TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.

—The transcriber of this project created the book cover image using the title page of the original book. The image is placed in the public domain.

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

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]

Luther now saw himself obliged openly to avow his standpoint, all the more as a similar request had reached him from the Elector, in this case possibly a verbal one. He left the Landgrave to wait and replied first to the Elector, though only by word of mouth, so as not to commit himself irretrievably on so delicate a matter. What his reply exactly was is not known. At the end of October he had to go to Torgau for a conference on the subject with the Elector’s legal advisers and possibly those of other Princes. Melanchthon and Jonas accompanied him, and the negotiations were protracted and lively.[140]

During these negotiations Luther replied from Torgau, on October 28, to the letter from the Landgrave referred to above, though in general and evasive terms. He says, he hopes no blood will be shed, but, in the event of things going so far, he had told the Elector his opinion on resistance, and of this the Landgrave would hear in due season; that it would be dangerous for him, as an ecclesiastic, to put this into writing, for many reasons.[141] Hence for the nonce he was determined to express himself only verbally on this tiresome question.

In what direction his thoughts were then turning may be gathered from what he says to the Landgrave in the same letter concerning his writings; the latter had asked him, he says, for a controversial booklet, “as a consolation for the weak”; he intended “in any case to publish a booklet shortly ... admonishing all consciences, that no subject was bound to render obedience should His Imperial Majesty persist”; and in which he will prove that the Emperor’s demands are “blasphemous, murderous and diabolical”—still, the booklet was not to be termed “seditious.” He here is referring either to the “Auff das vermeint Edict” or to the “Warnunge.” We have already spoken of the revolutionary character of the language he used in these tracts published in the early part of 1531, and, subsequently, in the reply “Widder den Meuchler zu Dresen.”[142] What he was there to advocate goes far beyond the limits of mere passive resistance.

He was at first unwilling to declare his views at Torgau. Not to contradict what he had previously said, he protested that the question did not concern him, since, as a theologian, his business was to teach Christ only. As regards secular matters, he could only counsel compliance with the law and, on the matter of forcible resistance to the Emperor, that any action taken should be conformable to the “written laws.” “But what these laws were he neither knew nor cared.”[143]

The assembled lawyers were, however, loath to leave Torgau without having reached an understanding, and submitted another statement to Luther and his colleagues, requesting their opinion on it. In this document they had sought to prove, from sources almost exclusively canonical, that it was lawful to resist the Emperor by force, because “he proceeds and acts contrary to law,” not being a judge in matters of religion, and that, even if he were such a judge, he had no right to do anything on account of the appeal to a Council. They urged that it was necessary to “obey God and evangelical truth rather than men,” and that the Emperor was “no more than a private individual so far as the ‘cognition’ and ‘statution’ of this matter went ... nor does the ‘execution’ come within his province.” For the sake of the salvation of souls the Emperor was not to be regarded as “judge in the matter of our faith,” for his “injustice is undeniable, manifest, patent and notorious, yea, more than notorious.”[144]

The councillors chose to deal with the matter chiefly from the point of view of canon law, as is shown by their misquotations from such well-known canonists as Panormitanus, Innocent IV., Felinus, Baldus de Ubaldis and the Archidiaconus (Baisius).[145] In spite of this they calmly assumed the truth of the proposition, condemned in canon law, of the subordination of Pope to Council and of the right of appealing from Pope to Council. They took it for granted that Luther’s doctrines had not yet been finally rejected by the Church, and, in contradiction with actual fact, declared that the Augsburg Reichstagsabschied “admitted and allowed” that Luther’s doctrines, seeing that they were supposed to have been condemned by previous Councils, should come up for discussion at the next. As a matter of fact the Reichstagsabschied contained nothing of the sort “concerning doctrines of faith.”[146]

This document was submitted to the theologians before they left Torgau, and their embarrassment was reflected in their written reply. Luther agreed with his friends that the only way out of the difficulty was to put the whole thing on the shoulders of the lawyers. He and his party declared that they stood altogether outside the question, since the councillors had already decided independently of them in favour of armed resistance, on the ground of the secular, Imperial laws. As for the reasons alleged from canon law, he refused to take them into consideration. Later on he was glad to be able to appeal to this subterfuge, and declared that he “had given no counsel.”[147]

At this time, however, Luther, Melanchthon and Jonas put their signatures to a memorandum in which they sought to protect themselves by certain assurances which make a painful impression on the reader.

It was true that hitherto they had taught, so they say, “that the [secular] authorities must on no account be resisted,” but, they had been unaware “that the authorities’ own laws, which we have always taught must be diligently obeyed, sanctioned this.” They had also taught, “that the secular laws must be allowed to take their own course, because the Gospel teaches nothing against the worldly law.” “Accordingly, now that the doctors and experts in the law have proved that our present case is such that it is lawful to resist the authorities, we, for our part, ‘cannot disprove this from Scripture, when self-defence is called for, even though it should be against the Emperor himself.’” They then come to the question of arming. This they declare to be distinctly practical and advisable, especially as “any day other causes may arise where it would be essential to be ready to defend oneself, not merely from worldly motives, but from duty and constraint of conscience.” It was necessary “to be ready to encounter a power which might suddenly arise.”[148]

The Landgrave of Hesse was then making great preparations for war, with an eye on Würtemberg, where, as he admitted publicly, he wished forcibly to re-instate Duke Ulrich, a friend to the religious innovations.

The theologians of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, unlike those of Wittenberg, were opposed to resistance. They replied then, or somewhat later, concerning the views put forward by the lawyers, that it was a question of the supreme secular Majesty, not of a judge who was subservient to a higher secular sword, hence that the lawyers’ suppositions could not stand.[149] Little heed was however paid to their objection. On the other hand the proposal made by the legal consulters, that further representations should be made to the Emperor regarding the execution of the Reichstagsabschied, was described by the theologians as “not expedient,” though it might be further discussed at the Nuremberg Conference on November 11 (Martinmas).[150]

Instead, it was for November 13 that a summons, dispatched by Saxony on October 31, invited a conference to meet at Nuremberg to discuss the matter, and take the steps which eventually led to the formation of the defensive League of Schmalkalden. At first it was proposed, that, after the Nuremberg conference, another should be held at Schmalkalden on November 28, though as a matter of fact the only meeting held commenced at Schmalkalden on December 22.

Only now did it become apparent that Luther and his theologians had, at least in the opinion of the Saxon politicians, expressed themselves privately much more openly in favour of resistance than would appear from the above memorandum. The envoys from the Saxon Electorate appealed with great emphasis to the opinion of the Wittenberg divines, in order to show the lawfulness of the plan of armed resistance and the expediency of the proposed League. Armed with this authority they openly “defied our ministers,” wrote Lazarus Spengler of Nuremberg, to Veit Dietrich on February 20, 1531. Spengler, like the Nuremberg Councillors and those of Brandenburg, was opposed to resistance and to the League. He was surprised that “Dr. Martin should so contradict himself.”[151] The fact is that he was the only person to whom Luther’s previous memorandum of March, 1530, had been communicated.[152]

The Nuremberg magistrates appealed, among other reasons, to the clear testimony of Scripture which did not sanction such proceedings against the supreme secular authority. They feared the consequences of a religious war for Germany, just as Luther himself had formerly done, but, in spite of their adherence to the new faith, they were more frank and courageous in their effort to avert it than he on whose shoulders the chief responsibility in the war was to rest.

One sentence of Melanchthon’s, written in those eventful days, singularly misrepresents the true position of affairs. To his friend Camerarius, on January 1, 1531, he says: “We discountenance all arming.”[153]

Melanchthon also writes: “We are now consulted less frequently than heretofore as to the lawfulness of resistance,” and he repeats much the same thing on February 15, 1531: “On the matter of the League no one now questions either Luther or myself.”[154] If we can here detect a faint note of wonder and regret, we may assuredly ask whether the very behaviour of the theologians at Torgau was not the reason of their advice being at a discount; their dissimulation and ambiguity were not of a nature to inspire the lawyers and statesmen with much respect.

It was some time before this vacillation in official, written statements came to an end. Some more instances of it are to be met with in the epistolary communications between Luther and the town of Nuremberg, which was opposed to the Schmalkalden tendencies.

Prior to November 20, 1530, the Elector of Saxony had addressed himself to the magistrates of Nuremberg with the request that “they would make preparations for resisting the unjust and violent measures of the Emperor.” Of this Veit Dietrich informed Luther from Nuremberg on that day, adding that the Elector had made a reference to an approval of the measures of defence secured from his “Councillors and Doctors,” but had said nothing of the theologians.[155] News was, however, subsequently received in Nuremberg that the Saxon envoys present at Schmalkalden had boasted of the support of Luther and his friends.

It was in consequence of this that the Nuremberg preacher, Wenceslaus Link, enquired of Luther in the beginning of January, 1531, or possibly earlier, whether the news which had reached Nuremberg by letter was true, viz. that “they had expressed the opinion that resistance might be employed against the Emperor.”

Without delay, on January 15, Luther assured him: “We have by no means given such a counsel” (“nullo modo consuluimus”).[156]

By way of further explanation he adds: “When some said openly that it was not necessary to consult the theologians at all, or to trouble about them, and that the matter concerned only the lawyers who had decided in favour of its lawfulness, I for my part declared: I view the matter as a theologian, but if the lawyers can prove its permissibility from their laws, I see no reason why they should not use their laws; that is altogether their business. If the Emperor by virtue of his laws determines the permissibility of resistance in such a case, then let him bear the consequences of his law; I, however, pronounce no opinion or judgment on this law, but I stick to my theology.” It is thus that he expresses himself concerning the argument which the lawyers had, as a matter of fact, drawn almost exclusively from canon law, the texts of which they misread.

He then puts forward his own theory in favour of the belligerent nobles of his party, according to which a ruler, when he acts as a politician, is not acting as a Christian (“non agit ut christianus”), as though his conscience as a sovereign could be kept distinct from his conscience as a Christian. “A Christian is neither Prince nor commoner nor anything whatever in the personal world. Hence whether resistance is permissible to a ruler as ruler, let them settle according to their own judgment and conscience. To a Christian nothing [of that sort] is lawful, for he is dead to the world.”

“The explanations [Luther’s] have proceeded thus far,” he concludes this strange justification, “and this much you may tell Lazarus [Spengler, the clerk to the Nuremberg Council] concerning my views. I see clearly, however, that, even should we oppose their project, they are nevertheless resolved to offer resistance and not to draw back, so full are they of their own ideas; I preach in vain that God will come to our assistance, and that no resistance will be required. God’s help is indeed visible in this, that the Diet has led to no result, and that our foes have hitherto taken no steps. God will continue to afford us His help; but not everyone has faith. I console myself with this thought: since the Princes are determined not to accept our advice, they sin less, and act with greater interior assurance, by proceeding in accordance with the secular law, than were they to act altogether against their conscience and directly contrary to Holy Scripture. It is true they do not wit that they are acting contrary to Scripture, though they are not transgressing the civil law. Therefore I let them have their way, I am not concerned.”

He thus disclaimed all responsibility, and he did so with all the more confidence by reason of his sermons to the people, where he continued to speak as before of the love of peace which actuated him, ever with the words on his lips: “By the Word alone.” “Christ,” he exclaims, “will not suffer us to hurt Pope or rebel by so much as a hair.”[157]

It was easy to foresee that after such replies from Luther, Spengler and the magistrates of Nuremberg would not be pleased with him. Possibly Link had doubts about making known at Nuremberg a writing which was more in the nature of an excuse than a reply, since, on such a burning question which involved the future of Germany, a more reliable decision might reasonably have been looked for. On February 20, fresh enquiries and complaints concerning the news which had come to Nuremberg of Luther’s approval of organised resistance, reached Veit Dietrich, from the Council clerk, Spengler, and were duly transmitted to Luther (see above, p. 58 f.). Luther now thought it advisable, on account of the charge of having retracted his previous opinion, to justify himself to Spengler and the magistrates. In his written reply of February 15, he assured the clerk, that he “was not conscious of such a retractation.” For, to the antecedent, he still adhered as before, viz. that it was necessary to obey the Emperor and to keep his laws. As for the conclusion, that the Emperor decrees that in such a case he may be resisted, this, he says, “was an inference of the jurists, not of our own; should they bring forward a proof in support of this conclusion—which as yet they have not done—(‘probationem exspectamus, quam non videmus’)—we shall be forced to admit that the Emperor has renounced his rights in favour of a political and Imperial law which supersedes the natural law.” Of the Divine law and of the Bible teaching, which Luther had formerly advocated with so much warmth, we find here no mention.[158]

The scruples of the magistrates of Nuremberg were naturally not set at rest by such answers, but continued as strong as ever. After the League had already been entered into, an unknown Nuremberg councillor of Lutheran sympathies, wrote again to the highest theological authority in Wittenberg for information as to its legality. In his reply Luther again threw off all responsibility, referring him, even more categorically than before, to the politicians: “They must take it upon their own conscience and see whether they are in the right.... If they have right on their side, then the League is well justified.” Personally he preferred to refrain from pronouncing any opinion, and this on religious grounds, because such leagues were frequently entered into “in reliance on human aid,” and had also been censured by the Prophets of the Old Covenant. Had he chosen, the distinguished Nuremberger might have taken these words as equivalent to a doubt as to the moral character of the League of Schmalkalden. Furthermore, Luther adds: “A good undertaking and a righteous one” must, in order to succeed, rely on God rather than on men. “What is undertaken in real confidence in God, ends well, even though it should be mistaken and sinful,” and the contrary likewise holds good; for God is jealous of His honour even in our acts.[159]

The citizens of Nuremberg had, in the meantime, on February 19, sent to the Saxon envoys their written refusal to join the League of Schmalkalden. The magistrates therein declared that they were still convinced (as Luther had been formerly) that resistance to the Emperor was forbidden by Holy Writ, and that the reasons to the contrary advanced by the learned men of Saxony were insufficient.[160] George, Elector of the Franconian part of Brandenburg, who was otherwise one of the most zealous supporters of the innovations, also refused to join the League.

The memorandum in which Luther, Jonas, Bugenhagen and Melanchthon had declared, in March, 1530, that the employment of force in defence of the Gospel “could not in any way be reconciled with Scripture” (above, p. 51 f.) was kept a secret. Not even Melanchthon himself was permitted to send it to his friend Camerarius, though he promised to show it him on a visit.[161] Myconius, however, sent it from Gotha confidentially to Lang at Erfurt, on September 19, 1530, and wrote at the same time: “I am sending you the opinion of Luther and Philip, but on condition that you show it to no one. For it is not good that Satan’s cohorts should be informed of all the secrets of Christ; besides, there are some amongst us too weak to be able to relish such solid food.”[162]

In spite of these precautions copies of the “counsel” came into circulation. The text reached Cochlæus, who forthwith, in 1531, had it printed as a document throwing a timely light on the belligerent League entered into at Schmalkalden in that year. He subjoined a severe, running criticism, a reply by Paul Bachmann, Abbot of the monastery of Altenzell, and other writings.[163]

Cochlæus pointed out, that it was not the Emperor but Luther, who had been a persecutor of the Gospel for more than twelve years. Should, however, the Emperor persecute the true Gospel of Christ, then the exhortation contained in Luther’s memorandum patiently to allow things to take their course and even to suffer martyrdom, would be altogether inadmissible, because there existed plenty means of obtaining redress; in such a case God was certainly more to be obeyed than the Emperor; any Prince who should assist the Emperor in such an event must be looked upon as a tyrant and ravening wolf; it was, on the contrary, the duty of the Princes to risk life and limb should the Gospel and true faith of their subjects be menaced; and in the same way the towns and all their burghers must offer resistance; this would be no revolt, seeing that the Imperial authority would be tyrannously destroying the historic ecclesiastical order as handed down, in fact, the Divine order. Luther’s desire, Cochlæus writes, that each one should answer for himself to the Emperor, was unreasonable and quite impossible for the unlearned. Finally, he warmly invites the doctors of the new faith to return to Mother Church.[164]

The author of the other reply to Luther’s secret memorandum dealt more severely with it. Abbot Bachmann declares, that it was not inspired by charity but by the cunning and malice of the old serpent. “As long as Luther had a free hand to carry on his heresies unopposed, he raged like a madman, called the Pope Antichrist, the Emperor a bogey, the Princes fools, tyrants and jackanapes, worse even than the Turks; but, now that he foresees opposition, the old serpent turns round and faces his tail, simulating a false humility, patience and reverence for the authorities, and says: ‘A Christian must be ready to endure violence from his rulers!’ Yet even this assertion is not true always and everywhere....” Should a ruler really persecute the Divine teaching, then it would be necessary to defend oneself against him. “I should have had to write quite a big book,” he concludes, “had I wished to reply one by one to all the sophistries which Luther accumulates in this his counsel.”[165]

The League of Schmalkalden and the Religious Peace of Nuremberg.

The League of Schmalkalden was first drawn up and subscribed to by Johann, Elector of Saxony, and Ernest, Duke of Brunswick, on February 27, 1531. The other members affixed their signatures to the document at Schmalkalden on March 29. The League comprised, in addition to the Electorate of Saxony and the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg, the Landgraviate of Hesse under Philip, the prime mover of the undertaking, and was also subscribed to by Prince Wolfgang of Anhalt, Counts Gebhard and Albert of Mansfeld, and the townships of Strasburg, Ulm, Constance, Reutlingen, Memmingen, Lindau, Biberach, Isny, Lübeck, Magdeburg and Bremen.

A wedge had been driven into the unity of Germany at the expense of her internal strength and external development. What had been initiated at Gotha in 1526 by the armed coalition between Landgrave Philip of Hesse and the Elector of Saxony, in the interests of the religious innovations, was now consummated.

The obligation to which the members of the League of Schmalkalden pledged themselves by oath was as follows: “That where one party is attacked or suffers violence for the Word of God or for causes arising from it, or on any other pretext, each one shall treat the matter in no other way than as though he himself were attacked, and shall therefore, without even waiting for the others, come to the assistance of the party suffering violence, and succour him to the utmost of his power.” The alliance, which was first concluded for six years, was repeatedly renewed later and strengthened by the accession of new members.

Luther, for his part, had now arrived at the goal whither his steps had been tending and towards which so many of the statements contained in his letters and writings had pointed, inspired as they were by a fiery prepossession in favour of his cause. It suited him admirably, that, when the iron which had so long been heating came upon the anvil, he should remain in the background, leaving to the lawyers the first place and the duty of tendering opinions. In his eyes, however, the future success of the League, in view of its then weakness, was still very doubtful. Should the Schmalkalden conference turn out to be the commencement of a period of misfortune for the innovations, still, thanks to the restraint which Luther had imposed on himself, in spite of his being the moving spirit and the religious link between the allies, his preaching of the Evangel would be less compromised. The miseries of the Peasant War, which had been laid to his account, the excesses of the Anabaptists against public order, the unpopularity which he had earned for himself everywhere on account of the revolts and disturbance of the peace, were all of a nature to make him more cautious. There are many things to show, that, instead of promoting the outbreak of hostilities in the days immediately subsequent to the Diet of Augsburg, he would very gladly have contented himself with the assurance, that, for the present, the Reichstagsabschied not being capable of execution, things might as well take their course. By this policy he would gain time; he was also anxious for the new faith quietly to win new ground, so as to demonstrate to the Emperor by positive proofs the futility of any proceedings against himself.

The wavering attitude of many of the Catholic Estates at Augsburg had inspired him with great hopes of securing new allies. It there became apparent that either much had been rotten for a long time past in that party of the Diet which hitherto had been faithful to the Pope, or that the example of the Protesters had proved infectious.

Wider prospects were also opening out for Lutheranism. In Würtemberg Catholicism was menaced by the machinations of the Landgrave of Hesse. There seemed a chance of the towns of Southern Germany being won back from Zwinglian influences and making common cause with Wittenberg. Henry the Eighth’s failure in his divorce proceedings also raised the hopes of the friends of the new worship that England, too, might be torn away from the Papal cause. At the conclusion of the Diet, Bugenhagen had been summoned by the magistrates of Lübeck in order to introduce the new Church system in that city.

In Bavaria there was danger lest the jealousy of the Dukes at the growth of the house of Habsburg, and their opposition to the expected election of Ferdinand as King, should help in the spread of schism.

It is noteworthy that Luther’s letter to Ludwig Senfl, the eminent and not unfriendly musician and composer, bandmaster to Duke William and a great favourite at the Court of Bavaria, should have been sent just at this time. To him Luther was high in his praise of the Court: Since the Dukes of Bavaria were so devoted to music, he must extol them, and give them the preference over all other Princes, for friends of music must necessarily possess a good seed of virtue in their soul. This connection with Senfl he continued in an indirect fashion.[166]

The best answer to the resolutions passed at Augsburg seemed to the first leader of the movement to lie in expansion, i.e. in great conquests, to be achieved in spite of all threats of violence.

Instead of having recourse to violence, the Empire, however, entered into those negotiations which were ultimately to lead, in 1532, to the so-called Religious Peace of Nuremberg. At about this time Luther sent a missive to his Elector in which his readiness for a religious war is perfectly plain.

The document, which was composed jointly with the other Wittenberg theologians, and for the Latinity of which Melanchthon may have been responsible, treats, it would appear, of certain Imperial demands for concessions made at the Court of the Elector on September 1, 1531, previous to the Schmalkalden conference. These demands manifest the utmost readiness on the part of the authorities of the Empire to make advances. Yet Luther in his reply refuses to acquiesce even in the proposal that people everywhere should be allowed to receive the Sacrament under one kind, according to the ritual hitherto in use. We are bound to declare openly and at all times, he says, that all those who refrain from receiving under both kinds are guilty of sin. He continues, referring to the other points under debate: It is true that we are told of the terrible consequences which must result should “war and rebellion break out, the collapse of all public order fall like a scourge upon Germany, and the Turks and other foreign powers subjugate the divided nation. To this our reply is: Sooner let the world perish than have peace at the expense of the Evangel. We know our teaching is certain; not a hair’s breadth may we yield for the sake of the public peace. We must commend ourselves to God, Who has hitherto protected His Church during the most terrible wars, and Who has helped us beyond all expectation.”[167]

This argument based on the Evangel cuts away the ground from under all Luther’s previous more moderate counsels.

The religious peace of Nuremberg was in the end more favourable to him than he could have anticipated. To his dudgeon, however, he had to remain idle while the guidance of the movement was assumed almost entirely by the League of Schmalkalden, the fact that the League was a military one supplying a pretext for dispossessing him more and more of its direction. Already, in 1530, he had been forced to look on while Philip made advances to the sectaries of Zürich and the other Zwinglian towns of Switzerland, and concluded a treaty with them on November 16 for mutual armed assistance in the event of an attack on account of the faith. “This will lead to a great war,” he wrote to the Elector, “and, as your Electoral Highness well knows, in such a war we shall be defending the error concerning the Sacrament, which will thus become our own; from this may Christ, my Lord, preserve your Electoral Highness.”[168]

His apprehensions, lest the good repute of his cause should be damaged by unjust bloodshed, grew, when, in 1534, the warlike Landgrave set out for Würtemberg.

It was a crying piece of injustice and violence when Philip of Hesse, after having allied himself with France, by means of a lucky campaign, robbed King Ferdinand of Würtemberg and established the new faith in that country by reinstating the Lutheran Duke Ulrich.[169]

Before the campaign Luther had declared that it was “contrary to the Gospel,” and would “bring a stain upon our teaching,” and that “it was wrong to disturb or violate the peace of the commonwealth.”[170] He hinted at the same time that he did not believe in a successful issue: “No wise man,” he said subsequently, “would have risked it.”[171]—Yet, when the whole country was in the hands of the conqueror, when a treaty of peace had been signed in which the articles on religion were purposely framed in obscure and ambiguous terms, while the prospects of the new faith, in view of Ulrich’s character, seemed excellent, Luther expressed his joy and congratulations to the Hessian Court through Justus Menius, a preacher of influence: “We rejoice that the Landgrave has returned happily after having secured peace. It is plain that this is God’s work; contrary to the general expectation He has set our fears to rest! He Who has begun the work will also bring it to a close. Amen.”[172]

Luther himself tells us later what foreign power it was that had rendered this civil war in the very heart of Germany possible. “Before he [the Landgrave] reinstated the Duke of Würtemberg he was in France with the King, who lent him 200,000 coronati to carry on the war.”[173]

The fear of an impending great war between the religious parties in Germany was gradually dispelled. The object of the members of the League of Schmalkalden in seeking assistance from France and England was to strengthen their position against a possible attack on the part of the Emperor; at the same time, by refusing to lend any assistance against the Turks, they rendered him powerless.

Luther now ventured to prophesy an era of peace. We shall have peace, he said, and there is no need to fear a war on account of religion. “But questions will arise concerning the bishoprics and the foundations,” as the Emperor is trying to get the rich bishoprics into his hands, and the other Princes likewise; “this will lead to quarrels and blows, for others also want their share.”[174] This confirms the observation made above: In place of a religious struggle the Princes preferred to wrangle over ecclesiastical property and rights, of which they were jealous. Thus Luther’s prediction concerning the character of the struggle in the years previous to the Schmalkalden and Thirty Years’ War was not so far wrong.

Luther and the Religious War in Later Years.

Luther was never afterwards to revert to his original disapproval of armed resistance to the Emperor.

In his private conversations we frequently find, on the contrary, frank admissions quite in agreement with the above remark on “war and rebellion” being justified by the Divine and indestructible Evangel. It is not only lawful, he says, but necessary to fight against the Emperor in the cause of the Evangel. “Should he begin a war against our religion, our worship and our Church, then he is a tyrant. Of this there is no question. Is it not lawful to fight in defence of piety? Even nature demands that we should take up arms in defence of our children and our families. Indeed, I shall, if possible, address a writing to the whole world exhorting all to the defence of their people.”[175]

Other similar statements are met with in his Table-Talk at a later date. “It is true a preacher ought not to fight in his own defence, for which reason I do not take a sword with me when I mount the pulpit, but only on journeys.”[176] “The lawyers,” he said, on February 7, 1538, “command us to resist the Emperor, simply desiring that a madman should be deprived of his sword.... The natural law requires that if one member injure another he be put under restraint, made a prisoner and kept in custody. But from the point of view of theology, there are doubts (Matt. v., 1 Peter ii.). I reply, however, that statecraft permits, nay commands, self-defence, so that whoever does not defend himself is regarded as his own murderer,” in spite of the fact, that, as a Christian and “believer in the Kingdom of Christ, he must suffer all things, and may not in this guise either eat or drink or beget children.” In many cases it is necessary to put away “the Christianum and bring to the fore the politicam personam,”[177] just as a man may slay incontinently the violator of his wife. “We are fighting, not against Saul, but against Absalom.” Besides, the Emperor might not draw the sword without the consent of the Seven Electors. “The sword belongs to us, and only at our request may he use it.”[178] “Without the seven he has no power; indeed, if even one is not for him, his power is nil and he is no longer monarch.... I do not deprive the Emperor of the sword, but the Pope, who has no business to lord it and act as a tyrant.”[179] “The Emperor will not commence a war on his own account but for the sake of the Pope, whose vassal he has become; he is only desirous of defending the abominations of the Pope, who hates the Gospel and thinks of nothing but his own godless power.”[180]

Luther, in his anger against the Papists and the priests, goes so far as to place them on a par with the Turks and to advise their being slaughtered;[181] this he did, for instance, in May, 1540. In 1539 he says: “Were I the Landgrave, I should set about it, and either perish or else slay them because they refuse peace in a good and just cause; but as a preacher it does not beseem me to counsel this, much less to do it myself.”[182] The Papal Legate, Paolo Vergerio, when with Luther in 1535, expressed to him his deep indignation at the deeds of King Henry VIII. of England, who had put to death Cardinal John Fisher and Sir Thomas More. Luther wrote to Melanchthon of Vergerio’s wrath and his threats against the King, but shared his feelings so little as actually to say: “Would that there were a few more such kings of England to put to death these cardinals, popes and legates, these traitors, thieves, robbers, nay, devils incarnate.” Such as they, he says, plunder and rob the churches and are worse than a hundred men of the stamp of Verres or a thousand of that of Dionysius. “How is it that Princes and lords, who are always complaining to us of the injury done to the churches, endure it?”[183]

Even in official memoranda Luther soon threw all discretion to the winds, and ventured to speak most strongly in favour of armed resistance.

Such was the memorandum, of January, 1539, addressed to the Elector Johann Frederick and signed at Weimar by Jonas, Bucer and Melanchthon, as well as Luther. The Elector had asked for it owing to the dangerous position of the League of Schmalkalden, now that peace had been concluded between the Emperor and Francis I. of France. He had also enquired how far the allies might take advantage of the war with the Turks; and whether they might make their assistance against the Turks contingent upon certain concessions being granted to the new worship. The second question will be dealt with later;[184] as to the first, whether resistance to the Emperor was allowed, the signatories replied affirmatively in words which go further than any previous admission.[185]

They had already, they say, “given their answer and opinion, and there was no doubt that this was the Divine truth which we are bound to confess even at the hour of death, viz. that not only is defence permitted, but a protest is verily, and indeed, incumbent on all.” Here it will be observed that Luther no longer says merely that the lawyers inferred this from the Imperial law, but that God, “to Whom we owe this duty,” commanded that “idolatry and forbidden worship” should not be tolerated. Numerous references to the “Word of God” regarding the authorities were adduced in support of this contention (Ps. lxxxii. 3; Exod. xx. 7; Ps. ii. 10, 11; 1 Tim. i. 9). It is pointed out how in the Sacred Books the “Kings of Juda are praised for exterminating idolatry.” “Every father is bound to protect his wife and child from murder, and there is no difference between a private murderer and the Emperor, should he attempt unjust violence outside his office.” The case is on all fours with one where the “overlord tries to impose on his subjects blasphemy and idolatry,” hence war must be waged, just as “Constantine fell upon Licinius, his ally and brother-in-law.” David, Ezechias and other holy kings likewise risked life and limb for the honour of God. “This is all to be understood as referring to defence.” But “where the ban has been proclaimed against one or more of the allies,” “discord has already broken out.” Those under the ban have lost “position and dignity,” and may commence the attack without further ado. Still, “it is not for us to assume that hostilities should be commenced at once”; this is the business of those actually concerned.

Such was the advice of Luther and those mentioned above to the Elector, when he was about to attend a meeting of the League of Schmalkalden at Frankfurt, where another attempt was to be made to prevent the outbreak of hostilities by negotiations with the Emperor’s ministers. Luther was apprehensive of war as likely to lead to endless misfortunes, yet his notion that “idolatry” must be rooted out would allow of no yielding on his part. “It is almost certain that this memorandum was made use of at the negotiations preliminary to the Frankfurt conference, seeing that the Elector in the final opinion he addressed to his councillors repeats it almost word for word.”[186] The memorandum was probably drawn up by Melanchthon.

At that very time Luther seems also to have received news from Brandenburg that Joachim II., the Elector, was about to Protestantise his lands. Such tidings would naturally make him all the more defiant.

Joachim, in spite of his sympathies for Lutheranism, had hitherto refrained from formally embracing it, not wishing to come into conflict with the Emperor. In 1539, however, he publicly apostatised, casting to the winds all his earlier promises. As Calvin wrote to Farel, in November, 1539, Joachim had informed the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, his chief tempter, that he had now made up his mind to “accept the Gospel and to exterminate Popery,”[187] and this he did with the best will, though he took no part in the Schmalkalden War against the Emperor. In his case politics and a disinclination to make war on the Emperor were the determining factors.

While Joachim was still quietly pursuing his subversive plans in the March of Brandenburg, the ever-recurring question was already being discussed anew amongst the Lutherans in that quarter, viz. whether Luther had not previously, and with greater justice, declared himself against resistance, and whether he was not therefore hostile to the spirit of the League of Schmalkalden.

A nobleman, Caspar von Kokeritz, probably one of Joachim’s advisers, requested Luther to furnish the Protestant preacher at Cottbus, Johann Ludicke, with a fresh opinion on the lawfulness of resistance. The request was justified by the difference between Luther’s earlier standpoint—which was well known at Cottbus—and that which he had more recently adopted. From the difficulty Luther sought to escape in a strongly worded letter to Ludicke, dated February 8, 1539, which is in several ways remarkable.[188]

In this letter the lawyers and the Princes again loom very large. They had most emphatically urged the employment of force, and “very strong reasons exist against my opposing this desire and plan of our party.” In his earlier memorandum[189] he had been thinking of the Emperor as Emperor, but now he had come to look on him as what he really was, viz. as a mere “hireling” of the Pope. The Pope is desirous of carrying out his “diabolical wickedness” with the help of the Emperor. “Hence, if it is lawful to fight against the Turks and to defend ourselves against them, how much more so against the Pope, who is worse?” Still, he was willing to stand by his earlier opinion, provided only that Pope, Cardinals and Emperor would admit that they were all of them the devil’s own servants; “then my advice will be the same as before, viz. that we yield to the heathen tyrants.” Other reasons too had led him, so he says, to discard his previous opinion, but he is loath to commit them to writing for fear lest something might reach the ears of “those abominable ministers of Satan.” Instead, he launches out into biblical proofs, urging that the “German Princes,” who together with the Emperor governed the realm, “communi consilio,” had more right to withstand the Emperor than the Jewish people when they withstood Saul, or those others who, in the Old Testament, resisted the authorities, and yet met with the Divine approval. The constitution of the Empire might not be altered by the Emperor, “who is not the monarch,” and “least of all in the devil’s cause. He may not be aware that it is this cause that he is furthering, but we know for certain that it is. Let what I have said be enough for you, and leave the rest to the teaching of the Spirit. Let your exhortation be to ‘render unto the Kaiser the things that are the Kaiser’s.’ Ceterum secretum meum mihi.”[190]

It is not difficult from the above to guess the “secret”: it was the impending apostasy of the Electorate of Brandenburg.

Luther had already several times come into contact with Joachim II. The Elector’s mother was friendly with him and came frequently to Wittenberg. Concerning her foes Luther once wrote to Jonas: “May the Lord Jesus give me insight and eloquence against the darts of Satan.”[191] In his letter of congratulation to the Elector on his apostasy he hints more plainly at the opponents to whom he had referred darkly in his letter to Ludicke: “I am less concerned about the subtlety of the serpents than about the growl of the lion, which perchance, coming from those in high places, may disquiet your Electoral Highness.”[192]

When the religious war of Schmalkalden at last broke out, the foes of Wittenberg recalled Luther’s biblical admonitions in 1530 against the use of arms in the cause of the Gospel, which Cochlæus had already collected and published. These they caused to be several times reprinted (1546), with the object of showing the injustice of the protesters’ attitude by the very words of the Reformer, who had died just before. The Wittenberg theologians replied (1547), but their answer only added to the tangle of the network of evasions. As a counter-blast they printed Luther’s later memoranda, or “Conclusions,” in favour of the use of force, adding prefaces by Melanchthon and Bugenhagen; where the prefaces come to deal with the awkward statement made by Luther in 1530, the writers have recourse to the device of questioning its authenticity; this Melanchthon does merely incidentally, Bugenhagen of set purpose.[193] According to Bugenhagen, who, as a matter of fact, had himself assisted in drawing up the statement, it deserved to be relegated to the domain of fiction; Luther’s enemies, he says, had fabricated the document in order to injure the Evangel. He even asserted that he could quote Luther’s own assurances in this matter; according to Caspar Cruciger, Luther had declared in his presence that the memorandum of 1530 had not “emanated” from him, though “carried the rounds by his enemies.” Bugenhagen was unable to understand, so he says, how his own name came to be there, and repeatedly he speaks of the document as the “alleged” letter. He also tells us that he had repudiated it as early as 1531, immediately after its publication by Cochlæus; if this be true, then it is difficult to explain away his denial as due to mere forgetfulness. His statements are altogether at variance with what we are told by the physician, Matth. Ratzeberger, Luther’s friend, who was always opposed to the war, and who, in his tract of 1552, “A Warning against Unrighteous Ways,” etc., blames Bugenhagen for his repudiation of Luther’s authority.[194] From the above it is evident that we have no right to praise Bugenhagen, as has been done in modern days, “for the fire with which he was wont to advocate the truth.” Regarding Melanchthon’s love of truth we shall have more to say later.

On looking back over the various statements made by Luther concerning armed resistance, we cannot fail to be struck by their diversity; the testimony they afford is the reverse of favourable to their author’s consistency and honesty.

By his very nature Luther felt himself drawn to proclaim the right of armed resistance in the cause of the Evangel. Of this feeling we have indications even at an early date in certain unguarded outbursts which were repeated at intervals in such a way as to leave no doubt as to his real views. Yet, until 1530, his official and public statements, particularly to the Princes, speak quite a different language. The divergence was there and it was impossible to get rid of it either by explanation or by denial. As soon as things seemed about to lead inevitably to war, Luther saw that the time had come to cast moderation to the winds. He was unwilling to sacrifice his whole life-work, and the protesting Estates had no intention of relinquishing their new rights and privileges. Formerly it had seemed advisable and serviceable to the spread of the Evangel to clothe it in the garb of submissiveness to the supreme authority of the Empire and of patient endurance for the sake of truth, but, after the Diet of Augsburg such considerations no longer held good. Overcoming whatever hesitation he still felt, Luther yielded to the urgings of the secular politicians.

From that time his memoranda assumed a different character. At the commencement of the change their wording betrays the difficulties with which Luther found himself faced when called upon to reconcile his later with his earlier views. It was, however, not long before his combative temper completely got the better of his scruples in Luther’s writings and letters.

Nothing is more unhistorical than to imagine that his guiding idea was “By the Word only,” in the sense of deprecating all recourse to earthly weapons and desiring that the Word should prevail simply by its own inherent strength. He had spoken out his real mind when he said, in 1522: “Every power must yield to the Evangel, whether willingly or unwillingly,” and again, in 1530, “Let things take their course ... even though it come to war or revolt.” Only on these lines can we explain his action. His firm conviction of his own Divine mission (below, xvi.) confirms this assumption.

4. The Turks Without and the Turks [Papists] Within the Empire

The stupendous task of repelling the onslaught of the Turkish power, which had cost Western Christendom such great sacrifices in the past, was, at the commencement of the third decade of the sixteenth century, the most pressing one for both Hungary and the German Empire.

Sultan Suleiman the Second’s lust for conquest had, since 1520, become a subject of the gravest misgivings in the West. With the help of his countless warlike hordes he had, in 1521, taken Belgrad, the strong outpost of the Christian powers, and, after a terrible struggle, on December 25 of the following year, captured from the Knights of St. John the strategically so important island of Rhodes. There now seemed every likelihood of these victories being followed up. The Kingdom of Hungary, which so long and gloriously had stemmed the inroads of the infidel into Christendom, now felt itself unable to cope single-handed with the enemy and accordingly appealed to the Emperor for help.

At the Diet of Nuremberg, in 1524, the Imperial Abschied of April 18 held out a promise of assistance in the near future, and even instanced tentatively the means to be adopted by the Empire. In the meantime appeals were to be made to the other Christian powers for help, so that the final resolutions concerning the plan of defence might be discussed and settled at the Spires Convention on November 11 of the same year.

Luther thought it his duty to interfere in these preparations.

Against Assistance for the Turkish War.

The Diet of Nuremberg had re-enacted the Edict of Worms against Luther. It had requested the Pope to summon a “free, general Council” in some suitable spot in Germany[195] “in order that good may not be overborne by evil, and that true believers and subjects of Christ may be brought to a firm belief in a common faith.” Incensed by the renewal of the Edict of Worms against his doctrine and person, Luther at once published an angry work, “Zwey keyserliche uneynige und wydderwertige Gepott” (1524),[196] in which he declared himself against the granting of any help whatever against the Turks.

He begins by saying of the authors of the new decree against Lutheranism, that surely even “pigs and donkeys could see how blindly and obstinately they were acting; it is abominable that the Emperor and the Princes should openly deal in lies.” After a lengthy discussion of the decree, he comes to the question of the help which was so urgently needed in order to repel the Turks; he says: “Finally I beg of you all, dear Christians, that you will join in praying to God for those miserable, blinded Princes, whom no doubt God Himself has placed over us as a curse, that we may not follow them against the Turks, or give money for this undertaking; for the Turks are ten times cleverer and more devout than are our Princes. How can such fools, who tempt and blaspheme God so greatly, expect to be successful against the Turks?”[197]

His chief reason for refusing help against the Turks was the blasphemy against God of which the Princes of the Empire, and the Emperor, had rendered themselves guilty by withstanding his Evangel.

He declares, “I would ten times rather be dead than listen to such blasphemy and insolence against the Divine Majesty.... God deliver us from them, and give us, in His mercy, other rulers. Amen.”—The Emperor himself he charges with presumption for daring—agreeably with age-long custom—to style himself the chief Protector of the Christian faith. “Shamelessly does the Emperor boast of this, he who is after all but a perishable bag of worms, and not sure of his life for one moment.” The Divine power of the faith has surely no need of a protector, he says; he scoffs at him and at the King of England, who styles himself Defender of the Faith; would that all pious Christians “would take pity upon such mad, foolish, senseless, raving, witless fools.”[198]

Even in the midst of the storm caused by his Indulgence Theses, Luther had already opposed the lending of any assistance against the Turks. A sermon preached in the winter of 1518, in which he took this line, was circulated[199] by his friends. When Spalatin enquired of him in the Elector’s name whether the Turkish War—for which Cardinal Cajetan was just then asking for help—could be justified by Holy Scripture, Luther replied, that the contrary could be proved from many passages; that the Bible was full of the unhappy results of wars undertaken in reliance on human means; that those wars alone were successful where heaven fought for the people; that now it was impossible to count upon victory in view of the corruption of Christendom and the tyranny and the hostility to Christ displayed by the Roman Church; on the contrary, God was fighting against them;[200] He must first be propitiated by tears, prayer, amendment of life and a pure faith. In the Resolutions on the Indulgence Theses we find the same antipathy to the war, again justified on similar mystical and polemical grounds.

His words in the Resolutions were even embodied by Rome in one of the propositions condemned on the proclamation of the ban: “To fight against the Turks is to withstand God, Who is using them for the punishment of our sins.”[201]

When, later, he came to approve of and advocate the war against the Turks, he declared, quite frankly: “I am open to confess that such an article was mine, and was advanced and defended by me in the past.”

He adds that he would be ready to defend it even now were things in the same state as then.—But where did he discern any difference? According to him, people then, before he had instructed them concerning its origin and office, had no idea of what secular authority really was. “Princes and lords who desired to be pious, looked upon their position and office as of no account, not as being the service of God, and became mere priests and monks.” But then he had written his “Von welltlicher Uberkeytt” (1523). Having reinstated the secular authority, so long “smothered and neglected,” he was loath to see it summoned against the Turks by the Pope. Besides, he is quite confident that the Pope had never been in earnest about the Turkish War; his real aim was to enrich his exchequer.[202]

Luther also explains that from the first he had been inclined to oppose the granting of any aid against the Turks on the theological ground embodied in his condemned proposition, viz. that God visits our sins upon us by means of the Turks. Here again he will not admit himself to have been in the wrong, for Christians must “endure wrong, violence or injustice ... not resist evil, but allow and suffer all things” as the Gospel teaches. Characteristically enough, he appeals to that “piece of Christian doctrine” according to which the Christian is to offer his left cheek to him who smites him on the right, and leave his cloak to the man who takes away his coat. Now, what our Lord taught in His Sermon on the Mount (Matt. v. 39 f.), was not, as he had already pointed out, a mere counsel of perfection, but a real command; but the “Pope with his schools and convents had made of this a counsel which it was permissible not to keep, and which a Christian might neglect, and had thus distorted the words of Christ, taught the whole world a falsehood, and cheated Christians.”[203] A way out of the fatal consequences which must ensue, Luther fancies he is able to find in the distinction between the true Christian and mere worldly citizen; it was not incumbent on the latter to perform everything that was binding on the former.

Previous to writing his “Von welltlicher Uberkeytt,” referred to above, he had again publicly expressed himself as opposed to the efforts of the Empire on behalf of the Turkish War; though no longer because the authorities lacked a right sense of their office, or because Christ’s counsel made submission a duty, but for quite another reason: Before taking any steps against the Turks it was necessary to resist the impious dominion of the Pope, compared with which the danger from the Turks paled into insignificance. “To what purpose is it,” he wrote in 1522, “to oppose the Turk? What harm does the Turk do? He invades a country and becomes its secular ruler.... The Turk also leaves each one free to believe as he pleases.” In both respects the Pope is worse; his invasions are more extensive, and, at the same time, he slays the souls, so that “as regards both body and soul the government of the Pope is ten times worse than that of the Turk.... If ever the Turks were to be exterminated it would be necessary first to begin with the Pope.” The Christian method of withstanding the Turks would be to “preach the Gospel to them.”[204] This paved the way for his warning, in 1524, against complying with the Emperor’s call for assistance in fighting the Turks (above, p. 77).

Such exhortations not to wage war against the Turks naturally tended to confuse the multitude to the last degree.

Incautious Lutheran preachers also did their share in stirring up high and low against the burden of taxes imposed by the wars. Hence it was quite commonly alleged against the instigator of the religious innovations that, mainly owing to his action after the Diet of Spires, there was a general reluctance to grant the necessary supplies, though the clouds on the eastern horizon of the Empire were growing ever blacker. After the horrible disaster at Mohacz, in 1526, Luther therefore found it necessary to exculpate himself before the public.

In Favour of Assistance for the Turkish War.

Luther gradually arrived at the decision that it was his duty to put his pen at the service of the war against the Turks.

A change took place in his attitude similar to that which had occurred in 1525 at the time of the Peasant Rising, which his words, and those of the Reformed preachers, had done not a little to further.

His friends, he says in 1529, “because the Turk was now so near,” had insisted on his finishing a writing against them which had already been commenced; “more particularly because of some unskilful preachers among us Germans, who, I regret to learn, are teaching the people that they must not fight against the Turks.” Some, he writes, also taught, that “it was not becoming for any Christian to wield the sword”; others went so far as to look forward to the coming of the Turks and their rule. “And such error and malice amongst the people is all placed at Luther’s door, as the fruit of my Evangel; in the same way that I had to bear the blame of the revolt [of the peasants].... Hence I am under the necessity of writing on the matter and of exculpating us, both for my own sake and for that of the Evangel ... in order that innocent consciences may not continue to be deceived by such calumnies, and be rendered suspicious of me and my teaching, or be wrongly led to believe that they must not fight against the Turks.”[205]

In February, 1528, Suleiman II. was in a position to demand that King Ferdinand should evacuate Buda-Pesth, the capital; it was already feared that his threat of visiting Ferdinand in Austria might be all too speedily fulfilled. The Sultan actually commenced, in the spring of 1529, his great campaign, which brought him to the very walls of Vienna. The city, however, defended itself with such heroism that the enemy was at last compelled to withdraw.

In April, 1529, when the reports of the danger which menaced Austria had penetrated throughout the length and breadth of Germany, Luther at last published the writing above referred to, viz. “On the Turkish War.”

The booklet he dedicated to that zealous patron of the Reformation, Landgrave Philip of Hesse. In it his intention is to teach “how to fight with a good conscience.” He points out how the Emperor, as a secular ruler, must, agreeably with the office conferred on him by God, protect his subjects against the Turks, as against murderers and robbers, with the secular sword, which, however, has nothing to do with the faith. There were two who must wage the war, Christian and Charles; but Christian’s duty was merely that of the faithful everywhere who would pray for the success of the campaign; this was all that the believers, as such, had to do; Charles would fight, because the example of Charles the Great would encourage him to bear the sword bravely, but only against the Turks as robbers and disturbers of the peace; it would be no Crusade, such as had been undertaken against the infidel in the foolish days of old. Amongst the most powerful pages of the work are those in which, regardless of flattery, he impresses on the German Princes the need of union, of sacrifice of private interests and of obedience to the guidance of the Emperor, without which it was useless to hope for anything in the present critical condition of the Empire. He scourges with a like severity certain faults into which Germans were prone to fall when engaged in warfare, viz. to under-estimate the strength of the enemy, and to neglect following up their victories; instead of this, they would sit down and tipple until they again found themselves in straits.[206]

It does not, however, seem that these words of Luther’s on behalf of the war against the Turks raised any great enthusiasm among the people.

He again took up his pen, and this time more open-heartedly, when, on October 14, the hour of Vienna’s deliverance came and the last assault had been happily repulsed. The result was his “Heer-Predigt widder den Türcken” addressed to all the Germans. Here he sought to instruct them from Scripture concerning the Turks and the approaching Last Day. In stirring, homely words he exhorted them to rise and lend their assistance, pointing out that whoever fell in the struggle died a martyr. He fired the enthusiasm of his readers by even quoting the examples of the women and maidens in olden Germany. He also dwelt on the need of preserving the faith in captivity should it be the lot of any of the combatants to be taken prisoner, and even exhorted those who might be sold as slaves not to prove unfaithful by running away from their lawful masters. He consoled his readers at the same time with the thought, to which he ever attached such importance, that, after all, in Turkey the devil did not rage nearly so furiously against Christians as the devil at home, i.e. the Pope, who was forcing them to deny Christ.[207]

We likewise find attacks on the Catholic fraction of the German nation, mingled with exhortations to resist the Turks, in a Preface he composed in 1530, on the occasion of the republication of an older work dating from Catholic times, “On the Morals and Religion of the Turks.”[208]

The struggle raging in the heart of Germany, and the opposition of the Protestant Princes and Estates to the Emperor as head of the Realm, constituted the greatest obstacle to any scheme for united and vigorous action against the Turks. Hence to some extent Luther was indirectly responsible for the growth of the Ottoman Empire. On one occasion Luther gave vent to the following outburst: “Would that we Germans stood shoulder to shoulder, then it would be easy for us to resist the Turk. If we had 50,000 foot and 10,000 horse constantly in the field ... we could well withstand them and defend ourselves.”[209] The Sultan had, long before, taken into his calculations the dissensions created by Luther in the Empire.[210] On one occasion, about 1532, as we know from Luther’s “Talk Table,” Suleiman made enquiries of a German named Schmaltz, who was attached to an embassy, concerning Luther’s circumstances, and asked how old he was. To the answer that he was forty-eight years of age he replied: “I would he were still younger, for he would find a gracious master in me.” Luther, when this was reported to him, made the sign of the cross and said: “May God preserve me from such a gracious master.”[211]

Luther, as we shall see below, had occasion to write against the Turks even at a later date. His writings had, however, no widespread influence; they were read only by one portion of the German nation, being avoided by the rest as works of an arch-heretic. Many marvelled at his audacity in presuming to teach the whole nation, and at his speaking as though he had been the leader of the people. Catholics were inclined, as Luther himself complains, to regard the growth of the Turkish power as God’s chastisement for the apostasy of a part of Germany and for the Emperor’s remissness in the matter of heresy.

Even in his very tracts against the Turks, Luther did much to weaken the force of his call to arms. His aim should have been to inspire the people with enthusiasm and a readiness to sacrifice themselves, which might, in turn, have encouraged and fired the nobles; but, as the experience of earlier ages had already proved, religion alone was able to produce such a change in the temper of a nation. Protection for the common, spiritual heritage, defence of the religion and civilisation of the West, such was the only appeal which could have fired people’s minds. And it was this banner which the Church unfurled, both before and after Luther’s day, which had led to victory at the battle of Lepanto and again at the raising of the siege of Vienna. Luther, on the contrary, in his writing of 1529, repels so vehemently any idea of turning the contest with the infidel into a crusade, that he even has it that, “were I a soldier and descried on the field of battle a priestly banner, or one bearing a cross, or even a crucifix, I would turn and run as though the devil were at my heels; and, if, by God’s Providence, they nevertheless gained the victory, still I should take no share in the booty or the triumph.”[212]

To insure a favourable issue to the campaign it was also necessary that the position of the Emperor as head of Christendom should be recognised, and the feeling of common interest between the sovereigns and nations be kindled anew. Yet the progress of the innovations, and Luther’s own menacing attitude towards the Empire and the Catholic sovereigns, was contributing largely to shatter both the authority of the Empire and the old European unity, not to speak of the injury done to the Papal authority, to whose guidance the common welfare of Christendom had formerly been confided.

Luther allowed his polemics to blunt entirely the effect of his summons. As, however, what he says affords us an insight into the working of his mind, it is of interest to the psychologist.

In the second of the two writings referred to above, the “Heer-Predigt,” despite the general excellence of its contents, the constant harping on the nearness of the Last Day could not fail to exert an influence the reverse of that desired. At the very commencement he ventilates his views on the prophecies of Daniel; he likewise will have it that the prophecy concerning Gog and Magog in Ezechiel also refers to the Turks, and that we even read of them in the Apocalypse; their victories portended the end of all things. His last warnings run as follows: “In the end it will come about that the devil will attack Christendom with all his might and from every side.... Therefore let us watch and be valiant in a firm faith in Christ, and let each one be obedient to the authorities and see what God will do, leaving things to take their course; for there is nothing good to be hoped for any more.”[213] Such pessimism was scarcely calculated to awaken enthusiasm.

Nor does he conceal his fears lest a successful campaign against the Turks should lead the Emperor and the Catholic Princes to turn their arms against the Evangelicals, in order to carry out the Edict of Worms. He so frequently betrays this apprehension that we might almost be led to think that he regarded the Turkish peril as a welcome impediment, did we not know on the other hand how greatly he came to dread it as he advanced in years. This anxiety concerning possible intentions of the Catholics he felt so keenly in 1529 as to append to the second of his tracts on the Turkish War a peculiarly inappropriate monition, viz. that Germans “must not allow themselves to be made use of against the Evangel, or fight against or persecute Christians; for thus they would become guilty of innocent blood and be no better than the Turks.... In such a case no subject is in the least bound to obey the authorities, in fact, where this occurs, all authority is abrogated.”[214]

Injudicious considerations such as these are also to be found in the earlier tract; here, however, what is most astonishing is his obstinacy in re-affirming his earlier doctrine, already condemned by Rome, viz. that it was not becoming in Christians, as such, to resist the Turk by force of arms, seeing that God was using the Turks for the chastisement of Christendom. “As we refuse to learn from Scripture,” he says, speaking in his wonted mystical tone, “the Turk must teach us with the sword, until we learn by sad experience that Christians must not fight or resist evil. Fools’ backs must be dusted with the stick.”[215] He also expresses his misgivings because “Christians and Princes are so greatly urged, driven and incited to attack the Turks and fall upon them, before we have amended our own lives and begun to live as true Christians”; on this account “war was not to be recommended.”[216] Real amendment would have consisted in accepting the Lutheran Evangel. Yet, instead of embracing Lutheranism, “our Princes are negotiating how best to molest Luther and the Evangel; there, surely, is the real Turk.”[217] Because they had ordered fasts, and penitential practices, and Masses of the Holy Ghost, in order to implore God’s protection against the Turk, the Catholic Princes drew down upon themselves the following rebuke: “Shall God be gracious to you, faithless rulers of unfortunate subjects! What devil urges you to make such a fuss about spiritual matters, which are not your business, but concern God and the conscience alone, and to do the work God has committed to you and which does concern you and your poor people, so lazily and slothfully even in this time of the direst need, thus merely hindering those who would fain give you their help?”[218]

Here again he was promoting dissension, indeed, generally speaking, his exhortations were more a hindrance than a help; again and again he insists on entangling himself anew in his polemics against Popery, and this in spite of the urgent needs of Germany. Led by the Pope, the Catholic Princes have become “our tyrants,” who “imprison us, exercise compulsion, banish and burn us, behead and drown us and treat us worse than do the Turks.”[219]

“In short, wherever we go, the devil, our real landlord, is at home. If we visit the Turk, we find the devil; if we remain under the rule of the Pope, we fall into hell. There is nothing but devils on either side and everywhere.” Thus it must be with mankind, he says, referring to 2 Timothy iii. 1, when the world reaches its end.[220]

In “what manner I advise war on the Turk, this my booklet shall be witness.”[221]

Cochlæus, Luther’s opponent, collected the contradictions contained in the latter’s statements on the Turkish War, and published them in 1529 at Leipzig in the form of an amusing Dialogue. In this work one of the characters, Lutherus, attacks the war in Luther’s own words, the second, Palinodus, defends it, again with Lutheran phrases, whilst an ambassador of King Ferdinand plays the part of the interested enquirer. The work instances fifteen “contradictions.”[222]

Luther personally acted wisely, for it was of the utmost importance to him to destroy the impression that he stood in the way of united action against the Turks. This the Princes and Estates who protested at the Diet of Spires were far less willing to do. They cast aside all scruple and openly refused to lend their assistance against the Turks unless the enactment against the religious innovations were rescinded. It is true that Vienna was then not yet in any pressing danger, though, on the other hand, news had been received at Spires that the Turkish fleet was cruising off the coasts of Sicily. It was only later on in the year, when the danger of Austria and for the German Princes began to increase, that the Protesters showed signs of relenting. They also saw that, just then, their refusal to co-operate would be of no advantage to the new Church. Landgrave Philip of Hesse nevertheless persisted in his obstinate refusal to take any part in the defence of the Empire.

Philip made several attempts to induce Brück, the Chancellor of the Saxon Electorate, and Luther, to bring their influence to bear on the Elector Johann Frederick so that he might take a similar line. Brück was sufficiently astute to avoid making any promise. Luther did not venture openly to refuse, though his position as principal theological adviser would have qualified him to explain to the Landgrave the error of his way. In his reply he merely finds fault with the “Priesthood,” who “are so obstinate and defiant and trust in the Emperor and in human aid.” God’s assistance against the Turks may be reckoned on, but if it came to the point, and he were obliged to speak to the Elector, he would “advise for the best,” and, may God’s Will be done.[223]

When the Turks, in order to avenge the defeat they had suffered before the walls of Vienna, prepared for further attacks upon the West, frightful rumours began to spread throughout Germany, adding greatly to Luther’s trouble of mind. At the Coburg, where he then was, gloomy forebodings of the coming destruction of Germany at the hand of the Turk associated themselves with other disquieting considerations.

In one of his first letters from the Coburg he says to Melanchthon, Spalatin and Lindemann, who were then at the Diet of Augsburg: “My whole soul begins to revolt against the Turks and Mohammed, for I see the intolerable wrath of Satan who rages so proudly against the souls and bodies of men. I shall pray and weep and never rest until heaven hears my cry. You [at Augsburg] are suffering persecution from our monsters at home, but we have been chosen to witness and to suffer both woes [viz. Catholicism and the Turks] which are raging together and making their final onslaught. The onslaught itself proves and foretells their approaching end and our salvation.”[224]—“All we now await is the coming of Christ,” so he says on another occasion in one of his fits of fear; “verily, I fear the Turk will traverse it [Germany] from end to end.... How often do I think of the plight of our German land, how often do I sweat, because it will not hear me.”[225]

Lost in his eschatological dream and misled by his morbid apprehension, he wrote his Commentary on Ezechiel xxxviii.-xxxix., which was at once placed in the hands of the printer; here again he finds the mischief to be wrought by the Turks at the end of the world as plainly foretold as in the prophecy of Daniel, the Commentary on which he had published shortly before.[226]

Everywhere anxiety reigned supreme, for there were lacking both preparedness and unanimity. The Catholic Princes of the Empire were not much better than the rest. Petty interests and jealousies outweighed in many instances a sense of the common needs. At Spires, for instance, Duke George of Saxony stipulated, as a condition of any promise of assistance, that he should be given precedence over both the Dukes of Bavaria. While the Catholic Estates agreed, at the Diet of Augsburg, to the grants for the war against the Turks, the Protestant Estates were not to be induced to give a favourable decision until the Emperor had sanctioned the so-called religious Peace of Nuremberg in 1532.[227]

In the summer of that same year Suleiman passed Buda-Pesth with 300,000 men. Thence he continued his march along the Danube with the intention of taking Vienna, this time at any cost. The Emperor Charles V. hurried in person to command the great army which was collecting near Vienna; the Sultan was to be encountered and a decisive battle fought. Throughout the Empire the greatest enthusiasm for the cause prevailed. The Electoral Prince, Joachim of Brandenburg, was nominated by the Emperor to the command of the troops of the Saxon lowlands, since this country had not been unanimous in the choice of a Captain, probably owing to the religious dissensions.

The Protestant Prince Joachim requested a pious letter from Luther. This Luther sent him, promising him his prayers, and saying that “he would take the field in spirit with his dear Emperor Carol [as he now calls him], and fight under his banner against Satan and his members.” He prayed God to bestow on them all “a glad spirit,” granting them not to trust in their own strength, but to fight with the “fear of God, trusting in His Grace alone,” and to ascribe the honour to heaven only; hitherto there had been too much of the “spirit of defiance on both sides,” and each party had gone into the field “without God,” “which on every occasion had been worse for the people of God than for the enemy.” Luther was evidently quite incapable of writing on the subject without his polemical ideas casting their shadow over his field of vision.

The Turks did not venture to give battle, but, to the joy of the Christian army, retreated, laying waste Styria on their march. The Imperial troops were disbanded and an armistice was concluded between King Ferdinand and Suleiman. But in 1536 the hostilities were renewed by the Turks; Hungary was as good as lost, and in 1537 Ferdinand’s army suffered in Slavonia the worst reverse, so at least Luther was informed, since the battle of Mohacz in 1526. On the strength of a rumour he attributed the misfortune to the treason of the Christian generals. In his conversations he set down the defeat to the account of Ferdinand, his zealous Catholic opponent; he had permitted “such a great and powerful army to be led miserably into the jaws of the Turks.”[228] Ferdinand, the Emperor’s brother, was, of course, to blame for the unfortunate issue of the affair; “hitherto the Turk has been provoked by Ferdinand and has been victorious; when he comes unprovoked, then he will succumb and be defeated; if the Papists commence the war they will be beaten.”[229] “Luther saw in the misfortune of King Ferdinand a just punishment on him and his friends who angered God and worshipped lies.”[230] He believed the cause of the success of the Turks to be the “great blasphemy of the Papists against God and the abominable sin against one and the other Table of the Commandments of God”; also “the great contempt of God’s Word amongst our own people.”[231]

While the Protestant Princes and cities again showed a tendency to exploit the Turkish peril to the advantage of the religious innovations, Luther, in view of the needs of the time, pulled himself together and, when consulted, openly advised the Elector Johann Frederick to give his assistance against the Turks should this be asked of him. (May 29, 1538.[232])

He writes to the Elector: “‘Necessitas’ knows no ‘legem,’ and where there is necessity everything that is termed law, treaty or agreement ceases.... We must risk both good and evil with our brothers, like good comrades, as man and wife, father and children risk all things together.” “Because many pious and honest people will also have to suffer,” it was meet that the Prince should, “with a good conscience, render assistance in order to help and protect, not the tyrants, but the poor little flock.”

Yet, immediately after, he deprives his counsel of most of its weight by declaring in fatalistic language, that there was nevertheless little to be hoped for, since God “had fashioned the rod which they will not be able to resist.”

He tells him concerning King Ferdinand, “that there was nothing to be anticipated from him, but only trouble and inevitable misfortune”; of the Catholics in general he assures him, that their “blasphemy” against the Evangel and their resistance to “their conscience and the known truth” made it impossible for them to escape a “great chastisement,” since “God liveth and reigneth.”

Again, as though desirous of deterring the Elector on personal grounds, he reminds him that they (the “tyrants” as he calls the Princes of the Catholic party) “had not so far even requested assistance, and had not been willing to agree to peace though the need was so great.”[233] He also thoughtfully alludes to the danger lest the tyrants, after having secured a victory with the help of the Protestants, should make use of their arms to overthrow the Evangel by force: “We must be wary lest, should our adversaries vanquish the Turks—which I cannot believe they will—they then turn their arms against us,” “which they would gladly do”; but, he adds, “it rests in God’s hands not in their desire, what they do to us, or what we are to suffer, as we have experienced so far,” for instance after the retreat of the Turks from Vienna when, “after all, nothing was undertaken against us”; for the people would refuse to follow them in any attack upon the Evangel.

This letter, which has frequently been appealed to by Protestants as a proof of Luther’s pure, unselfish patriotism, is a strange mixture of contradictory thoughts and emotions, the product of a mind not entirely sure of its ground and influenced by all sorts of political considerations. Of one thing alone was the writer certain, viz. that the Turk at Rome must be fought against relentlessly.

Luther’s “Table-Talk” and occasional letters supply various traits to complete the above picture of his attitude towards the Turkish War. There we find polemical outbursts interspersed with excellent admonitions to prayer,[234] confutations of the errors of the Turks, and lamentations on the judgment of God as displayed in these wars.

Luther on Turks and Papists.

“If Germany had a master,” he says very aptly on one occasion, “it would be easy for us to withstand the Turk”; but, he continues, “the Papists are our worst foes, and would prefer to see Germany laid waste, and this the Turk is desirous of doing.”[235] The Papists are actually trying to establish the domination of the Turk. “The Pope,” so he was informed, “refuses, like the King of France, to grant any assistance to the Emperor against the Turks. See the enormities of our day! And yet this is the money [which the Pope refused to give] that the Popes have been heaping up for so many long ages by means of their Indulgences.”[236] “I greatly fear,” he says to his friends, “the alliance between the Papists and the Turks by which they intend to bring us to ruin. God grant that my prophecy may prove false.... If this enters the heads of the Papists, they will do it, for the malice of the devil is incredible ... they will plot and scheme how to betray us and deliver us over into the hands of the Turk.”[237]

Meanwhile he believes that God is fighting for his cause by rendering the Turks victorious: “See how often the Papists with their hatred of the Evangel and their trust in the Emperor have been set at nought”; they had reckoned on the destruction of the Lutherans by means of Charles the Fifth’s victory over France, but, lo, “a great French army marches against the Emperor, Italy falls away and the Turk attacks Germany; this mean that God has dispersed the proud. Ah, my good God, it is Thou Who hast done this thing!”[238]—On one occasion he declared: “In order that it might be discerned and felt that God was not with us in the war against the Turks, He has never inspired our Princes with sufficient courage and spirit earnestly to set about the Turkish War.... Nowhere is anything determined upon or carried out.... Why is this? In order that my Article, which Pope Leo condemned, may remain ever true and uncondemned.”[239]

When, in the spring of 1532, Rome itself stood in fear of the Turk and many even took to flight, a letter reached Wittenberg announcing the consternation which prevailed there in the Eternal City. Then probably it was that Luther spoke the words which have been transmitted in both the Latin and German versions of the “Table-Talk”: “Should the Turk advance against Rome, I shall not regret it. For we read in the Prophet Daniel: ‘He shall fix his tabernacle between the seas upon a glorious and holy mountain.’” The two seas he imagined to be the Tyrrhenean and the Adriatic, whilst the holy mountain meant Rome, “for Rome is holy on account of the many Saints who are buried there. This is true, for the abomination which is the Pope, was [according to Daniel ix. 27] to take up its abode in the holy city. If the Turk reaches Rome, then the Last Day is certainly not far off.”[240]

It would even seem that it was his fervent desire to see Antichrist ousted by the Turk which allured him into the obscure region of biblical prophecy.

“Accordingly I hope for the end of the world. The Emperor Charles and Solimannus represent the last dregs of worldly domination. Christ will come, for Scripture knows nothing of any other monarchy, and the signs of the end of the world are already visible.”[241] “The rule of the Turk was foretold in Daniel and in the Apocalypse that the pious might not allow themselves to be terrified at his greatness. The prophecy of Daniel gives us a splendid account of what is to happen till the end of the world, and describes clearly the reign of Antichrist and of the Turk.”[242] Finally, Luther is of opinion that at the end of the world both must be united, viz. the Papal Antichrist and the Turk, because both had come into being together. About the time of the Emperor Phocas († 610) Mohammed appeared on the scene of history, and at that very time too the Bishops of Rome arrogated to themselves the primacy over the whole Church.[243]

His pseudo-mysticism and factious temper thus continued to play an unmistakable part in his ideas concerning the Turk.[244]

“Against such might and power [the Turkish] we Germans behave like pot-bellied pigs, we idle about, gorge, tipple and gamble, and commit all kinds of wantonness and roguery, heedless of all the great and pitiful slaughters and defeats which our poor German soldiery have suffered.”[245] “And, because our German people are a wild and unruly race, half diabolical and half human, some even desire the advent and rule of the Turk.”[246]

So scathing a description of the German people leads us to enquire into his attitude to German nationalism.

5. Luther’s Nationalism and Patriotism

In spite of his outspoken criticism of their faults, Luther recognised and honoured the good qualities of the Germans. His denunciations at times were certainly rather severe: “We Germans,” he says, “remain Germans, i.e. pigs and brutes”;[247] and again, “We vile Germans are horrid swine”; “for the most part such shocking pigs are we hopeless Germans that neither modesty, discipline nor reason is to be found in us”;[248] we are a “nation of barbarians,” etc. Germans, according to him, abuse the gifts of God “worse than would hogs.”[249] He is fond of using such language when censuring the corruption of morals which had arisen owing to abuse and disregard of the Evangel which he preached. Even where he attempts to explain his manner of proceeding, where, for instance, he tries to justify the delay in forming the “Assembly of true Christians,” he knows how to display to the worst advantage the unpleasing side of the German character. “We Germans are a wild, savage, blustering people with whom it is not easy to do anything except in case of dire necessity.”[250]

By the side of such spiteful explosions must be set the many kindlier and not unmerited testimonies Luther gives to the good qualities peculiar to the nation.[251] In various passages, more particularly in his “Table-Talk,” he credits the Germans with perseverance and steadfastness in their undertakings, also with industry, contentment and disinterestedness; they had not indeed the grace of the Italians, nor the eloquence of the French, but they were more honest and straightforward, and had more homely affection for their good old customs. He also believes that they had formerly been distinguished for great fidelity, “particularly in marriage,” though unfortunately this was no longer the case.[252]

Much more instructive than any such expressions of opinion, favourable or unfavourable, is the attitude Luther adopted towards the political questions which concerned the existence, the unity and the greatness of his country.

Here his religious standpoint induced him to take steps which a true German could only regret. We have already shown how the defence against the Turks was hampered by his action. He also appreciably degraded the Empire in the eyes of the Christian nations.[253] He not merely attacked the authority of the Emperor and thereby the power which held together the Empire, by his criticism of the edicts of the Diets, by the spirit of discord and party feeling he aroused amongst those who shared his opinions, and by his unmeasured and incessant abuse of the authorities, but, as years went by, he also came even to approve, as we have seen above (p. 53 ff.), of armed resistance to the Emperor and the Empire as something lawful, nay, praiseworthy, if undertaken on behalf of the new Evangel.

“If it is lawful to defend ourselves against the Turk,” he writes, “then it is still more lawful to do so against the Pope, who is even worse. Since the Emperor has associated himself with the defenders of the Pope, he must expect to be treated as his wickedness deserves.” “Formerly I advised that we should yield to the Emperor [i.e. not undertake anything against him]; even now I still say that we should yield to these heathen tyrants when they—Pope, Cardinals, Bishops, Emperor, etc.—cease to appeal to the name of Christ, but acknowledge themselves to be what they really are, viz. slaves of Satan; but if, in the name of Christ, they wish to stone Christians, then their stones will recoil on their own heads and they will incur the penalty attached to the Second Commandment.”[254]

He saw “no difference between an assassin and the Emperor,” should the latter proceed against his party—a course which, as a matter of fact, was imposed on the Emperor by the very laws of the Empire. How, he asks, “can a man sacrifice his body and this poor life in a higher and more praiseworthy cause” “than in such worship [resistance by violence] for the saving of God’s honour and the protection of poor Christendom, as David, Ezechias and other holy kings and princes did?”[255]

Countless examples from the Old Testament such as the above were always at his command for the purpose of illustrating his arguments.

In the “Warnunge an seine lieben Deudschen,” in 1531, he warns the Imperial power that God, “even though He Himself sit still, may well raise up a Judas Machabeus” should the Imperial forces have recourse to arms against the “Evangelicals”; their enemies would learn what their ancestors had learned in the war with Ziska and the Husites. Resistance to “bloodhounds” is, after all, mere self-defence. Whoever followed the Emperor against him and his party became guilty of all the Emperor’s own “godless abominations.” To instruct “his German people” on this matter was the object of the writing above referred to.[256]

“As I am the Prophet of the Germans—this high-sounding title I am obliged to assume to please my asinine Papists—I will act as a faithful teacher and warn my staunch Germans of the danger in which they stand.”[257]

By thus coming forward as the divinely commissioned spokesman of the Germans, as the representative and prophet of the nation, he implicitly denied to those who did not follow his banner the right of being styled Germans. He was fond of professing, in his war on Pope and Church, to be the champion of the Germans against Rome’s oppression. This enabled him to stir up the national feeling amongst those who followed him as his allies, and to win over the vacillating by means of the delusive watchword: “Germany against Italian tyranny.” But, apart from the absolute want of justification for any such appeal to national prejudices, the assumption that Germany was wholly on his side was entirely wrong. He spoke merely in the name of a fraction of the German nation. To those who remained faithful to the Church and who, often at great costs to themselves, defended the heritage of their pious German forefathers, it was a grievous insult that German nationalism should thus be identified with the new faith and Church.

Even at the present time in the German-speaking world Catholics stand to Protestants in the relation of two-fifths to three-fifths, and, if it would be a mistake to-day to regard Teutonism and Protestantism as synonymous—a mistake only to be met with where deepest prejudice prevails—still better founded were the complaints of Catholics in Luther’s own time, that he should identify the new Saxon doctrines with the German name and the interests of Germany as a whole.[258]

Even in the first years of his public career he appealed to his readers’ patriotism as against Rome. In 1518, before he had even thought of his aggressive pamphlet “To the German Nobility,” he commended the German Princes for coming forward to protect the German people against the extortions of the Roman Curia; “Prierias, Cajetan and Co. call us blockheads, simpletons, beasts and barbarians, and scoff at the patience with which we allow ourselves to be deceived.”[259] In the following year, when this charge had already become one of his stock complaints, he summed it up thus: “We Germans, through our emperors, bestowed power and prestige on the Popes in olden days and, now, in return, we are forced to submit to being fleeced and plundered.”[260] In the writing against Alveld, “Von dem Bapstum tzu Rome,” a year later, he declared in words calculated to excite the ire of every Teuton, that in Rome they were determined to suck the last farthing out of the “tipsy Germans,” as they termed them; unless Princes and nobles defended themselves to the utmost the Italians would make of Germany a wilderness. “At Rome they even have a saying about us, viz. ‘We must milk the German fools of their cash the best way we can.’”[261]

That Luther should have conducted his attacks on the Papacy on these lines was due in part to Ulrich von Hutten’s influence. Theodore Kolde has rightly pointed out, that his acquaintance with Hutten’s writings largely accounts for the utter virulence of Luther’s assault on “Romanism.”[262] There is no doubt that the sparks of hate which emanated from this frivolous and revolutionary humanist contributed to kindle the somewhat peculiar patriotism of the Wittenberg professor. All the good that Rome had brought to Germany in the shape of Christian culture was lost to sight in the whirlwind of revolt heralded by Hutten; the financial oppression exercised by the Curia, and the opposition between German and Italian, were grossly exaggerated by the knights.

Specifically German elements played, however, their part in Luther’s movement. The famous Gravamina Nationis Germanicæ had been formulated before Luther began to exploit them. Another German element was the peculiar mysticism, viz. that of Tauler and the “Theologia Deutsch,” on which, though he misapprehended much of it, Luther at the outset based his theories. German frankness and love of freedom also appeared to find their utterance in the plain and vigorous denunciations which the Monk of Wittenberg addressed to high and low alike; even his uncouth boldness found a strong echo in the national character. And yet it was not so much “national fellow-feeling,”[263] to quote the expression of a Protestant author, which insured him such success, but other far more deeply seated causes, some of which will be touched upon later, while others have already been discussed.

It is, however, noteworthy that this “Prophet of the Germans,” when speaking to the nation he was so fond of calling his own, did not scruple to predict for it the gloomiest future.

A dark pessimism broods over Luther’s spirit almost constantly whenever he speaks of the years awaiting Germany; he sees the people, owing to his innovations, confronted with disastrous civil wars, split up into endless and perpetually increasing sects and thus brought face to face with hopeless moral degradation. His cry is, Let the Empire dissolve, “Let Germany perish.” “Let the world fall into ruins.”[264] He consoles himself with the reflection that Christ, when founding His Church, had foreseen and sanctioned the inevitable destruction of all hostile powers, of Judaism and even of the Roman Empire. It was in the nature of the Gospel to triumph by the destruction of all that withstood it. It was certainly a misfortune, Luther admits, that the wickedness of the Germans, every day growing worse, should be the cause of this ruin. “I am very hopeless about Germany now that she has harboured within her walls those real Turks and devils, viz. avarice, usury, tyranny, dissensions and this Lernean serpent of envy and malice which has entangled the nobles, the Court, every Rathaus, town and village, to say nothing of the contempt for the Divine Word and unprecedented ingratitude [towards the new Evangel].” This is how he wrote to Lauterbach.[265] Writing to Jonas, he declared: “No improvement need be looked for in Germany whether the realm be in the hands of the Turk or in our own, for the only aim of the nobility and Princes is how they can enslave Germany and suck the people dry and make everything their very own.”[266]

The lack of any real national feeling among the Princes was another element which caused him anxiety. Yet he himself had done as much as any to further the spread of that “particularism” which to a great extent had replaced the national German ideal; he had unduly exalted the rights of the petty sovereigns by giving them the spiritual privileges and property of the Church, and he had confirmed them in their efforts to render themselves entirely independent of the Emperor and to establish themselves as despots within their own territories. Since the unhappy war of 1525 the peasantry and lower classes were convinced that no remedy was to be found in religion for the amelioration of their social condition, and had come to hate both Luther and the lords, because they believed both to have been instrumental in increasing their burdens. The other classes, instead of thanking him for furthering the German cause, also complained of having had to suffer on his account. In this connection we may mention the grievance of the mercantile community, Luther having deemed it necessary to denounce as morally dangerous any oversea trade.[267] It was also a grievous blow to education and learning in Germany, when, owing to the storm which Luther let loose, the Universities were condemned to a long period of enforced inactivity.[268] He himself professed that his particular mission was to awaken interest in the Bible, not to promote learning; yet Germans owe him small thanks for opposing as he did the discoveries of the famous German Canon of Frauenburg, Niklas Koppernigk (Copernicus), and for describing the founder of modern astronomy as a fool who wished to upset all the previous science of the heavens.[269]

Whilst showing himself ultra-conservative where good and useful progress in secular matters was concerned, he, on the other hand, scrupled not to sacrifice the real and vital interests of his nation in the question of public ecclesiastical conditions by his want of conservatism and his revolutionary innovations. True conservatism would have endeavoured to protect the German commonwealth and to preserve it from disaster by a strict guard over the good and tried elements on which it rested, more particularly over unchangeable dogma. The wilful destruction of the heritage, social, religious and learned, contributed to by countless generations of devout forebears ever since the time of St. Boniface, at the expense of untold toil and self-sacrifice, can certainly not be described as patriotic on the part of a German. At any rate, it can never have occurred to anyone seriously to expect that those Germans whose views on religion were not those of Luther should have taken his view of the duty of a patriot.

The main fact remains that Luther’s action drove a wedge into the unity of the German nation. Wherever his spirit prevailed—which was by no means the case in every place which to some extent came under his influence—there also prevailed prejudice, suspicion and mistrust against all non-Lutherans, rendering difficult any co-operation for the welfare of the fatherland.

In discussing a recent work which extols Luther as a “true German” a learned Protestant gives it as his opinion, that, however much one may be inclined to exalt his patriotism, it must, nevertheless, be allowed that Luther cherished a sort of indifference to the vital interests of his nation; his “religious concentration” made him less mindful of true patriotism; this our author excuses by the remark: “Justice and truth were more to him than home and people.” Luther, it is also said, “did not clearly point out the independent, ethical value of a national feeling, just as he omitted to insist at all clearly on the reaction of the ethical upon the religious.”[270]

On the other hand, however, his ways and feelings are often represented as the “very type and model of the true German.”[271] Nor is this view to be found among Protestants only, for Ignatius von Döllinger adopted it in later life, when he saw fit to abandon his previous position.

Before this, in 1851, in his Sketch of Luther, he had indeed said, concerning his patriotism, that, in his handling of the language and the use he made of the peculiarities of his countrymen, “he possessed a wonderful gift of charming his hearers, and that his power as a popular orator was based on an accurate knowledge and appreciation of the foibles of the German national character.”[272] In 1861, he wrote in another work: “Luther is the most powerful demagogue and the most popular character that Germany has ever possessed.” “From the mind of this man, the greatest German of his day, sprang the Protestant faith. Before the ascendency and creative energy of this mind, the more aspiring and vigorous portion of the nation humbly and trustfully bent the knee. In him, who so well united in himself intellect and force, they recognised their master; in his ideas they lived; to them he seemed the hero in whom the nation with all its peculiarities was embodied. They admired him, they surrendered themselves to him because they believed they had found in him their ideal, and because they found in his writings their own most intimate feelings, only expressed more clearly, more eloquently and more powerfully than they themselves were capable of doing. Thus Luther’s name is to Germany not merely that of a distinguished man, but the very embodiment of a pregnant period in national life, the centre of a new circle of ideas and the most concise expression of those religious and ethical views amidst which the German spirit moved, and the powerful influence of which not even those who were averse to them could altogether escape.”[273]

Here special stress is laid on Luther’s power over “the more aspiring Germans” who followed him, i.e. over the Protestant portion of the nation. Elsewhere, however, in 1872, Döllinger brings under Luther’s irresistible spell “his time and his people,” i.e. the whole of Germany, quite regardless of the fact that the larger portion still remained Catholic. “Luther’s overpowering mind and extraordinary versatility made him the man of his time and of his people; there never was a German who understood his people so well, or who in turn was so thoroughly understood, yea, drunk in, by the people, as this Monk of Wittenberg. The mind and spirit of the German people were in his hands like a harp in the hands of the musician. For had he not bestowed upon them more than ever one man had given to his people since the dawn of Christianity? A new language, popular handbooks, a German Bible, and his hymns. He alone impressed upon the German language and the German spirit alike his own imperishable seal, so that even those amongst us who abhor him from the bottom of our hearts as the mighty heresiarch who seduced the German nation cannot help speaking with his words and thinking with his thoughts. Yet, even more powerful than this Titan of the intellectual sphere, was the longing of the German nation for freedom from the bonds of a corrupt ecclesiasticism.”[274]

The change in Döllinger’s conception of Luther which is here apparent was not simply due to his personal antagonism to the Vatican Council; it is closely connected with his then efforts, proclaimed even in the very title of the Lectures in question: “Reunion of the Christian Churches”; for this reunion Döllinger hoped to be able to pave the way without the assistance of, and even in opposition to, the Roman Catholic Church. The fact is, however, that in the above passages the domination which Luther exercised over those who had fallen away with him has been made far too much of, otherwise how can we explain Luther’s own incessant complaints regarding the small response to the preaching of his new Evangel? The production of a schism by his vehement and forceful oratory was one thing; vigorous direction and leadership in the task of religious reconstruction was quite a different matter.

It is not our intention here to embark upon a controversy on such an opinion concerning Luther’s German influence as that here advanced by Döllinger. The present work will, in due course, treat of Luther’s posthumous influence on German culture and the German language, of his famous German Bible, and of his hymnological work (see vol. v., xxxiv., xxxv.), when we shall have occasion to show the true value to be accorded to such statements. As they stand, our last quotations from Döllinger merely constitute a part of the legend which grew up long since around the memory of the Wittenberg professor.

It must certainly be admitted, that Luther’s powerful language is grounded on a lively and clear comprehension of German ways of thought and German modes of expression; his command of language and his power for trenchant description, which were the result of his character, of his intercourse with the common people and his talent for noting their familiar ways of speech, were rare qualities. He left in his writings much that served as a model to later Germans. Of his translation of the Bible in particular we may say, with Janssen, that, although Luther cannot be termed the actual founder of the new High-German, yet “his deserts as regards the development of the German language are great,” especially in the matter of “syntax and style. In the last respect no one of any insight will wish to dispute the service which Luther rendered.” “The force and expression of the popular speech was hit off by Luther in a masterly manner in his Bible translations.”[275]

Those Germans, who had been won over to the new faith and had become Luther’s faithful followers, found in the instructions written in his own popular vein, particularly in those on the Bible, enlightenment and edification, in many cases, no doubt, much to their advantage. Writing for the benefit of this circle, the versatile author, in his ethical works—his controversial ones are not here under consideration—deals with countless other subjects outside the range of biblical teaching; here his manner owes its power to the fact that he speaks in tones caught from the lips of the people themselves. Thus, for instance, when he discovers the blots which sully the nation: luxury in dress, the avarice of the rich, the “miserliness and hoarding” of the peasants. Or when he tells unpleasant truths to the “great fops,” the nobles, concerning their despotic and arrogant behaviour. Or, again, when he raises his voice in condemnation of the neglect of education, or to reprove excessive drinking, or when, to mention a special case, he paints in lurid and amusing colours the slothfulness and utter carelessness of the Germans after having achieved any success in war against the Turks. His gift of humour always stood him in good stead, and his love of extravagant phraseology and imagery and of incisive rhetoric was of the greatest service to him in his dealings with the people, for both appealed strongly to German taste. Nor must we forget his proficiency in the effective application of German proverbs—a collection of proverbs in his own handwriting is still extant and has recently been published—nor his familiarity with German folk-lore and ballads, nor finally the wonderful gift which served to tranquillise many who were still undecided and wavering, viz. the boundless assurance and unshakable confidence with which he could advance even the most novel and startling opinions. The Germans of that day loved weight and power, and a strong man could not fail to impress them, hence, for those who were not restrained by obedience to the Church, Luther undoubtedly seemed a real chip off the old German block.

A single passage, one against usurers, will serve to show with what energy this man of the people could raise his voice, to the joy of the many who groaned under the burden. “Ah, how securely the usurer lives and rages as though he himself were God and Lord of the whole land; no one dares to resist him. And now that I write against them these saintly usurers scoff at me and say: ‘Luther doesn’t know what usury is; let him read his Matthew and his Psalter.’ But I preach Christ and my word is the Word of God, and of this I am well assured, that you accursed usurers shall be taught either by the Turk or by some other tool of God’s wrath, that Luther really knew and understood what usury was. At any rate, my warning is worth a sterling gulden.”[276]

On the very same page he vents his anger against the supreme Imperial Court of Justice, because, “in matters pertaining to the Gospel and the Church,” its sentences did not accord with his. “I shan’t be a hypocrite, but shall speak the truth and say: See what a devil’s strumpet reigns in the Imperial Kammergericht, which ought to be a heavenly jewel in the German land, the one consolation of all who suffer injustice.”

Particularly effective was his incitement of the people to hate Popery. “We Germans must remain Germans and the Pope’s own donkeys and victims, even though we are brayed in the mortar like sodden barley, as Solomon says (Prov. xxvii. 22); we stick fast in our folly. No complaints, no instruction, no beseeching, no imploring, not even our own daily experience of how we have been fleeced and devoured opens our eyes.”[277]—“The Emperor and the Princes,” he had already said, “openly go about telling lies of us”;[278] “pigs and donkeys,” “mad and tipsy Princes,” such are the usual epithets with which he spices his language here and later.

“Out of deep sympathy for us poor Germans”[279] it is that he ventures to speak thus in the name of all.

He boldly holds up his Evangel as the German preaching par excellence. He declares: “I seek the welfare and salvation of you Germans.”[280]—“We Germans have heard the true Word of God for many years, by which means God, the Father of all Mercy, has enlightened us and called us from the horrible abominations of the Papal darkness and idolatry into His holy light and Kingdom. But with what gratitude and honesty we have accepted and practised it, it is terrible to contemplate.”

Formerly, he says, we filled every corner with idolatries such as Masses, Veneration of the Saints, and good works, but now we persecute the dear Word, so that it would not be surprising should God flood Germany, not only with Turks, but with real devils; indeed, it is a wonder He has not done so already.[281]

However small the hope was of any improvement resulting from his preaching, he fomented the incipient schism by such words as these: “They [the Romans] have always abused our simplicity by their wantonness and tyranny; they call us mad Germans, who allow themselves to be hoaxed and made fools of.... We are supposed to have an Empire, but it is the Pope who has our possessions, honour, body, soul and everything else.... Thus the Pope feeds on the kernel and we nibble at the empty shells.”[282]

Finally, there are some who select certain traits of Luther’s character in order to represent him as the type of a true German. Such specifically German characteristics were certainly not lacking in Luther; it would be strange, indeed, were this not the case in a man of German stock, hailing from the lower class and who was always in close touch with his compatriots. Luther was inured to fatigue, simple in his appearance and habits, persevering and enduring; in intercourse with his friends he was frank, hearty and unaffected; with them he was sympathetic, amiable and fond of a joke; he did not, however, shrink from telling them the truth even when thereby offence might be given; towards the Princes who were well-disposed to him and his party he behaved with an easy freedom of manner, not cringingly or with any exaggerated deference. In a sense all these are German traits.[283] But many of these qualities, albeit good in themselves, owing to his public controversy, assumed a very unpleasant character. His perseverance degenerated into obstinacy and defiance, his laborious endurance into a passionate activity which overtaxed his powers, and he became combative and quarrelsome and found his greatest pleasure in the discomfiture of his opponents; his frankness made way for the coarsest criticism. The anger against the Church which carried him along found expression in the worst sorts of insults, and, when his violence had aroused bitter feelings, he believed, or at least alleged, he was merely acting in the interests of uprightness and love of truth. Had he preserved his heritage of good German qualities, perfected them and devoted them to the service of a better cause, he might have become the acknowledged spokesman of all Germans everywhere. He could have branded vice and instilled into the hearts of his countrymen the love of virtue more strongly and effectively than even Geiler of Kaysersberg; in seasoned and effective satire on matters of morals he would have far excelled Sebastian Brant and Thomas Murner; in depth of feeling and sympathetic expression he could have rivalled Bertold of Ratisbon, and his homely ways would have qualified him to enforce the Christian precepts amongst all the grades and conditions of German life even more effectively than any previous preacher.

CHAPTER XVI

THE DIVINE MISSION AND ITS MANIFESTATIONS

1. Growth of Luther’s Idea of his Divine Mission

Whereas the most zealous of Luther’s earliest pupils and followers outvied one another in depicting their master as the messenger of God, who had come before the world equipped with revelations from on high, the tendency of later Protestantism has been, more and more, to reduce Luther, so to speak, to a merely natural level, and to represent him as a hero indeed, but as one inspired by merely human motives. An earlier generation exalted him to mystical regions, and, being nearer him in point of time and therefore knowing him better, grasped the fact that he was dominated by a certain supernaturalism. Many later and more recent writers, on the other hand, have preferred to square their conception of his personality with their own liberal views on religion. They hail Luther as the champion of free thought and therefore as the founder of modern intellectual life. What he discovered in his struggles with himself by reflection and pious meditation, that, they say, he bequeathed to posterity without insisting upon the immutability of his ideas or claiming for them any infallibility. His only permanent work, his real legacy to posterity, was a negative one, viz. the breach with Popery, which he consummated, thanks to his extraordinary powers.

This is, however, from the religious standpoint, to attenuate Luther’s figure as it appears in history, notwithstanding the tribute paid to his talents.

If he is not the “messenger of God,” whose doctrines, inspired from on high, the world was bound to accept, then he ceases to be Luther, for it was from his supernatural estimate of himself that he drew all his strength and defiance. Force him to quit the dim, mystical heights from which he fancies he exercises his sway, and his claim on the faith of mankind becomes inexplicable and he himself an enigma.

It has been pointed out above, how Luther gradually reached the conviction that he had received his doctrine by a special revelation, with the Divine mission to communicate it to the world and to reform the Church (vol. ii., p. 92 f.). The conviction, that, as he declares, “the Holy Ghost had revealed the Scriptures” to him culminated in that personal assurance of salvation which was suddenly vouchsafed to him in the Tower.[284]

It will repay us to examine more closely the nature of this idea, and its manifestations, now that we have the mature man before us.

The founder of the new Church has reached a period when he no longer scruples to speak of the “revelations” which had been made to him, and which he is compelled to proclaim. “By His Grace,” he says, “God has revealed this doctrine to me.”[285]—“I have it by revelation ... that will I not deny.”[286] Of his mission he assures us: “By God’s revelation I am called to be a sort of antipope”;[287] of his chief dogma, he will have it that “the Holy Ghost bestowed it upon me,”[288] and declares that “under pain of the curse of eternal reprobation” he had been “instructed (‘interminatum’) not to doubt of it in any way.”[289] Of this he solemnly assured the Elector Frederick in a letter written in 1522: “Concerning my cause I would say: Your Electoral Highness is aware, or, if not aware, is hereby apprised of the fact, that I received the Evangel, not from man, but from heaven alone through our Lord Jesus Christ, so that I might well subscribe myself and boast of being a minister and evangelist—as, indeed, I shall do for the future.”[290]

It is because he has received the Word of God direct from on high that he is so firm. “God’s Word,” he cries, “is above everything to me; I have the Divine Majesty on my side, therefore I care not in the least though a thousand Augustines, or a thousand Harry-Churches [Henry VIII. of England was then still a Catholic] should be against me; I am quite certain that the true Church holds fast with me to God’s Word, and leaves it to the Harry-Churches to depend on the words of men.”[291]

There are many passages in which he merely claims to have been enlightened in his ruminations and labours and thus led to embrace the real, saving truth; less frequently do we hear of any actual, sudden inspiration from above. Where he does claim this most distinctly is in the matter of the discovery of his chief doctrine, viz. assurance of salvation by justifying faith, vouchsafed to him in the Tower of the Wittenberg monastery. The fact that his mode of expression varies may be explained not merely by his own involuntary wavering, but by the very difficulty of imparting his favourite doctrine to others. His frame of mind, outward circumstances and the character of his hearers or readers were the cause of his choice of words. With his friends, for instance, more particularly the younger ones, and likewise in his sermons at Wittenberg, he was fond of laying stress on what he had once said to the lawyers when they molested him with Canon Law: “They shall respect our teaching, which is the Word of God spoken by the Holy Ghost through our lips.”[292] When speaking to larger audiences, on the other hand, he does not as a rule claim more than a gradual, inner enlightenment by God, which indeed partakes of the nature of a revelation, but to which he was led by his work and study and inward experience. In the presence of the fanatics he became, after 1524, more cautious in his claims, owing to the similar ones made on their own behalf by these sectarians.

Yet the idea of an assurance born of God lies at the bottom of all his statements.

He worked himself into this belief until it became part of his nature.[293] He had to face many doubts and scruples, but he overcame them, and, in the latter years of his life, we hear little of any such. His struggle with these doubts, which clearly betray the faulty basis of his conviction, will be dealt with elsewhere.[294]

“I am certain and am determined to feel so.” Expressions such as this are not seldom to be met with in Luther’s letters and writings.[295]

An almost appalling strength of will lurks behind such assurances. Indeed, what impels him seems to savour more of self-suggestion than of inward experience. To the objections brought forward by his adversaries he frequently enough merely opposes his “certainty”; behind this he endeavours to conceal the defects of his proofs from Scripture, and his inability to reply to the reasons urged against him. His determination to find conviction constitutes one of Luther’s salient psychological characteristics; of the Titanic strength at his disposal he made proof first and foremost in his own case.

Luther also succeeded in inducing in himself a pseudo-mystic mood in which he fancied himself acting in everything conformably with a Divine mission, everywhere specially guided and protected as beseemed a messenger of God.

For instance, he says that he wrote the pamphlet against the seditious peasants in obedience to a Divine command; “therefore my little book is right and will always be so, though all the world should be incensed at it.”[296]

“It is the Lord Who has done this,” he had declared of the Peasant Rising when he recognised in it elements favourable to his cause; “It is the Lord Who has done this and Who conceals these menaces and dangers from the eyes of the Princes, and will even bring it about Himself by means of their blindness and violence.” That the Princes are threatened with destruction, that “I firmly believe the Spirit proclaims through me.”[297]

Later on he was no less sure that he could foresee in the Spirit the coming outbreak of a religious war in Germany; only the prayers which he—who had the Divine interests so much at heart—offered, could avail to stave off the war; at least the delay was mainly the result of this prayer: “I am assured that God really hearkens to my prayer, and I know that so long as I live there will be no war in Germany.”

Never does he tire of declaring that the misfortunes and deaths which his foes have to deplore are the result of the intervention of heaven on behalf of his cause.[298] He was convinced that he had repeatedly been cured in sickness and saved from death by Christ, by Him, as he says in 1534, “in Whose faith I commenced all this and carried it through, to the admiration even of my opponents.”[299] He, “one of the Apostles and Evangelists of Germany, is,” so he proclaims in 1526 in a pamphlet, “a man delivered over to death and only preserved in life by a wonder and in defiance of the wrath of the devil and his saints.”[300]

In February, 1520, he speaks of the intimation he has received of a great storm impending, were God not to place some hindrance in the way of Satan. “I have seen Satan’s cunning plans for my destruction and that of many others. Doubtless the Divine Word can never be administered without confusion, tumult and danger. It is a word of boundless majesty, it works great things and is wonderful on high.” This was to be his only guide in his undertaking. He was compelled, so he declared on the same occasion, “to leave the whole matter to God, to resign himself to His guidance and to look on while wind and waves make the ship their plaything.”[301]

He frequently repeats later that his professorship at the University had been bestowed upon him by a Divine dispensation and against his will; whereas others were honoured for their academic labours, he complains to Spalatin of being persecuted; “I teach against my will and yet I have to endure evil things.” “What I now do and have done, I was compelled to do.” “I have enough sins on my conscience without incurring the unpardonable one of being unfaithful to my office, of refraining from scourging evil and of neglecting the truth to the detriment of so many thousand souls.”[302]—At the time when the Disputation at Leipzig was preparing, he tells the same confidant that the matter must be left to God: “I do not desire that it should happen according to our designs, otherwise I would prefer to desist from it altogether.” Spalatin must not desire to see the matter judged and settled according to human wisdom, but should remember that we know nothing of “God’s plans.”[303]

Everything had befallen him in accordance with God’s design. It was in accordance therewith, nay, “at the command of God,” that he had become a monk, so at least he says later. This, too, was his reason for giving up the office in choir and the recitation of the Breviary. “Our Lord God dragged me by force from the canonical hours, anno 1520.”[304] His marriage likewise was the direct result of God’s plan. “The Lord suddenly flung me into matrimony in a wonderful way while my thoughts were set in quite another direction.”[305] At an earlier date he had, so he said, defended the theses of his Resolutions only “because God compelled him to advance all these propositions.”[306]

His first encounter with Dr. Eck took place, so he was persuaded, “at God’s behest.”[307] “God takes good care that I should not be idle.”[308] It is God Who “calls and compels him” to return to Wittenberg after his stay at the Wartburg.[309]—It is not surprising, then, that he also attributes to God’s doing the increase in the number of his friends and followers.

The success of his efforts to bring about a great falling away from the Catholic Church he regarded as a clear Divine confirmation of his mission, so that “no higher proof or miracle was needed.”[310] Even the disturbance and tumult which resulted bore witness in his favour, since Christ says: “I am come to send a sword.” All around him prevailed “discord, revolt and uproar,”[311] because, forsooth, the Gospel was there at work; the calm, unquestioned sovereignty of Popery within its own boundaries was a sure sign of its being the devil’s own.[312] “Did I not meet with curses, I should not believe that my cause was from God.”[313]

It is evident from these and other like statements how greatly his fame, the increase of his followers and his unexpected success engrossed and intoxicated him. In judging of him we must not under-estimate the effect of the din of applause in encouraging him in his self-suggestion. The cheers of so great a crowd, as Erasmus remarked in a letter to Melanchthon, might well have turned the head even of the humblest man. What anchor could have held the bark exposed to such a storm? Outbursts such as the following, to which Luther gave vent under the influence of the deafening ovation, were only to be expected of such a man as he, when he had once cut himself adrift from the Church: “God has now given judgment ... and, contrary to the expectation of the whole world, has brought things to such a pass.... The position of the Pope grows daily worse, that we may extol the work of God herein.”[314] Under the magic influence of the unhoped-for growth of his movement of revolt, he declared it could only be due to a higher power, “which so disposed things that even the gates of hell were unable to prevent them.” Not he, but “another man, drives the wheel.” It is as clear as day that no man could, single-handed, have achieved so much, and, by “mere word of mouth,” done more harm to the Pope, the bishops, priests and monks than all worldly powers hitherto.[315] Christ was working for him so strenuously, so he declares in all seriousness, that he might well calmly await His complete victory over Antichrist; for this reason there was really no need to trouble about the ecclesiastical organisation of the new Church, or to think of all the things it would otherwise have been necessary for him to remember.

His mere success was not the only Divine witness in his favour; Luther was also of opinion that owing to God’s notable working, signs and wonders had taken place in plenty in confirmation of the new teaching; such Divine wonders, however, must not be “thrown to the winds.”[316] He seems, nevertheless, to have had at one time the intention of collecting and publishing these miracles.[317]

In short, “the first-fruits of the Grace of God,” he says, have come upon us; in these he was unwilling that later teachers, who differed from him, should be allowed to participate.[318]

Was not the guidance of Christ also plainly visible in the fact that he, the proclaimer of His Word, had been delivered from so many ambushes on the part of the enemies who lay in wait for him? Such a thought lay at the root of his words to his pupil Mathesius: There was no doubt that poison had frequently been administered to him, but “an important personage had been heard to say, that none had any effect on him.” On one occasion, however, when an attempt had been made to poison him, He “Who said, ‘If they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them,’ blessed him, and preserved him then and afterwards from all mischief.”[319] “I also believe,” Luther once said, according to Bindseil’s Latin “Colloquia,” that “my pulpit-chair and cushion were frequently poisoned, yet God preserved me.”[320] Similar words are recorded in the Diary of Cordatus.[321] This accounts for the strange tales which grew up amongst his pupils and followers of how “God Almighty had always preserved him in a wonderful manner,” of how He “had affrighted the knaves” who sought his life, and so forth, of which the early editions of Luther’s Works have so much to say.

Among the characteristics most highly extolled by his earliest followers as exemplifying his mission must be instanced, first, his inflexible courage, amounting frequently to foolhardiness, in the accomplishment of his set task, viz. the establishing of the Evangel and the destruction of Popery; secondly, his extraordinary capacity for work and the perseverance of which he gave such signal proof in his literary undertakings; thirdly, his entire disregard for temporal advantages, which he himself held up as an example to those of the evangelical preachers whose worldliness had become a reproach to the Lutheran cause.

Very strange and remarkable is the connection between Luther’s mysticism and the simple and homely view he took of life; the pleasure with which he welcomed everything good which came in his way—so far as it was free from any trace of Popery—the kindly, practical turn of his manner of thinking and acting when among his own people, and that love for humour and good cheer which so strikingly contrasts with the puritanical behaviour of his opponents, the Anabaptists and fanatics.

To reconcile his mysticism with habits at first blush so divergent would present quite a problem in itself were we not to take into account the fact, that homeliness and humour had been his from the very beginning, whereas his mysticism was a later growth, always to some extent alien to his character. His mysticism he carefully confined to what related to his supposed Divine mission, though at times he does indeed seem to extend indefinitely the range of this mission. Yet, when the duties of his office had cost him pain or tried his temper, he was ever glad to return to the realities of life, and to seek relief in social intercourse or in his family circle.

When it was a question of the working of miracles by the heaven-sent messenger, he was of too practical a turn of mind to appeal to anything but the ostensible tokens of the Divine favour worked around him and on his behalf in proof of the truth of the new Evangel. He carefully avoided attributing any miracles to his own powers, even when assisted by Divine grace, though, occasionally, he seems to imply that, were the need to arise, he might well work wonders by the power of God, were he only to ask it of Him. With the question of miracles and predictions as proofs of Luther’s Divine mission we shall deal later (p. 153 ff.).

While on the one hand Luther’s views of miracles and prophecies witness to an error which was not without effect on his persuasion of his Divine mission, on the other his pseudo-mystic notion of his special calling led him superstitiously to see in chance events of history either the extraordinary confirmation of his mission or the celestial condemnation of Popery.

We know that Luther not only shared the superstitions of his contemporaries, but also defended them with all the weight of his great name and literary talents.[322] When at Vienna, in January, 1520, something unusual was perceived in the sky, he at once referred it to “his tragedy,” as he had done even previously in similar cases. He also expressed the wish that he himself might be favoured with some such sign. The noisy spirits which had formerly disturbed people had, he believed, been reduced in number throughout the world solely owing to his Evangel. The omnipotence of the devil and the evil he worked on men was, so he thought, to be restrained only by the power of that Word which had again been made known to the world, thanks to his preaching.[323] It was his intention to publish an account of the demoniacal happenings which had taken place in his day and which confirmed his mission; he was only prevented from doing this by want of time.[324] To astrology, unlike Melanchthon, he ever showed himself averse.

Another element which loomed large in his persuasion that he was a prophet was his so-called “temptations,” i.e. the mental troubles, which, so he thought, were caused by the devil and which, coinciding as they often did with other sufferings, were sometimes the cause of long fits of misery and dejection.[325]

These temptations in their most extreme form Luther compared with the death-agony. His extraordinary experiences, of which he never understood the pathological cause, were regarded by him as God’s own testimony to his election. His conviction was that, by imposing on him these pangs of hell, God was cleansing him for the grand task assigned to him, even as He had done with other favoured souls in the past. When plunged in the abyss of such sufferings he felt like St. Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles, who likewise was buffeted by Satan (vol. i., p. 381 f.), and whom he would fain have emulated in his “revelations” of the Divine mysteries. Only in the sequel, however, will it be possible to describe Luther’s pathology for the benefit of those to whom it may be of interest.

All his troubles, whether due to doubt and sadness or to the fury of foes stirred up by Satan against him, he utilised, so he tells us, as an incentive to immerse himself ever more and more in the study of Holy Scripture, to cultivate the understanding bestowed upon him, and to seek its practical applications. “My theology was not all learnt in a day; I was obliged to explore deeper and deeper to acquire it. My temptations helped me, for it is impossible to understand Holy Scripture without experience and temptations. This is what the fanatics and unruly spirits lack, viz. that capital gainsayer the devil, who alone can teach a man this. St. Paul had a devil, who beat him with his fists and drove him by the way of temptation diligently to study Holy Scripture. I have had the Pope, the Universities and all the scholars, and, behind them all, the devil, hanging round my neck: they drove me to the Bible and made me read it until at length I reached the right understanding of it. Unless we have such a devil, we remain mere speculative theologians, for whose precious imaginings the world is not much better.”[326] This casual saying of Luther’s gives us a good glimpse into his customary process of thought when in presence of troubles and temptations, great or small.

The above passage, moreover, agrees with many similar statements of his, inasmuch as, far from ascribing his doctrine to any actual revelation, he makes its discovery to result from effort on his part, under the guidance of a higher illumination. Luther, less than any other, could scarcely have been unconscious of the gradual change in his views, more particularly at the outset of his career as Evangelist and prophet; at the very least it was clear that, in the earlier period of his higher mission, he had taught much that was borrowed from Popery and which he discarded only later; at that time, as he puts it, he was still “besotted with Popery.”

Periodic Upheaval of Luther’s Idea of his Divine Mission.

Luther’s consciousness of his Divine mission found expression with varying degrees of intensity at different periods of his life.

At certain junctures, notably when historic events were impending, it was apt to burst forth, producing in him effects of a character almost terrifying. Such was the case, for instance, in the days which immediately preceded and followed the proclamation of the Bull of Excommunication. At that time it seemed as though every spirit of revolt had entered into him to use him as a tool for defying the authority of the Church. Such was the depth of his persuasion, that he, the excommunicate, was carried away to proclaim his unassailable prophetic rights in tones of the utmost conviction.

Towards the end of his stay at the Wartburg and during the first period of his struggle with the Anabaptists at Wittenberg, we again hear him insisting on his own exalted mission; owing, however, to the mystic illumination of which the fanatics boasted, his claims are now based, not so much on mystical considerations, as on the “outward Word,” whose authentic representative he had, by his works, proved himself to be.

The loneliness and gloom of the Wartburg and his “diabolical” experiences there doubtless helped to convince him yet more of the reality of his mission. The ensuing struggle with those of the innovators who differed from him and even threatened to oust him, acted as a further stimulus and aroused his powers of resistance to the utmost. Nor must we forget the threatening attitude of the Imperial authorities at Nuremberg, whom he was resolved to oppose with the greatest determination; only by impressing on his followers that he was something more than human would it be possible for him successfully to hold in check the hostility of Emperor and Princes. The supposed world-wide success of his venture also dazed him at this critical juncture, a fact which further elucidates the situation.

Triumphantly he cries: “The Lord has already begun to mock at Satan and his slaves. Satan is in truth vanquished, and the Pope, too, with all his abominations! Now our only concern is the soap-bubble which has swelled to such alarming dimensions [the Nuremberg menace]. We believe in Christ, the Son of God, believe in His dominion over life and death. Whom then shall we fear? The first-fruits of victory have already fallen to us; we rejoice at the overthrow of the Papal tyranny, whereas formerly Kings and Princes were content to submit to its oppression; how much easier will it be to vanquish and despise the Princes themselves!”

“If Christ assures us,” he continues in this same letter, one of the first dispatched after his “Patmos” at the Wartburg, “that the Father has placed all things under His feet, it is certain that He lieth not; ‘all things’ must also comprise the mighty ones assembled at Nuremberg, not to speak of that Dresden bubble [Duke George of Saxony]. Let them therefore set about deposing Christ. We, however, will calmly look on while the Father Almighty preserves His Son at His right hand from the face and the tail of these smoking firebrands” (Isa. vii. 4). Should a rising or a tumult among the people ensue “which cannot be suppressed by force, then that will be the Lord’s own work; He conceals the danger from the sight of the Princes; and, owing to their blindness and rebellion, He will work such things that methinks all Germany will be deluged with blood. We shall ‘set ourselves like a hedge before God in favour of the land and the people’ (Ezek. xxii. 30), in this day of His great wrath, wherefore do you and your people pray for us.”

These words were addressed to an old Augustinian friend to whom he showed himself undisguisedly and in his true colours. In the same letter he has it that he considers it quite certain that Carlstadt, Gabriel Zwilling and the fanatical Anabaptists were preaching without any real call, in fact, against God’s will. To himself he applies the words of our Redeemer: “He Whom God has sent speaketh the words of God” (John iii. 34), and “He that seeketh the glory of Him that sent Him is true” (John vii. 18). Fully convinced of the Divine inspiration and compulsion he exclaims: “For this reason did I yield to necessity and return [from the Wartburg], viz. that I might, if God wills, put an end to this devils’ uproar” (of the fanatics).[327]

If Luther sought to show the fanatics that their fruits bore witness against them and their doctrine, it is worthy of note that Staupitz, his former Superior, about this very time, confronted Luther with the disastrous fruits of his action, in order to dissuade him from the course he was pursuing. Staupitz, who so far had been his patron, had grown apprehensive of the character of the movement. His warning, however, only acted as oil on the flame of the enthusiasm then surging up in Luther. In his reply, dated in May, 1522, we find the real Luther, the prophet full of his own great plans: “You write that my undertaking is praised [by discreditable people], and by those who frequent houses of ill-fame, and that much scandal has been given by my latest writings. I am not surprised at this, neither am I apprehensive. It is certain that we for our part have been careful to proclaim the pure Word without causing any tumult; the good and the bad alike make use of this Word, and this, as you know, we cannot help.... For we do what Christ foretold when He commanded the angels to collect and remove out of His Kingdom all scandals. Father, I cannot do otherwise than destroy the Kingdom of the Pope, the Kingdom of abomination and wickedness together with all its train. God is already doing this without us, without any assistance from us, merely by His Word. The end of this Kingdom is come before the Lord. The matter far exceeds our powers of comprehension.... Great commotion of minds, great scandals and great signs must follow, in view of God’s greatness. But, dear father, I hope this will not trouble you; God’s plan is visible in these things and His mighty hand. You will remember that at the outset everybody thought my undertaking suspicious, doubtful and altogether too bad, and yet it has held the field and will hold its own in spite of your apprehensions; only have patience. Satan feels the smart of his wound, and that is why he rages so greatly and sets all at loggerheads. But Christ Who has begun the work will trample him under foot; and the gates of hell will do their worst, but all in vain.”

So perverted an application of the promise solemnly made by Christ to the Church of Peter, that the gates of hell should not prevail against it, had surely never before been heard. Words such as these would even sound incredible did we not learn from the same letter into what a state of nervous excitement the ban and excommunication had plunged him. At Antwerp, Jacob Probst, one of his followers, was to be burned with two of his comrades, and in various localities Luther’s writings, by order of the authorities, were being consigned to the flames. This it was which made him say in his letter: “My death by fire is already under discussion; but I only defy Satan and his myrmidons the more that the day of Christ may be hastened, when an end will be put to Antichrist. Farewell, father, and pray for me.... The Evangel is a scandal to the self-righteous and to all who think themselves wise.”[328]

The later occasions on which this peculiar mystic idea asserted itself most strongly and vividly were during the exciting events of the Peasant War of 1525; in 1528, at the time his Evangel was in danger from the Empire, while he was tormented within; his sojourn in the fortress of Coburg during the much-dreaded Diet of Augsburg, in 1530, when he again endured profound mental agony; the period of the Schmalkald negotiations, in 1537, when the Council of Trent had already been summoned, while Luther was suffering much from disease; finally, in the last years of his life, accompanied as they were by recurring friction with the various Courts and hostile parties, when a growing bitterness dominated his spirit.

In this last period of his career the sense of his Divine mission revived in full force, never again to quit him. His statements concerning his mission now bear a more pessimistic stamp, but he nevertheless holds fast to it and allows nothing to disconcert him by any suspicion of a mistake on his part, nor does he betray any trace of his earlier doubts and misgivings.

“We know that it is God’s cause,” he says in 1541 to the Electoral Chancellor Brück: “God has commenced it and carried it through, and He too will finish it! Whoever does not wish to follow us, let him fall to the rear, with the Emperor and the Turk; all the devils shall gain nothing here, let what God wills befall us.”[329]

“It annoys me that they should esteem these things [of the Evangel] as though they were secular, Imperial, Turkish or princely matters to be decided and controlled, bestowed and accepted by reason alone. It is a matter which God and the devil with their respective angels must arrange. Whoever does not believe this will do no good in the business.”[330]

When the negotiations at Ratisbon seemed to be exposing the timorous Melanchthon to the “snares of Satan,” Luther in his wonted presumptuous fashion wrote to him: “Our cause is not to be controlled by our own action, but only by God’s Providence. The Word progresses, prayer is ardent, hope endures, faith conquers, so that verily we cannot but see it, and might even sleep calmly and feast were we not so carnal; for the words of Moses are also addressed to us: ‘The Lord will fight for you and you shall hold your peace’ (cp. Exod. xiv. 14). It is certain that the Lord is fighting, that He is slowly and gradually descending from His Throne to the [Last] Judgment which we so anxiously look for. The signs announcing the approaching Judgment are all too numerous.... Hence put away all fear. Be strong and glad and untroubled, for the Lord is near. Let them undertake what they please, the Henrys [he is thinking of Henry of Brunswick, an opponent], the bishops, and likewise the Turks and Satan himself. We are children of the kingdom, and we await and honour Him as our Saviour Whom these Henrys spit upon and crucify anew.”[331]

In what frame of mind he then was, and what strange judgments he could pass, is seen even more plainly from what he adds concerning a tract he had just published against Duke Henry of Brunswick.

This work, entitled “Wider Hans Worst,” is, in style and matter, an attack of indescribable violence on this Catholic prince and Catholics in general. Yet Luther writes of it to Melanchthon: “I have re-read my book against this devil, and I cannot understand what has happened to make me so restrained. I attribute it to my headache which prevented my mind from being carried away on the wings of the storm.” The “bloodhound and incendiary assassin,” as he calls the Duke, would otherwise have had to listen to a very different song for having compelled Luther to “waste his time on Henry’s devil’s excrement.” That the Duke had been the originator of the appalling number of fires which occurred in the Electorate of Hesse in 1540, both Luther and Melanchthon were firmly convinced. Luther’s readiness to cherish the blackest suspicions, his volcanic rage against Catholics, the pessimism of his reiterated cry: “Let everything fall, stand or sink into ruins, as it pleases; let things take their own course,”[332] form a remarkable accompaniment to the thrilling tones in which he again asserts his consciousness of the fulfilment of his Divine mission.

We must here revert to some of Luther’s Statements concerning the triumphant progress of the Evangel and the determined resistance to be offered to all opposing forces—solemn declarations which attain their full meaning only in the light of his idea of his own Divine mission. We give the gist of the passages already quoted in detail elsewhere. These passages, which reek of revolution, are altogether inspired by the glowing idea of his heavenly mission apart from which they are scarcely comprehensible.

“If war is to come of it, let it come,” etc. “Princely foes are delivered up to us as a holocaust in order that they may be rewarded according to their works”; God will “deliver His people even from the fiery furnace of Babylon.”[333]

“Let things run on merrily and be prepared for the worst,” “whether it be war or revolt, as God’s anger may decree.”[334]

“Let justice take its course even should the whole world fall into ruins.”[335]

“It is said, ‘If the Pope fall, Germany will perish.’[336] But what has this to do with me?”

“It is God’s Word. Let what cannot stand, fall, and what is not to remain, pass away.” “It is a great thing,” he continues, “that for the sake of the young man [the Divine Redeemer] this Jewish Kingdom and the Divine Service which had been so gloriously instituted and ordered should fall to the ground.” Not Christ alone, he says, had spoken of His work in the same way that he (Luther) did of his own, but St. Paul also, in spite of his grief over the Jews, had, like himself, constantly declared: “The Word is true, else everything must fall into ruins; for He Who sent me and commanded me to preach, will not lie.”[337]

His followers recalled his words, that it were better “all churches, convents and foundations throughout the world should be rooted out” than that “even one soul should be seduced by such [Popish] error.”[338] And again: “Are we to forswear the truth?” “Would it be strange were the rulers, the nobles and laity to fall upon the Pope, the bishops, priests and monks and drive them out of the land?” They had brought it upon themselves and it was necessary “to pray for them.”[339] But prayer might not suffice. If no improvement took place, then “a general destruction of all the foundations and convents would be the best reformation.”[340]

These outbursts date almost all from the time of the Diet of Augsburg, or that immediately succeeding it. They might, however, be compared with some earlier utterances not one whit less full of fanaticism; for instance, where he says to the Elector, in 1522: “Not only the spiritual but also the secular power must yield to the Evangel, whether willingly or unwillingly”;[341] or the opening sentences of his “Bull of the Evening Feed of our Most Holy Lord the Pope” (1522): “After having had to put up with so many hawkers of bulls, cardinals ... and the countless horde of extortioners and swindlers and knaves whom the Rhine would hardly suffice to drown ...!”[342]

A flood of rage and passionate enthusiasm for his mission finds vent in these words: “If they hope ever to exterminate the Turks they must begin with the Pope.”[343] “The Pope drives the whole world from the Christian faith to his devilish lies, so that the Pope’s rule is ten times worse than that of the Turk for both body and soul.”[344]

Previous to this, in February, 1519, he reveals in the following words the agitation and ferment going on within him: “I adjure you,” he says to his friend Spalatin, “if you would think aright of the Evangel, not to imagine that such a cause can be fought out without tumults, scandal and rebellion. You cannot make a pen out of a sword, or peace of war. The Word of God is a sword, war, ruin, scandal, destruction, poison and, as we read in the Old Covenant, ‘Like to a bear in the road and a lioness in the wood,’ so it withstands the sons of Ephraim.”[345]

No Apostle or Prophet ever laid claim to a Divine authorisation for their preaching in language so violent. Indeed, mere phrases and extracts from his writings scarcely suffice to give a true picture of the intensity of his prepossession for his supposed Divine calling and of his furious hatred of his opponents. It would, in fact, be necessary to read in their entirety certain of his polemical works. That they have not done so is the explanation why so many know only a polished Luther and have scarcely an inkling of the fierceness of the struggle which centred round his consciousness of a Divine mission, and of the depth of his animosity against those who dared to gainsay him.

Nor was this consciousness of his without its effects on those around him. During the long years of his public life, it kindled the passion of thousands and contributed largely to the Peasant Revolt and the unhappy religious wars which followed later. Indirectly it was also productive of disaster for the Empire by forcing it to make terms with the turbulent elements within, and by preventing it from displaying a united front against the Turks and other enemies without. On the other hand, in the case of very many who honestly looked on Luther as a real reformer of the Church, it also served to infuse into them new enthusiasm for what they deemed the Christian cause.

Its effect on Luther’s character in later life was such as to make him, in his writings to the German people, rave like a maniac of the different forms of death best suited for Pope and Cardinals, viz. being hanged on the gallows with their tongues torn out, being drowned in the Tyrrhenean Sea, or “flayed alive.”[346] “How my flesh creeps and how my blood boils,” he cries, after one such outburst.[347]

If we remember the frenzy with which he carried out his religious enterprise, the high tension at which he ever worked and his inexhaustible source of eloquence, it is easy to fancy ourselves face to face with something more than human. The real nature of the spirit which, throughout Luther’s life, was ever so frantically at work within him, must for ever remain a secret. One eye alone, that of the All-seeing, can pierce these depths. Anxious Catholic contemporaries of Luther’s strongly suspected that they had to deal with one possessed by the evil spirit. This opinion was openly voiced, first by Johann Nathin, Luther’s contemporary at the Erfurt monastery, by Emser, Cochlæus, Dungersheim and certain other early opponents, and then by several others whose testimony will be heard later (vol. iv., xxvii., 1).

Catholic contemporaries also urged that his claim to a Divine mission was mere impudence. A simple monk, hitherto quite unknown to the world, so they said, breaks his vows and dares to set himself in opposition to the universal Church. A man, whose repute was not of the best, and who not only lacked any higher attestation, but actually exhibited in his doctrine of evangelical freedom, in the disorderly lives of his followers and in the dissensions promoted by his fanatical and stormy rhetoric, those very signs which our Redeemer had warned His disciples would follow false prophets—such a man, they argued, could surely not be a reformer, but was rather a destroyer, of Christendom; he perceives not that the Church, for all her present abuses and corruption, has nevertheless all down the ages scattered throughout the world the Divine blessings committed to her care by a promise which shall never fail, and that she will soon rise again purer and more beautiful than ever, for the lasting benefit of mankind.

Luther, on the contrary, sought to base his claim to a Divine mission on the abuses rampant in Popery, which, he would have it, was altogether under the dominion of the devil and quite beyond redemption.

2. His Mission Alleged against the Papists

Luther, subsequent to his apostasy, accustomed himself to speak of Catholicism in a fashion scarcely credible. He did not shrink even from the grossest and most impudent depreciation of the Church of the Popes. His incessant indulgence in such abuse calls for some examination into its nature and the mental state of which it was a product.

The Pope and the Papacy.

The Roman Curia, Luther repeatedly declared, did not believe one word of all the truths of religion; at the faithful who held fast to Revelation they scoffed and called them good simpletons (“buoni cristiani”); they knew nothing either of the Creed or of the Our Father, and from all the ecclesiastical books put together not as much could be learnt as from one page of Martin Luther’s Catechism.

“Mark this well,” he declared as early as 1520 in his work “Von dem Bapstum tzu Rome,” of all that is ordered of God not one jot or tittle is observed at Rome; indeed, they mock at it as folly when anyone pays any attention to it. They don’t mind a bit that the Gospel and the faith of Christ are perishing throughout the world, and would not lift a finger to prevent it.[348] The Popes are simply “Epicureans,” so that, naturally, almost all those who return from Rome bring back home with them an “Epicurean faith.” “For this at least is certain, viz. that the Pope and the Cardinals, together with their schools of knaves, believe in nothing at all; in fact, they smile when they hear faith mentioned.”[349]

“What cares the Pope about prayer and God’s Word? He has his own god to serve, viz. the devil. But this is a mere trifle.... What is far worse, and a real masterpiece of all the devils in hell, is, that he usurps the authority to set up laws and articles of faith.... He roars, as though chock-full of devils, that whosoever does not obey him and his Romish Church cannot be saved.... Papistically, knavishly, nay, in a truly devilish way, does the Pope, like the stupid scoundrel he is, use the name of the holy Roman Church, when he really means his school of knaves, his Church of harlots and hermaphrodites, the devil’s own hotchpotch.... For such is the language of his Romish Church, and whoever has to do with the Pope and the Roman See must first learn this or else he fares badly. For the devil, who founded the Papacy, speaks and works everything through the Pope and the Roman See.”[350]

His “Heer-Predigt widder den Türcken,” in 1529, supplied him with the occasion for the following aside: “The Pope’s doctrine is mere spiritual murder and not one whit better than the teaching and blasphemy of Mohammed or the Turks.... We have nothing but devils on either side and everywhere.”[351] “They even try to force us poor Christians at the point of the sword to worship the devil and blaspheme Christ. Other tyrants have at least this in their favour, that they crucify the Lord of Glory ignorantly, like the Turks, the heathen and the Jews ... but they [the Papists], say: We know that Christ’s words and acts testify against us, but nevertheless we shall not endure His Word, or yield to it.”[352] “I believe the Pope is the devil incarnate in disguise; for he is Antichrist. For, as Christ is true God and man, so Antichrist is the incarnation of the devil.”[353]

“The superstition of the Pope exceeds that of the Jews.” Though the Pope drags countless souls down to hell, yet we may not say to him: “For shame! Why act you thus?” “Had not his prestige been overthrown by the Word [i.e. by my preaching] even the devil would have vomited him forth. But this deliverance [from the Pope] we esteem a small matter and have become ungrateful. God, however, will send other forms of darkness to avenge this ingratitude; we still have this consolation, that the Last Day cannot be far distant; for the prophecy of Daniel has been entirely fulfilled, where he describes the Papacy as though he had actually seen its doings.”[354]

“At Rome,” so he assures his readers, “they pull the noses of us German fools,” and then say, that “it is of Divine institution that none can be made bishop without the authority of Rome. I can only wonder that Germany ... has a farthing left for this horde of unspeakable, intolerable Roman fools, scoundrels and robbers.”[355] “Worse even than this rapacious seizing of the money of foreigners is the Pope’s usurped right of deciding matters of faith. He acts just as he pleases in accordance with the imaginary interior inspirations which he believes he receives.” “He does just the same as Thomas Münzer and the Anabaptists, for he treads under foot the outward Word of God, trusts entirely to higher illumination and gives vent to his own fond inventions against Holy Scripture; which is the reason why we blame him. We care not for mere human thoughts; what we want is the outward Word.”[356]

“In short, what shall I say? No error, superstition or idolatry is too gross to be admitted and accepted; at Rome they even honour the Pope as God. And the heathen also had a god, whose name it was not lawful to utter.”[357]

The Catholics.

If we turn from the Pope-God or Pope-devil to the Papists, from the Roman Curia to the Catholics, we find them scourged in similar language.

Amidst a wealth of imagery quite bewildering to the mind, one idea emerges clearly, viz. that he has been summoned by God for the purpose of rebuilding Christianity from the very foundation. Nothing but such a mission could justify him in forcing upon himself and others the belief, that the existing Church had been utterly corrupted by the devil and that everybody who dared to oppose him was inspired by Satan.

“No one can be a Papist unless he is at the very least a murderer, robber or persecutor,” for “he must agree” that the “Pope and his crew are right in burning and banishing people,”[358] etc. The worst thing about the Papists is the Mass; he would rather he had “kept a brothel, or been a robber, than have sacrificed and blasphemed Christ for fifteen years by saying Mass.”[359]

Their bloodthirstiness is beyond belief. “They would not care a scrap were no Prince or ruler left in Germany, and were the whole land bathed in blood, so long as they were free to exercise their tyranny and lead their godless and shameless life.”[360] So shameless is their life that the morals of the Lutherans glitter like gold in comparison. Yea, “our life even when it reeks most of sin is better than all their [the Papists’] sanctity, though it should seem to smell as sweet as balsam.”[361] The Catholics had destroyed the Baptism instituted by Christ, and replaced it by a baptism of works, hence their doctrine is as pernicious as that of the Anabaptists, nay, is exactly on a level with that of the Jews.[362]

The Catholics profess “unbelief in God,” and “put to death those guileless Christians who refuse to countenance such idolatry”; they are “not fit to be compared with oxen or asses,” seeing that they exalt “their self-chosen works,” “far above God’s commandment. For in addition to the idolatry and ungodly teaching whereby they daily outrage and blaspheme God, they do not perform any works of charity towards their neighbour, nay, would rather leave anyone to perish in want than stretch out a hand to help him. Again, they are as careful not to deviate by a hair’s breadth from their man-made ordinances, rules and commands as were the Jews with regard to the Sabbath.... They make no scruple of cheating their neighbour of his money and goods in order to fill their own belly.... Such perverse and crazy saints, more foolish than ever ox or ass, are all those, Mohammedans, Turks or whatever else they be called, who refuse to listen to or receive Christ.”[363]

It was Luther that Dr. Jonas had heard, on one occasion at table, express the opinion concerning the Papists: “Young fellows, take note of this definition: A Papist is a liar and murderer, nay, the devil himself. Hence they are not to be trusted, for they thirst for our blood.”[364]

Luther himself assures us that “the blindness of the Papists and the anger of God against the Papacy was terrible.” “Christians, redeemed by the Blood of Christ, put away this blood and worshipped the crib, surely an awful fall! If this had happened amongst the heathen it would have been regarded as monstrous.”[365]

The Catholics, Luther taught, never pray, in fact, they do not know how to pray but only how to blaspheme. We find other almost incredible allegations born of his fancy and voiced in a sermon in 1524, of which we have a transcript. “They taught the Our Father, but warned us not to use it [by instructing us to get others to pray for us in our stead]. It is true that for many years I shouted [’bawled,’ he says elsewhere] in the monastery [in choir], but never did I pray. They mock the Lord God with their prayers. Never did they approach God with their hearts so as to pray for anything in faith.”[366]

Had it been possible for a man to be saved in Popery? He, Luther, replies that this might have happened because “some laymen” may have “held the crucifix in front of the dying man and said: Look up to Jesus, Who died on the cross for you. By this means many a dying man had turned to Christ in spite of having previously believed in the false, miraculous signs [which the devil performs in Popery] and acted as an idolator. Such, however, were lucky.”[367] He admits incidentally that “many of our forefathers” had been saved in this exceptional way, though only such as “had been led astray into error, but had not clung to it.”[368] In any case it was a miracle. “Those pious souls,” “many of whom had by God’s grace been wonderfully preserved in the true faith in the midst of Popery,” had been saved, so he fancies, in much the same way as “Abraham in Ur of the Chaldeans, and Lot in Sodom.”[369]

Now, however, matters stood differently; thanks to his mission light had dawned again, and the unbelief of the Catholics was therefore all the more reprehensible. In the heat of his polemic Luther goes so far as to accuse the Papists who oppose him of the sin against the Holy Ghost. At any rate they were acting against their conscience, as he had pointed out before. He also hints that theirs is that worst sin, of which Christ declares (Matt. xii. 31), that it can be forgiven neither in this world nor in the next. The greater part of a sermon on this text which he preached at Wittenberg, in 1528 or 1529, deals with this criminal blindness on the part of Catholics, this deliberate turning away from the truth of the Holy Ghost to which Matthew refers. Here, as elsewhere, Luther’s presupposition is: I teach “the bright Evangel with which even they can find no fault”; I preach “nothing but what is plain to all and so clearly grounded on Scripture that they themselves are forced to admit it”; “what is so plainly proved by the Holy Ghost” that it stands out as a “truth known to all.” He proceeds: “When I was a learned Doctor I did not believe there was such a thing on earth as the sin against the Holy Ghost, for I never imagined or believed it was possible to find a heart that could be so wicked.” But “now the Papal horde” has descended to this, for they “blaspheme and lie against their conscience”; they “are unable to refute our Evangel or to advance anything against it,” “yet they knowingly oppose our teaching out of waywardness and hatred of the truth, so that no admonition, counsel, prayer or chastisement is of any avail.” “Thus openly to smite the Holy Ghost on the mouth,” nay, “to spit in His Face,” is to emulate the treachery of Judas in the depth of their “obstinate and venomous hearts”; for such it was “forbidden to pray,” according to 1 John v. 16, because this would be to “insult the spirit of grace and tread under foot the Son of God.” The Papists richly deserve that the “Holy Ghost should forsake them,” and that they should go “wantonly to their destruction according to their desire.” In short, “It is better for people to be sunk in sin, to be prostitutes and utter scamps, for at least they may yet come to a knowledge of the truth; but these devil’s saints who go to Divine worship full of good works, when they hear the Holy Ghost openly testifying against them, strike Him on the mouth and say: it is all heresy and devilry.”[370]

The tone of hatred and of blind prejudice in favour of his cause which here finds utterance may be explained to some extent by his experience during the sharp struggles of conscience through which he was then going, and which formed the worst crisis of his inner states of terror. (See vol. v., xxxii., 4.) Nor must the connection be overlooked between his apparent confidence here and the attempt which he makes in one passage of the sermon to justify theologically his radical subversion of olden doctrine. The brief argument runs as follows: “From St. Paul everyone can infer that it cannot be achieved by works, otherwise the Blood of Christ is made of no account.” Hence the holiness-by-works of the Catholics was an abomination.[371]

On another occasion Luther, speaking of the wilful blindness of the Catholics, declared that “God’s untold wrath must sooner or later fall upon such Epicurean pigs and donkeys”; the devil must be a spirit of tremendous power to incite them “deliberately to withstand God.” They say and admit: “‘That is, I know, the Word of God, but even though it is the Word of God I shall not suffer it, listen to it, nor regard it, but shall reprove it and call it heretical, and whoever is determined to obey God in this matter ... him I will put to death or banish.’ I could never have believed there was such a sin.”[372]

As such declarations of the wilful obstinacy of the Catholics are quite commonly made by him, we are tempted to assume that such was really his opinion; if so, we are here face to face with a remarkable instance of what his self-deception was capable.

Even at the Wartburg, however, he was already on the road to such an idea, for, while still there, he had declared that the Papists were unworthy to receive the truth which he preached: “Had they been worthy of the truth, they would long ago have been converted by my many writings.” “If I teach them they only revile me; I implore and they merely mock at me; I scold them and they grow angry; I pray for them and they reject my prayer; I forgive them their trespass and they will have none of my forgiveness; I am ready to sacrifice myself for them and yet they only curse me. What more can I do than Christ?”[373]

It is true that according to him the Papists were ignorant to the last degree, and such ignorance had indeed always prevailed under Popery. “I myself have been a learned Doctor of theology and yet I never understood the Ten Commandments aright. Nay, there have been many celebrated Doctors who were not sure whether there were nine or ten or eleven Commandments; much less did they know anything of the Gospel or of Christ.”[374]

Still, this appalling ignorance on the part of the Papists did not afford any excuse or ground for charitable treatment. Their malice, particularly that of the Popes, is too great. “The Popes are a pot-boil of the very worst men on earth. They boast of the name of Christ, St. Peter and the Churches and yet are full of the worst devils in hell, full, absolutely full, so full that they drivel, spew and vomit nothing but devils.”[375]

A passage in the “Table-Talk” collected by Mathesius and recently published, shows that Luther considered his frenzied anti-popery as the most suitable method of combating Popish errors; “Philip [Melanchthon] isn’t as yet angry enough with the Pope,” he said some time in the winter of 1542-43; “he is moderate by nature and always acts with moderation, which may possibly be of some use, as he himself hopes. But my storming (impetus) knocks the bottom out of the cask; my way is to fall upon them with clubs ... for the devil can only be vanquished by contempt. Enough has been written and said to the weak, as for the hardened, nothing is of any avail ... I rush in with all my might, but against the devil.”[376]

His attitude towards scholarly Catholics was very apparent in the later episodes of his controversy with Erasmus.[377]

After having charged Popes and Cardinals with lack of faith, it can be no matter for surprise that he should have represented Erasmus as an utter infidel and a preacher of Epicureanism. The pretexts upon which Luther based this charge had been triumphantly demolished by Erasmus, and only Luther’s prejudice in favour of his own mission to save Christendom from destruction could have led him to describe Erasmus as a depraved fellow, who personified all the infidelity and corruption of the Papacy.

“This man learned his infidelity in Rome,” Luther ventured to say of him; hence his wish “to have his Epicureanism praised.” “He is the worst foe of Christ that has arisen for the last thousand years.”[378] In 1519, before Erasmus took the field against him, Luther had written to him, praising him, and, in the hope of securing his co-operation, had said: “You are our ornament and our hope.... Who is there into whose mind Erasmus has not penetrated, who does not see in him a teacher, or over whom he has not established his sway? You are displeasing to many, but therein I discern the gifts of our Gracious God.... With these my words, barbarous as they are, I would fain pay homage to the excellence of your mind to which we, all of us, are indebted.... Please look on me as a little brother in Christ, who is wholly devoted to you and loves you dearly.”[379]

On another occasion Luther abuses his opponent as follows: “The only foundation of all his teaching is his desire to gain the applause of the world; he weights the scale with ignorance and malice.” “What is the good of reproaching him with being on the same road as Epicurus, Lucian and the sceptics? By doing so I merely succeeded in rousing the viper, and in its fury against me it gave birth to the Viperaspides [i.e. the “Hyperaspistes”]. In Italy and at Rome he sucked in the milk of the Lamiæ and Megæræ and now no medicine is of any avail.” Even in what Erasmus says concerning the Creed, we see the “os et organum Satanæ.” He may be compared with the enemy in the Gospel, who, while men slept, sowed cockel in the field. We can understand now how Sacramentarians, Donatists, Arians, Anabaptists, Epicureans and so forth have again made their appearance. He sowed his seed and then disappeared. And yet he stands in high honour with Pope and Prince. “Who would have believed that the hatred of Luther was so strong? A poor man is made great simply through Luther.”[380]

This letter Erasmus described in the title of his printed reply as “Epistola non sobria Martini Lutheri.” Others, he says, might well explain it as a mental aberration, or as due to the influence of some evil demon.[381]

Luther, quite undismayed, continued to deny that Erasmus was in any sense a believer: “He regards the Christian religion and doctrine as a comedy or tragedy”; he is “a perfect counterfeit and image of Epicurus”; to this “incarnate scoundrel, God—the Father, Son and Holy Ghost—is merely ludicrous.” “Whereas I did not take the trouble to read most of the other screeds published against me, but merely put them to the basest use that paper can be put—which indeed was all they were worth—I read through the whole of the ‘Diatribe’ of Erasmus, though I was often tempted to throw it aside.” He, like Democritus, the cynical heathen philosopher, looks on our whole theology as nothing better than a fairy tale.[382]

We may well be permitted to regard such statements made by Luther in his later years concerning the Catholics more as the result of a delusion than as deliberate falsehoods. It may be that Luther gradually persuaded himself that such was really the case. If this be so, we must, however, admit with Döllinger “the unparalleled perversion and darkening of Luther’s judgment”; this, adds Döllinger, would explain “much in his statements which must otherwise appear enigmatical.”[383] Considerations such as those we have seen him (p. 121 ff.) allege concerning the truth of his cause being proved by its success, could scarcely have impressed any save an unsettled mind such as his. He seems to have accustomed himself to explaining the complex and highly questionable movement at the head of which he stood in a light other than the true one, so much so that he could declare: “God knows all this is not my doing, a fact of which the whole world should have been aware long ago.”[384] Brimful of the enthusiasm he had imbibed at the Wartburg he wrote, from Wittenberg, on June 27, 1522, in a similar tone to Staupitz, who was then Benedictine Abbot at Salzburg: “God has undertaken it [the destruction of the abomination of the kingdom of the Pope] without our help and without human aid, merely by the Word. Its end has come before the Lord. The matter is beyond our reason or understanding, hence it is useless to expect all to grasp it. For the sake of God’s power it is meet and just that people’s minds be deeply stirred and that there should be great scandals and great signs. Dear father, do not let this disturb you; I am hopeful. You see God’s plan in these matters and His Mighty Hand. Remember how my cause from the outset seemed to the world doubtful and intolerable, and how, notwithstanding, from day to day it has gained the upper hand more and more. It will also gain the upper hand in what you now anticipate with misplaced apprehension; just you wait and see. Satan feels the smart of the wound inflicted on him, that is why he rages so furiously and throws everything into confusion. But Christ Who began the work will tread him under foot in defiance of all the gates of hell.”[385]

From the very outset of his career Luther had been paving the way for this delusion as to the true character of his Catholic opponents, his own higher mission and God’s overthrow of all gainsayers.

In 1518 he declared, as a sort of prelude to the idea of his Divine mission, that the Catholic Doctors who opposed him were sunk in “chaotic darkness,” and that he preached “the one true light, Jesus Christ.”[386] Even in 1517, in publishing his Resolutions, he had said of the setting up of his Indulgence Theses, that the Lord Himself had compelled him to advance all this. “Let Christ see to it whether it be His cause or mine.”[387]

His pupils and Wittenberg adherents treasured up such assurances of his extraordinary mission in order to excite their own enthusiasm. Even Albert Dürer, who was further removed from the sphere of his influence, spoke of him in the third decade of the century as “a man enlightened by the Holy Ghost and one who has the Spirit of God.”[388] Long after his death the chord which he had struck continued to vibrate among those who were devoted to him. On his tomb at Wittenberg might be read: “Taught by the Divine inspiration and called by God’s Word, he disseminated throughout the world the new light of the Evangel.” Old, orthodox Lutheranism honoured him as God’s own messenger; the Protestant Pietists, at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, attributed to Luther, to quote the words of Gottfried Arnold, a truly “apostolic call,” received by means of a “direct inspiration, impulse or Divine apprehension”; this Divine mission, Arnold says, was “generally” admitted, although he himself, as a staunch Pietist, was willing to allow to Luther “the power and illumination of the Spirit” only during the period previous to the dispute with Carlstadt, who was equally enlightened from above. “For a while,” says Arnold, i.e. for about seven years, Luther was “in very truth mightily guided by God and employed as His instrument.”[389]

Other Lutheran theologians, Gerhard and Calovius, for instance, refused to see in Luther’s case anything more than an indirect call; about the middle of the eighteenth century the editor of Luther’s Works, Consistorialrat Prof. J. G. Walch, of Jena, asserted openly of Luther’s mission that he “was not called directly by God as had been the case with the Prophets and Apostles”; his call had only in so far been beyond the ordinary in that “God, after decreeing in His Divine plans the Reformation, had chosen Luther as His tool”; hence Luther’s providential mission was only to be inferred from the “divinity of the Reformation,” which, however, was apparent to all who “did not wantonly and maliciously shut their eyes to facts.” Extraordinary gifts had not indeed been bestowed upon him by God, though he had all the “gifts pertaining to his office” in rich measure, and likewise the “sanctifying gifts” and the “spiritual graces”; the latter Walch then proceeds to dissect with painstaking exactitude.[390]

Such a view marks the transition to the modern conception of Luther so widely prevalent among Protestants to-day, which, while extolling him as the powerful instrument of the Reformation, naturalises him, so to speak, and takes him down from the pedestal of the God-illumined teacher and prophet, who proclaims a Divine interpretation of Scripture binding upon all.[391]

Apocalyptico-Mystic Vesture.

Against Catholics Luther also used certain pseudo-mystic elements drawn from his consciousness of a higher mission and based principally on Holy Scripture.

In this respect his one-sided study of the Bible explains much, and should avail to mitigate our judgment on him. Stories and scenes from the Old Testament, incidents from the heroic times of the prophets, the lives of the patriarchs, to which he had devoted special Commentaries, so engrossed his mind, that, unwittingly, he came to clothe all in the garb of the prominent figures of Bible history. He was fond of imagining himself as one of those privileged heroes living in the same world of miracles as of yore.

If a she-ass could speak to Balaam then how much more can he, Luther, proclaim the truth by the power from on high, even though the whole world should be astonished at the solitary figure who dares to stand up against it. He calls to mind, that the prophet Elias was almost alone in refusing to bow the knee to Baal. Discouraged by the opposition he met with from the Catholic party he was ready to liken himself to Jeremias the prophet, and like him to say: “We would have cured Babylon, but she is not healed, let us forsake her.”[392]

In the New Testament Christ Himself and the Apostles were Luther’s favourite types, because, like himself, they were against a whole world whose views were different. The fact that they were alone did not, he says, diminish their reputation, and their success proved their mission. Like Paul and Athanasius and Augustine it is his duty to withstand the stream of false opinions: “My rock, that on which I build, stands firm and will not totter or fall in spite of all the gates of hell; of this I am certain.... Who knows what God wills to work by our means?”[393]

When, at different periods of his public career, and in preparing his various works for the press, he had occasion to ruminate on the biblical questions connected with Antichrist, he was wont also to consider the prophecies of Daniel on the end of the world. By dint of a diligent comparison of all the passages on the abominations of the latter days he came to find therein the corruption of the Papacy fully described, even down to the smallest details, with an account of its overthrow, and, consequently, also of his own mission. In the same way that he saw the impending fall of the Turkish Empire predicted, so also he recognised that the German Empire must shortly perish, since, as he had learnt from Daniel, it was to receive no other constitution. As for the Papacy, at least according to one of the most forcible of his pronouncements, within two years “it would vanish like smoke, together with all its swarm of parasites.”

In Daniel viii. we read that a king will come, “of a shameless face, and understanding dark sentences.” He will lay all things waste and destroy the mighty and the people of the saints according to his will. “Craft shall be successful in his hands and his heart shall be puffed up. He shall rise up against the prince of princes, and shall be broken without a hand.” His coming will be “after many days.”[394] The king thus prophesied is generally admitted to have been Antiochus Epiphanes, while the words “after many days” do not refer to the Last Day or to the End of the World, but to the latter end of the Jewish people. Luther, however, took these words and the whole prophecy in an erroneous, apocalyptic sense. He brought the description of the king into connection with the passages on Antichrist, and the great apostasy, in the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, the Second Epistle to Timothy and the Second Epistle of Peter, etc.[395] There seemed to him not the slightest doubt that the Papacy, with its pernicious arrogance and revolt against God, was here described in minutest detail.

This idea he finally elaborated while writing his violent work “On the Babylonish Captivity.” He therein promised to tell the Papists things such as they had never heard before. This promise he fulfilled soon after in the detailed reply to Ambrosius Catharinus, which he hastily wrote in the month of March, 1521. In this Latin work he proved in detail to the satisfaction of learned readers, whether in Germany or abroad, that the Papacy was plainly depicted in the Bible as Antichrist, and likewise its approaching great fall.[396]

“I think that, through my exposition of the Prophet Daniel, I have carried out excellently what I promised the Papists to do.” Thus to his friend Link, on the completion of the work.[397]

Daniel’s Antichrist, according to Luther’s interpretation, assumes various shapes. These, Luther assures us, are the different forms and masks of Romish superstition and Romish hypocrisy. Amongst these he reckons, as the last, the Universities, because they had made use of the Divine Word in order to deceive the world; here he introduces the prophecy in Apocalypse ix., where a star falls from heaven, the fountains of the deep are opened, locusts with the strength of scorpions rise up out of a thick smoke, and a King reigns over them whose name is Apollyon, or destroyer. The star Luther takes to be Thomas Aquinas, the smoke is the empty words and opinions of Aristotle and the philosophers, the destructive locusts are the Universities, and Apollyon is their master, viz. Aristotle. As for Antichrist himself, i.e. the Papacy, Jesus will destroy him with the breath of His mouth, according to the word of St. Paul, which agrees with the “destruction without hands” prophesied by Daniel. “Thus the Pope and his kingdom are not to be destroyed by laymen, although they greatly dread this [at Rome]; they are not worthy of so mild a chastisement, but are being reserved for the Second Coming of Christ because they have been, and still remain, His most furious enemies. Such is the end of Antichrist, who exalts himself above all things and does not fight with hands, but by the breath and spirit of Satan. Breath shall destroy breath, truth unmask deceit, for the unmasking of a lie means bringing it to nought.”[398]

Apocalyptic fancies such as the above were to dog Luther’s footsteps for the rest of his life. Both in his writings and in his “Table-Talk” he was never backward in putting forth his views on this abstruse subject.

Of the ideas concerning the Papal Antichrist which, since Hus’s time were current among the classes hostile to Rome,[399] Luther selected and absorbed whatever was worst. Hus’s work on the Church he read in February, 1520. The birth and growth of the theory in his mind even previous to this can, however, be traced step by step, and the process affords us a valuable insight into his mentality by revealing so well its pseudo-mystical element.

We may distinguish between the earliest private and the earliest public appearance of Luther’s idea of the Papal Antichrist. Its first unmistakable private trace is to be met with in a letter of December 11, 1518, to his brother-monk and sympathiser Wenceslaus Link. Luther was at that time labouring under the emotion incident on his interrogation at Augsburg, of which he had just published the “Acta.” Sending a copy to his friend he declares, that his pen is already at work at much greater things, that he knew not whence the ideas that filled his mind came, but that he would send Link whatever writings he published, that he might see “whether I am right in my surmise that the real Antichrist, according to Paul [2 Thess. ii., 3 ff.], rules at the Roman Curia.”[400] The first public expression of this idea is, however, to be found in the pronouncement he made subsequent to the Leipzig Disputation in the summer of 1519, viz. that if the Pope arrogated to himself alone the power of interpreting Scripture, then he was exalting himself above God’s Word and was worse than Antichrist.[401]

Not long after Luther showed how deeply he had drunk in the ideas of Hus; in February, 1520, he confessed to being a Husite, since both he and Staupitz too had hitherto taught precisely Hus’s doctrine, though without having recognised him as their leader; the plain, evangelical truth had been burnt a hundred years before in the person of Hus. “I am so astonished I know not what to think when I contemplate these terrible judgments of God upon men.”[402] On March 19 he sent to Spalatin a copy of Hus’s writing, which had just been printed for the first time, praising the author as a “marvel of intellect and learning.”[403]

In his conception of Antichrist Luther differed from antiquity in that he applied the term not so much to a person as to a system, or a condition of things: the ecclesiastical government of Rome, with its “pretensions” and its “corruption,” appears to him in his apocalyptic dreams as the real Antichrist. That he finally came to see in the person of the Pope more and more an embodiment of Antichrist was, however, only to be expected; when one wearer of the Papal tiara died, the mask of Antichrist passed to his successor, a matter of no difficulty since, as the end of the world was nigh, the number of the Popes was in any case complete.

As early as February 24, 1520, having previously found new fuel for his ire in the perusal of Hutten’s edition of Lorenzo Valla’s dissertation against the Donation of Constantine, he wrote to Spalatin:[404] “Nothing is too utterly monstrous not to be acceptable at Rome;[405] of the impudent forgery of the Donation they have made a dogma[!]. I have come to such a pass that I can scarcely doubt that the Pope is the real Antichrist whom the world, according to the accepted view, awaits. His life, behaviour, words and laws all fit the character too well. But more of this when we meet.” The allusion to the “accepted view” may refer to a work, reprinted at Erfurt in 1516, and which Luther must certainly have known, viz. the “Booklet on the Life and Rule of End-Christ as Divinely decreed, how he corrupteth the world through his false teaching and devilish counsel, and how, after this, the two prophets Enoch and ‘Helyas’ shall win back Christendom by preaching the Christian faith.”

Greater even than the influence of such writings, in confirming him in his persuasion that the Pope was Antichrist, was that of the excitement caused by his polemics. We have already had occasion to speak of his stormy replies to the “Epitome” of Silvester Prierias and the controversial pamphlet of Augustine Alveld the Franciscan friar. In the latter rejoinder he promises to handle the Papacy “mercilessly” and to belabour Antichrist as he deserves. “Circumstances demand imperatively that the veil be torn from the mysteries of Antichrist; indeed, in their effrontery they themselves refuse to be any longer shrouded in darkness.” Speaking of Prierias, who was a Roman, he says: “I believe that at Rome they have all gone stark, staring mad, and become senseless fools, stocks, stones, devils and a very hell”; “what now can we expect from Rome where such a monster is permitted to take his place in the Church?”[406] In his replies to Prierias and Alveld he depicts Antichrist in the worst colours to be supplied by a vivid imagination and an over-mastering fury: If such things are taught in Rome, then “the veritable Antichrist is indeed seated in the Temple of God, and rules in the purple-clad Babylon at Rome, while the Roman Curia is the synagogue of Satan.... Who can Antichrist be, if not such a Pope? O Satan, Satan, how greatly dost thou abuse the patience of thy Creator to thine own destruction!”[407]

The anger of the sensitive and excitable Wittenberg professor had been roused by contradiction, particularly by the tract which hailed from Rome, but the arrival of the Bull of Excommunication moved him to the very depths of his soul and led him to commit to writing the most hateful travesties of the Roman Papacy.

In the storm and stress of the struggle, which in the latter half of 1520 produced the so-called great Reformation works, the Antichrist theory, in its final form, was made to serve as a bulwark against the Papal excommunication and its consequences. Luther drops all qualifications and henceforth his assertions are positive. The wider becomes the breach separating him from Rome, the blacker must he paint his opponents in order to justify himself before the world and to his own satisfaction. Previous to its publication he summed up the contents of his “An den christlichen Adel” as follows: “There the Pope is severely mauled and treated as Antichrist.”[408] As a matter of fact, the comparison is so startling that he could well speak of the booklet as “a trumpet-blast against the world-destroying tyranny of the Roman Antichrist.”[409] In the writing “On the Babylonish Captivity,” a few weeks later, he exclaims: “Now I know and am certain that the Papacy is the empire of Babylon.” “The Popes are Antichrists and desire to be honoured in the stead of Christ.... The Papacy is nothing but the empire of Babylon and of the veritable Antichrist, because with its doctrines and laws it merely makes sin more plentiful; hence the Pope is the ‘man of sin’ and the ‘son of destruction.’”[410]

Hereby he had prepared the way for his attack upon Leo the Tenth’s Bull of Excommunication, which he published in German and Latin at the end of October, 1520, under the title, “Widder die Bullen des Endchrists” and “Adversus execrabilem Antichristi bullam.”[411] Such a name was well calculated to strike the fancy of the masses, and there cannot be the slightest doubt that Luther welcomed it as a taking, popular cry.

It is easy to meet the objection that the Papal Antichrist was nothing more to Luther than a serviceable catchword, and that he never meant it seriously. That such was not the case we have abundantly proved already; on the contrary, we have here a clear outgrowth of his pseudo-mysticism. He ever preserved it as a sacred possession, and it found its way in due season into the Schmalkald Articles[412] and into the Notes Luther appended to his German Bible.[413] The idea, which never left him, of the world’s approaching end—with this we shall deal at greater length in vol. v., xxxi. 2—is without a doubt closely linked with his cherished theory of his being the revealer of Antichrist and the chosen instrument of God for averting His malice in the latter days.

The Bible assures us, according to Luther, that, “after the downfall of the Pope and the delivery of the poor, no one on earth would be feared as a tyrant” (Psalm x. 18); now, he continues, “this would not be possible were the world to continue after the Pope’s fall, for the world cannot exist without tyrants. And thus the prophet agrees with the Apostle that Christ at His coming [i.e. His second coming, for the Last Judgment] will upset the holy Roman Chair. God grant this happen speedily. Amen.”[414]

In 1541, Luther wrote a Latin essay on the Chronology of the World, which, in 1550, was published in German by Johann Aurifaber under the title of “Luthers Chronica.” This work, which witnesses both to Luther’s industry and to his interest in history, is also made to serve its author’s views on Antichrist. Towards the end, alluding to what he had already said concerning the several periods of the world’s history, he adds, that it was “to be hoped that the end of the world was drawing near, for the sixth millenary of its history would not be completed, any more than the three days between Christ’s death and resurrection.” Besides, “at no other time had greater and more numerous signs taken place, which gives us a certain hope that the Last Day is at the very door.”[415] Of the year A.D. 1000 we here read: “The Roman Bishop becometh Antichrist, thanks to the power of the sword.”[416]

In the same year his tireless pen, amongst other writings, produced a Commentary on Daniel xii. concerning the “end of the days,” the abomination of desolation and the general retribution. The Papal Antichrist here again supplies him with abundant exemplifications of the fulfilment of the prophecy; the signs foretold to herald the destruction of this Empire, so hostile to God, had almost all been accomplished, and the great day was at hand.

Other people, and, among them some of the great lights of Catholicism, both before and after Luther’s day, have erred in their exegesis of Antichrist and been led to expect prematurely the end of the world. Yet only in Luther do we find united a fanatical expectation of the end with a minute acquaintance with its every detail, scriptural demonstrations with anxious observation of the events of the times, all steeped in the deadliest hatred of that mortal enemy the Papacy.

His conviction that God was proving his mission by signs and wonders sometimes assumed unfortunate forms, for instance, when he superstitiously seeks its attestation in incidents of his own day.

We see an example of this in the meaning he attached to the huge whale driven ashore near Haarlem, in which he saw a sign of God’s wrath against the Papists. “The Lord has given them an ominous sign,” he writes, on June 13, 1522, to Speratus, “if so be they enter into themselves and do penance. For He has cast a sea monster called a whale, 70 feet in length and 35 feet in girth, on the shore near Haarlem. Such a monster it is usual to regard as a certain sign of wrath. May God have mercy on them and on us.”[417] Other natural phenomena, amongst them an earthquake in Spain, led him to write as follows to Spalatin at the beginning of the following year: “Don’t think that I shall creep back into a corner however much Behemoth and his crew may rage. New and awful portents occur day by day, and you have doubtless heard of the earthquake in Spain.”[418]

When, in 1536, extraordinary deeds were narrated of a girl at Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, and attributed to demoniacal possession (she could, for instance, produce coins from all sorts of impossible places, even out of men’s beards), Luther, we are told, utilised in the pulpit these terrible signs and portents, “as a warning to abandoned persons who deem themselves secure, in order that now, at last, they may begin to fear God and to put their trust in Him.”[419]

At Freiberg in Saxony, towards the end of 1522, a cow was delivered of a deformed calf. On this becoming known, people, as was then the vogue, set about discovering the meaning of the portent. An astrologer of Prague first took the extraordinary phenomenon to refer to Luther, whose hateful and wicked behaviour was portrayed in the miscarriage. Luther, on the other hand, discovered that the monstrosity really represented a naked calf clothed in a cowl (the skin was drawn up into strange creases on the back), and that it therefore indicated the monkish state, of the worthlessness of which it was a true picture, and God’s wrath against monasticism. In a tract published in the spring, 1523, he compared in such detail and with such wealth of fancy the creature to the monks that the work itself was termed monstrous.[420] The cowl represented the monkish worship, “with prayers, Masses, chanting and fasting,” which they perform to the calf, i.e. “to the false idol in their lying hearts”; just as the calf eats nothing but grass, so “they fatten on sensual enjoyments here on earth.” “The cowl over the hind-quarters of the calf is torn,” this signifies the monks’ “impurity”; the calf’s legs are “their impudent Doctors” and pillars; the calf assumes the attitude of a preacher, which means that their preaching is despicable; it is also blind because they are blind; it has ears, and these signify the abuse of the confessional; with the horns with which it is provided it shall break down their power; the tightening of the cowl around its neck signifies their obstinacy, etc. A woodcut of the calf helped the reader to understand the mysteries better. To show that he meant it all in deadly earnest, he adduced texts from Scripture which might prove how “well-grounded” was his interpretation. He declares, that he only speaks of what he is quite sure, and that he refrains from a further, i.e. a prophetic, interpretation of the “Monk-Calf” because it was not sufficiently certain, although “God gives us to understand by these portents that some great misfortune and change is imminent.” His hope is that this change might be the coming of the Last Day, “since many signs have so far coincided.” Hence his strange delusion concerning the calf goes hand in hand with his habitual one concerning the approaching end of the world.

It would be to misapprehend the whole character of the writing to assert, as has recently been done by an historian of Luther, that the author was merely joking, and that what he says of the Monk-Calf was simply a jest at the expense of the Pope and the monks. As a matter of fact, every line of the work protests against such a misrepresentation of the author and his prophetic mysticism, and no one can read the pamphlet without being struck by the entire seriousness which it breathes.

The tragic earnestness of the whole is evident in the very first pages, where Luther allows a friend to give his own interpretation of a similar abortion (the Pope-Ass) born in Italy. Here the writer is no other than the learned Humanist Melanchthon, who, like Luther, with the help of a woodcut, describes and explains the portent. Pope-Ass and Monk-Calf made the round of Germany together, in successive editions. Melanchthon, scholar though he was, is not one whit less earnest in the significance he attaches to the “Pope-Ass found dead in 1496 in the Tiber at Rome.”

After this double work, so little to the credit of German literature, had frequently been reprinted, Luther, in 1535, added two additional pages to Melanchthon’s text with a corroboration entitled: “Dr. Martin Luther’s Amen to the interpretation of the Pope-Ass.” He here accepts entirely Melanchthon’s exposition, which was more than the latter was willing to do for Luther’s interpretation of the Monk-Calf. Melanchthon’s opinion, for which perhaps more might be said, was that the misshapen calf stood for the corruption of the Lutheran teaching by sensuality and perverse doctrine, iconoclast violence and revolutionary peasant movements.[421]

In his “Amen” to Melanchthon’s Pope-Ass, Luther writes: “The Sublime, Divine Wisdom Itself” “created this hideous, shocking and horrible image.” “Well may the whole world be affrighted and tremble.” “People are terrified if a spirit or devil appears, or makes a clatter in a corner, though this is but mere child’s play compared with such an abomination, wherein God manifests Himself openly and shows Himself so cruel. Great indeed is the wrath which must be impending over the Papacy.”[422]

In his Church-postils Luther spoke of the “Pope-Ass” with an earnestness calculated to make a profound impression upon the susceptible. He referred to the “dreadful beast which the Tiber had cast up at Rome some years before, with an ass’s head, a body like a woman’s, an elephant’s foot for a right hand, with fish scales on its legs, and a dragon’s head at its rear, etc. All this signified the Papacy and the great wrath and chastisement of God. Signs in such number portend something greater than our reason can conceive.”[423]

As Luther makes such frequent use of the Pope-Ass, which he was instrumental in immortalising, for instance, in the frightful abuse of the Pope contained in “Das Bapstum zu Rom vom Teuffel gestifft,”[424] and also circulated a woodcut of it in his book of caricatures of the Papacy, adding some derisive verses,[425] which woodcut was afterwards reproduced from this or the earlier publication by other opponents of the Papacy, both in Germany and abroad,[426] some particulars concerning the previous history of the Pope-Ass may here not be out of place.

The dead beast was said to have been left stranded on the banks of the Tiber in January, 1496, under the pontificate of Pope Alexander VI., when Italy was in a state of great distress. The find made a profound impression, as was only to be expected in those days of excitement and superstition; it was greatly exaggerated, and, at an early date, interpreted in various ways. The oldest description is to be met with in the Venetian Annals of Malipiero, where the account is that given by the ambassador of the Republic at Rome.[427] The monster was also portrayed in stone in the Cathedral of Como, as an omen, so it would seem, of the misfortunes of the day, and of those yet to be expected.[428] At Rome itself political opponents of Alexander VI. made use of it in their campaign against a Pope they hated, by circulating a lampoon—the oldest extant—containing a caricature of the event. A facsimile of this cut has come down to us in the shape of a copper plate made in 1498 by Wenzel of Olmütz.[429] In all likelihood a copy of this very plate was sent to Luther at the beginning of 1523 by the Bohemian Brethren.

Melanchthon and Luther diverged in their use of this picture from the older and more harmless interpretation, i.e. that which saw in it a reference to earthly trials, or a judgment on the politics of the Pope. They, on the contrary, regarded it as a denunciation by heaven of the Papacy itself and of the Roman Church with all its “abominations.” Quite possibly the transition had been quietly effected by the Bohemian Brethren. Luther, however, says Lange, “was the first to make it public property.” “The Pope-Ass is for this reason the most interesting example of the whole teratological literature, because in it we can see the transition visibly effected.” The same author detects in the joint work of the two Wittenbergers “a polemical tone hitherto unheard of”; of Melanchthon’s Pope-Ass, he says: “It is probably the most unworthy work we have of Melanchthon’s. He himself naturally believed implicitly in what he wrote.... That Melanchthon acquitted himself of his task with particular skill cannot be affirmed.”[430]

Just as the Monk-Calf had been applied to Luther himself previous to his own polemical interpretation of it, so, after the appearance of his and Melanchthon’s joint publication, both the Calf and the Ass were repeatedly taken by the Catholic controversialists to represent Luther and his innovations. The sixteenth century, as already hinted, loved to dwell upon and expound such freaks of nature. Authors of repute had done so before Luther, at least to the extent of making such the subject of indifferent compositions, as the poet J. Franciscus Vitalis of Palermo had done (“De monstro nato”) in the case of a monstrosity said to have been born at Ravenna in 1511 or 1512; the Humanist Jacob Locher, at the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, dealt with a similar case in his “Carmen heroicum.” Conrad Lycosthenes published at Basle, in 1557, a compendium of the prodigies of nature (“Prodigiorum ac ostentorum chronicon”), in which he instances a large number of such freaks famous even before Luther’s day. Of the earlier Humanists Sebastian Brant composed some Elegies on the Marvels of Nature. The Wittenberg work on the Calf and Ass must be put in its proper setting, and judged according to the standard of its age; although, owing to its religious bias, it far exceeds in extravagance anything that had appeared so far, it nevertheless was an outgrowth of its time.

3. Proofs of the Divine Mission. Miracles and Prophecies

How was Luther to give actual proof of the reality of his call and of his mission to introduce such far-reaching ecclesiastical innovations?

Luther himself, indirectly, invited his hearers to ask this question concerning his calling. “Whoever teaches anything new or strange” must be “called to the office of preacher” he frequently declares of those new doctrines which differed from his own; no one who has not a legitimate mission will be able to withstand the devil, but on the contrary will be cast down to hell.[431] Even in the case of the ordinary and regular office, Luther demands a legitimate mission; for the office of extraordinary messenger of God, he is still more severe. For here it is a question of the extraordinary preaching of truths previously unknown or universally forgotten or questioned, and of the reintroduction of doctrine. Here he rightly requires that whoever wishes to introduce anything new or to teach something different from the common, must be able to appeal to miracles in support of his vocation. If he is unable to do this, let him pack up and depart.[432] Elsewhere, as he correctly puts it: “Where God wills to alter the ordinary ways, He ever performs miracles.”[433] (Cp. vol. i., p. 225 f.)

His teaching is, “There are two sorts of vocations to the office of preacher”; one takes place without any human means by God alone [the extraordinary call], the other [the ordinary] is effected by man as well as by God. The first is not to be credited unless attested by miracles such as were performed by Christ and His Apostles. Hence, if they come and say God has called them, that the Holy Ghost urges them, and they are forced to preach, let us ask them boldly: “What signs do you perform that we may believe you?”[434] (Mark xvi. 20). Logically enough Luther also demanded miracles of Carlstadt, Münzer and the Anabaptists.

Which of the two kinds of vocation must we see in Luther’s case? Was his the ordinary one, which keeps to the well-trodden path, or the extraordinary one, which “strikes out a new way”? Simple as the question appears, it is nevertheless difficult to give a straight answer in Luther’s own words.

As has been proved by Döllinger in his work on the Reformation, and as was well seen even by earlier polemical writers, Luther’s statements concerning his own mission were not remarkable for consistency. No less than fourteen variations have been counted, though, naturally, they do not involve as many changes of opinion.[435] We shall be nearest to the truth if we assume his mission to have been an extraordinary and unusual one. As an ordinary one it certainly could not be regarded, seeing the novelty of his teaching, and that he himself, as “Evangelist by God’s Grace” (see vol. iv., xxvi., 4), professed to be introducing a doctrine long misunderstood and forgotten. Besides, an ordinary call could only have emanated from the actually existing ecclesiastical authorities, with whom Luther had altogether broken. In this connection Luther himself, on one occasion, comes surprisingly near the Catholic view concerning the right of call invested in the bishops as the successors of the Apostles, and declares that “not for a hundred thousand worlds would he interfere with the office of a bishop without a special command.”[436]

The assumption of an extraordinary call offers, however, an insuperable difficulty which cannot fail to present itself after what has been said. No extraordinary attestation on the part of heaven is forthcoming, nor any miracle which might have confirmed Luther’s doctrine; God’s witness on behalf of His messenger by signs or prophecies, such as those of Christ, of the Apostles and of many of the Saints, was lacking in Luther’s case, and so was that sanctity of life to be expected of a divinely commissioned teacher whose mission it is to bring men to the truth.

No one now believes in the existence of any actual and authentic miracle performed by Luther, or in any real prophecy, whether about or by him. With the tales of miracles which once found favour among credulous Pietists, history has no concern. Though here and there some credence still attaches to the alleged prediction of Hus, which Luther himself appealed to,[437] viz. that after the goose (Hus=goose) would come a swan, yet historical criticism has already dealt quite sufficiently with it. We should run the risk of exposing Luther to ridicule were we to enumerate and reduce to their real value the alleged miracles by which, for instance, he was convinced his life was preserved in the poisoned pulpits of the Papists, or the various “monstra” and “portenta” which accompanied his preaching. Of such prodigies the Pope-Ass and the Monk-Calf are fair samples (above, p. 148 ff.).[438]

In reply to the attempts made, more particularly in the days of Protestant orthodoxy in the sixteenth century, to compare the rapid spread of Protestantism with the miracle of the rapid propagation of Christianity in early days, it has rightly been pointed out, that the comparison is a lame one; the Church of Christ spread because her moral power enabled her to impose on a proud world mysteries which transcend all human reason; on a world sunk in every lust and vice a moral law demanding a continual struggle against all the passions and desires of the heart; her conquest of the world was achieved without secular aid or support, in fact, in the very teeth of the great ones of the earth who for ages persecuted her; yet during this struggle she laid her foundations in the unity of the one faith and one hierarchy; her spread, then, was truly miraculous.

Luther, on the other hand, so his opponents urged, by his opposition to ecclesiastical authority and his principle of the free interpretation of Scripture, was casting humility to the winds and setting up the individual as the highest authority in matters of religion; thanks to his “evangelical freedom” he felt justified in deriding as holiness-by-works much that in Christianity was a burden or troublesome; on the other hand, by his doctrine of imputation, he cast the mantle of Christ’s righteousness over all the doings and omissions of believers; from the very birth of his movement he had sought his principal support in the favour of the Princes, whom, in due course, he invested with supreme authority in the Church; the spread of Lutheranism was not the spread of a united Church, but, on the contrary, such was the diversity of opinions that Jacob Andreæ, a Protestant preacher, could say, in 1576, in a public address, that it would be difficult to find a pastor who held the same faith as his sexton.[439] From all this the Church’s sixteenth-century apologists concluded that the spread of Luther’s teaching was not at all miraculous.

Concerning the miracle spoken of above, and miracles in general as proofs of the truth, Luther expresses himself in the third sermon on the Ascension, embodied in his Church-postils. The occasion was furnished by the words of Our Lord: “These signs shall follow those who believe” (Mark xvi. 17), and by the pertinent question addressed to him by the fanatics and other opponents: Where are your miracles?

With remarkable assurance he will have it, that to put such a question to him was quite “idle”; miracles enough had taken place when Christianity was first preached to make good the words spoken by Our Lord; at the present day the Gospel had no further need of them; such outward signs had been suitable “for the heathen,” whereas, now, the Gospel had been “proclaimed everywhere.”—He does not see that though the Gospel had certainly been proclaimed everywhere this was was not his own particular Gospel or Evangel, and that he is therefore begging the question. He continues quite undismayed: Miracles may nevertheless take place, and do, as a matter of fact, occur under the Evangel, for instance, the driving out of devils and the healing of sicknesses. “The best and greatest miracle” is, however, the spread and preservation of my doctrine in spite of the assaults of devils, tyrants and fanatics, in spite of flesh and blood, of the “Pope, the Turk and his myrmidons.” Is it no miracle, that “so many die cheerfully in Christ” in this faith? Compared with this miracle, declares the orator, those miracles which appeal to the senses are mere child’s play; this is a “miracle beyond all miracles”; well might people be astonished at the survival of his doctrine “when a hundred thousand devils were striving against it.” It was only to be expected that this miracle should be blasphemed by an unbelieving world, but “were we to perform the most palpable miracles, they would still despise them.” This is why God does not work them through us, just as Christ Himself, although able to perform miracles with the greatest ease, once refused to give the Jews “any other sign than that of the Prophet Jonas,” i.e. the resurrection. Luther concludes with an explanation of Christ’s refusal and of the miracle of Jonas.[440]

Hence he is willing to allow the absence of “palpable miracles” in support of his Evangel, in default of which, however, he instances the miracle of his great success. And yet, according to his own showing, such an attestation by palpable miracles would have been eminently desirable. Germany, he says, from the early days of her conversion down to his own time, had never been in possession of Christianity, because the real Gospel, i.e. the doctrine of Justification, had remained unknown. Only now for the first time had the Gospel been revealed in all its purity, thanks to his study of Scripture.[441] At the Council of Nicæa he declares, “there was not one who had even tasted of the Divine Spirit”; even the Council of the Apostles at Jerusalem was not above suspicion, seeing that it had seen fit to discuss works and traditions rather than faith.[442]

Thus he requires that his unheard-of claims, albeit not attested by any display of miracles, should be accepted simply on his own assurance that his teaching was based on Holy Scripture. “There is no need for us to work wonders, for our teaching is already confirmed [by Holy Scripture] and is no new thing.”[443]

Owing to the lack of any Divine attestation, Luther often preferred to describe his mission as an ordinary one. In this case he derives his vocation to teach from his degree of Doctor of Theology and from the authority given him by the authorities to preach. “I, Dr. Martin,” he says, for instance, speaking of his doctorate, “was called and compelled thereto; for I was forced to become a Doctor [of Holy Scripture] against my will and simply out of obedience.”[444] Elsewhere, however, he declares that the doctorate was by no means sufficient to enable one to bid defiance to the devil, or to equip a man in conscience for the task of preaching.[445] He was still further confirmed in this belief when he realised that he owed his doctorate to that very Church which he represented as the Kingdom of Antichrist and a mere Babylon. He himself stigmatised his degree as the “mark of the Beast,” and rejoiced that the excommunication had cancelled this papistical title.

Neither could the want of a call be supplied by the authorisation of the Wittenberg Council, upon which at times Luther was wont to lay stress. He himself hesitated to allow that magistrates or Princes could give a call, particularly where the teaching of any of those thus appointed by the magistrates ran counter to his own. Even though their teaching agreed entirely with the views of the secular authorities, their mission was in his eyes quite invalid. He even had frequent cause to complain, that the Evangel was greatly hampered by the interference of the secular authorities and by their sending out as preachers those who had no real call, and were utterly unfitted for the office.

After what has gone before, we can readily understand how Luther came to pass over in silence the question of his mission and to appeal directly to his preaching of the truth as the sign of his vocation; he does not seem to have perceived that the main point was to establish a criterion for the recognition of the truth, short of which anyone would be at liberty to set up his pet error as the “truth.” “The first,” though not the only condition, was, he declared, “that the preacher should have an office, be convinced that he was called and sent, and that what he did was done for the sake of his office”; seeing, however, that even the Papists fulfilled these conditions, Luther usually required in addition that the preachers “be certain they have God’s Word on their side.”[446]

In 1522 he declared any questioning of his vocation to be mere perversity, for, of his call, no creature had a right to judge. We cannot but quote again this assurance, “My doctrine is not to be judged by any man, nor even by the angels; because I am certain of it, I will judge you and the angels likewise, as St. Paul says (Gal. i. 8), and whosoever does not accept my teaching will not arrive at blessedness. For it is God’s and not mine, therefore my judgment is God’s and not mine.”[447]

Such statements are aids to the understanding of his mode of thought, but there are other traits in his mental history relating to the confirmation of his Divine calling.

Such, for instance, is his account of the miracles by which the flight of certain nuns from their convents was happily accomplished.

The miracle which was wrought on behalf of the nun Florentina, and in confirmation of the new Evangel, is famous. Luther himself, in March, 1524, published the story according to the account given by the nun herself, and dedicated it to Count Mansfeld.[448] As this circumstance, and also the Preface, shows, he took the matter very seriously, and was entirely persuaded that it was a visible “sign from heaven.” Yet it is perfectly plain, even from his own pamphlet, that the occurrence was quite simple and natural.

Florentina of Upper-Weimar had been confided in early childhood to the convent of Neu-Helfta, at Eisleben, to be educated; later, after the regulation “year of probation,” she took the vows, probably without any real vocation. Having become acquainted with some of the writings of the Reformers, she entered into correspondence with Luther, and, one happy day in February, 1524, thanks to “visible, Divine assistance,” escaped from her fellow-nuns—who, so she alleged, had treated her cruelly—because, as she very naively remarks,[449] “the person who should have locked me in left the cells open.” She betook herself to Luther at Wittenberg. Luther adds nothing to the bare facts; he has no wish to deceive the reader by false statements. Yet, speaking of the incident, he says in the Introduction: “God’s Word and Work must be acknowledged with fear, nor ... may His signs and wonders be cast to the winds.” Godless people despised God’s works and said: This the devil must have done. They did not “perceive God’s action, or recognise the work of His Hands. So is it ever with God’s miracles.” Just as the Pharisees disregarded Christ’s driving out of devils and raising of the dead, and only admitted those things to be miracles which they chose to regard as such, so it is still to-day. Hence no heed would be paid to this work of God by which Florentina “had been so miraculously rescued from the jaws of the devil.” If noisy spirits, or Papists with their holy water, performed something extraordinary, then, of course, that was a real miracle. He proceeds: “But we who, by God’s Grace, have come to the knowledge of the Evangel and the truth, are not at liberty to allow such signs, which take place for the corroboration of the Evangel, to pass unnoticed. What matters it that those who neither know, nor desire to know, the Evangel do not recognise it as a sign, or even take it for the devil’s work?”[450]

The use of an argument so puerile, and Luther’s confident assumption of an extraordinary interference of Divine Omnipotence suspending the laws of nature (which is what a miracle amounts to), all this could only arouse painful surprise in the minds of those of his readers who were faithful to the Church. Luther was here the victim of a mystical delusion only to be accounted for by his dominant idea of his relation to God and the Church.

When, in the same work, he goes on to tell his readers that: “God has certainly wrought many similar signs during the last three years, which shall be described in due season”; or that he merely recounted Florentina’s escape to Count Mansfeld as “a special warning from God” against the nunneries, which “God had made manifest in their own country,” we see still more plainly the extent and depth of his pseudo-mystical views concerning the miracles wrought on behalf of his Evangel.

Concerning his own ability to work miracles, he is reticent and cautious. It is true that, to those who are ready to believe in him, he confidently promises God’s wonderful intervention should the need arise; the miraculous power, so far as it concerns himself, he represents, however, as bound by a wise economy, and, also, by his own desire of working merely through the Word.

It should be noted of the statements to be quoted that they betray no trace of having been made in a jesting or rhetorical mood, but are, on the contrary, in the nature of theological arguments.

In 1537, he declared: “I have frequently said that I never desired God to grant me the grace of working miracles, but rejoice that it is given to me to hold fast to the Word of God and to work with it; otherwise they would soon be saying: ‘The devil works through him.’” For, as the Jews behaved towards Christ, “so also do our adversaries, the Papists, behave towards us. Whatever we do is wrong in their eyes; they are annoyed at us and scandalised and say: The devil made this people. But they shall have no sign from us.” All that Christ said to the Jews was: “Destroy this temple,” that is, Me and My teaching; I shall nevertheless rise again. “What else can we reply to our foes, the Papists?... Destroy the temple if you will, it shall nevertheless be raised up again in order that the Gospel may remain in the Christian Church.”[451]—The great miracle required of Christ was merely deferred, He performed it by His actual resurrection from the dead. What sign such as this was it in Luther’s power to promise?

Luther is even anxious not to have any signs. “I have besought the contrary of God,” i.e. that there should be no revelations or signs, so he writes in 1534, in the enlarged Commentary on Isaias, “in order that I may not be lifted up, or drawn away from the spoken Word, by the deceit of Satan.”[452]—“Now that the Gospel has been spread abroad and proclaimed to the whole world it is not necessary to work wonders as in the time of the Apostles. But should necessity arise and the Gospel be threatened and suffer violence, we should then have to set about it and work signs rather than leave the Gospel to be abused and oppressed. But I hope it will not be necessary, and that things will not come to such a pass as to compel me to speak with new tongues, for this is not really necessary.” Here he is thinking of believers generally, though at the close he refers more particularly to himself. Speaking of all, he continues prudently: “Let no one take it upon himself to work wonders without urgent necessity.” “For the disciples did not perform them on every occasion, but only in order to bear witness to the Word and to confirm it by miraculous signs.”[453]

That he believed the power to work miracles might be obtained of God may be inferred from many of his declarations against the fanatics, where he challenges them to prove themselves the messengers of God by signs and wonders; for whosoever is desirous of teaching something new or uncommon, he had said, must be “called by God and able to confirm his calling by real miracles,” otherwise let him pack up and go his way.[454] But his own doctrines were an entirely new thing in the Church, and, in spite of every subterfuge, when thus inviting others to perform miracles, he cannot always have been unmindful of the fact. Hence it has been said that he claimed a certain latent ability to work miracles. It should, however, be noted that he always insists here that his teaching, unlike that of the fanatics and other sects, Catholics included, was not new, but was the original teaching of Christ, and that therefore it stood in no need of miracles.

Still, his confident tone brings him within measurable distance of volunteering to work miracles in support of his cause. “Although I have wrought no such sign such as perhaps we might work, should necessity arise,” etc.[455] These words are quite in keeping with the above: “We should have to set about it,” etc.

It is strange how Luther repeatedly falls back on Melanchthon’s recovery at Weimar in 1540. This eventually followed a visit of Luther to his friend, to encourage and pray for the sick man, whose health had completely broken down under the influence of melancholy.[456] It is possible Luther saw in this a miraculous answer to his prayer; owing to the manner in which he recounted the incident it became a tradition, that the power of his prayer was stronger than the toils of death. Walch, in his Life of Luther, wrote, that people had then seen “how much Luther’s prayer was capable of.”[457]

The same scholar adds, as another “remarkable example,” that that godly and upright man, Frederick Myconius, the first evangelical Superintendent at Gotha, had assured him before his death, that only thanks to Luther’s prayers had he been able to drag on his existence, notwithstanding his consumption, for six years, though in a state of “great weakness.”[458] In cheering up Myconius, and promising him his prayers, Luther had said: As to your recovery, “I demand it, I will it, and my will be done. Amen.”[459] “In the same way,” Walch tells us, “he also prayed for his wife Catharine when she was very ill; he was likewise reported to have said on one occasion: ‘I rescued our Philip, my Katey and Mr. Myconius from death by my prayers.’”[460]

How does the case stand as regards the gift of prophecy, seeing that Luther apparently claims to have repeatedly made use of higher prophetic powers?

On more than one occasion Luther declares that what he predicted usually came to pass, even adding, “This is no joke.” In the same way he often says quite seriously, that he would refrain from predicting this or that misfortune lest his words should be fulfilled. We see an instance of this sort in his circular-letter addressed, in February, 1539, to the preachers on the anticipated religious war.[461]

“I am a prophet of evil and do not willingly prophesy anything, for it generally comes to pass.” This he says in conversation when speaking of the wickedness of Duke George of Saxony.[462] In the Preface to John Sutel’s work on “The Gospel of the Destruction of Jerusalem,” Luther says, in 1539, speaking of the disasters which were about to befall Germany: “I do not like prophesying and have no intention of doing so, for what I prophesy, more particularly the evil, is as a rule fulfilled, even beyond my expectations, so that, like St. Micheas, I often wish I were a liar and false prophet; for since it is the Word of God that I speak it must needs come to pass.”[463] In his Church-postils he commences a gloomy prophecy on the impending fate of Germany with the words: “From the bottom of my heart I am loath to prophesy, for I have frequently experienced that what I predict comes only too true,” the circumstances, however, compelled him, etc.[464]

No wonder then that his enthusiastic disciples had many instances to relate of his “prophecies.”

A casual reference of Luther’s to a seditious rising to be expected among the German nobility, is labelled in the MS. copy of Lauterbach’s “Tagebuch,” “Luther’s Prophecy concerning the rising of the German nobles.”[465] Bucer in his Eulogies on Luther in the old Strasburg Agenda, after mentioning his great gifts, says: “Add also the gift of prophecy, for everything happens just as he foretold it.” This we read in a Leipzig publication,[466] in which, as an echo of the Reformation Festivities of 1717, a Lutheran, referring to the General Superintendent of Altenburg, Eckhard, protests, “that Luther both claimed and really possessed the gift of prophecy.” Mathesius, in his 15th Sermon on Luther, speaks enthusiastically of the latter’s prophecy against those of the new faith who were sapping the foundations of the Wittenberg teaching: “In our own day Dr. Martin’s prayers and prophecies against the troublesome and unruly spirits have, alas, grown very powerful ... they were to perish miserably, a prophecy which I heard from his own lips: ‘Mathesius, you will see what wanton attacks will be made upon this Church and University of Wittenberg, and how the people will turn heretics and come to a frightful end.’”[467]

Even J. G. Walch,[468] in 1753, at least in the Contents and Indices to his edition of Luther’s Works, quotes as “Luther’s Prophecies on the destruction of Germany,” the passage from the German “Table-Talk”[469] which foretells God’s judgments on Germany where His Evangel was everywhere despised. Yet this “prophecy” is nothing more than a natural inference from the confusion which Luther saw was the result of his work. In the same Indices, under the name “Luther,”[470] we again find given as a “prophecy” this prediction concerning Germany, under the various forms in which Luther repeated it. Lastly, under the heading “Prophecy,” further reference is made to his predictions on the future lamentable fate of his own Evangel; on the distressing revival by his preachers of the doctrine of good works which he had overthrown; on the apostasy of the most eminent Doctors of the Church; on the abuse of his books by friends of the Evangel; on the Saxon nobles after the death of Frederick the Elector,[471] and, finally, on the fate of Wittenberg.[472]—In all this there is, however, nothing which might not have been confidently predicted from the existing state of affairs. Walch prefaces his summary with the words: “For Luther’s teaching is verily that faith and doctrine proclaimed by the prophets from the beginning of the world,” just as Luther himself had once said in a sermon, that his doctrine had “been proclaimed by the patriarchs and prophets five thousand years before,” but had been “cast aside.”[473]

We can understand his followers, in their enthusiasm, crediting him with a true gift of prophecy, but it is somewhat difficult to believe that he himself shared their conviction. Although the belief of his disciples can be traced as clearly to Luther’s own assurances, as to the fulfilment of what he predicted, yet it is uncertain whether at any time his self-confidence went to this length. Whoever is familiar with Luther’s mode of speech and his habit of talking half in earnest half in jest, will have some difficulty in persuading himself that the disciples always distinguished the shade of their master’s meaning. The disasters imminent in Germany, and the religious wars, might quite well have been foreseen by Luther from natural signs, and yet this is just the prophecy on which most stress is laid. Melanchthon, who was more sober in his judgments in this respect, speaks of Luther as a prophet merely in the general sense, as for instance when he says in his Postils: “Prophets under the New Law are those who restore again the ancient doctrine; such a one was Dr. Martin Luther.”[474]

“What Luther, the new Elias and Paul, has prophesied cannot but come true,” writes a preacher in 1562, “and those who would doubt this are unbelieving and godless, Papists, Epicureans, Sodomites or fanatics. Everything has become so frightful and bestial, what with blasphemy, swearing, cursing, unchastity and adultery, usury, oppression of the poor and every other vice, that one might fancy the last trump was sounding for the Judgment. What else do the countless, hitherto unheard-of signs, wonders and visions indicate, but that Christ is about to come to judge and punish?”[475]

Luther was most diligent in collecting and making use of any prophetical utterances which might go to prove the exalted character of his mission.

The supposed prophecy of Hus, that from his ashes would arise a swan whose voice it would be impossible to stifle, he coolly applied to himself.[476] He was fond of referring to what a Franciscan visionary at Rome had said of the time of Leo X.: “A hermit shall arise and lay waste the Papacy.” Staupitz, he says, had heard this prophecy from the mouths of many at the time of his stay in Rome (1510). He himself had not heard it there, but later he, like Staupitz, had come to see that he “was the hermit meant, for Augustinian monks are commonly called hermits.”[477]

Luther had also learnt that a German Franciscan named Hilten, who died at Eisenach about the end of the fifteenth century, had predicted much concerning the destruction of monasticism, the shattering of Papal authority and the end of all things. So highly were Hilten’s alleged sayings esteemed in Luther’s immediate circle that Melanchthon placed one of them at the head of the Article (27) “On monastic vows,” in his theological defence of the Confession of Augsburg; “In 1516 a monk shall come, who will exterminate you monks; ... him will you not be able to resist.”[478] Luther, before this, on October 17, 1529, by letter, had urged his friend Frederick Myconius of Gotha to let him know everything he could about Hilten, “fully, entirely and at length, without forgetting anything”; “you are aware how much depends upon this.... I am very anxious for the information, nay, consumed with longing for it.”[479] His friend’s report, however, did not bring him all he wanted.[480] The Franciscan had predicted the fall of Rome about 1514, i.e. too early, and the end of the world for 1651, i.e. too late. Hence we do not hear of Luther’s having brought forward the name of this prophet in support of his cause. Only on one occasion does he mention Hilten as amongst those, who “were to be consigned to the flames or otherwise condemned.” The fact is that this monk of Eisenach, once an esteemed preacher, was never “condemned” or even tried by the Church, although Luther in the above letter to Myconius says that he “died excommunicate.” Hilten died in his friary, fortified with the Sacraments, and at peace with the Church and his brother monks, after beseeching pardon for the scandal he had given them. The Franciscans had kept in custody the unfortunate man, who had gone off his head under the influence of astrology and apocalyptic dreams, in order that his prophecies might not do harm in the Church or the Order. He was not, however, imprisoned for life, still less was he immured, as some have said; he was simply kept under fatherly control (“paterne custoditum”), that those of his brethren who believed in him might not take any unfair advantage of the old man.[481]

In the widely read new edition of the book of Prophecies by Johann Lichtenberger, astrologer to the Emperor Frederick III. (1488), republished by Luther in 1527 with a new Preface, the latter’s ideas play a certain part. Luther did not regard these Prophecies as a “spiritual revelation”; they were merely astrological predictions, as he says in the Preface,[482] views which might often prove to be questionable and faulty; nevertheless, his “belief” is “that God does actually make use of heavenly signs, such as comets, eclipses of the sun and the moon, etc., to announce impending misfortune and to warn and affright the ungodly.”[483] “I myself do not scorn this Lichtenberger in everything he says, for he has come right in some things.”[484] Luther is principally concerned with the chastisements predicted by Lichtenberger, but not yet accomplished—as the “priestlings” rejoiced to think—but, still to overtake them owing to their hostility to the Lutheran teaching. “Because they refuse to amend their impious life and doctrine, but on the contrary persevere in it and grow worse, I also will prophesy that in a short time their joy shall be turned to shame, and will ask them kindly to remember me then.”[485] Later he speaks incidentally of Lichtenberger as a “fanatic, but still one who had foretold many things, for this the devil is well able to do.”[486]

During his stay at the Wartburg he had occasion to reflect on the ancient prophecy concerning an Emperor Frederick, who should redeem the Holy Sepulchre. He was inclined to see in this Frederick, his Elector, whose right hand he himself was. The difficulty that the Elector was not Emperor did not appear to him insuperable, since at Frankfurt the votes of the other electors had been given to Frederick, so that he might have been “a real emperor had he so desired.” Still, he was loath to insist upon such an artifice; this solution of the difficulty might, he says, be termed mere child’s play. What is much clearer to him is, that the Holy Sepulchre of the prophecy is “the Holy Scripture wherein the truth of Christ lies buried, after having been put to death by the Papists.... As for the actual tomb in which the Lord lay and which is now in the hands of the Saracens, God cares no more about it than about the Swiss cows. But no one can deny that amongst you, under Duke Frederick, Elector of Saxony, the living truth of the Gospel has shone forth.”[487]

CHAPTER XVII

GLIMPSES OF A REFORMER’S MORALS

1. Luther’s Vocation. His Standard of Life

Reading the lives of great men really sent by God who did great things for the salvation of souls by their revelations and their labours, whether narrated in the Bible or in the history of the Christian Church, we find that, without exception, their standards were high, that they sought to convert those with whom they came in contact primarily by their own virtuous example, that their aim was to promote the spread of their principles and doctrines by honest, truthful and upright means, and that their actions bore the stamp, not of violence, but of peaceableness and charity towards all brother Christians.

Luther’s friends have always protested against his being compared with the Saints. Be their reason what it may, when it is a question of the moral appreciation of the founder of a religious movement everyone should be ready to admit, that such a founder must not present too great a contrast with those great harbingers of the faith in olden days whom he himself claims as his ideal, and in whose footsteps he pretends to tread. Luther is anxious to see St. Paul once more restored to his pinnacle; his doctrine he would fain re-establish. This being so, we may surely draw his attention to the character of St. Paul as it appears to us in his Epistles and in the Acts of the Apostles. St. Paul brought into this dark world a new light, unknown heretofore, which had been revealed to him together with his Divine calling. His vocation he fostered by heroic virtues, and by a purity of life free from all sensuality or frivolity, preaching with all the attraction conferred by sincerity and honesty of purpose, in words and deeds full of fire, indeed, yet at the same time breathing the most patient and considerate charity.

Although we may not exact from Luther all the virtues of a St. Paul, yet he cannot complain if his private life and his practice and theory of morals be compared with the sublime mission to which he laid claim. It is true, that, when confronted with such a critical test, he was accustomed to meet it with the assertion that his Evangel was unassailable whatever his life might be. This, however, must not deter us from applying the test in question, calmly and cautiously, with every precaution against infringing the truth of history and the claims of a just and unbiassed judgment which are his right even at the hands of those whose views are not his.

The following is merely an appreciation of some of the sides of his character, not a general conspectus of his morals. Such a conspectus will only become possible at the conclusion of our work. This we mention because in what follows we shall be considering almost exclusively Luther’s less favourable traits and ethical principles. It is unavoidable that we should consider here in this connection his own testimonies, and those of other witnesses, which militate against his Divine mission. His better points, both as man and writer, will be impartially pointed out elsewhere.

Luther himself admitted that Christ’s words: “By their fruits ye shall know them,” established a real standard for the teachers of the Gospel. He was familiar with the words of St. Bonaventure: “The sign of a call to the office of preacher is the healing of the hearers from the maladies of sin.”[488] He knew that the preacher’s virtue must be imparted to others, and that the sublimity and purity of his doctrine must be reflected in the amelioration of his followers.

A mere glance at Wittenberg at the time of the religious subversion will suffice to show how little such conditions were realised. Valentine Ickelsamer was referring to well-known facts when he confronted Luther with the words of Christ quoted above. He added: “You boast of holding the true doctrine on faith and charity and you shriek that men merely condemn the imperfections of your life.” He is here referring to Luther’s evasion. The latter had complained that people under-valued him and were scandalised at his life and that of his friends. In 1538, for instance, he was obliged, with the help of Jonas, Cruciger and Melanchthon, to dissociate himself from a theologian, Master George Karg, who had been advocating at Wittenberg doctrines which differed from his own; of him he wrote: “He is an inexperienced young man and, possibly, was scandalised at us personally in the first instance, and then fell away in his doctrine; for all those who have caused dissensions among us have begun by despising us personally.”[489]

Amongst the Catholic writers who pointed out to the Wittenberg professor that his lack of a Divine call or higher mission was proved by the visible absence of any special virtue, and by his behaviour as a teacher, we may mention the Franciscan Johann Findling (Apobolymæus). In the beginning of 1521 the latter published an “admonition” addressed to Luther which relies chiefly on the reasons mentioned above.[490] In this anonymous writing the Franciscan deals so considerately with the monk, who was already then excommunicate, that recent Protestant writers have actually contrasted him with the “Popish zealots.”[491] Luther he terms his “beloved,” and is unwilling even to describe him as a “heretic,”[492] following in this the example of many other monks who showed the same scruple, probably on account of their own former vacillation. Excuses of various kinds are not wanting in Findling’s letter.

What is of interest in the present connection is the question the author sets before the originator of the schism in the following challenge: “If you are a prophet or seer sent by God to point out the truth to men, let us perceive this, that we may believe in you, approve your action and follow you. If what you preach and write is of Divine revelation, then we are ready to honour you as a messenger sent from heaven.... But it is written: ‘Believe not every spirit, but try the spirits if they be of God’ (1 John iv. 1).... We are unable to believe in you because so much strife, so many intrigues, insults, bitter reproaches, vituperation and abuse proceed from you.... Quarrels, blasphemies and enmities are, as St. Ambrose says, foreign to the ministers of God.”[493] Your acrimony, your vituperation, your calumny and abuse are such that one is forced to ask: “Where is your Christian spirit, or your Lutheran spirit, for, according to some, Lutheran means the same as Christian?” Has not Christ commanded: “Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you? Certainly if prayer consists in calumny, abuse, detraction, reviling and cursing, then you pray excellently and effectually enough. Not one of all those I have ever read curses and abuses others as you do.”[494]

The writer also points out how Luther’s followers imitate and even outdo him; they were likewise turning his head by their praises; they sang hymns in his honour, but hymns coming from such lips were a poor tribute. Nor was the applause of the masses beyond suspicion, for it merely showed that what he wrote was to the taste of the multitude; for instance, when he blamed the authorities and cited them before his tribunal. It was his rude handling of his ghostly superiors which had brought the nobility and the knights to his side. Had he overwhelmed them and the laity with such reproaches as he had heaped upon the spiritual authorities, then “I know not whether you would still be in the land of the living.”[495]

Apart from his want of charity and his censoriousness, other very un-apostolic qualities of Luther’s were his pride and arrogance, his utter disdain for obedience, his irascibility, his jealousy and his want of seriousness in treating of the most important questions that concerned humanity; the childish, nay, womanish, outbursts in which notoriously he was wont to indulge could only serve to humble him in his own eyes.

Luther must have felt keenly the Franciscan’s allusions to his untruthfulness and evasiveness, more particularly in his conduct towards the Pope, whereas Holy Scripture expressly declares that “God has no need of a lie” (Job xiii. 7).

He concludes by saying, that if Luther “is a good and gentle disciple of Christ,” then he will not disregard this exhortation to turn back and recant.

Thus the Franciscan. It is to be feared, however, that Luther never read the letter to its end. As he himself said, he had nothing but scorn for anything that Catholic censors might say to him. “Attacks from without only serve to render me proud and arrogant, and you may see from my books how I despise my gainsayers; I look upon them as simple fools.”[496] His state of mind even then was such as to make him incapable of calmly weighing such reproofs. In the following sentences the Franciscan above referred to has aptly described Luther’s behaviour: Whoever allows himself to be overtaken by hatred and carried away by fury, “blots out the light of reason within himself and darkens his comprehension, so that he is no longer able to understand or judge aright. He rushes blindly through the surrounding fog and darkness, and knows not whither his steps will carry him. Many people, dearest Martin, believe you to be in this state.”[497] “In this condition of mental confusion you cannot fail to go astray; you will credit yourself with what is far beyond you and quite outside your power.”[498] In such a man eloquence was like a sword in the hand of a madman, as was sufficiently apparent in the case of Luther’s followers who attempted to emulate his zeal with the pen.[499]

Erasmus was another moderate critic. In the matter of Luther’s life, as was to be expected from one who had once praised him in this particular, as a rule he is inclined to be cautious, however unable to refrain from severely censuring his unevangelical manner of proceeding. The absence of the requisite standard of life seemed to Erasmus sufficient to disprove Luther’s claim to the possession of the Spirit of God and a higher mission. “You descend to calumny, abuse and threats and yet you wish to be esteemed free from guile, pure, and led by the Spirit of God, not by human passion.”[500] “Can the Evangel then be preached in so unevangelical a manner?” “Have all the laws of propriety been abrogated by the new-born Evangel, so that each one is at liberty to make use of any method of attack either in word or writing? Is this the liberty which you restore to us?”[501] He points more particularly to Luther’s demagogism as alien to the Christian spirit: “Your object is to raise revolt, and you are perfectly aware that this has often been the result of your writings. Not thus did the Apostles act. You drag our controversial questions before the tribunal of the unlearned.”[502] “God Almighty! What a contrast to the spirit of the Gospel!” exclaims Erasmus, referring to some of Luther’s abuse. “A hundred books written against him would not have alienated me from him so much as these insults.”[503]

Amongst the admonitions addressed to Luther at an early date by men of weight, that of Zaccaria Ferreri, the Papal Legate in Poland, written in 1520 and published in 1894, is particularly noteworthy. From the self-love and arrogance which he found displayed in Luther’s character he proves to him that his could not be the work of God: “Do open your eyes and see into what an abyss of delusion you are falling. You seem to fancy that you alone are in the sunlight and that all the rest of the world is seated in the darkness of night.... You reproach Christianity with groping about in error for more than a thousand years; in your madness you wish to appear wiser and better than all other mortals put together, to all of whom you send forth your challenge. Rest assured your opponents are not so dull-witted as not to see through your artfulness and to perceive the inconsistency and frivolity of your doctrines.” Ferreri also addressed the following appeal to Luther: “If you are determined to cast yourself into the abyss of death, at least take pity on the unfortunate people whom you are daily infecting with your poison, whose souls you are destroying and dragging along with you to perdition. The Almighty will one day require of you their blood which you have drunk, and their happiness which you have destroyed.”[504]

Such voices from the past help to make us alive to the importance of the question which forms the subject of the present section. Luther’s own ethical practice when defending the divinity of his mission, more particularly his doctrine of the forgiveness of sins, against all doubts and “temptations” which occurred to him, affords us, however, the best and clearest insight into his moral standards. Here his moral attitude appears in a most singular light.

We may preface what follows with some words of the Protestant historian Gottlieb Jacob Planck (†1833): “When it is necessary to lay bare Luther’s failings, an historian should blush to fancy that any excuse is required for so doing.”[505]

“Temptations” to doubt were not uncommon in Luther’s case and in that of his friends. He accordingly instructs his disciples to combat them and to regain their lost equanimity by the same method which he himself was in the habit of employing. Foremost amongst these instructions is one addressed to his pupil Hieronymus Weller of Molsdorf, a native of Freiberg, who, whilst at Wittenberg, had, under Luther’s influence, relinquished the study of the law for that of theology. He was received into Luther’s household as a boarder in 1527, and in 1535, after having secured his Doctorate of Theology, he was still resident there. He was one of the table-companions who took notes of Luther’s “Table-Talk.” This young man was long and grievously tormented with anxiety of mind and was unable to quiet, by means of the new Evangel, the scruples of conscience which were driving him to despair.

In 1530, Luther, writing from the Castle of Coburg, gave him the following counsel; we must bear in mind that it comes from one who was himself then struggling with the most acute mental anxiety.[506] “Sometimes it is necessary to drink more freely, to play and to jest and even to commit some sin (‘peccatum aliquod faciendum’) out of hatred and contempt for the devil, so that he may get no chance of making a matter of conscience out of mere trifles; otherwise we shall be vanquished if we are too anxious about not committing sin.... Oh that I could paint sin in a fair light,[507] so as to mock at the devil and make him see that I acknowledge no sin and am not conscious of having committed any! I tell you, we must put all the Ten Commandments, with which the devil tempts and plagues us so greatly, out of sight and out of mind. If the devil upbraids us with our sins and declares us to be deserving of death and hell, then we must say: ‘I confess that I have merited death and hell,’ but what then? Are you for that reason to be damned eternally? By no means. ‘I know One Who suffered and made satisfaction for me, viz. Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Where He is, there I also shall be.’”

Fell counsels such as these, to despise sin and to meet the temptation by sinning, Luther had certainly not learnt from the spiritual writers of the past. Such writers, more particularly those whom he professed to have read at his monastery, viz. Bernard, Bonaventure and Gerson, teach that sin must first be resisted, after which we may then seek prayerfully for the cause of the trouble; for this is not always due to the temptations of the devil, as Luther unquestioningly assumed in his own case and, consequently, also in that of Weller. If conscience was oppressed by sin, then, according to these spiritual writers, a remedy different from that suited to doubts against the faith must be applied, namely, penance, to be followed by acts of hope. If the trouble in Weller’s case was one of doubts concerning faith, anyone but Luther would have been careful to ascertain first of all whether these doubts referred to the specifically Lutheran doctrine or to the other truths of the Christian revelation. Luther, however, at the commencement of the letter, simply declares: “You must rest assured that this temptation comes from the devil, and that you are thus tortured because you believe in Christ”—i.e. in the Lutheran doctrine and in the Christ preached by that sect, as is clear from the reference immediately following to the “foes of the Evangel,” who live in security and good cheer.

The whole letter, though addressed to one standing on the brink of despair, contains not a single word about prayer for God’s help, about humbling oneself or striving after a change of heart. Beyond the above-mentioned reference to Christ, Who covers over all our sins, and to the need of contemning sin, we find merely the following natural, indeed, of the earth earthly, remedies recommended, viz.: To seek company, to indulge in jest and play, for instance, with Luther’s wife, ever to keep a good temper and, finally, “to drink more deeply.” “If the devil says, ‘Don’t drink,’ answer him at once: ‘Just because you don’t wish it, I shall drink, and deeply too.’ We must always do the opposite of what the devil bids. Why, think you, do I drink so much, converse so freely and give myself up so frequently to the pleasures of the table, if it be not in order to mock at the devil, and to plague him when he tries to torment and mock at me?”

Finally he encourages the sorely tried man by telling him how Staupitz had foretold that the temptations which he, Luther, endured in the monastery would help to make a great man of him, and that he had now, as a matter of fact, become a “great doctor.” “You, too,” he continues, “will become a great man, and rest assured that such [prophetic] words, particularly those that fall from the lips of great and learned men, are not without their value as oracles and predictions.”

It is not surprising that such counsels and the consolation of possible future greatness did not improve the pitiable condition of the unfortunate man, but that he long continued to suffer.

Of a like nature is the advice which Luther in the following year gave another of his boarders and companions, Johann Schlaginhaufen, as a remedy for the same malady, which indeed seems to have been endemic in his immediate circle. The passages in question, from Schlaginhaufen’s own notes, may be useful in further elucidating Luther’s instructions to Weller.

According to what we are told Luther spoke as follows to Schlaginhaufen on December 14, 1531, at a time when the latter had been reduced to despair owing to his sins and to his lack of the fiducial faith required by the new Evangel. “It is false that God hates sinners; if the devil reminds us of the chastisement of Sodom and other instances of God’s wrath, then let us confront him with Christ, Who became man for us. Had God hated sinners He would not have sent His own Son for us [here again not the slightest allusion to any effort after an inward change of heart, but merely what follows]: Those only does God hate who will not be justified, i.e. those who will not be sinners (‘qui non volunt esse peccatores’).”[508]

In these admonitions to Schlaginhaufen the consolatory thought of the merits of Christ, which alone can save us, occurs more frequently, though in a very Lutheran guise: “Why torment yourself so much about sin? Even had you as many sins on your conscience as Zwingli, Carlstadt, Münzer and all the ungodly, faith in Christ would overcome them all. Alas, faith is all that lacks us!” If the devil could reproach you with unbelief and such-like faults, says Luther, then it would be a different matter; but he does not worry us about the great sins of the first table, but about other sins; “he annoys us with mere trifles; if we would consent to worship the Pope, then we should be his dear children.”[509] “We must cling to the Man Who is called Christ, He will soon put right whatever we may have done amiss.”[510]

“So that at last I said,” Schlaginhaufen continues, “Then, Doctor, it would be better that I should remain a rogue and a sinner. And the Doctor replied: That Thou, O Lord, mayst be justified in Thy words, and mayst overcome when Thou art judged” (Ps. 1. 6).[511]

With this pupil, as with Weller, Luther enters into an account of his own temptations and the means he employed for ridding himself of them.

He himself, he says, in December, 1531, had often been made a target for the shafts of Satan. “About ten years ago I first experienced this despair and these temptations concerning the wrath of God. Afterwards I had some peace so that I enjoyed good days and even took a wife, but then the temptations returned again.”[512]

“I never had any temptation greater or more burdensome than that which assailed me on account of my preaching, when I thought: It is you alone who are bringing all this business about; if it is wrong, then you alone are accountable for so many souls which go down to hell. During such temptations I often went right down to hell, only that God called me back and strengthened me, because it was His Word and true doctrine. But it costs much before one can arrive at such comfort.”[513]

Here also he speaks of his remedy of a free indulgence in food and drink: “Were I to give in to my want of appetite, then I should [in this frame of mind] for three days eat not a scrap; it is a double fast to me to eat and drink without the least inclination. When the world sees this it looks upon it as drunkenness, but God shall judge whether it is drunkenness or fasting ... therefore keep stomach and head alike filled.”[514]

According to another communication of Luther’s to this pupil, he was in the habit of repelling the devil, when he troubled him too much about his sins, by cynical speeches on the subject of the evacuations. After one such statement the parish priest of Wittenberg, the apostate Bugenhagen, interrupted him, and, in perfect agreement with Luther, said, “I too would say to the devil: ‘My good devil, I have committed a great sin, for Pope and bishop anointed my hands and I have defiled them; that is also a great sin.’”[515] From such coarse speeches Schlaginhaufen passes on to relate other things which the veracious historian is not at liberty to suppress. The anxious pupil who was seeking consolation continues: “The Doctor [Luther] said: ‘Nevertheless, the devil was unable to get over my arguments. Often have I called my wife, et cetera, in order to allay the temptation and to free myself from such idle thoughts.’”[516]

What Luther, or rather Schlaginhaufen, merely hints at, we find explained in greater detail in the diary of Luther’s pupil Conrad Cordatus: “Thoughts of terror and sadness have worried me more than enemies and labours. In my attempts to drive them away I met with little success. I also tried caressing my wife in order that this distraction might free me from the suggestions of Satan; but in temptations such as these we can find no comfort, so greatly is our nature depraved. It is necessary, however, to make every kind of effort to banish these thoughts by some stronger emotion.”[517] One of the chief Latin versions of Luther’s Colloquies gives this passage in his “Table-Talk” as follows: “How often have I taken with my wife those liberties which nature permits merely in order to get rid of Satan’s temptations. Yet all to no purpose, for he refused to depart; for Satan, as the author of death, has depraved our nature to such an extent that we will not admit any consolation. Hence I advise everyone who is able to drive away these Satanic thoughts by diverting his mind, to do so, for instance, by thinking of a pretty girl, of money-making, or of drink, or, in fine, by means of some other vivid emotion. The chief means, however, is to think of Jesus Christ, for He comes to console and to make alive.”[518] The latter passage is to be found, with unimportant alterations, in Rebenstock’s edition of the Colloquies, though, perhaps out of consideration for Luther, it there commences with the words: “For Satan”;[519] in the German “Table-Talk” it is not found at all.[520]

“Let us fix our mind on other thoughts,” Luther had also said to Schlaginhaufen, “on thoughts of dancing, or of a pretty girl, that also is good. Gerson too wrote of this.”[521] As a matter of fact, Gerson certainly wrote nothing about getting rid of temptations by means of sensual images. On the contrary, in the passages in question of his spiritual writings, he teaches something quite different and insists, first and foremost, on the avoidance of sin. He proposes our doing the exact opposite of the wicked or unworthy acts suggested by the evil spirit. He, like all Catholic masters of the spiritual life, indeed instructs those tempted to distract their minds, but by pious, or at least, indifferent and harmless means.[522]

2. Some of Luther’s Practical Principles of Life

We find in Luther no dearth of strong expressions which, like his advice to Weller and Schlaginhaufen, seem to discountenance fear of sin, penance and any striving after virtue. It remains to determine from their context the precise meaning which he attached to them.

Luther on Sin

As early as 1518 Luther, in a sermon at Erfurt, had given vent to the words already quoted: “What does it matter whether we commit a fresh sin so long as we do not despair but repeat: Thou, my God, still livest, Christ, my Lord, has destroyed sin; then at once the sin is gone.... The reason why the world is so out of joint and lies in such error is that there has been no real preacher for so long.”[523]

“Hence we say,” so later on we read in his exposition of John xvii., “that those who are true Saints of Christ must be great sinners and yet remain Saints.... Of themselves, and for all their works, they are nothing but sinners and under condemnation, but by the holiness of another, viz. of the Lord Christ, bestowed on them by faith, they are made holy.”[524]

And further: “The Christian faith differs greatly from the faith and religion of the Pope and the Turks, etc., for, by it, in spite of his consciousness of sin, a man, amidst afflictions and the fear of death, continues to hope that God for Christ’s sake will not impute to him his sin.... But so great is this grace that a man is startled at it and finds it hard to believe.”[525]—He himself and many others often found it difficult, indeed terribly difficult, to believe. They were obliged to “reassure themselves” by the Word of God. A few more quotations may here be added.

“To be clean of heart not only means not to harbour any impure thoughts, but that the conscience has been enlightened and assured by the Word of God that the law does not defile; hence the Christian must understand that it does not harm him whether he keeps it [the law] or not; nay, he may even do what is otherwise forbidden, or leave undone what is usually commanded; it is no sin in him, for he is incapable of sinning because his heart is clean. On the other hand, an impure heart defiles itself and sins in everything because it is choked with law.”[526]

“God says in the law: Do this, leave that undone, this do I require of thee. But the Evangel does not preach what we are to do or to leave undone, it requires nothing of us. On the contrary. It does not say: Do this or that, but only tells us to hold out our hands and take: Behold, O man, what God has done for thee; He has caused His own Son to take flesh for thee, has allowed Him to be done to death for thy sake, and to save thee from sin, death and the devil; believe this and accept it and thou shalt be saved.”[527]

Such statements, which must not be regarded as spoken merely on the spur of the moment, rest on the idea that sin only troubles the man who looks to the law; let us look rather to the Gospel, which is nothing but grace, and simply cover over our sin by a firm faith in Christ, then it will not harm us in any way. Yet it would be quite a mistake to infer from this that Luther always regarded sin with indifference, or that he even recommended it on principle; as a rule he did not go so far as we just saw him do (p. 175 ff.) in his exhortations to persons tempted; there, moreover, his invitation to commit sin, and his other misplaced instructions, may possibly be explained by the excitement of the hand-to-hand struggle with the devil, in which he fancied himself to be engaged whenever he had to do with doubts concerning his doctrines, or with souls showing signs of halting or of despair. On the contrary, he teaches, as a rule, that sin is reprehensible; he also instructs man to fight against concupiscence which leads up to it. (Vol. i., p. 114 f.) He is fond of exhorting to amendment of life and to avoid any scandal. Still, the barriers admitted by his doctrine of Justification against this indifference with regard to sin were not strong enough.[528]

As to Luther’s teaching on the manner in which sin was forgiven, we shall merely state his ideas on this subject, without attempting to bring them into harmony; the fact is that, in Luther’s case, we must resign ourselves to a certain want of sequence.

He teaches: “Real faith is incompatible with any sin whatsoever; whoever is a believer must resist sinful lusts by the power and the impulse of the faith and Spirit.”[529] “Whoever has faith in the forgiveness of sins does not obey sinful lusts, but fights against them until he is rid of them.”[530] Where mortal sin has been committed, there, according to him, real faith was manifestly lacking; it had already been denied and was no longer active, or even present. A revival of faith, together with the necessary qualities of confidence, covers over all such sins, including the sin of unbelief. On the other hand, sins committed where faith was present, though for the moment too weak to offer resistance, were sins of frailty; there faith at once regains the upper hand and thus forgiveness or non-imputation of the sin is secured. The denial of Peter was, according to Luther, a sin of frailty, because it was merely due to “chance weakness and foolishness.” Nevertheless he declares that, like the treason of Judas, it was deserving of death.[531]

Luther teaches further, affording us incidentally an insight into the inadequacy of his doctrine from another point of view, that, in the case of the heathen or of Christians who had no faith, not only was every sin a mortal sin, but also all works, even good works, were mortal sins; indeed, they would be so even in the faithful, were it not for Christ, the Redeemer, Whom we must cling to with confidence. Moreover, as we know, man’s evil inclinations, the motions of concupiscence, the bad tendencies of the pious, were all grievous sins in Luther’s eyes; original sin with its involuntary effects he considers an enduring offence; only faith, which merits forgiveness and overcomes the terrors of conscience by the saving knowledge of Christ, can ensure man against it, and the other sins.

“Thus our salvation or rejection depends entirely on whether we believe or do not believe in Christ.... Unbelief retains all sin, so that it cannot be forgiven, just as faith cancels all sin; hence outside of such faith everything is and remains sinful and worthy of damnation, even the best of lives, and the best of works.... In faith a Christian’s life and works are pleasing to God, outside of Christ everything is lost and doomed to perdition; in Christ all is good and blessed, so that even the sin which flesh and blood inherits from Adam is neither a cause of harm nor of condemnation.” “This, however, is not to be understood as a permit to sin and to commit evil; for since faith brings forgiveness of sin ... it is impossible that he who lives openly unrepentant and secure in his sins and lusts should be a Christian and a believer.”[532] In conclusion he explains to what category of hearers he is speaking: “To them [the faithful] this is said, in order that sin may not harm nor condemn them; to the others, who are without faith and reprobate, we do not preach.”[533] Amongst the numerous other questions which here force themselves upon us, one is, why Luther did not address his Evangel to those “without faith,” and to the “reprobate,” according to the example of Christ.[534]

The fanatics, particularly Carlstadt, were not slow in attacking Luther on account of his doctrine of faith alone. Carlstadt described this “faith” of Luther’s as a “paper faith” and a “heartless faith.” He perceived the “dangers to the interior life which might arise from the stress laid on faith alone, viz. the enfeebling of the moral powers and the growth of formalism.”[535] The modern Protestant biographer of Carlstadt, from whom these words are taken, points out that “moral laxity too often went hand-in-hand with Luther’s doctrine of the forgiveness of sins.”[536] “Owing to an assiduous depreciation of the moral code no criterion existed according to which the direction of the impulses of the will could be determined, according to Luther’s doctrine of Justification.”[537] The Lutheran teaching was “admirably adapted to suit the life of the individual,” but the moral laxity which followed in its train “could not be considered as merely an exceptional phenomenon.”[538] There is no doubt that “much dross came to the surface when ‘faith only’ was applied to the forgiveness of sins.”[539]

A Protestant theologian, A. Hegler, one of those who demur to Luther’s doctrines, mentioned above, owing to their moral consequences, remarks: “It remains that the idea of justification without works was, at the time of the Reformation, often found side by side with moral laxity, and that, sometimes, the latter was actually the effect of the former.” Seeking the reason why so talented a man as Sebastian Franck should have seceded, after having been a Lutheran preacher till 1528, he remarks: “There is much to lead us to suppose that the sight of the moral indifference and coarseness of the evangelicals was the determining factor.”[540]

After having considered Luther’s principles with regard to the theory of sin, we now proceed to give some of his utterances on penance.

Luther’s Views on Penance

Although he speaks of repentance as the first step towards salvation in the case of the sinner, yet the idea of repentance, remorse or contrition was ever rather foreign to him. He will not admit as valid any repentance aroused by the demands and menaces of the law;[541] in the case of man, devoid of free will, it must be a result of Divine charity and grace; repentance without a love of justice is, he says, at secret enmity with God and only makes the sin greater.[542] Yet he also declares, not indeed as advocating penance as such, that it merely acts through faith “previous to and independently of all works,” of which, as we know, he was always suspicious; all that was needed was to believe “in God’s Mercy,” and repentance was already there.[543]

He is nevertheless in favour of the preachers exhorting Christians to repentance by diligent reference to the commandments, and to the chastisements threatened by God, so as to instil into them a salutary fear. The law, he goes on to say, in contradiction to the above, must do its work, and by means of its terrors drive men to repentance even though love should have no part in it. Here he is perfectly conscious of the objection which might be raised, viz. that he had made “repentance to proceed from, and to be the result of, justifying faith.” To this he replies, that repentance itself forms part of the “common faith,” because it is first necessary to believe that there is a God Who commands and makes afraid; this circumstance justifies the retention of penance, “for the sake of the common, unlearned folk.”[544]

The Catholic Church, on the other hand, formulates her doctrine of penance and regeneration, for the most cultured as well as for the “common and unlearned,” in terms simple and comprehensible, and in perfect accord with both Scripture and theology: Adults “are prepared for justification, when, moved and assisted by Divine grace ... they, of their free will, turn to God, believing that those things are true which have been Divinely revealed and promised; above all, that the ungodly is justified by God’s grace and by the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; recognising with a wholesome fear of the Divine Justice their sinfulness, they turn to God’s mercy, and, being thus established in hope, gain the confidence that God, for Christ’s sake, will be gracious to them. Thus they begin to love God as the source of all justice and to conceive a certain hatred (‘odium aliquod’) and detestation for sin, i.e. to perform that penance which must take place previous to baptism. Finally, they must have the intention of receiving baptism, of commencing a new life and of observing the commandments of God.”[545] “Those who, after having received the grace of justification, fall into sin [’without loss of faith’],[546] with God’s help may again be justified, regaining through the Sacrament of Penance and Christ’s merits the grace they had lost.... Christ Jesus instituted the Sacrament of Penance when He said: ‘Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose sins ye shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins ye shall retain, they are retained.’ Hence we must teach that the repentance of a sinner after falling into sin is very different from that which accompanies baptism, and involves not merely a turning away from, and a detestation for, sin, or a contrite and humble heart, but also a Sacramental confession of the sin, or at least a purpose of making such a confession in due season, and receiving the priestly absolution; finally, it involves satisfaction by fasting, almsdeeds, prayer and other pious exercises.”[547]

Such, according to the Catholic doctrine, is the process approved of by Holy Scripture, the various phases of which rest alike on religion and psychology, on the positive ordinances of God and on human nature. Luther, however, thrust all this aside; his quest was for a simpler and easier method, through faith alone, by which sin may be vanquished or covered over.

His moral character, so far as it reveals itself in his teaching, is here displayed in an unfavourable light, for he is never weary of emphasising the ease with which sin can be covered over—and that in language which must necessarily have had a bad effect on discipline—when we might have expected to hear some earnest words on penance. A few of his sayings will help to make yet clearer his earlier statements.

“You see how rich the Christian is,” he says, “since, even should he desire it, he is unable to forfeit his salvation, no matter how many sins he may commit, unless indeed he refuses to believe (‘nisi nolit credere’). No sin but unbelief can bring him to damnation; everything else is at once swept away by this faith, so soon as he returns to it, or recollects the Divine promise made to the baptised.”[548]

“Christ’s Evangel is indeed a mighty thing.... God’s Word brings everything to pass speedily, bestows forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life; and the cost of this is merely that you should hear the Word, and after hearing it believe. If you believe, then you possess it without any trouble, expense, delay or difficulty.”[549]

“No other sin exists in the world save unbelief. All others are mere trifles, as when my little Hans or Lena misbehave themselves in the corner, for we all take that as a big joke. In the same way faith covers the stench of our filth before God.... All sins shall be forgiven us if only we believe in the Son.”[550]

“As I have often said, the Kingdom of Christ is nothing else but forgiveness and perpetual blotting out of sin, which is extinguished, covered over, swept away and made clean while we are living here.” “Christ makes things so easy for us who stand before God in fear and trembling.”[551]

“Summa summarum: Our life is one long ‘remissio peccatorum,’ and forgiveness of sin, otherwise it could not endure.”[552]

Here, indeed, we have one of the main props of Luther’s practical theology. To this the originator of the doctrine sought to remain faithful to the very end of his life, whereas certain other points of his teaching he was not unwilling to revise. His ideas on sin and repentance had sprung originally from his desire to relieve his own conscience,[553] and, of this, they ever retained the mark. The words and doctrine of a teacher are the best witnesses we have to his moral character, and here the doctrine is one which affords but little stimulus to virtue and Christian perfection, but rather the reverse.

In what follows we shall consider more closely the relation between this doctrine and the effort after virtue, while at the same time taking into account that passivity, nay, entire unfreedom of the will for doing what is good, proclaimed by Luther.

Luther on Efforts after Higher Virtue.

The effort to attain perfection and to become like to Christ, which is the highest aim of the Christian, is scarcely promoted by making the whole Gospel to consist merely in the happy enjoyment of forgiveness. The hard work required for the building up of a truly virtuous life on the rude soil of the world, necessarily involving sacrifice, self-denial, humiliation and cheerful endurance of suffering, was more likely to be looked at askance and carefully avoided by those who clung to such a view.

On the pretext of opposing the “false humility of the holy-by-works,” Luther attacks many practices which have always been dear to pious souls striving after God. At the same time he unjustly implies that the Catholics made holiness to consist merely in extraordinary works, performed, moreover, by human strength alone, without the assistance of grace. “This all comes from the same old craze,” he declares;[554] “as soon as we hear of holiness we immediately think of great and excellent works and stand gaping at the Saints in heaven as though they had got there by their own merits. What we say is that the Saints must be good, downright sinners.” (See above, p. 180.) “The most holy state is that of those who believe that Christ alone is our holiness, and that by virtue of His holiness, as already stated, everything about us, our life and actions, are holy, just as the person too is holy.”[555]

After this, who can contend that Luther sets before the world the sublime and arduous ideal of a life of virtue such as has ever been cherished by souls inflamed with the love of Christ? To rest content with a standard so low is indeed to clip the wings of virtue. This is in no way compensated for by Luther’s fervent exhortations to the Christian, “to confess the Word, more particularly in temptation and persecution,” because true and exalted virtue was present wherever there was conflict on behalf of the Word [as preached by him], or by his asseveration, that “where the Word is and brings forth fruit so that men are willing to suffer what must be suffered for it, there indeed we have living Saints.” Living Saints? Surely canonisation is here granted all too easily. Nor does Luther make good the deficiencies of his teaching, by depriving good works of any merit for heaven, or by requiring that they should be performed purely out of love of God, without the least thought of reward. He thereby robs the practice of good works of a powerful stimulus, as much in conformity with the Will of God as with human nature. He is too ready here to assume that the faithful are angels, raised above all incentive arising from the hope of reward, though, elsewhere, he looks upon men only too much as of the earth earthly.

At any rate he teaches that good works spring spontaneously from the faith by which man is justified, and that the outcome is a life of grace in which the faithful has every incentive to the performance of his duty and to works of charity towards his neighbour. He also knows how to depict such spontaneous, practical efforts on the part of the righteous in attractive colours and with great feeling. Passages of striking beauty have already been quoted above from his writings. Too often, as he himself complains, such good works are conspicuous by their absence among the followers of the evangelical faith; he is disappointed to see that the new teaching on faith serves only to engender lazy hearts. Yet this was but natural; nature cannot be overcome even in the man who is justified without an effort on his part; without exertion, self-sacrifice, self-conquest and prayer no one can make any progress and become better pleasing to God; not holiness-by-works, but the sanctifying of our works, is the point to be aimed at, and, for this purpose, Holy Scripture recommends no mere presumptuous, fiducial faith as the starting-point, but rather a pious fear of God, combined with a holy life; no mere reliance on a misapprehension of the freedom of the children of God, but rather severe self-discipline, watchfulness and mortification of the whole man, who, freely and of his own accord, must make himself the image of his crucified Saviour. Those of Luther’s followers who, to their honour, succeeded in so doing, did so, and were cheered and comforted, not by following their leader’s teaching, but by the grace of God which assists every man.

We must, however, refer to another point of importance already once discussed. Why speak at all of good works and virtue, when Luther’s doctrine of the passivity and unfreedom of the will denies the existence of all liberty as regards either virtue or sin? (See vol. ii., p. 223 ff.)

Luther’s doctrine of Justifying Faith is closely bound up with his theories on the absence of free will, man’s inability to what do is good, and the total depravity of human nature resulting from original sin. In his “De servo arbitrio” against Erasmus, Luther deliberately makes the absence of free will the basis of his view of life.

Deprived of any power of choice or self-determination, man is at the mercy of external agents, diabolical or Divine, to such an extent that he is unable to will except what they will. Whoever has and keeps the Spirit of God and the faith cannot do otherwise than fulfil the Will of God; but whoever is under the domination of the devil is his spiritual captive. To sum up what was said previously: man retains at most the right to dispose of things inferior to him, not, however, any actual, moral freedom of choice, still less any liberty for doing what is good such as would exclude all interior compulsion. He is created for eternal death or for everlasting life; his destiny he cannot escape; his lot is already pre-ordained. Luther’s doctrine brings him into line, even as regards the “harshest consequences of the predestinarian dogma, with Zwingli, Calvin, and Melanchthon in his earliest evangelical Theology.”[556] According to one of the most esteemed of Lutheran theologians, “what finds full and comprehensive expression in the work ‘De servo arbitrio’ is simply the conviction which had inspired Luther throughout his struggle for his pet doctrine of salvation, viz. the doctrine of the pure grace of God as against the prevailing doctrine of free will and man’s own works.”[557] According to this theory, in spite of the lack of free will, God requires of man that he should keep the moral law, and, to encourage him, sets up a system of rewards and punishments. Man is constrained to this as it were in mockery, that, as Luther says, God may make him to realise his utter powerlessness.[558] God indeed deplores the spiritual ruin of His people—this much the author is willing to allow to his opponent Erasmus—but, the God Who does so is the God of revelation, not the Hidden God. “The God Who conceals Himself beneath His Majesty grieves not at man’s undoing, He takes no step to remedy it, but works all things, both life and death.” God, “by that unsearchable knowledge of His, wills the death of the sinner.”[559]

“Even though Judas acted of his own will and without compulsion, still his willing was the work of God, Who moved him by His Omnipotence as He moves all things.”[560] In the same way, according to Luther, the hardening of Pharao’s heart was in the fullest sense God’s work.[561] Adam’s sin likewise is to be traced back to the Will of God.[562] We must not ask, however, how all this can be reconciled with the goodness and justice of God. We must not expect God to act according to human law.[563]

It was necessary to recall the above in order to show how such a doctrine robs the moral law of every inward relation to its last end, and degrades it till it becomes a mere outward, arbitrary barrier. Luther may well thank his want of logic that this system failed to be carried to its extremest consequences; the ways of the world are not those of the logician.

Who but God can be held responsible in the last instance for the world being, as Luther complains, the “dwelling-place” of the devil, and his very kingdom? According to him the devil is its “Prince and God”;[564] every place is packed with devils.[565] Indeed, “the whole world is Satanic and to a certain extent identified with Satan.”[566] “In such a kingdom all the children of Adam are subject to their lord and king, i.e. the devil.”[567] Such descriptions given by Luther are often so vivid that one might fancy the devil was making war upon God almost like some independent power. Luther, however, admits that the devil has “only a semblance of the Godhead, and that God has reserved to Himself the true Godhead.”[568] Ethically the consequence of such a view of the world is a pessimism calculated to lame both the powers and the desires of anyone striving after higher aims.

Luther’s pessimism goes so far, that too often he is ready to believe that, unlike the devil, Christ loves “to show Himself weak” in man. He writes, for instance, that Satan desired to drag him in his toils down into the abyss, but that the “weak Christ” was ever victorious, or at least “fighting bravely.”[569] That it was possible for Christ to be overcome he would not have allowed, yet, surely, an excuse might have been sought for man’s failings in Christ’s own “weakness,” particularly if man is really devoid of free will for doing what is good.

Luther was always fond of imputing weaknesses and sins to the Saints. Their works he regarded as detracting from the Redemption and the Grace of Christ, which can be appropriated only by faith. Certain virtues manifested by the Saints and their heroic sacrifices Luther denounced as illusions, as morally impossible and as mere idolatry.

“The Apostles themselves were sinners, yea, regular scoundrels.... I believe that the prophets also frequently sinned grievously, for they were men like us.”[570] He quotes examples from the history of the Apostles previous to the descent of the Holy Ghost. Elsewhere he alludes to the failings they betrayed even in later life. “To hear” that the Apostles, even after they had received the Holy Ghost, were “sometimes weak in the faith,” is, he says, “very consoling to me and to all Christians.” Peter “not only erred” in his treatment of the Gentile Christians (Gal. ii. 11 ff.), “but sinned grossly and grievously.” The separation of Paul and Barnabas (Acts xv. 39) was very blameworthy. “Such instances,” he says, “are placed before us for our comfort; for it is very consoling to hear that such great Saints have also sinned.” “Samson, David and many other fine and mighty characters, filled as they were with the Holy Ghost, fell into great sins,” which is a “splendid consolation to faint-hearted and troubled consciences.” Paul himself did not believe as firmly as he spoke; he was, in point of fact, better able to speak and write than to believe. “It would scarcely be right for us to do all that God has commanded, for then what need would there be for the forgiveness of sins?”[571]

“Unless God had told us how foolishly the Saints themselves acted, we should not have been able to arrive at the knowledge of His Kingdom, which is nothing else but the forgiveness of sins.”[572] Here He is referring to the stumbling and falls of the Patriarchs; he adds: “What wonder that we stumble? And yet this is no cloak or excuse for committing sin.” Nevertheless, he speaks of Abraham, whom he credits with having fallen into idolatry and sin, as though holiness of life were of no great importance: “Believe as he did and you are just as holy as he.”[573] “We must interpret all these stories and examples as told of men like ourselves; it is a delusion to make such a fuss about the Saints. We ought to say: If they were holy, why, so are we; if we are sinners, why, so were they; for we are all born of the same flesh and blood and God created us as much as He did them; one man is as good as another, and the only difference between us is faith. If you have faith and the Word of God, you are just as great; you need not trouble yourself about being of less importance than he, unless your faith is less strong.”[574]

By his “articulus remissionis,” the constantly reiterated Evangel of the forgiveness of sins by faith, Luther certainly succeeded in putting down the mighty from their seats, but whether he inspired the lowly to qualify for their possession is quite another question.

On the unsafe ground of the assurance of salvation by faith alone even the fanatics were unwilling to stand; their preference was for a certain interior satisfaction to be secured by means of works. Hence they and their teaching—to tell the truth a very unsatisfactory one—became a target for Luther’s sarcasm. By a pretence of strict morals they would fain give the lie to the words of the Our Father, “Forgive us our trespasses”; “but we are determined not to make the Our Father untrue, nor to reject this article (the ‘remissio peccatorum’), but to retain it as our most precious treasure, in which lies our safety and salvation.”[575] An over-zealous pursuit of sanctity and the works of the Spirit might end by detracting from a trusting reliance upon Christ. In Catholic times, for instance, the two things, works and faith, had, so he complains, been “hopelessly mixed.” “This, from the beginning until this very day, has been a stumbling-block and hindrance to the new doctrine of faith. If we preach works, then an end is made of faith; hence, if we teach faith, works must go to the wall.”[576]

We must repeat, that, by this, Luther did not mean to exclude works; on the contrary, he frequently counsels their performance. He left behind him many instructions concerning the practice of a devout life, of which we shall have to speak more fully later. On the other hand, however, we can understand how, on one occasion, he refused to draw up a Christian Rule of Life, though requested to do so by his friend Bugenhagen, arguing that such a thing was superfluous. We can well understand his difficulty, for how could he compile a rule for the promotion of practical virtue when he was at the same time indefatigable in condemning the monkish practices of prayer and meditation, pious observances and penitential exercises, as mere formalities and outgrowths of the theory of holiness-by-works? It was quite in keeping with his leading idea, and his hatred of works, that he should stigmatise the whole outward structure of the Christian life known hitherto as a mere “service of imposture.”

“Christ has become to all of us a cloak for our shame.”[577]

“Our life and all our doings must not have the honour and glory of making us children of God and obtaining for us forgiveness of sins and everlasting life. What is necessary is that you should hear Christ saying to you: ‘Good morning, dear brother, in Me behold your sin and death vanquished.’ The law has already been fulfilled, viz. by Christ, so that it is not necessary to fulfil it, but only to hang it by faith around Him who fulfils it, and to become like Him.”[578]

“This is the Evangel that brings help and salvation to the conscience in despair.... The law with its demands had disheartened, nay, almost slain it, but now comes this sweet and joyful message.”[579]

“Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe more boldly still.”[580]

Luther’s “Pecca fortiter.”

In what has gone before, that we might the better see how Luther’s standard of life compared with his claim to a higher calling, we have reviewed in succession his advice and conduct with regard to one of the principal moral questions of the Christian life, viz. how one is to behave when tempted to despondency and to despair of one’s salvation; further, his attitude—theoretical and practical—towards sin, penance and the higher tasks and exercises of Christian virtue. On each several point the ethical defects of his system came to light, in spite of all his efforts to conceal them by appealing to the true freedom of the Christian, to the difference between the law and the Gospel, or to the power of faith in the merits of Christ.

On glancing back at what has been said, we can readily understand why those Catholic contemporaries, who took up the pen against Luther and his followers, directed their attacks by preference on these points of practical morality.

Johann Fabri (i.e. Schmidt) of Heilbronn, who filled the office of preacher at Augsburg Cathedral until he was forced to vacate the pulpit owing to the prohibition issued by the Magistrates against Catholic preaching in 1534, wrote at a later date, in 1553, in his work “The Right Way,” of Luther and those preachers who shared his point of view: “The sweet, sugary preachers who encourage the people in their wickedness say: The Lord has suffered for us, good works are unclean and sinful, a good, pious and honest life with fasting, etc., is mere Popery and hypocrisy, the Lord has merited heaven for us and our goodness is all worthless. These and such-like are the sweet, sugary words they preach, crying: Peace, Peace! Heaven has been thrown open, only believe and you are already justified and heirs of heaven. Thus wickedness gets the upper hand, and those things which draw down upon us the wrath of God and rob us of eternal life are regarded as no sin at all. But the end shall prove whether the doctrine is of God, as the fruit shows whether the tree is good. What terror and distress has been caused in Germany by those who boast of the new Gospel it is easier to bewail than to describe. Ungodliness, horrible sins and vices hold the field; greater and more terrible evil, fear and distress have never before been heard of, let alone seen in Germany.”[581]

Matthias Sittardus, from the little town of Sittard in the Duchy of Jülich, a zealous and energetic worker at Aachen, wrote as follows of Luther’s exhortations quoted above: “The result is that men say, What does sin matter? Christ took it away on the cross; the evil that I do—for I must sin and cannot avoid it—He is ready to bear; He will answer for it and refrain from imputing it to me; I have only to believe and off it goes like a flash. Good works have actually become a reproach and are exposed to contempt and abuse.”[582]—Elsewhere he laments, that “there is much glorying in and boasting of faith,” but of “good works and actions little” is seen.[583]

Alluding to man’s unfreedom for doing what is good, as advocated by Luther, Johann Mensing, a scholarly and busy popular writer, says: “They [the preachers] call God a sinner and maintain that God does all our sins in us. And when they have sinned most grievously they argue that such was God’s Will, and that they could do nothing but by God’s Will. They look upon the treachery of Judas, the adultery of David and Peter’s denial as being simply the work of God, just as much as the best of good deeds.”[584]

The words quoted above: “Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe more boldly still,” are Luther’s own.

The saying, which must not be taken apart from the context, was employed by Luther in a letter to Melanchthon, on August 1, 1521.[585] The writer, who was then at the Wartburg, was engaged in a “heated struggle”[586] on the question of the Church, and on religious vows, for the setting aside of which he was seeking a ground. At the Wartburg he was, on his own confession, a prey to “temptations and sins,”[587] though in this he only saw the proof that his Evangel would triumph over the devil. The letter is the product of a state of mind, restless, gloomy and exalted, and culminates in a prophetic utterance concerning God’s approaching visitation of Germany on account of its persecution of the Evangel.

The passage which at present interests us, taken together with the context, runs thus:

“If you are a preacher of grace, then preach a real, not a fictitious grace; if your grace is real, then let your sin also be real and not fictitious. God does not save those who merely fancy themselves sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe more boldly still (‘esto peccator et pecca fortiter, sed fortius fide’); and rejoice in Christ, Who is the conqueror of sin, death and the world; we must sin as long as we are what we are. This life is not the abode of justice, but we look for a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, as Peter says. It suffices that by the riches of the glory of God we have come to know the Lamb, Who taketh away the sin of the world; sin shall not drag us away from Him, even should we commit fornication or murder thousands and thousands of times a day. Do you think that the price and the ransom paid for our sins by this sublime Lamb is so insignificant? Pray boldly, for you are in truth a very bold sinner.”

This is language of the most extravagant paradox. What it really means is very objectionable. Melanchthon is to pray very fervently with the hope of obtaining the Divine assistance against sin, but at the same time he is to sin boldly. This language of the Wartburg is not unlike that in which Luther wrote, from the Castle of Coburg, to his pupil, Hieronymus Weller, when the latter was tempted to despair, to encourage him against the fear of sin (above, p. 175 f.); that letter too was written in anguish of spirit and in a state of excitement similar to what he had experienced in the Wartburg. We might, it is true, admit that, in these words Luther gave the rein to his well-known inclination to put things in the strongest light, a tendency to be noticed in some of his other statements quoted above. On the other hand, however, the close connection between the compromising words and his whole system of sin and grace, can scarcely be denied; we have here something more than a figure of rhetoric. Luther’s endeavour was to reassure, once and for all, Melanchthon, who was so prone to anxiety. The latter shrank from many of the consequences of Luther’s doctrines, and at that time was possibly also a prey to apprehension concerning the forgiveness of his own sins. Hence the writer of the letter seeks to convince him that the strength of the fiducial faith preached by himself, Luther, was so great, that no sense of sin need trouble a man. To have “real, not fictitious, sin” to him, means as much as: Be bold enough to look upon yourself as a great sinner; “Be a sinner,” means: Do not be afraid of appearing to be a sinner in your own sight; Melanchthon is to be a bold sinner in his own eyes in order that he may be the more ready to ascribe all that is good to the grace which works all. Thus far there is nothing which goes beyond Luther’s teaching elsewhere.

The passage is, however, more than a mere paradoxical way of expressing the doctrine dear to him.

Luther, here and throughout the letter, does not say what he ought necessarily to have said to one weighed down by the consciousness of sin; of remorse and compunction we hear nothing whatever, nor does he give due weight and importance to the consciousness of guilt; he misrepresents grace, making it appear as a mere outward, magical charm, by which—according to an expression which cannot but offend every religious mind—a man is justified even though he be a murderer and a libertine a thousand times over. Luther’s own words here are perhaps the best refutation of the Lutheran doctrine of Justification, for he speaks of sin, even of the worst, in a way that well lays bare the weaknesses of the system of fiducial faith.

It is unfortunate that Luther should have impressed such a stigma upon his principal doctrine, both in his earliest statements of it, for instance, in his letter to George Spenlein in 1516, and, again, in one of his last epistles to a friend, also tormented by scruples of conscience, viz. George Spalatin.[588]

In the above-mentioned letter to Melanchthon, in which Luther expresses his contempt for sin by the words “Pecca fortiter,” he is not only encouraging his friend with regard to possible sins of the past, but is also thinking of temptations in the future. His advice is: Sin boldly and fearlessly—whereas what one would have expected would have been: Should you fall, don’t despair. The underlying idea is: No sin is so detestable as to affright the believer, which is further explained by the wanton phrase: “even should we commit fornication or murder thousands and thousands of times a day.”

However much stress we may be disposed to lay on Luther’s warnings against sin, and whatever allowance we may make for his rhetoric, still the “Pecca fortiter” stands out as the result of his revolt against the traditional view of sin and grace, with which his own doctrine of Justification refused to be reconciled. These inauspicious words are the culmination of Luther’s practical ideas on religion, borne witness to by so many of his statements, which, at the cost of morality, give the reins to human freedom and to disorder. Such was the state of mind induced in him by the spirits of the Wartburg, such the enthusiasm which followed his “spiritual baptism” on his “Patmos,” that isle of sublime revelations.

Such is the defiance involved in the famous saying that an impartial critic, Johann Adam Möhler, in his “Symbolism” says: “Although too much stress must not be laid on the passage, seeing how overwrought and excited the author was, yet it is characteristic enough and important from the point of view of the history of dogma.”[589] G. Barge, in his Life of Carlstadt, says, that Luther in his letter to Melanchthon had reduced “his doctrine of Justification by faith alone to the baldest possible formula.”[590] “If Catholic research continues to make this [the ‘Pecca fortiter’] its point of attack, we must honestly admit that there is reason in its choice.”

The last words are from Walter Köhler, now at the University of Zürich, a Protestant theologian and historian, who has severely criticised all Luther’s opinions on sin and grace.[591]

One of the weak points of Luther’s theology lies, according to Köhler,[592] in the “clumsiness of his doctrine of sin and salvation.” “How, in view of the total corruption of man” (through original sin, absence of free will and loss of all power), can redemption be possible at all unless by some mechanical and supernatural means? Luther says: “By faith alone.” But his “faith is something miraculous, in which psychology has no part whatever; the corruption is mechanical and so is the act of grace which removes it.” In Luther’s doctrine of sin, as Köhler remarks, the will, the instrument by which the process of redemption should be effected, becomes a steed “ridden either by God or by the devil. If the Almighty is the horseman, He throws Satan out of the saddle, and vice versa; the steed, however, remains entirely helpless and unable to rid himself of his rider. In such a system Christ, the Redeemer, must appear as a sort of ‘deus ex machina,’ who at one blow sets everything right.” It would not be so bad, were at least “the Almighty to overthrow Satan. But He remains ever seated in heaven, i.e. Luther never forgets to impress on man again and again that he cannot get out of sin: ‘The Saints remain always sinners at heart.’”

Although, proceeds Köhler, better thoughts, yea, even inspiring ones, are to be found in Luther’s writings, yet the peculiar doctrines just spoken of were certainly his own, at utter variance though they be with our way of looking at the process of individual salvation, viz. from the psychological point of view, and of emphasising the personal will to be saved. “In spite of Luther’s plain and truly evangelical intention of attributing to God alone all the honour of the work of salvation,” he was never able “clearly to comprehend the personal, ethico-religious value of faith”; “on the contrary, he makes man to be shifted hither and thither, by the hand of God, like a mere pawn, and in a fashion entirely fatalistic”; “when Christ enters, then, according to him, all is well; I am no longer a sinner, I am set free” (“iam ego peccatum non habeo et sum liber”)[593];—“but where does the ethical impulse come in?” Seeing that sin is merely covered over, and, as a matter of fact, still remains, man must, according to Luther, “set to work to conquer it without, however, ever being entirely successful in this task, or rather he must strengthen his assurance of salvation, viz. his faith. Such is Luther’s ethics.” The critic rightly points out, that this “system of ethics is essentially negative,” viz. merely directs man how “not to fall” from the “pedestal” on which he is set up together with Christ. Man, by faith, is raised so high, that, as Luther says, “nothing can prejudice his salvation”;[594] “Christian freedom means ... that we stand in no need of any works in order to attain to piety and salvation.”[595]

3. Luther’s Admissions Concerning His own Practice of Virtue

St. Paul, the far-seeing Apostle of the Gentiles, says of the ethical effects of the Gospel and of faith: “Those who are Christ’s have crucified their flesh with the lusts thereof. If we live in the Spirit let us also walk in the Spirit.” He instances as the fruits of the Spirit: “Patience, longanimity, goodness, benignity, mildness, faith, modesty, continency, chastity” (Gal. v. 22 ff.). Amongst the qualities which must adorn a teacher and guide of the faithful he instances to Timothy the following: “It behoveth him to be blameless, sober, prudent, of good behaviour, chaste, no striker, not quarrelsome; he must have a good testimony of them that are without, holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience” (1 Tim. iii. 2 ff.). Finally he sums up all in the exhortation: “Be thou an example to the faithful in word, in conversation, in charity, in faith, in chastity” (ibid., iv. 12).

It seems not unjust to expect of Luther that his standard of life should be all the higher, since, in opposition to all the teachers of his day and of bygone ages, and whilst professing to preach nought but the doctrine of Christ, he had set up a new system, not merely of faith, but also of morals. At the very least the power of his Evangel should have manifested itself in his own person in an exceptional manner.

How far was this the case? What was the opinion of his contemporaries and what was his own?

Catholics were naturally ever disposed to judge Luther’s conduct from a standpoint different from that of Luther’s own followers. A Catholic, devoted to his Church, regarded as his greatest blemish the conceit of the heresiarch and devastator of the fold; to him it seemed intolerable that a disobedient and rebellious son of the Church should display such pride as to set himself above her and the belief of antiquity and should attack her so hatefully. As for his morality, his sacrilegious marriage with a virgin dedicated to God, his incessant attacks upon celibacy and religious vows, and his seducing of countless souls to break their most sacred promises, were naturally sufficient to debase him in the eyes of most Catholics.

There were, however, certain questions which both Catholics and Lutherans could ask and answer impartially: Did Luther possess in any eminent degree the fiducial faith which he represented as so essential? Did this faith produce in him those fruits he extols as its spontaneous result, above all a glad heart at peace with God and man? Further: How far did he himself come up even to that comparatively low standard to which, theoretically, he reduced Christian perfection?

If we seek from Luther’s own lips an estimate of his virtues, we shall hear from him many frank statements on the subject.

The first place belongs to what he says of his faith and personal assurance of salvation.

Of faith, he wrote to Melanchthon, who was tormented with doubts and uncertainty: “To you and to us all may God give an increase of faith.... If we have no faith in us, why not at least comfort ourselves with the faith that is in others? For there must needs be others who believe instead of us, otherwise there would be no Church left in the world, and Christ would have ceased to be with us till the end of time. If He is not with us, where then is He in the world?”[596]

He complains so frequently of the weakness of his own faith that we are vividly reminded how greatly he himself stood in need of the “consolation” of dwelling on the faith that was in others. He never, it is true, attributes to himself actual unbelief, or a wilful abandon of trust in the promises of Christ, yet he does speak in strangely forcible terms—and with no mere assumed humility or modesty—of the weakness of this faith and of the inconstancy of his trust.

Of the devil, who unsettles him, he says: “Often I am shaken, but not always.”[597] To the devil it was given to play the part of torturer. “I prefer the tormentor of the body to the torturer of the soul.”[598]—“Alas, the Apostles believed, of this there can be no doubt; I can’t believe, and yet I preach faith to others. I know that it is true, yet believe it I cannot.”[599] “I know Jonas, and if he [like Christ] were to ascend to heaven and disappear out of our sight, what should I then think? And when Peter said: ‘In the name of Jesus, arise’ [Acts iii. 6], what a marvel that was! I don’t understand it and I can’t believe it; and yet all the Apostles believed.”[600]

“I have been preaching for these twenty years, and read and written, so that I ought to see my way ... and yet I cannot grasp the fact, that I must rely on grace alone; and still, otherwise it cannot be, for the mercy-seat alone must count and remain since God has established it; short of this no man can reach God. Hence it is no wonder that others find it so hard to accept faith in its purity, more particularly when these devil-preachers [the Papists] add to the difficulty by such texts as: ‘Do this and thou shalt live,’ item ‘Wilt thou enter into life, keep the commandments’ (Luke x. 28; Matthew xix. 17).”[601]

He is unable to find within him that faith which, according to his system, ought to exist, and, in many passages, he even insists on its difficulty in a very curious manner. “Ah, dear child, if only one could believe firmly,” he said to his little daughter, who “was speaking of Christ with joyful confidence”; and, in answer to the question, “whether then he did not believe,” he replied by praising the innocence and strong faith of children, whose example Christ bids us follow.[602]

In the notes among which these words are preserved there follows a collection of similar statements belonging to various periods: “This argument, ‘The just shall live in his faith’ (Hab. ii. 4), the devil is unable to explain away. But the point is, who is able to lay hold on it?”[603]—“I, alas, cannot believe as firmly as I can preach, speak and write, and as others fancy I am able to believe.”[604]—When the Apostle of the Gentiles speaks of dying daily (1 Cor. xv. 31), this means, so Luther thinks, that he had doubts about his own teaching. In the same way Christ withdraws Himself from him, Luther, “so that at times I say: Truly I know not where I stand, or whether I am preaching aright or not.”[605] “I used to believe all that the Pope and the monks said, but now I am unable to believe what Christ says, Who cannot lie. This is an annoying business, but we shall keep it for that [the Last] Day.”[606]

“Conscience’s greatest consolation,” he also says, according to the same notes, “is simply the Lord Christ,” and he proceeds to describe in detail this consolation in language of much power, agreeably with his doctrine of Justification. He, however, concludes: “But I cannot grasp this consoling doctrine, I can neither learn it nor bear it in mind.”[607]

“I am very wretched owing to the weakness of my faith; hardly can I find any comfort in the death and resurrection of Christ, or in the article of the forgiveness of sins.... I cannot succeed in laying hold on the essential treasure, viz. the free forgiveness of sins.”[608]

“It is a difficult matter to spring straight from my sins to the righteousness of Christ, and to be as certain that Christ’s righteousness is mine as I am that my own body is mine.... I am astonished that I cannot learn this doctrine.”[609]

In a passage already quoted Luther rightly described the task he assigned to grace and faith as something “which affrights a man,” for which reason it is “hard for him to believe”; he himself had often, so to speak, to fight his way out of hell, “but it costs much before one obtains consolation.”

Such statements we can well understand if we put ourselves in his place. The effects he ascribed to fiducial faith were so difficult of attainment and so opposed to man’s natural disposition, that never-ending uncertainty was the result, both in his own case and in that of many others. Moreover, he, or rather his peculiar interpretation of Holy Scripture, was the only guarantee of his doctrine, whereas the Catholic Church took her stand upon the broad and firm basis of a settled, traditional interpretation, and traced back her teaching to an authority instituted by God and equipped with infallibility. In his “temptations of faith,” Luther clung to the most varied arguments, dwelling at one time on the fact of his election, at another on the depravity of his opponents, now on the malice of the devil sent to oppose him, now on the supposed advantages of his doctrine, as for instance, that it gave all the honour to God alone and made an end of everything human, even of free will: “Should Satan take advantage of this and ally himself with the flesh and with reason, then conscience becomes affrighted and despairs, unless you resolutely enter into yourself and say: Even should Cyprian, Ambrose, Augustine, St. Peter, Paul, John, nay, an angel from heaven, teach otherwise, yet I know for a certainty that what I teach is not human but divine, i.e. that I ascribe all to God and nothing to man.”[610]

“I do not understand it, I am unable to believe ... I cannot believe and yet I teach others. I know that it is right and yet believe it I cannot. Sometimes I think: You teach the truth, for you have the office and vocation, you are of assistance to many and glorify Christ; for we do not preach Aristotle or Cæsar, but Jesus Christ. But when I consider my weakness, how I eat and drink and am considered a merry fellow, then I begin to doubt. Alas, if one could only believe!”[611]

“Heretics believe themselves to be holy. I find not a scrap of holiness in myself, but only great weakness. As soon as I am assailed by temptation I understand the Spirit, but nevertheless the flesh resists. [That is] idolatry against the first table [of the law]. Gladly would I be formally just, but I am not conscious of being so.”

And Pomeranus replied: “Neither am I conscious of it, Herr Doctor.”[612]

Before passing on to some of Luther’s statements concerning the consonance of his life with faith, we may remark that there is no lack of creditable passages in his writings on the conforming of ethics to faith. Although here our task is not to depict in its entirety the morality of Luther and his doctrine, but merely to furnish an historical answer to the question whether there existed in him elements which rendered his claim to a higher mission incredible, still we must not forget his many praiseworthy exhortations to virtue, intended, moreover, not merely for others, but also for himself.

That the devil must be resisted and that his tricks and temptations lead to what is evil, has been insisted upon by few preachers so frequently as by Luther, who in almost every address, every chapter of his works, and every letter treats of the sinister power of the devil. Another favourite, more positive theme of his discourses, whether to the members of his household or to the larger circle of the public, was the domestic virtues and the cheerful carrying out of the duties of one’s calling. He was also fond, in the sermons he was so indefatigable in preaching, of bringing home to those oppressed with the burden of life’s troubles the consolation of certain evangelical truths, and of breaking the bread of the Word to the little ones and the unlearned. With the utmost earnestness he sought to awaken trust in God, resignation to His Providence, hope in His Mercy and Bounty and the confession of our own weakness. One idea on which he was particularly fond of lingering, was, that we must pray because we depend entirely upon God, and that we must put aside all confidence in ourselves in order that we may be filled with His Grace.

Unfortunately such thoughts too often brought him back to his own pet views of man’s passivity and absence of free will and the all-effecting power of God. “The game is always won,” he cries, “and if it is won there is no longer any pain or trouble more; there is no need to struggle and fight, for all has already been accomplished.”[613] “Christ, the Conqueror, has done all, so that there is nothing left for us to do, to root out sin, to slay the devil or to overcome death; they all have been trampled to the ground.... The doing was not, however, our work.”[614]—“The Christian’s work is to sleep and do nothing”; thus does he sum up in one of his sermons the exhortations he had previously given to rest altogether on the merits of Christ; even should a man “fall into sin and be up to the neck in it, let him remember that Christ is no taker, but a most gracious giver”; this is “a very sweet and cheering doctrine; others, it is true, teach that you must do so much for sin, must live in this or that way, since God must be paid to the last farthing before you can appear before Him. Such people make of God a torturer and taskmaster.”[615] After having recommended prayer he inveighs against what he calls its abuse: “They say: I will pray until God gives me His Grace; but nothing comes of it, because God says to them: You cannot and never will be able to do anything; but I shall do everything.” “Everything through Christ: through works, nothing whatever.”[616]

Luther has some remarkable admissions to make, particularly in his private utterances, concerning the manner in which he himself and his chosen circle lived their faith.

“I cannot express in words what great pains I took in the Papacy to be righteous. Now, however, I have ceased entirely to be careful, because I have come to the insight and belief that another has become righteous before God in my stead.”[617]

“My doctrine stands whatever [my] life may be.”[618]

“Let us stick to the true Word that the seat of Moses may be ours. Even should our manner of life not be altogether polished and perfect, yet God is merciful; the laity, however, hate us.”[619]

“Neither would it be a good thing were we to do all that God commands, for in that case He would be cheated of His Godhead, and the Our Father, faith, the article of the forgiveness of sins, etc., would all go to ruin. God would be made a liar. He would no longer be the one and only truth, and every man would not be a liar [as Scripture says]. Should any man say: ‘If this is so, God will be but little served on earth’ [I reply]: He is accustomed to that; He wills to be, and is, a God of great mercy.”[620]

“I want to hand over a downright sinner to the Judgment Seat of our Lord God; for though I myself may not have actually been guilty of adultery, still that has not been for lack of good-will.”[621]—The latter phrase was a saying of the populace, and does not in the least mean that he ever really had the intention of committing the sin.

“I confess of myself,” he says in a sermon in 1532, “and doubtless others must admit the same [of themselves], that I lack the diligence and earnestness of which really I ought to have much more than formerly; that I am much more careless than I was under the Papacy; and that now, under the Evangel, there is nowhere the same zeal to be found as before.” This he declares to be due to the devil and to people’s carelessness, but not to his teaching.[622]

On other occasions he admits of his party as a whole, more particularly of its leaders, viz. the theologians and Princes, that they fell more or less short of what was required for a Christian life; among them he expressly includes himself: “It is certain with regard to ourselves and our Princes that we are not clean and holy, and the Princes have vices of their own. But Christ loves a frank and downright confession.”[623]

Among such “confessions” made by Luther we find some concerning prayer.

Comparing the present with the past he says: “People are now so cold and pray so seldom”; this he seeks to explain by urging that formerly people were more “tormented by the devil.”[624] A better explanation is that which he gave in his Commentary on Galatians: “For the more confident we are of the freedom Christ has won for us, the colder and lazier we are in teaching the Word, praying, doing good and enduring contradictions.”[625]

We possess some very remarkable and even spirited exhortations to prayer from Luther’s pen; on occasion he would also raise his own voice in prayer to implore God’s assistance with feeling, fervour and the greatest confidence, particularly when in anxiety and trouble about his undertaking. (See vol. iv., xxv. 3.) He refers frequently to his daily prayer, though he admits that the heretics, i.e. the Anabaptists, also were in the habit of praying—in their own way. His excessive labours and the turmoil of his life’s struggle left him, however, little time and quiet for prayer, particularly for interior prayer. Besides, he considered the canonical hours of the Catholics mere “bawling,” and the liturgical devices for raising the heart mere imposture. During the latter years he spent in the cloister outside cares left him no leisure for the prayers which he was, as a religious, bound to recite. Finally, towards the end of his life, he often enough admits that his prayers were cold.[626] Frequently he was obliged to stimulate his ardour for prayer as well as work by “anger and zeal”;[627] “for no man can say,” as he puts it, “how hard a thing it is to pray from the heart.”[628]

Even in the early part of his career he had deliberately and on principle excluded one important sort of prayer, viz. prayer for help in such interior trials as temptations against the celibacy enjoined by the religious state, which he came to persuade himself was an impossibility and contrary to the Will of God. Then, if ever, did he stand in need of the weapon of prayer, but we read nowhere in his letters, written in that gloomy period, of his imploring God humbly for light and strength. On the contrary, he writes, in 1521: “What if this prayer is not according to God’s Will, or if He does not choose to grant it when it is addressed to Him?”[629] He ironically attacks those who rightly said that “we must implore in all things the grace of God, that He denies it to none,” and, that, with God’s grace, it was possible to keep the vows. He replies to “these simple people and those who care nothing for souls”: “Excellent! Why did you not advise St. Peter to ask God that he might not be bound by Herod?” “That,” he says, “is to make a mockery of serious matters” (“est modus ludendi”)[630]—a censure which might very well have been flung back at such a teacher of prayer.

Seventeen years later he gave the following advice on prayer: “We must not curse, that is true, but pray we must that God’s name be hallowed and honoured, and the Pope’s execrated and cursed together with his god, the devil; that God’s Kingdom come, and that End-Christ’s kingdom perish. Such a ‘paternosteral’ curse may well be breathed, and so should every Christian pray.”[631] That the Pope be “cursed, damned, dishonoured and destroyed, etc.,” such was his “daily, never-ending, heartfelt prayer, as it was of all those who believe in Christ,” so he assures us, “and I feel that my prayer is heard.”[632] His opinion is that it is impossible to pray for anything without “cursing,” i.e. excluding the opposite. “Someone asked Dr. Martin Luther whether he who prayed thus must curse. ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘for when I pray “Hallowed be Thy Name,” I curse Erasmus and all heretics who dishonour and blaspheme God.’”[633] His anger against the devil often broke out in his prayers. “Though I cannot read or write,” he writes to Melanchthon from the Coburg, “I can still think, and pray, and rage (‘debacchari’) against the devil.”[634]

He ought to “offer incense to God,” he complains on one occasion in 1538 in his “Table-Talk,” but, instead, he brings Him “stinking pitch and devil’s ordure by his murmuring and impatience.” “It is thus that I frequently worship my God.... Had we not the article of the forgiveness of sins, which God has firmly promised, our case would indeed be bad.”[635] Again and again does he cast his anchor on this article when threatened by the storms.

His private, non-polemical religious exercises seem to have been exceedingly brief: “I have to do violence to myself daily in order to pray, and I am satisfied to repeat, when I go to bed, the Ten Commandments, the Our Father and then a verse or two; while thinking these over I fall asleep.”[636] Unusual, and at the same time peculiar, were the prayers which we hear of his offering with the intention of doing some wholesome ill to his neighbour, or even of bringing about the latter’s death in the interests of the Evangel. In a sermon on July 23, 1531, after reprimanding certain Wittenberg brewers, who, in the hope of adding to their profits, were accustomed to adulterate their beer, he says: “Unless you mend your ways, we shall pray that your malt may turn to muck and sewage. Don’t forget that.”[637]

The Christian’s life of faith ought not merely to be penetrated with the spirit of prayer but, in spite of all crosses and the temptations from earthy things, to move along the safe path of peace and joy of heart. Luther must have found much concerning “peace and joy in the Holy Ghost” in his favourite Epistle to the Romans. He himself says: “A Christian must be a joyful man.... Christ says, ‘Peace be with you; let not your heart be troubled: have confidence, I have overcome the world.’ It is the will of God that you be joyful.”

Of himself, however, he is forced to add: “I preach and write this, but I have not yet acquired the art when tempted the other way. This is in order that we may be instructed,” so he reassures himself. “Were we always at peace, the devil would get the better of us.... The fact is we are not equal to the holy Fathers in the matter of faith. The further we fall short of them [this is another of his consolations], the greater is the victory Christ will win; for in the struggle with the devil we are the meanest, most stupid of foes, and he has a great advantage over us.... Our Lord has determined to bring about the end [the impending end of all] amidst universal foolishness.”[638] Thus, according to him, the victory of Christ would be exalted all the more by the absence of peace and joy amongst His followers.

What do we see of pious effort on his part, more particularly in the matter of preparation for the sacraments, and repressing of self?

The spiritual life was to him a passive compliance with the faith which God Himself was to awaken and preserve in the heart.

For “this is how it takes place,” he says, in a carefully considered instruction, “God’s Word comes to me without any co-operation on my part. I may, it is true, do this much, go and hear it, read it, or preach it, so that it may sink into my heart. And this is the real preparation which lies not in man’s powers and ability, but in the power of God. Hence there is no better preparation on our part for all the sacraments than to suffer God to work in us. This is a brief account of the preparation.”[639]

Yet he himself perceived the peril of teaching that “those people were fit to receive the sacrament whose hearts had been touched by the Word of God so that they believed, and that whoever did not feel himself thus moved should remain away.” He says: “I remark in many, myself included, how the evil spirit, by insisting too much upon the right side, makes people lazy and slow to receive the sacrament, and that they refuse to come unless they feel assured that their faith has been enkindled. This also is dangerous.”

Nevertheless he will have no “self-preparation”; such preparation, “by means of one’s own works,” appeared to him Popish; it was loathsome to God, and the doctrine of “faith alone” should be retained, even though “reason be unable to understand it.”[640] Hence it is not surprising that he declared it to be a dreadful “error and abuse” that we should venture to prepare ourselves for the sacrament by our own efforts, as those do who strive to make themselves worthy to receive the sacrament by confession and other works.[641]

He storms at those priests who require contrition from the sinner who makes his confession; his opinion is that they are mad, and that, instead of the keys, they were better able to wield pitchforks.[642] Even “were Christ Himself to come and speak to you as He did to Moses and say, ‘What hast thou done?’ kill Him on the spot.”[643] “Contrition only gives rise to despair, and insults God more than it appeases Him.”[644] Such language may be explained by the fact, that, in his theory, contrition is merely consternation and terror at God’s wrath produced by the accusations of the law; the troubled soul ought really to take refuge behind the Gospel.—How entirely different had been the preparation recommended by the Church in previous ages for the reception of the sacraments! She indeed enjoined contrition, but as an interior act issuing in love and leading to the cleansing of the soul. According to Luther, however, excessive purity of soul was not advisable, and only led to presumption. “The devil is a holy fellow,” he had said, “and has no need of Christ and His Grace”; “Christ dwells only in sinners.”

On the other hand, in many fine passages, he recommends self-denial and mortification as a check upon concupiscence. He even uses the word “mortificare,” and insists that, till our last breath, we must not cease to dread the “fomes” of the flesh and dishonourable temptations. He alone walks safely, so he repeatedly affirms, who keeps his passions under the dominion of the Spirit, suffers injustice, resists the attacks of pride, and at the same time holds his body in honour as the chaste temple of God by denying it much that its evil lusts desire.

Luther himself, however, does not seem to have been overmuch given to mortification, whether of the senses or of the inner man. He was less notable for his earnest efforts to restrain the passions than for that “openness to all the world had to offer,” and that “readiness to taste to the full the joy of living,” which his followers admire. Not only was he averse to penitential exercises, but he even refused to regulate his diet: “I eat just what I like and bear the pains afterwards as best I can.” “To live by the doctor’s rule is to live wretchedly.” “I cannot comply with the precautions necessary to ensure health; later on, remedies may do what they can.”[645] “I don’t consult the doctors, for I don’t mean to embitter the one year of life which they allow me, and I prefer to eat and drink in God’s name what I fancy.”[646] With his reference to his “tippling” and the “Good drink” we shall deal at greater length below, in section 5.

The aim of Luther’s ethics, as is plain from the above, did not rise above the level of mediocrity. His practice, to judge from what has been already said, involved the renunciation of any effort after the attainment of eminent virtue. It may, however, be questioned whether he was really true even to the low standard he set himself.

There is a certain downward tendency in the system of mediocrity which drags one ever lower. Such a system carries with it the rejection of all effort to become ever more and more pleasing to God, such as religion must necessarily foster if it is to realise its vocation, and to which those countless souls who were capable of higher things have, under the influence of Divine grace, ever owed their progress. The indispensable and noblest dowry of true piety is the moulding of spiritual heroes, of men capable of overcoming the world and all material things. Thousands of less highly endowed souls, under the impulse from above, hasten to follow them, seeking the glory of God, and comfort amidst the troubles of life, in religion and the zealous practice of virtue. Mighty indeed, when transformed by them into glowing deeds, were the watch words of the Church’s Saints: “I was born for higher things,” “All for the greater glory of God,” “Conquer thyself,” “Suffer and fight with courage and confidence.”

On the other hand, the system of mediocrity, organised yielding to weakness, and the setting up of the lowest possible ethical standard, could not be expected to furnish Luther and his disciples with any very high religious motive. Even in the ordinary domain of Christian life Luther’s too easy and over-confident doctrine of the appropriation of the satisfaction made by Christ, sounds very different from our Saviour’s exhortations: “Do penance, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”; “Whoever will come after Me, let him deny himself”; “Whoever does not take up his cross and follow Me cannot be My disciple”; or from those of St. Paul who said of himself, that the world was crucified to him and he to the world; or from those of St. Peter: “Seeing that Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the like mind.” “Do penance and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out.” What Scripture requires of the faithful is not blind, mechanical confidence in the merits of Christ as a cloak for our sins, but “fruits worthy of penance.” In the long list of Luther’s works we seek in vain for a commentary which brings these solemn statements on penance before the mind of the reader with the emphasis hitherto habitual. Even were such a commentary forthcoming, the living commentary of his own life, which is the seal of the preacher’s words, would still be wanting.

On another point, viz. zeal for the souls of others, we see no less clearly how far Luther was removed from the ideal. True zeal for souls embraces all without exception, more particularly those who have gone astray and who must be brought to see the light and to be saved. Luther, on the other hand, again and again restricts most curiously the circle to whom his Evangel is to be preached; the wide outlook of the great preachers of the faith in the Church of olden days was not his.

“Three classes do not belong to the Evangel at all,” he had said, “and to them we do not preach.... Away with the dissolute swine.” The three classes thus stigmatised were, first the “rude hearts,” who “will not accept the Evangel nor observe its behests”; secondly, “coarse knaves steeped in great vices,” who would not allow themselves to be bitten by the Evangel; thirdly, “the worst of all, who, beyond this, even dare to persecute the Evangel.” The Evangel is, as a matter of fact, intended only for “simple souls ... and to none other have we preached.”[647] This explains why Luther long cherished the idea of forming a kind of esoteric Church, or community consisting simply of religiously disposed faithful; unfortunately “he did not find such people,”[648] for most were content to neglect both Church and Sacraments.

The older Church had exhorted all who held a cure of souls to be zealous in seeking out such as had become careless or hostile. When, however, someone asked Luther, in 1540, how to behave towards those who had never been inside a church for about twenty years, he replied: “Let them go to the devil, and, when they die, pitch them on the manure-heap.”

The zeal for souls displayed by Luther was zeal for his own peculiar undertaking, viz. for the Evangel which he preached. Zeal for the general spread of the kingdom of God amongst the faithful, and amongst those still sunk in unbelief, was with him a very secondary consideration.

In reality his zeal was almost exclusively directed against the Papacy.

The idea of a universal Church, which just then was inspiring Catholics to undertake the enormous missionary task of converting the newly discovered continents, stood, in Luther’s case, very much in the background.

Though, in part, this may be explained by his struggle for the introduction of the innovations into those portions of Germany nearest to him, yet the real reason was his surrender of the old ecclesiastical ideal, his transformation of the Church into an invisible kingdom of souls devoted to the Evangel, and his destruction of the older conception of Christendom with its two hinges, viz. the Papacy established for the spiritual and the Empire for the temporal welfare of the family of nations. He saw little beyond Saxony, the land favoured by the preaching of the new Gospel, and Germany, to which he had been sent as a “prophet.” The Middle Ages, though so poor in means of communication and geographical knowledge, compared with that age of discovery, was, thanks to its great Catholic, i.e. world-embracing ideas, inspired with an enthusiasm for the kingdom of God which found no place in the ideals of Lutheranism. We may compare, for instance, the heroic efforts of those earlier days to stem the incursions of the Eastern infidel with the opinion expressed by the Wittenberg professor on the war against the Crescent, where he declared the resistance offered in the name of Christendom to the Turks to be “contrary to the will of the Holy Ghost,” an opinion which he continued to hold, in spite of, or perhaps rather because of, its condemnation by the Pope (p. 76 ff., and p. 92). We may contrast the eloquent appeals of the preachers of the Crusades—inspired by the danger which threatened from the East—for the delivery of the Holy Land and the Holy Sepulchre, with Luther’s statement quoted above, that God troubled as little about the Tomb at Jerusalem as He did about the Swiss cows (p. 168). In Luther’s thoughts the boundaries of the Christian world have suddenly become much less extensive than in the Middle Ages, whilst ecclesiastical interests, thanks to the new territorial rights of the Princes, tend to be limited by the frontiers of the petty States.[649]

The stormy nature of the work on which his energies were spent could not fail to impress on his personal character a stamp of its own. In considering Luther’s ethical peculiarities, we are not at liberty to pass over in silence the feverish unrest—so characteristic of him and so unlike the calm and joyous determination evinced by true messengers sent by God—the blind and raging vehemence, which not only suited the violence of his natural disposition, but which he constantly fostered by his actions. “The Lord is not in the storm”; these words, found in the history of the Prophet Elias, do not seem to have been Luther’s subject of meditation. He himself, characteristically enough, speaks of his life-work as one long “tally-ho.” He was never content save when worrying others or being worried himself; he always required some object which he could pull to pieces, whereas true men of God are accustomed to proceed quietly, according to a fixed plan, and in the light of some great supernatural principle. With Luther excitement, confusion and war were a second nature. “The anger and rage of my enemies is my joy and delight, in spite of all their attempts to take it from me and defraud me of it.... To hell-fire with such flowers and fruits, for that is where they belong!”[650]

If, after listening to utterances such as the above, we proceed to visit Luther in his domestic circle—as we shall in the next section—we may well be surprised at the totally different impression given by the man. In the midst of his own people Luther appears in a much more peaceable guise.

He sought to fulfil his various duties as father of the family, towards his children, the servants and the numerous guests who lived in or frequented his house, whether relatives or others, so far as his occupations permitted. He was affable in his intercourse with them, sympathetic, benevolent and kind-hearted towards those who required his help, and easily satisfied with his material circumstances. All these and many other redeeming points in his character will be treated of more in detail later. It is true that the ceaseless labours to which he gave himself up caused him to overlook many abuses at his home which were apparent to others.

The unrest, noise and bustle which reigned in Luther’s house, were, at a later date, objected to by many outsiders. George Held wrote in 1542 to George of Anhalt, who had thought of taking up his abode with Luther, to dissuade him from doing so: “Luther’s house is tenanted by a miscellaneous crowd (‘miscellanea et promiscua turba’) of students, girls, widows, old women and beardless boys, hence great unrest prevails there; many good men are distressed at this on account of the Reverend Father [Luther]. Were all animated by Luther’s spirit, then his house would prove a comfortable and pleasant abode for you for a few days, and you would have an opportunity of enjoying his familiar discourses, but, seeing how his house is at present conducted, I would not advise you to take up your quarters there.”[651]

Many of Luther’s friends and acquaintances were also dissatisfied with Catherine Bora, because of a certain sway she seemed to exercise over Luther, even outside the family circle, in matters both great and small. In a passage which was not made public until 1907 we find Johann Agricola congratulating himself, in 1544, on Luther’s favourable disposition towards him: “Domina Ketha, the arbitress of Heaven and Earth, who rules her husband as she pleases, has, for once, put in a good word on my behalf.”[652] The assertion of Caspar Cruciger, a friend of the family, where he speaks of Catherine as the “firebrand in the house,” and also the report given to the Elector by the Chancellor Brück, who accuses her of a domineering spirit, were already known before.[653] Luther’s own admissions, to which we shall return later, plainly show that there was some truth in these complaints. The latest Protestant to write the life of Catherine Bora, after pointing out that she was vivacious, garrulous and full of hatred for her husband’s enemies, says: “The influence of such a temperament, united with such strength of character, could not fail to be evil rather than good, and for this both wife and husband suffered.... We cannot but allow that Katey at times exerted a powerful influence over Luther.” Particularly in moving him in the direction in which he was already leaning, “her power over him was great.”[654]

Luther’s son Hans was long a trial to the family, and his father occasionally vents his ire on the youth for his disobedience and laziness. He finally sent him to Torgau, where he might be more carefully trained and have his behaviour corrected. Hans seems to have been spoilt by his mother. Later on she spoke of him as untalented, and as a “silly fellow,” who would be laughed at were he to enter the Chancery of the Elector.[655] A niece, Magdalene Kaufmann, whom Luther brought up in his house together with two other young relatives,[656] was courted by Veit Dietrich, one of Luther’s pupils, who also boarded with him. This was, however, discountenanced by the master of the house, who declared that the wench “was not yet sufficiently educated.” Luther was annoyed at her want of obedience and ended by telling her that, should she not prove more tractable, he would marry her to a “grimy charcoal-burner.” His opposition to the match with Dietrich brought about strained relations between himself and one who had hitherto been entirely devoted to him. Dietrich eventually found another partner and was congratulated by Luther. Magdalene, with Luther’s consent, married, first, Ambrose Berndt, an official of the University, and, after his death in 1541, accepted the proposal of Reuchlin, a young physician only twenty years of age, whom she married in spite of Luther’s displeasure. With her restlessness she had sorely troubled the peace of the household.[657]

Other complaints were due to the behaviour of Hans Polner, the son of Luther’s sister, who was studying theology, but who nevertheless frequently returned home the worse for drink and was given to breaking out into acts of violence.[658] Another nephew, Fabian Kaufmann, seems to have been the culprit who caused Luther to grumble that someone in his own house had been secretly betrothed at the very time when, in his bitter controversy with the lawyers, he was denouncing such “clandestine marriages” as invalid.[659] Finally, one of the servant-girls, named Rosina, gave great scandal by her conduct, concerning which Luther has some strong things to say in his letters.[660]

The quondam Augustinian priory at Wittenberg, which has often been praised as the ideal of a Protestant parsonage, fell considerably short, in point of fact, even of Luther’s own standard. There lacked the supervision demanded by the freedom accorded to the numerous inmates, whether relatives or boarders, of the famous “Black monastery.”

4. The Table-Talk and the First Notes of the same

At the social gatherings of his friends and pupils, Luther was fond of giving himself up unrestrainedly to mirth and jollity. His genius, loquacity and good-humour made him a “merry boon companion,” whose society was much appreciated. Often, it is true, he was very quiet and thoughtful. His guests little guessed, nay, perhaps he himself was not fully aware, how often his cheerfulness and lively sallies were due to the desire to repress thereby the sad and anxious thoughts which troubled him.

Liveliness and versatility, imagination and inventiveness, a good memory and a facile tongue were some of the gifts with which nature had endowed him. To these already excellent qualities must be added that depth of feeling which frequently finds expression in utterances of surprising beauty interspersed among his more profane sayings. Unfortunately, owing to his incessant conflicts and to the trivialities to which his pen and tongue were so prone, this better side of his character did not emerge as fully as it deserved.

In order to become better acquainted with the conditions amid which Luther lived at Wittenberg, we must betake ourselves to a room in the former Augustinian convent, where we shall find him seated, after the evening meal, amidst friends such as Melanchthon, Bugenhagen and Jonas, surrounded by eager students—for the most part boarders in his house, the former “Black monastery”—and strangers who had travelled to the little University town attracted by the fame of the Evangel. There it is that he imparts his views and relates his interior experiences in all confidence. He was perfectly aware that what he said was being noted down, and sometimes suggested that one saying or the other should be carefully committed to writing.[661] The older group of friends (1529-1535), to whom we owe relations of the Table-Talk, comprised Conrad Cordatus, Veit Dietrich, Johann Schlaginhaufen, Anton Lauterbach, Hieronymus Weller and Anton Corvinus; such of these as remained with him from 1536 to 1539 form the middle group; the last (1540-1546) was chiefly made up of Johann Mathesius, Caspar Heydenreich, Hieronymus Besold, Master Plato, Johann Stoltz and Johann Aurifaber. Apart from these there were a few who came into close, personal contact with Luther, for instance, George Rörer, who assisted him in translating the Bible and who is one of Aurifaber’s authorities for the Table-Talk.[662]

In his twelfth Sermon on the “Historien von des ehrwürdigen ... Manns Gottes Martini Lutheri,” etc., Mathesius was later on to write that he had enjoyed at his table “many good colloquies and chats” and had tasted “much excellent stuff in the shape of writings and counsels.”[663] Luther himself refers incidentally to these social evenings in his famous saying, that, while he “drank Wittenberg beer with his friends Philip and Amsdorf,” God, by his means, had weakened the Papacy and brought it nigh to destruction.[664] The wine was drunk—at least on solemn occasions—from the famous bowl known as the “Catechismusglas,” on which were painted in sections, placed one below the other and separated by three ridges, various portions of Christian doctrine: at the top the Ten Commandments, in the middle the Creed and Our Father, and at the bottom the whole Catechism (probably the superscriptions and numbers of the questions in the Catechism). We read in the Table-Talk, that, on one occasion, Johann Agricola could get only as far as the Ten Commandments at one draught, whereas Luther was able to empty the bowl right off down to the very dregs, i.e. “Catechism and all.”[665]

For Luther’s sayings given in what follows we have made use of the so-called original versions of the Table-Talk recently edited by various Protestant scholars, viz. the Diaries of Lauterbach and Cordatus, the notes of Schlaginhaufen and the Collections made by Mathesius and found in the “Aufzeichnungen” edited by Loesche and in the “Tischreden (Mathesius)” published more recently still by Kroker, the Leipzig librarian.[666]

The objection has frequently been raised that the Table-Talk ought not to be made use of as a reliable source of information for the delineation of Luther’s person. It is, however, remarkable that the chapters which are favourable to Luther are referred to and exploited in Protestant histories, only that which is disagreeable being usually excluded as historically inaccurate. The fact is that we have merely to comply conscientiously with the rules of historical criticism when utilising the information contained in the Table-Talk, which, owing to its fulness and variety, never fails to rivet attention. These rules suggest that we should give the preference to those statements which recur frequently under a similar form; that we should not take mere questions, put forward by Luther simply to invite discussion and correction, as conveying his real thought; that we consult the original notes, if possible those made at the time of the conversation, and that, where there is a discrepancy between the accounts (a rare occurrence), we should prefer those which date from before the time when Luther’s pupils arranged and classified his sayings according to subjects. The chronological arrangement of Luther’s sayings has thereby suffered, and here and there the text has been altered. For this reason the Latin tradition, as we have it, for instance, from Lauterbach’s pen,[667] ranks before the German version, which is of slightly later date. Kroker’s new edition, when complete, promises to be the best.

If the rules of historical criticism are followed in this and other points there is no reason why the historian should not thankfully avail himself of this great fount of information, which the first collectors themselves extolled as the most valuable authority on the spirit of their master “of pious and holy memory,”[668] and as likely to prove both instructive and edifying to a later generation. The doubt as to the reliability of the notes has been well answered by Kroker: “Such distrust, so far as the original documents are concerned, can now no longer stand. In his rendering of Luther’s words Mathesius, and likewise Heydenreich, Besold and Weller, whose notes his Collection also embodies, does not differ substantially from the older table companions, Dietrich, Schlaginhaufen and Lauterbach. All these men did their utmost to render Luther’s sayings faithfully and to the best of their knowledge and ability.”[669]

The spontaneous character of the Table-Talk gives it a peculiar value of its own. “These [conversations] are children of the passing moment, reliable witnesses to the prevailing mood” (Adolf Hausrath). In intercourse with intimates our ideas and feelings express themselves much more spontaneously and naturally than where the pen of the letter-writer is being guided by reflection, and seeks to make a certain impression on the mind of his reader. But if even letters are no faithful index to our thought, how much less so are prints, intended for the perusal of thousands and even to outlive the writer’s age? On the other hand, it is true that the deliberation which accompanies the use of the pen, imparts, in a certain sense, to the written word a higher value than is possessed by the spoken word. We should, however, expect to find in a man occupying such a position as Luther’s a standard sufficiently high to ensure the presence of deliberation and judgment even in ordinary conversation.

Among the valuable statements made by Luther, which on account of their very nature were unsuited for public utterance but have been faithfully transmitted in the Table-Talk, we have, for instance, certain criticisms of friends and even patrons in high places. Such reflections could not well be uttered save in the privacy of his domestic circle, but, for this very reason, they may well be prized by the historian. Then we have his candid admissions concerning himself, for instance, that his fear lest the Landgrave of Hesse should fall away from the cause of the Evangel constituted one of the motives which led him to sanction this Prince’s bigamy. Then, again, there is the account of his mental trouble, due to certain external events, of the influence of biblical passages, old memories, etc. Finally, we have his strange counsels concerning resistance to temptation, his own example held up as a consolation to the faint-hearted, to those who wavered in the faith or were inclined to despair; his excuse for a “good drink,” his curious recipe for counteracting the evil done by witches at home, and many other statements of an intimate nature which were quite unsuitable for public writings or even for letters. All this, and much more, offers the unprejudiced observer an opportunity for knowing Luther better. It is true that all is not the Word of God; this Luther himself states in a passage which has been wrongly brought forward in excuse of the Table-Talk: “I must admit that I say many things which are not the Word of God, when speaking outside my office of preacher, at home at meals, or elsewhere and at other times.”[670]

The value of the Table-Talk (always assuming the use of the oldest and authentic version) is enhanced if we take into consideration the attitude assumed with regard to it by learned Protestant writers of earlier times. As an instance of a certain type we may take Walch, the scholarly editor of the important Jena edition of Luther’s works prized even to-day.[671] He was much annoyed at the publication of the Table-Talk, just because it furnished abundant material for a delineation of Luther, i.e. for that very reason for which it is esteemed by the modern historian. It was unjust, he says, and “quite wrong to reveal what ought to have been buried in silence, to say nothing of the opportunity thus afforded the Papists for abuse and calumny of Luther’s person and life.” At most—he continues in a tone in which no present-day historian would dare to speak—mere “selections” from the Table-Talk “which could give no offence” ought to have been published, but thus to bring everything ruthlessly to light was a “perversion of the human will.” Fortunately, however, it was not possible even so to prove much against Luther, for, “though the sayings emanated from him originally,[672] still, they remained mere sayings, spoken without deliberation and written down without his knowledge or consent.”[673]

When he made this last statement Walch was not aware that Luther’s utterances were committed to writing in his presence and with his full “consent and knowledge” even, for instance, when spoken in the garden. “Strange as it may appear to us, these men were usually busy recording Luther’s casual words, just as though they were seated in a lecture-hall.”[674] Once, in 1540, Catherine Bora said jestingly to Luther, when they were at table with several industrious students: “Doctor, don’t teach them without being paid; they have already written down quite a lot; Lauterbach, however, has written the most and all that is best.” To which the Doctor replied; “I have taught and preached gratis for thirty years, why then should I now begin to take money for it in my old age?”[675]

The style of the original notes of the Table-Talk in many instances shows plainly that they were made while the conversation was actually in progress; even the frequent defects in the construction of the original notes, which have now been published, prove this.[676]

In 1844 E. Förstemann in his edition of the Table-Talk, as against Walch, had expressed himself strongly in favour of its correctness; he even went so far as to remark, with all the prejudice of an editor for his own work, that these conversations constituted the most important part of Luther’s spiritual legacy, and that here “the current of his thoughts flows even more limpidly than elsewhere.”[677] Walter Köhler likewise, speaking of the Table-Talk edited by Kroker, considers it a “reliable source.”[678]

Of Johann Aurifaber, who was the first to publish the Table-Talk in German, at Eisleben in 1566, and through whose edition it was most widely known, F. X. Funk said in 1882: “As his devotion to Luther led him to make public all the words and sayings which had come to his knowledge, the book, in spite of its defective plan, is important for the history of the Reformer and his time. Its value has always been admitted, though from different standpoints; of this its numerous editions are a proof.”[679] The defect in the arrangement consists in the classifying of the sayings handed down according to the different subjects, whereby they lose their historical setting. The large, new edition of the Table-Talk now planned, will necessarily abandon this confusing arrangement. It has been proved, however, that Aurifaber had a reliable version to work on. “He most probably took for the basis of his edition Lauterbach’s preliminary work,”[680] says Kawerau. This collection of Lauterbach’s has been incorporated, for the most part, in the Halle MS. edited by Bindseil under the title “Colloquia,” etc.[681] In addition to this, Aurifaber made use of the notes by Cordatus, Schlaginhaufen, Veit Dietrich, Mathesius and others. Kawerau draws attention to the fact, that the coarseness to be found in the German edition is not solely due to the compiler, as some of Luther’s apologists had urged, but really belongs to the original texts. Gross sayings of the sort not only gave no offence to Aurifaber, but he delights to repeat them at great length. Yet in certain instances he appears to have watered down and modified his text, as one investigator has proved by a comparison with the notes of Cordatus.[682]

The Pith of the New Religion. Doubts on Faith.

We shall begin by giving some practical theological examples out of the Table-Talk which may serve further to elucidate certain of Luther’s ideas already referred to, e.g. those concerning temptations and their remedy, particularly that most serious temptation of all, viz. regarding the saving power of fiducial faith, which, so Luther thinks, comes through our “weakness.” To this, the tender spot and at the same time cardinal point of his teaching and practical morality, Luther returns again and again, with a frankness for which indeed we may be grateful. Owing to the nature of the conversations and to his habitual loquacity it may happen that some of the trains of thought and modes of expression resemble those already quoted elsewhere; this, however, is no reason for neglecting them, for they testify anew to the ideas of which his mind was full, and also to the state of habitual depression in which he lived.

“Early this morning the devil held a disputation with me on Zwingli, and I learned that a full head is better able to wrangle with the devil than an empty one.... Hence,” he says, “eat and drink and live well, for bodies tempted in this way must have plenty of food and drink; but lewdsters, and those tempted by sensual passion, ought to fast.”[683]

“For those who are tempted fasting is a hundred times worse than eating and drinking.”[684]

“When a man is tempted, or is in the company of those who are tempted, let him put to death Moses [i.e. the Law] and cast stones at him; but, when he recovers, the Law must be preached to him also; a man who is troubled must not have new trouble heaped upon him.”[685]

“In the monastery the words ‘just and justice’ fell like a thunderbolt upon my conscience. I was terrified when I heard it said: ‘He is just, and He will punish.’”[686] [But now I know]: “Our justice is a relative justice [687] “Hence I say to the devil: I, indeed, am a sinner, but Christ is righteous.”[688]

Many admissions reveal his altered feelings, the inconstancy and sudden changes to which he was so prone.

“I do not always take pleasure in the Word. Were I always so disposed towards the Word of God as I was formerly, then I should indeed be happy. Even dear St. Paul had to complain in this regard, for he bewails another law which wars in his members. But is the Word to be considered false because it does not happen to suit me?”[689]

“Unless we wrap ourselves round with this God, Who has become both Man and Word, Satan will surely devour us.” “Hence the aim of the Prophets and the Apostles, viz. to make us hold fast to the Word.” “It costs God Almighty much to manifest His power and mercy even to a few. He must slay many kings before a few men learn to fear Him, and He must save many a rascal and many a prostitute before even a handful of sinners learn to believe in Him.”[690]

“So soon as I say: ‘Yes, indeed, I am a poor sinner,’ Christ replies, ‘But I died for you, I baptised you and I teach you daily.’ ... Ever bear this in mind, that it is not Christ Who affrights you, but Satan; believe this as though God Himself were speaking.”[691]

“Is it not a curse that we should magnify our sins so greatly? Why do we not exalt our baptism just as we exalt our inheritance? A princely baby remains a prince even though he should s—— in his cradle. A child does not cease being heir to his father’s property for having soiled his father’s habiliments. If only we could see our way to make much of our inheritance and patrimony before God!... Yet children call God quite simply their Father.”[692]

“You are not the only man to be tempted; I also am tempted and have bigger sins piled on my conscience than you and your fathers. I would rather I had been a procurer or highwayman than that I should have offered up Christ in the Mass for so long a time.”[693]

The last words may serve as an introduction to a remarkable series of statements concerning the religious practices of the ancient Church. As these words show, he does not shrink from dishonouring by the most unworthy comparisons even those acts and doctrines which, by reason of their religious value, were dear to the whole Church of antiquity and had been regarded by some of the purest and most exalted souls as their only consolation in this life.

Elsewhere he says of the sacrifice of the Mass: “The blind priestlings run to the altar like pigs to the trough”; this, “the shame of our scarlet woman of Babylon, must be exposed.” “I maintain that all public houses of ill-fame, strictly forbidden by God though they be, yea, manslaughter, thieving, murder and adultery, are not so wicked and pernicious as this abomination of the Popish Mass.”[694]

He says of the Catholic preacher: “Where the undefiled Evangel is not preached, the whoremonger is far less a sinner than the preacher, and the brothel less wicked than the church; that the procurer should daily make prostitutes of virgins, honest wives and cloistered nuns, is indeed frightful to hear of; still, his case is not so bad as that of the Popish preacher.”[695]

The Church’s exhortation to make use of fasting as a remedy in the struggle against sin—in which counsel she had the support both of Holy Scripture and of immemorial experience—was thus described by Luther: “No eating or drinking, gluttony or drunkenness can be so bad as fasting; indeed, it would be better to swill day and night rather than to fast for such a purpose,” so “ludicrous and shameful in God’s sight” was such fasting.[696]

“Confession” (as made by Catholics), Luther asserted in 1538, “is less to be condoned than any infamy.” “The devil assails Christians with pressing temptations, most of all on account of their confessions.”[697]

The life of the Saints in the Catholic Church, he says elsewhere, consisted in “their having prayed much, fasted, laboured, taken the discipline, slept on hard pallets and worn poor clothing, a kind of holiness which any dog or pig might practise any day.”[698]

He voices his abhorrence of the monastic life in figures such as the following: “Discalced Friars are lice placed by the devil on God Almighty’s fur coat, and Friars-preacher are the fleas of His shirt.” “I believe the Franciscans to be possessed of the devil, body and soul,”[699] and, reverting once again to his favourite image, he adds elsewhere: “Neither the dens of evil women nor any secret sins are so pernicious as those rules and vows which the devil himself has invented.”[700]

We have to proceed to the uninviting task of collecting other sayings of Luther’s, particularly from the Table-Talk, which are characteristic of his more than plain manner of speaking, and to pass in review the somewhat peculiar views held by him on matters sexual. As it is to be feared that the delicacy of some of our readers will be offended, we may point out that those who wish are at liberty to skip the pages which follow and to continue from Section 7 of the present chapter which forms the natural sequence of what has gone before. Certainly no one would have had just cause for complaint had one of the guests at Luther’s table chosen to take leave when the conversation began to turn on matters distasteful to him. The historian, however, is obliged to remain. True to his task he may not close his ears to what is said, however unpleasant the task of listener. He must bear in mind that Cordatus, one of Luther’s guests, in the Diary he wrote praises Luther’s Table-Talk as “more precious than the oracles of Apollo.” This praise Cordatus bestows not only on the “serious theological discourses,” but also expressly on those sayings which were apparently merely frivolous.[701] Another pupil, Mathesius, who was also frequently present, assures us he never heard an improper word from Luther’s lips.[702] This he writes in spite of the fact, that one of the first anecdotes he relates, embellished with a Latin verse from Philo, contains an unseemly jest,[703] and that he himself immediately after tells how Luther on one occasion told the people from the pulpit that: “Ein weiter Leib und zeitiger Mist ist gut zu scheiden”; he even mentions that Luther was carried away to express himself yet more plainly concerning the ventral functions, till he suddenly reined in and corrected himself. The truth is that Mathesius was an infatuated admirer of Luther’s.

As a matter of fact, terms descriptive of the lower functions of the body again and again serve Luther not only to express his anger and contempt, but as comparisons illustrative of his ideas, whether on indifferent matters or on the highest and most sacred topics. It is true that what he said was improper rather than obscene, coarse rather than lascivious. Nor, owing to the rough and uncouth character of the age and the plainness of speech then habitual, were his expressions, taken as a whole, so offensive to his contemporaries as to us. Yet, that Luther should have cultivated this particular sort of language so as to outstrip in it all his literary contemporaries, scarcely redounds to his credit. His readers and hearers of that day frequently expressed their disgust, and at times his language was so strong that even Catherine Bora was forced to cry halt.

As a matter of course the devil came in for the largest share of this kind of vituperation, more particularly that devil who was filling Luther with anxiety and trouble of mind. The Pope and his Catholic opponents came a good second. Luther was, however, fond of spicing in the same way even his utterances on purely worldly matters.

“When we perceive the devil tempting us,” he says, “we can easily overcome him by putting his pride to shame and saying to him: ‘Leck mich im Arss,’ or ‘Scheiss in die Bruch und hengs an den Halss.’”[704] This counsel he actually put in practice: “On May 7, 1532, the devil was tormenting me in the afternoon, and thoughts troubled me, such as that a thunderbolt might kill me, so I replied to him: ‘Leck mich im Arss, I am going to sleep, not to hold a disputation.’”[705] When the devil would not cease urging his sins against him he had a drastic method of effectually disposing of his importunity.[706]

He relates in the Table-Talk, in 1536, the “artifice” by which the parish-priest of Wittenberg, his friend Johann Bugenhagen (Pomeranus), had put the devil to flight. It was a question of the milk which the devil had bewitched by means of sorceresses or witches. Luther says: “Dr. Pommer’s plan was the best, viz. to plague them [the witches] with filth and stir it into the milk so that everything stank. For when his [Pommer’s] cows also lost their milk, he promptly took a vessel filled with milk, relieved himself in it, poured out the contents and said: ‘There, devil, eat that.’ After that he was no longer deprived of the milk.”[707] Before this his wife and the maids had worried themselves to death trying “to get the butter to come”—as we read in another account of this occurrence in a version of the Table-Talk which is more accurately dated—but all to no purpose. “Then Pommer came up, mocked at the devil and eased himself in the churn. Thereupon Satan ceased his tricks, for he is proud and cannot bear to be laughed at.”[708]

Less formal, according to him, was the action of another individual, who had put Satan to flight by a “crepitus ventris.”[709]

Still, all temptations of the devil are profitable to us, so Luther says, for, if we were always at peace, the devil himself “would treat us ignominiously,”[710] for he is full of nothing but deception and filthiness. Luther, like many of his contemporaries and later writers, was well acquainted with the devil’s private life, and convinced that “devil’s prostitutes: ‘cum quibus Sathan coiret’” actually existed.[711]

As the filthy details of the expulsion of the devil from the churn are omitted in Lauterbach’s Diary, certain defenders of Luther think they are warranted in drawing from this particular passage the conclusion that the Table-Talk had been polluted by “unseemly” additions in Aurifaber’s and other later versions (above, p. 224 f.) which “must not be laid to the charge of the Reformer.” “Not Luther in his domestic circle, but the compilers and collectors of the much-discussed Table-Talk, Aurifaber in particular, were rude, obscene and vulgar.” The publication of the original documents, for instance, by Kroker in 1903, has, however, shown the first version of the Table-Talk to be even more intolerably coarse, and confirmed the substantial accuracy of the text of the older German Table-Talk at present under discussion.[712] Preger, the editor of Schlaginhaufen’s notes, rightly repudiated such evasions even in 1888, together with the alleged proofs urged by apologists. “We want to see Luther,” he says, “under the actual conditions in which he moved, and in all his own native rudeness.”[713] Kroker also pointed out that even the first writers of the Table-Talk made use of certain signs in their notes (e.g. × or |) in lieu of certain words employed by Luther which they felt scrupulous about writing.[714]

“The entire lack of restraint with which Luther expresses himself,” a Protestant writer says of the Table-Talk edited by Kroker, “makes a remarkable impression on the reader of to-day, more particularly when we consider that his wife and children were among the audience.... In the Table-Talk we meet with numerous statements, some of them far-fetched, which are really coarse.... Although we can explain Luther’s love of obscenities, still, this does not hinder us from deploring his use of such and placing it to his discredit. It is true,” the same writer proceeds, “that Luther is never lascivious or merely frivolous.”[715] As regards the latter assertion the texts to be adduced will afford a better opportunity of judging. That at any rate in the instances already mentioned Luther did not intentionally wish to excite his hearers’ passions is clear, and the fact has been admitted even by Catholic polemics who have really read his writings and Table-Talk.[716]

An alarming number of dirty expressions concerning the Pope and Catholicism occur in the Table-Talk.

Elsewhere, however, he says of the Council: “I should like, during my lifetime, to see a Council deal with the matter, for they would give one another a fine pummelling, and us a splendid reason for writing against them.”[718]

What was the origin of the Pope’s authority? “I see plainly whence the Pope came; he is the vomit of the lazy, idle Lords and Princes.”[719]—“Then the Pope burst upon the world with his pestilential traditions and bound men by his carnal ordinances, his rules and Masses, to his filthy, rotten law.”[720]

Such unseemly expressions occur at times in conjunction with thoughts intended to be sublime. “I hold that God has just as much to do in bringing things back to nothingness as He has in creating them. This he [Luther] said, referring to human excrement. He also said: I am astounded that the dung-hill of the world has not reached the very sky.”[721]—“He took his baby into his arms and perceived that it was soiling its diaper. His remark was that the small folk by messing themselves and by their howling and screaming earn their food and drink just as much as we deserve heaven by our good works.”[722] He even brings the holy name of God into conjunction with one such customary vulgar expression. “I too have laid down rules and sought to be master, Aber der frum Gott hat mich in sein Arss fahren lassen und meyn Meystern ist nichts worden.”[723]

“There are many students here, but I do not believe there is one who would allow himself to be anointed [by the Papists], or open his mouth for the Pope to fill it with his filth; unless, perhaps, Mathesius or Master Plato.”[724]

In his strange explanation of how far God is or is not the author of evil, he says: Semei wished to curse and God merely directed his curse against David (2 Kings xvi. 10). “God says: ‘Curse him and no one else.’ Just as if a man wishes to relieve himself I cannot prevent him, but should he wish to do so on the table here, then I should object and tell him to betake himself to the corner.”[725]

“The Pope is a cuckoo who gobbles the eggs of his Church and vomits the Cardinals.”[726]

It is not surprising that in Luther’s conversations on non-theological, i.e. on secular subjects, similar and even more offensive expressions occur.

He thinks that we “feed on the bowels of the peasants,” for they “expel the stones” which produce the trees which produce the fruit on which we feed.[727]—He has a joke at the expense of an unlearned man who had mistaken the Latin equivalent of the German word “Kunst” for a common German term: “Wenn man eynem auff die Kunst küsset so bescheist er sich.”[728]

Speaking of women who had the impertinence to wish for a share in the government, he says: “The ‘Furtzlecher’ want to rule and we suffer for it; they really should be making cheese and milking the cows.”[729] Elsewhere he says to the preachers: “We never seek to please anybody nor to make our mouth the ‘Arschloch’ of another.”[730]

“Those who now grudge the preachers of the Word their bread will persecute us until we end by disgracing ourselves. Then ... ‘adorabunt nostra stercora.’” By a natural transition of ideas he goes on to say: “They will be glad to get rid of us, and we shall be glad to be out of them. We are as ready to part as ‘ein reiffer Dreck und ein weit Arssloch.’”[731]—“Rather than let them have such a work [732]

“The lawyers scream [when we appropriate Church property]: ‘Sunt bona ecclesiae!’ ... Yes [I say], but where are we to get our bread? ‘We leave you to see to that,’ they say. Yes, the devil may thank them for that. We theologians have no worse enemies than the lawyers.... We here condemn all jurists, even the pious ones, for they do not know what ‘ecclesia’ means.... If a jurist wishes to dispute with you about this, say to him: ‘Listen, my good fellow, on this subject no lawyer should speak till he hears a sow s——, then he must say: ‘Thank you, Granny dear, it is long since I listened to a sermon.’”[733]

After the above there is no need of giving further instances of the kind of language with which opponents within his fold had to put up from Luther. It will suffice to mention the poem “De merda” with which he retaliated on the satirist Lemnius for some filthy verses,[734] and the following prediction to his Zwickau opponents: “When trouble befalls them, whenever it may be, they will ‘in die Hosen scheissen und ein solchen Gestanck anrichten’ that nobody will be able to tarry in their neighbourhood.”[735]

It is also difficult for us to tarry any longer over these texts, especially as in what follows we shall meet with others of a similar character.[736]

Not to do injustice to the general character of Luther’s Table-Talk, we must again lay stress on the fact, that very many of his evening conversations are of irreproachable propriety. We may peruse many pages of the notes without meeting anything in the least offensive, but much that is both fine and attractive. Events of the day, history, nature, politics or the Bible, form in turn the subject-matter of the Table-Talk, and much of what was said was true, witty and not seldom quite edifying.

Still, the fact remains that filthy talking and vulgarity came so natural to Luther as to constitute a questionable side to his character.

Even when writing seriously, and in works intended for the general public, he seems unable to bridle his pen.

In the book “Wider das Bapstum zu Rom vom Teuffel gestifft,” he introduces, for instance, the following dialogue: “We have enacted in our Decretals [say the Papists] that only the Pope shall summon Councils and appoint to benefices. [Luther]: My friend, is that really true? Who commanded you to decree this? [Answer]: Be silent, you heretic, what proceeds from our mouth must be hearkened to. [Luther]: So you say; but which mouth do you mean? Da die Förze ausfahren? To such an opinion you are welcome. Or that into which good Corso [wine] is poured? Da scheiss ein Hund ein! [Answer]: Out upon you, you shameless Luther, is it thus you talk to the Pope? [Luther]: Out upon you rather, you rude asses and blasphemous desperadoes, to address the Emperor and the Empire in such a manner! How can you venture to insult and slight four such great Councils and the four greatest Christian Emperors ‘umb euer Förze und Drecketal [sic] willen?’ What reason have you to think yourselves anything but big, rude, senseless fools and donkeys?”[737]

Before this he says in the same work, in personal abuse of Pope Paul III.: “Dear donkey, don’t lick! Oh, dear little Pope-ass, were you to fall and some filth escape you, how all the world would mock at you and say: Lo, how the Pope-ass has disgraced itself!... Oh, fiendish Father, do not be unmindful of your great danger.”[738]

“Dr. Luther is a rough sort of fellow; were he to hear that, he would rush in booted and spurred like a countryman and say: The Pope had been thrust into the Church by all the devils from hell.”[739] “‘As much as the sun is greater than the moon, so does the Pope excel the Emperor.’ ... Hearken, reader; if you forget yourself and your nether garments have to be fumigated with incense and juniper, from such a reeking sin the Most Holy Father would never absolve you.”[740]

“‘Whatsoever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.’ ‘Whatsoever’ means [according to the Catholics] all that there is on earth, churches, bishops, emperors, kings and possibly ‘alle Förze aller Esel und sein eigen Förze auch.’ Ah, dear brother in Christ, put it down to my credit when I speak here and elsewhere so rudely of the cursed, noxious, ungainly monster at Rome. Whoever knows my mind must admit that I am far, far too lenient, and that no words or thoughts of mine could repay his shameful and desperate abuse of the Word and Name of Christ, our beloved Lord and Saviour.”[741]

“I must cease,” Luther says elsewhere in his “Wider das Bapstum,” after speaking of a Decretal, “I cannot bear to wallow any longer in this blasphemous, hellish, devils’ filth and stench; let someone else read it. Whoever wants to listen to God’s Word, let him read Holy Writ; whoever prefers to listen to the devil’s word, let him read the Pope’s Drecket [sic] and Bulls,” etc.[742]

We must here consider more closely the statement, already alluded to, made by some of Luther’s apologists. To remove the unfavourable impression left on the mind of present-day readers by his unbridled language an attempt has been made to represent it as having been quite the usual thing in Luther’s day.

It is true that, saving some expressions peculiar to the Saxon peasant, such obscenity is to be met with among the neo-Humanist writers of that age, both in Germany and abroad. Even Catholic preachers in Germany, following the manners of the time, show but scant consideration for the delicacy of their hearers when speaking of sexual matters or of the inferior functions of the human body. It is quite impossible to set up a definite standard of what is becoming, which shall apply equally to every age and every state of civilisation. But if Luther’s defenders desire to exonerate him by comparing him with others, it is clear that they are not justified in adducing examples taken from burlesque, popular writers, light literature, or even from certain writings of the Humanists. The filth contained in these works had been denounced by many a better author even in that age. Luther, as already explained (vol. ii., p. 150 f.), must not be judged by a profane standard, but by that which befits a writer on religion and the spiritual life, a reformer and founder of a new religion. The fact remains that it is impossible to instance any popular religious writer who ever went so far as, or even approached, Luther in his lack of restraint in this particular. Luther, in the matter of licentiousness of language, stands out as a giant apart. The passages to be quoted later on marriage and the sexual question will make this still more apparent.

His own contemporaries declared aloud that he stood quite alone in the matter of coarseness and in his incessant use of vituperation; Catholics, such as Dungersheim, and opponents of the Catholic Church like Bullinger, testify alike in the strongest terms to the impression made upon them. Some of their numerous statements will be quoted below. We may, however, remark that the severest strictures of all came from Sir Thomas More, who, for all his kindliness of disposition, condemned most indignantly the filthy language of the assailant of King Henry VIII. of England. The untranslatable passage may be read in its Latin original in the note below.[743] Caspar Schatzgeyer, another learned opponent of Luther’s, and likewise a man of mild temper, also rebuked Luther with great vehemence for the ignoble and coarse tone he was wont to employ against theological adversaries; he plainly hints that no one within living memory had brought into the literary arena such an arsenal of obscene language. Luther behaved “like a conqueror, assured by the spirit that he was able to walk upon the sea.” Spirits must, however, be tried. “The triumphal car of the victor can only be awarded to Luther and his followers if it be admitted that to triumph is synonymous with befouling the face and garments of all foes with vituperative filth (‘conviciorum stercora’), so that they are forced to save themselves by flight from the intolerable stench and dirt. Never in any literary struggle has such an array of weapons of that sort been seen.” One could well understand how such a man inspired fear amongst all who valued the cleanliness of their garments. Well might he be left to triumph with his assertion, which his adversaries would be the last to gainsay, “that everything which is not Gospel, must make room for the Gospel.”[744]

Some have gone so far as to say, that the tone of the popular religious writers of the period, from 1450-1550, was frequently so vulgar that there is little to choose between them and Luther. This is an unfair and unhistorical aspersion on a sort of literature then much read and which, though now little known, is slowly coming to its due owing to research. We may call to mind the long list of those in whose writings Luther could have found not merely models of decency and good taste—which might well have shamed him—but also much else worthy of imitation; for instance, Thomas à Kempis, Jacob Wimpfeling, Johann Mensing, Johann Hoffmeister, Michael Vehe, Johann Wild, Matthias Sittard, Caspar Schatzgeyer, Hieronymus Dungersheim, Ulrich Krafft, Johannes Fabri, Marcus de Weida, Johann Staupitz, and lastly Peter Canisius, who also belonged practically to this period. Many other popular religious authors might be enumerated, but it is impossible to instance a single one among them who would have descended to the level of the language employed by Luther.

Moreover, those secular writers of that day whose offensive crudities have been cited in excuse of Luther, all differed from him in one particular, viz. they did not employ these as he did, or at least not to the same extent, as controversial weapons. It is one thing to collect dirty stories and to dwell on them at inordinate length in order to pander to the depraved taste of the mob; it is quite another to pelt an enemy with filthy abuse. Hate and fury only make a vulgar tone more repulsive. There are phrases used by Luther against theological adversaries which no benevolent interpretation avails to excuse. Such was his rude answer to the request of the Augsburgers (above, p. 233), or, again, “I would rather advise you to drink Malvasian wine and to believe in Christ alone, and leave the monk (who through being a monk has denied Christ) to swill water or ‘seinen eigenen Urin.’”[745]

It may occur to one to plead in justification the language of the peasants of that day, and it must be conceded, that, even now, in certain districts the countryman’s talk is such as can only be appreciated in the country. The author of a book, “Wie das Volk spricht” (1855), who made a study of the people in certain regions not particularly remarkable for culture or refinement, says quite rightly in his Preface, that his examples are often quite unsuited “for the ears of ladies, and those of a timorous disposition”; “the common people don’t wear kid gloves.” This writer was dealing with the present day, yet one might ask what indulgence an author would find were he to draw his language from such a source, particularly did he happen to be a theologian, a spiritual writer or a reformer? Luther undoubtedly savours of his time, but his expressions are too often reminiscent of Saxon familiarity; for instance, when he vents his displeasure in the words: “The devil has given his mother ‘eine Fliege in den Hintern.’”[746]

Luther was fond of introducing indelicacies of this sort even into theological tracts written in Latin and destined for the use of the learned, needless to say to the huge scandal of foreigners not accustomed to find such coarseness in the treatment of serious subjects. Under the circumstances we can readily understand the indignation of men like Sir Thomas More (above, p. 237, n. 1) at the rudeness of the German.

Luther’s example proved catching among his followers and supporters. A crowd of writers became familiar with the mention of subjects on which a discreet silence is usually observed, and grew accustomed to use words hitherto banished from polite society. So well were Luther’s works known that they set the tone. His favourite pupils, Mathesius and Aurifaber, for instance, seem scarcely aware of the unseemliness of certain questions discussed. Sleidan, the well-known Humanist historian, described the obscene woodcuts published by Luther and Lucas Cranach in 1545 in mockery of the Papacy, “as calmly as though they had been no worse than Mr. Punch’s kindly caricatures.”[747] Luther actually told the theologians and preachers (and his words carried even more weight with secular writers, who were less hampered by considerations of decency) that “those who filled the office of preacher must hold the filth of the Pope and the bishops up to their very noses,”[748] for the “Roman court, and the Pope who is the bishop of that court, is the devil’s bishop, the devil himself, nay, the excrement which the devil has ... into the Church.”[749]

One of Luther’s most ardent defenders in the present day, Wilhelm Walther of Rostock, exonerates Luther from any mere imitation of the customary language of the peasants or the monks, for, strange to say, some have seen in his tone the influence of monasticism; he claims originality for Luther. “Such a mode of expression,” he says, “was not in Luther’s case the result of his peasant extraction or of his earlier life. For, far from becoming gradually less noticeable as years went on, it is most apparent in his old age.”[750] It is plain that Luther’s earlier Catholic life cannot be held responsible, nor the monastic state of celibacy, often misjudged though it has been in certain quarters. As regards the reassertion in him of the peasant’s son, we are at liberty to think what we please. At any rate, we cannot but endorse what Walther says concerning the steady growth of the disorder; in all likelihood the applause which greeted his popular and vigorous style reacted on Luther and tended to confirm him in his literary habits. As years passed he grew more and more anxious that every word should strike home, and delighted in stamping all he wrote with the individuality of “rude Luther.” Under the circumstances it was inevitable that his style should suffer.

Walther thinks he has found the real explanation in Luther’s “energy of character” and the depth of his “moral feeling”; here, according to him, we have cause of his increasingly lurid language; Luther, “in his wish to achieve something,” and to bring “his excellent ideas” home to the man in the street, of set purpose disregarded the “esthetic feelings of his readers” and his own “reputation as a writer.” Melanchthon, says Walther, “took offence at his smutty language. Luther’s reply was to make it smuttier still.”

This line of defence is remarkable enough to deserve to be chronicled. From the historical standpoint, however, we should bear in mind that Luther had recourse to “smuttiness” not merely in theological and religious writings or when desirous of producing some effect with “his excellent ideas.” The bad habit clings to him quite as much elsewhere, and disfigures his most commonplace conversations and casual sallies.

Thus the psychological root of the problem lies somewhat deeper. We shall not be far wrong in believing, that a man who moved habitually amidst such impure imaginations, and gave unrestrained expression to statements of a character so offensive, bore within himself the cause. Luther was captain in a violent warfare on vows, religious rules, celibacy and many other ordinances and practices of the Church, which had formerly served as barriers against sensuality. Consciously or unconsciously his rude nature led him to cast off the fetters of shame which had once held him back from what was low and vulgar. After all, language is the sign and token of what is felt within. It was chiefly his own renunciation of the higher standard of life which led him to abandon politeness in speech and controversy, and, in word and imagery, to sink into ever lower depths. Such is most likely the correct answer to the psychological problem presented by the steady growth of this questionable element in his language.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (“Werke,” 7, p. 401) has a few words, not devoid of admiration for Luther, which, however, apply to the whole man and not merely to his habits of speech. They may well serve as a transition to what follows: “Luther’s merit lies in this, that he possessed the courage of his sensuality—in those days tactfully described as the ‘freedom of the Gospel.’”

5. On Marriage and Sexuality

Christianity, with its doctrine of chastity, brought into the heathen world a new and vital element. It not only inculcated the controlling of the sexual instinct by modesty and the fear of God, but, in accordance with the words of our Saviour and His Apostle, St. Paul, it represented voluntary renunciation of marriage and a virgin life as more perfect and meritorious in God’s sight. What appeared so entirely foreign to the demands of nature, the Christian religion characterised as really not only attainable, but fraught with happiness for those who desired to follow the counsel of Christ and who trusted in the omnipotence of His grace. The sublime example of our Lord Himself, of His Holy Mother, and of the disciple whom Jesus loved, also St. Paul’s praise for virginity and the magnificent description in the Apocalypse of the triumphal throng of virgins who follow the Lamb, chanting a song given to them alone to sing—all this inspired more generous souls to tread with cheerfulness the meritorious though thorny path of continence. Besides these, countless millions, who did not choose to live unwedded, but were impelled by their circumstances to embrace the married state, learnt in the school of Christianity, with the help of God’s grace, that in matrimony too it was possible for them to serve God cheerfully and to gain everlasting salvation.

The Necessity of Marriage.

After having violated his monastic vows, Luther not only lost a true appreciation of the celibate state when undertaken for the love of God, but also became disposed to exaggerate the strength of the sexual instinct in man, to such an extent, that, according to him, extra-matrimonial misconduct was almost unavoidable to the unmarried. In this conviction his erroneous ideas concerning man’s inability for doing what is good play a great part. He lays undue stress on the alleged total depravity of man and represents him as the helpless plaything of his evil desires and passions, until at last it pleases God to work in him. At the same time the strength of some of his statements on the necessity of marriage is due to controversial interests; to the desire to make an alluring appeal to the senses of those bound by vows or by the ecclesiastical state, to become unfaithful to the promises they had made to the Almighty. Unfortunately the result too often was that Luther’s invitation was made to serve as an excuse for a life which did not comply even with the requirements of ordinary morality.

“As little as it is in my power,” Luther proclaims, “that I am not a woman, so little am I free to remain without a wife.”[751]

“It is a terrible thing,” he writes with glaring exaggeration to Albert, Archbishop of Mayence, “for a man to be found without a wife in the hour of death; at the very least he should have an earnest purpose of getting married. For what will he say when God asks him: ‘I made you a man, not to stand alone but to take a wife; where then is your wife?’”[752]

To another cleric who fancied himself compelled to marry, he writes in the year of his own wedding: “Your body demands and needs it; God wills it and insists upon it.”[753]

“Because they [the Papists] rejected marriage [!],” he says, “and opposed the ordinance of God and the clear testimony and witness of Scripture, therefore they fell into fornication, adultery, etc., to their destruction.”[754]

“Just as the sun has no power to stop shining, so also is it implanted in human nature, whether male or female, to be fruitful. That God makes exceptions of some, as, for instance, on the one hand of the bodily infirm and impotent, and on the other of certain exalted natures, must be regarded in the same light as other miracles.... Therefore it is likewise not my will that such should marry.”[755]

“A man cannot dispense with a wife for this reason: The natural instinct to beget children is as deeply implanted as that of eating and drinking.” Hence it is that God formed the human body in the manner He did, which Luther thereupon proceeds to describe to his readers in detail.[756]

“Before marriage we are on fire and rave after a woman.... St. Jerome writes much of the temptations of the flesh. Yet that is a trivial matter. A wife in the house will remedy that malady. Eustochia [Eustochium] might have helped and counselled Jerome.”[757]

One sentence of Luther’s, which, as it stands, scarcely does honour to the female sex, runs as follows: “The Word and work of God is quite clear, viz. that women were made to be either wives or prostitutes.”[758]

By this statement, which so easily lends itself to misunderstanding, Luther does not mean to put women in the alternative of choosing either marriage or vice. In another passage of the same writing he says distinctly, what he repeats also elsewhere: “It is certain that He [God] does not create any woman to be a prostitute.” Still, it is undeniable that in the above passage, in his recommendation of marriage, he allows himself to be carried away to the use of untimely language.—In others of the passages cited he modifies his brutal proclamation of the force of the sexual craving, and the inevitable necessity of marriage, by statements to quite another effect, though these are scarcely noticeable amid the wealth of words which he expends in favour of man’s sensual nature; for instance, he speaks of the “holy virgins,” who “live in the flesh as though not of the flesh, thanks to God’s sublime grace.”[759] “The grace of chastity”[760] was, he admits, sometimes bestowed by God, yet he speaks of the person who possesses it as a “prodigy of God’s own”;[761] such a one it is hard to find, for such a man is no “natural man.”[762] Such extravagant stress laid on the fewness of these exceptions might, however, be refuted from his own words; for instance, he urges a woman whose husband is ill to do her best with the ordinary grace of God bestowed on her as on all others, and endure with patience the absence of marital intercourse. “God is much too just to rob you of your husband by sickness in this way without on the other hand taking away the wantonness of the flesh, if you on your part tend the sick man faithfully.”[763]

That for most men it is more advisable to marry than to practise continence had never been questioned for a moment by Catholics, and if Luther had been speaking merely to the majority of mankind, as some have alleged he was, his very opponents could not but have applauded him. It is, however, as impossible to credit him with so moderate a recommendation as it is to defend another theory put forward by Protestants, viz. that his sole intention was to point out “that the man in whom the sexual instinct is at work cannot help being sensible of it.”

His real view, as so frequently described by himself, is linked up to some extent with his own personal experiences after he had abandoned the monastic life. It can scarcely be by mere chance that a number of passages belonging here synchronise with his stay at the Wartburg, and that his admission to his friend Melanchthon (“I burn in the flames of my carnal desires ... ‘ferveo carne, libidine’”)[764] should also date from this time.

In an exposition often quoted from his course of sermons on Exodus, Luther describes with great exaggeration the violence and irresistibility of the carnal instinct in man, in order to conclude as usual that ecclesiastical celibacy is an abomination. His strange words, which might so readily be misunderstood, call for closer consideration than is usually accorded them; they, too, furnished a pretext for certain far-fetched charges against Luther.

With the Sixth Commandment, says Luther, God “scolds, mocks and derides us”; this Commandment shows that the world is full of “adulterers and adulteresses,” all are “whore-mongers”; on account of our lusts and sensuality God accounted us as such and so gave us the Sixth Commandment; to a man of good conduct it would surely be an insult to say: “My good fellow, see you keep your plighted troth!” God, however, wished to show us “what we really are.” “Though we may not be so openly before the world [i.e. adulterers and whore-mongers], yet we are so at heart, and, had we opportunity, time and occasion, we should all commit adultery. It is implanted in all men, and no one is exempt ... we brought it with us from our mother’s womb.”[765] Luther does not here wish to represent adultery as a universal and almost inevitable vice, or to minimise its sinfulness. Here, as so often elsewhere, he perceives he has gone too far and thereupon proceeds to explain his real meaning. “I do not say that we are so in very deed, but that such is our inclination, and it is the heart that God searches.” Luther is quite willing to admit: “There are certainly many who do not commit fornication, but lead quite a good life”; “this is due either to God’s grace, or to fear of Master Hans” (the hangman). “Our reason tells us that fornication, adultery and other sins are wrong.... All these laws are decreed by nature itself,” just like the Commandment not to commit murder.[766] “But we are so mad,” “when once our passions are aroused, that we forget everything.” Hence we cannot but believe, that “even though our monks vowed chastity twice over,” they were adulterers in God’s sight. The conclusion he arrives at is: “Such being our nature, God forbids no one to take a wife.”

The whole passage is only another instance of Luther’s desire to magnify the consequences of original sin without making due allowance for the remedies provided by Christianity, the sacraments in particular. It is also in keeping with his usual method of clothing his attack on Catholicism in the most bitter and repulsive language, a method which gradually became a second nature to him.

In insisting on the necessity of marriage, Luther does not stop to consider that the Church of antiquity, for all her esteem for matrimony, was ever careful to see that the duties and interests of the individual, of the State and of the Church were respected, and not endangered by hasty marriages. Luther himself was not hampered by considerations of that sort, whether in the case of priests, monks or laymen. The unmarried state revolted him to such a degree, that he declares nothing offended his “ears more than the words nun, monk and priest,” and that he looked on marriage as “a Paradise, even though the married pair lived in abject poverty.”[767] A couple, who on account of their circumstances should hesitate to marry, he reproaches with a “pitiful want of faith.” “A boy not later than the age of twenty, and a girl when she is from fifteen to eighteen years of age [ought to marry]. Then they are still healthy and sound, and they can leave it to God to see that their children are provided for.”[768]

If we are to take him at his word, then a cleric ought to marry merely to defy the Pope. “For, even though he may have the gift so as to be able to live chastely without a wife, yet he ought to marry in defiance of the Pope, who insists so much on celibacy.”[769]

The “Miracle” of Voluntary and Chaste Celibacy.

Of the celibate and continent life Luther had declared (above, p. 242-3) that practically only a miracle could render it possible.[770] If we compare his statements on virginity, we shall readily see how different elements were warring within him. On the one hand he is anxious to uphold the plain words of Scripture, which place voluntary virginity above marriage. On the other, his conception of the great and, without grace, irresistible power of concupiscence draws him in the opposite direction. Moreover, man, being devoid of free will, and incapable of choosing of his own accord the higher path, in order not to fall a prey to his lusts, must resolutely embrace the married state intended by God for the generality of men. Then, again, we must not discount the change his views underwent after his marriage with a nun.

In view of the “malady” of “the common flesh,” he says of the man who pledges himself to voluntary chastity, that “on account of this malady, marriage is necessary to him and it is not in his power to do without it; for his flesh rages, burns and tends to be fruitful as much as that of any other man, and he must have recourse to marriage as the necessary remedy. Such passion of the flesh God permits for the sake of marriage and for that of the progeny.”[771]—And yet, according to another passage in Luther’s writings, even marriage is no remedy for concupiscence: “Sensual passion (‘libido’) cannot be cured by any remedy, not even marriage, which God has provided as a medicine for weak nature. For the majority of married people are adulterers, and each says to the other in the words of the poet: ‘Neither with nor without you can I live.’”[772] “Experience teaches us, that, in the case of many, even marriage is not a sufficient remedy; otherwise there would be no adultery or fornication, whereas, alas, they are only too frequent.”[773]

It is merely a seeming contradiction to his words on the miraculous nature of virginity when Luther says on one occasion: “Many are to be met with who have this gift; I also had it, though with many evil thoughts and dreams,”[774] for possibly, owing to his reference to himself, modesty led him here to represent this rare and miraculous gift as less unusual. Here he speaks of “many,” but usually of the “few.” “We find so few who possess God’s gift of chastity.”[775] “They are rare,” he says in his sermon on conjugal life, “and among a thousand there is scarcely one to be found, for they are God’s own wonder-works; no man may venture to aspire to this unless God calls him in a special manner.”[776]

Luther acknowledges that those in whom God works this “miracle”—who, while remaining unmarried, do not succumb to the deadly assaults of concupiscence—were to be esteemed fortunate on account of the happiness of the celibate state. It would be mere one-sidedness to dwell solely upon Luther’s doctrine of the necessity and worth of marriage and not to consider the numerous passages in which he speaks in praise of voluntary and chaste celibacy.

He says in the sermon on conjugal life: “No state of life is to be regarded as more pleasing in the sight of God than the married state. The state of chastity is certainly better on earth as having less of care and trouble, not in itself, but because a man can give himself to preaching and the Word of God [1 Cor. vii. 34].... In itself it is far less exalted.”[777] In the following year, 1523, in his exposition of 1 Corinthians, chapter vii., St. Paul’s declaration leads him to extol virginity: “Whoever has grace to remain chaste, let him do so and abstain from marriage and not take upon himself such trouble unless need enforce it, as St. Paul here counsels truly; for it is a great and noble freedom to be unmarried and saves one from much disquietude, vexation and trouble.”[778] He even goes so far as to say: “It is a sweet, joyous and splendid gift, for him to whom it is given, to be chaste cheerfully and willingly,”[779] and for this reason in particular “is it a fine thing,” because it enables us the better to serve the “Christian Churches, the Evangel and the preaching of the Word”; this is the case “when you refrain from taking a wife so as to be at peace and to be of service to the Kingdom of Heaven.” The preacher, he explains, for instance, was not expected to ply a trade, for which reason also he received a stipend for preaching. “Hence, whoever wishes to serve the Churches and to enjoy greater quiet, would do well to remain without a wife, for then he would have neither wife nor child to support.”[780] “Whoever has the gift of being able to live without a wife, is an angel on earth and leads a peaceful life.”[781]

In this way Luther comes practically to excuse, nay, even to eulogise, clerical celibacy; elsewhere we again find similar ideas put forward.

In his Latin exposition of Psalm cxxviii. he says: “There must be freedom either to remain single or to marry. Who would force the man who has no need to marry to do so? Whoever is among those who are able ‘to receive this word,’ let him remain unmarried and glory in the Lord.... They who can do without marrying do well (recte faciunt) to abstain from it and not to burden themselves with the troubles it brings.”[782] And again: “Whoever is set free by such a grace [783] For “if we contrast the married state with virginity, chastity is undoubtedly a nobler gift than marriage, but, still, marriage is as much God’s gift—so St. Paul tells us—as chastity.”[784] Compared with the chastity of marriage, “virgin chastity is more excellent (virginalis castitas excellentior est).”[785] “Celibacy is a gift of God and we commend both this and the married state in their measure and order. We do not extol marriage as though we should slight or repudiate celibacy.”[786]

Usually Luther represents virginity as not indeed superior but quite equal to the married state: “To be a virgin or a spouse is a different gift; both are equally well pleasing to God.”[787] As we might expect, we find the warmest appreciation of celibacy expressed before Luther himself began to think of marriage, whereas, subsequent to 1525, his strictures on celibacy become more frequent. In 1518, without any restriction, he has it that virginity is held to be the highest ornament and “an incomparable jewel”; in the case of religious, chastity was all the more precious because “they had of their own free will given themselves to the Lord.”[788] In the following year, comparing the married state with virginity, he says that “virginity is better,” when bestowed by the grace of God.[789]

“The breach with the past caused by his marriage,” says M. Rade, was “greater and more serious” than any change effected in later years in matrimonial relationship.[790] By his advocacy of marriage, as against celibacy and his glorification of family life, Luther brought about “a reversal of all accepted standards.”[791] Rade, not without sarcasm, remarks: “There is something humorous in the way in which Luther in his exposition of 1 Corinthians vii., which we have repeatedly had occasion to quote, after praising virginity ever passes on to the praise of the married state.”[792] It is quite true that his interpretation seems forced, when he makes St. Paul, in this passage, extol continency, not on account of its “merit and value in God’s sight,” but merely for the “tranquillity and comfort it insures in this life.”[793] To Luther it is of much greater interest, that St. Paul should be “so outspoken in his praise of the married state and should allude to it as a Divine gift.” He at once proceeds to prove from this, that “the married state is the holiest state of all, and that certain states had been falsely termed ‘religious’ and others ‘secular’; for the reverse ought to be the case, the married state being truly religious and spiritual.”[794]

Luther’s animus against celibacy became manifest everywhere. He refused to give sufficient weight to the Bible passages, to the self-sacrifice so pleasing to God involved in the unmarried state, or to its merits for time and for eternity. It is this animus which leads him into exaggeration when he speaks of the necessity of marriage for all men, and to utter words which contradict what he himself had said in praise of celibacy.

He paints in truly revolting colours the moral abominations of the Papacy, exaggerating in unmeasured terms the notorious disorders which had arisen from the infringement of clerical celibacy. His controversial writings contain disgusting and detailed descriptions of the crimes committed against morality in the party of his opponents; the repulsive tone is only rivalled by his prejudice and want of discrimination which lead him to believe every false report or stupid tale redounding to the discredit of Catholicism.

His conception of the rise of clerical celibacy is inclined to be hazy: “The celibacy of the clergy commenced in the time of Cyprian.” Elsewhere he says that it began “in the time of Bishop Ulrich, not more than five hundred years ago.”[795]

He assures us that “St. Ambrose and others did not believe that they were men.”[796] “The infamous superstition [of celibacy] gave rise to, and promoted, horrible sins such as fornication, adultery, incest ... also strange apparitions and visions.... What else could be expected of monks, idle and over-fed pigs as they were, than that they should have such fancies?”[797]—In the Pope’s Ten Commandments there was, so he said, a sixth which ran: “Thou shalt not be unchaste, but force them to be so” (by means of vows and celibacy), and a ninth: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, but say, it is no sin.”[798]

“Were all those living under the Papacy kneaded together, not one would be found who had remained chaste up to his fortieth year. Yet they talk much of virginity and find fault with all the world while they themselves are up to their ears in filth.”[799]—“It pleases me to see the Saints sticking in the mud just like us. But it is true that God allows nature to remain, together with the spirit and with grace.”[800]

Luther’s Loosening of the Marriage Tie.

Luther, advocate and promoter of marriage though he was, himself did much to undermine its foundations, which must necessarily rest on its indissolubility and sanctity as ordained by Christ. In the six following cases which he enumerates he professes to find sufficient grounds for dissolving the marriage tie, overstepping in the most autocratic fashion the limits of what is lawful to the manifest detriment of matrimony.

He declares, first, that if one or other of the married parties should be convicted of obstinately refusing “to render the conjugal due, or to remain with the other,” then “the marriage was annulled”; the husband might then say: “If you are unwilling, some other will consent; if the wife refuse, then let the maid come”; he had the full right to take an Esther and dismiss Vasthi, as King Assuerus had done (Esther ii. 17).[801] To the remonstrances of his wife he would be justified in replying: “Go, you prostitute, go to the devil if you please”;[802] the injured party was at liberty to contract a fresh union, though only with the sanction of the authorities or of the congregation, while the offending party incurred the penalty of the law and might or might not be permitted to marry again.[803]

The words: “If you won’t ... then let the maid come” were destined to become famous. Not Catholics only, but Protestants too, found in them a stone of offence. As they stand they give sufficient ground for scandal. Was it, however, Luther’s intention thereby to sanction relations with the maid outside the marriage bond? In fairness the question must be answered in the negative. Both before and after the critical passage the text speaks merely of the dissolution of the marriage and the contracting of another union; apart from this, as is clear from other passages, Luther never sanctioned sexual commerce outside matrimony. Thus, strictly speaking, according to him, the husband would only have the right to threaten the obstinate wife to put her away and contract a fresh union with the maid. At the same time the allusion to the maid was unfortunate, as it naturally suggested something different from marriage. In all probability it was the writer’s inveterate habit of clothing his thought in the most drastic language at his command that here led him astray. It may be that the sentence “Then let the maid come” belonged to a rude proverb which Luther used without fully adverting to its actual meaning, but it has yet to be proved that such a proverb existed before Luther’s day; at any rate, examples can be quoted of the words having been used subsequently as a proverb, on the strength of his example.[804]—It was on this, the first ground for the dissolution of marriage, that Luther based his decision in 1543, when one of the Professors turned preacher and his wife refused to follow him to his post at Frankfort-on-the-Oder, saying that “she wasn’t going to have a parson.” Luther then wrote: “I should at once leave her and marry another,” should she categorically refuse compliance; in reality the authorities ought to coerce her, but unfortunately no authority “with ‘executio’ existed, having power over the ‘ministerium.’”[805]

Secondly, according to Luther, the adultery of one party justified the other in assuming that the “guilty party was already ipso facto divorced”; “he can then act as though his spouse had died,” i.e. marry again, though Christian considerations intimate that he should wait at least six months.[806]

Thirdly, if one party “will not suffer the other to live in a Christian manner,” then the other, finding a separation from bed and board of no avail, has the right to “make a change,” i.e. to contract another union. “But how,” he asks, “if this new spouse should turn out ill and try to force the other to live like a heathen, or in an unchristian manner, or should even run away; what then, supposing this thing went on three, four or even ten times?” Luther’s answer to the conundrum is the same as before: “We cannot gag St. Paul, and therefore we cannot prevent those who desire to do so from making use of the freedom he allows.” Luther’s conviction was that the well-known passage in 1 Corinthians vii. 15 sanctioned this dangerous doctrine.[807]

Fourthly, if subsequent to the marriage contract one party should prove to be physically unfit for matrimony, then, according to Luther, the marriage might be regarded as dissolved without any ecclesiastical suit solely by “conscience and experience.” He would in that case advise, he says, that the woman, with the consent of the man, should enter into carnal relations with someone else, for instance, with her partner’s brother, for her husband would really be no husband at all, but merely a sort of bachelor life-partner; this marriage might, however, be kept secret and the children be regarded as those of the putative father.[808] Even where it was not a question of impotence but of leprosy Luther decided in much the same way, without a word of reference to any ecclesiastical or legal suit: should the healthy party “be unable or unwilling to provide for the household” without a fresh marriage, and should the sick party “consent willingly to a separation,” then the latter was simply to be looked upon as dead, the other party being free to re-marry.[809]

To these grounds of separation Luther, however, added a fifth. He declared, on the strength of certain, biblical passages, that marriage with the widow of a brother—for which, on showing sufficient grounds, it was possible to obtain a dispensation in the Catholic Church—was invalid under all circumstances, and that therefore any person married on the strength of such a dispensation might conclude a fresh union. At first, in 1531, such was not his opinion, and he declared quite valid the marriage of Henry VIII. with his sister-in-law Catherine of Aragon, which was the outcome of such a dispensation; later on, however, in 1536, on ostensibly biblical grounds he discarded the Catholic view.[810]

His views, not here alone but elsewhere, on matrimonial questions, were founded on an altogether peculiar interpretation of Scripture; he sought in Scripture for the proofs he wished to find, interpreting the Sacred Text in utter disregard of the teaching of its best authorised exponents and the traditions of the Church. The consequences of such arbitrary exegetical study he himself described characteristically enough. Speaking of Carlstadt, who, like him, was disposed to lay great stress on Old-Testament examples and referring to one of his matrimonial decisions which he was not disposed to accept, Luther exclaims: “Let him [Carlstadt] do as he pleases; soon we shall have him introducing circumcision at Orlamünde and making Mosaists of them all.”[811]

Yet he was perfectly aware of the danger of thus loosening the marriage tie. He feared that fresh grounds for severing the same would be invented day by day.[812] On one occasion he exclaims, as though to stifle his rising scruples, that it was clear that all God cares for is “faith and confession.... It does not matter to Him whether you dismiss your wife and break your word. For what is it to Him whether you do so or not? But because you owe a duty to your neighbour,” for this reason only, i.e. on account of the rights of others, it is wrong.[813] These strange words, which have often been misunderstood and quoted against Luther by polemics, were naturally not intended to question the existence of the marriage tie, but they are dangerous in so far as they do not make sufficient account of the nature of the commandment and the sin of its breach.

Most momentous of all, however, was the sixth plea in favour of divorce, an extension of those already mentioned. Not merely the apostasy of one party or his refusal to live with the Christian party, justified the other to contract a fresh union, but even should he separate, or go off, “for any reason whatever, for instance, through anger or dislike.” Should “husband or wife desert the other in this way, then Paul’s teaching [!] was to be extended so far ... that the guilty party be given the alternative either to be reconciled or to lose his spouse, the innocent party being now free and at liberty to marry again in the event of a refusal. It is unchristian and heathenish for one party to desert the other out of anger or dislike, and not to be ready patiently to bear good and ill, bitter and sweet with his spouse, as his duty is, hence such a one is in reality a heathen and no Christian.”[814]

Thus did Luther write, probably little dreaming of the incalculable confusion he was provoking in the social conditions of Christendom by such lax utterances. Yet he was perfectly acquainted with the laws to the contrary. He declaims against “the iniquitous legislation of the Pope, who, in direct contravention of this text of St. Paul’s (1 Cor. vii. 15), commands and compels such a one, under pain of the loss of his soul, not to re-marry, but to await either the return of the deserter or his death,” thus “needlessly driving the innocent party into the danger of unchastity.” He also faces, quite unconcernedly, the difficulty which might arise should the deserter change his mind and turn up again after his spouse had contracted a new marriage. “He is simply to be disregarded and discarded ... and serve him right for his desertion. As matters now are the Pope simply leaves the door open for runaways.”[815]

The new matrimonial legislator refuses to see that he is paving the way for the complete rupture of the marriage tie. If the mere fact of one party proving disinclined to continue in the matrimonial state and betaking himself elsewhere is sufficient to dissolve a marriage, then every barrier falls, and, to use Luther’s own words of the Pope a little further, “it is no wonder that the world is filled with broken pledges and forsaken spouses, nay, with adultery which is just what the devil is aiming at by [such a] law.”[816]

On the other hand, Luther, in his reforms, attacks those matrimonial impediments which, from the earliest Christian times, had always been held to invalidate marriages. The marriage of a Christian with a heathen or a Jew he thinks perfectly valid, though, as was to be expected, he does not regard it with a friendly eye. We are not to trouble at all about the Pope’s pronouncements concerning invalidity: “Just as I may eat and drink, sleep and walk, write and treat, talk and work with a pagan or a Jew, a Turk or a heretic, so also can I contract a marriage with him. Therefore pay no heed to the fool-laws forbidding this.” “A heathen is just as much a man or woman as St. Peter, St. Paul or St. Lucy.”[817]

M. Rade, the Protestant theologian quoted above, considers that on the question of divorce Luther took up “quite a different attitude,” and “opened up new prospects” altogether at variance with those of the past.[818] By his means was brought about a “complete reversal of public opinion on the externals of sexual life”; in this connection to speak of original sin was in reality mere “inward contradiction.” Such were, according to him, the results of the “Christian freedom” proclaimed by Luther.[819]

August Bebel, in his book “Die Frau und der Sozialismus,” says of Luther: “He put forward, regarding matrimony, views of the most radical character.”[820] “In advocating liberty with regard to marriage, what he had in mind was the civil marriage such as modern German legislation sanctions, together with freedom to trade and to move from place to place.”[821] “In the struggle which it now wages with clericalism social democracy has the fullest right to appeal to Luther, whose position in matrimonial matters was entirely unprejudiced. Luther and the reformers even went further in the marriage question, out of purely utilitarian motives and from a desire to please the rulers concerned, whose powerful support and lasting favour they were desirous of securing and retaining. Landgrave Philip I. of Hesse, who was well disposed towards the reformation,” etc. etc.[822]

Polygamy.

Sanctity of marriage in the Christian mind involves monogamy. The very word polygamy implies a reproach. Luther’s own feelings at the commencement revolted against the conclusions which, as early as 1520, he had felt tempted to draw from the Bible against monogamy, for instance, from the example of the Old Testament Patriarchs, such as Abraham, whom Luther speaks of as “a true, indeed a perfect Christian.”[823] It was not long, however, before he began to incline to the view that the example of Abraham and the Patriarchs did, as a matter of fact, make polygamy permissible to Christians.

In September, 1523, in his exposition on Genesis xvi., he said without the slightest hesitation: “We must take his life [Abraham’s] as an example to be followed, provided it be carried out in the like faith”; of course, it was possible to object, that this permission of having several wives had been abrogated by the Gospel; but circumcision and the sacrifice of the Paschal Lamb had also been abrogated, and yet they “are not sins, but quite optional, i.e. neither sinful nor praiseworthy.... The same must hold good of other examples of the Patriarchs, namely, if they had many wives, viz. that this also is optional.”[824]

In 1523 he advanced the following: “A man is not absolutely forbidden to have more than one wife; I could not prevent it, but certainly I should not counsel it.” He continues in this passage: “Yet I would not raise the question but only say, that, should it come before the sheriff, it would be right to answer that we do not reject the example of the Patriarchs, as though they were not right in doing what they did, as the Manicheans say.”[825]

The sermons where these words occur were published at Wittenberg in 1527 and at once scattered broadcast in several editions. We shall have to tell later how the Landgrave Philip of Hesse expressly cited on his own behalf the passage we have quoted.

Meanwhile, however, i.e. previous to the printing of his sermons on Genesis, Luther had declared, in a memorandum of January 27, 1524, addressed to Brück, the electoral Chancellor, regarding a case in point, viz. that of an Orlamünde man who wished to have two wives, that he was “unable to forbid it”; it “was not contrary to Holy Scripture”; yet, on account of the scandal and for the sake of decorum, which at times demanded the omission even of what was lawful, he was anxious not to be the first to introduce amongst Christians “such an example, which was not at all becoming”; should, however, the man, with the assistance of spiritual advisers, be able to form a “firm conscience by means of the Word,” then the “matter might well be left to take its course.”[826] This memorandum, too, also came to the knowledge of Landgrave Philip of Hesse.[827]

Subsequently Luther remained faithful to the standpoint that polygamy was not forbidden but optional; this is proved by his Latin Theses of 1528,[828] by his letter, on September 3, 1531,[829] addressed to Robert Barnes for Henry VIII. and in particular by his famous declaration of 1539 to Philip of Hesse, sanctioning his bigamy.

His defenders have taken an unfinished treatise which he commenced in the spring of 1542[830] as indicating, if not a retractation, at least a certain hesitation on his part; yet even here he shows no sign of embracing the opposite view; in principle he held fast to polygamy and merely restricts it to the domain of conscience. The explanation of the writing must be sought for in the difficulties arising out of the bigamy of Landgrave Philip. Owing to Philip’s representations Luther left the treatise unfinished, but on this occasion he expressly admitted to the Prince, that there were “four good reasons” to justify his bigamy.[831]

Needless to say, views such as these brought Luther into conflict with the whole of the past.

Augustine, like the other Fathers, had declared that polygamy was “expressly forbidden” in the New Testament as a “crime” (“crimen”).[832] Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure speak in similar terms in the name of the scholasticism of the Middle Ages. Peter Paludanus, the so-called “Doctor egregius” († 1342), repeated in his work on the Sentences, that: “Under the Gospel-dispensation it never had been and never would be permitted.”[833]

It is, however, objected that Cardinal Cajetan, the famous theologian and a contemporary of Luther, had described polygamy as allowable in principle, and that Luther merely followed in his footsteps. But Cajetan does not deny that the prohibition pronounced by the Church stands, he merely deals in scholastic fashion with the questions whether polygamy is a contravention of the natural law, and whether it is expressly interdicted in Holy Scripture. True enough, however, he answers both questions in the negative.[834] In the first everything of course depends on the view taken with regard to the patriarchs and the Old Testament exceptions; the grounds for these exceptions (for such they undoubtedly were) have been variously stated by theologians. In the second, i.e. in the matter of Holy Scripture, Cajetan erred. His views on this subject have never been copied and, indeed, a protest was at once raised by Catharinus, who appealed to the whole body of theologians as teaching that, particularly since the preaching of the Gospel, there was no doubt as to the biblical prohibition.[835]

Thus, in spite of what some Protestants have said, it was not by keeping too close to the mediæval doctrine of matrimony, that Luther reached his theory of polygamy.

It is more likely that he arrived at it owing to his own arbitrary and materialistic ideas on marriage. It was certainly not the Catholic Church which showed him the way; as she had safeguarded the sanctity of marriage, so also she protected its monogamous character and its indissolubility. In Luther’s own day the Papacy proved by its final pronouncement against the adultery of Henry VIII. of England, that she preferred to lose that country to the Church rather than sanction the dissolving of a rightful marriage (vol. iv., xxi. 1).

Toleration for Concubinage? Matrimony no Sacrament.

In exceptional cases Luther permitted those bound to clerical celibacy, on account of “the great distress of conscience,” to contract “secret marriages”; he even expressly recommended them to do so.[836] These unions, according to both Canon and Civil law, amounted to mere concubinage. Luther admits that he had advised “certain parish priests, living under the jurisdiction of Duke George or the bishops,” to “marry their cook secretly.”[837]

At the same time, in this same letter written in 1540, he explains that he is not prepared to “defend all he had said or done years ago, particularly at the commencement.” Everything, however, remained in print and was made use of not only by those to whom it was actually addressed, but by many others also; for instance, his outrageous letter to the Knights of the Teutonic Order who were bound by vow to the celibate state. Any of them who had a secret, illicit connection, and “whoever found it impossible to live chastely,” he there says, “was not to despair in his weakness and sin, nor wait for any Conciliar permission, for I would rather overlook it, and commit to the mercy of God the man who all his life has kept a pair of prostitutes, than the man who takes a wife in compliance with the decrees of such Councils.” “How much less a sinner do you think him to be, and nearer to the grace of God, who keeps a prostitute, than the man who takes a wife in that way?”[838]

Of the Prince-Abbots, who, on account of the position they occupied in the Empire, were unable to marry so long as they remained in the monastery, he likewise wrote: “I would prefer to advise such a one to take a wife secretly and to continue as stated above [i.e. remain in office], seeing that among the Papists it is neither shameful nor wrong to keep women, until God the Lord shall send otherwise as He will shortly do, for it is impossible for things to remain much longer as they are. In this wise the Abbot would be safe and provided for.”[839]

Here again we see how Luther’s interest in promoting apostasy from Rome worked hand in hand with the lax conception he had been led to form of marriage.

Of any sacrament of matrimony he refused to hear. To him marriage was really a secular matter, however much he might describe it as of Divine institution: “Know, that marriage is an outward, material thing like any other secular business.”[840] “Marriage and all that appertains to it is a temporal thing and does not concern the Church at all, except in so far as it affects the conscience.”[841] “Marriage questions do not concern the clergy or the preachers, but the authorities; theirs it is to decide on them”; this, the heading of one of the chapters of the German Table-Talk, rightly describes its contents.[842]

In Luther’s denial of the sacramental character of matrimony lies the key to the arbitrary manner in which, as shown by the above, he handled the old ecclesiastical marriage law. It was his ruling ideas on faith and justification which had led him to deny that it was a sacrament. The sacraments, in accordance with this view, have no other object or effect than to kindle in man, by means of the external sign, that faith which brings justification. Now marriage, to his mind, was of no avail to strengthen or inspire such faith. As early as 1519 he bewails the lack in matrimony of that Divine promise which sets faith at work (“quae fidem exerceat”),[843] and in his Theses of February 13, 1520, he already shows his disposition to question its right to be termed a sacrament.[844] In his work “On the Babylonish Captivity” of the same year he bluntly denies its sacramental character, urging that the Bible was silent on the subject, that matrimony held out no promise of salvation to be accepted in faith, and finally that it was in no way specifically Christian, since it had already existed among the heathen.[845] He ignores all that the Fathers had taught regarding marriage as a sacrament, with special reference to the passage in Ephesians v. 31 ff., and likewise the ancient tradition of the Church as retained even by the Eastern sects separated from Rome since the fifth century.

In advocating matrimony, instead of appealing to it as a sacrament, he lays stress on its use as a remedy provided by God against concupiscence, and on its being the foundation of that family life which is so pleasing to God. Incidentally he also points out that it is a sign of the union of Christ with the congregation.[846]

Luther did not, as has been falsely stated, raise marriage to a higher dignity than it possessed in the Middle Ages. No more unjustifiable accusation has been brought against Catholic ages than that marriage did not then come in for its due share of recognition, that it was slighted and even regarded as sinful. Elsewhere we show that the writings dating from the close of the Middle Ages, particularly German sermonaries and matrimonial handbooks, are a direct refutation of these charges.[847]

Luther on Matters Sexual.

Examples already cited have shown that, in speaking of sexual questions and of matters connected with marriage, Luther could adopt a tone calculated to make even the plainest of plain speakers wince. It is our present duty to examine more carefully this quality in the light of some quotations. Let the reader, if he chooses, look up the sermon of 1522, “On Conjugal Life,” and turn to pages 58, 59, 61, 72, 76, 83, 84; or to pages 34, 35, 139, 143, 144, 146, 152, etc., of his Exposition of Corinthians.[848] We are compelled to ask: How many theological or spiritual writers, in sermons intended for the masses, or in vernacular works, ever ventured to discuss sexual matters with the nakedness that Luther displays in his writing “Wyder den falsch genantten geystlichen Standt des Bapst und der Bischoffen” (1522), in which through several pages Luther compares, on account of its celibacy, the Papacy with the abominable Roman god Priapus.[849] In this and like descriptions he lays himself open to the very charge which he brings against the clergy: “They seduce the ignorant masses and drag them down into the depths of unchastity.”[850] He thus compares Popery to this, the most obscene form of idolatry, with the purpose of placing before the German people in the strongest and most revolting language the abomination by which he will have it that the Papacy has dishonoured and degraded the world, through its man-made ordinances. Yet the very words in which he wrote, quite apart from their blatant untruth, were surely debasing. In the same writing he also expresses himself most unworthily regarding the state of voluntary celibacy and its alleged moral and physical consequences.[851]

Here again it has been urged on Luther’s behalf, that people in his day were familiar with such plain speaking. Yet Luther himself felt at times how unsuitable, nay, revolting, his language was, hence his excuses to his hearers and readers for his want of consideration, and also his attempt to take shelter in Holy Writ.[852] That people then were ready to put up with more in sermons is undeniable. Catholic preachers are to be met with before Luther’s day who, although they do not speak in the same tone as he, do go very far in their well-meant exhortations regarding sexual matters, for instance, regarding the conjugal due in all its moral bearings. Nor is it true to say that such things occur only in Latin outlines or sketches of sermons, intended for preacher rather than people, for they are also to be found in German sermons actually preached. This disorder even called forth a sharp rebuke from a Leipzig theologian who was also a great opponent of Luther’s, viz. Hieronymus Dungersheim.[853]—In none of the Catholic preachers thus censured, do we, however, find quite the same seasoning we find in Luther, nor do they have recourse to such, simply to spice their rhetoric or their polemics, or to air new views on morality.

His contemporaries even, more particularly some Catholics, could not see their way to repeat what he had said on sexual matters.[854] “It must be conceded” that Luther’s language on sexual questions was “at times repulsively outspoken, nay, coarse, and that not only to our ears but even to those of his more cultured contemporaries.” Thus a Protestant writer.[855] Another admits with greater reserve: “There are writings of Luther’s in which he exceeds the limits of what was then usual.”[856]

Certain unseemly anecdotes from the Table-Talk deserve to be mentioned here; told in the course of conversation while the wine-cup went the rounds, they may well be reckoned as instances of that “buffoonery” for which Melanchthon reproves Luther. Many of them are not only to be found in Bindseil’s “Colloquia” based on the Latin collection of Lauterbach, and in the old Latin collection of Rebenstock, but have left traces in the original notes of the Table-Talk, for instance, in those of Schlaginhaufen and Cordatus. It is not easy to understand why Luther should have led the conversation to such topics; in fact, these improper stories and inventions would appear to have merely served the company to while away the time.

For example, Luther amuses the company with the tale of a Spandau Provost who was a hermaphrodite, lived in a nunnery and bore a child;[857] with another, of a peasant, who, after listening to a sermon on the use of Holy Water as a detergent of sin, proceeded to put what he had heard into practice in an indecent fashion;[858] with another of self-mutilated eunuchs, in telling which he is unable to suppress an obscene joke concerning himself.[859] He entertains the company with some far from witty, indeed entirely tactless and indecent stories, for instance, about the misfortune of a concubine who had used ink in mistake for ointment;[860] of the Beghine who, when violence was offered her, refused to scream because silence was enjoined after Compline;[861] of a foolish young man’s interview with his doctor;[862] of an obscene joke at the expense of a person uncovered;[863] of a young man’s experience with his bathing dress;[864] of women who in shameless fashion prayed for a husband;[865] of the surprise of Duke Hans, the son of Duke George of Saxony, by his steward, etc.[866]

These stories, in Bindseil’s “Colloquia,” are put with the filthy verses on Lemnius,[867] the “Merdipoeta,” and form a fit sequence to the account of Lustig, the cook, and the substitute he used for sauces.[868]

These anecdotes are all related more or less in detail, but, apart from them, we have plentiful indelicate sayings and jokes and allusions to things not usually mentioned in society, sufficient in fact to fill a small volume.

Luther, for instance, jests in unseemly fashion “amid laughter” on the difference in mind and body which distinguishes man from woman, and playfully demonstrates from the formation of their body that his Catherine and women in general must necessarily be deficient in wit.[869] An ambiguous sally at the expense of virginity and the religious life, addressed to the ladies who were usually present at these evening entertainments, was received with awkward silence and a laugh.[870]

On another occasion the subject of the conversation was the female breasts, it being queried whether they were “an ornament” or intended for the sake of the children.[871] Then again Luther, without any apparent reason, treats, and with great lack of delicacy, of the circumstances and difficulties attending confinement;[872] he also enters fully into the troubles of pregnancy,[873] and, to fill up an interval, tells a joke concerning the womb of the Queen of Poland.[874]

In the Table-Talk Luther takes an opportunity of praising the mother’s womb and does so with a striking enthusiasm, after having exclaimed: “No one can sufficiently extol marriage.” “Now, in his old age,” he understood this gift of God. Every man, yea, Christ Himself, came from a mother’s womb.[875]

Among the passages which have been altered or suppressed in later editions from motives of propriety comes a statement in the Table-Talk concerning the Elector Johann Frederick, who was reputed a hard drinker. In Aurifaber’s German Table-Talk the sense of the passage is altered, and in the old editions of Stangwald and Selnecker the whole is omitted.[876]

Of the nature of his jests the following from notes of the Table-Talk gives a good idea: “It will come to this,” he said to Catherine Bora, “that a man will take more than one wife.” The Doctoress replied: “Tell that to the devil!” The Doctor proceeded: Here is the reason, Katey: a wife can have only one child a year, but the husband several. Katey replied: “Paul says: ‘Let everyone have his own wife.’ Whereupon the Doctor retorted: ‘His own,’ but not ‘only one,’ that you won’t find in Paul. The Doctor teased his wife for a long time in this way, till at last she said: ‘Sooner than allow this, I would go back to the convent and leave you with all the children.’”[877]

When the question of his sanction of Philip of Hesse’s bigamy and the scandal arising from it came under discussion, his remarks on polygamy were not remarkable for delicacy. He says: “Philip (Melanchthon) is consumed with grief about it.... And yet of what use is it?... I, on the contrary am a hard Saxon and a peasant.... The Papists could have seen how innocent we are, but they refused to do so, and so now they may well look the Hessian ‘in anum.’ ... Our sins are pardonable, but those of the Papists, unpardonable; for they are contemners of Christ, have crucified Him afresh and defend their blasphemy wittingly and wilfully. What are they trying to get out of it [the bigamy]? They slay men, but we work for our living and marry many wives.” “This he said with a merry air and amid much laughter,” so the chronicler relates. “God is determined to vex the people, and if it comes to my turn I shall give them the best advice and tell them to look Marcolfus ‘in anum,’” etc.[878] On rising from table he said very cheerfully: “I will not give the devil and the Papists a chance of making me uneasy. God will put it right, and to Him we must commend the whole Church.”[879] By such trivialities did he seek to escape his burden of oppression.

On one occasion he said he was going to ask the Elector to give orders that everybody should “fill themselves with drink”; then perhaps they would abandon this vice, seeing that people were always ready to do the opposite of what was commanded; what gave rise to this speech on drinking was the arrival of three young men, slightly intoxicated, accompanied by a musical escort. The visitors interrupted the conversation, which had turned on the beauty of women.[880]

Many of Luther’s letters, as well as his sermons, lectures and Table-Talk, bear sad witness to his unseemly language. It may suffice here to mention one of the most extraordinary of these letters, while incidentally remarking, that, from the point of view of history, the passages already cited, or yet to be quoted, must be judged of in the light of the whole series, in which alone they assume their true importance. In a letter written in the first year of his union, to his friend Spalatin, who though also a priest was likewise taking a wife, he says: “The joy at your marriage and at my own carries me away”; the words which follow were omitted in all the editions (Aurifaber, De Wette, Walch), Enders being the first to publish them from the original. They are given in the note below.[881]

Luther himself was at times inclined to be ashamed of his ways of speaking, and repeatedly expresses regret, without, however, showing any signs of improvement. We read in Cordatus’s Diary that (in 1527, during his illness) “he asked pardon for the frivolous words he had often spoken with the object of banishing the melancholy of a weak flesh, not with any evil intent.”[882] At such moments he appears to have remembered how startling a contrast his speeches and jests presented to the exhortation of St. Paul to his disciples, and to all the preachers of the Gospel: “Make thyself a pattern to all men ... by a worthy mode of life; let thy conversation be pure and blameless” (Titus ii. 7 f.). “Be a model to the faithful in word, in act, in faith and charity, in chastity” (1 Tim. iv. 12).

It would be wrong to believe that he ever formally declared foul speaking to be permissible. It has been said that, in any case in theory, he had no objection to it, and, that, in a letter, he even recommends it. The passage in question, found in an epistle addressed to Prince Joachim of Anhalt, who was much troubled with temptations to melancholy, runs thus: “It is true that to take pleasure in sin is the devil, but to take pleasure in the society of good, pious people in the fear of God, sobriety and honour is well pleasing to God, even with possibly a word or ‘Zötlein’ too much.”[883] The expression “Zötlein” (allied with the French “sottise”) did not, however, then bear the bad meaning suggested by the modern German word “Zote,” and means no more than a jest or merry story; that such a meaning was conveyed even by the word “Zote” itself can readily be proved.

Especially was it Luther’s practice to load his polemics with a superabundance of filthy allusions to the baser functions of the body; at times, too, we meet therein expressions and imagery positively indecent.

In his work “Vom Schem Hamphoras” against the Jews he revels in scenes recalling that enacted between Putiphar’s wife and Joseph, though here it is no mere temptation but actual mutual sin; the tract contains much else of the same character.[884] In the notorious tract entitled “Wider Hans Worst,” which he wrote against Duke Henry of Brunswick (1541), he begins by comparing him with a “common procuress walking the street to seize, capture and lead astray honest maidens”;[885] he gradually works himself up into such a state of excitement as to describe the Church of Rome as the “real devil’s whore”; nay, the “archdevil’s whore,” the “shameless prostitute” who dwells in a “whores’ church” and houses of ill-fame, and compared with whom, as we have already heard him say elsewhere, “common city whores, field whores, country whores and army whores”[886] may well be deemed saints. In this work such figures of speech occur on almost every page. Elsewhere he describes the motions of the “Roman whore” in the most repulsive imagery.[887]

The term “whore” is one of which he is ever making use, more particularly in that connection in which he feels it will be most shocking to Catholics, viz. in connection with professed religious. Nor does he hesitate to use this word to describe human reason as against faith. In such varied and frenzied combinations is the term met with in his writings that one stands aghast. As he remarked on one occasion to his pupil Schlaginhaufen, people would come at last to look upon him as a pimp. He had been asked to act as intermediary in arranging a marriage: “Write this down,” he said, “Is it not a nuisance? Am I expected to provide also the women with husbands? Really they seem to take me for a pander.”[888]

Even holy things were not safe in Luther’s hands, but ran the risk of being vilified by outrageous comparisons and made the subject of improper conversations.

According to Lauterbach’s Diary, for instance, Luther discoursed in 1538 on the greatness of God and the wisdom manifest in creation; in this connection he holds forth before the assembled company on the details of generation and the shape of the female body. He then passes on to the subject of regeneration: “We think we can instruct God ‘in regenerationis et salvationis articulo,’ we like to dispute at great length on infant baptism and the occult virtue of the sacraments, and, all the while, poor fools that we are, we do not know ‘unde sint stercora in ventre.’”[889] Over the beer-can the conversation turns on temperance, and Luther thereupon proposes for discussion an idea of Plato’s on procreation;[890] again he submits an ostensibly difficult “casus” regarding the girl who becomes a mother on the frontier of two countries;[891] he relates the tale of the woman who “habitu viri et membro ficto” “duas uxores duxit”;[892] he dilates on a “marvellous” peculiarity of the female body, which one would have thought of a nature to interest a physician rather than a theologian.[893] He also treats of the Bible passage according to which woman must be veiled “on account of the angels” (1 Cor. xi. 11), adding with his customary vulgarity: “And I too must wear breeches on account of the girls.”[894] When the conversation turned on the marriage of a young fellow to a lady of a certain age he remarked, that at such nuptials the words “Increase and multiply” ought not to be used; as the poet says: “Arvinam quaerunt multi in podice porci,” surely a useless search.[895] The reason “why God was so angry with the Pope” was, he elsewhere informs his guests, because he had robbed Him of the fruit of the body. “We should have received no blessing unless God had implanted our passions in us. But to the spark present in both man and wife the children owe their being; even though our children are born ugly we love them nevertheless.”[896]—He then raises his thoughts to God and exclaims: “Ah, beloved Lord God, would that all had remained according to Thine order and creation.” But what the Pope had achieved by his errors was well known: “We are aware how things have gone hitherto.” “The Pope wanted to enforce celibacy and to improve God’s work.” But the monks and Papists “ ... are consumed with concupiscence and the lust of fornication.”[897]—Take counsel with someone beforehand, he says, “in order that you may not repent after the marriage. But be careful that you are not misled by advice and sophistry, else you may find yourself with a sad handful ... then He Who drives the wheel, i.e. God, will jeer at you. But that you should wish to possess one who is pretty, pious and wealthy, nay, my friend ... it will fare with you as it did with the nuns who were given carved Jesus’s and who cast about for others who at least were living and pleased them better.”[898]

Thus does Luther jumble together unseemly fancies, coarse concessions to sensuality and praise for broken vows, with thoughts of the Divine.

Anyone who regards celibacy and monastic vows from the Catholic standpoint may well ask how a man intent on throwing mud at the religious state, a man who had broken his most sacred pledges by his marriage with a nun, could be in a position rightly to appreciate the delicate blossoms which in every age have sprung up on the chaste soil of Christian continence in the lives of countless priests and religious, not in the cloister alone, but also in the world without?

Of his achievements in this field, of his having trodden celibacy under foot, Luther was very proud. To the success of his unholy efforts he himself gave testimony in the words already mentioned: “I am like unto Abraham [the Father of the Faithful] for I am the progenitor of all the monks, priests and nuns [who have married], and of all the many children they have brought into the world; I am the father of a great people.”[899]

By his attacks on celibacy and the unseemliness of his language Luther, nevertheless, caused many to turn away from him in disgust. Duke Anton Ulrich of Brunswick, who reverted to Catholicism in 1710, states in a writing on the step he had taken, that it was due to some extent to his disgust at Luther’s vulgarity. “What writer,” he says, “has left works containing more filth?... Such was his way of writing that his followers at the present day are ashamed of it.” He had compared the character of this reformer of the Church, so he tells us, with that of the apostolic men of ancient times. In striking contrast they were “pious, God-fearing men, of great virtue, temperate, humble, abstemious, despising worldly possessions, not given to luxury, having only the salvation of souls before their eyes”; particularly did they differ from Luther in the matter of purity and chastity.[900]

6. Contemporary Complaints. Later False Reports

Those of his contemporaries who speak unfavourably of Luther’s private life belong to the ranks of his opponents. His own followers either were acquainted only with what was to his advantage, or else took care not to commit themselves to any public disapproval. To give blind credence in every case to the testimony of his enemies would, of course, be opposed to the very rudiments of criticism, but equally alien to truth and justice would it be to reject it unheard. In each separate case it must depend on the character of the witness and on his opportunity for obtaining reliable information and forming a just opinion, how much we credit his statements.

Concerning the witnesses first to be heard, we must bear in mind, that, hostile as they were to Luther, they had the opportunity of seeing him at close quarters. How far their statements are unworthy of credence (for that they are not to be taken exactly at their word is clear enough) cannot be determined here in detail. The mere fact, however, that, at Wittenberg and in Saxony, some should have written so strongly against Luther would of itself lead us to pay attention to their words. In the case of the other witnesses we shall be able to draw some sort of general inference from their personal circumstances as to the degree of credibility to be accorded them. While writers within Luther’s camp were launching out into fulsome panegyrics of their leader, it is of interest to listen to what the other side had to say, even though, there too, the speakers should allow themselves to be carried away to statements manifestly exaggerated.

Simon Lemnius, the Humanist, who, owing to his satirical epigrams on the Wittenberg professor—whom he had known personally—was inexorably persecuted by the latter, wrote, in his “Apology,” about 1539, the following description of Luther’s life and career. This and the whole “Apology,” was suppressed by the party attacked; the later extracts from this writing, published by Schelhorn (1737) and Hausen (1776), passed over it in silence, till it was at last again brought to light in 1892: “While Luther boasts of being an evangelical bishop, how comes it that he lives far from temperately? For he is in the habit of overloading himself with food and drink; he has his court of flatterers and adulators; he has his Venus [Bora] and wants scarcely anything which could minister to his comfort and luxury.”[901] “He has written a pamphlet against me, in which, as both judge and authority, he condemns and mishandles me. Surely no pastor would arrogate to himself such authority in temporal concerns. He deprives the bishops of their temporal power, but himself is a tyrant; he circulates opprobrious and quite execrable writings against illustrious Princes. He flatters one Prince and libels another. What is this but to preach revolt and to pave the way for a general upheaval and the downfall of our States?... It is greatly to be feared, that, should war once break out, first Germany will succumb miserably and then the whole Roman Empire go to ruin. Meanwhile Luther sits like a dictator at Wittenberg and rules; what he says must be taken as law.”[902]

By the Anabaptists Luther’s and his followers’ “weak life” was severely criticised about 1525. Here we refer only cursorily to the statements already quoted,[903] in order to point out that these opponents based their theological strictures on a general, and, in itself, incontrovertible argument: “Where Christian faith does not issue in works, there the faith is neither rightly preached nor rightly accepted.”[904] In Luther they were unable to discern a “spark of Christianity,” though his “passionate and rude temper” was evident enough.[905] “The witless, self-indulgent lump of flesh at Wittenberg,” Dr. Luther, was not only the “excessively ambitious Dr. Liar, but also a proud fool,”[906] whose “defiant teaching and selfish ways” were far removed from what Christ and His Apostles had enjoined. In spite of the manifest spiritual desolation of the people Luther was wont to sit “with the beer-swillers” and to eat “sumptuous repasts”; he had even tolerated “open harlotry” on the part of some of the members of the University although, as a rule, he “manfully opposed” this vice.[907]

Catholic censors were even stronger in their expression of indignation. Dungersheim of Leipzig, in spite of his polemics an otherwise reliable witness, though rather inclined to rhetoric, in the fourth decade of the century reproached him in his “Thirty Articles” for leading a “life full of scandal”; he likewise appeals to some who had known him intimately, and was ready, if necessary, “to relate everything, down to the circumstances and the names.”[908] As a matter of fact, however, this theologian never defined his charges.

From the Duchy of Saxony, too, came the indignant voice of bluff Duke George, whom Luther had attacked and slandered in so outrageous a fashion: “Out upon you, you forsworn and sacrilegious fellow, Martin Luther (may God pardon me), public-house keeper for all renegade monks, nuns and apostates!”[909] He calls him “Luther, you drunken swine,” you “most unintelligent bacchant and ten times dyed horned beast of whom Daniel spoke in chapter viii., etc.”[910] Luther had called this Prince a “bloodhound”; he is paid back in his own coin: “You cursed, perjured bloodhound”; he was the “arch-murderer,” body and soul, of the rebellious peasants, “the biggest murderer and bloodhound ever yet seen on the surface of the globe.”[911] “You want us to believe that no one has written more beautifully of the Emperor and the Empire than yourself. If what you have written of his Imperial Majesty is beautiful, then my idea of beauty is all wrong; for it would be easy to find tipsy peasants in plenty who can write nine times better than you.”[912]

From the theologian Ambrosius Catharinus we hear some details concerning Luther’s private life.

On the strength of hearsay reports, picked up, so it would appear, from some of the visitors to the Council of Trent in 1546 and 1547, this Italian, who was often over-ardent both in attack and defence, wrote in the latter year his work: “De consideratione praesentium temporum libri quattuor.” Here he says: “Quite reliable witnesses tell me of Luther, that he frequently honoured the wedding feasts of strangers by his presence, went to see the maidens dance and occasionally even led the round dance himself. They declare that he sometimes got up from the banquets so drunk and helpless that he staggered from side to side, and had to be carried home on his friends’ shoulders.”[913]

As an echo of the rumours current in Catholic circles we have already mentioned elsewhere the charges alleged in 1524 by Ferdinand the German King, and related by Luther himself, viz. that he “passed his time with light women and at playing pitch-and-toss in the taverns.”[914] We have also recorded the vigorous denunciation of the Catholic Count, Hoyer of Mansfeld, which dates from a somewhat earlier period; this came from a man whose home was not far from Luther’s, and to whose character no exception has been taken. Hoyer wrote that whereas formerly at Worms he had been a “good Lutheran,” he had now “found that Luther was nothing but a knave,” who, as the way was at Mansfeld, filled himself with drink, was fond of keeping company with pretty women, and led a loose life, for which reason he, the Count, had “fallen away altogether.”[915] The latter statements refer to a period somewhere about 1522, i.e. previous to Luther’s marriage. With regard to that critical juncture in the year 1525 some consideration must be given to what Bugenhagen says of Luther’s marriage in his letter to Spalatin, which really voices the opinion of Luther’s friends at Wittenberg: “Evil tales were the cause of Dr. Martin’s becoming a married man so unexpectedly.”[916] The hope then expressed by Melanchthon, that marriage would sober Luther and that he would lay aside his unseemliness,[917] was scarcely to be realised. Melanchthon, however, no longer complains of it, having at length grown resigned. Yet he continued to regret Luther’s bitterness and irritability: “Oh, that Luther would only be silent! I had hoped that as he advanced in years his many difficulties and riper experience would make him more gentle; but I cannot help seeing that in reality he is growing even more violent than before.... Whenever I think of it I am plunged into deep distress.”[918]