LUTHER AND LYING
1. A Battery of Assertions.[216]
LUTHER’S frank admission of his readiness to make use of a “good big
lie” in the complications consequent on Philip’s bigamy, and his
invitation to the Landgrave to escape from the dilemma in this way, may
serve as a plea for the present chapter. “What harm is there,” he asks,
“if, in a good cause and for the sake of the Christian Churches, a man
tells a good, downright lie?” “A lie of necessity, of convenience,
or of excuse, all such lies are not against God and for such He will
Himself answer”; “that the Landgrave was unable to lie strongly, didn’t
matter in the least.”[217]
It is worth while ascertaining how Luther--who has so often
been represented as the embodiment of German integrity and
uprightness--behaved in general as regards the obligation of speaking
with truth and honesty. Quite recently a Protestant author, writing
with the sole object of exonerating his hero in this particular,
bestowed on him the title of “Luther the Truthful.” “Only in one
single instance,” so he has it, “did Luther advise the use of a lie of
necessity at which exception might be taken.” In order not to run to
the opposite extreme and make mountains out of mole-hills we shall do
well to bear in mind how great was the temptation, during so titanic a
struggle as his, for Luther to ignore at times the rigorous demands of
truth and justice, particularly when he saw his opponents occasionally
making light of them. We must likewise take into consideration the
vividness of Luther’s imagination, the strength of the ideas which
dominated him, his tendency to exaggeration and other mitigating
circumstances.
There was a time when Luther’s foes were ready to describe as lies
every false statement or erroneous quotation made by Luther, as though
involuntary errors and mistakes due to forgetfulness were not liable to
creep into his works, written as they were in great haste.
On the other hand, some of Luther’s admirers are ready enough to make
admissions such as the following: “In point of fact we find Luther
holding opinions concerning truthfulness which are not shared by
every Christian, not even by every evangelical Christian.” “Luther
unhesitatingly taught that there might be occasions when it was a
Christian’s duty to depart from the truth.”[218]
To this we must, however, add that Luther, repeatedly and with the
utmost decision, urged the claims of truthfulness, branded lying as
“the devil’s own image,”[219] and extolled as one of the excellencies
of the Germans--in which they differed from Italians and Greeks--their
reputation for ever being “loyal, truthful and reliable people”; he
also adds--and the words do him credit--“To my mind there is no more
shameful vice on earth than lying.”[220]
This, however, does not dispense us from the duty of carefully
examining the particular instances which seem to militate against the
opinion here expressed.
We find Luther’s relations with truth very strained even at the
beginning of his career, and that, too, in the most important and
momentous explanations he gave of his attitude towards the Church and
the Pope. Frequently enough, by simply placing his statements side by
side, striking falsehoods and evasions become apparent.[221]
For instance, according to his own statements made in private, he
is determined to assail the Pope as Antichrist, yet at the same
time, in his official writings, he declares any thought of hostility
towards the Pope to be alien to him. It is only necessary to note
the dates: On March 13, 1519, he tells his friend Spalatin that he
is wading through the Papal Decretals and, in confidence, must admit
his uncertainty as to whether the Pope is Antichrist or merely his
Apostle, so miserably had Christ, i.e. the truth, been crucified by
him in the Decretals.[222] Indeed, even in the earlier half of Dec.,
1518, he had been wondering whether the Pope was not Antichrist; on
Dec. 11, writing to his friend Link, he said he had a suspicion, that
the “real Antichrist” of whom Paul speaks ruled at the Court of Rome,
and believed that he could prove that he was “even worse than the
Turk.”[223] In a similar strain he wrote as early as Jan. 13, 1519,
that he intended to fight the “Roman serpent” should the Elector and
the University of Wittenberg allow him so to do;[224] on Feb. 3,[225]
and again on Feb. 20, 1519,[226] he admits that it had already “long”
been his intention to declare war on Rome and its falsifications of
the truth.--In spite of all this, at the beginning of Jan., 1519, he
informed the Papal agent Miltitz that he was quite ready to send a
humble and submissive letter to the Pope, and, as a matter of fact,
on Jan. 5 (or 6), 1519, he wrote that strange epistle to Leo X in
which he speaks of himself as “the dregs of humanity” in the presence
of the Pope’s “sublime majesty”; he approaches him like a “lambkin,”
whose bleating he begs the Vicar of Christ graciously to give ear to.
Nor was all this merely said in derision, but with a fixed purpose to
deceive. He declares with the utmost solemnity “before God and every
creature” that it had never entered his mind to assail in any way
the authority of the Roman Church and the Pope; on the contrary, he
“entirely admits that the power of the Church extends over all, and
that nothing in heaven or on earth is to be preferred to her, except
Jesus Christ alone, the Lord of all things.” The original letter
still exists, but the letter itself was never despatched, probably
because Miltitz raised some objection.[227] Only through mere chance
did the Papal Curia fail to receive this letter, which, compared with
Luther’s real thought as elsewhere expressed, can only be described as
outrageous.[228]
In his dealings with his Bishop, Hieronymus Scultetus the chief pastor
of Brandenburg, he had already displayed a like duplicity.
In May, 1518, he wrote assuring him in the most respectful terms,
that he submitted unconditionally to the judgment of the Church
whatever he was advancing concerning Indulgences and kindred
subjects; that the Bishop was to burn all his scribbles (Theses and
Resolutions) should they displease him, and that he would “not mind
in the least.”[229]--And yet a confidential letter sent three months
earlier to his friend Spalatin mentions, though for the benefit of
him “alone and our friends,” that the whole system of Indulgences now
seemed to Luther a “deluding of souls, good only to promote spiritual
laziness.”[230]
To the Emperor too he also gives assurances couched in submissive and
peaceful language, which are in marked contrast with other statements
which emanated from him about the same time.
It is only necessary to recall his letter of Aug. 30, 1520, to
Charles V.[231] Here Luther seeks to convince the Emperor that he
is the quietest and most docile of theologians; who was “forced to
write only owing to the snares laid for him by others”; who wished
for nothing more than to be ignored and left in peace; and who was
ready at any moment to welcome the instruction which so far had been
refused him.--Very different was his language a few weeks earlier when
writing to Spalatin, his tool at the Electoral Court of Saxony: “The
die is cast; the despicable fury or favour of the Romans is nothing
to me; I desire no reconciliation or communion with them.... I shall
burn the whole of the Papal Laws and all humility and friendliness
shall cease.”[232] He even hopes, with the help of Spalatin and the
Elector, to send to Rome the ominous tidings of the offer made by the
Knight Silvester von Schauenburg to protect him by armed force; they
might then see at Rome “that their thunders are of no avail”; should
they, however, obtain from the Elector his dismissal from his chair
at Wittenberg, then, “with the support of the men-at-arms, he would
make things still warmer for the Romans.”[233] And yet, on the other
hand, Luther was just then most anxious that Spalatin, by means of the
Elector, should represent his cause everywhere, and particularly at
Rome, as not yet defined, as a point of controversy urgently calling
for examination or, at the very least, for a biblical refutation
before the Emperor and the Church; the Sovereign also was to tell the
Romans that “violence and censures would only make the case of Germany
worse even than that of Bohemia,” and would lead to “irrepressible
tumults.” In such wise, by dint of dishonest diplomacy, did he seek
to frighten, as he says, the “timid Romanists” and thus prevent their
taking any steps against him.[234]
If we go back a little further we find a real and irreconcilable
discrepancy between the actual events of the Indulgence controversy
of 1517 and 1518 and the accounts which he himself gave of them later.
“I was forced to accept the degree of Doctor and to swear to preach
and teach my cherished Scriptures truly and faithfully. But then the
Papacy barred my way and sought to prevent me from teaching.”[235]
“While I was looking for a blessing from Rome, there came instead
a storm of thunder and lightning; I was made the lamb that fouled
the water for the wolf; Tetzel escaped scot-free, but I was to be
devoured.”[236]
His falsehoods about Tetzel are scarcely believable. The latter
was, so he says, such a criminal that he had even been condemned to
death.[237]
The Indulgence-preachers had declared (what they never thought of
doing) “that it was not necessary to have remorse and sorrow in
order to obtain the indulgence.”[238] In his old age Luther stated
that Tetzel had even given Indulgences for future sins. It is true,
however, that when he spoke “he had already become a myth to himself”
(A. Hausrath). “Not only are the dates wrong but even the events
themselves.... It is the same with the statement that Tetzel had sold
Indulgences for sins not yet committed.... In Luther’s charges against
Tetzel in the controversy on the Theses we hear nothing of this; only
in the work ‘Wider Hans Worst’ (1541), written in his old age, does he
make such an assertion.”[239] In this tract Luther does indeed make
Tetzel teach that “there was no need of remorse, sorrow or repentance
for sin, provided one bought an indulgence, or an indulgence-letter.”
He adds: “And he [Tetzel] also sold for future sins.” (See vol. i., p.
342.)
This untruth, clearly confuted as it was by facts, passed from
Luther’s lips to those of his disciples. Mathesius in his first sermon
on Luther seems to be drawing on the passage in “Wider Hans Worst”
when he says, Tetzel had preached that he was able to forgive the
biggest past “as well as future sins.”[240] Luther’s friend, Frederick
Myconius, helped to spread the same falsehood throughout Germany by
embodying it in his “_Historia Reformationis_” (1542),[241] whilst in
Switzerland, Henry Bullinger, who also promoted it, expressly refers
to “Wider Hans Worst” as his authority.[242]
In this way Luther’s misrepresentations infected his whole circle, nor
can we be surprised if in this, as in so many similar instances, the
falsehood has held the field even to our own day.[243]
We may mention incidentally, that Luther declares concerning the fame
which his printed “Propositions against Tetzel’s Articles” brought
him: “It did not please me, for, as I said, I myself did not know
what the Indulgence was,”[244] although his first sermons are a
refutation, both of his own professed ignorance and of that which he
also attributes “to all theologians generally.”--Finally, Luther was
very fond of intentionally representing the Indulgence controversy as
the one source of his opposition to the Church, and in this he was so
successful that many still believe it in our own times. The fact that,
long before 1517, his views on Grace and Justification had alienated
him from the teaching of the Church, he keeps altogether in the
background.
At length the Church intervened with the Ban and Luther was summoned
before the Emperor at the Diet of Worms. Three years later, at the
cost of truth, he had already contrived to cast a halo of glory around
his public appearance there. For instance, we know how, contrary to
the true state of the case, he wrote: “I went to Worms although I knew
that the safe conduct given me by the Emperor would be broken”; for the
German Princes, otherwise so staunch and true, had, he says, learned
nothing better from the Roman idol than to disregard their plighted
word; when he entered Worms he had “taken a jump into the gaping jaws
of the monster Behemoth.”[245] Yet he knew well enough that the promise
of a safe conduct was to be kept most conscientiously. Only on the
return journey did he express the fear lest, by preaching in defiance
of the prohibition, he might make people say that he had thereby
forfeited his safe conduct.[246]
Yet again it was no tribute to truth and probity, when, after the
arrival in Germany of the Bull of Excommunication, though perfectly
aware that it was genuine, he nevertheless feigned in print to regard
it as a forgery concocted by his enemies, to the detriment of the
Evangel. In confidence he declared that he “believed the Bull to be
real and authentic,”[247] and yet at that very time, in his “Von den
newen Eckischenn Bullen und Lugen,” he brought forward four reasons for
its being a forgery, and strove to make out that the document was, not
the work of the Pope, but a “tissue of lies” woven by Eck.[248]
His tactics had been the same in the case of an edict directed against
him by the Bishop of Meissen, the first of the German episcopate to
take action. He knew very well that the enactment was genuine. Yet he
wrote in reply the “Antwort auff die Tzedel sso unter des Officials tzu
Stolpen Sigel ist aussgangen,” as though the writer were some unknown
opponent, who ... “had lost his wits on the Gecksberg.”[249]
A similar artifice was made to serve his purpose in the matter of the
Papal Brief of Aug. 23, 1518, in which Cardinal Cajetan received full
powers to proceed against him. He insisted that this was a malicious
fabrication of his foes in Germany; and yet he was well aware of the
facts of the case; he cannot have doubted its authenticity, seeing that
the Brief had been officially transmitted to him from the Saxon Court
through Spalatin.[250]
While, however, accusing others of deception, even occasionally by
name, as in Eck’s case, he saw no wrong in antedating his letter to
Leo X; for this neither he nor his adviser Miltitz was to be called
to account; it sufficed that by dating it earlier the letter appeared
to have been written in ignorance of the Excommunication, and thereby
served Luther’s interests better.[251]
In fact, right through the period previous to his open breach with
Rome, we see him ever labouring to postpone the decision, though a
great gulf already separated him from the Church of yore. Across the
phantom bridge which still spanned the chasm, he saw with satisfaction
thousands passing into his own camp. When on the very point of raising
the standard of revolt he seemed at pains to prove it anything but an
emblem of uprightness, probity and truth.
* * * * *
Passing now to the struggle of his later life, similar phenomena can
scarcely escape the eyes of the unprejudiced observer.
He was proposing untruth and deception when, in 1520, he advised
candidates to qualify for major Orders by a fictitious vow of celibacy.
Whoever was to be ordained subdeacon was to urge the Bishop not to
demand continency, but should the Bishop insist upon the law and call
for such a promise, then the candidates were quietly to give it with
the proviso: “_quantum fragilitas humana permittit_”; then, says
Luther, “each one is free to take these words in a negative sense, i.e.
I do not vow chastity because human frailty does not allow of a man
living chastely.”[252]
To what lengths he was prepared to go, even where members of Reformed
sects were concerned, may be seen in one of his many unjust outbursts
against Zwingli and Œcolampadius. Although they were suffering
injustice and violence, yet he denounced them mercilessly. They were
to be proclaimed “damned,” even though this led to “violence being
offered them”; this was the best way to make people shrink from their
false doctrines.[253] His own doctrines, on the other hand, he says,
are such that not even Catholics dared to condemn them. On his return
to Wittenberg from the Coburg he preached, that the Papists had been
forced to admit that his doctrine did not offend against a single
article of the Faith.[254]--Of Carlstadt, his theological child of
trouble, he asserted, that he wished to play the part of teacher of
Holy Scripture though he had never in all his life even seen the
Bible,[255] and yet all, Luther inclusive, knew that Carlstadt was not
so ignorant of the Bible and that he could even boast of a considerable
acquaintance with Hebrew. Concerning Luther’s persecution of Carlstadt,
a Protestant researcher has pointed to the “ever-recurring flood
of misrepresentations, suspicions, vituperation and abuse which the
Reformer poured upon his opponent.”[256]
Such being his licence of speech, what treatment could Catholics expect
at his hands? One instance is to be found in the use he makes against
the Catholics of a well-known passage of St. Bernard’s.
St. Bernard, says Luther, had declared the religious life to be
worthless and had said: “_Perdite vixi_” (“I have shamefully wasted
my life”). The great Saint of the religious life, the noblest patron
and representative of the virtues of the cloister, Luther depicts
as condemning with these words the religious life in general as
an abominable error; he would have him brand his own life and his
attention to his vows, as an existence foreign to God which he had
too late recognised as such! By this statement, says Luther, he
“hung up his cowl on the nail,” and proceeds to explain his meaning:
“Henceforward he cared not a bit for the cowl and its foolery and
refused to hear any more about it.”[257] Thus, so Luther assures
us, St. Bernard, at the solemn moment of quitting this world, “made
nothing” (“_nihili fecit_”) of his vows.[258]
When quoting the words “_Perdite vixi_” Luther frequently seeks to
convey an admission on the Saint’s part of his having come at last to
see that the religious life was a mistake, and merely led people to
forget Christ’s merits; that he had at last attained the perception
during sickness and had laid hold on Christ’s merits as his only
hope.[259] Even on internal grounds it is too much to assume Luther to
have been in good faith, or merely guilty of a lapse of memory. That
we have here to do with a distorted version of a perfectly harmless
remark is proved to the historian by another passage, dating from
the year 1518, where Luther himself refers quite simply and truly
to the actual words employed by St. Bernard and sees in them merely
an expression of humility and the admission of a pure heart, which
detested the smallest of its faults.[260]
Denifle has followed up the “_Perdite vixi_” with great acumen, shown
the frequent use Luther made of it and traced the words to their
actual context in St. Bernard’s writings. The text does not contain
the faintest condemnation of the religious life, so that Luther’s
incessant misuse of it becomes only the more incomprehensible.[261]
St. Bernard is here speaking solely of his own faults and
imperfections, not at all of the religious life or of the vows. Nor
were the words uttered on his death-bed, when face to face with
eternity, but occur in a sermon preached in the full vigour of manhood
and when the Saint was eagerly pursuing his monastic ideal.
Again, what things were not circulated by Luther, in the stress of his
warfare, concerning the history of the Popes and the Church? Here,
again, some of his statements were not simply errors made in good
faith, but, as has been pointed out by Protestant historians, malicious
inventions going far beyond the matter contained in the sources which
we know to have been at his command. The Popes “poisoned several
Emperors, beheaded or otherwise betrayed others and put them to death,
as became the diabolical spectre of the Papacy.”[262] The bloodthirsty
Popes were desirous of “slaying the German Emperors, as Clement IV did
with Conradin, the last Duke of Suabia and hereditary King of Naples,
whom he caused to be publicly put to death by the sword.”[263] Of this
E. Schäfer rightly says, that the historian Sabellicus, whom Luther
was utilising, simply (and truly) records that: “Conradin was taken
while attempting to escape and was put to death by order of Charles [of
Anjou]”; Clement IV Sabellicus does not mention at all, although it is
true that the Pope was a strong opponent of the Staufen house.[264]
The so-called letter of St. Ulrich of Augsburg against clerical
celibacy, with the account of 3000 (6000) babies’ heads found in a
pond belonging to St. Gregory’s nunnery in Rome, is admittedly one of
the most impudent forgeries found in history and emanated from some
foe of Gregory VII and opponent of the ancient law of celibacy. Luther
brought it out as a weapon in his struggle against celibacy, and,
according to Köstlin-Kawerau, most probably the Preface to the printed
text published at Wittenberg in 1520 came from his pen.[265] The
manuscript had been sent to Luther from Holland. Emser took him to task
and proved the forgery, though on not very substantial grounds. Luther
demurred to one of his arguments but declared that he did not build
merely on a doubtful letter. In spite of this, however, the seditious
and alluring fable was not only not withdrawn from circulation but
actually reprinted. When Luther said later that celibacy had first
been introduced in the time of St. Ulrich, he is again speaking on the
authority of the supposititious letter. This letter was also worked for
all it was worth by those who later took up the defence of Luther’s
teaching.[266]
To take one single example of Luther’s waywardness in speaking of Popes
who were almost contemporaries: He tells us with the utmost assurance
that Alexander VI had been an “unbelieving Marane.” However much we
may execrate the memory of the Borgia Pope, still so extraordinary an
assertion has never been made by any sensible historian. Alexander
VI, the pretended Jewish convert and “infidel” on the Papal throne!
Who could read his heart so well as to detect an infidelity, which,
needless to say, he never acknowledged? Who can credit the tale of his
being a Marane?
* * * * *
When, in July 14, 1537, Pope Paul III issued a Bull granting an
indulgence for the war against the Turks, Luther at once published
it with misleading notes in which he sought to show that the Popes,
instead of linking up the Christian powers against their foes, had ever
done their best to promote dissensions amongst the great monarchs of
Christendom.[267]
In 1538 he sent to the press his Schmalkalden “Artickel” against the
Pope and the prospective Council, adding observations of a questionable
character regarding their history and meaning. He certainly was
exalting unduly the Articles when he declared in the Introduction,
that “they have been unanimously accepted and approved by our people.”
It is a matter of common knowledge, that, owing to Melanchthon’s
machinations, they had never even been discussed. (See vol. iii., p.
434.) They were nevertheless published as though they had been the
official scheme drafted for presentation to the Council. Luther also
put into the printed Artickel words which are not to be found in the
original.[268] The following excuse of his statement as to their having
been accepted at Schmalkalden has been made: “It is evident, that,
owing to his grave illness at Schmalkalden, he never learnt the exact
fate of his Articles.” Yet who can believe, that, after his recovery,
he did not make enquiries into what had become of the Articles on which
he laid so much weight, or that he “never learnt” their fate, though
the matter was one well known to both the Princes and the theologians?
Only after his death were these Articles embodied in the official
Confessions.[269]
Seeing that he was ready to misrepresent even the official proceedings
of his own party, we cannot be surprised if, in his controversies,
he was careless about the truth where the person of an opponent was
concerned. Here it is not always possible to find even a shadow of
excuse behind which he can take refuge. Of Erasmus’s end he had
received accounts from two quarters, both friendly to his cause, but
they did not strike him as sufficiently damning. Accordingly he at
once set in currency reports concerning the scholar’s death utterly at
variance with what he had learnt from the letters in question.[270]
He accused the Catholics, particularly the Catholic Princes, of
attempting to murder him, and frequently speaks of the hired braves
sent out against him. Nor were his friends and pupils slow to take his
words literally and to hurl such charges, more particularly against
Duke George of Saxony.[271] Yet not a single attempt on his life can
be proved, and even Protestants have admitted concerning the Duke
that “nothing credible is known of any attempt on George’s part to
assassinate Luther.”[272] Cochlæus merely relates that murderers had
offered their services to Duke George;[273] beyond that nothing.
Far more serious than such misrepresenting of individuals was the
injustice he did to the whole ecclesiastical life of the Middle Ages,
which he would fain have made out to have entirely fallen away from
the true standard of Christian faith and practice. Seen through his
new glasses, mediæval life was distorted beyond all recognition.
Walter Köhler gives a warning which is to the point: “Protestant
historians must beware of looking at the Middle Ages from Luther’s
standpoint.”[274] In particular was mediæval Scholasticism selected
by Luther and his friends as a butt for attack and misrepresentation.
Bucer admits in a letter to Bullinger how far they had gone in this
respect: “We have treated all the Schoolmen in such a way as to shock
many good and worthy men, who see that we have not read their works but
are merely anxious to slander them out of prudence.”[275]
* * * * *
However desirous we may be of crediting the later Luther with good
faith in his distorted views of Catholic practices and doctrines, still
he frequently goes so far in this respect as to make it extremely
difficult to believe that his misrepresentations were based on mere
error or actual conviction. One would have thought that he would at
least have noticed the blatant contrast between his insinuations
and the text of the Breviary and Missal--books with which he was
thoroughly conversant--and even of the rule of his Order. As a monk
and priest he was perfectly familiar with them; only at the cost of a
violent wrench could he have passed from this so different theological
world to think as he ultimately did of the doctrines of Catholicism.
Döllinger was quite right when he wrote: “As a controversialist Luther
combined undeniably dialectic and rhetorical talent with a degree of
unscrupulousness such as is rarely met with in this domain. One of
his most ordinary methods was to distort a doctrine or institution
into a mere caricature of itself, and then, forgetful of the fact
that what he was fighting was a simple creation of his fancy, to
launch out into righteous abuse of it.... So soon as he touches a
theological question, he confuses it, often of set purpose, and as
for the reasons of his opponents, they are mutilated and distorted
out of all recognition.”[276] The untruthfulness of his polemics is
peculiarly apparent in his attack on free-will. It is impossible,
even with the best of intentions, to put it all, or practically all,
to the account “of the method of disputation” then in use. That
method, the syllogistic one, called for a clear and accurate statement
of the opponent’s standpoint. The controversy round “_De servo
arbitrio_” (fully dealt with in vol. ii., pp. 223-294) has recently
been studied by two scholars, one a Protestant, the other a Catholic,
and both authors on the whole agree at least on one point, viz. that
Luther ascribed to his opponent a denial of the necessity of Grace,
such as the latter never defended, and such as is quite unknown to
Catholics.[277] Indeed, at a later juncture in that same controversy
Luther even declared of the author of the “_Hyperaspistes_” that he
denied the Trinity![278]
Instead of instancing anew all the many minor misrepresentations of
the dogmas and practices of the older Church for which Luther was
responsible, and which are found scattered throughout this work, we may
confine ourselves to recalling his bold assertion, that all earlier
expositors had taken the passage concerning “God’s justice,” in Rom.
i. 17, as referring to punitive justice.[279] This was what he taught
from his professor’s chair and what we find vouched for in the notes
of a zealous pupil of whose fidelity there can be no question. And yet
it has been proved, that, with the possible exception of Abelard, not
one can be found who thus explained the passage of which Luther speaks
(“_hunc locum_”), whilst Luther himself was acquainted with some at
least of the more than sixty commentators who interpret it otherwise.
Significant enough is the fact that he only reached this false
interpretation gradually.
Luther also says that he and all the others had been told it was a
mortal sin to leave their cell without their scapular, though he never
attempts to prove that this was the general opinion, or was even
held by anybody. The rule of his Order rejected such exaggeration.
All theologians were agreed that such trifles did not constitute a
grievous sin. Luther was perfectly aware that Gerson, who was much
read in the monasteries, was one of these theologians; he praised him,
because, though looked at askance at Rome, he set consciences free from
over-great scrupulosity and refused to brand the non-wearing of the
scapular as a crime.[280] Gerson was indeed not favourably regarded
in Rome, but this was for other reasons, not, as Luther makes out, on
account of such common-sense teaching as the above.
Then again we have the untruth he is never tired of reiterating, viz.
that in the older Church people thought they could be saved only by
means of works, and that, through want of faith in Christ, the “Church
had become a whore.”[281] Yet ecclesiastical literature in Luther’s day
no less than in ours, and likewise an abundance of documents bearing on
the point teach quite the contrary and make faith in Christ the basis
of all the good works enjoined.[282] All were aware, as Luther himself
once had been, that outward works taken by themselves were worthless.
And yet Luther, in one of the charges which he repeated again and
again, though at the outset he cannot have believed it, says: “The
question is, how we are to become pious. The Grey Friar says: Wear a
grey hood, a rope and the tonsure. The Black Friar says: Put on a black
frock. The Papist: Do this or that good work, hear Mass, pray, fast,
give alms, etc., and each one whatever he fancies will help him to be
saved. But the Christian says: Only by faith in Christ can you become
pious, and righteous and secure salvation; only through Grace alone,
without any work or merits of your own. Now look and see which is true
righteousness.”[283]
Let us listen for a moment to the indignant voice of a learned Catholic
contemporary, viz. the Saxon Dominican, Bartholomew Kleindienst,
himself for a while not unfavourable to the new errors, who, in 1560,
replied to Luther’s misrepresentations: “Some of the leaders of sects
are such impudent liars as, contrary to their own conscience, to
persuade the poor people to believe, that we Catholics of the present
day, or as they term us Papists, do not believe what the old Papists
believed; we no longer think anything of Christ, but worship the
Saints, not merely as the friends of God but as gods themselves; nay,
we look upon the Pope as our God; we wish to gain heaven by means of
our works, without God’s Grace; we do not believe in Holy Writ; have
no proper Bible and should be unable to read it if we had; trust more
in holy water than in the blood of Christ.... Numberless such-like
horrible, blasphemous and hitherto unheard-of lies they invent and use
against us. The initiate are well aware that this is the chief trick of
the sects, whereby they render the Papacy an abomination to simple and
otherwise well-disposed folk.”[284]
* * * * *
But had not Luther, carried away by his zeal against the Papists, taken
his stand on the assumption, that, against the deception and depravity
of the Papal Antichrist, every weapon was good provided only that it
helped to save souls? Such at any rate was his plea in justification of
his work “An den christlichen Adel.”[285] Again, during the menacing
Diet of Augsburg, when recommending the use of the questionable
“Gospel-proviso,” he let fall the following in a letter: Even “tricks
and failings” (“_doli et lapsus_”), should they occur amongst his
followers in their resistance to the Papists, “can easily be atoned for
once we have escaped the danger.”[286] He even adds: “For God’s Mercy
watches over us.”
In the midst of the double-dealing then in progress Luther again
appealed to Christ in his letter to Wenceslaus Link on Sep. 20, 1530,
where he says: Christ “would be well pleased with such deceit and would
scornfully cheat the [Papist] deceivers, as he hoped,” i.e. raise
false hopes that the Lutherans would yield; later they would find out
their mistake, and that they had been fooled. Here is my view of the
matter, he continues, “I am secure, that without my consent, their
consent [the concessions of Melanchthon and his friends at the Diet]
is invalid. Even were I too to agree with these blasphemers, murderers
and faithless monsters, yet the Church and [above all] the teaching of
the Gospel would not consent.” This was his “Gospel-proviso,” thanks to
which all the concessions, doctrinal or moral, however solemnly granted
by him or by his followers, might be declared invalid--“once we have
escaped the danger.” (See vol. iii., p. 337 ff.)
The underhandedness which he advocated in order that the people might
not be made aware of the abrogation of the Mass, has been considered
above (vol. ii., p. 321). Another strange trick on his part--likewise
for the better furtherance of his cause--was his attempt to persuade
the Bishop of Samland, George von Polenz, who had fallen away from the
Church and joined him, “to proceed with caution”; “therefore that it
would be useful for him [the Bishop] to appear to suspend his judgment
(“_ut velut suspendens sententiam appareret_”); to wait until the
people had consented, and then throw in his weight as though he had
been conquered by their arguments.”[287] Couched in Luther’s ordinary
language this would mean that the Bishop was to pretend to be wavering
between Christ and Antichrist, between hell and the Evangel, though any
such wavering, to say nothing of any actual yielding, would have been
a capital crime against religion. At the best the Bishop could only
hypocritically feign to be wavering in spite of the other public steps
he had taken in Luther’s favour and of which the latter was well aware.
Later, in 1545, considering the “deception and depravity” of the Papacy
Luther thought himself justified in insinuating in a writing against
the Catholic Duke Henry of Brunswick,[288] then a prisoner, that the
Pope had furnished him supplies for his unfortunate warlike enterprise
against the allies of the evangelical confession.
Of this there was not the shadow of a proof. The contrary is clear
from Protestant documents and protocols.[289] The Court of the Saxon
Electorate, where an insult to the Emperor was apprehended, was aghast
at Luther’s resolve to publish the charge concerning the “equipment
from Italy,” and Chancellor Brück hastened to request him to alter the
proofs for fear of evil consequences.[290] Luther, however, was in no
mood to yield; the writing comprising this malicious insinuation and
other falsehoods was even addressed in the form of a letter to the
Saxon Elector and the allied Princes. At the same time the author,
both in the text and in his correspondence, gave the impression that
the writing had been composed without the Elector’s knowledge and only
at the request of “many others, some of them great men,” though in
reality, as Protestants admit, the “work had been written to order,”
viz. at the instigation of the Electoral Court.[291]
“We all know,” Luther says, seemingly with the utmost gravity, in this
work against the Duke, “that Pope and Papists desire our death, body
and soul. We, on the other hand, desire to save them with us, soul
and body.”[292] There is no need to waste words on the intentions here
ascribed to the Papists. As to Luther’s own good intentions so far as
the material welfare of the Papists goes, what he says does not tally
with the wish he so loudly expressed at that very time for the bloody
destruction of the Pope. Further, as regards the Papists’ souls,
what he said of his great opponent, Archbishop Albert of Mayence,
deserves to be mentioned: “He died impenitent in his sins and must be
damned eternally, else the Christian faith is all wrong.”[293] Did
Luther perhaps write this with a heavy heart? Yet he also condemns in
advance the soul of the unhappy Duke of Brunswick, “seeing there is
no hope of his amendment,” and “even though he should feign to repent
and become more pious,” yet he would not be trusted since “he might
pretend to repent and amend merely in order to climb back to honour,
lands and people, which assuredly would be nothing but a false and
foxy repentance.”[294] Hence he insists upon the Princes refusing
to release the Duke. But even his own friends will not consider his
religious motives for this very profound or genuine, for instance,
when he says: Were he to be released, “many pious hearts would be
saddened and their prayers for your Serene Highnesses become tepid and
cold.”[295] His political reasons were no less founded on untruth.
The only object of the League of the Catholic Princes was to seize
upon the property of the evangelical Princes; “they were thinking,
not of the Christian faith, but of the lands of the Elector and the
Landgrave”; they have made “one league after the other” and now “call
it a defensive one, as though forsooth they were in danger,” whereas
“we for our part have without intermission prayed, implored, called
and cried for peace.”[296]
While Luther was himself playing fast and loose with truth, he was not
slow to accuse his opponents of lying even when they presented matters
as they really were. When Eck published the Bull of Excommunication,
which Luther himself knew to be authentic, he was roundly rated for
saying that his “tissue of lies” was “the Pope’s work.”[297] In fact,
in all and everything that Catholics undertake against his cause,
they are seeking “to deceive us and the common people, though well
aware of the contrary.... You see how they seek the truth.... They are
rascals incarnate.”[298] In fighting against the lies of his opponents
Luther, once,--curiously enough--in his writing “Widder die hymelischen
Propheten” actually takes the Pope under his protection against the
calumnies of his Wittenberg opponent Carlstadt; seeking to brand him as
a liar, he declares that he “was notoriously telling lies of the Pope.”
We already know how much Carlstadt had to complain of Luther’s lying
and fickleness.
This leads to a short review of the remarks made by Luther’s then
opponents and friends concerning his want of truthfulness.
2. Opinions of Contemporaries in either Camp
Luther’s work against Duke Henry of Brunswick entitled “Wider Hans
Worst” was so crammed with malice and falsehoods that even some of
Luther’s followers were disposed to complain of its unseemliness. Simon
Wilde, who was then studying medicine at Wittenberg, wrote on April
8, 1541, when forwarding to his uncle the Town Clerk, Stephen Roth of
Zwickau, a copy of the booklet which had just appeared: “I am sending
you a little work of Dr. Martin against the Duke of Brunswick which
bristles with calumnies, but which also [so he says] contains much that
is good, and may be productive of something amongst the virtuous.”[299]
Statements adverse to Luther’s truthfulness emanating from the
Protestant side are not rare; particularly are they met with in the
case of theologians who had had to suffer from his violence; nor can
their complaints be entirely disallowed simply because they came from
men who were in conflict with him, though the circumstance would call
for caution in making use of them were the complaints not otherwise
corroborated.
Œcolampadius in his letter to Zwingli of April 20, 1525, calls Luther a
“master in calumny, and prince of sophists.”[300]
The Strasburg preachers Bucer and Capito, though reputed for their
comparative moderation, wrote of one of Luther’s works on the
Sacrament, that “never had anything more sophistical and calumnious
seen the light.”[301]
Thomas Münzer repeatedly calls his enemy Luther “Dr. Liar” and “Dr.
Lyinglips,”[302] on account of the unkindness of his polemics; more
picturesquely he has it on one occasion, that “he lied from the bottom
of his gullet.”[303]
Bucer complains in terms of strong disapprobation, that, when engaged
with his foes, Luther was wont to misrepresent and distort their
doctrines in order the more readily to gain the upper hand, at least
in the estimation of the multitude. He finds that “in many places” he
has “rendered the doctrines and arguments of the opposite side with
manifest untruth,” for which the critic is sorry, since this “gave
rise to grave doubts and temptations” amongst those who detected
this practice, and diminished their respect for the Evangelical
teaching.[304]
The Lutheran, Hieronymus Pappus, sending Luther’s work “Wider Hans
Worst” to Joachim Vadian, declared: “In calumny he does not seem to me
to have his equal.”[305]
Johann Agricola, once Luther’s friend, and then, on account of his
Antinomianism, his adversary, brings against Luther various charges
in his Notes (see above, vol. iii., p. 278); the worst refer to his
“lying.” God will punish Luther, he writes, referring to his work
“Against the Antinomians”; “he has heaped too many lies on me before
all the world.” Luther had said that Agricola denied the necessity of
prayer or good works; this the latter, appealing to his witnesses,
brands as an “abominable lie.” He characterises the whole tract as
“full of lies,”[306] and, in point of fact, there is no doubt it did
contain the worst exaggerations.
Among the writers of the opposite camp the first place is due to
Erasmus. Of one of the many distortions of his meaning committed by
Luther he says: “It is true I never look for moderation in Luther,
but for so malicious a calumny I was certainly not prepared.”[307]
Elsewhere he flings in his face the threat: “I shall show everybody
what a master you are in the art of misrepresentation, defamation,
calumny and exaggeration. But the world knows this already.... In your
sly way you contrive to twist even what is absolutely true, whenever
it is to your interest to do so. You know how to turn black into
white and to make light out of darkness.”[308] Disgusted with Luther’s
methods, he finally became quite resigned even to worse things. He
writes: “I have received Luther’s letter; it is simply the work of
a madman. He is not in the least ashamed of his infamous lies and
promises to do even worse. What can those people be thinking of who
confide their souls and their earthly destiny to a man who allows
himself to be thus carried away by passion?”[309]
The polemic, Franz Arnoldi, tells Luther, that one of his works
contains “as many lies as words.”[310]
Johann Dietenberger likewise says, referring to a newly published book
of Luther’s which he had been studying: “He is the most mendacious man
under the sky.”[311]
Paul Bachmann, shortly after the appearance of Luther’s booklet “Von
der Winckelmesse,” in his comments on it emits the indignant remark:
“Luther’s lies are taller even than Mount Olympus.”[312]
“This is no mere erring man,” Bachmann also writes of Luther, “but the
wicked devil himself to whom no lie, deception or falsehood is too
much.”[313]
Johann Eck sums up his opinion of Luther’s truthfulness in these
words: “He is a man who simply bristles with lies (‘_homo totus
mendaciis scatens_’)”.[314] The Ingolstadt theologian, like
Bartholomew Kleindienst (above, p. 95), was particularly struck by
Luther’s parody of Catholic doctrine.--Willibald Pirkheimer’s words in
1528 we already know.[315]
We pass over similar unkindly epithets hurled at him by indignant
Catholic clerics, secular, or regular. The latter, particularly,
speaking with full knowledge and therefore all the more indignantly,
describe as it deserves what he says of vows, as a glaring lie, of
the falsehood of which Luther, the quondam monk, must have been fully
aware.
Of the Catholic Princes who were capable of forming an opinion,
Duke George of Saxony with his downright language must be mentioned
first. In connection with the Pack negotiations he says that Luther
is the “most cold-blooded liar he had ever come across.” “We must
say and write of him, that the apostate monk lies like a desperate,
dishonourable and forsworn miscreant.” “We have yet to learn from Holy
Scripture that Christ ever bestowed the mission of an Apostle on such
an open and deliberate liar or sent him to proclaim the Gospel.”[316]
Elsewhere he reminds Luther of our Lord’s words: “By their fruits you
shall know them”: To judge of the spirit from the fruits, Luther’s
spirit must be a “spirit of lying”; indeed, Luther proved himself
“possessed of the spirit of lies.”[317]
3. The Psychological Problem Self-suggestion and Scriptural Grounds of
Excuse
Not merely isolated statements, but whole series of regularly recurring
assertions in Luther’s works, constitute a real problem, and, instead
of challenging refutation make one ask how their author could possibly
have come to utter and make such things his own.
_A Curious Mania._
He never tires of telling the public, or friends and supporters within
his own circle, that “not one Bishop amongst the Papists reads or
studies Holy Scripture”; “never had he [Luther] whilst a Catholic
heard anything of the Ten Commandments”; in Rome they say: “Let us be
cheerful, the Judgment Day will never come”; they also call anyone
who believes in revelation a “poor simpleton”; from the highest to
the lowest they believe that “there is no God, no hell and no life
after this life”; when taking the religious vows the Papists also
vowed they “had no need of the Blood and Passion of Christ”; I, too,
“was compelled to vow this”; all religious took their vows “with a
blasphemous conscience.”
He says: In the Papacy “they did not preach Christ,” but only the Mass
and good works; and further: “No Father [of the Church] ever preached
Christ”; and again: “They knew nothing of the belief that Christ died
for us”; or: “No one [in Popery] ever prayed”; and: Christ was looked
upon only as a “Judge” and we “merely fled from the wrath of God,”
knowing nothing of His mercy. “The Papists,” he declares, “condemned
marriage as forbidden by God,” and “I myself, while still a monk,
was of the same opinion, viz. that the married state was a reprobate
state.”
In the Papacy, so Luther says in so many words, “people sought to be
saved through Aristotle.”[318] “In the Papacy the parents did not
provide for their children. They believed that only monks and priests
could be saved.”[319] “In the Papacy you will hardly meet with an
honest man who lives up to his calling” (i.e. who performs his duties
as a married man).[320]
But enough of such extravagant assertions, which to Catholics stand
self-condemned, but were intended by their author to be taken
literally. He flung such wild sayings broadcast among the masses, until
it became a second nature with him. For we must bear in mind that
grotesque and virulent misstatements such as the above occur not merely
now and again, but simply teem in his books, sermons and conversations.
It would be an endless task to enumerate his deliberate falsehoods. He
declares, for instance, that the Papists, in all their collects and
prayers, extolled merely the merits of the Saints; yet this aspersion
which he saw fit to cast upon the Church in the interests of his
polemics, he well knew to be false, having been familiar from his
monastic days with another and better aspect of the prayers he here
reviles. He knew that the merits of the Saints were referred to only in
some of the collects; he knew, moreover, why they were mentioned there,
and that they were never alleged alone but always in subordination to
the merits and the mediation of our Saviour (“_Per Dominum nostrum
Iesum Christum_,” etc.).
A favourite allegation of Luther’s, viz. that the Church of the past
had regarded Christ exclusively as a stern Judge, was crushingly
confuted in Denifle’s work. The importance of this brilliant and
scholarly refutation lies in the fact, that it is principally founded
on texts and usages of the older Church with which Luther was perfectly
familiar, which, for instance, he himself had recited in the liturgy
and more especially in the Office of his Order year after year, and
which thus bear striking testimony against his good faith in the matter
of his monstrous charge.[321]
It is a matter of common knowledge that, also in other branches of the
history of theology and ecclesiastical life, Denifle has refuted with
rare learning, though with too sharp a pen, Luther’s paradoxical “lies”
concerning mediæval Catholicism. It is to be hoped that this may be
followed by other well-grounded and impartial comments from the pen of
other writers, for, in spite of their monstrous character, some of
Luther’s accusations still live, partly no doubt owing to the respect
in which he is held. Some of them will be examined more closely below.
The principal aim of these pages is, however, to seek the psychological
explanation of the strange peculiarity which manifests itself in
Luther’s intellectual life, viz. the abnormal tendency to level
far-fetched charges, sometimes bordering on the insane.
_An Attempt at a Psychological Explanation._
A key to some of these dishonest exaggerations is to be found in the
need which Luther experienced of arming himself against the Papacy
and the older Church by ever more extravagant assertions. Realising
how unjust and untenable much of his position was, and oppressed by
those doubts to which he often confessed, a man of his temper was
sorely tempted to have recourse to the expedient of insisting yet more
obstinately on his pet ideas. The defiance which was characteristic of
him led him to pile up one assertion on the other which his rhetorical
talent enabled him to clothe in his wonted language. Throughout he was
acting on impulse rather than from reflection.
To this must be added--incredible as it may appear in connection
with the gravest questions of life--his tendency to make fun. Jest,
irony, sarcasm were so natural to him as to obtrude themselves almost
unconsciously whenever he had to do with opponents whom he wished to
crush and on whom he wished to impose by a show of merriment which
should display the strength of his position and his comfortable sense
of security, and at the same time duly impress his own followers. Those
who looked beneath the surface, however, must often have rejoiced
to see Luther so often blunting the point of his hyperboles by the
drolleries by which he accompanies them, which made it evident that
he was not speaking seriously. To-day, too, it would be wrong to take
all he says as spoken in dead earnest; at the same time it is often
impossible to determine where exactly the serious ends and the trivial,
vulgar jest begins; probably even Luther himself did not always know. A
few further examples may be given.
“In Popery we were compelled to listen to the devil and to worship
things that some monk had spewed or excreted, until at last we lost
the Gospel, Baptism, the Sacrament and everything else. After that
we made tracks for Rome or for St. James of Compostella and did
everything the Popish vermin told us to do, until we came to adore
even their lice and fleas, nay, their very breeches. But now God has
returned to us.”[322]
“Everywhere there prevailed the horrid, pestilential teaching of the
Pope and the sophists, viz. that a man must be uncertain of God’s
grace towards himself (‘_incertum debere esse de gratia Dei erga
se_’).”[323] By this doctrine and by their holiness-by-works Pope and
monks “had driven all the world headlong into hell” for “well-nigh
four hundred years.”[324] Of course, “for a man to be pious, or to
become so by God’s Grace, was heresy” to them; “their works were of
greater value, did and wrought more than God’s Grace,”[325] and with
all this “they do no single work which might profit their neighbour in
body, goods, honour or soul.”[326]
A. Kalthoff[327] remarks of similar distortions of which Luther was
guilty: “Hardly anyone in the whole of history was so little able to
bear contradiction as Luther; it was out of the question to discuss
with him any opinion from another point of view; he preferred to
contradict himself or to assert what was absolutely monstrous, rather
than allow his opponent even a semblance of being in the right.”--The
misrepresentation of Catholic doctrine which became a tradition among
Lutheran polemics was in great part due to Luther.--With equal skill
and moderation Duke Anton Ulrich of Brunswick, in his “Fifty Reasons”
for returning to the Catholic Church,[328] protests against this
perversion of Catholic doctrine by Lutheran writers. He had observed
that arguments were adduced by the Lutherans to prove truths which
the Church does not deny at all, whilst the real points at issue were
barely touched upon. “For instance, they bring forward a heap of
texts to prove that God alone is to be adored, though Catholics never
question it, and they teach that it is a sin of idolatry to pay divine
worship to any creature.” “They extol the merits of Christ and the
greatness of His satisfaction for our sins. But what for? Catholics
teach the same, viz. that the merits of Christ are infinite and that
His satisfaction suffices to blot out all the sins of the world,
and thus they, too, hold the Bible doctrine of the appropriation of
Christ’s merits by means of their own good works (1 Peter i. 10).”
Two things especially were made the butt of Luther’s extravagant and
untrue charges and insinuations, viz. the Mass and the religious
life. In his much read Table-Talk the chapter on the Mass is full of
misrepresentations such as can be explained only by the animus of the
speaker.[329] Of religious he can relate the most incredible tales.
Thus: “On the approach of death most of them cried in utter despair:
Wretched man that I am; I have not kept my Rule and whither shall I
flee from the anger of the Judge? Alas, that I was not a sow-herd,
or the meanest creature on earth!”[330] On account of the moral
corruption of the Religious Orders, he declares it would be right,
“were it only feasible, to destroy both Papacy and monasteries at one
blow!”[331] He is fond of jesting at the expense of the nuns; thus he
makes a vulgar allusion to their supposed practice of taking an image
of the Crucified to bed with them, as though it were their bridegroom.
He roundly charges them all with arrogance: “The nuns are particularly
reprehensible on account of their pride; for they boast: Christ is our
bridegroom and we are His brides and other women are nothing.”[332]
It is putting the matter rather too mildly when a Protestant
historian, referring to the countless assertions of this nature,
remarks, “that, in view of his habits and temper, some of Luther’s
highly flavoured statements call for the use of the blue pencil if
they are to be accorded historical value.”[333]
Lastly, we must point to another psychological, or, more accurately,
pathological, element which may avail to explain falsehoods so glaring
concerning the Church of former times. Experience teaches, that
sometimes a man soaked in prejudice will calumniate or otherwise assail
a foe, at first from an evil motive and with deliberate injustice, and
then, become gradually persuaded, thanks to the habit thus formed,
of the truth of his calumnies and of the justice of his proceedings.
Instances of such a thing are not seldom met with in history,
especially among those engaged in mighty conflicts in the arena of the
world. Injustice and falsehood, not indeed entirely, but with regard to
the matter in hand, are travestied, become matters of indifference, or
are even transformed in their eyes into justice and truth.
In Luther’s case the phenomenon in question assumes a pathological
guise. We cannot but perceive in him a kind of self-suggestion by which
he imposed upon himself. Constituted as he was, such suggestion was
possible, nay probable, and was furthermore abetted by his nervous
excitement, the result of his never-ceasing struggle.[334]
It is in part to his power of suggestion that must also be attributed
his success in making his disciples and followers accept even his most
extravagant views and become in their turn missioners of the same.
_The New Theology of Lying._
Another explanation, this time a theological one, of Luther’s disregard
for the laws of truth is to be found in the theory he set up of the
permissibility of lies.
Previously, even in 1517, he, like all theologians, had regarded every
kind of lie as forbidden. Theologians of earlier times, when dealing
with this subject, usually agreed with Augustine and Peter Lombard, the
“_Magister Sententiarum_” and likewise with Gratian, that all lies,
even lies of excuse, are forbidden. After the commencement of his
public controversy, however, strange as it may appear, Luther gradually
came to assert in so many words that lies of excuse, of convenience,
or of necessity were not reprehensible, but often good and to be
counselled. How far this view concerning the lawfulness of lying might
be carried, remained, however, a question to be decided by each one
individually.
Formerly he had rightly declared: A lie is “contrary to man’s nature
and the greatest enemy of human society”; hence no greater insult
could be offered than to call a man a liar. To this he always adhered.
But besides, following St. Augustine, he had distinguished between
lies of jest and of necessity and lies of detraction. Not merely the
latter, so he declared, were unlawful, but, as Augustine taught, even
lies of necessity or excuse--by which he understands lies told for our
own or others’ advantage, but without injury to anyone. “Yet a lie of
necessity,” he said at that time, “is not a mortal sin,” especially
when told in sudden excitement “and without actual deliberation.”
This is his language in January, 1517,[335] in his Sermons on the Ten
Commandments, when explaining the eighth. Again, in his controversy
with the Zwinglians on the Sacrament (1528), he incidentally shows his
attitude by the remark, that, “when anyone has been publicly convicted
of falsehood in one particular we are thereby sufficiently warned by
God not to believe him at all.”[336] In 1538, he says of the Pope and
the Papists, that, on account of their lies the words of Chrysippus
applied to them: “If you are a liar you lie even in speaking the
truth.”[337]
Meanwhile, however, his peculiar reading of the Old Testament, and
possibly no less the urgent demands of his controversy, had exerted an
unfortunate influence on his opinion concerning lies of convenience or
necessity.
It seems to him that in certain Old-Testament instances of such lies
those who employed them were not to blame. Abraham’s lie in denying
that Sarah was his wife, the lie of the Egyptian midwives about the
Jewish children, Michol’s lie told to save David, appear to Luther
justifiable, useful and wholesome. On Oct. 2, 1524, in his Sermons
on Exodus, as it would seem for the first time, he defended his
new theory. Lies were only real lies “when told for the purpose of
injuring our neighbour”; but, “if I tell a lie, not in order to injure
anyone but for his profit and advantage and in order to promote his
best interests, this is a lie of service”; such was the lie told by
the Egyptian midwives and by Abraham; such lies fall “under the grace
of Heaven, i.e. came under the forgiveness of sins”; such falsehoods
“are not really lies.”[338]
In his lectures on Genesis (1536-45) the same system has been further
elaborated: “As a matter of fact there is only one kind of lie, that
which injures our neighbour in his soul, goods or reputation.” “The
lie of service is wrongly termed a lie, for it rather denotes virtue,
viz. prudence used for the purpose of defeating the devil’s malice and
in order to serve our neighbour’s life and honour. Hence it may be
called Christian and brotherly charity, or to use Paul’s words: Zeal
for godliness.”[339] Thus Abraham “told no lie” in Egypt (Gen. xii.
11 ff.); what he told was “a lie of service, a praiseworthy act of
prudence.”[340]
According to his Latin Table-Talk not only Abraham’s lie, but also
Michol’s was a “good, useful lie and a work of charity.”[341] A lie
for the advantage of another is, so he says, an act “by means of which
we assist our neighbour.”
“The monks,” says Luther, “insist that the truth should be told
under all circumstances.”[342]--Such certainly was the teaching
of St. Thomas of Aquin, whose opinion on the subject then held
universal sway, and who rightly insists that a lie is never under any
circumstances lawful.[343] St. Augustine likewise shared this monkish
opinion, as Luther himself had formerly pointed out. Long before
Aquinas’s time this Doctor of the Church, whom Luther was later on
deliberately to oppose,[344] had brought his view--the only reliable
one, viz. that all untruth is wrong--into general recognition, thanks
to his arguments and to the weight of his authority. Pope Alexander
III, in a letter to the Archbishop of Palermo, declared that even
a lie told to save another’s life was unlawful; this statement was
incorporated in the official Decretals--a proof of the respect with
which the mediæval Church clung to the truth.[345]
Some few writers of antiquity had, it is true, defended the lawfulness
of lies of necessity or convenience. For instance, Origen, possibly
under the influence of pagan philosophy, also Hilary and Cassian.
Eventually their opinion disappeared almost completely.
It was reserved for Luther to revive the wrong view concerning the
lawfulness of such lies, and to a certain extent to impose it on his
followers. Theologically this spelt retrogression and a lowering of the
standard of morality hitherto upheld. “Luther here forsook his beloved
Augustine,” says Stäudlin, a Protestant, “and declared certain lies to
be right and allowable. This opinion, though not universally accepted
in the Evangelical Church, became nevertheless a dominant one.”[346]
It must be specially noted that Luther does not justify lies of
convenience, merely when told in the interests of our neighbour, but
also when made use of for our own advantage when such is well pleasing
in God’s sight. This he states explicitly when speaking of Isaac, who
denied his marriage with Rebecca so as to save his life: “This is no
sin, but a serviceable lie by which he escaped being put to death by
those with whom he was staying; for this would have happened had he
said Rebecca was his wife.”[347] And not only the lawful motive of
personal advantage justifies, according to him, such untruths as do
not injure others, but much more the love of God or of our neighbour,
i.e. regard for God’s honour; the latter motive it was, according to
him, which influenced Abraham, when he gave out that Sarah was his
sister. Abraham had to co-operate in accomplishing the great promise
made by God to him and his progeny; hence he had to preserve his life,
“in order that he might honour and glorify God thereby, and not give
the lie to God’s promises.” Many Catholic interpreters of the Bible
have sought to find expedients whereby, without justifying his lie,
they might yet exonerate the great Patriarch of any fault. Luther,
on the contrary, following his own arbitrary interpretation of the
Bible, approves, nay, even glories in the fault. “If,” he says, “the
text be taken thus [according to his interpretation] no one can be
scandalised at it; for what is done for God’s honour, for the glory and
furtherance of His Word, that is right and well done and deserving of
all praise.”[348]
On such principles as these, what was there that Luther could not
justify in his polemics with the older Church?
In his eyes everything he undertook was done for “God’s glory.” “For
the sake of the Christian Church,” he was ready, to tell “a downright
lie” (above, p. 51) in the Hessian affair. “Against the deception
and depravity of the Papal Antichrist,” he regarded everything “as
permissible” for the salvation of souls (above, p. 95); moreover,
was not the war he was waging part of his divine mission? The public
welfare and the exalted interests of his work might therefore at any
time call for a violation of the truth. Was he to be deterred, perhaps,
by the injury his opponents might thereby suffer? By no means. They
suffered no real injury; on the contrary, it all redounded to their
spiritual good, for by ending the reign of prejudice and error their
souls would be saved from imminent peril and the way paved for the
accomplishment of the ancient promises “to the glory and furtherance of
the Word.”
We do not mean to say that Luther actually formed his conscience thus
in any particular instance. Of this we cannot judge and it would be too
much to expect from him any statement on the subject. But the danger of
his doing so was sufficiently proximate.
The above may possibly throw a new light on his famous words: “We
consider everything allowable against the deception and depravity of
the Papal Antichrist.”[349]
_Luther’s Influence on His Circle._
Our remarks on Luther and lying would be incomplete were we not
to refer to the influence his example and theory exercised on his
surroundings and on those who assisted him in establishing the new
Church system.
Melanchthon not only incurred, and justly too, the reproach of
frequently playing the dishonest diplomatist, particularly at the
Diet of Augsburg,[350] but even advocated in his doctrinal works the
Lutheran view that lying is in many cases lawful.
“The lie of convenience,” he says, “is praiseworthy, it is a good
useful lie and proceeds from charity because one desires thereby to
help one’s neighbour.” Hence, we may infer, where the object was to
bring the Evangel home to a man, a lie was all the less reprehensible.
Melanchthon appeals to Abraham’s statement that Sarah was his sister
(Gen. xii. and xx.), and to the artifice of Eliseus (4 Kings vi. 19),
but overlooks the fact that these instances prove nothing in his
favour since there no “neighbour was helped,” but, on the contrary,
untruth was dictated purely by self-love.[351]
During the negotiations carried on between England, Hesse and Saxony
in view of an ecclesiastical understanding, Melanchthon, at the
instance of the Elector of Saxony, drew up for him and the Landgrave,
a document to be sent to Henry VIII of England, giving him information
concerning the Anabaptist movement. His treatment of the matter has
already been referred to (vol. iii., p. 374), but it now calls for
more detailed consideration.
In this writing Melanchthon, to serve the interests of the new
Evangel, had the courage to deny that the movement had made its
appearance in those parts of Germany “where the pure Gospel is
proclaimed,” but was only to be met with “where the people are not
preserved from such errors by sound doctrine,” viz. “in Frisia and
Westphalia.”[352] The fact is that the Anabaptists were so numerous
in the Saxon Electorate that we constantly hear of prosecutions
being instituted against them. P. Wappler, for instance, quotes an
official minute from the Weimar archives, actually dated in 1536,
which states, that the Elector “caused many Anabaptists to be punished
and put to death by drowning and the sword, and to suffer long terms
of imprisonment.”[353] Shortly before Melanchthon wrote the above,
two Anabaptists had been executed in the Saxon Electorate. Beyond
all doubt these facts were known to Melanchthon. The Landgrave of
Hesse refused to allow the letter to be despatched. Feige, his
Chancellor, pointed out the untruth of the statement, “that these
errors only prevailed in places where the pure doctrine was lacking”;
on the contrary, the Anabaptist error was unfortunately to be found
throughout Germany, and even more under the Evangel than amongst the
Papists.[354] An amended version of the letter, dated Sep. 23, 1536,
was eventually sent to the King. Wappler, who relates all this fully,
says: “Melanchthon was obviously influenced by his wish to warn the
King of the ‘plague’ of the Anabaptist heresy and to predispose him
for the ‘pure doctrine of the Evangel.’” “What he said was glaringly
at variance with the actual facts.”[355]
Like Luther, Martin Bucer, too, urged the Landgrave to tell a
deliberate lie and openly deny his bigamy. Though at first unwilling,
he had undertaken to advocate the Landgrave’s bigamy with Luther
and had defended it personally (above, p. 28). In spite of this,
however, when complications arose on its becoming public, he declared
in a letter of 1541 to the preachers of Memmingen, which so far has
received little attention, that the Landgrave’s wrong step, some
rumours of which had reached his ears, should it prove to be true,
could not be laid to his charge or to that of the Wittenbergers. “I
declare before God (‘_coram Deo affirmo_’) that no one has given the
Prince such advice, neither I, nor Luther, nor Philip, nor, so far as
I know, any Hessian preacher, nor has anyone taught that Christians
may keep concubines as well as their wives, or declared himself ready
to defend such a step.”[356] And, again calling God to witness (“_hæc
ego ut coram Deo scripta_”), he declares that he had never written or
signed anything in defence of the bigamy.[357] In the following year
he appeared before the magistrates of Strasburg and, in the presence
of two colleagues, “took God to witness concerning the suspicion of
having advised the Landgrave the other marriage,” “that the latter had
consulted neither him nor any preacher concerning the matter”; he and
Capito had “throughout been opposed to it” (the bigamy), “although
his help had been sought for in such matters by honourable and highly
placed persons.”[358] The reference here is to Henry VIII of England,
to whom, however, he had never expressed his disapproval of bigamy;
in fact he, like Capito and the two Wittenbergers (above, p. 4), had
declared his preference for Henry’s taking an extra wife rather than
divorcing his first.
Bucer (who had so strongly inveighed against Luther’s lies, above,
p. 99), where it was a question of a Catholic opponent like the
Augustinian Johann Hoffmeister, had himself recourse to notorious
calumnies concerning this man, whom even Protestant historians now
allow to have been of blameless life and the “greatest enemy of
immorality.”[359] He accused him of “dancing with nuns,” of “wallowing
in vice,” and of being “an utterly abandoned, infamous and dissolute
knave,” all of them groundless charges at very most based upon mere
hearsay.[360]--This same Bucer, who accused the Catholic Princes
of being double-tongued and pursuing dubious policies, was himself
notorious amongst his own party for his wiliness, deceit and cunning.
Johann Bugenhagen, the Pastor of Wittenberg, when called upon to
acknowledge his share in a certain questionable memorandum of a
semi-political character also laid himself open to the charge of being
wanting in truthfulness (vol. iii., p. 74 f.).
P. Kalkoff has recently made clear some of Wolfgang Capito’s
double-dealings and his dishonest behaviour, though he hesitates to
condemn him for them. Capito had worked in Luther’s interests at the
Court of Archbishop Albert of Mayence, and there, with the Archbishop’s
help, “rendered incalculable services to the Evangelical cause.” In
extenuation of his behaviour Kalkoff says: “In no way was it more
immoral than the intrigues” of the Elector Frederick. On the strength
of the material he has collected J. Greving rightly describes Capito
as a “thoroughbred hypocrite and schemer.”[361] The dealings of this
“eminent diplomatist,” as Greving also terms him, remind us only too
often of Luther’s own dealings with highly placed ecclesiastics and
seculars during the first period of his apostasy. If, in those early
days, Luther’s theory had already won many friends and imitators, in
the thick of the fight it made even more converts amongst the new
preachers, men ready to make full use of the alluring principle, that,
against the depravity of the Papacy everything is licit.
From vituperation to the violation of truth there was but a step amidst
the passion which prevailed. How Luther’s abuse--ostensibly all for
the love of his neighbour--infected his pupils is plain from a letter
in the newly published correspondence of the Brothers Blaurer. This
letter, written from Wittenberg on Oct. 8, 1522, by Thomas Blaurer, to
Ulrich Zasius, contains the following: “Not even from the most filthy
and shameful vituperation [of the hateful Papacy] shall we shrink,
until we see it everywhere despised and abhorred.” What had to be
done was to vindicate the doctrine that, “Christ is our merit and our
satisfaction.”[362] Luther, he says, poured forth abuse (“_convicia_”),
but only to God’s glory, and for the “salvation and encouragement of
the little ones.”[363]
4. Some Leading Slanders on the Mediæval Church Historically Considered
“In Luther’s view the Middle Ages, whose history was fashioned by the
Popes, was a period of darkest night.... This view of the Middle Ages,
particularly of the chief factor in mediæval life, viz. the Church in
which it found its highest expression, is one-sided and distorted.”
Such is the opinion of a modern Protestant historian. He is sorry that
false ideas of the mediæval Church and theology “have been sheltered so
long under the ægis of the reformer’s name.”[364]--“It will not do,” a
lay Protestant historian, as early as 1874, had told the theologians of
his faith, speaking of Köstlin’s work “Luthers Theologie,” “to ignore
the contemporary Catholic literature when considering Luther and the
writings of the reformers.... It is indispensable that the condition
of theology from about 1490 to 1510 should be carefully examined. We
must at all costs rid ourselves of the caricatures we meet with in the
writings of the reformers, and of the misunderstandings to which they
gave rise, and learn from their own writings what the theologians of
that time actually thought and taught.” “Paradoxical as it may sound,
it is just the theological side of the history of the Reformation
which, at the present day, is least known.”[365]
During the last fifty years German scholars have devoted themselves
with zeal and enthusiasm to the external and social aspect of the
Middle Ages. That great undertaking, the “_Monumenta Germaniæ
historica_,” its periodical the “Archiv,” and a number of others
dealing largely with mediæval history brought Protestants to a juster
and more objective appreciation of the past. Yet the theological,
and even in some respects the ecclesiastical, side has been too
much neglected, chiefly because so many Protestant theologians were
scrupulous about submitting the subject to a new and unprejudiced
study. Hence the astonishment of so many when Johannes Janssen, with
his “History of the German People,” and, to pass over others, Heinrich
Denifle with his work on Luther entered the field and demonstrated how
incorrect had been the views prevalent since Luther’s time concerning
the doctrine and the ecclesiastical life of his age. Astonishment in
many soon made way for indignation; in Denifle’s case, particularly,
annoyance was caused by a certain attitude adopted by this author
which led some to reject in their entirety the theologico-historical
consequences at which he arrived, whilst even Janssen was charged with
being biassed. Other Protestants, however, have learned something from
the Catholic works which have since made their appearance in greater
numbers, have acknowledged that the ideas hitherto in vogue were behind
the times and have invited scholars to undertake a more exact study of
the materials.
“The later Middle Ages,” says W. Friedensburg, speaking of the
prevailing Protestant view, “seemed only to serve as a foil for the
history of the Reformation, of which the glowing colours stood out all
the more clearly against the dark background.” “As late as a few years
ago the history of the close of the Middle Ages was almost a ‘_terra
incognita_.’” Only through Janssen, Friedensburg continues, “were we
led to study more carefully the later Middle Ages” and to discover,
amongst other things, that the “majority of the people [_sic_] had
not really been so ignorant of the truth of Christianity,” that “the
Church had not yet lost her power over people’s minds,” that “towards
the end of the Middle Ages the people had already been growing
familiar with the Bible,” and that “sermons in the vulgar tongue had
not been neglected to the extent that has been frequently assumed.”
This author, like H. Böhmer, characterises it as erroneous “to suppose
that Luther was the first to revive regard for Paul and to restore
Paulinism” or “to insist upon the reform of godliness on the model of
the theology of Christ.” Coming to Denifle, he says, that the latter
“on account of his learning was without a doubt qualified as scarcely
any other scholar of our time for the task he undertook. When he
published his ‘Luther’ he could look back on many years of solid and
fruitful labour in the field of mediæval Scholasticism and Mysticism.”
From Denifle’s work it is clear that Luther was “but little conversant
with mediæval Scholasticism, particularly that of Thomas Aquinas.”[366]
“Denifle is right,” wrote Gustav Kawerau in an important Protestant
theological periodical, “and touches a weak spot in Luther research
when he reproaches us with not being sufficiently acquainted with
mediæval theology.” An “examination of the Catholic surroundings in
which Luther moved” is, so Kawerau insists, essential, and Protestants
must therefore apply themselves to “the examination of that theology
which influenced Luther.”[367]
What is, however, imperative is that this theology be, if possible,
examined without Luther’s help, i.e. without, as usual, paying such
exaggerated regard to his own statements as to what influenced him.
Luther, moreover, does not always speak _against_ the Middle Ages;
on occasion he can employ its language himself, particularly when he
thinks he can quote, in his own interests, utterances from that time.
What W. Köhler says of a number of such instances holds good here:
“Luther fancied he recognised himself in the Middle Ages, that is
why his historical judgment is so often false.” In point of fact, as
the same writer remarks, “Luther’s idea of history came from his own
interior experience; this occupies the first place throughout.”[368]
If for “interior experience” we substitute “subjective bias” the
statement will be even more correct.
In returning here to some of Luther’s legends mentioned above (p.
92 f.) concerning the Catholic past and the religious views then
prevailing, our object is merely to show by a few striking examples how
wrong Luther was in charging the Middle Ages with errors in theology
and morals.
One of his most frequently repeated accusations was, that the Church
before his day had merely taught a hollow “holiness by works”; all
exhortations to piety uttered by preachers and writers insisted solely
on outward good works; of the need of cultivating an inward religious
spirit, interior virtues or true righteousness of heart no one had any
conception.
Against this we may set a few Catholic statements made during the years
shortly before Luther’s appearance.
Gabriel Biel, the “standard theologian” of his time, whose works
Luther himself had studied during his theological course, in one of
his sermons distinctly advocates the Church’s doctrine against any
external holiness-by-works. Commenting on the Gospel account of the
hypocrisy and externalism of the Pharisees and their semblance of
holiness, he pauses at the passage: “Except your righteousness exceed
the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees ye shall not enter the
Kingdom of Heaven” (Mt. v. 20). “Hence, if we desire to be saved,” he
says, “our righteousness must not merely be shown in outward works
but must reside in the heart; for without the inward spirit, outward
works are neither virtuous nor praiseworthy, though the spirit may be
so without outward works.” After proving this he again insists: “Thus
true service of God does not consist in externals; on the contrary it
is on the inward, pious acts of the will that everything depends, and
this presupposes a right judgment and the recognition of the spirit.
Hence in the practice of good works we must expend greater care on
the interior direction of the will.” The learned preacher goes on
fervently to exhort his hearers to amend their lives, to be humble, to
trust in Christ and to lead lives of real, inward piety.[369]
Another preacher and theologian with whom Luther was well acquainted
was Andreas Proles († 1503), the founder of the German Augustinian
Congregation to which Luther had once belonged. In the sermons
published by Petrus Sylvius, Proles insists upon the good intention
and interior disposition by which works are sanctified. They are
“smothered,” so he tells his hearers, “if done not out of love for
God but with evil intent, for instance, for the sake of praise, or in
order to deceive, or again, if done in sin or for any bad purpose.”
“Hence ... in the practice of all his works a man must diligently
strive after Divine justice, after a true faith with love of God and
of his neighbour, after innocence and humility of heart, with a good
purpose and intention, since every good work, however insignificant,
even a drink of cold water given to the meanest creature for God’s
sake, is deserving of reward in eternity.... Without charity neither
faith nor good works are profitable unto salvation.”[370]
At about that same time the so-called “holiness-by-works” was also
condemned by the learned Franciscan theologian, Stephen Brulefer.
“Merit,” so he emphasises, “depends not on the number of external
works but on the zeal and charity with which the work is done;
everything depends on the interior act of the will.” Amongst his
authorities he quotes the far-famed theologian of his Order, Duns
Scotus, who had enunciated the principle with the concision of the
scholastic: “_Deus non pensat quantum sed ex quanto_.”[371]
“God wants, not your work, but your heart.” So Marquard of Lindau
writes in his “Buch der X Gepot,” printed in 1483. Before this, under
the heading: “That we must love God above all things,” he declares,
that, whoever does not turn to God with his whole heart cannot merely
by his works gain Him, even though he should surrender “all his
possessions to God and allow himself to be burnt.”[372]
Thus we find in the writings of that period, language by no
means wanting in vigour used in denunciation of the so-called
“holiness-by-works”; hence Luther was certainly not first in the field
to raise a protest.
From their preachers, too, the people frequently heard this same
teaching.
Johann Herolt, a Dominican preacher, very celebrated at the
commencement of the 15th century, points out clearly and definitely in
his sermons on the Sunday Epistles, that every work must be inspired by
and permeated with charity if man’s actions are not to deteriorate into
a mere “holiness-by-works”; a poor man who, with a pure conscience,
performs the meanest good work, is, according to him, of “far greater
worth in God’s sight than the richest Prince who erects churches and
monasteries while in a state of mortal sin”; the outward work was of
small account.[373] Herolt thus becomes a spokesman of “inwardness” in
the matter of the fulfilment of the duties of the Christian life;[374]
many others spoke as he did.
Sound instruction concerning “holiness-by-works” and the necessary
“inwardness” was to be found in the most popular works of devotion at
the close of the Middle Ages.
The “Evangelibuch,” for instance, a sermon-book with glosses on the
Sunday Gospels, has the following for those who are too much devoted
to outward works: “It matters not how good a man may be or how many
good works he performs unless, at the same time, he loves God.” The
author even goes too far in his requirements concerning the interior
disposition, and, agreeably with a view then held by many, will not
admit as a motive for love a wholesome fear of the loss of God; he says
a man must love God, simply because “he is the most excellent, highest
and most worthy Good; ... for a man filled with Divine love does not
desire the good which God possesses, but merely God Himself”; thus, in
his repudiation of all so-called “holiness-by-works,” he actually goes
to the opposite extreme.[375]
Man becomes pleasing to God not by reason of the number or greatness of
his works, but through the interior justice wrought in him by grace;
such is the opinion of the Dominican, Johann Mensing. He protests
against being accused of disparaging God’s grace because at the same
time he emphasises the value of works; he declares that he exalts the
importance of God’s sanctifying Grace even more than his opponents (the
Lutherans) did, because, so he says, “we admit (what they deny, thereby
disparaging the grace of God), viz. that we are not simply saved by
God, but that He so raises and glorifies our nature by the bestowal of
grace, that we are able ourselves to merit our salvation and attain to
it of our own free will, which, without His Grace, would be impossible.
Hence our belief is not that we are led and driven like cattle who know
not whither they go. We say: God gives us His grace, faith and charity,
at first without any merit on our part; then follow good works and
merits, all flowing from the same Grace, and finally eternal happiness
for such works as bring down Grace.”[376]
This was the usual language in use in olden time, particularly in the
years just previous to Luther, and it was in accordance with this
that most of the faithful obediently shaped their lives. If abuses
occurred--and it is quite true that we often do meet with a certain
degree of formalism in the customs of the people--they cannot be
regarded as the rule and were reproved by zealous and clear-sighted
churchmen.
A favourite work at that time was the “Imitation of Christ” by Thomas à
Kempis. Thousands, more particularly amongst the clergy and religious,
were edified by the fervent and touching expositions of the author to
permeate all works with the spirit of interior piety.[377] We know how
strongly he condemns formalism as exemplified in frequent pilgrimages
devoid of virtue and the spirit of penance, and how he does not
spare even the religious; “the habit and the tonsure make but little
alteration, but the moral change and the entire mortification of the
passions make a true religious.”[378]
The practice of works of charity, which at that time flourished
exceedingly among both clergy and laity, offered a field for the
realisation of these principles of the true spirit in which good works
are to be performed. We have countless proofs of how the faithful in
Germany despoiled themselves of their temporal goods from the most
sincere religious motives--out of love for their neighbour, or to
promote the public Divine worship--“for the love of God our Lord,” as a
common phrase, used in the case of numerous foundations, expresses it.
G. Uhlhorn, the Protestant author of the “Geschichte der christlichen
Liebestätigkeit,” also pays a tribute to the spirit which preserved
charity from degenerating into mere “holiness-by-works.” “We should
be doing injustice to that period,” he says of the Middle Ages
generally, “were we to think that it considered as efficacious, i.e. as
satisfactory, mere external works apart from the motive which inspired
them, for instance, alms without love.” In support he quotes Thomas of
Aquin and Pope Innocent III, remarking, however, that even such alms
as were bestowed without this spirit of love were regarded, by the
standard authorities, as predisposing a man for the reception of Grace,
and as deserving of temporal reward from God, hence not as altogether
“worthless and unproductive.”[379]
* * * * *
Another fable concerning the Middle Ages, sedulously fostered by
Luther in his writings, was, that, in those days man had never come
into direct relations with God, that the hierarchy had constituted a
partition between him and Christ, and that, thanks only to the new
Evangel, had the Lord been restored to each man, as his personal
Saviour and the object of all his hopes; Luther was wont to say that
the new preaching had at length brought each one into touch with Christ
the Lamb, Who taketh away our sin; Melanchthon, in his funeral oration
on Luther, also said of him, that he had pointed out to every sinner
the Lamb in Whom he would find salvation.
To keep to the symbol of the Lamb: The whole Church of the past had
never ceased to tell each individual that he must seek in the Lamb of
God purgation from his guilt and confirmation of his personal love of
God. The Lamb was to her the very symbol of that confidence in Christ’s
Redemption which she sought to arouse in each one’s breast. On the
front of Old St. Peter’s, for instance, the Lamb was shown in brilliant
mosaic, with the gentle Mother of the Redeemer on its right and the
Key-bearer on its left, and this figure, in yet older times, had been
preceded by the ancient “_Agnus Dei_.”[380]
Every Litany recited by the faithful in Luther’s day, no less than in
earlier ages and in our own, concluded with the trustful invocation of
the “Lamb of God”; the waxen “_Agnus Dei_,” blessed by the Pope, and so
highly prized by the people, was but its symbol.[381] The Lamb of God
was, and still is, solemnly invoked by priest and people in the Canon
of the Mass for the obtaining of mercy and peace.
The centre of daily worship in the Catholic Church, in Luther’s day
as in the remoter past, was ever the Eucharistic Sacrifice. The Lamb
of God, which, according to Catholic belief, is there offered to the
Father under the mystic elements, and mysteriously renews the sacrifice
of the Cross, was as a well, daily opened, in which souls athirst for
God might find wherewith to unite themselves in love and confidence
with their Redeemer.
It was Luther who, with cruel hand, tore this pledge of hope and
consolation from the heart of Christendom. Inspiring indeed are the
allusions to the wealth of consolation contained in the Eucharist,
which we find in one of the books in most general use in the days
before Luther. “Good Jesus, Eternal Shepherd, thanks be to Thee Who
permittest me, poor and needy as I am, to partake of the mystery of
Thy Divine Sacrifice, and feedest me with Thy precious Body and Blood;
Thou commandest me to approach to Thee with confidence. Come, sayest
Thou, to Me, all you that labour and are burdened, and I will refresh
you. Confiding, O Lord, in Thy goodness and in Thy great mercy, I come
sick to my Saviour, hungry and thirsty to the Fountain of life, needy
to the King of Heaven, a servant to my Lord, a creature to my Creator,
and one in desolation to my loving Comforter.”[382]
The doctrine that the Mass is a renewal of the Sacrifice of Christ
“attained its fullest development in the Middle Ages”; thus Adolf
Franz at the conclusion of his work “Die Messe im deutschen
Mittelalter.” At the close of the Middle Ages it was the rule to
“direct the eyes of the faithful, during the sacrifice on the altar,
to the sufferings and death of the Redeemer in all its touching
and thrilling reality. At the altar a mystery is enacted; Christ
suffers and dies; the priest represents Him, and every act typifies
Christ’s Passion; just as He expired on the cross in actual fact,
so, mystically, He dies upon the altar.”[383] Though some writers of
the period dwell perhaps a little too much on the allegorical sense
then so popular in explaining the various acts of the Mass, yet, in
their conviction that its character was sacrificial and that it truly
re-enacted the death of Christ, they were in perfect agreement with
the past. In the explanations of the Mass everyone was reminded of his
union with Christ; and our Lord’s sufferings “were brought before the
mind of both priest and people”; by this means the “outward ceremonial
of the Mass was made a fruitful source of inward edification.” “The
abundant mediæval literature on the Mass is a proof both of the needs
of the clergy, and of the care displayed by the learned and those in
authority, to instruct them. In this matter the 15th century excels
the earlier Middle Ages.”[384] The very abuses and the formalism which
Franz finds witnessed to in certain mediæval sermons on the Mass,
chiefly in the matter of undue stress laid on the “fruits of the
Mass,” reveal merely an over-estimation on the part of the individual
of his union with Christ, or a too great assurance of obtaining help
in bodily and spiritual necessities; of want of fervour or of hope
there is not the least trace.
It is well worthy of note that Luther, if we may believe what he said
in a sermon in 1532, even in his monastic days, did not prize or love
the close bond of union established with Christ by the daily sacrifice
of the Mass: “Ah, bah, Masses! Let what cannot stand fast fall. You
never cared about saying Mass formerly; of that I am sure. I know it
from my own case; for I too was a holy monk, and blasphemed my dear
Lord miserably for the space of quite fifteen years with my saying of
Masses, though I never liked doing so, in spite of being so holy and
devout.”[385]
In spite of this Luther succeeded in bequeathing to posterity the
opinion that it was he who delivered people from that “alienation from
God” imposed on the world in the Middle Ages; “who broke down the
prohibition of the mediæval Church against anyone concerning himself on
his own account with matters of religion”; and who gave back “personal
religion” to the Christian.
Were Protestants to bestow more attention on the religious literature
of the Later Middle Ages, such statements would be simply impossible.
One of those best acquainted with this literature writes: “During
the last few months the present writer has gone carefully, pen in
hand, through more than one hundred printed and manuscript religious
works, written in German and belonging to the end of the Middle Ages:
catechetical handbooks, general works of piety, confession manuals,
postils, prayer-books, booklets on preparation for death and German
sermonaries. In this way he has learnt from the most reliable sources
not only how in those days people were guided to devout intercourse
with God, but also with what fervent piety the faithful were accustomed
to converse with their Saviour.” Let Protestants, he adds, at least
attempt to vindicate their pet assertions “scientifically, i.e. from
trustworthy sources.”[386]
The relations between the individual and God were by no means
suppressed because the priesthood stood as an intermediary between the
faithful and God, or because ecclesiastical superiors watched over and
directed public worship and the lines along which the life of faith
was to move. If the union of the individual with God was endangered by
such interference on the part of the clergy, then it was endangered
just as much by Luther, who insists so strongly on the preachers being
listened to, and on the ministers taking the lead in things pertaining
to God.
He teaches, for instance: “It is an unsufferable blasphemy to reject
the public ministry or to say that people can become holy without
sermons and Church. This involves a destruction of the Church and
rebellion against ecclesiastical order; such upheavals must be warded
off and punished like all other revolts.”[387]
The fact is, the ecclesiastical order of things to which Luther
attached himself more and more strongly amounted to this, as he
declares in various passages of his Table-Talk. Through the ministers
and preachers, as through His servants, God speaks to man; through
them God baptises, instructs and absolves; what the ministers of
the Gospel say and do, that God Himself does through and in us as
His instruments. Whoever does not believe this, Luther looks on as
damned. In a sermon of 1528, speaking of the spiritual authority
which intervenes between God and man, he exclaims: “God requires for
His Kingdom pious Bishops and pastors, through them he governs His
subjects [the Emperor, on the other hand, so he had said, had not even
to be a Christian since the secular power was all outward and merely
served to restrain evil-doers].[388] If you will not hearken to these
Bishops and pastors, then you will have to listen to Master Hans [the
hangman] and get no thanks either.”[389]
He uses similar language in his sermons on Matthew: “God, by means of
Prophets and Apostles, ministers and preachers, baptises, gives the
sacraments, preaches and consoles; without preachers and holy persons,
He does nothing, just as He does not govern land and people without
the secular power.”[390]
Hence Luther shows himself very anxious to establish a kind of
hierarchy. If then he charges the priesthood of the past with putting
itself between God and man, it is hard to see how he is to avoid
a similar charge being brought forward against himself. Moreover,
at the bottom of his efforts, memories of his Catholic days were
at work, and the feeling that an organised ministry was called for
if the religious sentiment was not to die out completely among the
people. His practical judgment of the conditions even appears here in
a favourable light, for instance, in those passages where he insists
on the authority of rightly appointed persons to act as intermediaries
between God and man, and as vicars and representatives of Christ.
The word Christ spoke on earth and the word of the preacher, are, he
says, one and the same “_re et effectu_,” because Christ said: “He
that heareth you heareth me” (Luke x. 16); “God deals with us through
these instruments, through them He works everything and offers us all
His treasures.”[391] Indeed, “it is our greatest privilege that we
have such a ministry and that God is so near to us; for he that hears
Christ hears God Himself; and he that hears St. Peter or a preacher,
hears Christ and God Himself speaking to us.”[392]
“We must always esteem the spoken Word very highly, for those
who despise it become heretics at once. The Pope despises this
ministry”[393] [!]. God, however, “has ordained that no one should
have faith, except thanks to the preacher’s office,” and, “without the
Word, He does no work whatever in the Church.”[394]
Thus we find Luther, on the one hand insisting upon an authority, and,
on the other, demanding freedom for the interpretation of Scripture.
How he sought to harmonise the two is reserved for later examination.
At any rate, it is to misapprehend both the Catholic Church and
Luther’s own theological attitude, to say that “independent study of
religious questions” had been forbidden in the Middle Ages and was
“reintroduced” only by Luther, that he removed the “blinkers” which
the Church had placed over people’s eyes and that henceforward “the
representatives of the Church had no more call to assume the place of
the Living God in man’s regard.”
* * * * *
Luther also laid claim to having revived respect for the secular
authorities, who, during the Middle Ages, had been despised owing to
the one-sided regard shown to the monks and clergy. He declares that
he had again brought people to esteem the earthly calling, family life
and all worldly employments as being a true serving of God. Boldly he
asserts, that, before my time, “the authorities did not know they were
serving God”; “before my time nobody knew ... what the secular power,
what matrimony, parents, children, master, servant, wife or maid really
signified.” On the strength of his assertions it has been stated,
that he revived the “ideal of life” by discovering the “true meaning
of vocation,” which then became the “common property of the civilised
world”; on this account he was “the creator of those theories which
form the foundation upon which the modern State and modern civilisation
rest.”
The fact is, however, the Church of past ages fully recognised the
value of the secular state and spheres of activity, saw in them a
Divine institution, and respected and cherished them accordingly.
A very high esteem for all secular callings is plainly expressed in
the sermons of Johann Herolt, the famous and influential Nuremberg
Dominican, whose much-read “_Sermones de tempore et de Sanctis_”
(Latin outlines of sermons for the use of German preachers) had, prior
to 1500, appeared in at least forty different editions.
“It has been asked,” he says in one sermon, “whether the labour of
parents for their children is meritorious. I reply: Yes, if only
they have the intention of bringing up their children for the glory
of God and in order that they may become good servants of Christ.
If the parents are in a state of grace, then all their trouble with
their children, in suckling them, bathing them, carrying them about,
dressing them, feeding them, watching by them, teaching and reproving
them, redounds to their eternal reward. All this becomes meritorious.
And in the same way when the father labours hard in order to earn
bread for his wife and children, all this is meritorious for the life
beyond.”[395]--A high regard for work is likewise expressed in his
sermon “To workmen,” which begins with the words: “Man is born to
labour as the bird is to fly.”[396] Another sermon praises the calling
of the merchant, which he calls a “good and necessary profession.”[397]
Another witness to the Church’s esteem for worldly callings and
employments is Marcus von Weida, a Saxon Dominican. In the discourses
he delivered on the “Our Father” at Leipzig, in 1501, he says: “All
those pray who do some good work and live virtuously.” For everything
that a man does to the praise and glory of God is really prayer. A
man must always do what his state of life and his calling demands.
“Hence it follows that many a poor peasant, husbandman, artisan or
other man who does his work, or whatever he undertakes, in such a way
as to redound to God’s glory, is more pleasing to God, by reason of
the work he daily performs, and gains more merit before God than any
Carthusian or Friar, be he Black, Grey or White, who stands daily in
choir singing and praying.”[398]
It is evident that Catholic statements, such as that just quoted from
Herolt, concerning the care of children being well-pleasing to God,
have been overlooked by those who extol Luther as having been the
first to discover and teach, that even to rock children’s cradles
and wash their swaddling clothes is a noble, Christian work. What
is, however, most curious is the assurance with which Luther himself
claimed the merit of this discovery, in connection with his teaching
on marriage.
The Carthusian, Erhard Gross, speaks very finely of the different
secular callings and states of life, and assigns to them an eminently
honourable place: “What are the little precious stones in Christ’s
crown but the various classes of the Christian people, who adorn the
head of Christ? For He is our Head and all the Christian people are
His Body for ever and ever. Hence, amongst the ornaments of the house
of God some must be virgins, others widows, some married and others
chaste, such as monks, priests and nuns. Nor are these all, for we
have also Princes, Kings and Prelates who rule the commonwealth, those
who provide for the needs of the body, as, for instance, husbandmen
and fishermen, tailors and merchants, bakers and shoemakers, and,
generally, all tradesmen.” If the general welfare is not to suffer, he
says, each one must faithfully follow his calling. “Therefore whoever
wishes to please God, let him stick to the order [state] in which God
has placed him and live virtuously; he will then receive his reward
from God here, and, after this life, in the world to come.”[399]