THE BULL OF EXCOMMUNICATION, AND LUTHER'S REPLY.
At Rome, the bull, now newly arrived in Germany, had been published
as early as June 16. It had been considered, when at length, under
the pressure of the influences described above, the subject was
taken up in earnest, very carefully in the Papal consistory. The
jurists there were of opinion that Luther should be cited once more,
but their views did not prevail. As for the negotiations, conducted
through Miltitz, for an examination of Luther before the Archbishop
of Treves, no heed was now paid to the affair.
The bull begins with the words, 'Arise, O Lord, and avenge Thy
cause.' It proceeds to invoke St. Peter, St. Paul, the whole body of
the saints, and the Church. A wild boar had broken into the vineyard
of the Lord, a wild beast was there seeking to devour &c. Of the
heresy against which it was directed, the Pope, as he states, had
additional reason to complain, since the Germans, among whom it had
broken out, had always been regarded by him with such tender
affection: he gives them to understand that they owed the Empire to
the Romish Church. Forty-one propositions from Luther's writings are
then rejected and condemned, as heretical or at least scandalous and
corrupting, and his works collectively are sentenced to be burnt. As
to Luther himself, the Pope calls God to witness that he has
neglected no means of fatherly love to bring him into the right way.
Even now he is ready to follow towards him the example of Divine
mercy which wills not the death of a sinner, but that he should be
converted and live; and so once more he calls upon him to repent, in
which case he will receive him graciously like the prodigal son.
Sixty days are given him to recant. But if he and his adherents will
not repent, they are to be regarded as obstinate heretics and
withered branches of the vine of Christ, and must be punished
according to law. No doubt the punishment of burning was meant; the
bull in fact expressly condemns the proposition of Luther which
denounces the burning of heretics.
All this was called then at Rome, and has been called even latterly
by the Papal party, 'the tone rather of fatherly sorrow than of
penal severity.' The means by which the bull had been brought about,
made it fitting that Eck himself should be commissioned with its
circulation throughout Germany, and especially with its publication
in Saxony. More than this, he received the unheard of permission to
denounce any of the adherents of Luther at his pleasure, when he
published the bull.
Accordingly, Eck had the bull publicly posted up in September at
Meissen, Merseburg, and Brandenburg. He was charged, moreover, by a
Papal brief, in the event of Luther's refusing to submit, to call
upon the temporal power to punish the heretic. But at Leipzig, where
the magistrate, by order of Duke George, had to present him with a
goblet full of money, he was so hustled in the streets by his
indignant opponents, that he was forced to take refuge in the
Convent of St. Paul, and hastened to pursue his journey by night,
whilst the city officials rode about the neighbourhood with the
bull. A number of Wittenberg students, adds Miltitz, made their
appearance also at Leipzig, who 'behaved in a good-for-nothing way
towards him.'
At Wittenberg, where the publication of the bull rested with the
university, the latter notified its arrival to the Elector, and
objected for various reasons to publish it, alleging, in particular,
that Eck, its sender, was not furnished with proper authority from
the Pope. Luther for the first time felt himself, as he wrote to
Spalatin, really free, being at length convinced that the Popedom
was Antichrist and the seat of Satan. He was not at all discouraged
by a letter sent at this time by Erasmus from Holland to Wittenberg,
saying that no hopes could be placed in the Emperor Charles, as he
was in the hands of the Mendicant Friars. As for the bull, so
extraordinary were its contents, that he wished to consider it a
forgery.
Still the promise which Luther had given to his Augustinian
brethren, only a few weeks before, under pressure from Miltitz,
remained as yet unfulfilled. Nor did Miltitz himself wish the
threads of the web then spun to slip from his fingers. Even at this
hour, with the consent and at the wish of the Elector, an interview
had been arranged between Miltitz and Luther at the Castle of
Lichtenberg (now Lichtenburg, in the district of Torgau), where the
monks of St. Antony were then housed. Just as Miltitz, as we have
seen, had thought to be able to avert the bull by getting Luther to
write a letter to the Pope, so now he promised the Elector still to
conciliate the Pope by that means. Only the letter was to be dated
back to the time, before the publication of the bull, when Luther
first gave his consent to write it. Its substance was to be as then
agreed upon; Luther, as Miltitz expressed it, was to 'eulogise the
Pope personally in a manner agreeable to him,' and at the same time
submit to him an historical statement of what he had done. Luther
consented to publish a letter in these terms, in Latin and German,
under date of September 6, and immediately gave effect to his
promise.
It is hardly conceivable how Miltitz could still have nurtured such
a hope. Neither his wish to ingratiate himself with the Elector
Frederick, and to checkmate the plans of Eck whom he detested, nor
his personal vanity and flippancy of character, are sufficient to
account for it. He must have learnt from his own previous personal
intercourse with the Pope, and his experiences of the Papal court,
that Leo did not take up Church questions and controversies so
gravely and so seriously as not to remain fully open all the time to
influences and considerations of other kinds, and that around him
were parties and influential personages, arrayed in mutual hostility
and rivalry. He must have been strangely ignorant of the state of
things at Rome. But as to Luther and his cause there was no longer
any hesitation in that quarter.
In what sense Luther himself was willing to comply with the demand
of Miltitz, the contents of his letter suffice to show. He makes it
clear that nothing was further from his intention than to appease
the angry Pontiff by any dexterous artifices or concealments. The
assurance required from him, that he had no wish to attack the Pope
personally, he construes in its literal terms, apart altogether from
the official character and acts of Leo. And in fact against his
personal character and conduct he had never said a word. But he
takes this opportunity, at the same time, of speaking to him plainly,
as a Christian is bound to do to his fellow-Christian; of repeating
to him, face to face, the severest charges yet made by him against
the Romish chair; of excusing Leo's own conduct in this chair simply
and solely on the ground that he regarded him as a victim of the
monstrous corruption which surrounded him, and of warning him once
more against it as a brother. He tells him to his face that he
himself, the Holy Father, must acknowledge that the Papal see was
more wicked and shameful than any Sodom, Gomorrah, or Babylon; that
God's wrath had fallen upon it without ceasing; that Rome, which
had once been the gate of heaven, was now an open jaw of hell. Most
earnestly he warns Leo against his flatterers,--the 'ear-ticklers'
who would make him a God. He assures him that he wishes him all
that is good, and therefore he wishes that he should not be devoured
by these jaws of hell, but on the contrary, should be freed from
this godless idolatry of parasites, and be placed in a position where
he would be able to live on some smaller ecclesiastical preferment,
or on his own patrimony. As for the historical retrospect which
Miltitz wanted, and which Luther briefly appends to this letter, all
that the latter says in vindication of himself is, that it was not
his own fault, but that of his enemies, who had driven him further
and further onward, that 'no small part of the unchristian doings at
Rome had been dragged to light.'
[Illustration: Fig. 23.--TITLE-PAGE, slightly reduced, of the
original Tract 'On the Liberty of a Christian Man.' The Saxon swords
are represented above, and the arms of Wittenberg below.]
Luther sent with this letter, as a present to the Pope, a pamphlet
entitled 'On the Liberty of a Christian Man.' This is no
controversial treatise intended for the great struggle of churchmen
and theologians, but a tract to minister to 'simple men.' For their
benefit he wished to describe compendiously the 'sum of a Christian
life'; to deal thoroughly with the question, 'What was a Christian?
and how he was to use the liberty which Christ had won and given to
him.' He premises as an axiom that a Christian is a free lord over
all things, and subject to nobody. He considers, first of all, the
new, inner, spiritual man, and asks what makes him a good and free
Christian. Nothing external, he says, can make him either good or
free. It does not profit the soul if the body puts on sacred
vestments, or fasts, or prays with the lips. To make the soul live,
and be good and free, there is nothing else in heaven or on earth
but the Holy Scriptures, in other words, God's Word of comfort by
His dear Son Jesus Christ, through Whom our sins are forgiven us. In
this Word the soul has perfect joy, happiness, peace, light, and all
good things in abundance. And to obtain this, nothing more is
required of the soul than what is told us in the Scriptures, namely,
to give itself to Jesus with firm faith and to trust joyfully in
Him. At first, no doubt, God's command must terrify a man, seeing
that it must be fulfilled, or man condemned; but when once he has
been brought thereby to recognise his own worthlessness, then comes
God's promise and the gospel, and says, Have faith in Christ, in
Whom I promise thee all grace; believe in Him, and thou hast Him. A
right faith so blends the soul with God's word, that the virtues of
the latter become her own, as the iron becomes glowing hot from its
union with the fire. And the soul becomes joined to Christ as a
bride to the bridegroom; her wedding-ring is faith. All that Christ,
the rich and noble bridegroom possesses, He makes His bride's; all
that she has, He takes unto Himself. He takes upon Himself her sins,
so that they are swallowed up in Him and in His unconquerable
righteousness. Thus the Christian is exalted above all things, and
becomes a lord; for nothing can injure his salvation; everything
must be subject to him and help towards his salvation; it is a
spiritual kingdom. And thus all Christians are priests; they can all
approach God through Christ, and pray for others. 'Who can
comprehend the honour and dignity of a Christian? Through his
kingship he has power over all things, through his priesthood he has
power over God, for God does what he desires and prays for.'
But the Christian, as Luther states in his second axiom, is not only
this new inner man. He has another will in his flesh, which would
make him captive to sin. Accordingly, he dare not be idle, but must
work hard to drive out evil lusts and mortify his body. He lives,
moreover, among other men on earth, and must labour together with
them. And as Christ, though Himself full of the Kingdom of God, for
our sake stripped Himself of His power and ministered as a servant,
so should we Christians, to whom God through Christ has given the
Kingdom of all goodness and blessedness, and therewith all that is
sufficient to satisfy us, do freely and cheerfully for our heavenly
Father whatever pleases Him, and do unto our neighbours as Christ
has done for us. In particular, we must not despise the weakness and
weak faith of our neighbour, nor vex him with the use of our
liberty, but rather minister with all we have to his improvement.
Thus the Christian, who is a free lord and master, becomes a useful
servant of all and subject to all. But he does these works, not that
he may become thereby good and blessed in the sight of God; he is
already blessed through his faith, and what he does now he does
freely and gratuitously. Luther thus sums up in conclusion: 'A
Christian lives not in himself, but in Christ and in his neighbour;
in Christ through faith, in his neighbour through love. Through
faith he rises above himself in God, from God he descends again
below himself through love; and yet remains always in God and in
godlike love.'
This tract was a remarkable pendant to Luther's remarkable letter to
the Pope. His Holiness, so he wrote to him in his dedication, might
taste from its contents what kind of occupation the author would
rather, and might with more profit, be engaged in, if only the
godless Papal flatterers did not hinder him. And in fact the Pope
could plainly see from it how Luther lived and laboured, with his
inmost being, in these profound but simple ideas of Christian truth,
and how he was inwardly compelled and delighted to represent them in
their noble simplicity. The whole tone and tenor of this dedication,
so tranquil, fervent, and tender, shows further what profound peace
reigned in the soul of this vehement champion of the faith, and what
happiness the excommunicated heretic found in his God. Next to
Luther's Address to the German Nobility and his Babylonian
Captivity, this tract is one of the most important contributions of
his pen to the cause of the Reformation. It is clear from its pages
that when Luther wrote his letter, at the request of Miltitz, to the
Pope, he had no thought of making peace with the Papacy, or of even
a moment's truce in the campaign.
The bull of excommunication he met in the manner intimated to
Spalatin from the first. He launched a short tract against it, 'On
the new Bull and Falsehoods of Eck,' treating it as Eck's forgery.
This he followed up with another tract in German and Latin, 'Against
the Bull of Antichrist.' He was resolved to unmask the blindness and
wickedness of the Roman evil-doers. He saw partly his own real
doctrines perverted, partly the Christian and Scriptural truth that
his doctrines contained, stigmatised as heresy and condemned. He
declared that if the Pope did not retract and condemn this bull, no
one would doubt that he was the enemy of God and the disturber of
Christianity.
He then solemnly renewed, on November 17, the appeal to a Council,
which he had made two years before. But how was his attitude changed
since then! He, the accused and condemned heretic, now himself
proclaims condemnation and ruin to his enemy, the antichristian
power that seeks to domineer the world. Nor is it only from a future
Council, and one constituted as the previous great assemblies of the
Church, that he expects and demands protection for himself and the
Christian truth; again and again he calls upon the Christian laity
to assist him. Thus in his appeal now published, he invites the
Emperor Charles, the Electors and Princes of the Empire, the counts,
barons, and nobles, the town councils, and all Christian authorities
throughout Germany, to support him and his appeal, that so the true
Christian belief and the freedom of a Council might be saved.
Similarly, in the Latin edition of his tract against the bull, he
calls upon the Emperor Charles, on Christian kings and princes and
all who believe in Christ, together with all Christian bishops and
learned doctors, to resist the iniquities of the Popedom. In his
German version he defends himself against the charge of stirring up
the laity against the Pope and priesthood; but he asks if, indeed,
the laity will be reconciled, or the Pope excused, by the command to
burn the truth. The Pope himself, he says, and his bishops, priests,
and monks are wrestling to their own downfall, through this
iniquitous bull, and want to bring upon themselves the hatred of the
laity. 'What wonder were it, should princes, nobles, and laymen beat
them on the head, and hunt them out of the country?'
Hutten now followed with a stormy demand for a general rising of
Germany against the tyranny of Rome, whose hirelings and emissaries
were to be chased away by main force. When two papal legates,
Aleander and Caraccioli, appeared on the Rhine to execute the bull
and work upon the Emperor in person, he was anxious to strike a blow
at them on his own account, little good as, on calm reflection, it
was evident could have come of it. Luther, on hearing of it, could
not refrain remarking in a letter to Spalatin, 'If only he had
caught them!'
Luther however persisted in repeating to himself and his friends the
warning of the Psalmist, 'Put not your trust in princes, nor in any
child of man, for there is no help in them.' Nay, when Spalatin, who
had gone with the Elector to the Emperor, told him how little was to
be hoped for from the latter, he expressed to him his joy at finding
that he too had learned the same lesson. God, he said, would never
have entrusted simple fishermen with the Gospel, if it had needed
worldly potentates to propagate it. It was to the Last Day that he
looked with full confidence for the overthrow of Antichrist. And,
indeed, his idea that Antichrist had long reigned at Rome was
connected in his mind with the belief that the Last Day was close at
hand. Of this, as he wrote to Spalatin, he was convinced, and for
many strong reasons.
And in fact the Emperor Charles, before leaving the Netherlands, on
his journey to Aix-la-Chapelle to be crowned, had already been
induced by Aleander to take his first step against Luther. He had
consented to the execution of the sentence in the bull, condemning
Luther's works to be burnt, and had issued orders to that effect
throughout the Netherlands. They were burnt in public at Louvain,
Cologne, and Mayence. At Cologne this was done while he was staying
there. It was in this town that the two legates approached the
Elector Frederick with the demand to have the same done in his
territory, and to execute due punishment on the heretic himself, or
at least to keep him close prisoner, or deliver him over to the
Pope. Frederick however refused, saying that Luther must first be
heard by impartial judges. Erasmus also, who was then staying at
Cologne, expressed himself to the same effect, in an opinion
obtained from him by Frederick through Spalatin. At an interview
with the Elector he said to him, 'Luther has committed two great
faults; he has touched the Pope on his crown and the monks on their
bellies.' The Archbishop of Mayence, Cardinal Albert, received
directions from the Pope to take more decisive and energetic steps
against Hutten as well. The burning of Luther's books at Mayence was
effected without hindrance, though Hutten was able to inform Luther
that, according to the account received from a friend, Aleander
narrowly escaped stoning, and the multitude were all the more
inflamed in favour of Luther. The legates in triumph proceeded to
carry out their mission elsewhere.
Luther, however, lost no time in following up their execution of the
bull with his reply. On December 10 he posted a public announcement
that the next morning, at nine o'clock, the antichristian decretals,
that is, the Papal law-books, would be burnt, and he invited all the
Wittenberg students to attend. He chose for this purpose a spot in
front of the Elster Gate, to the east of the town, near the
Augustinian convent. A multitude poured forth to the scene. With
Luther appeared a number of other doctors and masters, and among
them Melancthon and Carlstadt. After one of the masters of arts had
built up a pile, Luther laid the decretals upon it, and the former
applied the fire. Luther then threw the Papal bull into the flames,
with the words 'Because thou hast vexed the Holy One of the Lord,
[Footnote: It is obvious that he refers to Christ, who is spoken of
in Scripture as the Holy One of God (St. Mark i. 24, Acts ii. 27),
not, as ignorance and malice have suggested, to himself.] let the
everlasting fire consume thee.' Whilst Luther with the other
teachers returned to the town, some hundreds of students remained
upon the scene, and sang a Te Deum, and a Dirge for the decretals.
After the ten o'clock meal, some of the young students, grotesquely
attired, drove through the town in a large carriage, with a banner
emblazoned with a bull four yards in length, amidst the blowing of
brass trumpets and other absurdities. They collected from all
quarters a mass of Scholastic and Papal writings, and especially
those of Eck, and hastened with them and the bull, to the pile,
which their companions had meanwhile kept alight. Another Te Deum
was then sung, with a requiem, and the hymn 'O du armer Judas.'
Luther at his lecture the next day told his hearers with great
earnestness and emotion what he had done. The Papal chair he said,
would yet have to be burnt. Unless with all their hearts they
abjured the Kingdom of the Pope, they could not obtain salvation.
He next announced and justified his act in a short treatise entitled
'Why the Books of the Pope and his disciples were burnt by Dr.
Martin Luther.' 'I, Martin Luther,' he says, 'doctor of Holy
Scripture, an Augustinian of Wittenberg, make known hereby to
everyone, that by my wish, advice, and act, on Monday after St.
Nicholas' day, in the year 1520, the books of the Pope of Rome, and
of some of his disciples, were burnt. If anyone wonders, as I fully
expect they will, and asks for what reason and by whose command I
did it, let this be his answer.' Luther considers it his bounden
duty, as a baptized Christian, a sworn doctor of Holy Scripture, and
a daily preacher, to root out, on account of his office, all
unchristian doctrines. The example of others, on whom the same duty
devolved, but who shrank from doing as he did, would not deter him.
'I should not,' he says, 'be excused in my own sight; of that my
conscience is assured, and my spirit, by God's grace, has been
roused to the necessary courage.' He then proceeds to cite from the
law-books thirty erroneous doctrines, in glorification of the
Papacy, which deserved to be burnt. The sum total of this Canon law
was as follows: 'The Pope is a God on earth, above all things,
heavenly and earthly, spiritual and temporal, and everything is his,
since no one durst say, What doest thou?' This, says Luther, is the
abomination of desolation (St: Matth. xxiv. 15), or in other words
Antichrist (2 Thess. ii. 4).
Simultaneously with this, he set out in a longer and exhaustive work
the 'ground and reason' of all his own articles which had been
condemned by the bull. He takes his stand upon God's word in
Scripture against the dogmas of the earthly God;--upon the
revelation by God Himself, which, to everyone who studies it deeply
and with devotion, will lighten his understanding, and make clear
its substance and meaning. What though, as he is reminded, he is
only a solitary, humble man, he is sure of this, that God's Word is
with him.
To Staupitz, who felt faint-hearted and desponding about the bull,
Luther wrote, saying that, when burning it, he trembled at first and
prayed; but now he felt more rejoiced than at any other act in all
his life. He now released himself finally from the restraints of
those monastic rules, with which, as we have remarked before, he had
always tormented himself, besides performing the higher duties of
his calling. He was freed now, as he wrote to his friend Lange, by
the authority of the bull, from the commands of his Order and of the
Pope, being now an excommunicated man. Of this he was glad; he
retained merely the garb and lodging of a monk: he had more than
enough of real duties to perform with his daily lectures and
sermons, with his constant writings, educational, edifying, and
polemical, and with his letters, discourses, and the assistance he
was able to give his brethren.
By this bold act, Luther consummated his final rupture with the
Papal system, which for centuries had dominated the Christian world,
and had identified itself with Christianity. The news of it must
also have made the fire which his words had kindled throughout
Germany, blaze out in all its violence. He saw now, as he wrote to
Staupitz, a storm raging, such as only the Last Day could allay; so
fiercely were passions aroused on both sides.
Germany was then, in fact, in a state of excitement and tension more
critical than at any other period of her history. Side by side with
Luther stood Hutten, in the forefront of the battle with Rome. The
bull he published with sarcastic comments: the burning of Luther's
works of devotion he denounced in Latin and German verses. Eberlin
von Günzburg, who shortly after began to wield his pen as a popular
writer on reform, called these two men 'two chosen messengers of
God.' A German Litany, which appeared early in 1521, implored God's
grace and help for Martin Luther, the unshaken pillar of the
Christian faith, and for the brave German knight Ulrich Hutten, his
Pylades.
Hutten also wrote now in German for the German people, both in prose
and verse. During his stay with Sickingen in the winter at his
Castle of Ebernburg, he read to him Luther's works, which roused in
this powerful warrior an active sympathy with the doctrines of the
Reformation, and stirred up projects in his mind, of what his own
strong arm could accomplish for the good cause.
Pamphlets, both anonymous and pseudonymous, were circulated in
increasing numbers among the people. They took the form chiefly of
dialogues, in which laymen, in a simple Christian spirit, and with
their natural understanding, complain of the needs of Christendom,
ask questions and are enlightened. The outward evils of the Papal
system are put clearly before the people:--the scandals among the
priesthood and in the convents, the iniquities of the Romish
courtiers and creatures of the Pope, who pandered with menial
subservience to the magnates at Rome, in order to fatten on German
benefices, and reap their harvest of taxes and extortions of every
kind. The simple Word of God, with its sublime evangelical truths,
must be freed from the sophistries woven round it by man, and be
made accessible to all without distinction. Luther is represented as
its foremost champion, and a true man of the people, whose testimony
penetrated to the heart. His portrait, as painted by Cranach, was
circulated together with his small tracts. In later editions the
Holy Ghost appears in the form of a dove hovering above his head;
his enemies spread the calumny, that Luther intended this emblem to
represent himself.
Satirical pictures also were used as weapons on both sides in this
contest. Cranach pourtrayed the meek and suffering Saviour on one side,
and on the other the arrogant Roman Antichrist, in the twenty-six
woodcuts of his 'Passion of Christ and Antichrist:' Luther added short
texts to these pictures.
Luther's enemies now began, on their side, to write in German and
for the people. The most talented among them, as regards vigorous,
popular German and coarse satire, was the Franciscan Thomas Murner;
but his theology seemed to Luther so weak, that he only favoured him
once with a brief allusion. He entered now into a longer literary
duel with the Dresden theologian Emser, who had challenged him after
the disputation at Leipzig, and who now published a work 'Against
the Unchristian Address of Martin Luther to the German Nobility.'
Luther replied with a tract 'To the Goat at Leipzig,' Emser with
another 'To the Bull at Wittenberg,' Luther with another 'On the
Answer of the Goat at Leipzig,' and Emser with a third, 'On the
furious Answer of the Bull at Wittenberg.' Luther, whose reply to
Emser's original work had been directed to the first sheets that
appeared, met the work, when published in its complete form, with
his 'Answer to the over-Christian, over-priestly, over-artful Book
of the Goat Emser.' Emser followed up with a 'Quadruplica,' to which
Luther rejoined with another treatise entitled 'A Refutation by
Doctor Luther of Emser's error, extorted by the most learned priest
of God, H. Emser.' When later, during Luther's residence at the
Wartburg, Emser published a reply, Luther let him have the last
word. Nothing new was contributed to the great struggle by this
interchange of polemics. The most effective point made by Emser and
the other defenders of the old Church system, was the old charge
that Luther, one man, presumed to oppose the whole of Christendom as
hitherto constituted, and by the overthrow of all foundations and
authorities of the Church, to bring unbelief, distraction, and
disturbance upon Church and State. Thus Emser says once in German
doggrel, that Luther imagined that
What Church and Fathers teach was nought;
None lived but Luther;--so he thought.
In threatening Luther with the consequences of his heresy, he never
failed to hold up Huss as a bugbear.
In Germany, as Emser complains, there was already 'such quarrelling,
noise, and uproar, that not a district, town, village, or house was
free from partisans, and one man was against another.' Aleander wrote
to Rome saying that everywhere exasperation and excitement prevailed,
and the Papal bull was laughed at. Among the adherents of the old
Church system one heard rumours of strange and terrible import. A
letter written shortly after the burning of the bull, gave out that
Luther reckoned on thirty-five thousand Bohemians, and as many Saxons
and other North Germans, who were ready, like the Goths and Vandals
of old, to march on Italy and Rome. But it was evident, even at this
stage, that from rancorous words to energetic and self-sacrificing
action was a long step to take. Even in central Germany the bull was
executed without any disturbance breaking out; and that in the
bishoprics of Meissen and Merseburg, which were adjacent to Wittenberg.
Pirkheimer and Spengler at Nüremberg, whose names Eck had included in
the bull, now bowed to the authority of the Pope, represented though
it was by their personal enemy.
Hutten, who saw his hopes in the Emperor's brother deceived, and
believed his own liberty and even his life was menaced by the Papal
bull, burned with impatient ardour to strike a blow. He was anxious
also to see whether a resort to force, after his own meaning of the
term, would meet with any support from the Elector Frederick. He
ventured even, when speaking of Sickingen's lofty mission, to refer
to the precedent of Ziska, the powerful champion of the Hussites,
who had once been the terror and abomination of the Germans. He, a
member of the proud Equestrian order, was willing now to join hands
with the towns and the burghers to do battle with Rome for the
liberty of Germany. But, passionate as were his words, it was by no
means clear what particular end under present circumstances he
sought to achieve by means of arms. Sickingen, who had grasped the
situation in a practical spirit, advised him to moderate his
impatience, and sought, for his own part, to keep on good terms with
the Emperor, in whom Hutten accordingly renewed his hopes. Each, in
short, had overrated the influence which Sickingen really possessed
with the Emperor.
In this posture of affairs, Luther reverted, with increased
conviction, to his original opinion, that the future must be left
with God alone, without trusting to the help of man. Hutten himself
had written to him, during the Diet of Worms, as follows: 'I will
fight manfully with you for Christ; but our counsels differ in this
respect, that mine are human, while you, more perfect than I am,
trust solely in those of God.' And when Hutten seemed really bent on
taking the sword, Luther declared to him and to others, with all
decision of purpose: 'I would not have man fight with force and
bloodshed for the Gospel. By the Word has the world been subdued, by
the Word has the Church been preserved, by the Word will she be
restored. As Antichrist has begun without a blow, so without a blow
will Antichrist be crushed by the Word.' Even against the Romish
hirelings among the German clergy, he would have no acts of violence
committed, such as were committed in Bohemia. He had not laboured
with the German nobility to have such men restrained by the sword,
but by advice and command. He was only afraid that their own rage
would not allow of peaceful means to check them, but would bring
misery and disaster upon their heads.
His expectation--not indeed ungrounded--of the approaching end of
the world, to which, as we have seen, he alluded in a letter to
Spalatin on January 16, 1521, Luther now announced more fully in a
book, written in answer to an attack by the Romish theologian
Ambrosius Catharinus. He based his opinion on the prophecies of the
Old and New Testament, on which Christian men and Christian
communities, sore pressed in the battle with the powers of darkness,
had been wont ere then to rely, in the sure hope of the approaching
victory of God. Luther referred in particular to the vision of
Daniel (chap. viii.), where he states that after the four great
Kingdoms of the World, the last of which Luther takes to be the
Roman Empire, a bold and crafty ruler should rise up, and 'by his
policy should cause craft to prosper in his hand, and should stand
up against the Prince of princes, but should be broken without
hand.' He saw this vision fulfilled in the Popedom; which must,
therefore, be destroyed 'without hand,' or outward force. St. Paul,
in his view, said the same in the passage in which (2 Thess. ii.) he
foreshadowed long before the Roman Antichrist. That 'man of sin' who
set himself up as God in the temple of God, 'the Lord shall consume
with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness
of His coming.' So, said Luther, the Pope and his kingdom would not
be destroyed by the laity, but would be reserved for a heavier
punishment until the coming of Christ. He must fall, as he had
raised himself, not 'with the hand,' but with the spirit of Satan.
The Spirit must kill the spirit; the truth must reveal deceit.
Luther, as we shall see, had all his life held firmly to this belief
that the end was near. As his glowing zeal pictured the loftiest
images and contrasts to his mind, so also this assurance of victory
was already before his eyes. In his hope of the near completion of
the earthly history of Christianity and mankind, he became the
instrument of carving out a new grand chapter in its career.
The announcement of the retractation required from Luther by the
bull, was to have been sent to Rome within 120 days. Luther had
given his answer. The Pope declared that the time of grace had
expired; and on the 3rd of January Leo X. finally pronounced the ban
against Luther and his followers, and an interdict on the places
where they were harboured.