Hartmann Grisar

FROM THE PEASANT WAR TO THE DIET OF AUGSBURG (1525-1530)

1. Luther’s Marriage

When, in November, 1524, Spalatin, on the occasion of an enquiry made by a lady, ventured to broach the question when Luther proposed taking a wife, he received the following answer: He was to tell the enquirer (Argula), that Luther was “in the hands of God, as a creature whose heart He could fashion as He would; whom He was able to kill or to make alive at any hour and any moment.” His feelings were yet foreign to matrimony. “But I shall neither set bounds to God’s action in my regard, nor listen to my own heart.”[463] By these words, which were addressed to all observers and critics, he not only left himself an open door, but attempted to describe his state in the terms of that pseudo-mysticism of man’s bondage and lack of free will as regards God’s designs to which at times he was wont to abandon himself more or less completely, according to the varying circumstances of his life.

About March or April, 1525, a definite intention to marry begins to appear. The letter to Spalatin referred to above, on p. 140, was written on April 16, and, though in it he does not yet admit his determination to marry, he speaks of himself jestingly as a famous lover, who had had at one time three wives in his hands. His eye fell on Catherine von Bora, who after her flight from the convent at Nimbschen, had found a home in the house of the Town-clerk, Reichenbach (above, p. 138). He speaks of her in a letter of May 4 as “my Katey” and declares that he is about to marry her.[464] Owing to his intimacy with her all sorts of stories went the rounds in the town during the following months, to which intercourse with the ex-nuns referred to above (p. 145) gave all the more colour.

Then, suddenly, without consulting any of his friends and with a haste which surprised even his own followers, on the evening of June 13, he celebrated his wedding with Bora in his own house, with all the formalities then usual. Besides Bugenhagen and Jonas, Luther’s friends, only the painter Lucas Cranach and his wife, and the Professor of Jurisprudence, Dr. Apel, were summoned as witnesses. The consummation of the marriage seems to have been duly witnessed by Bugenhagen as Pastor of Wittenberg. The public wedding did not take place until June 27, according to the custom common in that district of dividing the actual marriage from the public ceremony. During the interval Luther invited several guests to be present, as we see from his letters, which are still extant. From June 13 he speaks of himself already as “copulatus,”[465] and as a “husband.”[466]

On June 14 Jonas sent by special messenger to Spalatin a letter, evidently written under the stress of very mixed feelings: “Luther has taken Catherine von Bora to wife. Yesterday I was there and saw the betrothed on the bridal couch. I could not restrain my tears at the sight; I know not what strong emotion stirred my soul; now that it has taken place and is the Will of God, I wish the excellent, honest man and our beloved father in the Lord, every happiness. God is wonderful in His decrees!”[467]

Luther also was at pains to represent the incident as divinely ordained, a high and holy act.

At a later date he said: “God willed that I should take pity on her [Catherine].”[468] Even before taking the step, he had thought out the plan of impressing upon his union with “Katey,” the ex-nun, the character of a “reforming work.” “Because our enemies do not cease to condemn matrimony,” he writes, and “our ‘little wiseacres’ daily scoff at it,” he feels himself for that very reason attracted to it; being determined to give celebrity to the true teaching of the Gospel concerning marriage.[469] He had informed Albert, the archiepiscopal Elector, that before quitting this life he would enter the married state, which he considered as enjoined by God,[470] and somewhat earlier he had confided to a friend that, if he could manage it before he died, he meant “to take his Katey to wife in order to spite the devil.”[471] This agrees in part with what he wrote shortly after his marriage: “The Lord plunged me suddenly, while I still clung to quite other views, into matrimony.”[472]

As a matter of fact it was the unpleasant rumours aroused when his intimacy with Bora became known, which hastened the step. This is what Bugenhagen, an authentic witness, says with evident displeasure: Evil tales were the cause of Dr. Martin’s becoming a married man so unexpectedly.[473] Luther himself admits this in a confidential letter to Spalatin three days after the step. He informs him of his marriage as follows: “I have shut the mouth of those who slandered me and Catherine von Bora.”[474]

In the same letter Luther also refers to the reproach he had at first dreaded, viz. of degrading himself by his marriage. He scoffs at this: “I have become so low and despicable by this marriage,” he says jokingly, “that I hope the angels will laugh and all the devils weep. The world and its ‘wise ones’ do not yet recognise the pious and holy work of God and in me they regard it as something impious and devilish. Hence it pleases me greatly that, by my marriage, the opinion of those who continue to persevere in their ignorance of divine things is brought in question and condemned. Farewell, and pray for me.”[475] Such utterances were directed also against many of the friends of the Evangel. Hieronymus Schurf, the lawyer, and otherwise Luther’s confidant, had been one of those opposed to his marriage. He had said: “If this Monk takes a wife all the world and the devil himself will laugh, and Luther will undo the whole of his previous work.”[476]

Melanchthon, too, expressed his deep displeasure at the marriage in the remarkable Greek letter already once referred to (p. 145) addressed to his friend Joachim Camerarius, and dated June 16, 1525.

The true wording of this Greek letter, which Camerarius saw fit to modify, as is proved by the original in the Chigi Library in Rome, with his “corrections” in red pencil, only became known in 1876.[477] He revised it completely for his edition of Melanchthon’s letters because he feared to make the severe censure it contained public; thus the letter was formerly only known in the altered shape in which it was also published in 1834 in the “Corpus Reformatorum,” which begins with Melanchthon’s letters. A similar fate has befallen several other letters of Melanchthon in the Camerarius editions, and consequently also in the “Corpus.”

Melanchthon, according to the real text of the letter (which we give in full in the note), commences with these words: “Since you have probably received divergent accounts concerning Luther’s marriage, I judge it well to send you my views on his wedding.” After detailing the external circumstances already referred to, and pointing out that Luther “had not consulted any of his friends beforehand,” he continues: “You will perhaps be surprised that, at this unhappy time when upright and right-thinking men are everywhere being oppressed, he is not also suffering, but, to all appearance, leads a more easy life (????? t??f??) and endangers his reputation, notwithstanding the fact that the German nation stands in need of all his wisdom and strength. It appears to me, however, that this is how it has happened.” And here Melanchthon brings forward the complaints already related (p. 145) of the imprudent intimacy between a “man otherwise noble and high-minded” and the escaped nuns, who had made use of every art to attract him and thus had rendered him effeminate and inflamed his passions. “He seems after this fashion to have been drawn into the untimely change in his mode of life. It is clear, however, that the gossip concerning his previous criminal intercourse with her [Bora] was false. Now the thing is done it is useless to find fault with it, or to take it amiss, for I believe that nature impels man to matrimony. Even though this life is low, yet it is holy, and more pleasing to God than the unmarried state. And since I see that Luther is to some extent sad and troubled about this change in his way of life, I seek very earnestly to encourage him by representing to him that he has done nothing which, in my opinion, can be made a subject of reproach to him.”

In spite of his misgivings Melanchthon seeks to console himself with two strange reflections: Advancement and honour are dangerous to all men, even to those who fear God as Luther does, and therefore this “low” way of life is good for him. And again, “I am in hopes that he will now lay aside the buffoonery[478] for which we have so often found fault with him.” Camerarius must not allow himself to be disconcerted by Luther’s unexpected mode of proceeding, even though he may be painfully aware that it is injurious to him. “I exhort you to bear this with patience ... God has shown us by the numerous mistakes (pta?sata) the Saints committed in earlier ages, that He wishes us to prove His Word and not to rely upon the reputation of any man, but only on His Word. He would, indeed, be a very godless man who, on account of the mistake (pta?sa) of the doctor, should judge slightingly of his doctrine....” Melanchthon then reiterates his statement that nature impels a man to matrimony, adding to it the word “verily.”[479]

The letter, which was not intended for publication and, probably for this reason, was written in Greek, contains a strange admixture of blame and dissatisfaction coupled with recognition and praise of Luther’s good qualities. We see clearly how Melanchthon tries to overcome the bitterness he feels by means of these reflections, which however reveal him as the learned and timid Humanist he really was, rather than as a theologian and man of the world. Protestants have attempted to moderate the impression created by this letter of Melanchthon’s by representing it as written hastily in a passing fit of temper. As a matter of fact, however, it does not bear the impress of having been so written, and, considering how the writer is evidently at pains to find some justification for Luther’s conduct, it cannot be described as written hastily and without due thought. The writer, in spite of all he says, is anxious that “what has taken place should not be blamed”; Luther to him is still “a noble and high-minded man,” one, too, who has given proof of his fear of God.

One of the most recent of Luther admirers accordingly abandons this excuse, and merely speaks of the letter as a “hateful” one, “written in an extremely uncomfortable frame of mind.” After various reflections thereon he arrives at the following surprising conclusion: “If we place ourselves in poor Melanchthon’s position and realise the slight offered him in not having been apprised of the matter until after the wedding had taken place, and his grief that his friend should thus expose the cause of the evangel to slander, we must admit that, after all, the letter was quite amiable.” If, however, there was any question of slight in the matter, Melanchthon was certainly not the only one who had cause for complaint; accustomed as he was to such treatment on Luther’s part, he scarcely even refers to it, his objection being based on far more serious grounds. He showed no sign of having been slighted when, shortly after, he invited Wenceslaus Link to the public “nuptiÆ,” expressing his good wishes that Luther’s marriage “may turn out well.”[480] The scruples which he shared with Camerarius concerning Luther’s intimacy with the ex-nuns were not new, but had long disquieted him. We may notice over and over again his secret esteem for celibacy, which he ranks above matrimony, and such thoughts may well have animated him when composing the letter, even though he repels them and praises the married state. “It is plain,” says Kawerau, “that a shudder passes through his frame at the very thought of marriage between a monk and a nun.”[481] We can only regard it as due to his state of indecision when he says in the letter in question, first that Luther “had done nothing that called for reproach,” and then, that “he had made a mistake.”

We may nevertheless grant to the Protestant author, mentioned at the commencement of the previous paragraph, that Melanchthon—who was not, as a matter of fact, apprised by Luther of his thoughts at that time—“did not rightly understand the motive which caused him to enter the married state at such a moment.” Indeed, the motive was not to be readily understood. Luther’s intention, so our author thinks, was to set his enemies at defiance by his marriage and to show them “that he would pay less attention to them than ever”; being apprehensive of his approaching end, he determined to set the last touch to his doctrine on matrimony by a solemn and manly act.

Many others, like Melanchthon, have been unable to appreciate this “great motive,” or at any rate the disadvantages of marriage in Luther’s case seem to have weighed more heavily with them than its compensating advantages in the service of the Reformation.

This explanation, nevertheless, appears so convincing to our author that he does not insist further upon another reason which he hints at, viz. that Catherine von Bora “was unkindly disposed to Melanchthon,” and that he much feared she would alienate his friend’s heart from him. The same writer mildly remarks concerning the falsification of the letter committed by Camerarius: “it was not with the intention of falsifying, that he made various alterations, but in order to prevent disedification.” Camerarius has, however, unfortunately aggravated one passage in the letter, for where Melanchthon speaks for the first time of man’s natural inclination for marriage, Camerarius adds the word a?t??, thus referring directly to Luther what the writer intended for men in general: “I believe he was forced by nature to marry,” which, following immediately upon the passage referring to his frivolous intercourse with the nuns and the calumnies about Bora, gives a still more unfavourable impression of Luther. This at any rate may serve to exculpate the Catholic controversialists, who erroneously referred this passage, and the other one which resembles it, directly to Luther, whereas he is comprised in it only indirectly.

According to what we have seen, the circumstance of Luther’s sudden marriage occurring just at the time of the panic of the Peasant War, made an especially deep impression on Melanchthon, who was ever inclined to circumspection and prudence.

In point of fact, a more unsuitable time, and one in more glaring contrast with nuptial festivities, it would have been impossible for Luther to select. The flames of the conflagration raging throughout Germany and even in the vicinity of Wittenberg, and the battlefields strewn with the dead, slain by the rebels or the supporters of the Knights and Princes, formed a terrible background to the Wittenberg wedding.

The precipitancy of his action was the more remarkable because at that time Luther himself was living in a state of keen anxiety concerning the outcome of the great social and religious upheaval.

Seeing that he was looked upon, by both lord and peasant, as the prime instigator of the trouble, he had grave cause to fear for his own safety. About five weeks later, writing from Seeburg, near Mansfeld, after a preaching tour through the rebels’ country, he says: “I, who am also affected by it, for the devil is intent upon my death, know that he is angered because so far he has been unable either by cunning or by force to harm me and is determined to be rid of me even should he be forced to do his worst and set the whole world in an uproar; so that I really believe, and it appears to me, that it is on my account that he does such things in the world in order that God may plague the world. If I reach home safe and sound, I shall, with God’s help, prepare myself for death.”[482]

Whereas he had written not long before, that he was not thinking of marrying because he awaited death, i.e. the death-penalty for heresy,[483] according to his statements after his marriage it was the thought of death which had led him to contract the union; God’s work was unmistakable, God was shaming his adversaries. He repeatedly makes statements to this effect, which we shall gather together with some of his other assertions to form a picture of his mental state then.

In one of the letters of invitation to the public wedding he writes: “The lords, priests and peasants are all against me and threaten me with death; well, as they are so mad and foolish I shall take care to be found at my end in the state [matrimony] ordained by God.”[484] He is forced, however, to brace himself up in order not to lose heart and be vexed at the falling away of the people from him; “to resign favour, honour and followers”[485] caused him grief of heart and an inward struggle.

His conviction that the end of the world was approaching, also did its part in exciting him; “the destruction of the world may be expected any hour,” he writes.[486]

Hence he is determined, as he declares, to marry “in order to defy the devil,”[487] i.e. he defies all his afflictions and anxieties, all the accusations of others as well as of his own conscience, and surrenders himself to the feeling, which, since the Wartburg days, ever stirred the depths of his soul on such occasions and made him hope to recover all the ground lost by means of force and violence. Peace and contentment of soul were not, however, the immediate result, for Melanchthon writes, that, after his marriage, Luther had been “sad and troubled.”[488]

Luther will, however, have it that it was God Who had shown him the road he had taken.

“God is pleased to work wonders in order to mock me and the world and to make fools of us.”[489] “That it is God’s work even the ‘wise ones’ among us are forced to acknowledge, though they are greatly vexed. The picture their fancy paints of me and the girl makes them lose their wits so that they think and speak godlessly. But the Lord liveth and is greater in us than he [the devil] that is in the world (1 John iv. 4).”[490] “God willed it and carried it out” (“Sic Deus voluit et fecit”).[491] “On account of this work of God I have, it is true, to suffer much abuse and many calumnies.”[492] “Thus, so far as I am able, I have [by my marriage] thrown away the last remnant of my former popish life; I am determined to make them [my foes] still madder and more foolish; this is the stirrup-cup and my last good-bye.”[493]

“Were the world not scandalised at us, I should be scandalised at the world, for I should be afraid lest what we undertake is not of God; but as the world is scandalised and withstands me, I am edified and comfort myself in God; do you likewise.”[494]

“The cause of the Evangel has been greatly wronged by MÜnzer and the peasants,” he declares, therefore he wished to strengthen it by his marriage, in spite of the Papists who were shouting in triumph (“ne videar cessisse”), “and I shall do more still which will grieve them and bring them to the recognition of the Word.”[495]

If, to the motives for his marriage which he enumerates above, we add a further reason, also alleged by him, viz. that he wished to show himself obedient to his father, who desired the marriage, we arrive at the stately number of seven reasons. They may be arranged as follows: 1. Because it was necessary to shut the mouth of those who spoke evil of him on account of his relations with Bora. 2. Because he was obliged to take pity on the forsaken nun. 3. Because his father wished it. 4. Because the Catholics represented matrimony as contrary to the Gospel. 5. Because even his friends laughed at his plan of marrying. 6. Because the peasants and the priests threatened him with death and he must therefore defy the terrors raised by the devil. 7. Because God’s will was plainly apparent in the circumstances. Melanchthon’s reason, viz. that man is impelled to marriage by nature, Luther does not himself bring forward.

We must not lose sight of the circumstance that the marriage took place barely five weeks after the death of the Saxon Elector Frederick the Wise. His successor was more openly favourable towards the ecclesiastical innovations. Frederick would have nothing to do with the marriage of the clergy, particularly with nuns, although he did not permit any steps to be taken against those who had married. He wrote to his Councillors at Torgau on October 4, 1523, that to undertake any alteration or innovation would be difficult, more particularly in these days when he had to anticipate trouble “for our country and people” from the opponents of Lutheranism; “he did not think that a clergyman ought to earn his stipend by idleness and the taking of wives, and by works which he himself condemned.”[496] In May, 1524, we see from one of Luther’s letters to Spalatin that difficulties had been raised at the Court concerning the remuneration of the married clergy by the Government. In this letter he recommends Johann Apel, formerly Canon of WÜrzburg, who had married a nun, for a post at the University of Wittenberg, and gives special advice in case his marriage should prove an obstacle (“quod si uxorcula obstet,” etc.). He here condemns the faint-hearted action of the Elector, and remarks, that he will not thereby escape the animosity of his foes, seeing that he notoriously “favours heretics and provides for them.”[497]

Luther did not lose his habit of jesting with his friends, though his witticisms are neither proper nor edifying: “I am bound in the meshes of my mistress’s tresses,” he writes to one,[498] and to another, that it all seemed “very strange” to him and he could hardly realise he had “become a married man, but the evidence was so strong that he was in honour bound to believe it”; and to a third, since God had taken him captive unawares in the bonds of holy matrimony, he would be obliged to confirm this with a “collation” [dinner-party], therefore he and Mrs. Catherine begged him to send a cask of the best Torgau beer for a good drink; should “it turn out not to be good, the sender would have to drink it all himself as a penalty.”[499] He speaks later in the same jocose fashion of his “Katey” as the “Kette” [chain] to which he is tied, and rather indelicately plays on his wife’s maiden name: “I lie on the bier [’Bore’ = mod. Germ. ‘Bahre’], i.e. I am dead to the world. My Catena [Kette, or chain] rattles her greetings to you and your Catena.” This to Wenceslaus Link, the former Vicar of the Augustinians, who was already married.[500]

Such jokes were likely to be best appreciated in the circle of apostate priests and monks.

But many earnest men of Luther’s own party, who like Melanchthon and Schurf, feared evil consequences from the marriage, were little disposed for such trifling.

Luther jestingly complains of such critics: “The wise men who surrounded him” were greatly incensed at his marriage;[501] he says he knew beforehand that “evil tongues would wag” and, in order that the marriage might “not be hindered,” he had “made all haste to consummate it.”[502]

Friends and followers living at a distance expressed strong disapproval of his conduct when it was already too late. The Frankfurt Patrician, Hamman von Holzhausen, wrote on July 16, 1525, to his son Justinian, who was studying at Wittenberg: “I have read your letter telling me that Martinus Lutherus has entered the conjugal state; I fear he will be evil spoken of and that it may cost him a great falling off.”[503]

It was, however, useless for the new husband to attempt to defend himself against the consequences by excuses such as the following: “I am neither in love nor consumed by passion, but I esteem my wife highly.”[504] According to his own assertion the step had not been taken under stress of sensual passion, seeing that it was closely bound up with his theology. “I had firmly determined, for the honour of matrimony,” he says in the Table-Talk, “before ever I took a wife, that had I had to die unexpectedly, or were lying on my death-bed, I would have wedded some pious maiden.”[505] He again assures us, that even when an old man and incapable of begetting children, he would still have taken a wife “merely in order to do honour to the married state and testify to his contempt for the shameful immorality and evil living of the Papacy.”[506]

We are here confronted with a strange psychological phenomenon, a candidate for death who is at the same time one for marriage.

Luther, however, speaks so frequently of this abnormal idea of marrying at the hour of death, that he may gradually have come to look upon it as something grand. In the case of most people death draws the thoughts to the severing of all earthly ties, but Luther, on the contrary, is desirous of forming new ones at the very moment of dissolution. He arrives at this paradox only by means of two highly questionable ideas, viz. that he must exhibit the utmost defiance and at the same time vindicate the sacred character of marriage. It would have been quite possible for him without a wife to show his defiant spirit, and he had already asserted his doctrine concerning marriage so loudly and bluntly, that this fresh corroboration by means of such a marriage was quite unnecessary. What was wanted was, that he should vindicate his own act, which appeared to many of his friends both troublesome and detrimental. Hence his endeavours to conceal its true character by ingenious excuses.

Luther’s Catholic opponents were loud in the expression of their lively indignation at the sacrilegious breaking of their vows by monk and nun; some embodied the same in satires designed to check the spread of the movement and to open the eyes of Luther’s followers. One saying of Erasmus has frequently been quoted: A wedding was the usual end of a comedy, but here it was the termination of a tragedy. The actual wording of the somewhat lengthy passage runs thus: “In the comic opera the fuss usually ends in a wedding and then all is quiet; in the case of sovereigns their tragedies also frequently come to a similar conclusion, which is not particularly advantageous to the people, but is better than a war.... Luther’s tragedy seems likely to end in the same way. The Monk has taken a nun to wife.... Luther has now become calmer and his pen no longer makes the same noise. There is none so wild but that a wife can tame him.”[507] Erasmus, however, speedily withdrew his last words, writing that Luther has become more virulent than ever.[508]

More in place than such satires were the serious expressions of disapproval and regret on the part of Catholics concerning the terrible fall of the quondam monk and minister of the altar, by reason of his invalid marriage with the nun. Hieronymus Dungersheim of Leipzig was later to raise his voice in a protest of this sort, addressed to Luther, which may be considered as an echo of the feeling awakened in the minds of many by the news of Luther’s marriage and as such may serve as a striking historical testimony: “O unhappy, thrice unhappy man! Once you zealously taught, supported by Divine testimonies and agreeably with the Church of God, that the insolence of the flesh must be withstood by penance and prayer; now you have the fallen woman living with you and give yourself up to serve the flesh under the pretence of marriage, blinded as you are by self-indulgence, pride and passion; by your example you lead others to similar wickedness.... What a startling change, what inconstancy! Formerly a monk, now in the midst of a world you once forsook; formerly a priest, now, as you yourself believe, without any priestly character and altogether laicised; formerly in a monk’s habit, now dressed as a secular; formerly a Christian, now a Husite; formerly in the true faith, now a mere Picard; formerly exhorting the devout to chastity and perseverance, now enticing them to tread their vow under foot and to deliver themselves without compunction into the hands of the Evil One!”[509]

In the above, light has been thrown upon the numerous legends attaching to Luther’s wedding at Wittenberg, and their true value may now be better appreciated.

It is clear, for instance, from the facts recorded, that it is incorrect to accuse Luther of not having complied with the then formalities, and of having consummated the marriage before even attempting to conclude these. The distinction mentioned above between the two acts of June 13 and 27, each of which had its special significance, was either unknown to or ignored by these objectors. Were we merely to consider the due observance of the formalities, then there is no doubt that these were complied with, save that objection might be raised as to the legal status of the pastor. But, on the other hand, Canon Law was plainly and distinctly opposed to the validity of a marriage contracted between parties bound by solemn monastic vows. Thus from the point of view of civil law the regularity of Luther’s new status was very doubtful, as both Canon Law and the Law of the Empire did not recognise the marriages of priests and monks, and lawyers were forced to base their decisions upon such laws. We shall have to speak later of Luther’s anger at the “quibbles” of the lawyers, and his anger had some reason, viz. his well-founded fear lest his marriage should not be recognised as valid by the lawyers, and hence that his children would be stamped as illegitimate and as incapable of inheriting.

The false though frequently repeated statement, that Catherine von Bora was confined a fortnight after her marriage with Luther can be traced back to a letter of Erasmus, dated December 24, 1525, giving too hasty credence to malicious reports.[510] Erasmus himself, however, distinctly retracted this statement in another letter of March 13, 1526: “The previous report of the woman’s delivery,” he writes, “was untrue, but now it is said she is in a certain condition.”[511] As his previous statement was thought to be correct, doubts were raised as to the authenticity of the second letter; the objections are, however, worthless; both letters are taken from the same set of the oldest collection of the correspondence of Erasmus, and, from their first appearance, were ever held to be genuine.

Indeed, the assumption that Luther had unlawful intercourse with Catherine von Bora before his marriage is founded solely and entirely on certain reports already discussed, viz. his intimacy with the escaped nuns generally.

It is true that soon after the marriage Luther speaks of Catherine von Bora as his “Mistress” (“Metze”) in whose tresses he is bound,[512] but the word he uses had not at that time the opprobrious meaning it conveys in modern German; it simply meant a girl or woman, and was a term of endearment in common use.

An assertion made by Joachim von der Heyden, a Leipzig Master, has also been quoted; in a public writing of August 10, 1525, addressed to Catherine von Bora, he reproached her with having conducted herself like a dancing-girl in her flight from the convent to Wittenberg, and there, as was said, having lived in an open and shameless manner with Luther before she took him as her husband.[513] A circumstance which must not be overlooked is, that these words were intended for Catherine herself, and appear to come from a man who believed what he was saying. Yet on examination we see that he rests his assertion merely on hearsay: “as was said.” The “dancing-girl,” again, was adduced merely by way of comparison, though assuredly not a complimentary one, and refers either to the very worldly manners of the escaped nun, or to the secular, perhaps even scarcely modest dress, for which she exchanged her habit on her flight or afterwards. It is probable that at Leipzig, where Heyden lived, and which was one of the headquarters of anti-Lutheranism, something more definite would have been urged, had anything really been known of any actual immorality between Catherine and Luther.

Another bitter opponent of Luther’s, Simon Lemnius, who has also been appealed to, likewise adduces no positive or definite facts. Among the inventions of his fancy contained in the “Monachopornomachia” he left us, he does not even mention any illicit intercourse of Luther with Bora before his marriage, though in this satire he makes the wives of Luther, Spalatin, and Justus Jonas give vent to plentiful obscene remarks touching other matters. He merely relates—and this only by poet’s licence—how Bora, after overwhelming Luther with reproaches on account of his alleged attempt to jilt her, finally dragged him away with her to the wedding.[514]

Since in this work it is history in the strict sense which speaks, only such evidence can be admitted against Luther as would be accepted as proof in a court of law, and mere conjectures would be out of place. We have seen the historic complaint made by Melanchthon of Luther’s “effeminacy” and the “exciting of his passions by the nuns who pursued him with the utmost cunning,”[515] and have some idea of the scandal created by the quondam monk through his light-hearted intercourse with these women who had quitted their seclusion; we can now understand how natural was the gossip to which he himself and his friends bear witness. It is true that men like Eberlin of GÜnzburg, the apostate Franciscan, said at the time that the devil was busy everywhere stirring up “wicked and vexatious suspicions and calumnies” against Luther, etc.[516] Others gave vent to their spite against the manners of the ex-nuns, who were bringing the evangel into dispute.[517] We can comprehend such reflections as the following, made at a later date by indignant Catholic observers, even though in an historical work such as this we cannot make them our own. “To have remained spotless amidst such dangers Luther would have to have been an angel. Whoever has any knowledge of human nature, and knows that God as a rule punishes pride and haughtiness by this particular vice, will not wonder that many have their doubts as to Luther’s unblemished life before he took a wife.”[518]

2. The Peasant-War. Polemics

That the preaching of the new Evangel had a great part in the origin of the frightful peasant rising of 1525 is a fact, which has been admitted even by many non-Catholic historians in modern days.

“We are of opinion,” P. Schreckenbach writes in 1895, “that Luther had a large share in the revolution,” and he endorses his opinion by his observations on “Luther’s warfare against the greatest conservative power of the day,” and the “ways and means he chose with which to carry on his war.”[519] Fr. v. Bezold, in 1890, in his “History of the German Reformation,” remarked concerning Luther’s answer to the hostile treatment he received from the Diet at Nuremberg (1524), and his allusions to “the mad, tipsy Princes”: “Luther should never have written in such a way had he not already made up his mind to act as leader of a Revolution. That he should have expected the German nation of those days to listen to such passionate language from the mouth of its ‘Evangelist’ and ‘Elias’ without being carried beyond the bounds of law and order, was a naÏvetÉ only to be explained by his ignorance of the world and his exclusive attention to religious interests. Herein lies his greatness and his weakness.”[520] Concerning the effects of such language upon the people, the same historian wrote, as late as 1908: “How else but in a material sense was the plain man to interpret Luther’s proclamation of Christian freedom and his extravagant strictures on the parsons and nobles?”[521]

Luther’s Catholic contemporaries condemned in the strongest manner his share in the unchaining of the revolt; they failed entirely to appreciate the “greatness” referred to above.

One who was well acquainted with his writings and published a polemical work in Latin against him at that time, referring to certain passages, some of which we have already met, makes the following representations to him on his responsibility in the Peasant War. It was he who first raised the call to arms, and it was impossible for him to wash his hands of all share in the revolt, even though he had told the people that they were not to make use of force without the consent of the authorities and had subsequently condemned the rising with violence. “The common people pay no attention to that,” he tells him, “but merely obey what pleases them in Luther’s writings and sermons.” “You declared in your public writings,[522] that they were to assail the Pope and the Cardinals with every weapon available, and wash their hands in their blood. You called all the bishops who would not follow your teaching, idolatrous priests and ministers of the devil; you said that the bishops deserved to be wiped off the face of the earth in a great rising.” “You called those, ‘dear children of God and true Christians,’ who make every effort for the destruction of the bishoprics and the extermination of episcopal rule. You said also that whoever obeyed the bishops was the devil’s own servant. You called the monasteries dens of murderers, and incited the people to pull them down.”[523]

A strong wave of anticlerical and of politico-social commotion due to unjust oppression prevailed among the peasantry in many parts of Germany even before Luther came forward. But it was the gospel of freedom, the mistaken approbation found in biblical passages for the desire for equality among the classes and a juster distribution of property, as well as the example of the great spiritual upheaval then going on, which rendered the crisis acute, and incited the peasants to make their extravagant and violent demands.

An attempt was made to conceal the revolutionary character of the movement by explaining it as mainly religious.

The “Twelve Articles of the Peasants of Swabia,” was headed, for instance, by a demand for liberty to preach the Gospel and for congregations to have the right of choosing their own pastors.[524] It was believed by those who drew up these Articles that all the claims, even those relating to the tithes, to hunting, fishing, forest rights, etc., could be proved from Holy Scripture; only then, they said, were they ready to abandon them when they were refuted by Holy Writ; at the same time, however, they reserved to themselves the right to make in the future such additional demands as they might come to recognise as being in accordance with Scripture. Luther’s ideas were also embodied in the thirty Articles of “Squire Helferich and the Knights Heinz und Karsthanns,” indeed, they were for the most part couched in the very words of Luther’s writings and the 28th Article swore deadly hostility to all his foes.[525]

The peasants in the Rhine province and about Mayence in their rising in May, 1525, demanded not merely the liberty to choose their own pastors and to preach the Gospel, but also that the preachers of the new faith imprisoned in Mayence should be set free. Their claim to choose their pastors, which was likewise made elsewhere, for instance, in the “Twelve Articles of the Peasants of Swabia,” signified nothing less than the intention to fill the posts with preachers of the new faith.[526]

“The rebels everywhere either supported or opposed the Evangelical demands, those of Evangelical views joining the rebels with the idea that they would be able to enforce their wishes by this means.” This explains why, after the rising had been put down, the Catholic lords were disposed “to look on Lutheranism as no better than rebellion.”[527] These words, written by a Protestant historian, refer to the Rhine Province, but they are equally applicable elsewhere. So, too, what he says of this district may also be said generally, viz. that the enthusiastic expectation, which was widespread in Lutheran circles, of a great change before the approaching end of the world, helped to make of the followers of the new faith supporters of the peasants. Luther encouraged such fanatical ideas among his readers till the very outbreak of the revolt. (See below, p. 200 f.)

“What wonder,” the same historian says, “that when the social revolution broke out in the spring, Luther’s persecuted followers thought they recognised the beginning of the change, and in many instances made common cause with the peasants and the lower classes of the towns. Luther himself had no wish to carry through his religious enterprise with the help either of the knights or of the peasants, but his followers were not equal to making the necessary distinction between the spiritual and the temporal.”[528]

Luther and his preachers had so frequently brought forward such disparaging and degrading charges against the secular, and still more against the spiritual authorities,[529] that clear-sighted contemporaries, such as Bartholomew von Usingen, foretold a revolution[530] as the result of such discourses and writings. The destruction of the episcopal power, which, under the conditions then prevailing, was so closely bound up with the secular, meant a radical revolution in the law of property obtaining in the German Empire.

The “Christian freedom” of all, the equality of high and low in the common priesthood, was proclaimed in the most incautious and seductive terms. The peasants were taught by itinerant and often fanatical preachers, concerning their real or alleged rights as vouched for by Holy Scripture. Thus the esteemed Strasburg preacher, Caspar Hedio, of the Rhinegau, in a sermon which he delivered on the Wachholder Heide, near Erbach, explained to the people his views on the customary payment of tithes; his words acting like a charm: He thought the peasants should pay tithes only under protest, though they were nevertheless not to attempt to abrogate the payment by force. Once roused, however, who was to keep the crowd within these limits? In 1524 Hedio had two sermons, preached on this subject in Strasburg, printed together with a circular letter addressed to the inhabitants of the Rhinegau, “which, there can be no doubt, exercised a certain influence upon the rising there.”[531] In the circular he proposed, that the people themselves should go in search of capable preachers if the ecclesiastical authorities did not send such.[532]

A far-reaching social movement had been at work among the peasants, more particularly in many districts of the south-west of Germany, even previous to the rise of Lutheranism. They raised protests, which in many instances were justifiable, against the oppression under which they laboured. A crisis seemed imminent there as early as 1513 and 1514, and the feeling was general that a settlement of the difficulties could only be brought about by violence. The ferment in many places assumed an anticlerical character, which was all the more natural seeing that the landowners and gentry who were the chief cause of the dissatisfaction were either clergymen, like the Prince-Bishops, or closely allied with the Church and her multifarious secular institutions. The ill-feeling against the clergy was even then being stirred up by exaggerated descriptions of their idle life, their luxury and their unworthy conduct.

To seek to represent the movement, as has been done, as an exclusively social one, is, even for the period before Luther, not quite correct, although it certainly was mainly social. Yet it was, as a matter of fact, the new ideas scattered among the people by Luther and Zwingli, and the preaching of the apostasy, which brought the unrest so quickly to a head. The anticlerical ideas of the religious innovators, combined with social class antagonism, lent an irresistible force to the rising. Hence the Peasant War has recently been described on the Protestant side as a “religious movement,” called forth by the discussion of first principles to which the Reformation gave rise, and which owed its violent character to the religious contrast which it brought out.[533] The expert on this period who writes thus, proves and justifies his opinion, showing that Zwingli and Luther “were the primary cause” of the War, not indeed directly, but because once the peasants had become familiar with the new “biblical” ideas, which were so favourable to their cause, they refused to stand by and see such doctrines suppressed by violence, and preferred to take up arms against the Catholic rulers and their energetic anti-Reformation measures.[534] According to the same writer it is necessary to distinguish carefully between what the peasants themselves represented in the course of the revolt as the moving cause, i.e. the social disabilities of which they complained (for instance in the Twelve Articles), and that which actually produced the rising.

Nor must it be overlooked that, at the moment when passions were already stirred up to their highest pitch, many attempts were made on the Lutheran side to pacify the people. The catastrophe foreseen affrighted those who were on the spot, and who feared lest the responsibility might fall upon their shoulders. Quite recently a forgotten pamphlet, written by an anonymous Lutheran preacher and dating from the commencement of the movement, has been republished, in which, after some pious exhortations, the author expresses his firm hope that the fear of God would succeed in triumphing over the excited passions; even biblical quotations against misuse of the new evangelical freedom are to be found in this well-intentioned booklet.[535] Then as now attention was drawn to Luther’s doctrine concerning obedience to the powers that be, which required of “the true Christian” that he should even “allow himself to be flayed,” and out of love of the cross renounce all desire for revenge (xiv. 4).

Notwithstanding all this, the great responsibility which Lutheranism shares in the matter remains. “It is no purely historical and objective view,” says another Protestant historian, “but rather an apologetic and false assumption, which attempts to deny the fact, that Luther’s evangelical preaching most strongly encouraged and brought to a crisis the social excitement which had been simmering among the lowest classes since the fifteenth century. The agitation stirred up by the preachers who followed in Luther’s footsteps contributed in a still greater degree towards this result.”[536]

Special research in the different parts of the wide area covered by the rising has to-day confirmed even more completely the opinion that the accusations urged against Lutheranism by the olden supporters of the Church were, after all, not so unjust in this particular. The much-abused Johann CochlÆus, who made such charges, is rightly spoken of by the last-mentioned historian as being “more suited” to depict that revolutionary period than the diplomatic and cautious Sleidanus, or the Protestant theological admirers and worshippers of Luther.[537] The learned Hieronymus Emser wrote, in the stormy year 1525, a work “Against Luther’s abominations,” a large part of which is devoted to proving what is already explained in the sub-title of the book, “How, and why, and in what words, Luther, in his books, urges and exhorts to rebellion.” Emser also gave indignant expression to his conviction in some verses intended for general circulation.

Luther was directly implicated in the beginning of the rising when the “Twelve Articles of the Peasants of Swabia” was forwarded to him by the insurgents. The peasants invited him, with confidence, “to declare what was of Divine right.”[538] Luther’s honoured name came first in the list of learned men who were to be consulted. The Wittenberg professor grasped the full importance of the moment; he felt that the direction of German affairs had been placed in his hands. Naturally he did not wish to be the one to let loose the terrible storm, nor did he, as the representative and “deliverer” of the people, wish to repulse the movement which had been so long favourable to him, and the demands of which were, in part at least, perfectly justifiable. He found himself in a position exactly similar to that which he had occupied formerly in regard to the Knights, who were anxious to take up arms, and with whom he had, up to a certain point, made common cause, but whose project afterwards appeared to him too dangerous and compromising to the cause of the evangel. In the question of the Twelve Articles it was difficult, nay, impossible, for him not to give offence either to the gentry or to the populace, or to avoid barring the way for the new evangel in one direction or the other. He determined to seek a middle course. But the tragic consequences of the position he had always assumed, the circumstances of the day and his unrestrained temper, caused him to give mortal offence to both sides, to the lords as well as to the peasants.

First, he flung his “Exhortation to Peace” on the field of battle—no mere figure of speech, as, at the time of writing, the tumult had already broken out and the horrors of Weinsberg been enacted (April 16, 1525), though of this Luther was ignorant when he composed the pamphlet. Formerly this writing was thought to have been written in May, but as a matter of fact it belongs to the period just after April 18.[539]

In this writing, as well as in the two following which treat of the rising, certain sides of Luther’s character are displayed which must be examined from the historical and psychological standpoint. The second, which was the outcome of the impressions made by the bloody contest, consists of only one sheet and is entitled “Against the murderous, thieving hordes of Peasants,” or more shortly, “Against the insurgent Peasants”; it, too, was written before the complete defeat of the rebels in the decisive days of May.[540] The third is the “Circular letter concerning the stern booklet against the Peasants,” of the same year, and belongs to the time when the conquerors, flushed with victory, were raging against the vanquished.[541]

The three writings must be considered in conjunction with the circumstances which called them forth. Written in the very thick of the seething ferment, they glow with all the fire of their author, whose personal concern in the matter was so great. Whoever weighs their contents at the present day will be carried back to the storm of that period, and will marvel at the strength of the spirit which inspires them, but at the same time be surprised at the picture the three together present. He will ask, and not without cause, which of the three is most to be regretted; surely the third, for the unmistakable blunders of the author, who gives the fullest play to feeling and fancy to the detriment of calm reason, go on increasing in each pamphlet.

In the first, the “Exhortation,” the author seeks to put the truth before, and to pacify the Princes and gentry, more particularly those Catholics who, subsequent to the Diet of Nuremberg, in 1524, had entered the lists against the innovations. He also would fain instruct and calm the peasants, his “dear Masters and Brothers.” Had Luther been endowed with a clear perception of the position of affairs, and seen the utter uselessness of any attempt merely to stem the movement, he would not at this critical juncture have still further irritated the rebels by the attacks upon the gentry, into which he allowed himself to break out, and which were at once taken advantage of.

He cries, for instance, to the authorities: “Your government consists in nothing else but fleecing and oppressing the poor common people in order to support your own magnificence and arrogance, till they neither can nor will endure it. The sword is at your throat; you think you sit fast in the saddle and that it will be impossible to overthrow you. But you will find that your self-confidence and obstinacy will be the breaking of your necks.” “You are bringing it upon yourselves and wish to get your heads broken. There is no use in any further warning or admonishing.” “God has so ordained it that your furious raging neither can nor shall any longer be endured. You must become different and give way to the Word of God; if you refuse to do so willingly, then you will be forced to it by violence and riot. If these peasants do not accomplish it, others must.”[542]

He admonishes the peasants to suffer in a Christian manner, and to be ready to endure even persecution and oppression willingly. Such is the spirit of the evangel which he has always preached. The gospel made the material life to consist in nothing else but suffering, injustice, crosses, patience and contempt for all temporal goods, even life itself. Hence they must not base their earthly claims on the gospel. “Murderous prophets” had, however, come amongst them who, by their false interpretation of the Bible, injured the cause of the gospel and incited men to the use of force, which was forbidden. He himself had been so successful and yet had abhorred violence, which made the spread of his doctrine so much the more marvellous. “Now you interfere,” you wish to help the cause of the evangel, but you “are damaging it” by your violent action. The effect of these words which form the central point of his train of thought he destroys by fresh attacks upon the lords and Princes: If they “forbid the preaching of the gospel and oppress the people so unbearably, then they deserve that God should cast them from their thrones.”[543] Luther fancies he already sees the hands stretched out to execute the sentence, and concludes by addressing the Princes thus: “Tyrants seldom die in their beds, as a rule they perish by a bloody death. Since it is certain that you govern tyrannically and savagely, forbidding the preaching of the gospel and fleecing and oppressing the people, there is no comfort or hope for you but to perish as those like you have perished.”[544]

Such words as these were scarcely in place on the very eve of the terrible struggle. Luther, in his excitement and his anxiety concerning his teaching, was not a fit judge of the condition of things. It is true that he fully realised that many of the burdens on account of which the peasants had risen in revolt were far too oppressive,[545] and the thoughts which he expresses on this matter are such as might well be taken to heart for all time. But he places the interests of his interpretation of the Bible so much in the foreground that he declares, at the very outset, that what pleased him best in the Peasants’ “Articles,” was their “readiness to be guided by clear, plain, undeniable passages of Scripture; since it is right and fair that no man’s conscience should be instructed and guided otherwise than by Holy Writ.”[546]

Never has the liberty of Bible interpretation been proclaimed under circumstances more momentous. Luther could not have been ignorant of the fact, that the armed multitude and their preachers, particularly the fanatical Anabaptists, had also, like him, set up a new interpretation of their own of the Bible, one, however, which agreed so well with their leanings that they would never relinquish it for any other.

Owing to the divergence of their teaching, and to the fact that they were led by fanatics of MÜnzer’s persuasion, Luther came to see in the warlike disturbances a mere work of the devil; hence he himself, the chief foe of hell, feels it his duty to enter the lists against Satan; the latter is seeking “to destroy and devour” both him and his evangel, using the bloodthirsty spirit of revolt as his instrument, but let the devil devour him and the result will be a belly-cramp.[547] In his excitement he fancies he sees signs and wonders. “I and my friends will pray to God that He may either reconcile you or else graciously prevent events from taking the course you wish, though the terrible signs and wonders of this time make me sad of heart.”[548] Like the end of the world, which was supposed to be approaching, the “signs in the heavens and the wonders on the earth” play their part in his mind. “They forebode no good to you,” he prophesies to the authorities, “and no good will come to you,” for “the many gruesome signs which have taken place till now in the heavens and on the earth point to some great misfortune and a striking change in the German land.”[549]

Shortly after the publication of the so-called “Exhortation to Peace,” the news reached Wittenberg of the sanguinary encounters which had already taken place. Everything was upside down. What dire confusion would ensue should the peasants prove victorious? Luther now asked himself what the new evangel could win supposing the populace gained the upper hand, and also how the rulers who had hitherto protected his cause would fare in the event of the rebels being successful in the Saxon Electorate and at Wittenberg. Says the most recent Protestant biographer of Luther: “Now that the rebellion was directed against the Princes whose kindness and pure intention were so well known to him, passionate rage with the rabble took the place of discriminating justice.”[550] The fanatical mob that accompanied Thomas MÜnzer whetted his tongue. We can understand how Luther, now thoroughly alarmed by what he saw on his journeys and preaching-tours throughout the insurgent districts, and by the daily accounts of unheard-of atrocities committed by the rebels, was anxious to take a vigorous part in the attempt to quench the flame. To his mind, with its constitutional disability to perceive more than one thing at a time, nothing is visible but the horrors of the armed rebellion. In “furious wrath” he now mercilessly assails the rebels, allying himself entirely with the Princes. The tract “Against the murderous Peasants,” comprising only four pages, was composed about May 4.[551]

The rebels, who had burnt the monasteries and demolished the strongholds and castles in Thuringia and in Luther’s own country, were soon to suffer a succession of great reverses. MÜnzer, the prophet, was defeated in the battle of Frankenhausen on May 15, 1525, and after being put to the torture, made his confession and was executed. Before his end he with great composure implored the Princes to have mercy on the poor, oppressed people. Luther said of his death, that his confession was “mere devilish stupidity” and that his torture should have been made much more severe; Melanchthon, in his history of MÜnzer, also regretted that he had not been forced to confess that he received his “Revelations” from the devil; he, too, did not think it enough that he should have been tortured only once. Luther, however, was not sorry to see the last of him. “MÜnzer, with some thousands of others, has unexpectedly been made to bite the dust.”[559]

The open supporters of the rising, on account of his second tract, called Luther a hypocrite and flatterer of the Princes.[560] Even some of his best friends could not understand his ferocity in inciting the lords against the peasants, more especially as it seemed to encourage the victors in their savage treatment of the prisoners, which in some places resembled a massacre.

Luther’s friend, Johann RÜhel, the Mansfeld councillor, wrote to him, at the time when the pamphlet against the peasants was making the greatest sensation, expressing his misgivings. He reminded him of the words he made use of in the passage last quoted concerning the “scene of desolation” into which the world seemed about to be transformed. This prophecy might prove only too true. “I am sore afraid,” he says, “and really it seems as though you were playing the prophet to the gentry, for, indeed, they will leave nothing but a desolate land to their heirs; the people are being chastised so severely that I fear the land of Thuringia and the County [of Mansfeld] will recover from it but slowly.... Here they [the victorious party] give themselves up to nothing but robbery and murder.”[561] Five days later RÜhel again wrote to Luther in tones of warning, saying that he meant well by him, but must nevertheless point out the effect his pamphlet “Against the Peasants” had had on the minds of some: “Be it as it may, it still appears strange to many who are favourably disposed towards you that you should allow the tyrants to slaughter without mercy and tell them that they may thus become martyrs; it is openly said at Leipzig that because the Elector has just died [May 5, 1525] you fear for your own skin and flatter Duke George by approving his undertaking [i.e. his energetic steps against the rising] out of fear for your own skin. I will not presume to judge, but commit it to your own spirit, for I know the saying: ‘qui accipit gladium gladio peribit,’ and, again, that the secular power ‘beareth not the sword in vain ... an avenger to execute wrath’ [Rom. xiii. 4].... I mean well, and beg you to remember me in your prayers.”[562] The writer tells Luther that “the result may well be that the victors in thus slaughtering without mercy will appeal to Luther, and that thus even the innocent will be condemned in Luther’s name.”[563] RÜhel was a good Lutheran, and his words bear witness to a deep-seated devotion to Luther’s spirit and guidance. In his strange zeal for the evangel he urges Luther in this same letter to invite the Archbishop of Mayence and Magdeburg to secularise himself and take a wife.[564]

Luther’s intimate friend, Nicholas Hausmann, was also “rather horrified and amazed” at the writing.[565] Complaints came from Zwickau that not only the common people but also many of the learned were falling away from him; it was thought that his manner of writing was very unbecoming, and that he had been unmindful of the poor. The burgomaster of Zwickau maintained that the tract against the peasants was “not theological,” i.e. not worthy of a theologian.[566] “A storm of displeasure broke out against Luther ... his ‘stab, slay, hew down’ sounded like mockery in the ears of the people when the aristocratic bands were bathing in the blood of the vanquished.... The fact is that Luther was not in his heart so indifferent as he made himself out to be in the circular-letter he wrote in defence of his ‘severe booklet.’”[567]

Before composing the circular-letter Luther sent a lively letter to RÜhel protesting that he was ready to stand by all he had written, and that his conscience was “right in the sight of God.” “If there are some innocent people among them, God will surely take care to save and preserve them. But there is cockle among the peasantry. They do not listen to the Word [but to MÜnzer], and are mad, so that they must be made to listen to the virga and the muskets, and ... serve them right!” “Whoever has seen MÜnzer may well say that he has seen the devil incarnate, in his utmost fury. O Lord God, where such a spirit prevails among the peasants it is high time for them to be slaughtered like mad dogs. Perhaps the devil feels the approach of the Last Day, therefore he stirs up all this strife.... But God is mightier and wiser.”[568]

Elsewhere Luther declares that owing to this booklet everything God had wrought for the world by his means was now forgotten; all were against him and threatened him with death. He had even lived to see the phrase, that “the lords might merit heaven by shedding their blood,” regarded—though perhaps only ironically—as a denial of his doctrine that there was no possibility of deserving heaven by works. “God help us,” they cried, “how has Luther so far forgotten himself! He who formerly taught that a man could arrive at grace and be saved only by faith alone!”[569]

The effect of the reproaches of excessive severity showed itself, nevertheless, to a certain extent in the pamphlet which Luther composed between the 17th and 22nd May on the defeat of Thomas MÜnzer. The title runs: “A terrible account of the judgment of God on Thomas MÜnzer, wherein God plainly gives the lie to his spirit and condemns it.”[570] This writing, it is true, does not deal so directly with the peasant rising as the two previous ones, and the “circular-letter” to be treated of below; its chief object is to cite the unfortunate termination of MÜnzer’s enterprise as a practical refutation of the prophetical office he had assumed. But, after the warning which the author addresses to “all dear Germans,” not excluding the rebellious peasants, against MÜnzer’s co-religionists, as the “noxious, false prophets,” he concludes with this timely exhortation: “Of the lords and authorities I would make two requests, first that if they prove victorious they be not over-elated, but fear God, in whose sight they are very culpable, and secondly, that they be merciful to the prisoners and to those who surrender, as God is merciful to everyone who resigns himself into His hands and humbles himself.”

The writing referred to on MÜnzer’s defeat gives examples of some of the fanatical letters written by the leader of the Anabaptists. It was an easy task for Luther to expose their fanaticism and danger. The fellow’s end “made it plain that God had condemned the spirit of revolt, and also the rebels themselves.” With bitter mockery he puts these words into MÜnzer’s mouth: “I, a befouled prophet, am borne along on a hurdle to the tower of Heldrungen.” (Luther knew nothing as yet of MÜnzer’s death, but only of his imprisonment in Heldrungen.) Therefore they ought to slay these “dangerous false prophets whom the judgment of God had unmasked, and return to peace and obedience.” The fanatics “who teach wrongly and falsely” are not to be regarded as leaders of the people; “in future the people must beware of them, and strive to preserve body and soul through the true Word of God.”

In order, however, to give an answer to all the “wiseacres, who wished to teach him how he should write,”[571] he at once composed the third work on the subject of the rising, which was now practically at an end. This is the “Circular-letter on the severe booklet against the Peasants,” dedicated to the Mansfeld Chancellor, Caspar MÜller, one of those who had informed him of the numerous complaints made against him.

“The Catholic bishops at once laid the blame of the peasant rising at the door of the ‘great murderer’ of Wittenberg,” so writes Luther’s most recent biographer, “as having been his work.[584] The peasants themselves in many instances believed this, while Luther himself admitted a certain complicity. ‘They went out from us; but they are not of us,’ he says in the words of the First Epistle of St. John (ii. 19). The natural connection of ideas necessarily implied that the spirit of reform which had been let loose was not to work on the Church alone. If all that was rotten in the Church was to fall, why should so much that was rotten in the Empire remain? If all the demands of the Papacy were to be rejected, why should those of squiredom be held sacred? If Luther might treat Duke George of Saxony and King Henry VIII of England as fools and scoundrels, why should more regard be shown to the smaller fry, the petty counts and lords? If the peasant, by virtue of the common priesthood of all Christians, was capable of reforming the Church, why should he not have his say in the question of hunting-rights and the right of pasture? The kernel of the Wittenberg preaching was that all man-made ordinances were worthless, and that one thing only was to be considered, viz. the Word of God. The Pope was Antichrist, the Emperor a scarecrow, the Princes and Bishops simple dummies. How could such words of Luther fail to be seized on with avidity by the oppressed, down-trodden, and shamelessly victimised peasantry? The forces which, owing to the religious disturbances, now broke loose, would, however, have done their work even without Luther’s teaching.”

It was not only the “Catholic bishops,” however, who accused Luther of being the instigator of the rising, but also intelligent laymen who were observing the times with a watchful eye. The jurist Ulrich Zasius, who at one time had been inclined to favour Luther, wrote in the year of the revolt to his friend Amerbach: “Luther, the destroyer of peace, the most pernicious of men, has plunged the whole of Germany into such madness, that we now consider ourselves lucky if we are not slain on the spot.” He regrets the treaty made on May 24, 1525, at Freiburg im Breisgau, where he lived, on its capitulation to the rebels, in which provision was made for the “Disclosure of the Holy Evangel of godly truth and the defence of godly righteousness.” That the “holy evangel” and “godly truth” should only now be disclosed at Freiburg, called forth his sarcasm. In the treaty, he says, “There is much that is in bad taste and ridiculous, as we might expect from peasants, for instance, their demand that the gospel be esteemed, or, as they say, ‘upheld’; as though this had not been done long before by every Christian.”[585]

In 1525 CochlÆus published a criticism on Luther’s work “Against the murderous Peasants,” where he says, “Now that the poor, unhappy peasants have lost the wager, you go over to the princes. But in the previous booklet, when there was still a good chance of their success, you wrote very differently.”[586]

Erasmus, who was closely observing Luther, says to him, in view of the fighting which still continued spasmodically: “We are now reaping the fruit of your spirit. You do not acknowledge the rebels, but they acknowledge you, and it is well known that many who boast of the name of the evangel have been instigators of the horrible revolt. It is true you have attempted in your grim booklet against the peasants to allay this suspicion, but nevertheless you cannot dispel the general conviction that this mischief was caused by the books you sent forth against the monks and bishops, in favour of evangelical freedom, and against the tyrants, more especially by those written in German.”[587]

It would appear that Luther himself had no difficulty whatever in forming his conscience and accepting the responsibility. On one occasion in later years, looking back upon the events of the unhappy rising, he declared, that he was completely at ease concerning the advice he had given to the authorities against the peasants, in spite of the sanguinary results. “Preachers,” he says, in his usual drastic mode of expression, “are the biggest murderers about, for they admonish the authorities to fulfil their duty and to punish the wicked. I, Martin Luther, slew all the peasants in the rebellion, for I said they should be slain; all their blood is upon my head. But I cast it on our Lord God, Who commanded me to speak in this way.” His usual persuasion, viz. that he was God’s instrument, here again helps him. He gives us, however, a further reason: The devil and the ungodly also slew not a few, but it is a very different matter when the authorities punish the wicked, for they are fulfilling a duty.[588]

Luther, after the appearance of these pamphlets, in various other publications asked that leniency should be shown towards the peasants who had been handled all too severely. In a private letter on behalf of the son of a citizen of Eisleben, who had been taken prisoner, we also meet with some fine recommendations in this sense.[589]

He was not, however, successful in calming the general ill-feeling aroused by his violent invective against the “murderous peasants.” His former popularity and his power over the masses were gone. After 1525 he lost his close touch with the people, and was obliged more and more to seek the assistance necessary for his cause in the camp of the Princes. For this change of front he was branded as a “hypocrite,” and “slave of Princes,” by many of the discontented.[590] “The springtime of the reformation was over,” says Hausrath. “Luther no longer passed from one triumph to another as he had during the first seven years of his career. He himself says: ‘Had not the revolted peasants fouled the water for my fishing, things would look very different for the Papacy!’ The hope to overthrow completely the Roman rule in Germany by means of a united, overwhelmingly powerful, popular movement had become a mere dream.”[591]

The Catholic princes of North Germany chose that very time to bind themselves more closely together for self-defence against the social revolution, and to repel Lutheranism. By the league of Dessau on July 19, 1525, they followed the example set by the bishops and dukes of South Germany, who had likewise, at Ratisbon, taken common measures for self-protection. The soul of the league was Duke George of Saxony; Joachim of Brandenburg, Albert of Mayence and Magdeburg, and Henry and Erich of Brunswick also joined him. An account given by Duke George, at the period when the league was established, throws a clearer light upon the motives which inspired it. Written under the influence of the horrors of the previous weeks, it breathes the indignation of its author at the part which Lutheranism had played in the misfortune, and looks around for some means by which the “root of the rebellion, the damned Lutheran sect, may be extirpated; the revolt inspired by the Lutheran evangel had led to the diminution of the honour and service of God, and had been undertaken with a view to damaging the clergy, prelates and the lower orders of the aristocracy, nor could it well be completely quelled except by the rooting out of these same Lutherans.”[592] Duke George at that time entertained hopes—not justified by events—of being able, by appealing to the experiences of the Peasant-War, to alienate from Luther, Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, and Johann, Elector of Saxony, who had just commenced his reign.

The above-mentioned Princes, who were Catholic in their views, met together in Leipzig at Christmas, 1525, in order—as representatives of the Catholic faith, the principles of which were being endangered in Germany—to induce the Emperor to provide some remedy in accordance with the provisions of the Diet of Worms.

The prolonged absence of the Emperor Charles from Germany, due to his concern in European politics, was one of the principal causes of the growing disturbances. To recall him to Germany and invite him to interfere was the object of a measure taken by certain ecclesiastics at a meeting held at Mayence on November 14, 1525. Delegates from the twelve provinces of Mayence assembled at the instance of the Chapter of Spires. It was a remarkable fact that the bishops themselves, who by the indifference they displayed had, as a body, roused the dissatisfaction of zealous Churchmen, did not attend, but only members of the Chapters. They determined to insist upon their bishops making a stand against the revolutionary Lutheran preaching, to send a deputation to the Pope and the Emperor with an account of the general mischief which had befallen Germany by reason of the apostasy, and finally to urge the Emperor to return to Germany, and meanwhile to name executors for carrying out the orders he might give for the preservation of religion according to law. George of Saxony, Archduke Ferdinand of Austria and the Bavarian Dukes were to be proposed to the Emperor as such executors. The deputation from the Chapters was, however, never sent, owing apparently to the lack of interest displayed by those Chapters which assembled, and by those which were invited but did not send the necessary funds. The zealous Dean of Mayence Cathedral, Lorenz Truchsess von Pommersfelden, found himself practically left single-handed.[593]

Upon learning what resolutions had been passed, Luther wrote, in March, 1526, a tract of frightful violence against the “Mayence Proposal”; it was, however, suppressed by the Electoral Court of Saxony, owing to the intervention of Duke George.[594] The Emperor, notwithstanding his promise to arrive speedily, did not reach Germany until 1530, after having achieved great success abroad. He came with the firm intention to oppose the religious revolution with the utmost vigour, and to place the Imperial authority on a firmer footing.

Meanwhile, the Courts of Saxony and Hesse, whose sympathies were with the Lutheran party, had, however, at Gotha entered into a defensive alliance which was finally concluded at Torgau on May 2, 1526. The Emperor’s threats, which had become known, did their part in bringing this about; and a further result of the Emperor’s letters against the “wicked Lutheran cause and errors” was, that the Dukes of Brunswick-LÜneburg, Philip of Brunswick-Grubenhagen, Henry of Mecklenburg, Wolfgang of Anhalt and Albert of Mansfeld also joined the league.

Luther was greatly rejoiced at this proof of the favour of the Princes, but, as yet, he refused to commit himself on the question as to whether force might be used against the Emperor and the Empire. (See vol. iii., xv. 3.)

As a consequence of the Peasant-War the Princes grew in power, while the people lost many rights and liberties which they had previously enjoyed.

“The practical outcome of the great popular movement was deplorable,” writes F. G. Ward. “The condition of the common people became even worse than before, and the national feeling which had begun to arise again degenerated into particularism in the vast number of small, independent States.”[595] Just as the common people ascribed their misfortunes to Luther, who, at the critical moment, had deserted the cause of the peasants, so likewise many of the nobility were angry with him because of the discontent which his teaching fostered. The confiscation of Church property by the nobility roused the hatred of many of the powerful against Luther, whose aim it was to favour the rapacity only of such as were favourable to his cause.

When, in February, 1530, Luther’s father lay on his death-bed, the fear of his enemies prevented the son undertaking the journey through the flat country to see him. He accordingly wrote to him, explaining why he was unable to leave Wittenberg: “My good friends have dissuaded me from it, and I myself am forced to believe that I may not tempt God by venturing into this peril, for you know the kind of favour I may expect from lord or peasant.”[596]

This dislike on the part of both the peasants and the lords, which he frequently admits, has been taken as a proof that he did his duty towards both in an impartial manner. It would, however, be more correct to say, that he failed in his duty towards both parties, first to the lords and then to the peasants, and that on both occasions his mistake was closely bound up with his public position, i.e. with his preaching of the new faith. He advocated the cause of the peasants with the intention of thereby introducing the evangel amongst the people, while he supported the lords in order to counteract the pernicious results of the socio-religious movement which resulted, and to exonerate the evangel from the charge of preaching revolt. There is, as a matter of fact, no ground for the charge of “duplicity” brought against him by his opponents; the changing circumstances determined his varying action, and so little did he disguise his thoughts, that on both occasions his strong language increased the evil.[597]

The unfavourable feeling which prevailed towards the peasants at once influenced his views concerning the duty of the authorities. That the authorities should meet every transgression of the law on the part of the people by severe measures, appears to him more and more as one of their principal obligations.

In 1526, at the instance of a stranger, he caused one of his sermons to be printed, in which he says to the people: “Because God has given a law and knows that no one keeps it, He has also appointed lictors, drivers and overseers, for Scripture speaks thus of the authorities in a parable; like the donkey-drivers who have to lie on the neck of their beasts and whip them to make them go. In the same way the authorities must drive, beat and slay the people, Messrs. Omnes, hang, burn, behead and break them on the wheel, that they may be kept in awe.” “As the swine and wild beasts have to be driven and restrained by force,” so the authorities must insist upon the keeping of the laws.[598] So far does he go as to declare that the best thing that could come about would be the revival of serfdom and slavery.[599]

At a later date he frequently depicted the peasants, quite generally, as rascals, and poured forth bitter words of anger against them. “A peasant is a hog,” he says in 1532, “for when a hog is slaughtered it is dead, and in the same way the peasant does not think about the next life, for otherwise he would behave very differently.”[600] The following date also from the same period: “The peasant remains a boor, do what you will”; they have, so he says, their mouth, nose, eyes and everything else in the wrong place.[601] “I believe that the devil does not mind the peasants”; he “despises them as he does leaden pennies”; he thinks “he can easily manage to secure them for himself, as they will assuredly be claimed by no one.”[602] “A peasant who is a Christian is like a wooden poker.”[603] To a candidate for marriage he wrote: “My Katey sends you this friendly warning, to beware of marrying a country lass, for they are rude and proud, cannot get on well with their husbands and know neither how to cook nor to brew.”[604]

“The peasants as well as the nobles throughout the country,” he complains in 1533, in a letter to Spalatin, “have entered into a conspiracy against the evangel, though they make use of the liberty of the gospel in the most outrageous manner. It is not surprising that the Papists persecute us. God will be our Judge in this matter!” “Oh, the awful ingratitude of our age. We can only hope and pray for the speedy coming of our Lord and Saviour [the Last Day].”[605]

The psychological picture presented by Luther during the whole of the year 1525 reveals more plainly than at any other time his state of morbid excitement. The nervous tension which had been increasing in him ever since 1517, together with his mental anxiety and the spirit of defiance, reached their culminating point in the year of his marriage, a year filled with the most acute struggles.

“His enemies called the temper of the strong man demoniacal,” says a Protestant historian of the Peasant-War, “and, as a matter of fact,” he adds, “the Luther we meet with in the writings of the years 1517-1525 bears but little resemblance to the earnest, but cheerful and kindly husband and father whom Protestants are wont to picture as their reformer.”[606]

This remark applies with special force to the year 1525 when he actually became a husband, though more stress should be laid upon the mental strain he was undergoing. Luther undoubtedly acted at that time, not only in the matter of the Peasant-War, but also in many other complex questions, under the influence of an overwrought temper. It was a period of combined internal and external conflict, which, so to speak, raised his troubled spirit above the normal conditions of existence. With the fanatics he had to struggle for the very existence of his evangel; the contradictions and dissensions within the new fold also caused him constant anxiety. His controversy with the learned Erasmus on the subject of Free-Will angered him beyond measure, for Erasmus, as Luther says, “held the knife to his throat”[607] by his book in defence of the freedom of the human will. Luther was also at war with the “wiseacres” who disapproved of his marriage, and had to vindicate his action also to himself. In feverish delirium he fancies he sees the jaws of death gaping for him, and feels that the devil in all his strength has been let loose to seize upon his person, as the one through whom alone, as he says, truth and salvation are to be proclaimed to the world. He marries, and then exclaims with fear: “Perhaps as soon as I am dead my teaching will be overthrown; then my example may be a source of encouragement to the weak.”[608] “I see the rabble as well as the nobles raging against me,” but this comfort remains to me, “however hostile they may be to me on account of my marriage or other matters, yet their hostility is only a sign that I am in the right”; “were the world not scandalised at me, then I should indeed fear that what we do was not from God.”[609]

The idea of his own divine mission, raising him far above the reach of his enemies, finds expression to quite a marked degree in the letters he wrote to his friends at that time. In these he is certainly not speaking of mere fancies, but of views which he was earnestly desirous of inculcating.

“God has so often trodden Satan under my feet, He has cast down the lion and the dragon beneath me, He will not allow the basilisk to harm me!” “Christ began without our counsel, and He will assuredly bring His work to its completion even contrary to what we would advise.... God works above, and against, and under, and beyond all that we can conceive.” “It is, however, a grief to me now that these blasphemous enemies [certain of the preachers] should have been raised to the ministry and the knowledge of the [Divine] Word through us. May God convert them and instruct them, or else provide for their removal. Amen.” He writes thus to his friend Nicholas Amsdorf, the later “bishop,” who, perhaps of all his friends, was the one most likely to have a real comprehension for language of this stamp.[610]

In utter contrast to the opinion Luther here expressed of himself stands the description sketched by Hieronymus Emser of his person and his work.

One of Luther’s humanistic followers, Euricius Cordus, had published in 1525, in Latin verse, the so-called “Antilutheromastix” (scourge of the antilutherans), in which he heaped scorn upon those literary men who defended the Church against Luther. Emser himself was attacked in the work for his championship of the older Church. Emser, however, replied in a work, also couched in Latin hexameters and entitled “Justification of the Catholics in reply to the invective of the physician Euricius Cordus, and his Antilutheromastix.”[611] Under the influence of the strong impression made upon him by Luther’s marriage and the Peasant-War he has therein inserted some verses expressing his indignation against Luther; from these we quote here some extracts. The language reflects plainly Luther’s personality as it appeared in the eyes of Emser and many of the Catholic controversialists of that day, and thus serves to mirror the development and progress of the intellectual struggle.[612]

“God commanded vows to be kept, but Luther tears them to pieces. Christ commended those who renounced matrimony, but Luther praises those who wantonly violate chastity. Purity is pleasing in the sight of heaven, but to this height Luther cannot raise himself. Luther at one time renounced matrimony by a sacred promise made in the presence of God, but now he plunges into it because he, the monk, has been led astray by his passion for a nun. Whereas our Saviour lived unmarried, he, the unhappy and faithless man, desires to take a wife. Christ gave an example of humility, this man is proud and even rises in impudent rebellion against the authorities. He launches out into torrents of abuse and vituperation (“Maledictorum plaustris iniurius”). He heaps up mountains of insults, he burns the sacred laws and mocks at God and man in the same way as did the old tyrants of Sicily. Christ is the friend of peace, but this fellow calls to arms. He invites the raging mob to wash their hands in the blood of the clergy. He provokes and incites the masses under the screen of a false freedom so that they audaciously refuse to pay tithes, dues and taxes, and ruthlessly conspire against the life of the lords.” In Emser’s opinion it was Luther’s word and writings which caused the conflagration. “He persuaded the people to look on him as a prophet, and to set his foolish fancies on a level with the oracles of heaven. The German people, as though stupefied with drink, rise and follow him in a terrible tumult, turning their blood-stained weapons against themselves.”

The poet then directs the attention of the reader to the crowds of people massacred and the strongholds consumed by fire. “The priest, robbed of his means of livelihood and without a church, wanders to and fro; in the families grief and dissension reign; the nun who has forfeited her honour and her chastity, weeps. This, Luther, is the result of your fine writings. Whoever says that you took them from the Word of Christ and that the clear light of the gospel shines through them, must indeed have been struck with blindness. None is more fickle than Luther; nowhere does he remain true to himself; first he commits his cause to the appointed judge, then he refuses to abide by the decision or to acknowledge any jurisdiction on earth. At one time he recognises all the seven Sacraments, at another only three, and no doubt he will soon admit none at all.”

This man, Emser continues, Cordus presumes to compare with Moses, the sublime, divinely appointed leader of the Israelites! This audacious comparison he is at pains to disprove by setting the qualities of the one side by side with those of the other. He says for instance: Moses sanctified the people, “but your Luther gives the reins to sinful lusts. The people, after casting off all the wholesome restrictions of the ancient laws of morality, are bereft of all discipline, of all fear either of God or the authorities; virtue disappears, law and justice totter.... The heart of the German race has been hardened to stone; sunk in the mire, and given over to their passions, they despise all the gifts they have received of God. The children suck in the errors of their parents with their mothers’ milk and follow their example, learn to blaspheme, are proud and thankless and thus become the ruin of their country. To this has your unhappy Moses brought them.” And now Luther was seeking to make further conquests by means of a flood of popular writings, embellished with pictures, verses and songs so as to penetrate more easily into the minds of the unwary; with this aim in view he did not even spare the Bible, circulating false translations and explaining it by venomous glosses. “How many thousand souls have not his writings already brought to eternal perdition! They fancied that in them they found the truth, and were miserably deceived by such doctrines.” What confusion, he says, will not be occasioned in the future among those who hang upon his words, by his translation of the Bible.

“Go now, Cordus, and compare this man with Moses, the liar with the truth-loving saint, the wild stormer with the meek and patient leader of the people. Luther, desirous of leading us out of the Roman bondage, casts us into an unhappy spiritual bondage; he drags us from light into darkness, from heaven down to hell.”

What is pleasing in the long poem, apart from the smooth Latin verse, is the generous recognition which Emser bestows on the numerous other defenders of the Church, who, like himself, as he says, have withstood Luther vigorously and successfully with their pen. Among these he singles out for special mention Eck, Faber, CochlÆus, Dietenberger and others. His frank admission that much in the Church stood in need of improvement and that a real Catholic reformer would be welcome to all, is also worthy of notice. He shares the desire, which at that time was making itself so strongly felt in Catholic circles, that the Emperor, as the highest temporal authority, should now lend his assistance to the Church and give the impetus necessary towards the accomplishment of the longed-for renewal. “ But though we do not defend the old abuses, yet we condemn Luther’s foolish new doctrines. The rule of the earlier ages of the Church ought to shine in front of us to guide our life as well as to determine dogma. We must cling to the narrow way of the gospel and to the apostolic precepts, the decrees of the Fathers and the written and unwritten tradition as taught by the Holy Ghost who guides the Church. For the success of the reform it is certainly not necessary to overthrow the existing human and divine order of things, or to fill the weary world with noisy strife. The Emperor has it in his hands, let him only follow the example of so many of his predecessors who helped the Church to renew her youth, particularly Charles the Great and his pious son Lewis.”

Luther, meanwhile, was straining every nerve in the cause of the intellectual revolution of which the plan floated in his mind. It seemed as though he were incapable of fatigue.

His numerous labours, his constant cares and the excessive mental strain are apparent from his letters. He writes of a supposed portent in the world of nature. “The omen fills me with fear, it can presage nothing but evil.” “I am altogether immersed in Erasmus,” he says, “I shall take care not to let anything slip, for not a single word of his is true:” he writes thus to Spalatin.[613] “Every day I am overwhelmed with complaints from our parishes,” he laments to the pastor of Zwickau: “Satan is busy in our midst. The people absolutely refuse to pay anything towards the support of the preachers.” He intends, he says, to persuade the Elector to organise a visitation of all the churches throughout the land, he is also anxious to introduce uniformity in matters of ritual; all this involves him in a hundred difficulties.[614] Disagreements with the Zwinglians of Strasburg cause some trouble. At the same time the negotiations with the Teutonic Order call for his whole care and attention, the apostasy and marriage of Albert, the Grand Master, greatly raising his hopes.

It was in this frame of mind, and in the midst of all this manifold business, that Luther threw himself into the controversy on man’s free-will. It was his object to establish a literary foundation for his new doctrines as a whole by vindicating a pet doctrine on account of which he had been so mercilessly attacked.[615]

3. The Religion of the Enslaved Will. The Controversy between Luther and Erasmus (1524-1525)

That the will is free is one of the most indisputable facts of our inner consciousness. Where there is reason there must needs be a corresponding freedom, i.e. freedom from interior necessity.

Freedom is the basis of all worship of God, and if external compulsion is rightly excluded from the idea of religion, surely still more opposed to it is the assumption that the will lacks freedom when it seeks and serves God. The true dignity of the soul’s worship of God consists in the voluntary payment of homage to the highest of all beings in the natural as well as the supernatural order. “God has made you without your co-operation,” says Augustine, “but He will not save you without it.”[616] God’s greatness and omnipotence are enhanced by His creation of beings gifted with the power of self-determination, who can will or not, who are free to choose this or that and are in a position to embrace what is good instead of what is evil.

The position which Luther had assumed in the Commentary on Romans in 1515-1516 concerning the doctrine of human free-will has already been discussed in detail (vol. i., p. 202 ff.). It is of the utmost importance to follow up his other statements on free-will dating from that period, and the subsequent advance in his views during his public struggle till the publication of the decisive book “De servo arbitrio” in 1525. It not only affords a deep, psychological and theological insight into his train of thought, but also shows how his denial of free-will was the central point of his whole teaching. At the same time we shall notice certain emphatic statements which he makes, but which do not usually occupy a due place in descriptions of his theology and which accordingly might easily be regarded by our readers as not his at all, were they not attested conscientiously and in detail by Luther’s own writings. We refer to such assertions as the following: “Everything happens of necessity”; “Man, when he does what is evil, is not master of himself”; “Man does evil because God ceases to work in him”; “By virtue of His nature God’s ineluctable concursus determines everything, even the most trivial,” hence “inevitable necessity” compels us in “all that we do and everything that happens,” “God alone moves and impels all that He has made” (“movet agit, rapit”), nay, “He decrees all things in advance by His infallible will,” including the inevitable damnation of those who are damned.—We shall hear these views expounded below by Luther himself as the core and kernel of his teaching (“summa causÆ”); with spirit and energy he advocates them through some hundred pages in one of his principal works, against the greatest of the Humanists, who had dared to attack him; to question his fundamental dogma was, says Luther, to “place the knife at his throat.”

The Development of Luther’s Opposition to Free-Will from 1516 to 1524

What Luther advanced in his Commentary on Romans, against man’s power of choice for what is good, has been summed up as follows by Johann Ficker, the editor of the Commentary: Luther allowed nothing to deter him from following up his new theories, nor did he even shrink from setting up the proposition of “the absolute impossibility of any good in the natural sphere,” or from “stating in the strongest terms of determinism the exclusive power and action of the salutary and unconditional Divine Will.”[624]

In his sermon on the Feast of St. Stephen, in 1515, Luther had spoken of the inward voice in man (“synteresis”), which urges him towards what is good and to true happiness, thereby implying the admission of free-will in man. This, he says, is capable of accepting or refusing God’s grace, though he is careful to add that the remnant of vital force represented by the synteresis does not indicate a condition of health nor afford any cause for boasting in God’s sight, the whole state of man being one of corruption; the synteresis, in fact, constitutes a danger to us because it leads us to trust in our own powers (“voluntas, sapientia”), so that we are readily induced to regard our restoration by grace as unnecessary. Such confidence in his own powers leads man to place himself on the side of those who crucified Christ, for such a one has a wrong opinion of righteousness and looks on Christ as superfluous, who is the source of righteousness. “Thus it comes about,” he cries, “that grace is most strongly opposed by those who boast most of it”; a paradoxical saying which often occurs in Luther’s early sermons and which plainly owes its origin to his quarrel with the “Little Saints.”[625]

Not here alone, but frequently in the sermons of those days, we hear Luther warning the people against misusing the synteresis. His opposition to man’s natural powers leads him at times so far that he represents the synteresis merely as a vague and practically worthless faculty. It is true he declares that he simply wishes to obviate an irreligious over-esteem of free-will, but he really goes further, now admitting, now rejecting it; his explanations let us see that “here there is an unsolved contradiction in his theology. He fails to explain how the remnant of vital force still in us is to be made use of by Divine grace so as to produce health,” and how “it can be of any importance or worth for the attainment of salvation in the domain of reason and will.” “Is there, then, no right use for the synteresis? Luther not only tells us nothing of this, but the natural consequence of much that he says is an answer to the question in the negative, although it should undoubtedly have been answered in the affirmative.”[626]

If we cast a glance at the other sermons which coincide in point of time with his Commentary on Romans, we shall find in certain remarks on the regeneration of man a foretaste of his later teaching regarding free-will. He says, for instance, of the attainment of the state of grace, that here regeneration takes place not only “without our seeking, praying, knocking, simply by the mercy of God,” but also that it resembles natural generation, where the child does nothing (“ipso nihil agente”); no man can be born for heaven by his own operation and merits (“sua opera suoque merito”). He contrasts those who are generated of God “in the spirit” with those who live after the flesh, and who often “make a great show of spirituality”: they are, he says, “carnal-spiritual” and, “with their horrid, hypocritical spirituality, are doomed to destruction.”[627]

According to these sermons it is plain that God is the only worker in the man who is thus born of God. In him free-will for doing what is good does not come into account, for the good works of the righteous man are God’s works, and his virtues and excellence are really God’s. “He works all in all, all is His, He, the One Almighty Being, does all things,” so we read in Luther’s sermon on August 15, 1516, the Feast of the Assumption, i.e. at a time when by his study of the Epistle to the Romans he had been confirmed in his bias against man’s natural powers.[628]

In the Disputation with Eck at Leipzig in the following year, owing to his views on the subject not yet being generally known, they were not directly discussed.

When, however, after its termination, Luther, in August, 1519, published the Latin “Resolutions” on the Leipzig Disputation, he proclaimed himself to the world as a most determined opponent of free-will, not even confining himself to attacking the power for doing what is good.

“Free-will,” he says here, “is purely passive in every one of its acts (‘in omni actu suo’) which can come under the term of will.... A good act comes wholly and entirely (‘totus et totaliter’) from God, because the whole activity of the will consists in the Divine action which extends to the members and powers of both body and soul, no other activity existing.”[637] In another passage of the “Resolutions” he says: “At whatever hour of our life we may find ourselves we are the slaves either of concupiscence or of charity, for both govern free-will (‘utraque enim dominabitur libero arbitrio’).”[638] Julius KÖstlin is right when he sees in such words the complete renunciation of free-will. “Of man’s free-will in the ordinary sense of the term, or of any independent choice for good or for evil which should include the possibility of a different decision, there is, according to Luther, no question.” KÖstlin points out that Luther does not here go into the question as to whether the sinfulness and corruption of the lost are to be attributed to God, Who did not cause His saving grace to be sufficiently efficacious in them.[639] Luther certainly contrived to avoid this dangerous objection, not only here, but also for long after when speaking on the subject of the will.

In the “Resolutions” Luther had merely represented his opposition to free-will as the consequence of his doctrine of the corruption of human nature due to original sin, but subsequent to the appearance of the Bull of Excommunication he goes further and declares the denial of the “liberum arbitrium” to be nothing less than the fundamental article of his teaching (“articulus omnium optimus et rerum nostrarum summa”).[640] Among the propositions condemned by the Papal Bull was Luther’s thesis directed against free-will at the Heidelberg Disputation. It was given in Luther’s own words, viz. that free-will is a mere empty name, etc.

In defence of the condemned propositions Luther wrote, in 1520, the “Assertio omnium articulorum,” which was published in 1521. To prove his denial of free-will it is usual to quote his “De servo arbitrio,” but the “Assertio” already contains in substance all the strictures embodied in his later attacks.

Since Luther in the above “Assertio” against the Bull of condemnation sets up Scripture as the sole foundation of theology—he could not well do otherwise, seeing that he had rejected all external ecclesiastical authority—we might have anticipated that, in the application of his newly proclaimed principle of the Bible only, he would have taken pains to demonstrate its advantages in this work on free-will by the exercise of some caution in his exegesis. It is true that he declares, when defending the theory of the Bible only: “Whoever seeks primarily and solely the teaching of God’s Word, upon him the spirit of God will come down and expel our spirit so that we shall arrive at theological truth without fail.” “I will not expound the Scripture by my own spirit, or by the spirit of any man, but will interpret it merely by itself and according to its own spirit.”[654] And again: It often happens that circumstances and a mysterious, incomprehensible impulse will give to one man a right understanding such as is hidden from the industry of others.[655] Yet when, on the basis of the Bible only, he attempts to “overthrow his papistical opponents at the first onslaught,”[656] he brings forward texts which no one, not even Luther’s best friend, could regard as having any bearing on the subject.

He quotes, for instance, the passage where the believer is likened to the branch of the vine which must remain engrafted on Christ the true vine, in order to escape the fire of hell, and finds therein a proof of his own view, that grace completely evacuates the will, a proof so strong that he exclaims: “You speak with the voice of a harlot, O most holy Vicar of Christ, in thus contradicting your Master who speaks of the vine.”[657] Another example. In Proverbs xvi. it is written: “It is the part of man to prepare the soul and of the Lord to govern the tongue,” hence man, reasons Luther, who cannot even control his tongue, has no free-will to do what is good.[658] There too we read: “The heart of man disposeth his way, but the Lord must direct his steps,” and further on: “As the divisions of water, the heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord, whithersoever He will He shall turn it.” After adducing these texts, which merely emphasise the general Providence of God, Luther thinks he is justified in demanding: “Where then is free-will? It is a pure creation of fancy.”[659]

The saying of the clay and the potter (Isa. lxiv. 8) which manifestly alludes to the Creation and expresses man’s consequent state of dependence, he refers without more ado, both here and also later, to a continuous, purely passive relationship to God which entirely excludes free-will.[660] When Christ says (Matt. xxiii. 37; Luke xiii. 34) that He wished to gather the children of Jerusalem like a hen under His wings, but that they would not (?a? ??? ??e??sate), Luther takes this as meaning: They could not; they did not wish to, simply because they did not possess that free-will which his foes believe in. It might however be said, he thinks, that Christ only “spoke there in human fashion” of the willingness of Jerusalem, i.e. “merely according to man’s mode of speech,” just as Scripture, for the sake of the simple, frequently speaks of God as though He were a man.[661] It is plain from his explanation that Luther, as an eminent Protestant and theologian says, “was seeking to escape from the testimony to the Divine Will that all men be saved.”[662]

The best text against the hated free-will appeared to him to be Ephesians ii. 3, where St. Paul deals with original sin and its ethical consequences. “We were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.” “There is not,” so he assures his readers, a “clearer, more concise and striking testimony in the Bible against free-will”; “for if all by reason of their nature are children of wrath, then free-will is also a child of wrath,”[663] etc.

He handled Scripture as an executioner would handle a criminal. All unconsciously he was ever doing violence to the words of the Bible. We naturally wonder whether in the whole history of exegesis such twisting of the sense of the Bible had ever before been perpetrated. Yet we find these interpretations in the very pages where Luther first exposed his programme of the Bible only, and declared that he at least would expound the Word of God according to its own sense, according to the “Spirit of God,” and setting aside all personal prejudice. The old interpretation, on the other hand, which was to be found in the book of Lyra, with which Luther was acquainted, gave the correct meaning retained among scholars to our own day, not merely of the texts already quoted, but of many other striking passages alleged by Luther then or afterwards against free-will.

Luther proceeds rather more cautiously in the German edition of the “Assertio,” which speedily followed the Latin.

It deals with the denial of free-will at considerably less length. Perhaps, as was often the case with him, after he had recovered from the first excitement caused by the condemnation of the articles, he may have been sobered, or perhaps he was reluctant to let loose all the glaring and disquieting theses of the “Assertio” in the wide circle of his German readers, whom they might have startled and whose fidelity to his cause was at that time, after the sentence of outlawry, such a vital matter to him. In later editions of the Latin text some of his sayings were softened even during his lifetime so as to avoid giving offence.

Luther had been careful in the “Assertio,” just as he had been in his previous treatment of the subject, not to take into consideration the consequences involved by his denial of free-will; that, for instance, it follows that it is not man who actually does what is evil, but rather God who works in him, and that many were condemned merely on account of the necessity of sinning imposed upon them by God. Of this he has as yet nothing to say, though he was, shortly after, to make an attempt to obviate the difficulties.

In his translation of the Bible, in 1522, he had to render the passage of the First Epistle to Timothy (ii. 4): “God will have all men to be saved (s????a?, ‘salvos fieri’) and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” This he translated: “God wills that all be assisted.” He sought to escape the doctrine of the Divine Will for the salvation of all men, by attributing to the principal word a “comprehensive and somewhat indefinite sense,” for that “all be assisted” may only mean, that all are to be preached to, prayed for, or assisted by fraternal charity.[664]

In a letter written at that time he even declares, that the Apostle says nothing more than that “it was God’s will that we should pray for all classes, preach the truth and be helpful to everyone, both bodily and spiritually”; that it did not follow from this that God called all men to salvation.[665] “And even though many other passages should be brought forward, yet all must be understood in this sense, otherwise the Divine Providence [i.e. prevision, predestination] and election from all eternity would mean nothing at all, whereas St. Paul insists very strongly upon this.”[666] Thus his own interpretation of Paul, the wholly subjective interpretation which he thought he had received through an interior revelation, was to govern the Bible as a rule admitting of no exception; it was, for instance, to elucidate for him the Epistles of Peter. In a sermon delivered about February, 1523, on the Second Epistle of Peter, he says of the passage: “The Lord is not willing that any should perish, but that all should return to penance,” that this was “one of the verses which might well lead a man to believe this epistle was not written by St. Peter at all,” at any rate, the author here “fell short of the apostolic spirit.”[667] At the back of this opinion lay Luther’s attachment to his pet doctrine and method of interpretation.

Luther’s efforts to get rid of the plain texts on the salvation which is offered to all without exception arose, accordingly, from his strong aversion to free-will, and also from a certain fear of man’s co-operation by means of works (even performed under grace), which would result from free-will and lead to salvation. He admits this plainly enough where he expounds 1 Timothy ii. 4: “This saying of St. Paul, the Papists assert, confirms free-will; for since he says, that ‘God wills that every man be assisted’ [rather, that every man be saved], it no longer depends upon Him, but upon us, whether we comply with His Will or not. This is how they come to use these words as an objection against us.”[668]

For the time being he had but little to say of predestination, though he had by no means given up the idea of absolute predestination, even to hell, which he had advocated in the Commentary on Romans. (See vol. i., p. 187 ff., 237 ff.). He probably had reasons of his own for being more reticent in his public utterances on this subject. It is only later, when treating of the revealed and the hidden God, that he again lays stress on his doctrine of predestination.

When Melanchthon published his “Loci communes rerum theologicarum,” in December, 1521, in this work, which was the technical exposition of Lutheranism at that time, he gave clear expression to the denial of free-will. “All that happens,” he says there, “happens of necessity (‘necessario eveniunt’) in accordance with the Divine predestination; there is no such thing as freedom of the will.”[669] Luther praised this work as an “invictus libellus,” worthy, not only of immortality, but of taking its place in the canon of the Bible.[670] It was only later that Melanchthon came to a more correct view, making no secret of his rejection of Luther’s determinism.

It is of interest to note how Luther, in his practical writings and exhortations, passes over his denial of free-will in utter silence. Such a denial would, needless to say, have been out of place in works intended for the furtherance of the Christian life. In admonishing people to keep the commandments of God, to cultivate virtue and practise charity, we must necessarily take free-will for granted. On such occasions, therefore, Luther’s language is the very reverse of that which we have just heard and furnishes a practical proof of the falseness of his theory.

In spite of all his attempts to make his view of the will acceptable and to accommodate it to the prevailing convictions of humanity, many, even amongst his own followers and admirers, were shocked at his attacks on free-will. People were scandalised, more particularly by the consequences involved.

At Erfurt his friends disputed as to how God could possibly work evil in man, and Luther was forced to request them to desist from enquiring into such matters, since it was clear that we did what was evil because God ceased to work in us: they ought to occupy themselves all the more diligently with the moral interests of the new churches.[678]

Capito declared himself openly against Luther’s theories concerning the absolute enslavement of the will.[679] The Humanist Mosellanus (Peter Schade), a great admirer of the Wittenbergers, spoke so strongly at Leipzig against the propositions deduced from Luther’s teaching on predestination to hell, that the latter was warned of what had occurred.[680] Many who had previously been favourably disposed to Luther were repelled, by his teaching on the enslaved will, and fell away then or later, for instance, the learned naturalist George Agricola.[681]

Mosellanus, like many others, now went over to the side of Erasmus, who, it had now leaked out, was growing more and more to dislike Luther the more the latter showed himself in his true colours.

Erasmus—His Attitude in General and his Attack on Luther in 1524

Erasmus had frequently been invited by the highest authorities to take up his pen and enter the field against Luther. This, however, presented some difficulty to him owing to his timidity, his anxiety to play the part of mediator and his real sympathy for many of Luther’s demands. Even before Erasmus had reached any decision, Luther and his friends had already a premonition of the great Humanist’s coming attack.

On August 8, 1522, Erasmus, while still wavering, wrote to Mosellanus concerning the desire expressed by the Emperor, the King of England and certain Roman Cardinals. “All want me to attack Luther. I do not approve of Luther’s cause, but have many reasons for preferring any other task to this.”[682] In May, however, a work on the question of predestination and free-will was already looked for in Lutheran circles at Leipzig, and the opinion was freely expressed that Luther “would probably get the worst in the encounter.” Luther, nevertheless, sought to inspire his friends with courage and confidence.

That Erasmus should have been solicited by so many parties to write against Luther was due to the quite extraordinary fame and influence of this scholar who, by common consent, was the first authority of the day on classical and critical studies.

It is not surprising, that when Luther came forward many elements of his new teaching were at once welcomed with sympathy by Erasmus and his school.

“It cannot be denied, that Luther commenced to play an excellent part and to vindicate the cause of Christ—which had been almost wiped off the face of the earth—amidst great and general applause.”[690] Thus wrote Erasmus to Duke George of Saxony as late as 1522. Many of Erasmus’s sayings in his books and confidential letters in favour of Luther’s reform were cherished as oracles. His testimonies in favour of Luther’s writings and his private life were spread far and wide, though he really knew little of Luther’s works (those written in German he could not even read), and owed all his information concerning his life to Humanist friends who were prejudiced in Luther’s favour.

After the breach between Luther and the ecclesiastical past had been consummated in 1520, Erasmus became more and more guarded in his utterances, whether public or private. His blame of Luther becomes ever more severe, though he is still desirous of finding a via media, and is willing to approve of far too much in Luther’s action. The excommunication of the heretic by the ecclesiastical authorities he describes in one of his letters after the publication of the Bull as an unfortunate mistake, showing want of charity; a peaceful adjustment of the controversy might easily have been reached by means of a council of wise men; this course his biassed mind still regarded as feasible.[701]

Luther for his part was fond of saying, that he merely spoke out plainly what Erasmus in his timidity only ventured to hint at. He himself, he tells a correspondent, had led the believing Christians into the Promised Land, whereas Erasmus had conducted them only as far as the land of Moab.[711] He recognised, however, the great difference between himself and Erasmus in their fundamental theological views, for instance, as to the condition of man stained by original sin, as to his free-will for doing what is good, his justification and pardon, on all of which the Humanist scholar held fast to the traditional teaching of the Church because, so Luther says, he could not, or would not, understand the Bible. Luther was well aware that, as time went on, Erasmus frequently protested that he had never had any intention of writing anything contrary to the revealed Word of God as taught by Holy Scripture and the common faith of Christendom; that he submitted himself to the decisions of the Popes, that he was ready to accept, as the Voice of God, what the authorities of the Church taught, even though he might not understand the reasons, and be personally inclined to embrace the opposite. His standpoint was accordingly miles removed from that of Luther with its unfettered freedom in religious matters.[712]

A severe but not unfair criticism of Erasmus—which does not charge him with unbelief or apostasy though censuring him for other grave faults—is to be met with in two German writers, both of them well conversant with their age, viz. Kilian Leib, Prior of the monastery of Rebdorf, and Bl. Peter Canisius.

The former, in dealing in his “Annales” with the year 1528, complains of the effect on the religious world of the sceptical and critical manner of his contemporary. “Wherever Erasmus had expressed a wish, or even merely conveyed a hint, there Luther has broken in with all his might.”[719] He is here referring to the strictures contained in the Annotations of Erasmus on the New Testament, in particular on Math. xi., upon the fasts and feasts, marriage laws and practice of confession, on the heavy burden of prayers, the number of Decretals and the endless ceremonial rules.

The other, Peter Canisius, speaks of Erasmus in the Preface to his edition of the Letters of St. Jerome. He says that Erasmus is distinguished by the “fluency and richness of his literary style” and his “rare and admirable eloquence.” In polite literature he had undoubtedly done good service, but he should either have refrained from meddling with theology or have treated it with more reserve and fairness. No one before him had ventured to censure the Fathers, the Schoolmen and the theologians in so severe and overbearing a fashion, nor was one to be found more touchy when contradicted. “He has carried this so far that he is now made as little of in the Catholic as in the opposite camp. In his writings he paid more attention to the form than to the matter.” The following sentence is worthy of attention: “I know not by what spirit he was really led, for he dealt with the Church’s doctrine according to the theology of Pyrrhus [the sceptic].”[720]

What, we may ask in this connection, was the origin of the saying which became later so widely current: “Erasmus laid the egg which Luther hatched”?

It is first alluded to by Erasmus himself in 1523, where he informs a friend that this had been said of him by certain Franciscans; he adds, that he had indeed laid a hen’s egg, but that Luther had hatched out quite a different nestling.[721] In 1534 he speaks more definitely of the German Franciscans as the purveyors of this saying, and in particular of the Cismontane commissioner of the Order, Nicholas Herborn, who with the assistance of other Friars had caused a volume of sermons to be printed at Antwerp in which appeared “the favourite asseveration of the brethren,” viz.: “Erasmus is Luther’s father; he laid the eggs and Luther hatched out the chicks; Luther, Zwingli, Œcolampadius and Erasmus are the soldiers of Pilate who crucified Jesus.”[722]

Similar utterances were indeed current in Catholic circles. Canisius mentions that he had frequently heard a saying which agrees with the words in Leib: “Ubi Erasmus innuit, illic Lutherus irruit,”[723] and might be rendered: Where Erasmus merely indicated, Luther violently eradicated. So general was the feeling that the head of the Humanists had really paved the way for Luther’s action.

As we have frequently pointed out, Luther’s speedy and unhoped-for success is altogether inexplicable, unless his way had been prepared beforehand by others, and that particular kind of Humanism which Erasmus had been largely instrumental in furthering cannot but be regarded as one of the causes which contributed to the spread of Lutheranism.

It is true that Humanism in some regards presented an inspiring and attractive spectacle. The revival of classical learning, the union of which with Christian truth had been the original aim both of the Humanists and of the Church, who had encouraged them; the idea of liberty and of the rights of the individual; the criticism and revision of ecclesiastical studies; all this, within due limits, seemed to presage a spring-tide in the development of the Christian nations at the close of the Middle Ages. The sanguine dreamt of a happy amalgamation of the ancient faith with the new culture of an age which was striving mightily upwards in all that concerned citizenship. Yet even enthusiastic patrons of the Christian Humanism of the day could not praise all the ideas current among those of its representatives who looked up to Erasmus; in such quarters many were the grievances raised against the Church, it being urged that religion had been corrupted, and that a purer Christianity should be established on the model of the earlier ages, and minus the mediÆval errors. Ideas such as these were distinctly revolutionary, especially when they had taken root in the heads of the masses in an even worse form. “It cannot as a matter of fact be denied,” says the French Academician P. Imbart de la Tour, “that the Humanists by their mode of criticising, accelerated the gathering of the revolutionary storm-clouds of the sixteenth century.”[724]

It was in the nature of an expiation that, along with Erasmus, many like-minded Humanists, following the example of their leader, deserted Luther’s cause, as soon as the air had been cleared by the master’s work against Luther and the denial of free-will. At the head of the German Humanists, Mutian, now an old man, welcomed the defence of free-will embodied in the “Diatribe.”[725] Zasius and Crotus, like Pirkheimer, returned to the Church. Others, especially those of Erfurt, were not to be separated from Luther, such were Justus Jonas, Johann Lang, Adam Kraft, Euricius Cordus, Draconites, Camerarius, Menius and Eobanus Hessus, who, however, wavered long.[726]

Summing up all that has been said, we must discount both the exaggerated charges brought against Erasmus, and the one-sided eulogies lavished upon him. A type of the unfair critic was Hieronymus Aleander, who was chiefly responsible for the violent attack made on Erasmus by Prince Albert Pius of Carpi. In 1521 Aleander declared: “Erasmus has written worse things against the faith than Luther”; he is of opinion that Erasmus had preached a real “intellectual revolt in Flanders and the Rhine-Lands.”[727] Equally exaggerated in the opposite direction is the statement ascribed to the Emperor Charles V, which must have been due to the glowing accounts given by the admirers of Erasmus, viz. that Erasmus had greatly reduced the number of Lutherans and achieved what Emperors, Popes, Princes and Universities had previously striven to do, but in vain. The allusion would seem to be to the great Humanist’s work against Luther’s denial of free-will.

What has been said tends to place in a true light a certain view which has been put forward in modern days. Thanks to a wrong interpretation of his antagonism to Luther’s principles and of his criticism of Catholic doctrine and practice, an attempt has been made to represent him as the “father of religious universalism” and of religion minus dogma. His bold schemes for renovation it is said paved the way for a great “renascence of Christianity” towards which we might well strive even to-day. As a matter of fact this “original creator in the domain of religion,” this “spokesman of modern religion,” never existed in Erasmus. It is a mere figment of the imagination of those who desire the complete reformation of religion and seek to shelter themselves behind the great Humanist. What is really strange is that such a deformation of the Erasmus of history has been attempted by certain Protestant theologians, whereas in Luther’s day Erasmus was denounced by Protestants as a free-thinker and unbeliever. There are other Protestant theologians, however, who candidly admit the futility of such efforts with regard to Erasmus.[728]

Catholics can see easily enough why the rise of Protestantism tended to bring back many Humanists, among them Erasmus himself, to a firmer and more clearly defined religious standpoint and to a more whole-hearted support of the Church. Erasmus, as stated above, frequently spoke of Luther’s work as a “remedy” (p. 249). It was a remedy above all for himself and for the more serious elements among his own party, whom the sight of the outward effects and internal consequences of the new teaching served to withdraw from the abyss towards which they were hurrying.

In his Annotations on the New Testament, Erasmus had clearly expressed both his fundamental antagonism to Luther’s denial of free-will and his own position. It so happens that the contrast between Luther and Erasmus becomes apparent for the first time in Luther’s correspondence of the famous year 1517. Luther had at that time been devoting some attention to his future opponent’s interpretation of Romans ix., of which the words concerning Divine election had confirmed him in his false teaching, while supplying Erasmus with an opportunity to lay stress on the freedom of the will under the influence of grace. The Wittenberg professor, full of the spirit of his recently completed Commentary on Romans, had, during his reading of it, written to his friend Lang concerning Erasmus in words which seem to presage the coming encounter: “I am reading our Erasmus, but every day he pleases me less. That he should so boldly attack the religious and the clergy for their ignorance pleases me, but I fear he does not sufficiently vindicate the rights of Christ and the grace of God.... How different is the judgment of the man who concedes something to free-will from one who knows nothing besides grace!”[729]—In these words we hear, as it were, the distant muttering of the storm which broke out seven years later, when the two exchanged their thunderbolts, clearing the air and plainly disclosing the difference between the Catholic and the Lutheran standpoint.

When a report reached Luther in 1522 that Erasmus was about to oppose his teaching on free-will, he was carried away to say certain things in his letters which greatly provoked his opponent.

In a letter to the Leipzig Professor, Caspar Borner, he stated that Erasmus understood less about these matters than the schools of the Sophists (the Schoolmen). “I have no fear of being vanquished so long as I do not alter my opinion.”[730] “Truth is stronger than eloquence, the spirit mightier than talent, faith greater than learning”; with his habitual confidence he says that were he only to stammer forth the truth he would still be sure of vanquishing the eloquence even of far-famed Erasmus. He did not wish to vex the scholar, but should he dare to attack he would be made to see “that Christ fears neither the gates of hell nor the powers of the air”; he (Luther) well knew the thoughts of Satan (“quandoquidem et SatanÆ cogitationes noverimus”).[731] Hence he seems to have regarded the doctrine of the absence of free-will as a sort of revelation, which the devil must necessarily oppose.

Erasmus got to hear of this letter. With the expressions it contained, viz.: spirit, truth, faith, triumph of Christ, he was familiar, for they were Luther’s watchwords; the innovators, following Luther’s example, made use of them, in season and out of season, though they were not able to conceal their real nature, least of all from the sharp eyes of Erasmus. “All,” Erasmus wrote in 1524 to Theodore Hezius, “have these five words always on their lips: evangel, God’s Word, faith, Christ and Spirit, and yet I see many behave so that I cannot doubt them to be possessed by the devil.”[732]

After long delay and anxious consideration, Erasmus finally decided to comply with the requests made of him and to publish a polemical work against Luther on the subject of free-will, for his own vindication and for the enlightenment of many whose eyes were turned upon him. In 1523 he set to work and forwarded a rough draft to Henry VIII of England.

He has frequently been said to have declared, in his witty way, that he had only yielded against his will to strong persuasion and that the work had been wrung from him; that, writing of free-will, he had lost his own free-will, and was, therefore, not to be taken seriously. This legend rests upon a false interpretation of a passage, the text of Erasmus containing nothing of the sort.[733]

In order if possible to delay or parry the attack, Luther, about the middle of 1524, wrote a strange letter addressed to the scholar.[734] He there complains openly of the criticisms Erasmus had directed against him latterly and of his ostensibly insulting remarks, and informs him that he, the Wittenberg Professor, has nothing whatever to fear, “even though an Erasmus should fall on him tooth and nail;” at the same time he begs him, with a most flattering eulogy of his gifts and standing, to consider well whether it would not be better to leave his (Luther’s) doctrines alone (“intacta dimittere”), and to busy himself with his own Humanist affairs. “I desire that the Lord may bestow on you a spirit worthy of your name. Should the Lord, however, still delay this gift, I would beg you meanwhile, if you can do nothing else, at least to remain a mere spectator of our tragedy; do not write against me or increase the number and strength of my opponents; particularly do not attack me through the press, and I for my part shall also refrain from attacking you.” The writer was all too well aware how heavily the words of Erasmus would weigh down the scale against him in public opinion.

Erasmus, however, was not to be moved from his decision; indeed, he felt still further provoked to write by an allusion of Luther’s in the above letter to the kindness he had hitherto displayed towards godless and hypocritical foes; should Erasmus dare to come forward against him publicly Luther vows he will alter this tone.[735] In the latter event Luther, in another passage of the letter, had declared regretfully, in perfect accordance with his theory of grace and the absence of free-will, that “Erasmus had not yet received from the Lord the gift of strength and an inward mind,” which would have enabled him to ally himself freely and trustfully with him (Luther) in his struggle with the monsters who were attacking him; even from Erasmus one could not expect what was beyond his power and lay outside his way. “On the contrary, we have accepted with patience and respect your weakness and the limitation of God’s gift in you.”

We may perhaps be permitted to remark here concerning the absence of the Divine action on the will, that Luther on other occasions did not allow himself to be swayed by “patience and respect,” as in the case of Erasmus, least of all when dealing with the Pope and his supporters. On the contrary, he reproves them severely for their “terrible blindness” and says, that the wrath of God had led to the setting up of an empire of error and lying, in spite of the Church having been so often warned by Christ and the Apostles against the Pope, i.e. Antichrist. The only explanation was in 2 Thessalonians ii. 10: “Therefore God sent upon them the operation of error, to believe lying”; “this operation was so great (‘illa energia tam potens fuit’) that they were blind even to the worst errors”; thus it was that they had set up their horrid Papacy. Out upon you, he cries to those, who, on the Lutheran hypothesis, were unable to do otherwise, “the overwhelming effect of your delusion defies all opposition” (“illa efficacia erroris potentissime restitit”). “But I have attacked the Pope in his very marrow and teaching, not merely his abuses.” “Had I not brought about his downfall by means of the Word, the devil himself would have vomited him forth.”[736]

The work of Erasmus, “De libero arbitrio diatribe,” which appeared in that same year, 1524, at Basle, was a severe blow to Luther.[737]

The ground chosen by Erasmus in his long-expected reply to all the questions raised by the Reformers, viz. the matter of free-will, was singularly apt; he launched forth at once into one of the most important subjects, one, too, which was readily understood by the people. His task was the exposure of the religion of the enslaved will.

Though the author was not thoroughly conversant with the learning of the Schoolmen, which might perhaps have enabled him to place the relationship between grace and free-will in an even clearer light, and though in the work he is rather reserved, yet his refinement of judgment and his eloquence more than compensate for his defects; these at least insured him great applause in an age so favourable to Humanism. Even the theologians were, on the whole, satisfied with the scriptural proofs adduced by so learned a man, whose linguistic knowledge and exegetical skill gave all the more weight to his work. Many cultured laymen breathed more freely, as though relieved of a heavy burden, when the authoritative voice of the great scholar was at last raised against Luther and in defence of free-will, that basic truth of sane human reason and pillar of all religious belief.

The work of Erasmus reached Wittenberg in September, 1524. Luther treated it with contempt and ostentatiously repudiated it. He wrote to Spalatin, on November 1, that it disgusted him; he had been able to read only two pages of it; it was tedious to him to reply to so unlearned a book by so learned a man.[745] All the same, he did write a lengthy and detailed answer; that he delayed doing so until late in the following year is to be accounted for by the Peasant-War with its terrors, which entirely engrossed his attention; it was also the year of his marriage. In estimating the value of the reply, upon which he then set to work with great energy, we must bear in mind the state of the author and the inward and outward experiences through which he had just gone. The impression made on his mind by the events of those days has left its stamp in the even more than usually extreme utterances contained in his reply to Erasmus. When once he had begun the work he carried it to its end with a rush; he himself admits that it was composed in excessive haste. We also know to whose influence his final decision to take the work in hand was due, viz. to Catherine Bora. “It was only at her request” that he undertook the work, when she pointed out to him, “that his foes might see in his obstinate silence an admission of defeat.”[746]

Luther’s Book “On the Enslaved Will” against Erasmus

The title “De servo arbitrio,” “On the enslaved will,” was borrowed by Luther from a misunderstood saying of St. Augustine’s.[747] While the book which bears it was still in the press his friend Jonas commenced a German version and entitled it: “Dass der freie Wille nichts sei.”[748]

However grotesque and exaggerated some of the principal theses of the famous work, Luther was at pains to declare therein that they were the result of most careful deliberation and were not written in the heat of controversy. Hence, as a Protestant historian says, “we must not seek to hide or explain them away, as was soon done by Luther’s followers and has been attempted even in our own day.”[749] Another Protestant scholar, in the preface to his study on the work “De servo arbitrio,” remarks that “quite rightly it caused great scandal and wonder,” and goes on to point out that “the hard, offensive theory” which it champions was “no mere result of haste or of annoyance with Erasmus, coupled with the desire clearly to define his own position with regard to the latter,” but really “expresses the matured conviction of the Reformer.”[750]

In this lengthy, badly arranged and rather confused work we see, first, that Luther gives the widest limits to his denial of free-will and declares man to be absolutely devoid of freedom of choice, even in the performance of works not connected with salvation, and moral acts generally. He does, indeed, casually remark that man is free “in inferioribus,” and that the question is whether he also possesses free-will in respect of God (“an erga Deum habeat liberum arbitrium”).[751] “But it is doubtful whether we are to take Luther at his word.” For “as a matter of fact he shows clearly enough that he does not wish this limitation to be taken literally.”[752] “That his intentions are, on the contrary, of the most radical character, is plain from many other passages where he attacks free-will everywhere, and represents all that we do and everything that occurs (‘omnia quÆ facimus et omnia quÆ fiunt’), as taking place in accordance with inexorable necessity.”[753] He lays it down as a principle that God’s omnipotence excludes all choice on man’s part, and again supports this on an argument from the Divine omniscience; God from all eternity sees all things, even the most insignificant, by virtue of His prescience, hence they must happen. Even where God acts on man apart from the influence of grace (“citra gratiam spiritus”), according to Luther, it is He Who works all in all, as the Apostle says, “even in the impious.” “All that He has made, He moves, impels and urges forward (‘movet, agit, rapit’) with the force of His omnipotence which none can escape or alter; all must yield compliance and obedience according to the nature of the power conferred on them by God.”[754]

In the same way as he here speaks of a certain “power” in the creature, so also, in the same connection, he refers to “our co-operation” in the universal action of God (“et nos ei cooperaremur”). By this, however, he does not mean any real free co-operation but, as he says darkly, only an activity of the will corresponding to its nature and governed by law, “whether in submission to the universal omnipotence of God in matters which do not refer to His Kingdom, or under the special impulse of His Spirit [grace] within His Kingdom.”

Luther’s main object in the book “De servo arbitrio” is undoubtedly the vindication of religious determinism.

His denial of free-will had its root in his mistaken conviction that man was entirely passive in the matter of his salvation and in his attempt to destroy all personal merit, even that won by the help of grace, as at variance with the merit of Jesus Christ. He is fond of dwelling with emphasis on the absence of any co-operation on man’s part in his justification, which is effected by faith alone, and on the so-called “righteousness” which had been effected in man by God alone even previous to man’s choice. Even that free-will for doing what is good, which is given back to the man who is justified, does not strictly co-operate—lest the merit of Christ should suffer.

How the ideas of free-will and of God are treated in Luther’s “De servo arbitrio” is made still more plain from the conclusions which he draws in this work from the denial of free-will, and deals with without the slightest reserve.

The first consequence is the absolute predestination of the reprobate to hell.

A second consequence of his teaching may also be pointed out here. From his theory of the enslaved will Luther was forced to deduce that God is responsible for evil.

We may, in the third place, cast a glance at the ethical consequences of the theory.

Luther refuses to admit what all people naturally believe, viz. that if God gives commandments man must be able either to obey, or to disobey, and thus incur guilt. What he teaches is, that God has a right and reasons of His own to impose commandments even though there should be no free-will; since without Him we are unable to keep the commandments He gives them for the wise purpose of teaching us how little we are capable of. The law is intended to awaken in us a sense of indigence, a desire for redemption, and the consciousness of guilt. When once this is present, God’s power does the rest; but the groundwork of all salvation is that we should become conscious of our nothingness, for which reason the belief in the enslaved will is to be proclaimed everywhere as the supreme virtue.

The greatest stress is laid by the champion of the “enslaved will” on the alleged importance of this doctrine for the personal assurance of salvation.

It is this doctrine alone, he says, which can impart to timorous man the pacifying certainty that he will find a happy eternity at the hands of the Almighty, Who guides him; on the other hand, the assumption of free-will shows man a dangerous abyss, ever yawning, into which the abuse of his freedom threatens to plunge him. Better to trust to God than to our own free-will.

“Since God,” he writes, “has taken my salvation upon Himself and wills to save me, not by my own works but by His grace and mercy, I am certain and secure (‘securus et certus’) that no devil and no misfortune can tear me out of His hands.... This is how all the pious glory in their God.”[781]

With enthusiasm he describes this consciousness, carefully refraining, however, from looking at the other side, where perchance predestination to hell, even without free-will, may lie.[782] When it presses on him against his will he at once drowns the thought with the consoling words of St. Paul on the greatness of the inscrutable ways of God. His justice must indeed be unsearchable, otherwise there would be no faith, but in the light of eternal glory we shall realise what we cannot now understand.[783]

The not over-enthusiastic critic, whom we have frequently had occasion to quote, remarks: “Seeing that faith according to Luther is no act of our will, but a mere form given to it by God, ... Luther is right in saying, that the very slightest deviation from determinism is fatal to his whole position. His ‘fides’ is ‘fides specialissima.’” It is the assurance of personal salvation. But even though “combined with a courageous certainty of salvation, Luther’s views, taken as they stand, would still offer no consolation to the tempted, so that when Luther has to deal with such he is forced to put these views in the background.” The critic goes on to wonder: “How if the thought, which Luther himself is unable to overcome, should trouble a man and make him believe that he is of the number of those whom the ‘voluntas maiestatis’ wills to hand over to destruction?” His conclusion is: “The certainty of salvation, about which Luther is so anxious, cannot be reached by starting from his premises.”[784]

At the end of his “De servo arbitrio,” summing up all he had said, Luther appeals to God’s rule and to His unchangeable predestination of all things, even the most insignificant; likewise to the empire of the devil and his power over spirits. His words on this matter cannot be read without amazement.

“If we believe that Satan is the Prince of this world, who constantly attacks the Kingdom of Christ with all his might and never releases the human beings he has enslaved without being forced to do so by the power of the Spirit of God, then it is clear that there can be no free-will.”[785] Either God or Satan rules over men; to this pet thought he adds: “The matter stands simply thus ... when God is in us, the devil is absent and then we can will only what is good; but when God is not there, the devil is, and then we can will only what is evil. Neither God nor Satan leaves us with an indifferent will.”[786] “When the stronger of the two comes upon us,”[787] he says, “and makes a prey of us, snatching us away from our former ruler, we become servants and prisoners to such an extent that we desire and do gladly what he wills (‘ut velimus et faciamus libenter quÆ ipse velit’). Thus the human will stands,” Luther continues, using a simile which has become famous, “like a saddle-horse between the two. If God mounts into the saddle, man wills and goes forward as God wills ... but if the devil is the horseman, then man wills and acts as the devil wills. He has no power to run to one or the other of the two riders and offer himself to him, but the riders fight to obtain possession of the animal.”[788]

With frightful boldness he declares this view to be the very core and basis of religion. Without this doctrine of the enslaved will, the supernatural character of Christianity cannot, so he says, be maintained; the work of redemption falls to the ground, because whoever sets up free-will cheats Christ of all His merit;[789] whoever advocates free-will brings death and Satan into the soul.[790]

In such passages we hear the real Luther, with all his presumptuous belief in himself: “To me the defence of this truth is a matter of supreme and eternal importance. I am convinced that life itself should be set at stake in order to preserve it. It must stand though the whole world be involved thereby in strife and tumult, nay, even fall into ruins and dissolve into nothing.”[791]

He ventures again to assert of Erasmus, that it had not been given him from above to feel, as he himself does, how in this great question “faith, conscience, salvation, the Word of God, the glory of Christ and even God Himself are involved.”[792] Concerning himself, on the other hand, he assures the reader that, with no earthly motives, he is waging a great war “with a God-given courage and steadfastness which his foes call obstinacy; that he holds fast to his cause in spite of so many dangers to his life, so much hatred, so many persecutions, in short, exposed as he is to the fury of man and of all the devils.”[793]

In various passages a lurid light is thrown on his inner state. In language which recalls the pseudo-mysticism of his Commentary on Romans ten years earlier, he says, that the predestination to hell which he advocated was certainly terrifying, that he himself had frequently taken great offence at it and had been brought to the abyss of despair, so that he wished he had never been born; but then “he saw how wholesome was this despair and how near to grace.”[794] “For whoever is convinced that all things depend on God’s Will, in his despair of self avoids making any choice and simply waits for God to act; such a one is near to grace and to finding salvation.” He himself “attributes nothing to himself, hopes for nothing and desires nothing” for his salvation; in thus waiting on the action of God’s grace he is very nigh to salvation, though he is as it were dead, stifled by the consciousness of guilt, and spiritually buried in hell; “whoever has read our works will be familiar with all this.”[795]

The echo of the pseudo-mystical ideas in which he had formerly steeped himself is plainly discernible in these words which go to form one of the most remarkable of the pictures he has left us of his state.

Even the “self-righteous,” whom he had at one time so bitterly assailed, again rise from their graves. The admission of free-will, he tells them, destroys all inward peace. After every work performed, the question still rankles: “Is it pleasing to God, or does God require something more? This is attested by the experience of all self-righteous (iustitiarii), and I myself, to my cost, was familiar with it for many long years.”[796]

On the same page he gives us a glimpse of the psychological source whence his whole theory of the enslaved will springs. The doctrine was born of personal motives and fashioned to suit his own state of soul. None the less, he insists that it must also become the common property of all the faithful which none can do without, nay, the very basis of the new Christianity. “Without this doctrine I should believe it necessary to plague myself with uncertainty and to beat the air with hopeless efforts, even were there no perils for the soul, no tribulations and no devils. Though I should live and work for all eternity, my conscience would never attain to a real peace and be able to say to itself, you have done enough for God.” He goes so far as to say: “For myself I admit, that, were free-will offered me, I should not care to have it; I should not wish to see anything placed within my power by means of which I might work for my salvation, because I should never be able to withstand and endure the trials and dangers of life and the assaults of so many devils.”[797]

The last words of the book even exceed the rest in confidence, and the audacity of his demand that his work should be accepted without question almost takes away one’s breath: “In this book I have not merely theorised; I have set up definite propositions, and these I shall defend; no one will I permit to pass judgment on them, and I advise all to submit to them. May the Lord Whose cause is here vindicated,” he says, addressing himself to Erasmus, “give you light to make of you a vessel to His honour and glory. Amen.”[798]

The great importance of the work “De servo arbitrio” for a knowledge of the religious psychology of its author may warrant a description of some of its other psychological aspects, and first of the connection discernible between the denial of free-will and Luther’s so-called inward experiences, which were supposed to be behind his whole enterprise.

He always believed he was following the irresistible pull of grace, and that he was merely treading the path appointed to him from above. In this work he breaks out into a loud hymn in praise of the irresistibility of the Divine action. “All that I have done,” he exclaims, “was not the result of my own will; this God knows, and the world, too, should have known it long ago. Hence, what I am and by what spirit and council I was drawn into the controversy is God’s business.”[799] In this explanation, so typical of his character and way of thinking, is summed up his reply to that argument of Erasmus against his doctrine, particularly of free-will, where the latter had confronted him with the teaching of the whole of the Church’s past.

For more than ten years, Luther adds, he had to listen to the reproach of his conscience: How dare you venture to overthrow the ancient teaching of all men and of the Church, which has been confirmed by saints, martyrs and miracles? “I do not think anyone has ever had to fight with this objection as I had. Even to me it seemed incredible that this impregnable stronghold which had so long withstood the storms, should fall. I adjure God, and swear by my very soul, that, had I not been driven, had I not been forced by my own insight and the evidence of things, my resistance would not have ceased even to this day.” But, under the higher impulse, he had suffered authorities ancient and modern to pass like a flood over his head that God’s grace might alone be exalted. “Since this is my only object, the spirit of the olden saints and martyrs and their wonder-working power witness in my favour.” The utter rigidity of his doctrine and line of thought, and the connection between his present attack on freedom and his own ostensible unfreedom in God’s hands could hardly be placed in a clearer light than here in Luther’s reply to the argument of Erasmus.

In another passage he describes, perhaps unconsciously, his experiences with his own will, so inclined to contradiction and anger; he says: That the will is not free is evident from the fact that, “it becomes the more provoked the greater the opposition it encounters....[800] Whoever pursues an object passionately is not open to correction, as experience shows. If he gives way, this is not willingly, but under pressure, and because it serves his purpose. It is only the man who has no interest whatever who allows things to take their own course.”[801]

From time to time the several pet ideas which had played a part in his previous development are harnessed to his argument and made to prove the servitude of the will.

We are conscious, he says, that, pressed down to the earth by concupiscence, we do not act as we should; hence man is not free to do what is good. The “sting” of this inability remains, as experience teaches, in spite of all theological distinctions. Natural reason, which groans so loudly under it and seeks to resist God’s action, would prove it even were it not taught in Holy Scripture. But Paul, throughout the whole of his Epistle to the Romans, while vindicating grace, teaches that we are incapable of anything, even when we fancy we are doing what is good.[802]

And further, the desire of gaining merit for heaven—the supposed error which he opposed quite early in his career owing to his distaste for works generally—can only be finally vanquished when the idol of free-will is overthrown. Then, too, he says, the fear of undeserved damnation by God also vanishes; for if there be no merit for heaven, then neither can there be any for hell; accordingly we may say without hesitation what must otherwise be repellent to every mind, viz. that God condemns to hell although man has not deserved it (“immeritos damnat”);[803] this is the highest degree of faith, to hold fast to the belief that “God is righteous when of His own will He makes us of necessity to be worthy of damnation (‘necessario damnabiles facit’), so that He would seem, as Erasmus says, to take delight in the torments of the damned and be more worthy of hatred than of love.”[804]

Here another element of his earlier development and mental trend comes into view, viz. a disregard for the rights of reason, based ostensibly on the rights of faith.

The denial of free-will seems to him in this regard quite attractive—such at least is the impression conveyed. For, when we deny the freedom of the will, so much becomes contradictory and mysterious to our reason. But so much the better! “Reason speaks nothing but madness and foolishness, especially concerning holy things.”[805] “Faith,” so he declares at great length, “has to do with things that do not appear (Heb. xi. 1); in order that true faith may enter in, everything that is to be believed must be wrapped in darkness. But things cannot be more completely concealed than when what is seemingly contradictory is presented to the mind, to the senses and to experience.”[806] In the present case, according to Luther, the apparent injustice of God in the “seemingly unjust” punishment of sinners, who are not free agents, is a grand motive for faith in His Justice.[807] Luther here displays his love of paradox. Even more than in his other writings plentiful opportunity for paradox presents itself in the “De servo arbitrio,” and of it he makes full use. “God makes alive by putting to death,” he writes in the passage under consideration, “He renders guilty and thereby justifies; He drags down the soul to hell and thereby raises it to heaven.”

Among the forcible expressions by which, here as elsewhere, he attempts to convince both himself and others, that he is in the right, are the following: “Liberty of choice is a downright lie (‘merum mendacium’).”[808] “Whoever assigns free-will to man, thereby makes him Divine, and thus commits the worst form of sacrilege.”[809] “To get rid altogether of the term free-will would be the best and most pious work (‘tutissimum et religiosissimum’).”[810] Whoever follows the road of Erasmus “is rearing within himself a Lucian—or a hog of the breed of Epicurus.”[811] “Erasmus concedes even more to free-will than all the sophists hitherto.”[812] “He denies Christ more boldly than the Pelagians,”[813] and those who hold with him are “double-dyed Pelagians, who merely make a pretence of being their opponents.”[814] But he himself, Luther, had never fallen so low as to defend free-will: “I have always, up to this very hour, advocated in my writings the theory that free-will is a mere name.”[815]

In this last assertion he repudiates his Catholic days and refuses even to take into account the works dating from that time; in his Commentary on the Psalms he had expressly admitted free-will for doing what is good and for the choice in the matter of personal salvation; it is true, however, that he never published this work. But in many of the writings composed and published even after his apostasy he had clearly assumed free-will in man and made it the basis of his practical exhortations, as shown above (p. 239). Now, however, he prefers to forget all such admissions.[816]

On the other hand he pretends to recall that in his Catholic days, “Christ had been represented as a terrible judge, Who must be placated by the intercession of His mother and the saints; that the many works, ceremonies, Religious Orders and vows were invented to propitiate Christ and to obtain His grace.”[817] Out of this is forged a fresh proof, drawn from his own experience, of the servitude of the will. For had Christ not been regarded exclusively as a judge, but as a “sweet mediator,” Who by His blood has redeemed all, then recourse would not have been had to the empty works of a self-righteous free-will. As it was, however, he had been made to feel strongly, that this delusion of works and free-will could only lead to despair.—Yet if, in his agony of soul, he really had sought and found peace of conscience in the theory of the enslaved will, how can we explain his many statements, made at almost that very time, concerning his enduring inward anguish and doubts?[818] The Protestant theologian, O. Scheel, the last to translate and expound the “De servo arbitrio,” says of the comfort that Luther professed to have derived from the absence of free-will and from the theory of predestination, that “in the Reformer’s piety a tendency is discernible which militates against the supposed whole-hearted and settled confidence of his faith in the redemption.”[819]

Contradictions formed an integral part of Luther’s psychology. Long pages of this work are full of them, though Luther seems quite unaware of his inconsistencies, obscurities and confusion. Conflicting lines of thought may be traced, similar to those which appeared in the Commentary on Romans (vol. i., p. 256), while the author was still a young man. They indicate a mentality singularly deficient in exactitude and clearness. The workshop where his ideas were fashioned was assuredly not an orderly one.

In the first place the main contention is very involved, while the statements that the will of the man who does what is evil is moved by God seem conflicting. The “movet, agit, rapit” in which the action of God on the will usually consists, does not here assert its sway; the Divine Omnipotence, which, as a rule, is the cause of all action, interferes here, either not at all, or at least less strongly than usual—God must not be made the direct author of sin. This illogical twisting of his theory is particularly noticeable where great sins of mighty consequence are in question. Is God to be regarded as having caused the Fall of Adam and the treason of Judas? Luther certainly does not answer this question in the affirmative so categorically as Melanchthon in his “Loci theologici.”[820] Here he carefully avoids speaking of an irresistible impulse of the will given by God; for the time being we seem to lose sight altogether of God’s imperative and exclusive action.

Under another aspect the work exhibits, better than any other, the undeniable qualities of its writer, the elasticity of his mind, his humour and imagination, and his startling readiness to turn every circumstance to advantage; at the same time, undoubtedly because it was a case of breaking a lance with Erasmus, the style is more polished than usual and the language less abusive. The editor of the Weimar edition speaks of the book as the “most brilliant of Luther’s Latin polemics, nay, perhaps the most brilliant of all his controversial works.”[835]

Luther would not have committed this great work to writing had not his mind been full of the subject. How far calm deliberation had any place in the matter it is as hard to determine here, as it is in so many of his other productions, where feeling seems to hold the reins. It is likewise difficult to understand how Luther, in practice, managed to compromise with the ideas he expounds, more especially as he was the leader of a movement on the banner of which was inscribed, not the gloomy domination of fatalism, but the amelioration of religious conditions by means of moral effort in all directions. The contradiction between lack of freedom on the one hand, and practice and the general belief in free-will on the other, was a rock which he circumnavigated daily, thanks to his self-persuasion that the strands drawn by the Divine Omnipotence around the will were of such a nature as not to be perceptible and could therefore be ignored. We believe ourselves to be free, and do not feel any constraint because we surrender ourselves willingly to be guided to the right or to the left; this, however, is merely due to the exceptional fineness of the threads which set the machine in motion.

For an ennobling of human nature and of the Christian state such a system was certainly not adapted. A tragic fate ordained that the apostasy, of which the cause was ostensibly the deepening of religious life and feeling, should bear this bitter fruit. Freedom had been proclaimed for the examination of religious truth, and now, the “submission of every man” is categorically demanded to doctrines opposed to free-will and to the dignity of the Christian. Nevertheless, both then and later, even to the present day, this curious, assertive book, like the somewhat diffident one of Erasmus, to which it was a reply—both of them so characteristic of the mind of their authors—have drawn many to examine the spirit of that age and of its two spokesmen.[836]

In the work “De servo arbitrio,” Luther speaks of Laurentius Valla as one who had cherished similar views.[837] In his “Table-Talk” he praises his opinions on free-will and the simplicity which he cultivated both in piety and learning. “Laurentius Valla,” he says, “is the best ‘Wal’ [Italian] I have ever come across in my life.”[838] Opinions differ widely as to Valla’s views, which are expressed with enigmatical obscurity in his Dialogue “De libero arbitrio.” At a later date Erasmus took his part against Luther, rightly pointing out that Valla was seeking to explain popularly how it is that the Divine foreknowledge does not necessarily make all things happen without freedom and of necessity.[839] Valla was a Humanist and critic, but neither a theologian nor a philosopher. In the question at issue he left the decision to faith, but laid great stress on the objections raised by reason. According to a modern historian he did not deny free-will, but merely left the problem, “which he neither could nor would solve,” to the Omnipotence of God.[840]

Luther’s Later Dicta on the Enslaved Will and on Predestination

Luther always remained faithful to the position taken up in his great work “De servo arbitrio,” as to both the absence of freedom and predestination.

In the Disputations of which we have records, he frequently reverts to his denial of free-will.

In his own mind Luther practically denied his doctrine as often as he struggled with remorse, or sought to overcome his terrors of conscience. Few men have had to exert their will with such energy (as we shall have occasion to point out later, vol. v., xxxii.) to hold their own against inward unrest. He, the advocate of the servitude of the will, in his struggles with himself and his better feelings, made his soul the battlefield of free-will, i.e. of a will vindicating its freedom.

From his artificial position of security he ventures to stand up vigorously against others, great men even, who “abused” his doctrine. Count Albert of Mansfeld was one of those who, according to Luther’s account, said of predestination and the helplessness of the will: “The Gospel? What is predestined must come to pass. Let us then do as we please. If we are to be saved, we shall be saved,” etc. Luther, therefore, takes him to account in a letter addressed to him on December 8, 1542. He tells him that he intends to speak freely, being himself “a native of the county of Mansfeld.” “He, too, had been tormented with such thoughts or temptations” and had thus been in danger of hell. “For in the case of silly souls such devilish thoughts breed despair and cause them to distrust God’s grace; in the case of brave people, they make them contemners and enemies of God, who say: let me alone, I shall do as I please, for in any case all I do is to no purpose.” He does not forbear to scold the Count for his behaviour, for “withdrawing himself from the Word and the Sacrament,” for “growing cold and set upon Mammon.” In the end he is, however, only able to give him the following questionable consolation concerning his doctrine. “It is perfectly true that what God has determined must certainly take place,” but there is “a great distinction to be observed” between the revealed and the secret will of God. He should not “trouble himself much” about the latter; for those who do soon “come to care nothing for the Word of God or the Sacrament, give themselves up to a wild life, to Mammon, tyranny and everything evil; for, owing to such thoughts, they can have no faith, hope or charity for either God or man.” Instead of this he desires, as he had explained in his book against Erasmus, that we should simply cling to the God Who has revealed Himself; “what He has promised we must believe, and what He has commanded we must do.” A servant, for instance, does not presume to seek out “the secret thoughts” of his master before obeying him. “Has not God the same right to secret knowledge of His own beyond what He chooses to tell us?” Some say: If it is to be, then all will happen in any case according to God’s will; “of what use, then, is baptism, Holy Scripture and every other creature to us? If God wills it, He can surely do it without all that.”[852]

At that time the report of such frivolous talk among the great ones led him to broach the subject in the lectures on Genesis which he happened to be delivering.[853] Here, if we may trust the reporter, he reverts to the doctrine he had defended in his “De servo arbitrio,” viz. that all things happen of entire necessity (“esse omnia absoluta et necessaria”).[854] He retracts nothing, but merely says, that he had emphasised the necessity of paying attention only to the revealed God; in this artifice he finds a means of preventing any frivolous abuse of the theory of predestination, any despair or recourse to the complaint “I cannot believe.”

In another letter he gives encouragement, no less doubtful in character, to an unknown person, who, in the anxiety caused by his apprehension of being predestined to hell, had applied to him. Luther boldly re-affirms the existence of such absolute predestination: “God rejected a number of men and elected and predestined others to everlasting life before the foundation of the world, such is the truth.” “He whom He has rejected cannot be saved, even though he should perform all the works of the Saints; such is the irrevocable nature of the Divine sentence. But do you gaze only upon the Majesty of the Lord Who elects, that you may attain to salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” In Christ, he proceeds, we have that revealed Majesty of God, Who wills to save all who believe in Christ; “whom He has predestined to salvation, He has also called by the gospel, that he may believe and be justified by faith.”[855]—Yet, strangely enough, this letter also contains a sentence which denies absolute predestination to hell, the only such denial known to have been made by Luther.[856] The text of the letter has, however, not yet been verified critically. The words in question appear to be a quotation from Augustine added by another hand in extenuation of Luther’s doctrine.

Although Luther did not put forth his rigid doctrine of predestination to hell either in his popular or strictly theological writings, yet, to the end of his life, he never surrendered it; that he “never retracted it” is emphasised even in KÖstlin and Kawerau’s Life of Luther.[857]

Of his book against Erasmus Luther spoke long after as the only one, save the Catechism, which he would be sorry to see perish.[858] In reply to the question put by Caspar Aquila, a preacher, why so many who heard the Word did not believe, he refused to ascribe this to free-will, and as regards the temptations to despair, which the same enquirer complained were the result of his thoughts on predestination, Luther insisted, that God had not chosen to reveal His secret will (“maiestas lucis illius occultata et non significata est”), hence the need to turn away resolutely from such thoughts and to defy this “greatest of all temptations, truly a devilish one.” He refuses to withdraw even the proposition, that all things happen of necessity.[859] In his later years he is fond of speaking of the power of sin over man’s interior, and though he does not allude so decidedly or so frequently to man’s “absolute and entire dependence upon God’s Omnipotence,” yet he has by no means relinquished the idea. Thus the “difference between his earlier and later years” is one only of degree, i.e. he merely succeeded in keeping his theory more in the background.[860]

The controversy with Erasmus did not cease with the appearance of Luther’s book, on the contrary. Apart from the question itself, the injustice done to the eminent scholar, and still more to the Church, by the arrant perversion of his opponent’s words to which Luther descended in order to stamp him and the Catholic doctrine of the past as altogether un-Christian, could not be allowed to pass unchallenged. It has been admitted, even by Protestants, as Luther’s constant policy in this work to make Erasmus say, that, in order to arrive at salvation it was sufficient to use free-will and that grace was unnecessary, and then to conclude that the Holy Ghost and Christ were shamefully set aside by Catholics. This Luther did (as Kattenbusch says) “by a certain, of course bona fide, perversion of his [Erasmus’s] words, or by a process of forced reasoning which can seldom, if indeed ever, be regarded as justified.”[861]

4. New Views on the Secular Authorities

“Since the time of the Apostles no doctor or scribe, no theologian or jurist has confirmed, instructed and comforted the consciences of the secular Estates so well and lucidly as I have done.”[862]

“Even had I, Dr. Martin, taught or done no other good, save to enlighten and instruct the secular government and authorities, yet for this cause alone they ought to be thankful to and well-disposed towards me, for they all of them, even my worst enemies, know that in Popery such understanding of the secular power was not merely discountenanced, but actually trampled under foot by the stinking, lousy priests, monks and mendicant friars.”[863]

“In Popery,” as hundreds of documents attest, the people were taught, as they always had been, that the secular government was divinely appointed and altogether independent in its own sphere;[864] that it was nevertheless to govern according to the dictates of law and justice; that, far from neglecting it, it was to promote the eternal welfare of the subject; finally, that it was bound to recognise the Catholic Church as the supreme guardian, of both the natural and religious law. Government and secular Estate could work in all freedom and prosperity. All that Luther taught rightly concerning the secular power had been proclaimed long before by the voice of the Church and put into practice.[865] As to the new and peculiar doctrines he taught in the first period of his career, they must now be examined.

A curious changeableness and want of logic are apparent, not merely in his way of expressing himself, but also in his views. This was due in part to the fact that his mental abilities lent themselves less to the statement and defence of general theories than to controversy on individual points, but still more to the influence on his doctrine exercised by the changes proceeding in the outer world.

The main point with him in the matter of the secular authorities was, whether they might demand obedience from him and his followers in matters concerning the new doctrine, i.e. whether they might compel them to forsake the innovations, or whether the Lutheran party had the right to resist the authorities and the Emperor, even by the use of force. Another question was whether Catholics could be left free to practise their religion in localities where the authorities were on Luther’s side. Were the authorities bound to respect Catholic convictions, or had the Lutheran Prince or magistrate the right to force the refractory to accept the innovations? Finally, Luther’s relations with those parties within the new faith who differed from him raised fresh questions: Were the evangelical authorities to tolerate these sectarians, or were they to repress any deviation from the Wittenberg doctrine?

To formulate any definite answers to such questions was rendered still more difficult in Luther’s case by the fact that prudence compelled him to exercise great reticence and caution in his utterances on many such points.[866] On the one hand he might easily have spoilt his whole work in the eyes of his cautious sovereign had he proclaimed openly the right of his friends among the nobles to resist the Emperor even by force. On the other, many would have been repelled had he laid down the principle of intolerance towards Zwinglians and Anabaptists as strongly at the commencement as he did later. In considering his doctrine concerning the secular authorities and the obedience due to them, we must simply take his utterances in their historical sequence, at the same time keeping a watchful eye on his actual behaviour in which we shall find at once their explanation and justification.[867] Only in this way shall we arrive at a clear estimation of his tangled ideas on secular authority and religious toleration.[868]

As to his varying theories,[869] at the outset and during the first stage of his revolt against the Church, Luther was fond of launching out into very questionable and far-reaching statements concerning the secular authority, as appears, for instance, in his tract addressed in 1520 to the German Nobility. Where the authorities are on the side of the Evangel, their power is so great that they may exercise their office “unhindered,” “even against Pope, bishop, parson, monk or nun or whatever else there be”; in that case, too, the secular authorities are perfectly justified in summoning clerics to answer before their tribunal.[870] “St. Paul says to all Christians,” Luther argues, “‘Let every soul’—hence, I suppose, even the Pope himself—‘be subject to higher powers, for they bear not the sword in vain.’ ... St. Peter, too, foretold that men would arise who would despise the temporal rulers, which has indeed come to pass through the rights of the clergy.”[871] In such wise does he charge the past.

But now, he continues (owing to his efforts), “the secular power has become a member of the ghostly body, and, though its office is temporal, yet it has been raised to a spiritual dignity; its work may now be done freely and unhindered among all the members of the whole body, punishing and compelling, where guilt deserves it or necessity demands, regardless of Pope, bishop or priest, let them threaten and ban as they please.”[872] It is clear how the interests of the “reformation” he has planned impel him to extend the rights of the secular power, even in the spiritual domain, over all who resist.

In his work “On the secular power,” of March, 1523, we find an entirely different language.

Here he insists with great emphasis on the fact that the secular authorities have no right to interfere in the spiritual domain. The explanation of his change of attitude is that here he is thinking of the Catholic authorities who were placing obstacles in the way of the spread of the Lutheran apostasy. His teaching is: The secular power exists and is ordained by God, but it has no concern with spiritual matters, may not place difficulties in the way of the preaching of the “Word,” and has no right to curtail the interests of the Evangel, by prohibiting Luther’s books, by threatening excommunication, or by hindering the new worship. He thus sets up general principles which are quite at variance with the line of action he himself constantly pursued where the authorities were favourable to his cause.

His teaching he expounds in this way: Temporal rulers are, it is true, established in the world by the will of God and must be obeyed; but their sword must not invade a domain which does not belong to them; it is not their business to render men pious, and they have nothing whatever to do with the good, their only object being to prevent outward crimes and to maintain outward peace as “God’s task-masters and executioners.”[873] He speaks almost as though there were two kingdoms of men, one, of the wicked and those who are not “Christians,” coming under the rule of the authorities and belonging to the kingdom of the world; the other, the kingdom of God, whose members are not subject to earthly laws and authorities; such are “all true believers in and beneath Christ.”

Not only could this curious dualism be objected to on the score of want of clearness, but the assertion that the secular power was merely an “executioner” for the punishment of outward crime actually tended to abase and degrade it. The olden Church had, on the contrary, exalted the secular power by permitting its representatives to share in many ways in the spiritual work of the Church, and by desiderating the harmonious co-operation of the two powers, spiritual and secular, in the interests of the ultimate end of mankind.

The singular attitude adopted by Luther is to be explained, as hinted above, by the fact that, in his work “On the secular power,” he has allowed himself to be so largely influenced by polemical regard for the Catholic authorities, whom he describes as those blind, wretched people, the Emperor and the wise Princes and tyrants generally. He inveighs against the “clever squires who seek to uproot heresy,” and against “our Christian Princes, who defend the faith.” The authorities with whom he is here concerned consist almost exclusively of persons who, “instead of allowing God’s Word to have free course,” would fain impose by compulsion the faith of bygone days upon their subjects, thus creating “liars by constraint.” They “command men to feel with the Pope,” but they act “without the clear Word of God” and must therefore necessarily perish in their “perverted understanding.”[874]

In the work in question he nevertheless seeks to establish a general theory, though, partly owing to its being forcibly shaped to meet the special needs of the case, partly because it was based on a certain kind of pseudo-mysticism, the theory remains open to many objections.

The secular power (more particularly where it is Catholic) cannot exercise any authority in spiritual matters, hence, he says, “these two governments must be carefully kept asunder, and both be preserved, the one to render men pious, the other to safeguard outward peace and prevent evil deeds.”[875] In speaking as he does here and elsewhere in this work of the “two governments” he is, however, very far from acknowledging an independent ecclesiastical or spiritual government such as had existed in Catholicism. What he called spiritual government was “without law or command,” and merely “the inward sovereignty of the Word,” “Christ’s spiritual dominion” where souls are ruled by the Evangel; there the Word of God is furthered by teaching and the sacraments, by which minds are led and heresy vanquished; “for Christians must be ruled by faith, not by outward works.... Those who do not believe are not Christians and do not belong to Christ’s kingdom, but to the kingdom of the world, and must therefore be compelled and governed by the sword.” “Christians do all what is good without compulsion and God’s Word suffices them.”[876]—Hence it is certain that he does not look upon this kingdom of the Christian as a real government, seeing that it implies no jurisdiction. The power to make and enforce laws in this world belongs only to the secular authorities. They alone form on earth a real government. “Priests and bishops,” too, have neither “supremacy nor power.”[877]

True believers are subject to “no laws and no sword,”[878] for they stand in need of none. For this reason Christ commands us not to make use of the sword and to refrain from violence. “The words of Christ are clear and peremptory: ‘resist not evil’” (Matt. v. 39). These words and the whole passage concerning the blow on the cheek, the Sophists (i.e. the Schoolmen) had indeed interpreted as a mere “counsel.” In reality, however, they constitute a command, though only for “Christians”; “the sword has no place among Christians, hence you cannot use it upon or among Christians, since they need it not.”[879] He is here addressing Duke Johann, the Elector’s brother, who sympathised with his cause and to whom, in the Preface, the work is dedicated. He goes on to tell him that the Christian ruler nevertheless must not lay aside the sword on account of what has just been said, for in point of fact there are few such “Christians,” wherefore the sword was still “useful and necessary everywhere.” “The world cannot and will not do without” authority. Even with the sword you still remain “true to the gospel,” he tells this Christian Prince, and still hold fast to Christ’s Word, “so that you would gladly offer the other cheek to the smiter and give up your cloak after your coat, if the matter affected yourself or your cause.”[880] Every Christian likewise must comply with the command to relinquish his rights, “allow himself to be insulted and disgraced,” but in his neighbour’s cause he must insist upon what is just, even to having recourse to the sword of authority.[881]

In this way he fancies, as he says in the Dedication, that he is the first to instruct “the Princes and secular authorities to remain Christians with Christ as their Lord, and yet not to make mere counsels out of Christ’s commands”; but the “Sophists” “have made a liar of Christ and placed Him in the wrong in order that the Princes may be honoured.... Their poisonous error has made its way throughout the world, so that everyone looks upon Christ’s teaching as counsels for the perfect and not as obligatory commands, binding on all.”

Should the secular power exceed its limits and the rulers demand what is against conscience, then God is to be obeyed rather than man.[882] He now comes to the new Evangel. If the authorities require you “to believe this or the other,” “or order you to put away certain books, you must reply, ... In this respect you are acting like tyrants; you are going too far and commanding where you have neither right nor power, etc. Should they thereupon seize your property and punish you for your disobedience, you should esteem yourself happy and thank God.”[883] In the County of Meissen, in Bavaria, and in the March, where the authorities required, under penalties, that his translation of the New Testament should be given up, he says, “the subjects are not to surrender a single leaflet, nor even a letter, if they do not wish to imperil their salvation, for whoever does such a thing, surrenders Christ into the hands of Herod.” They are, however, not to offer violent resistance, but to “suffer.”[884]

The Imperial Edicts issued against the innovations led him to speak more fully of the interference of the secular authorities on behalf of religious doctrine generally. “God,” he declares, “will permit none to rule over the soul but Himself alone.... Hence, when the secular power takes upon itself to make laws for the soul it is trespassing upon God’s domain and merely seducing and corrupting souls. We are determined to make this so plain that everyone can grasp it, and that our squires, Princes and bishops may see what fools they are when with laws and commandments they try to force the people to believe this or that.”[885] Such meddling of the authorities with matters which did not concern them was, so he says, due to the “commandments of men,” and was therefore utterly at variance with “God’s Word.” God would have “our faith founded only on His Divine Word,” but what the worldly authorities were after “was uncertain, or rather, certainly, displeasing [to God], because there was no clear Word of God in its favour.” “Such things are enjoined by the devil’s apostles, not by the Church, for the Church commands nothing save when she knows for certain that it is according to the Word of God.... As for them, they will find it a hard job to prove that the decrees of the Councils are the Word of God.”[886]

It is well worth our while to consider the following general grounds he assigns for his repudiation of all interference of the authorities in matters of faith, for, not long after, his position will be very different. He declares that, speaking generally, the authorities have “no power over souls”; the soul is removed altogether from the hands of men and “placed in the hands of God alone.” The ruler has just as little control over a soul as he has over the moon. “Who would not be accounted crazy who commanded the moon to shine at his pleasure?” Besides, Pope, Bishops and Schoolmen are “without God’s Word,” “and yet they wish to be termed Christian Princes, which may God prevent!” Further proofs follow from the Bible, where we read, that God alone knows and governs all things, and from the fact, that “every man’s salvation depends on his belief, and he must accordingly look to it that he believes aright”; “faith is a voluntary act to which no one can be forced, nay, it is a Divine work of the Spirit.” Moreover, “it is a vain and impossible thing” to compel the heart, and God will bring to a dreadful pass the purblind rulers who are now attempting it.[887]

His conclusion is that “the secular power must be content to wait and allow people to believe this or the other as they please and are able, and not to compel any man by force.”[888]

“Heresy can never be withstood by force,” he says further on. “Something else is needed.... God’s Word must here do the work, and if it fails, then the secular power will certainly not achieve it, though it should fill the world with blood.... God’s Word alone can be effective.” Hence the squires should learn at last to cease “destroying ‘heresy,’ and allow God’s Word which enlightens the heart” to have its way.[889]

Nevertheless, he admits that it is the right of the bishops to “restrain heretics.” “The bishops must do this, for it appertains to their office though not to the Princes”—a theory which Luther persistently refused to see carried to its logical conclusion. He also admits, that “no one has a right to command souls unless he knows how to show them the way to heaven,”—though here, again, he would have denied the consequence which Catholics gathered from this truth, when they urged that the measures adopted by the Empire against the innovations were for the safeguarding of the road to heaven, which an infallible Church points out to mankind. In Luther’s opinion there no longer existed any Church able to “point out the way to heaven” without danger of error. “This no man can do,” he exclaims in the same passage,[890] “but God alone.” It was hopeless for Catholics to argue that the Church did so only in God’s name, and under explicit promise of His assistance. Facts are there to prove that, at the very time when Luther was proclaiming his theories of religious toleration, he was setting them at nought in the most outrageous fashion where Catholics were concerned; he was, however, careful to veil his invitation to abolish their faith and worship under the specious pretext of demolishing abuses, sacrilege and the Kingdom of Antichrist. Nor was it long before he invoked the help of the secular power against sectarians within his own camp.

Where, towards the close of the work “On the secular power,” Luther passes on to show how Princes, who are “desirous of acting as Christian Princes and lords,” ought to administer their authority, he reaches a less controversial subject and is able to expound in that popular, imaginative language which he knew so well how to handle certain wholesome views which had already found expression in earlier times. In the forcible exhortations he here gives, rulers desirous of profiting might have found much to learn. Whoever wishes to be a Christian Prince must above all “lay aside the notion that he is to rule and govern by violence.” “Justice must reign at all times and in everything.” His whole mind must be set on “making himself of use and service to his subjects.” Secondly, “he must keep an eye on the Jacks-in-office and on his councillors, and behave towards them in such a way as not to despise any of them, while at the same time not confiding in any one man to such an extent as to leave everything to him.” “Thirdly, he must take care to deal rightly with evil-doers.” “He must not follow those advisers and fire-eaters who urge and tempt him to make war.” “Fourthly—what ought really to have been placed first— ... the ruler must behave towards his God as a Christian, submitting himself to Him with entire confidence, and praying for wisdom to rule well.”[891]

Concerning the latter point, viz. the attitude of the ruler towards God and towards religion, which, according to Luther, really should come first, the exhortations of earlier days addressed to the rulers, hardly ever failed to represent the protection of the Kingdom of God as the noblest task of any sovereign, who looked beyond temporal things to the world to come. Luther himself at a later period commends the protection and extension of the Kingdom of God most earnestly and eloquently to all rulers who followed the new faith, and instances the example of the Jewish Kings and Jewish priesthood.[892] Here, however, where he is full of other interests, we find not a word of the kind. On the subject of their relation to God, all he does is to remind the Princes in one sentence of the need of “true confidence and heartfelt prayer,” and, having done so, he breaks off and hurriedly brings the work to an end. In this circumstance, in itself insignificant, Luther’s violent breach with tradition is very apparent. Here, where, for the first time in any work of his, he puts forth his views as to what the conduct of secular authorities should be, in dealing with their relations to faith and worship, he has not a word in support of the recommendation to protect religion, albeit so justifiable and hitherto so usual; he could not give such a recommendation, because a few pages before he had laid it down that “the secular government has laws which do not extend beyond life and property and what is external on earth.” “The secular power must leave people free to believe this or that as they please”; “the blind, miserable wretches [the Catholic Princes] see not how vain and impossible a thing they are undertaking.”[893]—Nowhere in the writing, as a Protestant theological critic remarks, “does the idea appear that a Christian ruler has the right or the duty to pass beyond the limits of his temporal jurisdiction and to concern himself with ecclesiastical matters.”[894]

It is quite remarkable how Luther reduces the action of the secular power and the rights of the authorities to a judicial constraint to be exercised against evil-doers, or, as he says, to the task of a mere executioner.

For the explanation of these ideas on the secular power, two points are of especial importance: In the first place, Luther was at that time somewhat disappointed with the Princes and the nobles. In his work “To the Nobility” he had urged them to make an end of the Papal rule, and now he was vexed to see that, almost to a man, they had declined to do anything, whilst he himself was under the ban of the Empire. Secondly, it was his idea of the inward action of the Evangel upon souls and his conception of a sort of invisible Church, which induced him to exclude altogether the secular power from the spiritual domain, and to speak in exaggerated and disparaging terms of the “outward actions” with which alone it was concerned. In those years, when he was still to some extent under the influence of his early pseudo-mysticism, he was fond of picturing to himself the community of believers as an assembly of all those who had been awakened by “the Word,” and who, in spirit, were far above the compulsion of any earthly regulations. Thus, with him, the Church, in comparison with the political community, tended to evaporate into a mere union of souls, scarcely perceptible to earthly eyes.[895]

To us now it is clear that, in spite of every effort to the contrary, the new Church was bound in process of time to become entirely dependent on the secular power, first and foremost in its outward administration. Luther’s spiritual Church could not endure but for the support of the authorities.

It is notorious that the tendency to make his Church depend upon the secular authorities, as soon as they had embraced his cause, was part of Luther’s plan from the very outset. A State Church corresponded with his requirements. However much at the commencement Luther might emphasise the congregational ideal, tracing the whole authority of the freshly formed communities back to it, viz. to the priestly powers inherent in all the faithful, yet, as occasion arises, he falls back on the one external authority left standing, now that he has definitely set aside one of the two powers recognised of old.

In the sixteenth century the Church was confronted not only by official Protestantism, but by various other opposing bodies, Anabaptists, fanatics and anti-Trinitarians. If among all these only the Wittenberg, ZÜrich and Geneva groups “were able to assert themselves, this,” says a recent Protestant theologian, Paul Wernle, “was not due, or at least not solely due, to the fact, that they were more true or more profound than the others, but that they accommodated themselves better to existing conditions, and, above all, to the State.”[896] Karl Sell, a Protestant professor of theology, speaks in the same strain: “Where the Reformation gained the day it did so with the help of the secular power, of the Princes or republics and, in every instance, the Reformation itself strengthened the power of these authorities. Upon them devolved the new office of caring ... for religion.... Thus the duty of providing for wholesome doctrine and right faith, for the doctrine which alone could be pleasing to God, became one of the principal concerns of the rulers; hence arose the strict adherence to orthodoxy, the exclusion of erroneous teaching from the confines of the State, in short, the theological police system which prevailed in all Protestant countries till the middle of the seventeenth century.”[897]

The tendency to seek an alliance with the secular powers did not, however, hinder Luther from degrading the authorities and the Princes in the eyes of the people in the most relentless and public manner. In his mortification at the want of response to his call he allowed himself to be carried away to strictures and predictions which greatly excited the masses.

In the writing “On the secular power,” to which we must here revert, Luther says, that the Princes are, as a rule, “the biggest fools or the worst knaves on the surface of the earth”; a good Prince “had always been a rare bird from the beginning of the world.” Because the world is “of the devil,” therefore “its Princes too are of a like nature.” In spite of this Luther ends by saying, that as God’s “hangmen,” the Princes ought to be obeyed.[909] Later on he was to declare that the passages from the Bible, which he had here quoted in support of this obedience, were his best defence against the charge of diminishing the respect due to Princes, or of teaching rebellion. “The fact that, in that work, I based and confirmed the temporal supremacy and obedience on Scripture is of itself sufficient refutation of such slanders.”[910]

When he asserts in the above writing, that “Among Christians no authority can or ought to exist, but that everyone should be subject to all,”[911] his intention was not, as has sometimes been erroneously supposed by his opponents, to incite the people against the secular power; the words, though badly chosen, must be understood in connection with his mystical theory of the true believers, i.e. of the invisible Church, being intended to convey, that no authority should rule by enforced commands, but that, on the contrary, all must ‘serve,’ and that even superiors should be mindful of their duty of ‘service.’ It is not, however, very surprising that such a statement, so unwisely expressed in general terms as that, “among Christians there neither can nor ought to be any authority,” when taken out of its context and published abroad among the people, was misapplied by the malcontents, more especially when taken in conjunction with other questionable utterances of Luther’s.

His experience with the fanatics, and, still more, the events of the Peasant-War, caused Luther to dwell more and more strongly on the duty and right of the authorities to exercise compulsion towards evil-doers.[912]

In the work “Against the Heavenly Prophets,” the first published in the stormy year 1525, he says: “The principal thing” required to protect the people against the devils who were teaching through the mouths of the Anabaptist prophets was, “in the case of the common people,” compulsion by the sword and by law. The authorities must force them to be at least “outwardly pious” (true Christians, of course, do all of themselves); the law with its penalties rules over them in the same way that “wild beasts are held in check by chains and bars, in order that outward peace may prevail among the people; for this purpose the temporal authorities are ordained, and it is God’s will that they be honoured and feared.”[913] The change in his views concerning the treatment of sectarians and heretics will, however, be considered elsewhere.[914]

On the other hand, it must be pointed out here that he at least allows the supreme secular power such authority as to deprecate any armed resistance to it, even where the Evangel is oppressed. In his work “On the secular power” we find him stating: “I say briefly that no Prince may make war on his over-Lord, such as the King, or the Emperor, or any other feudal superior, but must allow him to seize what he pleases. For the higher authorities must not be resisted by force, but merely by bringing them to a knowledge of the truth. If they are converted, it is well; if not, you are free from blame, and suffer injustice for God’s sake.”[915]—As early as 1520 we find him saying: “Even though the authorities act unjustly God wills that they should be obeyed without deceit, unless, indeed, they insist publicly on the doing of what is wrong towards God or men; for to suffer unjustly harms no man’s soul, indeed is profitable to it.”[916] At the outset he persisted in dissuading Princes favourable to his cause from armed resistance to the Emperor.

His earlier unwillingness, however, only contrasts the more strangely with his later attitude, particularly after the Diet of Augsburg, when his position had become stronger and when danger appeared to threaten the new Evangel from the Imperial power, even though all the Emperor’s steps were merely in accordance with the ancient laws of the Empire. Addressing the protesting Princes, he tells them they must act as so many Constantines in defence of their cause, and not wince at bloodshed in order to protect the Evangel against the furious, soul-destroying attacks of the new Licinii. His change of front in thus inciting to rebellion he covered, by declaring he was most ready to render to CÆsar the things that were CÆsar’s, but that when the Emperor forbade “what God in His Word [according to Luther’s interpretation] had taught and commanded,” then he was going beyond his province; in such a case it was well to remember that “God still retained what was His,” “and that they, the tyrants, had lost everything and suffered shipwreck.”[917] In this case the action taken by the temporal power according to law must, he says, be forcibly frustrated by the subject. New theories as to the rights of the Emperor and the Princes did their part in justifying these demands in his eyes. “Gradually,” says Fr. von Bezold, “his experience of the limitations of the Imperial power and the liberty of the Princes of the Empire brought about a change in him. Thus he became ... the father of the doctrine of the right of resistance.”[918]

In 1522 he had written in quite a different strain to his Elector. At that time the critical question of the latter’s attitude towards the Imperial authority and of the protection to be afforded Luther against the Emperor was under discussion. “In the sight of men it behoves Your Electoral Highness to act as follows: As Elector to render obedience to the power established and allow His Imperial Majesty to dispose of life and property in the towns and lands subject to Your Electoral Highness, as is right and in accordance with the laws of the Empire; nor to oppose or resist, or seek to place any obstacle or hindrance in the way of the aforesaid power should it wish to lay hands on me or kill me.... If Your Electoral Highness were a believer, you would see in this the glory of God, but since you are not yet a believer, you have seen nothing so far.”[919] This, compared to the summons to resistance, spoken of above, reads like an invitation to submit with entire patience to those who were persecuting the Evangel. It is true that the then position of affairs to some extent explains the case. The writer was well aware that the Elector might be relied upon to protect him, he also knew that a little temporary self-restraint in his demands would do his cause no harm, and that a profession of entire readiness to sacrifice himself would be most conducive to his interests.[920]

But from this time the opinion that, in the pressing interests of the gospel, it was permissible to make use of violence against the authorities and their worldly regulations, breaks out repeatedly, and, in spite of the reticence he frequently displays and of his warnings against rebellion and revolt, he is quite unable to conceal his inner feeling. Many passages of an inflammatory character have already been instanced above and might be cited here.[921]

The opposition smouldering in his breast to the conduct of the authorities in the matter of religious practices differing from their own, comes out very strongly at an early period. Though he declared that he had no wish to interfere, yet, even in 1522, he requested Frederick the Elector of Saxony, through the intermediary of Spalatin,[922] to have Masses prohibited as idolatrous, “an interference in religious matters on the part of the authorities,” as Fr. Paulsen remarks, “which it is difficult to reconcile with the position which Luther assigns to them in 1523 in his work ‘On the secular power.’”[923] Paulsen also recalls the statement (above, p. 300) that a sovereign may not even order his subjects to surrender the book of the gospels, and that whoever obeyed such an order was handing over Christ to Herod. It is true, he concludes, that here the order would have emanated from “Popish authorities.”

When the Canons of Altenburg, in accordance with their chartered rights, wished, in 1522, to resist the appointment of a Lutheran preacher in that town, neither olden law nor the orders of the authorities availed anything with Luther, as we shall see below (p. 314 ff); “against this [the introduction of the Evangel] no seals, briefs, custom or right are valid,” he writes; it was the duty of the Elector “as a Christian ruler to encounter the wolves.” Finally, we have the outburst: “God Himself has abrogated all authority and power where it is opposed to the Evangel, ‘we must obey God rather than men’” (Acts v. 29).[924]

Here we have a practical commentary on what he says when speaking of the “Word” which must make its way alone: “The Word of God is a sword, is destruction, vexation, ruin, poison, and as Amos says, like a bear in the path and a lioness in the wood.”[925]

Even in his sermon on Good Works in 1520 he had made a remarkable application of the above principle of the abrogation of all authority in the case of those who ruled in defiance of God: People must not, he declares in accordance with Acts v. 29, allow themselves to be forced to act contrary to God’s law; “If a Prince whose cause is obviously unjust wishes to make war, he must not be followed or assisted, because God has commanded us not to kill our neighbour or to do him an injury.”[926] A Protestant theologian and historian of Luther remarks on this: “Luther does not, however, explain how far the responsibility, right and duty of the subject extends, and clearly had not given this matter any careful consideration.”[927]

A want of “consideration” may be averred by the historian concerning all Luther’s theoretical statements on secular authority during the first period of his career. The historian will find it impossible to discover in Luther’s views on this subject the thread which, according to many modern Protestant theologians, runs through his new theories. Wilhelm Hans, a Protestant theologian, was right when he wrote in 1901: “Luther’s lack of system is nowhere more apparent than in his views concerning the authorities and their duty towards religion. The attempt to sum up in a logical system the ideas which he expressed on this subject under varying circumstances and at different times, and to bring these ideas into harmony with his practice, will ever prove a failure. It will never be possible to set aside the contradictions in his theory, and between his theory and his practice.”[928]

5. How the New Church System was Introduced

A complete account of the introduction of the new ecclesiastical system will become possible only when impartial research has made known to us more fully than hitherto the proceedings in the different localities according to the records still extant.

Some districts were thrown open to the new Evangel without any difficulty because the inhabitants, or people of influence, believed they would thus be bringing about a reformation in the true sense of the word, i.e. be contributing to the removal of ecclesiastical abuses deplored by themselves and by all men of discernment.

Altenburg, Lichtenberg, Schwarzburg, Eilenburg

When the first preacher of the Lutheran faith at Altenburg in the Saxon Electorate, Gabriel Zwilling, a former comrade of Carlstadt’s, began to behave in too violent and arrogant a manner, Luther, out of consideration for his sovereign, admonished him to “lay aside all presumption” and to “leave God to do everything.” “You must not press for innovations, but, as I besought you once before, free consciences by means of the Word alone, and by exhorting to pure faith and charity.... I gave my word to the Prince that you would do this, so don’t act otherwise and bring shame on me, upon yourself and the Evangel. You see the people running after external things, sacraments and ceremonies; this you must oppose and make an end of; see that you lead them first to faith and charity in order that by their fruits they may show themselves to be a branch of our Vine.”[930]

As, however, the gentle methods which Luther had promised his Elector to employ did not appear to suffice, recourse was had to force. The town-council, with the support of the inhabitants of Wittenberg, boldly threw law and custom overboard.

Prejudiced in favour of Luther, they had invited him to visit Altenburg and to preach there, and he had agreed. On that occasion Luther had recommended Gabriel Zwilling to the magistracy as resident preacher, in spite of the Anabaptist tendencies he had already shown. The Canons, who were faithful to the Church and who for centuries had the gift of the livings, opposed the appointment of Zwilling to one of the parishes. Thereupon the town-council, in a complaint composed by Luther himself, declared that, as the natural and duly appointed senate of the congregation, it had the right to decide; that the councillors were, by virtue of their office, not merely responsible for the secular government, but also were bound by the duty of “fraternal Christian charity” to interfere on behalf of the Evangel. The council, or rather Luther, also pointed out, that according to Matthew vii. every man has the right to drive away ravening wolves, that the Canons with the Provost at their head were indeed such, not having scrupled to appropriate the revenues, whilst all the while teaching false doctrine; “Scripture does not give power to a ‘Concilium,’ but to each individual Christian to judge of doctrine, to detect the wolves and to avoid them.... Each one must believe for himself and be able to distinguish between true and false doctrine.”[931] Luther here at one and the same time, because it happens to serve his purpose, advocates an extravagant religious freedom, manifestly inconsistent with any religious commonwealth, and yet denies the unfortunate Canons any liberty whatsoever: “They must either hold their tongues or teach the pure Evangel”—or else depart elsewhere.

Luther supported the manifesto in a letter addressed to the Elector in which he declares, that, “God Himself has abrogated all authority and power where it opposes the gospel,”[932] though he does not say who is to decide whether anyone may quote the gospel in his own favour, and what is to be done if the authorities themselves assume the right of “deciding in matters of doctrine.”

The Provost of the Canons, in the matter of the appointment, represented the lawful authority. To the demand of the councillors he replied by asking what they would say were he to appoint a new burgomaster at Altenburg; yet they had as little right to introduce a preacher as he would have to interfere in their affairs; further, it was not his duty to stand by and see his collegiate establishment deprived of any of its chartered rights.[933]

The decision came at last before the Elector. He refused to confirm the appointment of Zwilling in his office of preacher, as his turbulent Anabaptist views did not inspire confidence. In the summer of 1522, however, he bestowed the appointment on Wenceslaus Link, one of Luther’s friends, without paying any attention to the Canons and obviously acting on Luther’s advice. Link, in February, 1523, resigned the office of Vicar-General of the Augustinian Congregation, and soon after was married by Luther himself at Altenburg. The Canons protested in vain against the compulsion exercised.

In the spring, 1524, Link succeeded in inducing the council of Altenburg to prohibit the Franciscans from celebrating Mass in public, preaching and hearing confessions. The council vindicated its action in a document—probably composed by Link—addressed to the Elector, in which from the Old and New Testament it is shown that rulers must not tolerate “idolatry.”[934] When Spalatin, after resigning his post as Court Chaplain, became parish priest of Altenburg, he at once set about suppressing the Catholic worship even in the Collegiate Church of the town. A demand for the suppression of the “idolatrous worship” at Altenburg, which Luther had addressed to the Elector on July 20, 1525,[935] was followed by another composed by Spalatin in October of the same year.[936] Both were full of attacks on the un-Christian, blasphemous mischief to which an end ought to be put. On January 10, 1526, a fresh document of a similar nature, written by Spalatin and two Altenburg preachers, was forwarded to the Elector. There we read that the sovereign, if he wishes to escape the severe chastisements of God, must follow the example of the pious Jewish kings, who rooted out the abomination of idolatry. Owing to the continuance of the service in the Collegiate Church at Altenburg, the weak were exposed to spiritual danger, and he must furthermore consider that “many a poor man would readily come over to the Evangel if this miserable business were made an end of.” The utmost that could be permitted was, that the Canons should perform “their ceremonies in the most private fashion, with locked doors, no one else being admitted.”[937]

This petition was at once based by Luther on the general theological principles referred to above, i.e. the statement he had addressed to the Elector, declaring that, owing to the value of the Evangel, no place must be allowed in the Electorate for the practice of any religion other than the “evangelical”: Let there be but one doctrine in every place! Luther adds, that the Canons of Altenburg had indeed alleged their conscience, but that this was not a true conscience but merely a fictitious one, otherwise they would have agreed “to allow their conscience to be formed and instructed from Scripture.” This they had refused to do, and had appealed instead to traditional usage “as vouched for by the Church,” “thereby giving ample proof that their plea concerning their conscience was an invention and only brought forward for the sake of preserving appearances; for a true conscience desires nothing so ardently as to be instructed from Scripture.” If they wished to continue publicly to blaspheme the true God by their worship, they must “prove from Scripture their right and authorisation to do so.”[938] The Canons were convinced that there was no need for them to prove to Luther their right from the Bible, and also that the best proof would be of no avail. The decision on the validity of any such proof lay in the last instance with the Electoral Court, and he would indeed have been blind who could have expected in that quarter any judgment differing from Luther’s.

Recourse was accordingly taken to force, and the Catholic religion was obliged to retire from its last foothold. Nevertheless, a large number of the burghers of Altenburg remained secretly faithful to the Church of their fathers. When, in 1528, the Lutheran visitors held an enquiry there, the town-councillors, who themselves were on the side of Luther, declared there were still “many Papists” in the town.[939]

Lichtenberg, in the Saxon Electorate, affords an example of how Catholic ecclesiastics themselves promoted the falling away of their flock by being the first to join the party of the innovators, sometimes merely in order to be able to marry. As soon as Luther had heard that Wolfgang Reissenbusch, the clerical preceptor and administrator of the property belonging to the Antonines, was showing signs of a desire for matrimony, by means of the seductive letter of March 27, 1525, already quoted above,[940] he invited him to carry out his project boldly. After his marriage, and notwithstanding the fact of his broken vow, the monk not only retained his spiritual office, but even continued to administer the temporalities of his Order, in defiance of all justice. According to the custom now introduced, the property was placed at the disposal of the Elector. Reissenbusch enjoyed the favour of the Court, and in due course became one of the councillors of the Elector; his district was gradually won over to Lutheranism.

Count Johann Heinrich of Schwarzburg, son of Count GÜnther one of Luther’s enemies, wished to see the new church system introduced in his domains, but met with the resistance of the monks to whom his father, legally and in due form, had entrusted the livings. He accordingly approached Luther with the question whether he might deprive them of the livings, rights and property.

Luther soon came to a decision, replied in the affirmative and proceeded to explain to his questioner how he might quiet his conscience.[941] The Count’s father had made the transfer on the condition that the monks should: “Keep their observance and above all preach the Gospel.” Upon taking over the cure of souls they had assumed the usual obligation of preaching the Catholic faith. Now, he continues, it is only necessary that the Count should summon them before him, and in the presence of witnesses prove from their replies that they had not preached the Gospel (i.e. not according to Luther); thereupon he would have the “right and the power, indeed it would be his duty, to take the livings away from them ... for it is not unjust, but an urgent duty, to drive away the wolf from the sheepfold.... No preacher receives property and emoluments for doing harm, but in order that he may make men pious. If, therefore, he does not make them pious, the goods are no longer his. Such is my brief answer.” This was indeed the principle which he applied throughout the Saxon Electorate. The result of its application to the bishoprics of Germany and to the great ecclesiastical domains in the Empire was to overthrow the very foundation of the law of property. If the bishop, abbot or provost no longer succeeds in making people pious, “then the property no longer belongs to him.”

Johann Heinrich of Schwarzburg at once seized upon the property and rights which his father had made over by charter to the Catholic Church. The monks were ousted, the livings seized, the new teaching was introduced and the Count became the founder of Lutheranism in Schwarzburg.

In Eilenburg Luther proceeded through the agency at once of his sovereign and the town-councillors, who were no less zealous than the Prince himself in their efforts to extend their sphere of influence. Luther himself had already worked there in person for his cause. On the occasion of his second stay at Eilenburg he found the councillors somewhat lacking in zeal. Those who favoured the innovations were, however, of opinion that if the Elector were to invite them to apply for a preacher, they would do so. There is no doubt that the Catholic consciences of the councillors were still troubled with scruples, and that the demand of a number of the new believers among the people had as yet failed to move them.

Luther accordingly wrote from Eilenburg to the Court Chaplain, Spalatin, asking him to employ his influence with the Elector in the usual way. He was to obtain from the latter a letter addressed to the town-councillors begging them to “yield to the poor people in this so essential and sacred a matter,” and to summon one of the two preachers whom he at once proposed. The reason he gives in these words: “It is the duty of the sovereign, as ruler and brother Christian, to drive away the wolves and to be solicitous for the welfare of his people.”[942] The change of religion was thereupon actually carried out, under the Elector’s pressure, in true bureaucratic fashion as a matter appertaining to the magistracy. One of the two preachers proposed, Andreas Kauxdorf of Torgau, arrived shortly after, having been dutifully accepted by the councillors. He was permitted to Lutheranise the people, however reluctant and faithful to the Church they might be. He remained there from 1522 to 1543, in which year he died.

General Phenomena accompanying the Religions Change

It not infrequently happened that the people were deceived by faithless and apostate clerics who became preachers of the new religion, and were drawn away from the olden faith without being clearly aware of the fact. After having become gradually and most insensibly accustomed to the new faith and worship, not even the bravest had, as a rule, the strength to draw back. The want of religious instruction among the people was here greatly to blame, likewise the lack of organised ecclesiastical resistance to the error, and also, the indolence of the episcopate.

Mass still continued to be said in many places where Lutheranism had taken root, though in an altered form, a fact which contributed to the deception. One of the chief of Luther’s aims was to combat the Mass as a sacrifice.

He expressed this quite openly to Henry VIII in 1522: “If I succeed in doing away with the Mass, then I shall believe I have completely conquered the Pope. On the Mass, as on a rock, the whole of the Papacy is based, with its monasteries, bishoprics, colleges, altars, services and doctrines.... If the sacrilegious and cursed custom of Mass is overthrown, then the whole must fall. Through me Christ has begun to reveal the abomination standing in the Holy Place (Dan. ix. 27), and to destroy him [the Papal Antichrist] who has taken up his seat there with the devil’s help, with false miracles and deceiving signs.”[943] In respect of the deception of the Mass, “I oppose all the pronouncements of the Fathers, of men, of angels, of devils, not by an appeal to ‘ancient custom and tradition’ nor to any man, but to the Word of the Eternal Majesty and to the Gospel which even my adversaries are forced to acknowledge.” “This is God’s Word,” he vehemently exclaims of his denial of the sacrifice, “not ours. Here I stand, here I take my seat, here I stay, here I triumph and laugh to scorn all Papists, Thomists, Henryists, sophists, and all the gates of hell, not to speak of all the sayings of men, and the most sacred and deceitful of customs.”[944]

It was of the utmost importance to him that the Mass should no longer be regarded as a sacrifice and as the centre of worship. He wished to reduce it to a mere “sign and Divine Testament in which God promises us His Grace and assures us of it by a sign.”[945] Nor is the presence of Christ in the sacrament, according to him, to be assumed as the result of a change of substance; Christ is in, with, and beneath the bread. The churches were robbed of their Divine Guest, for only in the actual ceremony of reception was the Supper a sacrament, at all other times it was nothing.[946]

Yet, in spite of all this, as already pointed out, Luther did not wish to abolish every form of liturgical celebration at once. In the reconstruction of public worship everything depended on not making the change felt by the people in a way that was displeasing to them. The very fact of the change was concealed from many by the form of liturgy Luther advocated,[947] and by the retaining of the ceremonies, vestments, lights, etc. Even the elevation was continued for a long while. But, though the celebration was clothed in a Catholic garb, yet of everything that expressed in words the sacrificial character Luther had already said that it “must and shall be done away with.”[948]

“The priest,” says Luther thoughtfully, when giving detailed instructions on the subject, “will easily be able to arrange that the common people learn nothing of it, and take no scandal.”[949] “How the priests are to behave with regard to the Canon,” he wrote in his Instruction for the Visitors in the Saxon Electorate, “they know well from other writings, and there is no need to preach much about this to the laity.” One would have thought, nevertheless, that the “common people,” no less than the learned, had a perfect right to the truth and to being instructed.

Luther was also anxious that the innovation at communion should be introduced in an unobtrusive manner. “Avoid anything unusual or any attempt to oppose the masses.”[950]

Although to receive under both kinds was regarded as the only “evangelical” way, agreeable “to Christ’s institution,” yet the weak were to be permitted to receive under the form of bread only and the reception of the chalice not to be prescribed “until we make the Evangel better known throughout the world.”[951] “But if anyone is so weak in this matter as rather to omit receiving the Sacrament altogether than to receive under one kind only, he was also to be indulged and allowed to live according to his conscience.”[952] In justification of all this Luther declared that the practice of the new religion must be introduced gently and “without detriment to charity.” That it was really a question of preventing disturbances and preserving charity, CochlÆus and others could not be made to see; this writer, in his work on Lutheranism, goes so far as to speak of Luther’s “hypocritical deception” of the masses.

Later, the advocate of this sagacious method of procedure could declare: “Thank God, in indifferent matters our churches are so arranged that a layman, whether Italian or Spaniard, unable to understand our preaching, seeing our Mass, choir, organs, bells, chantries, etc., would surely say that it was a regular papist church, and that there was no difference, or very little, between it and his own.” He rejoiced that, in spite of the hot-heads, no more had been altered in the ritual than was absolutely necessary to conform it to his teaching.[953]

Such is the course to pursue, he says, “If our churches are not to be shattered and confused and nothing to be effected among the Papists.”[954] As a matter of fact, the system he recommended did in some districts “effect much” among Papists who would otherwise have refused to have anything to do with him, the poor people not dreaming of the wide gulf which separated the new worship from the old. The people would not voluntarily have given up their faith in the truly sacrificial character of the Eucharist, in transubstantiation and sacrifice generally; as Melanchthon himself admitted: “The world is so much attached to the Mass that it seems well-nigh impossible to wrest people from it.”[955]

We may here mention what occurred at a later date within the Lutheran fold. At the instigation of Wittenberg the adaptation of the Catholic worship was carried out very thoroughly in some places, the principle proving highly conducive to the acceptance of the new church system. In few countries, however, was this the case to such an extent as in Denmark, where Luther’s friend Bugenhagen was responsible for the change of religion. Even to-day, in the Protestant worship established in Denmark, Norway and the duchies formerly united to the Danish crown, there is to be found a surprising number of Catholic reminiscences, from the solemn Eucharistic service down to the ringing of the bells thrice daily for prayer. In the celebration of the solemn Eucharist the preachers even vest in a white linen alb and chasuble of red velvet; the elevation, too, is still preserved, for, after the “consecration,” which is pronounced from the middle of the altar according to immemorial custom, the Bread and Wine are shown to the people.

Martin Weier, a young student of good family from Pomerania, took counsel of Luther as to how, on his return from Wittenberg, he was to behave with regard to his old father in the matter of Divine worship. Luther, according to his own account, told him “to conform to his father’s wishes in every way in order not to offend him; follow his example concerning fasting, prayer, hearing Mass and the veneration of the Saints, but at the same time instruct him in the Word of God and on the subject of justification, so as, if possible, to become his spiritual father without giving any offence.” Luther had declared concerning himself that he had offended God most horribly by his former celebration of Mass, more so than if he had been “a highwayman or kept a brothel”; yet he tells his aristocratic pupil that he will be committing no sin, if, “for the sake of his father, he is present at Mass and other acts by which God is dishonoured.”[956]

A contrast to this system of accommodation and the gentle introduction of innovations is presented by the acts of violence which too often occurred on German soil at the time of the religious revolution. The excesses perpetrated by the people were, as can be proved, encouraged by the inflammatory speeches of the preachers, Luther’s own words being frequently appealed to; their effect in such times of popular commotion was like that of oil poured on the flames. In “the streets and at every corner,” on all the walls, on placards, in broadsides, and even on playing cards the clergy and the monks were abused, to quote Luther’s own testimony.[957] “Turks” and “worse than Turks,” such were the descriptions applied to them by the populace in imitation of Luther. “We shall never be successful against the Turks,” he says later, reverting to his earlier style of language, “unless we fall upon them and the priests at the right moment and smite them dead.”[958]

In the case of Luther himself such expressions were empty words, but the mob scrupled little about carrying them into effect. In many instances, however, lust for riches on the part of the great, who longed to possess themselves of Church property, and the long-standing antagonism of towns and Princes to the rights claimed by bishops and abbots, led to violence. The exaltation of their own power was for many of the authorities their principal reason for taking sides against the older Church. It must be borne in mind that, subsequent to 1525, Luther himself was no longer the sole head of the movement of apostasy. More and more he began to hand over the actual guidance of the movement to the secular power, a condition of things which had been preparing since the Diet of Worms. The direction of so far-reaching an undertaking was scarcely suited to his talents, which were not of the administrative order. To his followers, however, he remained the chief authority as pastor, preacher and writer; he continued to take an active part in all public affairs, and, on many occasions, exercised a direct and profound influence on the spread of the new Church.

Many well-meaning and highly respected men supported the new establishment from no selfish motives, and became open and genuine promoters of Luther’s cause, because they looked upon it as just and true. The ideal character, which Wittenberg was successful in stamping on Luther’s aims, proved very seductive, especially in the then prevailing ignorance of the real state of things, and in many places won for the cause devoted and enthusiastic workers.

To take but one example: A knight, Hartmuth (Hartmann) von Cronberg, in the Taunus, glowing with zeal for the new Evangel, wrote a letter recommending the Lutheran congregational system to the inhabitants of Cronberg and Frankfurt.

The earnestness with which Cronberg espoused the Lutheran ideas is shown by the fact of his resigning, after the Diet of Worms, a yearly stipend of 200 gold gulden, promised him by the Emperor, when he entered his service with Sickingen in 1519.[961] The assistance he lent to Sickingen’s treacherous machinations against the Empire proved his undoing. His castle of Cronberg was seized on October 15, 1522. He sought to console himself for the loss of his property by a passionate devotion to his religious and political aims. After a life of “undismayed attachment to what he deemed his duty,” says H. Ulmann, this man, “whose fidelity to conviction verged on puritanism,” died at Cronberg on August 7, 1549.[962]

This Lutheran had demanded of the Emperor that he should convince the Pope by “irrefragable proofs” that he was the viceroy of the devil, nay, himself Antichrist. But should the Pope, owing to demoniacal possession, not admit this, then the Emperor had full right and authority and was bound before God to proceed against him by force, as against “an apostate, heretic and Antichrist.”[963] Some of his admirers, and likewise a eulogist of modern times, have extolled Hartmuth von Cronberg as a “Knight after God’s own heart.” His fanaticism, however, went so far that few dared to follow. The most unjust acts of violence, not merely against the Papal Antichrist, but also against church property which he declared everyone free to appropriate, were exalted by him to principles. In a circular-letter to Sickingen he wrote: “All ecclesiastical property has been declared free [i.e. ownerless] by God Himself, so that whoever by the grace of God can get some of it may keep it with God’s help, and no creature whether Pope or devil can harm such property.” He warns the Frankfurt priest, Peter Meyer, in a printed letter, that unless he is converted to the “Evangel” any man may, with a good conscience, take action against him, “just as it is lawful to fall upon a ravening wolf, a sacrilegious thief and murderer, with word and deed.”[964]

Wittenberg. The Saxon Electorate

The abolition of the last remnants of Catholic worship in Wittenberg was characterised by violence and utter want of consideration.

Only in the Collegiate Church, which was ruled by Provost and Chapter, had it been possible to continue the celebration of Mass. On April 26, 1522, at the instance of Luther, the Elector Frederick determined that the solemn exposition of the rich treasury of relics belonging to the Church should be discontinued, in spite of the fact that the relics were in great part his own gift to a Church which had enjoyed his especial favour. Luther, however, was anxious completely to transform this “Bethaven,” this place of idolatry, as he called the Church,[965] and in this matter the Prior and some of the Canons were on his side.

After some unsuccessful negotiations, carried on with the Elector through Spalatin, Luther himself invited the Chapter, on March 1, 1523, to abolish all Catholic ceremonies, as abominations, which could only give scandal at Wittenberg. “The cause of the ‘Evangel,’ which Christ has committed to this city as a priceless gift,” forced him, so he declared, to speak. “My conscience can no longer keep silence owing to the office entrusted to me.” If they would not give way peaceably, then they must be prepared for “public insults” from him, seeing that they would have to be excluded from the congregation as non-Christians, and have their company shunned.[966]

The Dean, who was faithful to the Church, and the Catholic members of the Chapter persisted in their resistance, urging that the Elector himself did not wish to see the Masses discontinued which his ancestors had founded for the repose of their souls.

Luther, not in the least disconcerted, on July 11, 1523, repeated his written declaration, this time in a peremptory tone. “If we endure this any longer,” he writes, “it will fall upon our own heads and we shall be burdened with the sins of others.” The Canons were not to tell him that “the Elector commanded or did not command to do this or to alter that. I am speaking now to your own consciences. What has the Elector to do with such matters?” he asks, strangely contradicting his own theory. “You know what St. Peter says, Acts v. 29, ‘We ought to obey God rather than men,’ and St. Paul (Gal. i. 8), ‘Though an angel from heaven preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema.’” He summons them to “obey,” otherwise he will pray against them as he has hitherto prayed for them, and as Christ was “jealous” it might be that his “prayer would be powerful and you may have to suffer for it.” “Christ soon punishes those who are His, when they wax disobedient (cp. 1 Peter iv. 17).”[967]

His violence in the pulpit gave reason for anticipating the worst when, on the very next day, he gave free rein to his eloquence against the Collegiate Church.

The agitation intentionally fomented became, however, so great, that the Canons did not know what steps to take against the “rising excitement of the inhabitants” of Wittenberg,[976] for the saving of the Catholic services, and for the safety of their own persons. Even before this, students had perpetrated disorders at night in the Collegiate Church, and Luther had himself declared that he was obliged daily to restrain the people to prevent the committing of excesses. The Canons were now tormented by the singing of satires on the Mass outside their house, and had to listen to the curses which were showered on them. One night the Dean had his windows smashed. The Town Council, and also the University, now definitely took sides against the Chapter, and, after warning them in writing of God’s anger, sent representatives to advise the Canons of their excommunication. Although no actual tumult took place, yet the public declarations and the threatening attitude of the populace incited by Luther amounted to practical compulsion. The few Canons still remaining finally yielded to force, particularly when they saw that the Elector, Frederick “the Wise,” refused to give any but evasive replies to their appeals.

On Christmas Day, 1524, for the first time, there was no Mass.

Protestants themselves have recently admitted that, “contrary to the express wish of the sovereign and not without the employment of force against the Canons”[977] did “Luther succeed in carrying matters so far.”[978] “The Canons finally gave way before new outbursts of violence on the part of the students and the citizens,” when, according to Luther’s own account, there remained only “three hogs and paunches” of all the Canons formerly attached to this Church, not of “All Saints,” but rather of “All Devils.”[979]

An echo of his tempestuous sermon of November 27 is to be found in the pamphlet which Luther published at the commencement of 1525: “On the abomination of Silent Masses” (against the Canon of the Mass). In the Preface he refers directly to the inglorious proceedings against the unfortunate Chapter. He finds it necessary to declare that he, for his part, had aroused no revolt, for what was done by the established authorities could not be termed revolt; the “secular gentlemen,” who, according to him, constituted the established authorities, had, however, felt it their duty to take steps against the Catholic worship in the Collegiate Church.

In that same year, 1525, under the auspices of the new Elector Johann, a great friend to Lutheranism, who succeeded the Elector Frederick upon his death on May 5, 1525, and whom Luther had long before won over to his cause, the order of Divine Service at Wittenberg was entirely altered. “The Pope” was at last, as Spalatin joyfully proclaimed throughout the city, “completely set aside.”[980]

Under the rule of the Elector Johann, Luther at once carried out the complete suppression of Catholic worship throughout the Electorate.

On October 1, 1525, Spalatin wrote to the Elector Johann: “Dr. Martin also says, that your Electoral Grace is on no account to permit anyone to continue the anti-Christian ceremonies any longer, or to start them again.”[981]

With the object of helping him in his work at Court and of removing any scruples he might have, Luther explained to Spalatin, in a letter of November 11 of the same year, that by stamping out the Catholic worship rulers would not be forcing the faith on anyone, but merely prohibiting such open abominations as the Mass; if anyone, in spite of all, desired to believe in it privately, or to blaspheme in secret, no coercion would be exercised.[982] No attention was paid to the rights of Catholics to a Divine Worship, attendance at which was to them a matter of conscience. They were simply to be permitted to emigrate; if they chose to remain they were not to “perform or take any part in any public worship.”[983] It was on such principles as these that the Memorandum which Spalatin presented to the Elector on January 10, 1526, was based.[984]

Luther himself appealed to the Elector on February 9, 1526, seeking to “fortify his conscience” and to encourage him “to attack the idolaters with even greater readiness.” He points out to him, first, how damnable is the blasphemous, idolatrous worship; were he to afford it any protection, then “all the abominations against God would eventually weigh upon his, the Prince’s, conscience”; secondly, that differences in religious worship would inevitably give rise to “revolt and tumults”; hence the ruler must provide that “in each locality there be but one doctrine.”[985]

To the force of such arguments Johann could not but yield.

He answered in a friendly letter to Luther on February 13, 1526, that he had been pleased to take note of the difficulty, and would for the future know how to comport himself in these matters in a Christian and irreproachable manner.[986] Subsequent to this assurance he acted as an apt pupil of the Wittenberg Professor.

In accordance with the instructions given by the Elector in 1527 for the general Visitation of the Churches in the Saxon Electorate, an “inquisition” was to be held everywhere by the ecclesiastical Visitors as to whether any “sect or schism” existed in the country. Whoever was “suspected of error in respect of the sacraments or some doctrine of faith” was to be “summoned and interrogated, and, if the occasion required, hostile witnesses were to be heard”; if any refused to give up their “error,” they were commanded to sell their possessions within a given time and to quit the country.[987] One thing only was still wanting, viz. that the people should be compelled by the Ruler to attend the Lutheran sermons and services. Even this was, however, implied in the regulations, since those who did not attend were classed among the “suspects.” As time went on Luther demanded the exercise of such coercion, and it was actually introduced in the Electorate and, later, in the Protestant Duchy of Saxony.[988]

The proceedings on the introduction of the innovations in other districts were similar to those in the Electorate of Saxony. Wherever a small group of persons were willing to throw in their lot with the first local representatives of the new faith—generally clerics—they were backed up by the State authorities, who reconstructed the religious system as they thought best. “Nowhere was the primitive Lutheran ideal realised of a congregation forming itself in entire independence.... Thus at an early date Lutheranism took its place among the political factors, and its development was to a certain extent dependent upon the tendencies and inclinations of the authorities and ruling sovereigns of that day.”[989]

The Electors Frederick and Johann of Saxony were gradually joined by a number of other Princes who introduced the innovations into their lands, and the magistrates of the larger, and even of some of the smaller, Imperial cities soon followed suit. Thus the whole movement, having owed its success so largely to the authorities, was governed and exploited by them and assumed a strongly political character, needless to say, much to the detriment of its religious aspect.

What part the “inclinations of the ruling sovereigns” played, even in opposition to Luther’s own wishes, is plain from the example of the Margrave Philip of Hesse, who, next to the Elector of Saxony, was the most powerful, and undoubtedly the most determined, promoter of the great apostasy. This Prince, whose leanings were towards ZÜrich, as early as 1529 was anxious to extend the alliance he had concluded in the interests of the innovations with the Saxon Electorate, so as to embrace also the Zwinglians. Attracted by Zwingli’s denial of the sacrament, he also sought, with the assistance of theologians of his own way of thinking, to amalgamate the Swiss doctrine with that of Wittenberg; in this he was not, however, successful. The great religious alliance with Wittenberg aimed at by Zwingli himself as well as by Philip, and which it was hoped to settle at the Conference of Marburg (see vol. iii., xix. 1), was never realised, Luther refusing to give in on any point. In Hesse, however, the Zwinglian influence was maintained through the agency of theologians of Bucer’s school, which had the favour of the Court, while at Strasburg and other South German cities the authorities, leaning even more to the Swiss Confession, set up their “reformed” view as the actual rule of faith in their domains.

Nuremberg

The history of the apostasy of Nuremberg, which may be considered separately here, exhibits another type of the proceedings at the general religious revolution.

It would, of course, be unfair to ascribe to Luther all the deeds of violence or injustice which took place in great number on the spread of the new ecclesiastical system. It is notorious how much the unruly, turbulent spirit of that day contributed to the distressing phenomena of the struggle then being carried on. Such a far-reaching revolution naturally set free forces and passions in both the higher and lower spheres, which could only with difficulty be brought once more under control. Now and then, too, faithful Catholics, laymen, priests and religious, by a misuse of the power they happened to possess, gave occasion to renewed acts of oppression on the part of the Lutherans.

It is, nevertheless, right to point out the turbulent stamp which Luther impressed upon the movement. His own share in the work, some examples of which we have considered above, were utterly at variance with his advice to Gabriel Zwilling, viz. “to leave everything to God, to avoid introducing innovations and to guide the people solely by faith and charity” (above, p. 314).

Luther and the Introduction of the New Teaching at Erfurt

The most powerful impulse to the introduction of the new teaching in Erfurt proceeded from the Augustinian house in that town. Its former Prior, Johann Lang, became an apostle of Lutheranism after having prepared the way for the innovation as a Humanist of modern views closely allied with the Humanist group at Erfurt.

We find Lang, in the summer of 1520, still Rural Vicar of his Order, and he may have retained the dignity for some time longer when Wenceslaus Link was elected as Staupitz’s successor at the Chapter held at Eisleben in that year. The fourteen monks of the Augustinian Congregation—at one time so faithful to the Church—who quitted the Order before Lang, remind us of the sad fact, that in his work Luther met with support in many places from those who were originally Catholics, and that the innovation was often heartily welcomed by members of the clergy, secular and regular.

The Saxon Augustinian Congregation, which was strongly represented at Erfurt, had been undermined by Luther’s spirit no less than by the struggle between the Conventuals and the Observantines. At the convention of the Order, held at Wittenberg on the Feast of the Three Kings in 1522, it was decided that begging would henceforth be no longer allowed,[992] “because we follow Holy Scripture.” At that time many had already apostatised. It was further ordained, that, by virtue of the evangelical freedom of the servants of God, everyone was free to leave his monastery. “Among those who are Christ’s there is neither monk nor layman. Whoever is not yet able to comprehend this freedom may act as he thinks fit, but must not give scandal to others by his conduct, in order that the Holy Evangel be not blasphemed.” On this the Protestant historian of the Augustinian Congregation remarks: “This [i.e. the giving of no scandal] was more easily commended than put into effect.” And, speaking of the time when the Erfurt Augustinian house was already almost empty (Usingen, Nathin and a few others alone remaining faithful), he writes: “Lang and his companions were in great danger of seeing the triumph of the Evangel rather in the rooting out of Popery than in the promoting of the new evangelical life.... Usingen, exposed to the mockery and insults of his own pupils, which he had certainly never deserved, at last quitted in anger the spot where he had worked for many years,” “an honest man.”[993] He withdrew in 1525 to the Augustinian monastery at WÜrzburg.

Factors favourable to the spread of Lutheranism in Erfurt were: The Humanism, antagonistic to the Church, which was all-powerful at the University; the restlessness of the common people, who were dissatisfied with their condition; the jealousy existing between the secular and regular clergy, the struggle which the town was carrying on with its chief pastor, the Archbishop of Mayence, concerning rights and property; last, but not least, the hatred of the laity for the opulent and far too numerous clergy. Here, therefore, we find the selfsame elements present which elsewhere so ably seconded the preaching of the new evangelists.

Erfurt affords an example of how pious foundations of former ages had multiplied to an excessive and burdensome extent, a condition of things which was no longer any real advantage to the Church, and simply tended to arouse the jealousy of the laity and working man.

There were more than three hundred vicariates (livings, or benefices), twenty-one parish churches or churches of the same standing, thirty chapels and six hospitals; the number of secular clergy was in proportion to the work entailed in serving the above, and there was an even greater number of monks and nuns. In every corner there were monastic establishments. Benedictines, the Scottish Brotherhood, the Canons Regular, Carthusians, Dominicans and Franciscans, Servites and Augustinians, all were represented. In addition to this were four or five convents of women. Erfurt perhaps possessed more ecclesiastical foundations and institutions than any other town in Germany, with the possible exception of Cologne and Nuremberg.[994] The rich possessions of the convents and churches at Erfurt were made the pretext for the religious innovations. The immunity they enjoyed from the burdens borne by the citizens was to be made an end of, the ecclesiastical property was to be handed over to the town, and the town itself was to be withdrawn from the temporal sway of the Archbishop of Mayence.

When Luther, who was already under the ban, preached at Erfurt, on April 7, 1521, in the Church of the Augustinians (see above, p. 63), he represented the religious change, the way for which had already been paved, in the light of that evangelical freedom which his view of faith and works was to bring to the inhabitants of Erfurt.[995]

“We must not build upon human laws or works, but have a real faith in Him Who destroys all sin.... Thus we don’t care a straw for man-made laws.” He derides the ecclesiastical laws, enacted by shepherds who destroyed the sheep and treated them “as butchers do on Easter Eve.” “Are all human laws to be ignored?” “I answer and say, that, where true Christian charity and faith prevails, everything that a man does is meritorious and each one may do as he pleases, provided always that he accounts his works as nothing; for they cannot save him.” “Christ’s work, which is not ours,” alone avails to save us. He extols the “sola fides” in persuasive and popular language, showing how it alone justifies and saves us.

It was on this occasion that, unguardedly, he allowed himself to be carried away to say: “What matters it if we commit a fresh sin! so long as we do not despair but remember that Thou, O God, still livest.”[996]

The contrary “delusion,” he says, had been invented and encouraged by the preachers, whose proceedings were infinitely worse than any mere “numbering of the people.” He storms against the clergy and vigorously foments the social discontent. To build churches, or found livings, etc., was mere outward show; “such works simply gave rise to avarice, desire for the praise of men and other vices.” “You think that as a priest you are free from sin, and yet you nourish so much jealousy in your heart; if you could slay your neighbour with impunity you would do so and then go on saying Mass. Surely it would not be surprising were a thunderbolt to smite you to the earth.” In order to complete the effect of this demagogic outburst he mocks at the sermons, with their legends “about the old ass,” etc., and their quotations from ancient philosophers, who were “not only against the Gospel, but even against God Himself.”

The result was stupendous, especially in the case of the young men at the University whom the Humanists had disposed in Luther’s favour. On the day after Luther’s departure one of his sympathisers, a Canon of the Church of St. Severus, who had taken part in the solemn reception accorded Luther on his arrival in the town, was told by the Dean, Jakob Doliatoris, that he was under excommunication and might no longer attend the service in choir. On his complaining to the University, of which he was a member, the students intervened with demonstrations in his favour.[997]

Luther heard of this only through certain unreliable reports and wrote to Spalatin: “They apprehend still worse things at Erfurt. The Senate pretends to see nothing of what is going on. The clergy are reviled. The young apprentices are said to be in league with the students. We are about to see the prophecy fulfilled: ‘Erfurt has become a new [Husite] Prague.’” Previous to this, in the same letter, he had said of his adversaries in the Empire: “Let them be, perhaps the day of their visitation is at hand.”[998]

Soon after, however, he became rather more concerned, perhaps owing to further reports of the unrest, and began to fear for the “good name and progress of the Evangel,” in consequence of the acts of brutality committed. “It is indeed quite right,” he wrote to Melanchthon, “that those who persist in their impiety should have their courage cooled,” but in this “Satan makes a mockery of us”; he sees in a mystical vision “The Judgment Day,” the approaching end of the world at Erfurt, and the fig tree, as had been foretold, growing up, covered with leaves, but bare of fruit because the cause of the Evangel could not make its way.[999]

In July, 1521, there broke out in the town the so-called “Pfaffensturm.”

In a few days more than sixty parsonages had been pulled down, libraries destroyed and the archives and tithe registers of the ecclesiastical authorities ransacked; little regard was shown for human life. A little later seven clergy-houses were again set on fire. Meanwhile the Lutheran preachers, with the fanatical Lang at their head, were at liberty to stir up the people.[1000] The ruin of the University was imminent; many parents withdrew their sons, fearing lest they should be infected with the “Husite heresy.” The customary Catholic services were, however, performed as usual, but the end of Catholic worship could be foreseen owing to the ever-increasing growth of “evangelical freedom.” Renegade monks, especially Luther’s former Augustinian comrades, preached against “the old Church as the mother of faithlessness and hypocrisy”; Lang spoke of the monasteries as “dens of robbers.” Under the attacks of the preachers one human ordinance after another fell to the ground. Fasting, long prayers, founded Masses, confraternities, everything in fact, disappeared before the new liberty, value being allowed only to temporal works of mercy. The avarice of the “shorn, anointed priestlings” was no longer to be stimulated by the people’s money. “Ruffianly crowds showed their sympathy with the preachers by yelling and shouting in church. Theological questions were debated in market-places and taverns, men, women and boys expounded the Bible.”[1001]

Luther, through Lang, urged the Augustinians at Erfurt, who still remained true to their monastic Rule, to apostatise; he merely expressed the wish that there should be no “tumults” against the Order. Lang was to “defend the cause of the Evangel”[1002] at the next Convention of the Saxon Augustinians, a meeting which took place at Epiphany, 1522 (above, p. 337). Lang justified his apostasy in a work in which he expressly appeals to the new doctrines on faith and good works. The exodus of the monks from their convent was not, however, carried out as quietly as Luther would have wished; he dreaded the “slanders of the foes of the Evangel” and was depressed by the immorality of the inhabitants of Erfurt, and by his own experience with his followers. He spoke his mind to Lang: “The power of the Word is still concealed, or else you pay too little heed to it. This surprises me greatly. We are just the same as before, hard, unfeeling, impatient, sinful, intemperate, lascivious and combative, in short, the mark of the Christian, true charity, is nowhere to be found. Paul’s words are fulfilled in us: We have God’s Word on our lips, but not in power (cp. 1 Cor. iv. 20).”[1003] In 1524 Lang married the rich widow of an Erfurt fuller.

Those who had been unfaithful to their vows and priestly obligations, and then acted as preachers of the new faith, gave the greatest scandal by their conduct.

Many letters dating from 1522, 1523 and 1524, written by Lutheran Humanists such as Eobanus Hessus, Euricius Cordus and Michael Nossenus, who, with disgust, were observing their behaviour, bore witness to the general deterioration of morals in the town, more particularly among the escaped monks and nuns.[1004] “I see,” Luther himself wrote to Erfurt, “that monks are leaving in great numbers for no other reason than for their belly’s sake and for the freedom of the flesh.”[1005]

Meanwhile, discussions were held in the Erfurt circle of the semi-theologian Lang, on the absence of free-will in man and on “the evil that God does.” Lang applied to Luther for help. “I see that you are idlers,” was his reply, “though the devil provides you with abundance of occupation in what he plots amongst you. You must not argue concerning the evil that God does. It is not, as you fancy, the work of God, but a ceasing to work on God’s part. We desire what is evil when He ceases to work in us and leaves our nature free to fulfil its own wickedness. Where He works the result is ever good. Scripture speaks of such ceasing to work on God’s part as a ‘hardening.’ Thus evil cannot be wrought [by God], since it is nothing (‘malum non potest fieri, cum sit nihil’), but it arises because what is good is neglected, or prevented.”

This was one of the ethical doctrines proclaimed by Luther and Melanchthon which lay at the back of the new theory of good works. Luther enlarged on it in startling fashion in his book “De servo arbitrio” (above, p. 223 ff.).

Bartholomew Usingen, the learned and pious Augustinian, who had once been Luther’s professor and had enjoyed his especial esteem, witnessed with pain and sadness the changes in the town and in his own priory. The former University professor, now an aged man, fearlessly took his place in the yet remaining Catholic pulpits, particularly at St. Mary’s, assured of the support and respect of the staunch members of the fold who flocked in numbers to hear him. There he protested against the new doctrines and the growing licentiousness, though he too had to submit to unheard-of insults, abuse and even violent interruptions of his sermons when emissaries of the Lutherans succeeded in forcing their way in. He also laboured against religious innovations with his pen.

Usingen mentions the “report,” possibly exaggerated, that at one time some three hundred apostate monks were in residence at Erfurt; many ex-nuns were daily to be seen wandering about the streets.[1011] Most of these auxiliaries who had flocked to the town in search of bread, were uneducated clerics who drew upon themselves the scorn of the Humanists belonging to the new faith. Any of these clerics who were capable of speaking in public, by preference devoted themselves to invective. Usingen frequently reproached his foes with their scurrility in the pulpit, their constant attacks on the sins and crimes of the clergy, and their violent reprobation and abuse of institutions and customs held in universal veneration for ages, all of which could only exercise a pernicious influence on morality. “Holy Scripture,” he says in a work against the two preachers Culsamer and Mechler, “commands the preacher to point out their sins to the people and to exhort them to amendment. But the new preaching does not speak to the people of their faults but only of the sins of the clergy, and thus the listener forgets his own sins and leaves the church worse than he entered it.” And elsewhere: “Invective was formerly confined to the viragoes of the market-place, but now it flourishes in the churches.” “Even your own hearers are weary of your everlasting slanders. Formerly, they say, the gospel was preached to us, but such abuse and calumny was not then heard in the pulpit.”[1012]

It could not be but regarded as strange that Luther himself, forgetful of his former regard, went so far as to egg on his pupils and friends at Erfurt against his old professor. Usingen certainly had never anticipated such treatment at his hands. “He has, as you know,” Luther wrote to Lang, on June 26, “become hard-headed and full of ingrained obstinacy and conceit. Therefore, in your preaching, you must draw down upon his folly the contempt that such coarse and inflated blindness deserves.” As from his early years he had never been known to yield to anyone, Luther gave up the hope of seeing the stubborn sophist “yield to Christ”; he sees here the confirmation of the proverb: “No fool like an old fool.”[1013]

Carried away by his success at Erfurt, Luther urged the preachers not to allow their energies to flag.

It is true that in an official Circular-Letter to the Erfurt Congregation, despatched on July 10, 1522, and intended for publication, his tone is comparatively calm; the superscription is: “Martin Luther, Ecclesiastes of Wittenberg, to all the Christians at Erfurt together with the preachers and ministers, Grace and Peace in Christ Jesus, Our Lord.”[1014] Therein, at Lang’s request, dealing with the controversy which had arisen at Erfurt regarding the veneration of the Saints, he declares that whilst there was certainly no warrant of Scripture for Saint-worship, it ought not to be assailed with violence (i.e. not after the fashion of the fanatics whose doings were a public danger). He trusts “we shall be the occasion of no rising” and points to his own example as showing with what moderation he had ever proceeded against the Papists: “As yet I have not moved a finger against them, and Christ has destroyed them with the sword of His mouth” (2 Thess. ii. 8).[1015] “Leave Christ to act” in true faith—such is the gist of his exhortation in this letter so admirably padded with Pauline phrases—but despise and avoid the “stiff-necked sophists”; “Whoever stinks, let him go on stinking.” He concludes, quite in the Pauline manner: “May Our Lord Jesus Christ strengthen you together with us in all the fulness of the knowledge of Himself to the honour of His Father, Who is also ours, to Whom be Glory for ever and ever, Amen. Greet Johann Lang [and the other preachers]: George Forchheim, Johann Culhamer, Antony Musam, Ægidius Mechler and Peter Bamberger. Philip, Jonas and all our people greet you. The Grace of God be with you all, Amen.”[1016]

But when Luther, at the instance of Duke Johann of Saxony and his son Johann Frederick, came to Erfurt, in October, 1522, accompanied by Melanchthon, Agricola and Jacob Probst, and proceeded to address the multitude who flocked to hear him (October 21 and 22), he was unable to restrain his passion, and, by his words of fire, fanned the hatred and blind fanaticism of the mob to the highest pitch.

As far as the change at Erfurt went, the moral condition of the town was to serve more than ever as a refutation of Luther’s expectation that “the works will follow.”

On January 24, 1524, Eobanus Hessus wrote to Lang: “Immorality, corruption of youth, contempt of learning and dissensions, such are the fruits of your Evangel.”[1033] “I dislike being here very much,” he says, in the same year, to his friend Sturz, “since all is lost, for there is now no hope of a revival of learning or of a recovery in public life. Everything is on the road to destruction, and we ourselves are rendered odious to all classes by reason of some unlearned deserters. “Oh, unhappy Erfurt,” he cries, in view of the “outrageous behaviour of these godless men of God”; one seeks to oppress the other; already the battlefield of passion is tinged with “blood.”[1034]

“You have by your preaching called forth a diabolical life in the town,” Usingen wrote in 1524 of the preachers at Erfurt, “although this is now displeasing to you, and you encourage it even up to the present day; you set the people free from the obedience which, according to the Divine command, they owe to the authorities of the Church, you deprive the people of the fear both of God and of man, hence the corruption of morals, which increases from day to day.”[1035]

Usingen, who continued courageously to vindicate the faith of his fathers, was depicted by the preachers as a “crazy old man,” just as they had been advised to do by Luther. “I am quite pleased to hear,” Luther wrote to Lang some considerable time after his return, “that this ‘Unsingen’ is still carrying on his fooleries; as the Apostle Paul says, their folly must be made manifest (2 Tim. iii. 9).”[1036]

The champion of the Church, the alleged fool, was sufficiently clear-sighted and frank to predict the Peasant-War as the end of all the godless commotion, and to prophesy that the result of the general religious subversion would be the ruin of his German Fatherland. A fanatical preacher in the town had appealed to the mattocks of the peasants. Him the Augustinian asks: “If the Word of God suffices in the Church, why have you in your sermons appealed for help to the pickaxes, mattocks and spades of the peasants?” “Why do you tell the people that the peasant must come from the field with these weapons to assist the Evangel, if your own and your comrades’ words prove of no avail? Do you not know with what audacity the peasants are already rising against their lords?” “The new preaching,” he complains, even where it is not directly inflammatory, “renders the people, who are already desirous of innovations and dearly love the freedom of the flesh, only too much inclined for tumults, and this daily foments the spirit of unrest.”[1037] “Do you not know that the mob is a hydra-headed monster, a monster that thirsts for blood? Are you anxious to promote your cause with the help of cut-throats?”[1038] Owing to the iconoclasts, the ancient greatness of Constantinople fell, and the Roman Empire of the East faded away; in like manner, so gloomily he predicts, the religious struggle now being waged in Germany will bring about the ruin of the Western Empire and the loss of its ancient greatness.[1039]

The help which the innovators received from the Erfurt magistrates induced the leaders of the party to pin their trust on the support of the secular authorities. Even this was justified by appeals to Scripture.

Lang, on presenting to Hermann von Hoff, the president of the Erfurt town-council, a translation which he had made of the Gospel of St. Matthew, stated in the accompanying letter, that he had done so “in order that all may know and take heed to the fact, that whatever they undertake against the Gospel is also directed against you. It is necessary, unfortunately, to defend the Gospel by means of the sword.”[1040]

When, in 1525, on the news of the Peasant Rising in Swabia and Franconia, meetings were held by the peasants in the Erfurt district, the adherents of the movement determined to enforce by violence their demands even at Erfurt. Those in the town who sympathised with Luther made common cause with the rebels.[1044] The magistrates were undecided. They were not as yet exclusively Lutheran, but were anxious to make the town independent of the Archbishop of Mayence, and to secure for themselves the property and rights of the clergy. For the most part the lower orders were unfavourable to the magistrates, and therefore sided with the peasantry.

The peasants from the numerous villages which were politically regarded as belonging to the Erfurt district demanded that they should be emancipated from the burdens which they had to bear, and placed on a footing of social equality with the lower class of Erfurt burghers. With this they joined, as had been done elsewhere, religious demands in the sense of Luther’s innovations. The movement was publicly inaugurated by fourteen villages at a meeting held in a beerhouse on April 25 or 26, 1525, at which the peasants bound themselves by an oath taken with “uplifted right hand,” at the risk of their lives “to support the Word of God and to combine to abolish the old obsolete imposts.” When warned not to go to Erfurt, one of the leaders replied: “God has enlightened us, we shall not remain, but go forward.” As soon as they had come to an agreement as to their demands concerning the taxes “and other heavy burdens which the Evangel was to assist them to get rid of,” they collected in arms around the walls of Erfurt.[1045] The magistrates then took counsel how to divert the threatening storm and direct it against the clergy and the hated authorities of Mayence. The remembrance of the “Pfaffensturm” which, in 1521, had served as a means to allay the social grievances, was an encouragement to adopt a similar course. As intermediary between council and peasants, Hermann von Hoff, who has been mentioned above as an opponent of the Catholic clergy and the rights of Mayence, took a leading part; one of his principles was that “it is necessary to make use of every means, sweet as well as bitter, if we are to allay so great a commotion and to avert further mischief.”[1046]

In their perplexity the magistrates, through the agency of Hoff, admitted the horde of peasants, only stipulating that they should spare the property of the burghers, though they were to be free to plunder the Palace of the Archbishop of Mayence, the “hereditary lord” of the city, and also the toll-house. The peasants made their entry on April 28 with that captain of the town whom Lang had invited to draw the sword in the cause of the Evangel. Not only was the Palace despoiled and the toll-house utterly destroyed, but the salt warehouses and almost all the parsonages were attacked and looted. In the name of “evangelical freedom” the plunderers vented all their fury on the sacred vessels, pictures and relics they were still able to find.

“In the Archbishop’s Palace Lutheran preachers, for instance, Eberlin of GÜnzburg, Mechler and Lang, mixed with the rabble of the town and country and preached to them.” The preachers made no secret of being “in league with the peasantry and the proletariate of the town.” The clergy and religious were, however, to be made “to feel still more severely”[1047] the effects of the alliance between the three parties.

Yielding to the pressure of circumstances, the councillors gave their sanction on May 9, 1525, “under the new seal,” to the amended articles, twenty-eight in number, which had been drafted by the town and peasant committees during the days of storm and stress. The very first article made obligatory the preaching of “the pure Word of God,” and gave to each congregation the right to choose its own pastors. “The gist of the remaining articles was the appointment of a permanent administrative council to give a yearly account, and to impose no new taxes without the knowledge and sanction of both burghers and country subjects.”

In accepting the articles it was agreed that Luther’s opinion on them should be ascertained, a decision which seems to show that the peasants and burghers, though probably not the councillors themselves, reckoned upon the weighty sanction of Wittenberg. Yet about May 4 Luther had finished his booklet “Against the murderous Peasants” (above p. 201), which was far from favourable to seditious movements such as that of Erfurt. The council invited him by letter, on May 10, to come to Erfurt with Melanchthon “and establish the government of the town,” as Melanchthon puts it (“ad constituendum urbis statum”).[1052] Luther, however, did not accept the invitation, and a month later the council sent him a copy of the articles, requesting a written opinion. It is difficult to believe that the Erfurt magistrates were not aware of Luther’s growing bitterness against the peasants, which is attested by the pamphlets he wrote at the time, or that they were incapable of drawing the obvious conclusion as to his reply.[1053] “If the council in taking this step,” says Eitner, “was relying on Luther’s known attitude towards all revolutionary movements, and hoped to make an end of the inconvenient demands of the people by means of the Reformer’s powerful words, then their expectation was fully realised. Both Luther’s letter (i.e. his answer to the council) and his written notes on the copy of the articles sent him, are full of irony expressing the displeasure of one whose advice was so much in request, but whose interference in the peasant movement, in spite of his good intentions, had thus far met with so little success.... The very articles which the authors had most at heart were submitted by Luther to a relentless and somewhat pointless criticism.... Thus we see in a comparatively trivial case what has long been acknowledged of his action generally, viz. that Luther’s interference in the Peasant-War cannot be altogether justified.... His conduct shattered his reputation, both in the empire and in his second native town [Erfurt], and paved the way for the inevitable reaction.”[1054]

Luther, in his reply to the “Honourable, prudent and beloved” members of the Erfurt council,[1055] declares in the very first sentences that the Twenty-eight Articles were so “ill-advised” that “little good could come of them” even were he present himself at Erfurt; he is of opinion that certain people, who “are better off than they deserve,” are putting on airs at the expense of the council, constitute a danger to the common weal, and, with “unheard-of audacity and wickedness,” wish to “turn things upside down.” Things must never be permitted to come to such a pass that the councillors fear the common people and become their servants; the common people must be quiet and entrust all to the honourable magistrates to be set right, “lest the Princes have occasion to take up arms against Erfurt on account of such unwarrantable conduct.” Luther’s new sovereign, the Elector Johann, had just been assisting in the suppression of the peasant rising. He was in entire sympathy with the Wittenberg Professor, whom he so openly protected and favoured, and doubtless they had discussed together the state of affairs at Erfurt. In his written reply Luther asks whether it is not “seditious” to refuse to pay the Elector the sum due to him for acting as protector of the city. “Did they, then, esteem so lightly the Prince and the security of the town, which, as a matter of fact, was something not to be paid for in money?” Their demand really signified either that “no one was to protect the town of Erfurt, or that the Princes were to relinquish their claim to payment and yet continue to protect the town.”

The demand that the congregations of the parishes should appoint their own pastors Luther considered particularly inadmissible; it was “seditious that the parishes should wish to appoint and dismiss their own pastors without reference to the councillors, as though the councillors, in whom authority was vested, were not concerned in what the town might do.” He insists that “the councillors have the right to know what sort of persons are holding office in the town.”

Concerning some of the articles which dealt with taxes and imposts, he points out that the business is not his concern, since these are temporal matters. Of the proposal to re-establish the decayed University of Erfurt he says: “This article is the best of all.” Of two of the articles he notes: “Both these will do,” one being that, for the future, openly immoral persons and prostitutes of all classes were not to be tolerated, nor the common houses of public women, and the other, that every debtor, whether to the council or the community, should be “faithfully admonished no matter who he might be.” Concerning the former of these two articles, however, we may remark, that a house of correction for the punishment of light women had existed at Erfurt under the Archbishop’s rule, but had been razed to the ground by the very framers of the articles as soon as the peasants entered the town.

The principal thing, in Luther’s opinion, was to place the reins in the hands of the magistrates, so that they may not sit there like an “idol,” “bound hand and foot,” “while the horses saddle and bridle their driver”; on the contrary, the aim of the articles seemed to him to be, to reduce the councillors to be mere figureheads, and to let “the rabble manage everything.”[1056] The “rabble” was just then Luther’s bugbear.

The clergy who had quitted the city addressed, on May 30, a written complaint to the Cardinal of Mayence, with an account of the proceedings. On June 8 they also appealed to Johann, the Saxon Elector, and to Duke George of Saxony, asking for their mediation, since they were the “protectors and liege lords” of their Church. They also did all they could with the council to recover their rights. The councillors were, however, merely rude, and replied that the proud priests might ask as much as they pleased but would get no redress. This was what caused them to complain to their secular protectors that they were being treated worse than the meanest peasant. Duke George advised them to await the result of the negotiations which, as he knew, were proceeding between the town of Erfurt and the Cardinal.

The Lutheran Elector, on the other hand, entered into closer relations with the town-council of Erfurt, accepting with good grace their appeal for help, their protestation of submission and obedience to his rule, and the explicit assurance of the councillors at the Weimar conference, on June 22, “that they would stand by the true and unfeigned Word of God as pious and faithful Christians, and, in support of the same, stake life and limb, with the help of God’s grace.” Thereupon the Elector promised them, on June 23, that, “should they suffer any inconvenience or attack because of the Word of God,” he, as their “liege lord, ruler and protector,” would “stand by them and afford them protection to the best of his ability,” since “the Word of God and the Holy Evangel were likewise dear to him.” In point of fact he did espouse the cause of the inhabitants of Erfurt, though, like Duke George, it was his wish to see a peaceful settlement arrived at between the town and its rightful over-lord.[1057]

The crafty councillors were actually negotiating with the representatives of the Cardinal of Mayence at the very time when they were seeking the protection of Saxony. The over-lord whose rights they had outraged, through his vicar, had made known his peremptory demands to the council on May 26, viz. entire restitution, damages, expulsion of the Lutheran sect, re-establishment of the old worship and payment of an indemnity. In the event of refusal he threatened them with the armed interference of the Swabian League. The threat took effect, for the Swabian League at that time was feared, and disturbers of the peace had had occasion to feel its strength. The hint of armed interference proved all the more effective when Duke George advised the inhabitants of Erfurt to come to terms with the Mayence vicar and abolish Lutheranism, as otherwise they would have to expect “something further.”

The council therefore assumed a conciliatory attitude towards Mayence, and negotiations concerning the restitution to be made were commenced at a conference at Fulda on August 25, 1525. After protracted delays these terminated with the Treaty of Hammelburg on February 5, 1530. This was, “from the political point of view, an utter defeat for the inhabitants of Erfurt.”[1058] The council was not only obliged to recognise the supremacy of the Archbishop, but also to re-erect all buildings which had been destroyed, and to return everything that had been misapplied; in addition to this, for the loss of taxes and other revenues, the council was to pay the Archbishop 2500 gulden, and to the two Collegiate churches, for losses sustained, 1200 marks of fine silver. Both these churches were to be handed over for Catholic worship. The reinstated over-lord, however, declared, for his part, that, “As regards the other churches and matters of faith and ritual, we hereby and on this occasion neither give nor take, sanction nor forbid, anything to any party.”[1059]

Thus the rescinding of the innovations was for the present deferred, and Luther had every reason to be satisfied with what had been effected in a town to which he was attached by many links. How little gratitude he showed to Archbishop Albert, and how fiercely his hatred and animus against the cautious Cardinal would occasionally flame up, will be seen from facts to be mentioned elsewhere.

Among the few Erfurt monks who, though expelled from their monastery, remained true to their profession and to the Church, there was one who attained to a great age and who is mentioned incidentally by Flacius Illyricus. He well remembered the first period of Luther’s life in Erfurt, his zeal for the Church and solicitude for the observance of the Rule.[1060]

When considering Luther’s intervention in Erfurt matters, and his personal action there, one thought obtrudes itself.

When Luther, now quite a different man and in vastly altered circumstances, returned to Erfurt on the occasion of the visit referred to above, is it not likely that he recalled his earlier life at Erfurt, where he had spent happy days of interior contentment, as is shown by the letters he wrote before his priestly ordination? In one of the sermons he delivered there, in October, 1522, he refers to his student days at Erfurt, but it does not appear that he ever seriously reflected on the contrast presented by the convictions he held at that time on the Church and his new ideas on faith and works. His allusions to his Erfurt recollections are neither serious nor grateful towards his old school. He speaks scoffingly of his learned Erfurt opponents, some of whom he had been acquainted with previously, as “knights of straw.” “Yes, they prate, we are Doctors and Masters.... Well, if a title settles the matter, I also became a Bachelor here, and then a Master and then again a Bachelor. I also went to school with them, and I know and am convinced that they do not understand their own books.”[1061]

Another circumstance must be taken into account. Whereas in later life he can scarcely speak of his early years as a monk without telling his hearers how he had passed from an excessive though purely exterior holiness-by-works to his great discovery, viz. to the knowledge of a gracious God, in 1522 he is absolutely silent regarding these “inward experiences”; yet his very theme, viz. the contrast between the new Evangel and the “sophistical holiness-by-works” preferred by Catholics, and likewise the familiar Erfurt scene of his early life as a monk, should, one would think, have invited him to speak of the matter here.[1062]

While Luther was seeking to expel by force the popish “wolves,” more especially the monks and nuns, from the places within reach of the new Evangel, an enemy was growing up in his own camp in the shape of the so-called fanatics; their existence can be traced back as far as his Wartburg days, and his first misunderstanding with Carlstadt; these, by their alliance with Carlstadt, who had been won over to their ideas, and with the help of men like Thomas MÜnzer, had of late greatly increased their power, thanks to the social conditions which were so favourable to their cause.

6. Sharp Encounters with the Fanatics

If, on the one hand, the antagonism which Luther was obliged to display towards the fanatical Anabaptists endangered his work, on the other the struggle was in many respects to his advantage.

His being obliged to withstand the claim constantly made by the fanatics to inspiration by the Holy Ghost served as a warning to him to exercise caution and moderation in appealing to a higher call in the case of his own enterprise; being compelled also to invoke the assistance of the authorities against the fanatics’ subversion of the existing order of things, he was naturally obliged to be more reticent himself and to refrain from preaching revolution in the interests of his own teaching. We even find him at times desisting from his claim to special inspiration and guidance by the “spirit” in the negotiations entered into on account of the MÜnzer business; this, however, he does with a purpose and in opposition with his well-known and usual view. In place of his real ideas, as expressed by him both before and after this period, he, for a while, prefers to deprecate any use of force or violence, and counsels his sovereign to introduce the innovations gradually, pointing out the most suitable methods with patience and prudence.

At first he was anxious that indulgence should be observed even in dealing with the Anabaptists, but later on he invoked vigorously the aid of the authorities.

In reality he himself was borne along by principles akin to those of the fanatics whose ideas were, as a matter of fact, an outcome of his own undertaking. His own writings exhibit many a trait akin to their pseudo-mysticism. In the end his practical common sense was more than a match for these pestering opponents, who for a time gave him so much trouble. His learning and education raised him far above them and made the religious notions of the Anabaptists abhorrent to him, while his public position at the University, as well as his official and personal relations with the sovereign, ill-disposed him to the demagogism of the fanatics and their efforts to win over the common people to their side.

The fanatical aim of Thomas MÜnzer, the quondam Catholic priest who had worked as a preacher of the new faith at Allstedt, near Eisleben, since 1523, was the extermination by violence of all impious persons, and the setting up of a Kingdom of God formed of all the righteous here on earth, after the ideal of apostolic times. This tenet, rather than rebaptism, was the mark of his followers. The rebaptism of adults, which was practised by the sect, was merely due to their belief that an active faith was essential for the reception of the sacraments, whilst children of tender years were incapable of any faith at all.

As a beginning of the war against the “idolatry” of the old Church, MÜnzer caused the Pilgrimage Chapel at Malderbach, near Eisleben, where a miraculous picture of Our Lady was venerated, to be destroyed in April, 1524. He then published a fiery sermon he had recently preached, in which he exhorted the great ones and all friends of the Evangel among the people at once to abolish Divine Worship as it had hitherto been practised. The sermon was sent to the Electoral Court by persons who were troubled about the rising, and who begged that MÜnzer might be called to account. The sermon was also forwarded to Luther by Spalatin, the Court Chaplain, evidently in order that Luther might take some steps to obviate the danger. In point of fact, Luther’s eagle eye took in the situation at a glance, and he at once decided to intervene with the utmost vigour. With MÜnzer’s spirit he was already acquainted through personal observation, so he said, and now he realised yet more clearly that its effect would be to let the mob loose, with the consequence that “heavenly spirits” of every sort would soon be claiming to interfere in the direction of his own enterprise.

Luther at once composed a clever and powerful writing entitled “A Circular to the Princes of Saxony Concerning the Spirit of Revolt.” This appeared in the last days of July, 1524. To it we shall return later, for it is of great psychological interest.

MÜnzer was dismissed from his situation, and went to MÜhlhausen, where the apostate monk, Heinrich Pfeifer, had already prepared the ground, and thence to Nuremberg. At Nuremberg he brought out, in September, 1524, his “Hochverursachte Schutzrede und Antwort wider das geistlose sanftlebende Fleisch zu Wittenberg” in reply to Luther’s Circular, above mentioned. He then recommenced his restless wanderings through South Germany and Switzerland. He remained for some time with the ex-priest and professor of theology, Balthasar Hubmaier, then pastor of the new faith at Waldshut. On his return to MÜhlhausen, in December, he put into execution his fantastic communistic scheme, which lasted until he and the seditious peasants were defeated in the encounter at Frankenhausen on May 15, 1525; his execution for a while put an end to the endeavours of the fanatics. Nevertheless, in other places, more particularly at MÜnster during the famous Reign of Terror from 1532-1535, the fanaticism of the Anabaptists again broke out under even worse forms.

The short circular, “On the Spirit of Revolt,”[1063] referred to above as a document curiously illustrative of Luther’s psychology, is not important in the sense of furnishing a true picture of his inner thoughts and feelings. Conveying as it does a petition and admonition to the Princes, it is naturally worded politically and with great caution, and was also manifestly intended for the general public. Nevertheless its author, even where he clothes his thoughts in the strange and carefully chosen dress best calculated to serve the purpose he had in view, affords us an interesting glimpse into his mode of action. He also shows throughout the whole circular in what light he wishes to see his own higher mission regarded.

Luther commences his writing with a complaint regarding Satan. It is his habit, he says, when nothing else avails, “to attack the Word of God by means of false spirits and teachers.” Hence, because he now perceives that the Evangel, though assailed by “raging Princes” (the opponents of the Saxon Princes), was nevertheless growing and thriving all the more, he had made a nest at Allstedt and caused his spirits there to proclaim that, “it was a bad thing that faith and charity and the Cross of Christ were being preached at Wittenberg. You must hear God’s voice yourself, they say, and suffer God’s action in you and feel how heavy your load is. It is all nonsense about the Scriptures [so Luther makes them say], all ‘Bible, Bubble, Babble,’” etc.

Secondly, a charge which was likely to weigh as much or even more with the Princes, he proceeds, “the same spirit would not allow the matter to remain one of words, but intended to strike with the fist, to oppose the authorities by force and to bring about an actual revolt.” As against this he points out very skilfully, that, according to God’s ordinance, the Princes are the “rulers of the world,” and that Christ had said: “My Kingdom is not of this world” (John xviii. 36). Hence his urgent exhortation to them is “to prevent such disorders and to anticipate the revolt.”

As to the spirit on which the fanatics pride themselves, it had not yet, so Luther declares, been proved, but “goes about working its own sweet will” without being willing to vindicate itself before two or three witnesses; MÜnzer, according to Luther’s previous experience of him, had no wish to present himself at Wittenberg (to be examined); “he was afraid of the soup and preferred to stay among his own followers, who say yes to all his excellent speeches.”

“If I, who am so deficient in the spirit and hear no heavenly voices,” so he humbly assures the Princes, “had uttered such words against my Papists, how they would have cried out on me ‘Gewunnen’ and have stopped my mouth! I cannot glorify myself or defy others with such great words; I am a poor, wretched man and far from carrying through my enterprise in a high-handed way, I began it with great fear and trembling, as St. Paul, who surely might have boasted of the heavenly voice, confesses concerning himself (1 Cor. ii.).”[1064]

Luther now comes to the proof that, unlike the fanatics, his cause was from God, that it was very different from MÜnzer’s enterprise, that he was being unfairly attacked by this rival, and that consequently his sovereign should support his undertaking as he had previously done. Here he undoubtedly meets with greater difficulties than when he made the off-hand statement that MÜnzer’s spirit was a “lying devil, and an evil devil,” and that “storming and fanaticism” and acts of violence by the rabble “Mr. Omnes” must not be permitted.

The one sentence in Luther’s writing which must have made the deepest impression on his princely readers, and on their courtiers, was that concerning the appropriation of the churches and convents, which had been surrendered in consequence of the innovations. “Let the Rulers of the land do what they please with them!” This invitation, in the mind of those in power, was quite sufficient to make up for the deficiencies of the other arguments and to be considered as an irrefragable proof of the justice of the cause.

Luther’s higher mission being in his own opinion so firmly established that he had no cause to fear any man, he goes so far in his Circular as to propose that his Anabaptist foes should not be hindered. “Do not scruple to let them preach freely!” He for his part will gird himself for the fight, and we know of how much the force and violence of his eloquence was capable. Confident that no one could stand against his written or spoken word, he cries: “Let the spirits fall upon one another and fight it out.... Where there is a struggle and a battle some must fall and be wounded, but whoever fights manfully receives the crown.” As a matter of fact, however, he was speedily to withdraw this too-confident challenge; indeed, as we shall see, he later went so far as to demand the infliction of the death-penalty upon those who dared to differ in doctrine from himself, viz. the Anabaptists and fanatics, establishing the necessity of this on passages from the Old Testament which speak of the execution of false prophets.[1067]

MÜnzer’s party too had appealed in defence of their violent work of destruction to the precepts of the Old Testament (Gen. xi. 2; Deut. vii. 12; xii. 2, 3: “Destroy the altars and break down the images,” etc.). Hence Luther deemed it necessary to point out in his Circular against them, that “a certain Divine command then existed for such acts of destruction which is not given to us at the present day.”

It was no uncommon thing for the Bible to furnish such matters of dispute for the warring elements; in the question of the Divine commission it ever occupied the foreground.

Luther solemnly raised the Bible on high and, to the Anabaptists and other teachers of the new faith who differed from him, protested that he and he alone had discovered the Word of God and was the appointed teacher. Yet all those whom he addressed said the selfsame thing and even maintained that they could show better proofs of their mission than Luther. How, then, was the question to be decided?

The Catholic Church has never permitted individual doctors to set up their own as the authentic interpretation of the Bible; she declared herself to be the only divinely appointed supreme authority qualified to determine the true sense of the written Word of God, she herself having received the living Word of God, together with authorisation to guard the whole body of Divine teaching, the written inclusive, in its primitive purity, and to proclaim it with an infallible voice. She appeals to the words of Christ: “Teach all nations,” “He that hears you, hears me,” “You shall be witnesses for me to the ends of the earth,” “I am with you, even to the consummation of the world.”[1068]

Outside this safe rule there is nothing but arbitrary judgment and confusion. Luther and those he called “heretics” accused each other of the most flagrant arbitrariness, and not without cause. They applied to each other in derision the phrase: “Bible, Bubble, Babble,” for indeed it was a confusion of tongues. It was not merely Luther who applied the phrase to MÜnzer’s party, for, according to Agricola, MÜnzer mocked the Lutherans with the same words when they ventured to attack him with biblical texts. The Anabaptist Conrad Grebel, of ZÜrich, writing to MÜnzer on September 5, 1524, says: “You have on your side the Bible, which Luther derides as ‘Bible, Bubble, Babble, etc.’”[1069]

No one could prevent the fanatics from availing themselves of the freedom of private interpretation which Luther had set up as a principle. MÜnzer, no less than Luther, respected the Bible as such, and knew how to make use of it skilfully. He also, declared, exactly as Luther had done, that he taught the people “only according to Holy Scripture,” and, “please God, never preached his own conceits.”[1070] According to Luther’s own principles, MÜnzer’s faction had also a perfect right to make the “outward Word” (the Bible) agree with the “inward Word,” which they believed they heard. When Luther, at a later date, insists so strongly on the need of accepting the outward Word as well as the inner worth, this was really a retreat on his part (see vol. iv., xxviii. 1); moreover, by the outward Word he here means the Bible as he explained it.

To force those who were unwilling to accept the new, purely personal and subjective interpretation, and to do so without the authority of the Church, whose claims had been definitively discarded, was to exercise an intolerable spiritual despotism. We can well understand how MÜnzer came to complain, in one of his letters, that Luther in his Circular-Letter “ramps in as ferociously and hideously as a mighty tyrant.”[1071] He could well complain in particular of Luther’s demand, that the spirit which spoke in MÜnzer should submit to an examination before the Lutheran tribunal at Wittenberg previous to being acknowledged as a spirit which had been duly called. This Luther required, assuring his followers that MÜnzer’s party was execrated even by the Papists, that it had no real commission and could show no miracles on its behalf. He was anxious to retain for himself the “first-fruits of the Spirit.” To this the retort of his foes was that the first-fruits of the Spirit were theirs, belonging to them by virtue of heavenly testimony. This fellow Luther wishes to ascribe the first-fruits of the Spirit to himself, wrote Grebel to MÜnzer, and yet he composes such a “wicked booklet.” I know his intentions; they are thoroughly tyrannical. “I see he means to give you up to the headsman’s axe and hand you over to the Princes.”[1072]

And yet, in spite of other differences between himself and the Anabaptists, Luther found himself in agreement with them not merely on the principle of free interpretation of the Bible but also in the stress he lays on the inspiration from above supposed to be bestowed on all. Luther did not deny that individual inspiration, the “whisper” from on high, as he termed it, was one of the means by which faith might be arrived at; on the contrary, the only question for him was how far this might go.

Luther was fond of insisting that only a heart tried by temptation was able to arrive at the understanding of the words of Scripture and of religious truths in general. MÜnzer, too, demands this preliminary on the part of the would-be theologian, though he does so in rather more fantastic language. Study of Tauler’s mysticism had filled his mind, even more than Luther’s, with confused notions. On the appearance of Luther’s Circular-Letter, he offered to submit to an examination of his spirit before the whole of Christendom. Those were to be summoned from all nations who had “endured overwhelming temptations in matters of faith and had arrived at despair of heart.” These words we find in a letter addressed to the Elector of Saxony, August 3, 1524.[1073] Luther, however, considered himself far better acquainted with the abyss of interior sufferings than any other; MÜnzer must not be allowed to interfere with him here. “We must not be bold in the Word of God,” but “treat Holy Scripture with reverence and great fear; this the rabble and the impudent spirits do not do.” Such things (what Christ says concerning the new birth) “cannot be understood, unless a man has experienced it, and himself undergone a spiritual regeneration.”[1074]

Luther, in point of fact, met the Anabaptists half-way on that doctrine of baptism from which they took their name. Rebaptism he naturally rejected, but he nevertheless advocated the principle for which the Anabaptists stood, namely, that, for the reception of baptism, faith is necessary on the part of the catechumen. To overcome the difficulties which presented themselves in the case of children who had not yet reached the use of reason, he had recourse to some curious explanations. There was no help for it; they also must believe. Probably they are enlightened at the moment of baptism, which, in accordance with the Church’s ancient usage, must be administered to them, and, by some Almighty action, are penetrated with that perception of faith which is essential for the reception of this absolutely necessary sacrament, After all, he argues, why should reason be essential for faith? Is not reason really hostile to faith? Strange indeed were the subterfuges in which he took refuge in order to evade the consequences which MÜnzer and his party rightly drew from his theses.[1075]

But in spite of all they might have in common, and notwithstanding his being the actual father of the detestable Anabaptist error, he felt himself removed far above the fanatics by a sense of superiority and Divine support which no words could adequately express.

His conviction regarding his own supreme mission and his great gifts and achievements, which increased in strength as he advanced in years, derived further encouragement from the utter madness of the fanatics and his success in overthrowing them.

No sooner had the unhappy MÜnzer been made prisoner and, after a contrite Catholic confession, been beheaded at MÜhlhausen, together with Heinrich Pfeifer, a priest, and twenty-four rebels, than Luther proclaimed the event throughout Germany in a pamphlet as a plain judgment of God, which set a seal on his own Evangel and confirmed him as the teacher of the truth.

His self-confidence makes it as clear as daylight to him that he is the true interpreter of the Word of God, whether against the survivors of MÜnzer’s party or against the fickle phantasies of Carlstadt; this we see particularly in the caustic, eloquent tracts he launched against the latter: “To the Christians of Strasburg against the fanatics” and “Against the heavenly Prophets.”

In the latter, a famous book which will be dealt with later when we have to speak of Carlstadt (vol. iii., xix. 2), Luther attacks the fanatics along the whole line and unconditionally lays claim to a higher authority for his own personal illumination and his Evangel. Yet he does not omit to point out, in view of the fact that so many repudiated this Evangel, that its power can only be felt by those whose consciences have been “humbled and perturbed.”

Never for a moment does he relinquish his claim, that his interpretation of the Bible is the only true one:—

We must cut short this string of Luther’s utterances and quote some of the words of his opponents. What Thomas MÜnzer said in reply is the reverse of feeble, but at least it gives us a good idea of the way in which controversies were conducted in those days. Thomas MÜnzer, in his printed reply to Luther referred to above,[1094] is manifestly angry that Luther should stamp all who contradict him as devils.

“That most ambitious, lying scribe Dr. Luther,” he says, becomes, “the longer he lives, more of an arrogant fool, shields himself behind Holy Scripture and utilises it to his advantage in the most deceitful manner.”[1095]

In spite of all remonstrances Luther continued, nevertheless, to compare his adversaries to mere devils. The devil beguiles them to employ their reason, to seek the reason (“Quare”) of the articles of faith. Such words are tantamount to an attack on theology in general. “The ‘Quare,’” he says, “leads us into all the unhappiness and heresy by which our first parents were deceived by the devil in Paradise.... Verily we deserve to be crowned with coltsfoot for being so foolish and falling so readily into the snare when the devil comes along with his old ‘Quare.’”[1098]

We will here conclude with a family scene. On one occasion, in 1544, Luther, in the presence of Catherine von Bora, poured out his ire against Schwenckfeld for his want of acquiescence in his doctrines: “He is ‘attonitus’ [moonstruck], like all the fanatics,” he says of him. “He spurts the grand name of Christ over the people and wants me to bow low before him. I thank God I am better off, however, for I know my Christ well, and have no need of this man’s filth.” Here Catherine interrupted him: “But, my dear Sir, that is really too rude.” Luther replied: “They are my masters in rudeness. It is necessary to speak so to the devil; he can make an end of this fanaticism,” etc.... “He leads the Churches astray, though from God he has received neither command nor mission! The mad, devil-possessed fool does not even know what he is talking about.... Of the muck the devil spews and excretes through his booklet I have had quite enough.”[1106]

7. Progress of the Apostasy. Diets of Spires (1529) and Augsburg (1530)

The Imperial Edict, issued after the Diet of Nuremberg and dated February 8, 1523, had decreed, that the Gospel should be preached agreeably to the teaching of the Christian Church.

At the Diet of Nuremberg, in 1524, it had been enacted that the edict against Luther promulgated at Worms was to stand and to be enforced as far as was possible; the Pope was also to be requested to summon a General Council to meet in Germany, but, before this, it was to be decided at a religious convention, meeting at Spires in the same year, what attitude should be assumed towards the doctrines called into question. Against this decree Luther published an angry, turbulent pamphlet entitled, “Two unequal and contradictory commands.”[1107] He therein showed that the orders of the Diet were self-contradictory; for it was absurd to uphold the Edict of Worms in all its severity and yet at the same time to reserve the decision regarding Luther’s doctrine to the assembly at Spires.[1108]

He went, however, much further and attacked the authority of the Estates and of the Emperor. On the other hand, at the conclusion of the Diet, the Dukes William and Lewis of Bavaria, and twelve bishops of South Germany, at the instance of Lorenzo Campeggio, the Papal Legate, and Archduke Ferdinand, had met together and agreed to carry out the Edict of Worms as far as they were able, and at the same time to inaugurate a wholesome reform of morals amongst both clergy and people. “By means of this agreement the temporal and spiritual Princes hoped to maintain unimpaired the religious unity of the German Nation and to insure internal tranquillity in their dominions.”[1109] Dissension for a while prevented others from joining the league.

The indecision of the Diets was due not only to lack of unity among the Catholics, but to a variety of other causes: to political considerations, the state of general unrest, the need of adopting measures against the Turks, the apprehensions of the Estates, and, finally, to religious indifference.

The Diet of Spires, in 1526, decreed in language no less ambiguous, that the Edict of Worms was to remain in force until a General Council could be summoned, and that the sovereigns and Estates of the Empire should “live, govern and conduct themselves as they hoped to answer for it to God and His Majesty [the Emperor].” This cannot be read “as implying that the evangelicals were given a formal right to separate themselves from the communion with the Church and to set about the work of reformation on their own account.”[1110]

The Diet held subsequently at Spires, in 1529, opposed the anti-Catholic interpretation placed on the resolutions of 1526 and the way in which they had been enforced. It pointed out the inconveniences which had been their result, and sought earnestly to improve the position of affairs.[1111] The article of 1526, it declared, had been interpreted, during the time that had since elapsed, in a most regrettable manner, “as an excuse for all sorts of shocking new doctrines and sects” and had served as a cloak for “apostasy, strife, dissension and wickedness”; wherefore it was to be rescinded and certain other enactments put into force.

Then follow the resolutions of the Diet of Spires, accepted by the Catholic majority and published with the Imperial sanction, against which the Lutheran Princes and Estates raised the “Protest” from which Protestantism took its name.

Foremost among these resolutions is the following: Those who had previously adhered to the Edict of Worms, “are determined to abide by the same until the future Council shall be convened and to insist upon their subjects doing so too.” Further, it was enacted by the Estates, that, “where the new teaching had been introduced and could not be abolished without notable revolt, trouble and danger,” “novelties” were to be avoided until the assembly of the Council. Thirdly, in places where the new teaching was in force the Blessed Sacrament in particular was not to be assailed or preached against (as it was by the Zwinglians), neither were people to be hindered from attending Mass. After more stringent measures had been sanctioned against the Anabaptists and “those who attempted to stir up the people to revolt against the authorities,” for the preservation of peace in matters of religion it was further determined that, “no ruler might take the subjects of another ruler under his protection whether for reasons of belief or for any other.” What had been enacted at Worms was to remain in full force, but “if any Estate should commit a deed of violence” the Kammergericht was empowered to pronounce sentence of outlawry on the offenders.

The latter enactments were occasioned by the preparations made by the Lutheran Estates to unite themselves still more closely in a common League.

Against these resolutions as a whole the party in the Reichstag which sided with the promoters of the innovations raised, on April 19, 1529, the “Protest” which has since become famous; they declared at the same time that it was impossible for them to countenance any alteration in the favourable Edict of 1526. Previous to the departure of their rulers and representatives, the Saxon Electorate, and Hesse, and the cities of Strasburg, Ulm and Nuremberg entered, on April 22, into the “particular secret agreement” concerning mutual armed resistance to any attack which might be made upon them in the “cause of the Word of God” by the Swabian League, the Kammergericht or the Empire.

In a Memorandum of the same year, also signed by Melanchthon, Luther approved the action of his Elector and sought to justify it from the theological point of view; “first, and principally, on the ground, that His Princely Highness [by accepting the Edict of Spires of 1529] would have been acting contrary to His Highness’ conscience and condemning the doctrines which he acknowledged before God to be both Christian and wholesome.” He also seeks to pacify the Prince by instancing the terrible abuses of the Papal Church in Germany, which had been so happily removed by the new teaching and which he ought not to use his authority to “re-establish or maintain.”[1112]

In the Reichstagsabschied there was, however, no question of the maintenance of abuses, and, only to Luther, could the retention of the Mass appear as the maintenance of an “abuse”; it was much more a question of checking, for a time, the advance of the innovations and the propaganda of the Lutherans and of securing the legal rights of Catholics, more particularly in those districts where the new religious system was already in being.

The protesters might have accepted such a settlement without in any way sacrificing their claims to equity, had they really been desirous of justice and of coming to an agreement. Melanchthon himself, in his own name and that of his friends, could well write: “The Articles in the Imperial resolution do not press hard upon us.”[1113] Luther’s opinion, on the other hand, was quite different; it was only his defiant attitude and their own obstinate determination to resist the terms offered them which prevented the protesters from accepting the resolution in question. Their action, however, tended to excite men’s minds still further. They appealed to their conscience: “What would our assent be,” they declared in the Protest, “but a public denial of our Lord and Saviour Christ and His sacred Word, which there is no doubt we now possess in all its purity, simplicity and justice?”

They then made the attitude they had thus assumed an excuse for refusing assistance against the Turks, notwithstanding the fact that news had already reached Spires that the Turkish fleet was cruising off the coasts of Sicily and threatening Western Christendom. “It is an undeniable fact, that they would not promise to render aid against the Turks unless the Catholic Estates of the Empire arrived at some other conclusion concerning the religious question than that under discussion, which they declared it was impossible for them to accept.”[1114]

Such was the position of affairs when, in the summer of 1530, the much-talked-of Reichstag at Augsburg was entrusted with the task of bringing about the practical reconciliation of those who had separated from communion with the Church. In the event of failure the Emperor held out the prospect of the employment of sterner measures.

Luther and his followers agreed to the negotiations, but with the so-called “proviso of the Gospel,” i.e. stipulating that the plain Gospel, the Word of God, should not be tampered with.

What a grand temple of peace the old Augsburg Rathaus, with its assembly-room for the forty-two members of the Reichstag, might have become! In that case what significance the solemn procession of the Blessed Sacrament, which, accompanied by the Catholic Princes and Estates, passed through the streets of the city on the Feast of Corpus Christi, would have possessed. Intentionally the feast had been celebrated with a pomp and concourse of people such as had never before been witnessed in the city, for was it not to symbolise the establishment of religious unity? As it was, however, the work of pacification completely miscarried, owing to the stubbornness of Luther and his party.

Luther himself remained in the background during the proceedings. He stayed in a place of safety at the Castle of Coburg, situated on the Elector’s territory but sufficiently near to the city where the Reichstag was held. His principal representative at Augsburg was Melanchthon, who distinguished himself by his supple and politic behaviour. In the afternoon of June 25, he caused the famous “Augsburg Confession,” of which he was himself the author, to be read in the Rathaus in the presence of the Estates of the Empire.[1115] The names of the Elector and Prince Johann Frederick of Saxony, of Margrave George of Brandenburg, of Dukes Franz and Ernest of LÜneburg, of Landgrave Philip of Hesse, of Prince Wolfgang of Anhalt and of the representatives of the Imperial cities of Nuremberg and Reutlingen were appended to the document.

When, during the sessions, the new faith and the steps to be taken towards peace came to be discussed, Melanchthon, greatly to the surprise of the Catholics, spoke as though the spiritual jurisdiction of the bishops was to be recognised by the Protestant party. The Papal Legate wrote letters to Rome which aroused high hopes, at least in the minds of the more sanguine. It was only gradually that the Catholic party at Augsburg became convinced of the fact that they must exercise the utmost caution. The ambiguity of the promises made by Melanchthon rested on the fact, that acknowledgment of jurisdiction was tacitly restricted to those bishops who should declare themselves in favour of the new faith.

Melanchthon also made use of equivocation in the official document just referred to, i.e. in the Augsburg Confession of Faith (cp. vol. iii., xviii. 1). In the further negotiations with his opponents he was “only too much inclined to agree to ambiguous formularies and to make concessions not honestly compatible with the constantly repeated ‘proviso,’ that nothing contrary to the Gospel was to be conceded.”[1116] When, however, he showed himself shaky even with regard to the sacrificial character of the Mass, the anxious Lutherans at Augsburg thought it time to draw Luther’s attention to the matter. It was pointed out to him by Lazarus Spengler that “our representatives at Augsburg are going rather too far” in their concessions to the demands of the Catholics.

Luther would not sanction any actual yielding, but was not averse to a little diplomacy. He replied to Spengler, on August 28: “I have written to him [Melanchthon] about this once before and am now writing to him again, but hope that there is no real need. For though Christ may appear to be somewhat weak, this does not mean that He is pushed out of His seat.... Though too much may have been conceded—as may be the case—still, the cause is not lost, on the contrary, a new struggle has been entered upon that our adversaries may be convinced how honestly they have acted. For nothing may be conceded above and beyond the Gospel, whichever party’s ‘insidiÆ’ hold the field; for, in the proviso concerning the Gospel, ‘insidiÆ’ are embodied other than those which our adversaries can employ against us. For what is the wisdom of man as compared with that of God? Therefore let your mind be at rest; we can have conceded nothing contrary to the Gospel. But if our supporters concede anything against the Gospel, then the devil himself will seize on that, as you will see.”[1117]

This remarkable letter, with its allusions to the weakness of Christ, the proviso of the Gospel and the successful “insidiÆ,” calls for some further consideration. Luther reckoned on two things, as we shall see from his instructions to be quoted immediately. First, that the best way to escape from the difficult situation created by the Reichstag was to make general statements, which, however, were not to surrender any part of the new teaching; he was anxious to pursue this course in order to secure freedom for the Evangel, or at least some delay in the condemnation of his cause. Secondly, that though at Augsburg the evangelical spokesmen might be forced to give up some part of the new teaching, yet this would be invalid, since against the Gospel nothing can stand.

One can scarcely fail to see that one and the other of these calculations militated against any serious, practical result of the negotiations. They could only succeed in retarding any settlement of the question, though any delay would of course tend to strengthen Luther’s cause.

We have also a Latin letter of Luther’s to Melanchthon, bearing the same date (August 28), which throws even more light on their treatment of the Diet of Augsburg.

The letter describes the painful embarrassment in which Melanchthon found himself placed as intermediary after the advances and concessions he had made at Augsburg. Luther encourages him with strange arguments: “I am reassured by the thought, that you cannot have committed anything worse than a sin against our own person, so that we may be accused of perfidy and fickleness. But what then? The constancy and truth of our cause will soon set that right. I trust this will not be the case, but I say, should it be, even then we should have no need to despair. For when once we have evaded the peril and are at peace, then we can easily atone for our tricks and failings (‘dolos ac lapsus nostros’), because His [God’s] mercy is over us. ‘Expect the Lord, do manfully and let thy heart take courage, and wait thou for the Lord’” (Psalm xxvi. 14).[1118]

This highly questionable counsel refers to the second of Luther’s calculations mentioned above. He was not, however, forgetful of the first, and expressly tells Melanchthon that he will best elude difficulties by the general statement that “they were ready to give to God what was God’s, and to the Kaiser what was the Kaiser’s.... Let them [the opposition] prove what they assert, viz. that God and the Emperor were on their side.” “Let them show that what they demand is according to the Word of God”; should they succeed, then they will have a right to hold the field, because all they were anxious to do was to obey the Word of God. With Luther, however, the Word of God was not really the Word of God itself, but what he understood by the Word of God. We cannot wonder if Catholics stigmatised this form of speaking as mere “dissimulation.” Nor can it be matter of surprise that far-seeing Catholic representatives at Augsburg dreaded some snare on the part of the protesters. Luther’s conception of the “proviso of the Gospel” which, according to his letter to Spengler, was under any circumstances to lead to the success of his cause, certainly shows their suspicions to have been amply justified. Luther was, however, wrong in imputing to them any wish to make use of similar “insidiÆ” against his cause.

In a Latin letter of the same date Luther pointed out to his friend Jonas, who was also one of the theologians then at Augsburg, the course he himself had pursued at the Diet of Worms as the best example and rule to be followed at Augsburg. At Worms Luther had appealed in the presence of the Empire to the Word of God as binding on his conscience. “Whatever you may concede [to the opposition],” he says to Jonas, “never forget to except the Gospel, as I did at Worms, for here the circumstances are quite similar.” Previous to this he had said: “Christ watches over His honour, though we may perhaps be asleep to our shame. Let them boast that you have yielded much, for they do not understand that they have not got the one and only thing for which we really care [the Gospel]. Let them have their way, those spectre-monks of Spires,” he adds in German.[1119]

The Emperor’s attempts to bring about peace at the Diet of Augsburg, under the circumstances described above, were doomed to failure. It was impossible for the Reichstag to bridge over the chasm which was intentionally and artfully kept open by Luther and his party. The final resolutions which were drawn up in due form and proclaimed by the Emperor on November 19, declared that in matters of faith no innovations might be introduced; worship, in particular the ritual of the sacraments, the Mass and Veneration of the Saints, was to remain as before until a decision by an Œcumenical Council; any interference with or injury to churches and convents was forbidden; married priests were to be removed from their posts and punished; preachers were only to be appointed by the bishop; books were not to be printed without being submitted to the censors, etc. The enactment, that Church property which had been seized by the innovators should be returned without delay, was a source of particular displeasure to Luther’s friends.

According to Luther the devil had triumphed at the Reichstag. “The spectre-monks of Spires,” to use his own expression, i.e. the spirits of hell, according to him, threatened his enterprise with destruction.

The apparition of the phantom monks of Spires was one of the manifestations of diabolical animosity towards his teaching which troubled Luther greatly at that time, in his lonely retreat of Coburg. We here see the curious spirit-world in which he lived. A whole troop of fiends disguised as monks, so he had been reliably informed, had come to the Rhine at Spires at the beginning of the Diet of Augsburg and had been ferried across the river on the pretext that “they were from Cologne and wished to attend the Diet at Augsburg. But,” so the story ran, “when they had crossed over, they all suddenly vanished, so that they are believed to have been nothing but a band of evil spirits.”[1124] Melanchthon looked upon the apparition of the “monks of Spires” as the presage of a “terrible revolt.”[1125] His son-in-law, George Sabinus, wrote a description of the incident in verse. Luther himself was probably more inclined to look upon these spectres as devils, because he had personally seen an apparition of the devil at Coburg, where Satan had appeared in the garden below his window under the form of a serpentine streak of light (cp. vol. vi., xxxvi. 3).

He was at that time dominated by fear and dread, partly owing to the proceedings at the Reichstag, partly on account of the unfortunate termination of the religious conference with Zwingli at Marburg,[1126] where no understanding had been reached regarding the chief point under dispute, and partly also because in his solitude his old inward “temptations” and mental depression were again tormenting him. He was also suffering much from the result of overwork. A malady due to nervous exhaustion had, in 1527, so enfeebled him as to bring him to the verge of the grave. The malady now returned with similar, though less severe, symptoms. The spiritual desolation and fear, which were the consequence of his doubts, now again assailed him as they had done after his previous illness in 1527. Of this condition, Melanchthon, to whom it was familiar enough, wrote to Dietrich, that one could not hope to dispel it by human means, but only by recourse to prayer.[1127]

“Satan has sent me his emissaries,” Luther himself says of his sufferings; “I was alone, Veit and Cyriacus were absent, and Satan was so far successful as to drive me out of the room and force me to go amongst the people.” He compares his mental state to a land dried up by heat and wind and thirsting for water.[1128]

He observed to Melanchthon that as a rule he was weaker in such personal combats than when it was a question of the common weal, or of his public work.[1129] This may serve to correct those historians who have nothing but “praise for Luther’s assurance and cheerfulness” during the time when at Augsburg his cause stood in such imminent danger.

Luther’s letters, previous to the breaking off of his followers’ pretended negotiations at Augsburg, certainly do not breathe a spirit of interior peace. He says, for instance, to Jonas: “I am actually bursting with anger and indignation (‘pÆne rumpor ira et indignatione’). I beseech you to cut the matter short and come back home. They have our Confession and the Gospel. If they wish they can accept them, if not let them depart.” Then there follows in the Latin epistle a characteristic exclamation in German: “If war is to come, let it come, we have prayed and done enough. The Lord has given them over to us as a holocaust in order ‘to reward them according to their works’ [2 Tim. iv. 14]; us, His people,” Luther concludes, “He will save even from the fiery furnace of Babylon. Forgive me, I pray, my Jonas, for spewing out all this annoyance of mine into your lap; but what I have written for you is meant for all.”[1130]

That it was indeed meant for all he showed by publishing, in 1531, in anticipation of the “war” and in order that his party might not become a “holocaust,” the “Warnunge Doctoris Martini Luther an seine lieben Deudschen.”[1131] In this work, while indulging in the most virulent abuse of the Reichstag, he declares, that in the event of a war or tumult no assistance was to be rendered to the Papists; legitimate self-defence demanded that such attacks should be met by resistance. The determination shown by Luther after the Diet of Augsburg to withstand the whole authority of the Empire is plainly manifest even now in the vehemence of the tracts which he proceeded to throw broadcast among the people. His purpose was to foster among the masses a spirit of opposition which should be a constant menace to peace.

Losing no time, he at once attacked the Imperial Abschied in a special pamphlet, “Auff das vermeint keiserlich Edict,”[1132] which immediately followed the “Warnunge” and was soon being read throughout the German lands.

It is true that at the beginning he here affirms that it is not his wish to “write against his Imperial Majesty or any of the authorities, temporal or spiritual.” Yet the whole work is nothing but a piece of frightful abuse against the decision arrived at by Charles V and against those Estates of the realm which had confirmed it. It is a mere artifice when he declares that he is merely inveighing against “traitors and other miscreants,” whether “Princes or Bishops, who work their deeds of wickedness in the name of the Emperor,” “particularly against that arch-knave, Pope Clement [VII] and his servant Campegius,” for all the while, now with satire, now in deadly earnest, he is really attacking the Reichstag and the authority of the Empire. Incidentally we may mention that, quite oblivious of the Imperial command, he had launched this pamphlet amongst the people without submitting it to the censorship, and that in the very title he speaks of the “supposed Edict,” though it was a question of an Edict issued in due form and signed and sealed by the Emperor. His distortions and misrepresentations, both of historical truth and of the Catholic doctrine as put forward at the Reichstag, are so gross that they deserve to be chronicled here.

Some of his misstatements were at once pointed out to him, in 1531, by Franz Arnoldi, parish-priest at CÖllen, near Meissen, in the “Antwort auf das BÜchlein,” printed at Dresden, probably at the instance of Duke George of Saxony.[1133] “As many lies as words,” exclaims Arnoldi;[1134] “the devil, the father of lies and murderer of the human race,” was anxious to support Luther by means of the “dissensions, disagreements and revolts” which had already been stirred up, and, for this purpose, had sent this shocking booklet among the people through the agency of his “familiar and customary instrument and tool, Martin Luther, that barrel brimful of abuse and slander.” Over and over again Arnoldi expresses his conviction in the strongest and coarsest language, that “the apostate undoubtedly worked under the devil’s own direction.”[1135] Luther’s proceedings do not, however, stand out with sufficient clearness in Arnoldi’s tract; indeed, the author was not competent to grapple with the task he undertook. For instance, he fails to show by examples how Luther, all through his pamphlet, makes use of dishonest devices. Thus Luther represents the Imperial Recess as laying it down that everything which the Lutherans opposed was certain on the strength of the Gospel, or of a special inspiration received by the Pope, and that this applied even to real ecclesiastical abuses, to say nothing of certain pious customs not affecting the faith. Hoping to mislead the people, Luther tells them that whoever refuses to take Holy Water has, according to the Reichstag, fallen under sentence of death; that, according to the same source, “befoulment with holy things, pilgrimages and such-like” is a true revelation; that festivals and fasts, cowls and tonsure, payments to Rome and pious brotherhoods, come, according to the Papists, from the Gospel, in fact, constitute their only Gospel. By his “inspirations” the Pope sets himself above Holy Scripture, just as he makes himself Emperor and sets himself above the Emperor, particularly in “secular government.” In support of this last statement he cites the Decretals, though his references prove nothing of the sort but rather the reverse.[1136]

It will be worth our while to examine rather more closely Luther’s system of polemics as it appears in his work “Auff das vermeint keiserlich Edict.” Its utter unfairness was, indeed, calculated to rouse the masses to a pitch in which deeds of violence were to be expected.

What has been quoted is sufficient to show the stratagems to which the author has recourse at the expense of truth, and the doubtful methods employed by him in his popular controversial writings. Yet this work is by a long way not the most violent and malicious specimen of Luther’s literary output.

We may wonder whether Luther, in the stress of his controversial struggle, was fully aware of the glaring dishonesty of his utterances. Certain it is that he was frequently carried away by anger and excitement. Some daring misrepresentations and inventions he reiterated so often that he may at last have come to believe them. Without some inward obsession playing upon his imagination such a phenomenon is almost inexplicable.

The Catholic Duke George of Saxony, a clear-headed man and good politician, owing to the attack made upon him by Luther, descended into the literary arena at the time when the struggle was at its height, after the Edict of Augsburg, writing an anonymous “Gegenwarnung” against Luther’s “Warnunge” and against his “Vermeint Edict.” This was published by Arnoldi, who added an epilogue of his own.[1141] The work is written in powerful language and abounds with good arguments. The Duke commences with the plain statement, that the innovator is after nothing else than making “us Germans disloyal to the Emperor and opposed to all authority.” He points out with how great cunning and malice Luther had gone to work, telling countless lies, making a loud clamour and using endless artifices; this should be taken to heart by those who called him a living Saint and vaunted the spirit of God which spoke through him.

Having learnt the name of the author, Luther replied immediately in a booklet steeped in hate, entitled, “Widder den Meuchler zu Dresen gedrÜckt.”[1142] He fell upon the Duke with such insults, misrepresentations and calumnies that many Catholics, to whom Luther’s conduct appeared ever stranger, shared the opinion expressed in George’s reply, viz. that “Luther is certainly possessed by the devil, with the whole legion which Christ drove out of the man who was possessed”; if Paul was right in saying that the spirit was known by its fruits (Gal. v. 22), then Luther’s spirit was “the spirit of lies, which spoke fond inventions and untruths through him.”[1143]

What he really should have done would have been to defend himself against the charge brought forward by George of stirring up revolt against the authority of the Empire. He not only failed to vindicate himself, but assumed a still more threatening and defiant attitude.

After contemplating these far from pleasing pictures we may be allowed to conclude by referring to one of Luther’s more favourable traits. While, on the one hand, his soul was filled with deep anger against the Papists, on the other he was also zealous in inveighing against those who were threatening the foundations of those articles of the Christian faith which he still held in common with Catholics, and which he was ever ready to defend with the fullest conviction.

He foresaw that the freethinking spirit, which was involved in his own religious movement, would not spare the dogma of the Trinity. He was painfully alive to the fact that the arbitrariness of the Anabaptists presaged the ruin of the most fundamental of Christian tenets.

In a sermon preached in 1526, speaking of the doctrine of the Trinity, he had said: “The devil will not rest until he has managed to do the same with this dogma as with the Sacrament; because we have snatched it out of the jaws of the Pope and re-established its right use, turbulent spirits now want to tread it under foot. The same will happen in the matter of this article, so that we shall relapse into Judaism.”[1147]

A dangerous example of anti-Trinitarian tendencies had shown itself in Luther’s immediate circle in the person of Johann Campanus, a native of the diocese of Liege, who had been a student at Wittenberg since 1528. This man boasted that he was the first since the days of the Apostles to rediscover the Gospel concerning the true unity or dualism of God.[1148]

The doctrines of Campanus, which the latter submitted to the Elector of Saxony, made Luther very angry; he described them as “wretched doctrinal monstrosities” (“misera monstra dogmatum”).[1149] Their author he termed an enemy of the Son of God, a blasphemer, a child of Satan.[1150] Against Campanus Bugenhagen published certain writings of St. Athanasius, with Luther’s approval, and the latter also wrote a powerful preface to the edition. He wished, as he says, to strike a blow at those Italian or German-Italian Humanists, who denied the Trinity or were alienated from Christianity. In his exaggeration and bitterness he counted Erasmus, the author of “Hyperaspistes,” among the “Viperaspides” pointing him out as one of the anti-Trinitarians who must be fought against.[1151] In the preface he vents his indignation in his usual language: The doctrine of the Trinity, like the other fundamental dogmas, was now being attacked by the “slaves of Satan”; the example of St. Athanasius, the champion of faith in the Trinity, demonstrated, how, in order to defend it, we must be ready to stand against “all the fury let loose in hell, on earth and in the whole realm”; in our “altogether distracted age” it is necessary to “set up against these devils, these Epicureans, sceptics, Italian and German monsters, Him [God the Father], Who had said to Jesus, our Servant, ‘Thou art My Son,’ and again, ‘Sit Thou on My right hand.’ Thus we will wait and see if these giants come off victorious in their titanic struggle against God.”

He recalls how, as a young monk, he had read these very writings of St. Athanasius “with great zeal in the faith,” and informs us that he had received a copy to read from his pedagogue or Novice-master, written out in his own writing. He trusts that Bugenhagen’s work will contribute to the glory of our Lord Jesus, Who, “through His boundless love for us has chosen to become the servant of us poor sinners,” and that “the Lord will soon destroy all those giants, which is what we await and pray for day by day.”

END OF VOL. II

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