CHAPTER IV. OTHER LABOURS AND TRANSACTIONS, 1535-39.--ARCHBISHOP ALBERT AND SCHONITZ.--AGRICOLA.

Amidst these important and general affairs of the Church, bringing daily fresh labours and fresh anxieties for Luther—labours, however, which, in spite of his bodily sufferings, he undertook with his old accustomed energy—his strength, as in previous years we have observed with reference to his preaching, now no longer sufficed as before for the regular work of his calling. In his official duties at the university the Elector himself, anxiously concerned as he was for its progress, would have spared him as much as possible. For these he arranged, in 1536, an ample stipend. In his announcement of this step he solemnly declared: 'The merciful God has plenteously and graciously vouchsafed to let His holy, redeeming Word, through the teaching of the reverend and most learned, our beloved and good Martin Luther, doctor of Holy Scripture, be made known to all men in these latter days of the world with true Christian understanding, for their comfort and salvation, for which we give Him praise and thanks for ever; and has made known also, in addition to other arts, the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages, through the conspicuous and rare ability and industry of the learned Philip Melancthon, for the furtherance of the right and Christian comprehension of Holy Scripture.' To each of these two men he now gave a hundred gulden as an addition to his salary as professor, which in Luther's case had hitherto amounted to two hundred gulden. At the same time he released Luther from the obligation of lecturing, and, indeed, from all his other duties at the university.

Luther began, however, this year a new and important course of lectures—the exposition of the Book of Genesis, which, according to his wont, he illustrated with a copious and valuable commentary on the chief points of Christian doctrine and Christian life. They progressed, however, but slowly and with many interruptions; sometimes a whole year was occupied with only a few chapters. The work was not completed until 1545. They were the last lectures he delivered.

In the office of preacher, which he continued to fill voluntarily and without emolument, he undertook again, after he had returned from Schmalkald, and had gained fresh strength and, at least, a temporary recovery from his recent illness, labours at once beyond and more arduous than his ordinary duties. He resumed, in short, the duties of Bugenhagen, who was given leave of absence till 1539 to visit Denmark, for the purpose of organising there, under the new king Christian III., the new Evangelical Church. He preached regularly on week-days, in addition to his Sunday sermons; continuing his discourses, as Bugenhagen had done, though with many interruptions, on the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. John. The chancellor BrÜck wrote to the Elector from Wittenberg on August 27: 'Doctor Martin preaches in the parish church thrice a week; and such mightily good sermons are they, that it seems to me, as everyone is saying, there has never been such powerful preaching here before. He points out in particular the errors of the Popedom, and multitudes come to hear him. He closes his sermons with a prayer against the Pope, his Cardinals and Bishops, and for our Emperor, that God may give him victory and deliver him from the Popedom.'

Among his literary labours he again took in hand in 1539 his German translation of the Bible—the most important work, in its way, of all his life—and persevered with intense and unremitting industry, in order to revise it thoroughly for a new edition, which was published at the end of two years. For this work he assembled around him a circle of learned colleagues, whose assistance he succeeded in obtaining and whom he regularly consulted. These were Melancthon, Jonas, Bugenhagen, Cruciger, Matthew Aurogallus, professor of Hebrew, and afterwards the chaplain RÖrer, who attended to the corrections. From outside also some joined them, such as Ziegler, the Leipzig theologian, a man learned in Hebrew. Luther's younger friend Mathesius, who had been Luther's guest in 1540, relates of these meetings how 'Doctor Luther came to them with his old Bible in Latin and his new one in German, and besides these he had always the Hebrew text with him. Philip (Melancthon) brought with him the Greek text, Dr. Kreuziger (Cruciger) besides the Hebrew, the Chaldaic Bible (the translation or paraphrase in use among the ancient Jews); the professors had with them their Rabbis (the Rabbinical writings of the Old Testament). Each one had previously armed himself with a knowledge of the text, and compared the Greek and Latin with the Jewish version. The president then propounded a text, and let the opinions go round;—speeches of wondrous truth and beauty are said to have been made at these sittings.'

In other respects Luther's literary activity was chiefly devoted to the great questions remaining to be dealt with at a Council. In 1539, the year after his publication of the Schmalkaldic Articles, appeared a larger treatise from his pen 'On Councils and Churches,' one of the most exhaustive of his writings, and important to us as showing how firmly and confidently his idea of the Christian Church, as a community of the faithful, was maintained amidst all the practical difficulties which events prepared. He complains of the substitution of the blind, unmeaning word 'Church'—and that even in the Catechism for the young—for the Greek word in the New Testament 'Ecclesia,' as the name of the community or assembly of Christian people. Much misery, he said, had crept in under that word Church, from its being understood as consisting of the Pope and the bishops, priests, and monks. The Christian Church was simply the mass of pious Christian people, who believed in Christ and were endowed with the Holy Spirit, Who daily sanctified them by the forgiveness of sins, and by absolving and purifying them therefrom.

Of Luther's love for his German mother-language, and of the services he rendered it, so conspicuously shown by these his writings, and especially by his persevering industry in his translation of the Bible, we are further reminded by a request he made in a letter of March 1535, to his friend Wenzeslaus Link at NÜremberg. He suddenly in that letter breaks off from the Latin—which was still the customary language of correspondence between theologians—and continues in German, with the words, 'I will speak German, my dear Herr Wenzel,' and then begs his friend to make his servant collect for him all the German pictures, rhymes, books, and ballads that had recently been published at NÜremberg, as he wished to familiarise himself more with the genuine language of the people. Luther himself made a goodly collection of German proverbs. His original manuscript which contained them was inherited by a German family, but unfortunately it was bought about twenty years ago in England. There was published also at Wittenberg, in 1537, a small anonymous book on German names, written (unquestionably by Luther) in Latin, and therefore intended for students. It contains, it is true, many strange mistakes, but it is, nevertheless, a proof of the interest he took in such studies, and is interesting as a maiden effort in this field of national learning.

In the regular government and legal administration of his Saxon Church, Luther did not occupy any post of office. When in 1539 a Consistory was established at Wittenberg for the Electoral district, and afterwards, indeed, for the regulation of marriage and discipline, he did not become a member; he was certainly never called upon or qualified to take part in the exercise of such a jurisdiction. And yet this also was done with his concurrence, and in cases of difficulty he was resorted to for his advice. All Church questions of public interest continued, with this exception, to occupy his independent and influential discussion. And even the moral evils on the domain of civil, municipal and social life, to which Luther at the beginning of the Reformation appeared desirous of extending his preaching of reform, so far, at least, as that preaching represented a general call and exhortation, but which he afterwards seemed to discard altogether as something foreign to his mission, never wholly faded from his purview, or ceased to enlist his active interest. He wrote again in 1539 against usury, much as he had written at an earlier period, remarking to his friends that his book would prick the consciences of petty usurers, but that the big swindlers would only laugh at him in their sleeves. And in publishing his Schmalkaldic Articles he briefly refers again in his preface to the 'countless matters of importance' which a genuine Christian Council would have to mend in the temporal condition of mankind—such as the disunion of princes and states, the usury and avarice, which had spread like a deluge and had become the law, and the sins of unchastity, gluttony, gambling, vanity in dress, disobedience on the part of subjects, servants, and workmen of all trades; as also the removal of peasants, &c. Nor at the same time was he less prompt to interfere on behalf of individuals who were suffering from want and injustice, either by his humble intercession with their lords, or with the sharp sword of his denunciation.

It was Luther's indignation and zeal on such an occasion that caused now his irremediable rupture with the Archbishop, Cardinal Albert, and induced him to attack that magnate as recklessly as he did; for the Cardinal had hitherto been always disposed to treat him with a certain respect; and Luther, on his side, had refrained at least from any open exhibition of hostility. The immediate cause of this rupture was a judicial murder, perpetrated against one John SchÖnitz (or Schanz) of Halle, on the river Saale. This man had for years had the charge, as the confidential servant of the Archbishop, of the public and even the private funds which his master required for his stately palaces, his luxury, and his sensual enjoyments, refined or coarse, legitimate or illegitimate; and had actually lent him large sums. The Estates of the Archbishopric complained of the demands made on them for money, and rightly suspected that the funds supplied were improperly and dishonestly misappropriated. SchÖnitz grew alarmed on account of the clandestine 'practices' which he was carrying on for his master. The latter, however, assured him of his protection. But when the Estates refused to grant any more subsidies until a proper account was laid before them, he basely sacrificed his servant in order to extricate himself from his embarrassment. For deceptions alleged to have been practised against himself, he had SchÖnitz arrested, and confined, in September 1534, in the Castle of Giebichenstein. In vain SchÖnitz demanded a public trial by impartial judges; in vain did the Imperial Court of Justice give judgment in his favour. A second judgment of the court was answered by Albert's directing the prisoner, who was a citizen of Halle and sprung from an old local family, to be tried on June 21, 1535, at Giebichenstein, by a peasant tribunal hastily summoned from the surrounding villages, for the trial merely, as the rumour ran in Halle, of a horse-stealer. The unhappy prisoner was allowed no regular defence, and no counsel. An admission of guilt was extorted from him by the rack, and he was summarily sentenced to death. Time was only allowed him to say to the bystanders that he confessed himself a sinner in the sight of God, but that he had not deserved this fate. He was quickly strung up on the gallows, where his corpse remained hanging till the wind blew it down in February 1537. Albert took possession of his property. And this was done by the supreme prince of the Roman Church in Germany, who played the part of a modern MÆcenas with regard to art and science.

Whilst now the justices of the town of Halle were protesting against this treatment of their fellow-townsman to the Archbishop, who turned a deaf ear to their remonstrance, and Antony, the brother of the murdered man, exerted himself in vain to vindicate his honour and the rights of their family, Luther was drawn into the affair by the fact that one of his guests, Ludwig Rabe, was threatened with punishment by Albert, for expressions he let fall soon after the deed was committed. Luther thereupon wrote several times to Albert himself, and told him openly he was a murderer, and, for his squandering of Church property, deserved a gallows ten times higher than the Castle of Giebichenstein. He was restrained, however, from taking further steps by the Elector of Brandenburg and other of Albert's influential relatives, who appealed to John Frederick on his behalf, whilst Albert sought to make a cheap compensation to the family of the murdered man, or at least pretended to do so.

When, however, a young Humanist poetaster at Wittenberg, named Lemnius—properly Lemchen—actually glorified the Archbishop in verse, or, as Luther put it, 'made a saint of the devil,' and at the same time vilified some men and women at Wittenberg, Luther read aloud from the pulpit, in 1538, a short indictment, couched in the plainest possible terms, against the shameless libeller, as also against the Archbishop whom he glorified; and this indictment soon appeared in print. And now he no longer refrained from taking up the cause of SchÖnitz in a pamphlet of some length. When the Duke of Prussia endeavoured once more in a friendly way to dissuade him from his purpose, for the honour of the house of Brandenburg, he replied, 'Wicked sons have sprung from the noble race of David, and princes ought not to disgrace themselves by unprincely vices.' In the pamphlet to his opening he declared that a stone was lying upon his heart which was called 'Deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain' (Prov. xxiv. 11). He denounced the contempt and denial of justice of which the Archbishop was guilty, and at the same time boldly exposed the real objects of those private expenses which the Archbishop, together with his servant, had incurred, and of which the latter was naturally unable to give an account—least of all, those that ministered to his carnal appetites, such as his establishment at Morizburg in Halle. He himself, says Luther, does not judge the Cardinal; he is simply the bearer of the sentence pronounced by the great Judge in heaven. To those who might perhaps have taken exception to his words he says, 'I sit here at Wittenberg, and ask my most gracious lord the Elector for no further favour or protection than what is given to all alike.' Albert found it more prudent to keep silent.

But what disturbed and grieved Luther more than anything else during this, the closing chapter of his life, was the bitter experience he had yet to make in his own religious community, nay, amidst his most intimate companions and friends.

The way of life—in other words, the way of saving faith—was now rediscovered and clearly brought to light; and, as Luther said, a truly moral life should be the consequence. And great pains were taken to stamp this new truth clearly and distinctly on doctrine, and to guard against new errors and perversions. Differences, however, now arose among those who had hitherto worked so loyally together for the establishment of the faith—a beginning of those doctrinal disputes which after Luther's death became so disastrous to his Church. Again and again Luther bitterly complained of the moral wrongs and scandals which proved that the faith, however widely its confession had spread through Germany, was far from living in its purity and strength in the hearts of men, and bearing the expected fruit. Only his own conviction, his own faith was never shaken by this result. It must needs be, as Christ Himself had said, that offences must come; and, in the words of St. Paul (1 Cor. xi. 19), 'there must be also heresies,' and false teachers and deceivers must arise.

[Illustration: Fig. 44.—AGRICOLA. (From a miniature portrait by
Cranach, in the University Album at Wittenberg, 1531.)]

We have seen above how cordially Luther welcomed Agricola back at Wittenberg after throwing up his appointment at Eisleben. He obtained for him from the Elector in 1537 an ample salary, to enable him to fill the long-coveted office of teacher at the university, and be a preacher as well. It soon became known that Agricola persisted in maintaining that doctrine of repentance in defence of which he had attacked Melancthon at the first visitation of churches in the Saxon Electorate. He had been accused of this at Eisleben, and Count Albert of Mansfeld, whose service he had quitted with rudeness and discontent, denounced him as a restless and dangerous fellow. And now at Wittenberg also Agricola had some sermons printed, and some theses circulated, embodying a statement of his peculiar doctrine. Luther considered it his duty to refute these, and he did so from the pulpit, but without naming their author.

The proclamation of God's law, so Agricola now taught, was no necessary part of Christianity, as such, nor of the way of salvation prepared and revealed by Christ. The Gospel of the Son of God, our Saviour, this alone should be proclaimed, and operate in touching the hearts of men and exposing the true character of their sins as sinfulness against the Son of God. In this way he sought to give full effect to the fundamental evangelical doctrine, that the grace of God alone had power to save through the joyful message of Christ. The personal vanity, however, which was the chief weakness of this gifted, intellectual, and fairly eloquent man, and which was now increased by the dissatisfaction it had caused at Eisleben, displayed itself further in the assertion of his eccentricities of dogma. Moreover, he was far from clear in his first principles, and while maintaining his tenets he was unwilling to stake too much on his own account, and yet refused actually to abandon them.

He came at first to an understanding with Luther by offering an explanation which the latter deemed satisfactory, but he then proceeded to revert to his peculiar tenets in a new publication. Luther now launched a sharp reply against these antinomian theses, as well as against others, which went much further, and whose origin is unknown. He found wanting in Agricola that earnest moral appreciation of the law, and of the moral demands made of us by God, whereby the heart of the sinner, as he himself had experienced, must first be bruised and broken, and thus opened to receive the word of grace, before that word can truly renew, revive, and sanctify it. But together with Agricola's tenets he then placed the others, betraying an equally frivolous estimate of the real nature of those demands and of the duties they entailed, as evidence of one tendency and one character, since Agricola, indeed, taught like them, that the good willed by God in His Commandments was fulfilled in Christians by the simple fact of their belief in Christ, and as the fruit of His word of grace. Thus it came about that this tendency which Luther found represented in Agricola, stood out before him in all its compass and with its extremest and most alarming consequences, and called forth the boldest exercise of his zeal. It grieved him sorely, nevertheless, to have to enter into this dispute with his old friend. 'God knows,' he said, 'what trials this business has prepared for me; I shall have died of sheer anxiety before I have brought my theses against him (Agricola) to the light.'

At the instance, however, of the Elector, who valued Agricola, another reconciliation was brought about. Agricola humbled himself; he even authorised his great opponent to draw up a retractation in his name, and Luther did this in a manner very damaging to Agricola, in a letter to his former colleague and opponent at Eisleben, Caspar GÜttel. Agricola thereupon received a place in the newly-formed consistory. But even now he could not refrain from fresh utterances which betrayed his old opinions. Luther's confidence in him was thus destroyed for ever: he spoke with indignation, pain, and scorn of 'Grikel (Agricola), the false man.' The latter at length complained to the Elector against Luther for having unjustly aspersed him. The Elector testified to him his displeasure; Luther gave a sharp answer to the charge, and his prince made further inquiries into the matter of complaint. Agricola finally snatched at a means of escape offered by his summons to Berlin, whither he had been called as a preacher of distinction by the Elector Joachim II., who was a convert to the Reformation. In August 1540 he left Wittenberg. He sent thither from Berlin another and fully satisfactory retractation in order to retain his official appointment. But Luther's friendship with him was broken for ever.

In another quarter also Melancthon had been charged with deviating in certain statements from the path of right doctrine.

We know already how his anxiety about the dangers caused by the separation from the great Catholic Church seemed to tempt him to indulge in questionable concessions, and how it was Luther himself, with a disposition so different to Melancthon's, who nevertheless held firmly to his trust in his friend and fellow-labourer, particularly during the Diet of Augsburg. And, indeed, subsequent events brought this tendency to concession more fully into notice.

Certain peculiarities now asserted themselves in Melancthon's independent opinions, with regard both to theology and practical life, which distinguished his mode of teaching from that of Luther. He who, again and again, in the Augsburg Confession and the Apology, as also in the system of evangelical theology which in his 'Loci Communes' he was the first to elaborate, had expounded with full and active conviction the fundamental evangelical truth of a justifying and saving Faith, was anxious also—more so, even, than many strict confessors of that doctrine—to have the whole field of moral improvement and the fruits of morality which were necessary to preserve that faith, estimated at their proper value. And further, with respect to God's will and the operation of His grace, whereby alone the sinner could obtain inward conversion and faith, he wished to make this depend entirely on man's own will and choice, so that the blame might not appear to lie with God if the call to salvation remained fruitless, and a temptation thereby be offered to many to indulge in carelessness or despondency. In addition to this, he differed unmistakably from Luther in his doctrine of the Sacrament. For, though it was he who at Augsburg in 1530 had flatly rejected the Zwinglians, still his historical researches impressed him with the belief, that, in reality, as indeed the Zwinglians maintained, not Augustine himself, among the ancients, had taught the Real Bodily Presence after the manner of Luther, or even of Roman Catholicism; and his own theological opinion induced him at least to satisfy himself with more or less obscure propositions about the communion of the Saviour Who died for us with the guests at His table, without any fixed or clear declarations about the substantiality of the Body. This appears, for instance, in his 'Loci Communes,' although in the formula of the Wittenberg Concord of 1536 he went farther, together with Luther.

On the first point above-mentioned, a priest named Cordatus, a strict adherent of Luther, had raised a protest against him in 1536. But the opponent whom Melancthon chiefly feared in this respect was the theologian Amsdorf, who was not only an old familiar friend of Luther, but the especial guardian, both then and still more after Luther's death, of Lutheran orthodoxy. But Luther himself was anxious to avoid, even in this matter, any rupture or discord with Melancthon. He took great pains to reconcile the difference, and knew also how to keep silence, though without deviating from his own strict standpoint, or being able to overlook the peculiarity of his friend's teaching, conspicuously apparent as it was in the new edition of his book.

We are reminded by this, moreover, how Luther, during his illness at Schmalkald in 1537, made no secret of his fear of a division breaking out at Wittenberg after his death.