In Holy Scripture the object of the Kingdom of Christ is differently

given. There it culminates in the glory of God. God’s glorification is

the real aim of Christ’s coming, and must also be the supreme object of

every believer. This does not in the least tally with that trumped-up

holiness-by-works which Luther saw in Catholicism. This far higher,

general, Catholic thought of God’s glory pervades the first petitions

of the prayer taught by our Saviour Himself in the Our Father:

“Hallowed be Thy Name,” etc.; only in the fifth petition do we hear of

the forgiveness of sins for which, indeed, every human creature must

implore. In the Our Father we acknowledge first of all our obligation

to serve God with all our powers and strive to comply with our duty of

glorifying His name. Hence Catholic religious instructions have never

commenced with “the simple forgiveness of sin,” with attempts to cloak

it and to induce a fancied security in the sinner; their purpose has

ever been to show that man is created to serve God and to honour Him,

and that he can best do so by imitation and love of Christ.

This high object, the only one worthy of man and his spiritual powers,

leads us to consider the doctrine of good works.

4. Good Works in Theory and Practice

Man is naturally disposed to believe that, built as he is, he must take

his share in working out his salvation, if he be in sin, by preparing

himself with God’s help to enter the state of grace and then by seeking

to retain it by means of good works.

The Church before Luther had taught, as she still does, and that on

the strength of Holy Writ, that such co-operation on man’s part, under

God’s assistance, is quite essential. Though the attaining to and

the perseverance in the Divine sonship is chiefly the work of God,

yet it is also man’s, carried out with the aid of grace. She assured

the faithful, that, according to the order graciously established by

God and warranted by Scripture, all good works have their value for

temporal and eternal reward. She sought indeed to kindle religious

fervour by pointing to the promises held out, yet she had no wish to

see man stop short at the thought of his reward, but rather expected

him to rise to a more perfect love. Generosity, so she taught, was in

no way impaired by the prospect of reward, on the contrary such hopes

served as stepping-stones to facilitate the ascent.[1605]

Luther, owing to his implacable, personal aversion to any good works or

human co-operation, laid violent hands on this so reasonable scheme of

salvation.

_Nature and Origin of the New Doctrine of Works._

Luther demanded that no importance should be set on co-operation by

means of works in the business of Justification, because salvation was

to be looked for from on high with simple faith and blind confidence.

After reconciliation, too, man must not vainly fancy that he is capable

of deserving anything by good works even by the greatest penances,

sacrifices or deeds of love, but the doing of good must be allowed to

follow simply as the effect of the Spirit of Christ now received, in

those feelings towards God which Christ produces in us and in that love

of our neighbour which is indispensable to human society.

Further light may be thrown on this standpoint of Luther’s by some

traits from his inward history and writings.

Here we cannot fail to notice echoes of his transition period, of his

conflict with his brother-monks and those pious folk who were intent on

good works and the heaping up of merits; of his subsequent remissness

in his vocation and in the performance of his duties as a monk; finally

of his later prejudice, largely a result of his polemics, against so

many of the Church’s public and private practices, of penance, of

devotion and of the love of God. He closed his eyes to the fact, that

he could have found no more effectual means of increasing amongst his

followers the growing contempt for moral effort, neglect of good works

and the gradual decline in religious feeling.

His estrangement from what he was pleased to call “holiness-by-works”

always remained Luther’s principal, ruling idea, just as it had been

the starting-point of his change of mind in his monastic days.[1606]

His chief discovery, viz. the doctrine of Justification, he was fond

of parading as an attack upon works. It is only necessary to observe

how persistently, how eagerly and instinctively he seizes the smallest

pretext to launch in his sermons and writings a torrent of abuse on the

Catholic works. It is as though some unseen hand were ever ready to

open the sluice-gates, that, whether relevant or not to the matter on

hand, his anger might pour forth against fasting, and the ancient works

of penance, against “cowls and tonsures,” against the recitation of the

Office in choir, rules, collections, pilgrimages and Jubilees, against

taking the discipline, vows, veneration of the Saints and so many other

religious practices.[1607] In his habitual slanders on works, found on

his lips from the beginning[1608] to within a few weeks of his death,

we can hardly fail to see the real link which binds together his whole

activity. As against the Popish doctrine of works he is never weary

of pointing out that his own doctrine of works is based on Christ;

“it allows God to be our Lord God and gives Him the glory,” a thought

that pleased him all the more because it concealed the error under a

mantle of piety; this deceptive idea already casts its shadow over

the very first letter in his correspondence which touches on the new

doctrine.[1609]

Johann Eck could well answer: “Luther is doing us an injustice when

he declares that we by our works exclude Christ as Mediator.... On

the contrary, we teach, that, without Christ, works are nothing....

Therefore let him keep his lies to himself; the works that are done

without faith, he may indeed talk of as he likes, but, as for ours,

they proceed from the bottom rock of faith and are performed with the

aid of Divine grace.”[1610]

Equally deceptive was the idea, so alluring in itself, that Luther’s

doctrine of works bore the stamp of true freedom, viz. the freedom

of the Gospel. Here, again, we can only see a new expression of his

profound alienation from works and from the sacrifice entailed by

self-conquest. He is desirous, so he says, of hoisting on the shield

the freedom of the man who is guided solely by God’s Spirit. But will

this not serve as an excuse for weakness? Here we seem to find an

after-effect of that late-mediæval pseudo-mysticism which had once

been a danger to him, which went so far as to demand of the righteous

complete indifference to works, and, that, in language apparently most

affecting and sublime.

These two thoughts, that Christ would thus be restored to His place

of honour and man secure evangelical freedom, were a great temptation

to many hearers of Luther’s call to leave the Catholic Church. In

all great intellectual revolutions there are always at work certain

impelling ideas, either true ones which rightly prove attractive, or

false ones which yet assume the appearance of truth and thus move

people’s minds. Without the intervention of the two thoughts just

referred to, the spread of the religious movement in the 16th century

is not fully to be explained.

How many of the apostles and followers of the new preaching were really

moved by these two thoughts must even then have been difficult to

determine. Noble and privileged souls may not have been wanting amongst

them. The masses, however, introduced so earthly an element into these

better and pious ideals that the ideals only remained as a pretext, a

very effective pretext indeed, to allege for their own pacification and

in extenuation of their other aims. Great watchwords, once put forward,

often serve as a useful cloak for other things. In this respect the

demand for the freedom of the Gospel proved very popular. The age

clamoured to be set free from bonds which were proving irksome, for

instance, to mention but one point, from exorbitant ecclesiastical

dues and spiritual penalties. Hence evangelical freedom was readily

accepted as synonymous with deliverance, and, in time, ceased to be

“evangelical” at all.

That Luther’s doctrine of works and of the freedom bestowed by Christ

the fulfiller of the Law, embodied a great moral danger, is now

recognised even by Protestants.

“How terribly dangerous,” a Protestant Church-historian says, “is

that ‘To be for ever and ever secure of life in Christ’ in the sense

in which Luther understands it! We Protestants are merely toning it

down when we find in it simply the consciousness of being supported

by God; to Luther it is much more ... it is a feeling of spiritual

mastery.” The author quotes as descriptive of Luther’s attitude the

characteristic watchword from his writing “Von der Freyheyt eynes

Christen Menschen”: “The Christian is so far exalted above everything

by faith that he becomes spiritually lord over all, for there is

nothing that can endanger his salvation.” To these we may append

Luther’s spoken words: “This is Christian freedom ... to have no need

of any work in order to attain to piety and salvation”; a Christian

may say: I possess “such a Saviour that I need have no fear of death,

and am certain of life for ever and ever; I can snap my fingers at

the devil and his hell, and am no longer called upon to tremble

before the wrath of God.”[1611] The same writer also points out,

that, according to Luther, this happy believer “remains for all this

inwardly (‘_intrinsece_’) a sinner and is righteous only outwardly

(‘_extrinsece_’).” From such teaching as this respect for works was

bound to suffer: the question of “religion and morality,” whether from

the point of view of religion in the process of salvation or from the

point of view of morals in social action, could not be satisfactorily

solved thereby. “In both cases morality comes short. Theologically

no sufficient bulwark is erected against misinterpretation.” “Luther

had trouble enough, and through his own fault, in stemming the

incroachments of immorality.”

More strongly, and with the frankness usual in the polemics of his

day, Willibald Pirkheimer, Luther’s former friend, voices the same

thought when he speaks of the “not evangelical, but rather devilish

freedom” which, owing to the preaching of the new “evangelical truth,”

had made itself so “shockingly” felt amongst so many apostates, both

male and female, and had induced him, after long hesitation, to betake

himself back to the Catholic fold.[1612]

Before quoting the opinion of other critics of the preaching against

works in his own time, we may give Luther the chance to describe the

extent of his opposition to the olden doctrine.

He is determined, as he says as early as 1516, “to root out utterly

the stupid, fleshly affectation that trusts in such works.”[1613]

“Many graces and merits,” so he taught even then, “lead man from God;

we are so ready to rely on good works, more than on God Himself”; yet

we should rather, “in absolute nakedness, pay homage to God’s mercy

from the bottom of our heart.”[1614] “The multitude of our sins must

not arouse despair, what should make us distrustful is any striving

after good works”; we “ought rather to take refuge in the mercy of

God.” The sense of good works is our ruin, for it induces in us “a

feeling of self-righteousness.”[1615] The latter words portray his own

psychological state at that time. It was these lax ideas that led to

his quarrel with the Observantines amongst his brethren and with the

so-called “Little Saints.” Here also we have an echo from the world

of thought already described as the real starting-point of his sad

development.

During this crucial period of his mental growth he preached in 1515

on the glad tidings of the Gospel; it was “glad” because it taught us

“that the law had already been fulfilled by Christ, so that it was

no longer necessary for us to fulfil it, but only, by faith, to hang

it about the Man who had fulfilled it and become conformed to Him,

because Christ is our Righteousness, Holiness and Redemption.”[1616]

Later he comes to speak still more strongly. He fully admitted it

was natural to all men, himself included, to turn to good works in

trouble of conscience; it was beyond reason not to rest on them,[1617]

yet, according to him, in solacing our conscience we must pay no

heed either to sin or to works, but put our whole trust in the

righteousness of Christ; we must, to quote him literally, “set up

grace and forgiveness, not only against sin, but also against good

works.”[1618] It is true that he protests that he has no intention to

exclude works (other statements of his in favour of good works will

be quoted in due time), yet he abases them to a level which fails to

explain why Christ and the Apostles so earnestly recommended them

and promised an eternal reward for their performance. Luther assures

us that good works form “worldly righteousness”; that love of our

neighbour is enjoined for the welfare of society and because we live

together; yet he steadfastly condemns as a “shameful delusion,” the

view “that works are of any value to righteousness in the sight of

God.”[1619]

Who of his contemporaries could deny that Luther preached a

wonderfully simple and easy road to “life everlasting”? If this and

the “forgiveness of sins” were to cost no more than he insists upon

elsewhere, viz. “that you hear the Word and believe it when you have

heard it; if you believe it, then you have it without any trouble,

expense, delay or pains; thus does the Gospel of Christ and the

Christian teaching do everything with a few short words, for it is

God’s own Word.”[1620]

Worthy of notice in connection with his ideas of evangelical freedom

(see above, p. 453, and vol. ii., p. 27 ff.) is the significant use

he makes of the term applied in the New Testament to all Christians,

viz. members of a “royal priesthood,” which Luther takes as meaning

that all believers have a certain supremacy over sin.

As every Christian, so he teaches, by virtue of the universal

priesthood possesses authority to “proclaim the Gospel,” as everyone,

“man, woman or maid,” is qualified to “teach” who “knows how to and is

able,” so the “Spirit of Christ encourages” all without exception and

makes of each one “a great Lord and King of all.” But, “where works

are preached, there the right of primogeniture is taken from us,” and

this privilege of “royal and priestly dignity disappears completely.”

Sometimes the devil tries to force us to sin, for “he is a servant

and has his own way. If he forces me to sin then I run to Christ and

invoke His help; then he is ashamed. The more he does, the greater his

shame. Thus this power is omnipotent. ‘Thou hast set all things under

his feet’ [Ps. viii. 8], we are told. ‘We shall judge the angels,’

says St. Paul [1 Cor. vi. 3]. That is our right of primogeniture which

we must ascribe, not to ourselves, but to Christ. But when Christ has

cleansed you, then you do what is good, not for yourself [by gaining

merit], but for others.”--Such a doctrine he could truly say the

Papists failed to understand. But he adds further: They cannot even

pray; “with their prayers they merely mock God.”[1621]

If all the faithful are, as the new Evangel teaches, by virtue of their

right of primogeniture great Lords and Kings, then that fear of God’s

chastisements is no longer justified which the ancient Church had

always put forward as one of the motives for performing good works and

leading a moral life. On the contrary, we are not to open our hearts

too readily to such fear. Luther’s injunctions concerning fear of the

Judge go to form a further chapter in the psychological and historical

criticism of his doctrine of works. Here we see plainly his instinctive

aversion to the views and practice of the olden Church.

The Catholic doctrine of fear had been expressed with wonderful

simplicity in the “Imitation of Christ,” already widely read in the

years previous to the Reformation: “It is well, my son, that so long

as love avails not to restrain thee, fear of eternal punishment

should at least affright thee from evil. Whoever disregards fear will

not long be able to persevere in good.”--“Consider how thou mayest

answer for thyself before the stern judge”: “Now thy labour is still

fruitful, now thy contrition still cleanses and makes satisfaction.”

“At the day of judgment the man who has mortified his flesh here

below will rejoice more than he who has indulged it in luxury.”--The

“Imitation” desires, however, that fear should be allied with

confidence and love. “Look on Me,” it makes Christ say, “let not thy

heart be troubled nor afraid. Believe in Me and trust in My mercy.

When thou thinkest thou art far from Me, I am often closest to thee.”

“If thou but trust in the Lord,” it says again, “strength will be

given thee from above.” “Thou hast no need to fear the devil if thou

art armed with the cross of Christ.” Nor do we meet in this book with

any trace of that frozen fear which Luther represented as prevalent in

the monasteries, on the contrary it insists no less on love: “In the

cloister no one can persevere unless he be ready for the love of God

to humble himself from the bottom of his heart.”

In order to supply a suitable background for his new doctrine, Luther

made out Catholic antiquity to have fostered both in theory and in

practice a craven fear, of which in reality it knew nothing at all. By

excluding the elements of trust and love, he reduced Catholic life to

the merest state of fear, as though this had actually been the sphere

in which it moved; he charges it with having cultivated that servile

fear which would at once commit sin were there no penalty attached;

he also finds in monastic life an element of excitement and confusion

which, as our readers already know, was really peculiar to his own

personal temperament at one time.

Far more characteristic than such calumnies is his own attitude to

that fear of God’s judgments which is just and indispensable.

Not as though, generally, he did not recommend and praise the “fear

of God.” This, however, falls beside the mark since such a fear may

exist without any adverting to the punishments of the judge, and,

as Luther himself puts it, not altogether incorrectly, is more “an

awe that holds God in honour and which is always expected of the

Christian, just as a good child should fear his father.”[1622] This is

the “_timor reverentialis_,” to use the earlier theological term. But

to the actual fear of the Divine judgments as an expiatory and saving

motive, Luther gives no place whatever; neither in the justification

of the sinner, seeing that he makes faith the one condition for its

attainment, or subsequent to justification and in the state of grace,

because there all that obtains is confidence in the covering over of

sin by grace, while the state of grace, in his opinion, of its own

nature necessarily works what is good. The Law and its threats, is,

in his opinion, useful “for revealing sin” in order that, knowing

this, “grace may be sought and obtained”; “thus the Law works fear and

wrath, whereas grace works hope and mercy.”[1623]

Fear, in reality, is contemptible; it “is there because sin prevails,”

hence it is not found in the pious, not even in Old-Testament

times.[1624] “Let us,” he cries, “cast at our feet all free-will....

Nature and free-will cannot stand before God, for they fear lest He

should fall upon them with His club.... Where the Holy Spirit does

not whisper to the heart the Evangelical promises, man looks upon God

as a devil, executioner, taskmaster and judge.... To the devil with

such holiness!”[1625] The above is no mere momentary outburst; it is

a theological system and the expression of his deep psychological

prejudice. We are carried back to his monastic days and to the theory

which fear led him to invent to allay his own personal agitation, but

to which he could hold fast only by dint of doing violence to himself.

When he came to see, that, to preserve the people from moral

degradation, fear of the Judgments of God had to be preached, he

urged that it should be emphasised and declared it quite essential.

This he did particularly in his instructions for the Visitation of

the Saxon Electorate, which accordingly contain what is practically

a repudiation of his teaching. The reasonable and wholesome fear of

the judge, which he would have preached to the “simple people” for

the moving of their hearts, in spite of all his protests has surely

a right and claim to work on the minds not merely of the “simple”

but even of the educated, and accordingly to be urged even by the

theologians.

Luther’s attitude here was as ambiguous as elsewhere, for instance,

in the case of his whole doctrine of grace and justification, no less

than in its premises, viz. unfreedom, concupiscence and original sin.

Everywhere we meet with contradictions, which make it almost impossible

to furnish any connected description of his doctrinal system.

_Augustine as the Authority for the New Doctrine of Works._

We have an example of Luther’s want of theological acumen in his appeal

to Augustine in support of his doctrine of works.

In order to understand this we must recollect that, from the beginning,

Luther had described his new theology as simply that of Augustine the

great Father of the Church. Of Augustine’s--of whom he said in 1516

that he had not felt the slightest leaning towards him until he had

“tumbled on” his writings[1626]--he had merely read in 1509 a small

number of works, and he became acquainted with what were for him the

more important of this Father’s writings only after he had already

largely deviated from the Church’s doctrine.[1627] Even later, his

knowledge of Augustine was scanty. He was, however, as a monk, fond of

identifying his own new doctrine of grace with Augustine’s;[1628] he

tried to enlist the help of his colleague, Amsdorf, by a present of

St. Augustine’s works; in this he was completely successful.[1629] On

May 18, 1517, he wrote to Lang on the state of things at Wittenberg,

the triumphant words already quoted: “Our theology and St. Augustine

are making happy progress with God’s help and are now paramount at

the University,” etc.[1630] From that time forward he was fond of

saying, that Augustine was opposed “to Gabriel Biel, Thomas of Aquin

and the whole crowd of Sententiaries, and would hold the field against

them because he was grounded on the pure Gospel, particularly on

the testimony of Paul.”[1631] To what extent he really in his heart

believed this of Augustine must remain a moot question.

“Luther,” says Julius Köstlin, one of the best-known authorities on

Luther’s theology, “could, indeed, appeal to St. Augustine in support

of the thesis that man becomes righteous and is saved purely by God’s

gracious decree and the working of His Grace and not by any natural

powers and achievements [which is the Catholic doctrine], but not

for the further theory that man is regarded by God as just purely by

virtue of faith ... nor that the Christian thus justified can never

perform anything meritorious in God’s sight but is saved merely by the

pardoning grace of God which must ever anew be laid hold of by faith”

[i.e. the specifically Lutheran theses on faith and works]. The same

author adds: “Only gradually did the fundamental difference between the

Augustinian view, his own and that of Paul become entirely clear to

Luther.”[1632]

When this happened it is hard to say; at any rate, his strictures on

Augustine and the Fathers in his lectures of 1527 on the 1st Epistle of

St. John, and in his later Table-Talk prove, that, as time went on he

had given up all idea of finding in these authorities any confirmation

of his doctrine on faith alone and works.[1633]

However his convictions may have stood, he certainly, in his earlier

writings, claimed Augustine in support of his doctrine of the absence

of free-will, particularly on account of a passage in the work

“_Contra Julianum_,” which Luther repeats and applies under various

forms.[1634] There can, of course, be no question of St. Augustine’s

having actually been a partisan, whether here or elsewhere, of the

Lutheran doctrine of the “enslaved will.” “These and other passages

from St. Augustine which Luther quotes in proof of the unfreedom of

the will really tell against him; he either tears them from their

context or else he falsifies their meaning.”[1635] He is equally

unfair when, in his Commentary on Romans and frequently elsewhere,

he appeals to this Doctor of the Church in defence of his opinion,

that, after baptism, sin really still persists in man,[1636]

likewise in his doctrine of concupiscence in general,[1637] where

he even fails to quote his texts correctly. He alters the sense of

Augustine’s words with regard to the keeping of God’s commandments,

the difference between venial and mortal sin, and the virtues of

the just.[1638] Denifle, after patiently tracing Luther’s patristic

excursions, angrily exclaims: “He treats Augustine as he does Holy

Scripture.”[1639]

Deserving of notice, because it explains both his repeated quotations

from Augustine and his advocacy of the motive of fear, is a lengthy

admonition of 1531 couched in the form of a letter on the defence of

the new doctrine of faith alone and of works. The letter was written

by Melanchthon to Johann Brenz, but it had the entire approval of

Luther, who even appended a few words to it.[1640] While clearly

throwing overboard Augustine, it is nevertheless anxious to retain him.

The letter discussed the objections alleged by Brenz, the influential

promoter of the innovations in Suabia, against Luther’s doctrine of

Justification, particularly as formulated in the Augsburg Confession,

and against Melanchthon’s appeal therein to St. Augustine; Brenz

urged that some effort on man’s part certainly intervened in the work

of pardon. In the reply Augustine is practically given up. Brenz

is told that he is wrong in clinging to Augustine’s fancy (“_hæres

in Augustini imaginatione_”) which puts our righteousness in the

fulfilment of the Law. “Avert your eyes from such a regeneration of

man and from the Law and look only to the promises and to Christ....

Augustine is not in agreement with the doctrine of Paul [read ‘of

Luther’], though he comes nearer to it than do the Schoolmen. I quote

Augustine as in entire agreement (_prorsus_ _ὁμόψηχος_), although

he does not sufficiently explain the righteousness of faith; this

I do because of public opinion concerning him.” What he means is:

Since Augustine is universally held in such high esteem, and has been

instanced by us, for this reason I too quote him as though on this

point he agreed entirely with Paul, which, as a matter of fact, is not

the case.[1641]

Melanchthon next deals more closely with the new idea of

righteousness. He hints that, in the Augsburg documents, he had not

been able to speak as he was now doing to Brenz,[1642] although, so he

persuades himself, he was really saying the same then as now. He gives

Brenz what, compared with Luther’s blunt words at the end, is a very

polished rendering of the Wittenberg doctrine. “Dismiss the fancy of

Augustine entirely from your mind,” he concludes, “and then you will

readily understand the reason [why only faith can justify]; I hope

that then you will find in our ‘Apologia’ [of the Confession] some

profit, though in it I was obliged to express many things with that

timidity which can only be understood in struggles of conscience (‘_in

certaminibus conscientiarum_’). It is essential to bring to the ears

of the people the preaching of the Law and of penance, but the above

true doctrine of the Gospel must not be lost sight of.”--To retire

with his holed theology into the mystic obscurity of the “struggles of

conscience” was an art that the pupil had learnt from his master.

Luther, unlike Melanchthon, was no adept on the tight-rope; in his

postscript he bluntly dismisses the Law, penance and all works so

far as they are intended to assist in sanctification as Brenz like

the Papists thought; his cry is “Christ alone.” Not even in “love

or the gifts that follow from it,” does our salvation lie; in this

work nothing within ourselves plays any part, therefore “away with

all reference to the Law and to works,” away too, with the thought

of “Christ as Rewarder!” “In the stead of every ‘_qualitas_’ in

myself, whether termed faith or love, I simply set Jesus Christ

and say: This is my righteousness, this is my ‘_qualitas_’ and my

‘_formalis iustitia_,’ as they call it.” Thus only had he everything

in himself, thus only did Christ become the “way, the truth and the

life” to him, without “effecting this in me from without; in me, not,

however, through me, He Himself must remain, live and speak.” Of

Augustine Luther indeed says nothing in this passage, but he could

not have expressed more strongly the purely mechanical conception of

justification, nor have rejected more emphatically every human work,

even man’s co-operation under grace.

With this decision Brenz in his letters to Luther and Melanchthon

declared himself satisfied, likewise with the instruction received,

“which was worthy of a place in the canon of Scripture.”

It is unfortunate, however, that Conrad Cordatus, one of Luther’s

favourite pupils, when consigning to his Notes the joint declarations

of Luther and Melanchthon, should have registered a protest against

“Philip’s innovations.” His quarrel with Philip Melanchthon on

the doctrine of Justification was one of the many phases of the

dissensions called forth in the Protestant camp by the “article on

which the Church stands or falls.”[1643]

Against any citation of St. Augustine the Lutheran theologians and

preachers in Pomerania protested during the negotiations for the

formula of Concord. By thus falsely alleging this Father, they said in

their declaration at the Synod of Stettin in 1577, a formidable weapon

was placed in the hands of their Catholic opponents of which they had

not failed to avail themselves against the Protestants; they were also

assuming the responsibility for a public lie: “Augustine’s book ‘_De

spiritu et littera_’ teaches concerning Justification what the Papists

teach to-day.” In the following year they declared against the form

of the “first ‘_Confessio Augustana_,’ as published at Wittenberg

in 1531 by Luther and our other fathers,” again on the ground that

“there Augustine’s ‘_consensus_’ is alleged.”[1644] In Mecklenburg

the strictures of the Synods of Pomerania were accepted as perfectly

warranted. David Chytræus, Professor at Rostock and once a member of

Melanchthon’s household, stated about that time, that Erhard Schnepf,

the Würtemberg theologian, who was of the same way of thinking as

Johann Brenz, had declared in 1544, i.e. during Luther’s lifetime,

in a public discourse at Tübingen, that in the whole of Augustine

there was not a syllable concerning the righteousness of Christ being

imputed to us by faith.[1645] When Chytræus adds that Augustine “was

_ὁμόψηχος_ with the Papists,” it is very likely that he was countering

the opposite use of this same word by Melanchthon in the passage

mentioned above; the latter’s epistle to Brenz had then already been

printed.

The real teaching of St. Augustine is best seen in his anxiety that man

should co-operate with all the power furnished by the assistance of

God’s grace, in the attainment of his salvation. The wholesome fear of

God he reckons first, after the necessary condition of faith has been

fulfilled. Of the acts of moral preparation (fear, hope, love, penance

and good resolutions) for obtaining the grace of Justification from

God, he regards fear as the element, without which a man “never, or

hardly ever,” reaches God.[1646] To show the necessity of works and a

good intention he appeals to texts in the Epistle of St. James rejected

by Luther, where we read: “You see that by works a man is justified and

not by faith only” (ii. 24). Here he goes so far as to suggest that

James probably spoke so explicitly of works because the passages on

faith in Paul’s Epistles had been misunderstood by some.[1647]

“We say,” so he teaches in opposition to Luther concerning the

destruction of sin in man by baptism, “that baptism brings the

remission of all sins, and not merely erases them, but actually

removes them (‘_auferre crimina non radere_’); the roots of sin do not

remain in the corrupt flesh, so that the sins have not to grow again

and be again cut off like the hair of our heads.”[1648]

The righteousness which is bestowed on the sinner is, in his view, no

imputed righteousness of Christ but a personal righteousness actually

residing in man. Hence he explains that the “Justice of God,” referred

to in Rom. iii. 21 f., is not that whereby God is just, but that with

which He provides the impious man when justifying him; in the same

way the “faith of Christ” mentioned there is “not a faith by which

Christ believes, but the faith that is in us.” “Both are ours, but

they are ascribed to God and Christ because bestowed on us by the

Divine favour.”[1649] The righteousness bestowed on us is “that which

Adam lost by sin”; Adam’s righteousness was a quality inherent in him,

not the imputed righteousness of Christ.[1650] It is also the same

grace which is infused into adults in Justification and which children

receive in baptism.[1651] By sanctifying grace the soul is inwardly

ennobled, “for when nature’s Creator justifies it by grace, it ceases

to be an object of horror and becomes a thing of beauty.”[1652] The

Holy Ghost dwells in us and “God gives us therewith no less a gift

than Himself.”[1653] Thus “as the soul is the life of the body, so God

is the life of the soul.”[1654]

Our state of grace may, however, be dimmed, and that not only by lack

of faith; for it has its enemies in imperfections and sins. “Though

our righteousness is a true one, yet in this life the forgiveness

of sins plays a greater part than the perfection of virtue.”[1655]

“If our will turns against God, we separate ourselves from Him, and

the light which enlightened us during His presence at once changes

into darkness.”[1656] In order to prevent any such danger on the

part of the will, Augustine frequently reminds his readers of such

exhortations of our Saviour, as: “If thou wilt enter into life, keep

the commandments.” “He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he

it is that loveth me.”

Man is also spurred to be faithful, so he says, by the merit of good

works. “God Himself has become our debtor,” so he said when preaching

to the assembled faithful; “not as though He had received something

from us, but because He has promised what He pleased. To a man we

speak differently and say: You are my debtor because I have given to

you. To God we say, on the contrary: Thou art my debtor because Thou

hast made me promises; ... in this sense therefore we may urge on God

our demands and say: Give what Thou hast promised, for we have done

what Thou didst command.”[1657]

To recommend the practice of good works out of love of God and zeal

for His honour, and to heap up merit for heaven, is the purpose of

long and eloquent portions of the literary legacy which Augustine left

behind him. The whole of the book “_De fide et operibus_” and long

chapters of his “_Enchiridion_” were written with this object. In the

former work he introduces, for instance, the Judgment scene described

by our Saviour, and says: “Those who are placed on the left hand of

Christ, according to this passage (Mat. xxv. 41), He will reproach

not for not having believed in Him, but for not having performed

good works. How could this be true if we were to attain to salvation

without keeping the commandments or by faith alone (‘_per solam

fidem_’), which without works is dead? Christ wished to impress on us

that no one can promise himself eternal life by a dead faith, minus

works. Hence He causes all the nations who have received the same

spiritual food [of faith] to be separated out before Him, and clearly

it is such as have believed but have not performed good works who

will say: When did we see Thee suffering this and that [and did not

minister to Thee]? They had fancied that by a dead faith they could

attain to everlasting life.”[1658]

The voice of the bishop of Hippo, supported by the whole Church whose

doctrine was also his, was re-echoed by later ecclesiastical writers

who made greedy use of his works; nor were the exhortations of the

Fathers without result among the faithful. Later Fathers frequently

discourse on the testimony of Holy Writ in favour of works just as

Augustine had done; the following texts were frequently adduced: “God

will render to every man according to his works”; “Not the hearers

of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be

justified”; “The Son of Man will come and render to every man according

to his works” (Rom. ii. 6, 13; Mat. xvi. 27).

Gregory the Great, who trained himself on Augustine’s model, states,

in a homily to his congregation: “Possibly we may say to ourselves: I

believe, hence I shall be saved. This is only true when we prove our

faith by our works.” “Then are we true believers when we execute in

work what we confess in our faith.”[1659]

A faith proved by works was the sign manual of the Middle Ages. Nor did

Luther and his preachers ever complain of the lack of works of piety in

the days previous to the Reformation, although they thought it their

duty to blame the spirit in which those works had been performed.

What, however, did Luther and his followers think of the moral

consequences of the preaching directed against all merit of good works?

_The New Doctrine of Works in Practice, as Judged by Lutheran Opinion

in the 16th Century._

We have already listened to Luther’s own complaints and those of many

of his contemporaries concerning the parlous state of morals amongst

the adherents of the new teaching, and the almost entire absence of

any practical fruits of piety under the amended Gospel.[1660] Since

the mainstay of the innovations was the doctrine of grace and works

it is necessary to seek out more closely the connection between the

new doctrine of works and the sad moral results of the revolt against

the Church. Luther himself makes no odds about referring to these

results and their real cause: “The surer we are of the freedom won by

Christ, the more indolent do we become”; “because we teach that man

attains to grace without any works whatever, we grow lazy”; he almost

wishes “that the old teaching again came into its own.”[1661] Only his

shortsightedness and the psychological effect of his passionate temper

prevented his foreseeing the inevitable consequences of his theory of

the all-sufficiency of faith and of his reckless denunciation of the

regard for commandments and works previously obtaining. How little his

own frequent exhortations to lead a moral life and to perform works

of Christian charity (see below, p. 472 ff.) could prevail against the

fell charm of the doctrine of Evangelical freedom, remained hid from

his eyes, until the extent of the moral corruption and the growing

savagery of the people in certain regions began to frighten him and to

cause him to long ardently for the end of the world and even to predict

its imminence.

There was some truth in what he said, viz. that, as the world was

constituted, if one preached faith (i.e. the justifying faith so much

belauded by him) works went to the wall, and that, on the other hand,

“faith” must needs perish wherever works were preached.[1662] The two

were indeed self-exclusive, however much, in his recommendation of

works, he might affirm the contrary.

This is not the place to point out anew the dangers inherent in

Luther’s doctrine of justification, for we have already seen the

necessary result of one of its presuppositions, viz. the denial of

free-will, and how right Erasmus was when he urged against Luther,

that, on this assumption, all laws and commandments, even those of

Scripture, were simply superfluous. A Protestant has aptly remarked,

that, in the last instance, “the difference between good and evil

becomes quite illusory”; we might well ask: “How can we feel ourselves

responsible towards God ... if we do nothing and God works all in all?”

Luther himself even goes so far as to make Scripture teach that “the

will not only desires nothing good, but is even unaware of how much

evil it does and of what good is.”[1663] Since the imputed merits of

Christ are, as a matter of fact, merely like a screen set up in front

of the soul, many might naturally feel tempted to extenuate and excuse

all that the sin which persists in man still does behind it.

To appreciate the peculiar nature of the danger it is necessary to take

Luther’s teaching, not by itself, but in conjunction with the mental

atmosphere of the day. We must of course take it for granted that

many of his followers refrained from putting into practice Luther’s

teaching in its entirety, for instance, his peculiar doctrine of the

lack of free-will. Many well-disposed Lutherans whose good faith was

above suspicion, doubtless remained more or less outside the influence

of such ideas, were actuated by good religious motives and expressed

them in Christian works. Assisted by the grace of God, which is at the

disposal of all men of good-will, they, all unknowingly, were gaining

merit in heaven. On the other hand, the ill-disposed, those who sought

the enjoyments of life--and of such there were thousands--found a

sanction in the Wittenberg doctrine for neglecting good works. In the

case of many the “joyful tidings” could not under the circumstances

of the age be expected to produce any other result. We have only to

think of what was going on all about; of the prevalent yearning after

release from irksome bonds; of the unkindly feeling towards rulers,

both ecclesiastical and secular; of the seething discontent among the

peasants on account of their oppression and toilsome duties; of the

spirit of independence so vigorous in the towns; of the boundless

ambition of the mighty; of the influence, sometimes sceptical,

sometimes immoral, of Humanism, and of the worldliness and degradation

of so many of the clergy and monks, to be able to understand how

momentous was the effect of Luther’s doctrine of justification and his

preaching concerning works.

We know on the one hand from many examples with what zest the newly-won

promoters of Lutheranism--for the most part former ministers of the

Church who had discarded their calling--concentrated their attacks on

the practice of good works, and, on the other, how the better-disposed

followers of the new doctrine admitted the danger to works accruing

from Luther’s views and even their actually evil consequences.

The declamation of the preachers against works was partly intended to

silence their own scruples. At any rate it was the speediest method

of obtaining a numerous following. The preachers were obliged to

deal in some way with the objection constituted by the existence of

far greater religious zeal in the olden Church than amongst the new

believers; they solved it by denouncing zeal for “outward works.” They

were also frequently obliged to extenuate their own laxity of morals,

and this they did in the most convenient fashion by branding moral

strictness as pharisaical holiness-by-works.

Thus it came about that some, even of the more cautious and moderate

Lutherans, for instance Urban Rhegius, complained that the preachers

were confining themselves to the denunciation of works and to

proclaiming the power of faith alone, as though the great gift of the

new religious system merely spelt release from everything displeasing

to the flesh; there they came very near justifying the constant

assertion to this effect of the defenders of Catholicism, indeed the

Catholics’ most effective weapon.

Rhegius, who died in 1541, as General Superintendent of Lüneburg,

summed up his experiences of the effect on the people of Luther’s

doctrine of Evangelical freedom, in the sermons he delivered at Hall

in the Tyrol: “The rude, carnal people here think that the Law has

been abolished and that we are released from it, so that we can do

as we please; hence, quite shamelessly and to the disgrace of the

Evangel, they say: To steal and to commit adultery is no longer

sinful, for the Law is no more of any account. Alas, what crass

blindness has fallen upon this people, that they think the Son of God

came into the world and suffered so much on account of sin in order

that we might lead a shameful, dissolute and bestial life.”[1664]

A man of no great firmness of character, he had previously been

episcopal vicar at Constance, and could speak from experience of

the condition of things amongst the preachers of both Southern and

Northern Germany.

He accused them of being responsible for the disastrous consequences,

but forgot to seek the real cause in the doctrine itself. According to

him not only did no two preachers agree in their preaching, so that

the people complained they did not know which religion to follow,

but too many were in the habit of speaking, “as though it were

possible without doing penance and without any contrition or sorrow

for sin to believe Christ’s Gospel and rest secure in the proffered

forgiveness.”[1665] They gave vent to utterances such as these: “Our

works are no good and stink in God’s nostrils. He does not want them.

They only make hypocrites. Faith alone does all. If only you believe,

you will become pious and be saved.”[1666]

In 1535 he had recourse to the pen in order to impress on the

preachers “How to speak with caution,” as the title of his work runs.

In this tract, published in German and Latin, he attempts to show

from a number of instances “how the preachers run off the track on

one side or the other,” and how many of them “merely destroy and fail

to build.”[1667] Anxious to drive home Luther’s doctrine of good

works, in the chapter devoted to this subject,[1668] he mentions

six different ways in which good works were profitable, which the

preachers were not to forget. In all six, however, the real advantage

and necessity of good works is not established on its true foundation.

The curious tract was an imitation and enlargement of a work published

in 1529 under the title: “Anweisung wie und was wir Ernst von Gots

Gnaden Hertzog zu Braunswick und Leuneburg unseres Fürstenthumbs

Pfarhern und Predigern zu predigen befohlen.”[1669] The secular rulers

were often obliged, as in this instance, to intervene in order to

safeguard the new faith from preachers who were either thoughtless, or

too logical, or in some cases half crazy.

The complaints current among Luther’s friends about the bad effects of

the doctrine of justification were even heard long after the tumults

of the earliest religious struggles were over.

For this reason we are not justified in making out the decline which

followed in the train of the new system of faith to have been merely

an episode in the history of civilisation and simply the inevitable

after-effect of the great upheaval in the intellectual world. It has

been argued that far-reaching and disturbing changes in public life

are usually accompanied by an increase of immorality among the masses,

and also that the disorders dating from Catholic times bore fruit only

when brought in contact with the new religion. Unfortunately in the

present case we have to do with conditions which, as later witnesses

show, persisted even when tranquillity had once more been restored and

when the fruits of the new ideas should already have ripened. “What is

here disclosed,” justly remarks Döllinger, “was the result of a system

already firmly established, no mere after-effect of former conditions,

but a true home produce continuing to flourish even when the thousand

ties which had once linked human life and consciousness with the olden

Church had long been torn and rent asunder, and when the memory of

the doctrines, imagery, practices and institutions of that Church had

either been completely forgotten by the people, or were known to them

only through controversial references made in the pulpits and in the

manuals of religious instruction.”[1670]

Andreas Hyperius, Professor at the University of Marburg and the best

theological authority in Hesse († 1564), in view of the low religious

and moral standards of the Protestants which he had had occasion to

notice during his many journeys, declared that it was necessary,

particularly in the pulpit, to be more reticent on the article of

Justification by faith alone. Not indeed that he was unwilling to

have this preached, yet he did not consider it advisable to continue

to “declaim to the masses with such violence on faith alone,” as had

hitherto been done. The state of the Church most urgently required

that the people, who already troubled themselves little enough

about doing good, should be spurred on to good works and, as far as

possible, brought back to a faith productive of fruit.[1671] Elsewhere

he describes with indignation the generally prevailing indifference

towards the poor; this annoyed him all the more, as he was well aware

of the loving care displayed towards them by both clergy and laity in

the past.[1672]

In a document dealing with Luther’s (or rather Flacius’s) doctrine of

man’s passivity in the work of conversion, the theologians of Leipzig

and Wittenberg, in 1570, attributed to it the prevailing corruption.

“The masses,” they said, “have been led into a wild, dissolute and

godless life.... There is hardly a spot to be found in the whole world

where greater modesty, honesty and virtue are not to be met with than

amongst those who listen daily to God’s Word.”[1673]

Thirty years later Polycarp Leyser, the Wittenberg Professor and

Superintendent, who stood for the strictest form of Lutheranism,

declared: “The moral corruption to-day is so great everywhere that

not only pious souls but even nature herself gives vent to uneasy

groans”; as the cause of it all he mentions the delusion under which

many members of the new Church laboured, viz. of fancying themselves

excellent Christians so long as they boasted loudly of faith and

repeated Scripture passages concerning the unspeakable mercy of God

Who received sinners into His favour without any co-operation on their

part, even though meanwhile they led the most shameful life.[1674]

“All these people have ever the faith in their mouths,” wrote Wolfgang

Franz, the Wittenberg professor of theology, in an admonition to the

Lutheran preachers (1610); “they are ever prating of faith and of

nothing but faith, and yet no one can adequately describe how brimful

they are of vice and sin.” For this the preachers were chiefly to

blame, because they dinned Justification by faith alone into the

people’s ears without further explaining it; hence many of their

hearers, who did not even know the Our Father, could discourse on

faith more learnedly than St. Paul; they fancied that if only they

protested now and then during their lifetime that they believed in

Jesus Christ, their salvation was assured; they thought that if a

murderer who died after committing his crime had only time to confess

Jesus with his lips he would at once soar up to heaven.[1675]

Johannes Rivius, Rector of Freiberg, and a personal friend of

Luther’s, declared the very year after Luther’s death that his

experience had shown him that the Lutheran peasants knew neither

what they should believe nor how they ought to live, and troubled

themselves little about it; the people might well be taken for

Epicureans were they not perpetually boasting of their faith in

Christ. He bewailed his times, distinguished as they were beyond

all past ages by their immorality; corruption of morals had indeed

grown so bad that ungodliness and Epicureanism had quite ousted

Christianity.[1676]--Not long after, in another writing, he continued

his description of the moral decay, and again and again points to

the cause, viz. the false ideas of faith, law and works. “By far

the greater number of people to-day take not the slightest pains to

restrain the lusts of the flesh; ... they indulge in every kind of

impiety, while at the same time boasting of faith and bragging of

the Gospel.... When the people hear nowadays that there is no other

satisfaction for sin than the death of the Redeemer, they fancy they

can sin with impunity and give themselves up to luxury.... How many

are there who practise real penance though making so brave a show of

faith?... They say: ‘Even should you be stained with every vice, only

believe and you will be saved; you need not be scared by the Law, for

Christ has fulfilled it and done enough for men!’ Such words [which

Luther himself had used] give great scandal to pious souls, lead men

astray into a godless life and are the cause of their continuing to

live hardened in vice and shame and without a thought of amendment;

thus such views only serve to encourage the ungodly in vice and

deprive them of every incentive to amend their lives.”[1677]

If the leaders of the innovations could speak in such a way then yet

stronger charges against the doctrine of Justification and its effects

may be expected from Luther’s opponents.

Johann Haner of Nuremberg, who there, in 1534, turned his back on the

new faith, wrote a small book on the interpretation of Scripture which

is accounted among the best and calmest of the period. The Preface

shows that it was the sight of the immoral outcome of Luther’s views

on faith and grace which led him to revert to Catholicism. Without

mentioning Luther’s name he tells us that in his book he is going “to

withstand all false, fleshly confidence,” “all freedom of the spirit

which leads to destruction”; the object of his attack is that faith

which is “a mere presumptuous laying claim to grace, and that Evangel

which opens the door to licence of every kind,” while “telling us

to trust solely in an alien righteousness, viz. the righteousness

of Christ”; “these anti-Evangelicals, as they ought to be called,

by their roguery and their carnal mind had turned topsy-turvy the

teaching which led to true piety.”[1678]

To Wicel the convert Haner wrote a letter which was one of the causes

of his expulsion from Nuremberg by the preachers and the magistrates.

Here he said: “By the worthless dogma of Justification by faith alone,

which is their alpha and omega, they have not merely loosed all the

bonds of discipline in the Church, but also abolished all penance

towards God and all unity and friendship among the brethren. Never

since the earliest heresies in the Church has there been seen so

poisonous and noxious a dogma, the effect of which has been none other

than to make the word of the Cross foolishness to us, and to cause

both charity towards the brethren and the spirit of repentance towards

God to wax cold.”[1679]

From Protestant Nuremberg it also was that Willibald Pirkheimer the

patrician, as early as 1528, after his own return to the Church, wrote

to a friend at Vienna, the architect Tschertte, “I confess that in

the beginning I was a good Lutheran, just like our departed Albert

[Dürer]. For we hoped that the Roman knavery and the roguery of the

monks and priests would be amended. But now we see that matters

have become so much worse, that, in comparison with the Evangelical

scoundrels, those other scamps are quite pious.” The Evangelicals

with their “shameful and criminal behaviour” wished nevertheless “not

to be judged by their works,” and pointed to their faith. But “when

a man acts wickedly and criminally he shows thereby that he is no

honest man, however much he may boast of his faith; for without works

faith is dead, just as works are dead without faith.... The works show

plainly that there is neither faith nor truth there, no fear of God,

or love of our neighbour, but a discarding of all honesty and clean

living, art and learning.... Almsgiving has ceased, for these knaves

have so abused it that no one will give any longer.”[1680]

A few years before this, Othmar Luscinius, an Alsacian theologian,

then one of the most weighty scholars of Germany, who, save for

having taken a passing fancy for Luther, remained true to the Church,

described the “rude Christians,” “whom really we ought to pity, who of

the articles necessary for Justification take those only that please

them and are sweet, viz. faith and the Evangel, arguing: ‘I have only

to believe and I shall be saved’; as for the other, which is bitter

and far from easy, viz. the putting to death of the old Adam, that

they take good care to leave alone.”[1681]

The above is sufficient to show that there was a consensus of opinion

in tracing back the moral decadence to the Lutheran doctrine of works.

As against this there is a certain strangeness in the explanation

variously given by Protestants of this real retrogression: The

complaints of Luther and his preachers, so they aver, only prove

that they were dissatisfied, as it was their right and duty to be,

with what had been achieved in the moral order.--At any rate, the

distressing results of the doctrine of faith alone proved strikingly

how ineffectual had been all Luther’s exhortations to good works.

_Luther’s Utterances in Favour of Good Works._

Many and earnest are Luther’s exhortations to prove our faith by works

of love towards God and our neighbour; to sinners he frequently speaks

of the path of penance which they must tread; conversion he wishes to

be accomplished with lively faith and the state of grace preserved

by practical piety. It was assuredly not the lack of such counsels

which occasioned the decline described above; this was rather due

to the system itself, combined with the evil effects of the general

overthrow of the old ecclesiastical law and practice which safeguarded

morals, and with the contempt aroused for the sacraments, for public

worship and the spiritual authorities. History must, however, allow

Luther’s exhortations on behalf of good works and the keeping of the

commandments to speak for themselves.

We may begin with his thesis: “We are bound to bring our will into

entire conformity with the Divine Will.”[1682] In accordance with

this, in his “Von der Freyheyt eynes Christen Menschen,” he does not

fail to speak agreeably with the teaching of the olden Church of the

assistance God gives for the zealous keeping of the commandments.

“If you desire to keep all the commandments, to be rid of your evil

lusts and of sin as the commandments enjoin and demand, then believe

in Christ, for in Him I make bold to promise you all grace and

righteousness, peace and freedom. If you believe, then you have it;

if you do not believe, you have it not. For what is impossible to

you with all the works of the Law, of which there must be many though

all to no profit, will be short and easy to you by faith.... The

promises of God give both the command and the fulfilment.”[1683] What

he means to say is, that, by faith, we receive grace in order to wage

a successful “conflict with sin.” Grace is, however, equivalent to

faith. “Without grace,” he had already taught before, “man cannot keep

God’s commandments.” “The old man ... is led by concupiscence.” “But

to faith all things are possible through Christ.”[1684]

Elsewhere he clearly teaches that faith alone is not nearly enough;

to rely exclusively on this must indeed be termed “folly”; with the

assistance of grace man must also keep the Law.[1685]

In spite of all he has to say against Moses and his harsh and

terrifying “Law”--the Ten Commandments inclusive--when he is busy

exalting the Evangel, he nevertheless has occasionally high praise for

the Decalogue on account of its agreement with the law of nature. His

exposition of it contains much that is worth taking to heart.[1686]

Faith, he points out, shows us whence the strength for keeping the Ten

Commandments is to be drawn.[1687]

The Christian, according to a lengthy and beautiful passage in the

Church Postils (in a sermon for the Feast of the Conception), must

“struggle and fight” against his lusts and must seek to resist the

darts of the wicked one.[1688] “If we have been baptised and believe,

we have received grace, and this contends with the evil inclinations

within us and expels and destroys original sin; then good and honest

desires for humility, chastity, longanimity and all the virtues awaken

in us, and at once good works begin to be performed with a cheerful

heart. All this is done by the grace which we receive in baptism by

faith in Christ; it is impossible for such grace to remain idle, but

it must needs bring forth good works.”

Emphatic admonitions to preserve chastity and a reminder of the

religious means to be employed are also frequent with him, for

instance, in his “Von guten Wercken,” written in 1520 at Spalatin’s

instigation, to repel the charge that his teaching was antagonistic

to any striving after virtue, to morality or Christian works. He

dedicated the writing to Duke Johann, the brother of the Saxon

Elector. Chastity, he there says, is indeed a hard matter, but it must

be acquired. “Even were no other work commanded besides chastity we

should all of us have enough to do, so dangerous and furious is the

[contrary] vice.... To get the better of all this requires labour

and trouble, and in fact all the commandments of God teach us how

important is the rightful performance of good works, nay that it is

impossible of our own strength even to plan a good work, let alone

commence and accomplish it.... This work of chastity, if it is to

be preserved, impels us to many other good works, to fasting and

temperance, in order to resist gluttony and drunkenness, to watching

and early rising, in spite of our laziness and love for slumber,

to strive and to labour in overcoming idleness. For gluttony and

drinking, too much sleep, idleness and loitering are the weapons of

unchastity.... These exercises, however, must not be carried further

than is necessary to subdue unchastity, not to the extent of damaging

our frame. The strongest weapons of all are prayer and the Word of

God.... Thus you see that each one finds enough to do in himself and

good works in plenty to perform. Yet now no one makes use of prayer,

fasting, watching and labour for this purpose, but looks upon these

works as an end in themselves, though the performance of these works

of the Law ought to be regulated daily so as to be ever more and more

purified [the sentence contains Luther’s usual perversion of Catholic

doctrine and practice]. Other things also have been mentioned as to

be avoided, such as soft beds and clothing, unnecessary adornments,

the society, sight and conversation of men or women, and much else

conducive to chastity. In all this no one can lay down a fixed rule

and measure. Each one must decide for himself what things and how

many are helpful to chastity, and for how long.” Here he even pays a

tribute to the monasteries founded in bygone ages to teach the “young

people discipline and cleanliness.” Finally he insists that “a good,

strong faith” “helps greatly in this work,” since “faith ever liveth

and doth all our works.”[1689]

The ravings of the fanatics repeatedly furnished him with an occasion

to emphasise good works more strongly and even to speak of a faith

working by love.

His dislike for their lawless behaviour and their praise of the

Spirit, to some extent directed against ordinary works, called him

into the arena. To call back the disturbers to a more moral life and

to the considerations of charity, he appealed to them to “exercise

themselves in the faith that worketh by charity” (Gal. v. 6). Even

the Epistle of James now appeared to him good enough to quote,

particularly the verse (i. 22): “Be ye doers of the the Word, and

not hearers only, deceiving your own selves”; from this Epistle he

also borrows the comparison of a dead faith, viz. of a faith not made

living through charity, with the face as seen in a glass, which is

merely the semblance of a countenance and not the reality.[1690]

It was the fanatics again who in 1530 drew from him some eloquent

statements in favour of good works, because, so he said, they had

misrepresented his doctrine that “Good works neither make a man pious

nor blot out sin.” They said “they would give their good works for

a groat,” and that all good works were not worth a peppercorn. Here

he professes to see great danger in contempt for good works and the

perversion of his teaching by the “devil’s lying tongue.” Good works,

according to him, are rather to be esteemed very highly because they

are God’s own. “If it is a good work, then God has wrought it in and

by me”; “it was done for the honour and glory of God and for the

profit and salvation of my neighbour.” He himself had been far from

questioning this and had merely taught that works did not conduce

to piety, i.e. “to justify the soul and to placate God”; this, on

the contrary, was “entirely the work of the One true God and of His

grace.”[1691]

Just as during his public career Luther looked upon such statements

as all the more useful seeing they blunted the edge of the awkward

inferences drawn from the new Evangel, and served to vindicate his

action from the charge of loosening the bonds of morality, so, at the

close of his days, he was obliged in a similar way to hark back to the

defence of good works against Antinomianism, of which the principal

spokesman was Johann Agricola. It is true that the Antinomians based

their contempt for the Law, which they said was harmful, and for the

excessive respect for commandments and good works which, according to

them, still prevailed, on nothing less than Luther’s own teaching. In

reality it was to his advantage that their exaggerations forced him to

explain away much that he had said, or at least to exercise greater

caution. The encounter with Agricola the Antinomian will be described

later (vol. v., xxix., 3). In spite of his being thus compelled to

take the Law and good works under his wing in this controversy, Luther

never, then or later, put forward the true relation of the Law to the

Gospel nor the real foundation of good works.[1692] He became involved

in contradictions, and to the end of his days it became more and more

apparent how forced had been the introduction into his theology of

good works and the keeping of the Law.

Nicholas Amsdorf, Luther’s intimate friend and most docile pupil,

published in 1559 a tract entitled “That the proposition ‘Good works

are harmful to salvation’ is a good and Christian one preached both by

St. Paul and by Luther.” Their “harmfulness” resided in their being

regarded as meritorious for salvation. We may wonder what Luther

would have thought of this writing had he been alive? In any case the

Lutheran Formula of Concord of 1577 contains a mild protest against it:

“The assertion that good works are necessary is not to be reprehended,

seeing that it may be understood in a favourable sense”;[1693] it

also appeals to what had been laid down in the Augsburg Confession;

it could “not be gainsaid that, in both the Confession and the

‘_Apologia_,’ the words: ‘Good works are necessary,’ are frequently

used.”[1694]

As for the attitude of the Augsburg Confession, it declares concerning

works--a declaration for which Melanchthon’s cautious pen was solely

responsible--“We also teach that such faith [in Christ, whereby man is

justified] must produce good fruit and good works, and that we must

perform all manner of good works which God has commanded, for God’s

sake.”[1695]

No one was so much concerned as Melanchthon in insisting that the

performance of good works should be represented as indispensable to

the people, particularly from the pulpit. It vexed him, the more

prudent of the two, to hear Luther again and again, and that often in

hyperbolical and paradoxical form, laying such stress on faith alone.

How far Melanchthon’s name may justifiably be quoted against what was

undesirable in the olden Protestant teaching on works, should be clear

from what has already been said concerning this theological henchman of

Luther’s (cp. vol. iii., p. 347 ff.).

Luther’s admirers are wont to quote the following utterance of his

when praising his attitude towards works: “Good, pious works never

made a good, pious man, but a good, pious man performs good, pious

works. Wicked works never made a wicked man, but wicked men perform

wicked works.”[1696] That “wicked deeds never made a wicked man” he

probably found some difficulty in really convincing many. If Luther

meant that an unjust man or sinner, who is not cleansed by faith in

Christ, can never act but wickedly, then it is the same error as we

find in other passages and which is repeated in connection with the

words just quoted: “Unless a man believes beforehand and is a Christian

[’consecrated by faith’] all his works are of no account, but are vain,

foolish, criminal and damnably sinful.” This is surely as much beside

the mark as the above statement of Luther’s concerning the relation

between a “pious man” and “pious works.” Of supernatural works that are

meritorious for heaven what Luther adds is indeed correct: “Hence,

in every instance the person must first be good and pious previous to

all works, and the good works follow and proceed from a good and pious

person.” We must, however, decline to accept Luther’s other inferences,

viz. that the sinner is not in a position to perform natural good

works of his own, and that the just man does not become more righteous

through good works.

Hence Luther’s statement, however apparently ingenious, cannot remove

the unfavourable impression produced by his doctrine of works. That it

was highly valued by its author is plain from the number of times he

repeats it under different forms. “Works do not make a Christian, but a

Christian performs works,” so he exclaimed in a sermon in 1523, summing

up in these specious words the instruction he had just given, viz.

that the faithful must struggle to remove whatever of evil there is in

them, and that they must “work good to their neighbour,” but not on

any account try “to blot out sin by works, for this would be to shame

and blaspheme God and Christ and to disgrace their own heritage,” viz.

Justification by faith alone.[1697]

_Works of Charity. Luther and the Ages of the Past._

For the purpose of recommending the Lutheran doctrine of works it

is sometimes urged that Luther, while slighting other works of less

account, assigned a place of honour to active works of charity, done

for the sake of our neighbour, that he placed them on a firmer moral

basis than they had hitherto occupied and promoted them so far as the

unfavourable circumstances of his age allowed. A few words on the

conception and particularly on the practice of charity as advocated by

him may serve as a fit conclusion to the present section.

First, we may mention that Luther is disposed to exaggerate the

importance of works of charity done to our neighbour.

It was an unjustifiable and paralysing restriction on the pious

impulse towards works pleasing to God that Luther embodied in the

rule he repeatedly lays down regarding works, viz. that they must be

directed exclusively towards the benefit of others. “On this earth,”

so he teaches in his Church postils, “man does not live for the sake

of works, nor that they may profit him, for he has no need of them,

but all works must be done for the sake of our neighbour.” “Thus must

all works be done, that we see to it that they tend to the service of

other people, impart to them the right faith and bring them to Christ’s

Kingdom.” They bring them the “right faith” when they serve to “quiet

their conscience.” Thus even here the Kingdom of God, which consists in

the forgiveness of sins, must also play its part.

Catholic doctrine recognises a wider field for good works. It regards

as such even the works which the faithful perform directly for

their own soul without any reference to their neighbour, such as

self-conquest in contending against one’s own passions, or those works

which are concerned primarily with honouring God whether in public

worship or in the private life of the Christian. Luther himself, at

least incidentally, also knows how to speak of the value of such works,

though thereby he contradicts his other statements like the above.

If, however, we neglect the principle, we have to admit, that Luther’s

frequent exhortations to neighbourly charity and kindness contain some

fine and truly Evangelical thoughts. With deep feeling he expresses his

sorrow that his admonitions are not heeded to the extent he would have

wished.

In his statements already quoted concerning the corruption of morals

consequent on the change of religion, we have heard him several

times lamenting the notorious falling off in private benevolence and

the quite remarkable decrease of public works of Christian charity.

Everywhere avarice reigns supreme, so we have heard Luther repeatedly

exclaim, and a reprehensible indolence in the doing of what is good

has spread far and wide; everything is now different from what it had

been “in the time of the monks and parsons,” when people “founded

and built” right and left, and when even the poorest was anxious to

contribute.[1698]

His defenders now declare, that he “unlocked the true source of

charity” by denying any meritorious character to works, thus sending

to limbo the imperfect, mediæval motive of charity and substituting a

better one in its place, viz. a “grateful love springing from faith.”

Luther’s own words have been used to decry earlier ages, as though

charity then had “merely had itself in view,” people in those days

having been intent solely on laying up merit “for them and theirs.”

It is perfectly true that the Catholic Church gladly emphasises the

reward charity brings to the giver.

If in the times previous to Luther’s day, both in the Middle Ages and

before, the Church frequently extolled the temporal and everlasting

reward of charity, and if this proved to the faithful an incentive,

she could at least in so doing appeal to those passages in the Gospel

itself which promise to the charitable a heavenly recompense. Yet the

thought of this reward did not exclude other high and worthy motives.

So little were such motives slighted in the mediæval practice of

charity, that, side by side with the heavenly reward, the original

deeds of foundations, gifts and pious legacies still extant allege all

kinds of other reasons, for instance, compassion for the helpless and

concern for their bodily and spiritual welfare, or the furtherance

of the common good by the establishment of institutions of public

utility. One formula frequently used, which, taken literally, seems

actually to ignore all merit and reward, runs variously: “For God’s

sake only”; “for God”; or, “in order to please Him with temporal

goods.” Thus the author of the “Wyhegertlin für alle frummen

Christenmenschen,”[1699] a German work of edification, wrote in 1509:

“Thanks to God’s grace there are still in our towns many hundreds

of brothers and sisters who have united themselves out of Christian

charity and compassion for the purpose of serving the poor sick

people, the infirm, plague-stricken and lepers, purely for God’s sake.”

Duke George of Saxony, in his reply to Luther’s “Widder den Meuchler

zu Dresen,” really expresses the motive for the active Catholic

charity formerly so lavishly displayed, when he speaks of the great

possessions given by past ages of which the religious revolt had

robbed the Church; of the “gifts freely given by nobles, burghers and

peasants out of ardent Christian love and gratitude for His sacred

bitter Passion, bright blood and guiltless death, to cloisters,

parish churches, altars, chapels, cells, hospitals, religious houses,

crafts,” etc.[1700]

Neither did such motives or the motive of reward curtail the spirit of

charity towards the close of the Middle Ages, as some Protestants have

chosen to assert. On the contrary they served to animate it.

On the basis of the data furnished by German archives a modern

historian remarks of those times: “The spirit of Christian

charity showed itself most active in the foundation of benevolent

institutions, in which respect hardly any age can compare with the

15th century.”[1701] “Towards the close of the Middle Ages the gifts

to hospitals, pest-houses and hostels were simply innumerable”; such

is the opinion of another researcher.[1702] Even G. Uhlhorn, in his

“Geschichte der christlichen Liebestätigkeit,” had to admit: “No

period did so much for the poor as the Middle Ages,” though, agreeably

to the standard of his peculiar Lutheranism, this author would fain

make out that good works then were done out of mere egotism.

Other Protestant authorities allow, that, even according to Luther’s

own admission, the Catholic charity far exceeded that displayed by

the new faith. “Here” (among the Catholics), says one historian,

“Confraternities for the care of the poor and sick arose in the 16th

and 17th centuries which far surpassed anything hitherto known in the

purity of their aims and their extraordinary achievements.... Among

the Catholics the reform in the nursing of the sick proceeded from

Spain, which also produced the men who loomed largest in the Catholic

Counter-Reformation, viz. the Jesuits and the Dominicans. From Spain

came the model of the modern hospital with the nursing staff as we

now know it.” “The Protestant communities during the two centuries

which followed the Reformation showed a great lack of fruitfulness as

regards works of charity.” “The hospitals in the Protestant districts,

with few exceptions, were and remained bad, nor was anything done to

improve them.”[1703]

Although Luther’s praiseworthy efforts to awaken charity were not

altogether wasted, yet neither his success in some localities nor the

supposed purer and higher spirit he introduced into deeds of love

were so apparent as to bear comparison with the charity so sedulously

cultivated on the Catholic side. On the contrary, his complaints

confirm the suspicion that in Lutheran circles works of charity were

as a rule lamed by the lack of that very spirit of piety which should

have been so manifest. (More in vol. vi., xxxv., 4.)

In 1528 he told the inhabitants of Wittenberg: “This week your

offerings will be solicited. I hear that people say they will give

nothing to the collectors, but will turn them away. Well, thank

God! You most ungrateful creatures, who are so grudging with your

money, refuse to give anything, and, not satisfied with this, heap

abuse on the ministers of the Church! I wish you a happy year. I am

so horrified, that I do not know whether to continue preaching any

longer to you, you rude brutes who cannot give even four half-pence

ungrudgingly.” It was a disgrace, he says, that so far the fiscal

authorities had been obliged to provide for the churches, the schools

and the poor in the hospitals, whom it was the people’s duty as

Christians to support. “Now that you are called upon to give four

beggarly half-pence, you feel it a burden.” “Deceivers will come

who will wax fat at your expense as happened formerly [in Catholic

times]. I am sorry that you have arrived at such a glorious state of

freedom, free from all tyrants and Papists, for, thankless brutes

that you are, you don’t deserve this Evangelical treasure. Unless you

mend your ways and act differently I shall cease to preach to you in

order not to cast pearls before swine and to give what is holy to the

dogs, and shall proclaim the Gospel to my real students who are the

poor beggar-men. Formerly you gave so much to the wicked seducers [the

Catholic clergy] and now ...!”[1704] Already, the year before, he had

vigorously complained from the pulpit, though, as it would appear, all

to no purpose: “Amongst those who hear the Word, faith is dull and

charity has grown cold and hope is at an end, etc. There is no one who

pities his brother’s distress. Once upon a time we gave a hundred, two

hundred, five hundred, or even a thousand pieces of gold to the monks,

canons or priests for the building of monasteries and churches. To-day

no one can be found who will give a coin, let alone a piece of gold,

for the poor. For this reason God sends His judgments on the world

and curses the earth on account of the contempt for His Word and His

Evangel; but we may look for yet worse things in the future.”[1705]

Amongst the reminiscences of his journey to Italy, Luther retained

a kindly memory of the charity as practised by the Catholics,

particularly at Florence. We read in Lauterbach’s Diary on Aug. 1,

1538: “Then Luther spoke of charity in Italy and how the hospitals

there were cared for. They are located in princely buildings, are

amply supplied with food and drink, the servants are most diligent

and attentive, the physicians very skilled, the bedding and clothing

are perfectly clean and the beds are even painted. When a patient is

brought in, he has at once to strip, an inventory of his clothes is

made in the presence of a notary and they are then kept carefully for

him. Then he is dressed in a white shirt and put in a nice painted bed

with clean sheets, and after a little while two physicians are at his

bedside; servants come and bring him food and drink in perfectly clean

glass goblets, which they do not touch even with a finger, carrying

everything on a tray. Even the greatest ladies come there, muffled

up completely so as to be unrecognisable, in order to serve the poor

for some days, after which they return to their homes. At Florence I

have seen what great care is bestowed on the hospitals. Also on the

foundling homes where the children are admirably installed, fed and

taught, are all dressed alike and in the same colour and treated in a

right fatherly way.”[1706]

5. Other Innovations in Religious Doctrine

The absence of any logical system in Luther’s theological and moral

views is so far from being denied by Protestants who know his theology

that they even reproach Luther’s opponents for expecting to find logic

in him. No system, but merely “the thought-world of a great religious

man” is, so they say, all that we may look for in his works; it is

true that he had a “general religious theory,” but it was “faulty,

in its details not seldom contradictory, and devised for a practical

and polemical object.” “Luther was no dogmatic theologian or man of

system,” hence his individual sayings must not always be treated as

though they were parts of a system.

There can be no doubt that this is a defect in a teacher who comes

forward as the founder of a denomination and as the restorer of

Christian doctrine, and who, in his quality of “Prophet of the

Germans,” declares: “Before me people knew nothing.” After all,

precision and coherence of doctrines form a test of their truth.

In reality the facts of the case are only indicated in a veiled way

in the Protestant admissions just recorded. The truth is, as the

reader has already had many an occasion to see, that, with Luther,

one assertion frequently invalidates the other. Even in the field

of moral teaching we find him at utter variance with himself, and

his contradictions become particularly glaring as soon as he passes

from theory to practice. Here it is easy to seize the “consummate

contradictions of his theology,” of which a present-day Protestant

theologian ventures boldly to speak; we may also subscribe to what this

same writer says, viz. that Luther hardened his heart against certain

consequences of his own religious principles.[1707] (Cp. p. 415, 447;

vol. ii., p. 312, etc.)

_The Regula Fidei._

Such a denial of the consequences of the principles of his doctrine

lies first and foremost in the fact that Luther summed up in a Rule

of Faith the various dogmas to which it was his intention to remain

true. The “_regula fidei_,” such as he wished to bequeath to posterity,

he saw expressed in the Confession of Augsburg, and in the oldest

Œcumenical Creeds of the Church.

It has already been seen that the radicalism involved in his religious

attitude should by rights have issued in a freedom, nay, licence, which

would have rendered impossible any binding formularies of faith.

It is also the opinion of most modern Protestant theologians that

the definition of doctrine which began with the Confession of

Augsburg, or in fact with the Articles of Marburg, really constituted

an unjustifiable encroachment on the freedom of religious thought

inaugurated by Luther. Luther indeed invested these doctrinal

formularies with all the weight of his authority, yet, according to

these theologians, they represented a “narrowing” of the Evangelical

ideas advocated by him; nor can it be gainsaid that the revolutionary

ideas for which Luther stood from about 1520 to 1523 justify such

strictures.[1708]

“This promising spring,” writes Adolf Harnack, a representative of

theological freedom, “was followed by no real summer. In those years

Luther was lifted above himself and seemed to have overcome the

limitations of his peculiar temperament.”... But Luther unfortunately

reverted to his limitations. Nor were they “merely a light vesture,

or as some would fain have us believe, due simply to lack of

comprehension on the part of Melanchthon and other henchmen, for

Luther himself saw in them the very foundation of his strength and

made the fullest use of them as such.”[1709]

In other words, his contradiction with his own original principles

became to him, so to speak, a second nature. He was in deadly earnest

with the dogmas which he retained, and which were comprised in the

official Articles of faith. In so far, therefore, he may be said to

have turned away from the consequences of his own action and to have

striven to slam the door which he had opened to unbelief and private

judgment.

Of the Confession of Augsburg, the most important of these

declarations of faith, Harnack says: “That the Gospel of the

Reformation found masterly expression in the ‘_Augustana_,’ that I

cannot admit. The ‘_Augustana_’ founded a teaching Church; on it must

be laid the blame for the narrowing of the movement of reform. Could

such a thing have been written previous to 1526, or even previous to

1529?”

After admitting elsewhere the advantages of the Confession of

Augsburg, Harnack proceeds: “It is possible by retracing our steps

to arrive through it at the broader Evangelical ideas without which

there would never have been a Reformation or an ‘_Augustana_.’ With

regard to their author, however, it is no use blinking the fact,

that here Melanchthon undertook, or rather was forced to undertake,

a task to which his gifts and his character were not equal.”[1710]

“In the theology of Melanchthon the moralist, who stands at the side

of Luther the Evangelist, we discern attempts to amend Luther’s

theology.... Melanchthon, however, felt himself cramped by having to

act as the guardian of Lutheranism. We cannot take it ill if Lutherans

prefer to err with Luther their hero, rather than submit to be put in

Melanchthon’s leading-strings.”[1711]

Harnack and those who think like him are even more antagonistic to

the later creeds of Lutheranism than to the Confession composed by

Melanchthon. “The ‘symbolic age’ when the ‘Lutheran Church’ gave

‘definite expression’ to her will is nothing more than a _fable

convenue_. ‘This Lutheran Church as an actual body,’ says Carl

Müller, ‘never really existed and the spokesmen of the strictest

Luther faction were just the worst enemies of such a union.... Thus

to speak of creeds of the Lutheran Church involves an historic

impossibility.’”[1712] According to these theologians Protestantism

must hark back to Luther’s original principles of freedom. Moreover,

argues Harnack, Protestantism has on the whole already reverted to

this earlier standpoint. “We are not forsaking the clear testimony

of history when we find in Luther’s Christianity and in the first

beginnings of the Reformation all that present-day Protestantism has

developed, though amidst weakness and constraint; nor when we state

that Luther’s idea of faith is still to-day the moving spirit of

Protestantism, however many or however few may have made it their

own.”[1713] Luther’s “most effective propositions,” according to him,

may well be allowed to stand as the “heirloom of the Evangelical

Churches”; it is plain that they do not lead to a mere “dogmatic

Christianity,” but to true Christianity consisting in the “disposition

which the Father of Jesus Christ awakens in the heart through the

Gospel.” Luther himself has only to be rightly appreciated and

“allowed to remain Luther.”[1714]

Harnack repeatedly insists that Luther by setting aside all authority

on dogma, whether of the Church, the hierarchy or tradition, also

destroyed the binding character of any “doctrine.” By his attack on

all authority he dealt a mortal blow at the vital principle of the

ancient Church, traceable back to the second century. According to him

“every doctrinal formulary of the past required objective proof”; this

objective proof was to him the sole authority. “How then could there

be authority when the objective proof failed or seemed to demonstrate

the contrary?” To judge of the proof is within the province of each

individual, and, according as he is constituted, the result will

be different. “Luther--even at the most critical moment, when he

seemed to stand in the greatest need of the formal authority of the

letter--did not allow himself to be overawed or his mouth to be closed

even by the Apostles’ Creed.” He indeed “involved himself later in

limitations and restrictions,” “but there can be no doubt ... that by

his previous historic behaviour towards them he had undermined all the

formal authorities of Catholicism.”[1715]

On this fundamental question of the possibility of a “_regula fidei_”

in Luther’s case, we may listen to the opinion of another esteemed

Protestant historian of late years.

Friedrich Paulsen, in his much-prized “Geschichte des gelehrten

Unterrichts,” writes: “The Word of God does not suffice as a

‘_regula fidei_,’ but a personal authority is also needed to decide

on questions of doctrine, this is what the Luther of 1535 says and

thereby confutes the Luther of 1521, who refused to allow anyone on

earth to point out to him the faith unless he himself could gather

its truth from the Word of God. Had Luther abided by his rejection of

all human authority he should have declared: On the interpretation of

Scripture there is no final court of appeal, each one believes or errs

at his own peril.... What Luther had relied on in 1521 against the

Papists, viz. inability to refute him from Scripture, was used against

him in his own struggle with the ‘fanatics.’... For the confuting of

heretics a rule of faith is needed, and what is more, a living one

to decide in each case. The principle of 1521, to allow no authority

on earth to prescribe the faith, is anarchical. On these lines there

can be no ‘Church’ with an ‘_examen doctrinæ_’ of its candidates and

Visitations of the clergy. This the Reformers also saw and thus there

was nothing left for them, if they were to retain a ‘Church,’ than

to set up their own authority in the stead of the authority of Pope

and Councils. On one vexatious point they were, however, at a loss:

Against the later Luther it was always possible to appeal to the

Luther of Worms. The starting-point and _raison d’être_ of the whole

Reformation was the repudiation on principle of all human authority

in matters of faith; after this, to find Luther installed as Pope,

was scarcely pleasing. If anyone stands in need of a Pope he would

surely be better advised in sticking to the real one at Rome.... The

hole in Luther’s teaching still remains a hole in the principle of

the Protestant Church to-day: There can be no earthly authority in

matters of faith, and: Such an authority there must be, this is an

antinomy which lies at its very root. Nor is the antinomy accidental,

but lies in the very nature of the matter and is expressed as often as

we speak of the ‘Protestant Church.’ If there is to be a Church ...

then the individual must submit himself and his ‘faith’ to the ‘faith’

of the community.” Paulsen, who had spoken of “Luther as Pope,” refers

to Luther’s own remark when taking his seat with Bugenhagen in the

carriage in which he went to meet Vergerio the Papal Nuncio: “Here go

the German Pope and Cardinal Pomeranus, God’s chosen instruments”;

Luther’s remark was of course spoken in jest, but the jest “was only

possible against a background of bitter earnest”; Luther frequently

dallied with this idea; “for the position Luther occupied, ages even

after his death, there really was no other comparison to be found....

With the above jest Luther reduced himself ad absurdum.”[1716]--Such

censures are in reality more in place than those eulogies of Luther’s

exclamation at Worms in 1521 on the freedom of Bible conviction, into

which orthodox Protestant biographers of Luther sometimes lapse.

_Some Peculiarities of the New Doctrine on the Sacraments, Particularly

on Baptism._

The theological pillars of the edifice of public worship are the

seven sacraments, the visible signs ordained by Christ by which grace

is given to our souls. Held in honour even by the Nestorians and

Monophysites as witnesses to ecclesiastical antiquity, they enfold and

hallow all the chief events of human life. Luther debased the effect

of the sacraments by making it something wholly subjective, produced

by the recipients themselves in virtue of the faith infused into them

by God, whereas the Church has ever recognised the sacraments as

sublime and mysterious signs, which of themselves work in the receiver

(“_ex opere operato_”) according to the extent of his preparation,

Christ having made the grace promised dependent on the outward signs

instituted by Himself. Luther, on the other hand, by declaring the

sacraments mere symbols whereby faith is strengthened, operative only

by virtue of the recipient’s faith in the pardon and forgiveness of

his sins, reduced them to the status of empty pledges for soothing

and consoling consciences. Only later did he again come nearer to the

Catholic doctrine of the “_opus operatum_.” With his view, however,

that the sole object of the sacraments is to increase the “_fides

specialis_,” we arrive again at the point which for Luther is the sum

total of religion, viz.: “mere forgiveness.”

He was not at all conscious of the contradiction involved in his

vigorous insistence on the absolute necessity of the sacraments for

salvation. From his standpoint Carlstadt was far more logical when he

said: “If Christ [alone] is peace and assurance [of salvation], then

lifeless creatures [the sacramental, outward signs] can surely not

satisfy or make secure.”[1717]

Luther raised no objection to infant baptism. He also wished it, and

baptism in general, to be given in the usual way in the name of the

Trinity. But how did he try to solve the difficulty arising from his

theory of the sacraments: If the sacrament only works in virtue of the

faith of the receiver and the effect is merely an increase of faith,

of what advantage can it be to the infant who is incapable of belief?

He endeavoured to remedy the defect with the help of the faith of the

congregation.

Meeting difficulties on this line he did not shrink from claiming a

perpetually recurring miracle, and proposed to assume that, during the

act of baptism, the new-born infant was momentarily endowed by God with

the use of reason and filled with faith.

In his “_De captivitate babylonica_” he had already attempted to cut

the Gordian knot presented by infant baptism by this assumption,

which, however arbitrary, is quite intelligible from his psychological

standpoint. Thanks to the believing prayer of the congregation who

present the children for baptism, so he said, faith is infused into

them and they thus become regenerate. In 1523 he states that children

have a hidden faith. “From that time onwards the tendency of his

teaching was to require faith from candidates for baptism.... Even

after the Concord he continued to speak exactly as before.”[1718] The

Bible teaches nothing about infant baptism. Yet Luther declares in 1545

in a set of theses: “It is false and outrageous to say that little

children do not believe, or are unworthy,” while at the head of the

theses these words stand: “Everything that in the Church, which is

God’s people, is taught without the Word of God, is assuredly false and

unchristian.”[1719]

It is of interest to follow up his arguments for the faith of

infants. In 1522 already he had attempted in a letter to prove to

Melanchthon the possibility of such unconscious faith. He referred

him to the circumstance, which, however, is irrelevant, “that we

retain the faith while asleep or otherwise engaged.” Moreover, since

to him who believes, everything is possible with God, so, too, to the

congregation which prays for the children; the children are presented

by the congregation to the Lord of all, and He, by His Omnipotence,

kindles faith in them. In the same letter, aimed at the Anabaptists,

who were then beginning to be heard of, we find an emphatic appeal

to the authority and belief of the Church (“_totius orbis constans

confessio_”), which, as a rule, Luther was so ruthless in opposing.

“It would be quite impious to deny that infant baptism agrees with

the belief of the Church; to do so would be tantamount to denying the

Church”; it was a special miracle that infant baptism had never been

attacked by heretics; there was therefore good reason to hope that

Christ, now, would trample the new foemen “under our feet.” Luther

forgets that the ancient Church was not hampered by such a heel of

Achilles as was his own teaching, viz. that the sacraments owed

all their efficacy to faith. We can, however, quite understand his

admission to Melanchthon: “I have always expected that Satan would lay

violent hands on this weak spot, but he has chosen to stir up this

pernicious quarrel, not through the Papists, but with the help of our

own people.”[1720] The rise of the Anabaptist heresy was indeed merely

a natural reaction against Luther’s doctrine of baptism.

Seeing that the doctrine of baptism is of such importance to the

Christian Church, we may be permitted to consider the inferences

regarding the sacrament of baptism drawn in modern times from Luther’s

conception of it, and from his whole attitude towards faith and

Christianity. A domestic dispute among the Protestants at Bremen in

1905 on the validity of baptism not administered according to the

usages of the Church, led to a remarkable discussion among theologians

of broader views, some of whom went so far as to argue in Luther’s name

and that of his Reformation, that baptism should be abolished.

Johannes Gottschick in “Die Lehre der Reformation von der Taufe”

(1906) defended the opinion that, according to the real views of the

Reformers, baptism was valid even when conferred without any mention

of the Trinity.--O. Scheel, on his side, pointed out in his book

“Die dogmatische Behandlung der Tauflehre in der modernen positiven

Theologie” (1906), that a contradiction with the principle of the

Reformation was apparent even in Luther’s own theology, inasmuch as,

according to this principle, baptism should merely be the proclaiming

of the Word of God; in the ceremony of baptism, according to the

Reformation teaching, which should be taken seriously, “the Word

is all”; baptism is the solemn declaration that the child has been

received into the congregation and the bestowal on it of the promise

of salvation, hence requires no repetition. “As to when the Word works

faith [in them] we do not know, nor is it necessary that theology

should know”; the power of God knows the day and the hour.[1721]--The

question: “Can baptism be regarded rightly as the exclusive act of

reception into the Church?” was answered negatively by Rietschel

in an article under that title in the “Deutsche Zeitschrift für

Kirchenrecht,”[1722] in which he too appeals to Luther. At any rate

Rietschel’s conclusion is, that, since Luther makes the Christian

state dependent on faith, the baptismal act as such cannot, according

to him, be of any essential importance; he thinks it possible to

complete Luther’s doctrine on baptism in the light of that of Zwingli

and Calvin, who were of opinion that the children of Christian

parents, by their very birth were received into the Church.

Luther’s attitude towards these questions was treated of more in

detail by the editor of the Deutsch-Evangelische Blätter, Erich Haupt,

Professor of theology at Halle.[1723]

Haupt agrees with Gottschick as to the possibility of discarding

the Trinitarian formula in baptism, in that, like Rietschel, all he

considers necessary is the liturgical retention of some definite form

of words. He also subscribes in principle to Rietschel’s contention

that it is possible to enter the Church without baptism. Going even

further, however, he declares with regard to Luther, that it was not

even necessary to borrow from Zwingli and Calvin as Rietschel had

proposed. “I believe the admission that salvation may be secured even

without baptism, is a necessary corollary of Luther’s theories taken

in the lump. One thing that lies at the bottom of Luther’s doctrine of

the sacraments is that the salvation bestowed by a sacrament is none

other than that communicated by the word of the preacher.... Nay, the

sacrament is merely a particular form in which the Evangel comes to

men.” But wherever there is faith, there is communion with God, and

faith may be wherever there is the Word of God. Just as it was said of

the Supper: “_crede et manducasti_,” so also it might be said: “_crede

et baptizatus es_.” “To deny this would not merely be to ascribe a

magical and mechanical effect to the sacrament, but would also imply

the denial of the first principle of all Evangelical Christianity,

viz. that for man’s salvation nothing further is necessary than to

accept in faith the offer of God’s grace given him in the Gospel.

In this the Reformation was simply holding to the words of Scripture

(Mk. xvi. 16),” where, in the second part (“He that believeth not

shall be condemned”), baptism is not mentioned.[1724]--Haupt, like

Rietschel, draws attention to the fact, that, according to Luther,

the unbelieving Christian, in spite of baptism, is inwardly no better

than a heathen.[1725] Nevertheless Haupt is unwilling to allow that

all children of Christian parents should simply be declared members

of the Christian Church on account of their birth and regardless of

baptism; for canonical reasons, to be considered Christians, they

must be inducted into the congregation by the act of baptism,[1726]

although it is “a logical outcome of the Reformer’s opinions that

instances may occur where the Gospel awakens faith, and thereby

incorporates in the congregation people who have never been baptised;

but this is the invisible congregation of the ‘_vere credentes_,’ not

the outward, visible, organised Church.” In order to enter children

into the latter, the parents must express their wish; this is the

meaning of the ceremony of baptism; the fact remains, that, dismissing

the magical effect formerly ascribed to baptism, the principal thing

is, “not Christian parentage as such, but the will of the parents as

expressed in some way or other.”[1727]

These vigorous attempts to shelter such ultra-modern views behind

Luther’s authority, and to make him responsible for consequences of

his doctrine, which he had been unwilling to face, have a common

ground and starting-point.

Wilhelm Herrmann, the Marburg theologian, in the “Zeitschrift für

Theologie und Kirche,” thus expresses himself on the subject.[1728]

“Christians are becoming more and more conscious,” he says, “that a

religion which must base its origin on an assent to ‘dogmas revealed

by God’ is at variance with elements of scholarship which they can

no longer deny.” He speaks of the “distress of conscience into which

the Church, by her demanding assent to revealed doctrine, plunges

people as soon as, under the influence of education, they have

come to see what alone can induce honest assent to any idea” (viz.

the fact “that one evolves it for oneself”). Luther was himself

scarcely acquainted with such trouble of conscience concerning faith,

notwithstanding the many spiritual troubles he had to endure. On the

contrary, he unhesitatingly sought and found a source of strength

in supernatural faith. Herrmann continues: “We should be unable to

escape from this difficulty had not the true Christian understanding

of faith, i.e. of religion, been recovered at the Reformation.” From

that standpoint “any demand for an assent to revealed doctrine may

well be repudiated.” For it was the teaching of Luther’s Reformation

that faith “must be experienced as the gift of God if it is to be the

‘_nova et spiritualis vita_’ essentially ‘_supra naturam_.’” This,

however, could not be required of all. The demand is subversive of

faith itself and “embodies the false Roman principle” that everything

depends on the “decision to acquiesce in a doctrine,” and not on the

“experienced power of a personal life.” “To lend a hand and clear a

path for the chief discovery of the Reformation is the grandest task

of theology within the Protestant Church.”[1729]

Luther by so incessantly emphasising personal religious experience and

by his repudiation of all objective ecclesiastical authority capable

of putting before mankind the contents of faith, certainly came very

near that which is here represented as the “chief discovery” of the

innovations undertaken by him (see above, pp. 403, vol. iii., 8 ff.).

But what would the Wittenberg “lover of the Bible and Apostle of the

Word” have said to the claim of modern scholars who wish simply to

surrender revelation? The passages in which he so indignantly censures

the unbelief of his day cannot but recur to one.[1730]

Luther arbitrarily reduced the sacraments to two; “there remain,” he

says, “two sacraments; baptism and the Supper.”[1731] With regard to

Penance his attitude was wavering and full of contradiction. In later

years he again came nearer to the Catholic teaching, arguing that

Penance must also be a sacrament because, as he said in 1545, “it

contains the promise of and belief in the forgiveness of sins.”[1732]

He had much at heart the retention of confession and absolution under

some shape or form as a remedy against the moral disorders that were

creeping in.[1733] Yet, according to him, Penance was only to be

regarded as the “exercise and virtue of baptism,”[1734] so that the

number of the sacraments underwent no actual increase.

Here, as everywhere else, the changeableness of Luther’s doctrinal

opinions is deserving of notice. The numerous instances where he

relinquishes a position previously held and virtually betakes himself

to another, are scarcely to the credit either of his logic or of his

foresight. Such wavering and groping hither and thither is the stamp of

error. In the “Histoire des variations” which might be written on the

fate of Luther’s views even during his lifetime, much would be found

truly characteristic of them.

One sacramentarian doctrine, which to the end of his life he would

never consent to relinquish, was, as we know, the Presence of Christ

in the Supper. And relentless as he was in combating the Sacrifice of

the Mass (see below, p. 506 ff.), yet he insisted steadfastly on the

literal acceptance of Christ’s words of institution: “This is My Body.”

_His Teaching on the Supper._

Luther’s retention of the Presence of Christ in the Eucharist may to

some extent be explained by the influence which, side by side with

the Bible, tradition and the authority of the Church still exercised

over him, at least on such points as did not call for modification

on account of his new doctrine of Justification. He had grown up in

this faith, and was accustomed to give practical proof of it even

when on other scores he had already broken with the Church. In this

matter Scripture presented no difficulty. Had he shared Zwingli’s

rationalistic leanings it is likely that, like him, he might have

sought for some other interpretation of the words of institution than

the obvious and literal one. It is also possible that the mysticism to

which he was addicted in early years may have contributed to make him

acknowledge the “_mysterium tremendum_” of the Sacrament, as he terms

it in the language of olden days.

It is true there came a time--according to him the year 1519-1520--when

he felt strongly tempted to throw the Sacrament overboard, because,

as he says in the well-known words, “I could thus have given a great

smack in the face to Popery.” At that time I “wrestled and struggled

and would gladly have escaped.” But from the plain text of the Bible,

he had, so he declares, been unable to free himself. This statement,

which is on the whole worthy of belief, we find in “Eyn Brieff an die

Christen zu Straspurg” which he published in 1525, and it is further

corroborated by the fact, that he there refers to two men who had been

anxious to move him to the denial of the Presence of Christ, but who

had failed to convince him. The two, whose names he does not mention,

were probably Cornelius Hendriks Hoen, a Dutchman, and Franz Kolb of

Baden, whose letters to Luther, in 1522 and 1524, trying to induce him

to accept the Zwinglian sense of the Sacrament, still exist.[1735]

When Carlstadt began his attack on the Real Presence, this, in view of

the then situation, so Luther declares in his letter to the people of

Strasburg, merely “confirmed his opinion.” “Even had I not believed

it before, I should at once have known that his opinions were nought,

because of his worthless, feeble stuff, devoid of any Scripture and

based only on reason and conceit.” Offended vanity and annoyance with

Carlstadt were here not without their effect on Luther; to deny this

would argue a poor acquaintance with Luther’s psychology. It is true

that the arguments of his opponent were very weak; it was not without

reason that Luther speaks of his “stuff and nonsense” and “ridiculous

tales.” He ranks the objections of the two letter-writers mentioned

above higher than the proofs adduced by Carlstadt; at least they “wrote

more skilfully and did not mangle the Word quite so badly.” Luther

was, however, tactless enough to give the Strasburgers a glimpse of

the secondary motives which led him to defend the Presence of Christ

so strongly and defiantly from that time forward. He complains that

Carlstadt was making such an ado as though he wanted “to darken the sun

and light of the Evangel,” so “that the world might forget everything

that had been taught them by us [by Luther] hitherto.” “I have up

till now managed well and rightly in all the main points, and whoever

says the contrary has no good spirit; I trust I shall not spoil it in

the matter of the externals on which alone prophets such as these lay

stress.”[1736]

It is unnecessary to show anew here how Luther’s later defence of

the Real Presence in the Eucharist against the Zwinglians contains

indubitable evidence in its virulence that Luther felt hurt. This

personal element is, however, quite insufficient for one to base upon

it any suspicion as to the genuineness of his convictions.

If, on the other hand, we consider the strange and arbitrary form he

gave to the doctrine of the Supper, more particularly by insisting

that the sole aim and effect of communion is to inspire faith in the

personal forgiveness of sins, then his belief in the presence of

Christ appears to a certain extent to harmonise with his peculiar

theological views. Amidst the storm of his struggle after certainty of

salvation the pledge of it which Christ bestows in the Sacrament seems

to him like a blessed anchor. That this Body was “given” for us, and

this blood shed for us, and that the celebration is in memory of the

saving death of Christ, as the very words of institution declare, was

frequently brought forward by him as a means to reassure anxious souls.

The need of strengthening our faith should, according to him, impel us

to receive the Sacrament.

He demands accordingly of others the same traditional faith in the

Eucharist in which he found his own stay and support. While clinging

to the literal interpretation of the words of the Bible, he, as we

already know, is quite ready to appeal to the “dear Fathers” and to the

whole of the Church’s past, at least when thereby he hopes to make an

impression.[1737] To such lengths does he go in the interests of the

confirmation of faith to which he strives to attain by means of this

indispensable Sacrament.

He overlooks the fact, however, that his view of the Supper, according

to which its only purpose is to be a sign for the stimulating of saving

faith, in reality undermines the doctrine of the Real Presence. True

to his theory of the Sacrament and of faith he reduces the Supper

to an outward sign destined to confirm the forgiveness of sins. One

might ask: If it is merely a sign, is so sublime a mystery as the Real

Presence at all called for? And, if it is a question of assurance,

how can we be rendered secure of our salvation by something which is

so far removed above the senses as the belief in the Real Presence of

Christ, or by an act which makes such great demands on human reason?

Luther’s theory requires a sign which should appeal to the senses and

vividly remind the mind of the Redemption and thus awaken faith. This

is scarcely the case in the Eucharist where Christ is invisibly present

and only to be apprehended by “the Word.” If bread and wine are merely

to call forth a remembrance of Christ which inspires faith, then the

Zwinglian doctrine of the Sacrament fulfils all that is required.

Luther does not face this difficulty, but Protestants were not slow to

urge it against him.[1738]

* * * * *

A peculiarity of Luther’s teaching on the Sacrament is to be found

in his two theories of Impanation and Ubiquity. Impanation, viz. the

opinion that the substance of the bread persists in the Sacrament

and that Christ is present together with the bread, served him as

a means to escape the Catholic doctrine of a change of substance

(Transubstantiation). With the help of the theory of Ubiquity which

affirmed the presence everywhere of the Body of Christ, he fancied he

could extricate himself from certain difficulties raised by opponents

of the Sacrament. The history of both opinions presents much that is

instructive. Here, however, we shall consider only the second, viz. the

ubiquity of Christ’s Body.

The theory of the omnipresence of the Body of Christ which Luther

reached together with his doctrine of the Supper, like his other

theory of the faith of infants, shows plainly not only of how much

his imagination was capable, but also what curious theses he could

propound in all calmness and serenity. Thus we hear him asserting that

the Redeemer, the Lord of Creation, is present, in His spiritualised

Body, everywhere and penetrates all things! He is present bodily at the

right hand of God according to the Scriptures; but the right hand of

God is everywhere, hence also in the consecrated Bread and Wine lying

on the altar; consequently the Body and Blood of Christ must be there

too.[1739] To the question how this comes about, he replies: “It is

not for us to know,” nor does reason even understand how God can be in

every creature.

Much more important is it, so he says, that we should learn to seize,

grasp and appropriate this ever-present Christ. “For though Christ is

everywhere present, He does not everywhere allow Himself to be seized

and laid hold of.... Why? Because it is one thing for God to be present

and another for Him to be present _to you_. He is present to you then

when He pledges His Word to it and binds Himself by it and says: Here

you shall find Me. When you have His Word for it, then you can truly

seize Him and say: Here I have Thee, as Thou hast said.”[1740] In this

way Christ assures us of His presence in the Sacrament, and invites

us, so Luther teaches, to partake of Him in the Bread of the Supper.

This, however, is practically to explain away the presence of Christ in

the Bread (to which Luther adheres so firmly) and to dissolve it into

a purely subjective apprehension. Nevertheless, at least according to

certain passages, he was anxious to see the Sacrament adored and did

not hesitate to do so himself.[1741]

To the belief that Christ’s Body is truly received in Communion he held

fast, as already stated, till the end of his life.

The report, that, in the days of extreme mental tension previous to

his last journey to Eisleben, he abandoned the doctrine of the Real

Presence, hitherto so passionately advocated, in order to conciliate

the Zwinglians or Melanchthonians, is a fable, put into circulation by

older Protestant writers.[1742] In view of the proofs, met with up to

the very last, of his belief to the contrary, we may safely dismiss

also the doubtful account to be mentioned directly which seems to

speak in favour of his having abandoned it.

Luther’s “Kurtz Bekentnis” of September, 1544, certainly was true to

his old standpoint and showed that he wished “the fanatics and enemies

of the Sacrament, Carlstadt, ‘Zwingel,’ Œcolampadius, Stinkfield

[Schwenkfeld] and their disciples at Zürich, or wherever else they

be, to be sternly condemned and avoided.”[1743] In his last sermon at

Wittenberg on Jan. 17, 1546, he warned his hearers against reason,

that “fair prostitute and devil’s bride,” and, indirectly, also

against the Sacramentarians and those who attacked his doctrine of

the Supper. George Major relates that when he was sent, on Jan. 10,

1546, by Luther to the religious conference at Ratisbon he found

scribbled on his door these words: “Our professors must be examined on

the Supper of the Lord”; Luther also admonished him not to endeavour

to conceal or pass over in silence belief in the Real Presence. On

his journey Luther said much the same in the sermons he delivered

at Halle and Eisleben; even in his last sermon at Eisleben we find

the Sacramentarians described as seducers of mankind and foes of the

Gospel.[1744]

That Luther changed his opinion is the purport of a communication,

which, after his death, Melanchthon is said to have made to A. R.

Hardenberg, a friend of his. Hardenberg speaks of it in a document

in his own handwriting preserved in the Bremen municipal archives.

There he certainly affirms that Melanchthon had told him how that

Luther, before his last journey, had said to him: People have gone

too far in the matter of the Supper; he himself had often thought

of writing something so as to smooth things down and thus allow the

Church again to be reunited; this, however, might have cast doubts on

his doctrine as a whole; he preferred therefore to commend the case to

God; Melanchthon and the others might find it possible to do something

after his death.[1745]--Evidently it is our duty to endeavour to

understand and explain this account, however grounded our suspicions

may be. One recent Protestant writer has justly remarked: “There must

be something behind Hardenberg’s testimony”[1746]; and another, that

it “cannot be simply set aside.”[1747]

J. Hausleiter, in 1898, seems to have given the most likely

explanation of it:[1748] After Luther’s death Amsdorf complained

bitterly that the Wittenberg edition of Luther’s German works, then

in the press, had not preserved the real Luther undefiled; he pointed

out, that, in the second volume, Luther’s violent attack on the

Sacramentarians had been omitted where (at the end of the work “Das

diese Wort Christi ‘Das ist mein Leib, etce.,’ noch fest stehen,”

1527) he had said that the devil with the help of Bucer and his denial

of the Sacrament had “smeared his filth” over Luther’s books; that

Bucer was a “sly, slippery, slimy devil”; where Luther had spoken of

Bucer’s “poisonous malice, murderous stabs and arch-scoundreldom,”

thanks to which he had “defiled, poisoned and defamed” Luther’s

teaching, and where a protest was registered against the assertion

that “to begin with,” Philip too had taught the same as the

Sacramentarians, viz. that there is “nothing but bread in the Lord’s

Supper.”[1749] It was known that those pages had been suppressed in

the new edition at Luther’s own hint. This was stated by George Rörer,

Luther’s former assistant, who supervised the correction. He said,

“he did this with the knowledge and by the request and command of

Luther, because M. Bucer, who had there been so severely handled as a

notable enemy of the Sacrament, had since been converted.” Of any real

conversion of Bucer there can be no question, but as he was then doing

good work at Ratisbon in the interests of the new Evangel it may be

that Luther--perhaps moved thereto by his Electer at the instance of

the Landgrave of Hesse--consented to display such indulgence. This may

well have formed the subject of the communication Hardenberg received

from Melanchthon, only that the one or the other, or possibly both,

in the interests of the movement hostile to Luther’s Sacramental

teaching, distorted and exaggerated the facts of the case, and thus

gave rise to the legend of Luther’s change of views.

Support for it may also have been seen in the circumstance that

Luther, in spite of Melanchthon’s defection on the doctrine of the

Sacrament, never broke off his relations with him. In his severe

“Kurtz Bekentnis” (1544) he forbore from attacking Melanchthon

either openly or covertly. Even in 1545, in the Preface to his own

Latin works, Luther bestowed his well-known eulogy on Melanchthon’s

“_Loci theologici_.”[1750] It has been pointed out elsewhere that the

services his friend rendered him had been and continued to be too

important to allow of Luther’s breaking with him.[1751]

Though Luther was unflinching in his advocacy of the Presence of Christ

together with his pet theories of Impanation and Ubiquity, yet he waged

an implacable war on the Sacrifice of the Mass. As, however, we have

reserved this for later consideration we shall here only point out,

that both his doctrine and his practice with regard to the Sacrament of

the Altar suffered by his unhappy opposition to the Mass in which it is

celebrated and offered, even more so than by the modifications he had

already introduced into the older doctrine.

_Invocation of the Saints._

Among those doctrines of the Church from which Luther cut himself

adrift only little by little and at the expense of a wrench, must be

numbered those dealing with the invocation of the Saints and with

Purgatory.

The grand and inspiring belief of the Church in the Communion of

Saints, which weaves a close and common band between the living and

those souls who have already passed into heaven and those, again, who

are still undergoing purification, had at first taken deep root in

Luther’s mind. Later on, however, the foundations of this doctrine

became more and more undermined, partly owing to his theories on the

Church and the Mediatorship of Christ, partly and even more so by

his ardent wish to strike a deadly blow at the practical life of the

Catholic Church and all that “Popish” worship had erected on this

particular doctrine. Veneration of the Saints and intercession for

the dead loomed very large among the religious practices dear to the

Christian people, though, at that time, they were disfigured by abuses.

Luther adroitly used the abuses as a lever for his work.

As late as 1519, in one of his sermons, he urged his hearers to

call upon the angels and the Saints; just as on earth one Christian

may pray for another and be asked for his prayers, so, as he

justly remarks, is it also with the Saints in heaven.[1752] In his

Church-postils, however, he raises his voice to condemn the “awful

idolatry” by which (so he thought) the “trust” which we should

repose on God alone was put in the Saints.[1753] From that time

he never tires of declaring that there was “no text or warrant in

Scripture for the worship of the Saints”; all he will sanction is the

humble petition to the Saints: “Pray for me.”[1754] He required the

Wittenberg Canons to erase from the liturgical prayers all reference

to the intercession of the saints, as misleading and likely to give

offence;[1755] this, in spite of the fact that the liturgical prayers

of the Church’s earliest days loudly voice the opposite view. The

“Sendbrieff von Dolmetzscheñ” of 1530 gives even stronger expression

to his abhorrence for all invocation of the Saints. There he says that

the light of the Gospel was now so bright that no one could find any

excuse for remaining in darkness.[1756]

In his Schmalkalden Articles the invocation of Saints has become one

of the “abuses of Endchrist”; for “though the angels in heaven pray

for us,” so he explains, again reverting to the ancient teaching of

the Church, “and also the Saints on earth, and, perhaps, even those in

heaven, yet it does not follow that we are to invoke the angels and

the Saints.”[1757]

_Mary._

As long as he admitted the invocation of Saints, Luther assigned a

prominent place to that of the Blessed Virgin. “She is to be invoked,”

he writes in 1521, “that God may give and do according to her will what

we ask.”[1758] After he had changed his mind concerning the saints, he

was unwilling to allow this any longer.

Owing, however, to the after effects of his Catholic education, here

particularly noticeable in him, we meet with many beautiful sayings of

his in support of the worship of Mary, although as time went on he grew

ever more hostile to it.

“You know,” so he says in a sermon published in 1522, “that the honour

paid to the Mother of God is so deeply implanted in the heart of man

that we dislike to hear it spoken against, but would much rather it

were fostered and encouraged.”[1759]

“O Blessed Mother,” he had already said, “O most worthy Virgin, be

mindful of us and grant that the Lord may do great things in us

also.” Such were his words in 1516 in a sermon on the Feast of the

Assumption.[1760]

In the same year, on the Feast of our Lady’s Conception, he speaks

of her name, which he says is derived from “_stilla maris_,”

and extols her as the one pure drop in the ocean of the “_massa

perditionis_.”[1761] To his admission here that her conception was

immaculate he was still true in 1527, as has already been shown; after

1529, however, the passage containing this admission was expunged

when the sermon in question was reprinted.[1762] In his home-postils

he says of her conception: “Mary the Mother was surely born of sinful

parents, and in sin, as we were”; any explanation of the universal

belief to the contrary and of his own previous statements he does not

attempt.[1763]

Owing to his belief in the Divinity of the Son, Luther continued to

call Mary the “Mother of God.” Even later he shared the Catholic

view that Mary by the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost and at the

birth of the Saviour had been sanctified by God as the instrument of

the great mystery of the Incarnation through her Divine Son.[1764]

He was also firm in accepting the Virginity of the Mother of God as

expressed in the Apostles’ Creed. Nevertheless, according to his own

confession, this appealed to him less than her “wifehood,” and when

praising her he prefers to dwell on the latter, i.e. on the Virgin’s

motherhood.[1765] Mary was to him ever a Virgin, before, during and

after childbirth, and, in the last sermon he delivered at Eisleben

before his death, he insists on this perpetual Virginity, says she

ever remained a “pure, chaste maid,” and praises her humility,

because, though a “most pure and most holy Virgin,” yet after the

birth of her Son, obediently to the Law, she came to the Temple to be

purified.[1766]

Luther’s work on the Magnificat (1521), of which we have already

spoken (p. 237, n. 1), marks a turning-point. Although much that it

says of the greatness, dignity and virtues of Mary might well be

quoted, yet it contains some curiously superfluous warnings, for

instance, not to look on Mary as a “helpful goddess.”[1767] In spite

of any abuse which may possibly have mingled with her worship, the

Catholic people were well able to distinguish between the veneration

and confidence given to her and those acts of worship which belong

solely to God. Catholicism allowed full play to the deepest and

warmest feelings towards the ideal of the purest of women, without in

any way detracting from the exclusive rights of her Divine Son; on the

contrary, devotion to the Mother tended only to increase the honour

paid to the Son.

His “Exposition of the Magnificat” has frequently been taken as a

proof of Luther’s great piety. It indeed contains many good thoughts,

even apart from those relating to Mary, but in numerous passages the

author uses his pen for a highly prejudiced vindication of his new

teachings on the state of grace.

It should also be borne in mind that the printers started on the

book just before the Diet of Worms, and that it was intended to

attract and secure the support of the future rulers of the Saxon

Electorate. Luther was also engaged at that time on his exceedingly

violent screed against Catharinus, in which he attempts to reveal the

Pope in his true character as Antichrist. When, after the Diet of

Worms, he continued his work on the Magnificat he was certainly in

no mood to compose a book of piety on Mary. The result was that the

book became to all intents and purposes a controversial tract, which

cannot be quoted as a proof of his piety or serenity of mind during

those struggles. Luther’s Magnificat is as little a serious work of

edification and piety as his exposition of certain of the Psalms,

which appeared almost simultaneously and was also directed “against

the Pope and the doctrine of men.”

In the “Prayer-book” which Luther prepared for the press he retained

the “Hail Mary” together with the “Our Father” and the “I believe,”

but he cut it down to the angel’s greeting, as contained in the Bible,

and taught that thereby honour was merely to be given God for the

grace announced to Mary.[1768] He frequently preached, e.g. in 1523,

on the wrong use of this prayer.[1769]

In the Augsburg Confession, Melanchthon, when rejecting the invocation

of the Saints, made no exception in favour of Mary. Yet in the

“_Apologia_” of the Confession also composed by him, he says, that

“Mary prays for the Church,” that she is “most worthy of the greatest

honour” (“_dignissima amplissimis honoribus_”), but is not to be made

equal to Christ, as the Catholics fancied.[1770]

Luther did not merely reproach the Catholics for making a goddess of

Mary; he even ventured some remarks scarcely to the credit of the

Mother of God; for a while, so he says, she had possessed only a

small measure of faith and God had sometimes allowed her to waver;

such statements were due to his idea that all Christians, in order to

preserve a firm faith in their hearts, must ever be waging battle. On

these statements, Eck, in his Homilies, was very severe.[1771]

An attitude hostile to all the Catholic veneration for Mary is

expressed by Luther in a sermon in 1522 on the Feast of our Lady’s

Nativity, included in his church-postils. It is true that we “owe

honour to Mary,” he says, rather frigidly, at the very beginning, “but

we must take care that we honour her aright.” He proceeds to explain

that “we have gone too far in honouring her and esteem her more highly

than we should.” For in the first place we have thereby “disparaged”

Christ, the Redeemer, and “by the profound honour paid to the Mother

of God derogated from the honour and knowledge of Christ”; secondly,

the honour due to our fellow-men and the love of the poor has thereby

been forgotten. If it is a question of honouring anyone on account of

his holiness, “then we are just as holy as Mary and the other Saints,

however great, provided we believe in Christ.” That she “has a greater

grace,” viz. a higher dignity as the Mother of God, “is not due to any

merit of hers, but simply because we cannot all be Mothers of God;

otherwise she is on the same level with us.”[1772]

Of the anthem “_Salve Regina_,” which is “sung throughout the world to

the ringing of great bells,” he says, that it was a “great blasphemy

against God,” for it terms Mary, the mother of mercy, our life, our

sweetness and our hope. “The ‘_Regina Caeli_’ is not much better,

since it calls her Queen of Heaven.” Why should her prayers have so

much value, he asks, as though unaware of the explanations given by

so many ecclesiastical writers, particularly by St. Bernard. “Your

prayers, O Christian, are as dear to me as hers. And why? Because if

you believe that Christ lives in you as much as in her then you can

help me as much as she.”[1773]

In this discourse again he ventures on the calumny on the Catholic

veneration of Mary, of which he was to make such frequent use later;

it is equivalent to adoration; “To seek to make of Mary an idol, that

we cannot and may not do. We will not have her as a mediator, but as

an advocate [to this Luther always clung] we will gladly accept her,

like the other Saints. But people have put her above all the choirs

of angels.”[1774] Neither here nor elsewhere does he attempt to prove

her alleged adoration or the idolatry of the Catholics; when, a little

further on, he launches forth against the pilgrimages made by common

folk to churches and chapels of our Lady, he is straying from the

subject and dealing with a practice of the faithful, quite harmless

and wholesome in itself, whatever abuses it may then have involved.

The veneration for the holy Mother of the Redeemer, that high ideal

of humility and purity of heart, so devoid of the slightest trace of

sensuality, springs from the soil of humility, chastity and pure,

unselfish love. Luther’s whole mental outlook was not too favourable

to such necessary dispositions. His moral character, as exhibited

more particularly during the period after his stay at the Wartburg

and previous to his marriage, scarcely harmonised with the delicate

blossoms of this cultus, nor can we be surprised, looking at it

psychologically, that the chief alteration in his views took place

just at this time.

That hostile instinct, shared by so many heretics in their attitude

towards the most holy of women, outweighed in his soul the vestiges

of Catholic feeling he still retained. Malice impelled him to blacken

the honour which the people loved to pay to Mary; this he strove to

paint as mere idolatry, seeking unceasingly to affix this stigma on

Catholicism. Controversy stifled in him the impulse to that pious

veneration which he himself had admitted to be so well-founded and so

natural.

_Purgatory._

In the Schmalkalden Articles the olden doctrine of Purgatory was

rejected by Luther as follows: Purgatory, “with all its pomp, worship

and traffic, must be held to be nothing more than a mere phantom of the

devil,” born of “that dragon’s tail” the Mass.[1775]

Although in this condemnation Luther’s customary polemical exaggeration

of abuses clearly plays a part, yet from his Indulgence Theses and

“Resolutions” down to the sentence in the Articles of Schmalkalden the

working of his mind can clearly be traced, expressed as it is, now in

rejection on principle, and on theological or biblical grounds, now

in opportunist and cynical attacks on the Church’s ancient doctrine

of Purgatory. The temporal penalties which, according to the teaching

of the Church, must be paid by the suffering souls notwithstanding

their state of grace, found no place in Luther’s new theory of a faith

which covered over everything. According to the usual view venial sins

also are forgiven in the next world, thanks to the purifying pains of

Purgatory. But of venial sins as distinct from grievous sins Luther

refused to hear. He had nothing but evasive replies to the objection

which presented itself of its own accord, viz. that mortals when they

die often seem ripe neither for heaven nor for hell.[1776]