Luther, vol. 2 of 6 :: CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XI

THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE GREAT APOSTASY

1. Allies among the Humanists and the Nobility till the middle of 1520

As his work progressed the instigator of the innovations received offers of support from various quarters where aims similar to his were cherished.

In the first place there were many among the Humanists who greeted him with joy because they trusted that their ideals, as expressed in the “EpistolÆ obscurorum virorum,” would really be furthered by means of Luther’s boldness and energy. They took his side because they looked upon him as a champion of intellectual liberty and thus as a promoter of noble, humane culture against the prevalent barbarism.

Erasmus, Mutian, Crotus Rubeanus, Eobanus Hessus and others were numbered amongst his patrons, though, as in the case of the first three, some of them forsook him at a later date. Most of the Humanists who sought, in verse and prose, to arouse enthusiasm for Luther in Germany were as yet unaware that the spirit of the man whom they were thus extolling differed considerably from their own, and that Luther would later become one of the sternest opponents of their views concerning the rights of reason and “humanity” as against faith. Meanwhile, however, Luther not only did not scorn the proffered alliance, but, as his letters to Erasmus show, condescended to crave favour in language so humble and flattering that it goes far beyond the customary protestations usual among the Humanists. He also drew some very promising Humanists into close relation with himself, for instance, Philip Melanchthon and Justus Jonas, whom he won over to his cause at an early date. Crotus Rubeanus, the principal author of the “EpistolÆ obscurorum virorum,” sought to renew his old acquaintance with his friend by letter in October, 1519. To him Luther appeared as the man of whose courage in opposing tyrants all the world was talking, and who was filled with the Spirit of the Lord. Crotus, at the instigation of Hutten, was anxious to bring about an understanding between Luther and the Knight Franz von Sickingen.[1]

The nobility was another important factor on whose support Luther was later to rely.

Ulrich von Hutten, the Franconian Knight and Humanist, a typical representative of the revolutionary knights of the day, speaks to the Monk of Wittenberg in the same devout terms as Crotus. The language, well padded with quotations from the Gospel, which he adopts to please Luther and the Reformers, makes a very strange impression coming from him, the libertine and cynic. His first dealings with Luther were in January, 1520, when, through the agency of Melanchthon, he promised him armed protection should he stand in need of such. The message was to the effect, that Franz von Sickingen, the knight, would, in any emergency,[2] offer him a secure refuge in his castle of Ebernburg. As a matter of fact Sickingen, in 1520, made over this castle—called the “Hostel of Justice”—to Hutten, Bucer and Œcolampadius as a place of safety. Representatives of the nobility who had fallen foul of the Empire there made common cause with the theologians of the new teaching.

As yet, however, Luther felt himself sufficiently secure under his own sovereign at Wittenberg. He maintained an attitude of reserve towards a party which might have compromised him, and delayed giving his answer. The revolutionary spirit which inspired the nobility throughout the Empire, so far as we can judge from the sources at our disposal, was not approved of by Luther save in so far as the efforts of these unscrupulous men of the sword were directed against the power of Rome in Germany, and against the payments to the Holy See. His own appeals to the national feeling of the Germans against the “Italian Oppression,” as he styled it, were in striking agreement with the warlike proclamations of the Knights against the enslaving and exploitation of Germany.

Thus sympathy, as well as a certain community of interests, made the Knights heralds of the new Evangel.

In February, 1520, Hutten, through the intermediary of Melanchthon, again called the attention of Luther, “God’s Champion,” to the refuge offered him by Sickingen.[3] Luther did not reply until May, nor has the letter been preserved; neither do we possess the three following letters which he wrote to Hutten. CochlÆus, his opponent, says, he had seen “truly bloody letters” written by Luther to Hutten.[4] He does not, however, give any further particulars of their contents; how the words “bloody letters”—probably an unduly strong expression—are to be understood may be gathered from some statements of Luther’s regarding another offer made him about the same time.

The Knight Silvester von Schauenberg, a determined warrior, at that time High Bailiff of MÜnnerstadt, declared he was ready to furnish one hundred nobles who would protect him by force of arms until the termination of his “affair.”[5] Luther made Schauenberg’s letter known amongst his friends and adherents. He informs Spalatin, that “Schauenberg and Franz von Sickingen have insured me against the fear of men. The wrath of the demons is now about to come; this will happen when I become a burden to myself.”[6] “A hundred nobles,” he repeats in another letter, “have been promised me by Schauenberg in the event of my fleeing to them from the menaces of the Romans. Franz Sickingen has made the same offer.”[7]

He had already, several months before this, spoken openly in his sermon “On Good Works” (March, 1520) of the intervention of the worldly powers which he would like to see, because the spiritual powers do nothing but lead everything to ruin.[8]

Hutten, who was more favourably disposed towards an alliance than Luther, continued to make protestations of agreement with Luther’s views and to hold out invitations to him. On June 4 he wrote to him among other things: “I have always agreed with you [in your writings] so far as I have understood them. You can reckon on me in any case.” “Therefore, in future, you may venture to confide all your plans to me.”[9] In another letter Hutten gave him to understand that, on account of the action of the Papal party, he would now attack the tyrant of Rome by force of arms,[10] at the same time informing also the Archbishop of Mayence, and Capito, of his resolution.[11] Luther was so carried away by this prospect that he wrote to Spalatin that if the Archbishop of Mayence were to proceed against him (Luther) in the same way as he had done against Hutten, viz. by prohibiting his writings, then he would “unite his spirit [meaning his pen] with Hutten’s,” and the Archbishop would have little cause to rejoice; the latter, however, “by his behaviour would probably put a speedy end to his tyranny.”[12]

In the autumn of 1520 it was said that, near Mayence, Hutten had fallen upon the Papal Nuncios Marinus Caraccioli and Hieronymus Aleander, who were on their way to the Diet at Worms; Luther believed the report, which was as a matter of fact incorrect, that Hutten had attacked the Nuncios and that it was only by chance that the plot miscarried. “I am glad,” he wrote at that time, “that Hutten has led the way. Would that he had caught Marinus and Aleander!”[13]

Luther’s threats to use brute force soon became a cause of annoyance, even to certain of his admirers. We see this from a friendly warning which Wolfgang Capito addressed to him in the same year, namely, 1520. After recommending a peaceable course of action he says to him: “You affright your devoted followers by hinting at mercenaries and arms. I think I understand the reason of your plan, but I myself look upon it in a different light.” Capito advises Luther to proceed in a conciliatory manner and with deliberation. “Do not preach the Word of Christ in contention, but in charity.”[14]

He had thus been forewarned when he received from Hutten, that turbulent combatant, a confidential account of his work and a request to use his influence with the Elector in order that the latter might be induced to lend his assistance to him and his party; the Prince was “either to give help to those who had already taken up arms or at least, in the interests of the good cause, to shut his eyes to what was going on, and allow them to take refuge in his domains should the condition of things call for it.”[15] Hutten, with his proposed alliance, became more and more importunate. To such lengths Luther was, however, not inclined to go; he prized too highly the favour in which he stood with his sovereign to be willing to admit that he was in favour of civil war or a supporter of questionable elements. In his reply he thought it necessary to declare himself averse to the use of arms, notwithstanding the fact that he hailed with joy Hutten’s literary attacks which, according to his own expression, “would help to overthrow the Papacy more speedily than could have been anticipated.”[16] We learn from his own lips that he wrote to Hutten, saying, “he did not wish to carry on the struggle for the Gospel by means of violence and murder.” Writing of this to his friend Spalatin, at Worms, he adds a reflection, intended for the benefit of the court: “The world has been conquered, and the Church preserved by the Word, and through the Word it will be renewed. Antichrist who rose to power without human assistance will also be destroyed without human means, namely, by the Word.”[17]

On the other hand, in a letter to Staupitz, who was already at that time staying at Salzburg, he again makes much of the importance of Hutten’s and his friends’ literary work for the advance of the new teaching. “Hutten and many others are writing bravely for me.... Our Prince,” he adds, “is acting wisely, faithfully and steadfastly,” and as a proof of the favour of the Ruler of the land he mentions that he is bringing out a certain publication in Latin and German at his request.[18]

“The Prince is acting faithfully and steadfastly,” such was probably the principal reason why Luther refrained from joining the forward movement as advocated by the Knights of the Empire. The clever Elector was opposed to any violent method of procedure and was unwilling to have his fidelity to the Empire unnecessarily called in question. To Luther, moreover, his favour was indispensable, as it was of the utmost importance to him, in the interests of his aims, to be able to continue his professional work at Wittenberg and to spread abroad his publications unhindered from so favourable a spot. He was also not of such an adventurous disposition as to anticipate great things from the chimerical enterprise proposed by Hutten’s Knights. He was, however, aware that the religious revolution he was furthering lent the strongest moral assistance to the liberal tendencies of the Knights, and he on his part was very well satisfied with the moral help afforded by their party. His coquetting with this party was, nevertheless, a dangerous game for Germany. As is well known, Sickingen appealed in exoneration of his deeds of violence, and Hutten in defence of his vituperation, to the new gospel which had recently sprung up in the German land.

Efforts have frequently been made to represent Luther as treating the efforts of the party opposed to the Empire with sublime contempt. But it is certain “he was as little indifferent to the enthusiastic applause of the Franconian Knight [Hutten] as to the offers of protection and defence made him by Franz von Sickingen and Silvester von Schauenberg, the favourable criticism of Erasmus and other Humanists, the encouraging letters of the Bohemian Utraquists, the growing sympathy of German clerics and monks, the commotion among the young students, and the news of the growing excitement amongst the masses. He recognised more and more clearly from all these signs that he was not standing alone.”[19]

His language becomes, in consequence, stronger, his action bolder and more impetuous. He casts aside all scruples of ecclesiastical reverence for the primacy of Peter which still clung to him from Catholic times and he seeks to arrogate to himself the rÔle of spokesman of the German nation, more particularly of the universal discontent with the exactions of Rome. Both are vividly expressed in his book “Von dem Bapstum tzu Rome” which he wrote in May, 1520, and which left the press already in June.

He addressed his book “Von dem Bapstum tzu Rome” to a very large circle, viz. to all who hitherto had found peace of conscience and a joyous assurance of salvation in fidelity to the Church and the Papacy. He sought to prove to them that they had been mistaken, that the Church is merely a purely spiritual kingdom; that the riches of this kingdom are to be obtained simply by faith without the intervention of priestly authority or the hierarchy; that God’s Kingdom is not bound up with communion with Rome; that it exists wherever faith exercises its sway; that such a spiritual commonwealth could have no man as its head, but only Christ. Ecclesiastical authority is to him no longer what he had at first represented it, an authority to rule entrusted to the clerical state, but a gracious promise of Divine forgiveness and mercy to consciences seeking salvation. His new dogmatic or psychological standpoint, with its tendency to tranquillise the soul, is noticeable throughout.

In the same work he deals angrily with the prevailing financial complaints of the Germans against Rome. He tells the people, in the inflammatory language of Hutten and Sickingen, that in Rome the Germans are looked upon as beasts, that the object there is to cheat the “drunken Germans” of their money by every possible thievish trick from motives of avarice. “Unless the German princes and nobles see to it presently, Germany will end in becoming a desert, or be forced to devour itself.”[20] A prediction which was sadly verified in a different sense, indeed, from that which Luther meant, though largely owing to his action. The German princes and nobles did indeed do their share in reducing Germany to a state of desolation, and the misery of the Thirty Years’ War stamped its bloody seal on Luther’s involuntary prophecy.

In the same year, 1520, Luther hurled his so-called “great reforming writings,” “An den Adel” and “De captivitate babylonica,” into the thick of the controversy. They mark the crisis in the struggle before the publication of the Bull of Excommunication.

Before treating of them, however, we must linger a little on what has already been considered; in accordance with the special psychological task of this work, it is our duty to describe more fully one characteristic of Luther’s action up to this time, viz. the stormy, violent, impetuous tendency of his mind. This, as every unprejudiced person will agree, is in striking contrast to the spiritual character of any undertaking which is to bring forth lasting ethical results and true blessing, namely, to that self-control and circumspection with which all those men commissioned by God for the salvation of mankind and of souls have ever been endowed, notwithstanding their strenuous energy.

The necessity of these latter qualities, in the case of one who is to achieve any permanent good, has never been better set forth than by Luther himself: “It is not possible,” he says in his exposition of the Lord’s Prayer, “that any man of good will, if really good, can become angry or quarrelsome when he meets with opposition. Mark it well, it is assuredly a sign of an evil will if he cannot endure contradiction.”[21] “But deep-seated pride cannot bear to be thought in the wrong, or foolish, and therefore looks upon all others as fools and wicked.”[22] He declares that these passionate and self-seeking men are the “worst and most shameful in the whole of Christendom,” forgetting that he himself was classed by his contemporaries and pupils among these very men.[23] If he really was desirous of hearing the voice of Christ speaking within him, as he actually believed he did hear it, then he ought not to have allowed that voice to be drowned by his passionate excitement. Men chosen by God had always been careful to await the Divine inspirations with the greatest composure of mind, because they knew well how easy it is for a troubled mind to be deaf to them, or to mistake for them the deceptive voice of its own perverse will.

The writing already mentioned, “Von dem Bapstum tzu Rome,” contains the saddest examples of Luther’s unbridled excitement, and of the irritation which burst into a flame at the least opposition to his opinions.

It is directed against the worthy theologian of Leipzig, Augustine Alveld, a Franciscan, who had ventured to take the part of the Apostolic See, and to gauge Luther’s unfair attacks at their true value. Luther falls upon this learned friar with absolutely ungovernable fury, calls his book the “work of an ape, intended to poison the minds of the poor laymen,” and him himself “an uncouth miller’s beast who has not yet learnt to bray.” “He ought to have too much respect for the fine, famous town of Leipzig [whence Alveld wrote] to defile it with his drivel and spittle.”[24]

Alveld, however, may have consoled himself with the fact, that Rome and the Papacy were the object of Luther’s wildest rage: “The Roman scoundrels come along and set the Pope above Christ.” But he is “Antichrist of whom the whole of Scripture speaks ... and I should be glad if the King, the Princes and all the Nobles gave short shrift to the Roman buffoons, even if we had to do without episcopal pallia. How has Roman avarice proceeded so far as to seize on the foundations made by our fathers, on our bishoprics and livings? Who ever heard or read of such robbery? Have we not people who stand in need of such that we should enrich the muleteers, stable-boys, yea, even the prostitutes and knaves of Rome out of our poverty, people who look upon us as the merest fools, and who mock at us in the most shameful fashion.”[25]

Such unrestrained violence, which tells of a bad cause, is not merely the result of Luther’s embittered state of feeling arising from the struggle with his opponents; we notice it in him almost from the outset of his public career, and it is evident both in his utterances and in his writings.

The ninety-five Theses, of which the wording was surely strong enough, were followed by his first popular writing, the “Sermon on Indulgences and Grace,” which ends with a furious outburst against his adversaries; whatever they might advance was nothing but “idle tattle”; he will not “pay much heed to it”; “they are merely dullards who have never so much as sniffed the Bible,” but are infatuated with their “threadbare opinions.”[26] The exclamation of Duke George of Saxony at the Disputation at Leipzig: “Das wallt die Sucht,” might be taken as the watchword for the whole of the disputatious and passionate course Luther pursued, from the nailing up of the Theses to the advent of the Bull of Excommunication. It is not deliberate and calm logic which leads him on from step to step, rather he advances by leaps and bounds, and allows himself to be carried away in his excitement against his opponents to still stronger outbursts against the Church, sometimes, it is true, merely for the pleasure of trouncing his enemies and winning the applause of readers as quarrelsome as himself. Only a few months after the publication of the Theses, he wrote in this sense to a friend: “The greater the opposition, the further I advance; the former propositions I leave to be barked over, and set up others in order that they may fall upon them also.”[27]

At the same time, however, he declares that his only crime is that, “he teaches men to place their hopes in Christ alone, not in prayers, merits and works.”[28]

The Dominican, Silvester Prierias, in his Dialogue directed against Luther, had touched upon the Indulgence Theses, though only cursorily; Luther was, however, intensely annoyed by the circumstance of his having replied from Rome, and in his character of Master of the Sacred Palace, for that Luther’s true character should be unmasked at Rome could prove extremely dangerous to him; he was also vexed because Prierias upheld the authority of the Pope, both as regards indulgences and Church matters in general. Luther says, it is true, that as regards his own person he is ready to suffer anything, but that he will not allow any man to lay hands on his theological standpoint, his exposition of Scripture and (as he insists later) on his preaching of the Word and Gospel; “in this matter let no man expect from me indulgence or patience.”[29]

He certainly proved the truth of the latter promise by his first coarse writing against Prierias, who thereupon entered the lists with a rejoinder certainly not characterised by gentleness. In his answer to this, Luther’s anger knew no bounds. It would be most instructive and interesting to compare the two replies of the Wittenberg professor in respect of the advance in his controversial theological position exhibited in the second reply when placed side by side with the first. We must, however, for the sake of brevity, content ourselves with selecting some characteristic passages from Luther’s second reply, which appeared at the same time as the work on the Papacy, directed against Alveld.[30]

“This wretched man wants to avenge himself on me as though I had replied to his feeble jests in a ridiculous manner; he puts forth a writing filled from top to bottom with horrible blasphemies, so that I can only think this work has been forged by the devil himself in the depths of hell. If this is believed and taught openly in Rome with the knowledge of the Pope and the Cardinals, which I hope is not the case, then I say and declare publicly that the real Antichrist is seated in the Temple of God and reigns at Rome, the true Babylon ‘clothed in purple’ (Apoc. xvii. 4), and that the Roman Court is the ‘Synagogue of Satan’ (Ibid., ii. 9).” He unjustly imputes to Prierias the belief that the Bible only receives its inward value from a mortal man (the Pope). “Oh, Satan,” he cries, “Oh, Satan, how long do you abuse the great patience of your creator?... If this [what is contained in Prierias’s book] is the faith of the Roman Church, then happy Greece, happy Bohemia [which are separated from Rome], happy all those who have torn themselves away from her, and have gone forth from this Babylon; cursed all those who are in communion with her!”

He goes so far as to utter those burning words: “Go, then, thou unhappy, damnable and blasphemous Rome, God’s wrath has at last come upon thee ... let her be that she may become a dwelling-place of dragons, an habitation of every impure spirit (Isaias xxxiv. 13), filled to the brim with miserly idols, perjurers, apostates, sodomites, priapists, murderers, simoniacs and other countless monsters, a new house of impiety like to the heathen Pantheon of olden days.” He inveighs against the teaching of Rome with regard to the primacy; “if thieves are punished by the rope, murderers by the sword, and heretics by fire, why not proceed against these noxious teachers of destruction with every kind of weapon? Happy the Christians everywhere save those under the rule of such a Roman Antichrist.”[31] Prierias himself is described by Luther as a “shameless mouthpiece of Satan,” and as “a scribe held captive in Thomistic darkness, and lying Papal Decretals.”

In a similar fashion Luther, in his controversial writings, heaps opprobrious epithets upon his other opponents, Tetzel, Eck and Emser.

It is true that in their censures on Luther his opponents were not backward in the use of strong language, thus following the custom of the day, but for fierceness the Wittenberg professor was not to be surpassed.

Luther was not appealing to the nobler impulses of the multitude who favoured him when, in 1518, he sought to incite his readers against another of his literary opponents, the Dominican Inquisitor, Jakob van Hoogstraaten, and his fellow-monks, with the violent assertion that Hoogstraaten was nothing but a “mad, bloodthirsty murderer, who was never sated with the blood of the Christian Brethren”; “he ought to be set to hunt for dung-beetles on a manure heap, rather than to pursue pious Christians, until he had learned what sin, error and heresy was, and all else that pertained to the office of an Inquisitor. For I have never seen a bigger ass than you ... you blind blockhead, you blood-hound, you bitter, furious, raving enemy of truth, than whom no more pestilential heretic has arisen for the last four hundred years.”[32] Is it correct to characterise such outbursts in the way Protestants have done when they mildly remark, that Luther fought with “boldness and without any fear of men,” and that, though his onslaught was “fierce and violent,” yet he was ever fearful “lest he should do anything contrary to the Will of God”?[33]

Luther, on the other hand, as early as 1518, made the admission: “I am altogether a man of strife, I am, according to the words of the Prophet Jeremias, ‘A man of contentions.’”[34]

Hieronymus Emser, who had met Luther at the Leipzig Disputation and before, might well reproach him with his passionate behaviour, so utterly lacking in calmness and self-control, and liken him to “the troubled sea which is never at rest day or night nor allows others to be at peace; yet the Spirit of the Lord only abides in those who are humble, in the peaceable and composed.”[35] In another work he laments in a similar way that, “in the schools and likewise in his writings and in the pulpit Luther neither displays devotion nor behaves like a clergyman, but is all defiance and boastfulness.”[36]

It was in vain that anxious friends, troubled about the progress of their common enterprise, besought him to moderate his language. It is true he had admitted to his fellow-monks, even as early as the time of the nailing up of his theses, his own “frivolous precipitancy and rashness” (“levitas et prÆceps temeritas”).[37] He did not even find it too hard a task to confess to the courtier Spalatin, that he had been “unnecessarily violent” in his writings.[38] But these were mere passing admissions, and, after the last passage, he goes on to explain that his opponents knew him, and should know better than to rouse the hound; ... “he was by nature hot-blooded and his pen was easily irritated”; even if his own hot blood and customary manner of writing had not of themselves excited him, the thought of his opponents and their “horrible crimes” against himself and the Word of God would have been sufficient to do so.

Such was his self-confidence that it was not merely easy to him, but a veritable pleasure, to attack all theologians of every school; they were barely able to spell out the Bible. “Doctors, Universities, Masters, are mere empty titles of which one must not stand in awe.”[39]

2. The Veiling of the Great Apostasy

Besides his stormy violence another psychological trait noticeable in Luther is the astuteness with which he conceals the real nature of his views and aims from his superiors both clerical and lay, and his efforts at least to strengthen the doubts favourable to him regarding his attitude to the hierarchy and the Church as it then was. Particularly in important passages of his correspondence we find, side by side with his call to arms, conciliatory, friendly and even submissive assurances.

The asseverations of this sort which he made to his Bishop, to the Pope, to the Emperor and to the Elector are really quite surprising, considering the behaviour of the Wittenberg Professor. In such cases Luther is deliberately striving to represent the quarrel otherwise than it really stood.

If the cause he advocated had in very truth been a great and honourable one, then it imperatively called for frank and honest action on his part.

The consequence of his peaceable assurances was to postpone the decision on a matter of far-reaching importance to religion and the Christian conscience. Many who did not look below the surface were unaware how they stood, and an inevitable result of such statements of Luther’s was, that, in the eyes of many even among the nobles and the learned, the great question whether he was right or wrong remained too long undecided. He thus gained numerous followers from the ranks of the otherwise well-disposed, and, of these, many, after the true aims of the movement had become apparent, failed to retrace their steps.

In fairness, however, all the means by which the delay of the negotiations was brought about must not be laid to Luther’s charge, and to his intentional misrepresentations. It is more probable that he frequently assumed an attitude of indecision because, to his excited mind, the stress of unforeseen events, which affected him personally, seemed to justify his use of so strange an expedient. Be this as it may, we must make a distinction between his actions at the various periods of his agitated life; the further his tragic history approaches the complete and open breach which was the result of his excommunication, the less claim to belief have his assurances of peace, whereas his earlier protestations may at least sometimes be accorded the benefit of a doubt.

To the assurances dating from the earlier stage belong in the first place those made to his Ordinary, Hieronymus Scultetus, Bishop of Brandenburg. To him on May 22, 1518, he forwarded, together with a flattering letter, a copy of his “Resolutions,” in order that they might be examined.[40]

“New dogmas,” he states, have just recently been preached regarding indulgences; urged by some who had been annoyed by them to give a strong denial of such doctrines, but being at the same time desirous of sparing the good reputation of the preachers—for upon it their work depended—he had decided to deal with the matter in a purely disputatory form, the more so as it was a difficult one, however untenable the position of his opponents might be; scholastics and canonists could be trusted only when they quoted arguments in defence of their teaching, more particularly from Holy Scripture. No one had, however, answered his challenge or ventured to meet him at a disputation. The Theses, on the other hand, had been bruited abroad beyond his expectations, and were also being regarded as actual truths which he had advocated. “Contrary to his hopes and wishes,” he had therefore been obliged, “as a child and ignoramus in theology,” to explain himself further (in the Resolutions). He did not, however, wish obstinately to insist upon anything contained in the latter, much being problematic, yea, even false. He laid everything he had said at the feet of Holy Church and his Bishop; he might strike out what he pleased, or consign the entire scribble to the flames. “I know well that Christ has no need of me; He proclaims salvation to the Church without me, and least of all does He stand in need of great sinners.... My timidity would have kept me for ever in my quiet corner had not the presumption and unwisdom of those who invent new gospels been carried so far.”

When Bishop Scultetus thereupon declared himself against the publication of the Resolutions, Luther promised to obey; he even made this known to those about the Elector, through Spalatin the Court-preacher. On August 21, 1518, the work nevertheless appeared. Had Luther really been “released” from his promise, as has been assumed by one writer in default of any better explanation?[41]

Let us consider more closely Luther’s letter to Pope Leo X, which has already been referred to cursorily (vol. i., p. 335). As is well known, it accompanied the copy of the Resolutions which, with singular daring, and regardless of the challenge involved in their errors, he had dedicated to the Supreme Teacher of Christendom.[42] Luther had lavished flattery on his Bishop, but here he surpasses himself in expressions of cringing humility.

He prostrates himself at the feet of the Pope with all that he has and is; it is for His Holiness to make him alive, or kill him, to summon or dismiss, approve or reprove, according to his good pleasure; his voice he will acknowledge as the voice of Christ, and willingly die should he be deserving of death. He is “unlearned, stupid and ignorant in this our enlightened age,” nothing but dire necessity compels him, so he says, “to cackle like a goose among the swans.” “The most impious and heretical doctrines” of the indulgence preachers have called him forth as the defender of truth, indeed of the Papal dignity which is being undermined by avaricious money-makers; by means of the Disputation he had merely sought to learn from his brothers, and was never more surprised than at the way in which the Theses had become known, whereas this had not been the case with his other Disputations. Retract he cannot; he has, however, written the Resolutions in his justification, from which all may learn how honestly and openly he is devoted to the Power of the Keys. The publication of the Resolutions “under the shield of the Papal name and the shadow of the Pope’s protection [Luther is here alluding to the dedication] renders his safety assured.”

As a matter of fact, the principal result of the dedication to the Pope was a wider dissemination of the work among the learned, Luther’s Bishop, the weak and uninformed Scultetus of Brandenburg, being likewise hindered from taking any action against his unruly subject. The move, if it really was intentional, had been well thought out.

After a lengthy delay Luther, in accordance with his promise to Miltitz, drafted a second letter to Pope Leo X, on January 5 or 6, 1519.[43]

He, “the off-scouring of humanity, and a mere speck of dust,” here declares, as he had done shortly before at Augsburg, that he cannot retract; since his writings are already so widely known and have met with so much support, a retractation would, he says, be useless, and indeed rather injure the reputation of Rome among the learned in Germany. He would never have believed, so he says, that his efforts for the honour of the Apostolic See could have led to his incurring the suspicion of the Pope; he will, nevertheless, be silent in future on the question of indulgences, if silence is also imposed upon his opponents; indeed, he will publish “a work which shall make all see that they must hold the Roman Church in honour, and not lay the foolishness of his opponents to her charge, nor imitate his own slashing language against the Church of Rome,” for he is “absolutely convinced that her power is above everything, and that nothing in Heaven or on earth is to be preferred to her, excepting only our Lord Jesus Christ.” This letter was not sent off, probably because it occasioned Miltitz some scruples.[44] In any case, it is a document of considerable interest.

Luther assumes an entirely different tone in the historic third and last letter to Leo X, with which, in 1520, he prefaced his work “Von der Freyheyt eynes Christen Menschen”; this letter was really written after October 13 of that same year.[45]

The very date of the letter has a history. It was published by Luther in Latin and German, with the fictitious date of September 6. The questionable expedient of ante-dating this letter had been adopted by Luther to satisfy the diplomatist Miltitz, and was due to the necessity of taking into account the Papal Bull condemning Luther, which had already been published on September 21, 1520; thereby it was hoped to avoid all appearance of this letter having been wrung from Luther by the publication of the Bull. This was what Miltitz[46] wrote at a time when he still entertained sanguine hopes of what the letter might achieve in the interests of the Pope and peace.[47] Luther, for his part, looked on the antedated letter as a manifesto which might considerably weaken, and to his advantage, the effect of the Bull on public opinion. The vehement blame therein contained regarding the corruption of the Roman Church ought surely to lessen the authority of the excommunication, while the loud appreciation of the person and good qualities of Leo would naturally cause the author of the excommunication (supposing it to have been published subsequently to the letter) to appear either ungrateful, or misled by others.

The Roman Church, in the words of this letter, has become the “most horrible Sodom and Babylon,” a “den of murderers worse than any other, a haunt of iniquity surpassing all others, the head and empire of sin, of death and of damnation, so that it would be impossible to imagine any increase in her wickedness even were Antichrist to come in person. Yet you, Holy Father Leo, are seated like a sheep among the wolves, like a Daniel amidst the lions”; Pope Leo, the author goes on to assert with unblushing effrontery, is much to be pitied, for it is the hardest lot of all that a man of his disposition should have to live in the midst of such things; Leo would do well to abdicate. He himself (Luther) had never undertaken any evil against his person; indeed, he only wished him well, and, so far as lay in him, had attempted to assist him and the Roman Church with all his might by diligent, heartfelt prayer. But “with the Roman See all is over; God’s endless wrath has come upon it; this See is opposed to General Councils, and will not permit itself to be reformed; let this Babylon then rush headlong to its own destruction!”

After this follow renewed protestations of his peaceableness throughout the whole struggle from the very beginning, attempts to justify the strong language he had later on used against thick-headed and irreligious adversaries, for which he deserved the “favour and thanks” of the Pope, and descriptions of the wiles of Eck who, at the Leipzig disputation, had picked up some “insignificant chance expression concerning the Papacy” so as to ruin him at Rome. This, of course, was all intended to weaken the impression of the excommunication on the public. Another bold assertion of his, of which the object was the same, ran: “That I should retract what I have taught is out of the question ... I will not suffer any check or bridle to be placed on the Word of God which teaches entire freedom, and neither can nor may be bound.” “I am ready to yield to every man in all things, but the Word of God I cannot and will not forsake or betray.”

Luther also approached the Emperor Charles V in a letter addressed to him at the time when Rome was about to take action. He begged the Emperor to protect him, entirely innocent as he was, against the machinations of his enemies, especially as he had been dragged into the struggle against his will. The letter was written August 30, 1520,[48] and safely reached the Emperor, possibly through the good offices of Sickingen; when it was again submitted at the Diet of Worms such was Charles’s indignation that he tore the missive to pieces.

In order rightly to appreciate its contents we must keep in mind that Luther had it printed and published in a Latin version in 1520, together with an “Oblation or Protestation” to readers of every tongue, wherein he offers them on the title-page his “unworthy prayers,” and assures them of his humble submission to the Holy Catholic Church, as whose devoted son he was determined to live and die.[49] Nevertheless, at the end of August[50] part of his work “On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church” already stood in print, in which, at the very commencement, the Papacy is declared to be the Kingdom of Babylon and the empire of Nimrod, the mighty hunter, and in which, as a matter of fact, an end is made of the whole hierarchy and Church visible.

Luther’s Prince, the Elector Frederick, had grave misgivings concerning the hot-headed agitator who had fixed his residence at the University of Wittenberg, though, hitherto, thanks to the influence of Spalatin, his Court Chaplain, he had extended to Luther his protection and clemency. Both the Emperor, who was altogether Catholic in his views, and the laws of the Empire, called for the greatest caution on his part; were the Church’s rights enforced as the imperial law allowed, then Luther was doomed. It was by the express advice of the Elector that Luther drew up the above-mentioned letter to Charles V and the pious “Protestation.” It was to these documents that the astute Elector appealed when, towards the end of August, he warned his agent at Rome, Teutleben, of the ostensibly dangerous disturbances which might result in Germany from any violent action against Luther unless he had been previously confuted by “strong and veracious proofs and statements clearly set forth in writing.”[51] This letter too had Luther himself for its author, Spalatin having, as usual, acted as intermediary. Spalatin in fact received both documents from him beforehand for revision.[52]

After these few words regarding the object and origin of the celebrated letter to the Emperor, we may go on to quote some of the statements it contains. Luther, at the commencement, protests that he presents himself before Charles “like a flea before the King of kings, who reigns over all.” “It was against my will that I came before the public, I wrote only because others traitorously forced me to it by violence and cunning; never did I desire anything but to remain in the retirement of my cell. My conscience and the best men bear me witness that I have merely endeavoured to defend the truth of the Gospel against the opinions introduced by superstitious traditions. For three years I have, in consequence, been exposed to every kind of insult and danger. In vain did I beg for pardon, offer to be silent, propose conditions of peace, and request enlightenment. I am, nevertheless, persecuted, the sole object being to stamp out the Gospel along with me.”

Things being thus, “prostrate before him,” he begs the Emperor to protect, not indeed one who lies “poor and helpless in the dust,” but, at least, the treasure of truth, since he, the greatest secular sovereign, has been entrusted with the temporal sword for the maintenance of truth and the restraint of wickedness; as for himself, he only desired to be called to account in a fair manner, and to see his teaching either properly refuted, or duly accepted by all. He was ready to betake himself to any public disputation, so he declares in the “Protestation,” and would submit to the decision of any unprejudiced University; he would present himself before any judges, saintly or otherwise, clerical or lay, provided only they were just, and that he was given state protection and a safe conduct. If they were able to convince him by proofs from Holy Scripture, he would become a humble pupil, and obediently relinquish an enterprise undertaken—this, at least, he would assert without undue self-exaltation—only for the honour of God, the salvation of souls and the good of Christianity, simply because he was a doctor, and without any hope of praise or profit.

This manifesto was sufficient to satisfy the Elector Frederick. The growing esteem in which Luther was held and the delay in the settlement of his case served admirably Frederick’s purpose of making himself less dependent on the Emperor and Empire. Calculation and politics thus played their part in an affair which to some extent they shaped.

At a later date, it is true, Luther asserted in the preface to his Latin works, that his success had been the result only of Heaven’s visible protection; that he had quietly “awaited the decision of the Church and the Holy Ghost”; only one thing, namely, the Catechism, he had been unable to see condemned by the interference of Rome; to deny Christ he could never consent. He was willing to confess his former weaknesses “in order that—to speak like Paul—men may not esteem me for something more than I am, but as a simple man.”[53]

From the pulpit, too, where honest truth usually finds expression, he declared that it was not violence or human effort or wisdom that had crowned his cause with the laurels of victory, but God alone: “I studied God’s Word and preached and wrote on it; beyond this I did nothing. The Word of God did much while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my Philip [Melanchthon] and Amsdorf, so that Popery has been weakened and suffered more than from the attacks of any Prince or Emperor. I did nothing; everything was achieved and carried out by the Word.”[54] His object here is to oppose the violence and fanaticism of the Anabaptists, and, if he points out to them that he has achieved his mighty work without force of arms, and that the great success of his movement was out of all proportion to the means he could employ as professor and preacher—the truth being that his success was chiefly due to the circumstances of the time—there is much in his contention.

In the circle of his friends, at a later date, he thus expressed his conviction: “I did not begin the difficult business of my own initiative ... rather it was God who led me in a wonderful manner.... All happened in accordance with God’s will.”[55] “I thought I was doing the Pope a service [by throwing light upon the question of Indulgences]; but I was forced to defend myself.” “Had I foreseen that things would turn out as, thank God, they have, I would have held my tongue; but had I kept silence it would have fared much worse with the Papacy; the Princes and the Powers, enraged at its usurpations, would finally have made an end of it.” “I acted with moderation and yet I have brought the Papacy to an evil day.”[56]

The genius of history could well hide its face were such statements accepted as reliable testimonies.

Certain extracts from Luther’s correspondence with Spalatin deserve special consideration.

The worldly-wise Chaplain of Frederick, the Saxon Elector, frequently gave Luther a hint as to how to proceed, and, in return, his Wittenberg friend was wont to speak to him more openly than to others. It is, however, necessary, in order to arrive at a right appreciation of this correspondence, to distinguish between the letters written by Luther to Spalatin as a personal friend and those he sent him with the intention that they should reach the ruling Prince. It would betray a great lack of critical discrimination were the whole correspondence with Spalatin taken as the expression of Luther’s innermost thought. The fact that Spalatin’s letters to Luther are no longer extant makes it even more difficult to understand Luther’s replies. Nevertheless, it is easy to trace a persistent effort throughout the correspondence, to secure in the Saxon Electorate toleration both for the new teaching and its originator without arousing the misgivings of a prudent sovereign. The Court had to be won over gradually and gently.

Acting on Spalatin’s advice, Luther made the following declaration for the benefit of the Elector, on March 5, 1519: “The Roman Decrees must allow me full liberty with regard to the true Gospel; of whatever else they may rob me, I don’t care. What more can I do, or can I be bound to anything further?”[57]

“If they do not confute us on reasonable grounds and by written proofs,” he says, on July 10, 1520, in another letter addressed to Spalatin, but really intended for the Elector, “but proceed against us by force and censures, then things will become twice as bad in Germany as in Bohemia” [an allusion to the Husite apostasy].[58] “Where then can I turn for better instruction?”[59] ... “Let His Highness the Prince,” he here writes, coming to the question of the University professorship which provided him with his means of livelihood, “put me out into the street so that I may either be better instructed or confuted.” He, for his part, is ready to resign his public appointment, retire into private life, allow others to take his place, and let all his belongings be burned. But he also thinks it just that the Elector, being personally unable to instruct him, should also refuse to act either as judge or as executioner until a (true ecclesiastical) sentence be pronounced. The principal thing is, so he says, that “the question under discussion has not been solved, and my enemies have not touched it with so much as a single word. The Prince, under these circumstances, may well refuse to punish anyone, even though he be a Turk or a Jew, for he is in ignorance whether he be guilty or not; his conscience bids him pause, and how then can the Romanists demand that he should step in and obey men rather than God?”

Thereupon Frederick, the Elector, actually wrote to Rome that Luther was ready to be better instructed from Holy Scripture by learned judges; no one could reproach him, the Prince; he was far from “extending protection to the writings and sermons of Dr. Martin Luther,” or “from tolerating any errors against the Holy Catholic faith.”[60]

At the very last moment before the promulgation of the Bull of Excommunication, Luther made offers of “peace” to the Roman Court through Cardinal Carvajal, professing to be ready to accept any conditions, provided he was left free to teach the Word, and was not ordered to retract. This step was taken to safeguard his public position and his future; Spalatin, and through him the Elector, received due notification of the fact on August 23, 1520.[61]

Yet only a few weeks before, on July 10, he had already expressly assured the same friend privately: “The die is cast; I despise alike the favour and the fury of the Romans; I refuse to be reconciled with them, or to have anything whatever to do with them ... I will openly attack and destroy the whole Papal system, that pestilential quagmire of heresies; then there will be an end to the humility and consideration of which I have made a show, but which has only served to puff up the foes of the Gospel.”[62]

He had also not omitted, at the same time, to bring to the knowledge of the Elector, through his same friend at Court, the promise of a guard of one hundred noblemen, recently made by Silvester von Schauenberg; he likewise begged that an intimation of the fact might be conveyed to Rome, that they might see that his safety was assured, and might then cease from threatening him with excommunication and its consequences. “Were they to drive me from Wittenberg,” he adds, “nothing would be gained, and the case would only be made worse; for my men-at-arms are stationed not only in Bohemia, but in the very centre of Germany, and will protect me should I be driven away, for they are determined to defy any assault.” “If I have these at my back then it is to be feared that I shall attack the Romanists much more fiercely from my place of safety than if I were allowed to remain in my professorship and in the service of the Prince [at Wittenberg], which is what will certainly happen unless God walls otherwise. Hitherto I have been unwilling to place the Prince in any difficulty; once expelled, all such scruples will vanish.”[63]

In conclusion, he extols his great consideration for the Prince. “It is only the respect I owe my sovereign, and my regard for the interests of the University [of Wittenberg] that the Romanists have to thank for the fact that worse things have not been done by me; that they escaped so lightly they owe neither to my modesty, nor to their action and tyranny.”

All the diplomacy which he cultivated with so much calculation did not, however, hinder his giving free course to the higher inspiration with which he believed himself to be endowed; the result was a series of works which may be numbered among the most effective of his controversial writings. He there fights, to employ his own language, “for Christ’s sake new battles against Satan,” as Deborah, the prophetess, fought “new wars” for Israel (Judges v. 8).[64]

In Luther we find a singular combination of the glowing enthusiast and cool diplomatist. Just as it would be wrong to see in him nothing but hypocrisy and deception without a spark of earnestness and self-sacrifice, so too, at the other extreme, we should not be justified in speaking of his success as simply the result of enthusiasm and entire surrender of earthly considerations. History discerns in him a combatant full of passion indeed, yet one who was cool-headed enough to choose the best means to his end.

3. Luther’s Great Reformation-Works—Radicalism and Religion

It was at the time when the Bull of Excommunication was about to be promulgated by the Head of Christendom that Luther composed the Preface to the work entitled: “An den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation von des christlichen Standes Besserung.”[65] The booklet appeared in the middle of August, and by the 18th four thousand copies were already in circulation, eagerly devoured by a multitude of readers hungry for books of all kinds. Staupitz’s warning not to publish it had come too late. “Luther’s friends, the Knights, were urging him on, and something had to be done at once.”[66]

This inflammatory pamphlet, so patronised by the rebellious Knights, was, with its complaints against Rome, in part based on the writings of the German Neo-Humanists.

Full of fury at the offences committed by the Papacy against the German nation and Church, Luther here points out to the Emperor, the Princes and the whole German nobility, the manner in which Germany may break away from Rome, and undertake its own reformation, for the bettering of Christianity. His primary object is to show that the difference between the clerical and lay state is a mere hypocritical invention. All men are priests; under certain circumstances the hierarchy must be set aside, and the secular powers have authority to do so. “Most of the Popes,” so Luther writes with incredible exaggeration, “have been without faith.” “Ought not Christians, who are all priests, also to have the right [like them, i.e. the bishops and priests] to judge and decide what is true and what false in matters of faith?”

The work was, as Luther’s comrade Johann Lang wrote to the author, a bugle-call which sounded throughout all Germany. Luther had to vindicate himself (even to his friends) against the charge of “blowing a blast of revolt.”[67] It is not enough to acquit him to point out in his defence that he had merely assigned to the Rulers the right of employing force, and that his intention was to “make the Word triumphant.”

One of the most powerful arguments in Luther’s work consisted in the full and detailed description of the Roman money traffic, Germany and other countries being exploited on the pretext that contributions were necessary for the administration of the Church. Luther had drawn his information on this subject from the writings of the German Neo-Humanists, and from a certain “Roman courtier” (Dr. Viccius) resident in Wittenberg.

It was, however, the promise he received of material help which spurred Luther on to give a social aspect to his theological movement and thus to ensure the support of the disaffected Knights and Humanists. Concerning Silvester von Schauenberg, he wrote to a confidant, Wenceslaus Link: “This noble man from Franconia has sent me a letter ... with the promise of one hundred Franconian Knights for my protection, should I need them.... Rome has written to the Prince against me, and the same has been done by an important German Court. Our German book addressed to the whole Nobility of Germany on the amelioration of the Church is now to appear; that will be a powerful challenge to Rome, for her godless arts and usurpations are therein unmasked. Farewell and pray for me.”[68]

By the end of August another new book by Luther, which, like the former, is accounted by Luther’s Protestant biographers as one of the “great Reformation-works,” was in the press; such was the precipitancy with which his turbulent spirit drove him to deal with the vital questions of the day. The title of the new Latin publication which was at once translated into German was “Prelude to the Babylonish Captivity of the Church.”[69]

He there attacks the Seven Sacraments of the Church, of which he retains only three, namely, Baptism, Penance, and the Supper, and declares that even these must first be set free from the bondage in which they are held in the Papacy, namely, from the general state of servitude in the Church; this condition had, so he opined, produced in the Church many other perverse doctrines and practices which ought to be set aside, among these being the whole matrimonial law as observed in the Papacy, and, likewise, the celibacy of the clergy.

The termination of this work shows that it was intended to incite the minds of its readers against Rome, in order to forestall the impending Ban.

This end was yet better served by the third “reforming” work “On the Freedom of a Christian Man,” a popular tract in Latin and German with its dangerously seductive explanation of his teaching on faith, justification and works.[70]

In this work, as a matter of fact, Luther expresses with the utmost emphasis his theological standpoint which hitherto he had kept in the background, but which was really the source of all his errors. As before this in the pulpit, so here also he derives from faith only the whole work of justification and virtue which, according to him, God alone produces in us; this he describes in language forcible, insinuating and of a character to appeal to the people; it was only necessary to have inwardly experienced the power of faith in tribulations, temptations, anxieties and struggles to understand that in it lay the true freedom of a Christian man.

This booklet has in recent times been described by a Protestant as “perhaps the most beautiful work Luther ever wrote, and an outcome of religious contemplation rather than of theological study.”[71] It does, as a matter of fact, present its wrong ideas in many instances under a mystical garb, which appeals strongly to the heart, and which Luther had made his own by the study of older German models.

The new theory which, he alleged, was to free man from the burden of the Catholic doctrine of good works, he summed up in words, the effect of which upon the masses may readily be conceived: “By this faith all your sins are forgiven you, all the corruption within you is overcome, and you yourself are made righteous, true, devout and at peace; all the commandments are fulfilled, and you are set free from all things.”[72] “This is Christian liberty ... that we stand in need of no works for the attainment of piety and salvation.”[73] “The Christian becomes by faith so exalted above all things that he is made spiritual lord of all; for there is nothing that can hinder his being saved.”[74] By faith in Christ, man, according to Luther, has become sure of salvation; he is “assured of life for evermore, may snap his fingers at the devil, and need no longer tremble before the wrath of God.”

It was inevitable that the author should attempt to vindicate himself from the charge of encouraging a false freedom. “Here we reply to all those,” he says in the same booklet,[75] “who are offended at the above language, and who say: ‘Well, if faith is everything and suffices to make us pious, why, then, are good works commanded? Let us be of good cheer and do nothing.’” What is Luther’s answer? “No, my friend, not so. It might indeed be thus if you were altogether an interior man, and had become entirely spiritual and soulful, but this will not happen until the Day of Judgment.”

But in so far as man is of the world and a servant of sin, he continues, he must rule over his body, and consort with other men; “here works make their appearance; idleness is bad; the body must be disciplined in moderation and exercised by fasting, watching and labour, that it may be obedient and conformable to faith and inwardness, and may not hinder and resist as its nature is when it is not controlled.” “But,” he immediately adds this limitation to his allusion to works, “such works must not be done in the belief that thereby a man becomes pious in God’s sight”; for piety before God consists in faith alone, and it is only “because the soul is made pure by faith and loves God, that it desires all things to be pure, first of all its own body, and wishes every man likewise to love and praise God.”

In spite of all reservations it is very doubtful whether the work “On the Freedom of a Christian Man” was capable of improving the many who joined Luther’s standard in order to avail themselves of the new freedom in its secular sense. “By faith” man became, so Luther had told them, pure and free and “lord of all.” They might reply, and as a matter of fact later on they did: Why then impose the duty of works, especially if the interior man has, according to his own judgment, become strong and sufficiently independent? Such was actually the argument of the fanatics. They added, “to become altogether spiritual and interior,” is in any case impossible, moreover, as, according to the new teaching, works spring spontaneously from the state of one who is justified, why then speak of a duty of performing good works, or why impose an obligation to do this or that particular good work here and now? It is better and easier for us to stimulate the spirit and the interior life of faith in the soul merely in a general way and in accordance with the new ideal.

As a matter of fact, experience soon showed that where the traditional Christian motives for good works (reparation for sin, the acquiring of merit with the assistance of God’s grace, etc.) were given up, the practice of good works suffered.

There is, however, no doubt that there were some on whom the booklet, with its heartfelt and moving exhortation to communion with Christ, did not fail to make a deep impression, more particularly in view of the formalism which then prevailed.

“Where the heart thus hears the voice of Christ,” says Luther with a simple, popular eloquence which recalls that of the best old German authors, “it must needs become glad, receive the deepest comfort and be filled with sweetness towards Christ, loving Him and ever after troubling nothing about laws and works. For who can harm such a heart, or cause it alarm? Should sin or death befall, it merely recollects that Christ’s righteousness is its own, and then, as we have said, sin disappears before faith in the Righteousness of Christ; with the Apostle it learns to defy death and sin, and to say: O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting? The sting of death is sin, but thanks be to God Who has given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ, so that death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor. xv. 54 ff.).[76]

Pious phrases, such as these, which are of frequent occurrence, demanded a stable theological foundation in order to produce any lasting effects. In Luther’s case there was, however, no such foundation, and hence they are merely deceptive. The words quoted, as a matter of fact, detract somewhat from the grand thought of St. Paul, since the victory over sin and death of which he speaks refers, not to the present life of the Faithful, but to the glorious resurrection. The Apostle does, however, refer to our present life in the earnest exhortation with which he concludes (1 Cor. xv. 58): “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast and unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.”

Protestants frequently consider it very much to Luther’s credit that he insisted with so much force and feeling in his work “On the Freedom of a Christian Man” upon the dignity which faith and a state of grace impart to every calling, even to the most commonplace; his words, so they say, demonstrate that life in the world, and even the humblest vocation, when illumined by religion, has in it something of the infinite. This, however, had already been impressed upon the people, and far more correctly, in numerous instructions and sermons dating from mediÆval times, though, agreeably with the teaching of the Gospel, the path of the Evangelical Counsels, and still more the Apostolic and priestly vocation, was accounted higher than the ordinary secular calling. A high Protestant authority, of many of whose utterances we can scarcely approve, remarks: “It is usual to consider this work of Luther’s as the Magna Charta of Protestant liberty, and of the Protestant ideal of a worldly calling in contradistinction to Catholic asceticism and renunciation of the world. My opinion is that this view is a misapprehension of Luther’s work.”[77]

It was this booklet, “On the Freedom of a Christian Man,” that the author had the temerity to send to Pope Leo X, with an accompanying letter (see above, p. 18), in which he professed to lay the whole matter in the hands of the Sovereign Pontiff, though in the work itself he denied all the Papal prerogatives. In the latter denial Luther was only logical, for if the foundation of the whole of the hierarchy be upset, what then remains of the position of the Pope?

To appreciate the effects of the three works just mentioned it may be worth our while to examine more closely two characteristics which there appear in singular juxtaposition. One is the deeply religious tone which, as we said, is so noteworthy in Luther’s book “On the Freedom of a Christian Man.” The other is an unmistakable tendency to dissolve all religion based on authority.

Luther, as we said before, positively refused to have anything to do with a religion of merely human character; yet, if we only draw the necessary conclusions from certain propositions which he sets up, we find that he is not very far removed from such a religion; he is, all unawares, on the high road to the destruction of all authority in matters of faith. This fact makes the depth of religious feeling evinced by the author appear all the more strange to the experienced reader.[78]

Some examples will make our meaning clearer.

In the work addressed to the Christian nobility, Luther confers on every one of the Faithful the fullest right of private judgment as regards both doctrines and doctors, and limits it by no authority save the Word of God as explained by the Christian himself.

“If we all are priests”—a fact already proved, so he says—“how then shall we not have the right to discriminate and judge what is right or wrong in faith? What otherwise becomes of the saying of Paul in 1 Corinthians ii. [15], ‘The spiritual man judgeth all things, and he himself is judged of no man,’ and again, ‘Having all the same spirit of faith,’ 2 Corinthians iv. [13]? How then should we not perceive, just as well as an unbelieving Pope, what is in agreement with faith and what not? These and many other passages are intended to give us courage and make us free, so that we may not be frightened away from the spirit of liberty, as Paul calls it (2 Cor. iii. [17]), by the fictions of the Popes, but rather judge freely, according to our understanding of the Scriptures, of all things that they do or leave undone, and force them to follow what is better and not their own reason.”[79]

“A little man,” he had said already, “may have a right comprehension; why then should we not follow him?” and, with an unmistakable allusion to himself, he adds: surely more trust is to be placed in one “who has Scripture on his side.”[80]

Such assertions, as a matter of fact, destroy all the claims made by the visible Church to submission to her teaching. Further, they proclaim the principle of the fullest independence of the Christian in matters of faith; nothing but private judgment and personal inspiration can decide. Luther failed to see that, logically, every barrier must give way before this principle of liberty, and that Holy Scripture itself loses its power of resistance, subjectivism first invading its interpretation and then, in the hands of the extremer sort of critics, questioning its value and divine origin. The inner consequences of Luther’s doctrine on freedom and autonomy have been clearly pointed out even by some of the more advanced Protestant theologians. Adolf Harnack, for instance, recently expressed the truth neatly when he said that “Kant and Fichte were both of them hidden behind Luther.”[81]

The second work “On the Babylonish Captivity,” with its sceptical tendency, of which, however, Luther was in great part unconscious, also vindicates this opinion.

The very arbitrariness with which the author questions facts of faith or usages dating from the earliest ages of the Church, must naturally have awakened in such of his readers as were already predisposed a spirit of criticism which bore a startling resemblance to the spirit of revolt. Here again, in one passage, Luther comes to the question of the right of placing private judgment in matters of religion above all authority. He here teaches that there exists in the assembly of the Faithful, and through the illumination of the Divine Spirit, a certain “interior sense for judging concerning doctrine, a sense, which, though it cannot be demonstrated, is nevertheless absolutely certain.” He describes faith, as it comes into being in every individual Christian soul, “as the result of a certitude directly inspired of God, a certitude of which he himself is conscious.”[82]

What this private judgment of each individual would lead to in Holy Scripture, Luther shows by his own example in this very work; he already makes a distinction based on the “interior sense” between the various books of the Bible, i.e. those stamped with the true Apostolic Spirit, and, for instance, the less trustworthy Epistle of St. James, of which the teaching contradicts his own. KÖstlin, with a certain amount of reserve, admits: “This he gives us to understand, agreeably with his principles and experience; it is not our affair to prove that it is tenable or to vindicate it.”[83]

Luther says at the end of the passage in question: “Of this question more elsewhere.” As a matter of fact, however, he never did treat of it fully and in detail, although it concerned the fundamentals of religion; for this omission he certainly had reasons of his own.

A certain radicalism is perceptible in the work “On the Babylonish Captivity,” even with regard to social matters. Luther lays it down: “I say that no Pope or Bishop or any other man has a right to impose even one syllable upon a Christian man, except with his consent; any other course is pure tyranny.”[84] It is true that ostensibly he is only assailing the tyranny of ecclesiastical laws, yet, even so, he exceeds all reasonable limits.

With regard to marriage, the foundation of society, so unguarded is he, that, besides destroying its sacramental character, he brushes aside the ecclesiastical impediments of marriage as mere man-made inventions, and, speaking of divorce based on these laws, he declares that to him bigamy is preferable.[85] When a marriage is dissolved on account of adultery, he thinks remarriage allowable to the innocent party. He also expresses the fervent wish that the words of St. Paul in 1 Corinthians vii. 15, according to which the Christian man or woman deserted by an infidel spouse is thereby set free from the marriage tie, should also apply to the marriages of Christians where the one party has maliciously deserted the other; in such a case, the offending party is no better than an infidel. Regarding the impediment of impotence on the man’s part, he conceives the idea[86] that the wife might, without any decision of the court, “live secretly with her husband’s brother, or with some other man.”[87] In the later editions of Luther’s works this statement, as well as that concerning bigamy, has been suppressed.

Luther, so he says, is loath to decide anything. But neither are popes or bishops to give decisions! “If, however,” says Luther, “two well-instructed and worthy men were to agree in Christ’s name, and speak according to the spirit of Christ, then I would prefer their judgment before all the Councils, which are now only looked up to on account of the number and outward reputation of the people there assembled, no regard being paid to their learning and holiness.”[88] Apart from other objections, the stipulation concerning the “Spirit of Christ,” here made by the mystic, renders his plan illusory, for who is to determine that the “Spirit of Christ” is present in the judgment of the two “well-instructed men”? Luther seems to assume that this determination is an easy matter. First and foremost, who is to decide whether these men are really well-instructed? There were many whose opinion differed from Luther’s, and who thought that this and such-like demands, made in his tract “On the Babylonish Captivity,” opened the door to a real confusion of Babel.

Neither can the work “On the Freedom of a Christian Man” be absolved from a certain dangerous radicalism. A false spirit of liberty in the domain of faith breathes through it. The faith which is here extolled is not faith in the olden and true meaning of the word, namely the submission of reason to what God has revealed and proposes for belief through the authority He Himself instituted, but faith in the Lutheran sense, i.e. personal trust in Christ and in the salvation He offers. Faith in the whole supernatural body of Christian truth comes here so little into account that it is reduced to the mere assurance of salvation. All that we are told is that the Christian is “free and has power over all” by a simple appropriation of the merits of Christ; he is purified by the mere acceptance of the merciful love revealed in Christ; “this faith suffices him,” and through it he enjoys all the riches of God. And this so-called faith is mainly a matter of feeling; a man must learn to “taste the true spirit of interior trials,” just as the author himself, so he says, “in his great temptations had been permitted to taste a few drops of faith.”[89] Faith is thus not only robbed of its true meaning and made into a mere personal assurance, but the assurance appears as something really not so easy of attainment, since it is only to be arrived at by treading the difficult path of spiritual suffering.

Luther thereby strikes a blow at one of the most vital points of positive religion, viz. the idea of faith.

The author, in this same work,[90] again reminds us that by faith all are priests, and therefore have the right “to instruct Christians concerning the faith and the freedom of believers”; for the preservation of order, however, all cannot teach, and therefore some are chosen from amongst the rest for this purpose. It is plain how, by this means, a door was opened to the introduction of diversity of doctrine and the ruin of the treasure of revelation.

The religious tone which Luther assumed in the work “On the Freedom of a Christian Man,” and his earnestness and feeling, made his readers more ready to overlook the perils for real religion which it involved. This consideration brings us to the other characteristic, viz. the pietism which, as stated above, is so strangely combined in the three works with intense radicalism.

The religious feeling which pervades every page of the “Freedom of a Christian Man” is, if anything, overdone. In what Luther there says we see the outpourings of one whose religious views are quite peculiar, and who is bent on bringing the Christian people to see things in the same light as he does; deeply imbued as he is with his idea of salvation by faith alone, and full of bitterness against the alleged disfiguring of the Church’s life by meritorious works, he depicts his own conception of religion in vivid and attractive colours, and in the finest language of the mystics. It is easy to understand how so many Protestant writers have been fascinated by these pages, indeed, the best ascetic writers might well envy him certain of the passages in which he speaks of the person of Christ and of communion with Him. Nevertheless, a fault which runs through the whole work is, as already explained, his tendency to narrow the horizon of religious thought and feeling by making the end of everything to consist in the mere awakening of trust in Christ as our Saviour. Ultimately, religion to him means no more than this confidence; he is even anxious to exclude so well-founded and fruitful a spiritual exercise as compassion with the sufferings of our crucified Redeemer, actually calling it “childish and effeminate stupidity.”[91] How much more profound and fruitful was the religious sentiment of the genuine mystics of the Church, whom the contemplation of the sufferings of Christ furnished with the most beautiful and touching subject of meditation, and who knew how to find a source of edification in all the truths of faith, and not only in that of the forgiveness of sins. Writers such as they, described to their pious readers in far greater detail the person of Christ, the honour given by Him to God and the virtues He had inculcated.

The booklet “To the Nobility,” likewise, particularly in the Preface, throws a strange sidelight on the pietism of the so-called great Reformation works.

Here, in his exordium to the three tracts, the author seeks to win over the minds of the piously disposed. The most earnest reformer of the Church could not set himself to the task with greater fear, greater diffidence and humility than he. Luther, as he assures his readers, is obliged “to cry and call aloud like a poor man that God may inspire someone to stretch out a helping hand to the unfortunate nation.” He declares that such a task “must not be undertaken by one who trusts in his power and wisdom, for God will not allow a good work to be commenced in trust in our own might and ability.” “The work must be undertaken in humble confidence in God, His help being sought in earnest prayer, and with nothing else in view but the misery and misfortune of unhappy Christendom, even though the people have brought it on themselves.... Therefore let us act wisely and in the fear of God. The greater the strength employed, the greater the misfortune, unless all is done in the fear of God and in humility.”[92]

Further on, even in his most violent attacks, the author is ever insisting that it is only a question of the honour of Christ: “it is the power of the devil and of End-Christ [Antichrist] that hinders what would be for the reform of Christendom; therefore let us beware, and resist it even at the cost of our life and all we have.... Let us hold fast to this: Christian strength can do nothing against Christ, as St Paul says (2 Cor. xiii. 8). We can do nothing against Christ, but only for Him.”[93]

In his concluding words, convinced of his higher mission, he declares that he was “compelled” to come forward. “God has forced me by them [my adversaries] to open my mouth still further, and, because they are cowards, to preach at them, bark at them, roar at them and write against them.... Though I know that my cause is good, yet it must needs be condemned on earth and be justified only by Christ in heaven.”[94] When a mission is Divine, then the world must oppose it.—One wonders whether everything that meets with disapproval must therefore be accounted Divine.

It is the persuasion of his higher mission that explains the religious touch so noticeable in these three writings. The power of faith there expressed refers, however, principally to his own doctrine and his own struggles. If we take the actual facts into account, it is impossible to look on these manifestations of religion as mere hypocrisy. The pietism we find in the tract “To the German Nobility” is indeed overdone, and of a very peculiar character, yet the writer meant it as seriously as he did the blame he metes out to the abuses of his age.

We still have to consider the religious side of the work “On the Babylonish Captivity.” Originally written in Latin, and intended not so much for the people as for the learned, this tract, even in the later German version, is not clad in the same popular religious dress as the other two. Like the others, nevertheless, it was designed as a weapon to serve in the struggle for a religious renewal, especially in the matter of the Sacraments. Among other of its statements, which are characteristic of the direction of Luther’s mind, is the odd-sounding request at the very commencement: “If my adversaries are worthy of being led back by Christ to a more reasonable conception of things, then I beg that in His Mercy He may do so. Are they not worthy, then I pray that they may not cease to write their books against me, and that the enemies of truth may deserve to read no others.”[95] His conclusion is: He commits his book with joy to the hands of all the pious, i.e. of those who wish to understand aright the sense of Holy Scripture and the true use of the Sacraments.[96] He further declares in an obstinate and mocking manner his intention of ever holding fast to his own opinion. His more enlightened contemporaries saw with anxiety how every page of his work teemed with signs of self-deception and blind prejudice, and of a violent determination to overthrow religious views which had held the field for ages. To those who cared to reflect, Luther’s religiousness appeared in the light of a religious downfall, and as the chaotic manifestation of a desire to demolish all those venerable traditions which encumbered the way of the spirit of revolt.

4. Luther’s Followers. Two Types of His Cultured Partisans: Willibald Pirkheimer and Albert DÜrer

Owing to the huge and rapid circulation of the three “Reformation works,” the number of Luther’s followers among all classes increased with prodigious speed.

The spirit of the nation was roused by his bold words, the like of which had never before been heard.

Too many of those whose Catholicism was largely a matter of form were seduced by the new spirit that was abroad, and by the “liberty of the Gospel,” before they rightly saw their danger. The fascination of the promised freedom was even increased by Luther’s earnest exhortations to commence a general reformation, to cultivate the inner man, and to assert the independence of the German against immoral Italians, the extortioners of the Curia and the spiritual tyranny of the Pope. Even better minds, men who despised the masses and their vulgar agitation, were powerfully attracted. At no other time, save possibly at the French Revolution, was mankind more profoundly stirred by the force of untried ideas, which with suggestive power suddenly invaded every rank of society. Scholars, writers, artists, countless men who had heard nothing of Luther that was not to his advantage, and who, from lack of theological knowledge, were unable fully to appreciate the spirit of his writings, were carried away by the man who so courageously attacked the crying abuses which they themselves had long bewailed.

In explaining this universal commotion we cannot lay too great stress upon a factor which also played a part in it, viz. the comparative ignorance of most people regarding Luther, his antecedents and his aims. Eminent men, and his own contemporaries, who allowed themselves to be borne away by the current, were incredibly ignorant of Luther as he is now known to history. They knew practically nothing of the whole arsenal of letters, tracts and reports which to-day lie open before us and are being read, compared and annotated by industrious scholars. It is difficult for us at the present day to imagine the condition of ignorance in which even cultured men were, in the sixteenth century, regarding the Lutheran movement, especially at its inception.

To show the seduction and fascination exercised by Luther’s writings even on eminent men, we may take two famous Nurembergers, Willibald Pirkheimer and Albert DÜrer.

Willibald Pirkheimer, a Senator of Nuremberg and Imperial Councillor, was one of the most respected and cultured Humanists of his day. He edited or translated many patristic works. After taking a too active part in the Reuchlin controversy against the theologians of Cologne, owing to his zeal for a reformed method of studies, he put himself on Luther’s side, again out of enthusiasm for reform, and under the impression that he had found in his doctrine a more profound conception of religion. He received Luther as his guest when he passed through Nuremberg on his return journey from Augsburg, after his appearance before Cardinal Cajetan. In a letter to Emser he declared that the learned men of Wittenberg had earned undying fame by having been, after so many centuries, the first to open their eyes, and to distinguish between the true and the false, and to banish from Christian theology a bad philosophy.[97] Eck even inserted his name in the Bull of Excommunication which he published, though Pirkheimer was absolved on appealing to Pope Leo X. He wrote, in Luther’s favour, a letter to Hadrian VI which, however, was perhaps never despatched, in which he calls him “a good and learned man.” The entire blame for the quarrel was thrust by this disputatious and peculiar man on Eck and the Dominicans.

In later years, however, he withdrew more and more from the Lutheran standpoint, chiefly, as it would appear, because he perceived the unbridled nature of the Reformers’ views and the bad moral and social effects of the innovations. He died in 1530 at peace with the Catholic Church.

“I had hoped at the commencement,” he wrote already in 1527 to Zasius in Freiburg, “that we might have obtained a certain degree of liberty, but of a purely spiritual character. Now, however, as we see with our own eyes, everything is perverted to the lust of the flesh, so that the last state is far worse than the first.”[98] He admitted his definite turning away from Lutheranism in a letter to Kilian Leib, Prior of the Rebdorf Monastery (1529), in which he at the same time relates the reason of his previous enthusiasm: “I hoped that [by Luther’s enterprise] the countless abuses would be remedied, but I found myself greatly deceived; for, before the former errors had been expelled, others, much more intolerable, and compared to which the earlier were mere child’s play, forced themselves in. I therefore began to withdraw myself gradually, and the more attentively I considered everything the more clearly I recognised the cunning of the old serpent.”[99]

His letter to his friend Tschertte in Vienna (1530) also contains a “loud lamentation and outburst of anger against Luther’s work.” We can see that he has entirely broken with it.[100] In this letter he says: “I admit that at first I too was a good Lutheran, like our departed Albert [DÜrer]. We hoped thereby to better the Roman knavery and the roguery of the monks and parsons.” But the contrary was the result; those of the new faith were even worse than those whom they were to reform. Members of the Council had also hoped for a general improvement of morals, but had found themselves shamefully deceived. He knows for certain—a valuable admission in view of the unhistorical idea of some Catholics that Luther’s partisans were all frivolous men—that “many pious and honourable men” lent a willing ear to his teaching; “hearing beautiful things said of faith and the holy Gospel, they fancy all is real gold that glitters, whereas it is hardly brass.”[101]

Another statement against Luther, made by this same scholar in 1528, is still stronger: “Formerly almost all men applauded at the sound of Luther’s name, but now nearly all are seized with disgust on hearing it ... and not without cause, for apart from his audacity, impudence, arrogance and slanderous tongue he is also guilty of lying to such an extent that he cannot refrain from any untruth; what he asserts to-day he does not scruple to deny to-morrow; he is instability itself.”[102]

We see also from the example of Albert DÜrer of Nuremberg, who is rightly accounted one of the greatest masters of Art, how overwhelming an influence the stormy energy, the calls for reform and the religious tone of Luther’s writings could exert on the susceptible minds of the day. Of a lively temper,[103] full of imagination and religious idealism, as his sixteen wonderful illustrations to the Apocalypse proved in 1498, he, like his Nuremberg friend Willibald Pirkheimer, gave himself up from the very first to the influence of the Lutheran writings, with which to a certain extent he was in sympathy. In his enthusiasm for freedom he considered that Christianity was too much fettered by oppressive rules of human invention, and was profoundly troubled by the desecration of holy things introduced in many regions by the greed and avarice of a worldly-minded clergy.

In 1520 he wrote to Spalatin: “God grant that I may meet with Dr. Martinus Luther, for then I will make a careful sketch of him and engrave it in copper, so that the memory of the Christian man may long be preserved, for he has helped me out of much anxiety.” He believed that light had been brought to him by means of Luther’s spiritual teaching, and a little further on he calls him “a man enlightened by the Holy Ghost and one who has the Spirit of God”; these words, which came from the depths of his soul, are an echo of Luther’s writings. Altogether prepossessed in Luther’s favour, though he never formally abandoned the Church, he wrote in his Diary, on May 17, 1521; “The Papacy resists the liberty of Christ by its great burden of human commandments, and in shameful fashion sucks our blood and robs us of our sweat for the benefit of idle and immoral folk, while those who are sick are parched with thirst and left to die of hunger.”

Being at that time somewhat anxious with regard to his material position, he had gone to Holland, and had heard of Luther’s supposed capture and disappearance after the Diet of Worms. In the same Memorandum, therefore, he summons Erasmus to undertake a reform of the Church: “O Erasmus Roderdamus, why hangest thou back? Listen, O Christian knight, ride forth by the side of the Lord Christ and defend the cause of truth.... Then the gates of Hell, the Roman See, shall, as Christ says, not prevail against thee ... for God is on the side of the holy Christian Churches.” And he adds in Apocalyptic tone: “Await the completing of the number of those who have been slain innocently, and then I will judge.”[104] Yet even on this journey through the Netherlands, DÜrer showed interest in the manifestations of Catholic life, attended the Catholic services, and, with his wife, duly made his Easter Confession.

Two thoughts, the oppression of the Faithful by man-made commandments and the unjust extortion of their money, held him under the spell of Luther’s writings with their promise of deliverance.

“O God, if Luther is dead who will in future expound the Holy Gospel to us so clearly? What would he not have written for us in ten or twenty years!” “Never,” he says, “has anyone written more clearly during the last 140 years [i.e. since the death of Wiclif in 1381], never has God given to anyone so evangelical a spirit.” So transparent is his teaching, that “everyone who reads Dr. Martin Luther’s books sees that it is the Gospel which he upholds. Hence they must be held sacred and not be burnt.”[105]

The man who wrote this was clearly better able to wield the pencil or brush than to pass theological judgment on the questions under discussion. DÜrer was already among the most famous men of the day. Led astray by the praise of the Humanists, he, and other similarly privileged minds, easily exceeded the limits of their calling, abetted as they were by the evil tendency to individualism and personal independence prevalent among the best men of the day.

On his return to Nuremberg in the autumn of 1521 he lived entirely for his art and remote from all else, clinging to the opinions he had already embraced, or at least suspending his judgment. How greatly the real or imaginary abuses in Catholic practice were capable of exciting him, especially where avarice appeared to play a part, is proved by his indignant inscription in 1523 to an Ostendorfer woodcut, representing the veneration of a picture of our Lady at Ratisbon: “This spectre has risen up against Holy Scripture at Regenspurg ... out of greed of gain”; his wish is that Mary should be rightly venerated “in Christ.” In 1526 he presented his picture of the four Apostles, now the ornament of the Munich Pinacothek, to the Nuremberg bench of magistrates who had just established Protestantism in the city, exhorting them “to accept no human inventions in place of the Word of God, for God will not allow His Word to be either added to or detracted from.” The “warnings,” in the form of texts, afterwards removed, which he placed in the mouths of Peter, John, Paul and Mark in his celebrated picture, also refer to religious seducers and false prophets, more particularly those who seize on the possessions of the poor through avarice and greed. We can hardly do otherwise than apply these texts to the abuses which met with his disapproval, and alleged false teaching of the Catholic Church. It is plain that the Elector Maximilian I of Bavaria understood them in this sense when he ordered their removal. This view is also supported by DÜrer’s letter in 1524 to Nicholas Kratzer, in which he says: “We are derided as heretics,” but this must be endured. At a later date Pirkheimer seems to have regarded him as merely “on the way to becoming a Lutheran” (p. 40). It cannot be affirmed with certainty that, when he died suddenly at Nuremberg, on April 6, 1528, he was either entirely convinced of the justice of Luther’s cause or had reverted to Catholicism.[106] At any rate, his art grew up on the soil of the Church.

Luther himself spoke of him after his death, on the strength of the reports received, and, perhaps, also from a desire to reckon him amongst his followers, in a letter to the Nuremberg Humanist Eobanus Hessus, as “the best of men,” and one to be congratulated “for that Christ allowed him to die so happily after such preparation” (“tam instructum et beato fine”), sparing him the sight of the evil days to come. “Therefore may he rest in peace with his fathers, Amen.”[107] Melanchthon says a few words of regret on the death of the great artist, but from them nothing definite can be gathered. Venatorius, the Lutheran preacher at Nuremberg, preached his panegyric.[108] In his letter to Tschertte, in 1530, on the other hand, Pirkheimer counts him, like himself, among those who were at first good Lutherans, but were afterwards disappointed in their hopes. “The close friendship which united DÜrer to this passionate and conceited scholar, who could not brook the slightest contradiction, is, in fact, a proof which we must not undervalue, of a certain affinity in their views with regard to the cardinal question of faith and religious belief.”[109] It is not impossible that DÜrer, like Pirkheimer, began to have doubts, and withdrew at last the open support he had previously given the Reformers.

The spiritual experiences of Pirkheimer and DÜrer help to bring before our eyes typical instances of the false paths followed by many of their contemporaries and the struggles through which they went.

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