Hartmann Grisar

ETHICAL RESULTS OF THE NEW TEACHING

1. Preliminaries. New Foundations of Morality

Luther’s system of ethics mirrors his own character. If Luther’s personality, in all its psychological individuality, shows itself in his dogmatic theology (see vol. iv., p. 387 ff.), still more is this the case in his ethical teaching. To obtain a vivid picture of the mental character of their author and of the inner working of his mind, it will suffice to unfold his practical theories in all their blatant contradiction and to examine on what they rest and whence they spring. First and foremost we must investigate the starting-point of his moral teaching.

To begin with, it was greatly influenced by his theory that the Gospel consisted essentially in forgiveness, in the cloaking over of guilt and in the soothing of “troubled consciences.” Thanks to a lively faith to reach a feeling of confidence, is, according to him, the highest achievement of ethical effort. At the same time, however, Luther lets it be clearly understood that we can never get the better of sin. In the shape of original sin it ever remains; concupiscence is always sinful; and, even in the righteous, actual sin persists, only that its cry is drowned by the voice speaking from the Blood of Christ. Man must look upon himself as entirely under the domination of the devil, and, only in so far as Christ ousts the devil from his human stronghold, can a man be entitled to be called good. In himself he is not even free to do what is right.

To the author of such doctrines it was naturally a matter of some difficulty to formulate theoretically the injunctions of morality. Some Protestants indeed vaunt his system of ethics as the best ever known, and as based on an entirely “new groundwork.” Many others, headed by StÄudlin the theologian, have nevertheless openly admitted that “no system of Christian morality could exist,” granted Luther’s principles.[1]

Of his principles the following must be borne in mind. Man’s attitude towards things Divine is just that of the dumb, lifeless “pillar of salt into which Lot’s wife was changed”; “he is not one whit better off than a clod or stone, without eyes or mouth, without any sense and without a heart.”[2] Human reason, which ought to govern moral action, becomes in matters of religion “a crazy witch and Lady Hulda,”[3] the “clever vixen on whom the heathen hung when they thought themselves cleverest.”[4] Like reason, so the will too, in fallen man, behaves quite negatively towards what is good, whether in ethics or in religion. “We remain as passive,” he says, “as the clay in the hands of the potter”; freedom there is indeed, “but it is not under our control.” In this connection he refers to Melanchthon’s “Loci communes,”[5] whence some striking statements against free-will have already been quoted in the course of this work.[6]

It is only necessary to imagine the practical application of such principles to perceive how faulty in theory Luther’s ethics must have been. Luther, however, was loath to see these principles followed out logically in practice.

Other theories of his which he applies either not at all or only to a very limited extent in ethics are, for instance, his opinions that the believer, “even though he commit sin, remains nevertheless a godly man,” and, that, owing to our trusting faith in Christ, God can descry no sin in us “even when we remain stuck in our sins,” because we “have donned the golden robe of grace furnished by Christ’s Blood.” In his Commentary on Galatians he had said: “Act as though there had never been any law or any sin but only grace and salvation in Christ”;[7] he had declared that all the damned were predestined to hell, and, in spite of their best efforts, could not escape eternal punishment. (Vol. ii., pp. 268 ff., 287 ff.)

In view of all the above we cannot help asking ourselves, whence the moral incentive in the struggle against the depravity of nature is to come; where, granted that our will is unfree and our reason blind, any real ethical answerableness is to be found; what motive for moral conduct a man can have who is irrevocably predestined to heaven or to hell; and what grounds God has for either rewarding or punishing?

To add a new difficulty to the rest, Luther is quite certain of the overwhelming power of the devil. The devil sways all men in the world to such a degree, that, although we are “lords over the devil and death,” yet “at the same time we lie under his heel ... for the world and all that belongs to it must have the devil as its master, who is far stronger than we and clings to us with all his might, for we are his guests and dwellers in a foreign hostelry.”[8] But because through faith we are masters, “my conscience, though it feels its guilt and fears and despairs on its account, yet must insist on being lord and conqueror of sin ... until sin is entirely banished and is felt no longer.”[9] Yea, since the devil is so intent on affrighting us by temptations, “we must, when tempted, banish from sight and mind the whole Decalogue with which Satan threatens and plagues us so sorely.”[10]

Such advice could, however, only too easily lead people to relinquish an unequal struggle with an unquenchable Concupiscence and an overwhelmingly powerful devil, or, to lose sight of the distinction between actual sin and our mere natural concupiscence, between sin and mere temptation; Luther failed to see that his doctrines would only too readily induce an artificial confidence, and that people would put the blame for their human frailties on their lack of freedom, their ineradicable concupiscence, or on the almighty devil.

How, all this notwithstanding, he contrived to turn his back on the necessary consequences of his own teaching, and to evolve a practical system of ethics far better than what his theories would have led us to expect, is plain from his warm recommendation of good works, of chastity, neighbourly love and other virtues.

In brief, he taught in his own way what earlier ages had also taught, viz. that sin and vice must be shunned; in his own way he exhorted all to practise virtue, particularly to perform those deeds of brotherly charity reckoned so high in the Church of yore. In what follows we shall have to see how far his principles nevertheless intervened, and how much personal colouring he thereby imparted to his system of ethics. In so doing what we must bear in mind is his own way of viewing the aims of morality and practical matters generally, for here we are concerned, not with the results at which he should logically have arrived, but with the opinions he actually held.

The difficulty of the problem is apparent not merely from the nature of certain of his theological views just stated, but particularly from what he thought concerning original sin and concupiscence, which colours most of his moral teaching.

In his teaching, as we already know, original sin remains, even after baptism, as a real sin in the guise of concupiscence; by its evil desires and self-seeking it poisons all man’s actions to the end of his life, except in so far as his deeds are transformed by the “faith” from above into works pleasing to God, or rather, are accounted as such. Owing to the enmity to God which prevails in the man who thus groans under the weight of sin even “civil justice is mere sinfulness; it cannot stand before the absolute demands of God. All that man can do is to acknowledge that things really are so and to confess his unrighteousness.”[11] Such an attitude Luther calls “humility.” Catholic moralists and ascetics have indeed ever made all other virtues to proceed from humility as from a fertile source, but there is no need to point out how great is the difference between Luther’s “humility” and that submission of the heart to God’s will of which Catholic theologians speak. Humility, as Luther understood it, was an “admission of our corruption”; according to him it is our recognition of the enduring character of original sin that leads us to God and compels us “to admit the revelation of the Grace of God bestowed on us in Christ’s work of redemption,” by means of “faith, i.e. security of salvation.” It is possible to speak “only of a gradual restraining of sin,” so strongly are we drawn to evil. We indeed receive grace by faith, but of any infused grace or blotting out of sin, Luther refuses to hear, since the inclinations which result from original sin still persist. Hence “by grace sin is not blotted out.” Rather, the grace which man receives is an imputed grace; “the real answer to the question as to how Luther arrived at his conviction that imputed grace was necessary and not to be escaped is to be found in his own inward experience that the tendencies due to original sin remain, even in the regenerate. This sin, which persists in the baptised, ... forces him, if he wishes to avoid the pitfall of despair ... to keep before his mind the consoling thought ... ‘that God does not impute to him his sin.’”[12]

2. The two Poles: the Law and the Gospel

One of the ethical questions that most frequently engaged Luther’s attention concerned the relation of Law and Gospel. In reality it touched the foundations of his moral teaching.

His having rightly determined how Law and Gospel stood seemed to him one of his greatest achievements, in fact one of the most important of the revelations made to him from on High. “Whoever is able clearly to distinguish the Law from the Gospel,” he says, “let such a one give thanks to God and know that he is indeed a theologian.”[13] Alluding to the vital importance of Luther’s theory on the Law with its demands and the Gospel with its assurance of salvation, Friedrich Loofs, the historian of dogma, declares: Here “may be perceived the fundamental difference between the Lutheran and the Catholic conception of Christianity,”[14] though he does not fear to hint broadly at the “defects” and “limitations” of Luther’s new discovery; rather he admits quite openly, that some leading aspects of the question “never even revealed themselves clearly” to Luther, but betray a “notable” lack of discernment, and that Luther’s whole conception of the Law contained “much that called for further explanation.”[15]

In order to give here a clearer picture of Luther’s doctrine on this matter than it was possible to do in the earlier passages where his view was touched upon it may be pointed out, that, when, as he so frequently does, he speaks of the Law he means not merely the Old-Testament ceremonial and judicial law, but even the moral law and commands both of the Old Covenant[16] and of the New,[17] in short everything in the nature of a precept binding on the Christian the infringement of which involves him in guilt; he means, as he himself expresses it, “everything ... that speaks to us of our sins and of God’s wrath.”[18]

By the Gospel moreover he understands, not merely the promises contained in the New Testament concerning our salvation, but also those of the Old Covenant; he finds the Gospel everywhere, even previous to Christ: “There is not a book in the Bible,” he says, “which does not contain them both [the Law and the Gospel]. God has thus placed in every instance, side by side, the Law and the promises, for, by the Law, He teaches what we are to do, and, by the promises, how we are to set about it.” In his church-postils where this passage occurs Luther explains more fully what he means by the “promise,” or Gospel, as against the Law: It is the “glad tidings whereby grace and forgiveness of sins is offered. Hence works do not belong to the Gospel, for it is no law, but faith only [is required], for it is simply a promise and an offer of Divine grace. Whoever believes it receives the grace.”[19]

As to the relationship between the Law and the Gospel: Whereas the Law does not express the relation between God and man, the Gospel does. The latter teaches us that we may, nay must, be assured of our salvation previous to any work of ours, in order, that, born anew by such faith, we may be ready to fulfil God’s Will as free, Christian men. The Law, on the other hand, reveals the Will of God, on pedagogic grounds, as the foundation of a system of merit or reward. It is indeed necessary as a negative preparation for faith, but its demands cannot be complied with by the natural man, to say nothing of the fact that it seems to make certainty of salvation, upon which everything depends in our moral life, contingent on the fulfilment of its prescriptions.[20]

From this one can see how inferior to the Gospel is the Law.

The Law speaks of “facere, operari,” of “deeds and works” as essential for salvation. “These words”—so Luther told the students in his Disputations in 1537 on the very eve of the Antinomian controversy—“I should like to see altogether banished from theology; for they imply the notions of merit and duty (“meritum et debitum”), which is beyond toleration. Hence I urge you to refrain from the use of such terms.”[21]

What he here enjoins he had himself striven to keep in view from the earliest days of his struggle against “self-righteousness” and “holiness-by-works.” These he strove to undermine, in the same measure as he exalted original sin and its consequences. Psychologically his attitude in theology towards these questions was based on the renegade monk’s aversion to works and their supposed merit. His chief bugbear is the meritoriousness of any keeping of the Law. For one reason or another he went further and denied even its binding character (“debitum”); caught in the meshes of that pseudo-mystic idealism to which he was early addicted we hear him declaring: the Christian, when he is justified by “faith,” does of his own accord and without the Law everything that is pleasing to God; what is really good is performed without any constraint out of a simple love for what is good. In this wise it was that he reached his insidious thesis, viz. that the believer stands everywhere above the Law and that the Christian knows no Law whatever.[22] In quite general terms he teaches that the Law is in opposition to the Gospel; that it does not vivify but kills; and that its real task is merely to frighten us, to show us what we are unable to do, to reveal sin and “increase it.” The preaching of the Law he here depicts, not as “good and profitable, but as actually harmful,” as “nothing but death and poison.”[23]

That such a setting aside of the specifically Mosaic Law appealed to him, we can readily understand. But does he include in his reprobation the whole “lex moralis,” the Natural Law which the Old Testament merely confirmed, and which, according to Luther himself, is written in man’s heart by nature? This Law he asserts is implicitly obeyed as soon as the heart, by its acceptance of the assurance of salvation, is cleansed and filled with the love of God.[24] And yet “in many instances he applies to this Natural Law what he says elsewhere of the Law of Moses; it too affrights us, increases sin, kills, and stands opposed to the Gospel.”[25] Desirous of destroying once and for all any idea of righteousness or merit being gained through any fulfilment of any Law, he forgets himself, in his usual way, and says strong things against the Law which scarcely agree with other statements he makes elsewhere.

Owing to polemists taking too literally what he said, he has been represented as holding opinions on the Law and the Gospel which in point of fact he does not hold; indeed, some have made him out a real Antinomian. Yet we often hear him exhorting his followers to bow with humility to the commandments, to bear the yoke of submission and thus to get the better of sin and death. Nevertheless, particularly when dealing with those whose “conscience is affrighted,” he is very apt to forget what he has just said in favour of the Law, and prefers to harp on his pet theology: “Man must pay no heed to the Law but only to Christ.” “In dealing with this aspect of the matter we cannot speak too slightingly of so contemptuous a thing [as the Law].”[26]

His changeableness and obscurity on this point is characteristic of his mode of thought.

At times he actually goes so far as to ascribe to the Law merely an outward, deterrent force and to make its sole value in ordinary life consist in the restraining of evil. Even when he is at pains to emphasise the “real, theological” use of the Law as preparatory to grace, he deliberately introduces statements concerning the Law which do not at all help to explain the matter. According to him, highly as we must esteem the Law for its sacred character, its effect upon people who are unable to keep it is nevertheless not wholesome but rather harmful, because thereby sin is multiplied, particularly the sin of unbelief, i.e. as seen in want of confidence in the certainty of salvation and in the striving after righteousness by the exact fulfilling of the Law.[27] “Whoever feels contrition on account of the Law,” he says for instance, “cannot attain to grace, on the contrary he is getting further and further away from it.”[28]

Even for the man who has already laid hold on salvation by the “fides specialis” and has clothed himself in Christ’s merits, the deadening and depraving effect of the Law has not yet ceased. It is true that he is bound to listen to the voice of the Law and does so with profit in order to learn “how to crucify the flesh by means of the spirit, and direct his steps in the concerns of this life.” Yet—and on this it is that Luther dwells—because the pious man is quite unable to fulfil the Law perfectly, he is only made sensible of his own sinfulness; against this dangerous feeling he must struggle.[29] Hence everything depends on one’s ability to set oneself with Christ above the Law and to refuse to listen to its demands; for Christ, Who has taken the whole load upon Himself, bears the sin and has fulfilled the Law for us.[30] That this, however, was difficult, nay, frequently, quite impossible, Luther discovered for himself during his inward struggles, and made no odds in admitting it. He gives a warning against engaging in any struggles with our conscience, which is the herald of the Law; such contests “often lead men to despair, to the knife and the halter.”[31] Of the manner in which he dealt with his own conscience we shall, however, speak more in detail below (XXIX, 6).

It is not necessary to point out the discrepancies and contradictions in the above train of thought. Luther was untiring in his efforts at accommodation, and, whenever he wished, had plenty to say on the matter. Here, even more plainly than elsewhere, we see both his lack of system and the irreconcilable contradictions lying in the very core of his ethics and theology. Friedrich Loofs says indulgently: “Dogmatic theories he had none; without over much theological reflection he simply gives expression to his religious convictions.”[32]

It is strange to note how the aspect of the Law changes according as it is applied to the wicked or to the just, though it was given for the instruction and salvation of all alike. In the New Testament we read: “My yoke is sweet and my burden light,” but even in the Old Testament it had been said: “Much peace have they that love thy Law.”[33] According to Luther the man who is seeking for salvation and has not yet laid hold on faith in the forgiveness of sins must let himself be “ground down [’conteri,’ cp. ‘contritio’] by the Law” until he has learnt “to live in a naked trust in God’s Mercy.”[34] The man, however, who by faith has assured himself of salvation looks at the Law and its transgressions, viz. sin, in quite a different light.

“He lives in a different world,” says Luther, “where he must know nothing either of sin or of merit; if however he feels his sin, he is to look at it as clinging, not to his own person, but to the person (Christ) on whom God has cast it, i.e. he must regard it, not as it is in itself and appears to his conscience, but rather in Christ by Whom it has been atoned for and vanquished. Thus he has a heart cleansed from all sin by the faith which affirms that sin has been conquered and overthrown by Christ.... Hence it is sacrilege to look at the sin in your heart, for it is the devil who puts it there, not God. You must say, my sins are not mine; they are not in me at all; they are the sins of another; they are Christ’s and are none of my business.”[35] Elsewhere he describes similarly the firm consolation of the righteous with regard to the Law and its accusations of sin: “This is the supreme comfort of the righteous, to vest and clothe Christ with my sins and yours and those of the whole world, and then to look upon Him as the bearer of all our sins. The man who thus regards Him will soon come to scorn the fanatical notions of the sophists concerning justification by works. They rave of a faith that works by love (‘fides formata caritate’), and assert that thereby sins are taken away and men justified. But this simply means to undress Christ, to strip Him of sin, to make Him innocent, to burden and load ourselves with our own sins and to see them, not in Christ, but in ourselves, which is the same thing as to put away Christ and say He is superfluous.”[36]

The confidence with which Luther says such things concerning the transgression of the Divine Law by the righteous is quite startling; nor does he do so in mere occasional outbursts, but his frequent statements to this effect seem measured and dispassionate, nor were they intended simply for the learned but even for common folk. It was for the latter, for instance, that in his “Sermon von dem Sacrament der Puss” he said briefly: “To him who believes, everything is profitable and nothing harmful, but, to him who believes not, everything is harmful and nothing profitable.”[37]

“Whosoever does not believe,” i.e. has failed to lay hold of the certainty of salvation, deserves to feel the relentless severity of the Law; let him learn that the “right understanding and use of the Law” is this, “that it does no more than prove” that all “who, without faith, follow its behests are slaves, stuck [in the Law] against their will and without any certainty of grace.” “They must confess that by the Law they are unable to make the slightest progress.”

“Even should you worry yourself to death with works, still your heart cannot thereby raise itself to such a faith as the Law calls for.”[38]

Thus, by the Law alone, and without the help of Luther’s “faith,” we become sheer “martyrs of the devil.”

It is this road, according to him, that the Papists tread and that he himself, so he assures us, had followed when a monk. There he had been obliged to grind himself on the Law, i.e. had been forced to fight his way in despair until at last he discovered justification in faith.[39] One thing that is certain is his early antipathy—due to the laxity of his life as a religious and to his pseudo-mysticism—for the burdens and supposed deadening effect of the Law, an antipathy to which he gave striking expression at the Heidelberg Disputation.[40]

Luther remained all his life averse to the Law.[41] In 1542, i.e. subsequent to the Antinomian controversy, he even compared the Law to the gallows. He hastens, however, to remove any bad impression he may have made, by referring to the power of the Gospel: “The Law does not punish the just; the gallows are not put up for those who do not steal but for robbers.”[42] The words occur in an answer to his friends’ questions concerning the biblical objections advanced by the Catholics. They had adduced certain passages in which everlasting life is promised to those who keep the Law (“factores legis”) and where “love of God with the whole heart” rather than faith alone is represented as the true source of righteousness and salvation. Luther solves the questions to his own content. Those who keep the Law, he admits, “are certainly just, but not by any means owing to their fulfilment of the Law, for they were already just beforehand by virtue of the Gospel; for the man who acts as related in the Bible passages quoted stands in no need of the Law.... Sin does not reign over the just, and, to the end, it will not sully them.... The Law is named merely for those who sin, for Paul thus defines the Law: ‘The Law is the knowledge of sin’ (Rom. iii. 20).”—In reality what St. Paul says is that “By the Law is the knowledge of sin,” and he only means that the Old-Testament ordinances of which he is speaking, led, according to God’s plan, to a sense of utter helplessness and therefore to a yearning for the Saviour. Luther’s very different idea, viz. that the Law was meant for the sinner and served as a gallows, is stated by W. Walther the Luther researcher, in the following milder though perfectly accurate form: “In so far as the Christian is not yet a believer he lacks true morality. Even in his case therefore the Law is not yet abrogated.”[43]

“A distinction must be made,” so Luther declares, “between the Law for the sinner and the Law for the non-sinner. The Law is not given to the righteous, i.e. it is not against them.”[44]

The olden Church had stated her conception of the Law and the Gospel both simply and logically. In her case there was no assumption of any assurance of salvation by faith alone to disturb the relations between the Law and the Gospel; one was the complement of the other; though, agreeably to the Gospel, she proclaimed the doctrine of love in its highest perfection, yet at the same time, like St. Peter, she insisted in the name of the “Law,” that, in the fear of sin and “by dint of good works” we must make sure our calling and election (2 Peter i. 10). She never ceased calling attention to the divinely appointed connection between the heavenly reward and our fidelity to the Law, vouched for both in the Old Testament (“For thou wilt render to every man according to his works,” Ps. lxi. 13) and also in the New (“The Son of Man will render to every man according to his works,” Mt. xvi. 27, and elsewhere, “For we must all be manifested before the judgment seat of Christ that everyone may receive the proper things of the body according as he hath done, whether it be good or evil,” 2 Cor. v. 10).

3. Encounter with the Antinomianism of Agricola

Just as the Anabaptist and fanatic movement had originally been fostered by Luther’s doctrines, so Antinomianism sprang from the seed he had scattered.

Johann Agricola, the chief spokesman of the Antinomians, merely carried certain theses of Luther’s to their logical conclusion, doing so openly and regardless of the consequences. He went much further than his master, who often had at least the prudence here and elsewhere to turn back half-way, a want of logic which Luther had to thank for his escape from many dangers in both doctrine and practice. In the same way as Luther, with the utmost tenacity and vigour, had withstood the Anabaptists and fanatics when they strove to put in full practice his own principles, so also he proclaimed war on the Antinomians’ enlargement and application of his ideas on the Law and Gospel which appeared to him fraught with the greatest danger. That the contentions of the Antinomians were largely his own, formulated anew, must be fairly evident to all.[45]

Johann Agricola, the fickle and rebellious Wittenberg professor, seized on Luther’s denunciations of the Law, more particularly subsequent to the spring of 1537, and built them up into a fantastic Antinomian system, at the same time rounding on Luther, and even more on the cautious and reticent Melanchthon, for refusing to proceed along the road on which they had ventured. In support of his views he appealed to such sayings of Luther’s, as, the Law “was not made for the just,” and, was “a gallows only meant for thieves.”

He showed that, whereas Luther had formerly refused to recognise any repentance due to fear of the menaces of the Law, he had come to hold up the terrors of the Law before the eyes of sinners. As a matter of fact Luther did, at a later date, teach that justifying faith was preceded by a contrition produced by the Law; such repentance due to fear was excited by God Almighty in the man deprived of moral freedom, as in a “materia passiva.”—The following theses were issued as Agricola’s: “1. The Law [the Decalogue] does not deserve to be called the Word of God. 2. Even should you be a prostitute, a cuckold, an adulterer or any other kind of sinner, yet, so long as you believe, you are on the road to salvation. 3. If you are sunk in the depths of sin, if only you believe, you are really in a state of grace. 4. The Decalogue belongs to the petty sessions, not to the pulpit. 11. The words of Peter: ‘That by good works you may make sure your calling and election’ [2 Peter i. 10] are all rubbish. 12. So soon as you begin to fancy that Christianity requires this or that, or that people should be good, honest, moral, holy and chaste, you have already rent asunder the Gospel [Luke, ch. vi.].”[46]

In his counter theses Luther indignantly rejected such opinions: “the deduction is not valid,” he says, for instance, “when people make out, that what is not necessary for justification, either at the outset, later, or at the end, should not to be taught” (as obligatory), e.g. the keeping of the Law, personal co-operation and good works. “Even though the Law be useless to justification, still it does not follow that it is to be made away with, or not to be taught.”[47]

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Luther was the more indignant at the open opposition manifest in his own neighbourhood and at the yet worse things that were being whispered, because he feared, that, owing to the friendly understanding between Agricola, Jacob Schenk and others, the new movement might extend abroad. The doctrine, in its excesses, seemed to him as compromising as the teaching of Carlstadt and the doings of the fanatics in former days. In reality it did embody a fanatical doctrine and an extremely dangerous pseudo-theology; in Antinomianism the pseudo-mystical ideas concerning freedom and inner experience which from the very beginning had brought Luther into conflict with the “Law,” culminated in a sort of up-to-date gnosticism.

We now find Luther, in the teeth of his previous statements, declaring that “Whoever makes away with the Law, makes away with the Gospel.”[48] He says: “Agricola perverts our doctrine, which is the solace of consciences, and seeks by its means to set up the freedom of the flesh”;[49] the grace preached by Agricola was really nothing more than immoral licence.[50]

The better to counter the new movement Luther at once proceeded to modify his teaching concerning the Law. In this wise Antinomianism exercised on him a restraining influence, and was to some extent of service to his doctrine and undertaking, warning him, as the fanatic movement had done previously, of certain rocks to be avoided.

Luther now came to praise Melanchthon’s view of the Law, which hitherto had not appealed to him, and declared in his Table-Talk: If the Law is done away with in the Church, that will spell the end of all knowledge of sin.[51]

This last utterance, dating from March, 1537, is the first to forebode the controversy about to commence, which was to cause Luther so much anxiety but which at the same time affords us so good an insight into his ethics and, no less, into his character. Even more noteworthy are the two sermons in which he expounds his standpoint as against that of Agricola, whom, however, he does not name.[52]

The first step taken by Luther at the University against the Antinomian movement was the Disputation of Dec. 18, 1537. For this he drew up a list of weighty theses. When the Disputation was announced everyone was aware that it was aimed at a member of the Wittenberg Professorial staff, at one, moreover, whom Luther himself, as dean, had authorised to deliver lectures on theology at Wittenberg. When Agricola failed even to put in an appearance at the Disputation, as though it in no way concerned him, and also continued to “agitate secretly” against the Wittenberg doctrine, Luther, in a letter addressed to Agricola on Jan. 6, 1538, withdrew from him his faculty to teach, and even demanded that he should forswear theology altogether (“a theologia in totum abstinere”); if he now wished to deliver lectures he would have to ask permission “of the University” (where Luther’s influence was paramount).[53] This was a severe blow for Agricola and his family. His wife called on Luther, dropped a humble curtsey and assured him that in future her husband would do whatever he was told. This seems to have mollified Luther. Agricola himself also plucked up courage to go to him, only to be informed that he would have to appear at the second Disputation on the subject—for which Luther had drawn up a fresh set of theses—and there make a public recantation. Driven into a corner, Agricola agreed to these terms. At the second Disputation (Jan. 12, 1538) he did, as a matter of fact, give explanations deemed satisfactory by Luther, by whom he was rewarded with an assurance of confidence. He was, nevertheless, excluded from all academical office, and though the Elector of Saxony permitted him to act as preacher this sanction was not extended by Bugenhagen to any preaching at Wittenberg.[54] A third and fourth set of theses drawn up by Luther,[55] who could not do enough against the new heresy, date from the interval previous to the settlement, though no Disputation was held on them that the peace might not be broken.

Agricola nevertheless was staunch in his contention, that, in his earlier writings, Luther had expressed himself quite differently, and this was a fact which it was difficult to disprove.

On account of Agricola’s renewal of activity, Luther, on Sep. 13, 1538, held another lengthy and severe Disputation against him and his supporters, the “hotheads and avowed hypocrites.” For this occasion he produced a fifth and last set of theses. He also insisted that his opponent should publicly eat his words. This time Luther admitted that some of his own previous statements had been injudicious, though he was disposed to excuse them. In the beginning they had been preaching to people whose consciences were troubled and who stood in need of a different kind of language than those whose consciences had first to be stirred up. Agricola, finding himself in danger of losing his daily bread, yielded, and even agreed to allow Luther himself to pen the draft of his retractation, hoping thus to get off more easily.

Instead of this, and in order, as he said, to “paint him as a cowardly, proud and godless man,” Luther wrote a tract (“Against the Antinomians”) addressed to the preacher Caspar GÜttel, which might take the place of the retractation agreed upon.[56] It was exceedingly rude to Agricola. It represented him as a man of “unusual arrogance and presumption,” “who presumed to have a mind of his own, but one that was really intent on self-glorification”; he was a standing proof that in the world “the devil liveth and reigneth”; by his means the devil was set on raising another storm against Luther’s Evangel, like those others raised by Carlstadt, MÜnzer, the Anabaptists and so forth.[57] In spite of all this the writing, according to a statement made by its author to Melanchthon, was all too mild (“tam levis fui”), particularly now that Agricola’s great “obstinacy” was becoming so patent.[58]

Luther even spoke of the excommunication which should be launched against so contumacious a man. As a penalty he caused him to be excluded from among the candidates for the office of Dean, and when Agricola complained to the Rector and to Bugenhagen of Luther’s “tyranny” both refused to listen to him.[59]

In the meantime Agricola expressed his complete submission in a printed statement, which, however, was probably not meant seriously, and thereupon, on Feb. 7, 1539, was nominated by the Elector a member of the Consistory. He at once profited by this mark of favour to present at Court a written complaint against Luther, referring particularly to the scurrilous circular letter sent to Caspar GÜttel. He protested that, for wellnigh three years, he had submitted to being trodden under foot by Luther, and had slunk along at his heels like a wretched cur, though there had been no end to the insult and abuse heaped upon him. What Luther reproached him with he had never taught. The latter had accused him of many things which he “neither would, could nor might admit.”[60]

Luther in his turn, in a writing, appealed to the Elector and his supreme tribunal. In vigorous language he explained to the Court, utterly incapable though it was of deciding on so delicate a question, why he had been obliged to withstand the false opinions of his opponent which the Bible condemned. Agricola had dared to call Luther’s doctrine unclean, “a doctrine on behalf of which our beloved Prince and Lord wagered and imperilled land and subjects, life and limb, not to speak of his soul and ours.” In other words, to differ from Luther was high treason against the sovereign who agreed with him. He sneers at Agricola in a tone which shows how great licence he allowed himself in his dealings with the Elector: Agricola had drawn up a Catechism, best nicknamed a “Cackism”; Master Grickel was ridden by an angry imp, etc. So far was he from offering any excuse for his virulence against Agricola that he even expressed his regret for having been “so friendly and gentle.”[61]

To the same authority, as though to it belonged judgment in ecclesiastical matters, Melanchthon, Jonas, Bugenhagen and Amsdorf sent a joint memorandum in which they recommended a truce, “somewhat timidly pointing out to the Elector, that Luther was hardly a man who could be expected to retract.”[62]

The Court Councillors now took the whole matter into their hands and it was settled to lodge a formal suit against Agricola. The latter, however, accepted a call from Elector Joachim of Brandenburg, to act as Court preacher, and, in spite of having entered into recognisances not to quit the town, he made haste to get himself gone to his new post in Berlin (Aug., 1540). On a summons from Wittenberg, and seeing that, unless he made peace with Luther, he could do nothing at Berlin, he consented to issue a circular letter to the preachers, magistrates and congregation of Eisleben[63] “which might have satisfied even Luther’s exorbitant demands.”[64] He explained that he had in the meantime thought better of the points under discussion, and even promised “to believe and teach as the Church at Wittenberg believes and teaches.”

In 1545, when he came to Wittenberg with his wife and daughter, Luther, who still bore him a grudge, whilst allowing them to pay him a visit, refused to see Agricola himself. On another occasion it was only thanks to the friendly intervention of Catherine Bora that Luther consented to glance at a kindly letter from him, but of any reconciliation he would not hear. Regarding this last incident we have a note of Agricola’s own: “Domina Ketha, rectrix coeli et terrÆ, Iuno coniunx et soror Iovis, who rules her husband as she wills, has for once in a way spoken a good word on my behalf. Jonas likewise did the same.”[65]

Luther’s hostility continued to the day of his death. He found justification for his harshness and for his refusal to be reconciled in the evident inconstancy and turbulence of his opponent. For a while, too, he was disposed to credit the news that Antinomianism was on the increase in Saxony, Thuringia and elsewhere.

Not only was Agricola’s fickleness not calculated to inspire confidence, but his life also left much to be desired from the moral standpoint. Though Luther was perhaps unaware of it, we learn from Agricola’s own private Notes, that the “vices in which the young take delight” had assailed him in riper years even more strongly than in his youth. Seckendorff also implies that he did not lead a “regular life.”[66]

In 1547 Agricola, together with Julius Pflug, Bishop of Naumburg, and Helding, auxiliary of Mayence, drew up the Augsburg Interim. As General Superintendent of the Brandenburg district and at the invitation of his Elector he assisted in the following year at the religious Conferences of the Saxon theologians. He died at Berlin, Sep. 22, 1566, of a disease resulting from the plague.

Of the feeling called forth in circles friendly to Luther by Agricola’s part in the Interim we have proof in the preface which introduces in the edition of 1549 Luther’s letter of 1539 to the Saxon Court. Here we read: If the Eisleben fellow (Agricola) “was ever a dissolute sharper, who secretly promoted false doctrine and made use of the favour and applause of the pious as a cloak for his knavery,” much more has this now become apparent by his outcry concerning the Interim and the alleged good it does. The editors recall the fact, that “Our worthy father in God, Dr. Martin Luther of happy memory, shortly before his end, in the presence of Dr. Pommer, Philip, Creutziger, Major, Jonas and D. Paulus Benedictus” spoke as follows: “Eisleben (Agricola) is not merely ridden by the devil but the devil himself lodges in him.” In proof of the latter statement they add, that trustworthy persons, who had good grounds for their opinion, had declared, that “it was the simple truth that devils had visibly appeared in Eisleben’s house and study, and at times had made a great disturbance and clatter; whence it is clear that he is the devil’s own in body and soul.” “The truth,” they conclude, “is clear and manifest. God gives us warnings enough in the writings of pious and learned persons and also by signs in the sky and in the waters. Let whoever wills be admonished and warned. For to each one it is a matter of life eternal; to which may God assist us through Christ our Lord, Amen.”[67]

A writing of Melanchthon’s, dating from the last months of his life and brought to light only in 1894, gives further information concerning a later phase of the Antinomian controversy as fought out between Agricola and Melanchthon.[68]

Melanchthon, for all his supposed kindliness, here empties the vials of his wrath on Johann Agricola because the latter had vehemently assailed his thesis “Bona opera sunt necessaria.” As a matter of fact, so he writes, he bothered himself as little about Agricola’s “preaching, slander, abuse, insistence and threats” as about the “cackle of some crazy gander.” But Christian people were becoming scandalised at “this grand preacher of blasphemy” and were beginning to suspect his own (Melanchthon’s) faith. Hence he would have them know that Agricola’s component parts were an “asinine righteousness, a superstitious arrogance and an Epicurean belly-service.” To his thesis he could not but adhere to his last breath, even were he to be torn to pieces with red-hot pincers. He had refrained from adding the words “ad salutem” after “necessaria” lest the unwary should think of some merit. The “ad salutem” was an addition of Agricola’s, that “foolish man,” who had thrust it on him by means of a “shameless and barefaced lie.” He is anxious to win his spurs off the Lutherans. Yet donkeys of his ilk do understand nothing in the matter, and God will “punish these blasphemers and disturbers of the Churches.” But in order that “a final end may at length be put to the evil doing, slander, abuse and cavilling it will,” he says, “be necessary for God to send the Turk; nothing else will help in such a case.” Melanchthon compares himself to Joseph, who was sold by his brethren. If Joseph had to endure this “in the first Church,” what then “will be my fate in the extreme old age of this mad world (‘extrema mundi delira senecta’) when licence wanders abroad unrestrained to sully everything and when such unspeakably cruel hypocrites control our destinies? I can only pray to God that He will deign to come to the aid of His Church and graciously heal all the gaping wounds dealt her by her foes. Amen.”

A certain reaction against the Antinomian tendency, is, as already explained, noticeable in Luther’s latter years; at least he felt called upon to revise a little his former standpoint with regard to the Law, the motive of fear, indifference to sin and so forth, and to remove it from the danger of abuse. He was also at pains to contradict the view that his doctrine of faith involved an abrogation of the Law. “The fools do not know,” he remarked, for instance, alluding to Jacob Schenk, “all that faith has to do.”[69]

In his controversy with Agricola we can detect a tendency on his part “to revert to Melanchthon’s doctrine concerning repentance.”[70] He insisted far more strongly than before[71] on the necessity of preaching the Law in order to arouse contrition; he even went so far along Catholic lines as to assert, that “Penance is sorrow for sin with the resolve to lead a better life.”[72] He also admitted, that, at the outset, he had said things which the Antinomians now urged against the Law, though he also strove to show that he had taken pains to qualify and safeguard what he had said. Nor indeed can Luther ever have expected that all the strong things he had once hurled against the Law and its demands would ever be used to build up a new moral theology.

And yet, even at the height of the Antinomian controversy, he stood firmly by his thesis regarding the Law, fear and contrition, viz. that “Whoever seeks to be led to repentance by the Law, will never attain to it, but, on the contrary, will only turn his back on it the more”;[73] to this he was ever true.

4. The Certainty of Salvation and its relation to Morality

How did Luther square his system of morality with his principal doctrine of Faith and Justification, and where did he find any ground for the performance of good works?

In the main he made everything to proceed from and rest upon a firm, personal certainty of salvation. The artificial system thus built up, so far as it is entitled to be called a system at all, requires only to be set forth in order to be appreciated as it deserves. It will be our duty to consider Luther’s various statements, and finally his own summary, made late in life, of the conclusions he had reached.

Certainty of Salvation as the cause and aim of True Morality. The Psychological Explanation

Quite early Luther had declared: “The ‘fides specialis,’ or assurance of salvation, of itself impels man to true morality.” For, “faith brings along with it love, peace, joy and hope.... In this faith all works are equal and one as good as the other, and any difference between works disappears, whether they be great or small, short or long, few or many; for works are not pleasing [to God] in themselves but on account of faith.... A Christian who lives in this faith has no need to be taught good works, but, whatever occurs to him, that he does, and everything is well done.” Such are his words in his “Sermon von den guten Wercken” to Duke Johann of Saxony in 1520.[83]

He frequently repeats, that “Faith brings love along with it,” which impels us to do good.

He enlarges on this in the festival sermons in his Church-Postils, and says: When I am made aware by faith, that, through the Son of God Who died for me, I am able to “resist and flaunt sin, death, devil, hell and every ill, then I cannot but love Him in return and be well disposed towards Him, keeping His commandments and doing lovingly and gladly everything He asks”; the heart will then show itself full “of gratitude and love. But, seeing that God stands in no need of our works and that He has not commanded us to do anything else for Him but to praise and thank Him, therefore such a man must proceed to devote himself entirely to his neighbour, to serve, help and counsel him freely and without reward.”[84]

All this, as Luther says in his “Von der Freyheyt eynes Christen Menschen,” must be performed “by a free, willing, cheerful and unrequited serving of our neighbour”;[85] it must be done “cheerfully and gladly for Christ’s sake Who has done so much for us.”[86] “That same Law which once was hateful to free-will,” he says in his Commentary on Galatians, “now [i.e. after we have received the faith and assurance of salvation] becomes quite pleasant since love is poured into our hearts by the Holy Ghost.... We now are lovers of the Law.”[87] From the wondrous well-spring of the imputed merits of Christ there comes first and foremost prayer; if only we cling “trustfully to the promise of grace,” then “the heart will unceasingly beat and pulsate to such prayers as the following: O, beloved Father, may Thy Name be hallowed, Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done.”[88] But all is not prayer and holy desire; even when the “soul has been cleansed by faith,” the Christian still must struggle against sin and against the body “in order to deaden its wantonness.”[89] The Christian will set himself to acquire chastity; “in this work a good, strong faith is of great help, more so here than anything else.” And why? Because whoever is assured of salvation in Christ and “enjoys the grace of God, also delights in spiritual purity.... Under such a faith the Spirit without doubt will tell him how to avoid evil thoughts and everything opposed to chastity. For as faith in the Divine mercy persists and works all good, so also it never ceases to inform us of all that is pleasing or displeasing to God.”[90]

Whence does our will derive the ability and strength to wage this struggle to the end? Only from the assurance of salvation, from its unshaken awareness that it has indeed a Gracious God. For this certainty of faith sets one free, first of all from those anxieties with regard to one’s salvation with which the righteous-by-works are plagued and thus allows one to devote time and strength to doing what is good; secondly this faith in one’s salvation teaches one how to overcome the difficulties that stand in one’s way.[91]

There was, however, an objection raised against Luther by his contemporaries and which even presented itself to his own mind: Why should a lifelong struggle and the performance of good works be requisite for a salvation of which we are already certain? It was re-formulated even by Albert Ritschl, in whose work, “Rechtfertigung und VersÖhnung,” we find the words: “If one asks why God, Who makes salvation to depend on Justification by faith, prescribes good works at all, the arbitrary character of the assumption becomes quite evident.”[92] In Luther’s own writings we repeatedly hear the same stricture voiced: “If sin is forgiven me gratuitously by God’s Mercy and is blotted out in baptism, then there is nothing for me to do.” People say, “If faith is everything and suffices of itself to make us pious, why then are good works enjoined?”[93]

In order to render Luther’s meaning adequately we must emphasise his leading answer to such objections. He is determined to insist on good works, because, as he says, they are of the utmost importance to the one thing on which everything else depends, viz. to faith and the assurance of salvation.[94]

Hence the “fides specialis” as just explained, seems to be the chief ethical aim of life.[103] This is why it is so necessary to strengthen it by works, and so essential to beat down all anxieties of conscience.

Here Luther is speaking from his own inward experience. He says: “Thus must the conscience be lulled to rest and made content, thus must all the waves and billows subside.... Our sins towered mountain-high about us and would fain have made us despair, but in the end they are calmed, and settle down, and soon are seen no longer.”[104] It was only very late in his life that Luther reached a state of comparative calm, a calm moreover best to be compared with the utter weariness of a man worn out by fatigue.[105]

Luther’s Last Sermons at Eisleben on the Great Questions of Morality

In the four sermons he preached at Eisleben—the last he ever delivered—Luther gives utterance to certain leading thoughts quite peculiar to himself regarding morality and the “fides specialis.” These utterances, under the circumstances to be regarded as the ripest fruit of his reflection, must be taken in conjunction with other statements made by him in his old age. They illustrate even more clearly than what has gone before the cardinal point of his teaching now under discussion, which, even more than any other, has had the bad luck to be so often wrongly presented by combatants on either side.

Luther’s four sermons at Eisleben, which practically constitute his Last Will and Testament of his views on faith and good works, were delivered before a great concourse of people. A note on one delivered on Feb. 2, 1546, tells us: “So great was the number of listeners collected from the surrounding neighbourhood, market-places and villages, that even Paul himself were he to come preaching could hardly expect a larger audience.”[106] For the reports of his sermons we are indebted to the pen of his pupil and companion on his journey, Johann Aurifaber.[107] From their contents we can see how much Luther was accustomed to adapt himself to his hearers and to the conditions prevailing in the district where he preached. The great indulgence then extended to the Jews in that territory of the Counts of Mansfeld; the religious scepticism shared or favoured by certain people at the Court; and, in particular, the moral licence—which, taking its cue from Luther’s teaching, argued: “Well and good, I will sin lustily since sin has been taken away and can no longer damn me,” as he himself relates in the third sermon,[108]—all this lends colour to the background of these addresses delivered at Eisleben. In particular the third sermon, on the parable of the cockle (Mt. xiii. 24-30), is well worth notice. It speaks of the weeds which infest the Church and of those which spring up in ourselves; in the latter connection Luther expatiates on the leading principles of his ethics, on faith, sin and good works, and concludes by telling the Christian how he must live and “grow in faith and the spirit.”[109] One cannot but acknowledge the force with which the preacher, who was even then suffering acutely, speaks on behalf of good works and the struggle against sin. What he says is, however, tainted by his own peculiar views.

He exhorts his hearers to struggle against sin, whether original or actual sin, and does so in words which place the “fides specialis” in the first place and impose the obligation of a painful and laborious warfare which contrasts strongly with the spontaneous joy of the just in doing what is good, elsewhere taken for granted by Luther.

He was also fond of saying—and of this assurance we find an echo in his last sermon—that a true and lively faith should govern even our feeling, and as we are so little conscious of such a feeling and impulse to what is good, it follows that we but seldom have this faith, i.e. this lively certainty of salvation.

Luther, when insisting so strongly that good works must follow “faith,” as a moral incentive to such works also refers incidentally to our duty of gratitude and love in return for this faith bestowed on us.

Thus in the Eisleben sermons he invites the believer, the better to arouse himself to good works, to address God in this way: “Heavenly Father, there is no doubt that Thou hast given Thy Son for the forgiveness of my sins. Therefore will I thank God for this during my whole life, and praise and exalt Him, and no longer steal, practise usury or be miserly, proud or jealous.... If you rightly believe,” he continues, “that God has sent you His Son, you will, like a fruitful tree, bring forth finer and finer blossoms the older you grow.”[121] In what follows he is at pains to show that good works will depend on the constant putting into practice of the “faith”; the Justification that is won by the “fides specialis” is insufficient, in spite of all the comfort it brings; rather we must be mindful of the saying of St. Paul: “If by the spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh you shall live.” “But if your flesh won’t do it, then leave it to the Holy Ghost.”[122]

The motive for good works which Luther here advances, viz. “To thank God, to praise and extol Him,”[123] is worthy of special attention; it is the only real one he furnishes either here or elsewhere. Owing to the love of God which arises in the heart at the thought of His benefits we must rouse ourselves to serve Him. The idea is a grand one and had always appealed to the noblest spirits in the Church before Luther’s day. It is, however, a very different thing to represent this motive of perfect love as the exclusive and only true incentive to doing what is pleasing to God. Yet throughout Luther’s teaching this is depicted as the general, necessary and only motive. “From faith and the Holy Ghost necessarily comes the love of God, and together with it love of our neighbour and every good work.”[124] When I realise by faith that God has sent His Son for my sake, etc., says Luther, in his Church-Postils, “I cannot do otherwise than love Him in return, do His behests and keep His commandments.”[125] This love, however, as he expressly states, must be altogether unselfish, i.e. must be what the Old Testament calls a “whole-hearted love,” which in turn “presupposes perfect self-denial.”[126]

It is plain that we have here an echo of the mysticism which had at one time held him in thrall;[127] but his extravagant idealism was making demands which ordinary Christians either never, or only very seldom, could attain to.

The olden Church set up before the faithful a number of motives adapted to rouse them to do good works; such motives she found in the holy fear of God and His chastisements, in the hope of temporal or everlasting reward; in the need of making satisfaction for sin committed, or, finally, for those who had advanced furthest, in the love of God, whether as the most perfect Being and deserving of all our love, or on account of the benefits received from Him; she invited people to weld all these various motives into one strong bond; those whose dispositions were less exalted she strove to animate with the higher motives of love, so far as the weakness of human nature allowed. Luther, on the contrary, in the case of the righteous already assured of salvation, not only excluded every motive other than love, but also, quite unjustifiably, refused to hear of any love save that arising from gratitude for the redemption and the faith. “To love God,” in his eyes, “is nothing more than to be grateful for the benefit bestowed” (through the redemption).[128] And, again, he imputes such power to this sadly curtailed motive of love, or rather gratitude, that it is his only prescription, even for those who are so cold-hearted that the Word of God “comes in at one ear and goes out at the other,” and who hear of the death of Christ with as little devotion as though they had been told, “that the Turks had beaten the Sultan, or some other such tit-bit of news.”[129]

Some notable Omissions of Luther’s in the above Sermons on Morality

Hitherto we have been considering what Luther had to say on the question of faith and morality in his last sermons. It remains to point out what he did not say, and what, on account of his own doctrines, it was impossible for him to say; as descriptive of his ethics the latter is perhaps of even greater importance.

Luther’s Vacillation between the Two Faiths, Old and New, in the Matter of Morality and the Assurance of Salvation

Many discordant utterances, betraying his uncertainty and his struggles, have been bequeathed to us by Luther regarding the main questions of morality and as to how we may insure salvation. First we have his statements with regard to the importance of morality in God’s sight.

In 1537 in a Disputation on June 1 he denounced the thesis, “Good works are necessary for salvation.”[142] In the same way, in a sermon of 1535, he asserted that it was by no means necessary for us to perform good works “in order to blot out sin, to overcome death and win heaven, but merely for the profit and assistance of our neighbour.” “Our works,” he there says, “can only shape what concerns our temporal life and being”; higher than this they cannot rise.[143]

Yet, when thus degrading works, he had again and again to struggle within his own heart against the faith of the ancient Church concerning the merit of good deeds. Especially was this the case when he considered the “texts which demand a good life on account of the eternal reward,”[144] for instance, “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments” (Mt. xix. 17), or “Lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven” (ib., vi. 20). With them he deals in a sermon of 1522. The eternal reward, he here says, follows the works because it is a result of the faith which itself is the cause of the works. But the believer must not “look to the reward,” or trouble about it. Why then does God promise a reward?—In order that “all may know what the natural result of a good life will be.” Yet he also admits a certain anxiety on the part of the pious Christian to be certain of his reward, and the favourable effect of such a certainty on the good man’s will.[145] Here he exhorts his listeners; “that you be content to know and be assured that this indeed will be the result,” whilst in another sermon of that same year he describes as follows the promise of eternal life as the reward of works: “It is an incentive and inducement that makes us zealous in piety and in the service and praise of God.... That God should guide us so kindly makes us esteem the more His Fatherly Will and the Mercy of Christ”—but on no account “must we be good as if for the sake of the reward.”[146] He also quotes incidentally Mt. xix. 29, where our Lord says that all who leave home, brethren, etc. for His name’s sake “shall receive a hundredfold and shall possess life everlasting”; also Heb. x. 35 concerning the “great reward” that awaits those who lose not their confidence. Such statements, he refuses, however, to see referred to salvation, which will be the equal portion of all true believers, but, in his arbitrary fashion, explains them as denoting some extra ornament of glory.[147]

“Good works will be present wherever faith is.” As this supposition, a favourite one with Luther from early days, fails to verify itself in practice, and as the expedients he proposed to meet the new difficulty are scattered throughout his writings, an admirer in recent times ventured to sum up these elements into a system under the following headings: “Faulty morality is a proof of a faulty faith.” “The fact of morality being present proves the presence of faith.” “Moral indolence induces loss of faith.” “Zeal for morality causes faith to increase.”[148] The true explanation would therefore seem always to be in the assumption of a want of “faith,” i.e. of a lack of that absolute certainty of personal salvation which should regulate all religious life,[149] in other words moral failings should be held to prove the absence of this saving certainty.

Seen in this light good works are of importance, as the outward demonstration that a person possesses the “fides specialis,” and in this wise alone are they a guarantee of everlasting happiness. They prove “before the world and before his own conscience” that a Christian really has the “faith.” This is what Luther expressly teaches in his Church-Postils: “Therefore hold fast to this, that a man who is inwardly a Christian is justified before God solely by faith and without any works; but outwardly and publicly, before the people and to himself, he is justified by works, i.e. he becomes known to others as, and certain in himself that, he is inwardly just, believing and pious. Thus you may term one an open or outward justification and the other an inward justification.”[150] Hence Luther’s certainty of salvation, however strong it may be, still requires to be tested by something else as to whether it is the true “faith” deserving of God’s compassion; for “it is quite possible for a man never to doubt God’s mercy towards him though all the while he does not really possess it”;[151] according to Luther, namely, there is such a thing as a fictitious faith.

In Luther’s opinion “faith” was a grasping of something actually there. Hence if God’s mercy was not there, then neither was there any “faith.” Accordingly, an “unwarrantable assurance of salvation” was not at all impossible, and works served as a means of detecting it. Walther, to whom we owe our summary, does not, it is true, prove the existence of such a state of “unwarrantable assurance” by any direct quotation from Luther’s writings, and, indeed, it might be difficult to find any definite statement to this effect, seeing that Luther was chary of speaking of any failure in the personal certainty of salvation, on which alone, exclusive of works, he based the whole work of justification.

And yet, as Luther himself frequently says, moods and feelings are no guarantee of true faith; what is required are the works, which, like good fruit, always spring from a good tree.—So strongly, in spite of all his predilection for faith alone, is he impelled again and again to have recourse to works. In many passages they tend to become something more than mere signs confirmatory of faith. We need not examine here how far his statements concerning faith and works are consistent, and to what extent the sane Catholic teaching continued to influence him.

What is remarkable, however, is, that, in his commendable efforts to urge the performance of works in order to curtail the pernicious results of his doctrine, Luther comes to attribute a saving action to “faith,” only on condition that, out of love of God, we “strive” against sin. In one of his last sermons at Eisleben he tells his hearers: Sins are forgiven by faith and “are not imputed so far as you set yourself to fight against them, and learn to repeat the Our Father diligently ... and to grow in strength as you grow in age; and you must be at pains to exercise your faith by resisting the sins that remain in you ... in short, you must become stronger, humbler, more patient and believe more firmly.”[152] The conditional “so far as” furnishes a key which has to be used in many other passages where works are demanded as well as faith. Faith, there, is real and wholesome “in so far as” it produces works: “For we too admit it and have always taught it, better and more forcibly than they [the Papists], that we must both preach and perform works, and that they must follow the faith, and, that, where they do not follow there the faith is not as it should be.”[153]

Nor does he merely say that works of charity must follow eventually, but that charity must be infused by the Spirit of God together with faith of which it is the fruit.

“For though faith makes us righteous and pure, yet it cannot be without love, and the Spirit must infuse love together with faith. In short, where there is true faith, there the Holy Ghost is also present, and where the Holy Ghost is, there love and all good things must also be.... Love is a consequence or fruit of the Spirit which comes to us wrapped up in the faith.”[154] “Charity is so closely bound up [with faith and hope] that it can never be parted from faith where this is true faith, and as little as there can be fire without heat and smoke, so little can faith exist without charity.”[155] From gratitude (as we have heard him state above, p. 26) the man who is assured of salvation must be “well disposed towards God and keep His commandments.” But if he be “sweetly disposed towards God” this must “show itself in all charity.”

Taking the words at their face value we might find in these and similar statements on charity something reminiscent of the Catholic doctrine of a faith working through love.[156] But though this is what Luther should logically have arrived at, he was in reality always kept far from it by his idea both of faith and of imputation. It should be noted that he was fond of taking shelter behind the assertion, that his “faith” also included, or was accompanied by, charity. He was obliged to do this in self-defence against the objections of certain Evangelicals—who rushed to conclusions he would not accept—or of Catholic opponents. Indeed, in order to pacify the doubters, he even went so far as to say, that love preceded the “faith” he taught, and that “faith” itself was simply a work like any other work done for the fulfilling of the commandments.

Many truly saw therein an alarming abasement of the moral standard and accordingly returned to the doctrine of their fathers. As the ideal to be aimed at throughout life the Church had set up before them progress in the love of God, encouraging them to put this love in practice by fidelity to the duties of their calling and by a humble and confident trust in God’s Fatherly promises rather than in any perilous “fides specialis.”

5. Abasement of Practical Christianity

To follow up the above statement emanating from a Protestant source, concerning the “huge decline” in moral ideals and practical Christianity involved in Luther’s work, we shall go on to consider how greatly he did in point of fact narrow and restrict ethical effort in comparison with what was required by the ethics of earlier days. In so doing he was following the psychological impulse discernible even in the first beginnings of his dislike for the austerity of his Order and the precepts of the Church.

Lower Moral Standards

1. The only works of obligation in the service of God are faith, praise and thanksgiving. God, he says, demands only our faith, our praise and our gratitude. Of our works He has no need.[164] He restricts our “deeds towards God” to the praise-offering or thank-offering for the good received, and to the prayer-offering “or Our Father, against the evil and badness we would wish to be rid of.”[165] This service is the duty of each individual Christian and is practised in common in Divine worship. The latter is fixed and controlled with the tacit consent of the congregation by the ministers who represent the people; in this we find the trace of Luther’s innate aversion to any law or obligation which leads him to avoid anything savouring of legislative action.[166]

In the preface to his instructions to the Visitors in 1528 he declares, for instance, that the rules laid down were not meant to “found new Papal Decretals”; they were rather to be taken as a “history of and witness to our faith” and not as “strict commands.”[167] This well expresses his antipathy to the visible Catholic Church, her hierarchy and her so-called man-made ordinances for public worship.

Since, to his mind, it is impossible to offer God anything but love, thanksgiving and prayer, it follows that, firstly, the Eucharistic Sacrifice falls, and, with it, all the sacrifices made to the greater glory of God by self-denial and abnegation, obedience or bodily penances, together with all those works—practised in imitation of Christ by noble souls—done over and above the bounden duties of each one’s calling. He held that it was wrong to say of such sacrifices, made by contrite and loving hearts, that they were both to God’s glory and to our own advantage, or to endeavour to justify them by arguing that: Whoever does not do great things for God must expect small recompense. Among the things which fell before him were: vows, processions, pilgrimages, veneration of relics and of the Saints, ecclesiastical blessings and sacramentals, not to speak of holy days and prescribed fasts. With good reason can one speak of a “huge decline.”

He justifies as follows his radical opposition to the Catholic forms of Divine worship: “The only good we can do in God’s service is to praise and thank Him, in which in fact the only true worship of God consists.... If any other worship of God be proposed to you, know that it is error and deception.”[168] “It is a rank scandal that the Papists should encourage people to toil for God with works so as thereby to expiate their sins and secure grace.... If you wish to believe aright and really to lay hold on Christ, you must discard all works whereby you may think you labour for God; all such are nothing but scandals leading you away from Christ and from God; in God’s sight no work is of any value except Christ’s own; this you must leave to toil for you in God’s sight; you yourself must perform no other work for Him than to believe that Christ does His work for you.”[169]

In the same passage he attempts to vindicate this species of Quietism with the help of some recollections from his own earlier career, viz. by the mystic principle which had at one time ruled him: “You must be blind and lame, deaf and dead, poor and leprous, or else you will be scandalised in Christ. This is what it means to know Christ aright and to accept Him; this is to believe as befits a true Christian.”[170]

2. “All other works, apart from faith, must be directed towards our neighbour.”[171] As we know, besides that faith, gratitude and love which are God’s due, Luther admits no good works but those of charity towards our neighbour. By our faith we give to God all that He asks of us. “After this, think only of doing for your neighbour what Christ has done for you, and let all your works and all your life go to the service of your neighbour.”[172]—God, he says elsewhere, asks only for our thank-offering; “look upon Me as a Gracious God and I am content”; “thereafter serve your neighbour, freely and for nothing.”[173] Good works in his eyes are only “good when they are profitable to others and not to yourself.” Indeed he goes so far as to assert: “If you find yourself performing a work for God, or for His Saints, or for yourself and not alone for your neighbour, know that the work is not good.”[174] The only explanation of such sentences, as already hinted, is to be found in his passionate polemics against the worship and the pious exercises of the Catholics. It is true that such practices were sullied at that time by certain blemishes, owing to the abuses rampant in the Church; yet the Catholic could confidently answer in self-defence in the words Luther proceeds to put on his lips: Such “works are spiritual and profitable to the soul of our neighbour, and God thereby is served and propitiated and His Grace obtained.”

Luther rudely retorts: “You lie in your throat; God is served not by works but by faith; faith must do everything that is to be done as between God and ourselves.” That the priests and monks should vaunt their religious exercises as spiritual treasures, he brands as a “Satanic lie.” “The works of the Papists such as organ-playing, chanting, vesting, ringing, smoking [incensation], sprinkling, pilgriming and fasting, etc., are doubtless fine and many, grand and long, broad and thick works, but about them there is nothing good, useful or profitable.”

3. “Know that there are no good works but such as God has commanded.” What, apart from faith, makes a work a good one is solely God’s express command. Luther, while finding fault with the self-chosen works of the Catholics, points to the Ten Commandments as summing up every good work willed by God. “There used to be ecclesiastical precepts which were to supersede the Decalogue.” “The commandments of the Church were invented and set up by men in addition to and beyond God’s Word. Luther therefore deals with the true worship of God in the light of the Ten Commandments.”[175] As for the Evangelical Counsels so solemnly enacted in the New Testament, viz. the striving after a perfection which is not of obligation, Luther, urged on by his theory that only what is actually commanded partakes of the nature of a good work, came very near branding them as an invention of the Papists.

4. The good works which are performed where there is no “faith” amount to sin. This strangely unethical assertion Luther is fond of repeating in so extravagant a form as can only be explained psychologically by the utter blindness of his bias in favour of the “fides specialis” by him discovered. True morality belongs solely to those who have been justified after his own fashion, and no others have the slightest right to credit themselves with anything of the sort.

Annulment of the Supernatural and Abasement of the Natural Order

From the above statements it is clear that Luther, in doing away with the distinction between the natural and supernatural order, also did away with the olden doctrine of virtue, and without setting up anything positive in its place. He admits no naturally good action different from that performed “by faith and grace”; no such thing exists as a natural, moral virtue of justice. This opinion is closely bound up with his whole warfare on man’s natural character and endowments in respect of what is good. Moreover, what he terms the state of grace is not the supernatural state the Church had always understood, but an outward imputation by God; it is indeed God’s goodness towards man, but no new vital principle thanks to which we act justly.[185]

Not only does he deny the distinction between natural and supernatural goodness, essential as it is for forming an ethical estimate of man, but he practically destroys both the natural and supernatural order. Even in other points of Luther’s doctrine we can notice the abrogation of the fundamental difference between the two orders; for instance in his view of Adam’s original state, which, according to him, was a natural not a supernatural one, “no gift,” as he says, “apart from man’s nature, and bestowed on him from without, but a natural righteousness so that it came natural to him to love God [as he did], to believe in Him and to acknowledge Him.”[186] It is, however, in the moral domain that this peculiarity of his new theology comes out most glaringly. Owing to his way of proceeding and the heat of his polemics he seems never to have become fully conscious of how far-reaching the consequences were of his destruction of all distinction between the natural and the supernatural order.

Natural morality, viz. that to which man attains by means of his unaided powers, appears to him simply an invention of the pagan Aristotle. He rounds on all the theologians of his day for having swallowed so dangerous an error in their Aristotelian schools to the manifest detriment of the divine teaching. This he does, for instance, at the commencement of his recently published Commentary on Romans. He calls it a “righteousness of the philosophers and lawyers” in itself utterly worthless.[187] A year later, in his manuscript Commentary on Hebrews, he has already reached the opinion, that, “the virtues of all the philosophers, nay, of all men, whether they be lawyers or theologians, have only a semblance of virtue, but in reality are vices (‘vitia’).”[188]

But what would be quite incomprehensible, had he actually read the scholastic theologians whose “civil, Aristotelian doctrine of justice” he was so constantly attacking, is, that he charges them with having stopped short at this natural justice and with not having taught anything higher; this higher justice was what he himself had brought to light, this was the “Scriptural justice which depended more on the Divine imputation than on the nature of things,”[189] and was not acquired by deeds but bestowed by God. The fact is, however, that the Schoolmen did not rest content merely with natural justice, but insist that true justice is something higher, supernatural and only to be attained to with the help of grace; it is only in some few later theologians with whom Luther may possibly have been acquainted, that this truth fails to find clear expression. Thomas of Aquin, for instance, distinguishes between the civil virtue of justice and the justice infused in the act of justification. He says expressly: “A man may be termed just in two ways, on account of civil [natural] justice and on account of infused justice. Civil justice is attained to without the grace which comes to the assistance of the natural powers, but infused justice is the work of grace. Neither the one nor the other, however, consists in the mere doing of what is good, for not everyone who does what is good is just, but only he who does it as do the just.”[190]

The Book of Concord on the Curtailment of Free-Will.

When orthodox Lutheranism gained a local and temporary victory in 1580 with the so-called Book of Concord, the authors of the book deplored the inferences drawn from Luther’s moral teaching, particularly from his denial of free-will, the dangers of which had already long been apparent.

We have as it were a sad monument set up to the morality of the enslaved will and the doctrine of imputation, when the Book of Concord, in spite of the sad results it has just admitted, goes on in the same chapter to insist that all Luther’s principles should be preserved intact. “This matter Dr. Luther settled most excellently and thoroughly in his ‘De servo arbitrio’ against Erasmus, where he showed this opinion to be pious and irrefutable. Later on he repeated and further explained the same doctrine in his splendid Commentary on Genesis, particularly in his exposition of ch. xxvi. There, too, he made other matters clear—e.g. the doctrine of the ‘absoluta necessitas’—defended them against the objections of Erasmus and, by his pious explanations, set them above all evil insinuations and misrepresentations. All of which we here corroborate and commend to the diligent study of all.”[196]

Melanchthon’s and his school’s modifications of these extreme doctrines are here sharply repudiated, though Luther himself “never spoke with open disapproval” of Melanchthon’s Synergism.[197]

Christianity merely Inward. The Church Sundered from the World

Among the things which Luther did to the detriment of the moral principle must be numbered his merciless tearing asunder of spiritual and temporal, of Christian and secular life.

The olden Church sought to permeate the world with the religious spirit. Luther’s trend was in a great measure towards making the secular state and its office altogether independent; this, indeed, the more up-to-date sort of ethics is disposed to reckon among his greatest achievements. Luther even went so far as to seek to erect into a regular system this inward, necessary opposition of world and Church. Of this we have a plain example in certain of his instructions to the authorities.[204] Whereas the Church had exhorted people in power to temper with Christianity their administration of civil justice and their use of physical force—urging that the sovereign was a Christian not merely in his private but also in his official capacity,—Luther tells the ruler: The Kingdom of Christ wholly belongs to the order of grace, but the kingdom of the world and worldly life belong to the order of the Law; the two kingdoms are of a different species and belong to different worlds. To the one you belong as a Christian, to the other as a man and a ruler. Christ has nothing to do with the regulations of worldly life, but leaves them to the world; earthly life stands in no need of being outwardly hallowed by the Church.[205] Certain statements to a different effect will be considered elsewhere.

“A great distinction,” Luther said in 1523, “must be made between a worldling and a Christian, i.e. between a Christian and a worldly man. For a Christian is neither man nor woman ... must know nothing and possess nothing in the world.... A prince may indeed be a Christian, but he must not rule as a Christian, and when he rules he does so not as a Christian but as a prince. As an individual he is indeed a Christian, but his office or princedom is no business of his Christianity.” This seems to him proved by his mystical theory that a Christian “must not harm or punish anyone or revenge himself, but forgive everyone and endure patiently all injustice or evil that befalls him.” The theory, needless to say, is based on his misapprehension of the Evangelical Counsels which he makes into commands.[206] On such principles as these, he concludes, it was impossible for any prince to rule, hence “his being a Christian had nothing to do with land and subjects.”[207]

For the same reason he holds that “every man on this earth” comprises two “practically antagonistic personalities,” for “each one has at the same time to suffer, and not to suffer, everything.”[208] The dualism which Luther here creates is due to his extravagant over-statement of the Christian law. The Counsels of Perfection given by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, with which Luther is here dealing (not to resist evil, not to go to law, etc., Mt. v. 19 ff.), are not an invitation addressed to all Christians, and if higher considerations or some duty stands in the way it would certainly denote no perfection to follow them. Luther’s misinterpretation necessarily led him to make a cleavage between Christian life and life in the world.

The dualism, however, in so far as it concerned the authorities had, however, yet another source. For polemical reasons Luther was determined to make an end of the great influence that the olden Church had acquired over public life. Hence he absolves the secular power from all dependence as the latter had itself sought to do even before his time. He refused to see that, in spite of all the abuses which had followed on the Church’s interference in politics during the Middle Ages, mankind had gained hugely by the guidance of religion. To swallow up the secular power in the spiritual had never been part of the Church’s teaching, nor was it ever the ideal of her enlightened representatives; but, for the morality of the great, for the observance of maxims of justice and for the improvement of the nations the principle that religion must not be separated from the life of the State and from the office of those in authority, but must permeate and spiritualise them was, as history proved, truly vital. Subsequent to Luther’s day the tendency to separate the two undoubtedly made unchecked progress. He himself, however, was not consistent in his attitude. On the contrary, he came more and more to desiderate the establishment of the closest possible bond between the civil authorities and religion—provided only that the ruler’s faith was the same as Luther’s. Nevertheless, generally speaking, the separation he had advocated of secular from spiritual became the rule in the Protestant fold.

“Lutheranism,” as Friedrich Paulsen said on the strength of his own observations in regions partly Catholic and partly Protestant, “which is commonly said to have introduced religion into the world and to have reconciled public worship with life and the duties of each one’s calling has, as a matter of fact, led to the complete alienation and isolation of the Church from real life; on the contrary, the older Church, despite all her ‘over-worldliness,’ has contrived to make herself quite at home in the world, and has spun a thousand threads in and around the fabric of its life.” He thinks himself justified in stating: “Protestantism is a religion of the individual, Catholicism is the religion of the people; the former seeks seclusion, the latter publicity. In the one even public worship bears a private character and appears as foreign to the world as the pulpit rhetoric of a Lutheran preacher of the old school; the [Protestant] Church stands outside the bustle of the workaday world in a world of her own.”[209]

We may pass over the fact, that, Luther, by discarding the so-called Counsels reduced morality to a dead level. In the case of all the faithful he abased it to the standard of the Law, doing away with that generous, voluntary service of God which the Church had ever approved and blessed. We have already shown this elsewhere, more particularly in connection with the status of the Evangelical Counsels and the striving after Christian perfection in the monastic life. According to him there are practically no Counsels for those who wish to pass beyond the letter of the Law; there is but one uniform moral Law, and, on the true Christian, even the so-called Counsels are strictly binding.[210]

Life in the world, however, according to his theory has very different laws; here quite another order obtains, which is, often enough, quite the opposite to what man, as a Christian, recognises in his heart to be the true standard. As a Christian he must offer his cheek to the smiter; as a member of the civil order he may not do so, but, on the contrary, must everywhere vindicate his rights. Thus his Christianity, so long as he lives in the world, must perforce be reduced to a matter of inward feeling; it is constantly exposed to the severest tests, or, more accurately, constantly in the need of being explained away. The believer is faced by a twofold order of things, and the regulating of his moral conduct becomes a problem which can never be satisfactorily solved.

“Next to the doctrine of Justification there is hardly any other doctrine which Luther urges so frequently and so diligently as that of the inward character and nature of Christ’s kingdom, and the difference thus existing between it and the kingdom of the world, i.e. the domain of our natural life.”[211]

“Such honour and glory have I by the grace of God—whether it be to the taste or not of the devil and his brood—that, since the days of the Apostles, no doctor, scribe, theologian or lawyer has confirmed, instructed and comforted the consciences of the secular Estates so well and lucidly as I have done by the peculiar grace of God. Of this I am confident. For neither St. Augustine nor St. Ambrose, who are the greatest authorities in this field, are here equal to me.... Such fame as this must be and remain known to God and to men even should they go raving mad over it.”[221]

It is true that his theories contain many an element of good and, had he not been able to appeal to this, he could never have spoken so feelingly on the subject.

The good which lies buried in his teaching had, however, always received its due in Catholicism. Luther, when contrasting the Church’s alleged aversion for secular life with his own exaltation of the dignity of the worldly calling, frequently speaks in language both powerful and fine of the worldly office which God has assigned to each one, not only to the prince but even to the humble workman and tiller of the field, and of the noble moral tasks which thus devolve on the Christian. Yet any aversion to the world as he conceives it had never been a principle within the Church, though individual writers may indeed have erred in this direction. The assertion that the olden Church, owing to her teaching concerning the state of perfection and the Counsels, had not made sufficient allowance for the dignity of the secular calling, has already been fully dealt with.

It is true that Luther, to the admiration of his followers, confronted the old Orders founded by the Church with three new Orders, all Divinely instituted, viz. the home, the State and the Church.[222] But, so far from “notably improving” on the “scholastic ethics” of the past, he did not even contrive to couch his thoughts on these “Orders” in language as lucid as that used long before his day by the theologians and moralists of the Church in voicing the same idea; what he says of these “Orders” also falls short of the past on the score of wealth and variety.[223] Nevertheless the popular ways he had of depicting things as he fain would see them, proved alluring, and this gift of appealing to the people’s fancy and of charming them by the contrast of new and old, helped to build up the esteem in which he has been held ever since; his inclination, moreover, to promote the independence of the individual in the three “Orders,” and to deliver him from all hierarchical influence must from the outset have won him many friends.

Divorce of Religion and Morals

Glancing back at what has already been said concerning Luther’s abasement of morality and considering it in the light of his theories of the Law and Gospel, of assurance of salvation and morality, we find as a main characteristic of Luther’s ethics a far-reaching, dangerous rift between religion and morals. Morality no longer stands in its old position at the side of faith.

Faith and the religion which springs from it are by nature closely and intimately bound up with morality. This is shown by the history of heathenism in general, of modern unbelief in particular. Heathenism or unbelief in national life always signifies a moral decline; even in private life morality reacts on the life of faith and the religious feeling, and vice versa. The harmony between religion and morality arises from the fact that the love of God proceeds from faith in His dominion and Fatherly kindness.

Luther, in spite of his assurances concerning the stimulus of the life of faith and of love, severed the connection between faith and morality and placed the latter far below the former. His statements concerning faith working by love, had they been more than mere words, would, in themselves, have led him back to the very standpoint of the Church he hated. In reality he regards the “Law” as something utterly hostile to the “pious” soul; before the true “believer” the Law shrinks back, though, to the man not yet justified by “faith,” it serves as a taskmaster and a hangman. The “Law” thus loses the heavenly virtue with which it was stamped. In Luther’s eyes the only thing of any real value is that religion which consists in faith in the forgiveness of sins.

Where this tendency to subordinate all to God and to exalt the merits of Christ finds more chastened expression in Luther’s writings, when, in his hearty, homely fashion, he paints the love of the Master or His virtues as the pattern of all morality, or pictures in his own peculiar realistic style the conditions of everyday life the better to lash abuses, then the reader is able to appreciate the better side of his ethics and the truly classic example he sometimes sets of moral exhortations. It would surely be inexplicable how so many earnest Protestant souls, from his day to our own, should have found and still find a stimulus in his practical works, for instance, in his Postils, did these works not really contain a substratum of truth, food for thought and a certain gift of inspiration. Even the man who studies the long list of Luther’s practical writings simply from the standpoint of the scholar and historian—though he may not always share Luther’s opinions—cannot fail to acknowledge that the warmth with which Luther speaks of those Christian truths accepted by all, leaves a deep impression and re-echoes within the soul like a voice from our common home.

On the one hand Luther rightly retained many profoundly religious elements of the mediÆval theology, indeed, owing to his curious way of looking at things, he actually outdid in mediÆvalism the Middle Ages themselves, for he merged all human freedom in the Divine action, a thing those Ages had not dared to do.

And yet, on the other hand, to conclude our survey of his “abasement of practical Christianity,” he is so ultramodern on a capital point of his ethics as to merit being styled the precursor of modern subjectivism as applied to morals. For all his new ethical precepts and rules, beyond the Decalogue and the Natural Law, are devoid of objective obligation; they lack the sanction which alone would have rendered them capable of guiding the human conscience.

The Lack of Obligation and Sanction

Luther’s moral instructions differed in one weighty particular from those of the olden Church.

As he himself insists at needless length, they were a collection of personal opinions and exhortations which appeared to him to be based on Holy Scripture or the Law of Nature—and in many instances, though not always, actually did rest on this foundation. When he issued new pronouncements of a practical character, for instance, concerning clandestine espousals, or annulled the olden order of public worship, the sacraments, or the Commandments of the Church, he was wont to say, that, it was his intention merely to advise consciences and to arouse the Evangelical consciousness. He took this line partly because he was conscious of having no personal authority, partly because he wished to act according to the principles proclaimed in his “Von der Freyheyt eynes Christen Menschen,” or, again, in order to prevent the rise of dissent and the resistance he always dreaded to any attempt to lay down categorical injunctions. Thus his ethical regulations, so far as they differed from the olden ones, amounted merely to so many invitations to act according to the standard set up, whereas the character of the ethical legislation of Catholicism is essentially binding. Having destroyed the outward authority of the Church, he had nothing more to count upon than the “ministry of the Word,” and everything now depended on the minister’s being able to convince the believer, now freed from the ancient trammels.

In but few points does the purely subjective character of the new religion and morality advocated by Luther stand out so clearly as in this absence of any objective sanction or higher authority for his new ethics. Christianity hitherto had appealed to the divine, unchangeable dignity of the Church, which, by her infallible teaching, her discipline and power to punish, insured the observance of law and order in the religious domain. But, now, according to the new teaching, man—who so sadly needs a clear and definite lead for his moral life—besides the Decalogue, “clear” Bible text and Natural Law, is left with nothing but “recommendations” devoid of any binding force; views are dinned into his ears the carrying out of which is left solely to his feelings, or, as Luther says, to his “conscience.”

Deprived of the quieting guidance of an authority which proclaims moral obligations and sees that they are carried out, conscience and personality tend in his system to assume quite a new rÔle.

6. The part played by Conscience and Personality. Luther’s warfare with his old friend Caspar Schwenckfeld

Protestants have confidently opined, that “Luther mastered anew the personal foundation of morality by reinstating conscience in its rights”; by insisting on feeling he came to restore to “personality the dignity” which in previous ages it had lost under the ban of a “legalism” devoid of “morality.”

To counter such views it may be of use to give some account of the way in which Luther taught conscience to exercise her rights. The part he assigns to the voice within which judges of good and evil, scarcely bears out the contention that he really strengthened the “foundation of morality.” The vague idea of “personality” may for the while be identified with conscience, especially as in the present connection “person” stands for the medium of conscience.[231]

On Conscience and its Exercise in General

To quiet the conscience, to find some inward support for one’s actions in the exercise of one’s own will, this is what Luther constantly insists on in the moral instructions he gives, at the same time pointing to his own example.[232] What was the nature of his own example? His rebellion against the Church’s authority was to him the cause of a long, fierce struggle with himself. He sought to allay the anxiety which stirred his soul to its depths by the reassuring thought, that all doubts were from the devil from whom alone all scruples come; he sternly bade his soul rest secure and as resolutely refused to hearken to any doubts regarding the truth of his new Evangel. His new and quite subjective doctrines he defended in the most subjective way imaginable and, to those of his friends whose consciences were troubled, he recommends a similar course of action; he even on several occasions told people thus disturbed in mind whom he wished to reassure, that they must listen to his, Luther’s, voice as though it were the voice of God. This was his express advice to his pupil Schlaginhaufen[233] and, in later days, to his friend Spalatin, who also had become a prey to melancholy.[234] He himself claimed to have been delivered from his terrors by having simply accepted as a God-sent message the encouraging words of Bugenhagen.[235]

In the above instances the Catholic could find support for his conscience in the infallible authority of the Church. It was this authority which forbade him Luther’s writings as heretical, and, in the case of contrition—which Luther also brings forward—it was likewise his religious faith, which, consonantly with man’s natural feeling, demanded such sorrow for sin. In earlier days authority and faith were the reliable guides of conscience without which it was impossible to do. Luther left conscience to itself or referred it to his own words and his reading of Scripture, though this again, as he himself acknowledged, was not an absolute rule; thus he leaves it a prey to a most unhappy uncertainty—unless, indeed, it was able to “find assurance” in the way he wishes.

But what voice was to decide in the case of those who were wavering?

On the profoundest questions of moral teaching, it is, according to Luther, the “inward judgment” that is to decide what “spirit” must be followed. “For every Christian,” he writes, “is enlightened in heart and conscience by the Holy Ghost and by God’s Grace in such a way as to be able to judge and decide with the utmost certainty on all doctrines.” It is to this that the Apostle refers when he says: “A spiritual man judges all things” (1 Cor. iii. 15). Beyond this, moreover, Scripture constitutes an “outward judgment” whereby the Spirit is able to convince men, it being a “ghostly light, much brighter than the sun.”[248] It is highly important “to be certain” of the meaning of the Bible,[249] though here Luther’s own interpretation was, needless to say, to hold the field. The preachers instructed by him were to say: “I know that the doctrine is right in God’s sight” and “boast” of the inward certainty they shared with him.[250]

Luther’s rules for the guidance of conscience in other matters were quite similar. Subjectivism becomes a regular system for the guidance of conscience. In this sense it was to the person that the final decision was left. But whether this isolation of man from man, this snatching of the individual from dutiful submission to an authority holding God’s place, was really a gain to the individual, to religion and to society, or not rather the reverse, is only to be settled in the light of the history of private judgment which was the outcome of Luther’s new principle.

The Help of Conscience at Critical Junctures

It was the part played by subjectivism in Luther’s ethics that led him in certain circumstances to extend suspiciously the rights of “conscience.”

In the matter of the bigamy of Philip of Hesse he soothed the Elector of Saxony by telling him he must ignore the general outcry, since the Landgrave had acted “from his need of conscience”; in his “conscience” the Prince regarded his “wedded concubine” as “no mere prostitute.” “By God’s Grace I am well able to distinguish between what by way of grace and before God may be permitted in the case of a troubled conscience and what, apart from such need of conscience, is not right before God in outward matters.”[257] In his extreme embarrassment, consequent on this matrimonial tangle, Luther deemed it necessary to make so hair-splitting a distinction between lawfulness and permissibility when need of conscience required it. The explanation—that, in such cases, something must be conceded “before God and by way of grace”—which he offers together with the Old-Testament texts as justifying the bigamy, must look like a fatal concession to laxity.

He also appealed to conscience in another marriage question where he made the lawfulness of bigamy depend entirely on the conscience.

A man, who, owing to his wife’s illness was prevented from matrimonial intercourse, wished, on the strength of Carlstadt’s advice, to take a second wife. Luther thereupon wrote to Chancellor BrÜck, on Jan. 27, 1524, telling him the Prince should reply as follows: “The husband must be sure and convinced in his own conscience by means of the Word of God that it is lawful in his case. Therefore let him seek out such men as may convince him by the Word of God, whether Carlstadt [who was then in disgrace at Court], or some other, matters not at all to the Prince. For if the fellow is not sure of his case, then the permission of the Prince will not make him so; nor is it for the Prince to decide on this point, for it is the priests’ business to expound the Word of God, and, as Zacharias says, from their lips the Law of the Lord must be learned. I, for my part, admit I can raise no objection if a man wishes to take several wives since Holy Scripture does not forbid this; but I should not like to see this example introduced amongst Christians.... It does not beseem Christians to seize greedily and for their own advantage on everything to which their freedom gives them a right.... No Christian surely is so God-forsaken as not to be able to practise continence when his partner, owing to the Divine dispensation, proves unfit for matrimony. Still, we may well let things take their course.”[258]

On the occasion of his own marriage with Bora we may remember how he had declared with that defiance of which he was a past master, that he would take the step the better to withstand the devil and all his foes. (Vol. ii., p. 175 ff.)

A curious echo of the way in which he could set conscience at defiance is to be met with in his instructions to his assistant Justus Jonas, who, as soon as his first wife was dead, cast about for a second. Luther at first was aghast, owing to Biblical scruples, at the scandal which second marriages on the part of the regents of the Church would give and entreated him at least to wait a while. When he found it impossible to dissuade Jonas, he warned him of the “malicious gossip of our foes,” “who are ever eager to make capital out of our example”; nevertheless, he goes on to say that he had nothing else to urge against another union, so long as Jonas “felt within himself that spirit of defiance which would enable him, after the step, to ignore all the outcry and the hate of all the devils and of men, and not to attempt, nay, to scorn any effort to stop the mouths of men, or to crave their favour.”[259]

The “spirit of defiance” which he here requires as a condition for the step becomes elsewhere a sort of mystical inspiration which may justify an action of doubtful morality.

Conscience in the Religious Question of the Day

The new method of dealing with conscience is more closely connected with Luther’s new method of inducing faith than might at first sight appear.

Was it possible, according to Luther, to be conscientiously opposed to his teaching on faith and morals? At least in theory, he does go so far in certain statements as to recognise the possibility of such conscientious scruples. In these utterances he would even appear to surrender the whole weight and authority of his theological and ethical discoveries, fundamental though they were to his innovations. “I have served the Church zealously with what God has given me and what I owe to Him. Whoever does not care for it, let him read or listen to others. It matters but little should they feel no need of me.”[271] With regard to public worship, it is left “to each one to make up his conscience as to how he shall use his freedom.” “I am not your preacher,” so he wrote to the “Strasburg Christians,” who were inclined to distrust his exclusiveness; “no one is bound to believe me; let each man look to himself”;[272] all are to be referred “from Luther,” “to Christ.”[273]

Such statements, however, cannot stand against his constant insistence on his Divine mission; they are rather of psychological interest as showing how suddenly he passes from one idea to another. Moreover, his statement last mentioned, often instanced by Protestants as testifying to his breadth of mind, is nullified almost on the same page by the solemn assurance, that, his “Gospel is the true Gospel” and that everything that contradicts it is “heresy,” for, indeed, as had been foretold by the Apostle Paul (1 Cor. xi. 19), “heresies” must needs arise.[274]

And, in point of fact, those teachers who felt themselves bound in conscience to differ from him and go their own way—for instance, the “Sacramentarians” in their interpretation of the words of consecration—were made to smart. Of this the example of Schwenckfeld was a new and striking proof.

The contradiction presented on the one hand by Luther’s disposition to grant the most absolute freedom of conscience, and on the other by his rigid exclusiveness, is aptly described by Friedrich Paulsen: “In the region of morals Luther leaves the decision to the individual conscience as instructed by the Word of God. To rely on human authority in questions of morals appeared to him not much better than blasphemy.... True enough, however, this very Luther, at a later date, attacked those whose conscience found in God’s Word doctrines at all different from those taught at Wittenberg.”[275]

Hence, neither to the heretics in his own camp nor to the adherents of the olden faith would he allow the right of private judgment, so greatly extolled both by himself and his followers. Nothing had been dearer to the people of mediÆval times, who for all their love of freedom were faithful children of the Church, than regard and esteem for the rights of personality in its own domain. Personality, denoting man’s unfettered and reasonable nature stamped with its own peculiar individuality, is assuredly something noble. The Catholic Church, far from setting limits to the development of personality, promoted both its real freedom and the growth of individuality in ways suited to man’s nature and his supernatural vocation. Even the monastic life, so odious to Luther, was anything but “hostile to the ideal of personality.” An impartial observer, prepared to disregard fortuitous abuses, could have seen even then, that the religious life strives after the fairest fruits of ethical personality, which are fostered by the very sacrifice of self-will: Obedience is but a sacrifice “made in the interests of personality.”[276] Mere wilfulness and the spirit of “defiance,” ever ready to overstep the bounds set by reason and grace, creates, not a person, but a “superman,” whose existence we could well spare; of such a being Luther’s behaviour reminds us more than once.

After all we have said it would be superfluous to deal in detail with the opinion expressed above (p. 66) by certain Protestant judges, viz. that Luther reinstated conscience, which had fallen into the toils of “legalism,” and set it again on its “true basis,” insisting on “feeling” and on real “morality.” Nor shall we enquire whether it is seriously implied, that, before Luther’s day, people were not aware that the mere “legality” of a deed did not suffice unless first of all morality was recognised as the true guide of conduct.

We may repeat yet once again that Luther was not the first to brand “outward holiness-by-works” in the sphere of morality.[277] Berthold of Ratisbon, whose voice re-echoed through the whole of Germany, summing up the teaching of the mediÆval moral theologians, reprobates most sternly any false confidence in outward deeds. No heaping up of external works, no matter how eager, can, according to him, prove of any profit to the soul, not even if the sinner, after unheard-of macerations, goes loaded with chains on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and there lays himself down to die within the very sepulchre of the Lord; all that, so he points out with an eloquence all his own, would be thrown away were there lacking the inward spirit of love and contrition for the sins committed.

The doctrine on contrition of the earlier Catholic theologians and popular writers, which we have already had occasion to review, forms an excellent test when compared with Luther’s own, by which to decide the question: Which is the outward and which the inward morality? Their doctrine is based both on Scripture and on the traditions of antiquity. Similarly the Catholic teaching on moral self-adaptation to Christ, such as we find it, for instance, in St. Benedict’s Prologue to his world-famous Rule, that textbook of the mediÆval ascetics, in the models and examples of the Fathers and even in the popular Catholic works of piety so widely read in Luther’s day, strikingly confutes the charge, that, by the stress it laid on certain commandments and practices, Catholicism proved it had lost sight of “the existence of a living personal morality” and that it fell to Luther once more to recall to life this ideal. The imitation of Christ in the spirit of love was undoubtedly regarded as the highest aim of morality, and this aim necessarily included “personal morality” in its most real sense, and Luther was not in the least necessity of inaugurating any new ideals of virtue.

Luther’s Warfare with his old friend Caspar Schwenckfeld

Caspar Schwenckfeld, a man of noble birth hailing from Ossig near LÜben in Silesia, after having studied at Cologne, Frankfurt-on-the-Oder and perhaps also at Erfurt, was, in 1519, won over by Luther’s writings to the religious innovations. Being idealistically inclined, the Wittenberg preaching against formalism in religion and on the need of returning to a truly spiritual understanding of the Bible roused him to enthusiasm. He attempted, with rather more logic than Luther, to put in practice the latter’s admonitions concerning the inward life and therefore started a movement, half pietist, half mystic, for bringing together those who had been really awakened.

Schwenckfeld was a man of broad mind, with considerable independence of judgment and of a noble and generous disposition. His good position in the world gave him what many of the other Lutheran leaders lacked, viz. a free hand. His frank criticism did not spare the faults in their preaching. The sight of the sordid elements which attached themselves to Luther strengthened him in his resolve to establish communities—first of all in Silesia—modelled on the very lines roughly sketched by Luther, which should present a picture of the apostolic age of the Church. The Duke of Silesia and many of the nobility were induced to desert Catholicism, and a wide field was won in Silesia for the new ideals of Wittenberg.

In spite of his high esteem for Luther, Schwenckfeld wrote, in 1523: It is evident “that little improvement can be discerned emerging from the new teaching, and that those who boast of the Evangel lead a bad and scandalous life.... This moves us not a little, indeed pierces our heart when we hear of it.”[278] To the Duke he dedicated, in 1524, a writing entitled: “An exhortation regarding the misuse of sundry notable Articles of the Evangel, through the wrong understanding of which the common man is led into the freedom of the flesh and into error.” The book forms a valuable source of information on the religious state of the people at the time of the rise of Lutheranism. Therein he laments, with deep feeling and with an able pen, that so many Lutherans were being influenced by the most worldly of motives, and that a pernicious tendency towards freedom from social restrictions was rife amongst them.[279]

Though Schwenckfeld was all his life equally averse to the demagogue Anabaptist movement and to Zwinglianism with its rationalistic tendency, yet his fate led him into ways very much like theirs. Together with his associate Valentine Krautwald, a former precentor, he attacked the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament, giving, however, a new interpretation of the words of Institution., different from that of Zwingli and Œcolampadius. To the fanaticism of the Anabaptists he approximated by his opposition to any organised Church, to the sacraments as means of grace, and to all that appeared to him to deviate from the spirit of the Apostolic Church.

He besought Luther in a personal interview at Wittenberg, on Dec. 1, 1525, to agree to his doctrine of the Sacrament, explaining to him at the same time its affinity with his supposedly profounder conception of the atonement, the sacraments and the life of Christ as followed in his communities; he also invited him in fiery words to throw over the popular churches in which all the people received the Supper and rather to establish congregations of awakened Christians. Luther, though in no unfriendly manner, put him off; throughout the interview he addressed him as “Dear Caspar,” but he flatly refused to give any opinion. According to Schwenckfeld’s own account he even allowed that his doctrine of the Sacrament was “plausible” ... if only it could be proved, and, on parting, whispered in his ear: “Keep quiet for a while.”[280]

When, however, the Sacramentarian movement began to assume alarming dimensions, and the Swiss started quoting Schwenckfeld in favour of their view of the Sacrament, Luther was exasperated and began to assail his Silesian fellow-worker. His indignation was increased by certain charges against the nobleman which reached him from outside sources. He replied on April 14, 1526, to certain writings sent him by Schwenckfeld and Krautwald by an unconditional refusal to agree, though he did so briefly and with reserve.[281] On Jan. 4, of the same year, referring to Zwingli, Œcolampadius and Schwenckfeld in a writing to the “Christians of Reutlingen” directed against the Sacramentarians he said: “Just behold and comprehend the devil and his coarseness”; in it he had included Schwenckfeld, though without naming him, as a “spirit and head” among the three who were attacking the Sacrament.[282]

From that time onward the Silesian appeared to him one of the most dangerous of heretics. He no longer admitted in his case the rights of conscience and private judgment which Luther claimed so loudly for himself and defended in the case of his friends, and to which Schwenckfeld now appealed. It was nothing to him that on many occasions, and even till his death, Schwenckfeld expressed the highest esteem for Luther and gratitude for his services in opening up a better way of theology.

In 1529, two years after his great interior experience, Schwenckfeld left his home, and, on a hint from the Duke of Silesia, severed his connection with him, being unwilling to expose him to the risk of persecution. Thereafter he led a wandering existence for thirty years; until his seventy-second year he lived with strangers at Strasburg, Esslingen, Augsburg, Spires, Ulm and elsewhere. After 1540, when the Lutheran theologians at Schmalkalden published an admonition against him, his history was more that of a “fugitive” than a mere “wanderer.”[289]

Still, he was untiringly active in furthering his cause by means of lectures and circular letters, as well as by an extensive private correspondence. He scattered the seeds of his peculiar doctrines amongst the nobility in particular and their dependents in country parts. Many people of standing either belonged or were well-disposed to his school, as Duke Christopher of WÜrtemberg wrote in 1564; according to him there were many at Augsburg and Nuremberg, in the Tyrol, in AllgÄu, Silesia and one part of the Mark.[290] “The well-known intolerance of the Reformation and of its preachers,” remarks the Protestant historian of Schwenckfeld, “could not endure in their body a man who had his own views on the Sacraments and refused for conscience sake to take part in the practices of their Church.... He wandered, like a hunted deer, without hearth or home, through the cities and forests of South Germany, pursued by Luther and the preachers.”[291] As late as 1558 Melanchthon incited the authorities against him, declaring that “such sophistry as his requires to be severely dealt with by the princes.”[292]

Not long after Schwenckfeld departed this life at Ulm in 1561. His numerous following in Silesia migrated, first to Saxony, then to Holland and England, and finally to Pennsylvania, where they still exist to this day.

Luther’s indignation against Schwenckfeld knew no bounds. In conversation he spoke of him as Swinesfield,[293] and, in his addresses and writings, still more commonly as Stinkfield, a name which was also repeatedly applied by his followers to the man they so disliked.[294]

In his “Kurtz Bekentnis vom heiligen Sacrament” (1545) Luther again gives vigorous expression to his aversion to the “Fanatics and foes of the Sacrament, Carlstadt, Zwingli, Œcolampadius and ‘Stinkfield’”; they were heretics “whom he had warned sufficiently” and who were to be avoided.[300] He had refused to listen to or to answer that “slanderer Schwenckfeld” because everything was wasted on him. “This you may well tell those among whom, no doubt, Stinkfield makes my name to stink. I like being abused by such slanderers.” If by their attacks upon the Sacrament they call the “Master of the house Beelzebub, how should they not abuse His household?”[301]

7. Self-Improvement and the Reformation of the Church

Self-betterment, by the leading of a Christian life and, particularly, by striving after Christian perfection, had in Catholic times been inculcated by many writers and even by first-rank theologians. In this field it was usual to take for granted, both in popular manuals and in learned treatises, as the general conviction, that religion teaches people to strive after what is highest, whether in each one’s ordinary duties of daily life, or in the ecclesiastical or religious state. The power of the moral teaching was to stand revealed in the struggle after the ideal thus set forth.

Did Luther Found a School of True Christian Life?

Luther, of set purpose, refused to make any attempt to found, in the strict sense of the term, a spiritual school of Christian life or perfection. He ever found it a difficult matter even to give any methodical instructions to this end.

Though he dealt fully and attractively with many details of life, not only in his sermons and commentaries, but also in special writings which still serve as inspirations to practical Christianity, yet he would never consent to draft anything in the shape of a system for reaching virtue, still less for attaining perfection. On one occasion he even deliberately refused his friend Bugenhagen’s request that he would sketch out a rule of Christian life, appealing to his well-known thesis that “the true Christian has no need of rules for his conduct, for the spirit of faith guides him to do all that God requires and that brotherly love demands of him.”[302]

It may indeed be urged that his failure to bequeath to posterity any regular guide to the spiritual life was due to lack of time, that his active and unremitting struggle with his opponents left him no leisure, and, in point of fact, it is quite true that his controversy did deprive him of the requisite freedom and peace of mind. It may also be allowed that no one man can do everything and that Luther had not the methodical mind needed for such a task, which, in his case, was rendered doubly hard by his revolution in doctrine. The main ground, however, is that there were too many divergent elements in his moral teaching which it was impossible to harmonize; so much in it was false and awry that no logical combination of the whole was possible. Hence his readiness to invoke the theory, which really sprung from the very depths of his ethics, viz. that the true Christian has no need of rules because everything he has to do is the natural outcome of faith.

In his “Sermon von den guten Wercken” (1520), he expressed this in a way that could not fail to find a following, though it could hardly be described as in the interests of moral effort. Each one must take as his first rule of conduct, not on any account to bind himself, but to keep himself free from all troublesome laws. The very title of the tract in question, so frequently reprinted during Luther’s lifetime, would have led people to expect to find in it his practical views on ethics. Characteristically enough, instead of attempting to define the exact nature and value of moral effort, Luther penned what, in reality, was merely an appendix to his new doctrine on faith. He himself, in his dedication of it to Duke Johann of Saxony, admits this of the first and principal part: “Here I have striven to show how we must exercise and make use of faith in all our good works and consider it as the chiefest of works. If God allows me I shall at some other time deal with faith itself, how we must each day pray and speak it.”[303]

As, however, no other of Luther’s writings contains so many elements of moral teaching drawn from his theology, some further remarks on it may here be in place, especially as he himself set such store on the sermon, that, while engaged on it, referring evidently to the first part, he wrote to Spalatin, that, in his opinion it “would be the best thing he had yet published.”[304] KÖstlin felt justified in saying: “The whole sermon may be termed the Reformer’s first exposition and vindication of the Evangelical teaching on morals.”[305]

His exhortations to a devout life (some of them fine enough in themselves, for instance, what he says on the trusting prayer of the sinner, on the prayers of the congregation which cry aloud to heaven and on patience under bitter sufferings), are, as a rule, intermingled to such an extent with polemical matter, that, instead of a school of the spiritual life, we seem rather to have before us the turmoil of the battlefield.[317] To understand this we must bear in mind that he wrote the book amidst the excitement into which he was thrown by the launching of the ban.

In the somewhat earlier writing on the Magnificat, which might equally well have served as a medium for the enforcing of virtue and which in some parts Luther did so use,[318] we also find the same unbridled spirit of hatred and abuse. Nor is it lacking even in his later works of edification. The most peaceable ethical excursus Luther contrives to disfigure by his bitterness, his calumnies and, not seldom, by his venom.

In the Sermon on Good Works as soon as he comes to speak of prayer he has a cut at the formalism of the prayer beloved of the Papists;[319] he then proceeds to abuse the churches and convents for their mode of life, their chanting and babbling, all performed in “obstinate unbelief,” etc. At least one-half of his instruction on fasting consists in mockery of the fasting as practised by the Papists. His anger, however, reaches its climax in the 4th Commandment, where he completely forgets his subject, and, losing all mastery over himself, wildly storms against the spiritual authorities and their disorders.[320] The only allusion to anything that by any stretch of imagination would be termed a work, is the following:[321] The rascally behaviour of the Church’s officers and episcopal or clerical functionaries “ought to be repressed by the secular sword because no other means is available.” “The best thing, and the only remaining remedy, would be, that the King, Princes, nobles, townships and congregations should take the law into their hands, so that the bishops and clergy might have good cause to fear and therefore to obey.” For everything must make room for the Word of God.

“Neither Rome, nor heaven, nor earth” may decree anything contrary to the first three Commandments.

In dealing with these first three Commandments the booklet releases the reader at one stroke from all the Church’s laws hitherto observed. “Hence I allow each man to choose the day, the food and the amount of his fasting.”[322] “Where the spirit of Christ is, there all is free, for faith does not allow itself to be tied down to any work.”[323]

“The Christian who lives by faith has no need of any teacher’s good works.”[324] Here we can see the chief reason why Luther’s instructions on virtue and the spiritual life are so meagre.

A Lutheran Theologian on the Lack of any Teaching Concerning “Emancipation from the World”

Even from Protestant theologians we hear the admission that Luther’s Reformation failed to make sufficient allowance for the doctrine of piety; he neglected, so they urge, the question of man’s “emancipation from the world,” so that, even to the present day, Protestantism, and traditional Lutheran theology in particular, lacks any definite rule of piety. According to these critics, ever since Luther’s day practical and adequate instructions had been wanting with regard to what, subsequent to the reconciliation with the Father brought about by Justification, still remains “to be done in the Father’s house”; nor are we told how the life in Christ is to be led, of which nevertheless the Apostle Paul speaks so eloquently, though this is in reality the “main question in Christianity” and concerns the “vital interests of the Church.”

The remarks just quoted occur in an article by the theologian Julius Kaftan, Oberkonsistorialrat at Berlin, published in the “Zeitschrift fÜr Theologie und Kirche” in 1908 under the title, “Why does the Evangelical Church know no doctrine of the Redemption in the narrower sense, and how may this want be remedied?” We all the more gladly append some further remarks by a theologian, who, as a rule, is by no means favourably disposed to Catholicism.

According to Kaftan, Luther indeed supplied “all the elements” for the upbuilding of a doctrine of “redemption from the world”; he gave “the stimulus” to the thought; it is “not as though we had no conception of it.”

But he, and the Reformation as a whole, failed to furnish any “actual, detailed doctrine” on this subject because their attack was directed, and had to be directed, against the ideal of piety as they found it in the Church’s monastic life; they destroyed it, so the author opines, because it was only under this distorted monkish shape that the “Christian idea of redemption from the world was then met.”[325] The Reformation omitted to replace it by a better system. It suffers from having fallen into the way of giving “too great prominence to the doctrine of Justification,” whereas the salvation “bestowed by Christ is not merely Justification and forgiveness of sins,” as the traditional Lutheran theology seems on the surface to assume even to-day, but rather the “everlasting possession” to be reached by a Christ-like life; Justification is but the road to this possession. Because people failed to keep this in view the doctrine of the real “work of salvation” has from the beginning been made far too little of.

A further reason which explains the neglect is, according to Kaftan, the following: In Catholicism it is the Church which acts as the guide to piety and supplies all the spiritual aids required; she acts as intermediary between God and the faithful. But “the Evangelical teaching rejected the Church (in this connection) as a supernatural agency for the dispensation of the means of salvation. In her place it set the action of the Spirit working by means of the Word of God.” Since this same teaching stops short at the Incarnation and Satisfaction of Christ, it has “no room for any doctrine of redemption (from the world) as a work of God.”[326] Pietism, with all its irregularities, was merely an outcome of this deficiency; but even the Pietists never succeeded in formulating such a doctrine of redemption.

It is to the credit of the author that he feels this want deeply and points out the way in which theology can remedy it.[327] He would fain see introduced a system of plain directions, though framed on lines different from those of the “ostensibly final doctrinal teaching” of the Formula of Concord,[328] i.e. instructions to the devout Christian how to manifest in his life in the world the death and resurrection of Christ which St. Paul experienced in himself. Much too much emphasis had been laid in Protestantism on Luther’s friendliness to the world and the joy of living, which he was the first to teach Christians in opposition to the doctrine of the Middle Ages; yet the other idea, of redemption from the world, must nevertheless retain a lasting significance in Christianity. Although, before Luther’s day, the Church had erroneously striven to attain to the latter solely in the monastic life, yet there is no doubt “that the most delicate blossoms of pre-Reformation piety sprang from this soil, and that the best forces in the Church owed their origin to this source.” Is it merely fortuitous, continues the author, “that the ‘Imitation of Christ,’ by Thomas À Kempis, should be so widely read throughout Christendom, even by Evangelicals? Are there not many Evangelical Christians who could witness that this book has been a great help to them in a crisis of their inner life? But whoever knows it knows what the idea of redemption from the world there signifies.” All this leads our author to the conclusion: “The history of Christianity and of the Church undoubtedly proves that here [in the case of the defect in the Lutheran theology he is instancing] it is really a question of a motive power and central thought of our religion.”[329] He points out to the world of our day, “that growing civilisation culminates in disgust with the world and with civilisation.” “Then,” he continues, “the soul again cries for God, for the God Who is above all the world and in Whom alone the heart finds rest. As it ever was, so is it still to-day.”[330]

It is a satisfaction to hear this call which must rejoice the heart of every believer. The same, however, had been heard throughout the ancient Church and had met with a happy response. Not in the “Imitation” only, but in a hundred other writings of Catholics, mystic and ascetic, could our author have found the ideals of Christian perfection and of the rest in God which comes from inward severance from the world, all expressed with the utmost clearness and the warmest feeling. Nor was Christian perfection imprisoned within the walls of the monasteries; it also flourished in the breezy atmosphere of the world. The Church taught the universality of this ideal of perfect love of God, of the imitation of Christ and of detachment from the world, and she recommended it indiscriminately to all classes, inviting people to practise it under all conditions of life and expending liberally in all directions her supernatural powers in order to attain her aim. Among the best of those whose writings inaugurated a school of piety may be classed St. Bernard and Gerson, in whom Luther had found light and edification when still a zealous monk. With him, however, the case was very different. Of the works he bequeathed to posterity the Protestant theologian referred to above, says regretfully: They contain neither a “doctrine” nor a definite “scheme of instruction” on “that side of life which faces God.” “No clear, conclusive thoughts on this all-important matter are to be found.”

On the other hand it must be added that there is no want of “clear, conclusive thoughts” to a quite opposite effect; not merely on enjoyment of the world, but on a kind of sovereignty over it which is scarcely consistent with the effort after self-betterment.

The Means of Self-Reform and their Reverse Side

Self-denial as the most effective means of self-education in the good, and self-conquest in outward and inward things, receive comparatively small attention from Luther; rather he is set on delivering people from the “anxiety-breeding,” traditional prejudice in favour of spiritual renunciation, obedience to the Church and retrenchment in view of the evil. This deliverance, thanks to its alluring and attractive character, was welcomed, in spite of Luther’s repeated warnings against any excess of the spirit of the world. His abandonment of the path of perfection so strongly recommended by Christ and his depreciation of “peculiar” works and “singular” practices were more readily understood and also more engaging than his words in favour of real works of faith. He set up his own inward experiences of the difficulty and, as he thought, utter futility of the conflict with self, together with his hostility to all spiritual efforts exceeding the common bounds, as the standard for others, and, in fact, even for the Church; in the Catholic past, on the other hand, the faithful had been taught to recognise the standard of the Church, their teacher and guide, as the rule by which to judge of their own experiences.

Here to prove what we have said, would necessitate the repetition of what has already been given elsewhere.

Luther’s writings, particularly his letters, also contain certain instructions, which, fortunately, have not become the common property of Protestants, but which everybody must feel to be absolutely opposed to anything like self-betterment. We need only call to mind his teaching, that temptations to despondency and despair are best withstood by committing some sin in defiance of the devil, or by diverting the mind to sensual and carnal distractions.[331] The words: “What matters it if we commit a fresh sin?”[332] since through faith we have forgiveness, and the other similar utterance, “Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe more boldly still,” are characteristic of him, though he would have been unwilling to see them pressed or taken too literally. By these and other statements he did, however, seriously endanger the ethical character of sin; in reality he diminished the abhorrence for sin, though no doubt he did not fully perceive the consequences of his act.[333]

To the man who had become sensible of the ensnaring influence of the world and of its evil effects upon himself, or who on account of his mental build felt himself endangered by it, Catholic moralists advised retirement, recollection, self-examination and solitude. Luther was certainly not furthering the cause of perfection when he repeatedly insisted, with an emphasis that is barely credible, that solitude must be avoided as the deadly foe of the true life of the soul, and that what should be sought was rather company and distraction. Solitude was a temptation to sin. “I too find,” so he says, “that I never fall into sin more frequently than when I am alone.... Quietude calls forth the worst of thoughts. Whatever our trouble be, it then becomes much more dangerous,” etc.[334] Of course, in the case of persons of gloomy disposition Luther was quite right in recommending company, but it was just in doing so that he exceeded the bounds in his praise of sensual distractions;[335] of his own example, too, he makes far too much. On the other hand, all the great men in the Church had sought to find the guiding light of self-knowledge in solitude; this they regarded as a school for the subjugation of unruly emotions.

Not only were self-control and self-restraint something strange to Luther,[336] but he often went so far as to adduce curious theoretical reasonings of his own to prove that they could have no place in his public life and controversies, and why he and his helpers were compelled to give the reins to anger, hatred and abuse. Thus the work of self-improvement was renounced in yet another essential point.

Then again with regard to prayer. His exhortations thereto are numerous enough and he himself prayed frequently. But it is not necessary to be an ascetic to see that several things are wanting in his admonitions to prayer. The first is the salt of contrition and compunction. He was less alive to the wholesome underlying feeling of melancholy that characterises the soul which prays to God in the consciousness of having abused its free-will, than he was to the suggestions of self-confidence and assurance of salvation. The second thing wanting is the humility which should permeate prayer even when exalted to the highest limits of trusting confidence. If man, as Luther taught, is incapable of any work, then of course there can be no sense of shame at not having done more to please God and to merit greater grace from Him. Moreover, Luther indirectly encouraged people to pray in the bold consciousness of being justified and to look for the keeping of the law as a natural consequence of such “faith.” Lastly, and this sums up everything, we miss the spirit of love in his often so strongly worded and eloquent exhortations to prayer; the spirit which should have led him to resignation to God’s designs, and to commit his life’s work to the Will of God with a calm indifference as to its eventual success.[337] Hardly ever do we find any trace of that zeal for souls which embraces the whole of God’s broad kingdom even to the heathen, in short, the whole of the Church’s sphere.[338] On the other hand, however, he expressly exhorts his followers to increase the ardour of their prayers, after his own example, by interspersing them with curses on all whose views were different.[339]

In place of the pleasing variety of the old exercises of prayer—from the Office recited by the clergy with its daily commemoration of the Saints down to the multifarious devotions of the people, to say nothing of the great Sacrifice of the Altar, the very heart’s pulse of the Church—he recommends as a rule only the Our Father, the Creed and the Psalms—prayers indeed rich beyond all others and which will ever hold the first place among Christian devotions. But had they not been brought closer to the heart formerly in the inner and outer life of prayer dealt with in the writings of the Catholic masters of the spiritual life, and exemplified in the churches and monasteries, and even in private houses and the very streets? But behind all this rich display Luther saw lurking the demon of “singular works.” The monk absorbed in contemplation was, in Luther’s eyes, an unhappy wretch sitting “in filth” up to his neck. Thus he restricts himself to recommending the old short formulas of prayer. In accordance with his doctrine that faith alone avails, he desires that sin, and the intention of sinning, should be withstood by the use of the Our Father: “That you diligently learn to say the Our Father, the Creed and the Ten Commandments.”[340] “Grant, O God (thus must you pray), that Thy Name be hallowed by me, Thy Kingdom come to me, and Thy Will be done in me”; in this wise they would come to scorn “devil, death and hell.”[341] He indeed kept in touch with the people by means of the olden prayers, but, even into them, he knew how to introduce his own new views; the Kingdom of God, which to him is forgiveness of sins,[342] “must come to us by faith,” and the chief article of the whole Creed with which to defy “death, devil and hell” was the “remissio peccatorum.” These remarks must not, however, be understood as detracting from the value of his fine, practical, and often sympathetic expositions of the Our Father, whether in his special work on it in 1518 or in the Larger Catechism.[343]

Of the numerous “man-made laws” which he banished at one stroke by denying the Church’s authority there is no need to speak here. Without a doubt the overturning of all these barriers erected against human lusts and wilfulness was scarcely conducive to the progress of the individual.

Nor does the absence of any higher standard of life in his own case[344] serve to recommend his system of ethics. Seeing that, as has been already pointed out,[345] he himself is disposed to admit his failings, the apparent confidence with which, in order to exalt his reform of ethics, he appeals to the biblical verity, that the truth of a doctrine is proved by its moral fruits, is all the more surprising.

Of this confidence we have a remarkable example in a sermon devoted to the explanation of the 1st Epistle of St. John. At the same time the exceptional boldness of his language and the resolute testimony he bears in his own favour constitute striking proof of how the very firmness of his attitude impressed his followers and exercised over many a seductive spell. The weakness of the Reformer’s ethics seems all at once to vanish before his mighty eloquence.

Self-Reform and Hatred of the Foe

In speaking of Luther, his staunch friends are wont to boast of his lifelong struggle against the fetters of the Papacy and of the overwhelming power of his assault on the olden Church; this, so they imply, redounded to his glory and showed his moral superiority.

In what follows we shall therefore consider some of the main ethical features of this struggle of Luther’s and of the attitude he adopted in his conflict with Popery. His very defence of himself and of the moral effects of his preaching, which we have just heard him pronounce subsequent to the Diet of Augsburg, invites us to consider in the light of ethics his public line of action, as traced in his writings of that period. These years represent a turning-point in his life, and here, if anywhere, we should be able to detect his higher moral standard and the power of his new principles to effect a change first of all in himself. In the sermon of 1532 (above, p. 96) he had said: The new Gospel which he had “preached rightly and faithfully” made those who accepted it “to walk in simplicity and godly piety” according to the law of love, and to stand forth “blameless before all the world.” Could he truthfully, he, the champion of this Gospel, really lay any claim to these qualities as here he seems to do, at least indirectly?

His controversial tracts dating from that time display anything but “simplicity and godly piety.” His hate was without bounds, and his fury blazed forth in thunderbolts which slew all who dared to attempt to bridge the chasm between him and the Catholic Church. Reproaching voices, about him and within him, seemed to him to come from so many devils. The Coburg, where he stayed, was assuredly “full of devils,” so he wrote.[353] There, in spite of his previous attempts to jest and be cheerful,[354] and notwithstanding the violent and distracting labours in which he was engaged, the devil had actually established an “embassy,” troubling him with many anxieties and temptations.[355]

The devil he withstood by paroxysms of that hate and rage which he had always in store for his enemies. “The Castle may be crammed with devils, yet Christ reigneth there in the midst of His foes!”[356] He includes in the same category the Papists, and the Turks who then were threatening Europe: Both are “monsters,” both have been “let loose by the fury of the devil,” both represent a common “woe doomed to overwhelm the world in these last days of Christendom.”[357] These “stout jackasses” (of the Diet of Augsburg), so he cried from the ramparts of his stronghold, “want to meddle in the business of the Church. Let them try!”[358] “The very frenzy and madness of our foes of itself alone proves that we are in the right.”[359] “Their blasphemy, their murders, their contempt of the Gospel, and other enormities against it, increase day by day and must bring the Turk into the field against us.”[360] “I am a preacher of Christ,” so he assures us, “and Christ is the truth.”—But is hatred a mark of a disciple of Christ, or of a higher mission for the reformation of doctrine and worship?

Elsewhere Luther himself describes hate as a “true image of the devil; in fact, it is neither human nor diabolical but the devil himself whose whole being is nothing but an everlasting burning,” etc. “The devil is always acting contrary to love.” “Such is his way; God works nothing but benefits and deeds of charity, while he on the contrary performs nothing but works of hate.”[361] On other occasions in his sermons he speaks in familiar and at the same time inspiring words of the beauty of Christian love. “Love is a great and rich treasure, worth many hundred thousand gulden, or a great kingdom. Who is there who would not esteem it highly and pursue it to the limit of his power, nay, pour out sweat and blood for it if he only hoped or knew how to obtain it!... What is sun, moon, heavens or all creation, all the angels, all the saints compared with it? Love is nothing but the one, unspeakable, eternal good and the highest treasure, which is God Himself.”[362]

But his “Vermanug an die geistlichen versammelt auff dem Reichstag zu Augsburg” (which he wrote from the Coburg) was the fruit, not of love, but of the most glowing hate.[363] In a private letter he calls it quite rightly, not an “exhortation” (Vermanug), but “an invective” against the clergy,[364] and, in another letter, admits the “violent spirit” in which he had written it; when composing it the abusive thoughts had rushed in on him like an “uninvited band of moss-troopers.”[365] But, that he drove them back as he declares he did, is not discernible from the work in question.

The writing culminates in the following outburst: “In short we and you alike know that you are living without God’s Word, but that, on our side, we have God’s Word.”

“If I live I shall be your bane; if I die I shall be your death! For God Himself has driven me to attack you! I must, as Hosea says, be to you as a bear and a lion in the way of Assur. You shall have no peace from me until you amend or rush to your own destruction.”[370]

At a later date, of the saying “If I live,” etc., Luther made the Latin couplet: “Pestis eram vivus moriens ero mors tua papa.” In life, O Pope, I was thy plague, in dying I shall be thy death. He first produced this verse at Spalatin’s home at Altenburg on his return journey from the Coburg; afterwards he frequently repeated it, for instance, at Schmalkalden in 1537, when he declared, that he would bequeath his hatred of the Papacy as an heirloom to his disciples.[371]

On another occasion he tells us how he would gladly have left Wittenberg with Melanchthon and the others who were going by way of Nuremberg to the Diet of Augsburg, but a friend had said to him: “Hold your tongue! Your tongue is an evil one!”[373]

After the publication of the “Vermanug an die Geistlichen,” or possibly even before, Melanchthon seems to have written to him, re-echoing the observations of startled and anxious friends, and saying that the writing had been “variously” appreciated, in itself a significant remark; Luther himself at that time certainly dreaded the censure of his adherents. Still, he insists as defiantly as ever on his “invective”: “Let not your heart be troubled,” he admonishes Melanchthon, “My God is a God of fools, Who is wont to laugh at the wise. Whence I trouble myself about them not the least bit.”[374] On the contrary, he even came near regarding his writing as a special work of God.

As we have already pointed out, the defiant and violent steps he took, only too often became in his eyes special works of God. His notorious, boundless sense of his own greatness, to which this gave rise, is the first of the phenomena which accompanied his hate; these it will now be our duty briefly to examine in order better to appreciate the real strength of his ethical principles in his own case.

Companion-Phenomena of his Hate

As a matter of fact Luther’s sense of his superiority was so great that the opponents he attacked had to listen to language such as no mortal had ever before dreamed of making use of against the Church.

The Church is being reformed “in my age” in “a Divine way, not after human ways.” “Were we to fall, then Christ would fall with us.”[375]

Whenever he meets with contradiction, whenever he hears even the hint of a reproach or accusation, he at once ranges himself—as he does, for instance, in the “Vermanug”—on the side of the persecuted “prophets and apostles,” nay, he even likens himself to Christ.[376] He stood alone, without miracles, and devoid of holiness, as he himself candidly informed Henry VIII. of England; nevertheless he pits himself against the heads of both Church and Empire assembled at the Diet.

All he could appeal to was his degree of Doctor of Theology: “Had I not been a Doctor, the devil would have given me much trouble, for it is no small matter to attack the whole Papacy and to charge it” (with error).[377] In the last instance, however, his self-confidence recalls him to the proud consciousness of his entire certainty. “Thus our cause stands firm, because we know how we believe and how we live.”[378]

With these words from his “Vermanug” he defies the whole of the present and of the past, the Pope and all his Councils.

He knows—and that suffices—that what he has and proclaims is God’s Word; “and if you have God’s Word you may say: Now that I have the Word what need have I to ask what the Councils say?”[379] “Among all the Councils I have never found one where the Holy Spirit rules.... There will never be no Council [sic], according to the Holy Spirit, where the people have to agree. God allows this because He Himself wills to be the Judge and suffers not men to judge. Hence He commands every man to know what he believes.”[380] Luther only, and those who follow him, know what they believe; he takes the place of all the councils, Doctors of the Church, Popes and bishops, in short, of all the ecclesiastical sources of theology.

“The end of the world may now come,” he said, in 1540, “for all that pertains to the knowledge of God has now been supplied” (by me).[381]

His natural lack of charity, of which we shall have later on to add many fresh and appalling examples to those already enumerated, aggravated his hatred, his sense of his own greatness and his exclusiveness. What malicious hatred is there not apparent in his advice that Zwingli and Œcolampadius should be condemned, “even though this led to violence being offered them.”[387] It is with reluctance that one gazes on Luther’s abuse of the splendid gifts of mind and heart with which he had been endowed.

Such was Luther’s irritability and quickness of temper, even in private concerns, that, at times, even in his letters, he would pour forth the most incredible threats.

On one occasion, in 1542, when a messenger sent by Justus Jonas happened to offend him, he at once wrote an “angry letter” to Jonas and on the next day followed it up with another in which he says, that his anger has not yet been put to rest; never is Jonas to send such people into his house again or else he will order them to be gagged and put under restraint. “Remember this, for I have said it. This man may scold and do the grand elsewhere, but not in Luther’s house, unless indeed he wants to have his tongue torn out. Are we going to allow such caitiffs as these to play the emperor?”[396]—He had, as we already know, a sad experience with a certain girl named Rosina, whom he had engaged as a servant, but who turned out to be a person of loose morals and brought his house into disrepute. “She shall never again have the chance of deceiving anyone so long as there is water enough in the Elbe,” so he writes of her to a judge. In letters to other persons he accuses her of “villainy and fornication”; she had “shamed all the inmates of his house with the [assumed] name of Truchsess”; he could only think that she had been “foisted on him by the Papists as an arch-prostitute—the god-forsaken minx and lying bag of trouble, who has damaged my household from garret to cellar ... accursed harridan and perjured, thieving drab that she is!” Away with her “for the honour of the Evangel.”[397]

Even in younger days he had been too much accustomed to give the reins to his excitement, as his two indignant letters (his own description of them) to his brother monks at Erfurt show.[398] Even his upbringing of his own children, highly lauded as it has been, suffered from this same lack of self-control. “The mere disobedience of a boy would stir him to his very depths. For instance, he admits of a nephew he had living with him—a son of his brother James—that once ‘he angered me so greatly as almost to be the death of me, so that for a while I lost the use of my bodily powers.’”[399]—So exasperated was he with the lawyers who treacherously deceived the people that he went so far as to demand that their tongues should be torn out. At times he confesses his hot temper, owning and acknowledging that it was “sinful”; to such fits of passion he was still subject, but, as a rule, his anger was at least both right and called for, for he could not avoid being angry where it was “a question of the soul and of hell.” Anger, he also says, refreshed his inner man, sharpened his wits and chased away his temptations; he had to be angry in order to write, preach or pray well.[400]

Repeatedly he seemed on the point of quitting Wittenberg for ever in revenge for all the neglect he met with there; “I can no longer contain my anger and disappointment.”[401] It was to this depression of spirits that he was referring when he said, that, often, in his indignation, he had “flung down the keys on Our Lord God’s threshold.”[402] He sees his inability to change his surroundings and how Popery refuses to be overthrown; yet, as he told us, he is determined to “rain abuse and curses on the miscreants [the Papists] till he is carried to the grave,” and to provide the “thunder and lightning for the funeral” of the foe.[403]

A gloomy, uncanny passion often glows in his words and serves to fire the fanatism of the misguided masses.

“Lo and behold how my blood boils and how I long to see the Papacy punished!” And what was the punishment he looked for? Just before he had said that the Pope, his Cardinals and all his court should have “the skins of their bodies drawn off over their heads; the hides might then be flung into the healing bath [the sea] at Ostia, or into the fire,” unless indeed they found means to pay back all the alien property that the Pope, the “Robber of the Churches, had stolen only to waste, lose and squander it, and to spend it on whores and their ilk.” Yet even this punishment fell short of the crime, for “my spirit knows well that no temporal penalty can avail to make amends even for one Bull or Decree.”[404]

The part played by the first person is great indeed in Luther’s writings.

“We should all have fallen back into the state of the brute!” “Not for a thousand years has God bestowed such great graces on any bishop as on me.” “I, wonderful monk that I am,” have, by God’s grace, overthrown the devil of Rome; “I have stamped off the heads of more than twenty factions, as though they had been worms.” Countless other such utterances are to be found in what has gone before.[413] “He,” so he declares, “was surely far too learned to allow himself to be taught by the Swiss theologians”; this was one of the sayings that led the friends of the latter to speak of his “tyrannical pride.”[414]

Here come the fractious Sacramentarians, he says, and want a share in my fame; they want to celebrate a “glorious victory” as though it was not from me that they got everything. This is how things turn out, “one labours and some other man takes the fruit.”[415] Carlstadt comes forward and seeks to become a new doctor; “he is anxious to detract from my importance and to introduce among the people his own regulations.”[416]

A character where the first person asserted itself so imperiously could not but be a disputatious one. Down to his very last years Luther’s whole life was filled with strife: quarrels with the jurists; with his own theologians; with the Jews; with the Princes and rapacious nobility; with the Popish foemen and with his own colleagues and followers, even with the preachers and writers dearest to him.

Luther sought to safeguard his cause on every side, even at the cost of concessions at variance with his duty, or by grovelling subserviency to the Princes, whether he actually granted their desire,[417] or, as in the case of the bigamy of Henry VIII of England, merely threw out a suggestion.[418]

His new ethical principles should surely have been attested in his own person, above all by truthfulness. In this connection we must, however, recall to mind the observations made elsewhere. (Above, vol. iv., p. 80 ff.)

Who is the lover of truth who does not regret the advice Luther gave from the Coburg to his followers at the Diet of Augsburg, viz. to make use of cunning when the cause seemed endangered? Where does self-betterment come in if “tricks and lapses” are to form a part of his life’s task, even though “with God’s help” they were afterwards to be amended;[419] if, when treating of the most important church matters, “reservation and subterfuge (‘insidiÆ’)” are not only to be used but even to be represented as the work of Christ? Wherever the principle holds: Against the malice of our opponents everything is lawful,[420] there, undoubtedly, the least honest will always have the upper hand. As to how far Luther thought himself justified in going in order to conceal his real intentions we may see from his letters to the Pope, particularly from the last letter he addressed to him, where the public assertion of his devotion to the Roman Church coincides with his private admission to friends that the Pope was Antichrist and that he had sworn to attack him.[421]

In his relentless polemics against the Church—where he does not hesitate to bring the most baseless of charges against both her dignitaries and her institutions—we might dismiss as not uncommon his tendency to see only what was evil, eagerly setting this in the foreground while passing over all that was good; his eyes also served to magnify and distort the dark spots into all manner of grotesque shapes. But what tells more heavily against him is his having evolved out of his own mind a mountain of false doctrines which he foists on the Church as hers, though in reality not one of them but the very opposite was taught in and by the Church.

We have here a row of instances of the honesty of his polemics and of the way in which he treated with the State authorities concerning the deepest matters of the Church’s life. Often enough his polemics consist solely of unwarrantable statements concerning his own pacific intentions and salutary achievements, supported by revolting untruths, misrepresentations and exaggerations tending to damage his opponents’ case.

Beyond this we frequently find him having recourse to low and unworthy language, and to filthy and unmannerly abuse. (Vol. iv., p. 318 ff.)

Kindlier Traits and Episodes

The unprejudiced reader will gladly turn his gaze from pictures such as the above to the more favourable traits in Luther’s character, which, as already shown elsewhere,[440] are by no means lacking.

Whoever has the least acquaintance with his Kirchenpostille and Hauspostille will not scruple to acknowledge the good and morally elevating undercurrent which runs below his polemics and peculiar theories. For instance, his exhortations, so warm and eloquent, to give alms to the needy; his glowing praise of Holy Scripture and of the consolation its divine words bring to troubled hearts; again, his efforts to promote education and juvenile instruction; his admonitions to assist at the sermon and at Divine worship, to avoid envy, strife, avarice and gluttony, and private no less than public vice of every kind.

The many who are familiar only with this beautiful and inspiring side of his writings, and possibly of his labours, must not take it amiss if, in a work like the present, the historian is no less concerned with the opposite side of Luther’s writings and whole conduct.

As a matter of fact, gentler tones often mingle with the harsher notes, while the unpleasant traits just described alter at times and tend to assume a more favourable aspect. This is occasionally true of his severity, his defiant and imperious behaviour. He not seldom, thanks to this art of his, achieved good and eminently creditable results, particularly in the protection of the poor or oppressed. Many who were in dire straits were wont to apply to him in order to secure his powerful intervention with the authorities on their behalf.

During the famine of 1539, when the nobles avariciously cornered the grain, Luther made strong representations to the Elector and begged him to come to the assistance of the town. Nor, in the same year, did he hesitate to address a severe “warning” to the Electoral steward, the Knight Franz Schott of Coburg, when the town-council at his instigation was moved to take too precipitate action.[441]

Best known of all, however, was his powerful intervention in the case of a certain man whose misdeeds were the plague of the Saxon Electorate from 1534 to 1540; this was Hans Kohlhase, a Berlin merchant. He had been overreached in a matter of two horses by a certain Saxon squire of Zaschwitz, and had afterwards lost his case in the courts. In order to obtain satisfaction Kohlhase formally gave out, that he would “rob, burn, capture and hold to ransom” the Saxons until he obtained redress. Incendiary fires broke out shortly after in Wittenberg and the neighbourhood which were laid to the charge of Kohlhase’s men. The Elector could think of no better plan than to suggest a settlement between the merchant, now turned robber-knight, and the heirs of the above-mentioned squire; it was then that Kohlhase appealed to Luther for advice.

Luther replied with authority and dignity, not hesitating to rebuke him for his unprincipled action. He would not escape the wrath of God if he continued to pursue his unheard-of course of private revenge, since it stands written that “Vengeance is mine”; the shameful acts of violence which had been perpetrated by his men would be put down to his account. He ought not to take the devil as his sponsor. If in spite of all peaceful efforts he failed to succeed in obtaining his due, then nothing was left but for him to submit to the Divine decree, which was always for our best, and to suffer in patience. He consoled him at the same time in a friendly way for such injury and outrage as he might have endured; nor was it wrong to seek redress, but this must be done within the right bounds.[442]

The well-meaning letter, which does Luther credit, had unfortunately no effect.

The attempted arbitration, owing to the leniency of the Electoral agent, Hans Metzsch, ended so much to the advantage of Kohlhase that the Elector, partly owing to his strained relations with Brandenburg, refused to ratify it. Kohlhase’s bands came from Brandenburg and fell upon the undefended castles and villages in the Saxon Electorate. Their raids were also to some extent connived at by the Elector of Brandenburg. They excited great terror even at Wittenberg itself owing to sudden attacks made in the vicinity of the town. New attempts to reach a settlement brought them to a standstill for a while, but soon the strange civil war—an echo of the Peasant Rising and Revolt of the Knights—broke out anew and lasted until 1539.

Luther told his friends that such things could never have taken place under the Landgrave of Hesse; that, as the principal actor had shed blood, he would himself die a violent death. In 1539 he invited the Elector of Saxony by letter to act as the father of his country; he should come to the assistance of his people who were at the mercy of a criminal, nor should he leave the Elector of Brandenburg a free hand if it were true that he was implicated in the business.[443]

Finally Kohlhase, after committing excesses even in Brandenburg itself, was executed at Berlin on March 22, 1540, being broken on the wheel.

On Luther’s admonition to the robber, Protestant legend soon laid hold, and, even in the second half of the 16th century, we find it further embellished. There is hardly a popular history of Luther to-day which does not give the scene where Kohlhase, in disguise, knocks at Luther’s door one dark night and on his reply to the question, “Art thou Kohlhase?” is admitted by the latter, explains his quarrel in the presence of Melanchthon, Cruciger and others and is reconciled with God and his fellow-men; he then promises to abstain from violence in future as Luther and his people are willing to help him to his rights, and the romantic visit closes by the repentant sinner making his confession and receiving the Supper.

The only chronicler of the March who relates this at the date mentioned above fails to give any authority for his narrative, nor can it, as KÖstlin-Kawerau points out, be assigned its place “anywhere in Kohlhase’s life-story as otherwise known to us.”[444] Luther’s own statements concerning the affair, particularly his last ones, do not agree with such an ending; throughout he appears as the champion of outraged justice against a public offender. The not unkindly words in which Luther had answered Kohlhase’s request were probably responsible for the legend, which sprang up all the easier seeing that numerous instances were known where Luther’s powerful intervention had succeeded in restraining violence and in securing victory for the cause of justice against the oppressor.[445]

The Reformation of the Church and Luther’s Ethics

The defenders of the ancient faith urged very strongly that the first step towards a real moral reformation of the Church was to depict the Church as she was to be in accordance with Christ’s institution and the best traditions, and then, with the help of this standard, to see how far the Church of the times fell short of this ideal; in order to reform any institution, so they argued, we must be acquainted with its primitive shape so as to be able to revert to it.

This they declared they had in vain asked of Luther, who, on the contrary, seemed bent on subverting the whole Church. They even failed to see that he had suggested any means wherewith to withstand the moral shortcomings of the age. In their eyes the radical and destructive changes on which he so vehemently insisted spelt no real improvement; the discontent with prevailing conditions which he preached to the people could not but create a wrong atmosphere; nor could the abolishing of the Church’s spiritual remedies, the slighting of her commands and the revolting treatment of the hierarchy serve the cause of prudent Church reform.

Luther himself, in his so-called “Bull and Reformation,” put forth his demands for the reform of ecclesiastical conditions as they presented themselves to his mind during the days of his fiercest struggle.[446] The “Bull” does not, however, afford any positive scheme of reformation, as the title might lead one to suppose. It is made up wholly of denials and polemics, and the same is true of his later works.

According to this writing the bishops are “not merely phantoms and idols, but folk accursed in God’s sight”; they corrupt souls, and, against them, “every Christian should strive with body and substance.” One should “cheerfully do to them everything that they disliked, just as though they were the devil himself.” All those who now are pastors must repudiate the obedience which they gave “with the promise of chastity,” seeing that this obedience was promised, not to God, but to the devil, “just as a man must repudiate a compact he has made with the devil.” “This is my Bull, yea, Dr. Luther’s own,” etc.

In this Luther was striking out a new road. Christ and his Apostles had begun the moral reform of the world by preaching the doing of “penance, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” True enough such a preaching can never have been so popular with the masses as Luther’s invitation to overthrow the Church.

Luther’s “Reformation” did not, however, consist merely in the overthrow of the olden ecclesiasticism; it also strove to counteract much that was really amiss.

His action had this to recommend it, that it threw into the full light of day the shady side of ecclesiastical life; after all, knowledge of the evil is already a step towards its betterment. For centuries few had had the courage to point a finger at the Church’s wounds so insistently as Luther; at the ills rampant in the clergy, Church government and in the faith and morals of the people. His piercing glance saw into every corner, and, assisted by expert helpers, some of them formerly officials of the Curia, he laid bare every regrettable disorder, needless to say not without exaggerating everything to his heart’s content. Practically, however, Luther’s revelations represent what was best in the movement which professed to aim at a reform of morals. Had he not embittered with such unspeakable hate the long list of shortcomings with which he persistently confronted the olden Church, had he used it as a means of amendment and not rather as a goad whereby to excite the masses, then one might have been even more thankful to him.

It cannot be gainsaid that, particularly at the outset, ethical motives were at work in him; that he like others felt the burden of the evil, was certainly no lie.

Yet it must not be forgotten that he attacked the Pope and the Church so violently, not on account of any refusal to amend, but in order to clear a path for his subversive views of theology and for the “Evangel” which had been condemned by ecclesiastical authority. The very magnitude of the attack he led on the whole conception of the Church, in itself proves that it was no mere question of defending the rights of Christian ethics; the removal of moral disorders from Christendom was to him but a secondary concern, and, moreover, he certainly did everything he could to render impossible any ordered abolishment of abuses and any real improvement.

One may even ask whether he had any programme at all for the betterment of the Church. The question is made almost superfluous by the history of the struggle. He himself never set up before his mind any regular programme for his work, whether ecclesiastical, social or even ethical, when once he had come to see that the idealist scheme in his “An den christlichen Adel” was impossible of realisation. Hence, when he had succeeded in destroying the old order in a small portion of the Church’s territory, he had perforce to begin an uncertain search after something new whereby to replace it; nothing could be more hopeless than his efforts to build up from the ruins a new Church and a new society, a new liturgy and a new canon law, and to improve the morals of the adherents of his cause. In spite of Luther’s aversion to the scheme, it came about that the whole work of reformation was, by the force of circumstances, left to the secular authorities; from the Consistories down to the school-teachers, from the Marriage Courts down to the guardians of the poor, everything came into the hands of the State. Luther had been wont to complain that the Church in olden days had drawn all secular affairs to herself. Since his day, on the other hand, everything that pertained to the Church was secularised. The actual result was a gradual alienation of secular and ecclesiastical, quite at variance with the theories embodied in the faith. In this it is impossible to see a true reformation in any moral meaning of the word, and Luther’s ethics, which made all secular callings independent of the Church, failed in the event to celebrate any triumph.

The better to appreciate certain striking contrasts between the olden Church and her ratification of morality on the one hand and Luther’s thought on the other, we may glance at his attitude towards canonisation and excommunication.

Canonisation and excommunication are two opposite poles of the Church’s life; by the one the Church stamps her heroes with the seal of perfection and sets them up for the veneration of the faithful; by the other she excludes the unworthy from her communion, using thereto the greatest punishment at her command. Both are, to the eye of faith, powerful levers in the moral life.

Luther, however, laughed both to scorn. The ban he attacked on principle, particularly after he himself had fallen under it; in this his action differed from that of Catholic writers, many of whom had written against the ban though only to lament its abuse and its too frequent employment for the defence of the material position of the clergy.

Luther’s opposition to this canonisation was, however, by no means dictated by historical considerations but by his hatred of all veneration of the Saints and by his aversion to the ideal of Christian self-denial, submissive obedience to the Church and Catholic activity of which the canonised Saints are models. He himself makes it easy to answer the question whether it was zeal for the moral reformation of the Church which drove him to assail canonisation and the veneration of the Saints; nowhere else is his attempt to destroy the sublime ideal of Christian life which he failed to understand and to drag down to the gutter all that was highest so clearly apparent as here. The real Saints, so he declared, were his Wittenbergers. Striving after great holiness on the part of the individual merely tended to derogate from Christ’s work; the Evangelical Counsels fostered only a mistaken desertion of the world.

Judging others by his own standard, he attempted to drag down the Saints of the past to the level of mediocrity. Real Saints must be “good, lusty sinners who do not blush to insert in the Our Father the ‘forgive us our trespasses.’” It was “consoling” to him to hear, that the Apostles, too, even after they had received the Holy Ghost, had at times been shaky in their faith, and “very consoling indeed” that the Saints of both Old and New Covenant “had fallen into great sins”; only thus, so he fancies, do we learn to know the “Kingdom of Christ,” viz. the forgiveness of sins. Even Abraham, agreeably with Luther’s interpretation of Josue xxiv. 2, was represented to have worshipped idols, in order that Luther might be able to instance his conversion and say: Believe like him and you will be as holy as he.[453]

The Reformation in the Duchy of Saxony considered as typical

In 1539, after the death of Duke George, at Luther’s instance, the protestantising of the duchy of Saxony was undertaken with unseemly haste; to this end Henry, the new sovereign, ordered a Visitation on the lines of that held in the Saxon Electorate and to be carried out by preachers placed at his disposal by the Elector. Jonas and Spalatin now became the visitors for Meissen. Before this, on the occasion of the canonisation of St. Benno, Spalatin, in a letter to Luther, had treated the canonisation as a laughing matter. On July 14, the visitors, alleging the authority of the Duke, summoned the Cathedral Chapter at Meissen to remove the sepulchre of St. Benno. On this being met by a refusal armed men were sent to the Cathedral the following night. “‘They broke into fragments the richly ornamented sepulchre of the Saint, together with the altar,’ to quote the words of the bishop’s report to the Emperor, ‘they decapitated a wooden statue of St. Benno and stuck it up outside as a butt for ridicule.’”[454]

Luther, for his part, in a letter to Jonas of August 14 of the same year, has his little joke about the visitors’ undoing of the canonisation of Benno. “You have unsainted Benno and have shown no fear of CochlÆus, Schmid, nor of the Nausei and Sadoleti, who teach the contrary. They are indignant with you, ultra-sensitive men that they are, knowing so little of grammar and so much less of theology.”[455]

Nor did the progress of the overthrow of the Church throughout the Duchy bear the least stamp of moral reform. The very violence used forbids our applying such a term to the work. The Catholic worship at the Cathedral was at once abolished and replaced by Lutheran services and preaching. The priests were driven into exile, the bishop alone being permitted to carry on “his godless papistical abominations and practices openly in his own residence” (the Castle of Stolpen). At the demand of the Wittenbergers the professors at Leipzig University who refused to conform to the Lutheran doctrine were dismissed. Melanchthon insisted, that, if they refused to hold their tongues, they must be driven out of the land as “blasphemers.” The new preachers publicly abused the friends, clerical and lay, of the late Duke to such an extent that the Estates were moved to make a formal complaint. Churches and monasteries were plundered and the sacred vessels melted down.[456]

Maurice, the son of Duke Henry, who succeeded in 1541, showed himself even more violent and relentless in extirpating the olden system.

The profoundly immoral character of this reformation, the interference with the people’s freedom of conscience, the destruction of religious traditions which the peaceable inhabitants had received a thousand years before from holy missionaries and bishops, merely on the strength of the new doctrines of a man who claimed to have a better Gospel—all this was expressly sanctioned and supported by Luther.

He wrote in a memorandum on the proceedings: “There is not much room here for discussion. If my gracious Duke Henry wishes to have the Evangel, then His Highness must abolish idolatry, or not afford it protection ... otherwise the wrath of heaven will be too great.” As a “sovereign appointed by God” the ruler “owed it to Him to put down such horrible, blasphemous idolatry by every means in his power.” This was nothing more than “defending Christ and damning the devil”; an example had been given by the “former kings of Juda and Israel,” who had abolished “Baal and all his idolatry,” and later by Constantine, Theodosius and Gratian. For it was as much the duty of princes and lords as of other people to serve God and the Lord Christ to the utmost of their power. Away, therefore, with the abbots and bishops “since they are determined to remain blasphemers ... they are blind leaders of the blind; God’s wrath has come upon them; hence we must help in the matter as much as we can.”[457]

Yet the Christian emperors here appealed to could have furnished Luther with an example of forbearance towards heathen Rome and its religious works of art which might well have shamed him. He did not know that at Rome the defacing and damaging of temples, altars or statues was most strictly forbidden, and that, for instance, Pope Damasus († 384) had been formally assured by the city-prefect that never had a Christian Roman appeared before his tribunal on such a charge.[458] Elsewhere, however, such acts of violence were not unknown.

Luther’s spirit of persecution was quite different from the spirit which animated those Roman emperors who came over to Christianity. It was their desire to hasten the end of an outworn religion of superstition, immorality and idolatry. With them it was a question of defending and furthering a religion sent from heaven to renew the world and which had convincingly proved the divinity of its mission by miracles, by the blood of martyrs and by the striking holiness of so many thousands of confessors.

It was against the faithful adherents of this very religion that, on the pretext of the outward corruption under which it groaned, Luther perpetrated so many acts of violence regardless of the testimony of a thousand years of beneficent labours. His ingratitude towards the achievements of the olden Church in the education of the nations, his deliberate ignoring of the great qualities which distinguished her and in his day could still have enabled her to carry out her own moral regeneration from within, are incompatible with his having been a true moral reformer.

The Aims of the Reformation and the Currents of the Age

Looking at the state of the case from the standpoint of the olden Catholic Church a closer historical examination shows that what she needed above all was a strengthening of her interior organisation.[459]

In view of the tendency to split up into separate States, in view of the decay of that outward bond of the nations under the Empire which had once been her stay, and of the rise of all sorts of new elements of culture requiring to be exploited for the glory of God and the spiritual betterment of mankind, a consolidation of the Church’s structure was essential. The Primacy indeed was there, exercised its functions and was recognised, but what was needed was a more direct recognition of a purified Papacy. The bond of unity between the nations within the Church needed to be more clearly put in evidence. This could best be done by allowing the significance of a voluntary submission to the authority appointed by God, and of the Primacy, to sink more deeply into the consciousness of Christendom. This was all the more called for, now that the traditional devotion to Rome had suffered so much owing to the great Schism of the West, to the reforming Councils and the prevalence of Gallican ideas, and that the splendour of the Papacy seemed now on the wane. The excessive concern of the Popes in politics and the struggle they had waged in Italy in the effort to establish themselves more securely had by no means contributed to increase respect for the power of the keys in its own peculiar domain, viz. the spiritual.

Thus any reformer seeking to improve the Church’s condition had necessarily to face this task first of all.—Many other moral requirements arising out of the then state of society had, however, also to be borne in mind.

It was necessary to counteract, by laying stress on what had been handed down, the false subjectivism and universal scepticism which the schools of philosophy had let loose on the world; also to oppose the cynicism, lack of discipline and love of destruction which characterised Humanism, by infusing into education the true spirit of the Church. Both these tasks could, however, be accomplished only by men filled with respect for tradition who while on the one hand broad-mindedly accepting the new learning, i.e. without questioning or distrusting reason and its rights, on the other hand possessed the power and the will to spiritualise the new culture. The disruptive tendency of the nations, the counterpart in international politics of the prevalent individualism, required to be corrected by laying stress on the underlying common ground. The undreamt-of enlargement of the Church through the discovery of new lands had to be met by organisations, the members of which were filled with love of self-denial and zeal for souls. At the same time the materialism, which was a consequence of the great increase of wealth brought from foreign lands, had to be checked. To oppose the alarming growth of Turkish power it was necessary to preach self-sacrifice, manly courage and above all Christian unity amongst those in power, amongst those who in former times had sallied forth against the East strong in the feeling of being one family in the faith. A still worse foe to Christian society was to be found in moral discouragement and exhaustion; there was need of a new spirit to awaken the motive force of religious life and to stir men to a more active use of the means of grace.

If we compare the moral aims and motives which inspired Luther’s reformation, with the great needs of the times, as just described, we cannot fail to see how far short he fell of the requirements.

Most of the aims indicated were quite strange to him. Judging from the standpoint of the olden Church, he frequently sought the very opposite of what was required. Some few instances may be cited.

So little did Luther’s reformation tend to realise the sublime moral principle of the union and comradeship of the nations, that, on the contrary, he encouraged nationalism and separatist tendencies even in Church matters. Where his idea of a National Church prevailed, there the strongest bond of union disappeared completely.[460] The more the authority of the Empire was subverted by the separatists, by religious Leagues and violent inroads of princes and sovereign towns within the Empire, the more the idea of unity, which at one time had been so great a power for good, had to suffer. He complained that the nations and races were as unfriendly to each other as devils. But for him, the rude Saxon, to abuse all who dwelt outside his borders in the most unmeasured terms, and to pour out the vials of his wrath and vituperation on the Latin nations because they were Catholic could hardly be regarded as conducive to better harmony. When he persistently declared in his writings and sermons that the real Turks were to be found at home, or when he fanned the flames of fraternal hatred against the Papists within the Fatherland, such action could scarcely promote a more effectual resistance to the danger looming in the East. The Bible, according to him, was to serve as the means of uniting the people of God. He flung it amongst the people at a time when everything was seething with excitement; yet he himself, in spite of all his praise of Bible study, was moved to execrate the results. It seemed, so he declared, as though it had been done merely “in order that each one might bore a hole where his snout happened to be.”[461]

As to subjectivism, the dominant evil of the age, he himself carried it to its furthest limits, relentlessly condemning everywhere whatever did not appeal to him and exalting his personal views and feelings into a regular law; subjectivism pervades and spoils his whole theology, and, in the domain of ethics, puts both personality and conscience on a new and very questionable basis.[462] The subjective principle as used by him and exalted into an axiom, might be invoked equally by any religious faction for its own ends. We need only recall Luther’s theory of the lonely isolation of the individual in the matter of faith.

Again, if that transition period between mediÆval and modern times was suffering from moral and religious exhaustion and was inclined to be pessimistic concerning spiritual goods, and if, for its moral reform, what was needed was a leader deeply imbued with faith in revelation, able by the very strength of his faith to arouse the world of his day, and to inspire the lame and timid with enthusiasm and delight in the ancient treasures of religion—then, again, one is forced to ask whether such a man as Luther, even apart from his new and erroneous doctrines, had the requisite strong and overbearing devotion to supernatural truths? Is it not Luther who speaks so often of the weakness of his faith, of his doubts and his inward trials, and who, in order to reassure himself, declares that everyone, even the Apostles, the martyrs and the saints, were acquainted with the like?

Not only did he not fight against pessimism, but, as the years went by, he even built it into a truly burdensome system. Towards the end of his life, owing both to his theories and to his experiences, he became a living embodiment of dejection, constituting himself its eloquent advocate. His view of the history of the kingdom of Christ was the gloomiest imaginable. Everywhere he saw the power of the devil predominant throughout the whole course of the world’s history.

Formerly he had looked forward with some courage and confidence to the possibility of a change. But even his courage, particularly at critical junctures, for instance, at the Coburg and during the Diet of Augsburg, more resembled the wanton rashness of a man who seeks to set his own fears at defiance. At any rate his peculiar form of courage in faith was not calculated to give a fresh stimulus, amid the general relaxation and exhaustion, to religious enthusiasm and the spirit of cheerful self-sacrifice for the highest aims of human life. On the other hand, his success was largely due to the discouragement so widely prevalent. We meet with a mournful echo of this discouragement in the sayings of certain contemporary Princes of the Church, who seem to have given up everything for lost. Many who had been surprised and overwhelmed by the sudden bursting of the storm were victims of this depression.

Luther not only failed to direct the unfavourable tendencies of the age into better channels, but even to some extent allowed himself to be carried away by them.

Even so strong a man as he, was keenly affected by the spirit of the age. In some respects it is true his work exercised a lasting effect on the prevalent currents, but in others he allowed his work to be dominated by the spirit then abroad. To the nominalistic school of Occam he owed not only certain of his doctrines but also his disputatious and subversive ways, and his method of ignoring the general connection between the truths of faith and of making the most of the grounds for doubt. Pseudo-mystic influences explain both his subjectivism and those quietistic principles, traces of which are long met with in his writings. Humanism increased his aversion to the old-time scholasticism, his animosity to the principles of authority and tradition, his contempt for all things mediÆval, his lack of appreciation for, and unfairness to, the religious orders no less than the paradox and arrogance of his language. A strain of coarse materialism runs through the Renaissance. In Luther, says Paulsen, “we are reminded of the Renaissance by a certain coarse naturalism with which the new Evangel is spiced, and which, in his attacks on celibacy and the religious life, occasionally leads Luther to speak as though to abstain from carnal works was to rebel against God’s Will and command.”[465] To the tendency of the Princes to exalt themselves Luther yielded, even at the expense of the liberties and well-being of the people, simply because he stood in need of the rulers’ support. The spirit of revolt against the hierarchy which was seething amongst the masses and even among many of the theologians, and which the disorders censured in the Gravamina of the various Diets had brought almost to the point of explosion, carried Luther away; even in those writings which contemporaries and aftercomers were to praise as his greatest achievement and, in fact, in his whole undertaking in so far as it involved separation from Rome, he was simply following the trend of his time.

8. The Church Apart of the True Believers

Luther’s sad experiences in establishing a new Church led him for several years to cherish a strange idea; his then intention was to unite the true believers into a special band and to restrict the preaching of the Gospel to these small congregations which would then represent the real Church.

This idea of his of gathering together the true Christians has already been referred to cursorily elsewhere,[466] but it is of such importance that it may well be dealt with somewhat more in detail.

Luther’s Theory of the Church Apart prior to 1526

On the whole the idea which Luther, previous to 1526, expressed over and over again as clearly as could be desired and never rejected later, viz. of uniting certain chosen Christians—the true believers—in a “congregation apart” and of regarding the remainder, i.e. the ordinary members of the flock which followed him, or popular Church as it was termed, as a mere lump still to be kneaded, gives us a deep insight into the development which his conception of the Church underwent and into his opinion of the position of his congregations generally. The idea was an outcome more of circumstances than of reflection, more a fanciful expedient than a consequence of his theories; thus it was that it suffered shipwreck on the outward conditions which soon showed that the plan was impossible of realisation. It really originated in the moral disorders rampant in the new Church, particularly at Wittenberg. So few of those who followed him allowed their hearts to be touched by the Evangel, and yet all, none the less, claimed not merely to be called Evangelicals but even to share in the Supper. Luther saw that this state of things was compromising the good name of the work he had started.

After the refusal of the Princes and nobles to listen to his appeal to amend the state of Christendom, he determined to take his stand on the congregational principle. He fondly expected that, thanks to the supposed inward power of reform in the new communities, all his proposals would soon be put into execution, the old system of Church government swept away and a new order established more in accordance with his views. Hence in the writing to the magistrates and congregation of Prague, “De instituendis ministris ecclesiÆ” (Nov., 1523), which, without delay, he caused to be translated into German,[467] he strove to show, how, everywhere, the new Church system was to be established from top to bottom by the selection of pastors by members of the congregation filled with faith (“iis qui credunt, hÆc scribimus”).[468] According to this writing, the Visitors and Archbishop yet to be chosen by the zealous clergy, were to live only for the sake of the pastors and the congregations, whom they had to better by means of the Word. The faithful congregations “will indeed be weak and sinful”—Luther had no hope of setting up a Church of the perfect—but, “seeing they have the Word, they are at least not ungodly; they sin indeed, but, far from denying, they confess the Word.”[469] “Luther’s optimism,” says Paul Drews, “saw already whole parishes converted into congregations of real Christians, realising anew the true Church of the Apostolic ideal.”[470]

These preliminary attempts at the formation of an assembly of true Christians were no more crowned with success than his plan for the relief of the poor by means of the so-called common box, or his efforts to establish a new system of penalties. Hence he declared, that, owing to the Wittenbergers’ want of preparation, he was obliged to put off its execution “until our Lord God forms some Christians.” For the time being “we have not got the necessary persons.” In 1524 he told them that “neither charity nor the Gospel could make any headway amongst them.”[474] In the Wittenberg congregation he could “not yet discern a truly Christian one.”[475] He nevertheless permitted the whole congregation to take its share, when, in the autumn of 1523, the town-council appointed Bugenhagen to the office of parish-priest; this he did agreeably with his ideas concerning the rights of the congregation.

Meanwhile, however, the ideal of a whole parish of true believers seemed about to be realised elsewhere. Full of apparent zeal for the new Evangel, the magistrates and burghers of Leisnig on the Mulde drafted a scheme for a “common box” and begged Luther to send them something confirming their right to appoint a minister—the town having refused to accept the lawfully presented Catholic priest—and also a reformed order for Divine worship. The instructive incident has already been mentioned.[476]

Luther seized eagerly on the opportunity of calling into existence at Leisnig a community which might in turn prove a model elsewhere. From the establishment of such congregations he believed there would result a system of new Churches independent indeed, though supported by the authorities, which might then take the place of the Papal Church now thought on the point of expiry. The idealistic dreams with which, as his writings show, the proceedings at Leisnig filled his mind would seem to have been responsible both for his project for Wittenberg and for his letter to the Bohemians previously referred to. The fact that they belonged to the same time is at any rate a remarkable coincidence.

He promised the town-council of Leisnig (Jan. 29, 1523) that he would have their scheme for the establishment of a common fund printed,[477] and this he did shortly after, adding an introduction of his own.[478]

At Leisnig, however, events did not in the least justify his sanguine expectations.

The citizens succeeded in making an end of their irksome dependence on the neighbouring Cistercian monastery, and the town-council promptly sequestrated all the belongings and foundations of the Church; it then became apparent, however, that, particularly on the side of the council, the prevalent feeling was anything but evangelical; the councillors, for instance, refused to co-operate in the establishment of a common poor-box or to apply to this object the endowments it had appropriated. Grave dissensions soon ensued and Luther sought in vain the assistance of the Elector. Of any further progress of the new religious-community ideal we hear nothing. The fact is, the fate at Leisnig of the model congregation and “common fund” scheme was a great disappointment to Luther. Elsewhere, too, attempts at establishing a common poor-box were no less unsuccessful. Of these, however, we shall treat later.[481]

Luther’s next detailed statements concerning the “assembly of true Christians” are met in 1525. Towards the end of that year Caspar Schwenckfeld, a representative of the innovations in Silesia, visited him, and various theological discussions took place in the presence of Bugenhagen and Jonas,[482] of which Schwenckfeld took notes which have come down to us.[483] With the help of what Luther said then, supplemented by some later explanations, the history of the remarkable plan can be followed further.

This hesitation cannot be explained merely by the anxiety to which he himself refers incidentally lest commands should arouse the spirit of opposition and give rise to “factions,”[489] for the absence of authority was evident; it must also have sprung from the author’s own sense of the indefiniteness of the plan. His pious wish to establish an organisation on the apostolic model was not conspicuous for practical insight, however great the stress Luther laid on the passages he regarded as authoritative (2 Cor. ix., 1 Cor. xiv., Mt. xviii. 2, and Acts vi.). “This much is clear,” rightly remarks Drews, “that Luther was uncertain and wavered in the details of his plan. He had but little bent to sketch out organisations even in his head; to this he did not feel himself called.”[490]

Others, not alone from the ranks of such as inclined to fanatism, were also to some extent to blame for the persistence with which he continued to revert to this pet idea. Nicholas Hausmann, pastor of Zwickau, and an intimate friend, approached him at the end of 1526 on the subject of the ban, which he regarded as indispensable for the cause of order. On Jan. 10, 1527, Luther replied, referring him to the Visitation which the Elector had promised to have held. “When the Churches have been constituted (‘constitutis ecclesiis’) by it, then we shall be able to try excommunication. What can you hope to effect so long as everything is in such disorder?”[491]

Here we reach a fresh stage in the efforts to establish a new system of Church organisation. Luther waited in vain for the birth of the ideal community. Everything remained “in disorder.”[492] The intervention of the State introduced in the Visitation was, however, soon to establish an organisation and thus to improve discipline.

The Church Apart replaced by the Popular Church Supported by the State

That the project of esoteric congregations of true believers still survived in Luther’s mind long after, in spite of the consolidation of the popular Church in the form of a State Church, is plain from a letter of his on June 26, 1533, to Tilemann Schnabel and the other Hessian clergy (“episcopi HassiÆ”), again sitting in assembly at Homberg. Schnabel was a whilom Provincial of the Saxon Augustinians and had taken part in the abortive attempt to establish a community of true Christians at Leisnig of which he was pastor. Finally, want, misery and his own instability of character drove him from the country.[500] From 1526 onwards he had been living at Alsfeld in Hesse. The new assembly at Homberg had submitted to Luther, for his approval, the draft of a scheme of church discipline, most probably inspired by Schnabel himself. Luther’s reply is of the utmost importance for the understanding of his opinion of the conditions then prevailing in the Church.[501]

He is, at bottom, quite at one with the Hessian preachers, but, on practical grounds, chiefly on account of the lack of the “veri Christiani,” he rejects the well-meant proposals as too far-reaching and incapable of execution.

The time, according to him, “is not yet ripe for the introduction of discipline.” “Verily one must let the peasants run riot a little ... and then things will right themselves.” We have not as yet taken root in the earth; when the branches and leaves shall have appeared, then we shall be better able to oppose the mighty. The Hessian preachers, so he tells them, instead of rushing in with the Greater Excommunication involving such serious civil consequences, would do better to begin with the so-called “Lesser Excommunication” in use at Wittenberg, simply excluding the unworthy from Communion and from the right to stand as sponsors; for “the Greater Excommunication does not come within our jurisdiction (‘quod non sit nostri iuris’), and, moreover, concerns only those who desire to be real Christians; nor are we in these times in a position to make use of the Greater Excommunication; it would merely make us look silly were we to attempt it before we have the necessary power. You seem to hope that the Prince will take the enforcing of it into his own hands; but this is very uncertain, and it is better he should have nothing to do with it.”

Thus, though Luther did not believe in the feasibility of a community of real Christians there and then, or that it was likely soon to be realised, yet the idea had not quitted his mind. The great mass of those belonging to his party meanwhile constituted a sort of popular Church. But such a popular Church was not in Luther’s eyes the real institution intended by the Gospel. It consisted of the masses “who must first be left their own way for a while” before the Church can be established. Drews justly observes of the above statement: “Luther did not relinquish the ideal of a really Christian congregation because he had come to see that it was mistaken, the ideal had simply lost its practical value in his eyes because it now seemed impossible of realisation. Luther resigned himself to take things as they were. As he had always regarded it as his mission, not to organise, but merely to preach the Evangel, he was easily able to console himself. At any rate it would be quite wrong to say that the popular Churches which now grew up at all corresponded with his ideal.”[502]

The popular Church throve, nevertheless, and, soon, owing to the co-operation of numerous factors, became a State institution.

The result was the Lutheran State-Church, to be considered later in another connection, was something widely different from the original idea of its founder; he frequently grumbled about it, without, however, being able to check its development, which, indeed, he himself had been the first to urge.[503] The sovereigns on their side, particularly the Saxon Elector in the very birthplace of the innovations, did their best to make ecclesiastical order, so far as externals, its organisation and control went, depend upon themselves.[504]

The Visitation of 1527, for which Luther himself had asked, furnished the Elector Johann with a welcome pretext for such action.

Even when giving his formal consent to the Visitation the Elector says, speaking of the “erection of parishes”: “We have considered and weighed the matter and have come to the conclusion that it becomes us as ruler of the land to see to the business.”[505] Luther, moreover, for the sake of securing some order in the new Church by the only means at his command, outdid himself in assurances to the Elector, that, he, being the principal member of the Church, must take in hand the adjusting of the parishes and the appointment of suitable clergy; that his very love of his country obliged him to this, and, that, owing to the pressing needs of the time, he was a sort of “makeshift bishop” of the Church. This last title is significant of the reserve Luther still maintained; he was loath to see the Church’s authority simply merged in that of the State; he did, nevertheless, speak of the sovereign as the head of the new congregations and, little by little, allowed him so large a share in their government that, even in his own day, the secular sovereign was to all intents and purposes supreme head of the episcopate.[506]

9. Public Worship. Questions of Ritual

The ordering of public worship, particularly at Wittenberg, was a source of much anxiety to Luther. He was not blind to the difficulties which his reformation had to face in this department.

The soul of every religion must be sought in its public worship. Hence, in Catholicism, the bishops, from earliest times, had bestowed the most diligent and pious care on worship. A proof of this is to be found in the grand liturgies of antiquity and the prayers, lessons and outward rites with which they so lovingly surround the eucharistic sacrifice.

To build up a new liturgy from the very foundation was far from Luther’s thoughts. He was not the “creator” of any new form of public worship. He preferred to make the best of the Roman Mass, for one reason, as he so often insists, because of the weak, i.e. so as not needlessly to alienate the people from the new Church by the introduction of novelties.[507] From the ancient rite he merely eliminated all that had reference to the sacrificial character of the Mass, the Canon, for instance, and the preceding Offertory. He also thought it best to retain the word “Mass” in both the writings in which he embodied his adaptation: “Formula missÆ et communionis pro ecclesia Wittenbergensi” 1523,[508] and “Deudsche Messe und Ordnung Gottis Diensts” 1526.[509]

By the introduction of the German Mass in the latter year “the whole Pope was flung out of the Church,”[510] to use Spalatin’s words. It is noteworthy that Luther, in announcing this latest innovation to the inhabitants of Wittenberg, admitted that he had been urged by the sovereign to make the change.[511]

In Luther’s “German Mass,” as in his even more traditional Latin one, we find at the beginning the Introit, Kyrie Eleison, Gloria and a Collect; then follows the Epistle for the Sunday together with a Gradual or Alleluia or both; then the Gospel and the Credo, followed by the sermon. “After the sermon the Our Father is to be publicly explained and an exhortation given to those intending to approach the Sacrament,”[512] then comes the Consecration. The Secret was omitted with the Offertory. The Preface was shortened. Of the whole of the hated “Canon”[513] the “priest” was merely to pronounce aloud over the Bread and Wine the words of consecration as given in 1 Cor. xi. 23-25, saying then the Sanctus and Benedictus. The Elevation came during the Benedictus.[514] The Our Father and the Pax follow, then the communion of the officiating clergyman and the faithful, under both kinds. To conclude there was another collect and then the blessing.

Some of the portions mentioned were sung by the congregation and great use was made of German hymns.[515] Whatever had been retained in Latin till 1526 was after that date put into German. For the sake of the scholars who had to learn Latin Luther would have been in favour of continuing to say the Mass in that language. The old ecclesiastical order of the excerpts of the Epistles and Gospels read in church was retained, though the selection was not to Luther’s tastes; it seemed to him that the passages in Holy Scripture which taught saving faith were not sufficiently to the fore; he was convinced that the man who originally made the selection was an ignorant and superstitious admirer of works;[516] his advice was that the deficiency should at any rate be made good by the sermon. The celebration of Saints’ days was abolished, saving the feasts of the Apostles and a few others, and of the feasts of the Virgin Mary only those were retained which bore on some mystery of Our Lord’s life. In addition to the Sunday service short daily services were introduced consisting of the reading and expounding of Holy Scripture; these were to be attended at least by the scholars and those preparing themselves for the preaching office. At these services Communion was not to be dispensed as a general rule but only to those who needed it.

Alb and chasuble continued to be worn by the clergyman at the “Mass” in the parish church of Wittenberg, though no longer in the monastic church. The Swiss who visited Wittenberg were struck by this, and, in their reports, declared that Luther’s service was still half Popish. At Augsburg where Zwinglianism was rampant the “puppet show” of the Saxons, with their priestly vestments, candles, etc., seemed a “foolish” and scandalous thing.[517] Luther wished the use of lights and incense to be neither enjoined nor abolished.

As he frequently declared, the utmost freedom was to prevail in matters of ritual in order to avoid a relapse into the Popish practice of man-made ordinances. Even the adoption of the “Deudsche Messe, etc.,” was to be left to the decision of the congregations and the pastors.[518] If they knew of anything better to set up in its place, this was not to be excluded; yet in every parish-congregation there must at least be uniformity. The chief thing is charity, edification and regard for the weak. Above all, the “Word must have free course and not be allowed to degenerate into singing and shouting, as was formerly the case.”[519]

Of the whole of the Wittenberg liturgical service, he says in his “Deudsche Messe”—to the surprise of his readers who expected to find in it a work for the believers—that it did not concern true believers at all: “In short we do not set up such a service for those who are already Christians.”[520] He is thinking, of course, of the earnest, convinced Christians whom, as stated above (p. 133 f.), he had long planned to assemble in special congregations. They alone in his eyes constituted the true Church, however imperfect and sinful they might be, provided they displayed faith and good-will.

As his highest principle he sets up the following, which in reality is subversive of all liturgy: In Divine worship “it is a matter for each one’s conscience to decide how he is to make use of such freedom [the freedom of the Christian man given by the Evangel]; the right to use it is not to be refused or denied to any.... Our conscience is in no way bound before God by this outward order.”[524] This has the true Lutheran ring. Beside this must be placed his frequently repeated assertion, that we can give God nothing that tends to His honour, and that every effort on our part to give Him anything is merely an attempt to make something of man and his works, which works are invariably sinful.[525] He also teaches elsewhere that not only does real and true worship consist in a life of faith and love, but that the outward worship given in common is in reality a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving (a gift to God after all) made in common solely because of all people’s need to express their faith and love;[526] he also calls it a “sacrificium,” naturally, not in the Catholic, but in the widest sense of the word. Even the expression “eucharistic sacrifice,” i.e. sacrifice of praise, is not inacceptable to him; but at least the sacrifice must be entirely free.

With such a view the form of worship described above seems scarcely to tally. A well-defined outward order of worship was first proposed, and then prescribed; it would, according to Luther’s statement, have imposed itself even on the assemblies of true believers. It is true, he says, that only considerations of charity and public order compel such outward regulations, that it was not his doing nor that of any other evangelical authority. Still it is a fact that they were enjoined, that a service according to the choice of the individual was, even in Luther’s day, regarded with misgivings, and that even in the 16th century it fell to the secular prince to sanction the form of worship in church and to punish those who stayed away, those who failed to communicate and those who did not know their catechism.[527] We have here another instance of the same contradiction apparent in matters of dogma, where Luther bound down the free religious convictions of the individual—supposed to be based on conscience and the Bible—in cast-iron strands in his catechism and theological hymns. The catechism, even in the matter of confession, and likewise the theology of the hymns, closely trenched on the regulations for Divine worship. The Ten Commandments, the Our Father, etc., were also put into verse and song. Moreover, those who presented themselves for communion had to submit at least to a formal examination into their faith and intentions, and also to a certain scrutiny of their morals—a strange limitation surely of Evangelical freedom and of the universal priesthood of all believers.

According to Kawerau, the best Protestant liturgical writers agree, that a “false, pedagogic conception of worship” finds expression in Luther’s form of service.[528] To make the aim of the public worship of the congregation—whatever elements the latter might comprise—a mere exercise for the young and a method of pressing “Christianity” on non-believers was in reality to drag down the sublime worship of God, the “sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving” as Luther himself sometimes calls it, to an undeservedly low level.

This degradation was, however, intimately bound up with the fact, that Luther had robbed worship of its most precious and essential portion, the eucharistic sacrifice, which, according to the Prophet Malachias, was to be offered to the Lord from the rising till the going down of the sun as a pure and acceptable oblation. To the Catholic observer his service of the Mass, owing to the absence of this all-important liturgical centre, appears like a blank ruin. As early as 1524 he was told at Wittenberg that his service was “dreary and all too sober.” Although it was his opposition to the Holy Sacrifice and its ceremonies which called forth this stricture, yet at the same time his objection to any veneration of the Saints also contributed to the lifeless character of the new worship. It was, however, above all, the omission of the sacrifice which rendered Luther’s clinging to the ancient service of the Mass so unwarrantable.[529]

Older Protestant liturgical writers like Kliefoth spoke of the profound, mystical value of Luther’s liturgy and even of certain elements as being quite original. Recourse to the old scheme of the Mass, duly expurgated, was, however, a much simpler process than they imagined. We must also bear in mind, that Luther himself was not so rigid in restricting the liturgy to the forms he himself had sketched out as they assumed. On the contrary, he left room for development, and allowed the claims of freedom. Hence it is not correct to say, that he curtailed the tendency towards “free liturgical development,” as has been asserted of him by Protestants in modern times.[530] For it was no mere pretence on his part when he spoke of freedom to improve. The progress made in hymnology owing to this freedom is a proof that better results were actually arrived at.

Were one to ask which was the principal point in Luther’s Mass, the Supper or the sermon, it would not be easy to answer.

The term Mass and the adaptation of the olden ritual would seem to speak in favour of the Supper.[532] If, however, the service was to consist principally of the celebration of the Supper it was necessary there should always be communicants. Without communions there was, according to Luther, no celebration of the Sacrament. Now at Wittenberg there were not always communicants, nor was there any prospect of the same presenting themselves at every Sunday service, or that things would always remain as in 1531 when Luther boasted, that “every Sunday the hundred or so communicants were always different people.”[533]

At the weekly services, communion in any case was very unusual. The custom had grown up under Luther’s eyes that, on Sundays, as soon as the sermon was over, the greater part of the congregation left the church.[534] From this it is clear that the ritual involved a misunderstanding. In practice the celebration of the Supper became something merely supplementary, whereas, according to Luther himself, it ought to have constituted either the culmination of the service, or at least an organic part of Divine worship; under him, however, it was soon put on the same level with the sermon though the organic connection between the two is not clear. Indeed, it would be more accurate to say that predominance was assigned to the sermon,[535] which undoubtedly was only right if, as Luther maintains, worship was intended only for instruction.

In our own day some have gone so far as to demand that the sermon should be completely sundered from the Supper; and also to admit, that the creation of a real Lutheran liturgy constitutes “a problem still to be solved.”[536]

It is a fact of great ethical importance, that, what was according to Luther the Sacrament of His Real Presence instituted by Christ Himself, had to make way for preaching and edification by means of prayers and hymns. Even the Elevation had to go. From the beginning its retention had aroused “misgivings,”[537] and, to say the least, Luther’s reason for insisting on it, viz. to defy Carlstadt who had already abolished it, was but a poor one. It was abrogated at Wittenberg only in 1542; elsewhere, too, it was discontinued.[538] Thus the Sacrament receded into the background as compared with other portions of the service. But, like prayer and hymn-singing, preaching too is human and subject to imperfections, whereas the Sacrament, even though it be no sacrifice, is, even according to Luther, the Body of Christ. Luther was, indeed, ready with an answer, viz. that the sermon was also the Word of God, and, that, by means of both Sacrament and sermon, God was working for the strengthening of faith. Whether this reply gets rid of the difficulty may here be left an open question. At any rate the ideal Word of God could not be placed on the same footing with the sermons as frequently delivered at that time by expounders of the new faith, capable or otherwise, sermons, which, according to Luther’s own loud complaints, contained anything but the rightful Word of God, and were anything but worthy of being classed together with the Sacrament as one of the two component parts of Divine worship.

The ritual of the Catholic sacrifice, dating as it does from the Church’s remotest past, expresses adequately the highest thoughts of Christian ethics, viz. the adoration of the Creator by the creature through the God-man Christ, Who alone worthily honours Him. To this idea Luther’s attempt at a liturgy does not do justice.

10. Schwenckfeld as a Critic of the Ethical Results of Luther’s Life-work

Caspar Schwenckfeld, the Silesian nobleman (see above, p. 78 ff.), is a type of those men who attached themselves to Lutheranism with the utmost enthusiasm, but, who, owing to the experience they met with and in pursuance of those very principles which Luther himself had at first advocated, came to strike out new paths of their own.

In spite of his pseudo-mystical schemes for the establishment of a Church on the Apostolic model; in spite of his abandonment of doctrines to which Luther clung as to an heirloom of the ancient Church; regardless of his antagonism to Luther—which the latter repaid with relentless persecution—this cultured fanatic expressed in his numerous writings and letters his lasting gratitude to, and respect for, Luther on account of the services which the latter had in his opinion rendered in the restoration of truth. He extols his “wonderful trumpet-call,”[542] and without any trace of hypocrisy, says: “What Martin Luther and others have done aright, for instance in the expounding of Holy Scripture ... I trust I will, with God’s help, never underrate.”[543]

At the same time, however, he is not slow to express it as his conviction, that, “At the beginning of the present Evangel the said [Lutheran] doctrine was far better, purer and more wholesome than it is now.”[544] “Dr. Martin led us out of Egypt, through the Red Sea and into the wilderness, and there he left us to lose ourselves on the rough roads; yet he seeks to persuade everybody that we are already in the Promised Land.” This he said in 1528.[545]

“Although Luther has written much that is good,” “that has been and still may be profitable to believers, for which we give praise and thanks to God the Lord, still he has also written much that is evil, and in the end it will be proved that his and his people’s doctrine or theologia was neither apostolic, nor pure, nor perfect ... which certainly might have been seen long since by its fruits.”[546]

His criticisms of Luther, which, in spite of his harsh treatment at the latter’s hands, are throughout temperately expressed and with a certain aristocratic reticence, deal on the one hand with the fruits of the Wittenberg Reformation, and, on the other, with certain main features of the ethical teaching of his master and one-time friend; his strictures thus form a recapitulation of what has gone before.

On the hoped-for Moral Revival

“The reformation of life has not taken place,” this is what Carl Ecke, Schwenckfeld’s latest biographer, represents as the honest conviction of the “apostolic” preacher of the faith in Silesia.[547] “The religion of Lutheranism as it then was did not, in Schwenckfeld’s opinion, as a whole reach the standard of Bible Christianity.”[548] “The greater part of the common herd,” says Schwenckfeld, “who are called Lutherans do not know to-day how they stand, whether with regard to works, or in relation to God and to their own conscience.”[549]

Schwenckfeld’s own standard was certainly somewhat one-sided and his own Apostolic Church, so far as it ever saw the light, fell considerably short of the ideal. His insight into the ethical conditions and doctrines was, however, keen enough and his judgment was at least far calmer and clearer than that of Carlstadt and Luther’s other more hot-headed antagonists. He was also able to base his definite and oft-repeated statements on the experience he had gained during his wide travels and in intercourse with all sorts of men.

Even in 1524 he had published an essay on practical ethics entitled, “An Exhortation regarding the misuse of sundry Articles of the Evangel, etc.” (Above, 79 f.) In 1547 he found it necessary to publish another work on the “Misuse of the Evangel.” To this misuse he attributes most of the above excuses of his “Lutheran co-religionists.” Luther himself, so he declares here, was much to blame for the confusion that prevailed. He quotes many passages from Luther’s Church-postils, from the edition printed at Wittenberg in 1526 with prefaces by Luther and Stephen Roth. He also makes use of the same work in another book, “On Holy Scripture,” which he also wrote in 1547.[558] Many of the incriminated passages were “wickedly omitted” in the next editions of the Church-postils.[559]

Further Complaints of Schwenckfeld’s. The Ethical Doctrines

Schwenckfeld, in his strictures on Luther’s preaching and its results, deals with the ethical side of the new teaching concerning the Law and the Gospel.

Luther had said, that, with the law, God “wished to do no more than make us feel our helplessness, our weakness and our sickness.”[560] The critic asks: “Why not also to make us eschew evil and do good, 1 Peter iii.?” On the other hand, Luther will have it that the “Law makes all of us sinners so that not even the smallest tittle of these commandments can be kept even by the most holy.” “Such is in short Luther’s doctrine concerning the Law and the Commandments of God. There he lets it rest, as though the ground and contents of the Law and God’s intention therein—which was centred on Christ—were nothing.... Of this doctrine, particularly, the common people can make nothing save that God has given us His commandments, not in order that we may keep them by means of His Grace, but only that we may thereby come to the knowledge of sin.”[561]

“Why should we hate our life in this world ... and follow Christ? Nay, why take pains at all to enter in at the narrow gate and to seek the strait way to life everlasting (Mt. vii.) if it is possible to reach heaven along the broad way on which so many walk who are called Lutherans, and to enter in through the wide gate which they make for themselves!”[562]

Two other points of doctrine which in the same connection Schwenckfeld censures in the strongest terms as real stumbling blocks in ethics, are the preaching of predestination and the denial of free-will.

The universal priesthood as commonly preached and understood by the people furnishes Schwenckfeld with a further cause for grumbling. “They have also been in the habit of preaching and shouting to the multitudes that all of them were already Christians, children of God and spiritual kings and princes. What corruption of conscience and abuse of the Evangel has resulted from all this we see and hear to-day from many ... who thereby have fallen into a bold and godless manner of life.”[568]

Finally there was Luther’s ethical attitude towards sin. “Look at the second sermon for Easter Day in Luther’s Church-sermons [where he says]: ‘Where now is sin? It is nailed to the cross.... If only I hold fast to this, I shall have a good conscience of being, like Christ Himself, without sin; then I can defy death, devil, sin and hell.’”

The Silesian also ruthlessly attacked the imputation of the merits of Christ by means of the Sola Fides.

An instructive parallel and at the same time a severe censure on Luther’s method of building up “faith” on inward assurance is afforded by Schwenckfeld’s account of the experiences and spiritual trials on which he himself had founded his faith. The preachers, insisting on the outward Word, urged that he had no right to appeal to his mere feelings; yet, as he points out, this very thing had been proclaimed from Wittenberg as the right, nay the duty of all.

Schwenckfeld on the Popular Church and the New Divine Service

The system of a State Church then being set up, the externalism of the Lutheran Popular Church and the worship introduced were naturally looked at askance by the promoter of the Church Apart of true believers; at the same time his strictures are not unduly biassed.[580]

He looks at the matter from the standpoint of Lutheran freedom, or as Carl Ecke expresses it, of “the early Christian individualism rediscovered by Luther.”[581] From this point of view Schwenckfeld can detect in the official Lutheran Church only a shadow of the Apostolic Church. Not merely the principle of the multitude, but also the appeal to the authorities for help and coercion was opposed to the spirit of Christ, at least according to all he had learnt from Luther.

“He raises the question whether that can possibly be the true Church of Christ where human coercion, force, commands and prohibitions, rather than Christian freedom and willingness, rule over faith and conscience.... The secular sword has no place in the Churches of Christ, but belongs to the secular authorities for the punishment of the wicked.... As little as it is in the power of the authorities to bestow the faith on anyone, to strengthen or increase it, so little does it befit it to force, coerce or urge.... What the authorities do here [in matters of faith] is nothing but violence, insolence and tyranny.”[582]

But “we always want to attract the great crowd!”[583] “They saw the great multitude and feared lest the churches should dwindle away.”[584] How were they to keep “Mr. Omnes, the common people, faithful to their churches without the help of the secular arm?”[585] They do not even think of first honestly instructing the magistrates how to become Christians and what the duty of a Christian is.... I am unable in conscience to agree with those who make idols of them so speedily and persuade them that they already have that, which their own conscience tells them they have never received.[586]

At the Supper, too, so he complains, owing to the want of proper discrimination between the converted and unconverted, “a false security of conscience is aroused, whereby people are led away from true repentance; for they teach that it is a source of grace, indulgence, ablution of sin, and salvation, whereas it is plain that no one receives anything of the kind.”[587] In his view it is not right to say that the Supper leads man to reconciliation with God by enlivening his faith, and that even that man “who is full of sin or has a bad conscience gnawed and bitten by his sins” should receive it, as the preachers teach;[588] on the contrary, only those who are reconciled have the right to approach. “Not the man who wants to be holy [the unjustified], but he who has already been hallowed by Christ, is fit for the Supper.”[589]

From the standpoint of his own peculiar doctrine he characterises it as a downright error on Luther’s part to have “put Justification even into the Sacrament”—Schwenckfeld himself had thrown all the sacraments overboard.—He also reproaches Luther with teaching, that: “Forgiveness of sins, which is only to be found in Christ as ruler, is to be sought in the Sacrament.”[590]

Now, Schwenckfeld was far from advising people to forsake the official Church; he did not recommend that the church service and its ceremonies and sermons should be shunned, he feared lest such advice might play into the hands of the Anabaptists. He recommends as necessary an “external practice of godliness.”[591] Yet, according to him, this was more readily carried out in private conventicles, i.e. in some sort of congregation apart of the true believers such as Luther himself had long dreamt of, and in conversation with Schwenckfeld, in 1525, regretted his inability to establish owing to the fewness of true Christians. (Above, p. 138 f.)

Luther in the meantime had become reconciled to the outer, Popular, Church, and, with his preachers’ help, had made of the outward Word a law.

The imperious behaviour of Luther and the preachers in the matter of the outward Word was, however, odious to Schwenckfeld. He protested strongly against being tied down to professions of faith liable at any moment to be rendered obsolete by new discoveries in Scripture truth.[592] Interest in things Divine was regarded as a privilege of the pastor’s office and the layman was kept in ignorance on the ground, that “one must believe blindly.”[593] Luther “is setting up a new tyranny, and wishes to tie men to his doctrine.”[594]