Another passage falsely rendered is Rom. viii. 3: “He condemned sin in

the flesh by sin,” instead of “on account of sin” (the Son of God was

sent) as the Greek text (περὶ ἁμαρτίας) plainly states.

The frequent substitution of the word “pious” for “just” would seem

innocent enough, but this too was done purposely. Here a pet term

of Luther’s theology is made to replace the right word in order the

better to represent holiness as something merely imputed. “To be

pious,” according to Luther, is to have faith, and, through faith,

imputed justice.[1997] Thus Noe becomes a “pious man without reproach”

(Gen. vi. 9) instead of a “just and perfect man.” Zachary and

Elizabeth are described as “pious,” but not as “just” before God (Luke

i. 6), and similarly with Simeon (_ib._, ii. 25), and Joseph, the

husband of Mary (Mt. i. 19). Job, too, is not asked, as in the Sacred

text: “What doth it profit God if thou be just?” but “What pleasure is

it to the Almighty if thou makest thyself pious?” (Job xxii. 3). The

exhortation in Apoc. xxii. 11: “He that is just let him be justified

still,” appears in the weakened form: “He that is pious let him be

pious still.”[1998]

From his constant use of the word “congregation” instead of “Church”

the latter conception unquestionably suffers. In Luther’s translation

the word church is used only of the heathen temples and illegal

sanctuaries of the Israelites. He also terms the heathen priests

and soothsayers “parsons,” and unmistakably likens them and their

practices to those of Catholicism. Baruch vi. 30, for instance, which

describes the heathen priests is rendered as follows: “And the priests

sit in their temples in their voluminous copes [!]; with shaven faces

and wearing tonsures they sit there bareheaded and howl and cry aloud

before their idols.” “It is perfectly obvious at whom this is aimed,”

remarks a Protestant critic.[1999]

The licence of the translator here is, however, of less importance

than in his treatment of the passages on faith and justice, of which

we shall give two further instances. These also show how Luther, even

where he does not essentially alter the text, nevertheless succeeds

in construing the words of Holy Scripture in such a way as to favour

his own doctrine. When Paul’s statements were obscure they should have

been left in their obscurity, or, at any rate, they should not have

been translated in such a way as to contradict the doctrine elsewhere

taught by the Apostle.

And yet this is just what Luther does in Rom. x. 4. The passage

according to the Greek runs: “For the aim of the law is Christ unto

the justice of everyone that believeth,” whereas Luther’s version is:

“For Christ is the end of the law, and whoever believeth in Him is

just.”

The same is the case with the oft-quoted text Rom. iii. 28, of which

Luther’s Bible makes a kind of palladium for the new teaching by the

arbitrary addition of the word “alone.” The text has been immortalised

in its Lutheran shape even to our own day in inscriptions on

Protestant churches and pulpits. There Luther makes the Apostle say:

“Thus we hold that a man is justified by faith alone without the works

of the law,” whereas the old Latin of the Vulgate rightly rendered it:

“_Arbitramur enim iustificari hominem per fidem sine operibus_.”

The word “alone” is not called for either by the text or the context.

It is indeed true that the Apostle wishes to emphasise the exclusive

action of faith, nevertheless, if we take this faith as he understands

it, i.e. as a strong and vivifying faith and no mere dead thing,

then it naturally comprises the works wrought by faith and man’s

co-operation under the influence of grace. Of this faith to which the

Apostle expressly refers, for instance in Romans ii. 6 ff. and in

Galatians v. 6, he might quite well have said in the above passage

that it justifies without works, i.e. without such as are performed

apart from faith and grace. In fact, taken in this sense, Luther’s

interpolation of the word “alone” is not reprehensible, though in

the sense in which he intended it it is altogether inadmissible; for

he would fain make the Apostle say, that faith “alone,” without any

works of the law, operates justification, the works being merely

an aspect of faith. The addition of the word “alone” amounted to a

quite unjustifiable usurpation of the famous Pauline dictum for the

uses of his own party. It must also at least be termed a subjective

falsification, even though, objectively, it be capable of a better

interpretation. If, as we have heard Luther say, he really wished

to show in his translation “the utmost fidelity and industry and had

never a thought of deception,” then he should not have made St. Paul

say more than he does in the original, viz. that man is justified by

faith without works.

Contemporary Catholic pens were not slow in assailing in the

strongest terms Luther’s translation on account of his surreptitious

introduction of the word “alone.” The translator also regarded the

protest as of sufficient importance to warrant his devoting his

leisure in the Coburg in September, 1530, to composing a reply. The

tract in question, entitled “Sendbrieff von Dolmetzscheñ,” he sent to

his friend Wenceslaus Link at Nuremberg instructing him to have it

printed.[2000]

In it he gives two reasons in vindication of his arbitrary action: He

had been obliged in this instance to add the word “alone” in order

first of all to render the Apostle’s meaning in correct German, for

it was the German usage to use the word “alone” or “only,” when,

of two things, people wanted to deny one and affirm the other, for

instance, if one wished to say that a peasant had brought the wheat

asked for but not the money, then he would not say “he has brought

the wheat but not the money,” but “he has brought no money but only

corn.”[2001] Luther, however, was only able to show that this was in

accordance with the spirit of the language in certain instances, not

that it was necessary or indispensable in every case, particularly in

the instance in question; still less could he prove that there were

not circumstances affecting the words and the meaning where such a use

of “alone” or “only” must be avoided in order not to change the tenor

of the sentence. It might rightly have been urged against him that

fidelity was far more important a matter than good phraseology.—The

second reason he alleges in support of the interpolation bears

directly on his erroneous view of the Apostle’s doctrine: “I have

not followed merely linguistic considerations, for the text and the

meaning of St. Paul absolutely demand it.” “He deliberately cuts

away all works.” “Whoever would speak bluntly and plainly of such

a dismissal of works must say: faith alone,” etc. If “this be so

obvious,” “why then not say so”?[2002] Thus he makes the word “alone”

a sort of hall-mark of his own “public” teaching.

He is determined to defy his opponents and to challenge them yet

again. “And I repent me,” he cries, “that I did not add thereto the

word _all_, thus: without _all_ works, _all_ law whatsoever, so that

it might be spoken out with a full, round sound. Thus therefore it

shall remain in my New Testament, and though all Pope-asses should go

raving mad they will not alter my decision.”[2003]—In a similar way

and with redoubled energy he turns on those who had found fault with

his translation of the Hail Mary because he had discarded “full of

grace” in favour of “gracious.” “The Papists are furious with me for

having spoilt the Angelical Salutation, but, as a matter of fact, in

good German I ought to have said, ‘God greet thee, dear Mary.’ I shall

translate, not as _they_, but as _I_ please!”[2004]

The remarkable “Sendbrieff,” other portions of which are of the

highest psychological interest, must be regarded as in reality a

product of the author’s mental overstrain at that time. On the one

hand he was on tenterhooks wondering what the fate of the new Evangel

would be, threatened as it was by the Diet of Augsburg; on the other

hand he was overmastered by the sight of his own achievements,

particularly his much-belauded translation of the Bible. He was

also profoundly exasperated by the translation of the New Testament

published by Emser (see below, p. 519), the “Dresen [Dresden]

Scribbler” as Luther called him,[2005] and by the prohibition issued

at Leipzig against the sale of his German Bible in the duchy of Saxony.

Hence he relieves his feelings in his usual way by an outburst of

noisy vituperation: “All the Papists in a lump” are not “clever enough

to understand or translate a single chapter of Scripture aright, no,

not even the first two words.” Their braying, their “he-haw, he-haw,

is too weak to harm my translation. I know full well what art,

industry, reason and common sense go to make a good translation, but,

as for them, they understand this less even than the miller’s beast.”

It is quite true, so he says, that the four letters, _s_ _o_ _l_ _a_,

do not occur in Romans, “which letters these blockheads stare at as

stupidly as a cow does at a new gate”; but, so he goes on, it is not

our business to inquire “of the Latin letters how to speak German,

as these donkeys do.” “No Pope-ass or mule-ass, who has never even

attempted it himself, shall I suffer to be my judge, or to find fault

with me in this matter. Whoever does not want my version has simply to

let it alone and ... be rewarded with the devil’s thanks.”[2006] “For

the future I shall simply despise them and get others to do the same,

so long as they remain such people, I beg your pardon, donkeys.”[2007]

In his efforts to express his contempt in the strongest words at his

command we have the key to what he says in conclusion, which some of

his opponents took too seriously. The famous “_Sic volo, sic iubeo_”

with which his tract ends, though of course not meant in earnest, is

nevertheless very characteristic of him.

“If,” he writes, “your new Papist makes much ado about the word

_sola_, just say straight out to him: Dr. Martin Luther _will_ have

it so and says Papist and donkey are one and the same thing.... _Sic

volo, sic iubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas._” He too would boast for

once and rail against the blockheads as St. Paul [!] had done against

his crazy saints. Hence he parodies St. Paul’s words and scoffs at the

Papists who wished to make themselves out to be doctors, preachers,

theologians and disputants, reiterating for each category the words

“And so am I.” He then goes further: “I am able to interpret the

Psalms and the Prophets, which they cannot do. I can translate, which

they can’t. I can read Holy Scripture, they cannot. And to come to

other matters: I am better acquainted with their dialectics and their

philosophy than the whole lot of them together, and know for certain

that not one of them understands his Aristotle. And if there is one

among them who understands one introduction or chapter of Aristotle,

then I am ready to be tossed in a blanket.”[2008]

The whole tract is one of the most extravagant examples of this stamp

of polemical satire. It is hardly possible to determine where exactly

the “great doctor” ceases and the satirical rhetorician begins.

In addition to the mistakes and the wilfulness of the translation,

the character of the glosses appended by Luther, and still more

his attitude towards the Canon of the Bible, laid his work open to

objections of the most serious kind.

In the glosses on many passages he shows wonderful skill in

manipulating the text in favour of his wrong views. This is carried

so far that, to the account of the anointing of Our Lord’s feet by

the Magdalen (Mat. xxvi. 10), he adds the marginal gloss: “Thus one

sees that faith alone makes the work good,” because only faith could

transform this seeming waste into a good work.[2009] Of Mat. xvi. 18:

“Thou art Peter and on this rock I will build my church,” he gives the

following explanation, which plainly rests on his own partisan and

anti-Papal standpoint: By Peter all Christians together with Peter are

meant, and their confession is the rock. “All Christians are Peters on

account of the confession which here Peter makes, which also is the

rock on which Peter and all the other Peters are built. The confession

is common to all; hence also the name.”[2010]

It was partly the defects of the translation itself, partly the

cleverly calculated and thus all the more dangerous marginal glosses,

which called forth objections and warnings from Catholic writers as

soon as the work was published.

Hier. Emser complains that Luther “made Scripture to turn everywhere

on faith and works, even when neither faith nor works are thought of.”

Emser speaks of more than 1400 passages which Luther had rendered in

a false and heretical sense, though many of the passages he instances

are not of any great importance.[2011]

Johann Hasenberg, the Leipzig Professor, even went so far as to

enumerate three thousand passages badly rendered in the German

Bible.[2012]

The theological faculty at Leipzig had declared as early as Jan. 6,

1523, that Luther had introduced his erroneous doctrines into the

German Bible, a verdict on which Duke George took his stand when

issuing his prohibition. Emser now set to work to carry out the

Duke’s further instructions, viz. that “he should revise anew the New

Testament in accordance with the tenor and arrangement of the old,

authentic text, and restore it and set it in order throughout.”[2013]

His purpose was mainly to weed out the theological errors. His new

edition of Luther’s text was revised according to the Vulgate and

provided with notes on the Greek. He also bought from Cranach the

blocks for the illustrations (see below, p. 528), rejecting, however,

such of the cuts as were too insulting, for instance, those in which

the Papal tiara appears. The many excellencies of the language of

Luther’s version, and almost all the fruits of his labours, thus

passed into Emser’s edition, which appeared at Leipzig in 1527.

Absence of copyright laws explains to some extent Emser’s action.

Emser’s Bible, which was also made up to resemble Luther’s folio

volumes, bore no translator’s name and was simply entitled: “Das Naw

Testament nach Lawt der christlichen Kirchen bewertem Text corrigiert

un wiederumb zurecht gebracht,” and thus made no claim to being a new

or original translation. As, however, Luther, the original translator,

had been severely censured in Duke George’s Introduction we can

readily understand that he was much vexed at the revision of his work

and accused the editor of plagiarism.[2014] As Kawerau, however,

remarks, “had he (Emser) laid claim to being an actual ‘translator,’

then his work would indeed have deserved to be styled a piece of

plagiarism, as it has even down to our own day; but this he did not

do, and merely wished to be regarded as the corrector of the Lutheran

translation; hence this charge may be dismissed as unfair.”[2015]

The second edition, however, which appeared after his death, bore

Emser’s name as the translator: “Das New Testament, so Emser säliger

verdeutscht.” This second edition was brought out by Augustine Alveld,

as recent research has proved.[2016] In it certain coarse expressions

which Emser had borrowed from Luther’s Bible were supplanted by more

“seemly” words “for the sake of the maidens and the pure of heart,” a

circumstance which incidentally shows that even Luther’s more moderate

style of writing, as we find it in his Bible, was felt to be unusual

and not always quite proper.

Johann Dietenberger, a Bible expert and contemporary of Luther’s,

wrote: Although Luther constantly appeals to Holy Scripture, yet

there is no one who takes away from or adds to it more than he. “Of

the Bible he rejects and adds what he pleases in order to establish

his errors.”[2017] Dietenberger, a Mayence Dominican, published a

complete translation of Holy Scripture in 1534, making considerable

use for this purpose of Luther’s German Bible. He says in his Preface,

in explanation of this, that he had been urgently requested to “go

through the recent German translation of the Bible (Luther’s) and

remove all that was not in accordance with the faith.”[2018]

Johann Eck, who undertook a new translation of the whole Bible (1537),

acted more independently; but, however good as a critic of Luther’s

Bible, his own work met with but little success. His stilted German

translation found but few readers.[2019]

Even to the followers of the new faith Luther’s translation gave

offence owing to its want of fidelity. Bullinger, writing to Bucer

on a certain question, remarks: “Luther admits that he has not been

faithful in his translation of the Bible, in fact he is almost

inclined to withdraw it.”[2020] J. L. Holler, who in 1654 wrote a

pamphlet about his return from Protestantism to the Catholic Church,

says that what moved him to take this step was his discovery of

Luther’s dishonest rendering. He gave a long list of passages where

Luther’s Bible departs from the true text.[2021]

In his treatment of the Canon of the Bible Luther proceeds with his

customary licence. Those books of the Bible in which he thought he

found his own doctrines most clearly enunciated he speaks of in

the Prefaces as “the best,” viz. the Gospel and 1st Epistle of St.

John, the Epistles of St. Paul, particularly those to the Romans,

the Galatians and the Ephesians, and the 1st Epistle of Peter; the

remaining books he arbitrarily ranks below these, and sometimes goes so

far in depreciating them that their biblical character is jeopardised

(below, p. 522, n. 6).

“The standard by which the greater or lesser value of each book

is determined,” says Adolf Hausrath, is the degree of clearness

with which the doctrine of justification by faith is proclaimed.

“Protestant Bible criticism had its originator in Luther, only that

his successors shrank from persevering in his footsteps.”[2022]

Of 2 Machabees he had said even at the Leipzig Disputation that it did

not belong to the Canon, simply because of the difficulty presented by

the passage quoted by Eck concerning Purgatory which Luther denied.

Of this book and the book of Esther, which also found no favour

in his eyes, he said later in the Table-Talk, that “they were too

much inclined to judaise and contained much heathen naughtiness.”

The so-called deuterocanonical books, though they are found in the

Septuagint, were practically denied the status of inspired books by

the very way in which he grouped them; in his translation they appear

as a mere appendix to the rest of Scripture. According to the Preface,

they were “not to be regarded as equal to the Bible, though good and

profitable to read.”

He denied that the Epistle to the Hebrews emanated from an Apostle;

it was “a made-up Epistle,” consisting of fragments amongst which,

“mayhap, there is wood, hay and chaff.”[2023]

The Apocalypse he regarded as neither “apostolic nor prophetic.”[2024]

“Let each one judge of it as he thinks fit; my spirit cannot find its

way in the book.”[2025] In the Preface to the Epistle of Jude he is

very unfair to this portion of Holy Scripture.[2026] He regards it as

merely an excerpt from the 2nd Epistle of Peter and says it was “an

unnecessary missive and should be ranked below the main books [of the

Bible].”[2027] The words of approval he elsewhere bestows on these

books do not avail to undo his criticism in this instance.

As regards his animosity to the Epistle of James; Luther questions

its authenticity chiefly because, so he says, this Epistle, “in

direct contrast to St. Paul and the rest of Scripture, attributes

righteousness to works.”[2028] As further grounds for doubting its

genuineness, he points out, that, though “it undertakes to teach

Christian people, yet throughout its whole length it never once

considers the sufferings, the resurrection and the spirit of Christ,”

further, it uses the language of the apostolic writings in such a way,

“that it is plain that he [the author] lived long after St. Peter and

St. Paul.”[2029]—On these grounds, at the close of his preface to

the New Testament of 1522, he characterised it as an epistle of straw

compared with the other canonical writings: “Hence the Epistle of

James is nothing but an epistle of straw in comparison with them, for

it has nothing evangelical about it.”[2030]—In 1515 and 1516, when he

wrote his unprinted commentary on Romans, he had as yet no objection

to raise against the canonical character of the Epistle of James. On

the contrary he sought to combine the doctrine of this epistle on good

works with that of St. Paul; he wrote: “When James and Paul say a man

is justified by works, they are refuting the false views of those who

imagine that faith suffices without its works.”[2031] But as early

as the Leipzig Disputation in 1519 he expressed himself unfavourably

concerning the Epistle of James. He repeats his condemnation in the

commentary on Genesis and even goes so far as to remark bitterly, that

James was mad (_delirat_) with his crazy doctrine of works;[2032] in

the same way, in the marginal notes to his private copy of the New

Testament he says, in 1530 for instance, of James ii. 12: “Oh what

a chaos!”[2033] That he eventually altered his opinion, as has been

asserted, cannot be proved merely from the circumstance that the

later editions of his translation of the Bible do not contain the

above words concerning the Epistle of straw. Although he occasionally

expresses himself more favourably to this Epistle, still, against

this, must be set other unfavourable utterances, nor did he ever

retract his severe public condemnation.[2034]

Even in his own day many who favoured the innovations spoke out

against his condemnation of the Epistle of James. Carlstadt in his

“_De canonicis scripturis_” objected in the strongest terms to the

attacks on the Epistle, though he refrains from naming Luther.

Luther’s opinion at that time, viz. that Jerome might be the

author, was characterised quite openly by Carlstadt as “a baseless

supposition,” and his proofs as “frivolous arguments by which he

sought to discredit the Epistle of James.”[2035] Zwingli, Calvin and

H. Bullinger also disclaimed Luther’s views. “In the 17th and 18th

centuries James stood in high favour with Protestants,” and they

even sought to exonerate Luther as best they could, sometimes on

very strange grounds.[2036] The following is the final judgment of a

Protestant critic of modern times who had also vainly tried to excuse

Luther’s action: “It remains an act of injustice no less natural than

regrettable.”[2037]

Says Carlstadt’s biographer: “What lent Carlstadt a decided advantage

in his polemics (against Luther’s attitude towards the Epistle of

James) was the utter inconsistency of Luther’s critical attitude

towards Holy Scripture at that time.”[2038] Luther “read his theology

into the Bible,” remarks another Protestant critic, “just as his

mediæval predecessors had done with theirs.”[2039] “With a wondrous

pertinacity he pitted his theology and his Christ against everything

that did not accord with it, against Popery, against Tradition, yea,

against the Bible itself.”[2040]

The halo of learning that had so long surrounded Luther’s German Bible

seemed to threaten to fade when, after long preparation, the revised

edition was published at Halle in 1883 (and, with new emendations, in

1892). A commission of learned Protestant theologians “of various

shades of opinion” was entrusted by the German-Evangelical Conference

of Eisenach with the work. Out of too great respect for Luther the

alterations made were, however, all too few; veneration for his memory

explains why the translation was not raised to the present standard

of learning. The result was that many Protestant congregations, more

particularly in North Germany, looked askance at the new edition and

it was not generally introduced.[2041] A proposal was made, but to no

purpose, that an exact counterpart of the Luther Bible of 1545 should

be reproduced as a literary monument which would best serve to honour

the author’s memory. The severe objections which scholars have brought

against the revised edition cause it to resemble already a ruin, which,

having had the misfortune to date from a period when the demands made

by learning were less insistent than to-day, now towers lonely and

forsaken in our midst.

It is true that the revised Bible, with its heavy type showing exactly

where it departs from the wording of the old Luther Bible, exhibits

a huge number of freshly hewn stones built into the old, crumbling

fabric. Nevertheless De Lagarde could say of the scholars who had taken

part in the work:

“These theologians of acknowledged standing have given us a Bible in a

language which is not our own, a Bible in which one seeks in vain for

the indispensable emendations with which the revisers were familiar, a

Bible the revisers of which have of set purpose ignored the labours of

their most painstaking and self-sacrificing colleagues, a Bible which

passes over in silence all the essential developments in theology and

religion.”[2042]

“A language that is not ours,” is also the main complaint of the

Protestant theologian S. Oettli concerning this Bible; he also numbers

among its failings its retention of certain old German words and of

Luther’s German rendering of the Divine names and the expressions

Scheol, Hades, Daemon, etc. The principles which ruled the revision

were “anything but unexceptionable,” and the result of the work seemed

“unsatisfactory.” Oettli demonstrates the “backwardness” of the church

Bible by comparing portions of the Bible taken from the revised text

with exact translations of the same passages.[2043]

All the surreptitious alterations and ambiguities we have alluded

to above, for which Luther’s theology was responsible, have been

left untouched, save for the few exceptions already mentioned. And

yet the introduction which tells the story of the revision and is

printed at the beginning of the edition of 1883 admits, though with

extreme caution, that, in places, Luther “had been led to put his

own explanations into his translation of certain passages.”[2044] In

spite of the admitted incorrectness of the renderings in question the

revisers chose to be governed by the strange principle, that “texts

to which the people have become attached under the form given them

by Luther, owing to their use in the church and in works of piety,

are, as far as possible, to be retained unchanged, or only to undergo

slight alteration.”[2045] Owing to their laxity in this respect they

were to hear from their co-religionists that, in the new Bible, they

had “sacrificed their understanding” to Luther,[2046] and again: “If

the [Lutheran] Church after three and a half centuries, with the help

of her best-esteemed theologians, can produce nothing better than this

revision of her principal treasure, then sentence has already been

passed on her. What can flourish in the Lutheran Church if the study

of the Word of God does not?”[2047]

We may add: How much better would not the results have been, and

with what emulation would not the work have been undertaken had

Protestant scholars been summoned to labour in unison to supply

the members of their communion with a brand new translation, quite

independent of Luther’s, which should tally with the best present-day

knowledge? In asking this question we are, of course, ignoring the

inward difficulties presented by the difference of standpoint. In any

case, however, the unprejudiced observer will see in the history of

this revision and of similar attempts at revision made in the past,

how heavily the burden of a single great name may weigh on whole

generations.

A result of greater importance for the present subject is, however,

that Luther’s German Bible, in spite of all the pains taken by its

author, falls far short of the ideal of scholarship and impartial

fidelity. For these defects the real merits of its German garb cannot

compensate.

_Psychological Aspects of Luther’s Work on the German Bible_

In Protestant works on Luther written in a pious vein we often find

him depicted as animated solely by the desire to enjoy the heavenly

consolation of the holy Word of God and to make it known to his fellow

Germans. In such works all his secondary, personal and polemical

motives tend to disappear from view, and his guiding star during the

three and twenty long years during which he was busy on the Bible seems

to be nothing but the desire to satisfy the soul that craves for God

and the glory of the Master.

Were this the case, then the task chosen was certainly of an eminently

peaceful and religious character. Yet we find often enough in Luther

allusions to purposes of a different kind to which too little attention

is generally paid in Protestant literature of the sort we are referring

to. Indeed the question arises whether, psychologically, the secondary

aims are not to be regarded as quite as powerful as his supposed

leading motive.

The tendencies which his statements betray are various; first and

foremost we have those of a polemical nature, also his desire to

enhance his own personal position. As we are here dealing with the

German Bible, which a recent writer has described as the “crown of

Luther’s creations,” we are amply justified in looking into these

psychological motives, the more so since they throw a new light on the

alterations in the sacred text referred to above which Luther undertook

in the interests of his theology.

The Bible, so he declares in his “Von den letzten Worten Davids” in

1543, could not be interpreted by Papists or Jews but only by those

who “truly and rightly” possess Christ. Speaking from the standpoint

of his own teaching he says: “Whoever does not really and truly hold,

or wish to hold, this man Who is called Jesus Christ, the Son of God,

Whom we Christians preach, let him leave the Bible alone.... What else

did the Pope lack? Had they not the sure, bright and mighty word of

the New Testament? What else is wanting to our sects at the present

time?”[2048] Since the Papists will not join those who had rediscovered

the “mind of Christ”[2049] and revealed it to humanity, let them keep

their hands off the Bible. Another will interpret it for them.

But, even apart from the “mind of Christ,” something else was wanting

to the Papists which Luther could boast of possessing, viz. learning

and a knowledge of the German language: “If I, Dr. Luther, could have

felt sure,” so he wrote in his “Sendbrieff von Dolmetzscheñ” of 1530,

“that all the Papists taken in a lump were sufficiently skilful to be

able to translate even one chapter of the Bible into German faithfully

and rightly I should in good sooth have been humble enough to beg their

help and assistance in translating the New Testament into German. But

because I knew and still see with my own eyes that not one of them

knows how to translate or to speak German aright, I have not troubled

about it.”[2050]

It was now his intention, as he declares at the beginning of his

preface to the German New Testament, that the great work he had

produced should make an end of the “old delusion” in which the whole

world was sunk, viz. “that men do not really know what is the Law

or the Gospel, or what the New or the Old Testament.”[2051] He is

determined, so he tells us, by popularising his New Testament to show

the people that the Gospel is not to be turned into a “code of laws

or a handbook,” as had “hitherto been the case and as certain earlier

prefaces even by St. Jerome” had proposed. For the Gospel does not

really require our works that we may become devout and thus be saved,

nay, it condemns such works, but it does demand that we should believe

that Christ has overcome sin, death and hell for us and therefore

that He makes us pious, vivifies us and saves us, not by our own

works but by His work, _i.e._ by His death and passion. “Hence it is,

that, no Law is given to the believer whereby he may be justified

before God.”[2052] It was his old antagonism to the importance of

man’s co-operation with grace and to good works that made him place

at the head of both his German Testaments his motto against works, so

indicative of his tendency. In the beginning of the preface to the

first part of the Old Testament (1523) we read that Moses, in his 1st

Book, taught that “it was not by the Law or by our own works that sin

and death were to be vanquished,” but only by the seed of the woman,

that is Christ; “in order that faith may be exalted from the beginning

of Scripture above all works, Law or merit. Thus the 1st Book of Moses

contains hardly anything but examples of faith and unbelief, and of

the fruits of faith and unbelief, and is thus almost an evangelical

book.”[2053]

That the German Bible was intended as a bulwark of the Evangel was

also plain from the illustrations. For the New Testament contained,

as Duke George complained when interdicting it, “many disgraceful

pictures, ridiculing and deriding His Holiness the Pope and fortifying

his [Luther’s] doctrines.”[2054] Emser, too, refers to these pictures

in his protest: “How should Christians accept the work of one who has

been openly branded as a heretic, a work which lacks the approbation

of the church, and, moreover, insults and reviles the Pope in abusive

figures, pictures, words and insinuations?”[2055] Thus, for instance,

in the woodcuts appended to the Apocalypse the scarlet woman of Babylon

and likewise the dragon, the monster from the pit, both wear the papal

tiara. In Apoc. xiv. Babylon is depicted as Rome, Sant’ Angelo, St.

Peter’s, the Belvedere of the Pope’s palace and Santa Maria Rotunda are

all collapsing, whilst in chapter xviii. these same buildings are shown

in flames.[2056]

In Luther’s Bible the Catholic rulers were directly attacked in the

heading chosen in 1529 for the book of Wisdom: “The Wisdom of Solomon

for the Tyrants.” “The book should above all be read,” he here says,

“by the big Johnnies who rage against their subjects and against the

guiltless on account of the Word of God”; for “in this book the tyrants

are violently taken to task and scourged.” “Hence this book is very

much in place in our day.”[2057]

The introduction to Romans (1522) not only exposes at length the

doctrine of faith alone, which Luther supposed Paul to have taught

in this Epistle, but also warns all against the “verminous medley of

men-made laws and ordinances under which the whole world groans.”

Rightly enough had Paul said of the makers of these laws, that their

God is their belly.[2058]

As we are here less concerned with the theological importance of

Luther’s German Bible than with the spirit which inspired its

composition, we shall only remind the reader briefly, that the work

of translation was intended as a solemn expression of the author’s

root ideas according to which the Bible was the only true source of

faith. From the Bible alone, so he taught, all must derive their

faith and find the way of salvation under the direct inspiration of

the spirit from on high; it ought to be in the hands of all, even of

the unlearned. Hence, in his “To the German Nobility” of 1520, he had

declared that the Bible, and particularly the Gospel, ought to be in

the hands of everybody, even of the boys and girls.[2059]

We find Luther, says Risch, regarding the Bible and its use from “a

new standpoint diametrically opposed to the Catholic, and which found

its ripest expression in his German Bible.”[2060]

O. Reichert likewise has it, that the “chief incentive to his

translation of the Bible,” was the determination in which his whole

life’s work centred, of unlocking for the German people by means of a

thoroughly German translation, that book with the help of which “each

one could live up to his faith and be assured of his salvation.”[2061]

“Only now,” says Hausrath, speaking of the spread of Luther’s

Bible,[2062] “could the burghers feel that they had attained to

manhood in the matter of religion, and that the universal priesthood

had become a reality. The head of each household had now the

well-spring of all religious truth brought to his very door. To the

Papists this seemed an abomination, as Cochlæus admits when he says,

that every cobbler and old crony was poring over the New Testament

as a source of all truth.[2063] Even the populace took part in the

controversies of the learned, having now begun to see that the faith

concerned them too. For a while this could lead to strange excesses,

as the theology of the New Prophets showed.” Still, “the advent of the

German Bible was the dawn of freedom.”

Johann Fabri, who had recognised Luther’s aims, was at one with

Cochlæus and Emser in lending support to the prohibition issued

against the German Bible. To Luther he said: “Your Testament works

more harm than all the idolatrous books of Ephesus (Acts xix. 19),

nay, than the hail in Egypt.”[2064] This was, as it were, his answer

to the wish Luther had expressed to his friend Lang as early as Dec.

18, 1521: “Oh, that every little town had its translator! Oh, that

this book might be found on the lips of all, in their hands, before

their eyes, and in their ears and hearts.”[2065]

A surprising psychological trait is the haughty self-satisfaction

evinced by Luther with his grand achievement when objections were

raised.

He had repeatedly proclaimed that he intended everything solely for the

honour of God.[2066] But woe to anyone who in any way attacked his own

honour! For, by this work, Luther had vindicated his mission as the

appointed preacher to the Germans; only at Wittenberg, where the Bible

was taken really seriously, were people able to fathom the secrets of

this sealed book.

“What is needed,” he says in 1530, in his “Sendbrieff von

Dolmetzscheñ,” speaking of the work of translation, “is a truly pious,

faithful, God-fearing, Christian, learned, tried and experienced

heart. Hence I hold that no false Christian or sectarian can translate

faithfully.”[2067] Not only does he deem himself qualified for

the task, but, as he declares in 1523, he knows nobody else who

“can, within a twentieth part,” do as well as he, though many find

fault with his Bible. “I know that I am more learned than all the

Universities, those sophists by the grace of God.” True enough, “even

if we all set to work with a will, we should still have enough to do

to bring the Bible to light, one by means of his reason, another by

his knowledge of languages.” But all these critics, “who blame me here

and there,” “know that they themselves are unable to do it, yet they

would fain make themselves out to be proficient in an art that is

entirely foreign to them.” To him their objections were but “the mud

that clings to the wheels.”[2068]

Thanks to himself, he says, “the German language has now a better

Bible than the Latin [the Vulgate]; in support of this I appeal to the

reader.”[2069]

Of the superiority of his Bible over the Latin Vulgate in the

matter of accuracy he had not the slightest doubt. “St. Jerome,” he

wrote in 1533, “and many others from among the masses, have made

more mistakes in translating than we, both in the Latin and in the

Greek.”[2070]—Should anyone attempt to translate the Psalms and

refuse to be guided in his work by Luther’s German Psalter, so he

says in the same passage, “he would translate the Psalter in such a

way that precious little would remain in it either of German or of

Hebrew.” “But a man who is unable to do anything good himself likes

to court praise and to appear an adept by abusing and crying down the

good work of others.”[2071]

Of Emser he remarked, that he had admitted by his amended edition of

the German Bible that, “my German is good and sweet; he saw plainly

that he could not better it, and yet he wished to dishonour it, hence

he took my Testament and copied it almost word for word.” “I am glad

to see even my very foes compelled to further my work.”[2072]

“If anyone will translate me 72 or 73 verses aright,” he assures his

friends, “I will give him 50 florins. But, for this, he must not make

use of our translation.”[2073]—“Since the heathen Church has existed

we have never had a Bible that could be read and understood so easily

and readily as that which we have produced at Wittenberg, and, praise

be to God, put into German.”[2074]

To irritate (“_irritare_”) the Papists by his work, to rouse them to

fury (“_furiam concitare_”) and to let loose their “calumnious attacks”

on his translation, was a real pleasure to him.[2075] As in the case of

the Papists, so also in that of rivals within his fold, his work for

the Bible spelt their undoing. This it was which justified him against

all opponents.

People like Osiander, he told his friends in 1540, single out one

word of my translation “in order to find a ground for disagreeing

with us. They dispute about a single word but they are after more.

They should be compelled to translate the whole Bible and then we

should see what they are able to do. And Amsdorf said: If I were the

sovereign I should clap these wiseacres into cells and order them to

translate Holy Scripture without making use of Luther’s Bible. Then we

should soon see what they could do.”[2076] “When we were at Marburg

[at the religious Conference in 1529],” Luther once remarked, “Zwingli

always spoke in Greek”; he declared he had studied the Greek Testament

for thirteen years; “Oh, no, something more is needed than the mere

reading of the Testament, but these people are blinded by ambition”;

that was why Zwingli had used Greek and Hebrew when preaching at

Marburg.[2077] Carlstadt, too, was always making a display of his

Greek and Hebrew,[2078] but all of them were only able to “pick holes

in the Scriptures” which Luther had translated.[2079]

He was determined that nobody should be allowed to interfere in his

Bible and protests in his own way against any alterations. He wrote

in 1539: “I beg all my friends, foes, masters, printers and readers

to look upon this New Testament as my own; if they have any fault to

find with it, then let them make a new one for themselves. I know

full well what I am about, and I can also see what others are able to

do. But this Testament is to be Luther’s own German Testament! For of

criticism and cavilling there is now no end.”[2080]

Which of his rivals had ever had to contend with “temptations” when

engaged on the Bible? He, however, had to thank his “combats” for

having been his instructors.[2081] Münster, so Luther said in 1536,

accused him of making certain mistakes in his translation of the

book of Jonas. “Yes, dear Münster, you have never been through these

temptations. I, like Jonas, have looked into the belly of the whale

where all seemed given over to despair.”[2082] “The pious are like

unto Jonas; they are cast into the sea of despair, nay, into hell

itself.”[2083]

Discontent and vexation—temptations of another kind—frequently

overwhelmed him whilst engaged on his Bible. Even his unprecedented

success did not satisfy him; the Bible did not seem to him to be

selling quick enough, nor to be made use of to the extent he wished;

again, he feared, that in the future, it would lose its interest.

“I fear,” he said in Nov., 1540, “that the Bible will not be much

read, for people are very weary of it and no one reprints it

now.”[2084] His views regarding the future were even more gloomy:

“When I die there will not be a curate, teacher or sacristan who will

not set to work to render the Bible on his own. Our version will

no longer be valued. All our works will be thrown aside, yea, even

the Bible and the Postils, for the world ever yearns for something

new.”[2085]—“I am sick of Holy Scripture; see that you make a good

use of it after my death. It has cost us enough toil yet is but little

regarded by our own people.”[2086] “So profitable is the German Bible

that no one knows how to esteem it high enough; no one sees what

knowledge it has unlocked to the world. What formerly we sought with

much trouble and constant study and even then were unable to find, is

now offered to us in the plainest language; though we looked for it in

vain in the obscurity of the olden version.”[2087]—He does not tell

us whether it is the Vulgate or the mediæval German Bible which he

here refers to as so obscure in comparison with his own Bible.

What appears to have afforded him most satisfaction was that he had

been able to counteract the false translations and commentaries of the

Jews. Often does he mention this as one of the advantages of his Bible,

and it is perfectly true that his felicitous and correct exposition

particularly of the Messianic predictions based on the Hebrew text is

deserving of all praise.

He pointed out incidentally to his friends, that, in his Bible, he had

“protested very strongly against the Rabbis,”[2088] and, in his “On

the Last Words of David,” he congratulated himself when comparing his

own interpretation with that of the Jews: “The Jews, because they do

not accept Christ, cannot know or understand what is said by Moses,

the Prophets and the Psalms.... Scripture must seem to them as an

epistle does to a man who cannot read.” “Unless we devote our energies

to bringing the Hebrew Bible, wherever this is possible, into touch

with the New Testament in a sense contrary to the Rabbinists, then it

would be better to keep to the old version [the Vulgate] which, after

all, is the best.”[2089]—His statement here, provided of course that

the proviso “wherever this is possible,” be rigidly observed, is not

altogether devoid of truth.

In spite of this, however, his conscience often told him that

his acquaintance with Hebrew was not equal to that of the Jewish

commentators. He admitted even in later years that he was no

“grammatical or regular Hebraist.”[2090] “His familiarity with the

language of the Old Testament was due, for the most part, as he

himself says, to his constant reading of it and to his comparing

together the different passages in order to arrive at their true

meaning.”[2091]

Julius Köstlin, Luther’s best-known biographer, from whom the words

just quoted are taken, declares, that, in his translation of the Bible,

Luther “bestowed on his German people the greatest possible gift”;

Luther wished to make of the Book of Books “an heirloom of the whole

German nation.”[2092] Similar enthusiastic allusions to “the gift to

the nation” are often met with in Protestant writers. They, however,

overlook the fact that it was only to a fraction of the German nation,

viz. to his co-religionists, that Luther offered this gift; moreover,

they seem forgetful of a remark once made by Luther to a very intimate

friend, which is far from enthusiastic and anything but complimentary

to his German fellow-countrymen. The remark in question occurs in a

letter of Luther’s dated Feb. 4, 1527, and addressed to Johann Lang

of Erfurt; evidently he was extremely annoyed at the time. It runs

as follows: “I am busy with Zacharias [the translation of which was

then in the press] and have begun the translation of the Prophets, a

work that is quite in keeping with the gratitude I have hitherto met

with from this heathenish, nay, utterly bestial nation.”[2093] Even so

severe a stricture must not be lost to sight by the historian desirous

of tracing a psychological picture of the author’s feelings at the time

he was engaged on the translation.

Finally it is instructive from the psychological standpoint to trace

the development in Luther’s mind of the fable—to be dealt with more

fully below—that, under Popery, the Bible had been discarded and that

he, Luther, had brought it once more to light.[2094]

To begin with, he merely claimed to have discovered the true meaning

of Scripture on the controversial points he himself had raised.[2095]

It was the more easy for him to attribute to his Catholic

contemporaries ignorance of the Bible, seeing that in those years the

exegetical side of sacred learning had been to some extent neglected

in favour of the discussions of the schoolmen. When afterwards he had

been dazed by his great success with his translation of the Bible he

was led to fancy that he was the first to open up the domain of Holy

Scripture. This impression is closely bound up with the arbitrary

pronouncements, even on the weightiest questions of the Canon, which

we find scattered throughout his prefaces to the books of the Bible.

He frequently repeats that he had forced all his opponents to take up

the study of the Bible and that it was he alone who had made them see

the need of their devoting themselves to this branch of learning—so

as to be able to refute him. Here of course he is exaggerating the

facts of the case. Accustomed as he was to hyperbole, we soon find him

declaring, first as a paradox and then as actual fact, that the Bible

had been buried in oblivion among the Catholics. The Papal Antichrist

had destroyed all reverence for the Bible and all understanding of

it; only that all men without exception might not run headlong to

spiritual destruction had Christ, as it were by “force,” preserved the

“simple text of the Gospel on the lecterns” “even under the rule of

Antichrist.”[2096]

Luther utterly discarded the principles of antiquity concerning the

Bible, but nevertheless he made abundant use in his translation of the

literary assistance afforded him by the Catholic past.

In the Old Testament, the Church’s Latin translation, viz. the Vulgate,

and the Greek Septuagint were of great service to him, but he also made

use of the Latin translation of Santes Pagninus (not to speak of that

of the Protestant, Seb. Münster) and likewise of the Commentaries, as,

for instance, of the “_Glossa ordinaria_” and the works of Nicholas of

Lyra († 1340).

An unkindly saying current at a later date in Catholic circles

concerning Lyra’s widely-known Bible Postils declared: “_Si Lyra

non lyrasset, Lutherus non saltasset_.” The saying is, however, met

with under another form even before Luther’s day, and in this older

guise serves to show the high esteem in which Lyra’s Commentary was

held; here it runs: “_Nisi Lyra lyrasset, nemo doctorum in bibliam

saltasset_.”[2097] Not only Lyra but many other Bible commentators

stood in high favour among Catholic scholars at the close of the Middle

Ages, nor was there before Luther’s day any such absence of respect for

the Bible or ignorance of its contents, whether in the original text or

in German translations as he would have us believe.

_The Bible in the Ages before Luther_

It would be to perpetuate a prejudice all too long current among

Protestants, founded on Luther’s often false or at least exaggerated

statements, were one to fail to recognise how widely the Bible was

known even before Luther’s day and to what an extent it was studied

among educated people. Modern research, not seldom carried out by

open-minded Protestants, has furnished some surprising results in this

respect, so that one of the most recent and diligent of the Protestant

workers in this field could write: “If everything be taken into account

it will no longer be possible to say as the old polemics did, that the

Bible was a sealed book to both theologians and laity. The more we

study the Middle Ages, the more does this fable tend to dissolve into

thin air.” “The Middle Ages concerned themselves with Bible translation

much more than was formerly supposed.”[2098]

According to a careful summary recently published by Franz Falk no

less than 156 different Latin editions of the Bible were printed in

the period between the discovery of the art of printing and the year

of Luther’s excommunication, i.e. from 1450 to 1520. To this must also

be added at that time many translations of the whole Bible, many of

them emanating from what was to be the home of the innovations, viz.

17 German, 11 Italian, 10 French, 2 Bohemian, 1 Belgian, 1 Limousine

and 1 Russian edition, making in all, with the 6 Hebrew editions also

known, 199 editions of the complete Bible. Of the German editions 14

are in the dialect of Upper Germany.[2099]

Besides this the common people also possessed extracts of the Sacred

Book, the purchase of the entire Bible being beyond their slender

means. The Psalter and the Postils were widely known and both played

a great part in the religious life of the Middle Ages. The Psalter,

or German translation of the 150 Psalms, was used as a manual of

instruction and a prayer-book for both clergy and laity. Twenty-two

translations dating from the Middle Ages are extant, and the latter

editions extend from the ‘seventies of the 15th to the ‘twenties of

the 16th century. The Postils was the collection of lessons from both

Old and New Testaments, prescribed to be read on the Sundays. This

collection sufficed for the people and provided them with useful

reading matter, with which, moreover, they were rendered even more

familiar owing to the homilies on these very excerpts usually given

on the Sundays. The early printers soon helped to spread this form of

literature. We still have no fewer than 103 printed German editions

of the Postils (often known as Plenaries) dating from the above

period.[2100]

Of the importance of the Plenaries Risch remarks very aptly: “In

them the ideal of a popular exposition and translation of the Bible

before Luther’s day finds its first actual expression. That these

Plenaries—it would be interesting to know which kind—were the

first incentive to Luther’s popular works of piety, and, at times,

thanks to his good memory, supplied him with a ready-made German

translation of the Bible, appears to me beyond question.” “Thanks to

these Gospel-Books, as they were frequently called, a kind of German

‘Vulgate’ covering certain portions of the Sacred text may have grown

up even before Luther’s day.”[2101] “Even a superficial glance at the

Middle Ages,” says Risch, “cannot fail to show us the gradual upgrowth

of a fixed German Biblical vocabulary. Luther here could dip into a

rich treasure-house and select the best.... In laying such stress

on Luther’s indebtedness to the past we have no wish to call into

question the real originality of his translation.”[2102]

“That, during the Middle Ages,” says another Protestant scholar,

“more particularly in the years which immediately preceded Luther’s

appearance, the Bible was a well-spring completely choked up, and the

entrance to which was jealously guarded, used to be, and probably

still is, the prevailing opinion. The question is, however, whether

this opinion is correct.” “We have before us to-day so complete a

history of the Bible in the various modern languages that it can no

longer be said that the Vulgate alone was in use and that the laity

consequently were ignorant of Scripture. It greatly redounds to the

credit of Protestant theologians, that they, more than any others,

took so large a part in collecting this enormous store of material.”

“We must admit that the Middle Ages possessed a quite surprising and

extremely praiseworthy knowledge of the Bible, such as might in many

respects put our own age to shame.” “We have to acknowledge that

the Bible at the present day no longer forms the foundation of our

knowledge and civilisation to the same extent as it did in the Middle

Ages.”[2103]

Who, however, was responsible for the prevalent belief that the Middle

Ages knew nothing of the Bible? Who was it who so repeatedly asserted

this, that he misled the people into believing that nobody before him

had studied Holy Scripture, and that it was only through him that the

“Word of God had been drawn forth from under the bench”? A Protestant

quite rightly reproves the “bad habit” of accepting the estimate of

ecclesiastical conditions, particularly of divine worship, current

“with Luther and in his circle”;[2104] it is, however, to fall short

of the mark, to describe merely as a “bad habit” Luther’s flagrant

and insulting falsehoods against the ecclesiastical conditions at

the close of the Middle Ages, falsehoods for which his own polemical

interests were solely responsible.

The psychology of Luther’s gradual approach to the statement that the

Bible before his day lay under the bench, has already been described

(p. 534 f.). As some Protestants have sought to clear him of the

authorship of so glaring a fable and to insinuate that the expression

belongs rather to his pupil Mathesius, we must here look a little more

closely into the words.

Luther himself uses the saying, for instance, when claiming credit

in his Commentary on the Prophet Zacharias (chap, viii.) with having

rendered the greatest possible service to Scripture. He says: “They

[the Papists] are still angry and refuse to listen when people say,

that, with them, Scripture lay under the bench, and that their mad

delusions alone prevailed.” In this connection the Weimar editor of the

Commentary refers to a work of the former Dominican, Petrus Sylvius,

aimed at Luther and entitled “Von den vier Evangelein, so eine lange

Zeit unter der Bank sein gelegen.”[2105]—Popery, Luther says in

another passage, “kicked Scripture under the bench.”[2106] He speaks

repeatedly in the Table-Talk[2107] of the “Bible under the bench,”

which, since “it lay forgotten in the dust,” he had been obliged to

drag again into the light of day.[2108]

Elsewhere he describes in detail the trouble he had in pulling the

Bible from “under the bench,” particularly owing to his theological

rivals and the sectarians within the camp; on this occasion his black

outlook as to the future of the Bible he had thus set free scarcely

redounds to the credit of his achievement. He says in his tract against

Zwingli (“That the words of Christ, ‘This is My Body,’ still stand

fast,” 1527): “When in our own day we saw how Scripture lay under the

bench, and how the devil was deluding us and taking us captive with

the hay and straw of men-made prayers, we tried, by the Grace of God,

to mend matters, and have indeed with great and bitter pains brought

Scripture back to light once more, and, sending human ordinances to the

winds, set ourselves free and escaped from the devil.” But then, so he

goes on, others [on his own side] fell upon him, raised up an uproar

and raged against him; Zwingli, in particular, had riddled a single

line of Scripture “with ten holes,” “so that I have never read of a

more disgraceful heresy”; which, even in the beginning, “comprised as

many factions and divisions as it had heads.” There would, however,

in future “be such a turmoil in Scripture, such dissensions and so

many factions, that we might well say with St. Paul ‘the mystery of

ungodliness is already at work’” (2 Thess. ii. 7). “He [the devil] will

bring about factions and dissensions in Scripture so that you will

not know what is Scripture, or faith, or Christ, or even where you

stand.”[2109]

Words of Luther’s such as these, which we meet with repeatedly

under various shapes, point indirectly to the reason why the Church

preferred to see, in the hands of people unversed in theology, only

those extracts from Holy Scripture approved by herself, in particular

the Postils and Plenaries; for the dangers of misunderstanding

and disagreement were very real, especially in an age so prone to

sectarianism.

“To put into the people’s hands the complete Bible,” says Franz

Falk bluntly enough, “was to give them something both dangerous and

superfluous. The Postils were amply sufficient for the Christian

people. Even in Protestant circles to-day people are deciding

in favour of an expurgated Bible for use in the school and the

home.”[2110] W. Walther in his “Deutsche Bibelübersetzungen des

Mittelalters” gives a favourable account of the Catholic practice:

“According to what we have stated the attitude of the mediæval Church

to the German Bible appears to have been quite definite. Janssen

seems perfectly right when he says, ‘The Church opposed no resistance

to its spread so long as strifes and divisions within her own body

brought no pet abuses to light.’”[2111] “Men of insight,” continues

Janssen, “such as Geiler von Kaysersberg and Sebastian Brant doubted

from the beginning the advisability of putting the entire Scriptures

in the hands of the people. They feared, and rightly feared, that the

Bible would be grossly and wilfully perverted by the ignorant and the

light-minded, and be made to uphold all sorts of doctrinal and moral

teaching. God Himself had not placed His Divine Word indiscriminately

in the hands of all, for He had not made the reading of it a condition

of salvation. All errors had sprung out of false interpretation of

Holy Scripture. Even to learned commentators the Scriptures presented

difficulties enough, how much more to the ignorant masses?”

No one to whom it might prove of use was debarred access to the

complete German translation or to the Sacred Text in the original

languages; in their case restrictions were waived. The large number

of complete editions would in fact be inexplicable except on the

assumption of a certain freedom in this respect. Numerous instances

might also be cited where educated people during the Middle Ages made

use of the complete Bible.[2112]

Sebastian Brant says in the “Narrenschiff”: “Every country is now

filled with Holy Scripture.” “The rapidity with which the different

editions followed each other,” wrote Janssen,[2113] “and the testimony

of contemporary writers point to a wide distribution of German Bibles

among the people.”

As regards other countries, too, there is no lack of sufficient data

for arriving at a like conclusion, viz. that the Bible was already

widely disseminated before the religious revulsion came. We may

instance the recent works of A. C. Paues and A. Gasquet on England and

those of the Dominican Mandonnet on his own Order’s relations with the

Bible during the Middle Ages, from which we may see how familiar the

Bible must have been in certain circles.[2114]

The honest admission made by a Protestant, viz. “that, so far as

outward acquaintance with the Bible went, it would be untrue to say

that it lay under the bench before the Reformation,”[2115] does not,

however, sufficiently counter what Luther says, for his grievance in

reality was, that, among the Papists, it was rather the true meaning of

the Bible that “lay under the bench.”

It is plain that they “abuse and revile Scripture, thrust it under

the bench, pretend that it is shrouded in thick fog, that the

interpretation of the Fathers is needed and that light must be sought

in the darkness.” Thus did he write against Emser in 1521.[2116] A

recent champion of Luther has also thought it worth while to write:

“The Bible before Luther’s day was not regarded as in Luther’s opinion

it should have been regarded, or treated as it should have been

treated; it was indeed studied by the learned but only in the same way

as people studied Augustine, Jerome and Thomas Aquinas—and, moreover,

not with the same zeal or to the same extent.”

Did one wish to deal adequately with the standing thus taken up by

Luther and his defenders there would be a whole book to be written

full of interesting facts; for what Luther presupposes in such

repeated statements is that his theology was right and that of the

Church all wrong. Sufficient light has, however, already been thrown

in this work on the value of this assertion of Luther’s.

Denifle, who, thanks to his expert acquaintance with the material, was

able to examine so many of Luther’s theological assertions concerning

the Middle Ages, deals amongst other things with the question, whether

Luther was really the first to advance the theory, “that Christ is the

whole content of Scripture,”[2117] the enunciation of which had been

claimed as “the greatest service rendered by Luther to the Church and

to theology.”—The truth is, however, that the Church of old was so

full of the idea that the “Holy Scriptures before Christ were written

only to proclaim Him and His Church,” that it was an easy task for

Denifle to overwhelm his adversaries beneath a mass of quotations, for

instance, from Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and J. Perez of Valencia (the

latter representing Luther’s older contemporaries).

Catholics have rightly gone even further, and asked whether it

was not Luther himself, who, by his arbitrary treatment of some

parts of Scripture, and its actual words,—to say nothing of its

interpretation—thrust the Bible under the bench? Surely, his

destruction of the Canon of Scripture, his alterations in the text

and the liberty he arrogated to himself in his glosses[2118] are

but little calculated to qualify him to be called the saviour and

liberator of the Bible.—It is nothing more than an appeal to the

imagination of the populace, when, in connection with this, popular

works on Luther refer to the Bible, which the youthful Luther when

still a student in the world, found chained in the library at Erfurt

(though this itself is a matter of history). To hear of the Bible

having been “bound in chains before Luther’s day” may sound very

dreadful, but, as all should know, the only reason why valuable

books were chained in those days was to guarantee their preservation

for the use of the reader. Scholars are well aware that the printed

works which were then so costly, and still more the manuscripts,

were usually kept chained in the libraries in order to prevent

visitors carrying them off; the custom still obtains in Rome to-day

in the parlours of some of the convents, where books are displayed

for the perusal of those waiting. Wattenbach in his “Schriftwesen

des Mittelalters”[2119] enumerates a whole series of instances from

earlier centuries. One of the most remarkable which goes back to about

Luther’s day, is that of the Medicean library of manuscripts, the

so-called Laurentiana at Florence, where, even to-day, the valuable

MSS. in their splendid book-cases are fastened by chains and have

to be unlocked when called for for use in the Reading-Room. In his

catalogue of the Greek Codices in the Laurentiana Bandini gives an

interesting sketch of these curious book-cases. Even under the Elector

Johann Frederick of Saxony, in 1535, in Luther’s own time, the books

belonging to the Princely Library at Wittenberg were chained.[2120]

On the other hand, the copy of Holy Scripture which Luther was given

during his student years at the Erfurt monastery, and the diligent

study of which was enjoined upon him both by the rule of his Order and

the words of his Superior, was evidently not thus chained.

Finally as regards the German translations of the Bible before Luther’s

day. Of the seventeen printed editions of the whole Bible referred to

above (p. 536) as dating from the years 1450-1520, the oldest is the

so-called Mendel edition of Strasburg, probably dating from 1466,[2121]

in which year the copy was purchased which now lies in the Munich

State Library. The German Plenaries commence with the year 1470. We

hear, for instance, of a printed German Bible being bought for nine

florins.[2122] The lower price of the Plenaries, on the other hand,

made them easier to obtain. Thus according to the data collected by

Franz Falk, Johann Schöffer, a printer, in 1510, sent from Mayence to

the Easter fair at Leipzig, amongst other books, seventy-three German

Postils (Plenaries), priced at five copies a florin. In the following

year Schöffer’s agent had to render an account after the Michaelmas

fair for the sale of seventy-two postils.[2123] The German postils in

those days served much the same purpose as Goffine does to-day.

Besides the printed editions, the manuscript translations still

preserved must also be taken into account. Some twenty years ago

Wilhelm Walther, the Protestant theologian, devoted a study to this

particular branch of research.[2124] The results he then arrived at

have since been amplified and corrected by Franz Jostes and others, and

still await further additions. Walther examined 202 MSS. German Bibles,

or portions of Bibles, and came to the conclusion that they represented

no less than thirty-four various forms of translation. They have indeed

much in common, though they differ slightly according to the dialect of

the locality they hail from, or the alterations made by their writers.

The translations are, in every case, made on the Latin Vulgate.

Yet all the printed German Bibles dating from before Luther’s time

resemble each other so much in the translation that we can, in

reality, speak only of one German Bible. They all sprang originally

from a single MS. translation and practically constitute a sort of

German vulgate. The type was not, however, of Waldensian origin, as

some formerly thought owing to the fact that the Tepler Bible, which

had been placed first on the list, shows traces of that heresy. The

earliest German translation is, on the contrary, as orthodox as the

printed editions. This is probably the fragmentary Bible translated by

Master Johann Rellach. It seems to be older than the Tepler Bible, and

the first Mendel edition and all the others might well go back to it.

Franz Jostes was the first to suppose that “the pre-Lutheran printed

version of the Bible is the work of Master Johann Rellach.”[2125] The

translator was, so he opines, a Dominican belonging to a convent in the

diocese of Constance. He happened to be in Rome in 1450, the Jubilee

year, and, hearing from Bishop Leonard of Chios of the destruction of

the magnificent library at Constantinople he and his brethren were

led to vow to make good this loss to the best of their ability by

translating the Bible into German. They doubtless made use of even

older translations in their work.

As for the slight difference shown in the seventeen printed editions of

this translation still extant, they are easily explained. The printers,

out of consideration for their readers, were pretty free in introducing

dialect forms.

If we glance at the language, we shall find here some good points, but

as the original manuscripts of which Johann Rellach made use were not

all equally good, the same holds of all the printed translations. Of

the different varieties which never appeared in print at all, Walther

praises some on account of their excellent German, for instance, the

one he places second on his list, and which may date from the second

half of the 14th century. As a whole, however, particularly in the

printed translation, the language suffers from a too slavish adherence

to the style of the Latin text. A more exact classification, according

to the excellence of the language, is, however, impossible until the

whole field has been explored by our German philologists.[2126]

* * * * *

Owing to the matter not having yet been sufficiently investigated, we

cannot determine accurately what influence the earlier translations had

on the German Bible published by Luther. Luther himself says never a

word of having used them.

It would, however, be just as bad to say, on the one hand, that Luther

made no use whatever of the older version and had not even a copy of it

to refer to in the Wartburg during his work on the New Testament or,

on the other, as some have done, that Luther stole the best part of his

work from earlier German translators.

When he wrote from the Wartburg that now he knew what it was to

translate, and why, hitherto, no translator had dared to put his name

to his work,[2127] he proves that he was aware that all previous German

translations were anonymous, a fact which presupposes some acquaintance

with them. Older translations cannot have been inaccessible to him at

the Wartburg, and might well have been sent him by friends at Eisenach

or Wittenberg, who, as we know, did occasionally send him books; when

he had returned home, moreover, he could easily have found copies in

his old monastery or at the University. Portions of the Bible, viz. the

Plenaries, were doubtless within his reach from the first, and since

he finished his translation of the New Testament in so short a time as

three months, though all the while engaged on a number of other works,

it is only natural to suppose that he lightened his labours by the use

of other versions within his reach as any other scholar would have

done, though undoubtedly he used his own judgment in his selection.

That, in the work of revision at Wittenberg at a much later date, the

mediæval text was employed, appears quite plain from the alterations

introduced by Luther.

J. Geffcken was probably not far wrong when he wrote in 1855 in

“Der Bilderkatechismus des 15. Jahrhunderts,” “that the similarity

between Luther’s version and the old translations could not be merely

fortuitous.”[2128]

The same was repeated with still greater emphasis by Krafft in 1883

after he had instituted fresh comparisons: “Whoever compares these

passages can no longer doubt that the agreement between Luther’s work

and the mediæval German Bible is not merely accidental.”[2129] The

result of further research will probably be to confirm the guarded

opinion expressed as long ago as 1803 by G. W. Meyer of Göttingen

in his “Geschichte der Schrifterklärung”: to assume that “the older

translation was not unknown to him,” “that he consulted it here and

there,” and even “made his own some of its happy renderings,” is quite

compatible with a high esteem for Luther’s translation.[2130]

Modern Protestant writers in this field are also somewhat sceptical

about the theory of Luther’s complete ignorance of the older

translation of the Bible, and the assertion that he made no use

whatever of it. O. Reichert, for instance, in his new work “Luthers

deutsche Bibel” makes the following remarks on Luther’s work in the

Wartburg, with which we may fittingly conclude this section: “Although

he probably was able to make use of Lang’s translation of 1521 in his

rendering of Matthew, and as a matter of fact did have recourse to it,

and though he most likely also had the old German translation at his

elbow, as is apparent from many coincidences, nevertheless, what Luther

accomplished is an achievement worthy of all admiration.”[2131]

4. Luther’s Hymns

Amongst the means to be employed for the spread and consolidation of

the new Evangel Luther included, in addition to his Bible, German hymns

for use in public worship.

In 1523 and 1524 especially, he busied himself in the making of verses.

In his _Formula Missæ_ (1523) he expresses the wish that as many German

hymns as possible be introduced into the revised service of the Mass

and sung, not only by the choir, but by the whole congregation, though,

for the nonce, the customary Latin hymns might be used.[2132] With his

wonted energy and industry he at once entrusted the work of composing

hymns to some of his Wittenberg friends, and despatched letters so as

to obtain help even from afar. He was particularly anxious to see the

Psalms in a German dress. His translation of the Psalter, which he had

just completed, naturally drew his thoughts to the Psalms which so

admirably express all the religious emotions of the soul, especially

its trusting reliance upon God. He was not very confident of his own

powers of composition: “I have not the knack of doing this as well

as I wish to have it done,” he writes to his old friend Spalatin at

Nuremberg.[2133] He asks him and his other friends for an eminently

simple, popular versification of the Psalms, in pure German, “free

from the new-fangled words used at Court”; it should keep as closely

as possible to the sense and yet not be stilted. For this Spalatin was

qualified by “a rich flow of eloquence, and by many years’ experience.”

Luther sends him at the same time a poetic effort of his own.

In view of the beauty and the deep albeit simple grandeur of the olden

Catholic hymns the task Luther had undertaken of composing something

new was naturally not an easy one. He himself had much to say in praise

of the magnificent old hymns in which the faithful praised their

Creator or poured forth their griefs before Him. “In Popery,” he once

said in a sermon, “they used to sing some fine hymns: ‘He who broke the

might of Hell,’ item ‘Jesus Christ to-day is risen.’ This comes from

the heart.”[2134] “A beautiful sequence is also sung in Advent,” he

says, thus paying tribute even to a Latin hymn, viz. the _Mittitur ad

Virginem_. “It is well done and not too barbarous.”[2135]

Luther nevertheless persevered in his own efforts in spite of his

misgivings, especially as the contributions of his assistants failed

to reach his standards. Of the eight hymns contained in the so-called

Wittenberg “Achtliederbuch” four were composed by Luther, while of

the twenty-five in the Erfurt “Enchiridion” eighteen were his; the

collection, however, which he characterised as having been started by

himself, the “Geistliche Gesangbüchlein” of Johann Walther, consisting

chiefly of translations or adaptations, contained thirty-two hymns,

twenty-four of them being written by Luther. This was the result of his

efforts up to the end of 1524.[2136]

In later years only twelve other hymns were published by him, of which

some, like the familiar “A safe stronghold,” and that intended in

the first instance for children: “In Thy Word preserve us, Lord,”

were not originally meant for use in public worship. A hymn, likewise

not written for public worship, yet one of the oldest, as it dates

from the summer of 1523, is the one where Luther extols the glorious

martyrdom of two of his followers, who were executed in the Netherlands

as heretics. Including this the number of his compositions rises to

thirty-seven.

The number is not excessive considering how prolific his genius as a

rule was, but among them are hymns, which, owing to their simple vigour

and fine wording, bear witness to the author’s real talent for this

form of literature. Thus, for instance, “From highest heaven on joyous

wing,” “Ah God, look down from heaven and see,” “Dear is to me the Holy

Maid” (the Church), finally and above all the hymn “A safe stronghold

our God is still” (“Ein’ feste Burg”), which for ages has had so

stimulating an effect on his followers. When, in these compositions,

Luther shakes off the trammels of pedantry and leaves his spirit to

go its own way, he often strikes the true poetic note.[2137] He was

endowed with a powerful fancy, nor was there ever any lack of warmth,

nay passion, in his expression of his inward experiences; in addition

to this there was his rare gift of language, his keen appreciation

of music and song, which he regarded as the “very gift of God” and

to which, “next to theology,” he allotted the first place;[2138] the

art he possessed of making the whole congregation to share in what

he himself felt, and his careful avoidance of any conscious striving

after originality contributed to render many of these productions

acknowledged works of genius.

Most characteristic of all in this respect is the rousing hymn “Ein’

feste Burg.” The result, as shown above,[2139] of outward circumstances

as well as of inward experiences, it gives the fullest expression to

Luther’s own defiance. In so far as Luther succeeded in depicting his

cause as that of all his followers, and, with rare power, made his

own defiant spirit ring from every lip, we may accept the opinion of

a recent Luther biographer on the hymn in question, viz. that it

expresses the “defiance of Protestantism.” “So entirely does Luther’s

hymn spring from the feeling common to the whole of Protestantism, that

we seem to hear Protestants yet unborn joining in it. The trumpets of

Gustavus Adolphus and the cannon of Lützen are audible in this hymn

of defiance. It reminds us of Torstensson and Coligny, of Cromwell

and William of Orange.”[2140] We must, however, remember that part

of the impression it creates must be attributed to the powerful

pre-reformation melody to which the words are set.

We give the hymn below in Carlyle’s fine rendering[2141]:

PSALM XLVI. (XLV.)

_Deus Nosier Refugium et Virtus_

1. A safe stronghold our God is still,

A trusty shield and weapon.

He’ll help us clear from all the ill

That hath us now o’ertaken.

The ancient Prince of Hell

Hath risen with purpose fell,

Strong mail of Craft and Power

He weareth in this hour,

On Earth is not his fellow.

2. With force of arms we nothing can,

Full soon were we down-ridden.

But for us fights the proper Man

Whom God Himself hath bidden.

Ask ye, Who is this name?

Christ Jesus is His name,

The Lord Zebaoth’s Son,

He and no other one

Shall conquer in the battle.

3. And were this world all Devils o’er

And watching to devour us,

We lay it not to heart so sore

Not they can overpower us.

And let the Prince of Ill

Look grim, as e’er he will,

He harms us not a whit,

For why? His doom is writ,

A word shall quickly slay him.

4. God’s Word, for all their craft and force,

One moment shall not linger,

But, spite of Hell, shall have its course,

’Tis written by His finger.

And though they take our life,

Goods, honour, children, wife,

Yet is their profit small.

These things shall vanish all,

The City of God remaineth.

Though Protestants are fond of extolling the sincere faith expressed

in Luther’s hymns (nay even speak of the “overwhelming fervour of his

faith”[2142]) we must not forget, that in some of them bitter polemics

strike a harsh and very unpoetic note, quite out of harmony with the

otherwise good and pious thoughts. The “Children’s Hymn” to be sung

against the two arch-enemies of Christ and His holy Church, viz. the

Pope and the Turk, dating from 1541 at the latest, begins with the

verse:

Lord, by Thy Word deliverance work

And stay the hand of Pope and Turk

Who Jesus Christ Thy Son

Would hurl down from His throne.[2143]

This hymn became ultimately “One of the principal hymns of the

Evangelical flock.”[2144]

No less noticeable is Luther’s anti-Catholic prejudice in his “Song of

the Two Martyrs of Christ at Brussels” and in the hymn “To new strains

we raise our voices.” But even when the words do not sound directly

controversial the substance often serves as a weapon against the old

faith and was thus understood by his followers; this was the case, for

instance, with the hymn just referred to on the Church. The hymns, in

fact, were intended, as he says in his preface to Johann Walther’s

collection, “to advance and further the Holy Gospel which by the grace

of God has once more dawned.” To this end he would gladly see “all

the arts, more particularly that of music, employed in the service

of Him Who created them and bestowed them on us.”[2145] The more he

was animated by the fighting instinct, the better he fancies he can

compose. “If I am to compose, write, pray or preach well, I must be

angry.” “Then my blood boils and my understanding grows keener.”[2146]

His opponents complained that his popular hymns against the Church

excited the people and that they “sang themselves into” the new faith.

Just as the polemics of their author detracts from the real poetic

value of some of the hymns, so, in spite of all his good-will, there

are other defects to decrease the value of his work. Owing to hasty

workmanship his poesy has suffered. His roughness explains how “much

in his work sounds harsh and clumsy.”[2147] Nevertheless the very fact

that they were Luther’s own made them praiseworthy in the eyes of his

olden admirers.[2148]

Owing to their hearty reception in Protestant circles, to their use

both in public worship and elsewhere, and also because they served as

a model and exerted a powerful influence on later Protestant efforts

to promote hymnology, they won for their author the proud title of

the Father of Protestant psalmody. The earliest Protestants, in their

ignorance of what obtained in Catholicism previous to his day, even

pushed their esteem for his labours so far as to call him simply the

Father of Hymnology. “What made him the great poet of our nation,” a

modern Protestant historian declares, “was his individuality and the

boldness of his expression. He was not, nor did he wish to be, the

Father of German psalmody, but he was in very truth the Father of

_Evangelical_ psalmody.”[2149]

When the introduction of hymns in the new form of public worship

came up for discussion, Luther, owing to the exigencies of the case,

showed himself by no means intolerant of the numerous hymns dating from

Catholic times then still in use.

We can the more readily understand this seeing the praise he himself

lavished on these hymns, the inspiring strains of which still rang in

his ears from the days of his youth. It is true that not many of them

appeared to him to have the “true spirit.” In his service of the Mass

where this remark occurs he wished only three of these to be retained

for the time being, viz. the Communion hymn, “Praised be God and blest,

Who Himself becomes our Guest,” the Whitsun hymn, “Now we crave of

the Holy Ghost” and the Christmas hymn, “A tender Child is born To us

this very morn.” The Whitsun hymn and the Communion hymn were enlarged

later, i.e. revised. He also took from an older model the first verse

of another Whitsun hymn which he composed. His Easter hymn, “Christ

lay in His Winding-sheet,” was a revision of the older Catholic hymn,

“Jesus Christ to-day is risen,” into which he has introduced part of

the Latin Easter sequence. His hymns, “In the midst of life cruel death

surrounds us” and “God our Father bide with us” are also adaptations

of older Catholic hymns for use in processions. In his rendering of

the Ten Commandments into German verse he seems to have taken as his

model a similar composition dating from earlier days and also used

in processions. “Heirlooms of Catholicism” are also three old chants

which he translated from the Latin, “Come, Holy Ghost, Creator, come,”

“Saviour of the heathen known” and “Now praise we Christ the Holy

One.”[2150]

The Middle Ages had always been noted for their renderings of the

Psalms and hymns of the Church, and their productions compare

favourably with Luther’s compositions, the more so since he is seldom

at his best when he is not free to develop his own thoughts.[2151]

Speaking of translations and alluding to those made by his colleagues

Luther declared in 1529: “Some have now given proof of their ability

and have increased the number of hymns; they far outstrip me and

must be regarded as experts in this field.”[2152] Many had been the

poets who had turned the old Latin hymns into German; particularly

worthy of mention were the monk of Salzburg in the 14th and Heinrich

of Laufenberg in the 15th century. Many of these hymns can take their

place beside Luther’s rendering of Psalm xlvi. (xlv.), “Ein’ feste

Burg,” though the trust in God they express and the unshaken faith of

their childlike language is far removed from any presumptuous reliance

on private judgment in religious matters or subjective revelations.

Of the use of German hymns Provost Gerhoch of Reichersberg wrote as

early as the 12th century: “The whole people breaks out into praise

of the Saviour in the hymns of their mother tongue; especially is

this the case with the Germans whose language lends itself so well to

melody.”[2153] At the close of the Middle Ages it might be said with

truth: “The German nation possessed a hoard of hymns, such as no other

nation in the world could show.”[2154]

It is not only Luther who frequently admits that he had “included in

his hymnbook some of the songs of our forefathers” as “bearing witness

to the good Christians who lived before our day,”[2155] but even the

_Apologia_ for the Confession of Augsburg had to admit in its defence

of the Protestant ritual: “The use [of German hymns] has always been

regarded as praiseworthy in the churches; though more German hymns are

sung in some places than in others, nevertheless, in all the churches

the people have always sung something in German, hence the practice is

not at all novel.”[2156]

That _something_ was always sung in German is perfectly correct; in

the liturgy properly so-called, viz. the Mass, the rule was to sing

in Latin the Proper, Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, etc. Hence the standing

of vernacular hymns was different in the case of Catholics from

what it was with Protestants. With the latter the edification of the

congregation was the principal thing, whereas, for the Catholic, public

worship had in the eucharistic sacrifice something quite independent

of private devotion; it was in keeping with the character of this

universal sacrifice offered by all nations and tongues that its rites

should be conducted in Latin, the universal language. The only strictly

liturgical Psalmody in the Middle Ages was the Latin Gregorian chant.

The German hymn held only a subordinate place in the liturgy, being

inserted sometimes in connection with the sequence after the Gradual,

or, more usually, before and after the sermon. On the other hand,

recourse to German hymns was usual in extra-liturgical devotions, in

processions, pilgrimages and in pious gatherings of the people whether

at home or in the church.

The hymn tunes made use of in the Middle Ages were also in every case

either Gregorian or quasi-Gregorian. Thus the musical language of

popular piety was able to maintain its dignity, was preserved faithful

to the traditions of the great ages of the Church and secure from the

inroads of private fancy.

The melodies to which Luther set his own compositions and those of

his friends had also been handed down from earlier times. Some of

them were purely Gregorian, others were those of older Catholic hymns

or of popular ditties. The melody of “A Safe Stronghold,” as already

observed, is derived from the Latin chant, and so is that of “Jesaia

dem Propheten” and others. Even the setting of the versified creed

“We all believe in one true God” is borrowed from a 15th-century

composition.

Protestant admiration for Luther has indeed led “to his being

represented as a notable composer,[2157] and thus many of these

tunes bear his name. Careful research has, however, shattered this

delusion.... Many other melodies, which so far it has been impossible

to trace to the Middle Ages, probably form part of the pre-reformation

treasury of hymns.... Whether, as modern research is inclined to think,

the simple new melody to ‘Saviour of the heathen known,’ ... is

Luther’s own, it is not possible to determine.”[2158]

The traditional fondness of Germans for song was used to spread

erroneous doctrines not by Luther alone, but also by others of the

New Believers; this was particularly the case with the followers of

Schwenckfeld, who exploited it in the interests of their sect. Luther’s

hymnbook even stood in danger of being “spoilt” by outside additions,

hence the precaution he took of appending the authors’ names to the

various hymns; he also prefixed a special “Warnung” to the Preface of

an edition brought out towards the end of his life (1542).[2159]

Among the songs falsely attributed to Luther is one on the

“Out-driving of Antichrist.” In old editions this “Song for the

Children, wherewith to drive out the Pope in Mid-Lent”[2160] is indeed

ascribed to Luther, but we learn from Mathesius’s “Historien” that

it was he who brought the text of it to Luther in the spring of 1545

on the occasion of his last visit. The song is a modification of an

older one still sung in places even to-day, on Laetare Sunday, for

the chasing away of winter. The unknown versifier, who was perhaps

Mathesius himself, has transferred to the Pope-Antichrist what was

intended for the winter. Luther was pleased with the verses and

himself undertook their publication.[2161] There is a great difference

between the cheerful, innocent verses still sung by children to-day:

“Now let us drive the Winter out,” etc.,[2162] and the malicious

version which Luther popularised and which was even included in many

of the Lutheran hymn-books, for instance in the collection dating from

1547, “Etliche tröstliche Gebet, Psalmen und geistliche Lieder,” etc.

There it is entitled “A Christian song for Children.” It occurs in

the Königsberg Enchiridion of 1560, together with another Old German

children’s song, to be sung on the way home.[2163]

The first lines of the hymn for the Out-driving of Antichrist run as

follows:[2164]

1. Now let us drive the Pope from out

Christ’s kingdom and God’s house devout,

For murderously he has ruled,

And countless souls to ruin fooled.

2. Be off with you, you damnéd son,

You scarlet bride of Babylon;

Horror and antichrist thou art,

Lies, murder, cunning fill thy heart.