LUTHER AND THE PROGRESS AND INTERNAL TROUBLES OF PROTESTANTISM. 1538—1541.

In the great affairs of the Church, amid the threats of his enemies and in all his dealings with them, Luther continued from day to day to trust quietly in God, as the Guider of events, Who suffers none to forestall His designs, and puts to shame and rebuke the inventions of man. His hope of external peace had hitherto been fulfilled beyond all expectation. And it had been permitted him to see the Reformation gain strength and make further progress in the German Empire. Indeed, it seemed possible that a union might be effected with those Catholics who had been impressed with the evangelical doctrine of salvation. These were results accomplished by the inward power of God's Word, as hitherto preached to the people, under a Divine and marvellously favourable dispensation of outer relations and events—fruits as unexpected as they were gratifying to Luther. Great plans or projects of his own, however, were still far from his thoughts; nor even did the details of this historical development demand such activity on his part as he had shown in the earlier years of the movement. And yet there was no lack of discord, difficulty, and trouble within the pale of the new Church and amongst its members; prospects of further, and possibly much more serious dangers to be encountered; thoughts of sadness and disquietude to vex the soul of the Reformer, now aged, suffering, and weary. The goal of his hopes had ever been, and still remained, not indeed a victory to be gradually achieved for his cause, perhaps even in his own lifetime, by the course of ecclesiastical and political changes and events, but the end which the Lord Himself, according to His promises, would make of the whole wicked world, and the Hereafter whither he was ever waiting to be summoned.

Since the Schmalkaldic allies had rejected the Emperor with his invitation to a Council, the Romish zealots might well hope that Charles at length would prepare to use force against them. He was not yet able to bring his quarrel with King Francis to a final termination; but, nevertheless, he concluded a truce with him in 1538 for ten years, while at the same time his vice-chancellor Held contrived to effect a union of Roman Catholic princes in Germany in opposition to the Schmalkaldic League. This union was joined, in addition to Austria, Bavaria, and George of Saxony, by Duke Henry of Brunswick, the bitter enemy of the Landgrave Philip. Already in the spring of that year people at Wittenberg talked of operations on a large scale ostensibly directed against the Turks, but in reality against the Protestants. Or at least it was feared that the imperial army, in the event of its defeating the Turks, might, as Luther expressed it, turn their spears against the Evangelical party. In this respect Luther had no fears; he did not believe in a victory over the Turks, and, even in that case, his opinion was that the imperial troops would no more submit to be made the instruments of such a policy than they had done some years before, after their victory at Vienna. Most earnestly he exhorted the Elector, for his part at least, to do his duty again in the war against the Turks, for the sake of his Fatherland and the poor oppressed people. On the other hand, the right of the Protestant States to resist the Emperor, if it came to a war of religion, was one which he now asserted without scruple or hesitation. The Emperor, he said, in such a war would not be Emperor at all, but merely a soldier of the Pope. He appealed to the fact that once among the people of Israel pious and godly men had risen up against their sovereign; and the German princes had additional rights over their Emperor, by virtue of their constitution. Finally, he reasoned from the law of nature itself, that a father was bound to protect his wife and children from open murder; and he likened the Emperor, who usurped a power notoriously illegal, to a murderer. For the rest, he declared, in a publication exhorting the Evangelical clergy to pray for peace, that as to whether the Papists chose to carry out their designs or not he was perfectly indifferent, in case God did not will to work a miracle. His only fear was lest a war might arise, if they did so, which would never end, and would be the total ruin of Germany.

But the Emperor was less zealous and more cautious than his vice-chancellor. He sent another representative to Germany, with instructions to prevent an outbreak of hostilities. This envoy, in the course of some negotiations conducted at Frankfort in April 1539, agreed to an understanding by which the ecclesiastical law-suits hitherto instituted in the Imperial Chamber against the Protestants were suspended, and a number of chosen theologians of piety and laymen were to 'arrange a praiseworthy union of Christians' at an assembly of the German Estates.

On April 17, in the midst of these transactions, Duke George of Saxony died after a short illness. His country passed to his brother Henry, who in his own smaller territory of Freiburg had for some years, much to the grief of George, established the Evangelical form of worship, and given shelter to the heretics banished by his brother. The latter had left no male issue to succeed him. He had lost two sons in boyhood; and his son John, who held the same opinions as himself, had died two years ago, when quite a young man, without leaving any children. His last remaining son Frederick was of weak intellect, but had nevertheless been married after his brother's death, and died a few weeks later. He was soon followed by his unhappy father and sovereign. Luther said of him that he had gone to everlasting fire, though he would have wished him life and conversion. To us his end appears the more tragic because we cannot but acknowledge the honest zeal with which, from his own point of view, he endeavoured to serve God, and would willingly even have effected a reform in the Church; whilst, in spite of all his severity against heretics, he never suffered himself to be hurried into deeds of coarse violence and cruelty. There are extant prayers and religious discourses, composed and written down by himself. He read the Bible, and expressed a wish, when Luther's translation appeared, that 'the monk would put the whole Bible into German, and then go about his business.'

Thus the old and constantly revived quarrel between Luther and the Duke came at length to an end. The Reformation was immediately introduced throughout the duchy by the appointment of Evangelical clergy, by changes in public worship, and by a visitation of churches after the example of the one in Electoral Saxony. When Henry was solemnly acknowledged sovereign at Leipzig, he invited Luther and Jonas to be present. On the afternoon of Whitsunday, May 24, 1539, Luther preached a sermon in the court chapel of that Castle of Pleissenburg, where he had once disputed before George with Eck, and on the following afternoon he preached in one of the churches of the town, not venturing to do so in the morning on account of his weak state of health. He now proclaimed aloud, in his sermon on the Gospel for Whitsunday, that the Church of Christ was not there, where men were madly crying 'Church! Church!' without the Word of God, nor was it with the Pope, the cardinals, and the bishops; but there, and there only, where Christ was loved and His Word was kept, and where accordingly He dwelt in the souls of men. He refrained from any special reference to the state of things hitherto existing at Leipzig and in the duchy, or to the change brought about by God. But we call to mind the words he had spoken in 1532, 'Who knows what God will do before ten years are over?' Very soon, indeed, the magnates of the Saxon court and the nobility, though accepting the reformed faith of their new sovereign, gave occasion to Luther for bitter complaints of their rapacity, their indifference to religion, and their improper and tyrannical usurpations on the territory of the Church.

In addition to the Saxon duchy, the Electorate of Brandenburg was also about to go over to Protestantism. The Elector Joachim I. adhered so strictly to the ancient Church, that his wife Elizabeth, who was evangelically inclined, had fled to Saxony, where she became an intimate friend of Luther's household. But on his death in 1535, his younger son John, together with his territory, the 'Neumark,' joined at once the Schmalkaldic allies. And now, after longer consideration, his elder brother also, Joachim II.—a man of quieter disposition and more attached to ancient ways—took the decisive step, after an agreement with his Estates and the territorial bishop, Jagow. On November 1, 1539, he received from the latter publicly the Sacrament in both kinds.

Under these circumstances the Emperor resolved to give effect to the essential part of the Frankfort agreement. He summoned a meeting at Spire 'for the purpose of so arranging matters that the wearisome dissension in religion might be reconciled in a Christian manner.' In consequence of a pestilence which appeared at Spire, the assembly was removed to Hagenau. Here it was actually held in June 1540.

Meanwhile, the most vigorous champion of Protestantism, the Landgrave Philip, took a step which was calculated to damage the position of the Evangelical Church and to embarrass its adherents more than anything which their enemies could possibly attempt. Philip, in his youth (1523) had taken to wife a daughter of Duke George of Saxony, but soon repented of his ill-considered resolve, on the ground that she was of an unamiable disposition and was afflicted with bodily infirmities, and accordingly proceeded to look elsewhere for a mistress, after the fashion only too common at that time with emperors and princes, but scarcely commented upon in their case. The earnest remonstrances made to him on religious grounds against this step had the effect of causing him certain prickings of conscience; he had not ventured on that account, as he now complained, to present himself at the Lord's table, with one single exception, since the Peasants' War. But his conscience was not strong enough to make him give up his evil ways. At last the Bible, which he read industriously, seemed to him to provide a means of outlet from his difficulty. He sheltered himself, as the Anabaptist fanatics had done before him, behind the Old Testament precedent of Abraham and other godly men, to whom it had been permitted to have more than one wife, and pleaded, moreover, that the New Testament contained no prohibition of polygamy. With all the energy and stubbornness of his nature, he fastened on these notions and clung to them, when, at the house of his sister, the Duchess Elizabeth, at Rochlitz, he chanced to meet and fall in love with a lady named Margaret von der Saal. She refused to be his except by marriage. Her mother even demanded of him that Luther, Butzer, and Melancthon, or at least two of them, together with an envoy of the Elector and the Duke of Saxony, should be present as witnesses at the marriage. Philip himself found the consent of these divines and of his most distinguished ally, John Frederick, indispensable. He succeeded first of all in gaining over the versatile Butzer, and sent him in December 1539, on this errand, to Wittenberg.

He appealed to the strait that he was in, no longer able with a good conscience to go to war or to punish crime, and also to the testimony of Scripture, adding, very truly, that the Emperor and the world were quite willing to permit both him and anyone else to live in open immorality. Thus, he said, they were forbidding what God allowed, and winking at what He prohibited. In other respects, indeed, a double marriage was not a thing unheard of even by the Christendom of those days. It was said, for instance, of the Christian Emperor of Rome, Valentinian II., to whose case Philip himself appealed, that he had been permitted to contract a marriage of that kind. To the Pope was ascribed the power to grant the necessary dispensation.

On December 10 Butzer brought back to the Landgrave from Wittenberg an opinion of Luther and Melancthon. They told him in decided terms that it was in accordance with creation itself, and recognised as such by Jesus, 'that a man was not to have more than one wife;' and they, the preachers of God's Word, were commanded to regulate marriage and all human things 'in accordance with their original and Divine institution, and to adhere thereto as closely as possible, while at the same time avoiding to their utmost all cause of pain or annoyance.' They urgently exhorted him not to regard incontinence, as did the world, in the light of a trifling offence, and represented to him plainly that if he refused to resist his evil inclinations, he would not mend matters by taking a second wife. But with all this exhortation and warning, they confessed themselves bound to admit that 'what was allowed in respect of marriage by the law of Moses was not actually forbidden in the gospel;' thereby maintaining, in point of fact, that an original ordinance in the Church must be adhered to as the rule, but nevertheless admitting the possibility of a dispensation under very strong and exceptional circumstances. They did not say that such a dispensation was applicable to the case of Philip; they only wished him earnestly to reconsider the matter with his own conscience. In the event, however, of his keeping to his resolve, they would not refuse him the benefit of a dispensation, and only required that the matter should be kept private, on account of the scandal and possible abuse it would occasion if generally known.

Luther himself abandoned afterwards the conclusions he drew from the Old Testament in this respect, and, as a consequence, rejected the admissibility of a double marriage for Christians. Friends of the evangelical and Lutheran belief can only lament the decision he pronounced in this matter. With that belief itself it has nothing whatever to do. Instead of drawing his conclusions from the moral aspect of marriage, as amply attested by the spirit of the New Testament, though not indeed exactly expressed, Luther on this occasion clung to the letter, and failed, of course, to find any written declaration on the point. At the same time he mistook, in common with all the theologians of his time, the difference, in point of matured morality and knowledge, between the New Covenant and the standpoint of the Old, which was that also of his best adherents.

The simple Christian common sense of the Elector John Frederick, and his practical view of the position, preserved him this time from the error into which the theologians had fallen. He lamented that they should have given an answer, and would have nothing to do with the business.

Philip, however, rejoiced at the decision, and obtained, moreover, his wife's consent to take a second one.

In the following March the Protestants held another conference at Schmalkald, with a view of coming to an agreement as to their conduct in the attempts at unity in the Church. The Elector summoned Melancthon thither, but excused Luther, at his own request. Philip then invited the former, under some pretext or other, to the neighbouring Castle of Rothenburg on the Fulda. Arrived there, he was obliged to be a witness with Butzer, on March 4, 1540, to the marriage of the Landgrave with Margaret. Philip thanked Luther some weeks after for the 'remedy' allowed him, without which he should have become 'quite desperate.' He had kept the name of his second wife a secret from the Wittenbergers; he now told Luther that she was a virtuous maiden, a relative of Luther's own wife, and that he rejoiced to have honourably become his kinsman.

Very soon, however, the news of this unheard of event got wind. The Evangelicals were not less scandalised than their enemies, who in other respects were glad to see the mischief. The first to demand an explanation was the Ducal Court of Saxony, the Duke being so nearly related to Philip's first wife, and on the eve of a quarrel with Philip about a claim of inheritance. The Landgrave's whole position was in jeopardy; for bigamy, by the law of the Empire, was a serious offence. Luther heard now with indignation that the 'necessity' to which Philip had thought himself justified in yielding had been exaggerated. The latter, on the other hand, finding concealment no longer possible, wished to announce his marriage publicly, and defend it. He went so far as to imagine that even if the allies should renounce him he might still procure the favour and consideration of the Emperor. Unpleasant and very painful discussions arose between him, John Frederick, and Duke Henry of Saxony.

Meanwhile, the day was now approaching for the conference at Hagenau. Melancthon was sent there too by the Elector. But on reaching Weimar on June 13, where the prince was then staying, he suddenly fell ill, and it seemed as if his end was close at hand. He was oppressed with trouble and anxiety about the wrongdoing of the Landgrave. The Elector himself wrote reproachfully to Philip, saying that 'Philip Melancthon was disturbed with miserable thoughts about him,' and he now lay between life and death. Luther was sent for by the Elector from Wittenberg. He found the sick man lying in a state of unconsciousness and seemingly quite dead to the world. Shocked at the sight, he exclaimed, 'God help us! how has Satan marred this vessel of Thy grace!' Then the faithful, manly friend fell to praying God for his precious companion, casting, as he said, all his heart's request before Him, and reminding Him of all the promises contained in His own Word. He exhorted and bade Melancthon to be of good courage, for that God willed not the death of a sinner, and he would yet live to serve Him. He assured him he would rather now depart himself. On Melancthon's gradually showing more signs of life, he had some food prepared for him, and on his refusing it said, 'You really must eat, or I will excommunicate you.' By degrees the patient revived in body and soul. Luther was able to inform another friend, 'We found him dead, and by an evident miracle he lives.'

Luther, after this, was taken to Eisenach by his prince, to advise him on the news which he expected to receive there from Hagenau. At Eisenach he and the chancellor BrÜck had an earnest consultation with envoys from Hesse. Against these, both Luther and BrÜck insisted that the proceedings which had taken place between Philip and the theologians in respect to his marriage should be kept as secret as a confession, and that Philip must be content to have his second marriage regarded, in the eyes of the world and according to the law, as concubinage. He must make up his mind, therefore, to parry, as best he could, the questions which were being noised abroad about him, with vague statements or equivocations. He would then incur no further personal danger. But any attempt to brazen it out would inevitably land him in confusion and embarrassment, and only increase and continue the damage done to the Evangelical cause by this affair.

The Diet at Hagenau made no further demand on Luther's activity. It was there resolved to take in hand again, at another meeting to be held at Worms late in the autumn, and after further preparation, the religious and ecclesiastical questions at issue. Peaceably-disposed and competent men were to be appointed on both sides for this purpose. Thus Luther was now at liberty to leave Eisenach towards the end of July, and return home, dissatisfied, as he wrote to his wife, with the Diet at Hagenau, where labour and expense had been wasted, but happy in the thought that Melancthon had been restored from death to life.

At Worms the proceedings, in which Melancthon and Eck took a prominent part, were further adjourned to a Diet which the Emperor purposed to hold in person at Ratisbon early in 1541. Here, on April 27, a debate was opened on religion.

Luther entertained very slender expectations from all these conferences, considering the long-ascertained opinions of his opponents. He pointed to the innocent blood which had long stained the hands of the Emperor Charles and King Ferdinand. Still, during the Diet at Worms, the thought arose in his mind that, if only the Emperor were rightly disposed, a German Council might actually result from that assembly. He saw his enemies busy with their secret schemes of mischief, and feared lest many of his comrades in the faith, such as the Landgrave Philip, might treat too lightly the matter, which was no mere comedy among men, but a tragedy in which God and Satan were the actors. He rejoiced again, however, that the falsehood and cunning of his enemies must be brought to nought by their own folly, and that God Himself would consummate the great catastrophe of the drama. And in regard to the fear we have just mentioned, he declared that he, at any rate, would not suffer himself to be dragged into anything against his own conviction. 'Rather,' said he, 'would I take the matter again on my own shoulders, and stand alone, as at the beginning. We know that it is the cause of God, and He will carry it through to the end; whoever will not go with it, must remain behind.'

Between the Diets of Worms and Ratisbon he entered in 1541, with all his old severity, and with a violence even beyond his wont, into a bitter correspondence which had just then begun between Duke Henry of Brunswick—WolfenbÜttel, a zealous Catholic, and morally of ill repute with friend and foe, on the one side, and John Frederick and the Landgrave Philip, the heads of the Schmalkaldic League, on the other. He published against Duke Henry a pamphlet 'Against Hans Worst.' The Duke had taunted him with having allowed himself to call his own sovereign Hans Wurst. Luther assured him, in reply, that he had never given this name to a single man, whether friend or foe; but now applied it to the Duke, because he found it meant a stupid blockhead who wished to be thought clever and all the time spoke and acted like a simpleton. But he was not content with calling him a blockhead; he represented him as a profligate man, who, while libelling the princes and pretending to be the champion of God's ordinances, himself practised open adultery, committed acts of violence and insolent tyranny, and incited men to incendiarism in his opponents' territories. He would let the Duke scream himself hoarse or dead with his calumnies against John Frederick and the Evangelicals, and simply answer him by saying, 'Devil, thou liest! Hans Worst, how thou liest! O, Henry WolfenbÜttel, what a shameless liar thou art! Thou spittest forth much, and namest nothing; thou libellest, and provest nothing.' At the same time this pamphlet of Luther was a literary vindication of the Reformation and Protestantism; here, said he, and not in the popedom, was the true, ancient, and original Christian Church. Luther himself, on reading over his pamphlet after it was printed, thought its tone against Henry was too mild; a headache, he said, must have suppressed his indignation.

Just at this time he had to encounter a fresh and violent attack of illness. He described it, in a letter to Melancthon, who was then at Ratisbon, as a 'cold in the head;' it was accompanied not only with alarming giddiness, from which he was now a frequent sufferer, but also with deafness and intolerable pains, forcing tears from his eyes, something unusual with him, and making him call on God to put an end to his pain or to his life. A copious discharge of matter from his ear, which occurred in Passion Week, gave him relief; but for a long while he continued very weak and suffering. To his prince, who sent his private physician to attend him, he wrote on April 25, thanking him, and adding, 'I should have been well content if the dear Lord Jesus had taken me in His mercy from hence, as I am now of little more use on earth.' He attributed his recovery to the intercessions which Bugenhagen had made for him in the Church.

Whilst he was still feeling his head thus full of pain and unfit for work, he was called upon to give his opinion on the preparations for the religious conference at Ratisbon, and afterwards upon its results.

Bright prospects seemed now to be opening for the victory of the Gospel. Men of understanding and really desirous of peace had for once been commissioned, by the Catholics as well as by the Protestants, to conduct the debate. The chief actors were no longer an Eck, though he, too, was one of the collocutors, but the pious, gentle, and refined theologian Julius von Pflug, and the electoral counsellor of Cologne, Gropper, who vied with him in an earnest desire for reform and unity. Contarini also was there, as the Papal legate—a man influenced by purely religious motives, and a convert to the deeper Evangelical doctrine of salvation. Melancthon and Butzer were also there. The questions of most importance from the Evangelical point of view were first dealt with—namely, those which related, not to the external system and authority of the Church, but to man's need of, and the way to obtain, salvation, to sin, grace, and justification. And it was now unanimously confessed that the faithful soul is sustained solely by the righteousness given by Christ; and for His sake alone, and not for any worthiness or works of its own, is justified and accepted by God.

Never before, and never since, have Protestant and Catholic theologians approached each other so nearly, nay, been so unanimous, on these fundamental doctrines, as on that memorable day. And the Catholics, in this, distinctly left the ground of mediÆval scholasticism, and went over to that of the Evangelicals. How distinctly this was done will be apparent to any one who compares the propositions accepted at the Conference of Ratisbon with the Catholic reply to the Augsburg Confession of 1530.

Nevertheless, we do not find that Luther felt particularly elated by the news from Ratisbon. The formula which embodied their agreement seemed to him a 'roundabout and patched affair.' In connection with faith, as the only means of justification, too much, he thought, was said of the works which must spring from it; in connection with the justification given to the faithful through Christ, too much was said of the righteousness which each Christian must strive to attain. He, too, had always taught and demanded both works and righteousness. But the present arrangement of clauses seemed to him calculated to lessen and obscure again the primary importance of Christ and of Faith, as the sole means of salvation. And we see what objection was uppermost in his mind, in his allusion to Eck, who also was obliged to subscribe the formula. Eck, said Luther, would never confess to having once taught differently to now, and would know well enough how to adopt the new tenets to his old way of thinking. They were putting a patch of new cloth upon an old garment, and the rent would be made worse. (Matt. ix. 16.)

Luther was spared, however, a decision as to the acceptance or non-acceptance of an agreement. For among the Catholic Estates of the Empire he found, so far as he had followed the debate of the Diet, too strong an opposition to hope for real union. Moreover, the collocutors themselves were unable to agree when they came to further questions, as, for example, the Mass and Transubstantiation; they still shipwrecked, therefore, on those points which were of the most vital importance for the external glorification of the priesthood and the Church, and the surrender of which would have meant the sacrifice of a dogma already ratified by a Conciliar decree.

On June 11 an embassy from Ratisbon appeared before Luther in the name of those Protestant states which were most zealous for unity. Prince John of Anhalt was at their head. Luther was requested to declare his concurrence with what had been done, and assist them in giving permanent effect to the articles agreed to at the Conference, and arranging some peaceful and tolerant compromise with regard to those points on which agreement had been impossible. Luther was quite prepared to acquiesce in such toleration, provided only the Emperor would permit the preaching of the articles referring to the doctrine of salvation, leaving it open to the Protestants to continue their warfare of the Word on the points still remaining in dispute. The Emperor, however, would only sanction those articles on the understanding that a Council should finally decide upon them, and that, in the meantime, all controversial writings on matters of religion should cease. By the Catholic Estates at the Diet they were strenuously opposed. Luther's own opinion remained substantially the same as before—namely, that any trust or hopes were vain, unless their enemies gave God the honour due to Him, and openly confessed that they had changed their teaching. The Emperor must see and acknowledge that within the last twenty years his Edict had been the murder of many pious people.

The Conference accordingly remained fruitless. The Diet, however,
did not close without achieving an important result for the
Protestants; for the Emperor granted them, at their request, the
Religious Peace of NÜremberg.

The main reason that induced Charles so far to toleration and leniency was the trouble with the Turks. With regard to these, Luther now addressed himself once more to his countrymen with words of earnestness and weight. He published an 'Exhortation to prayer against the Turks,' teaching and warning his readers to regard them as a scourge of God, and make war against them as God commanded. From this time also dates his hymn

Lord, shield us with Thy Word, our Hope,
And smite the Moslem and the Pope.

When a tax was levied for the war with the Turks, Luther himself begged the Elector not to exempt him with his scanty goods. He would gladly, he said, if not too old and too infirm, 'be one of the army himself.' In 1542 he brought out for his countrymen a refutation of the Koran, written in earlier days, that they might learn what a shameful faith was Mahomed's, and not suffer themselves to be perverted, in case by God's decree they should see the Turks victorious, or even fall into their hands.