that

inward sense of the Grace of God which Luther at the outset ...

declared to be necessary for salvation, writing that: ‘No one can

rightly understand God or the Word of God unless he has it direct

from the Holy Ghost.’ No one, however, can receive it from the Holy

Ghost unless he experiences it, makes trial of it and feels it; in

this experience the Holy Ghost is teaching us as in His own school,

outside of which nothing is learned but all is mere delusion, words

and vapouring.”[575]

“How would Dr. Luther’s own gloss stand,” Schwenckfeld asks elsewhere,

“which he gives on the words of the New Testament, 1 Cor. xi.: ‘Let a

man prove himself,’ and where he says: ‘to prove oneself is to feel

one’s faith,’ etc.? But the man who feels his faith will assuredly

by such a faith—which is a power of God and the very being of the

Holy Ghost—have forgiveness of sins and bear Christ in his believing

heart.”[576]

He reproaches Luther with having in later days failed to distinguish

between the outward Word or preaching and the inward living Word

of God. The blunt assertion of the preachers—which was encouraged

by “Luther’s unapostolic treatment of the problem of Christian

experience”[577]—that faith referred solely to the written Word and

was elicited merely by preaching,[578] leads in practice to neglect

of those passages of Scripture which speak of the Divine character of

faith and of its transmission by the Holy Ghost; owing to the lack

of a faith really felt, there was also wanting any “holiness of life

worked by the Spirit, and any moral justice and sanctification.”[579]

_Schwenckfeld on the Popular Church and the New Divine Service_

The system of a State Church then being set up, the externalism of

the Lutheran Popular Church and the worship introduced were naturally

looked at askance by the promoter of the Church Apart of true

believers; at the same time his strictures are not unduly biassed.[580]

He looks at the matter from the standpoint of Lutheran freedom, or

as Carl Ecke expresses it, of “the early Christian individualism

rediscovered by Luther.”[581] From this point of view Schwenckfeld can

detect in the official Lutheran Church only a shadow of the Apostolic

Church. Not merely the principle of the multitude, but also the appeal

to the authorities for help and coercion was opposed to the spirit of

Christ, at least according to all he had learnt from Luther.

“He raises the question whether that can possibly be the true Church

of Christ where human coercion, force, commands and prohibitions,

rather than Christian freedom and willingness, rule over faith and

conscience.... The secular sword has no place in the Churches of

Christ, but belongs to the secular authorities for the punishment of

the wicked.... As little as it is in the power of the authorities to

bestow the faith on anyone, to strengthen or increase it, so little

does it befit it to force, coerce or urge.... What the authorities

do here [in matters of faith] is nothing but violence, insolence and

tyranny.”[582]

But “we always want to attract the great crowd!”[583] “They saw

the great multitude and feared lest the churches should dwindle

away.”[584] How were they to keep “Mr. Omnes, the common people,

faithful to their churches without the help of the secular arm?”[585]

They do not even think of first honestly instructing the magistrates

how to become Christians and what the duty of a Christian is.... I am

unable in conscience to agree with those who make idols of them so

speedily and persuade them that they already have that, which their

own conscience tells them they have never received.[586]

At the Supper, too, so he complains, owing to the want of proper

discrimination between the converted and unconverted, “a false

security of conscience is aroused, whereby people are led away

from true repentance; for they teach that it is a source of grace,

indulgence, ablution of sin, and salvation, whereas it is plain that

no one receives anything of the kind.”[587] In his view it is not

right to say that the Supper leads man to reconciliation with God by

enlivening his faith, and that even that man “who is full of sin or

has a bad conscience gnawed and bitten by his sins” should receive

it, as the preachers teach;[588] on the contrary, only those who are

reconciled have the right to approach. “Not the man who wants to

be holy [the unjustified], but he who has already been hallowed by

Christ, is fit for the Supper.”[589]

From the standpoint of his own peculiar doctrine he characterises

it as a downright error on Luther’s part to have “put Justification

even into the Sacrament”—Schwenckfeld himself had thrown all the

sacraments overboard.—He also reproaches Luther with teaching, that:

“Forgiveness of sins, which is only to be found in Christ as ruler, is

to be sought in the Sacrament.”[590]

Now, Schwenckfeld was far from advising people to forsake the official

Church; he did not recommend that the church service and its ceremonies

and sermons should be shunned, he feared lest such advice might play

into the hands of the Anabaptists. He recommends as necessary an

“external practice of godliness.”[591] Yet, according to him, this was

more readily carried out in private conventicles, i.e. in some sort

of congregation apart of the true believers such as Luther himself

had long dreamt of, and in conversation with Schwenckfeld, in 1525,

regretted his inability to establish owing to the fewness of true

Christians. (Above, p. 138 f.)

Luther in the meantime had become reconciled to the outer, Popular,

Church, and, with his preachers’ help, had made of the outward Word a

law.

The imperious behaviour of Luther and the preachers in the matter of

the outward Word was, however, odious to Schwenckfeld. He protested

strongly against being tied down to professions of faith liable at

any moment to be rendered obsolete by new discoveries in Scripture

truth.[592] Interest in things Divine was regarded as a privilege of

the pastor’s office and the layman was kept in ignorance on the ground,

that “one must believe blindly.”[593] Luther “is setting up a new

tyranny, and wishes to tie men to his doctrine.”[594]