TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.
—Whereas adequate character is unavalaible, superscripts are rendered
as word^[sup].
LUTHER
NIHIL OBSTAT
C. SCHUT, S.T.D.,
_Censor Deputatus._
IMPRIMATUR
EDM. CAN. SURMONT,
_Vic. Gen._
_Westmonasterii, die 10 Julii, 1913._
LUTHER
BY
HARTMANN GRISAR, S.J.
PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF INNSBRUCK
AUTHORISED TRANSLATION FROM THE GERMAN BY
E. M. LAMOND
EDITED BY
LUIGI CAPPADELTA
VOLUME III
LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO., LTD.
BROADWAY HOUSE, 68-74 CARTER LANE, E.C.
1914
A FEW PRESS OPINIONS OF VOLUME I
“His most elaborate and systematic biography ... is not merely a book
to be reckoned with; it is one with which we cannot dispense, if only
for its minute examination of Luther’s theological writings.”—_The
Athenæum._
“There is no room for any sort of question as to the welcome ready
among English-speaking Roman Catholics for this admirably made
translation of the first volume of the German monograph by Professor
Grisar on the protagonist of the Reformation in Europe.... The
book is so studiously scientific, so careful to base its teaching
upon documents, and so determined to eschew controversies that are
only theological, that it cannot but deeply interest Protestant
readers.”—_The Scotsman._
“Father Grisar has gained a high reputation in this country through
the translation of his monumental work on the History of Rome and the
Popes in the Middle Ages, and this first instalment of his life of
Luther bears fresh witness to his unwearied industry, wide learning,
and scrupulous anxiety to be impartial in his judgments as well as
absolutely accurate in matters of fact.”—_Glasgow Herald._
“It is impossible to understand the Reformation without understanding
the life and character of the great German. The man and the work
are so indissolubly united that we cannot have right judgments
about either without considering the other. It is one of Father
Grisar’s many merits that he does not forget for a single moment the
fundamental importance of this connection. The man and his work come
before us in these illuminating pages, not as more or less harmonious
elements, but as a unity, and we cannot analyse either without
constant reference to the other.”—_Irish Times._
“Professor Grisar is hard on Luther. Perhaps no Roman Catholic can
help it. But it is significant that he is hard on the anti-Lutherans
also.... He shows us, indeed, though not deliberately, that some
reformation of religion was both imperative and inevitable.... But he
is far from being overwhelmed with prejudice. He really investigates,
uses good authorities, and gives reasons for his judgments.”—_The
Expository Times._
“This Life of Luther is bound to become standard ... a model of every
literary, critical, and scholarly virtue.”—_The Month._
“The most important book on Luther that has appeared since Denifle’s
epoch-making ‘Luther und Luthertum.’ ... It is an ordered biography,
... and is therefore very probably destined to a wider general
usefulness as a Catholic authority.”—_The Irish Rosary._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER XV. ORGANISATION AND PUBLIC POSITION OF THE NEW
CHURCH _pages_ 3-108
1. LUTHER’S RELIGIOUS SITUATION. WAS HIS REACTION A
BREAK WITH RADICALISM?
The New Church, with its binding formularies of faith and
its constituted authorities, contrasted with Luther’s
earlier demands for freedom from all outward bonds. The
change which occurred in his mind in 1522. What prompted
the reaction? Did Luther, prior to 1522, ever cherish
the idea of a “religion minus dogma”? His clear design
from the beginning to preserve all the Christian elements
deemed by him essential. His assertion of the freedom
of the Christian; the negations it logically involved
pass unperceived. Greater stress laid on the positive
elements after 1522; the subjective counter-current.
Ecclesiastical anarchy. Modern Protestants more willing
than was Luther to push his principles to their
legitimate consequences. Conclusion: The reaction which
set in in 1522 implied no real change of view. How Luther
contrived to conceal from himself and from others the
incompatibility of his leanings _pages_ 3-21
2. FROM THE CONGREGATIONAL TO THE STATE CHURCH. SECULARISATIONS.
Previous to espousing the idea of the Congregational
Church Luther invites the secular authorities to
interfere; his “An den christlichen Adel”; his hopes
shattered; Luther’s new ideal: the Evangel not intended
for all; the assembly of true Christians; the Wittenberg
congregation and the model one established at Leisnig.
The Congregational Church proving impracticable, Luther
advocates a popular Church; its evolution into the
State Church as it afterwards obtained in Protestant
Germany. Secularisation of church property in the Saxon
Electorate. Luther’s view as to the use to which church
property should be put by the rulers; he complains of
princely avarice. Secularisation of the marriage-courts;
matrimonial cases dealt with by secular lawyers; Luther’s
antipathy for lawyers, how accounted for _pages_ 21-43
3. THE QUESTION OF THE RELIGIOUS WAR; LUTHER’S VACILLATING
ATTITUDE. THE LEAGUE OF SCHMALKALDEN, 1531.
Luther casts all reserve to the winds; his resolve to
proceed regardless of the consequences. His earlier
opposition to armed resistance; his memoranda on the
subject clearly evince his hesitation. His change of
view in 1530; reasons why he veered round; the change
kept secret; difficulties with the Nurembergers; a
tell-tale memorandum published by Cochlæus. The League of
Schmalkalden; Luther’s hopes and fears; a new memorandum.
Luther’s misgivings regarding Philip of Hesse’s invasion
of Würtemberg; the expedition turning out successful is
blessed by Luther. The religious war in Luther’s private
conversations in later years. Later memoranda. A question
from Brandenburg. Later attempts to deny the authenticity
of the document signed by Luther in 1530 _pages_ 43-76
4. THE TURKS WITHOUT AND THE TURKS [PAPISTS] WITHIN THE
EMPIRE.
The danger looming in the East. Luther’s earlier
pronouncements (previous to 1524) against any military
measures being taken to prevent the Turkish inroads;
attitude of the preachers; imminent danger of the
Empire after the battle of Mohacz; Luther’s “Vom Kriege
widder die Türcken” registers a change of front; his
“Heer-Predigt widder den Türcken” and the approval it
conveys of warlike measures against the invader; he robs
his call to arms of most of its force by insisting on his
pet ideas; his later sayings on the subject; the Turk not
so dangerous a foe as Popery _pages_ 76-93
5. LUTHER’S NATIONALISM AND PATRIOTISM.
Luther’s sayings about the virtues and vices of his
own countrymen; his teaching sunders the Empire and
undermines the Imperial authority; his advocacy of
resistance; the “Prophet of the Germans”; discouragement
of trade and science; Döllinger on Luther as the typical
German; the power of the strong man gifted with a facile
tongue _pages_ 93-108
CHAPTER XVI. THE DIVINE MISSION AND ITS MANIFESTATIONS _pages_ 109-168
1. GROWTH OF LUTHER’S IDEA OF HIS DIVINE MISSION.
His conviction of his special call and enlightenment;
his determination to brook no doubt; all his actions
controlled from on high; finds a confirmation of
his opinion in the extent of his success and in his
deliverance from his enemies; his untiring labours and
disregard for personal advancement; the problem presented
by the union in him of the fanatic mystic with the
homely, cheerful man enjoying to the full the good things
that come his way; his superstitions; his “temptations”
promote his progress in wisdom. His consciousness of his
Mission intensified at critical junctures, for instance,
during his stay at the Wartburg; his letter to Staupitz
in 1522; his statement: It is God’s Word. Let what cannot
stand fall _pages_ 109-128
2. HIS MISSION ALLEGED AGAINST THE PAPISTS.
How Luther describes the Pope and his Court; his call to
reform Catholics generally; his caricature of Erasmus;
how later Protestants have taken Luther’s claims.
Luther’s apocalyptic dreams; his exegesis of Daniel
viii.; the Papal Antichrist: A system rather than a man;
Luther’s work on Chronology. The Monk-Calf as a Divine
sign of the abomination of Popery and monasticism.
Luther’s “Amen” to Melanchthon’s Pope-Ass _pages_ 128-153
3. PROOFS OF THE DIVINE MISSION. MIRACLES AND PROPHECIES.
Luther on the proofs required to establish an
extraordinary mission. The distinction between ordinary
and extraordinary calls. His appeal to the rapid
diffusion of his doctrine; the real explanation of this
spread not far to seek. His appeal to his doctorate,
to his appointment by authority, and, finally, to the
“Word of Truth” which was the burden of his preaching.
Luther’s account of the “miracle” of Florentina’s escape
from her convent. His unwillingness to ask for the
grace of working miracles; his demand that the fanatics
should work miracles to substantiate their claims; his
allusions to the power of his own prayer in restoring
the sick to health. The gift of prophecy; Luther loath
to predict anything “lest it should come true.” His own
so-called predictions. Earlier predictions of mystics and
astrologers taken by him as referring to himself _pages_ 153-168
CHAPTER XVII. GLIMPSES OF A REFORMER’S MORALS
_pages_ 169-318
1. LUTHER’S VOCATION: HIS STANDARD OF LIFE.
What may rightly be looked for in a reformer of the
Church. Luther’s contemporaries on his shortcomings: Joh.
Findling, Erasmus, and Ferreri. The remedy proposed by
Luther to drive away depression, viz. self-indulgence _pages_ 169-180
2. SOME OF LUTHER’S PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES OF LIFE.
His contradictory views on sin, and on penance; his
ideas suited to meet his own case and to relieve his
own conscience. His attitude towards human endeavour;
predestination and unfreedom; the devil’s dominion; the
failings of the Saints. “Be a sinner and sin boldly, but
believe more boldly still.” Protestant strictures on
Luther’s doctrine of sin _pages_ 180-199
3. LUTHER’S ADMISSIONS CONCERNING HIS OWN PRACTICE AND
VIRTUE.
Luther on the weakness of his own faith, his doubts,
his utter misery, and the shortcomings of his life. His
attitude towards prayer; prayer mingled with imprecation;
his threatened prayer against dishonest brewers.
Christian joy and peace. Preparation for the sacraments.
Mortification and self-conquest. Mediocrity as the aim
of ethics. Lack of zeal for the salvation of all men;
disregard for missionary work. Luther in his home; minor
disappointments _pages_ 200-217
4. THE TABLE-TALK AND THE FIRST NOTES OF THE SAME.
Luther’s evening conversations at Wittenberg recorded
by his friends; utility of the notes they left;
Walch, Kroker and others on the authority of these
notes. Excerpts from the Table-Talk: The pith of the
new religion, viz. confidence in Christ. Catholic
practices and institutions described: The Mass, fasting,
confession, the religious life. Praises heaped on the
Table-Talk by Luther’s early disciples. Luther himself
responsible for the foulness of the language. Pommer’s
way of dealing with the devil. Filthy references to
the Pope; unseemly comparisons; “_adorabunt nostra
stercora_.” Such language by no means confined to the
Table-Talk; a few quotations from Luther’s “Wider das
Bapstum zu Rom.” An excuse alleged, viz. that such
language was then quite usual. Sir Thomas More’s protest.
A modern defender of Luther. The real explanation of
Luther’s unrestraint _pages_ 217-241
5. ON MARRIAGE AND SEXUALITY.
On the imperative necessity of marriage; the
irresistibility of the natural impulse; the world full
of adulterers? The “miracle” of voluntary and chaste
celibacy. Luther’s animus against Popish celibacy. His
loosening of the marriage-bond. Cases in which marriage
is annulled. Meaning of the words “If the wife refuse,
then let the maid come.” A modern secularist’s appeal
to Luther’s principles. Polygamy. Luther, after some
hesitation, comes to tolerate polygamy, but makes it a
matter of the _forum internum_. The opinions of Catholic
theologians. “Secret marriages” and concubinage; what
those have to do who are forbidden by law to contract
marriage. Denial of the sacramental character of
matrimony. Luther’s tone in speaking of things sexual; a
letter to Spalatin; regret expressed for offensive manner
of speech; odious comparisons contained in his “Vom Schem
Hamphoras” (against the Jews) and “Wider Hans Worst”
(against the Catholics); improper anecdotes; Luther, like
Abraham, “the father of a great people,” viz. of the
children of all the monks and nuns who discarded their
vows _pages_ 241-273
6. CONTEMPORARY COMPLAINTS. LATER FALSE REPORTS.
Simon Lemnius; fanatics and Anabaptists; Catholics:
Hieronymus Dungersheim, Duke George, Ambrosius
Catharinus, Hoyer of Mansfeld; Protestants: Melanchthon,
Leo Judae, Zwingli, Bullinger, Joh. Agricola. How far
the complaints were grounded. Apocryphal legends to
Luther’s discredit: Had Luther three children of his
own apart from those born to him by Bora? His jesting
letters to his wife not to be taken seriously. Did he
indulge in the “worst orgies” with the escaped nuns in
the Black Monastery of Wittenberg? The passages “which
will not bear repetition.” Whether Luther as a young monk
declared he would bring things to such a pass as to be
able to marry a girl; Wolfgang Agricola’s authority for
this statement and the information he gives concerning
Spalatin. Luther’s stay as a boy in Cotta’s house at
Eisenach no ground for a charge of immorality. Did Luther
describe the lot of the hog as the most enviable goal of
happiness? Did he allow the validity of marriage between
brother and sister? Whether he counselled people to pray
for many wives and few children; variants of an ancient
rhyme. Did he include wives in the “daily bread” for
which we pray in the Our Father? Was he the inventor of
the proverb: “Who loves not woman, wine and song, remains
a fool his whole life long”? _pages_ 273-294
7. THE “GOOD DRINK.”
Need of examining critically the charges made against
Luther; the number of his literary productions scarcely
compatible with his having been an habitual drunkard.
Testimonies of Musculus, the “Dicta Melanchthoniana,”
Ickelsamer, Lemnius, etc. Opinions of Catholics:
Catharinus, Hoyer of Mansfeld, Joh. Landau and others.
Luther’s own statements about his “Good Drink”; his
reasons for such indulgence; his distinction between
drinking and drunkenness; his reprobation of habitual
drunkenness. Melanchthon and Mathesius, two witnesses to
Luther’s temperance. From the cellar and the tap-room;
gifts in kind made to Luther; his calls on the cellar of
the Wittenberg council; the signature “_Doctor plenus_”
appended to one of his letters to be read as “_Doctor
Johannes_”; the “old wine” of the Coburg and Luther’s
indisposition in 1530; beer _versus_ wine _pages_ 294-318
CHAPTER XVIII. LUTHER AND MELANCHTHON
_pages_ 319-378
1. MELANCHTHON IN THE SERVICE OF LUTHERANISM, 1518-30.
What Luther owed to his friend. Their earlier relations;
Luther’s unstinted praise; Melanchthon’s apprehensions;
his work during the Visitation in 1527; is horrified by
Luther’s language to Duke George and saddened by the
“Protest” of the dissidents at Spires. Melanchthon at
the Diet of Augsburg, 1530. The “Augsburg Confession”
and its “Apology” characteristic of the writer; his
admission regarding the use he had made of the name of
St. Augustine; his letter to Cardinal Campeggio; some
contemporaries on Melanchthon’s “duplicity”; the Gospel
proviso; Melanchthon judged by modern historians; Luther
consoles his friend. The “Erasmian” intermediary _pages_ 319-346
2. DISAGREEMENTS AND ACCORD BETWEEN LUTHER AND MELANCHTHON.
Melanchthon first accepts the whole of Luther’s doctrine,
but afterwards deviates from it even in essentials;
his antipathy to the denial of freedom and to absolute
predestination to hell, to faith alone and to the denial
of the value of works. Penance and the motive of fear.
Differs from Luther on the question of the Supper and
gradually approaches the Zwinglian standpoint. Points
of accord with Luther; he shares Luther’s superstition
and belief in the Papal Antichrist; has unjustly been
accused of being more tolerant than his master; his ideal
a pedagogic one _pages_ 346-360
3. MELANCHTHON AT THE ZENITH OF HIS CAREER. HIS MENTAL
SUFFERINGS.
His interest in the promotion of studies; his correspondence;
his intimacy with Luther; his disappointment; what
he disliked in Luther; he meets with little sympathy in
Luther’s circle, though Luther’s personal esteem never fails
him; the rumour that he was disposed to return to the
Catholic fold; his willingness to find congenial employment
away from Wittenberg; his tendency to leave religious affairs
in the hands of the State _pages_ 360-378
CHAPTER XIX. LUTHER’S RELATIONS WITH ZWINGLI, CARLSTADT,
BUGENHAGEN AND OTHERS _pages_ 379-416
1. ZWINGLI AND THE CONTROVERSY ON THE SUPPER.
Earlier relationship between Zwingli and Luther; their
divergent opinions on the Eucharist; the Marburg
Conference between the two; the power behind this
Conference; Luther on Zwingli’s untimely end _pages_ 379-385
2. CARLSTADT.
Finding Wittenberg too warm, Carlstadt removes to
Orlamünde; his meeting with Luther in the Black Bear Inn
at Jena; he goes to Strasburg, and thence to Rothenburg;
he is driven by want to accept Luther’s conditions; he
breaks his promise, escapes to Switzerland and receives
an appointment at Basle. What Luther says of him in the
Table-Talk and in his “Widder die hymelischen Propheten”:
The defects of Carlstadt’s mission, his violent
behaviour, his attachment to the Decalogue, his wrong
interpretation of the Supper, his stress on the inward
rather than on the outward Word, his unacquaintance with
“temptations” _pages_ 385-400
3. JOHANN AGRICOLA, JACOB SCHENK, AND JOHANN EGRANUS.
Luther on Agricola. Schenk and the question of the
Law; an encounter between Schenk and Luther. Egranus’s
dissatisfaction with Luther; Luther’s references to the
“brood of Erasmus”; the burden of Egranus’s complaints _pages_ 400-404
4. BUGENHAGEN, JONAS AND OTHERS.
Luther’s admiration for Amsdorf and Brenz. Bugenhagen, a
legate “_a facie et a corde_”; his antecedents; becomes
pastor of Wittenberg; his missionary labours; his
intimacy with Luther; his letters from Denmark; a female
demoniac. Friendship between Luther and Jonas as attested
by the Table-Talk; chief events of Jonas’s life _pages_ 404-416
CHAPTER XX. ATTEMPTS AT UNION IN VIEW OF THE PROPOSED
COUNCIL _pages_ 417-449
1. ZÜRICH, MÜNSTER, THE WITTENBERG CONCORD, 1536.
The Swiss theologians on Luther and his doctrine. The
Anabaptists and Luther’s opinion of their doings at
Münster. Pope Paul III. Efforts of the Protestants to
reach an understanding among themselves; Martin Bucer;
the Wittenberg Concord; attempts to secure the adhesion
of the Swiss; Luther pockets his scruples; collapse of
the negotiations; Luther’s “Kurtz Bekentnis” _pages_ 417-424
2. EFFORTS IN VIEW OF A COUNCIL. VERGERIO VISITS LUTHER.
Pope Paul III. determines to hold a Council at Mantua
in 1537. Vergerio dispatched by the Pope to Germany to
smooth the way; the Legate invites Luther to breakfast
with him at the Castle of Wittenberg; his description of
his guest; his own subsequent apostasy _pages_ 424-430
3. THE SCHMALKALDEN ASSEMBLY OF 1537. LUTHER’S ILLNESS.
The Schmalkalden League. The league of the Catholic
Princes. Luther’s “Artickel” for the Schmalkalden
convention. Melanchthon’s endeavour to arrange matters.
Luther’s willingness to promote the Council. The
discussions at Schmalkalden; Melanchthon’s backhanded
proceedings. Luther, prostrated by an attack of stone,
desires to be removed so as not to die in a town
defiled by the presence of a Papal envoy. His parting
benediction: “_Deus vos impleat odio Papæ_.” The
agreement subsequently reached at Schmalkalden. Luther
makes his “First Will”; his recovery; his imprecatory
Paternoster _pages_ 430-438
4. LUTHER’S SPIRIT IN MELANCHTHON.
Melanchthon’s sudden change of attitude whilst at
Schmalkalden; he emulates Luther; reason of the change;
Melanchthon’s preference for the “needle,” Luther’s for
the “hog-spear.” Melanchthon’s work for Luther in the
Antinomian and Osiander controversies; his “_Confessio
Augustana variata_” tacitly sanctioned by Luther; Bucer
and Melanchthon and the “Cologne Book of Reform”; Bucer
is violently taken to task by Luther, but Melanchthon is
spared. The last joint work of Luther and Melanchthon,
viz. the “Wittenberg Reformation” (1545) _pages_ 438-449
VOL. III
THE REFORMER (I)
LUTHER
CHAPTER XV
ORGANISATION AND PUBLIC POSITION OF THE NEW CHURCH
1. Luther’s Religious Situation. Was his Reaction a Break with
Radicalism?
FROM the date of the presentation of the “Confession” at the Diet
of Augsburg, Lutheranism began to take its place as a new form of
religious belief.
Before this it had ostensibly been merely a question of reforming the
universal Church, though, as a matter of fact, the proposed reform
involved the entire reconstruction of the Church. Now, however,
Lutherans admitted—at least indirectly, by putting forward this
new profession of faith—that it was their intention to constitute
themselves into a distinctive body, in order to impart a permanent
character to the recent innovations in belief and practice. The
Protestants were prepared to see in Germany two forms of faith existing
side by side, unless indeed the Catholic Church should finally consent
to accept the “evangelical” Profession of Faith.
It is true, that, in thus establishing a formula of faith which should
be binding on their followers, the Lutherans were taking up a position
in contradiction with the principle of private judgment in matters
of faith, which, in the beginning, they had loudly advocated. This
was, however, neither an isolated phenomenon, nor, considering the
circumstances, at all difficult to understand. The principles which
Luther had championed in the first part of his career, principles of
which the trend was towards the complete emancipation of the individual
from outward creeds and laws, he had over and again since his first
encounters with the fanatics and Anabaptists honoured in the breach,
and, if he had not altogether discarded them, he had at least come to
explain them very differently.
Hence a certain reaction had taken place in the mind of the originator
of the schism upon which in some sense the Confession of Augsburg set a
seal.
The extent of this reaction has been very variously estimated. In
modern times the contrast between the earlier and later Luther has
been so strongly emphasised that we even hear it said that, in the
first period of his career, what he stood for was a mere “religion
of humanity,” that of a resolute “radical,” whereas in the second
he returned to something more positive. Some have even ventured to
speak of the earlier stage of Luther’s career, until, say, 1522, as
“Lutheran,” and of the later as “Protestant.”
In order to appreciate the matter historically it will be necessary for
us to take a survey of the circumstances as a whole which led to the
change in Luther’s attitude, and then to determine the effect of these
factors by a comparison between his earlier and later life.
Amongst the circumstances which influenced Luther one was his tardy
recognition of the fact that the course he had first started on, with
the noisy proclamation of freedom of thought and action in the sphere
of religion, could lead to no other goal than that of universal anarchy
and the destruction of both religion and morality. The Anabaptist
rising served to point out to him the results of his inflammatory
discourses in favour of freedom. He was determined that his work
should not degenerate into social revolution, for one reason because
he was anxious to retain the good-will of the mighty, above all of the
Elector of Saxony. When the Peasant rising, thanks to the ideas he had
himself put forth, began to grow formidable he found himself compelled
to make a more determined stand against all forms of radicalism which
threatened disintegration. This he did indeed more particularly in the
political domain, though his changed attitude here naturally reacted
also on his conception of matters religious.
He treated Andreas Carlstadt and Thomas Münzer as foes, not merely
because they were turbulent and dangerous demagogues, but also because
they were his rivals in the leadership of the movement. The “Spirit,”
which he had formerly represented as the possession of all who opposed
to the old Church their evangelical interpretation of Scripture, he
was now obliged to reserve more and more to himself, in order to put
a stop to the destructive effect of the multiplicity of opinions.
Instead of the “inward word” he now insisted more and more on the
“outward word,” viz. on the Bible preaching, as authorised by the
authorities, i.e. according to his own interpretation. The mysticism,
which had formerly lent a false, idealistic glamour to his advocacy of
freedom, gradually evaporated as years went by. Having once secured
a large following it was no longer necessary for him to excite the
masses by playing to their love of innovation. After the first great
burst of applause was over he became, in the second period of his life,
rather more sober, the urgent task of establishing order in his party,
particularly in the Saxon parishes which adhered to his cause, calling
for prudent and energetic action on his side.
In this respect the Visitation in 1527 played a great part in modifying
those ideas of his which tended to mere arbitrariness and revolution.
Now that the doctrines of the preachers had been made to conform
more and more to the Wittenberg standard; now that the appointment
of pastors had been taken out of the hands of the Congregations and
left to the ruler of the land, it was only natural that when the new
national Church called for a uniform faith, a binding confession of
faith, such as that of Augsburg, should be proclaimed, however much
such a step, such a “constriction and oppression” of freedom, might
conflict with the right of private judgment displayed at the outset on
the banner of the movement.
Such were, broadly stated, the causes which led to the remarkable
change in Luther’s attitude.
On the other hand, those who opine that his ardour had been moderated
by his stay at the Wartburg seem to be completely in the wrong. The
solitude and quiet of the Wartburg neither taught Luther moderation,
nor were responsible for the subsequent reaction. Quite otherwise; at
the Wartburg he firmly believed that all that he had paved the way
for and executed was mystically confirmed from above, and when, after
receiving his “spiritual baptism” within those gloomy walls, he wrote,
as one inspired, to the Elector concerning his mission, there was as
yet in his language absolutely nothing to show the likelihood of his
withdrawing any of the things he had formerly said. Upon his return
to Wittenberg he at once took a vigorous part in the putting down of
the revolt of the fanatics, not, however, because he disapproved of
the changes in themselves—this he expressly disclaims—but because he
considered it imprudent and compromising to proceed in so turbulent a
manner.[1]
If, in order to estimate the actual extent of the reaction in Luther’s
mind, we compare his earlier with his later years, we find in the
period previous to 1522 a seething, contradictory mixture of radicalism
and positive elements.
We say a mixture, for it is not in accordance with the historical
sources to say that, in those first stormy years of Luther’s career,
what he stood for was a mere religion of humanity, or that his mode
of thought was quite unchristian. Had this been the case, then the
contrast with his later period would indeed be glaring. As it is,
however, Luther’s statements, as previously given, prove that, in spite
of certain discordant voices, his intention had ever been to preserve
everything in Christianity which he regarded as really positive, i.e.
everything which in his then state of thought and feeling he regarded
as essential.[2] Indeed, he was even disposed to exaggerate the
importance of a positive faith in Christ and man’s dependence upon God
at the expense of man’s natural power of reason. “In spite of all his
calls for freedom and of his pronounced individualism” he preached an
extravagant “dependence upon God.”[3] So far was he from the slightest
tendency to embracing a religion of pure reason that he could not
find terms sufficiently opprobrious to bestow on reason. We also know
that he did not evolve his doctrine of Justification in the second or
so-called reaction period, as has recently been stated in order to
accentuate the contrast, but in the first period and in the quite early
stage of his development.
His Latin Commentary on Galatians (1519), with the new doctrine of
Justification,[4] expresses faith in the Redeemer and His Grace in
terms of startling force; he requires of the children of God the
fruits of Grace, and attention to every word of Scripture.
After that year and till 1521, the “_Operationes in Psalmos_” prove
both his desire for a positive religion and his own earnestness
in directing others to lead a Christian life;[5] the doctrine of
Justification therein advocated was admitted by him, even in his old
age, to have been “faithfully set forth.”[6]
As other examples which certainly do not go to prove any conscious
tendency towards theological radicalism, we may mention his work on
the Ten Commandments and the Our Father, which he published in 1520
for the unlearned and for children;[7] the sermons, which he continued
the whole year through; various discourses which he published in 1519,
such as that on the Twofold Justice,[8] in which he treats of the
indwelling of Christ in man; that on Preparation for Death, where he
inculcates the use of Confession, of the Supper and even of Extreme
Unction, teaching that hope is to be placed in Christ alone, and that
Saints are to be honoured as followers of Christ;[9] finally, many
other writings, sermons, letters, already dealt with, dating from the
time prior to the change.
In view of the statements of this sort with which Luther’s early
works teem we cannot accept the assertion that the words “Christ,
Gospel, Faith and Conscience” were merely intended by Luther to lend
a “semblance of religion” to his negations, and were, on his lips,
mere biblical phrases. Louis Saltet, a Catholic historian of the
Church, is right in his opinion concerning this new theory: “A negative
Lutheranism dominant from 1517 to 1521 is something not vouched for by
history”; that the author of the new teaching “had arrived at something
very much like theological nihilism is a supposition which there is
nothing to prove.”[10]
As for Luther’s then attitude towards the Bible, he actually
exaggerates its importance at the expense of reason by asserting that
reason, whilst well aware of the contradictions and the foolishness
of the truths of revelation, was nevertheless obliged to accept them.
The incomprehensibility, ever taught by theologians, of many of the
mysteries of the faith, for the understanding of which human reason
alone does not suffice, Luther represents as an open contradiction
with reason; reason and philosophy, owing to original sin, must
necessarily be in opposition to God, and hence faith does actual
violence to reason, forcing it to submit, contrary to its present
nature and to that of man. Hence, in his estimate of Holy Scripture,
far from being a rationalist, he was, as a modern Protestant
theologian puts it, really an “irrationalist,” holding as he did that
an “unreasonable obedience to Holy Scripture”[11] was required of us.
According to this same theologian, Luther starts from “an irrational
conception of God’s veracity,” indeed it is God, Who, according to
Luther, “by the gift of faith, produces in man the irrational belief
in the truth of the whole Divine Word.” Thus does Luther reach his
“altogether irrational, cut-and-dry theology.”[12] If the Wittenberg
Professor asserts later, that no religion is so foolish and contrary
to reason as Christianity, and that nevertheless he believes “in
one Jew, Who is called and is Jesus Christ,”[13] this belief, so
singularly expressed, was already present to him in his first period,
and the same may be said, so the authority above referred to declares,
of his apparent adoption in later years of more positive views,
“since Luther’s theological convictions never underwent any essential
change.”[14]
If from the positive we pass to the negative side of Luther’s teaching,
we do indeed find the latter more predominant during the first period
of his career. An almost revolutionary assertion of religious freedom
is found side by side with the above utterances on faith, so that Adolf
Harnack could with some justice say that “Kant and Fichte both are
concealed in this Luther.”[15]
“Neither Pope, nor bishop, nor any man,” according to what Luther then
says, “has a right to dictate even a syllable to the Christian without
his own consent.”[16] If you have grasped the Word in faith, then “you
have fulfilled all the commandments and must be free from all things”;
the believer becomes “spiritually lord of all,” and by virtue of his
priestly dignity, “he has power over all things.”[17] “No laws can be
imposed upon Christians by any authority whatsoever, neither by men,
nor by angels, except with their own consent, for we are free of all
things.”[18] “What is done otherwise is gross tyranny.... We may not
become the servants of men.” “But few there are who know the joy of
Christian liberty.”[19]
Applying this to faith and the interpretation of Scripture, he
says, for instance, in 1522: “Formerly we were supposed to have no
authority to decide,” but, by the Gospel which is now preached, “all
the Councils have been overthrown and set aside”; no one on earth has
a right to decree what is to be believed. “If I am to decide what
is false doctrine, then I must have the right to judge.” Pope and
Councils may enact what they will, “but I have my own right to judge,
and I may accept it or not as I please.” At the hour of death, he
continues, each one must see for himself how he stands; “you must be
sharp enough to decide for yourself that this is right and that wrong,
otherwise it is impossible for you to hold your own.” “Your head is in
danger, your life is at stake; God must speak within your breast and
say: ‘This is God’s Word,’ otherwise all is uncertain. Thus you must
be convinced within yourself, independent of all men.”[20]
The individualistic standpoint could scarcely be expressed more
strongly. The appeal to the voice of God “speaking in the heart”
renders it all the more forcible by introducing a pseudo-mystic
element. It is an individualism which might logically be made to
justify every form of unbelief. In such devious paths as these did
Luther lose himself when once he had set aside the doctrinal authority
of the Church.
In his practical instructions and in what he says on the most important
points of the doctrine of salvation, he ever arrogates to himself a
liberty which is in reality mere waywardness.
If the Sacraments were committed to the Church by her Divine Founder,
then she must put the faithful under the obligation of making use
of them in the way Christ intended; she may not, for instance,
leave her subjects free to bring their children to be baptised or
not, to confess or not to do so, to receive the Sacrament of the
Altar or to refrain from receiving it altogether. She may, indeed
she must, exercise a certain compulsion in this respect by means of
ecclesiastical penalties. Luther, however, refused to hear of the
Church and her authority, or of any duty of obedience on the part of
the faithful, the result being that the freedom which he proclaimed
nullified every obligation with respect to the Sacraments.
In the booklet which he composed in the Wartburg, “Von der Beicht ob
der Bapst Macht habe zu gepieten” (1521), wherein he sets aside the
duty of Confession, he says of the use of the Sacraments, without
troubling to exclude even Baptism: “He [man] is at liberty to make
use of Confession if, as, and where he chooses. If he does not wish
you may not compel him, for no one has a right to or ought to force
any man against his will. Absolution is nevertheless a great gift of
God. In the same way no man can, or ought to, be forced to believe,
but everyone should be instructed in the Gospel and admonished to
believe; though he is to be left free to obey or not to obey. All
the Sacraments should be left optional to everyone. Whoever does not
wish to be baptised, let him be. Whoever does not wish to receive the
Sacrament, has a right not to receive; therefore, whoever does not
wish to confess is free before God not to do so.”[21]
The receiving of Holy Communion, he declared then and on other
occasions, was to remain optional, although in later years he was
most severe in insisting upon it. Concerning this Sacrament, at the
commencement of 1520 in his “Erklerung etlicher Artickel,” he said
that Christ had not made the reception of the Sacrament compulsory;
reception under one kind or under both was not prescribed, although
“it would be a good thing to receive under both kinds.”[22]
May we, however, say that Luther made the reception of the Sacrament
of Baptism entirely optional? Did he go so far as to consider Baptism
as something not necessary? The passage just quoted, which does away
so thoroughly with the duty of Confession and instances Baptism as
a parallel case, is certainly somewhat surprising with regard to
Baptism. Luther’s train of thought in the passage in question is,
however, rather confused and obscure. Is he referring to the liberty
of the unbaptised to receive or not receive the Sacrament of Baptism,
or to the deferring of Baptism, whether in the case of the adult or in
that of the children of Christian parents?
He certainly always held Baptism itself to be absolutely essential
for salvation;[23] only where it could not be had, was faith able
to produce its effects. Hence, in the above passage, stress must be
laid on the words “no one can be forced,” Luther’s meaning being that
constraint in the case of this Sacrament is as intolerable as in the
case of the others. He, moreover, declares immediately afterwards that
Christ demands “Baptism and the Sacrament.” Elsewhere, when again
advocating freedom in the matter of Confession and defending the work
above referred to, he says: “I will have no forcing and compelling.
Faith and baptism I commend; no one, however, may be forced to
accept it, but only admonished and then left free to choose.”[24]
Nevertheless he had certainly not been sufficiently careful in his
choice of words, and had allowed too great play to his boisterous
desire for freedom, when, at the conclusion of the passage quoted
from his booklet “On Confession,” he seemingly asserts man’s “freedom
before God,” not only in the matter of Confession and Communion, but
also in that of Baptism. Yet the object of the whole tract was to
show what the result would be, more particularly in the matter of
Confession and Excommunication, were Christ’s commandments in Holy
Scripture put in practice, instead of attending only to the man-made
ordinances of Popes and Councils.[25]
One modern school of Protestant unbelief professes to base itself on
the earlier Luther, and, in almost every particular, justifies itself
by appealing to him.
Such theologians are, however, overstepping the limits of what is
right and fair when they make out the Luther of that earlier period
to have been a true representative of that form of unbelief just
tinged with religion which is their own ideal. As a matter of fact,
Luther, had he been logical, should have arrived at this conclusion,
but he preferred to turn aside, repudiate it, and embrace the profound
contradiction involved in the union of that right of private judgment
he had proclaimed, with the admission of binding dogmas. Freedom in
the interpretation of the sense of Scripture, or more correctly the
setting aside of all ecclesiastical and ostensibly human authority,
has been termed the formal principle of Lutheranism; the doctrine of
Justification, viz. the chief doctrine of Lutheranism, was called by
the older theologians its material principle. Both principles were at
variance with each other in Luther’s mind, just as there can be no
composition between arbitrary judgment and formulæ of faith. History
has to take Luther as he really was; he demanded the fullest freedom
to oppose the Church and her representatives who claimed the right to
enact laws concerning faith and morals, but he most certainly was not
disposed to hear of any such freedom where belief in revelation, or the
acceptance of God’s commandments, was concerned. In the domain of the
State, too, he had no intention of interfering with due subjection to
the authorities, though his hasty, ill-considered utterances seemed to
invite the people to pull down every barrier.
* * * * *
In the second period, from 1522 onwards, his tone has changed and he
becomes, so to speak, more conservative and more “religious.”
The principle of freedom of interpretation he now proclaims rather more
cautiously, and no longer appeals in so unqualified a manner to the
universal priesthood and the sovereignty of the Congregation in matters
of religion. Now that the State has come to assume the direction of
the Church, Luther sees fit to make his own some of the conservative
ideas usually dear to those in power. As a preservative against abuse
of freedom he lays great stress on the “office,” and the call to the
work of preaching given by superior authority. “Should a layman so far
forget himself as to correct a preacher,” says Heinrich Böhmer when
dealing with Luther’s attitude at this period, “and speak publicly,
even to a small circle, on the Word of God, it becomes the duty of the
authorities, in the interests of public order, to proceed against him
as a disturber of the peace. How contradictory this was with the great
Reformer’s previous utterances is patent, though very likely he himself
did not clearly perceive it. The change in his convictions on this
point had taken place all unnoticed simultaneously with the change in
the inward and outward situation of the evangelical party.... That his
[earlier] view necessarily called not only for unrestricted freedom to
teach, but also for complete freedom of worship, was indeed never fully
perceived by the Reformer himself.”[26]
The two divergent tendencies, one positive and the other negative, are
apparent throughout Luther’s career.
The positive tendency is, however, more strongly emphasised in the
second period. We shall hear him giving vent to the most bitter
complaints concerning those who interpret Holy Scripture according
to their own ideas and introduce their own notions into the holy and
unchanging Word of God. As exemplifying his own adherence to the truths
of Christianity, the great and solemn profession of faith contained in
the work he wrote in 1528 on the Supper, has been rightly instanced. As
P. Albert Weiss remarks, he makes this “fine profession with an energy
which goes straight to the heart” and “in words which bear honourable
testimony to the depth of his conviction”; it is true that here, too,
the contrast to the Catholic Church, whose belief he so passionately
depreciates, forces itself like a spectre before his mind.[27] “This is
my belief,” he says at the end of the list of Christian dogmas which he
accepts, “for this is what all true Christians believe and what Holy
Scripture teaches. Whatever I may have left unsaid here will be found
in my booklets, more particularly in those published during the last
four or five years.”[28]
Hence when it is asserted by Protestants of rationalist leanings that
Luther recognised only one form of faith, viz. trust in Christ, and
that he reduced all religion to this, it should be pointed out that he
required at the same time a belief in all revealed truths, and that his
doctrine of confident faith in one’s personal salvation and of trust in
a Gracious God and Saviour, was ultimately based on a general act of
faith; “Faith,” he says, in a sermon which was later embodied in his
Church-postils, “really means accepting as true from the bottom of our
heart what the Gospel says concerning Christ, and also all the articles
of faith.”[29] It is true that Luther ever insisted on awakening of
confidence, yet the “_fides fiducialis_” as explained by him always
presupposes the existence of the “_fides historica_.”
With Luther faith in the whole of Divine revelation comes first, then
the trusting faith which “trusts all to God.”[30]
“His whole manner of life,” Otto Ritschl says, “so far as it was
directed to the attainment of practical aims, was fundamentally
religious, in the same way as his most important doctrines concerning
God, Christ, the Law, Sin, Justification, the Forgiveness of Sins and
Christian Freedom all breathe the spirit of faith, which, as such, was
confidence.” The Protestant theologian from whom we quote these words
thinks it necessary to say of the contradictions in Luther which have
been instanced by Catholics and non-Catholics alike, that “at least in
Luther’s own way of thinking,” they were not such, for he based his
faith on the “revelation given by God’s Word in Holy Scripture.”[31]
In the polemical writings directed against Luther, it was pointed out,
concerning his faith, that he himself had described faith as a mere
“fancy and supposition” (_opinio_). We would, however, suggest the
advisability of considerable caution, for according to other passages
and from the context, it is plain that what he intends by the word
“_opinio_” is rather a belief, and, besides, he adds the adjective
“_firma_” to the word incriminated. It is of course a different
question whether the absolute certainty of faith can be attributed
to that faith on which he lays such great stress, viz. the purely
personal _fides fiducialis_ in one’s salvation through Christ, and,
further, whether this certainty can be found in the articles, which,
according to Luther’s teaching, the Christian deduces from the Word of
God in Scripture by a subjective examination in which he has only his
own private judgment to depend on.
However this may be, we find Luther till the very end insisting
strongly on the submission of reason to the Word of God, so that E.
Troeltsch, the Heidelberg theologian, could well describe his attitude
as mediæval on account of the subjection he demands to dogma. For this
very reason he questions the view, that Luther really “paved the way
for the modern world.” Troeltsch, nevertheless, is not disinclined to
see in Luther’s independence of thought a considerable affinity with
the spirit of modern days.[32] This brings us to the other side of the
subject.
Let us follow up the other, the negative, tendency in Luther, from 1522
onwards, which makes for complete religious independence.
Of one doctrine in which it is manifest Harnack says, and his
statement is equally applicable to others: “The universal priesthood
of all the faithful was never relinquished by Luther, but he became
much more cautious in applying it to the congregations actually in
existence.”[33] Luther, according to him, expresses himself “very
variably” concerning the “competency of the individual congregations,
of the congregations as actually existing or as representing the true
Church.”
The author of the schism, in spite of all the positive elements he
retained during the whole of this period of reaction and till the
very end, had no settled conception of the Church, and the subjective
element, and with it the negative, disintegrating tendency therefore
necessarily predominated in his mind. It is not only Catholics, from
their standpoint, who assert that his whole life’s work was above all
of a destructive character, for many Protestant writers who look below
the surface agree with them, notwithstanding all their appreciation for
Luther.
“Wittenberg,” says Friedrich Paulsen, “was the birthplace of the
revolutionary movement in Germany.... Revolution is the fittest name
by which to describe it.” The term “Reformation,” is, he declares,
inexact; a “reformation,” according to Paulsen, was what “the great
Councils of the fifteenth century sought to bring about.” “Luther’s
work was not a ‘reformation,’ a re-shaping of the existing Church
by her own means, but a destruction of the old form; indeed, we may
say, a thorough-going denial of the Church.” Paulsen points out that,
in his work addressed to the knights of the Teutonic Order, Luther
advocates “ecclesiastical anarchy” in seeking to lead them to despise
all spiritual authority and to break their vow of chastity. The tract
in question was repeatedly published as a broadside, and passed into
the Wittenberg and other early collections of his works.[34]
From the Catholic standpoint, says Gustav Kawerau, “Paulsen was quite
right in branding Luther as a revolutionary”; Luther’s new wine could
not, however, so he says, do otherwise than burst the old bottles.[35]
The “wine” which Luther had to offer was certainly in a state of
fermentation, which, with his rejection of all ecclesiastical
authority, made it savour strongly of nihilism. According to Luther
religious truth had been altogether disfigured even in Apostolic
times, owing to the rise of the doctrine of free-will. “For at least
a thousand years,” he repeatedly asserts, truth had been set aside
because, owing to the illegal introduction of external authority in the
Church, “we have been deprived of the right of judging and have been
unjustly forced to accept what the Pope and the Councils decreed”; yet
no one can “determine or decide for others what faith is,” and, since
Christ has warned us against false prophets, “it clearly follows that I
have a right to judge of doctrine.”[36]
One person only has the right—of this he is ever sure—to proclaim
doctrines as undeniable truths come down from heaven. “I am certain
that I have my dogmas from heaven.”[37] “I am enlightened by the
Spirit, He is my teacher.”[38] “We have seen him raised up by God,” so
his friends declared immediately after his death,[39] and, so far as
they were in agreement with him, they claimed a heavenly authority on
his behalf. In spite of all this Luther never saw fit to restrict in
principle the freedom of determining and judging doctrine; the meaning
of Scripture he permits every man to search out, the one indispensable
condition being, that Scripture should be interpreted under the
inspiration of the Spirit from on high, in which case he presumed that
the interpretation would agree with his own. The numerous “clear and
plain” passages from Scripture which were to guide the interpreter,
were to him a guarantee of this; he himself had followed nothing else.
The misfortune is that he never attempted to enumerate or define these
passages, and that many of those very passages which appeared to him
so clear and plain were actually urged against him; for instance, the
words of institution by the Zwinglians and the texts on Justification
by certain of his followers and by the Catholics.
The fact that freedom in the interpretation of the Bible produced,
and must necessarily produce, anarchy of opinion, has, by the
representatives of the Rationalistic school of Protestant theology,
been urged against the positive elements which Luther chose to retain.
The tendency which, had he not set himself resolutely against it,
would have brought Luther even in later years face to face with a
purely naturalistic view of life, has been clearly and accurately
pointed out. Paul Wernle, a theologian whose ideal of a renewed
Christianity is a natural religion clad in religious dress, points
to the anarchy resulting from the multitude of interpretations, and
attacks Luther’s Bible faith for the contradictions it involves.
“The appeal to ‘Bible Christianity,’ and ‘Primitive New Testament
Christianity,’ produced a whole crop of divergent views of
Christianity”; “the limitations of this Renascence of Christianity,”
which was no real Renascence at all, are, he says, very evident;
Luther had summed up “the theology of Paul in a one-sided fashion,
purely from the point of view of fear of, and consolation in, sin”;
his comprehension of Paul was “one-sided, repellent and narrow,”
and, in favour of Paul, “he depreciated most unjustly the first
three Gospels”; the new theology “rested exclusively on Romans and
Galatians,” and, root and branch, is full of contradictions.[40]
Luther himself invited such criticism by his constant advocacy of
individualism in his later no less than in his earlier years. “If
individualism be introduced even into religious life,” writes E.
Troeltsch, “then the Church loses her significance as an absolute
and objective authority.” And concerning the “whole crop of views on
Christianity” which sprang from such individualism, he says with equal
justice: “A truth which can and must live in so many embodiments, can
of its very nature never be expressed in one simple and definable
form. It is in its nature to undergo historical variations and to take
on different forms at one and the same time.”[41] But this is the
renunciation of stable truth, in other words: scepticism.
Denifle put it clearly and concisely when he said: “Luther planted the
seed of present-day Protestant incredulity.”[42]
“The tendency of the Reformation,” declares W. Herrmann, a
representative of ultra-liberal Protestant theology, was in the
direction of the views he holds, viz. towards a rationalistic
Christianity, not at all towards “the view of religion dear to
orthodox theology.” He is convinced, that “it is high time for us
to resume the work of the Reformers and of Schleiermacher, and to
consider what we are really to understand by religion.” Religion
is not an “unreasoning” faith in dogmas, nor a “non-moral” assent
to alien ideas, “but a personal experience” such as the great
Reformation doctrine of Justification rightly assumed. Yet, even now,
theologians still lack that “comprehension of religion common to
all.” All that is needed is to take Luther’s ideas in real earnest,
for, according to Herrmann, the “true Christian understanding of what
faith, i.e. religion [in the above, modern sense], is, was recovered
at the Reformation. Thus only,” he concludes, “can we escape from
the hindrances to belief presented by the present development of
science.”[43]
It is with a similar appeal to Luther that another theologian, P.
Martin Rade, the editor of the “Christliche Welt,” spreads his sails
to the blast of modern infidelity. According to him Luther was “one
of the fathers of subjectivism and of modern ways”; Luther, by his
doctrine of Justification by faith, gave to subjective piety “its
first clumsy expression”; the faith which Luther taught the world was
an “individual staking” of all on God’s mercy. Yet, he complains,
there are people within the Evangelical Church who are still afraid
of subjectivism. “This fear torments the best, and raises a mighty
barrier in front of those who struggle onwards.” The barrier is
composed of the articles of the creed which have remained upstanding
since Luther’s day. And yet “each scholar can, and may, only represent
Christianity as it appears to him.” “For us Protestants there is in
these circumstances only one way. We recognise no external authority
which could cut the knot for us. Hence we must take our position
seriously, and embrace and further the cause of subjectivism.” Thanks
to Luther “religion has been made something subjective; too subjective
it can never be ... all precautions adopted to guard against religious
subjectivism are really unevangelical.” We must, on the contrary, say
with Luther: “God will always prevail and His Word remains for all
eternity, and His truth for ever and ever.” “Let the Bible speak for
itself and work of itself” without any “human dogma,” and then you
have the true spirit of Luther’s Reformation, “the very spirit which
breathed through it from the day when it first began to play its part
in the history of the world.” This writer is well acquainted with the
two great objections to that principle of Luther, which he praises,
yet he makes no attempt to answer them any more than Luther himself
did. The first is: “Where is all this to end? Where shall we find
anything stable and certain?” He simply consoles the questioner by
stating that “Science provides its own remedy.” The second objection
is: “But the masses require to be governed, and educated,” in other
words, religion must be an assured, heaven-sent gift to all men,
whereas only the few are capable of proving things for themselves and
following the profession of the learned. “Herein lies the problem,”
is the resigned answer, “which we do not fail to recognise, and
with it Protestantism has hitherto proved itself sadly incapable of
grappling”; “entirely new forces are required” for this purpose.
Whence these forces are to come, we are not told.[44]
That all are not determined to follow the course which Luther had
entered upon is but natural. To many the Wittenberg Professor remains
simply a guardian of the faith, a bulwark of conservatism, and
even the safety-valve he opened many would fain see closed again.
Characteristic of this group is the complaint recently brought forward
by the Evangelical “Monatskorrespondenz” against Friedrich Nietzsche,
for having described Luther’s reformation, with scant respect, as the
“Peasant Revolt of the mind,” and spoken of the “destruction of throne
and altar” which he had brought about.[45]
If, from the above, we attempt to judge of the range of Luther’s
so-called “reaction” in his second period, we find that it can no more
be regarded as a return to positive beliefs than his first period can
be described as almost wholly Rationalistic. In both cases we should
be guilty of exaggeration; in the one stage as well as in the other
there is a seething mixture of radical principles and tendencies on
the one hand, and of Christian faith and more positive ones on the
other. In his earlier years, however, Luther allows the former, and,
in the second, the latter to predominate. Formerly, at the outset of
the struggle, he had been anxious to emphasise his discovery which
was to be the loosing of imaginary bonds, while the old beliefs he
still shared naturally retreated more or less into the background;
now, owing partly to his calmer mode of thought, partly to insure
greater stability to his work and in order to shake off the troublesome
extremists, Luther was more disposed to display the obverse of the
medal with the symbols of faith and order, without however repudiating
the reverse with the cap of liberty. How he contrived to reconcile
these contradictions in his own mind belongs to the difficult study
of his psychology. On account of these contradictions he must not,
however, be termed a theological nihilist, since he made the warmest
profession of faith in the principles of Christianity; neither may he
be called a hero of positive faith, seeing that he bases everything
on his private acceptance. To describe him rightly we should have to
call him the man of contradictions, for he was in contradiction not
merely with the Church, but even with himself. The only result of the
so-called reaction in Luther during the ‘twenties, and later, was the
bringing into greater prominence of this inner spirit of contradiction.
The startling antagonism between negation and belief within his
mind found expression in his whole action. Though his character,
his vivacity, imaginativeness and rashness concealed to some extent
the rift, his incessant public struggles also doing their part in
preventing him from becoming wholly alive to the contradictions in
his soul, yet in his general behaviour, in his speech, writings and
actions we find that instability, restlessness and inconstancy which
were the results at once of this contrast and of the fierce struggle
going on within him. The vehemence which so frequently carries him
away was a product of this state of ferment. Often we find him
attempting to smother his consciousness of it by recourse to jesting.
His conviviality and his splendid gift of sympathy concealed from his
friends the antagonism he bore within him. All that the public, and
most of his readers, perceived was the mighty force of his eloquence
and personality and the wealth and freshness of his imagery. They
sufficed to hide from the common herd the discrepancies and flaws
inherent in his standpoint.
Wealth and versatility, such are the terms sometimes applied by
Protestants to the frequent contradictions met with in his statements.
In the same way the ambiguity of Kant’s philosophy has been accounted
one of its special advantages, whereas ambiguity really denotes a lack
of sequence and coherence, or at the very least a lack of clearness.
Truth undefiled displays both wealth and beauty without admixture of
obscurity or of ambiguity.
Luther’s “wealth” was thus described by Adolf Hausrath: “Every word
Luther utters plays in a hundred lights and every eye meets with a
different radiance, which it would gladly fix. His personality also
presents a hundred problems. Of all great men Luther was the most
paradoxical. The very union, so characteristic of him, of mother-wit
and melancholy is quite peculiar. His wanton humour seems at times
to make a plaything of the whole world, yet the next moment this
seemingly incurable humorist is oppressed with the deepest melancholy,
so that he knows not what to do with himself.... In one corner of his
heart lurks a demon of defiance who, when roused, carries away the
submissive monk to outbursts which he himself recognises as the work
of some alien force, stronger than his firmest resolutions. He was
the greatest revolutionary of the age and yet he was a conservative
theologian, yea, conservative to obstinacy.... He insisted at times
upon the letter as though the salvation of the entire Church depended
upon it, and yet we find him rejecting whole books of the Bible and
denying their Apostolic spirit. Reason appears to him as a temptress
from the regions of enchantment, intellect as a mere rogue, who proves
to his own satisfaction just what he is desirous of seeing proved, and
yet, armed with this same reason and intellect, Luther went out boldly
into the battle-fields of the prolonged religious war.”[46]
2. From the Congregational to the State Church Secularisations
In the first stage of his revolt against the Church, Luther had
imagined that the new order of things could be brought about amongst
his followers merely by his declaiming against outward forms;
repeatedly he asserted that the Christian life consisted wholly in
faith and charity, that faith would display its power spontaneously
in good works, and that thus everything would arrange itself; a new
and better Church would spring up within the old one, though minus a
hierarchy, minus all false doctrine and holiness-by-works.
Up to the commencement of the ‘twenties his efforts had, in fact,
been directed not to the setting up of new congregations but to the
reconstruction of the existing Church system. Previous to his drafting
of the plan comprised in the writing he sent to Prague, on the
appointment of ecclesiastical ministers (vol. ii., p. 111 f.), in which
we find the congregational organisation proposed as a model for the
German Church, he was as yet merely desirous of paving the way for what
he looked on as a reformation within the already existing Church, and
this by means of the rulers and nobles.
His work “An den christlichen Adel,” to which we must now return in
order to consider it from this particular standpoint, was composed
with this object. By it he sought to rouse the rulers and those in
power who had opened their hearts to the “Christian” faith, i.e. to
the new Evangel, to take in hand the moral and religious reformation
on the lines indicated by himself. Thus he appealed, as almost all
sectarians had instinctively done from the very first, to the secular
authorities and the power of the Princes in order to attain his special
ecclesiastical ends. The secular Estates, already covetous of increased
power and independence, were invited in these fiery pages to take their
stand against the Papacy and the hierarchy, just as they would against
“a destroyer of Christendom,”[47] and “to punish them severely” on
account of divers disorders and “for their abuse of excommunication
and their shocking blasphemies against the name of God,”[48] in short,
“to put an end to the whole affair.”[49] The last words, found in the
writing “On good works,” were addressed to the “King, the Princes,
Nobles, Townships and people generally.”
Thus to force the two powers, secular and ecclesiastical, out of their
spheres, handing over the supervision of the Church to the secular
authorities[50] can only be characterised as an attack upon the whole
Christian and moral order of things, on the whole previous development
of the Church and on the highest principles of religion. It is true
that the Catholic States had already appropriated many of the rights
really appertaining to the Church, but to carry their interference
so far as Luther advised, had never yet occurred to them. Indeed,
the subversion of order planned by Luther was so great, that the
impossibility of carrying out his project must have speedily become
apparent to him. As a matter of fact, the actual number of those whose
hearts had been awakened by the Evangel to the extent of sharing
Luther’s extreme views was not at all considerable.
When anxious friends pointed out to Luther how revolutionary his
undertaking was, his excuse was merely this: “I am blameless, seeing
that my only object is to induce the nobles of Germany to set a limit
to the encroachments of the Romanists by passing resolutions and
edicts, not by means of the sword; for to fight against an unwarlike
clergy would be like fighting against women and children.”[51] Hence,
so long as no blood was shed, the overthrow of the legal status of the
Church met with his full approval.
The torrents of angry abuse which Luther soon afterwards poured forth
upon those in power because they would not follow his call and allow
themselves to be “awakened,” were simply proofs of the futility of his
plan.
No demagogue had ever before filled Germany with such noisy abuse
of the Princes as Luther now did in works intended for the masses,
where he declared, for instance, that “God has sent our Rulers mad”;
that “they command their subjects just what they please”; that they
are “scamps” and “fools”; that he is forced to resist, “at least by
word,” these “ungracious Lords and angry squires” on account of their
“blasphemies against the Divine Majesty.”[52] He denounced them to the
populace as having heaped together their “gold and goods” unjustly,
just as “Nimrod had acquired his goods and his gold.”[53] He accuses
them “of allowing everything to drift, and of hindering one another”;
“plenty of them even vindicate the cause of Antichrist,”[54] therefore
the Judgment of God must fall upon our “raving Princes.” “God has
blinded them and made them stupid that they may run headlong to
destruction.”[55]
This he wrote on the eve of the fearful events of the Peasant Rising.
Thus his ideal of the future was now shattered, viz. the spiritual
society and new Christendom which he had planned to establish with the
help of the Princes. “This dream passed rapidly away. All that remained
was a deep-seated pessimism.... From that time the persuasion grew on
him that the world will always remain the same, that it can never be
governed according to the Evangel and can never be rendered really
Christian; likewise, that true Christians will always be but few in
number.”[56]
Hence these few Christians must become the object of his solicitude.
He is more and more inspired by the fantastic notion that Popery is to
be speedily overthrown by God Himself, by His Word and by the breath
of His Mouth. In the meantime he expects the new Church to develop
spontaneously from the congregations by the power of God, even though
at first it should consist of only a small number of faithful souls.
The congregational ideal, as a passing stage in his theory of Church
formation, absorbed him, as we have already seen, more particularly
from the year 1523. The congregations were to be self-supporting after
once the new teaching had been introduced amongst them. In accordance
with the Evangel, they were to be quite independent and to choose their
own spiritual overseers. From among these, superintendents were to be
selected, to be at the head of the congregations of the country, and as
it were general-bishops, assisted by visitors, of course all laymen, no
less than those from whom they derived their authority and by whom, for
instance for bad doctrine, they might be removed. The above-mentioned
letter sent to Prague, on the appointment of ministers in the Church
(1523), contained further details. Other statements made by Luther
about that same time, and already quoted, supply what is here lacking;
for instance, his ascribing to each member of the congregation the
right of judging of doctrine and of humbly correcting the preacher,
should he err, even before the whole assembly, according to the Spirit
of God which inspires him.[57]
Thus he had relinquished the idea of proceeding by means of the
assistance of the Princes and nobles, and had come to place all his
hopes in the fruitfulness and productive power of the congregational
life.
But here again he met with nothing but disappointment. It was not
encouraging to find, that, on the introduction of the new teaching and
in the struggle against alleged formalism and holiness-by-works, what
Christian spirit previously existed was inclined to take to flight,
whilst an unevangelical spirit obtruded itself everywhere. Hence his
enlargement of his earlier congregational theory by the scheme for
singling out the faithful, i.e. the true Christians, and forming of
them a special community.
Just as his belief in the spontaneous formation of a new state of
things testified to his abnormal idealism, so this new idea of an
assembly within the congregation displays his utter lack of any
practical spirit of organisation. As to how far this perfecting of his
congregational Churches tended to produce a sort of esoteric Church,
will be discussed elsewhere (vol. v., xxix., 8).
As his starting-point in this later theory he took the proposition,
which he believed could be reconciled with the Gospel, viz. that the
Gospel is not for all; it is not intended for the “hard-hearted” who
“do not accept it and are not amenable to it,” it is not meant for
“open sinners, steeped in great vices; even though they may listen to
it and not resist it, yet it does not trouble them much”; still less
is it for those, “worst of all men, who go so far as to persecute the
Gospel.” “These three classes have nothing to do with the Gospel, nor
do we preach to such as these; I only wish we could go further and
punish them, the unmannerly hogs, who prate much of it but all to no
purpose, as though it [the Gospel] were a romance of Dietrich of Bern,
or some such-like tale. If a man wants to be a pig, let him think of
the things which are a pig’s. Would that I could exclude such men from
the sermons.”[58]
In reality, as is evident from passages already quoted and as Luther
here again goes on to point out, the Gospel was intended for “simple”
consciences, for those who, “though they may at times stumble, are
displeased with themselves, feel their malady and would gladly be
rid of it, and whose hearts are therefore not hardened. These must
be stirred up and drawn to Christ. To none other than these have we
ever preached.” The latter assertion is not, of course, to be taken
quite literally. It is, however, correct that he considered only the
true believers as real members of the Church, for these alone, viz.
for people who had been touched by the Spirit of God and recognised
their sins, was his preaching intended.[59] These too it was whom
he desired to unite if possible into an ordered body. Side by side
with this he saw in his mind the great congregational Church, termed
by him the “masses”; this Church seemed, however, to him, less a
Church than a field for missionary labour, for its members were yet
to be converted. The idea of a popular Church was, nevertheless, not
altogether excluded by the theory of the separate Church of the true
believers.
More particularly at Wittenberg he was desirous of seeing this
segregation of the “Christians” carried out, quietly and little by
little. He prudently abstained from exerting his own influence for its
realisation, and preferred to wait for it to develop spontaneously
“under the Spirit of God.” The idea was, as a matter of fact, far
too vague. He also felt that neither he nor the others possessed
the necessary spiritual authority for guiding hearts towards this
goal, for preserving peace within the newly founded communities, or
for defending them against the hostile elements outside. As for his
favourite comparison of his theory of the congregation with that in
vogue in Apostolic times, it was one which could not stand examination.
His congregations lacked everything—the moral foundation, the Spirit
from above, independent spiritual authority and able, God-enlightened
superiors to act as their organs and centres.
At Leisnig in the Saxon Electorate (cf. vol. ii., p. 113) an attempt to
call an ideal evangelical community into existence was made in 1523,
the Church property being illegally confiscated by the magistrates
and members of the parish, and the ancient right of the neighbouring
Cistercian house to appoint the parish-priest being set at nought
by the congregation choosing its own pastor; here the inevitable
dissensions at once broke out within the community and the whole thing
was a failure. The internal confusion to which the congregation would
be exposed through the doctrine of private illumination and “apostolic”
rights, is clear from the very title of the work which Luther composed
for Leisnig: “That a Christian assembly or parish has the right and
power to judge of doctrine and to give the call to, and appoint and
remove, its pastors,” etc.[60]
In spite of the evident impracticability of the scheme, the phantom of
the congregational Church engrossed the author of the ecclesiastical
schism for about ten years. Nor did he ever cease to cherish the idea
of the Church apart. It was this idea which inspired the attacks
contained in his sermons upon the multitude of lazy, indolent and
unbelieving souls to whom it was useless to preach and who, even after
death, were only fit for the flaying-ground because during life they
had infected the invisible, living community. He is heedless of what
must result, in the towns, villages and families, from any division
into Christians and non-Christians, nor does he seem to notice that
the system of the Church apart could only produce spiritual pride,
hypocrisy and all the errors of subjectivism in those singled out by
the Spirit, to say nothing of the obstinacy and wantonness engendered
in those who were excluded.
The popular Church, of which it was necessary to make the best, owing
to the impracticability of the Church apart, apparently embraced all,
yet, within it, according to Luther, the true believers formed an
invisible Church, and this in a twofold manner, first, because they
were themselves not to be recognised, and, secondly, because the Word
and the Sacrament, from which they derived their religious life,
concealed a whole treasure of invisible forces.
With such imperfect elements it was, however, impossible to establish a
new Church system. A new phase was imminent, towards which everything
was gravitating of its own accord; this was the State Church, i.e. the
national Church as a State institution, with the sovereign at its head.
The various congregational churches formed a visible body frequently
impinging on the outward, civil government, and largely dependent on
the support of the authorities; hence their gradual evolution into a
State Church. The local and national character of the new system paved
the way for this development. Luther, whilst at the bottom of his heart
anxious to check it—for his ideal was an independent Church—came,
under pressure of circumstances, to champion it as the best and only
thing. A popular Church or State Church had never been his object,
yet he ultimately welcomed the State Church as the best way to meet
difficulties; this we shall see more clearly further on. In his
efforts to overcome the apathy of the masses he even had recourse to
compulsion by the State, inviting the authorities to force resisters to
attend Divine Worship.[61]
Luther should have asked himself whether the moral grandeur
and strength which, in spite of its favourable appearance, the
congregational Church lacked, would be found in the compulsory State
Church. This question he should have been able to answer in the
negative. It was a radical misfortune that in all the attempts made
to infuse life into the branch torn away by Luther from the universal
Catholic Church the secular power never failed to interfere. The
State had stood sponsor to the new faith on its first appearance and,
whether in Luther’s interest or in its own, the State continued to
intervene in matters pertaining to the Church. This interweaving of
politics with religion failed to insure to the new Church the friendly
assistance of the State, but soon brought it into a position of entire
subservience—in spite of the protests of the originator of the
innovation.
The jurisdiction of the State within the “Church,” in the case of the
early Lutheran congregations, did not amount to any actual government
of the Church by the sovereign. This, in the appalling form it was to
assume, was a result of the later Consistories. What, with Luther’s
consent, first passed into the hands of the secular authorities was
the jurisdiction in certain external matters which, according to
the earlier Canon Law, really belonged to the Bishop’s court. When
episcopal authority was abolished the Elector of Saxony assumed
this jurisdiction as a sort of bishop _faute-de-mieux_, or, to use
Melanchthon’s expression, as the principal member of the Church
(“_membrum præcipuum ecclesiæ_”).[62] The jurisdiction in question
concerned, above all, matrimonial cases which, according to Luther,
belonged altogether to the secular courts, matters of tithes, certain
offences against ecclesiastical or secular law and points of Church
discipline affecting public order. Luther had declared that the Church
possessed no power to govern, that the only object for which it existed
was to make men pious by means of the Word, that the secular authority
was the only one able to make laws and formally to claim obedience
“whether it does right or wrong.”[63] Hence the State in assuming
jurisdiction in the above matters was doing nobody any injustice, was
merely exercising its right, whilst the authority of which it made use
was not “ecclesiastical,” but merely the common law exercised for the
purpose of preserving “sound doctrine” and the “true Church.”[64]
The next step was the appointment of ecclesiastical superintendents by
the sovereign and, either through these or without them, the nomination
of pastors by the State, the removal of unqualified teachers, the
convening of ecclesiastical synods or “consultations,” the carrying
out of Visitations and the drawing up of Church regulations. Here
again no objection on the point of principle was raised by Luther,
partly because the power of the keys, according to him, included no
coercive authority, partly because the idea of the “_membrum præcipuum
ecclesiæ_” was elastic enough to permit of such encroachments on the
part of the ruler.[65] In the Protestant Canon Law, compiled by R.
Sohm, all the above is described, under appeal to Luther, as coming
under the jurisdiction of the State, the Church being “without
jurisdiction in the legal sense” and its business being “merely the
ministry of the Word.”[66]
The introduction of the Consistories in 1539 was a result of the idea
expressed by Justus Jonas in his memorandum, viz. that if the Church
possesses no legal power of coercion for the maintenance of order,
she is fatally doomed to perish. To many the growing corruption made
an imitation of “episcopal jurisdiction in the Catholic style,” such
as Melanchthon desiderated, appear a real need.[67] In the event
the advice of Jonas was followed, jurisdiction being conferred on
the Consistories directly by the ruler of the land. After a little
hesitation Luther gave his sanction to the new institution, seeing
that, though appointed by the sovereign, it was a mere spiritual
tribunal of the Church. The Consistories, more particularly after his
death, though retaining the name of ecclesiastical courts gradually
became a department of the civil judicature, a good expression of the
complete subservience of Church to State.
“The setting up of the civil government of the Church was achieved,”
remarks Sohm, by an arrangement really “in entire opposition to the
ideas of the Reformation.”[68]
“The lack of system in Luther’s mode of thought is perhaps nowhere
so apparent as in his views on the authorities and their demeanour
towards religion.”[69] The want of unity and sequence in his teaching
becomes even more apparent when we listen to the very diverse
opinions of Protestant scholars on the subject. It is no fault of the
historian’s if the picture presented by the statements of Luther and
his commentators shows very blurred outlines.
“The civil government of the Church,” writes Heinrich Böhmer, in
“Luther im Lichte der neueren Forschung”—speaking from his own
standpoint—“in so far as it actually represents a ‘government,’
is utterly at variance with Luther’s own principles in matters of
religion. Neither can it be brought into direct historical connection
with the Reformation.... The so-called congregational principle is
really the only one which agrees with Luther’s religious ideal,
according to which the decision upon all ecclesiastical matters is
to be regarded as the right of each individual congregation.... It
is, however, perfectly true that the attempts to reorganise the
ecclesiastical constitution on the basis of this idea were a complete
failure. Neither at Wittenberg, nor at Allstedt, nor at Orlamünde were
the communities from a moral point of view sufficiently ripe.”[70]
The civil government of the Church is also in disagreement with
Luther’s conception of the secular power as expressed in some chief
passages of his work “Von welltlicher Uberkeytt,” (1523). According to
Erich Brandenburg’s concise summary, Luther shows in this work, that
“the task of the State and of society is entirely secular; it is not
their duty to make men pious. There is no such thing as a Christian
State; society and the State were called into being by God on account
of the wicked.”[71] Brandenburg also quotes later statements made by
Luther concerning the secular authorities, and infers, “that neither
the civil government of the Church in the sense accepted at a later
date, nor the quasi-episcopate of the sovereign, is really compatible
with such views.”[72]
It is true that in his Commentary on the Gospel of St. John
(1537-1538), in his annoyance at his unfortunate experiences of State
encroachments, Luther declares, that “the two governments should
not be intermingled to the end of the world, as was the case with
the Jewish nation in Old Testament times, but must remain divided
and apart, in order that the pure Gospel and the true faith may be
preserved, for the Kingdom of Christ and the secular government are
two very different things.”[73] He realises, however, the futility
of his exhortations: “You will see that the devil will mingle them
together again ... the sword of the Spirit and the secular sword....
Our squires, the nobles and the Princes, who now go about equipped
with authority and desire to teach the preachers what they are to
preach and to force the people to the sacrament according to their
pleasure, will cause us much injury; for it is necessary ‘to render
obedience to the worldly authorities,’ hence ‘what we wish, that you
must do,’ and thus the secular and spiritual government becomes a
single establishment.”[74]
Brandenburg, for his part, is of opinion that “the civil government of
the Church had come about in opposition to Luther’s wishes, but had to
be endured like other forms of injustice.... Luther reproached himself
with strengthening the tyrants by his preaching, with throwing open
doors and windows to them. But with the unworldly idealism peculiar to
him, he thereupon replied defiantly: ‘What do I care? If, on account
of the tyrants, we are to omit the teaching which is so essential a
matter, then we should have been forced long since to relinquish the
whole Evangel.’”[75]
On the other hand another Protestant theologian, H. Hermelink, who
supports the opposite view, viz. that Luther was a staunch upholder
of the supremacy of the authorities in matters ecclesiastic, adduces
plentiful quotations from Luther’s writings in which the latter, even
from the early days of his struggle, declares that the authorities
have their say in spiritual matters, that it is their duty to provide
for uniformity of teaching in each locality and to supervise Christian
worship. He admits, however, that Luther set certain “bounds to the
ecclesiastical rights of the authorities.”[76]
These statements in favour of the authorities cannot be disallowed.
They arose partly from Luther’s efforts to advance his party with the
help of the worldly magnates, partly, as will appear immediately, from
the material difficulties of the Lutheran congregations, due to the
confiscation of Church property by the secular power.
In any case it was unexpectedly that Luther found himself confronted
with all the above problems. When their immediate solution became the
most urgent task for the new faith, Luther’s principles were still
far from presenting any well-defined line of action. “To these, and
similar questions,” remarks Wilhelm Maurenbrecher, the Protestant
historian of the Reformation, “Luther had given no sufficient answer;
it would even seem as though he had not considered them at all
carefully.” Among the questions was, according to Maurenbrecher, the
fundamental one: “Who is to decide whether this or that person belongs
to the congregation?” If the congregation, where does the Church come
in? for, “after all, the congregation is not the Church.”[77] The very
idea of the Church had still to be determined.[78]
_Confiscation of Church Property._
In the Saxon Electorate, the home of the religious innovation, it had
become imperatively necessary that the parishes which sided with Luther
should be set in order by a strong hand, first, and principally, in the
matter of the use to which the Church lands were to be put. In these
territories, where the civil government of the Church first obtained,
it arose through the robbing and plundering of the churches.
“The parsonages all over the country lie desolate,” Luther wrote
to the Elector Johann of Saxony on October 31, 1525, “no one gives
anything, or pays anything.... The common people pay no attention to
either preacher or parson, so that unless some bold step be taken
and the pastors and preachers receive State aid from your Electoral
Highness, there will shortly be neither parsonages, nor schools, nor
scholars, so that the Word of God and His worship will perish. Your
Electoral Highness must therefore continue to devote yourself to God’s
service and act as His faithful tool.”[79]
Not long afterwards Luther strongly advises the Elector not only to
see to the material condition of the parsonages, but also to examine
by means of visitors the fitness of the parsons for their office,
“in order that the people may be well served in the Evangel and may
contribute to his [the parson’s] support.”[80]
The Order for Visitations (1527), which Luther looked over and which
practically had his approval, was intended in the first place to
better financially the condition of the parishes. Hand in hand with
this, however, went supervision of the preaching by the State and the
repression by force of whatever Catholic elements still survived.[81]
The Electoral Visitors here and there found the utmost indifference
towards the new faith prevailing among the people, whose interests were
all material. They finally proposed that the Elector should provide
for the support of the parsons and assume the right of appointing and
removing all the clergy.
Luther himself had written as early as 1526: “The complaints of the
parsons almost everywhere are beyond measure great. The peasants
refuse to give anything at all, and there is such ingratitude amongst
the people for the Holy Word of God that there can be no doubt a great
judgment of God is imminent.... It is the fault of the authorities
that the young receive no education and that the land is filled with
wild, dissolute folk, so that not only God’s command but our common
distress compel us to take some measures.”[82]
“Common distress” was, in point of fact, compelling recourse to the
authorities who had confiscated the property of the Church; i.e. the
heads of the various parishes or the Electoral Court. The magistrates
had laid hands upon the smaller benefices, which, as a matter of fact,
were for the most part in their own gift or in that of the families
of distinction, whilst in case of dispute the Elector himself had
intervened. The best of the plunder naturally went to the Ruler of the
land.
Luther addressed the Elector as follows: “Now that an end has
been made of the Papal and ecclesiastical tyranny throughout your
Highness’s dominions, and now that all the religious houses and
endowments have come into the power of your Electoral Highness as the
supreme head, this involves the duty and burden of setting this matter
in order, since no one else has taken it up, nor has a right to do
so.”[83]—Nor was Luther backward in pointing out to the Court, when
obliged to complain of the meagre support accorded to the churches,
the great service he had done in enriching it: “Has the Prince ever
suffered any loss through us?” he asks a person of influence with the
Elector in 1520. “Have we not, on the contrary, brought him much gain?
Can it be considered an insignificant matter, that not only your souls
have been saved by the Evangel, but that also considerable wealth, in
the shape of property, has begun to flow into the Prince’s coffers, a
source of revenue which is still daily on the increase?”[84]
The appropriation of property by the Elector as Ruler of the land
necessarily entailed far-reaching obligations with regard to the
churches.
Hence, when, on November 22, 1526, Luther represented to the sovereign
the financial distress of the pastors, he also told him, that a just
ruler ought to prevail upon his subjects to support the schools,
pulpits and parsonages.[85] Johann, in his reply, when agreeing to
intervene for the better ordering of the churches, likewise appeals to
his rights as sovereign of the country: “Because we judge, and are of
opinion, that it beseems us as Ruler to attend to them.”[86]
Luther’s invitation to the Princes to effect by force a reformation
of the ecclesiastical order had already thrown wide open the doors to
princely aggression.
“The secular power,” Luther had said, “has become a member of the
Christian body, and though its work is of the body, yet it belongs
to the spiritual estate. Therefore its work shall go forward without
let or hindrance amongst all the members of the whole body.” The
Christian secular authority shall exercise its office in all freedom,
if necessary even against Pope, bishop and priest, for ecclesiastical
law is nothing but a fond invention of Roman presumption.[87]
If it was the duty of the rulers to intervene on behalf of the general
public needs of Christendom, how much more were they bound to provide
for the proper standing and pure doctrine of the pastors. It is they
who must assist in bringing about a “real, free Council,” since the
Pope, whose duty it was to convene it, neglected to do so; “this
no one can do so effectively as the secular powers, particularly
now that they have become fellow-Christians, fellow-priests and
fellow-clergymen, sharing our power in all things; their office and
work, which they have from God over all men, must be allowed free
course wherever needful and wholesome.”[88]
Luther was wide-awake to the fact, and reckoned upon it, that the
gain to be derived from the rich ecclesiastical property would act
as a powerful incentive with those in power to induce them to open
their lands to the innovations. What ruler would not be tempted by the
prospect of coming so easily into possession of the Church’s wealth,
that fabulous patrimony accumulated from the gifts previous ages had
made on behalf of the poor, of the service of the altar, of the clergy
and the churches? They heard Luther declare that he was going to tear
Catholic hearts away from “monasteries and clerical mummery”; they
also heard him add: “When they are gone and the churches and convents
lie desolate and forsaken, then the rulers of the land may do with
them what they please. What care we for wood and stone if once we have
captured the hearts?”[89] The taking over of the Church property by the
rulers was, according to him, simply the just and natural result of the
preaching of the Evangel. This was the light in which he wished the
very unspiritual procedure of confiscation to be regarded.
He frequently insisted very urgently that the nobles and unauthorised
laymen were not to seize upon the church buildings, revenues and
real property. He was aware of the danger of countenancing private
interference, and preferred to see the expropriation carried out by the
power of the State and according to law. In this wise he hoped that the
property seized might still, to some extent, be employed in accordance
with its original purpose, though, as was inevitable, he was greatly
disappointed in this hope. It is spiritual property, he repeats
frequently, bestowed for a spiritual purpose, and therefore, even after
the departure of its former occupant, it must be used for the salvation
of souls in accordance with the Evangel. To the Elector Johann, for
instance, he writes: The parsonages must be repaired out of the
revenues of the monasteries, “because such property cannot profit your
Electoral Highness’s Exchequer, for it was dedicated to God’s service
and therefore must be devoted primarily to this object. Whatever is
left after this, your Electoral Highness may make use of for the needs
of the land, or for the poor.”[90]
His demands were, however, very inadequately complied with. If Luther
really anticipated their fulfilment, he was certainly very ignorant
of the ways of the world. Who was to prevent the Princes from seizing
upon the Church lands with greedy hands so soon as they stood vacant,
and employing them for their own purposes, or to enrich the nobles?
Even where everything was done in an orderly manner, who could prevent
ever-impecunious Sovereigns from making use of the revenues for State
purposes and from allotting the first place among the “needs of the
land” of which we just heard Luther speak, to their own everyday
requirements?
Luther’s subsequent experiences drew from him such words as the
following: “This robbing of the monasteries”—he wrote to Spalatin,
who was still connected with the Court of the new Elector Johann
(since 1525), concerning the condition of things in the Saxon
Electorate—“is a very serious matter, which worries me greatly. I
have set my face against it for a long while past. Not content with
this, when the Prince was stopping here I actually forced my way into
his chamber, in spite of the resistance I met with, in order to make
representations to him privately.” He goes on to complain that there
was little hope of redress so long as certain selfish intrigues were
being carried on in the vicinity of the sovereign. Indeed, he does
not anticipate much help from this Elector Johann, because he lacks
his father’s firmness, and is much too ready to listen to anyone.
“A Prince must know how to be angry, a King must be something of
a tyrant; this the world demands.” As things are, however, we are
imposed upon in all sorts of ways for “the sake of the spoils”;
“smoke, fumes and fables” are made to serve, and we do not even know
who are at work behind the scenes; at any rate they are hostile to the
Evangel and were its foes even in the time of the pious Elector. “Now
that they have enriched themselves, they laugh and exult over the fact
that it is possible in the name of the Evangel to enjoy all sorts of
evangelical freedom, and at the same time to be the Evangel’s worst
enemy. This is bitter to me, more bitter than gall.” “I shall have to
issue a public admonition to the Prince in order to insist upon some
other administration of the religious houses; perhaps then I shall
be able to shame those fellows.... I hate Satan’s rage, malice and
ambushes, everywhere, in all matters, and unceasingly, and it gives me
pleasure to thwart him and injure him wherever I can.”[91]
Thus the consequences were more serious than the ex-monk in his
ignorance of the ways of the world had anticipated. “Satan,” on whose
shoulders he lays the blame, was not to be so easily expelled. The
worst acts of violence perpetrated in the name of the Word of God were
the result of the lust for wealth which he had unchained.
“How heavily the negligence of our Court presses upon me,” he sighs
in the last years of his life. Much is undertaken presumptuously,
and then, after a while, we are left stranded in the mire; they do
nothing themselves, and we are left to our fate. But I intend to
pour my grievous complaints into the ears of Dr. Pontanus and the
Prince himself as soon as I get a chance. I have learnt, to my great
annoyance, that the nobles are governing in the Prince’s name.[92]
A few days after the letter to Spalatin, quoted above, in another
letter to him, he gives vent to his thoughts on the marriage questions
arising within the domain of the new faith.
_Secularisation of the Matrimonial Courts.
Against the Lawyers._
The secularisation of the marriage courts appears as a very
characteristic subject amongst the questions of jurisdiction arising
between State and Church, side by side with the secularisation of
Church property. The secularising of these courts was the logical
consequence of Luther’s secularising of matrimony, which he
regarded—to forestall his later statements[93]—“as an outward,
secular matter, subject to the authorities, like food and clothing,
house and land.”[94] According to the Confession of Augsburg at the
very most it was a sacrament only in the same way that the authority
of the magistrates appointed by God was a sacrament.[95] The codicil
to the Articles of Schmalkalden required, that the “magistrates shall
establish special marriage courts,” because Canon Law “contains
pitfalls for conscience.”[96]
As the Church had formerly been the sole authority on questions
relating to marriage, and as the custom of referring such matters to
her was deeply rooted in the life of the German people, Luther at the
outset consented to take this into account and to leave the decision
to his preachers; the result of this was, however, that he found
himself overwhelmed amidst his other labours by a mass of unpleasant
and uncongenial work and was accordingly soon moved to throw the whole
burden on the State and the secular lawyers, though here again he met
with distressing experiences.
He wrote to Spalatin in 1527: “We have been plagued by so many
questions concerning marriage, owing to the connivance of the devil,
that we have decided to leave this profane business to the profane
courts. Formerly I was stupid enough to expect from mankind something
more than mere humanity, and to fancy that they could be directed by
the Evangel. Now, facts have shown that they despise the Evangel and
insist on being compelled by the law and the sword.” He shows himself
very much annoyed in this letter at the position taken up by the
jurists with their “law” concerning those marriages which took place
contrary to the will of the parents. The lawyers of the Wittenberg
Faculty agreed with the older Church in recognising the validity
of such unions. Luther, on the other hand, ostensibly on biblical
grounds, wished them to be held as null, because duty to the public
and the respect due to parents required it. In practice, however,
he soon became aware how precarious was this position. “The Gospel
teaches,” he explains to Spalatin, “that the father must be ready to
give his consent when his son asks what is lawful, and that the son
must obey his father; on both sides there must be good-will; this
holds good with the pious. But when godless parents hear that the
Gospel confirms their authority, they become tyrannical [and refuse to
consent to their children’s marriage]. The children, on the other hand,
learn that, according to the law of Pope and Emperor, they have the
necessary permission, and so they abuse this liberty and despise their
parents. Both sides are in the wrong and numerous examples of the same
abound.”[97]
In the case of such dissensions between parents and children, he says
in an instruction to Spalatin which was printed later, the son “must
be sent to the profane, i.e. Imperial Courts of Justice, under which
we live in the flesh, and thus you will be relieved of the burden.”
Preachers, according to him, as “evangelists,” have nothing to do with
legal questions, but merely with peaceable matters; “where there is
strife and dissension the Kaiser’s tribunal [the secular courts] must
decide.... Should the son get no redress from the secular court, then
there is nothing for him but to submit to his father’s tyranny.”[98]
Naturally neither Luther nor the parties concerned found much
satisfaction in such expedients. The handing over of the marriage
questions to the State was to prove a source of endless and increasing
trouble and vexation to Luther in the ensuing years, particularly in
connection with the “secret” marriages just referred to. Luther even
appealed from the then practice of the lawyers to the law of the old
Roman Empire, which exaggerated the paternal rights to the extent of
making the children’s marriages altogether dependent on the will of the
parents. In the letter to Spalatin, printed in the Wittenberg edition
of Luther’s German works, we find the following marginal note which
expresses Luther’s opinion: “The old Imperial and Christian laws decree
and ordain that children shall marry with the knowledge, consent and
advice of their parents, and this the natural law also teaches. But the
Pope, like the tyrant and Antichrist he is, has determined to be the
only judge in questions of marriage and has abolished the obedience
due by children to their parents.”[99] The truth is, that Canon Law,
whilst strongly urging both sons and daughters to obey and respect
their parents, nevertheless recognised as valid a marriage contract
when concluded under conditions otherwise lawful, and this because it
saw no reason for depriving the contracting parties of the freedom
which was theirs by the natural law.
Luther, greatly incensed by the opposition of the lawyers, at
length, in a sermon preached in 1544, launched forth the most solemn
condemnation possible of the so-called secret unions contracted
without the paternal consent. He declared: “I, Dr. Martinus, command
in the name of the Lord our God, that no one shall enter into a secret
engagement and then, after the event, seek the parents’ ratification
... and, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, I condemn to
the abyss of hell all those who assist in furthering such devil’s work
as secret engagements. Amen.”[100]
In the same way he boasted to the Elector, that the jurists had “wanted
to play havoc” with his churches “with their annoying, damnable suits
which, however, I have resolved to expel from my churches as damnable
and accursed to-day and for all eternity.” The principal motive for
his action was the “Divine command” he had received “to preach the
observance of the Fourth Commandment in these matters.”[101]
What Luther, however, was most sensitive to was that some of the
Wittenberg lawyers, conformably with the traditional code, declared
the marriages of priests, and consequently his own, to be invalid in
law, and the children of such unions to be incapable of inheriting. He
keenly felt the blow which was thus directed against himself and his
children. His displeasure he gave vent to in some drastic utterances.
If what the lawyers say is correct, he continues in the writing above
referred to addressed to the Elector, “then I should also be obliged to
forsake the Evangel and crawl back into the frock [the religious habit]
in the devil’s name, by power and virtue of both ecclesiastical and
secular law. Then Your Electoral Highness would have to have my head
chopped off, dealing likewise with all those who have married nuns, as
the Emperor Jovian decreed more than a thousand years ago” [and as the
law still stood in the codes then in use].
Thoughts such as these, on the reprobation of his union with Bora by
the law of the Church and of the Christian Roman Empire, stood in
glaring contrast to the pleasant moods of domestic life to which he
so gladly gave himself up. He sought to find solace from his public
cares and conflicts in his family circle, and some compensation for the
troubles which the great ones of the earth caused him in the domestic
delights in which he would have wished all other fallen priests to
share. He succeeded, to an extent which appeared by no means enviable
to those who followed a different ideal, in forgetting his priestly
state and its demands. In one of the letters just mentioned he writes
as a father to Spalatin, who also had had recourse to marriage: “May
you live happily in the Lord with your rib [i.e. your wife]. My little
Hans sends you greetings; he is now in the month of teething and is
beginning to lisp; it is delightful to see how he will leave no one in
peace about him. My Katey also sends you her best wishes, above all for
a little Spalatin, to teach you what she boasts of having learnt from
her little Hans, i.e. the crown and joy of wedded life, which the Pope
and his world were not worthy of.”[102]
What Canon Law said of the high calling of the priest and religious and
of the depth of the fall of those who proved untrue to it, no longer
made the slightest impression on him. It would have been in vain had
a St. Jerome of olden days, a mediæval St. Bernard or a Geiler of
Kaysersberg championed the cause of Canon Law against Luther and his
nun in the glowing language they knew so well how to use. Luther’s
own words quoted above concerning the death penalty decreed by Jovian
the Christian Emperor against anyone sacrilegiously violating a nun,
illuminate as with a lightning flash the antagonism between antiquity
and Luther’s doings.
He asserts himself proudly because he considers his heavenly calling to
expound the new Evangel, and his Divine mission, had been questioned
by the lawyers who represented the authority of the State. When, in
defiance of their objections against the legitimacy of his family,
he drafted his celebrated will, he was careful to inform them that,
for its validity, he has no need of them or of a notary; he was “Dr.
Martinus Luther, God’s Notary and Witness to His Gospel,” and was
“well known in heaven, on earth and in hell”; that “God had entrusted
him with the Gospel of His Dear Son and had made him faithful and true
to it,” for which reason, “in spite of the fury of all the devils,”
many “in the world regarded him as a teacher of truth.”[103]
3. The Question of the Religious War; Luther’s Vacillating Attitude.
The League of Schmalkalden, 1531
After the Diet of Augsburg, Luther, as we have shown (vol. ii., pp.
391, 395 f.), proclaimed the war of religion much more openly than ever
before. His writings, “Auff das vermeint Keiserlich Edict” and “Widder
den Meuchler zu Dresen,” bear witness to this. The proceedings taken by
the Empire on the ground of the resolutions of Worms, and the attitude
of the Catholic Princes and Estates, appeared to him merely a plot, a
shameful artifice on the part of the “bloodhounds” who opposed him.
In his writing against the Assassin, i.e. Duke George of Saxony, he
expounds his politico-religious standpoint in a way which became his
rule for the future. Cain and Abel, the devil and the righteous, stand
face to face. “The world belongs either to the devil or to the Children
of God. The devil’s realm conceals a murderer and bloodhound, Abel,
a pious and peaceable heart.” Abel stands for the Lutherans, Cain
and the devil for the Papists. It is a “veracious opinion, founded
on Scripture and proved by the fruits of the Papists, that they are
ever on the watch and lie in wait day and night to destroy us and root
us out.”[104] “If the Emperor or the authorities purpose to make war
on God [i.e. Luther’s Evangel], then no one must obey them.” In this
case everyone must resist, for it is no “disobedience, rebellion or
contumacy to refuse to obey and assist in shedding innocent blood.”[105]
Opposition and violent resistance to the lawful authority of the empire
and its legitimate action is here justified by the argument that to
fight for the Evangel is no revolt.
The defiant resolve to proceed to any extreme regardless of others or
of the public weal, finds its strongest expression in Luther’s words
during and after the Diet of Augsburg: “Not one hair’s breadth will I
yield to the foe,” he wrote from the fortress of Coburg, with a hint at
the wavering attitude of Melanchthon and Jonas. This it was which led
up to the statement already quoted: “If war is to come, let it come.”
“God has delivered them up to be slaughtered.”[106]
_Luther on Armed Resistance, until 1530._
If we glance at Luther’s former attitude towards open resistance, we
find that it would be unjust to say that he preferred religious war
to peaceful propaganda. He perceived the danger which it involved.
At an earlier period he several times had occasion to intervene when
warring elements threatened to estrange the German Princes. We find
statements of his where he speaks against armed resistance and points
out (to use his later words) what a “blot upon our teaching” a “breach
or disturbance of the peace of the land would be.”[107] There is no
question that such utterances preponderate with him until 1530. From
the very first years of his public career he was anxious to impress on
all, particularly on his own Sovereign, that the Word alone must work
all; he eliminates as far as possible every prospect of a struggle with
the Emperor or the other rulers, which was what the Elector really
dreaded. He also frequently expounds theoretically, more particularly
in his booklet “Von welltlicher Uberkeytt” (1523), the duty of
Christians not to resist the authorities, because the Kingdom of God
means yielding, humility and submission; every true believer must even
allow himself to be “fleeced and oppressed”; he must indeed confess
the evangelical faith, but be willing to “suffer” under an authority
hostile to the faith (cp. vol. ii., p. 229 f.). When occasion offered
he was ready to quote numerous passages from Holy Scripture in order to
show that violent revolt and armed intervention on behalf of the Gospel
are forbidden, and that the German Princes had nothing to fear from him
in this regard.
None the less, his enterprise was visibly drifting towards the
employment of force and towards war.
How deeply he felt the premonition of civil war is plain, for
instance, from the following:
“There will be no lack of breaches of the peace, and of war only too
much,” he wrote in 1528 to the Elector Johann.[108] He and Melanchthon
together also wrote in the same strain to the Crown-Prince of Saxony,
Johann Frederick, in 1528; “Time will bring enough fighting with it
which it will be impossible to avoid, so that we should be grateful to
accept peace where we are able.”[109] As early as 1522 he had given to
the Elector Frederick one of his reasons for leaving the Wartburg and
returning to Wittenberg: “I am much afraid and troubled because I am,
alas, convinced that there will be a great revolt in the German lands,
by which God will chastise the nation.” The Evangel was well received
by the common people, but some were desirous of extinguishing the
light by force. And yet “not only the spiritual, but also the secular
power, must yield to the Evangel, whether cheerfully or otherwise, as
all the accounts contained in the Bible sufficiently show.... I am
only concerned lest the revolt should begin with the Lords, and, like
a national calamity, engulf the priesthood.”[110]
Nevertheless he is determined to be of good cheer; even should the
war ensue, his conscience is “pure, guiltless and untroubled, whereas
the consciences of the Papists are guilty, anxious and unclean.”
“Therefore let things take their course and do their worst, whether it
be war or rebellion according as God’s anger decrees.”[111]
This gives redoubled weight to his determination to press forward
relentlessly. “Let justice prevail even though the whole world should
be reduced to ruin. For I say throw peace into the nethermost hell if
it is to be purchased at the price of harm to the Evangel and to the
faith.”[112]
It has been admitted on the Protestant side that “Luther adhered
to this view throughout his life, viz.: that his doctrine must be
preached even though it should lead to the destruction of all.”[113]
In confirmation of this, another passage taken from Luther’s writings
is quoted: “It has been said that if the Pope falls Germany will
perish, be utterly wrecked and ruined; but how can I help that? I
cannot save it; whose fault is it? Ah, they say, if Luther had not
come and preached, the Papacy would still be on its legs and we should
be at peace. I cannot help that.”[114]
When the same author urges in Luther’s defence that, “he was
not really indifferent to the evil consequences of his actions
in ecclesiastical and political matters,”[115] we naturally ask
whether the author of the schism did not at times feel bitterly his
heavy responsibility for these results, and whether he should not
have exerted himself in every possible way to ward off the “evil
consequences.” His own admissions, to be given elsewhere (see vol.
v., xxxii.), concerning his inward struggles, disclose how frequently
he was troubled with such reproaches and what difficulty he had in
ridding himself of them.
To the inflammatory invitations already given we may subjoin a few
others.
“It were better,” Luther says in his Church-postils, “that all the
churches and foundations throughout the land were uprooted and burnt
to powder—and the sin would be less even though done out of mere
wantonness—than that a single soul should be seduced and corrupted
by this [Papistical] error.”[116] And, further on: “Here you see why
the lightning commonly strikes the churches rather than any other
buildings, viz.: because God is more hostile to them than to any
others, because in no den of robbers, no house of ill-fame is there
such sin, such blasphemy against God, such murder of the soul and
destruction of the Church committed as in these houses” [i.e. in the
churches where the Catholic worship obtained].[117] Elsewhere, at an
earlier date he had said: “Would it be astonishing if the Princes, the
nobles and the laity were to hit Pope, bishop, priest and monk on the
head and drive them out of the land? It has never before been heard of
in Christendom, and it is abominable to hear now, that the Christian
people should openly be commanded to deny the truth.”[118]—Besides
these, we have the fiery words he flung among the people: “Where the
ecclesiastical Estate does not proceed in the way of faith and charity
[according to the Evangel], my wish is not merely that my doctrine
should interfere with the monasteries and foundations, but that they
were reduced to one great heap of ashes.”[119]—In fine: “A grand
destruction of all the monasteries and foundations would be the best
reformation, for they are of no earthly use to Christendom and might
well be spared.... What is useless and unnecessary and yet does such
untold mischief, and to boot is beyond reformation, had much better
be exterminated.”[120] The word here rendered as “destruction” is one
of which Luther frequently makes use to denote violent annihilation,
for instance, of the devastation of Jerusalem and its Temple, nor can
we well explain it away in the above connection; he certainly never
pictured to himself the “grand destruction of all the monasteries
and foundations” otherwise than as a general reduction to ruins. The
excuse brought forward in modern times in extenuation of Luther is a
very strange one, viz.: that, when giving vent to such expressions,
he frequently added the qualifying clause “_if_ the Catholics do not
change their opinions,” then violence will befall them; hence only
in the event of their final refusal to accept the new teaching was
the destruction so vividly described to overtake them! Presumably his
contemporaries should have shown themselves grateful for this saving
clause. The mitigation conveyed by the clause in question in reality
amounted to this: Only if the whole world becomes Lutheran will it be
saved from destruction.[121]
It is psychologically worth noticing that Luther, in his zeal, seems
never to have perceived that the argument might just as well be turned
against himself. The Emperor and the Catholic powers of the Empire,
with at least as much show of reason, might have urged as he did,
that no power, without being doomed to “destruction” and to being
“burnt to ashes,” could stand against the Gospel. The Gospel which
they defended was that handed down by the Church, whereas Luther’s
Evangel, to mention only one point, was novel and hitherto unheard
of by theologians and faithful laity alike. On the one occasion when
this thought occurred to him, he had the following excuse ready: We
are sure of our faith, hence we may and must demand that everything
yield to it; the Emperor and his party on the other hand have no such
assurance and can never reach it. “We know that the Emperor is not and
cannot be certain of it, because we know that he errs and seeks to
oppose the Evangel. We are not obliged to believe that he is certain
because he does not act in accordance with God’s Word, whereas we
on the other hand do; for it is his bounden duty to recognise God’s
Word!” Otherwise, Luther adds, “every murderer and adulterer might
also plead: ‘I am right, therefore you must approve my act because
I am certain I am in the right.’”[122]—“It was with arguments like
these that the Protestant Estates were to justify their overthrow
of the ancient faith and worship, and to demonstrate the wickedness
of the Emperor’s efforts to preserve the faith and worship of his
fathers.”[123]
Of the various memoranda which Luther had to draw up for his Sovereign
on the question of armed resistance, that of February 8, 1523, prepared
for the Elector Frederick, must be mentioned first.[124] In this the
Prince’s attention is drawn to the fact, that publicly he had hitherto
preserved an attitude of neutrality concerning religious questions,
and had merely given out that, as a layman, he was waiting for the
triumph of the truth. Hence it was necessary that he should declare
himself for the justice of Luther’s cause if he intended to abandon
his attitude of submission to the Imperial authority. In that case he
might have recourse to arms in the character of a stranger who comes to
the rescue, but not as a sovereign of the Empire. Further, “he must do
this only at the call of a singular spirit and faith, short of which
he must give way to the sword of the higher power and die with his
Christians.”[125] Should he, however, be attacked, not by the Emperor,
but by the Catholic Princes, then, after first attempting to bring
about peace, he must repel force by force.
When, in 1528, the false reports were circulated, of which we hear in
the history of the Pack negotiation, to wit, that the Catholic Princes
of the Empire were on the point of falling upon the Protesters, Luther
sent a letter to Johann, his Elector, regarding the question of law.
What was to be done if the Catholic powers, without the authorisation
of the Emperor, attacked the Lutheran party? Luther’s verdict was that
such an act on the part of “scoundrel-princes” must be resisted by
force of arms “as a real revolt and conspiracy against the Empire and
His Imperial Majesty,” but that “to take the offensive and anticipate
such an action on the part of the Princes was in no wise to be
counselled.”[126]
On this occasion he manifested serious apprehension of the mischief
which might be caused by a precipitate armed attack on the part of his
princely patrons. It was a very different matter to look forward to a
mere possibility of war and to find himself directly confronted with an
outbreak of hostilities. “May God preserve us from such a horror! This
would indeed be to fish with a draw-net and to take might for right. No
greater blame could attach to the Evangel, for this would be no Peasant
Rising but a Rising of the Princes, which would destroy Germany utterly
to the joy of Satan.”[127]
The above memorandum had dealt with the question of an attack by the
Princes of the Empire. But what was to be done if the Emperor himself
intervened?
The Lutheran Princes and Estates were anxious to exercise the utmost
caution and restraint with regard to the Emperor personally, and in
this Luther agreed with them. At Spires, in 1526, they had decided to
behave “in such a way as to be able to answer for it before God and
the Emperor,” which, however, did not prevent them from establishing
the “evangelical” worship in contravention of the decrees of Worms. It
was hoped that the Emperor, hampered by his foreign policy, would not
take up arms. When, accordingly, the protesting Princes, at the time of
the Pack business, commenced warlike preparations against the Catholic
party in the Empire, they solemnly declared at Rotach, in June, 1528,
that they “excepted” the Emperor. In the same way they desired that
their action at Spires in 1529, where they “protested” against the
Emperor, should be looked upon as an appeal to the Emperor “better
instructed.” When the Emperor, on account of the protest, began to
take a serious view of the matter, any scruples which the sovereigns of
Hesse and the Saxon Electorate may have felt concerning the employment
of armed resistance against him soon evaporated. In Saxony it was held
that a closer alliance of the Princes favourable to the innovations
ought not to be “shorn of its meaning and value” by this “exemption
of the Emperor”; the exemption, it was argued, was only of the person
of the Emperor, not of his mandataries. A Saxon memorandum at the end
of July, 1529, practically made an end of the exemption; “resistance,
even to the Emperor, the most dangerous of our foes, belongs to the
natural law of humanity.”[128] This was the opinion of the Margrave of
Brandenburg, and even more so of the Landgrave of Hesse. At Nuremberg,
however, Lazarus Spengler sought to persuade the Council to negative
this resolution; he was still entirely under the influence of Luther’s
earlier teaching, that the spirit must be ready to endure and suffer
under the secular authorities.
Luther, in spite of his frequent threats and urgings, was not
immediately to be induced to make common cause with the politicians. In
January, 1530, Johann Brenz penned a memorandum in which, in terms of
the utmost decision, he denies the lawfulness of resisting the Emperor,
whereas on Christmas Day, 1529, in a similar memorandum requested
of him by the Elector, Luther expresses himself most ambiguously.
He, indeed, just hints at the unlawfulness of such resistance, but
qualifies this admission by such words as the following: “There must
be no resistance unless actual violence is done, or dire necessity
compels”; “without a Council and without a hearing” there must be no
war against the Emperor; before this, however, much water is likely to
flow under the bridge, and God may easily find means of establishing
peace; “hence my opinion is that the project of taking the field should
be abandoned for the nonce, unless further cause or necessity should
arise.”[129]
In a letter to George, Margrave of Brandenburg, written on March 6,
1530, with the object of winning him over to the war party, Philip
of Hesse declared that he had seen “in Luther’s own writings to the
Elector, that he sanctioned the latter’s resisting the Emperor.” This
probably refers to the above memorandum which lies to-day in the
Hessian archives at Marburg, the original of which seems to have been
submitted to Philip; it may, however, have been some other letter
since lost, or possibly the 1528 memorandum in which Luther speaks of
the lawfulness of repelling the anticipated attack of the Catholic
Princes.[130]
To take up arms in the cause of the Evangel was certainly not in
accordance with Luther’s previous teaching, however much he may
himself have occasionally disregarded it. Owing to a certain mystical
confidence in his cause, he could not bring himself to believe that
things would ever come to be settled by force of arms. The Elector
Johann, unlike Philip of Hesse, again began to hesitate. On January
27, 1530, he instructed the Wittenberg Faculty to let him have, within
three weeks, the views of its lawyers. These counsellors declared in
favour of the lawfulness of such a war against the Emperor, basing
their view on two considerations, viz. that as an appeal had been
made to a Council the Emperor could not in the meantime insist upon
submission in matters of religion, and that, on his election at
Frankfurt, it had been agreed that all the Princes and Estates should
retain their customary rights. In spite of this, the lawyers consulted
were not in favour of having forthwith recourse to open resistance,
but suggested the exercise of patience and restraint.[131] Luther and
Melanchthon replied only on March 6, 1530. What strikes one in Luther’s
reply is that “he has nothing personal to say on the relations between
Emperor and Prince; this was a serious omission. All he sees is the
individual Christian—in this case the sovereign—and his fidelity to
the faith.... He is still unable to believe in a coming disaster, for
this his God will surely not permit.”[132]
His categorical declaration, in the memorandum of March 30, 1530,
against the lawfulness of resistance, is of greater importance, for it
is the last of the kind. After this the change already foreseen was to
take place.
With an express appeal to his three advisers, Jonas, Bugenhagen and
Melanchthon, Luther explains to the Elector,[133] that armed resistance
“can in no way be reconciled with Scripture.” Quite candidly he lays
stress on the unfavourable prospects of resistance and the evil
consequences which must attend success. Having taken the step, we
should, he says, “be forced to go further, to drive away the Emperor
and make ourselves Emperor.” “In the confusion and tumult which would
ensue everyone would want to be Emperor, and what horrible bloodshed
and misery would that not cause.”[134]
In principle, it will be observed, the letter left open a loophole
in the event of a more favourable condition of the Protestant cause
supervening, i.e. should it be possible to arrive at the desired result
by some quieter and safer means, and without deposing the Emperor. None
the less noteworthy are, however, the biblical utterances to which
Luther again returns: “A Christian ought to be ready to suffer violence
and injustice, more particularly from his own ruler,” otherwise “there
would be no authority or obedience left in the world.” He would fain
uphold, against all law, “whether secular or Popish,” the truth, that
“authority is of Divine institution.” Hence the Princes must quietly
submit to all the Emperor does; “Each one must answer for himself and
maintain his belief at the risk of life and limb, and not drag the
Princes with him into danger.” “The matter must be committed to God.”
Hence the memorandum culminates in the exhortation to sacrifice “life
and limb,” i.e. to endure martyrdom.[135] This memorandum of Luther’s
was kept secret. At any rate the apparently heroic renunciation of
all recourse to arms, together with the reference—reminiscent of his
earlier mysticism—to the Christian’s vocation to suffer violence
and injustice, make of this memorandum a remarkable document not to
be matched by any other writing of Luther at that time. Though there
is little doubt that the sight of the comparatively helpless and
critical position of the new party had its effect here, yet, beyond
this, there is a psychological connection between the standpoint voiced
in the memorandum and Luther’s attitude after the inward change which
occurred in him whilst yet a monk. His perfectly just injunction not to
withstand the Emperor, he rests partly on the mystic theories he had
imbibed at that time, partly on his early erroneous views concerning
the rights of the authorities as guardians of outward, public order. In
his enthusiasm for his cause he clings to that presumptuous confidence
in a special Divine guidance, which had inspired him from the beginning
of his career. “The call of a singular spirit and faith,” which he
considered necessary in the case of the Elector Frederick (see above,
p. 48), he hears quite clearly within himself, though as yet this
call does not urge him to advocate armed resistance to the Emperor,
but merely inspires him blindly to confide in his cause and to exhort
others to “martyrdom.”
Simultaneously Melanchthon sent to the Elector a memorandum of his
own, which, apart from being clearer in language and thought, closely
resembles Luther’s and betrays the same deficiencies.[136]
_The Change of 1530; Influence of the Courts._
In that same year, 1530, after his return to Wittenberg from the Coburg
on the termination of the Diet of Augsburg, a notable change took place
in Luther’s public attitude towards the question of the employment of
force. This change we can follow step by step.
The fact that the lawyers attached to the Court had, in view of the
circumstances, altered their minds, weighed strongly with Luther.
Confronted with the measures of retaliation announced by the Diet,
and more hopeful regarding the prospects of resistance now that
the Protesters were joining forces, the councillors of the Saxon
Electorate, with Chancellor Brück at their head, were inclined to the
opinion that whatever sentences the Reichsgericht might pronounce in
virtue of the Imperial edict of Augsburg might safely be disregarded,
which, of course, was tantamount to a commencement of resistance.
They were very anxious concerning the consequences of the decrees
of Augsburg, as these involved the restitution of all the property
and rights of the Church, which had been appropriated by the secular
power in the name of religion. Johann, Elector of Saxony, for a while
continued to regard resistance as unlawful. On reaching Nuremberg, on
his return journey from Augsburg, he said to Luther’s friend there,
Wenceslaus Link: “Should one of my neighbours, or anyone else, attack
me on account of the Evangel, I should resist him with all the force at
my command, but should the Emperor come and attack me, he is my liege
lord and I must yield to him, and what were more honourable than to be
exterminated on account of the Word of God?”[137] Gradually, however,
he was brought over to the new standpoint of his councillors. The
example of the Landgrave of Hesse, who belonged to the war party and
was very hopeful of the results of a league, had great weight with him,
and likewise his determination not to surrender to the executors of
the Imperial edict the Church property which had been confiscated. The
innovations which, in the beginning, had seemed a work of high-minded
idealists, were now pushed forward by many of the Princes, for motives
of the very lowest, viz. to avoid making restitution of property which
had been unlawfully distrained. On unevangelical motives such as
these it was that the theory of submission to the secular power, in
particular to the Emperor, announced by Luther in such grandiloquent
language, was to suffer shipwreck.
Philip of Hesse, who was aware of the weak points in Luther’s previous
declarations on the subject, was the first to attempt to bring about a
change in his views.
He entered into communication with Luther in October, 1530, and sent
him a “writing,” together with a “Christian admonition,” to encourage
him and his theologians, in whom, during the Diet, he thought he had
detected a certain tendency to waver. Luther replied, on October 15,
in a very devout letter, assuring the Landgrave that he had “received
both the writing and the admonition with pleasure and gladness.” “I
beg to thank Your Highness for your good and earnest counsel”; he and
his, as time went on, were “even less disposed to yield” and reckoned
on the help of God.[138]
Philip, in his next letter a week later, came at once to the crucial
point, the question of resistance. He reminded Luther of the
memorandum in which he had said, they must indeed not “commence the
war, but that if they were attacked they might defend themselves” (p.
50 f.). Philip, without further ado, explains his plans against the
Emperor. The Emperor, he says with perfect frankness, “took the oath
to his Princes at his election, just as much as they did to him....
Hence, if the Emperor does not keep his oath to us, he reduces himself
to the rank of any other man, and must no longer be regarded as a real
Emperor, but as a mere breaker of the peace.” The “most important of
the Electors and Estates” had not agreed to the Reichstagsabschied.
Hence there was hope of triumphing over the Emperor. In his letter
to Luther, he even makes use of comparisons from the Bible, just as
Luther himself was in the habit of doing, and this he did again at
a later date when seeking Luther’s sanction for his bigamy. “God in
the Old Testament did not forsake His people or allow the country to
perish which trusted in Him.” He had come to the aid of the Bohemians
and of “many other too, against Emperors and such-like, who treated
their subjects with unjust violence.” This being so, he requests
Luther for his “advice and opinion” whether force may not be used,
seeing that “His Majesty is determined to re-establish the devil’s
doctrine.”[139]