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LUTHER 


IMPRIMATUR 

EDM.  CAN.  SURMONT, 

Vic.  •  Gen. 
Wcstmonasterii,  die  13  Decembris,  1915. 


LUTHER 


BY 

HARTMANN    GRISAR,    SJ 

PROFESSOR    AT    THE    UNIVERSITY    OF    INNSBRUCK 


AUTHORISED    TRANSLATION    FROM     THE    GERMAN    BY 

E.   M.    LAMOND 

EDITED    BY 

LUIGI   CAPPADELTA 


VOLUME  V 


LONDON 
KEGAN  PAUL,  TRENCH,  TRUBNER  &  CO.,  LTD. 

BROADWAY   HOUSE,   68-74  CARTER   LANE,    E.G. 
1916 


A  FEW  PRESS  OPINIONS  OF  VOLUMES  I-IY. 

"His  most  elaborate  and  systematic  biography  ...  is  not  merely  a  book  to  be 
reckoned  with;  it  is  one  with  which  we  cannot  dispense,  if  only  for  its  minute 
examination  of  Luther's  theological  writings."— The  Athenccum  (Vol.  I). 

"The  second  volume  of  Dr.  Grisar's  '  Life  of  Luther'  is  fully  as  interesting  as  the 
first.  There  is  the  same  minuteness  of  criticism  and  the  same  width  of  survey." 

The  Athenceum  (Vol.  II). 

"Its  interest  increases.  As  we  see  the  great  Reformer  in  the  thick  of  his  work, 
and  the  heyday  of  his  life,  the  absorbing  attraction  of  his  personality  takes  hold  of 
us  more  and  more  strongly.  His  stupendous  force,  his  amazing  vitality,  his  super 
human  interest  in  life,  impress  themselves  upon  us  with  redoubled  effect.  We  find 
him  the  most  multiform,  the  most  paradoxical  of  men.  .  .  .  The  present  volume, 
which  is  admirably  translated,  deals  rather  with  the  moral,  social,  and  personal  side 
of  Luther's  career  than  with  his  theology." — The  Athe7iceum  (Vol.  III). 

"Father  Grisar  has  gained  a  high  reputation  in  this  country  through  the  translation 
of  his  monumental  work  on  the  History  of  Rome  and  the  Popes  in  the  Middle  Ages, 
and  this  first  instalment  of  his  '  Life  of  Luther'  bears  fresh  witness  to  his  unwearied 
industry,  wide  learning,  and  scrupulous  anxiety  to  be  impartial  in  his  judgments  as 
well  as  absolutely  accurate  in  matters  of  fact." — Glasgow  Herald. 

"  This  '  Life  of  Luther '  is  bound  to  become  standard  ...  a  model  of  every  literary, 
critical,  and  scholarly  virtue." — The  Month. 

"Like  its  two  predecessors,  Volume  III  excels  in  the  minute  analysis  not  merely  of 
Luther's  actions,  but  also  of  his  writings ;  indeed,  this  feature  is  the  outstanding 
merit  of  the  author's  patient  labours." — The  Irish  Times. 

"  This  third  volume  of  Father  Grisar's  monumental  '  Life '  is  full  of  interest  for  the 
theologian.  And  not  less  for  the  psychologist ;  for  here  more  than  ever  the  author 
allows  himself  to  probe  into  the  mind  and  motives  and  understanding  of  Luther,  so 
as  to  get  at  the  significance  of  his  development."— The  Tablet  (Vol.  III). 

"Historical  research  owes  a  debt  of  gratitude  to  Father  Grisar  for  the  calm  un 
biased  manner  in  which  he  marshals  the  facts  and  opinions  on  Luther  which  his 
deep  erudition  has  gathered." — The  Tablet  (Vol.  IV). 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER    XXIX.      ETHICAL    RESULTS    OF    THE    NEW 

TEACHING     .  •    pages  3-104 

1.  PRELIMINARIES.     NEW  FOUNDATIONS  or  MORALITY. 

Difficulties  involved  in  Luther's  standpoint  ;  poverty  of 
human  reason,  power  of  the  devil,  etc.  How  despair  may 
serve  to  excite  humility  .  •  pages  3-7 

2.  THE  TWO  POLES  :  THE  LAW  AND  THE  GOSPEL. 

His  merits  in  distinguishing  the  two  ;  what  he  means  by 
"  the  Gospel  "  ;  his  contempt  for  "  the  Law  "  ;  the  Law 
a  mere  gallows  .  •  pages  7-14 

3.  ENCOUNTER  WITH  THE  ANTINOMIANISM  or  AGRICOLA. 

Connection  between  Agricola's  doctrine  and  Luther's. 
Luther's  first  step  against  Agricola  ;  the  Disputations  ; 
the  tract  "  Against  the  Antinomians  "  ;  action  of  the  Court  ; 
end  of  Agricola  ;  the  reaction  of  the  Antinomian  movement 
on  Luther  .  •  page*  15-25 

4.  THE    CERTAINTY  OF    SALVATION     AND     ITS     RELATION     TO 

MORALITY. 

Psychology  of  Luther's  conception  of  this  certainty  as  the 
very  cause  and  aim  of  true  morality.  Luther's  last  sermons 
at  Eisleben  ;  notable  omissions  in  these  sermons  on  morality  ; 
his  wavering  between  Old  and  New  .  pages  25-43 

5.  ABASEMENT  or  PRACTICAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

Faith,  praise  and  gratitude  our  only  duties  towards  God. 
"  All  works,  apart  from  faith,  must  be  for  our  neighbour's 
sake."  There  are  "  no  good  works  save  such  as  God  com 
mands."  Good  works  done  without  faith  are  mere  sins. 
Annulment  of  the  supernatural  and  abasement  of  the 
natural  order.  The  Book  of  Concord  on  the  curtailment  of 
free-will.  Christianity  merely  inward.  Divorce  of  Church 
and  World,  of  Religion  and  Morals.  Lack  of  obligation  and 
sanction  .  •  pages  43-66 

6.  THE      PART      PLAYED      BY      CONSCIENCE      AND      PERSONALITY. 

LUTHER'S    WARFARE    WITH    HIS    OLD    FRIEND    CASPAR 

SCHWENCKFELD. 

On  Conscience  and  its  exercise  ;  how  to  set  it  to  rest. 
Help  of  conscience  at  critical  junctures.  Conscience  in 
the  religious  questions  of  the  day.  Schwenckfeld  .  pages  66-84 


vi  CONTENTS 

7.  SELF-IMPROVEMENT  AND  THE  REFORMATION  OF  THE  CHURCH. 

Whether  Luther  founded  a  school  of  godly,  Christian  life. 
A  Lutheran  theologian  on  the  lack  of  any  teaching  concerning 
emancipation  from  the  world.  The  means  of  self-reform  and . 
their  reverse  side.  Self -reform  and  hatred  of  the  foe.  Com 
panion  phenomena  of  Luther's  hate.  Kindlier  traits  and 
episodes  :  The  Kohlhase  case  in  history  and  legend.  The 
Reformation  of  the  Church  and  Luther's  Ethics  ;  His 
work  "  Against  the  new  idol  and  olden  devil."  The  Reforma 
tion  in  the  Duchy  of  Saxony.  The  aims  of  the  Reformation 
and  the  currents  of  the  age  .  .  .  pages  84-133 

8.  THE  CHURCH  APART  OF  THE  TRUE  BELIEVERS. 

Luther's  earlier  theory  on  the  subject ;  Schwenckfeld  ; 
the  proceedings  at  Leisnig  ;  the  Popular  Church  supported  by 
the  State  ;  the  abortive  attempt  to  create  a  Church  Apart 
in  Hesse  .......  pages  133-144 

9.  PUBLIC  WORSHIP.     QUESTIONS  OF  RITUAL. 

The  "  Deudsche  Messe  "  ;  the  liturgy  not  meant  for 
"  true  believers  ";  place  of  the  sermon  .  .  pages  145-154 

10.  SCHWENCKFELD    AS    A    CRITIC    OF    THE    ETHICAL    RESULTS 

OF  LUTHER'S  LIFE-WORK. 

Schwenckfeld  disappointed  in  his  hope  of  a  moral  renova 
tion.  Luther's  wrong  teaching  on  Law  and  Evangel  ; 
on  predestination,,  on  freedom  and  on  faith  alone,  on  the 
inward  and  outward  Word.  Schwenckfeld  on  the  Popular 
Church  and  the  new  Divine  Service  .  .  pages  155-164 


CHAPTER  XXX.  LUTHER  AT  THE  ZENITH  OF  HIS 
LIFE  AND  SUCCESS,  FROM  1540  ONWARDS.  APPRE 
HENSIONS  AND  PRECAUTIONS  .  .  pages  165-224 

1.  THE  GREAT  VICTORIES  OF  1540-1544. 

Success  met  with  at  Halle  and  Naumburg  ;  efforts  made 
at  Cologne,  Minister,  Osnabriick,  Brunswick,  and  Merseburg. 
Progress  abroad  ;  the  Turkish  danger  ;  the  Council  pages  165-168 

2.  SAD  FOREBODINGS. 

False  brethren ;  new  sects ;  gloomy  outlook  for  the 
future  ....  .  pages  169-174 

3.  PROVISIONS  FOR  THE  FUTURE. 

A  Protestant  Council  suggested  by  Bucer  and  Melanchthon. 
Luther's  attitude  towards  the  Consistories.  He  seeks  to  re- 
introduce  the  Lesser  Excommunication.  The  want  of  a 
Hierarchy  begins  to  be  felt  ....  pages  174-191 

4.  CONSECRATION    OF   NICHOLAS    AMSDORF    AS    "  EVANGELICAL 

BISHOP  "  OF  NAUMBURG  (1542). 

The  Ceremony.  Luther's  booklet  on  the  Consecration  of 
Bishops.  Excerpts  from  his  correspondence  with  the  new 
"  Bishop "  .  pages  192-200 


CONTENTS  vii 

5.  SOME  FURTHER  DEEDS  OF  VIOLENCE.  FATE  OF  ECCLESIASTICAL 

WORKS  OF  ART. 

End  of  the  Bishopric  of  Meissen.  Destruction  of  Church 
Property.  Luther's^  attitude  towards  pictures  and  images. 
Details  as  to  the  fate  of  works  of  art  in  Prussia,  Bruns 
wick,  Danzig,  Hildesheim,  Merseburg,  etc.  Protest  of  the 
Nuremberg  artists  .  .  pages  200-224 

CHAPTER    XXXI.      LUTHER    IN    HIS    DISMAL    MOODS, 

HIS  SUPERSTITION  AND  DELUSIONS          pages  225-318 

1.  His  PERSISTENT  DEPRESSION  IN  LATER  YEARS.     PERSECU 

TION  MANIA  AND  MORBID  FANCIES. 

Weariness  and  pessimism.  Grounds  of  his  low  spirits  ; 

suspects  the  Papists  ;  and  his  friends.  His  single-handed 

struggle  with  the  powers  of  evil  .  .  pages  225-241 

2.  LUTHER'S   FANATICAL   EXPECTATION    OF   THE    END    OF   THE 

WORLD.     His  HOPELESS  PESSIMISM. 

Why  he  was  convinced  that  the  end  was  nigh.  Allusions 
to  the  end  of  the  world  in  the  Table-Talk  .  .  pages  241-252 

3.  MELANCHTHON  UNDER  THE  DOUBLE  BURDEN,  OF  LUTHER'S 

PERSONALITY  AND  HIS  OWN  LIFE'S  WORK. 

Some  of  Melanchthon's  deliverances.  His  state  of  servi 
tude.  His  last  years.  His  real  character.  Unfounded  tales 
about  him  .  pages  252-275 

4.  DEMONOLOGY  AND  DEMONOMANIA. 

Luther's  devil-lore.  On  all  the  evil  the  devil  works  in  the 
world.  On  the  devil's  dwelling-place,  his  shapes  and  kinds. 
Witchcraft.  Connection  of  Luther's  devil-mania  with  his 
character  and  doctrine.  The  best  weapons  to  use  against  the 
devil  .....  .  pages  275-305 

5.  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  LUTHER'S  JESTS  AND  SATIRE. 

His  humour  in  the  home  and  in  his  writings.  He  finds 
relief  in  it  amidst  his  troubles.  Some  instances  of  his  jests 

pages  306-318 

CHAPTER  XXXII.     A  LIFE   FULL   OF   STRUGGLES   OF 

CONSCIENCE pages  319-375 

1.  ON  LUTHER'S  "  TEMPTATIONS  "  IN  GENERAL. 

Some  characteristic  statements  concerning  his  "  combats 
and  temptations  "        .  .          .  .          .        pages  319-321 

2.  THE  SUBJECT-MATTER  OF  THE  "  TEMPTATIONS.'' 

"  Supposing  you  had  to  answer  for  all  the  souls  that 
perish  !  "  "If  you  do  not  penance  shall  you  not  likewise 
perish  ?  "  "  See  how  much  evil  arises  from  your  doctrine  !  " 

pages  321-326 

3.  AN  EPISODE.     TERRORS   OF   CONSCIENCE   BECOME   TEMPTA 

TIONS  OF  THE  DEVIL. 

Schlaginhaufen  falls  into  a  faint  at  Luther's  house. 
Luther  persuades  himself  that  his  remorse  of  conscience 
comes  from  the  devil  .....  pages  326-330 


BR 


V  '<" 


viii  CONTENTS 

4.  PROGRESS    OF    HIS    MENTAL    SUFFERINGS    UNTIL    THEIR    FLOOD- 

TIDE  IN   1527-1528. 

"  What  labour  did  it  not  cost  me  ...  to  denounce  the 
Pope  as  Antichrist."  The  height  of  the  storm  ;  "  tossed 
about  between  death  and  hell  "  ;  "I  seek  only  for  a  gracious 
God."  Luther  pens  his  famous  hymn,  "  A  safe  stronghold 
our  God  is  still  "  ;  the  hymn  an  echo  of  his  struggles  pages  330-345 

5.  THE  TEN  YEARS  FROM  1528-1538.     How  TO  WIN  BACK  PEACE 

OF  CONSCIENCE. 

At  the  Coburg.  "  I  should  have  died  without  a  struggle." 
The  waning  of  the  "  struggles  by  day  and  by  night "  ; 
thoughts  of  suicide  ;  how  to  reach  peace  pages  346-356 

6.  LUTHER  ON  HIS  FAITH,  HIS  DOCTRINE,  AND  HIS  DOUBTS,  PAR 

TICULARLY  IN  HIS  LATER  YEARS. 

His  notion  of  faith,  (a)  the  accepting  as  true,  (b)  the  be 
lieving  trust.  His  picture  of  himself  and  his  difficulties  in 
late  years  ;  he  compares  his  case  with  that  of  St.  Paul  and 
with  that  of  Christ  in  the  Garden.  Some  misunderstandings 
and  false  reports  as  to  Luther's  having  himself  condemned 
his  own  life-work  .....  pages  356-375 

CHAPTER  XXXIII.  THE  COUNCIL  OF  TRENT  IS  CON 
VOKED,  1542.  LUTHER'S  POLEMICS  AT  THEIR 
HIGHEST  TENSION  .  pages  376-431 

1.  STEPS    TAKEN    AND    TRACTS    PUBLISHED    SUBSEQUENT    TO    1537 

AGAINST    THE    COUNCIL    OF    THE    CHURCH. 

The  Schmalkalden  meeting  in  1537.  Luther,  after  having 
asked  for  a  Council,  now  opposes  such  a  thing.  His  "  Von 
den  Conciliis."  The  Ratisbon.  Interim.  The  Council  is 
summoned  .  .  .  .  .  .  pages  376-381 

2.  "  WIDER  DAS  BAPSTUM  zu  ROM  VOM  TEUFFEL  GESTIFFT." 

THE  PAPACY  RENEWS  ITS  STRENGTH. 

Luther  is  urged  by  highly  placed  friends  to  thwart  the  plans 
of  Pope  Paul  III.  The  fury  of  his  new  book.  How  to  deal 
with  Pope  and  Cardinals.  The  "  Wittenberg  Reforma 
tion  "  drawn  up  as  a  counterblast  against  the  Council  of 
Trent .  pages  381-389 

3.  SOME  SAYINGS  OF  LUTHER'S  ON  THE  COUNCIL  AND  HIS  OWN 

AUTHORITY 

"  If  we  are  to  submit  to  this  Council  we  might  as  well  have 
submitted  twenty-five  years  since  to  the  lord  of  the  Councils." 
How  Luther  would  have  spoken  to  the  Fathers  of  the  Council 
had  he  attended  it  .  .  .  .  pages  389-394 

4.  NOTABLE  MOVEMENTS  OF  THE  TIMES  ACCOMPANIED  BY  LUTHER 

WITH  "  ABUSE  AND  DEFIANCE  DOWN  TO  THE  VERY  GRAVE." 
THE  CARICATURES. 

The  Brunswick  raid  and  Luther's  treatment  of  Duke 
Henry.  His  wrath  against  the  Zwiiiglians  :  "A  man  that  is  a 
heretic  avoid."  The  exception  Luther  made  in  favour  of  Cal 
vin,  the  friendly  relations  between  the  two,  their  similarities 
and  divergencies.  Luther  vents  his  anger  on  the  Jews  in  his 


CONTENTS  ix 

"  Von  den  Jiiden  "  and  "  Vom  Schem  Hamphoras  "  (1543)  ; 
exceptional  foulness  of  his  language  in  these  two  screeds. 
An  earlier  work  of  his  on  the  Jews  ;  reason  why,  in  it,  he  is 
fairer  to  the  Jews  than  in  his  later  writings  ;  some  special 
motives  for  his  later  polemics  against  the  Jews  ;  his  "  De 
ultimis  verbis  Davidis."  His  crusade  against  the  Turks  ; 
his  translation  of  the  work  of  Richardus  against  the  Alcoran. 
His  last  effort  against  the  Papacy  :  "  Popery  Pictured  "  ; 
some  of  the  abominable  woodcuts  described  ;  the  state  of  soul 
they  presuppose.  Pirkheimer  on  "  the  audacity  of  Luther's 
unwashed  tongue  "  .  .  .  .  .  pages  394-431 

CHAPTER    XXXIV.       END    OF    LUTHER'S    LITERARY 

LABOURS.     THE  WHOLE  REVIEWED  pages  432-556 

1.  TOWARDS    A    CHRISTIANITY    VOID    OF   DOGMA.     PROTESTANT 

OPINIONS. 

Harnack,  etc.,  on  Luther's  abandonment  of  individual 
points  of  Christian  doctrine  and  destruction  of  the  older 
idea  of  faith  :  The  Canon  and  true  interpretation  of  Scrip 
ture  ;  speculative  theology.  Luther's  own  admissions  that 
Christian  doctrine  is  a  chain  the  rupture  of  any  link  of  which 
involves  the  rupture  of  the  whole.  Luther's  inconsistencies 
in  matters  of  doctrine  as  instanced  by  Protestant  theologians  : 
Original  sin  and  unfreedom  ;  Law  and  Gospel  ;  Penance  ; 
Justification  and  good  works  ;  his  teaching  on  merit,  on  the 
sacraments  and  the  supper  ;  on  the  Church  and  Divine  wor 
ship  pages  432-469 

2.  LUTHER  AS  A  POPULAR  RELIGIOUS  WRITER.    THE  CATECHISM. 

Collected  works  :  Luther's  preface  to  the  Latin  and 
German  Collections.  The  Church-postils  and  Home- 
postils  ;  advantages  and  shortcomings  of  his  popular 
works  ;  his  silence  regarding  self-denial.  Origin  and  charac 
ter  of  the  Larger  and  Smaller  Catechisms.  His  Catechisms 
compared  with  the  older  catechetic  works  .  pages  470-494 

3.  THE  GERMAN  BIBLE. 

The  work  of  translation  completed  in  1534  ;  how  it  was 
launched  on  the  public  and  the  extent  of  its  success.  The 
various  revisions  of  the  work  and  the  notes  of  the  meetings 
held  under  Luther's  presidency.  His  anxiety  to  use  only  the 
best  German  ;  "  Chancery  German."  The  language  of  the 
German  Bible,  its  scholarship  ;  its  inaccuracies  ;  Luther's 
"  Sendbrieff  "  to  defend  his  addition  of  the  word  "  alone  " 
in  Romans  iii.  28.  The  corrections  of  Emser  the  Dresden 
"  scribbler."  How  Luther  belittled  certain  books  of  Scrip 
ture.  Some  sidelights  into  the  psychology  of  Luther's  trans 
lation.  The  Bible  in  earlier  ages  ;  the  "  Bible  in  chains." 
Luther's  indebtedness  to  earlier  German  translators  pages  494-546 

4.  LUTHER'S  HYMNS. 

His  efforts  to  interest  his  friends  in  the  making  of  hymns. 
His  best-known  hymn,  "  A  safe  stronghold  our  God  is  still." 
Other  hymns  ;  their  character  and  musical  setting.  The 
"  Hymn  for  the  Outdriving  of  Antichrist  "  once  falsely 
ascribed  to  Luther  .....  pages  546-556 


x  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  XXXV.       LUTHER'S     ATTITUDE     TOWARDS 
SOCIETY   AND   EDUCATION    (continued  in  Vol.   VI) 

pages  557-606 

1.  HISTORICAL  OUTLINES  FOB  JUDGING  OF  HIS  SOCIAL  WORK. 

Luther's  "  signal  services  "  as  they  appear  to  certain 
modern  Protestants.  The  fell  results  of  his  twin  principle  : 
1°,  that  the  Church  is  alien  to  the  world,  and  2  ,  has  no 
power  to  make  binding  laws  .  .  .  pages  557-568 

2.  THE  STATE  AND  THE  STATE  CHURCH. 

The  State  de-Christianised  and  the  Church  regarded  as  a 
mere  union  of  souls.  Luther  as  "  Founder  of  the  modern 
State."  The  secular  potentate  assimilated  to  King  David. 
The  New  Theocracy.  The  Established  Church.  Significance 
of  the  Visitation  introduced  in  the  Saxon  Electorate.  The 
"  Instructions  of  the  Visitors."  Luther  to  the  end  the 
plaything  of  divergent  currents  .  .  .  pages  568-606 


VOL.    V. 

THE   REFORMER   (III) 


LUTHEK 

CHAPTER   XXIX 

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  ;  con 
cupiscence  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 

3 


4  LUTHER  THE   REFORMER 

"  new  groundwork."  Many  others,  headed  by  Staudlin  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  with 
out  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  nega 
tively  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  Melanch- 
thon'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 

"  Gesch.  der  Moral,"  Gottingen,  1908,  p.  209. 

Cp.  the  passages  quoted  in  Mohler,  "  Symbolik,"  §  11. 

"  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  24,  p.  516  ;   Erl.  ed.,  34,  p.  138. 

/&.,  10,  2,  p.  295  =  162,  p.  532. 

Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  7. 

6  Vol.  ii.,  p.  239  f.  and  vol.  iv.,  p.  435.     Cp.  Luther's  own  words, 
passim,  in  our  previous  volumes. 

7  Comm.  on  Gal.,  Weim.  ed.,  40,  1,  p.  557  ;   Irmischer,  2,  p.  144. 


LACK   OF  MORAL   INCENTIVE          5 

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  answer- 
ableness  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."1  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."2  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."3 

Such  advice  could,  however,  only  too  easily  lead  people  to 
relinquish  an  unequal  struggle  with  an  unquenchable  Con 
cupiscence  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 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  36,  p.  495  ;  Erl.  ed.,  51,  p.  90.  Cp.  our 
vol.  iv.,  p.  436.  2  Ib.,  p.  495  =  91. 

3  To  Hier.  Weller  (July  ?),  1530,  "  Brief wechsel,"  8,  p.  159. 


6  LUTHER  THE   REFORMER 

warm  recommendation  of  good  works,  of  chastity,  neigh 
bourly  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  con 
cupiscence  ;  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  unrighteous 
ness."1  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 

1  W.  Braun,  "  Die  Bedeutung  der  Concupiscenz  in  Luthers  Leben 
und  Lehre,"  Berlin,  1908,  p.  310. 


LAW  AND   GOSPEL  7 

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.'  J>1 

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."2  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,"3 
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."4 

1  Braun,  ib.,  p.  310-312. 

1  "  Comm.  on  Gal.,"  Weim.  ed.,  40,  1,  p.  207  ;  Irmischer,  1,  p.  172. 

3  "Leitfaden  zum  Stud,  der  DC,"  Halle,  19G6,  p.  722. 

4  Ib.,  pp.  770  f.,  773  f.,  778. 


8  LUTHER  THE   REFORMER 

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  Covenant1  and  of  the  New,2  in  short  every 
thing  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."3 

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."4 

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 

1  Cp.  Loofs,  ib.y  p.  771,  n.  4. 

2  But  cp.  what  Loofs  says,  ib.,  p.  772,  n.  5. 

3  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  132,  p.  153.  4  Ib.,  102,  p.  96 


LAW  AND   GOSPEL  9 

our  moral  life,  contingent  on  the  fulfilment  of  its  pre 
scriptions.1 

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

The  Law  speaks  of  "  facer -e,  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."2 

What  he  here  enjoins  he  had  himself  striven  to  keep  in  view 
from  the  earliest  days  of  his  struggle  against  "  self -righteous 
ness  "  and  "  holiness-by-works."  These  he  strove  to  under 
mine,  in  the  same  measure  as  he  exalted  original  sin  and  its  con 
sequences.  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  every 
thing  that  is  pleasing  to  God  ;  what  is  really  good  is  per 
formed  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.3  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."4 

That  such  a  setting  aside  of  the  specifically  Mosaic  Law 
appealed  to  him,  we  can  readily  understand.  But  does  he 

1  Cp.  Loofs,  ib.,  p.  721  f. 

"  Disput.,"  ed.  P.  Drews,  p.  159  ;   cp.  ib.,  pp.  126,  136  f.,  156. 

3  "  Dixi  .   .   .  quod  christianus  nullam  prorsus  legem  habeat,  sed  quod 
tota  illi  lex  abrogata  sit  cum  suis  terroribus  et  vexationibus."     "  Comm. 
on  Gal.,"  Weim.  ed.,  40,  1,  p.  668  f.  ;   Irmischer,  2,  p.  263. 

4  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  92,  p.  238  f. 


10  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

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.1  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."2 
Desirous  of  destroying  once  and  for  all  any  idea  of  righteous 
ness  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,  par 
ticularly  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]."3 

His  changeableness  and  obscurity  on  this  point  is  character 
istic  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  prepara 
tory  to  grace,  he  deliberately  introduces  statements  concerning 

1  Ib.,  Weim.  ed.,  24,  p.  10  ;  Erl.  ed.,  33,  p.  13.    Cp.  Loofs,  ib.,  p.  764, 
n.  2. 

2  Loofs,  ib.,  p.  773,  where  he  cites  the  "Comm.  on  Gal."  (1535), 
Weim.  ed.,  40,  1,  p.  209  ;   Irmischer,  1,  p.  174. 

3  "  Quia  Paulus  hie  versatur  in  loco  iustificationis,  .  .   .  necessitas 
postulabat,  ut  de  lege  tamquam  de  re  contemptissima  loqueretur,  neque 
satis  viliter  et  odiose,  cum  in  hoc  argumento  versamur,  de  ea  loqui  pos- 
sumus."     "  Comm.  on  Gal.,"  Weim.  ed.,  40,  1,  p.  557  ;    Irmischer,  2, 
p.    144.      "  Conscientia  perterrefacta  .   .   .  nihil  de  lege  et  peccato  scire 
debet,  sed  tantum  de  Christo."    Ib.,  p.  207  f.=p.  173  sq.    Cp.  "  Werke," 
Erl.  ed.,  58,  p.  279  f.  ("Tischreden  ")  and  "  Opp.  lat.  var."  4,  p.  427. 


LAW  AND   GOSPEL  11 

the  Law  which  do  not  at  all  help  to  explain  the  matter.  Accord 
ing  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.1 
"  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."2 

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.3  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.4  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."5  Of  the  manner  in  which  he  dealt  with  his  own  con 
science  we  shall,  however,  speak  more  in  detail  below  (XXIX,  6). 

It  is  not  necessary  to  point  out  the  discrepancies  and  contra 
dictions  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  else 
where,  we  see  both  his  lack  of  system  and  the  irreconcilable  con 
tradictions  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."6 

It  is  strange  to  note  how  the  aspect  of  the  Law  changes  accord 
ing  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," 

1  Cp.  Loofs,  ib.,  p.  775.    Luther  here  refers  to  Rom.  v.  20  ;  vii.  9,  etc. 

2  "  Contritus  lege  tantum  abest  ut  perveniat  ad  gratiam,  ut  longius  ab 
ea  discedat"     "  Disput.,"  ed.  P.  Drews,  p.  284. 

3  "  Comm.  on  Gal.,"  Weim.  ed.,  2,  p.  498  ;  40,  1,  p.  208  ;  Irmischer, 
3,  p.  236  ;    1,  p.  173.  4  Loofs,  ib.,  p.  775  f. 

5  "  Quce  (conscientia)  scepe  ad  desperationem,  ad  gladium  etadlaqueum 
homines  adigit."  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  25,  p.  330  ;  "  Opp.  lat.  exeg.," 
23,  p.  141  sq.  «  P.  737,  n. 


12  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

but  even  in  the  Old  Testament  it  had  been  said  :  "  Much  peace 
have  they  that  love  thy  Law."1  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  ['  con- 
teri,'  cp.  '  contritio  ']  by  the  Law  "  until  he  has  learnt  "  to  live 
in  a  naked  trust  in  God's  Mercy."2  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."3  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."4 

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  dispassion 
ate,  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."6 

"  Whosoever  does  not  believe,"  i.e.  has  failed  to  lay  hold  of 

1  Mt.  xi.  30  ;   Ps.  cxviii.  165. 

2  "Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,   1,  p.  357;    "  Opp.  lat.  var.,"   1,  p.  392. 
Luther  frequently  uses  the  term  "  conteri  lege." 

3  "  Dices  enim  :  Peccata  mea  non  sunt  mea,  quia  non  sunt  in  me,  sed 
sunt  aliena,  Christi  videlicet  ;  non  ergo  me  Icedere  poterunt."     "  Werke," 
Weim.  ed.,  25,  p.  330  ;    "  Opp.  lat.  exeg.,"  23,  p.  141. 

4  "  Comm.  on  Gal.,"  Weim.  ed.,  40,  1,  p.  436  ;   Irmischer,  2,  p.  17. 

5  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  2,  p.  723  ;   Erl.  ed.,  162,  p.  48. 


LAW  AND   GOSPEL  13 

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."1 

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.2  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  expres 
sion  at  the  Heidelberg  Disputation.3 

Luther  remained  all  his  life  averse  to  the  Law.4  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."5  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 
("  factor -es  legis  ")  and  where  "  love  of  God  with  the  whole 
heart  "  rather  than  faith  alone  is  represented  as  the  true 

1  Ib.,  10,  1,  1.  p.  338  f.  =  72,  p.  259  ff. 

2  See,  however,  below,  vol.  vi.,  xxxvii.,  2. 

3  Vol.  i.,  p.  317  f.  and  passim. 

4  Cp.    Mathesius,    "  Tischreden,"    ed.    Kroker,    p.    260. — Ammon 
("  Hdb.  der  chr.  Sittenlehre,"   1,   1823,  p.   76)  laments    that   Luther 
"  regarded  the  moral  law  merely  as  a  vision  of  terror,"   and  that 
according  to  him  "the  essence  of  the  Christian  religion  consisted,  not 
in  moral  perfection,  but  in  faith."     De  Wette,  "  Christl.  Sittenlehre," 
2,  2,  1821,  p.  280  f.,  thinks  that  an  ethical  system  might  have  been 
erected  on  the  antithesis  set  up  by  Luther  between  the  Law  and  the 
Gospel  and  on  his  theories  of  Christian  freedom,  "  but  that  Luther  was 
not  equal  to  doing  so.    He  was  too  much  taken  up  with  his  fight  against 
the  Catholic  holiness-by-works  to  devote  all  the  attention  he  should  to 
the  moral  side  of  the  question  and  not  enough  of  a  scholar  even  to 
dream  of  any  connection  between  faith  and  morality  being  feasible." 

5  Mathesius,  ib.    The  Note  in  question  is  by  Caspar  Heydenreich. 


14  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

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  know 
ledge  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."1 

"  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."2 

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  dis 
turb  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  connec 
tion  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.  Ixi.  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). 

1  "  Christl.  Sittlichkeit  nach  Luther,"  1909,  p,  91  f. 

2  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  261. 


JOHANN   AGRICOLA  15 


3.  Encounter  with  the  Antinomianism  of  Agricola 

Just  as  the  Anabaptist  and  fanatic  movement  had 
originally  been  fostered  by  Luther's  doctrines,  so  Antinomi 
anism  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  conse 
quences.  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  wrhich  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.1 

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 

1  Cp.  the  passages  cited  above,  p.  9  ff.,  and  vols.  iii.  and  iv, 
passim. 


16  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

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.]."1 

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."2 


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 

1  It  was  Luther  himself  who  published  the  Aritinomian  theses  in  two 
series  on  Dec.  1,  1537.     Cp.  "  Opp.  lat.  var.,"  4,  p.  420  sqq.    The  most 
offensive  of  these  theses  Luther  described  as  the  outcome  of  Agricola's 
teaching  and  attributed  them  to  one  of  the  latter's  pupils  ;    Agricola, 
however,  refused  to  admit  that  the  propositions  were  his.    Cp.  Kostlin- 
Kawerau  (2,  p.  458),  who,  after  attempting  to  harmonise  Luther's  earlier 
and  later  teaching  on  the  Law,  proceeds  :   "He  paid  no  heed  to  the  fact 
that  Agricola  was  seeking  to  root  sin  out  of  the  heart  of  the  believer, 
though  in  a  way  all  his  own,  and  which  Luther  distrusted,  nor  did  he 
make  any  distinction  between  what  Agricola  merely  hinted  at  and 
what  others  carried  to  extremes  :   in  the  one  he  already  saw  the  other 
embodied.      All   this   was   characteristic   enough   of  Luther's   way  of 
conducting  controversy." 

2  "  Opp.  lat.  var.,"  4,  p.  434  (Thes.  17),  428  (Thes.  10). 


JOHA.NN   AGRICOLA  17 

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  state 
ments,  declaring  that  "  Whoever  makes  away  with  the  Law, 
makes  away  with  the  Gospel."1  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  "  ;2 
the  grace  preached  by  Agricola  was  really  nothing  more  than 
immoral  licence.3 

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.4 

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.5 

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 

1  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  352.         2  Ib.         3  Ib.,  p.  357. 

4  16.,  p.  403. 

5  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  132,  p.  153,  Sermon  of  July  1,  5th  Sunday  after 
Trinity,  and  ib.,   142,  p.   178,  Sermon  of  Sep.  30,  18th  Sunday  after 
Trinity.       Cp.     Buchwald,     "  Ungedruckte    Predigten    Luthers,"     3, 
p.  108  ff.    Kostlin-Kawerau,  2,  p.  457. 

v.— c 


18  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

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).1  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.2  A  third  and  fourth  set  of 
theses  drawn  up  by  Luther,3  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 

1  "  Brief wechsel,"  11,  p.  323. 

2  Cp.    Drews,    "  Disputationen   Luthers,"   pp.    382,    388,    394 ;     G. 
Kawerau,  "  Job.  Agricola,"  1881,  p.  194. 

3  "  Opp.  lat.  var.,"  4,  p.  430  sq. 


JOHANN   AGRICOLA  19 

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  him 
self  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  Giittel,  which  might  take  the  place  of  the  retractation 
agreed  upon.1  It  was  exceedingly  rude  to  Agricola.  It 
represented  him  as  a  man  of  "  unusual  arrogance  and  pre 
sumption,"  "  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,  Miinzer,  the  Anabaptists  and  so  forth.2 
In  spite  of  all  this  the  writing,  according  to  a  statement 
made  by  its  author  to  Melanchthon,  was  all  too  mild  ("  tarn 
levis  fui "),  particularly  now  that  Agricola's  great  "ob 
stinacy  "  was  becoming  so  patent.3 

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.4 

In  the  meantime  Agricola  expressed  his  complete  sub 
mission  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, 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  32,  p.  1  ff.  (publ.  early  in  1539).    Also  "  Briefe," 
ed.  De  Wette,  5,  p.  147  ff. 

2  "  Briefe,"  ib.,  p.  154. 

3  To  Melanchthon,  Feb.  2,  1539,  "  Brief wechsel,"  12,  p.  84. 

4  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  61,  p.  35  (Table-Talk).    Cp.  Kostlin-Kawerau, 
2,  p.  462  f. 


20  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

referring  particularly  to  the  scurrilous  circular  letter  sent  to 
Caspar  Giittel.  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."1 

Luther  in  his  turn,  in  a  writing,  appealed  to  the  Elector 
and  his  supreme  tribunal.  In  vigorous  language  he  ex 
plained  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."2 

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."3 

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 

1  (In  March,  1540)  see  C.  E.  Forstemann,  "N.  Urkundenbuch  zur 
Gesch.  der  Kirchenreformation,"  1,  1842,  reprinted,  p.  317  ff. 

2  /&.,  p.  321  ff.;   also  in  "Werke,"  ed.  Walch,  20,  p.  2061  ff.,  and 
"  Brief e,"  ed.  De  Wette,  6,  p.  256  ff. 

3  Forstemann,  ib.,  p.   325.      The  quotation  is  from   G.   Kawerau, 
"  Joh.  Agricola,"  "  KE.  f.  prot.  Theol." 


JOHANN   AGRICOLA  21 

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  Eisleben1 
"  which  might  have  satisfied  even  Luther's  exorbitant 
demands."2  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  Witten 
berg  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  con 
sented  to  glance  at  a  kindly  letter  from  him,  but  of  any 
reconciliation  he  would  not  hear.  Regarding  this  last  inci 
dent  we  have  a  note  of  Agricola 's  own  :  "  Domina  Ketha, 
rectrix  cceli  et  terrce,  luno  coniunx  et  soror  lovis,  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."  3 

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."4 

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 

1  Forstemann,  ib.,  p.  349.  2  Kostlin-Kawerau,  2,  p.  464. 

3  E.  Kroker,  "  Katharina  von  Bora,"  1906,  p.  280,  from  Agricola's 
Notes,  pub.  by  E.  Thiele. 

4  Cp.  Kawerau  in  the  Article  referred  to  above,  p.  20,  n.  3. 


22  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

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."1 

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. 2 

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 

1  "  Luthers  Briefe,"  ed.  De  Wette,  6,  p.  256  fL 

2  Melanchthon  to  Willibald  Ransberck  (Ramsbeck),  Jan.  26,  1560, 
publ.  by  Nic.  Miiller  in  "  Zeitschr.  fur  KG.,"  14,  1894,  p.  139. 


JOHANN   AGRICOLA  23 

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  d^ 
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  com 
pares  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  stand 
point  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,  allud 
ing  to  Jacob  Schenk,  "  all  that  faith  has  to  do."1 

In  his  controversy  with  Agricola  we  can  detect  a  tendency 
on  his  part  "  to  revert  to  Melanchthon's  doctrine  concerning 
repentance."2  He  insisted  far  more  strongly  than  before3 
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."4  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  contro- 

1  Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  90.  For  other  statements  of  Luther's 
see  our  vol.  iii.,  p.  401.  2  Loofs,  ib.,  p.  858. 

3  On  Luther's  attitude  towards  penance  see  our  vol.  iii.,  pp.  184  ff,. 
196.  4  "  Opp.  lat.  var.,"  4,  p.  424. 


24  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

versy,  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  "  j1  to  this 
he  was  ever  true. 

"Luther,"  says  Adolf  Harnack,  "could  never  doubt  that  only 
the  Christian  who  has  been  vanquished  by  the  Gospel  is  capable  of 
true  repentance,  and  that  the  Law  can  work  no  real  repentance."2 
The  fact  however  remains,  that,  at  least  if  we  take  his  words  as 
they  stand,  we  do  find  in  Luther  a  doctrine  of  repentance  which 
does  not  claim  faith  in  the  forgiveness  of  sins  so  exclusively  as 
its  source.3  The  fact  is  that  his  statements  do  not  tally.4  Other 
Protestant  theologians  will  have  it  that  no  change  took  place  in 
Luther's  views  on  penance,5  or  at  least  that  the  attempts  so  far 
made  to  solve  the  problem  are  not  satisfactory.6  Stress  should, 
however,  be  laid  on  the  fact,  that,  during  his  contest  with  Anti- 
nomiariism  Luther  insisted  that  it  was  necessary  "  to  drive  men 
to  penance  even  by  the  terrors  of  the  Law,"7  and  that,  alluding 
to  his  earlier  statements,  he  admits  having  had  much  to  learn  : 
"  I  have  been  made  to  experience  the  words  of  St.  Peter,  '  Grow 
in  the  knowledge  of  the  Lord.'  ' 

Of  the  converted,  i.e.  of  those  justified  by  the  certainty  of 
salvation,  he  says  in  1538  in  his  Disputations  against  Agricola  : 
The  pious  Christian  as  such  "  is  dead  to  the  Law  and  serves  it 
not,  but  lies  in  the  bosom  of  grace,  secure  in  the  righteousness 
imputed  to  him  by  God.  .  .  .  But,  so  far  as  he  is  still  in  the 
flesh,  he  serves  the  law  of  sin,  repulsive  as  it  may  sound  that  a 
saint  should  be  subject  to  the  law  of  sin."8  If  Luther  finds  in  the 
saint  or  devout  man  such  a  double  life,  a  free  man  side  by  side 
with  a  slave,  holiness  side  by  side  with  sin,  this  is  on  account  of 
the  concupiscence,  or  as  Luther  says  elsewhere,  original  sin, 
which  still  persists,  and  the  results  of  which  he  regarded  as  really 
sinful  in  God's  sight. 

Elsewhere  in  the  same  Disputations  he  speaks  of  the  Law  as 
contemptuously  as  ever  :  "  The  LawT  can  work  in  the  soul  nothing 
but  wanhope  ;  it  fills  us  with  shame  ;  to  lead  us  to  seek  God  is 
not  in  the  nature  and  might  of  the  Law  ;  this  is  the  doing  of 

1  See  above,  p.  11,  n.  2.  2  "  DG.,"  34,  p.  842. 

3  Cp.  Loofs,  ib.,  p.  860,  n.  2  and  4 ;  790,  n.  7,  and  Harnack,  ib. 

4  Harnack  (loc.  cit.)  points  out  that  Luther's  statements  on  the 
subject  do  not  agree  when  examined  in  detail. 

5  E.g.,  Lipsius,  "Luthers  Lehre  von  der  Busse,"  1892. 

6  E.g.,   Galley,   "  Die  Busslehre  Luthers  und  ihre  Darstellung  in 
neuester  Zeit,"  1900. 

7  To  the  latter  passage  ("  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  32,  p.  7)  E.  F.  Fischer 
draws   attention   ("  Luthers  Sermo  de  poenitentia  von    1518,"    1906, 
p.  36).     Galley  (loc.  cit.,  p.  20)  had  also  referred  to  the  same  as  being 
a  further  development  of  Luther's  doctrine  on  penance. — On  Luther's 
shifting  attitude  in  regard  to  the  motive  of  fear  see  our  vol.  iv.,  p.  455  f. 

8  "  Disputation.es,"  ed.  Drews,  p.  452. 


CERTAINTY   OF  SALVATION          25 

".another  fellow,"  viz.  of  the  Gospel  with  its  preaching  of  for 
giveness  of  sins  in  Christ. 1  It  is  true  he  adds  in  a  kindlier  vein : 
"  The  Law  ought  not  so  greatly  to  terrify  those  who  are  justified 
( '  nee  deberet  ita  terrere  iustificatos  ' )  for  it  is  already  much  chas 
tened  by  our  justification  in  Christ.  But  the  devil  conies  and 
makes  the  Law  harsh  and  repellent  to  those  who  are  justified. 
Thus,  through  the  devil's  fault,  many  are  filled  with  fear  who  have 
no  reason  to  fear.  But  [and  now  follows  the  repudiation  of  the 
extreme  theories  of  the  Antinomians],  the  Law  is  not  on  that 
account  abolished  in  the  Church,  or  its  preaching  suppressed  ; 
for  even  the  pious  have  some  remnant  of  sin  abiding  in  their 
flesh,  which  must  be  purified  by  the  Law.  ...  To  them,  how 
ever,  the  Law  must  be  preached  under  a  milder  form  ;  they  should 
be  admonished  in  this  wise  :  You  are  now  washed  clean  in  the 
Blood  of  Christ.  Yield  therefore  your  bodies  to  serve  justice 
and  lay  aside  the  lusts  of  the  flesh  that  you  may  not  become  like 
to  the  world.  Be  zealous  for  the  righteousness  of  good  works." 
There  too  he  also  teaches  how  the  "  Law  "  must  be  brought 
home  to  hardened  sinners.  In  their  case  no  "  mitigation  "  is 
allowable.  On  the  contrary,  they  are  to  be  told :  You  will  be 
damned,  God  hates  you,  you  are  full  of  unrighteousness,  your  lot 
is  that  of  Cain,  etc.  For,  "  before  Justification,  the  Law  rules, 
and  terrifies  all  who  come  in  contact  with  it,  it  convicts  and 
condemns."2 

Among  the  most  instructive  utterances  touching  the  Anti- 
nomians  is  the  following  one  on  sin,  more  particularly  on  breach 
of  wedlock,  which  may  be  given  here  as  amplifying  Luther's 
statements  on  the  subject  recorded  in  our  vol.  iii.  (pp.  245,  256  f., 
etc.)  :  The  Antinomians  taught,  so  he  says,  that,  if  a  man  had 
broken  wedlock,  he  had  only  to  believe  ("  tantum  ut  crederet  ")  and 
he  would  find  a  Gracious  God.  But  surely  that  was  no  Church 
where  so  horrible  a  doctrine  ("  horribilis  vox  ")  was  heard.  On 
the  contrary  what  was  to  be  taught  was,  that,  in  the  first  place, 
there  were  adulterers  and  other  sinners  who  acknowledged  their 
sin,  made  good  resolutions  against  it  and  possessed  real  faith, 
such  as  these  found  mercy  with  God.  In  the  second  place,  how 
ever,  there  were  others  who  neither  repented  of  their  sin  nor 
wished  to  forsake  it ;  such  men  had  no  faith,  and  a  preacher  who 
should  discourse  to  them  concerning  faith  (i.e.  fiducial  faith) 
would  merely  be  seducing  and  deceiving  them. 

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 

1  Ib.,  p.  402.  2  J6.,  pp.  402-404. 


26  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

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  specialist 
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  them 
selves  but  on  account  of  faith.  ...  A  Christian  who  lives  in 
this  faith  has  no  need  to  be  taught  good  works,  but,  what 
ever  occurs  to  him,  that  he  does,  and  everything  is  well 
done."  Such  are  his  words  in  his  "  Sermon  von  den  gut  en 
Wercken  "  to  Duke  Johann  of  Saxony  in  1520.1 

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."2 

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  "  ;3  it 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  6,  p.  206  f.  ;   Erl.  ed.,  162,  p.  127. 

2  16.,  Erl.  ed.,  152,  p.  40. 

3  76.,  Weim.  ed.,  7,  p.  36  ;   Erl.  ed.,  27,  p.  196. 


CERTAINTY  OF   SALVATION         27 

must  be  done  "  cheerfully  and  gladly  for  Christ's  sake  Who 
has  done  so  much  for  us."1  "  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."2  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."3  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."4  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."5 

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  salva 
tion  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.6 

There  was,  however,  an  objection  raised  against  Luther 

1  Ib.,  p.  30=189. 

2  "  Comm.  in  ep.  ad.  Gal.,"  3,  p.  365  (Irmischer). 

3  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  49,  p.  114  f.,  Exposition  of  John  xiv.-xvi. 

4  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  7,  p.  30  f.  ;   Erl.  ed.,  27,  p.  189  f. 

5  Ib.,  6,  p.  269  f.  =  162,  p.  212,  "  Sermon  von  den  guten  Wercken," 
1520. 

6  Owe  account  is  from  Walther  (above,  p.  14,  n.  1),  p.  75  ff.     His 
faithful  rendering   of   Luther's   thought   shows   how   actual   grace   is 
excluded. 


28  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

by  his  contemporaries  and  which  even  presented  itself  to  his 
own  mind  :  Why  should  a  lifelong  struggle  and  the  per 
formance  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 
Versohnung,"  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."1  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  ?  "2 

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.3 


In  his  "  Sermon  von  den  guten  Wercken,"  which  deserves  to 
be  taken  as  conclusive,  he  declares  outright  that  all  good  works 
are  ordained — for  the  sake  of  faith.  "  Such  works  and  sufferings 
must  be  performed  in  faith  and  in  firm  trust  in  the  Divine  mercy, 
in  order  that,  as  already  stated,  all  works  may  come  under  the 
first  commandment  and  under  faith,  and  that  they  may  serve 
to  exercise  and  strengthen  faith,  on  account  of  which  all  the 
other  commandments  and  works  are  demanded."4  Hence 
morality  is  necessary,  not  primarily  in  order  to  please  God,  to 
obey  Him  and  thus  to  work  out  our  salvation,  but  in  order  to 
strengthen  our  "  fides  specialis  "  in  our  own  salvation,  which 
then  does  all  the  needful.5  It  is  necessary,  as  Luther  says  else 
where,  in  order  to  provide  a  man  with  a  reassuring  token  of  the 
reality  of  his  "  fides  specialis  "  ;  he  may  for  instance  be  tempted 
to  doubt  whether  he  possesses  this  saving  gift  of  God,  though  the 
very  doubt  already  spells  its  destruction  ;  hence  let  him  look  at 
his  works  ;  if  they  are  good,  they  will  tell  him  at  the  dread  hour 

34,  p.  460. 

"Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  7,  p.  29  f. ;  Erl.  ed.,  27,  p.  188.  "Von  der 
Freyheyt  eynes  Christen  Menschen."  Cp.  ib.,  Erl.  ed.,  72,  p.  257. 

Walther,  ib.,  p.  99. 

"  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  6,  p.  249  ;    Erl.  ed.,  162,  p.  184. 

Cp.  "  Brief e,"  ed.  De  Wette,  where  the  idea  that  faith  "  then  does 
all  the  needful,"  and  that  works  are  a  natural  product  of  faith  is  summed 
up  thus  :  "  Opera  propter  fidem  fiunt." 


CERTAINTY   OF   SALVATION          29 

of  death:  Yes,  you  have  the  "faith."1  Strangely  enough  he 
also  takes  the  Bible  passages  which  deal  with  works  performed 
under  grace  as  referring  to  faith,  e.g.  "  If  thou  wilt  enter  into 
life  keep  the  commandments  "  (Mt.  xix.  17)  and,  "  By  good  works 
make  your  calling  and  election  sure  "  (2  Peter  i.  10).  The  latter 
exhortation  of  St.  Peter  signifies  according  to  Luther's  exegesis  : 
"  Take  care  to  strengthen  your  faith,"  from  the  works  "  you  may 
see  whether  you  have  the  faith."2  According  to  St.  Peter 
you  are  to  seek  in  works  merely  "  a  sign  and  token  that  the  faith 
is  there  "  ;  his  meaning  is  not  that  you  "  are  to  do  good  works 
in  order  that  you  may  secure  your  election."  "  We  are  not  to 
fancy  that  thereby  we  can  become  pious."3 

This  thought  is  supplemented  by  another  frequent  exhortation 
of  Luther's  which  concerns  the  consciousness  of  sin  persisting 
even  after  "  justification."  The  sense  of  sin  has,  according  to 
him,  no  other  purpose  than  to  strengthen  us  in  our  trustful  cling 
ing  to  Christ,  for  as  no  one's  faith  is  perfect  we  are  ever  called 
upon  to  fortify  it,  in  which  we  are  aided  by  this  anxiety  concern 
ing  sin  :  "  Though  we  still  feel  sin  within  us  this  is  merely  to 
drive  us  to  faith  and  make  our  faith  stronger,  so  that  despite  our 
feeling  we  may  accept  the  Word  and  cling  with  all  our  heart  and 
conscience  to  Christ  alone,"  in  other  words,  to  follow  Luther's 
own  example  amidst  the  pangs  of  conscience  that  had  plunged 
him  into  "  death  and  hell."4  "  Thus  does  faith,  against  all  feeling 
and  reason,  lead  us  quietly  through  sin,  through  death  and 
through  hell."  "  The  more  faith  waxes,  the  more  the  feeling 
diminishes,  and  vice  versa.  Sins  still  persist  within  us,  e.g.  pride, 
avarice,  anger  and  so  on  and  so  forth,  but  only  in  order  to  move 
us  to  faith."  He  refrains  from  adducing  from  Holy.  Scripture 
any  proof  in  support  of  so  strange  a  theory,  but  proceeds  to  sing 
a  paean  on  faith  "  in  order  that  faith  may  increase  from  day  to 
day  until  man  at  length  becomes  a  Christian  through  and  through, 
keeps  the  real  Sabbath,  and  creeps,  skin,  hair  and  all,  into 
Christ."5  The  Christian,  by  accustoming  himself  to  trust  in  the 
pardoning  grace  of  Christ  and  by  fortifying  himself  in  this  faith, 
becomes  at  length  "  one  paste  with  Christ."6 

Hence  the  '"''fides  specialist  as  just  explained,  seems  to  be 
the  chief  ethical  aim  of  life.7  This  is  why  it  is  so  necessary 
to  strengthen  it  by  works,  and  so  essential  to  beat  down  all 
anxieties  of  conscience. 

1  Cp.  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  12,  p.  386  ;  Erl.  ed.,  51,  p.  479,  in  1523, 
on  1  Peter  iv.  19.     Cp.  also  Erl.  ed.,  182,  pp.  330,  333  f.,  in  1532,  on 
1  John  iv.  17. 

2  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  92,  p.  273.  3  /&.,  132,  p.  97. 

4  Cp.  our  vol.  iv.,  p.  442. 

5  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  II2,  p.  219  f.  6  Ib.,  142,  p.  257. 

7  Cp.  Loofs,  "  DG.,"  4,  p.  737.  Hence  Luther  also  says :  "  Dum 
bonus  aut  malus  quisquam  efficitur,  non  hoc  ab  operibus,  sed  a  fide  vel 
incredulitate-oritur."  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  7,  p.  62  ;  "  Opp.  lat.  var .," 
4,  p.  239. 


30  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

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."1  It  was  only 
very  late  in  his  life  that  Luther  reached  a  state  of  compara 
tive  calm,  a  calm  moreover  best  to  be  compared  with  the 
utter  weariness  of  a  man  worn  out  by  fatigue.2 

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  specialist  These  utterances,  under  the  circum 
stances  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  con 
course  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 
viHages,  that  even  Paul  himself  were  he  to  come  preaching 
could  hardly  expect  a  larger  audience."3  For  the  reports  of 
his  sermons  we  are  indebted  to  the  pen  of  his  pupil  and 
companion  on  his  journey,  Johann  Aurifaber.4  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 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  II2,  p.  220.          2  See  below,  ch.  xxxii.,  6. 

3  Printed,  in  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  202,  2,  p.  524. 

4  The  first  revised  by  Cruciger.    Aurifaber  published  his  notes  four 
months  after  the  sermons,  which,  as  the  Preface  points  out,  "  might 
well    be    taken    as    a    standing   witness    to    his    [Luther's]    doctrine." 
"  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  202,  2,  p.  501. 


THE   EISLEBEN   SERMONS  31 

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  him 
self  relates  in  the  third  sermon, x — 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  our 
selves  ;  in  the  latter  connection  Luther  expatiates  on  the  lead 
ing  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."2  One  cannot  but  acknow 
ledge  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. 

"  God  forgives  sin  in  that  He  does  not  impute  it.  ...  But 
from  this  it  does  not  follow  that  you  are  without  sin,  although  it 
is  already  forgiven  ;  for  in  yourself  you  feel  no  hearty  desire  to 
obey  God,  to  go  to  the  sacrament  or  to  hear  God's  Word.  Do 
you  perhaps  imagine  that  this  is  no  sin,  or  mere  child's  play  ?  " 
Hence,  he  concludes,  we  must  pray  daily  "  for  forgiveness  and 
never  cease  to  fight  against  ourselves  and  not  give  the  rein  to 
our  sinful  inclinations  and  lusts,  nor  obey  them  contrary  to  the 
dictates  of  conscience,  but  rather  weaken  and  deaden  sin  ever 
more  and  more  ;  for  sin  must  not  merely  be  forgiven  but  verily 
swept  away  and  destroyed."3 

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. 

"  Our  doctrine  as  to  how  we  are  to  deal  with  our  own  unclean- 
ness  and  sin  is  briefly  this  :  Believe  in  Jesus  Christ  and  your  sins 
are  forgiven  ;  then  avoid  and  withstand  sin,  wage  a  hand-to- 
land  fight  with  it,  do  not  allow  it  its  way,  do  not  hate  or  cheat 
your  neighbour,"  etc.4 

1  "Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  ib,.  p.  551.  z  Ib.,  p.  552. 

3  Ib.,  p.  551.  *  Ib.,  p.  554. 


32  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

Such  admonitions  strenuously  to  strive  against  sin  involun 
tarily  recall  some  very  different  assurances  of  his,  viz.  that  the 
man  who  has  once  laid  hold  on  righteousness  by  faith,  at  once 
and  of  his  own  accord  does  what  is  good  :  "  Hence  from  faith 
there  springs  love  and  joy  in  God  and  a  free  and  willing  service 
of  our  neighbour  out  of  simple  love." 

Elsewhere  too  he  says,  "  Good  works  are  performed  by  faith 
and  out  of  our  heartfelt  joy  that  we  have  through  Christ  obtained 
the  remission  of  our  sins.  .  .  .  Interiorly  everything  is  sweet 
and  delicious,  and  hence  we  do  and  suffer  all  things  gladly."1 
And  again,  just  as  we  eat  and  drink  naturally,  so  also  to  do  what 
is  good  comes  naturally  to  the  believer  ;  the  word  is  fulfilled  : 
Only  believe  and  you  will  do  all  things  of  your  own  accord ; 2  as 
a  good  tree  must  bring  forth  good  fruit  and  cannot  do  otherwise, 
so,  where  there  is  faith,  good  works  there  must  also  be.3  He 
speaks  of  this  as  a  "  necessitas  immutdbilitatis  "  and  as  a  "  neces- 
sitas  gratuita,"  no  less  necessary  than  that  the  sun  must  shine. 
In  1536  he  even  declared  in  an  instruction  to  Melanchthon  that 
it  was  not  right  to  say  that  a  believer  should  do  good  works, 
because  he  can't  help  performing  them  ;  who  thinks  of  ordering 
"  the  sun  to  shine,  a  good  tree  to  bring  forth  good  fruit,  or  three 
and  seven  to  make  ten  ?  "4 


Of  this  curious  idealism,  first  noticed  in  his  "Von  der  Freyheyt 
eynes  Christen  Menschen,"  we  find  traces  in  Luther  till  the  very 
end  of  his  life.5  In  later  life,  however,  he  either  altered  it  a  little 
or  was  less  prone  to  insist  on  it  in  and  out  of  season.  This  was 
due  to  his  unfortunate  experiences  to  the  contrary  ;  as  a  matter 
of  fact  faith  failed  to  produce  the  effects  expected,  and  only  in 
rare  instances  and  at  its  very  best  was  it  as  fruitful  as  Luther 
wished.  The  truth  is  he  had  overrated  it,  obviously  misled  by 
his  enthusiasm  for  his  alleged  discovery  of  the  power  of  faith  for 
justification. 

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. 

When  a  Christian  is  lazy,  starts  thinking  he  possesses  every 
thing  and  refuses  to  grow  and  increase,  then  "  neither  has  he 
earnestness  nor  a  true  faith."  Even  the  just  are  conscious  of  sin 

1  "  Comm.  on  Gal.,"  1,  p.  196  (Irmischer). 

2  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  12,  p.  559  ;   Erl.  ed.,  122,  p.  175.     "  Comm. 
on  Gal."  (Irmischer),  1,  p.  196. 

3  Ib.,  Erl.  ed.,  172,  p.  94  ;   49,  p.  348.          4  Ib.,  58,  pp.  343,  347. 
5  See  above,  p.  26  f.,  and  vol.  ii.,  p.  27  ff. 


THE  EISLEBEN  SERMONS  33 

(i.e.  original  sin),  but  they  resist  it  ;  but  where  there  is  a  distaste 
for  the  beloved  Word  of  God  there  can  be  "  no  real  faith."  Luther, 
to  the  detriment  of  his  ethics,  was  disposed  to  relegate  faith  too 
much  to  the  region  of  feeling  and  personal  experience  ;  this, 
however,  he  could  scarcely  avoid  since  his  was  a  "  fides  specialis  " 
in  one's  own  personal  salvation.  True  religion,  in  his  opinion,  is 
ever  to  rejoice  and  be  glad  by  reason  of  the  forgiveness  of  sins 
and  cheerfully  to  run  the  way  of  God's  service  ;  this  idea  is 
prominent  in  his  third  sermon  at  Eisleben.  The  right  faith  "  is 
toothsome  and  lively  ;  it  consoles  and  gladdens."1  "  It  bores 
its  way  into  the  heart  and  brings  comfort  and  cheer  "  ;  "we  feel 
glad  and  ready  for  anything."2 

But  because  the  actual  facts  and  his  experience  failed  to  tally 
with  his  views,  Luther,  as  already  explained,  had  recourse  to  a 
convenient  expedient  ;  towards  the  close  of  his  life  we  frequently 
hear  him  speaking  as  follows  :  Unfortunately  we  have  not  yet 
got  this  faith,  for  "  we  do  not  possess  in  our  hearts,  and  cannot 
acquire,  that  joy  which  we  would  gladly  feel  "  ;  thus  we  become 
conscious  how  the  "  old  Adam,  sin  and  our  sinful  nature,  still 
persist  within  us  ;  this  it  is  that  forces  you  and  me  to  fail  in  our 
faith."3  "Even  great  saints  do  not  always  feel  that  joy  and 
might,  and  we  others,  owing  to  our  unbelief,  cannot  attain  to 
this  exalted  consolation  and  strength  .  .  .  and  even  though  we 
would  gladly  believe,  yet  we  cannot  make  our  faith  as  strong  as 
we  ought."4  He  vouchsafes  no  answer  to  the  objection  :  But 
why  then  set  up  aims  that  cannot  be  reached  ;  why  make  the 
starting-point  consist  in  a  "  faith  "  of  which  man,  owing  to 
original  sin,  can  only  attain  to  a  shadow,  except  perhaps  in  the 
rare  instances  of  martyrs,  or  divinely  endowed  saints  ? 

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  lo.ve  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.  There 
fore  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."5  In  what  follows  he  is  at  pains  to  show 
that  good  works  will  depend  on  the  constant  putting  into 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  202,  2,  p.  553.  2  /&.,  p.  548. 

3  Ib.  4  /&.,  p.  549.  *  /&.,  p.  554. 

v. — D 


34  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

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."1 

The  motive  for  good  works  which  Luther  here  advances, 
viz.  "  To  thank  God,  to  praise  and  extol  Him,"2  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."3  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."4  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."5 

It  is  plain  that  we  have  here  an  echo  of  the  mysticism 
which  had  at  one  time  held  him  in  thrall ; 6  but  his  extrava 
gant  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  chastise 
ments,  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 

1  Ib.,  p.  555. 

2  Cp.  p.  552  :    "  Help  me  that  I  may,  with  gratitude,  praise  and 
exalt  Thy  Son."  3  Kostlin's  summary,  ib.,  p.  206. 

4  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  152,  p.  40.     Cp.  "  Opp.  lat.  exeg.,"  13,  p.  144. 
6  Kostlin,  ib.,  p.  207.  6  Cp.  vol.  i.,  passim. 


THE   EISLEBEN   SERMONS  35 

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).1  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."2 

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. 

In  the  first  place  he  says  nothing  of  the  supernatural  life,  which, 
according  to  the  ancient  teaching  of  the  Church,  begins  with 
the  infusion  of  sanctifying  grace  in  the  soul  of  the  man  who  is 
justified.  As  we  know,  he  would  not  hear  of  this  new  and  vital 
principle  in  the  righteous,  which  indeed  was  incompatible  with 
his  theory  of  the  mere  non-imputation  of  sin.  Further,  he  also 
ignores  the  so-called  "  infused  virtues  "  whence,  with  the  help 
of  actual  grace,  springs  the  new  motive  force  of  the  man  received 
into  the  Divine  sonship.  By  his  denial  of  the  complete  renewal 
of  the  inner  man  he  placed  himself  in  opposition  to  the  ancient 
witnesses  of  Christendom,  as  Protestant  historians  of  dogma 
now  admit.3 

1  Kostlin,  ib.,  p.  204.  -  In  the  Eisleben  Sermons,  p.  548. 

3  On  Luther's  attitude  towards  the  supernatural  moral  order,  see 
xxix.,  5. 


36  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

Secondly,  he  dismisses  in  silence  the  so-called  actual  grace. 
Not  even  in  answering  the  question  as  to  the  source  whence  the 
believer  draws  strength  and  ability  to  strive  after  what  is  good, 
does  he  refer  to  it,  so  hostile  is  his  whole  system  to  any  co-opera 
tion  between  the  natural  and  the  supernatural  in  man. 

Thirdly,  he  does  not  give  its  due  to  man's  freedom  in  co-opera 
ting  in  the  doing  of  what  is  good ;  it  is  true  he  does  not  expressly 
deny  it,  but  it  was  his  usual  practice  in  his  addresses  to  the  people 
to  say  as  little  as  possible  of  his  doctrine  of  the  enslaved  will.1 
Along  with  faith,  however,  he  extols  the  Holy  Ghost.  "  Leave 
it  to  the  Holy  Ghost  !  "  Indeed  faith  itself,  and  the  strong  feeling 
which  should  accompany  it,  are  exclusively  the  work  of  the  Holy 
Ghost.  It  is  the  Holy  Ghost  alone  Who  believes,  and  feels,  and 
works  in  man,  according  to  Luther's  teaching  elsewhere.  This 
action  of  God  alone  is  something  different  from  actual  grace. 
In  the  instructions  he  gave  to  Melanchthon  in  1536  concerning 
justification  and  works,2  Luther  entirely  ignores  any  action  on 
man's  part  as  a  free  agent,  and  yet  here  we  have  the  "  clearest 
expression  "  of  his  doctrine  of  how  good  works  follow  on  justifi 
cation.  The  Protestant  author  of  "  Luthers  Theologie  in  ihrer 
geschichtlichen  Entwicklung  "  remarks  of  this  work  (and  the 
same  applies  to  the  above  sermons  and  other  statements)  : 
"  Luther  is  always  desirous,  on  the  one  hand  of  depreciating  man's 
claim  to  personal  worth  and  merit,  and  on  the  other  by  his 
testimony  to  God's  mercy  in  Christ,  of  furthering  faith  and  the 
impulses  and  desires  which  spring  from  faith  and  the  spirit  ; 
here,  too,  he  says  nothing  of  any  choice  as  open  to  man  between 
the  Divine  impulses  working  within  him  and  those  of  his  sinful 
nature."3 

Fourthly,  and  most  important  of  all,  Luther  says  nothing  of  the 
true  significance  of  morality  for  the  attainment  of  everlasting 
life. 

The  best  and  theologically  most  convincing  reply  to  the  objec 
tion  of  which  he  spoke  :  "  Well  and  good,  then  I  shall  sin  lustily," 
etc.  would  have  been  :  No,  a  good  moral  life  is  essential  for 
salvation  !  The  strongest  Bible  texts  would  have  been  there  to 
back  such  a  statement,  and,  to  his  powerful  eloquence,  it  should 
have  proved  an  attractive  task  to  crush  his  frivolous  opponents 
by  so  weighty  an  argument.  Yet  we  find  never  a  word  concern 
ing  the  necessity  of  good  works  for  salvation,  but  merely  an 
account  of  the  wonders  worked  by  faith  of  its  own  accord  alone 
after  it  has  laid  hold  on  the  heart.  This  is  readily  understood, 
if  justification  is  purely  passive  and  effected  solely  by  the  Spirit 
of  God  which  enkindles  faith  and,  with  it,  covers  over  sin  as  with 
a  shield,  then  the  very  being  of  the  life  of  faith  must  be  mere 
passivity,  and  there  can  be  no  more  question  of  attaining  to 
salvation  by  means  of  good  deeds  performed  with  the  aid  of  grace. 
In  the  instruction  for  Melanchthon  mentioned  above  we  find  at 

1  Cp.  vol.  ii.,  p.  223  ff.,  particularly  p.  240  ff, 

2  See  above,  p.  32,  n.  4. 

3  Kostlin,  ib.,  p.  206. 


THE  EISLEBEN  SERMONS  37 

the  end  this  clear  query:  "Is  this  saying  true :  Righteousness  by 
works  is  necessary  for  salvation  ?  "  Luther  answers  by  a  distinc 
tion  :  "  Not  as  if  works  operate  or  bring  about  salvation,"  he 
says,  "  but  rather  they  are  present  together  with  the  faith  that 
operates  righteousness  ;  just  as  of  necessity  I  must  be  present 
in  order  to  be  saved."  This  distinction,  however,  leaves  the 
question  just  where  it  was  before.  He  concludes  his  remarks  on 
this  vital  matter  with  a  jest  on  the  purely  external  and  fortuitous 
presence  of  works  in  the  man  received  into  eternal  life  :  "I  too 
shall  be  in  at  the  death,  said  the  rascal  when  he  was  about  to  be 
hanged  and  many  people  were  hurrying  to  see  the  scene."1 

All  the  more  strongly  did  Luther  in  his  usual  way  describe  in 
his  last  sermon  the  natural  sinfulness  which  persists  in  man 
owing  to  original  sin. 

The  sin  that  still  dwells  within  us  "  forces  "  man  to  prevent 
faith  and  works  coming  to  their  own.2  For  "he  is  not  yet  with 
out  sin,  though  he  has  the  forgiveness  of  sins  and  is  sanctified  by 
the  Holy  Ghost."  In  consequence  of  the  "  foulness  "  within  him 
"  the  longer  he  lives  the  worse  he  gets."  "  We  cannot  get  rid 
of  our  sinful  body."3  For  this  reason  even  the  "best  minds  " 
so  often  are  indifferent  to  eternal  life.  On  account  of  the  evil 
taint  in  our  flesh  we  are  unable  to  rise  as  high  as  we  ought.4  But 
if  original  sin  and  its  workings  were  declared  really  sinful  in  man 
(for  even  the  very  motions  against  "  heartfelt  pleasure  "  in  God's 
service  are,  so  we  are  told,  "sins"5),  then  it  is  no  wonder  that 
Luther  should  have  been  confronted  with  the  question  of  which 
he  speaks  :  "If  sin  be  in  me,  how  then  can  I  be  pleasing  to 
God  ?  " — a  question  which  formerly  could  not  have  been  asked 
of  those  whose  original  sin  had  been  washed  away  in  baptism. 
The  teaching  of  the  olden  Church  had  been,  that  original  sin  was 
blotted  out  by  baptism,  but  that  the  inclination  to  evil  per 
sisted  in  man  to  his  last  breath,  though  without  any  fault  on  his 
part  so  long  as  consent  was  lacking. 6 

Still  less  to  be  wondered  at  was  it,  that  many,  unable  to  regard 
themselves  as  responsible  or  guilty  on  account  of  the  involuntary 
motions  of  original  sin,  began  to  doubt  whether  any  responsi 
bility  existed  for  evil  actions  or  whether  moral  effort  was  within 
the  bounds  of  possibility. 

Further,  according  to  Luther,  our  constant  exercise  of  our 
selves  in  faith  and  our  "  rubbing  "  ourselves  against  sin  was 
finally  to  lead  "  not  merely  to  our  sins  being  forgiven  but  to  their 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  58,  p.  346.  2  Ib.,  202,  2,  p.  548. 

3  Ib.,  p.  545.  *  Ib.,  p.  549  f.  5  Ib.,  p.  551. 

6  Luther's  opposite  doctrine,  which  is  of  importance  to  the  matter 
under  consideration,  is  expressed  by  Kostlin  (ib.,  p.  126  f.)  as  follows  : 
Luther  "  does  not  make  guilt  and  condemnation  follow  on  the  act 
which  is  contrary  to  God's  will,  nor  even  on  the  determination  to 
commit  such  an  act,  but  on  the  inward  motion,  or  concupiscence,  nay, 
in  the  inborn  evil  propensity  [even  of  the  baptised]  which  exists  prior 
to  any  conscious  motion.  .  .  .  We  do  not  find  in  his  writings  any 
further  information  on  the  other  questions  here  involved  "  (e.g.  of  the 
children  who  die  unbaptised,  etc.). 


38  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

being  altogether  rooted  up  and  swept  away  ;  for  your  shabby, 
smelly  body  could  not  enter  heaven  without  first  being  cleansed 
and  beautified."1  Taking  for  granted  his  mystic  assumption 
that  sinful  concupiscence  can  at  last  be  "  swept  away,"  he  insists 
on  our  continuing  hopefully  "  to  amend  by  faith  and  prayer  our 
weakness  and  to  fight  against  it  until  such  a  change  takes  place 
in  our  sinful  body  that  sin  no  longer  exists  therein,"2  though,  in 
his  opinion,  this  cannot  entirely  be  until  we  reach  heaven.  Yet 
experience,  had  he  but  opened  his  eyes  to  it,  here  once  again 
contradicted  him.  The  "  fomes  peccati,"  as  the  Catholic  Church 
rightly  teaches,  cannot  be  extinguished  so  long  as  man  is  on  this 
earth,  though  it  may  be  damped,  and,  by  the  practice  of  what  is 
right  and  the  use  of  the  means  of  grace,  be  rendered  harmless  to 
our  moral  life.  The  Church  expected  nothing  unreasonable 
from  man,  though  her  moral  standards  were  of  the  highest. 
Luther,  however,  by  abandoning  the  Church's  ethics,  came  to 
teach  a  strange  mixture  of  perverted,  unworkable  idealism  and 
all  too  great  indulgence  towards  human  frailty. 

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."3  In  the  same  way, 
in  a  sermon  of  1535,  he  asserted  that  it  was  by  no  means  neces 
sary  for  us  to  perform  good  wrorks  "  in  order  to  blot  out  sin,  to 
overcome  death  and  win  heaven,  but  merely  for  the  profit  and 
assistance  of  our  neighbour."  "  Our  wTorks,"  he  there  says, 
"  can  only  shape  what  concerns  our  temporal  life  and  being  "  ; 
higher  than  this  they  cannot  rise. 4 

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,"5  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 

1  In  the  Eisleben  sermons,  ib.,  p.  551.  2  Ib.,  p.  546. 

3  "  Disputationes,"  ed.  Drews,  p.  159.     Cp.  "  Corp.  ref.,"  3,  p.  385. 
Loofs,  "  DG.,"  4,  p.  857,  n.  4,  and  770,  n.  4. 

4  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  192,  p.  153.  5  Ib.,  132,  p.  307. 


GOOD  WORKS  39 

itself  is  the  cause  of  the  works.  But  the  believer  must  not  "  lock 
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.1 
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  in 
ducement  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."2  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  ever 
lasting  "  ;  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. 3 

"  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."4  The  true 
explanation  would  therefore  seem  always  to  be  in  the  assumption 
of  a  w^ant  of  "  faith,"  i.e.  of  a  lack  of  that  absolute  certainty  of 
personal  salvation  which  should  regulate  all  religious  life,5  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  specialist'  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 

1  Ib.,  p.  305  ff.  2  Ib.,  152,  p.  524.  Kostlin,  ib.,  p.  213. 

3  Cp.  ib.,  43,  p.  362  ff. 

4  The   headings  in  W.  Walther's   "  Die  Sittlichkeit  nach  Luther," 
pp.  100,  106,  120,  125  are  as  above.  5  Above,  p.  32  f. 


40  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

that,  he  is  inwardly  just,  believing  and  pious.  Thus  you  may 
term  one  an  open  or  outward  justification  and  the  other  an  in 
ward  justification."1  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  com 
passion  ;  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  " ; 2  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  assur 
ance  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  "  un 
warrantable  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  im 
pelled  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  exer 
cise  your  faith  by  resisting  the  sins  that  remain  in  you  ...  in 
short,  you  must  become  stronger,  humbler,  more  patient  and 
believe  more  firmly."3  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  whole 
some  "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  a3  it  should  be."4 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  132,  p.  304  f.  2  Walther,  ib.,  p.  102. 

3  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  202,  2,  p.  553.          4  Ib.,  122,  p.  219. 


GOOD  WORKS  41 

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."1 
"  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."2  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  reminis 
cent  of  the  Catholic  doctrine  of  a  faith  working  through  love.3 
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  con 
clusions  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. 

1  Ib.,  82,  p.  119,  in  the  exposition  of  1  Cor.  xiii.  2  :  "  And  though 
I  had  all  faith  and  could  remove  mountains  and  had  not  charity,  I  am 
nothing."  2  Ib.,  152,  p.  40. 

3  Willibald  Pirkheimer  confronted  Luther  with  the  following  state 
ment  of  the  Catholic  teaching  :  "  We  know  that  free-will  of  itself 
without  grace  cannot  suffice.  We  refer  all  things  back  to  the  Divine 
grace,  but  we  believe,  that,  after  the  reception  of  that  grace  without 
which  we  are  nothing,  we  still  have  to  perform  our  rightful  service. 
We  are  ever  subject  to  the  action  of  grace  and  always  unite  our  efforts 
with  grace.  .  .  .  But  whoever  believes  that  grace  alone  suffices  even 
without  any  exercise  of  our  will  or  subduing  of  our  desire,  such  a  one 
does  nothing  else  but  declare  that  no  one  is  obliged  to  pray,  watch,  fast, 
take  pity  on  the  needy,  or  perform  works  of  mercy,"  etc.  "  Opp.,"  ed. 
Goldast,  p.  375  sqq.,  in  Drews,  "  Pirkheimers  Stellung  zur  Reforma 
tion,"  Leipzig,  1884,  p.  119. 


42  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

It  was  in  this  sense  that  he  wrote  in  the  "  Sermon  von  den  guten 
Wercken,"  composed  at  the  instance  of  his  prudent  friend  Spalatin 
for  the  Duke  of  Saxony  :  "  Such  trust  and  faith  brings  with  it 
charity  and  hope  ;  indeed,  if  we  look  at  the  matter  aright,  charity 
comes  first,  or  at  least  simultaneously  with  faith.  For  I  should 
not  care  to  trust  God  unless  I  believed  He  would  be  kindly  and 
gracious  to  me,  whereby  I  am  well  disposed  towards  Him,  trust 
Him  heartily  and  perform  all  that  is  good  in  His  sight."  In  the 
same  connection  he  characterises  "  faith  "  as  a  "  work  of  the 
first  Commandment,"  and  as  a  "  true  keeping  of  that  command," 
and  as  the  "  first,  topmost  and  best  work  from  which  all  others 
flow."1  It  might  seem,  though  this  is  but  apparent,  that  he  had 
actually  come  to  acknowledge  the  reality  and  merit  of  man's 
works,  in  the  teeth  of  his  denial  of  free-will  and  of  the  possibility 
of  meriting. 

Of  charity  as  involved  in  faith  he  wrote  in  a  similar  strain  in 
1519  to  Johann  Silvius  Egranus,  who  at  that  time  still  belonged 
to  his  party,  but  was  already  troubled  with  scruples  concerning 
the  small  regard  shown  for  ethical  motives  and  the  undue  stress 
laid  on  faith  alone  :  "  I  do  not  separate  justifying  faith  from 
charity,"  Luther  told  him,  "  on  the  contrary  we  believe  because 
God,  in  Whom  we  believe,  pleases  us  and  is  loved  by  us."  To 
him  all  this  was  quite  clear  and  plain,  but  the  new-comers  who 
had  busied  themselves  with  faith,  hope  and  charity  "  under 
stood  not  one  of  the  three."2 

We  may  recall  how  the  enquiring  mind  of  Egranus  was  by  no 
means  entirely  satisfied  by  this  explanation.  In  1534  he  pub 
lished  a  bitter  attack  on  the  Lutheran  doctrine  of  works,  though 
he  never  returned  more  than  half-way  from  Lutheranism  to  the 
olden  Church.3 

Many,  like  Silvius  Egranus,  who  at  the  outset  had  been  won 
over  to  the  new  religion,  took  fright  when  they  saw  that,  owing 
to  the  preference  shown  to  faith  (i.e.  the  purely  personal  assurance 
of  salvation),  -the  ethical  principles  regarding  Christian  perfection 
and  man's  aim  in  life,  received  but  scant  consideration. 

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  specialist 

In  previous  ages  Christian  perfection  had  rightly  been  thought 
to  consist  in  the  development  of  the  moral  virtues,  particularly 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  162,  p.  131. 

2  Feb.  2,  1519,  "  Brief wechsel,"  1,  p.  408.     3  See  vol.  hi.,  p.  462  ff. 


LOWERING  OF  MORALS  43 

of  charity,  the  queen  of  all  the  others.  Now,  however,  Luther 
represented  "  the  consoling  faith  in  the  forgiveness  of  sins  as  the 
sum  of  Christian  perfection."1  According  to  him.  the  "real 
essence  of  personal  Christianity  lies  in  the  confidence  of  the  justi 
fied  sinner  that  he  shares  the  paternal  love  of  the  Almighty  of 
which  he  has  been  assured  by  the  work  and  person  of  Jesus 
Christ."  In  this  sense  alone  can  he  be  said  to  have  "  rediscovered 
Christianity  "  as  a  religion.  We  are  told  that  "  the  essence  of 
Lutheran  Christianity  is  to  be  found  in  Luther's  reduction  of 
practical  Christianity  to  the  doctrine  of  salvation."2  He  "  altered 
the  ideal  of  religious  perfection  as  no  other  Christian  before 
his  day  had  ever  done."  The  "  revulsion  "  in  moral  ideals  which 
this  necessarily  involved  spelt  "  a  huge  decline."3 

George  Wicel,  who,  after  having  long  been  an  adherent  of 
Lutheranism,  broke  away  from  it  in  consequence  of  the  moral 
results  referred  to,  wrote,  in  1533,  with  much  bitterness  in  the 
defence  he  addressed  to  Justus  Jonas  :  "  Amongst  you  one  hears 
of  nothing  but  of  remitting  and  forgiving  ;  you  don't  seem  to 
see  that  your  seductions  sow  more  sins  than  ever  you  can  take 
away.  Your  people,  it  is  true,  are  so  constituted  that  they  will 
only  hear  of  the  forgiving  and  never  of  the  retaining  of  sin 
(John  xx.  23)  ;  evidently  they  stand  more  in  need  of  being  loosed 
than  of  being  bound.  Ah,  you  comfortable  theologians  !  You 
are  indeed  sharp-sighted  enough  in  all  this  business,  for  were  you 
to  bind  as  often  as  you  loose,  you,  the  ringleaders  of  the  party, 
would  soon  find  yourselves  all  alone  with  your  faith,  and  might 
then  withdraw  into  some  hole  to  weep  for  the  loss  of  your  authority 
and  congregation."  "  Ah,  you  rascals,  what  a  fine  Evangelical 
mode  of  life  have  you  wrought  with  your  preachment  on  grace."4 


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. 

1  Adolf  Harnack,  "  DG.,"  34,  p.  850. 

2  Loofs,  "  DG.,"  4,  p.  698,  n.  1,  p.  737. 

3  Harnack,  ib.,  p.  831  f. 

4  "  Confutatio  calumn.  resp.,"  E  2a.     Dollinger,   "  Reformation," 
1,  p.  39. 


44  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 


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.1  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."2  This  service  is 
the  duty  of  each  individual  Christian  and  is  practised  in 
common  in  Divine  worship.  The  latter  is  fixed  and  con 
trolled  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.3 

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."4  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  abnega 
tion,  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,  ecclesi- 

1  Kostlin,  "  Luthers  Theol.,"  22,  p.  208. 

2  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  92,  p.  33.          3  Kostlin,  ib.,  pp.  284,  295. 

4  "Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  26,  p.  200;  Erl.  ed.,  23,  p.  9.  Kostlin, 
however  (p.  275  f.),  points  out  that  Luther  nevertheless  threatens  those 
who  refuse  to  accept  his  injunctions.  Cp.  below,  xxix.,  9. 


LOWERING  OF  MORALS  45 

astical  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."1  "  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."2 

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."3 

2.  "  All  other  works,  apart  from  faith,  must  be  directed 
towards  our  neighbour."4  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."5 — God,  he  says  elsewhere,  asks 
only  for  our  thank-offering  f  "  look  upon  Me  as  a  Gracious 
God  and  I  am  content  "  ;  "  thereafter  serve  your  neigh 
bour,  freely  and  for  nothing."6  Good  works  in  his  eyes  are 
only  "  good  when  they  are  profitable  to  others  and  not  to 

1  "  Werke,"  ib.,  72,  p.  68.  2  Ib.,  102,  p.  108. 

3  On  dying  spiritually,  cp.  vol.  i.,  p.  169  and  passim. 

4  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  102,  p.  108.  5  Ib. 
6   "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  132,  p.  206. 


46  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

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."1  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,  pilgrim- 
ing  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  wljich  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  there 
fore  deals  with  the  true  worship  of  God  in  the  light  of  the 
Ten  Commandments."2  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 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  102,  p.  25.  Cp.  on  Luther's  restriction  of  good 
works  to  practical  love  of  our  neighbour,  vol.  iv.,  p.  477  ff.,  and  above, 
p.  26,  38  f. 

2  Chr.  E.  Luthardt,  "  Die  Ethik  Luthers  in  ihren  Grundziigen,"  2, 
1875,  p.  70. 


THE  EVANGELICAL  COUNSELS       47 

partakes  of  the  nature  of  a  good  work,  came  very  near 
branding  them  as  an  invention  of  the  Papists. 

They  have  "  made  the  Counsels  twelve"  in  number,1  he  says, 
"  and  twist  the  Gospel  as  they  please."  They  have  split  the 
Gospel  into  two,  into  "  Consilia  et  prcecepta."  "  Christ,"  so  he 
teaches,  "  gave  only  one  Counsel  in  the  whole  of  the  Gospel,  viz. 
that  of  chastity,  which  even  a  layman  can  preserve,  assuming 
him  to  have  the  grace."  He  sneers  at  the  Pope  and  the  Doctors 
because  they  had  established  not  only  a  clerical  order  which 
should  be  superior  to  the  laity,  but  also  an  order  of  the  counsels 
the  duty  of  whose  members  it  was  to  portray  the  Evangelical 
perfection  by  the  keeping  of  the  three  vows  of  poverty,  chastity 
and  obedience.  "  By  this  the  common  Christian  life  and  faith 
became  like  flat,  sour  beer  ;  everyone  rubbed  his  eyes,  despised 
the  commandments  and  ran  after  the  counsels.  And  after  a 
good  while  they  at  last  discovered  man-made  ordinances  in  the 
shape  of  habits,  foods,  chants,  lessons,  tonsures,  etc.,  and  thus 
God's  Law  went  the  way  of  faith,  both  being  blotted  out  and 
forgotten,  so  that,  henceforth,  to  be  perfect  and  to  live  according 
to  the  counsels  means  to  wear  a  black,  white,  grey  or  coloured 
cowl,  to  bawl  in  church,  wear  a  tonsure  and  to  abstain  from  eggs, 
meat,  butter,  etc."2 

In  the  heat  of  his  excitement  he  even  goes  so  far  as  to  deny 
the  necessity  of  any  service  in  the  churches,  because  God  demands 
only  the  praise  and  thanks  of  the  heart,  and  "  this  may  be  given 
.  .  .  equally  well  in  the  home,  in  the  field,  or  anywhere  else." 
"  If  they  should  force  any  other  service  upon  you,  know  that  it 
is  error  and  deception  ;  just  as  hitherto  the  world  has  been  crazy, 
with  its  houses,  churches  and  monasteries  set  aside  for  the 
worship  of  God,  and  its  vestments  of  gold  and  silk,  etc.  .  .  , 
which  expenditure  had  better  been  used  to  help  our  neighbour, 
if  it  was  really  meant  for  God."3 

It  was  of  course  impossible  for  him  to  vindicate  in  the  long 
run  so  radical  a  standpoint  concerning  the  churches,  and,  else 
where,  he  allows  people  their  own  way  on  the  question  of  litur 
gical  vestments  and  other  matters  connected  with  worship. 

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. 

1  Cp.  "  Compend.  totius  theol.  Hugonis  Argentorat.  O.P.,"  V.  cap.  ult. 

2  Quoted  from  Luthardt,  ib.,  pp.  70-73. 

3  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  72,  p,  68, 


48  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

When,  in  1528,  in  his  "  Great  Confession  "  he  expounded  his 
"  belief  bit  by  bit,"  declaring  that  he  had  "  most  diligently 
weighed  all  these  articles  "  as  in  the  presence  of  death  and 
judgment,  he  there  wrote  :  "  Herewith  I  reject  and  condemn 
as  rank  error  every  doctrine  that  exalts  our  free-will,  which  is 
directly  opposed  to  the  help  and  grace  of  our  Saviour  Jesus 
Christ.  For  seeing,  that,  outside  of  Christ,  death  and  sin  are  our 
masters  and  the  devil  our  God  and  sovereign,  there  can  be  no 
power  or  might,  no  wit  or  understanding  whereby  we  could  make 
ourselves  fit  for,  or  could  even  strive  after,  righteousness  and  life, 
but  on  the  contrary  we  must  remain  blind  and  captive,  slaves  of 
sin  and  the  devil,  and  must  do  what  pleases  them  and  runs 
counter  to  God  and  His  Commandments."1  Even  the  most 
pious  of  the  Papists,  he  goes  on  to  say,  since  they  lack  Christ  and 
the  "  Faith,"  have  "  merely  a  great  semblance  of  holiness," 
and  although  "  there  seem  to  be  many  good  works  "  among  them, 
"  yet  all  is  lost  "  ;  chastity,  poverty  and  obedience  as  practised 
in  the  convents  is  nothing  but  "  blasphemous  holiness,"  and 
"  what  is  horrible  is  that  thereby  they  refuse  Christ's  help  and 
grace."2 

This,  his  favourite  idea,  finds  its  full  expression  in  his  learned 
Latin  Commentary  on  Galatians  (1535)  :  "  In  the  man  who  does 
not  believe  in  Christ  not  only  are  all  sins  mortal,  but  even  his 
good  works  are  sins  "  ;3  for  the  benefit  of  the  people  he  enunciates 
the  same  in  his  Church-Postils.  ;'  The  works  performed  without 
faith  are  sins  .  .  .  for  such  works  of  ours  are  soiled  and  foul  in 
God's  eyes,  nay,  He  looks  on  them  with  horror  and  loathing." 
As  a  matter  of  course  he  thinks  that  God  looks  upon  concupis 
cence  as  sin,  even  in  its  permissible  manifestations,  e.g.  in  the 
"  opus  conjugates . "  Amongst  the  heathen  even  virtues  such  as 
patriotism,  continence,  justice  and  courage  in  which,  owing  to 
the  divine  impulses  ("  divini  motus  "),  they  may  shine,  are 
tainted  by  the  presence  in  them  of  original  sin  ("  in  ipsis  heroicis 
virtutibus  depravata  ").4  As  to  whether  such  men  were  saved, 
Luther  refuses  to  say  anything  definite  ;  he  holds  fast  to  the 
text  that  without  faith  it  is  impossible  to  please  God.  Only 
those  who,  in  the  days  of  Noe,  did  not  believe  may,  so  he  declares, 
be  saved  in  accordance  with  his  reading  of  1  Peter  iii.  19  by 
Christ's  preaching  of  salvation  on  the  occasion  of  His  descent 
into  hell.  He  is  also  disposed  to  include  among  those  saved  by 
this  supposed  course  of  sermons  delivered  "tn  inferis,"  such  fine 
men  of  every  nation  as  Scipio,  Fabius  and  others  of  their  like. 5 

In  general,  however,  the  following  holds  good  :  Before  "  faith 
and  grace  "  are  infused  into  the  heart  "  by  the  Spirit  alone," 
"as  the  work  of  God  which  He  works  in  us" — everything  in 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  26,  p.  502  f.  ;   Erl.  ed.,  30,  p.  365. 

2  Ib.,  pp.  507,  509  =  370,  372. 

3  Ed.  Irmischer,  3,  p.  25.     Cp.  Loofs,  "  DG.,"  4,  p.  705. 

4  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.  152,  p.  60.    "  Opp.  lat.  exeg.,"  2,  p.  273  sqq.  ; 
19,  p.  18;  24,  p.  463,  sq.     "  Disputationes,"  ed.  Drews,  pp.  115,  172. 

5  Cp.  Kostlin,  "  Luthers  Theol.,"  22,  p.  169  f.,  the  passages  quoted. 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  49 

man  is  the  "  work  of  the  Law,  of  no  value  for  justification,  but 
unholy  and  opposed  to  God  owing  to  the  unbelief  in  which  it  is 
performed."1 


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  per 
formed  "  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  imputa 
tion  by  God ;  it  is  indeed  God's  goodness  towards  man,  but 
no  new  vital  principle  thanks  to  which  we  act  justly.2 

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,  accord 
ing  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."3  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 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  10,  1,  1,  p.  340  ;    Erl.  ed.,  72,  p.  261.— For 
the  theological  and  psychological  influences  which  led  him  to  these 
statements,  see  vol.  i.,  pp.  72  ff.,  149  ff. 

2  Cp.  what  Luther  says  in  his  Comm.  on  Romans  in  1515-16  :    It 
depends  entirely  "  on  the  gracious  Will  of  God  whether  a  thing  is  to  be 
good  or  evil,"  and  "  Nothing  is  of  its  own  nature  good,  nothing  of  its 
own  nature  evil,"  etc.,  vol.  i.,  p.  211  f. 

3  "  Opp.  lat.  exeg.,"  1,  p.  109,     "  In  Genesim,"  c.  3. 

V.— B 


50  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

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.1  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  ')."  2 

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  any 
thing  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,"3  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  with 
out  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 

1  See  vol.  i.,  p.  148  f.    Cp.  Denifle-Weiss,  I2,  p.  527,  n.  1. 

2  Denifle-Weiss,  ib.,  p.  528,  n.  2. 

;i  Denifle-Weiss,  ib.,  p.  527.    Cp.  our  vol.  i.,  p.  148  f, 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  51 

what  is  good,  for  not  everyone  who  does  what  is  good  is  just, 
but  only  he  who  does  it  as  do  the  just."1 

With  regard  to  supernatural  (infused)  justice,  the  Church's 
representatives,  quite  differently  from  Luther,  had  taught  that 
man  by  his  natural  powers  could  only  attain  to  God  as  the  Author 
of  nature  but  not  to  God  as  He  is  in  Himself,  i.e.  to  God  as  He 
has  revealed  and  will  communicate  Himself  in  heaven  ;  it  is 
infused,  sanctifying  grace  alone  that  places  us  in  a  higher  order 
than  that  of  nature  and  raises  us  to  the  status  of  being  children 
of  God  ;  in  it  we  love  God,  by  virtue  of  the  "  habit  "  of  love 
bestowed  upon  us,  as  He  is  in  Himself,  i.e.  as  He  wills  to  be  loved  ; 
sanctifying  grace  it  is  that  brings  us  into  a  true  relation  with  our 
supernatural  and  final  end,  viz.  the  vision  of  God  in  heaven,  in 
which  sense  it  may  be  called  a  vital  principle  infused  into  the 
soul. 2 

This  language  Luther  either  did  not  or  would  not  understand. 
On  this  point  particularly  he  had  to  suffer  for  his  ignorance  of 
the  better  class  of  theologians.  He  first  embraced  Occam's 
hypothesis  of  the  possibility  of  an  imputation  of  justice,  and 
then,  going  further  along  the  wrong  road,  he  changed  this  possi 
bility  into  a  reality  ;  soon,  owing  to  his  belief  in  the  entire  cor 
ruption  of  the  natural  man,  imputed  justice  became,  to  him,  the 
only  justice.  In  this  way  he  deprived  theology  of  supernatural 
as  well  as  of  natural  justice  ;  for  imputed  justice  is  really  no 
justice  at  all,  but  merely  an  alien  one.  "  With  Luther  we  have 
the  end  of  the  supernatural.  His  basic  view,  of  justifying  faith 
as  the  work  of  God  in  us  performed  without  our  co-operation, 
bears  indeed  a  semblance  of  the  supernatural.  .  .  .  But  the 
supernatural  is  ever  something  alien."3 

What  he  had  in  his  mind  was  always  a  foreign  righteousness 
produced,  not  by  man's  own  works  and  acts  performed  under 
the  help  of  grace,  but  only  by  the  work  of  another  ;  this  we  are 
bold  by  Luther  in  so  many  words  :  "  True  and  real  piety  which 
is  of  worth  in  God's  sight  consists  in  alien  works  and  not  in  our 
own."4  "If  we  wish  to  work  for  God  we  must  not  approach 
Him  with  our  own  works  but  with  foreign  ones."  "  These  are 
the  works  of  Our  Lord  Jesus  Christ."  "  All  that  He  has  is  ours. 
...  I  may  attribute  to  myself  all  His  works  as  though  I  had 
actually  done  them,  if  only  I  believe  in  Christ.  .  .  .  Our  works 

1  "  In  2  Sent.,"  dist.  28,  a.  1  ad  4.    Denifle- Weiss,  ib.,  p.  482,  n.  1. 
Cp.  Luther's  frequent  statement,  already  sufficiently  considered  in  our 
vol.  iv.,   p.  476  f.,  in  which   he    sums  up  his  new  standpoint  :    Good 
works  never  make  a  good  man,  but  good  men  perform  good  works. 

2  Cp.  Denifle-Weiss,  ib.,  p.  598. 

3  Denine-Weiss,  p.  604.    Cp.  also  p.  600,  n.  2,  where  Denifle  remarks  : 
"  Being  an  Occamist  he  never  understood  actual  grace." 

4  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,   152,  p.  60.     After  the  words  quoted  above 
follows  the  remarkable  passage  :    One  builds  churches,  another  makes 
pilgrimages,  etc.     "  These  are  self -chosen  works  which  God  has  not 
commanded.  .  .  .  Such  self-chosen  works  are  nought  .  .  .  are  sin." 


52  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

will  not  suffice,  all  our  powers  together  are  too  weak  to  resist 
even  the  smallest  sin.  .  .  .  Hence  when  the  Law  comes  and 
accuses  you  of  not  having  kept  it,  send  it  to  Christ  and  say :  There 
is  the  Man  who  has  fulfilled  it,  to  Him  I  cling,  He  has  fulfilled 
it  for  me  and  bestowed  His  fulfilment  of  it  upon  me  ;  then  the 
Law  will  have  to  hold  its  tongue."1 

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. 

"  It  is  not  unknown  to  us,"  they  say,  "  that  this  holy  doctrine 
of  the  malice  and  impotence  of  free-will,  the  doctrine  whereby 
our  conversion  and  regeneration  is  ascribed  solely  to  God  and  in 
no  way  to  our  own  powers,  has  been  godlessly,  shamelessly  and 
hatefully  abused.  .  .  .  Many  are  becoming  immoral  and  savage 
and  neglectful  of  all  pious  exercises  ;  they  say  :  '  Since  we  can 
not  turn  to  God  of  our  own  natural  powers,  let  us  remain  hostile 
to  God  or  wait  until  He  converts  us  by  force  and  against  our 
will.'  '  "  It  is  true  that  they  possess  no  power  to  act  in  spiritual 
things,  and  that  the  whole  business  of  conversion  is  merely  the 
work  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  And  thus  they  refuse  to  listen  to  the 
Word  of  God,  or  to  study  it,  or  to  receive  the  Sacraments  ;  they 
prefer  to  wait  until  God  infuses  His  gifts  into  them  directly  from 
above,  and  until  they  feel  and  are  certain  by  inward  experience 
that  they  have  been  converted  by  God." 

"  Others,"  they  continue,  speaking  of  the  case  as  a  possibility 
and  not  as  a  sad  reality,  "  may  possibly  give  themselves  up  to 
sad  and  dangerous  doubts  as  to  whether  they  have  been  pre 
destined  by  God  to  heaven,  and  as  to  whether  God  will  really 
work  His  gifts  in  them  by  the  help  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  Being 
weak  and  troubled  in  mind  they  do  not  grasp  aright  our  pious 
doctrine  of  free-will,  and  they  are  confirmed  in  their  doubts  by  the 
fact  that  they  do  not  find  within  themselves  any  firm  and  ardent 
faith  or  hearty  devotion  to  God,  but  only  weakness,  misery  and 
fear."  The  authors  then  proceed  to  deal  with  the  widespread 
fear  of  predestination  to  hell.2 

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 

.     !  Ib.,  p.  61  f. 

2  "  Symb.  Biicher,"  ed.  Muller-Kolde,  10,  p.  599  f. 


THE  SYNERGISTS  53 

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,  Joo,  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."1 

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.2 

"  From  our  doctrinal  standpoint,"  we  there  read,  "it  is  plain 
that  the  teaching  of  the  Synergists  is  false,  who  allege  that  man 
in  spiritual  things  is  not  altogether  dead  to  what  is  good  but  merely 
badly  wounded  and  half  dead.  .  .  .  They  teach  wrongly,  that 
after  the  Holy  Spirit  has  given  us,  through  the  Evangel,  grace, 
forgiveness  and  salvation,  then  free-will  is  able  to  meet  God  by 
its  natural  powers  and  .  .  .  co-operate  with  the  Holy  Ghost. 
In  reality  the  ability  to  lay  hold  upon  grace  ('  facultas  applicandi 
se  ad  gratiam  ')  is  solely  due  to  the  working  of  the  Holy  Ghost." 

What  then  is  man  to  do,  and  how  are  the  consequences  de 
scribed  above  to  be  obviated,  on  the  one  hand  libertinism,  on  the 
other  fear  of  predestination  to  hell  ? 

Man  still  possesses  a  certain  freedom,  so  the  Book  of  Concord 
teaches,  e.g.  "  to  be  present  or  not  at  the  Church's  assemblies,  to 
listen  or  close  his  ears  to  the  Word  of  God." 

"  The  preaching  of  the  Word  of  God  is  however  the  tool 
whereby  the  Holy  Ghost  seeks  to  effect  man's  conversion  and  to 
make  him  ready  to  will  and  to  work  ('  in  ipsis  et  velle  et  perficere 
operari  vult ')."  "  Man  is  free  to  open  his  ears  to  the  Word  of 
God  or  to  read  it  even  when  not  yet  converted  to  God  or  born 
again.  In  some  way  or  other  man  still  has  free-will  in  such  out 
ward  things  even  since  Adam's  Fall."  Hence,  by  the  Word,  "  by 

1  Ib.    The  Thesis  of  man's  lack  of  freedom  is  bluntly  expressed  on 
p.   589,  and  in  the  sequel  it  is  pointed  out  that  in  Luther's  larger 
Catechism  not  one  word  is  found  concerning  free-will.     Reference  is 
made  to  his  comparison  of  man  with  the  lifeless  pillar  of  salt  (p.  593), 
and  to  Augustine's  "  Confessions  "  (p.  596). 

2  The  last  remark  is  from  Loofs,  "  DG.,"  4,  p.  857.    Cp.  our  vol.  iii., 
p.  348  ff.  and  passim. 


54  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

the  preaching  and  contemplation  of  the  sweet  Evangel  of  the 
forgiveness  of  sins,  the  spark  of  '  faith  '  is  enkindled  in  his 
heart."1 

"  Although  all  effort  without  the  power  and  work  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  is  worthless,  yet  neither  the  preacher  nor  the  hearer  must 
doubt  of  this  grace  or  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit,"  so  long  as  the 
preacher  proceeds  according  to  God's  will  and  command  and 
"  the  hearer  listens  earnestly  and  diligently  and  dwells  on  what 
he  hears."  We  are  not  to  judge  of  the  working  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
by  our  feelings,  but  "  agreeably  with  the  promises  of  God's 
Word."  We  must  hold  that  "  the  Word  preached  is  the  organ 
of  the  Holy  Ghost  whereby  He  truly  works  and  acts  in  our 
hearts."2 

With  the  help  of  this  queer,  misty  doctrine  which,  as  we  may 
notice,  makes  of  preaching  a  sort  of  Sacrament  working  "  ex 
opere  operato,"  Luther's  followers  attempted  to  construct  a 
system  out  of  their  master's  varying  and  often  so  arbitrary 
statements.  At  any  rate  they  upheld  his  denial  of  any  natural 
order  of  morality  distinct  from  the  order  of  grace.  It  was  to 
remain  true  that  man,  "  previous  to  conversion,  possesses  indeed 
an  understanding,  but  not  of  divine  things,  and  a  will,  though 
not  for  anything  good  and  wholesome."  In  this  respect  man 
stands  far  below  even  a  stock  or  stone,  because  he  resists  the 
Word  and  Will  of  God  (which  they  cannot  do)  until  God  raises 
him  up  from  the  death  of  sin,  enlightens  and  creates  him  anew. 3 

Nevertheless  several  theses,  undoubtedly  Luther's  own,  are 
here  glossed  over  or  quietly  bettered.  If,  for  instance,  according 
to  Luther  everything  takes  place  of  absolute  necessity  (a  fact  to 
which  the  Formula  of  Concord  draws  attention),  if  man,  even 
in  the  natural  acts  of  the  mind,  is  bound  by  what  is  fore-ordained, 4 
then  even  the  listening  to  a  sermon  and  the  dwelling  on  it  cannot 
be  matters  of  real  freedom.  Moreover  the  man  troubled  with 
fears  on  predestination,  is  comforted  by  the  well-known  Bible 
texts,  which  teach  that  it  is  the  Will  of  God  that  all  should  be 
saved ;  whilst  nothing  is  said  of  Luther's  doctrine  that  it  is 
only  the  revealed  God  who  speaks  thus,  whereas  the  hidden 
God  acts  quite  otherwise,  plans  and  carries  out  the  very  opposite, 
"  damns  even  those  who  have  not  deserved  it — and,  yet,  does 
not  thereby  become  unjust."5  Reference  is  made  to  Adam's 
Fall,  whereby  nature  has  been  depraved  ;  but  nothing  is  said 
of  Luther's  view  that  Adam  himself  simply  could  not  avoid 
falling  because  God  did  not  then  "  bestow  on  him  the  spirit  of 
obedience."0  But,  though  these  things  are  passed  over  in  silence, 
due  prominence  is  given  to  those  ideas  of  Luther's  of  which  the 
result  is  the  destruction  of  all  moral  order,  natural  as  well  as 

1  "  Symb.  Biicher,"  ib.,  p.  601.  2  Ib. 

3  Ib.,  p.  602.  4  Cp.  vol.  ii.,  pp.  232,  265  f.,  290. 

5  Quoted  from  Loofs,  "  DGL,"  4,  p.  758.     On  the  statement  "  with 
out  on  that  account  being  unjust "  see  vol.  i.,  p.  187  ff.,  vol.  ii,  p.  268  f. 

6  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  18,  p.  675  ;    "  Opp.  lat.  var.,"  7,  p.  207. 
Cp.  Loofs,  ib.,  p.  757. 


CHRISTIANITY  INWARD  55 

supernatural.  According  to  the  Formula  of  Concord  the  natural 
order  was  shattered  by  Adam's  Fall  ;  as  for  the  supernatural 
order  it  is  replaced  by  the  alien,  mechanical  order  of  imputation. 

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.1  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.2  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 

1  Cp.  vol.  ii.,  p.  294  ff,  and  below,  xxxv.,  2. 

2  The    above    largely   reproduces    Luthardt,    "  Luthers    Ethik,"  2, 
p.  81  ff. 


56  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

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  for 
give  everyone  and  endure  patiently  all  injustice  or  evil  that 
befalls  him."  The  theory,  needless  to  say,  is  based  on  his  mis 
apprehension  of  the  Evangelical  Counsels  which  he  makes  into 
commands.1  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."2 

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."3 
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  con 
siderations  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  un 
checked  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. 

1  See  our  vol.  ii.,  p.  298  f. 

2  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  32,  p.  439  ;   Erl.  ed.,  43,  p.  211.    Exposition 
of  Mt.  v.-vii.     Cp.  our  vol.  ii.,  p.  297  f.,  and  vol.  iii.,  pp.  52  f.,  60  :    A 
prince,  as  a  Christian,  must  not  even  defend  himself,  since  a  Christian 
is  dead  to  the  world. 

3  "  Werke,"  ib. 


COUNSEL  AND  PRECEPT  57 

"  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:  "Protestant 
ism  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  out 
side  the  bustle  of  the  workaday  world  in  a  world  of  her  own." l 

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  t.o  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.2 

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  satis 
factorily  solved. 

1  "  Jugenderinnemngen  aus  seinem  Nachlasse,"  Jena,  1909,  p.  155  f. 

2  Cp.  vol.  ii.,  p.  140  ff.  ;  vol.  iii.,  p.  187  ft  ;  vol.  iv.,  p.  130  f. 


58  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

"  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."1 

Let  us  listen  to  Luther's  utterances  at  various  periods  on  the 
dualism  in  the  moral  life  of  the  individual  :  "  The  twin  kingdoms 
must  be  kept  wide  asunder  :  the  spiritual  where  sin  is  punished 
and  forgiven,  and  the  secular  where  justice  is  demanded  and 
dealt  out.  In  God's  kingdom  which  He  rules  according  to  the 
Gospel  there  is  no  demanding  of  justice,  but  all  is  forgiveness, 
remission  and  bestowal,  nor  is  there  any  anger,  or  punishment, 
but  nothing  save  brotherly  charity  and  service."2  "  No  rights, 
anger,  or  punishment,"  this  certainly  would  have  befitted  the 
invisible,  spiritual  Church  which  Luther  had  originally  planned 
to  set  up  in  place  of  the  visible  one.3 

"  Christ's  everlasting  kingdom  ...  is  to  be  an  eternal 
spiritual  kingdom  in  the  hearts  of  men  by  the  preaching  of  the 
Gospel  and  by  the  Holy  Spirit."4  "For  your  own  part,  hold 
fast  to  the  Gospel  and  to  the  Word  of  Christ  so  as  to  be  ready  to 
offer  the  other  cheek  to  the  smiter,  to  give  your  mantle  as  well  as 
your  coat  whenever  it  is  a  question  of  yourself  and  your  cause."5 
It  is  a  strict  command,  though  at  utter  variance  with  the  civil 
law,  in  which  your  neighbour  also  is  greatly  concerned.  In  so 
far,  therefore,  you  must  resist.  "  Thus  you  manage  perfectly  to 
satisfy  at  the  same  time  both  the  Kingdom  of  God  and  that  of 
the  world,  both  the  outward  and  the  inward  ;  you  suffer  evil  and 
injustice  and  yet  at  the  same  time  punish  evil  and  injustice  ;  you 
do  not  resist  evil,  and  yet  at  the  same  time  you  resist  it  ;  for 
according  to  the  one  you  look  to  yourself  and  to  yours,  and, 
according  to  the  other,  to  your  neighbour  and  to  his  rights.  As 
regards  yourself  and  yours,  you  act  according  to  the  Gospel  and 
suffer  injustice  as  a  true  Christian  ;  as  regards  your  neighbour 
and  his  rights,  you  act  in  accordance  with  charity  and  permit  no 
injustice."6 

If,  as  is  but  natural,  we  ask,  how  Christ  came  so  strictly  to 
enjoin  what  was  almost  impossible,  Luther  replies  that  He  gave 
His  command  only  for  Christians,  and  that  real  Christians  were 
few  in  number  :  "In  point  of  fact  Christ  is  speaking  only  to  His 
dear  Christians  [when  He  says,  '  that  Christians  must  not  go  to 

1  Luthardt,  "  Luthers  Ethik,"  2,  p.  81. 

2  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  142,  p.  280  f. 

3  Cp.  vol.  ii.,  p.  107  for  Luther's  earlier  idea  of  the  "  holy  brother 
hood  of  spirits,"  in  which  "  omnia  sunt  indifferentia  et  liberal    See  also 
vol.  vi.,  xxxviii.,  3. 

4  "Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  I2,  p.  108. 

5  16.,  Weim.  ed.,  11,  p.  255  ;    Erl.  ed.,  22,  p.  73.     "  Von  welltlicher 
Uberkeytt,"  1523.  G  /6. 


COUNSEL  AND  PRECEPT  59 

law,'  etc.],  and  it  is  they  alone  who  take  it  and  carry  it  out  ; 
they  make  no  mere  Counsel  of  it  as  the  Sophists  do,  but  are  so 
transformed  by  the  Spirit  that  they  do  evil  to  no  one  and  are 
ready  willingly  to  suffer  evil  from  anyone."  But  the  world  is 
full  of  non-Christians  and  "  them  the  Word  does  not  concern  at 
all."1  Worldlings  must  needs  tread  a  very  different  way  :  "  All 
who  are  not  Christians  belong  to  the  kingdom  of  the  world  and 
are  under  the  law."  Since  they  know  not  the  command  "  Resist 
not  evil,"  "  God  has  given  them  another  government  different 
from  the  Christian  estate,  and  the  Kingdom  of  God."  There 
ruleth  coercion,  severity,  and,  in  a  word,  the  Law,  "  seeing,  that, 
amongst  a  thousand,  there  is  barely  one  true  Christian."  "  If 
anyone  wished  to  govern  the  world  according  to  the  Gospel  .  .  . 
dear  heart,  what  would  the  result  be  !  He  would  be  loosening 
the  leashes  and  chains  of  the  wild  and  savage  beasts,  and  turn 
ing  them  astray  to  bite  and  tear  everybody.  .  .  .  Then  the 
wicked  would  abuse  the  Christian  freedom  of  the  Gospel  and 
work  their  own  knavery."2 

Luther  clung  to  the  very  end  of  his  life  to  this  congeries  of 
contradictory  theories,  which  he  advocated  in  1523,  in  his 
passionate  aversion  to  the  ancient  doctrine  of  perfection.  In 
1539  or  1540  he  put  forth  a  declaration  against  the  "  Sophists  " 
in  defence  of  his  theory  of  the  "  Counsels,"  directed  more  par 
ticularly  against  the  Sorbonne,  which  had  insisted  that  the 
"  consilia  evangelica,"  "  were  they  regarded  as  precepts,  would  be 
too  heavy  a  burden  for  religion."3  "  They  make  out  the 
Counsels,"  he  says,  "  i.e.  the  commandments  of  God,  to  be  not 
necessary  for  eternal  life  and  invite  people  to  take  idolatrous,  nay, 
diabolical  vows.  To  lower  the  Divine  precepts  to  the  level  of 
counsels  is  a  horrible,  Satanic  blasphemy."  As  a  Christian  "  you 
must  rather  forsake  and  sacrifice  everything"  ;  to  this  the  first 
table  of  the  Law  (of  Moses,  the  Law  of  the  love  of  God)  binds 
you,  but,  on  account  of  the  second  table  (the  law  of  social  life), 
you  may  and  must  preserve  your  own  for  the  sake  of  your  family. 
As  a  Christian,  too,  you  must  be  willing  to  suffer  at  the  hands  of 
every  man,  "  but,  apart  from  your  Christian  profession,  you  must 
resist  evil  if  you  wish  to  be  a  good  citizen  of  this  world."4 

"  Hence  you  see,  O  Christian  brother,"  he  concludes,  "  how 
much  you  owe  to  the  doctrine  which  has  been  revived  in  our  day, 
as  against  a  Pharisaical  theology  which  leaves  us  nothing  even  of 
Moses  and  the  Ten  Commandments,  and  still  less  of  Christ." 

"  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  com 
forted  the  consciences  of  the  secular  Estates  so  well  and 

1  Ib.,  p.  252  =  70.  2  /6.,  p.  251  =  68. 

"  Opp.  lat.  var.,"  4,  p.  451.  4  /&.,  p.  445. 


60  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

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."1 

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.2  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.3  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 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  31,  p.  236.     Verantwortung  der  auffgelegten 
Auffrur,  1533.    Cp.  our  vol.  ii.,  p.  294,  and  vol.  iv.,  p.  331. 

2  Luthardt,  "  Luthers  Ethik,"  2,  pp.  93-96. 

3  Cp.  vol.  iv.,  p.  127  ff.,  on  the  high  esteem  of  worldly  callings  in  the 
period   previous   to   Luther's.      Cp.    N.    Paulus,    "  Die   Wertung   der 
weltlichen  Berufe  im  MA."  ("  Hist.  Jahrb.,"  1911,  p.  725  ff.). 


RELIGION  AND  MORALS  61 

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. 

"  This,"  he  says,  "  is  the  '  Summa  Summarum  of  a  truly 
Christian  life,  to  know  that  in  Christ  you  have  a  Gracious  God 
ready  to  forgive  you  your  sins  and  never  to  think  of  them  again, 
and  that  you  are  now  a  child  of  everlasting  happiness,  reigning 
with  Christ  over  heaven  and  earth." 


62  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

It  is  true  he  hastens  to  add,  that,  from  this  saving  faith,  works 
of  morality  would  "  assuredly  "  flow.1 

"  Assuredly  "  ?  Since  Albert  Ritschl  it  has  been  repeated 
countless  times  that  Luther  did  no  more  than  "  assert  that  faith 
by  its  very  nature  is  productive  of  good  works."  As  a  matter  of 
fact  "he  is  wont  to  speak  in  much  too  uncertain  a  way  of  the 
good  works  which  follow  faith  "  ;  with  him  "  faith  "  is  the 
whole  man,  whereas  the  Bible  says  :  "  Fear  God  and  keep  His 
commandments  [i.e.  religion  plus  morality]  ;  this  is  the  whole 
man."2 

Luther's  one-sided  insistence  on  a  confiding,  trusting  faith  in 
God,  at  the  cost  of  the  moral  work,  has  its  root  in  his  theory  of 
the  utter  depravity  of  man  and  his  entire  lack  of  freedom,  in 
his  low  esteem  for  the  presuppositions  of  morality,  in  his  con 
viction  that  nature  is  capable  of  nothing,  and,  owing  to  its  want 
of  self-determination,  is  unable  on  its  own  even  to  be  moral  at 
all.  If  we  desire,  so  he  says  frankly,  to  honour  God's  sublime 
majesty  and  to  humble  fallen  creatures  as  they  deserve,  then  let 
us  recognise  that  God  works  all  in  all  without  any  possibility  of 
any  resistance  whatsoever  on  man's  part,,  God's  action  being  like 
to  that  of  the  potter  on  his  clay.  Just  as  Luther  was  unable  to 
recognise  justification  in  the  sense  in  which  it  had  been  taught 
of  yore,  so  also  he  entirely  failed  to  appreciate  the  profounder 
conception  of  morality. 

His  strictures  on  morality — which  had  ever  been  esteemed  as 
the  voluntary  keeping  of  the  Law  by  man,  who  by  a  generous 
obedience  renders  to  God  the  freedom  received — point  plainly 
to  the  cause  of  his  upheaval  of  the  whole  field  of  dogma.  At  the 
outset  he  had  set  himself  to  oppose  self-righteousness,  but  in 
doing  so  he  dealt  a  blow  at  righteousness  itself  ;  he  had  attacked 
justice  by  works,  but  justice  itself  had  suffered  ;  he  declared 
war  on  the  wholly  imaginary  phantom  of  a  self-chosen  morality 
based  on  man-made  ordinances  and  thereby  degraded  morality, 
if  he  did  not  indeed  undermine  its  very  foundations. 

What  Mohler  says  of  the  reformers  and  their  tendency  to  set 
aside  the  commands  of  morality  applies  in  particular  to  Luther 
and  his  passionate  campaign.  It  is  true  he  writes,  that  "  the 
moral  freedom  they  had  destroyed  came  to  involve  the  existence 
of  a  freedom  from  that  moral  law  which  concerns  only  the  seen, 
bounded  world  of  time,  but  fails  to  apply  in  the  eternal  world, 
sot  high  above  all  time  and  space.  This  does  not  mean,  however, 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  152,  p.  42  f. 

2  Cp.  W.  Walther,  "  Die  christliche  Sittlichkeit  nach  Luther,"  1909, 
p.  50,  where  Hitachi's  opinion  is  disputed.     The  above  complaint  of 
Luther's  "  uncertain  way  "  is  from  Ritschl,  who  was  not  the  first  to  make 
it  ;   the  Bible  objection  is  also  much  older.     It  matters  nothing  that 
in  addition  to  the  faith  usually  extolled  as  the  source  of  works,  Luther 
also  mentions  the  Holy  Ghost  (see  passages  in  Walther,  p.  46  f.)  and 
once  even  speaks  of  the  new  feeling  as  though  it  were  a  gift  of  the 
Spirit  dwelling  in  His  very  substance  in  the  believer.      ("  Opp.   lat. 
exeg,."   19,  p.  109  sq*)     These  are  reminiscences  of  his  Catholic  days 
and  have  in  reality  nothing  to  do  with  his  doctrine  of  Imputation. 


RELIGION  AND  MORALS  63 

that  the  reformers  were  conscious  of  what  lay  at  the  base  of  their 
system  ;  on  the  contrary,  had  they  seen  it,  had  they  perceived 
whither  their  doctrines  were  necessarily  leading,  they  would  have 
rejected  them  as  quite  unchristian."1 

The  following  reflection  of  the  famous  author  of  "  Catholic 
Symbolism  "  may  also  be  set  on  record,  the  better  to  safeguard 
against  misapprehension  anything  that  may  have  been  said, 
particularly  as  it  touches  upon  a  matter  to  which  we  repeatedly 
have  had  occasion  to  allude. 

"  No  one  can  fail  to  see  the  religious  element  in  Protestantism," 
he  says,  "  who  calls  to  mind  the  idea  of  Divine  Providence  held 
by  Luther  and  Melanchthon  when  they  started  the  work  of  the 
Reformation.  .  .  .  All  the  phenomena  of  this  world  [according 
to  it]  are  God's  own  particular  work  and  man  is  merely  His 
instrument.  Everything  in  the  history  of  the  world  is  God's 
invisible  doing  which  man's  agency  merely  makes  visible.  Who 
can  fail  to  see  in  this  a  truly  religious  outlook  on  all  things  ?  All 
is  referred  back  to  God,  Who  is  all  in  all.  ...  In  the  same  way 
the  Redeemer  also  is  all  in  all  in  the  sense  that  He  and  His  Spirit 
are  alone  active,  and  faith  and  regeneration  are  solely  due  to 
Him."2 

Mohler  here  relates  how,  according  to  Luther,  Staupitz  had 
said  of  the  new  teaching  at  its  inception,  "  What  most  consoles 
me  is  that  it  has  again  been  brought  to  light  how  all  honour  and 
praise  belong  to  God  alone,  but,  to  man,  nothing  at  all."  This 
statement  is  quite  in  keeping  with  the  vague,  mystical  world  of 
thought  in  which  Staupitz,  who  was  no  master  of  theology  or 
philosophy,  lived.  But  it  also  reflects  the  impression  of  many 
of  Luther's  contemporaries  who,  unaware  of  his  misrepresentation 
of  the  subject,  were  attracted  by  the  advantage  to  religion  and 
morality  which  seemed  to  accrue  from  Luther's  effort  to  ascribe 
all  things  solely  to  God. 

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 

1  "  Symbolik,"  §  25.  2  Ib.,  §  26. 


64  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

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  mediaeval  theology,  indeed,  owing 
to  his  curious  way  of  looking  at  things,  he  actually  outdid  in 
medievalism  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  ultra 
modern  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  ob 
jective  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  par 
ticular  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  Command 
ments  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  pro 
claimed  in  his  "  Von  der  Freyheyt  eynes  Christen  Menschen," 
or,  again,  in  order  to  prevent  the  rise  of  dissent  and  the 


LACK  OF   SANCTION  65 

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. 

He  himself,  for  instance,  once  declared  that  he  would  "  assume 
no  authority  or  right  to  coerce,  for  I  neither  have  nor  desire 
any  such.  Let  him  rule  who  will  or  must  ;  I  shall  instruct  and 
console  consciences  as  far  as  I  am  able.  Who  can  or  wants  to 
obey,  let  him  do  so  ;  who  won't  or  can't,  let  him  leave  it  alone."1 

He  would  act  "  by  way  of  counsel,"  so  he  teaches,  "as  in 
conscience  he  would  wish  to  serve  good  friends,  and  whoever 
likes  to  follow  his  advice  must  do  so  at  his  own  risk."2  "  He 
gives  advice  agreeably  to  his  own  conscience,"  writes  Luthardt  in 
"  Luthers  Ethik,"  "  leaving  it  to  others  to  accept  his  advice  or 
not  on  their  own  responsibility."3 

Nor  can  one  well  argue  that  the  requisite  sanction  for  the  new 
moral  rules  was  the  general  sanction  found  in  the  Scriptural 
threats  of  Divine  chastisements  to  overtake  transgressors.  The 
question  is  whether  the  Law  laid  down  in  the  Bible  or  written  in 
man's  heart  is  really  identical  with  Luther's.  Those  who  were 
unable  of  themselves  to  prove  that  this  was  the  case  were  ulti 
mately  (so  Luther  implies)  to  believe  it  on  his  authority  and 
conform  themselves  to  his  "  Evangelical  consciousness  "  ;  thus, 
for  instance,  in  the  matter  of  religious  vows,  held  by  Luther  to  be 
utterly  detestable,  and  by  the  Church  to  be  both  permissible  and 
praiseworthy. 

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 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  30,  3,  p.  206  ;  Erl.  ed.,  23,  p.  95. 

2  76.  3  p.  111. 

V.— F 


66  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

text  and  Natural  Law,  is  left  with  nothing  but 
mendations  "  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  role. 

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  con 
tention  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 


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.2  What 

1  Owing  to  his  assertion  of  man's  unfreedom  and  passivity,  Luther 
found  it  very  difficult  to  retain  the  true  meaning  of  conscience.     So 
long  as  he  thought  in  any  way  as  a  Catholic  he  recognised  the  inner 
voice,  the  "  synteresis,"  that  urges  us  to  what  is  good  and  reproves 
what  is  evil,  leaving  man  freedom  of  choice  ;   this  we  see  from  his  first 
Commentary  on  the  Psalms,  above,  vol.  i.,  p.  76  f.     But  already  in  his 
Commentary  on  Romans  he   characterised  the  "  synteresis,"  and  the 
assumption  of  any  freedom  of  choice  on  man's  part,  as  the  loophole 
through  which  the  old  theology  had  dragged  in  its  errors  concerning 
grace.    (Above,  vol.  i.,  p.  233  f.) 

2  Cp.  W.  Walther,  "  Die  ehristl.  Sittlichkeit,"  p.  31. 


ON  CONSCIENCE  67 

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  Schlaginhaufen1  and,  in  later 
days,  to  his  friend  Spalatin,  who  also  had  become  a  prey  to 
melancholy."2  He  himself  claimed  to  have  been  delivered 
from  his  terrors  by  having  simply  accepted  as  a  God-sent 
message  the  encouraging  words  of  Bugenhagen.3 

"  Conscience  is  death's  own  cruel  hangman,"  so  he  told 
Spalatin  ;  from  Ambrose  and  Augustine  the  latter  should  learn 
to  place  all  his  trust  not  in  conscience  but  in  Christ. 4  It  scarcely 
needs  stating  that  here  he  is  misapplying  the  fine  sayings  of  both 
these  Fathers.  They  would  have  repudiated  with  indignation 
the  words  of  consolation  which  not  long  after  he  offered  the  man 
suffering  from  remorse  of  conscience,  assuring  him  that  he  was  as 
yet  a  novice  in  struggling  against  conscience,  and  had  hitherto 
been  "  too  tender  a  sinner  "  ;  "join  yourself  to  us  real,  big,  tough 
sinners,  that  you  may  not  belittle  and  put  down  Christ,  Who  is  the 
Saviour,  not  of  small,  imaginary  sinners,  but  of  great  and  real 
ones  "  ;  thus  it  was  that  he,  Luther,  had  once  been  consoled  in 
his  sadness  by  Staupitz. 5  Here  he  is  applying  wrongly  a  perfectly 
correct  thought  of  his  former  Superior.  Not  perhaps  quite  false, 
but  at  any  rate  thoroughly  Lutheran,  is  the  accompanying 
assurance  :  "I  stand  firm  [in  my  conscience]  and  maintain  my 
attitude,  that  you  may  lean  on  me  in  your  struggle  against  Satan 
and  be  supported  by  me." 

1  Above,  vol.  iv.,  p.  227.     "  You  are  to  believe  without  doubting 
what  God  Himself  has  spoken  to  you,  for  I  have  God's  authority  and 
commission  to  speak  to  and  to  comfort  you." 

2  Letter  of  Aug.   21,    1544,   "  Brief e,"  ed.  De  Wette,   5,  p.   680  : 
"  Believe  me,  Christ  speaks  through  me." 

3  "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  3,  p.  220  :    "  persuasi  mihi,  esse  de  coelo 
vocem  Dei." 

4  Letter  of  March  8,  1544,  "  Briefe,"  ib.,  p.  636. 

5  In  the  letter  quoted  in  n.  2,  ib.,  p.  679  f. 


68  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

Thus  does  he  direct  Spalatin,  who  was  tormented  by  remorse, 
to  comfort  himself  against  his  conscience."1 

"  To  comfort  oneself  against  one's  conscience,"  such  is  the 
task  which  Luther,  in  many  of  his  writings,  proposes  to  the 
believer.  Indeed,  in  his  eyes  the  chief  thing  of  all  is  to  "  get  the 
better  of  sin,  death,  hell  and  our  own  conscience  "  ;  in  spite  of 
the  opposition  of  reason  to  Luther's  view  of  Christ's  satisfaction, 
we  must  learn,  "  through  Him  [Christ]  to  possess  nothing  but 
grace  and  forgiveness,"  of  course,  in  the  sense  taught  at  Witten 
berg.  2 

A  former  brother  monk,  Link,  the  apostate  Augustinian  of 
Nuremberg,  Luther  also  encourages,  like  Spalatin  the  fallen  priest, 
to  kick  against  the  prick  of  conscience  :  "  These  are  devil's 
thoughts  and  not  from  us,  which  make  us  despair,"  they  must 
be  "  left  to  the  devil,"  the  latter  always  "  keeps  closest  to  those 
who  are  most  pious  "  ;  to  yield  to  such  despairing  thoughts  "  is 
as  bad  as  giving  in  and  leaving  Satan  supreme."3 

When  praising  the  "  sole  "  help  and  consolation  of  the  grace 
of  Christ  he  does  not  omit  to  point  out,  directly  or  otherwise,  how, 
"  when  in  despair  of  himself,"  and  enduring  frightful  inward 
"  sufferings  "  of  conscience,  he  had  hacked  his  way  through  them 
all  and  had  reached  a  firm  faith  in  Christ  minus  all  works,  and  had 
thus  become  a  "  theologian  of  the  Cross."4 

Even  at  the  commencement  of  the  struggle,  in  order  to  en 
courage  wavering  followers,  he  allowed  to  each  man's  conscience 
the  right  to  defy  any  confessor  who  should  forbid  Luther's 
writings  to  such  of  his  parishioners  who  came  to  him  :  "  Absolve 
me  at  my  own  risk,"  they  were  to  say  to  him,  "  I  shall  not  give 
up  the  books,  for  then  I  should  be  sinning  against  my  conscience." 
He  argues  that,  according  to  Rom.  xiv.  1,  the  confessor  might 
not  "  urge  them  against  their  conscience."  Was  it  then  enough 
for  a  man  to  have  formed  himself  a  conscience,  for  the  precept 
no  longer  to  hold  ?  His  admonition  was,  however,  intended 
merely  as  a  counsel  for  "  strong  and  courageous  consciences." 
If  the  confessor  did  not  prove  amenable,  they  were  simply  to  "go 
without  scruple  to  the  Sacrament,"  and  if  this,  too,  was  refused 
them  then  they  had  only  to  send  "  Sacrament  and  Church  " 
about  their  business. 5  Should  the  confessor  require  contrition  for 
sins  committed,  this,  according  to  another  of  his  statements,  was 
a  clear  attack  on  conscience  which  does  not  require  contrition 
for  absolution,  but  merely  faith  in  Christ ;  such  a  priest  ought  to 
have  the  keys  taken  out  of  his  hands  and  be  given  a  pitchfork 
instead."6 

i  Ib.  2  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  182,  p.  337. 

3  On  July  14,  1528,  "  Brief weohsel,"  ed.  Enders,  6,  p.  300  f. 

4  Cp.  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  1,  p.  354  ;    "  Opp.  lat.  var.,"  1,  p.  388. 
Cp.  vol.  i.,  p.  319. 

5  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  7,  p.  290  f.  ;  Erl.  ed.,  242,  p.  209,    For  fuller 
quotations  see  vol.  ii.,  p.  58  f. 

6  76.,  Weim.  ed.,  4,  p.  658. 


ON  CONSCIENCE  69 

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. 

Quite  early  in  his  career  he  also  gave  the  following  instruction 
to  those  of  the  clergy  who  were  living  in  concubinage  on  how  to 
form  their  conscience  ;  they  were  "  to  salve  their  conscience  " 
and  take  the  female  to  their  "  wedded  wife,"  even  though  this 
were  against  the  law,  fleshly  or  ghostly.  "  Your  soul's  salva 
tion  is  of  more  account  than  any  tyrannical  laws.  .  .  .  Let  him 
who  has  the  faith  to  take  the  risk  follow  me  boldly."  "  I  will 
not  deceive  him,"  he  adds  apologetically,  but  at  least  he  had  "  the 
power  to  advise  him  regarding  his  sins  and  dangers  "  ;  he  will 
show  them  how  they  may  do  what  they  are  doing,  "but  with  a 
good  conscience."1  For  as  Luther  points  out  in  another  passage, 
even  though  their  discarding  of  their  supposed  obligation  of 
celibacy  had  taken  place  with  a  bad  conscience,  still  the  Bible- 
texts  subsequently  brought  forward,  read  according  to  the  inter 
pretation  of  the  new  Evangelist,  avail  to  heal  their  conscience.2 
At  any  rate,  so  he  tells  the  Teutonic  Knights  when  inviting  them 
to  break  their  vow  of  chastity  :  "on  the  Word  of  God  we  will 
risk  it  and  do  it  in  the  teeth  of  and  contrary  to  all  Councils  and 
Churches  !  Close  eyes  and  ears  and  take  God's  Word  to  heart."3 
Better,  he  cries,  go  on  keeping  two  or  three  prostitutes  than  seek 
of  a  Council  permission  to  marry ! 4 

These  were  matters  for  "  those  to  risk  who  have  the  faith," 
so  we  have  heard  him  say.  In  reality  all  did  depend  on  people's 
faith  ...  in  Luther,  on  their  conviction  that  his  doctrine  and 
his  moral  system  were  right. 

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

On  the  profoundest  questions  of  moral  teaching,  it  is,  ac- 

1  Ib.,  Erl.  ed.,  21,  p.  324.  2  Ib.,  28,  p.  224. 

3  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  12,  p.  237  ;   Erl.  ed.,  29,  p.  25. 

4  Ib.,  Erl.  ed.,  29,  p.  23  ;   cp.  above,  vol.  iii.,  p.  262  ff. 


70  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

cording  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."1  It 
is  highly  important  "to  be  certain  "  of  the  meaning  of  the 
Bible,2  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.3 

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. 

Of  himself  Luther  repeats  again  and  again,  that  his  knowledge 
and  conscience  alone  sufficed  to  prove  the  truth  of  his  position  ; 4 
that  he  had  won  this  assurance  at  the  cost  of  his  struggles  with 
conscience  and  the  devil.  Ulenberg,  the  old  writer,  speaking  of 
these  utterances  in  his  "Life  of  Luther,"5  says  that  his  hero 
mastered  his  conscience  when  at  the  Wartburg,  and,  from  that 
time,  believed  more  firmly  than  ever  that  he  had  gained  this 
assurance  by  a  Divine  revelation  ("  ccelesti  quadam  revelatione"), 
for  which  reason  he  had  then  written  to  his  Elector  that  he  had 
received  his  lead  solely  from  heaven.6 

In  matters  of  conscience  wherever  the  troublesome   "  Law  " 

"  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  18,  p.  653  ;    "  Opp.  lat.  var.,"  7,  p.  176  sq. 

Ib.,  Erl.  ed.,  58,  pp.  394-398. 

"  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  17,  1,  p.  232  ;  Erl.  ed.,  39,  p.  111.  Should 
a  p  eacher  be  unable  thus  to  "  boast,"  he  is  to  "  hold  his  tongue,"  so  we 
read  there. 

See,  e.g.,  vol.  iii.,  pp.  110  ff.-158  f. 

"  Vita  Lutheri,"  Colonise,  1622,  p.  141. 

Above,  vol.  iii.,  p.  111. 


ON    CONSCIENCE  71 

comes  in  we  can  always  trace  the  devil's  influence  ;  we  "  must 
come  to  grips  with  him  and  fight  him,"1  only  the  man  who  has 
been  through  the  mill,  as  he  himself  had,  could  boast  of  having 
any  certainty  :  "  The  devil  is  a  juggler.  Unless  God  helps  us, 
our  work  and  counsel  is  of  no  account ;  whether  we  turn  right 
or  left  he  remains  the  Prince  of  this  world.  Let  him  who  does 
not  know  this  just  try.  I  have  had  some  experience  of  this.  But 
let  no  one  believe  me  until  he  too  has  experienced  it."2 

Not  merely  in  the  case  of  his  life-work  in  general,  but  even  in 
individual  matters  of  importance,  the  inward  struggles  and 
"  agonies  "  through  which  he  had  passed  .were  signs  by  which 
to  recognise  that  he  was  in  the  right.  Thus,  for  instance,  referring 
to  his  hostile  action  in  Agricola's  case,  Luther  says  :  "  Oh,  how 
many  pangs  and  agonies  did  I  endure  about  this  business.  I 
almost  died  of  anxiety  before  I  brought  these  propositions  out 
into  the  light  of  day."3  Hence  it  was  plain,  he  argued,  how  far 
he  was  from  the  palpable  arrogance  displayed  by  his  Antinornian 
foe,  and  how  evidently  his  present  conduct  was  willed  by  God. 


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."4  In  his  extreme  embarrassment,  consequent  on 
this  matrimonial  tangle,  Luther  deemed  it  necessary  to  make 
so  hair-splitting  a  distinction  between  lawfulness  and  per 
missibility  when  need  of  conscience  required  it.  The 
explanation — that,  in  such  cases,  something  must  be  con 
ceded  "  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. 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  23,  p.  69  f.  ;   Erl.  ed.,  30,  p.  19. 

2  Ib.,  p.  70  =  20'.  3  Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  22. 

4  On  July  24,  1540,  "  Briefe,"  ed.  De  Wette,  6,  p.  274.  Above, 
vol.  iv.,  p.  13  ff. 


72  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

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  Briick,  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  dis 
grace  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  every 
thing  to  which  their  freedom  gives  them  a  right.  .  .  .  No  Chris 
tian  surely  is  so  God-forsaken  as  not  to  be  able  to  practise  con 
tinence  when  his  partner,  owing  to  the  Divine  dispensation, 
proves  unfit  for  matrimony.  Still,  we  may  well  let  things  take 
their  course."1 

On  the  occasion  of  his  own  marriage  with  Bora  we  may  re 
member  how  he  had  declared  with  that  defiance  of  which  he  was 
a  past  master,  that  he  would  take  the  step  the  better  to  with 
stand  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."2 

1  To  Chancellor  Briick,  "  Brief wechsel,"  4,  p.  282  :   "  Oportere  ipsum 
maritum  sua  propria  conscientia  esse  firmum  ac  cerium  per  verbum  Dei, 
sibi  hcec  licere."    Cp.  above,  vol.  iii.,  p.  259  f. 

2  Letter  to  Jonas,  May  4,  1543,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  556. 


ON  CONSCIENCE  73 

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. 

Granted  the  presence  of  this  inspiration  he  regards  as  per 
missible  what  otherwise  would  not  be  so.  In  a  note  sent  to  the 
Elector  of  Saxony  at  the  time  of  the  Diet  of  Augsburg  regarding 
the  question  whether  it  was  allowed  to  offer  armed  resistance  to 
the  Emperor,  we  find  this  idea  expressed  in  remarkable  words. 
Till  then  Luther  had  looked  upon  resistance  as  forbidden.  The 
predicament  of  his  cause,  now  endangered  by  the  warlike  threats 
of  the  Emperor,  led  him  to  think  of  resistance.  He  writes  :  If 
the  Elector  wishes  to  take  up  arms  "  he  must  do  so  under  the 
influence  of  a  singular  spirit  and  faith  ( '  vocante  aliquo  singulari 
spiritu  et  fide  ').  Otherwise  he  must  yield  to  superior  force  and 
suffer  death  together  with  the  other  Christians  of  his  faith."1  It 
is  plain  that  there  would  have  been  but  little  difficulty  in  finding 
the  peculiar  mystical  inspiration  required  ;  no  less  plain  is  it, 
that,  once  this  back  door  had  been  opened  "  inspiration  "  would 
soon  usurp  the  place  of  conscience  and  justify  steps,  that,  in  them 
selves,  were  of  a  questionable  character. 

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. 

The  individualism  he  proclaimed  in  matters  of  faith  embodied 
the  principle,  that  "  each  one  must,  in  his  own  way,  lay  hold  on 
religious  experience  and  thus  attain  religious  conviction." 2  Luther 
often  says,  in  his  idealistic  way,  that  only  thus  is  it  possible  to 
arrive  at  the  supreme  goal,  viz.  to  feel  one's  faith  within  as  a  kind 
of  inspiration  ;  our  aim  must  ever  be  to  feel  it  "  surely  and  im 
mutably  "  in  our  conscience  and  in  all  the  powers  of  our  soul.3 

1  Text  in  G.  Berbig  ("  Quellen  und  Darstellungen  aus  der  Gesch. 
des    Reformationszeitalters,"    Leipzig,     1908),    p.     277    (cp.    Enders, 
"  Brief wechsel,"  4,  p.  76  f.).     This  statement  completes  what  was  said 
in  vol.  iii.,  p.  55. 

2  Karl    Stange,   "  Die  altesten   ethischen   Disputationen  Luthers," 
1904,  p.  vii. 

3  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,   10,  2,  p.  23  ;    Erl.  ed.,  28,  p.  298.—"  He 
ventured,  relying  on  Christ,"  says  Adolf  Harnack  ("  DG.,"  34,  p.  824), 
"  to  lay  hold  on  God  Himself,  and,  by  this  exercise  of  his  faith,  in 
which  he  saw  God's  work,  his  whole  being  gained  in  independence  and 
firmness,  and  he  acquired  such  confidence  and  joy  as  no  man  in  the 
Middle  Ages  had  ever  known."     Of  Luther's  struggles  of  conscience,  to 
be  examined  more  closely  in  ch.  xxxii.,  Harnack  says  nothing.     On  the 
other  hand,  however,  he  quotes,  on  p.  825,  n.   1,  the  following  words 
of  Luther's  :    "  Such  a  faith  alone  makes  a  Christian  which  risks  all  on 
God  whether  in  life  or  death." 


74  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

Everything  must  depend  on  this  experience,  the  more  so  as  to 
him  faith  means  something  very  different  from  what  it  means  to 
Catholics  ;  it  is,  he  says,  "  no  taking  it  all  for  true  "  ;  "  for  that 
would  not  be  Christian  faith  but  more  an  opinion  than  faith  "  ; 
on  the  contrary,  each  one  must  believe  that  "he  is  one  of  those 
on  whom  such  grace  and  mercy  is  bestowed."1  Now,  such  a  faith, 
no  matter  how  profound  and  immutable  the  feeling  be,  cannot 
be  reached  except  at  the  cost  of  a  certain  violence  to  conscience  ; 
such  coercion  is,  in  fact,  essential  owing  to  the  nature  of  this  faith 
in  personal  salvation. 

What,  according  to  Luther,  is  the  general  character  of  faith  ? 
Fear  and  struggles,  so  he  teaches,  are  not  merely  its  usual  ac 
companiments,  but  are  also  the  "  sure  sign  that  the  Word  has 
touched  and  moved  you,  that  it  exercises,  urges  and  compels 
you  "  ;  nay,  Confession  and  Communion  are  really  meant  only 
for  such  troubled  ones,  "  otherwise  there  would  be  no  need  of 
them  " — i.e.  they  would  not  be  necessary  unless  there  existed 
despair  of  conscience  and  anxiety  concerning  faith.  It  was  a 
mistaken  practice,  he  continues,  for  many  to  refrain  from 
receiving  the  Sacrament,  "  preferring  to  wait  until  they  feel  the 
faith  within  their  heart  "  ;  in  this  way  all  desire  to  receive  is 
extinguished  ;  people  should  rather  approach  even  when  they 
feel  not  at  all  their  faith  ;  then  "  you  will  feel  more  and  more 
attracted  towards  it  "2 — though  this  again,  according  to  Luther, 
is  by  no  means  quite  certain. 

The  "  inward  experience  of  faith  "  too  often  becomes  simply 
the  dictate  of  one's  whim.  But  a  whim  and  order  to  oneself  to 
think  this  or  that  does  not  constitute  faith  as  the  word  is  used  in 
revelation,  nor  does  a  command  imposed  on  the  inward  sense  of 
right  and  wrong  amount  to  a  pronouncement  of  conscience. 

Though  Luther  often  held  up  himself  and  his  temptations 
regarding  faith,  as  an  example  which  might  comfort  waverers, 
Protestants  have  nevertheless  praised  him  for  the  supposed 
firmness  of  his  faith  and  for  his  joy  of  conscience.  But  was  not  his 
"  defiant  faith  "  really  identical  with  that  imposition  he  was  wont 
to  practise  on  his  conscience  and  to  dignify  by  the  name  of 
inspiration  ? 

Yet,  in  spite  of  all,  he  never  found  a  secure  foundation.  "  I 
know  what  it  costs  me,  for  I  have  daily  to  struggle  with  myself," 
he  told  his  friends  in  1538.3  "  I  was  scarcely  able  to  bring  my 
self  to  believe,"  he  said  in  a  sermon  of  the  same  year,  "  that  the 
doctrine  of  the  Pope  and  the  Fathers  was  all  wrong."4  His  faith 
was  as  insecurely  fixed,  so  he  quaintly  bewailed  on  another 
occasion,  "  as  the  fur  trimming  on  his  sleeve."5  "  Who  believes 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  72,  p.  253  f. 

2  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  II2,  p.  248  f. 

3  Lauterbach,    "  Tagebuch  "  :     "in   quotidiana  versor  lucta."      On 
Feb.  26. 

4  "  Luthers   ungedruckte   Predigten,"    ed.    G.    Buchwald,    Leipzig, 
1885,  3,  p.  245.    Sermon  of  March  16,  1538. 

5  "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  1,  p.  56. 


ON  CONSCIENCE  75 

such  things  ?  "  he  asks,  wildly  implicating  all  people  in  general, 
at  the  conclusion  of  a  note  jotted  down  in  a  Bible  and  alluding 
to  the  hope  of  Kfe  everlasting.1  In  1529  he  repeatedly  describes 
to  his  friends  how  Satan  tempts  him  ("  Satanas  fatigat  ")  with 
lack  of  faith  and  despair,  how  he  was  sunk  in  unspeakable 
"  bitterness  of  soul,"  and,  how,  for  this  reason  as  he  once  says,  he 
was  scarce  able  "  with  a  trembling  hand  "  to  write  to  them.2 

Calvin,  too,  was  aware  of  the  frequent  terrors  Luther  endured. 
When  Pighius,  the  Catholic  writer,  alleged  Luther's  struggles  of 
conscience  and  temptations  concerning  the  faith  as  disproving 
his  authority,  Calvin  took  good  care  not  to  deny  them.  He 
boldly  replied  that  this  only  redounded  to  Luther's  honour  since 
it  was  the  experience  of  all  devout  people,  and  particularly  of  the 
most  famous  divines.3 

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  dis 
coveries,  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."4  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  "  ;5  all  are  to  be 
referred  "from  Luther,"  "to  Christ."6 

Such  statements,  however,  cannot  stand  against  his 
constant  insistence  on  his  Divine  mission  ;  they  are  rather 

1  "  Briefe,"  ed.  De  Wette,  6.  p.  411. 

2  To  Amsdorf,  Oct.  18  (?),  1529,  "  Briefwechsel,"  7,  p.  173. 

3  Cp.  A.  Zahn,  "  Calvins  Urteile  iiber  Luther  "  ("  Theol.  Stud,  aus 
Wiirttemberg,"  4,  1883),  p.  187.     Pighius  had  written  against  Luther 
in  1543  on  the  servitude  of  the  will.     Cp.,  ib.,  p.  193,  Calvin's  remark 
against  Gabriel  de  Saconay. 

4  The  words  can  be  better  understood  when  we  bear  in  mind  that 
they  occur  in  the  dedication  to  Duke  Johann  of  Saxony,  of  his  "  Sermon 
von  den  guten  Wercken  "  (March  29,  1520).      "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  6, 
p.  203  ;   Erl.  ed.,  162.  p.  122  f. 

6  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  53,  p.  273  ("  Briefwechsel,"  5,  p.  83).  Here 
also  we  must  remember  that  he  is  speaking  to  preachers,  some  of  whom 
differed  from  him.  6  Ib.,  53,  p.  276. 


76  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

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.1 

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  interpreta 
tion  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."2 

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 
mediaeval  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 

1  Ib.,  p.  272. 

2  "  Gesch.  des  gelehrten  Unterrichtes,"  I2,  1896,  p.  174,  n. 


ON  CONSCIENCE  77 

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."1  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.2  Berthold  of  Ratisbon,  whose  voice  re-echoed 
through  the  whole  of  Germany,  summing  up  the  teaching  of 
the  mediaeval  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  theo 
logians  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 

1  F.  Sawicki,  "  Kath.  Kirche  und  sittliche  Personlichkeit,"  Cologne, 
1907,  pp.  86,  88,  and  "  Das  Problem  der  Personlichkeit  und  des  Uber- 
menschen,"  Paderborn,   1909  ;    J.  Mausbach,   "  Die  kath.  Moral  und 
ihre  Gegner,3",  Cologne,  1911.      Part  2,  particularly  pp.  125  ff.,  223  ff. 

2  See  vol.  iv.,  p.  118  ff. 


78  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

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  text 
book  of  the  mediaeval  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  command 
ments  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  inaugurat 
ing  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  Liiben  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  innova 
tions.  Being  idealistically  inclined,  the  Wittenberg  preach 
ing  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  con 
cerning  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 


CASPAR  SCHWENCKFELD  79 

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."1  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  under 
standing  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.2 

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  (Ecolampadius.  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  Witten 
berg,  on  Dec.  1,  1525,  to  agree  to  his  doctrine  of  the  Sacra 
ment,  explaining  to  hirii  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  com 
munities  ;  he  also  invited  him  in  fiery  words  to  throw  over 
the  popular  churches  in  which  all  the  people  received  the 

1  "  A  study  of  the  earliest  Letters  of  C.  Schwenckfeld,"  Leipzig, 
1907   (vol.  i.  of  the  "Corpus  Schwenckfeldianorum "),  p.   268.     Karl 
Ecke,   "  Schwenckfeld,    Luther  und   der   Gedanke  einer   apostolischen 
Reformation,"  Berlin,  1911,  p.  58. 

2  Cp.  Ecke,  ib.,  p.  59.     Ecke  (p.  viii.)  speaks  of  this  writing  as  a 
"  first-rate  source." 


80  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

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."1 

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.2  On  Jan.  4,  of  the  same  year,  referring  to 
Zwingli,  CEcolampadius  and  Schwenckfeld  in  a  writing  to 
the  "  Christians  of  Reutlingen  "  directed  against  the  Sacra- 
mentarians  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.3 

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. 

"  Dr.  Martin,"  Schwenckfeld  wrote  in  1528,  "  I  would  most 
gladly  have  spared,  if  only  my  conscience  had  allowed  it,  for  I 
know,  praise  be  to  God,  what  I  owe  to  him."4 

1  "  Epistolar  Schwenckfelds,"  2,  2,  1570,  p.  94  ff.    For  full  title  see 
Ecke,  ib.,  p.  11.     Cp.  Th.  Kolde,  "  Zeitschr.  fur  KG.,"  13,  p.  552  ff. 
Cp.  below,  p.  138  f. 

2  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  53,  p.  383  ("  Brief wechsel,"  5,  p.  337). 

3  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  19,  p.  123  ;    Erl.  ed.,  53,  p.  362  ("  Brief- 
wechsel,"  5,  p.  302). 

«  "  Epistolar,"  ib.,  p.  645.    Ecke,  p.  87. 


CASPAR  SCHWENCKFELD  81 

It  was  his  purpose  to  pursue  the  paths  along  which  Luther 
had  at  first  striven  to  reach  a  new  world.  "  A  new  world  is  being 
born  and  the  old  is  dying,"  so  he  wrote  in  1528. x  This  new  world 
he  sought  within  man,  but  with  the  same  mistaken  enthusiasm 
with  which  he  taught  the  new  resurrection  to  life.  The  Divine 
powers  there  at  work  he  fancied  were  the  Holy  Ghost,  the  Word 
of  God  and  the  Blood  of  the  all-powerful  Jesus.  The  latter  he 
wished  to  reinstate  in  person  as  the  sole  ruler  of  the  Church  ;  in 
raising  up  to  life  and  in  supporting  it,  Jesus  was  ministering 
personally.  According  to  him  Christ's  manhood  was  not  the 
same  as  a  creature's ;  he  deified  it  to  such  an  extent Jas  tojdis- 
solve  it,  thus  laying  himself  open  to  the  charge  of  Eutychianism. 
Regeneration  in  baptism  to  him  seemed  nothing,  compared  with 
Christ's  raising  up  of  the  adult  to  life. 

He  would  have  it  that  he  himself  had  passed,  in  1527,  through 
an  overwhelming  spiritual  experience,  the  chief  crisis  of  his  life, 
when  God,  as  he  says,  made  him  "  partaker  of  the  heavenly 
calling,  received  him  into  His  favour,  and  bestowed  upon  him 
a  good  and  joyful  conscience  and  knowledge."2  On  his  "con 
science  and  knowledge  "  he  insisted  from  that  time  with  blinded 
prejudice,  and  taught  his  followers,  likewise  with  a  joyful  con 
science  to  embrace  the  illumination  from  on  high.  He  adhered 
with  greater  consistency  than  Luther  to  the  thesis  that  everyone 
who  has  been  enlightened  has  the  right  to  judge  of  doctrine  ; 
no  "  outward  office  or  preaching  "  might  stand  in  the  way  of 
such  a  one.  To  each  there  comes  some  upheaval  of  his  earthly 
destiny  ;  it  is  then  that  we  receive  the  infusion  of  the  knowledge 
of  salvation  given  by  the  Spirit,  and  of  faith  in  the  presence  of 
Christ  the  God-man  ;  it  is  a  spiritual  revelation  which  fortifies 
the  conscience  by  the  absolute  certainty  of  salvation  and  guides 
a  man  in  the  freedom  of  the  Spirit  through  all  the  scruples  of 
conscience  he  meets  in  his  moral  life.  His  system  also  comprises 
a  theory  of  practically  complete  immunity  from  sin.3 

No  other  mind  has  given  such  bold  expression  as  Schwenckfeld 
to  the  individualism  or  subjectivism  which  Luther  originally 
taught  ;  no  one  has  ever  attempted  to  calm  consciences  and 
fortify  them  against  the  arbitrariness  of  religious  feeling  in  words 
more  sympathetic  and  moving. 

Carl  Ecke,4  his  most  recent  biographer,  who  is  full  of  admira 
tion  for  him,  says  quite  truly  of  the  close  connection  between 
Schwenckfeld  and  the  earlier  Luther,  that  the  chief  leaders  of  the 
incipient  Protestant  Church,  estimable  men  though  some  of  them 
were,  nevertheless  misunderstood  and  repulsed  one  of  the  most 
promising  Christians  of  the  Reformation  age.  When  he  charged 
them  with  want  of  logic  in  their  reforming  efforts  they  regarded 
it  as  the  fanaticism  of  an  ignoramus.  ...  In  Schwenckfeld 
16th-century  Protestantism  nipped  in  the  bud  the  Christian 

1  Ecke  takes  these  words  as  his  motto  on  the  title-page. 

2  "  Epistolar,"   1,   1566,  p.  200.     Cp.  on  the  "  experience,"  Ecke, 
p.  48  ff. 

3  Ecke,  p.  118  f.  4  See  above,  p.  79,  n.  1. 

v.— G 


82  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

individualism  of  the  early  ages  rediscovered  by  Luther,  in  which 
lay  the  hope  of  a  higher  unity."1 

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  admo 
nition  against  him,  his  history  was  more  that  of  a  "  fugitive  " 
than  a  mere  "  wanderer."2 

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  Wiirtemberg  wrote  in  1564  ;  accord 
ing  to  him  there  were  many  at  Augsburg  and  Nuremberg, 
in  the  Tyrol,  in  Allgau,  Silesia  and  one  part  of  the  Mark.3 
"  The  well-known  intolerance  of  the  Reformation  and  of  its 
preachers,"  remarks  the  Protestant  historian  of  Schwenck 
feld,  "  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."4  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."5 

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. 

1  P.  222. 

2  Thus  G.  Kawerau  in  his  sketch  of  Schwenckfeld  in  Holler's  "  KG.," 
33,  p.  475. 

3  16.,  p.  478.  4  Ecke,  p.  217. 

6  "  Corp.  ref.,"  9,  p.  579  :  "  Heri  Stenckfeldianum  librum  contra  me 
scriptum  accepi.  .  .  .  Talis  sophistica  principum  severitate  compescenda 
est"  To  G.  Buchholzer,  Aug.  5,  1558. 


CASPAR  SCHWENCKFELD  83 

Luther's  indignation  against  Schwenckfeld  knew  no 
bounds.  In  conversation  he  spoke  of  him  as  Swinesfield,1 
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.2 

In  his  Table-Talk  Luther  refers  to  that  "  rascal  Schwenckfeld," 
who  was  the  instigator  of  numerous  errors  and  deceives  many 
people  with  his  "  honeyed  words." 3  He,  like  the  fanatics,  so  Luther 
complains,  despises  "  the  spoken  word,"  and  yet  God  willed  "  to 
deal  with  and  work  in  us  by  such  means."4 

In  1540  he  told  his  friends  that  Schwenckfeld  was  unworthy 
of  being  refuted  by  him,  no  less  unworthy  than  Sebastian  Frank, 
another  gifted  and  independent  critic  of  Luther  and  Lutheranism.5 

In  1543,  when  Schwenckfeld  attempted  to  make  advances  to 
Luther  and  sent  him  a  tract  together  with  a  letter,  Luther  sent 
down  to  the  messenger  a  card  on  which  he  acknowledged  the 
receipt  of  the  book,  but  declared  that  "  the  senseless  fool,  beset 
as  he  is  by  the  devil,  understands  nothing  and  does  not  even 
know  what  he  is  talking  about."  He  had  better  leave  him, 
Luther,  alone  and  not  worry  him  with  his  "  booklets,  which  the 
devil  himself  discharges  through  him."  In  the  last  lines  he 
invokes  a  sort  of  curse  on  Schwenckfeld,  and  all  "  Sacramen- 
tarians  and  Eutychians  "  of  whom  it  had  been  said  in  the  Bible 
(Jer.  xxiii.  21)  :  "I  did  not  send  prophets,  yet  they  ran  :  I  have 
not  spoken  to  them,  yet  they  prophesy."6 

When  giving  vent  to  his  grudge  against  Schwenckfeld  in  his 
Table-Talk  shortly  after  this,  he  declared  :  "  He  is  a  poor  crea 
ture,  with  neither  talent  nor  an  enlightened  spirit.  .  .  .  He 
bespirts  the  people  with  the  grand  name  of  Christ.  .  .  .  The 
dreamer  has  stolen  a  few  phrases  from  my  book,  '  De  ultimis  verbis 
Davidis  '  [of  1543],  and  with  these  the  poor  wretch  seeks  to  make 
a  great  show."  It  was  on  this  occasion  that  Catherine  Bora  took 
exception  to  a  word  used  by  her  husband,  declaring  that  it  was 
"  too  coarse."7 

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,  Zwingii, 
(Ecolampadius  and  '  Stinkfield  '  "  ;  they  were  heretics 
"  whom  he  had  warned  sufficiently  "  and  who  were  to  be 
avoided.8  He  had  refused  to  listen  to  or  to  answer  that 

1  Cordatus,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  337. 

2  Cp.  below,  and  above,  p.  b2,  n.  5  ;  also  Ecke,  p.  218. 

3  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  61,  p.  54.  4  Ib.,  57,  p.  51. 

5  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  ed.  Kroker,  p.  167. 

6  "  Briefe,"  ed.  De  Wette,  5,  p.  613.     "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  58,  p.  29. 
Cp.  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  335. 

7  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  ib. 

8  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  32,  p.  397. 


84  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

"  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  ?  '51 

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."2 

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 

1  "Werke,"  ib.,  32,  p.  411. 

2  1520  or  beginning  of  1521.     "  Brief wechsel,"  3,  p.  37.     Cp.,  how 
ever,  Ender's  remark  on  the  authorship. 


SELF-IMPROVEMENT  85 

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  chief est  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."1 

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."2  Kostlin  felt  justified  in  saying  : 
"  The  whole  sermon  may  be  termed  the  Reformer's  first 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  6,  p.  204  ;   Erl.  ed.,  16, 2  p.  123. 

2  On  March  25,  1520,  "  Brief wechsel,"  2,  p.  366. 


86  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

exposition  and  vindication  of  the  Evangelical  teaching  on 
morals."1 

Starting  from  his  doctrine  that  good  works  are  only  those 
which  God  has  commanded,  and  that  the  highest  is  "  faith,  or 
trust  in  God's  mercy,"2  he  endeavours  to  show,  agreeably  to  his 
usual  idea,  that  from  faith  the  works  proceed,  and  for  this 
reason  he  lingers  over  the  first  four  commandments  of  the 
Decalogue.  He  explains  the  principle  that  faith  knows  no  idle 
ness.  By  this  faith  the  believer  is  inwardly  set  free  from  the  laws 
and  ceremonies  by  which  men  were  driven  to  perform  good 
works.  If  faith  reigned  in  all,  then  of  such  there  would  no  longer 
be  any  need.  The  Christian  must  perform  good  works,  but  he  is 
free  to  perform  works  of  any  kind,  no  man  being  bound  to  one 
or  any  work,  though  he  finds  no  fault  with  those  who  bind  them 
selves.3  "  Here  we  see,  that,  by  faith,  every  work  and  thing  is 
lawful  to  a  Christian,  though,  because  the  others  do  not  yet 
believe,  he  bears  with  them  and  performs  even  what  he  knows  is 
not  really  binding."4  Faith  issues  in  works  and  all  works  come 
back  to  faith,  to  strengthen  the  assurance  of  salvation.5 

His  explanation  of  the  3rd  Commandment,  where  he  speaks  of 
the  ghostly  Sabbath  of  the  soul  and  of  the  putting  to  death  of  the 
old  man,  seems  like  an  attempt  to  lay  down  some  sort  of  a  system 
of  moral  injunction,  and  incidentally  recalls  the  pseudo-mystic 
phase  through  which  Luther  had  passed  not  so  long  before. 
Here  we  get  just  a  glimpse  of  his  theory  of  human  unfreedom  and 
of  God's  sole  action,  so  far  as  this  was  in  place  in  a  work  intended 
for  the  "  unschooled  laity."6 

In  man,  because  he  is  "  depraved  by  sin,  all  works,  all  words, 
all  thoughts,  in  a  word  his  whole  life,  is  wicked  and  ungodly.  If 
God  is  to  work  and  live  in  him  all  these  vices  and  this  wickedness 
must  be  stamped  out."  This  he  calls  "  the  keeping  of  the  day  of 
rest,  when  our  works  cease  and  God  alone  acts  within  us."  We 
must,  indeed,  "  resist  our  flesh  and  our  sins,"  yet  "  our  lusts  are 
so  many  and  so  diverse,  and  also  at  times  under  the  inspiration 
of  the  Wicked  One  so  clever,  so  subtle  and  so  plausible  that  no  man 
can  of  his  own  keep  himself  in  the  right  way  ;  he  must  let  his 
hands  and  feet  go,  commend  himself  to  the  Divine  guidance, 
trusting  nothing  to  his  reason.  .  .  .  For  there  is  nothing  more 
dangerous  in  us  than  our  reason  and  our  will.  And  this  is  the 
highest  and  the  first  work  of  God  in  us,  and  the  best  thing  we  can 
do,  for  us  to  refrain  from  work,  to  keep  the  reason  and  the  will 
idle,  to  rest  and  commend  ourselves  to  God  in  all  things,  par 
ticularly  when  they  are  running  smoothly  and  well."  ;'  The 

1  Kostlin-Kawerau,  1,  p.  291. 

2  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  6,  p.  209  ;   Erl.  ed.,  162,  p.  131. 

3  Cp.  Kostlin-Kawerau,  1,  p.  288. 

4  "  Werke,"  ib.,  p.  214=138. 

5  Much  the  same  in  the  Exposition  of  the  Ten  Commandments 
(1528),  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  16,  p.  485  ;   Erl.  ed.,  36,  p.  100. 

6  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  6,  p.  203  ;   Erl.  ed.,  162,  p.  122. 


SELF-IMPROVEMENT  87 

spiritual  Sabbath  is  to  leave  God  alone  to  work  in  us  and  not  to 
do  anything  ourselves  with  any  of  our  powers."1  He  harks  back 
here  to  that  idea  of  self -surrender  to  the  sole  action  of  God,  under 
the  spell  of  which  he  had  formerly  stood  :  "  The  works  of  our 
flesh  must  be  put  to  rest  and  die,  so  that  in  all  things  we  may 
keep  the  ghostly  Sabbath,  leaving  our  works  alone  and  letting 
God  work  in  us.  ...  Then  man  no  longer  guides  himself,  his  lust 
is  stilled  and  his  sadness  too  ;  God  Himself  is  now  his  leader  ; 
nothing  remains  but  godly  desires,  joy  and  peace  together  with 
all  other  works  and  virtues."2 

Though,  according  to  the  peculiar  mysticism  which  speaks  to 
the  "  unschooled  laity  "  out  of  these  pages,  all  works  and  virtues 
spring  up  of  themselves  during  the  Sabbath  rest  of  the  soul,  still 
Luther  finds  it  advisable  to  introduce  a  chapter  on  the  mortifica 
tion  of  the  flesh  by  fasting. 

Fasting  is  to  be  made  use  of  for  the  salvation  of  our  own  soul, 
so  far  but  no  further,  as  or  than  each  one  judges  it  necessary 
for  the  repression  of  the  "  wantonness  of  the  flesh  "  and  for  the 
"putting  to  death  of  our  lust."3  We  are  not  to  "regard  the 
work  in  itself."  Of  corporal  penance  and  mortification,  and 
fasting  in  particular,  he  will  have  it,  that  they  are  to  be  used 
exclusively  to  "  quench  the  evil  "  within  us,  but  not  on  account  of 
any  law  of  Pope  or  Church.  Luther  dismisses  in  silence  the  other 
motives  for  penance  recommended  by  the  Church  of  yore,  in  the 
first  place  satisfaction  for  sins  committed  and  the  desire  to  obtain 
graces  by  reinforcing  our  prayers  by  self-imposed  sacrifices.4 

He  fancies  that  a  few  words  will  suffice  to  guard  against  any 
abuse  of  the  new  ascetical  doctrine  :  "  People  must  beware  lest 
this  freedom  degenerate  into  carelessness  and  indolence  .  .  .  into 
which  some  indeed  tumble  and  then  say  that  there  is  no  need 
or  call  that  we  should  fast  or  practise  mortification."5 

When,  in  the  3rd  Commandment,  he  comes  to  speak  of  the 
practice  of  prayer  one  would  naturally  have  expected  him  to  give 
some  advice  and  directions  concerning  its  different  forms,  viz. 
the  prayer  of  praise,  thanksgiving,  petition  or  penitence.  All  he 
seems  to  know  is,  however,  the  prayer  of  petition,  in  the  case  of 
temporal  trials  and  needs,  and  amidst  spiritual  difficulties.6 

Throughout  the  writing  Luther  is  dominated  by  the  idea  that 
faith  in  Christ  the  Redeemer,  and  in  personal  salvation,  must  at 
all  costs  be  increased.  At  the  same  time  he  is  no  less  certain  that 
the  Papists  neither  prayed  aright,  nor  were  able  to  perform  any 
good  works  because  they  had  no  faith. 

His  exhortations  to  a  devout  life  (some  of  them  fine 
enough  in  themselves,  for  instance,  what  he  says  on  the 

1  Ib.,  pp.  243-245=177-179. 

2  Ib.,  p.  247  f.  =  182  f.    Cp.  the  similar  statements  in  the  Exposition 
of  the  Ten  Commandments  (1528),  pp.  480  f.,  484  f.  =  93  f.,  96  f. 

3  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  6,  p.  245  f.  ;   Erl.  ed.,  162,  p.  180. 

4  Cp.  ib.,  p.  246  =  181.  5  P.  247  =  182. 

6  Elsewhere,  however,  he  treats  of  the  other  forms  of  prayer. 


88  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

trusting  prayer  of  the  sinner,  on  the  prayers  of  the  congrega 
tion  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.1  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  en 
forcing  of  virtue  and  which  in  some  parts  Luther  did  so  use, 2 
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  dis 
figure  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  ;3  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  Command 
ment,  where  he  completely  forgets  his  subject,  and,  losing 
all  mastery  over  himself,  wildly  storms  against  the  spiritual 
authorities  and  their  disorders.4  The  only  allusion  to  any 
thing  that  by  any  stretch  of  imagination  would  be  termed 
a  work,  is  the  following  :5  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. 

1  Cp.  p.  237-168  f.,  238  f.  =  170  f.,  247  f.  =  182  f. 

2  See  vol.  iv.,  p.  501  f.         3  P.  232  =  162. 
4  P.  262  =  202.  5  P.  258  =  197. 


SELF-IMPROVEMENT  89 

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."1  "  Where 
the  spirit  of  Christ  is,  there  all  is  free,  for  faith  does  not 
allow  itself  to  be  tied  down  to  any  work."2 

"  The  Christian  who  lives  by  faith  has  no  need  of  any 
teacher's  good  works."3  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'''1 

Even  from  Protestant  theologians  we  hear  the  admission 
that  Luther's  Reformation  failed  to  make  sufficient  allow 
ance  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  fur  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 

1  P.  246  =  180.  2  P.  207  =  127.  3  Ib. 


90  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

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."1  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  Justi 
fication  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  sal 
vation  "  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  Cod  and  the  faithful.  But 
"  the  Evangelical  teaching  rejected  the  Church  (in  this  connec 
tion)  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."2  Pietism,  with  all  its  irregularities,  was  merely  an  out 
come  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.3  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,4  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  Protes 
tantism  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  redemp 
tion  from  the  world,  must  nevertheless  retain  a  lasting  signifi 
cance  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 

1  P.  236.  2  P.  271. 

3  Kaftan  speaks  of  a  theological  want  which  he  had  attempted  to 
supply  in  his  own  "  Dogmatik."  In  reality,  however,  he  has  practice 
equally  in  view,  and,  from  his  statements  we  may  infer  that  the  want 
which  had  been  apparent  from  Luther's  day  was  more  than  a  mere 
defect  in  the  theory.  *  P.  281. 


SELF-IMPROVEMENT  91 

of  Christ,'  by  Thomas  a  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."1  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."2 

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  nourished  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  ex 
pending  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  "  doc 
trine  "  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  ; 

1  P.  276.  2  P.  278. 


92  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

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  recom 
mended  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.1  The 
words  :  "  What  matters  it  if  we  commit  a  fresh  sin  ?  "2 

1  Cp.  the  letter  to  Hier.  Weller,  July  (?),  1530,  "  Brief wechsel,"  8, 
p.  159;  Schlaginhaufen,  " Aufzeichnungen,"  pp.  11,  89,  etc.;  Cordatus, 
"  Tagebuch,"  p.  450  ;    "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  2,  p.   299.     See  our 
vol.  iii.,  p.  175  ff. 

2  See  vol.  ii.,  p.  339  ;  iii.,  p.  180  ff.  ;   above,  p.  9  ff. 


SELF-IMPROVEMENT  93 

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.1 

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.2  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  ;3 
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,4  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 -improve 
ment  was  renounced  in  yet  another  essential  point. 

1  Above,  vol.  iii.,  p.  185  f. 

2  "  Briefe,"  ed.  De  Wette,  6,  p.  155  ff. 

3  Cp.  our  vol.  iii.,  p.  176  f. 
*  Vol.  iii.,  p.  213  f. 


94  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

Then  again  with  regard  to  prayer.  His  exhortations 
thereto  are  numerous  enough  and  he  himself  prayed  fre 
quently.  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  conse 
quence  of  such  "  faith."  Lastly,  and  this  sums  up  every 
thing,  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.1  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.2  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.3 

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  devo 
tions.  But  had  they  not  been  brought  closer  to  the  heart 

1  Cp.  on  Luther's  prayer,  vol.  iii.,  p.  206  f.  ;  iv.,  p.  274  ff. 

2  Vol.  iii.,  p.  213  f. 

3  Vol.  iii.,  p.  207  f.  ;  iv.,  p.  311. 


SELF-IMPROVEMENT  95 

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."1  "  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."2  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,3  "  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  detract 
ing  from  the  value  of  his  fine,  practical,  and  often  sympa 
thetic  expositions  of  the  Our  Father,  whether  in  his  special 
work  on  it  in  1518  or  in  the  Larger  Catechism.4 

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  case5  serve  to  recommend  his  system  of  ethics.  Seeing 
that,  as  has  been  already  pointed  out, 6  he  himself  is  disposed 
to  admit  his  failings,  the  apparent  confidence  with  which, 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  202,  2,  p.  553.    Cp.  pp.  554,  558. 

2  /&.,  p.  552. 

3  W.  Walther,  "  Die  Sittlichkeit  nach  Luther,"  p.  63. 

4  The  Explanation  of  the  Our  Father  in  1518,  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed., 
2,  p.  74  ff  ;    9,  p.  122  ff ;    Erl.  ed.,  21,  p.  156  ff ;    45,  p.  203  ff.     Note 
worthy  additions  to  it  were  made  by  Luther  in  1519,  ib.,  6,  pp.  8  ff., 
20  ff.-45,  p.  208  ff.     Cp.  Kostlin-Kawerau,  1,  pp.  116  f.,  291  f. 

6  Above,  vol.  iii.,  pp.  169  f.,  211  f.  6  Vol.  iii.,  p.  200  ff. 


96  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

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. 

The  discourse  in  question,  where  at  the  same  time  he  vindicates 
his  own  conduct,  belongs  to  1532.  About  that  time  he  preached 
frequently  at  Wittenberg  on  St.  John's  sublime  words  concerning 
the  love  of  God  and  our  neighbour  (1  Jo.  iv.  16-21).  His  object 
was  to  cleanse  and  better  the  morals  of  Wittenberg,  the  low 
standard  of  which  he  deplores,  that  the  results  of  justification  by 
faith  might  shine  forth  more  brightly.  At  that  very  time  he  was 
treating  with  the  Elector  and  the  Saxon  Estates  in  view  of  a  new 
visitation  of  all  the  parishes  to  be  held  the  next  year,  which  might 
promote  the  good  of  morality.  The  sermons  were  duly  reported 
by  his  pupil  Cruciger,  whose  notes  were  published  at  Wittenberg 
in  1533  under  the  general  title  of  "  A  Sermon  on  Love."1 

Dealing  therein  with  ethical  practice  he  starts  by  proclaiming 
that,  according  to  the  "  pious  Apostle  "  whose  doctrines  he  was 
expounding,  everything  depends  on  Christians  proving  by  their 
fruits  whether  they  really  "walk  in  love."  Of  many,  however, 
who  not  only  declared  themselves  well  acquainted  with  the 
principles  of  faith  and  ethics  but  even  professed  to  be  qualified 
to  teach  them,  it  was  true  that,  "if  we  applied  and  manifested  in 
our  lives  their  ethics  after  their  example,  then  we  should  be  but 
poorly  off."2  Such  men  must,  nevertheless,  be  tested  by  their 
works.  Nor  does  he  exempt  himself  from  this  duty  of  putting 
ethics  to  a  practical  test. 

Nowhere  else  does  he  insist  more  boldly  than  in  these  sermons 
on  proof  by  actual  deeds,  even  in  his  own  case.  According 
to  the  words  of  John,  so  he  says,  a  life  of  love  would  give 
them  "confidence  in  the  Day  of  Judgment"  (iv.  17).  Confi 
dence,  nay,  a  spirit  of  holy  defiance,  even  in  the  presence  of  death 
and  judgment,  must  fill  the  hearts  of  all  who  acted  aright,  owing 
to  the  very  testimony  of  their  fellow-men  to  the  blamelessness 
of  their  lives.  "  We  must  be  able  to  boast  [with  Christ,  '  the 
reconciliation  for  our  sins  ']  not  before  God  alone  but  before  God 
and  all  Christendom,  and  against  the  whole  world,  that  no  one 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  36,  pp.  416-477  ;   Erl.  ed.,  182,  pp.  304-361. 

2  76.,  pp.  420-308  f. 


SELF-IMPROVEMENT  97 

can  truthfully  condemn  or  even  accuse  us."  "  We  must  be  able 
to  assure  ourselves  that  we  have  lived  in  such  a  way  that  no  one 
can  take  scandal  at  us  "  ;  we  must  have  this  testimony,  "  that 
we  have  walked  on  earth  in  simplicity  and  godly  piety,  and  that 
no  one  can  charge  us  with  having  been  given  to  '  trickery.'  '  In 
this  wise  had  Paul  countered  false  doctrines  by  boasting,  just  as 
Moses  and  Samuel  had  already  done  under  the  Old  Covenant.1 

Coming  to  his  own  person  the  speaker  thinks  he  can  honestly 
say  the  same  of  himself,  though,  like  the  rest,  he  too  must  confess 
to  being  still  in  need  of  the  article  of  the  forgiveness  of  sins. 
There  were  false  teachers  who  could  not  appeal  so  confidently  to 
the  morality  of  their  lives,  "  proud,  puffed-up  spirits  who  lay 
claim  to  a  great  and  wonderful  holiness,  who  want  to  reform  the 
whole  world  and  to  do  something  singular  in  order  that  all  may 
say  that  they  alone  are  true  Christians.  This  sort  of  thing  lasts 
indeed  for  a  while,  during  which  they  parade  and  strut,  but, 
when  the  hour  of  death  comes,  that  is  the  end  of  all  such  idle 
nonsense."2  He  himself,  with  the  faithful  teachers  and  good 
Christians,  is  in  a  very  different  case  :  "  If  I  must  boast  of  how 
I  have  acted  in  my  position  towards  everyone  then  I  will  say  : 
I  witness  before  you  and  all  the  world,  and  know  that  God  too 
witnesses  on  my  behalf  together  with  all  His  angels,  that  I  have 
not  falsified  God's  Word,  His  Baptism  or  the  Sacrament  but  have 
preached  and  acted  faithfully  as  much  as  was  in  me,  and  suffered 
all  ill  solely  for  God's  and  His  Word's  sake.  Thus  must  all  the 
Saints  boast."3 

He  lays  the  greatest  stress  on  the  unanimous  testimony  which 
the  preacher  must  receive  from  his  fellow-men  and  from  posterity. 
He  must  be  able  to  say,  "  you  shall  be  my  witnesses,"  he  "  must 
be  able  to  call  upon  all  men  to  bear  him  witness  "  ;  they  must 
bear  us  witness  on  the  Last  Day  that  we  have  lived  aright  and 
shown  by  our  deeds  that  we  were  Christians.  If  this  is  the  case, 
if  they  can  point  to  their  practice  of  good  works,  then  the  preach 
ing  of  good  works  can  be  insisted  on  with  all  the  emphasis 
required.4  It  is  natural,  however,  that  towards  the  end  Luther 
lays  greater  stress  on  his  teaching  than  on  his  works. 

On  his  preaching  of  the  value  of  good  works  he  solemnly  assures 
us  :  "  We  can  testify  before  the  whole  world  that  we  have 
preached  much  more  grandly  and  forcefully  on  good  works  than 
even  those  who  calumniate  us."5 

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. 

1  P.  448  f.  =  335  f.  2  P.  444  =  331.  3  P.  452  =  339. 

4  P.  449  ff.  =  336  ff.          6  P.  447  =  334. 

v.— H 


98  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

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  "  accord 
ing  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.1  There,  in  spite  of  his  previous 
attempts  to  jest  and  be  cheerful,2  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.3 

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 

1  To  Melanchthon  from  the  Coburg,  July  31,  1530,  "  Brief wechsel," 
8,  p.  157  :    "  ex  arce  dcemonibus  plena." 

2  To  the  same,  April  23,  1530,  ib.,  7,  p.  308  :    "  Hcec  satis  pro  ioco, 
sed  serio  et  necessario  ioco,  qui  mihi  irruentes  cogitationes  repelleret,  si 
tamen  repellet." 

3  To  the  same,  May  12,  1530,  ib.,  7,  p.  333  :    "  Eo  die,  quo  literce  tuce 
e  Norimberga  venerunt,  Tiabuit  satan  legationem  suam  apud  me,"  etc. 
See  vol.  ii.,  p.  390.     Cp.  to  the  same,  June,  1530  ("  Brief  wechsel,"  8, 
p.  43),  where  he  calls  the  devil  his  torturer,  and  to  the  same,  June  30, 
1530,  ib.,  p.  51,  where  he  speaks  of  his  "  private  struggles  with  the 
devil." 


HATE  AND  RAGE  99 

the  midst  of  His  foes  !  "*  He  includes  in  the  same  categpry 
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."2  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  !  "3  "  The  very  frenzy  and  madness  of  our  foes  of  itself 
alone  proves  that  we  are  in  the  right."4  4  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."5  "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  ever 
lasting  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."6  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."7 

1  To  the  same,  July  31,  1530,  ib.,  8,  p.  157. 

2  Cp.  to  the  same,  April  23,  1530,  ib.,  7,  p.  303. 

3  To  the  same,  May  12,  1530,  ib.,  p.  333. 

4  To  the  same,  May  15,  1530,  ib.,  p.  335. 

5  To  the  same,  Aug.   15,   1530,  ib.,  8,  p.   190  :    "  Christus  vivit  et 
regnat.     Fiant  sane  dcemones,  si  ita  volunt,  monachi  vel  nonnce  quoque. 
Nee  forma  melior  eos  decet,  quam  qua  sese  tnundo  hactenus  vendiderunt 
adorandos"    The  "monks  or  nuns  "  is  an  allusion  to  the  appearance  of 
the  "spectre-monks"  at  Spires  just  before  the  Diet  of  Augsburg;  see 
vol.  ii.,  p.  389  f. 

•  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  36,  p.  424  ;   Erl.  ed.,  182,  p.  313  f. 

7   Ib.,   p.  423  =  312. — The   so-called    "  Sermon   on   Love  "    (above, 


100          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

i 

But  his  "  Vermanug  an  die  geistlichen  versamlet  auff  dem 
Reichstag  zu  Augsburg  "  (which  he  wrote  from  the  Coburg) 
was  the  fruit,  not  of  love,  but  of  the  most  glowing  hate.1 
In  a  private  letter  he  calls  it  quite  rightly,  not  an  "  exhorta 
tion  "  (Vermanug),  but  "an  invective"  against  the  clergy,2 
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."3  But,  that  he  drove  them  back  as  he  declares  he 
did,  is  not  discernible  from  the  work  in  question. 

In  the  booklet  under  discussion  he  several  times  uses  what 
would  seem  to  be  words  of  peace,  and,  in  one  passage,  even 
sketches  a  scheme  for  reunion  ;  but,  as  a  Protestant  critic  of  the 
latter  says,  not  altogether  incorrectly,  the  "idea  was  of  its  very 
nature  impossible  of  execution."4  Indeed,  we  may  say  that 
Luther  himself  could  see  well  enough  that  the  idea  was  a  mere 
deception  ;  the  best  motto  for  the  writing  would  be  :  Enmity 
and  hatred  until  death  ! 

The  Catholic  members  of  the  Diet  are  there  represented  as 
"obstinate  and  stiff-necked,"  and  as  "bloodhounds  raging 
wantonly  "  ;  they  had  hitherto,  but  all  to  no  purpose,  "  tried 
fraud  and  trickery,  force  and  anger,  murder  and  penalties."  To 
the  bishops  he  cries  :  "  May  the  devil  who  drives  them  dog 
their  footsteps,  and  all  our  misfortunes  fall  on  their  head  !  " 

p.  96  f.)  seeks  to  demonstrate  in  the  above  words  the  value  of  love  of 
our  neighbour,  and,  that  this  necessarily  resulted  from  true  faith.  It 
abounds  in  beautiful  sayings  concerning  the  advantage  of  this  virtue. 
Cruciger  had  his  reasons  for  publishing  it,  one  being,  as  he  says  in  the 
dedication,  to  stop  the  mouths  of  those  who  never  cease  to  cry  out 
against  our  people  as  though  we  neither  taught  nor  practised  any 
thing  concerning  love  and  good  works."  (Erl.  ed.,  182,  p.  305.)  Kostlin- 
Kawerau  remarks  (2,  p.  273) :  "  The  fundamental  evil  was  that  the  new 
Church  included  amongst  its  members  so  many  who  were  indifferent 
to  such  preaching  ;  they  had  joined  it  not  merely  without  any  real 
interior  conversion,  but  without  any  spiritual  awakening  or  sympathy, 
purely  by  reason  of  outward  circumstances."  It  must  be  added  that 
the  Sermon,  though  intended  as  a  remedy,  suffers  from  the  defect  of 
being  permeated  through  and  through  with  a  spirit  of  bitter  hate 
against  the  Church  Catholic ;  in  the  very  first  pages  we  find  the  speaker 
complaining,  that  the  devil,  "  who  cannot  bear  the  Word,"  "  attacks 
us  ...  in  order  to  murder  us  by  means  of  his  tyrants  "  ;  "  we  are, 
however,  forced  to  have  the  devil  for  our  guest,"  who  molests  us 
"  with  his  crew."  Weim.  ed.,  36,  p.  417  f. ;  Erl.  ed.,  182,  p.  306  f. 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  242,  p.  356  ff. 

2  To  Melanchthon,  May  12,  1530,  "  Briefwechsel,"  7,  p.  332. 

3  To  the  same,  April  29,  1530,  ib.,  p.  313  :    "  Oratio  mea  ad  clerum 
procedit ;  crescit  inter  manus  et  materia  et  impetus,  ut  plurimos  Lands- 
knechtos  prorsus  vi  repellere  cogar,  qui  insalutati  non  cessant  obstrepere." 
Cp.  Kolde,  "  Luther,"  2,  p.  330. 

4  Kostlin-Kawerau,  2,  p.  199. 


HATE  AND  RAGE  101 

He  puts  them  on  a  level  with  "procurers  and  whoremongers," 
and  trounces  them  as  "  the  biggest  robbers  of  benefices,  bawds 
and  procurers  to  be  found  in  all  the  world."1 — There  had  been 
many  cases  of  infringement  of  the  law  of  celibacy  among  both 
lower  and  higher  clergy  previous  to  Luther's  advent,  while  the 
Wittenberg  spirit  of  freedom  set  free  in  the  German  lands  helped 
considerably  to  increase  the  evil  amongst  the  ranks  of  the 
Catholic  clergy ;  but  to  what  unheard-of  exaggerations,  all 
steeped  in  hate,  did  not  Luther  have  recourse  the  better  to 
inflame  the  people  and  to  defend  the  illicit  marriages  of  those  of 
the  clergy  who  now  were  the  preachers  of  the  new  religion  ?  He 
was  about  "to  sweep  out  of  the  house  the  harlots  and  abducted 
spouses  "  of  the  bishops,  and  not  merely  to  show  up  the  bishops 
as  real  "  lechers  and  brothel-keepers  "  (a  favourite  expression  of 
his),  but  to  drag  them  still  deeper  in  the  mire.  It  was  his  unclean 
fancy,  which  delighted  to  collect  the  worst  to  be  found  in  corrupt 
localities  abroad,  that  led  him  to  say  :  "  And,  moreover,  we  shall 
do  clean  away  with  your  Roman  Sodom,  your  Italian  weddings, 
your  Venetian  and  Turkish  brides,  and  your  Florentine  bride 
grooms  !  "2 

The  pious  founders  of  the  bishoprics  and  monasteries,  he  cries, 
"  never  intended  to  found  bawdy-houses  or  Roman  robber- 
churches,"  nor  yet  to  endow  with  their  money  "  strumpets  and 
rascals,  or  Roman  thieves  and  robbers."  The  bishops,  however, 
are  set  on  "  hiding,  concealing  and  burying  in  silence  the  whole 
pot-broth  of  their  abominations  and  corrupt,  unepiscopal  abuses, 
shame,  vice  and  noxious  perversion  of  Christendom,  and  on  seeing 
them  lauded  and  praised,"  whereas  it  is  high  time  that  they  "  spat 
upon  their  very  selves  "  ;  their  auxiliary  bishops  "  smear  the 
unschooled  donkeys  with  chrism  "  (ordain  priests)  and  these  in 
turn  seek  "  to  rise  to  power  "  ;  yet  revolt  against  them  and 
against  all  authority  is  brewing  in  the  distance  ;  if  the  bloody 
deeds  of  Miinzer's  time  were  repeated,  then,  he,  Luther,  would  not 
be  to  blame  ;  "  men's  minds  are  prepared  and  greatly  embittered 
and,  that,  not  without  due  cause  "  ;  if  you  "go  to  bits  "  then 
"  your  blood  be  upon  your  own  head  !  "  Meanwhile  it  is  too  bad 
that  the  bishops  "should  go  about  in  mitres  and  great  pomp,"  as 
though  we  were  "  old  fools  "  ;  but  still  worse  is  it  that  they 
should  make  of  all  this  pomp  "  articles  of  faith  and  a  matter  of 
conscience,  so  that  people  must  commit  sin  if  they  refuse  to 
worship  such  child's  play  ;  surely  this  is  the  devil's  own  work." 
Of  such  hateful  misrepresentations,  put  forward  quite  seriously, 
a  dozen  other  instances  might  be  cited  from  this  writing.  "  But 
that  we  must  look  upon  such  child's  play  as  articles  of  faith, 
and  befool  ourselves  with  bishops'  mitres,  from  that  we  cannot 
get  away,  no  matter  how  much  we  may  storm  or  jeer."3 

The  writing  culminates  in  the  following  outburst  :  "In 
short  we  and  you  alike  know  that  you  are  living  with- 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  242,  p.  391  ff. 

2  Ib.,  p.  395  f.  3  Ib.,  p.  406. 


102          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

out  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."1 

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.2 

As  early  as  1522  he  had  also  made  use  of  the  Bible  passage 
concerning  the  lion  and  the  bear  in  his  "  Wyder  den  falsch 
genantten  geystlichen  Standt  "  with  the  like  assurance  of  the 
Divine  character  of  his  undertaking,  and  in  a  form  which  shows 
how  obsessed  he  was  by  the  spirit  of  hate  :  He  was  sure  of 
his  doctrine  and  by  it  would  judge  even  the  angels  ;  without  it 
no  one  could  be  saved,  for  it  was  God's  and  not  his,  for  which 
reason  his  sentence  too  was  God's  and  not  his  :  "  Let  this  be  my 
conclusion.  If  I  live  you  shall  have  no  peace  from  me,  if  you 
kill  me,  you  shall  have  ten  times  less  peace  ;  and  I  shall  be  to 
you  as  Oseas  says,  xiii.  8,  a  bear  in  the  path  and  a  lion  in  the 
road.  However  you  may  treat  me  you  shall  not  have  your  will, 
until  your  brazen  front  and  iron  neck  are  broken  either  unwillingly 
or  by  grace.  Unless  you  amend,  as  I  would  gladly  wish,  then  we 
may  persist,  you  in  your  anger  and  hostility  and  I  in  paying 
no  heed."3 

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  !  "4 

1  Ib.,  p.  396  f.  2  Cp.  our  vol.  iii.,  p.  435. 

3  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  10,  2,  p.  107  ;   Erl.  ed.,  28,  p.  144. 

4  To  Eobanus  Hessus,  April  23,   1530,   "  Brief wechsel,"  7,  p.  301. 
Cp.  n.  2  in  Enders,  who  suggests  the  above  translation  of  "  tu  habes 
malam  vocem."     We  read  in  Kostlin-Kawerau,  2,  p.  199 :    "  We  must 
admit,  that,  judging  by  the  tone  of  this  tract  [the  '  Vermanug ']  Luther's 
'  voice  '  would  have  been  out  of  place  at  Augsburg,  as  he  admits  in 
his  letter  to  Eobanus  Hessus." 


SENSE  OF  GREATNESS  103 

After  the  publication  of  the  "  Vermanug  an  die  Geist- 
lichen,"  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."1  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."2 

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.3  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 

1  On  June  5,  1530,  "  Briefwechsel,"  8,  p.  367. 

2  See  vol.  iv.,  p.  338  f.          3  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  242,  p.  364.  j 


104          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

given  me  much  trouble,  for  it  is  no  small  matter  to  attack 
the  whole  Papacy  and  to  charge  it  "  (with  error).1  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."2 

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  ?  "3  "  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.  He  rice  He  commands  every  man  to  know  what  he 
believes."4  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).5 

With  this  contempt  for  the  olden  Church  he  combines  a  most 
imperious  exclusiveness  in  his  treatment  even  of  those  who  like 
him  were  opposed  to  the  Pope,  whether  they  were  individuals 
or  formed  schools  of  thought.  They  must  follow  his  lead,  other 
wise  there  awaits  them  the  sentence  he  launched  at  the  Zwing- 
lians  from  the  Coburg  :  "  These  Sacramentarians  are  not  merely 
liars  but  the  very  embodiment  of  lying,  deceit  and  hypocrisy  ; 
this  both  Carlstadt  and  Zwingli  prove  by  word  and  deed." 
Their  books,  he  says,  contain  pestilential  stuff  ;  they  refused  to 
retract  even  when  confuted  by  him,  but  simply  because  they 
stood  in  fear  of  their  own  following  ;  he  would  continue  to  put 
them  to  shame  by  those  words,  which  so  angered  them  :  "  You 
have  a  spirit  different  from  ours."  He  could  not  look  upon  them 
as  brothers  ;  this  was  duly  expressed  in  the  article  in  which  he 
went  so  far  as  to  promise  them  that  love  which  was  due  even  to 

1  Cordatus,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  363  f. 

2  "  Werke,"  ib.,  p.  361  ;  cp.  p.  396. 

3  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  24,  p.  313  ;   Erl.  ed.,  33,>p.  331.    Sermons  on 
Genesis,  1527.  4  Ib.,  p.  312  f.  =  330  f. 

5  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  108.     From  the  year  1540. 


WANT  OF  CHARITY  105 

enemies.  On  his  own  authority  he  curtly  dubs  them  "  heretics," 
and  is  resolved  in  this  way  to  tread  unharmed  with  Christ  through 
Satan's  kingdom  and  all  his  lying  artifices.1  Luther's  aggra 
vating  exclusiveness  went  hand-in-hand  with  his  overweening 
self-confidence. 

In  consequence  of  this  treatment  the  Swiss,  through  the  agency 
of  Bullinger,  Zwingli's  successor,  complained  to  Bucer,  "  Beware 
of  not  believing  Luther  readily  or  of  not  yielding  to  him  !  He 
is  a  scorpion  ;  no  matter  how  carefully  he  is  handled  he  will 
sting,  even  though  to  begin  with  he  seems  to  caress  your  hand."2 
To  this  Bucer,  who  had  also  ventured  to  differ  from  Luther, 
wrote  in  his  reply  :  "  He  has  flung  another  scathing  book  at 
us.  ...  He  speaks,  and  means  to  speak,  much  more  harshly 
than  heretofore."  "  He  will  not  now  endure  even  the  smallest 
contradiction,  and  I  am  sure  that,  were  I  to  go  any  further,  I 
should  cause  such  a  tragedy  that  all  the  churches  would  once 
more  be  convulsed."3  Another  Protestant  voice  we  hear  ex 
claiming  with  a  fine  irony  :  "  Luther  rages,  thunders  and  lightens 
as  though  he  were  a  Jupiter  and  had  all  the  bolts  of  heaven  at 
his  command  to  launch  against  us.  .  .  .  Has  he  then  become  an 
emperor  of  the  Christian  army  on  the  model  of  the  Pope,  so  as  to 
be  able  to  issue  every  pronouncement  that  his  brain  suggests  ?  "4 
"  He  confuses  the  two  Natures  in  Christ  and  brings  forward 
foolish,  nay  godless,  statements.  If  we  may  not  condemn  this, 
then  what,  pray,  may  be  condemned  ?  "5 

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 
(Ecolampadius  should  be  condemned,  "  even  though  this  led 
to  violence  being  offered  them."6  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. 

A  recent  Protestant  biographer  of  Carlstadt's  laments  the 
"  frightful  harshness  of  his  (Luther's)  polemics."  "  How  deep 
the  traces  left  by  his  mode  of  controversy  were,  ought  not  to 
be  overlooked,"  so  he  writes.  "  From  that  time  forward  this 
sort  of  thing  took  the  place  of  any  real  discussion  of  differences 
of  opinion  between  members  of  the  Lutheran  camp,  nor  did 
people  even  seem  aware  of  how  far  they  were  thus  drifting  from 
the  kindliness  and  dignity  of  Christian  modes  of  thought."7 

1  To  Jacob  Probst,  June  1,  1530,  "  Brief wechsel,"  7,  p.  353  f. 

2  To  Bucer,  July  12,  1532,  in  "  Anal.  Lutherana,"  ed.  Kolde,  p.  203. 

3  "  Anal.,"  loc.  cit.  4  Leo  Judae,  1.  c.,  203. 
5  Ib.,  p.  204.  6  See  our  vol.  iv.,  p.  87. 
7  H.  Barge,  "  Carlstadt,"  see  our  vol.  ii.,  p.  154. 


106          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

What  is  here  said  of  the  treatment  of  opponents  within  the  camp 
applies  even  more  strongly  to  Luther's  behaviour  towards 
Catholics. 

The  following  episode  of  his  habitual  persecution  of  Albert, 
Archbishop  and  Elector  of  Mayence,  illustrates  this  very  well. 

On  June  21,  1535,  the  Archbishop  in  accordance  with  the  then 
law  and  with  the  sentence  duly  pronounced  by  the  judge,  had 
caused  Hans  von  Schonitz,  once  his  trusted  steward,  to  be  executed ; 
the  charge  of  which  he  had  been  proved  guilty  was  embezzlement 
on  a  gigantic  scale.  The  details  of  the  case,  which  was  dealt  with 
rather  hurriedly,  have  not  yet  been  adequately  cleared  up,  but 
even  Protestant  researchers  agree  that  Schonitz  deserved  to  be 
dealt  with  as  a  "public  thief,"1  seeing  that  "in  the  pecuniary 
transactions  which  he  undertook  for  Albert  he  was  not  unmindful 
of  his  own  advantage  "  ;2  "  there  is  no  doubt  that  he  was  rightly 
accused  of  all  manner  of  peculation  and  cheating."3  Luther, 
however,  furiously  entered  the  lists  on  behalf  of  the  executed 
man  and  against  the  detested  Archbishop  who,  in  spite  of  his 
private  faults,  remained  faithful  to  the  Church  and  was  a  hin 
drance  to  the  spread  of  Lutheranism  in  Germany.  Luther  im 
plicitly  believed  all  that  was  told  him,  of  Hans's  innocence  and 
of  Albert's  supposed  abominable  motives,  by  Schonitz's  brother 
and  his  friend  Ludwig  Rabe — who  himself  was  implicated  in  the 
matter — and  both  of  whom  came  to  Wittenberg.  "  Both  natur 
ally  related  the  case  from  their  own  point  of  view."4  Luther 
sent  two  letters  to  the  Cardinal,  one  more  violent  than  the  other. 5 
The  second  would  seem  to  have  been  intended  for  publication 
and  was  sent  to  the  press,  though  at  present  no  copy  of  it  can  be 
discovered.  In  it  in  words  of  frightful  violence  he  lays  at  the 
door  of  the  Prince  of  the  Church  the  blood  of  the  man  done  to 
death.  The  Archbishop  was  a  "  thorough-paced  Epicurean 
who  does  not  believe  that  Abel  lives  in  God  and  that  his  blood 
still  cries  more  loudly  than  Cain,  his  brother's  murderer,  fancies." 
He,  Luther,  like  another  Elias,  must  call  down  woes  "  upon 
Achab  and  Isabel."  He  had  indeed  heard  of  many  evil  deeds 
done  by  Cardinals,  "  but  I  had  not  taken  your  Cardinalitial 
Holiness  for  such  an  insolent,  wicked  dragon.  .  .  .  Your  Elec 
toral  Highness  may  if  he  likes  commit  a  nuisance  in  the  Em 
peror's  Court  of  Justice,  infringe  the  freedom  of  the  city  of  Halle, 
usurp  the  sword  of  Justice  belonging  to  Saxony,  and,  over  and 
above  this,  look  on  the  world  and  on  all  reason  as  rags  fit  only 
for  the  closet  " — such  is  a  fair  sample  of  the  language — and, 
moreover,  treat  everything  in  a  Popish,  Roman,  Cardinalitial 

1  F.  Hiilsse,  "  Card.  Albrecht  und  Hans  Schenitz,"  "  Magdeburger 
Geschichtsblatter,"  1889,  p.  82;  cp.  Enders,  "  Brief wechsel  Luthers," 
10,  p.  182,  who  remarks  of  F.  W.  E.  Roth's  review  in  the  "  Hist.-pol. 
BL,"  118,  1896,  p.  160  f.  :   "  The  author  does  not  seem  to  be  acquainted 
with  Hiilsse's  work  and  therefore  condemns  Albert." 

2  Enders,  ib.,  p.  181.          3  Kostlin-Kawerau,  2,  p.  419. 

4  Enders,  ib. 

5  On  July  31,   1535,  and  Jan.-Feb.,  1536,  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  55, 
pp.  98  and  125  ("  Brief  wechsel,"  10,  pp.  180  and  296). 


HIS  IRRITABILITY  107 

way,  but,  please  God,  our  Lord  God  will  by  our  prayers  one  day 
compel  your  Electoral  Highness  to  sweep  out  all  the  filth  your 
self." 

In  the  first  letter  he  had  threatened  fiercely  the  hated  Cardinal 
with  publishing  what  he  knew  (or  possibly  only  feigned  to  know) 
of  his  faults  ;  he  would  not  "  advise  him  to  stir  up  the  filth  any 
further  "  ;  here  in  the  second  letter  he  charges  him  in  a  general 
way  with  robbery,  petty  theft  and  fraud  in  the  matter  of  Church 
property,  also  with  having  cheated  a  woman  of  the  town  whom  he 
used  to  keep  ;  he  deserved  to  be  "  hanged  on  a  gallows  three 
times  as  high  as  the  Giebichstein,"  where  Schonitz  had  been 
executed.  Incidentally  he  promises  him  a  new  work  that  shall 
reveal  all  his  doings.  The  threatened  work  was,  however,  never 
published,  Albert's  family,  the  Brandenburgs,  having  raised 
objections  at  the  Electoral  Court  of  Saxony.  Albert,  however, 
offered  quite  frankly  to  submit  the  Schonitz  case  and  the 
grievances  raised  by  his  relatives  to  the  judgment  of  George  of 
Anhalt,  one  of  the  princes  who  had  gone  over  to  Lutheranism, 
who  was  perfectly  at  liberty  to  take  the  advice  of  Jonas,  nay, 
even  of  Luther  himself.  "  In  this  we  may  surely  see  a  proof  that 
he  was  not  conscious  of  being  in  the  least  blameworthy."1  At 
any  rate  he  seems  to  have  been  quite  willing  to  lay  his  case  even 
before  his  most  bitter  foe.2 


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  ?  "3 — 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  dis 
repute.  "  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 

1  Kostlin-Kawerau,  2,  p.  420. 

2  Enders,  "  Brief wechsel,"  10,  p.  297  ;    Hulsse,  p.  61. 

3  On  March  10,  1542,  "  Briefe,"  ed.  De  Wette,  5,  p.  442. 


108          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

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."1 

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.2 
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.'  "3 — 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.4 

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."5  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."6  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.7 

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 

1  To  Johann  Goritz,  judge  at  Leipzig,  Jan.  29,  1544,  ib.,  p.  625. 
Cp.  for  the  account  of  Rosina,  vol.  iii.,  pp.  217  f.,  280  f. 

2  Vol.  i.,  p.  59.     "  Stupidce   litterce  "   here  perhaps  means  "  indig 
nant  "  rather  than  "  amazed  "  letters. 

8  Kostlin-Kawerau,  2,  p.  483. 

4  Mathesius,  "  Aufzeichn."     (Loesche),  p.  200.     Cp.  above  vol.  iii., 
p.  437  f. 

5  To  Catherine,  end  of  July,    1545,   "  Brief e,"   ed.  De  Wette,   5, 
p.  753. 

6  Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  127.    Cp.  above  vol.  iv.,  p.  276. 

7  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  30,  3,  p.  470  ;  Erl.  ed.,  252,  p.  127.    "  Widder 
den  Meuchler  zu  Dresen,"  1531. 


VIOLENT  LANGUAGE  109 

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  tem 
poral  penalty  can  avail  to  make  amends  even  for  one  Bull 
or  Decree."1 

Side  by  side  with  language  so  astonishing  we  must  put  other 
sayings  which  paint  his  habitual  frame  of  mind  in  a  light  any 
thing  but  favourable  :  "  It  is  God's  Word  !  Let  what  cannot 
stand  fall  ...  no  matter  what!"2  "The  Word  is  true,  or 
everything  crumbles  into  ruin  !  "3  "  Even  if  you  will  not  follow  " 
- — such  were  his  words  to  Staupitz  as  early  as  1521,  "at  least 
suffer  me  to  go  on  and  be  carried  away  ['  ire  et  rapi  ']."  "I  have 
put  on  my  horns  against  the  Roman  Antichrists  "  ;4  in  these 
words  Luther  compares  himself  to  a  raving  bull. 

This  frame  of  mind  tended  to  promote  his  natural  tendency  to 
violence,  hitherto  repressed.  His  proposal  to  flay  all  the  members 
of  the  Roman  Curia  was  not  by  any  means  his  first  hint  at  deeds 
of  blood  ;  such  allusions  occur  in  other  shapes  in  earlier  discourses, 
particularly  in  his  predictions  of  the  judgments  to  come.  The 
Princes,  nobility  and  towns,  so  he  declared,  must  put  their  foot 
down  and  prevent  the  shameful  abuses  of  Rome  :  "  If  we  mean 
to  fight  against  the  Turks  let  us  begin  at  home  where  they  are 
worst  ;  if  we  do  right  in  hanging  thieves  and  beheading  robbers, 
why  then  do  we  let  Roman  avarice  go  scot  free,  when  all  the 
time  it  is  the  biggest  thief  and  robber  there  ever  has  been  or  will 
ever  be  upon  the  earth."  Whoever  comes  from  Rome  bringing 
in  his  pocket  a  collation  to  a  benefice  ought  to  be  warned  either 
"  to  desist,  or  else  to  jump  into  the  Rhine  or  the  nearest  pond, 
and  give  the  Roman  Brief — letter,  seals  and  all,  a  cold  bath."5 
Not  without  a  shudder  can  one  read  the  description  in  his 
"  Bapstum  vom  Teuffel  gestifft,"  written  in  his  last  days,  of  the 
kinds  of  death  best  suited  to  the  Pope  and  his  Curia,  of  which  the 
flaying  and  the  "  bath  "  at  Ostia  is  only  one  example.  (Cp.  below, 
xxx.,  2.)  True  enough  he  is  careful  to  point  out  that  such  a 
death  will  be  theirs  only  should  they  refuse  to  amend  their  ways 
and  accept  the  Lutheran  Evangel  ! 

Ten  years  previously,  in  1535,  he  had  written  to  Melanchthon, 

1  Ib.,  262,  p.  242,  "  Das  Bapstum  vom  Teuffel  gestifft,"  1545. 

2  Ib.,  Weim.  ed.,  33,  p.  605  ;   Erl.  ed.,  48,  p.  342.    Expos,  of  John 
vi.-viii.,  1530-1532.  3  Ib.,  p.  341. 

4  Feb.  7,  1521,  "  Brief wechsel,"  3,  p.  83  f. 

5  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  6,  pp.  427,  428  f.  ;  Erl.  ed.,  21,  pp.  305  and 
307.     "An  den  christl.  Adel,"  1520.     Cp.  above  p.  88  f. 


110  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

who  shrank  from  acts  of  violence  with  what  appeared  to  Luther 
too  great  timidity  :  "  Oh,  that  our  most  venerable  Cardinals, 
Popes  and  Roman  Legates  had  more  Kings  of  England  to  put 
them  to  death  !  "x  These  words  he  penned  soon  after  Henry  VIII 
of  England  had  sacrificed  the  lives  of  John  Fisher,  bishop  of 
Rochester,  and  his  Chancellor,  Sir  Thomas  More,  to  his  sensual 
passions  and  his  thirst  for  blood.  Luther  adds,  of  the  Pope  and 
the  Curia,  with  the  object  of  vindicating  the  sentence  of  death  he 
had  passed  on  them,  "  They  are  traitors,  thieves,  robbers  and 
»regular  devils.  .  .  .  They  are  out  and  out  miscreants  to  the  very 
bottom  of  their  hearts.  May  God  only  grant  you  too  to  see  this." 2 
Fury  had  stood  by  the  cradle  of  Luther's  undertaking  and 
under  its  gloomy  auspices  his  cause  continued  to  progress. 
Without  repeating  what  has  already  been  said,  it  may  suffice  to 
point  out  how  his  excitement  frequently  led  him  to  take  even 
momentous  steps  which  he  would  otherwise  have  boggled  at. 
Only  too  frankly  he  admitted  to  his  friend  Lang  in  1519  and  soon 
after  to  Spalatin,  that  Eck  had  so  exasperated  him  that  he  would 
now  shake  himself  loose  and  write  and  do  things  from  which  he 
would  otherwise  have  refrained.  His  early  "  jest  "  at  Rome's 
expense  would  now  become  a  real  warfare  against  her3 — as 
though  Rome  was  to  be  made  to  suffer  for  Eck  and  his  violence. 
In  1521,  from  apprehension  of  his  violence  and  out  of  considera 
tion  for  the  Court,  Spalatin  had  kept  back  two  of  Luther's 
writings  which  the  latter  wished  to  be  printed.  "  I  shall  get  into 
a  towering  rage,"  so  the  author  wrote  to  him,  "  and  bring  out 
much  worse  things  on  this  subject  afterwards  if  my  manuscripts 
are  lost,  or  you  refuse  to  surrender  them.  You  cannot  destroy 
the  spirit  even  though  you  destroy  the  lifeless  paper."4 — This 
incident  at  so  early  a  date  shows  how  deeply  seated  in  him  was 
his  tendency  to  violence  ;  even  at  the  outset  it  was  to  some 
extent  personal  animus  which  led  him  to  shape  his  action  as  he 
did.  Self-esteem  and  the  plaudits  of  the  mob  had  even  then 
begun  to  dim  his  mental  vision. 

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."  Count- 

1  "  Utinam  haberent  plures  reges  Anglice,  qui  illos  occiderent"     Cp. 
Paulus,  "  Protestantismus  und  Toleranz  in  16.  Jahrh.,"  1911,  p.  17  ff. 

2  Dec.,  1535,  "  Briefwechsel  "  10,  p.  275. 

3  Feb.  3,  1519,  "  Briefwechsel,"  1,  p.  410  ;   cp.  to  Spalatin,  Feb.  7, 
1519,  ib.,  p.  412. 

4  4-9  Dec.,  1521,  ib.,  3',  p.  253  :    "  Exacerbabitur  mihi  spiritud,  ut 
multo  vehementiora  deinceps  in  earn  rem  nihilominus  moliar," 


HIS  QUARRELSOMENESS  111 

less  other  such  utterances  are  to  be  found  in  what  has  gone 
before.1  "  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."2 

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."3  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."4 

A  character  wrhere  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,5  or,  as  in  the  case  of  the  bigamy  of 
Henry  VIII  of  England,  merely  threw  out  a  suggestion.6 

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 

1  Vol.  iv.,  p.  329  ff. 

2  Oswald  Myconius  to  Simon  Grynseus,  Nov.  8,   1534,  in  Kostlin- 
Kawerau,  2,  p.  665,  from  a  MS.  source  :    "  Doctiorem  se  esse,  quam  qui 
ab   eiusmodi   hominibus   doceri   velit  "  ;     this   showed   his    "  tyrannica 
superbia." 

3  To  Amsdorf,  April  14,  1545,  "  Briefe  "  ed.  De  Wette,  5,  p.  728. 

4  To  Caspar  Giittel,  March  30,  1522,  "  Brief wechsel,"  3,  p.  326. 

5  Vol.  iv.,  p.  13  ff.  6  Ib.,  p.  3  ff. 


112          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

be  amended  ;x  if,  when  treating  of  the  most  important  church 
matters,  "  reservation  and  subterfuge  ('  insidice  ')  "  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,2  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.3 

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. 

The  Pope,  he  writes,  for  instance,  in  his  "  Vermanug  "  from  the 
Coburg,  wants  to  "  forbid  marriage  "  and  teaches  that  the  "  love 
of  woman  "  is  to  be  despised  ;  this  is  one  of  the  abominations 
and  plagues  of  Antichrist,  for  God  created  woman  for  the  honour 
and  help  of  man."4  The  state  of  celibacy,  willingly  embraced  by 
many  under  the  Papacy,  Luther  decried  in  the  same  violent 
writing  as  a  "  state  befitting  whores  and  knaves,"5  and  he  even 
connects  with  it  unmentionable  abominations. 

1  Cp.  our  vol.  ii.,  p.  386  :    "  For  when  once  we  have  evaded  the 
peril  and  are  at  peace,  then  we   can  easily  atone  for  our  tricks  and 
lapses  ('  dolos  ac  lapsus  nostros  '),  because  His  [God's]  mercy  is  over  us," 
etc.,  for  the  word  mendacia  after  dolos  see  vol.  iv.,  p.  96. 

2  See  vol.  iv.,  p.  95  :   "  In  cuius  [Antichristi]  deceptionem  et  nequitiam 
ob  salutem  animarum  nobis  omnia  licere  arbitramur." 

3  Ib.,  p.  81  f. 

4  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  242,  p.  388  f.     Cp.  our  vol.  iv.,  p.  166  ff. 

5  Ib.,  p.  391.      "Even  should  the  Pope,  the  bishops,  the  canons 
and  the  people  wish  to  remain  in  the  state  of  celibacy,  or  the  state  of 
whores  and  knaves — and  even  the  heathen  poet  admits  that  fornica- 


DISHONEST  POLEMICS  113 

He  had  declared  "  contempt  of  God  "  to  be  the  mark  of  the 
Papal  Antichrist,  but,  in  the  booklet  in  question,  and  elsewhere, 
we  find  him  tirelessly  charging  with  utter  forgetfulness  of  God, 
hatred  of  religion,  nay,  complete  absence  of  Christian  faith  not 
only  the  Pope  and  his  advisers — who,  none  of  them  rose  above 
an  Epicurean  faith — but  all  his  opponents,  particularly  those 
who  by  their  pen  had  damaged  his  doctrine.  "  Willingly  enough 
would  I  obey  the  Pope  and  all  the  bishops,  but  they  require  me 
to  deny  Christ  and  His  Gospel  and  to  take  of  God  a  liar,  there 
fore  I  prefer  to  attack  them."1  When,  in  addition  to  this,  he 
tries  in  all  seriousness  to  make  the  people  believe  that  at  Rome 
the  Gospel  and  all  it  contained  was  scoffed  at  ;  that  the  Papists 
were  all  sceptics ;  that  their  Doctors  did  not  even  know  the  Ten 
Commandments  ;  that  their  priests  were  quite  unable  to  quiet 
any  man's  conscience  ;  that  the  popish  doctrine  spelt  nothing 
but  murder,  and  that  indeed  every  Papist  must  be  a  murderer, 
etc.,2  one  is  tempted  to  seek  for  a  pathological  explanation  of  so 
strange  a  phenomenon.  Such  explanations  will,  it  is  true,  be 
forthcoming  in  due  course  and  will  furnish  grounds  for  a  more 
lenient  judgment.  Here  it  may  suffice  to  instance  the  terrific 
strength  of  will  which  dominated  Luther's  fiery  warfare,  and 
which  at  times  made  him  see  things  that  others,  even  his  own 
followers,  were  absolutely  unable  to  see.  Fortunately  his  mad 
statements  concerning  the  Papists'  love  of  murder  found  little 
credence,  any  more  than  his  repeated  assurance  that  the  Papists 
were  at  heart  on  his  side,  at  any  rate  their  leaders,  writers  and 
educated  men. 

He  seems,  however,  also  to  believe  many  other  monstrous 
things  :  it  was  his  discovery,  that,  "  in  the  Papacy,  men  sought 
to  find  salvation  in  Aristotle  "  ;  this  belief  he  attempted  to 
instil  into  the  people  in  a  sermon  of  1528.3  In  1542  he  assured 
his  friends  in  tones  no  less  confident  that  the  Papists  had  suc 
ceeded  in  teaching  nothing  but  idolatry,  "  for  every  work  [as 
taught  by  them]  is  idolatry.  What  they  learnt  was  nothing  but 
holiness-by-works.  .  .  .  Man  was  to  perform  this  or  that ;  to  put 
on  a  cowl  or  get  his  head  shaved  ;  whoever  did  not  do  or  believe 
this  was  damned.  Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  even  if  a  man  did  all 
this  they  were  unable  to  say  with  certainty  whether  thereby  he 
would  be  saved.  Fie,  devil,  what  sort  of  doctrine  was  this  !  "4 

The  cowl  and  tonsure  of  the  monks  were  particularly  obnoxious 
to  him.  He  cherished  the  view  that  he  had  for  ever  extirpated 
monkery  ;  he  declared  that  even  the  heads  of  Catholicism  would 
not  in  future  endure  these  hateful  guests.  To  have  been  instru 
mental  in  preparing  such  a  fate  for  the  sons  of  the  most  noble- 
minded  men,  of  St.  Francis  of  Assisi  and  St.  Dominic,  and  for  all 

tors  and  whoremongers  are  loath  to  take  wives — still  I  hope  you  will 
take  pity  on  the  poor  pastors  and  those  who  have  the  cure  of  souls 
and  allow  them  to  marry." 

1  Cordatus,  "  Tageb./'  p.  364.  2  Cp.  vol,  iv.,  p.  102  f. 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  27,  p.  286. 

4  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  287, 


114          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

the  monks  generally,  who  had  been  the  trustiest  supports  of  the 
faith,  of  the  missions  and  of  civilisation,  this  appears  to  him  a 
triumph,  which  he  proceeds  to  magnify  out  of  all  proportion  the 
better  to  gloat  over  it. 

"  No  greater  service  has  ever  been  rendered  to  the  bishops  and 
pastors,"  so  he  writes  in  his  "  Vermanug,"  "  than  that  they 
should  thus  be  rid  of  the  monks  ;  and  I  venture  to  surmise  that 
there  is  hardly  anyone  now  at  Augsburg  who  would  take  the  part 
of  the  monks  and  beg  for  their  reinstatement.  Indeed  the  bishops 
will  not  permit  such  bugs  and  lice  again  to  fasten  on  their  fur 
[their  cappas],  but  are  right  glad  that  I  have  washed  the  fur  so 
clean  for  them."1 — The  untruth  of  this  is  self-evident.  If  some 
few  short-sighted  or  tepid  bishops  among  them  were  willing  to 
dispense  with  the  monks,  still  this  was  not  the  general  feeling 
towards  those  auxiliaries  of  the  Church,  whom  Luther  himself 
on  the  same  page  dubs  the  "  Pope's  right-hand  men."  But  the 
lie  was  calculated  to  impress  those  who  possessed  influence. 

Further  untruths  are  found  in  this  booklet  :  Hitherto,  the 
monks,  not  the  bishops,  had  "  governed  the  churches  "  ;  it  was 
merely  his  peaceable  teaching  and  the  power  of  the  Word  that 
had  "  destroyed  "  the  monks  ;  this  the  bishops,  "  backed  by  the 
might  of  all  the  kings  and  with  all  the  learning  of  the  universities 
at  their  command  had  not  been  able  to  do."2  Let  no  one 
accuse  him  of  "  preaching  sedition,"  so  he  goes  on  ;  he  had 
merely  "  taught  the  people  to  keep  the  peace  "  ;3  he  would  much 
rather  have  preferred  to  end  his  days  in  retirement  ;  "  for  me 
there  will  be  no  better  tidings  than  to  hear  that  I  had  been 
removed  from  the  office  of  preacher  "  ;  better  and  more  pious 
heretics  than  the  Lutherans  had  never  before  been  met  with  ;  he 
cannot  deny  that  there  is  nothing  lacking  in  his  doctrine  and  in 
that  of  his  "followers  .  .  .  whatever  their  life  may  be."4 

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  unwarrant 
able  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.) 

"  When  they  are  most  angry  I  say  to  the  Papists,"  he  cries  in 
his  "  Warnunge  an  seine  lieben  Deudschen,"  "  My  dear  sirs, 


"  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  242,  p.  364. 
/&.,  p.  365.  3  Ib.,  p,   364. 


4  Ib.,  p.  361, 


BULLINGER  ON  LUTHER          115 

leave  the  wall,  relieve  yourselves  into  your  drawers  and  sling  it 
round  your  neck.  ...  If  they  do  not  care  to  accept  my  services, 
then  the  devil  may  well  be  thankful  to  them  !  "  etc.1  "  Oh,  the 
shameful  Diet,  such  as  has  never  before  been  held  or  heard  of  ... 
an  everlasting  blot  on  the  whole  Empire  !  What  will  the  Turk 
say  ...  to  our  allowing  the  accursed  Pope  with  his  minions  to 
fool  and  mock  at  us,  to  treat  us  as  children,  nay,  as  clouts  and 
blocks,  to  our  behaving  contrary  to  justice  and  truth,  nay,  with 
such  utter  shamelessness  in  open  Diet  as  regards  their  blasphemies, 
their  shameful  and  Sodomitic  life  and  doctrines  ?  "2  These  were 
the  words  in  which  he  described  the  Diet  of  Augsburg  in  1530. 

We  may  here  recall  the  saying  of  Valentine  Ickelsamer  the 
Anabaptist.  At  one  time  he  had  thought  of  espousing  Luther's 
cause,  but  "  owing  to  the  diabolical  abuse  "  which  he  piled  on 
"  erring  men  "  it  was  possible  to  regard  him  only  "  as  a  non- 
Christian."  Luther  wanted  to  overthrow  his  opponents  simply 
by  words  "  of  abuse  "  ;  these  "  Saxon  rogues  of  Wittenberg," 
"  when  unable  to  get  what  they  want  by  means  of  a  few  kind 
words,  invoke  on  you  all  the  curses  of  the  devil." 

Heinrich  Bullinger  complains  repeatedly,  and  quite  as  bitterly, 
of  the  frightful  storm  into  which  Luther's  eloquence  was  apt 
to  break  out.  It  is  noteworthy  that  he  applies  what  he  says  to 
Luther's  polemics,  not  merely  against  the  Swiss,  but  against 
other  opponents.  "  Here  all  men  have  in  their  hands  Luther's 
King  Harry  of  England,  and  another  Harry  as  well,  in  his  un 
savoury  Hans  Worst  ;  item,  they  have  Luther's  book  on  the 
Jews  with  its  hideous  letters  of  the  Bible  dropped  from  the 
posterior  of  the  pig,  which  the  Jews  may  swallow,  indeed,  but 
never  read  ;  then,  again,  there  is  Luther's  filthy,  swinish  Schem- 
hamphorasch,  for  which  some  small  excuse  might  have  been  found 
had  it  been  written  by  a  swine-herd  and  not  by  a  famous  pastor 
of  souls."3 

"  And  yet  most  people,"  so  Bullinger  says,  "  even  go  so  far  as 
to  worship  the  houndish,  filthy  eloquence  of  the  man.  Thus  it 
comes  that  he  goes  his  way  and  seeks  to  outdo  himself  in  vitupera 
tion.  .  .  .  Many  pious  and  learned  people  take  scandal  at  his 
insolence,  which  really  is  beyond  measure."  He  should  have 
someone  at  his  side  to  keep  a  check  on  him,  so  Bullinger  tells 
Bucer,  for  instance,  his  friend  Melanchthon,  "  so  that  Luther  may 
not  ruin  a  good  cause  with  his  wonted  invective,  his  bitterness,  his 
torrent  of  bad  words  and  his  ridicule."4 

And  yet  Luther  at  this  very  time,  in  his  "  Warnunge,"  calls 
himself  "  the  German  Prophet  "  and  "  a  faithful  teacher."5 

The  following  words  of  Erasmus  contain  a  general  censure  : 
"  You  wish  to  be  taken  for  a  teacher  of  the  Gospel.  In  that  case, 
however,  would  it  not  better  beseem  you  not  to  repel  all  the 
prudent  and  well-meaning  by  your  vituperation  nor  to  incite  men 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  30,  3,  p.  291  ;   Erl.  ed.,  252,  p.  23. 

2  Ib.,  p.  285- 14  f. 

3  "  Wahrhaffte  Bekanntnuss,"  Bl.  9'.  4  Ib. 

5  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  30,  3,  p.  290  ;   Erl.  ed.,  252,  p.  22. 


116  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

to  strife  and  revolt  in  these  already  troubled  times?"1 — "  You 
snarl  at  me  as  an  Epicurean.  Had  I  been  an  Epicurean  and  Jived 
in  the  time  of  the  Apostles  and  heard  them  proclaim  the  Gospel 
with  such  invective,  then  I  fear  I  should  have  remained  an 
Epicurean.  .  .  .  Whoever  is  conscious  of  teaching  a  holy 
doctrine  should  not  behave  with  insolence  and  delight  in  malicious 
misrepresentation."2  "  To  what  class  of  spirits,"  he  had  already 
asked  him,  "  does  yours  belong,  if  indeed  it  be  a  spirit  at  all  ? 
And  what  unevangelical  way  is  this  of  inculcating  the  holy 
Gospel  ?  Has  perchance  the  risen  Gospel  done  away  with  all  the 
laws  of  public  order  so  that  now  one  may  say  and  write  any 
thing  against  anyone  ?  Does  the  freedom  you  are  bringing  back 
to  us  spell  no  more  than  this  ?  "3 

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,4 
are  by  no  means  lacking. 

Whoever  has  the  least  acquaintance  with  his  Kirchen- 
postille  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, 

1  "  Opp."  10,  col.  1558.     "  Adv.  ep.  Lutheri." 

2  76.,  1555.  3  Ib.,  1334.     "  Hyperaspistes." 
4  Vol.  iv.,  p.  228  ff. 


THE  KOHLHASE  CASE  117 

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  authori 
ties  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.1 

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.2 

1  Kostlin-Kawerau,  2,  p.  442. 

2  Dec.  8,  1534,  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  55,  p.  71  ("  Brief wechsel,"  10, 


118          LUTHER   THE   REFORMER 

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.1 

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 

p.  88  f.) ;  "  Briefe,"  4,  p.  567  ff.  :  "To  set  ourselves  up  as  judges  and 
ourselves  to  judge  is  assuredly  wrong,  and  the  wrath  of  God  will  not 
leave  it  unpunished."  "  If  you  desire  my  advice,  as  you  write,  I 
counsel  you  to  accept  peace,  however  you  reach  it,  and  rather  to  suffer 
in  your  goods  and  your  honour  than  to  involve  yourself  further  in  such 
an  undertaking  where  you  will  have  to  take  upon  yourself  all  the  crimes 
and  wickedness  that  are  committed.  .  .  .  You  must  consider  for  how 
much  your  conscience  will  have  to  answer  if  you  knowingly  bring 
about  the  destruction  of  so  many  people." 

1  Cp.  Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  159.  "  Brief wechsel,"  12, 
pp.  84-102  ;  13,  p.  13. 


REALITY  OF  THE   "  REFORMATION '    119 

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  Kostlin-Kawerau  points  out,  be 
assigned  its  place  "  anywhere  in  Kohlhase's  life-story  as 
otherwise  known  to  us."1  Luther's  own  statements  con 
cerning  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.2 

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  accord 
ance  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 
re-form  any  institution,  so  they  argued,  we  must  be  ac 
quainted  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  improve 
ment  ;  the  discontent  with  prevailing  conditions  which  he 

1  Kostlin-Kawerau,  2,  p.  444. 

2  Cp.  C.  A.  Burkhardt,  "  Der  historische  Hans  Kohlhase,"  1864. 


120         LUTHER  THE   REFORMER 

preached  to  the  people  could  not  but  create  a  wrong  atmo 
sphere  ;  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.1  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 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  10,  2,  p.  140  ff. ;  Erl.  ed.,  28,  p.  178  ff.  In 
"  Wyder  den  falsch  genantten  geystlichen  Standt,"  1522. 


REALITY  OF  THE   "REFORMATION'1   121 

them  formerly  officials  of  the  Curia,  he  laid  bare  every 
regrettable  disorder,  needless  to  say  not  without  exaggerat 
ing  everything  to  his  heart's  content.  Practically,  however, 
Luther's  revelations  represent  what  was  best  in  the  move 
ment  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  dis 
orders  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  him 
self  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 


122         LUTHER   THE   REFORMER 

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  employ 
ment  for  the  defence  of  the  material  position  of  the  clergy. 

The  Pope,  according  to  Luther,  had  made  such  a  huge  "  mess 
in  the  Church  by  means  of  the  Greater  Excommunication  that 
the  swine  could  not  get  to  the  end  with  devouring  it."1  Chris 
tians,  according  to  him,  ought  to  be  taught  rather  to  love  the 
ban  of  the  Church  than  to  fear  it.  We  ourselves,  he  cries,  put 
the  Pope  under  the  ban  and  declare  that  "  the  Pope  and  his 
followers  are  no  believers." 

Later  on,  however,  he  came  to  see  better  the  use  of  ghostly 
penalties  for  unseemly  conduct  and  made  no  odds  in  em 
phasising  the  right  of  the  community  as  such  to  make  use  of 
exclusion  as  a  punishment  ;  in  view  of  the  increase  of  disorders 
he  essayed  repeatedly  to  reintroduce  on  his  own  authority  a  sort 
of  ban  in  his  Churches.2 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  44,  p.  84.     In  the  sermons  on  Mt.  xviii.-xxiii. 

2  See  xxix.,  8. 


SAINT-WORSHIP  123 

As  early  as  1519  Luther  had  expressed  his  disapproval  of  the 
canonising  of  Saints  by  the  Church,  a  practice  which  stimulated 
the  moral  efforts  of  the  faithful  by  setting  up  an  ideal  and  by 
encouraging  daily  worship  ;  he  added,  however,  that  "  each  one 
was  free  to  canonise  as  much  as  he  pleased."1  In  1524,  however, 
he  poured  forth  his  wrath  on  the  never-ending  canonisations  ; 
as  a  rule  they  were  "  nothing  but  Popish  Saints  and  no  Christian 
Saints  "  ;2  the  foundations  made  in  their  honour  served  "  merely 
to  fatten  lazy  gluttons  and  indolent  swine  in  the  Churches  "  ; 
before  the  Judgment  Day  no  one  could  "  pronounce  any  man 
holy  "  ;  Elisabeth,  Augustine,  Jerome,  Ambrose,  Bernard  and 
Francis,  even  he  regarded  as  holy,  though  he  would  not  stake 
his  life  on  it,  seeing  there  was  nothing  about  them  in  Holy 
Scripture  ;  "  but  the  Pope,  nay,  all  the  angels,  had  not  the 
power  of  setting  up  a  new  article  of  faith  not  contained  in  Scrip 
ture."3 

On  May  31,  1523,  was  canonised  the  venerable  bishop  Benno 
of  Meissen,  a  contemporary  of  Gregory  VII.  Luther  was  in 
censed  to  the  last  degree  at  the  thought  of  the  special  celebration 
to  be  held  in  1524  in  the  town — the  Duchy  being  still  Catholic — 
in  honour  of  the  new  Saint.  He  accordingly  published  his 
"  Against  the  new  idol  and  olden  devil  about  to  be  set  up  at 
Meyssen."4  His  use  of  the  term  "  devil  "  in  the  title  he  vindi 
cates  as  follows  on  the  very  first  page  :  Now,  that,  "  by  the 
grace  of  God,  the  Gospel  has  again  arisen  and  shines  brightly," 
"  Satan  incarnate  "  is  avenging  himself  "  by  means  of  such 
foolery  "  and  is  causing  himself  to  be  worshipped  with  great 
pomp  under  the  name  of  Benno.  It  was  not  in  his  power  to 
prevent  Duke  George  setting  up  the  relics  at  Meissen  and  erecting 
an  artistic  and  costly  altar  in  their  honour.  The  only  result  of 
Luther's  attack  was  to  increase  the  devotion  of  clergy  and  people, 
who  confidently  invoked  the  saintly  bishop's  protection  against 
the  inroads  of  apostasy.  The  attack  also  led  Catholic  writers  in 
the  Duchy  to  publish  some  bitter  rejoinders.  The  rudeness  of 
their  titles  bears  witness  to  their  indignation.  "  Against  the 
Wittenberg  idol  Martin  Luther  "  was  the  title  of  the  pamphlet 
of  Augustine  Alveld,  a  Franciscan  Guardian  ;  the  work  of  Paul 
Bachmann,  Abbot  of  Alte  Zelle,  was  entitled  "Against  the 
fiercely  snorting  wild-boar  Luther,"  and  that  of  Hieronymus 
Emser,  "  Reply  to  Luther's  slanderous  book."  The  last  writer 
was  to  some  extent  involved  in  the  matter  of  the  canonisation 
through  having  published  the  Legend  of  the  famous  Bishop. 
This  he  had  done  rather  uncritically  and  without  testing  his 
authorities,  and  for  this  reason  had  been  read  a  severe  lesson  by 
Luther. 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  2,  p.  651  f.  ;  "  Opp.  lat.  var.,"  2,  p.  511. 
In  the  "  Defensio  contra  Eccii  iudicium." 

2  Ib.,  Weim.  ed.,  15,  p.  183  ;    Erl.  ed.,  242,  p.  251.     "  Widder  den 
newen  Abgott  und  allten  Teuffel  der  zu  Meyssen  sol  erhaben  werden." 

3  Ib.,  p.  194  f.  =  264. 
*  Ib.,  p.  175  =  249. 


124         LUTHER   THE   REFORMER 

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  con 
version  and  say  :  Believe  like  him  and  you  will  be  as  holy 
as  he.1 

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 

1  Cp.  vol.  iii.,  p.  191  f. ;  211  f.  and  Joh.  Wieser  in  "Luther  und 
Ignatius  von  Loyola"  ("  Zeitschr.  f.  kath.  Theol.,"  7  (1883)  and  8 
(1884),  particularly  8,  p.  365  ff.). 


THE  SAXON  REFORMATION        125 

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.'  "x 

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  Cochlseus,  Schmid,  nor  of  the 
Nausei  and  Sadoleti,  who  teach  the  contrary.  They  are 
indignant  with  you,  ultra-sensitive  men  that  they  are,  know 
ing  so  little  of  grammar  and  so  much  less  of  theology."2 

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  Witten- 
bergers  the  professors  at  Leipzig  University  who  refused  to 
conform  to  the  Lutheran  doctrine  were  dismissed.  Melanch- 
thon  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.3 

Maurice,  the  son  of  Duke  Henry,  who  succeeded  in  1541, 

1  Janssen,  "Hist,  of  the  German  People"  (Engl.  Trans.),  vi.,  p.  54. 

"  Brief wechsel,"  12,  p.  231. 
3    Cp.  Janssen,  ib. 


126          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

showed   himself  even   more   violent   and   relentless   in   ex 
tirpating  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  Const  an  tine,  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."1 

Yet  the  Christian  emperors  here  appealed  to  could  have  fur 
nished  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  (f384)  had  been  formally  assured  by 
the  city-prefect  that  never  had  a  Christian  Roman  appeared 
before  his  tribunal  on  such  a  charge.2  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  out 
worn  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. 

1  July,  1539,  "  Brief wechsel,"  12,  p.  188. 

2  Cp.  my  "  Hist,   of  Rome  and  the  Popes  in  the  Middle  Ages  " 
(Engl.  Trans.,  i.,  pp.  9-26). 


THE   CURRENTS  OF  THE  AGE      127 

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.1 

In  vieAV  of  the  tendency  to  split  up  into  separate  States, 
in  view  of  the  decay  of  that  out\vard  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. 

1  In  what  follows  we  have  drawn  largely  on  J.  Wieser  (see  above, 
p.  124,  n.  1). 


128          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

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  in 
dividualism,  required  to  be  corrected  by  laying  stress  on 
the  underlying  common  ground.  The  undreamt-of  enlarge 
ment  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 


HIS   SUBJECTIVISM  129 

sublime  moral  principle  of  the  union  and  comradeship  of 
the  nations,  that,  on  the  contrary,  he  encouraged  national 
ism  and  separatist  tendencies  even  in  Church  matters.  Where 
his  idea  of  a  National  Church  prevailed,  there  the  strongest 
bond  of  union  disappeared  completely.1  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  resist 
ance  to  the  danger  looming  in  the  East.  The  Bible,  accord 
ing  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."2 

As  to  subjectivism,  the  dominant  evil  of  the  age,  he  him 
self  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  ;  sub 
jectivism  pervades  and  spoils  his  whole  theology,  and,  in 
the  domain  of  ethics,  puts  both  personality  and  conscience 
on  a  new  and  very  questionable  basis.3  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. 

1  Wieser  rightly  points  out  that  Luther  claimed  above  all  to  be  a 
"  National  Prophet  "  ;   he  was  fond  of  saying  that  he  had  brought  the 
Gospel  "to  the  Saxons,"  or  "  to  the  Germans."    Ib.,  8,  pp.  143  f.,  356. 

2  Ib.,  8,  p.  352.  3  Above,  pp.  3  ff.  and  66  ff. 

V. — K 


130          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

Again,  if  that  transition  period  between  mediaeval  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  requi 
site  strong  and  overbearing  devotion  to  supernatural 
truths  ?  Is  it  not  Luther  who  speaks  so  often  of  the  weak 
ness  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  embodi 
ment  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. 

Not  only  is  everything  in  the  world  outside  of  Christ  Satanic, 
but  even  the  ancient  people  of  God,  chosen  with  a  view  to  the 
coming  Redeemer,  according  to  Luther,  "  raged  and  stormed  " 
against  the  faith.  But  "  the  fury  of  the  Jews  "  was  exceeded  by 
the  "  malice "  which  began  to  insinuate  itself  into  the  first 
Church  not  very  long  after  its  foundation.  What  the  Jews  did 
was  "  but  a  joke  and  mere  child's  play  "  compared  with  the  cor 
ruption  of  the  Christian  religion  by  means  of  "  human  ordinances, 
councils  and  Papistry."  Hardly  had  the  light  enkindled  by  Christ 
begun  to  shine  before  it  gradually  nickered  out,  until  lighted  again 
by  Luther.  In  the  East  prevailed  the  rule  of  the  Turks,  those 
devils  incarnate,  whilst  the  West  groaned  under  the  Papacy, 
which  far  exceeds  even  the  Islam  in  devilry.1 

His  pessimism  sees  the  origin  of  the  corruption  in  the  Church 
in  the  fact,  that,  already  in  the  first  centuries,  "  the  devil  had 
broken  into  Holy  Scripture  and  made  such  a  disturbance  as  to 
give  rise  to  many  heresies."  To  counteract  these  the  Christians 
surrendered  themselves  to  human  ordinances  ;  "  they  knew  of 

1  Cp.  Wieser,  ib.,  8,  p.  353. 


HIS  PESSIMISM  131 

no  other  way  out  of  the  difficulty  than  to  set  up  a  multitude  of 
Councils  side  by  side  with  Scripture."  "  In  short,  the  devil  is 
too  clever  and  powerful  for  us  ;  everywhere  he  is  an  obstacle  and 
a  hindrance.  If  we  go  to  Scripture,  he  arouses  so  much  dissension 
and  strife  that  we  grow  sick  of  the  Word  and  afraid  to  trust  to 
it.  Yet  if  we  rely  on  human  councils  and  counsels,  we  lose 
Scripture  altogether  and  become  the  devil's  own,  body  and  soul." 
This  evil  was  not  solely  due  to  setting  up  human  ordinances  in 
the  place  of  Scripture,  but  also  to  the  preference  shown  in  theory 
to  works  which  arose  when  people  saw,  that  "  works  or  deeds  did 
not  follow  "  from  the  preaching  of  the  Apostles,  "  as  they  should 
have  done."  "  Hence  the  new  disciples  set  to  work  to  improve 
upon  the  Master's  building  and  proceeded  to  confuse  two  different 
things,  viz.  works  and  faith.  This  scandal  has  been  a  hindrance 
to  the  new  doctrine  of  faith  from  the  beginning  even  to  the  present 
day." 

From  all  this  one  would  rather  gather  that  the  fault  lay  more 
in  the  nature  of  Christianity  than  in  the  devil. 

Luther's  pessimistic  tendency  also  expresses  itself  in  the 
conviction,  that  it  was  the  "  gruesome,  frightful  and  boundless 
anger  of  God  "  that  was  the  cause  of  the  desolation  of  Christen 
dom  during  so  many  centuries,  though  he  assigns  no  reason  for 
such  anger  on  the  part  of  God. 

His  gloomy  view  of  the  world,  exercising  an  increasing  domina 
tion  over  him,  led  him  to  take  refuge  in  fatalistic  grounds  for 
consolation,  which,  according  to  his  wont,  he  even  attributed  to 
Christ  who  had  inspired  him  with  them.  Haunted  by  his  dia 
bolical  visions  he  finally  became  more  deeply  imbued  with 
pessimism  than  any  present-day  representative  of  the  pessimistic 
philosophy. 

"  Here  you  are  living,"  so  he  writes  to  one  of  his  friends,  "  in 
the  devil's  own  den  of  murderers,  surrounded  by  dragons  and 
serpents.  Of  two  things  one  must  happen  ;  either  the  people 
become  devils  to  you,  or  you  yourself  become  a  devil."1 

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 

1  Wieser,  ib.,  8,  p.  387. 


132  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

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  ten 
dencies  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  princi 
ples,  traces  of  which  are  long  met  with  in  his  writings. 
Humanism  increased  his  aversion  to  the  old-time  scholasti 
cism,  his  animosity  to  the  principles  of  authority  and 
tradition,  his  contempt  for  all  things  mediaeval,  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  Renais 
sance  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."1  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  con 
temporaries  and  aftercomers  were  to  praise  as  his  greatest 
achievement  and,  in  fact,  in  his  whole  undertaking  in  so  far 
1  "  Gesch.  des  gelehrten  Unterrichts,"  I2,  1896,  p.  174. 


THE  CHURCH  APART  133 

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,1  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 

1   See  above,  vol.  iii.,  p.  2-5  ff. 


134  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

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  ecclesice  " 
(Nov.,  1523),  which,  without  delay,  he  caused  to  be  trans 
lated  into  German,1  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  ("  Us  qui  credunt,  hcec  scri- 
bimus  ").2  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  110  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."3  "  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."4 

In  the  same  year,  1523,  on  Maundy  Thursday,  he  for  the  first 
time  spoke  publicly,  in  a  sermon  delivered  at  Wittenberg,  of  the 
plan  he  had  long  cherished  of  segregating  the  "  believing  " 
Christians  from  the  common  herd .  This  was  when  publishing  a  new 
rule  on  the  receiving  of  the  Supper,  making  Penance,  or  at  least 
a  general  confession  of  sin,  a  condition  of  reception.  In  future 
all  were  no  longer  to  be  allowed  to  approach  the  Sacrament 
indiscriminately,  but  only  those  who  were  true  Christians  ; 
hence  communion  was  to  be  preceded  by  an  examination  in 
faith,  i.e.  by  the  asking  of  certain  questions  on  the  subject.  The 
five  questions,  and  the  answers,  which  were  printed  with  a 
preface  by  Bugenhagen,  practically  constituted  an  assurance  of 
a  sort  to  the  dispensers  of  the  Sacrament  that  the  communicants 

1  Vol.  ii.,  p.  111.     "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  12,  p.  169  ff. ;    "  Opp.  lat. 
var.,"  6,  p.  494  sqq. 

2  "  Werke,"  ib.,  p.  192  =  p.  528.  3  Ib.,  p.  194=532. 

4  "  Entsprach  das  Staatskirchentum  dem  Ideale  Luthers  ?  " 
("  Zeitschr.  f.  Theol.  und  Kirche,"  1908,  Suppl.,  p.  38.)  The  striking 
new  works  of  Hermelink,  K.  Miiller,  etc.,  have  already  been  referred 
to  elsewhere.  In  addition  we  must  mention  K.  Holl,  "  Luther  und  das 
landesherrliche  Kircheriregiment "  ("Zeitschr.  f.  Theol.  und  Kirche," 
1911,  Suppl.),  where  the  writer  takes  a  view  of  the  much-discussed 
question  different  from  that  of  K.  Miiller. 


THE   CHURCH  APART  135 

approached  from  religious  motives  and  that  they  received  the 
Body  and  Blood  of  Christ  as  a  sign  of  the  forgiveness  of  their 
sins. 

"  It  must  be  a  faith,"  says  Luther  in  this  sermon,  "  which  God 
works  in  you,  and  you  must  know  and  feel  that  God  is  working 
this  in  you."  But  did  it  come  to  a  "  serious  self-examination  you 
would  soon  see  how  few  are  Christians  and  how  few  there  would 
be  who  would  go  to  the  Sacrament.  But  it  might  be  arranged  and 
brought  about,  as  I  greatly  wish,  for  those  in  every  place  who 
really  believe  to  be  set  apart  and  distinguished  from  the  others. 
I  should  like  to  have  done  this  long  ago,  but  it  was  not  feasible  ; 
for  it  has  not  been  sufficiently  preached  and  urged  as  yet." 
Meanwhile,  instead  of  "  separating  "  the  true  believers  (later  on 
he  speaks  of  private  sermons  for  them  to  be  preached  in  the 
Augustinian  minster)  he  will  still  address  his  discourse  to  all, 
even  though  it  be  not  possible  to  know  "  who  is  really  touched 
by  it,"  i.e.  who  really  accepts  the  Gospel  in  faith  ;  but  it  was 
thus  that  Christ  and  the  Apostles  had  preached,  "  to  the  masses, 
to  everyone ;  .  .  .  whoever  can  pick  it  up,  let  him  do  so.  .  .  . 
But  the  Sacrament  ought  not  thus  to  be  scattered  broadcast 
amongst  the  people  in  the  way  the  Pope  did."1 

In  the  "  Formula  missce  "  from  about  the  beginning  of  Dec.,  1523, 
he  again  speaks  of  the  examination  of  the  communicants,  and 
adds  that  it  was  enough  that  this  should  take  place  once  a  year, 
while,  in  the  case  of  educated  people,  it  might  well  be  omitted 
altogether  ;  the  examination  by  the  "  bishop  "  (i.e.  the  pastor) 
must  however  extend  also  to  the  "  life  and  conduct  "  of  the 
communicants.  "If  he  sees  a  man  addicted  to  fornication, 
adultery,  drunkenness,  gambling,  usury,  cursing  or  any  other 
open  vice  he  is  to  exclude  him  from  the  Supper  unless  he  has 
given  proof  of  amendment."  Moreover,  those  admitted  to  the 
Sacrament  are  to  be  assigned  a  special  place  at  the  altar  in  order 
that  they  may  be  seen  by  all  and  their  moral  conduct  more  easily 
judged  of  all.  He  would,  however,  lay  down  no  commands  on 
such  matters,  but  leave  everything,  as  was  his  wont,  to  the  good 
will  of  free  Christian  men. 2 

The  introduction  of  the  innovation  was,  moreover,  to  depend 
entirely  on  the  consent  of  the  congregation,  agreeably  with  his 
theory  of  their  rights.  This  he  said  in  a  sermon  of  Dec.  6,  1523. 3 
It  was  probably  in  that  same  month  that  the  plan  was  tried. 

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 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  12,  p.  484  f. ;  Erl.  ed.,  II2,  p.  205  f.    Cp.  ib., 
p.  481  =  201  f.,  and  Erl.  ed.,  IP,  p.  82  f. 

2  Ib.,  Weim.  ed.,  12,  p.  215  f.  ;  "  Opp.  lat.  var.,"  7,  13.     On  the 
"  Formula  missce"  see  below,  xxix.,  9. 

3  Ib.,   Weim.   ed.,    11,   p.    210.      The   Latin   version    reads  :     "  Si 
Dominus  dederit  in  cor  vestrum,  ut  simul  probetis"  etc. 


136          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

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  Chris 
tians."  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."1  In 
the  Wittenberg  congregation  he  could  "  not  yet  discern  a 
truly  Christian  one."2  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  some 
thing  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.3 

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, 4  and  this  he  did  shortly  after,  adding 
an  introduction  of  his  own.5 

1  Ib.,  12,  p.  693  ;  cp.  697.  On  the  Wittenberg  Poor  Box  see  below, 
vol.  vi.  xxxv.,  4.  2  P.  Drews,  p.  55. 

3  Vol.  ii.,  p.  113  ;  cp.  vol.  iii.,  p.  27.          4  "  Brief wechsel,"  4,  p.  70. 
6  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  12,  p.  11  ff.  ;   Erl.  ed.,  22,  p.  106  ff. 


THE  CHURCH  APART  137 

In  the  introduction  he  expresses  his  conviction  that  true 
Christianity,  the  right  belief  such  as  he  desiderated,  had  taken 
up  its  abode  with  them.  For  had  they  not  made  known  their 
willingness  to  enforce  strict  discipline  at  Leisnig  ?  "  By  God's 
grace,"  he  tells  them,  "  you  are  yourselves  enriched  by  God," 
hence  you  have  "  no  need  of  my  small  powers."  Still,  he  was 
far  from  loath  to  draw  up  for  them  and  for  others,  too,  first  the 
writing  which  appeared  in  print  in  1523  (possibly  at  the  beginning 
of  March),  "Von  Ordenung  Gottes  Dienst  ynn  der  Gemeyne,"1 
and  then,  about  Easter,  1523,  another  booklet  destined  to  become 
particularly  famous  and  to  which  we  have  already  frequently 
referred,  "  Das  eyn  Christliche  Versamlung  odder  Gemeyne 
Recht  und  Macht  habe,  alle  Lere  zu  urteylen,"  etc.2 

In  the  first,  speaking  of  public  worship  "to  real,  heartfelt,  holy 
Christians,"  he  says  the  model  must  surely  be  sought  in  the 
"  apostolic  age  "  ;  at  least  the  clergy  and  the  scholars,  if  not  the 
whole  congregation,  were  to  assemble  daily,  and  on  Sundays  all 
were  to  meet  ;  then  follow  his  counsels — he  took  care  to  lay  down 
no  actual  rules — for  the  details  of  public  worship,  where  the 
Word  and  the  awakening  of  faith  were  to  be  the  chief  thing. 
These  matters  the  congregation  were  to  arrange  on  their  own 
authority. 

The  second  booklet  lays  it  down  that  it  is  the  congregation  and 
not  the  bishops,  the  learned  or  the  councils  who  have  the  right 
and  duty  of  judging  of  the  preacher  and  of  choosing  a  true 
preacher  to  replace  him  who  does  not  proclaim  the  Word  of  God 
aright — needless  to  say,  regardless  of  the  rights  of  church 
patronage.  A  minority  of  true  "  Christians  "  is  at  liberty  to 
reject  the  parish  priest  and  appoint  a  new  one  of  the  right  kind, 
whom  it  then  becomes  their  duty  to  support.  Even  "  the  best 
preachers  "  might  not  be  appointed  by  the  bishops  or  patrons 
"  without  the  consent,  choice  and  call  of  the  congregation. "- 
There  can  be  no  doubt,  that,  if  every  congregation  acted  as  was 
here  proposed,  this  would  have  spelt  the  doom  of  the  old  church 
system.  This  too  was  what  Luther's  vivid  fancy  anticipated 
from  the  power  of  that  Word  which  never  returns  empty-handed, 
though  he  preferred  simply  to  ignore  the  huge  inner  difficulties 
which  the  proposal  involved.  The  tidings  that  new  congregations 
and  town-councils  were  joining  his  cause  strengthened  him  in  his 
belief.  His  statements  then,  concerning  the  near  overthrow  of 
the  Papacy  by  the  mere  breath  of  Christ's  mouth,  are  in  part  to 
be  explained  by  this  frame  of  mind. 

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 

1  /&.,  p.  35ff=153ff. 

2  76.,    11,   p.    408  ff.=  22,  p.    141   ff.      "  Ordenug  eyns   gemeynen 
Kastens,"  1523.    On  the  date  cp.  Drews,  p.  43. 


138          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

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  dis 
sensions  soon  ensued  and  Luther  sought  in  vain  the  assist 
ance  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.1 

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  theo 
logical  discussions  took  place  in  the  presence  of  Bugenhagen 
and  Jonas,2  of  which  Schwenckfeld  took  notes  which  have 
come  down  to  us.3  With  the  help  of  what  Luther  said 
then,  supplemented  by  some  later  explanations,  the  history 
of  the  remarkable  plan  can  be  followed  further. 

In  the  discussion  then  held  with  Schwenckfeld  the  latter 
voiced  his  conviction,  that  true  Christians  must  be  separated 
from  the  false,  "  otherwise  there  was  no  hope  "  of  improvement  ; 
excommunication,  too,  must  "  ever  go  hand  in  hand  with  the 
Gospel,"  otherwise  "  the  longer  matters  went  on  the  worse  they 
would  get,  for  it  was  easy  to  see  the  trend  throughout  the  world  ; 
every  man  wanted  to  be  Evangelical  and  to  boast  of  the  name  of 
Christ.  To  this  he  [Luther]  replied  :  it  was  very  painful  to  him 
that  no  one  showed  any  sign  of  amendment  "  ;  he  had,  however, 
already  taken  steps  concerning  the  separation  of  the  true  be 
lievers  and  had  announced  "  publicly  in  his  sermons  "  his  inten 
tion  of  keeping  a  "register  of  Christians  "  and  of  having  a  watch 
set  over  their  conduct,  also  "  of  preaching  to  them  in  the  mon 
astery  "  while  a  "  curate  preached  to  the  others  in  the  parish."4 

1  See  below,  vol.  vi.,  xxxv.,  4.  2  Above,  p.  78  ff. 

3  "  Schwenckfelds  Epistolar,"  2,  2,   1570,  p.  39  fi.     Cp.  K.  Ecke, 
"  Schwenckfeld,  Luther  und  der  Gedanke  einer  apostolischen  Refor 
mation,"  1911,  p.  101,  where  the  words  of  the  Epistolar,  pp.  24  and  39, 
are  given,  showing  that  Schwenckfeld  "  noted  down  the  whole  affair 
from  beginning  to  end  at  the  inn  while  it  was  still  fresh  in  his  memory." 

4  Of  these  steps  and  the  sermon  nothing  is  known. 


THE  CHURCH  APART  139 

It  was  a  disgrace,  remarked  Luther,  how,  without  such  helps, 
everything  went  to  rack  and  ruin.  Not  even  half  a  gulden  had 
he  been  able  to  obtain  for  the  poor. 

Concerning  the  ban,  however,  "he  refused  to  give  a  reply" 
even  when  repeatedly  pressed  by  Schwenckfeld  ;  he  merely 
said  :  "  Yes,  dear  Caspar,  true  Christians  are  not  yet  so  plentiful  ; 
I  should  even  be  glad  to  see  two  of  them  together  ;  for  I  do  not 
feel  even  myself  to  be  one."  And  there  the  matter  rested.1 

Hence,  even  then,  he  still  had  a  quite  definite  intention  of 
forming  such  a  congregation  of  true  believers  at  Wittenberg.2 

During  the  last  months  of  1525  Luther  concluded  a  writing 
entitled  "  Deudsche  Messe  und  Ordnung  Gottis  Diensts,"  which 
was  published  in  1526,  in  which  he  speaks  at  length  of  the  strange 
scheme  which  was  ever  before  his  mind.  Its  reaction  on  his 
plans  for  Mass  and  Divine  worship  may  here  be  passed  over.3 
What  more  nearly  concerns  us  now  is  the  distinction  he  makes 
between  those  present  at  Divine  worship.  If  the  new  Mass,  so 
he  says,  "  is  held  publicly  in  the  churches  before  all  the  people  " 
many  are  present  "  who  as  yet  neither  believe  nor  are  Christians." 
In  the  popular  Church,  such  as  it  yet  is,  "  there  is  no  ordered  or 
clearly  cut  assembly  where  the  Christians  can  be  ruled  in  accord 
ance  with  the  Gospel  "  ;  to  them  worship  is  merely  "  a  public 
incentive  to  faith  and  Christianity."  It  would  be  a  different 
matter  if  we  had  the  true  Christians  assembled  together,  "  with 
their  names  registered  and  meeting  together  in  some  house  or 
other,"  where  prayer,  reading,  and  the  receiving  of  the  Sacrament 
would  be  assiduously  practised,  general  almsgiving  imposed  and 
"  penalties,  correction,  expulsion  or  the  ban  made  use  of  accord 
ing  to  the  law  of  Christ."  But  here  again  we  find  him  complaining  : 
"  I  have  not  yet  the  necessary  number  of  people  for  this,  nor  do 
I  see  many  who  are  desirous  of  trying  it."  "  Hence  until  Chris 
tians  take  the  Word  seriously,  find  their  own  legs  and  persevere," 
the  carrying  out  of  the  plan  must  be  delayed.  Nor  did  he  wish, 
so  he  says,  to  set  up  "  anything  new  in  Christendom."  As  he  put 
it  in  a  previous  sermon:  "It  is  perfectly  true  that  I  am  certain 
I  have  and  preach  the  Word,  and  am  called  ;  yet  I  hesitate  to 
lay  down  any  rules."4 

This  hesitation  cannot  be  explained  merely  by  the 
anxiety  to  which  he  himself  refers  incidentally  lest  com 
mands  should  arouse  the  spirit  of  opposition  and  give  rise 
to  "factions,"5  for  the  absence  of  authority  was  evident  ; 

1  "  Epistolar,"  ib.,  pp.  39,  43. 
"  Zeitschr.  f.  KG.,"  13,  p.  552  ff. 

3  See  below,  xxix.,  9.    The  writing  is  reprinted  in  "  Werke,"  Weini. 
ed.,  19,  p.  70  ff.  ;   Erl.  ed.,  22,  p.  227  ff. 

4  Sermon  of  Dec.  6,  1523,  ib.,  Weim.  ed.,  11,  p.  210. 

5  In  the  "  Deudsche  Messe,"  Weim.  ed.,  19,  p.  75  ;    Erl.  ed.,  22, 
p.  231  :    "In  order  that  no  faction  may  arise  as  though  I  had  done  it 
of  my  own  initiative." 


140          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

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."1 

Others,  not  alone  from  the  ranks  of  such  as  inclined  to 
fanatism,  were  also  to  some  extent  to  blame  for  the  per 
sistence  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  excommunica 
tion.  What  can  you  hope  to  effect  so  long  as  everything  is 
in  such  disorder  ?  "2 

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."3  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 

Luther  hoped  much  from  the  Visitation  of  1527  ;  it  was  not 
merely  to  constitute  parishes  but  also  to  serve  the  cause  of  the 
"  assembly  of  Christians  "  and  of  discipline  ;  the  segregation 
of  the  true  believers  was  to  be  effected  within  the  parishes,  at  least 

1  "  Entsprach  des  Staatskirchentum  dem  Ideale  Luthers  ?  "  p.  65. 
Drews  adds  :    "  He  was  afraid  of  doing  something  contrary  to  God's 
will."     That  Luther  had  not  thought  out  the  matter  plainly  is  also 
stated  by  K.  Miiller  ("  Luther  und  Karlstad t,"  p.  121). 

2  "  Briefwechsel,"  6,  p.  10. 

3  As  late  as  June  26,  1533  ("  Briefwechsel,"  9,  p.  317),  he  wrote  : 
"  In  hoc  sceculo  tarn  turbido  et  nondum  satis  pro  recipienda  discipline 
idoneo  non  ausim  consulere  tarn  subitam  innovationem."     Cp.  p.  142, 
below. 


THE   CHURCH  APART  141 

when  the  parishes  were  not  prepared  to  go  over  as  a  whole  to  the 
true  Church,  as,  for  instance,  Leisnig  had  once  promised  to  do. 
Luther  again  wrote,  on  March  29,  1527,  to  Hausmann,  the 
zealous  Zwickau  Evangelical  :  "  We  hope  that  it  [the  'assembly 
of  Christians  ']  will  come  about  through  the  Visitation."  Then, 
he  fancies,  "  Christians  and  non-Christians  would  no  longer  be 
found  side  by  side  "  as  at  the  ordinary  gatherings  in  church  ;  but, 
once  they  were  "  separated  and  formed  an  assembly  where  it  was 
the  custom  to  admonish,  reprove  and  punish,"  church  discipline 
could  soon  be  applied  to  individuals  too.1 

But  the  "  hope  "  remained  a  mere  hope  even  when  the  Visita 
tion  was  over. 

Nothing  whatever  is  known  of  any  further  attempt  of  Luther 
in  this  direction,  though,  as  Drews  points  out,  "  it  is  evident  that 
he  was  unable  to  understand  how  Christians  who  had  reached  the 
faith  could  fail  to  feel  themselves  impelled  to  assemble  in  com 
munities  organised  on  the  Apostolic  model."2  He  had  to  look 
on  helplessly  while  the  followers  of  the  new  preaching  formed 
a  great  congregation,  of  which  many  of  the  members  were,  as  he 
had  said,  "  not  Christians  at  all,"  and  whose  prayer-gatherings 
were  no  more  than  "  an  incentive  to  faith  and  Christianity." 
(Above,  p.  139.) 

In  Hesse  alone  had  steps  been  taken — independently  of  the 
Visitation  in  the  Saxon  Electorate  and  previous  to  it — to  bring 
about  a  condition  of  things  more  in  accordance  with  Luther's  ideal. 
Moreover,  Luther  himself  preferred  to  remain  entirely  neutral  in 
respect  of  this  novel  attempt,  destined  to  become  famous  in  the 
history  of  Protestant  church-organisation.  The  prime  mover  in 
the  Hessian  plan  was  the  preacher,  Lambert  of  Avignon,  an 
apostate  Friar  Minor  ;  his  draft  was  submitted  to  Landgrave 
Philip  by  a  Synod  held  at  Homberg  at  the  end  of  1526. 3  Philip 
forwarded  it  to  Luther  in  order  to  hear  his  opinion.  Among  the 
proposals  made  in  the  draft  were  the  following  :  After  preaching 
for  a  while  to  the  whole  of  the  people,  they  were  to  be  asked 
individually  whether  they  wished  to  join  the  assembly  of  true 
believers  and  submit  themselves  to  the  discipline  prevailing 
amongst  them  ;  those,  however  few  in  number,  who  give  in  their 
names  are  the  Christians  ;  as  for  the  others  they  must  be  looked 
upon  as  pagans  ;  the  former  have  their  meetings  and  choose 
their  pastors  because  it  is  the  duty  of  the  flock  to  decide  in  what 
voice  the  shepherds  shall  speak.  All  the  clergy  were  annually  to 
meet  the  delegates  of  the  congregations,  nobles  and  princes  in 
synod  and  to  elect  a  committee  and  three  Visitors  for  the  direction 
and  supervision  of  the  whole  Church  of  the  land ;  these  were  also 
to  ratify  the  election  of  all  the  clergy  chosen  by  the  people. 4 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  53  ("  Brief wechsel,"  6,  p.  32),  p.  399. 

2  P.  67. 

3  The  plan  as  Kostlin-Kawerau,  2,  p.  47  f.,  rightly  points  out  had 
been  formed   "  mainly  on  elements  previously  brought  forward  by 
Luther." 

4  Reprinted  in  A.  L.  Richter,  "  Die  evang.  Kirchenordnungen  des 
16.  Jahrh.,"  1,  1846,  p.  56. 


142  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

Luther  advised  the  Landgrave  "  not  as  yet  to  allow  this  order 
to  appear  in  print,  for  I,"  he  adds,  "  dare  not  yet  be  so  bold  as  to 
introduce  so  great  a  number  of  laws  amongst  us  and  with  such 
high-sounding  words."  He  did  not,  however,  by  any  means 
reject  the  plan  absolutely.  On  the  contrary  he  writes,  that,  in 
his  opinion,  it  were  better  to  allow  the  project  to  grow  up  gradu 
ally  "  from  force  of  habit  "  ;  a  few  of  the  pastors,  "  say  one, 
three,  six,  or  nine  "  might  well  make  a  beginning  ;  otherwise 
they  were  sure  to  find  that  "  the  people  were  not  yet  ripe  for  it," 
and  that  "  much  would  have  to  be  altered."1 

As  Landgrave  Philip,  after  receiving  from  Luther  this  rather 
discouraging  reply,  proceeded  no  further,  the  "  plan  for  the 
realisation  of  Luther's  ideas  "  was  carried  stillborn  to  the  grave.2 
"  And  yet  it  was  the  only  practical  plan  which  at  all  corresponded 
with  the  theories  of  the  Reformer  prior  to  1525. "3  Later  on 
Philip  adopted  the  Saxon  Reformation-book  for  the  organising 
of  the  Church  of  Hesse. 

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 
Hassice"),  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.4  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.5 

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. 

1  Jan.  7,  1527.     "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  56,  p.  170  ("  Brief wechsel,"  6, 

P-  9). 

2  Kostlin-Kawerau,  2,  p.  48. 

3  F.  Feuchtwanger  :   "  Gesch.  der  sozialen  Politik  .   .  .  irn  Zeitalter 
der   Reformation  "    ("  Schmollers  Jahrb.  f.  Gesetzgebung  N.F.,"  33, 
1909),  p.  193. 

*  Cp.  Enders,  "  Luthers  Brief  wechsel,"  5,  p.  73  n. 

5  June  26,  1533,  to  Schnabel,  "  Brief  wechsel,"  9,  p,  316. 


THE  CHURCH  APART  143 

The  time,  according  to  him,  "  is  not  yet  ripe  for  the  intro 
duction  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  Ex 
communication  "  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  institu 
tion  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."1 

The    popular    Church   throve,    nevertheless,    and,    soon, 

i  Ib.,  p.  68. 


144          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

owing  to  the  co-operation  of  numerous  factors,  became  a 
State  institution. 

The  result  was  the  Lutheran  State-Church,  to  be  con 
sidered  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.1  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.2 

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."3  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.4 

1  Below,  xxxv.,  2. 

2  To  what  extent  the  Elector  was  following  the  example  of  his 
Catholic  ancestors  in  Church  matters  is  shown  by  K.  Pallas,  "  Entste- 
hung  des  landesherrlichen  Kirchenregiments  in  Kursachsen "    ("  N. 
Mitteilungen  aus  dem  Gebiet  historisch-antiquarischer  Forschung  "), 
24,  2. 

3  To  Luther,  Nov.  26,  1526,  "  Brief wechsel,"  5,  p.  408. 

4  Proofs  of  this  will  be  given  below  when  we  deal  with  Luther's 
attitude  towards  State  government   of  the   Church.     So  ineffectual 
was  Luther's  reserve  and  even  his  formal  protest,   that    Carl  Holl 


WORSHIP  AND  RITUAL  145 

9.   Public  Worship.     Questions  of  Ritual 

The  ordering  of  public  worship,  particularly  at  Witten 
berg,  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.1  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 
missce  et  communionis  pro  ecclesia  Wittenbergensi  "  1523,2 
and  "  Deudsche  Messe  und  Ordnung  Gottis  Diensts  "  1526. 3 

By  the  introduction  of  the  German  Mass  in  the  latter 
year  "  the  whole  Pope  was  flung  out  of  the  Church,"4  to  use 
Spalatin's  words.  It  is  noteworthy  that  Luther,  in  announc 
ing  this  latest  innovation  to  the  inhabitants  of  Wittenberg, 
admitted  that  he  had  been  urged  by  the  sovereign  to  make 
the  change.5 

(above,  p.  134,  n.  4)  remarks  (p.  59)  :  "  These  exertions  on  Luther's 
part  were  of  small  avail.  Facts  proved  stronger  than  his  theories.  Once 
the  Visitation  had  been  made  in  the  Elector's  name,  then,  in  spite  of 
all  that  might  be  said,  he  could  not  fail  to  appear  as  the  one  to  whom 
the  oversight  of  spiritual  matters  belonged.  It  must  have  been  fairly 
difficult  for  the  Electoral  Chancery  to  make  the  distinction  between 
the  Elector  speaking  as  a  brother  to  other  Christians  and  as  a  ruler 
to  his  subjects.  It  was  certainly  much  easier  to  treat  everything  on 
the  same  lines."  Cp.  W.  Friedensburg,  above,  vol.  ii.,  p.  333,  n.  2. 

1  Cp.  vol.  ii.,  p.  319  ff. 

2  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  12,  p.  205  ;    "  Opp.  lat.  var.,"  7,  p.  2  sqq. 

3  /&.,  Weim.  ed.,  19,  p.  70  ff.  ;   Erl.  ed.,  22,  p.  227  ff. 

4  To  V.  Warnbeck,  Sep.  30,   1525,  see  Schlegel,    "  Vita  Spalatini," 
p   222.    Cp.  Jonas  to  Spalatin,  Sep.  23,  1525,  vol.  iv.,  p.  511. 

6  "  Since  so  many  from  all  lands  request  me  to  do  so,  and  the  secular 

V. — L 


146          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

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,"1  then  comes  the 
Consecration.  The  Secret  was  omitted  with  the  Offertory.  The 
Preface  was  shortened.  Of  the  whole  of  the  hated  "  Canon  "2  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.3  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. 4  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  ;6 
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. 

power  also  urges  me  to  it."  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  19,  p.  50  f.  ;  Erl. 
ed.,  142,  p.  278,  from  the  Church-postils.  Cp.  G.  Rietschel,  "  Lehrb. 
der  Liturgik,"  Berlin,  1900,  p.  278. 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  19,  p.  95  ;   Erl.  ed.,  22,  p.  239. 

2  For  Luther's  writing  :  "  Von  dem  Grewel  der  Stillmesse  so  man  den 
Canon  nennet,"  see  above,  vol.  iv.,  p.  511  f. 

3  For  the  fate  of  this  see  our  vol.  iii.,  p.  392  f.,  vol.  iv.,  p.  195,  n.  4, 
p.  239,  and  Kawerau,  in  Holler,  "  KG,"  33,  p.  401. 

4  See  below,  xxxiv.,  4. 

5  Kostlin-Kawerau,  1,  p.  532.     He  also  repeatedly  complains  th'at 
the  hymns  and  prayers  of  antiquity  failed  to  make  sufficient  mention 
of  the  Redemption  and  the  Grace  of  Christ.    Even  in  the  "  Te  Deum  " 
he  misses  the  doctrine  of  Redemption,  needless  to  say  in  tho  sense  in 
which  he  taught  it.     "  Briefe,"  ed.  De  Wette,  6,  p.  425. 


WORSHIP  AND  RITUAL  147 

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.1  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.2  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,  edifica 
tion  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."3 

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  Chris 
tians."4  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 
goodwill. 

"  They  "  (the  true  believers),  he  here  says  of  his  regulations, 
"  need  none  of  these  things,  for  which  indeed  we  do  not  live,  but 
rather  they  for  the  sake  of  us  who  are  not  yet  Christians,  in 
order  that  we  may  become  Christian  ;  true  believers  have  their 
service  in  the  spirit."5  In  the  case  of  the  particular  assemblies 
he  had  in  mind  for  the  latter,  they  would  have  to  "enter  their 
names  and  meet  in  some  house  or  other  for  prayer,  reading, 

1  W.  Germann,  "  Joliann  Forster  "  ("  N.  Beitr.  zur  Gesch.  deutschen 
Altertums,"  Hft.  12),  1894. 

2  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  19,  p.  72  ;   Erl.  ed.,  22,  p.  227. 

3  Ib.,  12,  p.  37  =  22,  p.  156.      4  Ib.,  19,  p.  73-22,  p.  228.       3  Ib. 


148          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

baptism,  receiving  of  the  Sacrament  and  other  Christian  works." 
"  Here  there  would  be  no  need  of  loud  or  fine  singing.  They 
could  descant  a  while  on  baptism  and  the  Sacrament,  and  direct 
everything  towards  the  Word  and  prayer  and  charity.  All  they 
would  need  would  be  a  good,  short  catechism  on  faith,  the  Ten 
Commandments  and  the  Our  Father."  Amongst  them  ecclesi 
astical  discipline  and  particularly  excommunication  would  be 
introduced  ;  such  assemblies  would  also  be  well  suited  for 
"  common  almsgiving,"  all  the  members  helping  in  replenishing 
the  poor-box.1 

Until  such  "  congregations  apart  "  had  come  into  being  the 
service,  and  particularly  the  sermon,  according  to  Luther,  must 
needs  be  addressed  to  all.  "  Such  a  service  there  must  be  for  the 
sake  of  those  who  are  yet  to  become  Christians,  or  need  strengthen 
ing  .  .  .  especially  for  the  sake  of  the  simple-minded  and  young 
...  on  their  account  we  must  read,  sing  and  preach  .  .  .  and, 
where  this  helps  at  all,  I  would  have  all  the  bells  rung  and  all 
the  organs  played."  He  boasts  of  having  been  the  first  to  impart 
to  public  worship  this  aim  and  character,  "to  exercise  the  young 
and  to  call  and  incite  others  to  the  faith  "  ;  the  "  popish  services," 
on  the  other  hand,  were  "  so  reprehensible  "  because  of  the 
absence  of  any  such  character. — In  his  Churches  he  sees  "  many 
who  do  not  yet  believe  and  are  no  Christians  ;  the  greater  part 
stand  there  gaping  at  the  sight  of  something  new,  just  as  though 
we  were  holding  an  open-air  service  among  the  Turks  or 
heathen."  Hence  it  seems  to  him  quite  necessary  to  regard  the 
worship  in  common  as  simply  a  public  encouragement  to  faith 
and  Christianity.2 

As  for  those  Christians  who  already  believed,  Luther  cannot 
loudly  enough  assert  their  freedom. 

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."3  This  has  the 
true  Lutheran  ring.  Beside  this  must  be  placed  his  fre 
quently  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.4  He  also  teaches  elsewhere  that  not  only  does  real 
and  true  worship  consist  in  a  life  of  faith  and  love,  but  that 

1  Ib.,  p.  75  =  230  f.  2  Ib.,  74  ff.  =  229  ff. 

3  16.,  p.  72  =  228.  4  Cp.  for  instance  above,  p.  44  f. 


WORSHIP  AND  RITUAL  149 

the  outward  worship  given  in  common  is  in  reality  a  sacri 
fice  of  praise  and  thanksgiving  (a  gift  to  God  after  all) 
made  in  common  solely  because  of  all  people's  need  to  ex 
press  their  faith  and  love;1  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  mis 
givings,  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.2 
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  wor- 

1  Cp.  above,  p.  45,  and  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  142,  p.  87. 

2  On  Luther's  attitude  towards  such  punishment  cp.  his  letter  to 
Margrave  George  of  Brandenburg   (Sep.  14,  1531),  "  Brief e,"  ed.  De 
Wette,  4,  p.  308  ("  Brief wechsel,"  9,  p.  103). 


150          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

ship  "  finds  expression  in  Luther's  form  of  service.1  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  "  Chris 
tianity  "  on  non-believers  was  in  reality  to  drag  down  the 
sublime  worship  of  God,  the  "  sacrifice  of  praise  and  thanks 
giving  "  as  Luther  himself  sometimes  calls  it,  to  an  un 
deservedly  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,  ac 
cording  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. 2 

Older  Protestant  liturgical  writers  like  Kliefoth  spoke  of 
the  profound,  mystical  value  of  Luther's  liturgy  and  even 

1  Kawerau  in  the  "Gottinger  Gelehrte  Anzeigen,"  1888,  1,  p.  113  f., 
in  his  review  of  Joh.  Gottschick,  "  Luthers  Anschauungen  vom  christl. 
Gottesdienst,"  Freiburg,  1887  :    "In  practice  Luther  helped  to  further 
a  worship  which,  though  easily  to  be  explained,  constituted  neverthe 
less  a  questionable  concession  to  the  needs  of  the  moment  ;    for  he 
vindicates  the  purely  pedagogic  character  of  worship  and  ascribes  it 
to   the   need   of    educating   backward    Christians    or   of  making   real 
Christians  of  them."     Kawerau  speaks  of  this  as  "an  object  which,  on 
every  side,  spells  serious  injury  to  worship  itself."     Gottschick  had 
proved  convincingly  (p.  19  f.)  that  "  such  a  conception  of  worship  was 
on  every  point  at  variance  with  Luther's  own  principles  concerning 
the  priestly  character  of  the  congregation  and  the  relation  of  prayer 
to  faith."     In  this  view  Gottschick  would  find  himself  "  in  complete 
harmony  with  all  eminent  liturgical  writers  at  the  present  day." 

2  J.  Gottschick  (see  above,  n.  1 ),  in  concluding,  charges  Luther's  reform 
of   divine   worship   with   being  merely   an   adaptation  of  the  Roman 
Mass,    absolutely   worthless  for  Lutherans,  adopted  out  of   too  great 
consideration  for  the  weak  ;  this  form  of  worship,  utterly  at  variance 
with  his  own  liturgical  principles,  was  not  to  be  regarded   as  a  real 
Lutheran  liturgy. 


WORSHIP  AND  RITUAL  151 

of  certain  elements  as  being  quite  original.  Recourse  to 
the  old  scheme  of  the  Mass,  duly  expurgated,  was,  how 
ever,  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.1  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. 

How  easy  it  was,  on  the  other  hand,  for  liberty  to  lead  to 
serious  abuses  is  plain  from  the  history  of  the  Evangelical  churches 
in  Livonia.  Melchior  Hofmarm,  the  preacher,  had  come  from 
that  country  to  Wittenberg  complaining  that  the  reformed  service 
had  given  rise  to  the  worst  discord  among  both  people  and  clergy. 
Luther  composed  a  circular  letter  addressed  to  the  inhabitants  of 
Livonia,  entitled  "  Eyne  christliche  Vormanung  von  eusser- 
lichem  Gottis  Dienste  unde  Eyntracht  an  die  yn  Lieffland,"  which 
was  printed  together  with  a  letter  from  Bugenhagen  and  another 
from  Hofmann.2  Therein  he  admits  with  praiseworthy  frank 
ness  his  embarrassment  with  regard  to  ceremonial  uniformity. 

"  As  soon  as  a  particular  form  is  chosen  and  set  up,"  he  says, 
"  people  fall  upon  it  and  make  it  binding,  contrary  to  the  freedom 
brought  by  faith."  "But  if  nothing  be  set  up  or  appointed,  the 
result  is  as  many  factions  as  there  are  heads.  .  .  .  One  must, 
however,  give  the  best  advice  one  can,  albeit  everything  is  not  at 
once  carried  out  as  we  speak  and  teach."  He  accordingly 
encourages  those  whom  he  is  addressing  to  meet  together 
amicably  "  in  order  that  the  devil  may  not  slink  in  unawares, 
owing  to  this  outward  quarrel  about  ceremonies."  "  Come  to 
some  agreement  as  to  how  you  wish  these  external  matters 
arranged,  that  harmony  and  uniformity  may  prevail  among  you 
in  your  region,"  otherwise  the  people  would  grow  "  confused  and 
discontented."  Beyond  such  general  exhortations  he  does  not 
go  and  thus  refuses  to  face  the  real  difficulty. 

When  seeking  to  introduce  uniformity  nothing  was  to  be 
imposed  as  "  absolute  command,"  but  merely  to  "  ensure  the 
unity  of  the  Christian  people  in  such  external  matters  "  ;  in  other 
words,  "  because  you  see  that  the  weak  need  and  desire  it."  The 

1  Cp.  Kawerau's  quotations  in  his  article  in  the   "  Gdttinger  Gel. 
Anzeigen,"  1888,  1,  p.  115. 

2  June  17,  1525,  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  18,  p.  412  ff.  ;  Erl.  ed.,  53, 
p.  315  ff.  ("  Brief wechsel,"  5,   p.   198).     For  Bugenhagen's  letter  see 
"  Brief  wechsel,"  p.  207,  for  Hofmann's,  ib.,  p.  213. 


152          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

people,  however,  were  "  to  inure  themselves  to  the  breaking  out 
of  factions  and  dissensions.  For  who  is  able  to  ward  off  the 
devil  and  his  satellites  ?  "  "When  you  were  Papists  the  devil,  of 
course,  left  you  in  peace.  .  .  .  But  now  that  you  have  the  true 
seed  of  the  divine  Word  he  cannot  refrain  from  sowing  his  own 
seed  alongside." 

The  writing  did  no  good,  for  the  confusion  continued.  It  was 
only  in  1528  that  the  Konigsberg  preacher,  Johann  Briesmann,  at 
the  request  of  the  authorities  and  with  Luther's  help,  established 
a  new  form  of  church  government  in  Livonia. 

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.1  If,  how 
ever,  the  service  was  to  consist  principally  of  the  celebration 
of  the  Supper  it  was  necessary  there  should  always  be  com 
municants.  Without  communions  there  was,  according  to 
Luther,  no  celebration  of  the  Sacrament.  Now  at  Witten 
berg  there  were  not  always  communicants,  nor  was  there 
any  prospect  of  the  same  presenting  themselves  at  every 
Sunday  service,  or  that  things  wxmld  always  remain  as  in 
1531  when  Luther  boasted,  that  "  every  Sunday  the  hun 
dred  or  so  communicants  were  always  different  people."2 

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.3  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  him 
self,  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 

1  Kawerau,  in  Holler,   "  KG.,"  33,  p.  400  ;    "  The  influence  of  the 
Catholic  past  is  still  evident  in  the  fact,  that,  in  spite  of  the  predominant 
position  assigned  to  preaching,  the  view  still  prevailed  that  Divine 
worship,  in  order   to    be    complete,  must   include   the    Supper,   and 
that  it  culminated  in  this  '  office.'     This,  even  in  the   16th  century, 
gave  rise  to  difficulties." 

2  To  Margrave  George  of  Brandenburg  in  the  letter  quoted  above, 
p.  145,  n.  2.  3  Kawerau,  ib.,  p.  401. 


WORSHIP  AND  RITUAL  153 

that  predominance  was  assigned  to  the  sermon,1  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."2 

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,"3  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  discon 
tinued.4  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  other 
wise,  sermons,  which,  according  to  Luther's  own  loud  com 
plaints,  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. 

Three  charges  of  a  general  character  were  made  by  Luther 
against  Catholic  worship.  First,  "  the  Word  of  God  had  not  been 
preached  .  .  .  this  was  the  worst  abuse."  Secondly,  "  many 
unchristian  fables  and  lies  found  their  way  into  the  legends, 
hymns  and  sermons."  Finally,  "  worship  was  performed  as  a 

1  Ib.,   p.    400.      Luther  says  :     "  Diligens  verbi  Dei  prcedicatio   est 
proprius  cultus  novi  testamenti."     "  Opp.  lat.  exeg.,"  19,  p.  161. 

2  Gottschick.  3  This  is  Kawerau's  opinion,  ib.,  p.  401. 
4  See  above,  p.  146,  n.  3. 


154          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

work  whereby  to  win  salvation  and  God's  grace  ;  and  so  faith 
perished."1 

Of  these  charges  it  is  hard  to  say  which  is  the  most  unjust. 
His  assertion  that  the  Word  of  God  had  not  been  preached  and 
that  there  was  110  Bible-preaching,  has  been  refuted  anew  by 
every  fresh  work  of  research  in  the  history  of  preaching  at  that 
time.  Nor  was  the  Bible-element  in  preaching  entirely  lacking, 
though  it  might  not  have  been  so  conspicuous.  The  truth  is, 
that,  in  many  places,  sermons  were  extremely  frequent.2 

Luther's  second  assertion,  viz.  that  Catholic  worship  was  full 
of  lying  legends,  does  not  contain  the  faintest  trace  of  truth,  more 
particularly  there  where  he  was  most  radical  in  his  work  of 
expurgation,  i.e.  in  the  Canon.  The  Canon  was  a  part  of  the 
Mass-service,  which  had  remained  unaltered  from  the  earliest 
times.  It  was  only  into  the  sermons  that  legends  had  found  their 
way  to  a  great  extent. 

If  finally,  as  seems  likely,  Luther,  by  his  third  charge,  viz.  that 
the  olden  Church  sought  to  "  win  salvation  and  God's  Grace  " 
through  her  worship,  means  that  this  was  the  sole  or  principal 
aim  of  Catholic  worship,  here,  too,  he  is  at  sea.  The  real  object 
had  always  been  the  adoration  and  thanksgiving  which  are  God's 
due,  offered  by  means  of  the  sublime  sacrifice  united  with  the 
spiritual  sacrifice  of  the  whole  congregation.  Adoration  and 
thanksgiving  found  their  expression  above  all  in  the  sublime 
Prefaces  of  the  Mass.  The  thought  already  appears  in  the 
"  Sursum  corda,  Gratias  agamus,  etc.,  Dignum  et  iustum  est," 
whereupon  the  priest,  taking  up  again  the  "  Dignum  et  iustum 
est/'  proceeds  :  "  &quum  et  salutare,  nos  tibi  semper  et  ubique 
gratias  agere  .  .  .  per  Christum  Dominum  nostrum."  It  is  not 
without  significance  that  "  dignum,"  "  iustum  "  and  "  cequum  " 
stand  first,  and  that  "  salutare  "  comes  after  ;  praise  and  thanks 
giving  are  what  it  becomes  us  first  of  all  to  offer  in  presence  of 
God's  Majesty,  but  they  are  also  profitable  to  us  because  they 
render  God  gracious  to  us.3 

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. 

1  "Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,   12,  p.  35;   Erl.   ed.,    22,    p.    153.      "Von 
Ordenung  Gottes  Dienst  ynn  der  Gemeyne,"  1523. 

2  Of  the  most  recent  studies  we  need  only  mention  here  H.  Greving, 
"  Ecks  Pfarrbuch  fiir  U.L.  Frau  in  Ingolstadt  "  ("  RG1.  Studien  "),  Hft. 
4  and  5,  1908,  p.  87  ff.     Cp.  Janssen,  "Hist,  of  the  German  People  " 
(Engl.  Trans.),  vol.  i.,  passim. 

3  This  introduction,  together  with  the  whole  text  of  the  common 
Preface,  enters  into  Luther's  Latin  Mass.     "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  12, 
p.  212  ;    "  Opp.  lat.  var.,"  7,  p.  8.    In  his  German  Mass  it  is  suppressed. 


SCHWENCKFELD  ON  LUTHER      155 

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  establish 
ment  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  relent 
less  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,"1  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."2 

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."3  "  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  1528.4 

"  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."5 

1  "Epistolar,"  2,  2,  1570.    Ecke  (see  below,  p.  156,  n.  1),  p.  159. 

2  "  Der  erste  Teil  der  christl.  orthodox.  Biicher  und  Schriften.   .   .   . 
Schwenckfelds  .   .   .  durch    Mitbekenner    zusammengetragen,"     1564, 
p.  4.     Ecke,  p.  160  ;    cp.  p.  10  f. 

3  "Epistolar,"  ib.,  p.  228;  cp.  p.  246.     4  /&.,  p.  645.     5  /&.,  p.  519. 


156  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

His  criticisms  of  Luther,  which,  in  spite  of  his  harsh  treat 
ment  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  Reforma 
tion,  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 

16  The  reformation  of  life  has  not  taken  place,"  this  is 
what  Carl  Ecke,  Schwenckfeld's  latest  biographer,  repre 
sents  as  the  honest  conviction  of  the  "  apostolic  "  preacher 
of  the  faith  in  Silesia.1  "  The  religion  of  Lutheranism  as  it 
then  was  did  not,  in  Schwenckfeld's  opinion,  as  a  whole 
reach  the  standard  of  Bible  Christianity."2  "  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."3 

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,  how 
ever,  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. 

Thus  he  writes  :  "  If  by  God's  grace  I  see  the  great  common 
herd  and  the  poor  folk  on  both  sides,  as  they  really  are,  then  I  must 
fain  admit,  that,  under  the  Papacy  and  in  spite  of  all  its  errors, 
there  are  more  pious,  godfearing  men  than  in  Lutheranism.  I  also 
believe  that  they  might  more  easily  be  improved  than  some  of 
our  Evangelicals  who  are  now  trying  to  hide  themselves  and 
their  sinful  life  behind  Holy  Scripture,  nay,  behind  a  fictitious 

1  "  Schwenckfeld,    Luther   und    der    Gedanke   einer   apostolischen 
Ref.,"  Berlin,  1911,  p.  161. 

2  Ecke,  p.  176.     The  Protestant  author  adds  in  a  note  :    "  It  must, 
however,  be  pointed  out  that  this  criticism  does  not  affect  the  apostolic 
nature  of  the  profound  phenomena  of  Evangelical  piety  seen  among 
Lutherans." 

3  "  Christl.  Biicher,"  etc.  (above,  p.  155,  n.  2),  p.  384.     Ecke,  p.  177. 


SCHWENCKFELD  ON  LUTHER      157 

faith  and  Christ's  satisfaction,  and  in  whom  no  fear  of  God 
is  left."1 

Many  of  Schwenckfeld's  more  specific  complaints  are  supported 
by  other  witnesses.  We  may  compare  what  Luther  himself  and 
his  friends  report  of  the  conditions  at  Wittenberg2  with  what 
Schwenckfeld  says  a  little  later  :  "  It  is  credibly  asserted  con 
cerning  their  Church  at  Wittenberg,  that  there  such  a  mad, 
dissolute  life  prevails  as  is  woeful  to  see  ;  there  is  no  discipline 
whatever,  no  fear  of  God,  and  the  people  are  wild,  impudent  and 
unmannerly,  particularly  Philip's  students,  so  that  even  Dr. 
Major  not  long  since  (1556)  is  himself  said  to  have  complained 
of  it  there  in  a  sermon,  saying  :  Our  Wittenberg  is  so  widely 
talked  of  that  strangers  fancy  there  are  only  angels  here  ;  when, 
however,  they  come  they  find  only  devils  incarnate.  If  Philip, 
who  sends  out  his  disciples  as  Apostles  '  in  omnem  terram '  does 
not  found  any  better  Churches  than  these,  he  has  but  little  to 
boast  of  before  God."3 

"  What  harm  and  damage  to  consciences  such  Lutheran 
teaching  has  brought  into  Christendom  it  is  easier  to  bewrail  with 
many  tears  than  to  describe."  Though  Luther's  "  Evangel  and 
office  has  discovered  and  made  an  end  of  much  false  worship  and 
a  great  apostasy,  for  which  we  give  thanks  to  God  the  Lord,"  yet 
"  it  has  but  little  of  the  power  of  grace,  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  or  of 
blessing,  for  bringing  sinners  to  repentance  and  true  conversion."4 

"  Thus  we  have  Schwenckfeld's  witness  that  he  had  seen 
nothing  of  any  real  awakening  or  revival  among  the  people 
generally.  Whole  classes,  the  merchant  class,  for  instance, 
remained  inwardly  untouched  by  the  glad  tidings  ;  even  where 
the  '  Word  '  was  preached,  there  the  bad  sermons,  of  which 
Schwenckfeld  had  complained  as  early  as  1524,  often  produced 
evil  fruits."  Thus  writes  Ecke.5  Schwenckfeld,  however,  does 
not  lay  all  the  blame  on  the  preachers,  but  rather  directly  on  the 
ethical  principles  resulting  from  Luther's  doctrines,  which  had 
filled  the  utterances  of  the  new  preachers  with  so  much  that  was 
dangerous  and  misleading.  "  Oh,  how  many  of  our  nobles  have 
I  heard  say:  'I  cannot  help  it,'  'it  is  God's  Will,'  'God  does  all, 
even  my  sin,  and  I  am  not  answerable  '  ;  'if  He  has  predestined 
me  I  shall  be  saved.'  '  "  How  many  have  I  heard,  who  all 
appealed  to  the  Wittenberg  writings,  and,  who,  alas,  to-day,  are 
ten  times  worse  than  before  the  Evangel  began  to  be  preached."6 

Whenever  he  exhorted  his  Lutheran  co-religionists  to  con 
version  and  holiness  of  life,  so  he  declares  in  1543,  he  always 
received  some  reply  such  as  the  following  :  "  We  are  poor  sinners 
and  can  do  nothing  good."  "  Faith  alone  without  works  saves 
us."  "  We  cannot  keep  God's  law  "  ;  "  have  no  free-will." 
"  Amendment  is  not  in  our  power."  "  Christ  has  done  enough 

1  "  Epistolar,"  ib.,  p.  602.     In  1550.     Ecke,  p.  196. 

2  See  our  vol.  iv.,  p.  210ff.,  forinstance,  and  below,  vol.  vi.,xxxix.,  1. 

3  "  Die  ander  Verantwortung,"  1556,  Aiii.     Ecke,  p.  190  f. 

4  "  Christl.  Biicher,"  p.  326  f.     Ecke,  p.  163.  5  Ib. 
6  "  Epistolar,"  1,  1566,  p.  680.    Ecke,  p.  164. 


158          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

for  us  ;  He  has  overthrown  sin,  death,  hell  and  the  devil  ;  that  is 
what  we  have  to  believe."1  When  he  preached  sanctification  he 
was  dubbed  a  "  Papist."  "  That  the  Lutherans  accuse  me  of 
being  more  a  Papist  than  a  Lutheran  is  due  mainly  to  good  works 
and  the  stress  I  lay  on  them."2 

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  1547.3  Many 
of  the  incriminated  passages  were  "  wickedly  omitted  "  in 
the  next  editions  of  the  Church-postils.4 

Further    Complaints    of  Schwenckf eld'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 
110  more  than  make  us  feel  our  helplessness,  our  weakness 
and  our  sickness."5  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  com 
mandments  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.  .  .  . 

1  "  Christl.  Biicher,"  p.  362.    In  1547.    Ecke,  ib. 

2  Ecke,  p.  164,  from  a  MS. 

3  "  Christl.  Biicher,"  p.  477.    Ecke,  p.  164. 

4  Thus  G.   Arnold,    "  Kirchenhistorie,"   Frankfurt   a/M.,    1729,    1, 
p.  413. 

5  Ib.,  p.  395.     Ecke,  p.  170  f.,  where  he  quotes  in  support  of  this 
and  what  follows,  "  Luthers  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  142,  pp.  164  f.,  174, 


SCHWENCKFELD  ON  LUTHER      159 

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."3 

"  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  !  "2 

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

How,  at  the  outset,  the  "  learned  had  soared  far  too  high  " 
with  their  article  of  predestination  "  and,  by  means  of  their 
human  wisdom,  reached  a  philosophical,  heathen  conception 
[presumably  the  ancient  '  fatum  ']  can  readily  be  seen  from  their 
books,  especially  from  Luther's  against  free-will  and  Melanch- 
thon's  first  Commentary  on  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans."3 

"  Luther  writes  that  no  one  is  free  to  plan  either  good  or  evil, 
but  only  does  as  he  is  obliged  ;  that,  as  God  wills,  so  we  live.  .  .  . 
Item,  that  the  man  who  does  evil  has  no  control  over  himself, 
that  it  is  not  in  man's  power  to  do  evil  or  not,  but  that  he  is 
forced  to  do  it,  '  nos  coacti  facimus.'  '  "  God,"  so  Philip  tells  us, 
"  does  all  things  by  His  own  power."4 

"  They  have  treated  of  predestination  in  accordance  with 
heathen  philosophy,  forgetful  of  Christ  and  the  Grace  of  the 
Gospel  now  made  manifest  ;  they  wrote  of  it  from  a  human 
standpoint  ;  and  though  Luther  and  Philip,  after  they  had  seen 
the  evil  results,  would  gladly  have  retracted  it,  yet  because  what 
they  had  formerly  taught  was  very  pleasing  to  the  flesh,  it  took 
root  in  men's  hearts  so  deeply  that  what  they  afterwards  said 
passed  almost  unheard."5 

"  This  aberration,"  says  Ecke,  "  was  to  Schwenckfeld  a  further 
sign  that  their  method  of  reformation  was  not  that  of  good 
missionaries."  6 

Schwenckfeld  complains  rightly  :  "  Instead  of  beginning,  after 
the  Apostles'  example,  by  preaching  penance  in  the  name  of 

1  Ib.  2  Ib.,  p.  325.    Ecke,  p.  172. 

3  Ib.,  p.  377.    Ecke,  p.  168. 

4  Ib.,  p.  420.     Schwenckfeld's  excuse  is,  however,  worthy  of  note, 
p.  401  :    "  Such  doctrine  is  not  the  outcome  of  an  evil  mind  but  is  due 
to  misapprehension."     Ecke,  p.  168. 

5  Ib.,  p.  421.    Ecke,  p.  169.  6  Ib. 


160          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

Christ  .  .  .  they  preferred  vehemently  to  urge  such  lofty  matters 
as  predestination  and  the  Divine  election  together  with  the  denial 
of  free- will."1 

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."' 

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]  :  4  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.'  ' 

Schwenckfeld  continues  :  "  And  again  :  '  Seeing  that  Christ 
allowed  Himself  to  be  put  to  death  for  sin,  it  cannot  harm  me. 
Thus  does  faith  work  in  the  man  who  believes  that  Christ  has 
taken  away  sin  ;  such  a  one  feels  himself  to  be  without  sin  like 
Christ,  and  knows  that  death,  devil  and  hell  have  been  conquered 
and  cannot  harm  him  any  more.'  Hcec  ille.  This  has  proved 
a  scandal  to  many."3 

He  is  angered  by  what  Luther  says  in  his  sermon  for  the  8th 
Sunday  after  Trinity,  that  "  no  work  can  condemn  a  man,  that 
unbelief  is  the  only  sin,  and  that  it  was  the  comfort  of  Christians 
to  know  that  sins  do  not  harm  them.  Item,  that  only  sinners 
belong  to  the  Kingdom  of  God." — He  is  much  shocked  at  such 
sayings  as,  "  If  you  but  believe  you  are  freed  from  sin.  ...  If  we 
believe  then  we  have  a  Gracious  God  and  only  need  to  direct  our 
works  to  the  advantage  of  our  neighbour  so  that  they  may  be 
profitable  to  him."4 

Such  a  form  of  neighbourly  love  does  not  suffice  to  reassure 
Schwenckfeld  as  to  the  method  of  justification  taught  by  Luther. 
"  We  see  here  that  repentance,  the  renewal  of  the  heart  and  the 
crucifixion  of  the  flesh  with  its  lusts  and  concupiscences,  as  well 
as  the  Christian  combat  .  .  .  are  all  forgotten."  "  How  is  it 
possible  that  such  easy  indulgence  and  soft  and  honeyed  sermons 
should  not  lead  to  little  account  being  made  of  sin,  seeing  the 

1  Ib.,  p.  401.    Ecke,  ib.  2  Ib.    Ecke,  p.  170. 

3  Ib,,  p.  361.     Ecke  quotes  "  Luthers  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  II2,  p.  217. 

4  Ib.,  p.  365.   Ecke,  p.  166,  quotes  Erl.  ed.,  132,  p.  218  ;  142,  pp.  281  f ., 

287  ft 


SCHWENCKFELD  ON  LUTHER     161 

people  are  told  that  God  winks  at  the  sins  of  all  those  who 
believe  ?  "*• 

Again  and  again  he  returns  to  the  patent  fact  that  "  the  result 
of  such  shameless  preaching  and  teaching  is  nothing  but  a  grave 
and  damnable  abuse  of  the  Evangel  of  Jesus  Christ,  since  people 
now  make  but  little  account  even  of  many  and  great  sins."2 

For  Luther  to  point  to  the  Crucified  and  tell  the  believer  that 
"  sin  is  nothing  but  a  devilish  spectre  and  a  mere  fancy,"  was 
to  speak  "fanatically."  Luther  might  write  what  he  pleased,  but 
here,  at  any  rate,  he  was  himself  guilty  of  that  fanatism  of 
which  he  was  fond  of  accusing  others.3  Schwenckfeld  himself 
had  been  numbered  by  the  preachers  among  the  crazy  fanatics. 

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

The  Lutherans,  even  the  best  of  them,  imagine  their  righteous 
ness  to  be  nothing  else  "  but  the  bare  faith,  since  they  believe 
God  accounts  them  righteous,  even  though  they  remain  as  they 
were  before."  "  They  should,  however^  be  exhorted  to  search 
Holy  Scripture  and  to  ask  themselves  in  their  hearts  whether 
such  faith  and  righteousness  are  not  rather  a  human  persuasion, 
mere  imposition  and  self-delusion  .  .  .  which  men  invent  to 
justify  an  impenitent  life  ;  not  a  true,  living  faith,  the  gift  of  the 
Holy  Ghost  .  .  .  which,  as  Scripture  says,  purifies  the  heart, 
Acts  xv.  .  .  .,  reconciles  consciences,  Rom.  v.  .  .  .,  and  brings 
Christ  into  our  hearts,  Eph.  iii.,  Gal.  ii."4 

An  instructive  parallel  and  at  the  same  time  a  severe 
censure  on  Luther's  method  of  building  up  "  faith  "  on  in 
ward  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. 

"  In  addition  to  all  this  they  reject  the  ghostly  feeling  and  that 
inward  sense  of  the  Grace  of  God  which  Luther  at  the  outset  .  .  . 
declared  to  be  necessary  for  salvation,  writing  that  :  '  No  one  can 
rightly  understand  God  or  the  Word  of  God  unless  he  has  it 
direct  from  the  Holy  Ghost.'  No  one,  however,  can  receive  it 
from  the  Holy  Ghost  unless  he  experiences  it,  makes  trial  of  it 
and  feels  it ;  in  this  experience  the  Holy  Ghost  is  teaching  us  as 

1  Ib.  2  Ib.  3  Ib. 

4  16.,  p.  343  f.  Cp.  "  Epistolar,"  2,  2,  p.  912.  Ecke,  p.  176.  Cp. 
Dollinger,  on  Schwenckfeld,  in  "  Die  Reformation,"  1,  p.  254  ff. 

v. — M 


162  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

in  His  own  school,  outside  of  which  nothing  is  learned  but  all  Is 
mere  delusion,  words  and  vapouring."1 

"  How  would  Dr.  Luther's  own  gloss  stand,"  Schwenckfeld 
asks  elsewhere,  "  which  he  gives  on  the  words  of  the  New  Testa 
ment,  1  Cor.  xi.  :  '  Let  a  man  prove  himself,'  and  where  he  says  : 
'  to  prove  oneself  is  to  feel  one's  faith,'  etc.  ?  But  the  man  who 
feels  his  faith  will  assuredly  by  such  a  faith — which  is  a  power 
of  God  and  the  very  being  of  the  Holy  Ghost — have  forgiveness 
of  sins  and  bear  Christ  in  his  believing  heart."2 

He  reproaches  Luther  with  having  in  later  days  failed  to 
distinguish  between  the  outward  Word  or  preaching  and  the 
inward  living  Word  of  God.  The  blunt  assertion  of  the  preachers 
— which  was  encouraged  by  "  Luther's  unapostolic  treatment  of 
the  problem  of  Christian  experience"3 — that  faith  referred 
solely  to  the  written  Word  and  was  elicited  merely  by  preaching, 4 
leads  in  practice  to  neglect  of  those  passages  of  Scripture  which 
speak  of  the  Divine  character  of  faith  and  of  its  transmission  by 
the  Holy  Ghost ;  owing  to  the  lack  of  a  faith  really  felt,  there  was 
also  wanting  any  "  holiness  of  life  worked  by  the  Spirit,  and  any 
moral  justice  and  sanctification."5 

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.6 

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."7  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 

1  "  Epistolar,"  2,  2,  p.  913.    Ecke,  p.  55. 

2  Ib.,  p.  427.    Cp.  "  Epistolar,"  I.,  p.  410. 

3  Ecke's  words,  p.  161. 

4  "  Epistolar,"  2,  2,  p.  513,  cp.  p.  403  ff.  ;    1,  p.  424.    Ecke,  ib. 

5  Ecke,  p.  162. 

«  Cp.  Ecke,  p.  160,  n.  3.  '  Ib.,  p.  222. 


SCHWENCKFELD   ON  LUTHER     163 

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."1 

But  "  we  always  want  to  attract  the  great  crowd  !  "2  "  They 
saw  the  great  multitude  and  feared  lest  the  churches  should 
dwindle  away."3  How  were  they  to  keep  "Mr.  Omnes,  the 
common  people,  faithful  to  their  churches  without  the  help  of 
the  secular  arm  ?  "4  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  per 
suade  them  that  they  already  have  that,  which  their  own  con 
science  tells  them  they  have  never  received."5 

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."6  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  ;7  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."8 

From  the  standpoint  of  his  own  peculiar  doctrine  he  charac 
terises  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."9 

Now,  Schwenckfeld  was  far  from  advising  people  to  for 
sake  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."10  Yet,  according  to 
him,  this  was  more  readily  carried  out  in  private  con- 

1  Ecke,  p.  180  f.  ;   from  MS.  sources. 

2  "  Epistolar,"  2,  2,  p.  639.    Ecke,  p.  179. 

3  "  Epistolar,"  1,  p.  99.    Ecke,  p.  181.          4  Ib.    Ecke,  p.  182. 
5  Ib.,  1,  p.  92.    Ecke,  p.  181.          6  Ib.,  p.  736.    Ecke,  p.  182. 

7  "  Christl.  Biicher,"  p.  363.    Ecke,  p.  173. 

8  Ib.  9  "  Epistolar,"  2,  2,  p.  1014.    Ecke,  p.  160. 
10  Ecke,  p.  227,  MS. 


164          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

venticles,  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.1 
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."2  Luther  "  is 
setting  up  a  new  tyranny,  and  wishes  to  tie  men  to  his 
doctrine."3 

1  "  Christl.  Biicher,"  pp.  962,  965.    Ecke,  p.  191. 

2  "  Epistolar,"  1,  p.  173.    "  Christl.  Biicher,"  p.  74  f.,  549.    Ecke,  ib. 

3  "  Epistolar,"  1,  p.  iii.  B.    Ecke,  p.  86. 


CHAPTER    XXX 

LUTHER    AT    THE    ZENITH    OF    HIS    LIFE    AND    SUCCESS,    FROM 
1540     ONWARDS.        APPREHENSIONS     AND     PRECAUTIONS 

1.  The  Great  Victories  of  1540-1544 

THE  opening  of  the  Diet  of  Ratisbon  in  1541 1  coincided  with 
the  advance  of  Protestantism  in  one  of  the  strongholds  of 
the  power  and  influence  of  Albert  of  Mayence.  The  usual 
residence  of  the  Archbishop  and  Elector  was  at  Halle,  in 
his  diocese  of  Magdeburg.  Against  this  town  accordingly 
all  the  already  numerous  Protestants  in  Albert's  sees  of 
Magdeburg  and  Halberstadt  directed  their  united  efforts. 
Albert  was  compelled  by  the  local  Landtag  to  abolish  the 
Catholic  so-called  "  Neue  Stift  "  at  Halle,  and  to  remove 
his  residence  to  Mayence.  Thereupon  Jonas,  Luther's 
friend,  at  once,  on  Good  Friday,  1541,  commenced  to  preach 
at  the  church  of  St.  Mary's  at  Halle.  He  then  became 
permanent  preacher  and  head  of  the  growing  movement 
in  the  town,  while  two  other  churches  were  also  seized  by 
Lutheran  preachers. 

The  town  and  bishopric  of  Naumburg,  which  had  been 
much  neglected  by  its  bishop,  Prince  Philip  of  Bavaria, 
who  resided  at  Freising,  fell  a  prey  to  the  innovations  under 
the  Elector  Johann  Frederick  of  Saxony  ;  this  in  spite  of 
being  an  imperial  city  under  the  immediate  protection  of  the 
Emperor.  The  Elector  had  taken  advantage  of  his  position 
as  arbitrator,  thanks  to  his  influence  and  to  the  authority 
he  soon  secured,  gradually  to  establish  himself  in  Naumburg. 
By  his  orders,  in  1541,  as  soon  as  Philip  was  dead,  Nicholas 
Medler  began  to  preach  at  the  Cathedral  as  "  Superintendent 
of  Naumburg  "  ;  Julius  Pflug,  the  excellent  Provost,  who  had 
been  elected  bishop  by  the  Cathedral  chapter,  was  prevented 
by  the  Elector  from  taking  possession  of  the  see.  Even  the 

1  See  above,  vol.  iv.,  p.  367. 
165 


166          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

Wittenberg  theologians  were  rather  surprised  at  the  haste 
and  violence  with  which  the  Elector  proceeded  to  upset  the 
religious  conditions  there,  and — a  matter  which  concerned 
him  deeply — to  seize  the  city  and  the  whole  diocese.  (See 
below,  p.  191  f.) 

The  storm  was  already  gathering  over  the  archbishopric 
of  Cologne  under  the  weak  and  illiterate  Archbishop,  Her 
mann  von  Wied.  This  man,  who  was  in  reality  more  of  a 
secular  ruler,  after  having  in  earlier  days  shown  himself 
kindly  disposed  to  the  Church,  was  won  over,  first  by  Peter 
Medmann  in  1539  and  then  by  Martin  Bucer  in  1541,  and 
persuaded  to  introduce  Lutheranism.  Only  by  the  energetic 
resistance  of  the  chapter,  and  particularly  of  the  chief 
Catholics  of  the  archdiocese,  was  the  danger  warded  off  ; 
to  them  the  Archbishop  owed,  first  his  removal,  and  then 
his  excommunication. 

On  March  28,  1546,  shortly  before  the  excommunication, 
the  Emperor  Charles  V  said  to  Landgrave  Philip  of  Hesse, 
who  had  been  pleading  the  cause  of  Hermann  :  "  Why  does 
he  start  novelties  ?  He  knows  no  Latin,  and,  in  his  whole 
life,  has  only  said  three  Masses,  two  of  which  I  attended 
myself.  He  does  not  even  understand  the  Confiteor.  To 
reform  does  not  mean  to  bring  in  another  belief  or  another 
religion."1 

"  We  are  beholders  of  the  wonders  of  God,"  so  Luther 
wrote  to  Hermann  Bonn,  his  preacher,  at  Osnabriick ; 
"  such  great  Princes  and  Bishops  are  now  being  called  of 
God  by  the  working  of  the  Holy  Ghost."2  He  was  speaking 
not  only  of  the  misguided  Archbishop  of  Cologne  but  also 
of  the  Bishop  of  Minister  and  Osnabriick,  who  had  intro 
duced  the  new  teaching  at  Osnabriick  by  means  of  Bonn, 
Superintendent  of  Liibeck.  Luther,  however,  was  rather 
too  sanguine.  In  the  same  year  he  announced  to  Duke 
Albert  of  Prussia  :  "  The  two  bishops  of  4  Collen  '  and 
Miinster,  have,  praise  be  to  God,  accepted  the  Evangel  in 
earnest,  strongly  as  the  Canons  oppose  it.  Things  are  also 
well  forward  in  the  Duchy  of  Brunswick."3  As  a  matter 
of  fact  he  turned  out  right  only  as  regards  Brunswick. 

1  Ch.    v.    Rommel,    "  Philipp    der    Grossmiithige,    Landgraf    von 
Hessen,"  1,  1820,  p.  517. 

2  Aug.  5,  1543,  "  Brief e,"  ed.  De  Wette,  5,  p.  580. 

3  May  7,  1543,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  557. 


PROGRESS   OF  THE   CAUSE        167 

Henry,  the  Catholic  Duke,  was  expelled  in  1542  by  the 
Elector  of  Saxony  and  the  Landgrave  of  Hesse  after  the 
war  which  broke  out  on  account  of  Goslar  had  issued  in  his 
loss  of  the  stronghold  of  Wolfenbuttel ;  thereupon  with  the 
help  of  Bugenhagen  the  churches  of  the  land  were  forcibly 
brought  over  to  Lutheranism. 

In  1544  the  appointment  at  Merseburg  of  a  bishop  of  the 
new  faith  in  the  person  of  George  of  Anhalt  followed  on 
Duke  Maurice  of  Saxony's  illegal  seizure  of  the  see.  So  bare 
faced  was  this  act  of  spoliation  that  even  Luther  entered 
a  protest  against  "  this  rapacious  onslaught  on  Church 
property."1  The  appointment  of  an  "  Evangelical  bishop  " 
at  Naumburg  took  place  in  1542  under  similar  circumstances. 

From  Metz,  where  the  preacher  Guillaume  Farel  was  work 
ing  for  the  Reformation,  an  application  was  received  for 
admission  into  the  Schmalkalden  League.  The  Lutherans 
there  received  at  least  moral  support  from  Melanchthon 
who,  in  the  name  of  the  League,  addressed  a  writing  to  the 
Duke  of  Lorraine.  Not  only  distant  Transylvania,  but  even 
Venice,  held  correspondence  with  Luther  in  order  to  obtain 
from  him  advice  and  instructions  concerning  the  Protestant 
congregations  already  existing  in  those  regions. 

Thus  the  author  of  the  religious  upheaval  might  well 
congratulate  himself,  when,  in  the  evening  of  his  days,  he 
surveyed  the  widespread  influence  of  his  work. 

He  was  at  the  same  time  well  aware  what  a  potent  factor 
in  all  this  progress  was  the  danger  which  menaced  Germany 
from  the  Turks.  The  Protestant  Estates  continued  to  ex 
ploit  the  distress  of  the  Empire  to  their  own  advantage  in 
a  spirit  far  from  loyal.  They  insisted  on  the  Emperor's 
granting  their  demands  within  the  Empire  before  they 
would  promise  effectual  aid  against  the  foe  without  ;  their 
conduct  was  quite  inexcusable  at  such  a  time,  when  a  new 
attack  on  Vienna  was  momentarily  apprehended,  and  when 
the  King  of  France  was  quite  openly  supporting  the  Turks. 

In  the  meantime  as  a  result  of  the  negotiations  an  Imperial 
army  was  raised  and  Luther  published  his  prudent  "  Ver- 
manunge  zum  Gebet  wider  den  Tiircken."  In  this  he 
advised  the  princes  to  do  their  duty  both  towards  God 
and  the  Evangel  and  towards  the  Empire  by  defending  it 
against  the  foe.  The  Pope  is  as  much  an  enemy  as  the 

1  Kostlin-Kawerau,  2,  p.  562. 


168          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

Turk,  and  the  world  has  reached  its  close,  for  the  last  Judg 
ment  is  at  hand.1 

The  Emperor  found  it  advisable  to  show  himself  even 
more  lenient  than  before  ;  the  violent  encroachments  of 
the  Protestants,  which  so  unexpectedly  strengthened  their 
position,  were  allowed  to  pass  unresisted  ;  the  ecclesiastical 
and  temporal  penalties  pronounced  against  the  promoters 
of  the  innovations  remained  a  dead  letter,  and  for  the  time 
being  the  Church  property  was  left  in  their  hands.  At  the 
Diet  of  Spires,  in  1544,  the  settlement  was  deferred  to  a 
General  Council  which  the  Reichsabschied  describes  as  a 
"  Free  Christian  Council  within  the  German  Nation." 

As  was  only  to  be  expected,  Paul  III,  the  supreme  head 
of  Christendom,  energetically  protested  against  such  a 
decision.  With  dignity,  and  in  the  supreme  consciousness  of 
his  rights  and  position,  the  Pope  reminded  the  Emperor  that 
a  Council  had  long  since  been  summoned  (above,  vol.  iii., 
p.  424)  and  was  only  being  delayed  on  account  of  the  war. 
It  did  not  become  the  civil  power,  nor  even  the  Emperor, 
to  inaugurate  the  religious  settlement,  least  of  all  at  the 
expense  of  the  rights  of  Church  and  Pope  as  had  been  the 
case  ;  to  the  Vicar  of  Christ  and  the  assembly  summoned 
by  him  it  fell  to  secure  the  unity  of  the  Church  and  to  lay 
down  the  conditions  of  reunion  ;  yet  the  civil  power  had 
left  the  Pope  in  the  lurch  in  his  previous  endeavours  to 
summon  a  Council  and  to  establish  peace  in  Germany  ; 
"  God  was  his  witness  that  he  had  nothing  more  at  heart 
than  to  see  the  whole  of  the  noble  German  people  reunited 
in  faith  and  all  charity  "  ;  "  willingly  would  he  spend  life 
and  blood,  as  his  conscience  bore  him  witness,  in  the  attempt 
to  bring  this  about  in  the  right  way." 2 

These  admonitions  fell  on  deaf  ears,  as  the  evil  work  was 
already  done.  The  consent,  which,  by  dint  of  defiance  and 
determination,  the  Protestant  princes  wrung  from  Empire 
and  Emperor,  secured  the  triumph  of  the  religious  revolution 
in  ever  wider  circles. 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  32,  p.  75  ff.     Cp.  above,  vol.  iii.,  p.  91  ff. 

2  Letter  to  the  Emperor  Charles  V,  Aug.  24,  1544,  in  Raynaldus, 
"  Annales,"  a.   1544  ;    in  German  in  "  Luthers  Werke,"  Walch's  ed., 
17,  p.  1253  ff.    For  the  former  attitude  of  the  Papacy  to  the  idea  of  the 
Council,  cp.  our  vol.  iii.,  p.  424  ff. 


FEARS   AND   APPREHENSIONS      169 


2.   Sad  Forebodings 

In  spite  of  all  his  outward  success,  Luther,  at  the  height 
of  his  triumph,  was  filled  with  melancholy  forebodings 
concerning  the  future  of  his  work. 

He  felt  more  and  more  that  the  new  Churches  then  being 
established  lacked  inward  stability,  and  that  the  principle 
on  which  they  were  built  was  wanting  in  unity,  cohesion 
and  permanence.  Neither  for  the  protection  of  the  faith 
nor  for  the  maintenance  of  an  independent  system  of 
Church  government  were  the  necessary  provisions  forth 
coming.  Indeed,  owing  to  the  very  nature  of  his  under 
taking,  it  was  impossible  that  such  could  be  effectually  sup 
plied  ;  thus  a  vision  of  coming  disunion,  particularly  in  the 
domain  of  doctrine,  unrolled  itself  before  his  eyes  ;  this 
was  one  of  the  factors  which  saddened  him. 

As  early  as  the  'thirties  we  find  him  giving  vent  to  his 
fears  of  an  ever-increasing  disintegration.  In  the  'forties  they 
almost  assume  the  character  of  definite  prophecies. 

In  the  Table-Talk  of  1538,  which  was  noted  down  by  the 
Deacon  Lauterbach,  he  seeks  comfort  in  the  thought  that  every 
fresh  revival  of  religion  had  been  accompanied  by  quarrels  due 
to  false  brethren,  by  heresies  and  decay  ;  it  was  true  that  now 
"the  morning  star  had  arisen"  owing  to  his  preaching,  but  he 
feared  "  that  this  light  would  not  endure  for  long,  not  for  more 
than  fifty  years";  the  Word  of  God  would  "again  decline  for 
want  of  able  ministers  of  the  Word."1  "  There  will  come  want 
and  spiritual  famine  "  ;  "  many  new  interpretations  will  arise, 
and  the  Bible  will  no  longer  hold.  Owing  to  the  sects  that  will 
spring  up  I  would  rather  I  had  not  printed  my  books."2 

"  I  fear  that  the  best  is  already  over  and  that  now  the  sects 
will  follow."3  The  pen  was  growing  heavy  to  his  fingers  ;  there 
"  will  be  no  end  to  the  writings,"  he  says  ;  "  I  have  outlived 
three  frightful  storms,  Miinzer,  the  Sacramentarians  and  the 
Anabaptists  ;  these  are  over,  but  now  others  will  come."  "  I 
wish  not  to  live  any  longer  since  no  peace  is  to  be  hoped  for."4 
"  The  Evangel  is  endangered  by  the  sectarians,  the  revolutionary 
peasants  and  the  belly  servers,  just  as  once  the  Roman  empire 
was  at  Rome."5 

"  On  June  27  [1538],"  we  read,  "  Dr.  Luther  and  Master  Philip 
were  dining  together  at  his  house.  They  spoke  much,  with  many 
a  sigh,  of  the  coming  times  when  many  dangers  would  arise." 
The  greatest  confusion  would  prevail.  No  one  would  then  allow 

1  Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  172  f.  2  Ib.,  p.  62. 

3  Ib.,  p.  70.  4  Ib.,  p.  114.  5  Ib.,  p.  80. 


170          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

himself  to  be  guided  by  the  doctrine  or  authority  of  another. 
"  Each  one  will  wish  to  be  his  own  Rabbi,  like  Osiander  and 
Agricola.  From  this  the  worst  scandals  and  the  greatest  desola 
tion  will  come.  Hence  it  would  be  best  [one  said],  that  the 
Princes  should  forestall  it  by  some  council,  if  only  the  Papists 
would  not  hold  back  and  flee  from  the  light.  Master  Philip 
replied  :  The  Pope  will  never  be  brought  to  hold  a  General 
Council.  .  .  .  Oh,  that  our  Princes  and  the  Estates  would  bring 
about  a  council  and  some  sort  of  unity  in  doctrine  and  worship 
so  as  to  prevent  each  one  undertaking  something  on  his  own 
account  to  the  scandal  of  many,  as  some  are  already  doing.  The 
Church  is  a  spectacle  of  woe,  with  so  much  weakness  and  scandal 
heaped  upon  her."1 

Shortly  after  this  Luther  instituted  a  comparison — which  for 
him  must  have  been  very  sad — between  the  "  false  Church  [of 
the  Pope]  which  stands  erect,  a  cheerful  picture  of  dignity, 
strength  and  holiness,"  and  the  Church  of  Christ  "  which  lies 
in  such  misery  and  ignominy,  sin  and  insignificance  as  though 
God  had  no  care  for  her."  He  fancied  he  could  find  some  slight 
comfort  in  the  Article  of  the  Creed  :  "I  believe  in  the  Holy 
Church,"  for,  so  he  observes,  "  because  we  don't  see  it,  therefore 
we  believe  in  it."2 

In  the  midst  of  the  great  successes  of  those  years  he  still  gives 
utterance  to  the  gloomiest  of  predictions  for  the  future  of  his 
doctrine,  which  dissensions  would  eat  to  the  very  core.  His  pupil 
Mathesius  reports  him  as  holding  forth  as  follows  : 

"  Alas,  good  God,"  he  groaned  in  1540,  "  how  we  have  to  suffer 
from  divisions  !  .  .  .  And  many  more  sects  will  come.  For  the 
spirit  of  lies  and  murder  does  not  sleep.  .  .  .  But  God  will  save 
His  Christendom."3 — In  1542  someone  remarked  in  his  presence  : 
"  Were  the  world  to  last  fifty  years  longer  many  things  would 
happen."  Thereupon  Luther  interjected  :  "  God  forbid,  things 
would  get  worse  than  ever  before  ;  for  many  sects  will  arise  which 
yet  are  hidden  in  men's  hearts,  so  that  we  shall  not  know  how 
we  stand.  Hence,  dear  Lord,  come  with  Thy  Judgment  Day,  for 
no  further  improvement  is  now  to  be  looked  for  !  "4 — After 
instancing  the  principal  sects  that  had  arisen  up  to  that  time  he 
said,  in  1540  :  "  After  our  death  many  sects  will  arise,  God 
help  us  !  "5  "  But  whoever  after  my  death  despises  the  authority 
of  this  school — so  long  as  the  Church  and  the  school  remain  as 
they  are — is  a  heretic  and  an  evil  man.  For  in  this  school  [of 
Wittenberg]  God  has  revealed  His  Word,  and  this  school  and  town 
can  take  a  place  side  by  side  with  any  others  in  the  matter  of 
doctrine  and  life,  even  though  our  life  be  not  yet  quite  above 
reproach.  .  .  .  Those  who  flee  from  us  and  secretly  contemn  us 
have  denied  the  faith.  .  .  .  Who  knew  anything  five- and- twenty 

1  Ib.,  p.  91  f.    Cp.  "  Colloq."  ed.  Bindseil,  3,  p.  90  sq.  ;    "  Werke," 
Erl.  ed.,  62,  p.  42  f. 

2  Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  101. 

3  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  138.  4  Ib.,  p.  287. 
5  Ib.,  p.  231. 


FEARS   AND   APPREHENSIONS      171 

years  ago  [before  my  preaching  started]  ?  Alas  for  ambition  ; 
it  is  the  cause  of  all  the  misfortunes."1 

Frequently  he  reverts  to  the  theory,  that  the  Church  must 
needs  put  up  with  onsets  and  temptations  to  despair.  "  Now 
even  greater  despair  has  come  upon  us  on  account  of  the  sec 
tarians,"  he  said  in  1537  ;  "  the  Church  is  in  despair  according 
to  the  words  of  the  Psalmist  (cviii.  92)  :  '  Unless  Thy  Law  had 
been  my  meditation  I  had  then  perhaps  perished  in  my  abjec 
tion.'  "2 

At  an  earlier  period  (1531)  a  sermon  of  Luther's  vividly 
pictures  this  despair  :  "If,  in  spiritual  matters,  it  comes  about, 
that  the  devil  sows  his  seed  in  Christ's  kingdom  and  it  springs 
up  both  in  doctrine  and  life,  then  we  have  a  crop  of  misery  and 
distress.  In  the  preaching  it  happens,  that  although  God  has 
appointed  one  man  and  commanded  him  to  preach  the  Evangel, 
yet  others  are  found  even  amongst  his  pupils  who  think  they  know 
how  to  do  it  ten  times  better  than  he.  .  .  .  Every  man  wants 
to  be  master  in  doctrine.  .  .  .  Now  they  are  saying  :  '  Why 
should  not  we  have  the  Spirit  and  understand  Scripture  just  as 
well  as  anyone  else  ?  '  Thus  a  new  doctrine  is  at  once  set  up  and 
sects  are  formed.  .  .  .  Hence  a  deadly  peril  to  Christendom 
ensues,  for  it  is  torn  asunder  and  pure  doctrine  everywhere 
perishes."3  Christ  had  indeed  "  foretold  that  this  would  happen"; 
true  enough,  it  is  not  forbidden  to  anyone  "  who  holds  the  public 
office  of  preacher  to  judge  of  doctrine  "  ;  but  whoever  has  not 
such  an  office  has  no  right  to  do  so  ;  if  he  does  this  of  "  his  own 
doctrine  and  spirit,"  then  "  I  call  such  judging  of  doctrine  one 
of  the  greatest,  most  shameful  and  most  wicked  vices  to  be  found 
upon  earth,  one  from  which  all  the  factious  spirits  have  arisen."4 

Duke  George  of  Saxony  unfeelingly  pointed  out  to  the  innovator 
that  his  fear,  that  many,  very  many  indeed,  would  say  :  "  Do 
we  not  also  possess  the  Spirit  and  understand  Scripture  as  well 
as  you  ?  "  would  only  too  surely  be  realised. 

"  What  man  on  earth,"  wrote  the  Duke  in  his  usual  downright 
fashion,  "  ever  hitherto  undertook  a  more  foolish  task  than  you 
in  seeking  to  include  in  your  sect  all  Christians,  especially  those 
of  the  German  nation  ?  Success  is  as  likely  in  your  case  as  it 
was  in  that  of  those  who  set  about  building  a  tower  in  Babylonia 
which  was  to  reach  the  very  heavens  ;  in  the  end  they  had  to 
cease  from  building,  and  the  result  was  seventy- two  new  tongues. 
The  same  will  befall  you  ;  you  also  will  have  to  stop,  and  the 
result  will  be  seventy- two  new  sects."5 

Luther's  letters  speak  throughout  in  a  similar  strain  of 
the  divisions  already  existing  and  the  gloomy  outlook  for 
the  future  ;  in  the  'forties  his  lamentation  over  the  approach - 

1  Ib.,  p.  169.  2  /6>>  PI  417> 

3  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  32,  p.  474  ;    Erl.  ed.,  43,  p.  263. 

4  Ib.,  p.  475  =  264  f. 

5  In    the    "  Antwort    auf    das    Schmahbuchlein,"    etc.,    "  Luthers 
Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  252,  p.  146. 


172  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

ing  calamities  becomes,  however,  even  louder  than  usual 
in  spite  of  the  apparent  progress  of  his  cause.  Much  of  what 
he  says  puts  us  vividly  in  mind  of  Duke  George's  words  just 
quoted. 

Amidst  the  excitement  of  his  struggle  with  the  fanatics 
he  wrote  as  early  as  1525  to  the  "  Christians  at  Antwerp  "  : 
"  The  tiresome  devil  begins  to  rage  amongst  the  ungodly 
and  to  belch  forth  many  wild  and  mazy  beliefs  and  doctrines. 
This  man  will  have  nothing  of  baptism,  that  one  denies  the 
Sacrament,  a  third  awaits  another  world  between  this  and 
the  Last  Day  ;  some  teach  that  Christ  is  not  God  ;  some 
say  this,  some  that,  and  there  are  as  many  sects  and  beliefs 
as  there  are  heads  ;  no  peasant  is  so  rude  but  that  if  he 
dreams  or  fancies  something,  it  must  forsooth  be  the  Holy 
Spirit  which  inspires  him,  and  he  himself  must  be  a  prophet."1 

After  the  bitter  experiences  of  the  intervening  years  we  find 
in  a  letter  of  1536  this  bitter  lament  :  "  Pray  for  me  that  I  too 
may  be  delivered  from  certain  ungodly  men,  seeing  you  rejoice 
that  God  has  delivered  you  from  the  Anabaptists  and  the  sects. 
For  new  prophets  are  constantly  arising  against  me  one  after  the 
other,  so  that  I  almost  wish  to  be  dissolved  in  order  not  to  see 
such  evils  without  end,  and  to  be  set  free  at  last  from  this  kingdom 
of  the  devil."2 

Even  in  the  strong  pillars  of  the  Evangel,  in  the  Landgrave  of 
Hesse  and  Bucer  the  theologian,  he  apprehended  treason  to  his 
cause  and  complains  of  them  as  "  false  brethren."  At  the  time 
of  the  negotiations  at  Ratisbon,  in  1541,  he  exclaims  in  a  letter  to 
Melanchthon  :  "  They  are  making  advances  to  the  Emperor  and 
to  our  foes,  and  look  on  our  cause  as  a  comedy  to  be  played  out 
among  the  people,  though  as  is  evident  it  is  a  tragedy  between 
God  and  Satan  in  which  Satan's  side  has  the  upper  hand  and 
God's  comes  off  second  best.  ...  I  say  this  with  anger  and  am 
incensed  at  their  games.  But  so  it  must  be  ;  the  fact  that  we 
are  endangered  by  false  brethren  likens  us  to  the  Apostle  Paul, 
nay,  to  the  whole  Church,  and  is  the  sure  seal  that  God  stamps 
upon  us."3 

In  spite  of  this  "  seal  of  God,"  he  is  annoyed  to  see  how  his 
Evangel  becomes  the  butt  of  "  heretical  attacks  "  from  within, 
and  suffers  from  the  disintegrating  and  destructive  influence  of 
the  immorality  and  godlessness  of  many  of  his  followers. 

This,  for  instance,  he  bewails  in  a  letter  of  condolence  sent  in 
1541  to  Wenceslaus  Link  of  Nuremberg.  At  Nuremberg  accord- 

1  April,  1525,  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  18,  p.  547  ;  Erl.  ed.,  53,  p.  342 
("  Briefwechsel,"  5,  p.  151). 

2  To  the  Preacher  Balthasar  Raida  of  Hersfeld,   Jan.    17,    1536, 
"  Briefwechsel,"  10,  p.  288. 

3  April  4,  1541,  "  Briefwechsel,"  13,  p.  291. 


FEARS   AND   APPREHENSIONS      173 

ing  to  Link's  account  the  evil  seemed  to  be  assuming  a  menacing 
shape.  Not  the  foe  without,  writes  Luther,  but  rather  "  our 
great  gainsayers  within,  who  repay  us  with  contempt,  are  the 
danger  we  must  fear,  according  to  the  words  of  the  common 
prophecy  :  '  After  Antichrist  has  been  revealed  men  will  come 
who  say :  There  is  no  God ! '  This  we  see  everywhere  fulfilled 
to-day.  .  .  .  They  think  our  words  are  but  human  words  !  '51 

About  this  time  he  often  contemplates  with  sadness  the 
abundance  of  other  crying  disorders  in  his  Churches, 2  the  wanton 
ness  of  the  great  and  the  decadence  of  the  people  ;  he  cries  : 
"  Hasten,  O  Jesus,  Thy  coming  ;  the  evils  have  come  to  a  head 
and  the  end  cannot  be  delayed.  Amen."3  "  I  am  sick  of  life  if 
this  life  can  be  called  life.  .  .  .  Implacable  hatred  and  strife 
amongst  the  great  ...  no  hopes  of  any  improvement  .  .  .  the 
age  is  Satan's  own  ;  gladly  would  I  see  myself  and  all  my  people 
quickly  snatched  from  it  !  "4  The  evil  spirit  of  apostasy  and 
fanatism  which  had  raged  so  terribly  at  Minister,  was  now, 
according  to  him,  particularly  busy  amongst  the  great  ones,  just 
as  formerly  it  had  laid  hold  on  the  peasants.  "  May  God  prevent 
him  and  resist  him,  the  evil  spirit,  for  truly  he  means  mischief."5 

And  yet  he  still  in  his  own  way  hopes  in  God  and  clings  to  the 
idea  of  his  call  ;  God  will  soon  mock  at  the  devil  :  "  The  working 
of  Satan  is  patent,  but  God  at  Whom  they  now  laugh  will  mock 
at  Satan  in  His  own  time."6 

We  can  understand  after  such  expressions  descriptive 
of  his  state  of  mind,  the  assurance  with  which,  for  all  his 
confidence  of  victory,  he  frequently  seems  to  forecast  the 
certain  downfall  of  his  cause.  In  the  German  Table-Talk, 
for  instance,  we  read  :  "So  long  as  those  who  are  now  living 
and  who  teach  the  Word  of  God  diligently  are  still  with  us, 
those  who  have  seen  and  heard  me,  Philip,  Pomeranus  and 
other  pious,  faithful  and  honest  teachers,  all  may  be  well  ; 
but  when  they  all  are  gone  and  this  age  is  over,  there  will 
be  a  falling  away."7  He  also  sees  how  two  great  and  widely 
differing  parties  will  arise  among  his  followers  :  unbelievers 
on  the  one  hand  and  Pietists  and  fanatics  on  the  other  ; 
we  have  a  characteristic  prophecy  of  the  sort  where  he  says 
of  the  one  party,  that,  like  the  Epicureans,  they  would 

1  To  Wenceslaus  Link,  Sep.  8,  1541,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  398. 

2  To  the  Elector  Johann  Frederick,  Jan.  18,  1545,  ib.,  p.  716  :    "  I 
will  have  them  [the  lawyers]  eternally  damned   and  cursed  in  my 
Churches." 

3  To  Justus  Jonas,  Dec.  16,  1543,  ib.,  p.  612. 

4  To  Jacob  Probst,  Dec.  5,  1544,  ib.,  p.  703. 

5  To  Amsdorf,  Jan.  8,  1546,  ib.,  p.  773  f.  6  /&.,  p.  774. 

7  Cp.  (E.  v.  Jarcke)  "  Studien  und  Skizzen  z.  Gesch.  d.  Ref.,"  1846, 
p.  68. 


174          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

acknowledge  "  no  God  or  other  life  after  this,"  and  of  the 
other,  that  many  people  would  come  out  of  the  school  of 
enthusiasm,  "  following  their  own  ideas  and  speculations  and 
boasting  of  the  Spirit  "  ;  "  drunk  with  their  own  virtues 
and  having  their  understanding  darkened,"  they  would 
"  obstinately  insist  on  their  own  fancies  and  yield  to  no 
one."1 

And  again  he  says  sadly :  "  God  will  sweep  His  threshing- 
floor.  I  pray  that  after  my  death  my  wife  and  children 
may  not  long  survive  me  ;  very  dangerous  times  are  at 
hand."2  "  I  pray  God,"  he  frequently  said,  "  to  take  away 
this  our  generation  with  us,  for,  when  once  we  are  gone,  the 
worst  of  times  will  follow."3  The  preacher,  "  M.  Antonius 
Musa  once  said,"  so  he  recalls  :  "  We  old  preachers  only 
vex  the  world,  but  on  you  young  ones  the  world  will  pour 
out  its  wrath  ;  therefore  take  heed  to  yourselves."4 

This  is  not  the  place  to  investigate  historically  the  fulfil 
ment  of  these  predictions.  We  shall  content  ourselves  with 
quoting,  in  connection  with  Musa,  the  words  of  another 
slightly  later  preacher.  Cyriacus  Spangenberg  saw  in 
Luther  a  prophet,  for  one  reason  because  his  gloomiest  pre 
dictions  were  being  fulfilled  before  the  eyes  of  all.  In  the 
third  sermon  of  his  book,  "  Luther  the  Man  of  God,"  he 
shows  to  what  frightful  contempt  the  preachers  of  Luther's 
unadulterated  doctrine  were  everywhere  exposed,  just  as  he 
himself  (Spangenberg)  was  hated  and  persecuted  for  being 
over-zealous  for  the  true  faith  of  the  "  Saint  "  of  Witten 
berg.  "  Ah,"  he  says  in  a  sermon  in  1563  couched  in  Luther's 
style,  "  Shame  on  thy  heart,  thy  neck,  thy  tongue,  thou 
filthy  and  accursed  world.  Thy  blasphemy,  fornication,  un- 
chastity,  gluttony  and  drunkenness  .  .  .  are  not  thought 
too  much  ;  but  that  such  should  be  scolded  is  too  much. 
...  If  this  be  not  the  devil  himself,  then  it  is  something 
very  like  him  and  is  assuredly  his  mother."5 

3.  Provisions  for  the  Future 

Luther  failed  to  make  the  effectual  and  systematic  efforts 
called  for  in  order  to  stave  off  the  fate  to  which  he  foresaw 
his  work  would  be  exposed.  He  was  not  the  man  to  put 

1  Ib.         2  Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  158.          3  Ib.,  p.  198. 
4  Ib.,  p.  200.          5  "  Theander  Lutherus,"  Ursel  s.a.,  Bl.  59'. 


A  COUNCIL   SUGGESTED          175 

matters  in  order,  quite  apart  from  the  unstirmountable 
difficulties  this  would  have  involved,  seeing  he  possessed  little 
talent  for  organisation.  He  was  very  well  aware  that  one 
expedient  would  be  to  surrender  church  government  almost 
entirely  into  the  hands  of  the  secular  authorities. 

A  Protestant  Council? 

The  negotiations  which  preceded  the  (Ecumenical  Council 
of  the  Catholic  Church,  had  for  one  result  not  only  to  impress 
the  innovators  with  a  sense  of  their  own  unsettled  state,  but 
to  lead  them  to  discuss  the  advisability  of  holding  a  great 
Protestant  council  of  their  own.  Luther  himself,  however, 
wisely  held  aloof  from  such  a  plan,  nay  his  opposition  to 
it  was  one  of  the  main  obstacles  which  prevented  its  fulfil 
ment. 

When  the  idea  was  first  mooted  in  1533  it  was  rejected 
by  Luther  and  his  theologians  Jonas,  Bugenhagen  and 
Melanchthon  in  a  joint  memorandum.  "  Because  it  is 
plain,"  so  they  declare,  "  that  we  ourselves  are  not  at  one, 
and  must  first  of  all  consider  how  we  are  to  arrive  at  unity 
amongst  ourselves.  In  short,  though  an  opposition  council 
might  be  good  and  useful  it  is  needless  to  speak  of  such  a 
thing  just  now."1 

In  1537  the  Landgrave  of  Hesse,  and  more  particularly 
the  Elector  of  Saxony,  again  proposed  at  Schmalkalden 
that  Luther,  following  the  example  of  the  Greeks  and  the 
Bohemians,  should  summon  a  council  of  his  own,  a  national 
Evangelical  council,  to  counteract  the  Papal  Council.2  The 
Elector  proposed  that  it  should  be  assembled  at  Augsburg 
and  comprise  at  least  250  preachers  and  men  of  the  law  ; 
the  Emperor  might  be  invited  to  attend  and  a  considerable 
army  was  also  to  be  drafted  to  Augsburg  for  the  protection 
of  the  assembly.  At  that  time  Luther's  serious  illness  saved 
him  from  an  embarrassing  situation. 

Bucer  and  Melanchthon  were  now  the  sole  supporters  of 

1  After  June  16,  1533,  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  55,  p.  20.  ("  Brief- 
wechsel,"  9,  p.  312.)  The  passage  in  question  in  the  original  at 
Weimar  is  in  Melanchthon's  handwriting.  Cp.  Enders,  p.  313,  on  the 
historical  connection  of  the  memorandum. 

"  Corp.  ref.,"  3,  p.  139  sqq.  Rommel,  "  Philipp  von  Hessen," 
1,  p.  417.  Janssen,  "Hist,  of  the  German  People"  (Engl.  Trans.), 
vol.  v.,  p.  527  ff.  Pastor,  "  Die  kirchl,  Reunionsbestrebungen  wahrend 
der  Regierung  Karls  V,"  p.  95, 


176          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

the  plan  of  a  council.  Both  were  men  who  believed  in 
mediation  and  Melanchthon  may  really  have  hoped  for 
a  while,  that  the  "  philosophy  of  dissimulation,"  for  which 
he  stood,1  might,  even  in  a  council,  palliate  the  inward 
differences  and  issue  in  something  tolerably  satisfactory. 
Luther  himself  was  never  again  to  refer  to  the  Evangelical 
Council. 

It  was  the  theologians  headed  by  Martin  Bucer,  who,  at  the 
Diet  of  Schmalkalden  in  1540  at  which  Luther  was  not  present, 
lodged  a  memorandum  on  the  advisability  of  holding  a  council. 
The  petitioners  declared  it  "  very  useful  and  called  for,  both  for 
the  saving  of  unity  in  doctrine  and  for  the  bettering  of  many 
other  things,  that,  every  one  or  two  years,  the  Estates  should 
convene  a  synod  ;  Visitors  chosen  there  were  to  "  silence  any 
errors  in  doctrine"  that  they  might  discover.2  The  Estates, 
however,  did  not  agree  to  this  proposal  ;  it  was  easy  to  foresee 
that  it  would  be  unworkable  and  productive  of  evil.  It  was 
only  necessary  to  call  to  mind  the  fruitlessness  of  the  great 
assemblies  at  Cassel  and  Wittenberg  which  had  brought  about 
the  so-called  Wittenberg  Concord  and  the  disturbances  to  which 
the  Concord  gave  rise.3 

Bucer  keenly  regreted  the  absence  of  any  ecclesiastical  unity 
and  cohesion  amongst  his  friends. 

"  Not  even  a  shadow  of  it  remains,"  so  he  wrote  to  Bullinger. 
"  Every  church  stands  alone  and  every  preacher  for  himself. 
Not  a  few  shun  all  connection  with  their  brethren  and  any 
discussion  of  the  things  of  Christ.  It  is  just  like  a  body  the 
members  of  which  are  cut  off  and  where  one  cannot  help  the  other. 
Yet  the  spirit  of  Christ  is  a  spirit  of  harmony  ;  Christ  wills  that 
His  people  should  be  one,  as  He  and  the  Father  are  one,  and  that 
they  love  one  another  as  He  loved  us.  .  .  .  Unless  we  become 
one  in  the  Lord  every  effort  at  mending  and  reviving  morals  is 
bound  to  be  useless.  For  this  reason,"  he  continues,  "  it  was 
the  wish  of  (Ecolampadius  when  the  faith  was  first  preached  at 
Basle,  to  see  the  congregations  represented  and  furthered  by 
synods.  But  he  was  not  successful  even  amongst  us  [who  stood 
nearest  to  him  in  the  faith].  I  cannot  say  that  to-day  there  is 
any  more  possibility  of  establishing  this  union  of  the  Churches  ; 
but  the  real  cause  of  our  decline  certainly  lies  in  this  inability. 
Possibly,  later  on,  others  may  succeed  where  we  failed.  For, 
truly,  what  we  have  received  of  the  knowledge  of  Christ  and  of 
discipline  will  fade  away  unless  we,  who  are  Christ's,  unite  our 
selves  more  closely  as  members  of  His  Body." 

He  proceeds  to  indicate  plainly  that  one  of  the  main  obstacles 

1  To  Brenz,  April  14,   1537,   "  Corp.  ref.,"   3,  p.   340  :     "  Ulyssea 
philosophia  .  .  .  multa  dissimulantes" 

2  Letter  of  March  10,  1540,  in  Bindseil,  "  Melanchthonis  epistolae, 
iudicia,  etc.,"  1874,  p.  146. 

3  Cp.  above,  vol.  iii.,  p4421  ff. 


A   COUNCIL   SUGGESTED  177 

to  such  a  union  was  Luther's  rude  and  offensive  behaviour 
towards  the  Swiss  theologians  :  Luther  had  undoubtedly  heaped 
abuse  on  "  guiltless  brethren."  But  with  this  sort  of  thing, 
inevitable  in  his  case,  it  would  be  necessary  to  put  up.  "  Will 
it  not  be  better  for  us  to  let  this  pass  than  to  involve  so 
many  Churches  in  even  worse  scandals  ?  Could  I,  without  grave 
damage  to  the  Churches,  do  something  to  stop  all  this  vitupera 
tion,  then  assuredly  I  should  not  fail  to  do  so."1 

Unfortunately  the  peacemaker's  efforts  could  avail  nothing 
against  a  personality  so  imperious  and  ungovernable  as  Luther's. 

Bucer  continued  nevertheless  to  further  the  idea  of  a  Protestant 
council,  though,  so  long  as  Luther  lived,  only  with  bated  breath. 
He  endeavoured  at  least  to  interest  the  Landgrave  of  Hesse  in 
his  plan  for  holding  small  synods  of  theologians. 

It  was  the  want  of  unity  in  the  matter  of  doctrine  and  the 
visible  decline  of  discipline  that  drove  him  again  and  again  to 
think  of  this  remedy.  On  Jan.  8,  1544,  he  wrote  to  Landgrave 
Philip  :  In  so  many  places  there  is  "no  profession  of  faith,  no 
penalties,  no  excommunication  of  those  who  sin  publicly,  nor 
yet  any  Visitation  or  synod.  Only  what  the  lord  or  burgomaster 
wished  was  done,  and,  in  place  of  one  Pope,  many  Popes  have 
arisen  and  things  become  worse  and  worse  from  day  to  day." 
He  reminds  the  Prince  of  the  proposal  made  at  Schmalkalden  ; 
because  nothing  was  done  to  put  this  in  effect,  scandals  were  on 
the  increase.  "  We  constantly  find  that  scarcely  a  third  or  fourth 
part  communicate  with  Christ.  What  sort  of  Christians  will 
there  be  eventually  ?  "2 — In  the  same  way  he  tells  him  later  : 
Because  no  synods  are  held  "  many  things  take  place  daily  which 
ought  really  greatly  to  trouble  all  of  us."3  In  Wiirtemberg  and 
in  some  of  the  towns  of  Swabia  the  authorities  were  dissuaded  by 
the  groundless  fear  lest  the  preachers  should  once  more  gain  too 
much  influence  ;  this  was  why  the  secular  authorities  were  averse 
to  synods  and  Visitations  ;  but  "  on  this  account  daily  arise 
gruesome  divisions  in  matters  of  doctrine  and  unchastity  of  life  ; 
we  find  some  who  are  daily  maddened  with  drink  and  who  give 
such  scandal  in  other  matters  that  the  enemies  of  Christ  have  a 
terrible  excuse  for  blaspheming  and  hindering  our  true  Gospel. 
...  At  the  last  Schmalkalden  meeting  all  the  preachers  were 
anxious  that  synods  and  Visitations  should  be  ordered  and  held 
everywhere.  But  who  has  paid  any  heed  to  this  ?  "  And  yet 
this  is  the  best  means  whereby  "  our  holy  religion  might  be 
preserved  and  guarded  from  the  new  Papists  amongst  us,  i.e. 
those  who  do  not  accept  the  Word  of  God  in  its  purity  and 
entirety,  but  explain  it  away,  pull  it  to  pieces,  distort  and  bend 
it  as  their  own  sensual  passions  and  temptations  move  them."4 

Once  the  main  obstacle  had  been  removed  by  Luther's  death, 

1  Letter  of  Dec.  28,  1543,  in  Lenz,  "  Brief wechsel  des  Landgrafen 
Philipp  von  Hessen,"  2,  p.  227.     "  Nihil  est  quod  minus  multum  [read 
inulturri]  relinquerem." 

2  Lenz,  ib.,  p.  241.          3  Letter  of  Feb.  25,  1545,  Lenz,  p.  304, 
4  Letter  of  Dec.  1,  1545,  Lenz,  p.  379, 

V,— N 


178          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

Bucer,  who  was  very  confident  of  his  own  abilities,  again  mooted 
the  idea  of  a  great  council.  In  the  same  letter  to  Landgrave 
Philip  of  Hesse  in  which  he  refers  to  the  death  of  Luther,  "  the 
father  and  teacher  of  us  all,"  which  had  occurred  shortly  before, 
he  exhorts  the  Landgrave  more  emphatically  than  ever  to  co 
operate,  so  that  "first  of  all  a  general  synod  may  be  held  of  our 
co-religionists  of  every  estate,"  to  which  all  the  sovereigns  should 
despatch  eminent  preachers  and  councillors — i.e.  be  formally 
convened  by  the  secular  authorities — and,  that,  subsequently 
"  particular  synods  be  held  in  every  country  of  the  Churches 
situated  there."1  "Short  of  this  the  Churches  will  assuredly 
fare  badly."2 

The  Landgrave  was  not  averse,  yet  the  matter  never  got  any 
further.  The  terrible  quarrels  amongst  the  theologians  in  the 
camp  of  the  new  faith  after  Luther's  decease3  put  any  general 
Protestant  council  out  of  the  question. 

We  can  imagine  what  such  a  council  would  have  become, 
if,  in  addition  to  the  theologians,  the  lay  element  had  been 
represented  to  the  extent  demanded  at  a  certain  Disputa 
tion  held  at  Wittenberg  under  Luther's  presidency  in  1543.4 
From  the  idea  of  the  whole  congregation  taking  its  share  in 
the  government  of  the  Church,  Luther  could  never  entirely 
shake  himself  free.  Nevertheless  it  is  probable,  that,  in 
spite  of  this  Disputation,  he  had  not  really  changed  his  mind 
as  to  the  impossibility  of  an  Evangelical  council. 

If,  with  Luther's,  we  compare  Melanchthon's  attitude 
towards  the  question  of  a  Lutheran  council  we  find  that 
the  latter's  wish  for  such  a  council  and  his  observations 
about  it  afforded  him  plentiful  opportunity  for  voicing  his 
indignation  at  the  religious  disruption  then  rampant.5 

"  Weak  consciences  are  troubled,"  he  said  in  1536, 
"  and  know  not  which  sect  to  follow  ;  in  their  perplexity 
they  begin  to  despair  of  religion  altogether."6 — "  Violent 
sermons,  which  promote  lawlessness  and  break  down  all 
barriers  against  the  passions,  are  listened  to  greedily.  Such 

1  Letter  of  April  5,  1546,  Lenz,  p.  426  f. 

2  Letter  of  May  12,  1545,  Lenz,  p.  433. 

3  See  below,  vol.  vi.,  xl.,  3. 

4  Seckendorf,    "  Comm.    hist,    de   Lutheranismo,"    3,    Lips.,    1694, 
p.  468.     The  disputant,  Johannes  Marbach,  received  from  Luther  this 
testimony  :     "  Amplectitur  pur  am   evangelii   doctrinam,   quam  ecclesia 
nostra  uno  spiritu  et  una  voce  profitetur."     "  Briefe,"  ed.  De  Wette,  5, 
p.  543.      Cp.  Disputationen,  ed.  Drews,  p.  700  ff.      Some  of  Luther's 
other  statements  concerning  unity  ring  very  differently. 

5  Cp.  vol.  in.,  pp.  324,  363,  371  f. 

9  "  Corp.  ref.,"  3,  p.  230  ;    "  Incipiunt  de  tola  religione  dubilare" 


THE   CONSISTORIES  179 

preaching,  more  worthy  of  cynics  than  of  Christians,  it 
is  which  thunders  forth  the  false  doctrine  that  good  works 
are  not  called  for.  Posterity  will  marvel  that  there  should 
ever  have  been  an  age  when  such  madness  was  received  with 
applause."1 — "  Had  you  made  the  journey  with  us,"  he 
writes  on  his  return  from  a  visit  to  the  Palatinate  and 
Swabia,  "  and,  like  us,  seen  the  woeful  desolation  of  the 
Churches  in  so  many  places,  you  would  doubtless  long  with 
tears  and  sighs  that  the  Princes  and  the  learned  should  con 
fer  together  how  best  to  come  to  the  help  of  the  Churches."2 
— Later  again  we  read  in  his  letters  :  "  Behold  how  great 
is  everywhere  the  danger  to  the  Churches  and  how  difficult 
their  government  ;  for  everywhere  those  in  the  ministry 
quarrel  amongst  themselves  and  set  up  strife  and  division." 
"  We  live  like  the  nomads,  no  one  obeys  any  man  in  any 
thing  whatsoever."3 

Two  provisions  suggested  by  Luther  for  the  future  in 
lieu  of  the  impracticable  synods  were,  the  establishment  of 
national  consistories  and  the  use  of  a  sort  of  excommunica 
tion. 

Luther's  Attitude  towards  the  Consistories  introduced 
in  1539 

With  strange  resignation  Luther  sought  to  persuade  him 
self  that,  even  without  the  help  of  any  synods  and  general 
laws,  it  would  still  be  possible  to  re-establish  order  by  means 
of  a  certain  supervision  to  be  exercised  with  the  assistance 
of  the  State,  backed  by  the  penalty  of  exclusion.  Against 
laws  and  regulations  for  the  guidance  of  the  Church's  life, 
he  displayed  an  ever-growing  prejudice,  the  reason  for  this 
being  partly  his  peculiar  ideas  on  the  abrogation  of  all 
governing  authority  of  the  Church,  partly  the  experiences 
with  which  he  had  met. 

"  So  long  as  the  sense  of  unity  is  not  well  rooted  in  the 
heart  and  mind  " — he  wrote  in  1545,  i.e.  after  the  establish 
ment  of  the  consistories — "  outward  unity  is  not  of  much 
use,  nor  will  it  last  long.  .  .  .  The  existing  observances  [in 
matters  of  worship]  must  not  become  laws.  On  the  con- 

1  "  Pezelii  Object,  et  resp.  Melanchtonis,"  P.  V.,  p.  289.    Dollinger, 
"  Die  Reformation,"  1,  p.  373. 

2  Nov.,  1536,  to  Myconius,  "  Corp.  ref.,"  3,  p.  187. 

3  Ib.,  pp.  460,  488  (1537  and  1538). 


180          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

trary,  just  as  the  schoolmaster  and  father  of  the  family  rule 
without  laws,  and,  in  the  school  and  in  the  home,  correct 
faults,  so  to  speak  only  by  supervision,  so,  in  the  same  way, 
in  the  Church,  everything  should  be  done  by  means  of  super 
vision,  but  not  by  rules  for  the  future.  .  .  .  Everything 
depends  on  the  minister  of  the  Word  being  prudent  and 
faithful.  For  this  reason  we  prefer  to  insist  on  the  erection 
of  schools,  but  above  all  on  that  purity  and  uniformity 
of  doctrine  which  unites  minds  in  the  Lord.  But,  alas, 
there  are  too  few  who  devote  themselves  to  study  ;  many 
are  just  bellies  and  no  more,  intent  on  their  daily  bread. 
.  .  .  Time,  however,  will  mend  much  that  it  is  impossible 
to  settle  beforehand  by  means  of  regulations."1 

"  If  we  make  laws,"  he  continues,  "  they  become  snares 
for  consciences  and  pure  doctrine  is  obscured  and  set  aside, 
particularly  if  those  who  come  after  are  careless  and 
unlearned.  .  .  .  Already  during  our  lifetime  we  have  seen 
sects  and  dissensions  enough  under  our  very  noses,  how  each 
one  follows  his  own  way.  In  short,  contempt  for  the  Word 
on  our  side  and  blasphemy  on  the  other  [Catholic]  side  pro 
claim  loudly  enough  the  advent  of  the  Last  Day.  Hence, 
above  all,  let  us  have  pure  and  abundant  preaching  of  the 
Word  !  The  ministers  of  the  Word  must  first  of  all  become 
one  heart  and  one  soul.  For  if  we  make  laws  our  successors 
will  lay  claim  to  the  same  authority,  and,  fallen  human 
nature  being  what  it  is,  the  result  will  be  a  war  of  the  flesh 
against  the  flesh."2 

In  other  words  Luther  foresaw  a  war  of  all  against  all 
as  likely  sooner  or  later  to  be  the  result  of  any  thorough 
going  attempt  to  regulate  matters  by  means  of  laws  as  the 
Catholics  did  in  their  councils.  He  and  his  friends  were 
persuaded  that  laws  could  only  be  made  effectual  by  virtue 
of  the  power  of  the  State. 

Melanchthon  declared  :  "  Unless  the  Court  supports  our 
arrangements,  what  else  will  they  become  but  Platonic 
laws,  to  use  a  Greek  saying  ?  "3 

The  idea  to  which  Luther  had  clung  so  long  as  there  was 
any  hope,  viz.  to  make  the  congregations  self-governing,  was 
but  a  fanciful  and  impracticable  one  ;  when  again,  little  by 
little,  he  came  to  seek  support  from  the  secular  authority, 

1  To  Prince  George  of  Anhalt,  June  10,  1545,  "  Brief e,"  ed.  De 
Wette,  6,  p.  379.  2  Ib.  3  "  Corp.  ref.,"  1,  p.  907. 


THE   CONSISTORIES  181 

he  did  so  merely  under  compulsion  ;  he  felt  it  to  involve 
a  repudiation  of  his  own  principles,  nor  could  he  control  his 
jealousy  when  the  far-reaching  interference  of  the  State 
speedily  became  manifest. 

In  the  Saxon  electorate  the  consistories  had  been  intro 
duced  in  1539,  not  so  much  at  the  instance  of  Luther  as  of 
the  committee  representing  the  Estates.  They  were  to  deal 
with  ecclesiastical  affairs  and  disputes,  with  complaints 
against,  and  grievances  of,  the  clergy,  but  chiefly  with  the 
matrimonial  cases.  The  earlier  "  Visitors  "  had  lacked 
executive  powers.  The  consistory  established  by  the 
Elector  at  Wittenberg  for  the  whole  electorate  was  com 
posed  of  two  preachers  (Jonas  and  Agricola),  and  two 
lawyers.  Luther  raised  many  objections,  particularly  to  the 
consistory's  proposed  use  of  excommunication  ;  he  feared 
that,  unless  they  stuck  to  his  theological  views,  the  con 
sistories  would  lead  to  "  yet  another  scrimmage."  Later, 
however,  he  gave  the  new  organisation  his  support.  It 
was  not  till  1541  that  the  work  of  the  consistories  was  more 
generally  extended.1 

Luther  consoled  himself  and  Spalatin  as  follows  for  the  loss 
of  dignity  which  they  apprehended  :  "  The  consistory  will  deal 
only  with  matrimonial  cases,  with  which  we  no  longer  will  or 
can  have  any  more  to  do  ;  also  with  the  bringing  back  of  the 
peasants  to  some  sort  of  discipline  and  the  payment  of  stipends 
to  the  preachers."2 

For  the  Wittenberg  consistory  to  relieve  him  of  the  matri 
monial  cases  was  in  many  respects  just  what  he  desired.  He 
had  himself  frequently  dealt  with  these  cases  according  to  the 
dictates  of  his  own  ever-changing  views  on  marriage,  so  far  as 
he  was  allowed  by  his  frequent  quarrels  with  the  lawyers  who 
questioned  his  right  to  interfere.  He  now  declared  :  "I  am  glad 
that  the  consistoria  have  been  established,  especially  on  account 
of  the  matrimonial  cases."3  As  early  as  1536,  he  had  written  : 
"  The  peasants  and  rude  populace  who  seek  nothing  but  the 
freedom  of  the  flesh,  and  likewise  the  lawyers,  who,  whenever 
possible,  oppose  our  decisions,  have  wearied  me  so  much  that  I 
have  flung  aside  the  matrimonial  cases  and  written  to  some 
telling  them  that  they  may  do  just  as  they  please  in  the  name  of 
all  the  devils  ;  let  the  dead  bury  their  dead  ;  for  though  I  give 
much  advice,  I  cannot  help  the  people  when  afterwards  they  are 

1  Kostlin-Kawerau,  2,  pp.  441,  574. 

2  To  Spalatin,  Jan.  12,  1541.     "  Brief wechsel,"  13,  p.  246.     "  Spala 
tin  foresaw  what  was  to   come  better  than  did  Luther."     K.  Holl, 
"Luther  und  das  landesherrliche  Kirchenregiment,"  1911,  p.  57. 

3  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  61,  p.  223,  Table-Talk. 


182  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

robbed  and  teased  [by  the  lawyers].  If  the  world  will  have  the 
Pope  then  let  it  have  him  if  otherwise  it  cannot  be." 

"  So  far  I  have  not  found  one  single  lawyer,"  he  continues, 
speaking  of  a  certain  matrimonial  question,  "  who  would  hold 
with  me  against  the  Pope  in  this  or  any  similar  case.  .  .  .  We 
theologians  know  nothing,  and  are  not  supposed  to  count."1 

It  was  in  part  nausea  and  wounded  vanity,  in  part  also  his 
abhorrence  for  the  ecclesiastical  and  sacramental  side  of  marriage 
which  caused  him  repeatedly  to  declare  :  "I  would  we  were 
rid  of  the  matrimonial  business  "  ;2  "  marriage  and  all  its  circum 
stances  is  a  political  affair  "  (both  statements  date  from  1538)  ;3 
"  leave  the  matrimonial  cases  to  the  secular  authorities,  for  they 
concern,  not  the  conscience,  but  the  external  law  of  the  Princes 
and  magistrates  "  (1532).4 

Of  the  ecclesiastical  powers  of  the  sovereign  he  declared 
however  (1539),  "We  must  make  the  best  of  him  as  bishop, 
since  no  other  bishop  will  help  us."5 

"  But  if  things  come  to  such  a  pass  that  the  Courts  try  to  rule 
as  they  please,"  so  he  wrote  at  a  time  when  this  principle  had 
already  begun  to  bear  its  bitter  fruit,  "  then  the  last  state  will 
be  worse  than  the  first  ...  in  that  case  let  the  Lords  them 
selves  be  our  pastors  and  preachers,  let  them  baptise,  visit  the 
sick,  give  communion  and  perform  all  the  other  offices  of  the 
Church !  Otherwise  let  them  stop  confusing  the  two  callings, 
attend  to  their  own  Courts  and  leave  the  Churches  to  the  clergy. 
...  It  is  Satan  who  in  our  day  is  seeking  to  introduce  into  the 
Church  the  counsels  and  the  authority  of  the  government  officials  ; 
we  shall,  however,  resist  him  and  keep  the  two  callings  separate."6 

Yet  the  "  two  callings,"  the  secular  and  the  ecclesiastical, 
were  to  become  more  and  more  closely  intermingled.  As 
was  inevitable,  the  weak  spiritual  authority  set  up  by 
Luther  was  soon  absorbed  by  a  strong  secular  authority 
well  aware  of  its  own  aims  ;  the  secular  power  treated  the 
former  as  its  sacristan  charged  with  carrying  out  the  services 
of  the  Church,  and  gradually  assumed  exclusive  control, 
even  in  matters  of  doctrine.  A  moral  servitude  such  as  had 
never  been  seen  at  any  period  in  the  history  of  the  German 
Church  was  the  consequence  of  the  State  government  of 
the  Church,  brought  about  by  the  consistories. 

1  To  Count  Albert  of  Mansfeld,  Oct.  5,  1536,  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed., 
55,  p.  147  ("  Brief wechsel,"  11,  p.  90).    Cp.  above,  vol.  iii.,  38  f.,  263  f. 

2  Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  121. 

3  Ib.,  p.  152. 

4  Schlaginhaufen,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  82. 

5  To  the  Visitors  in  Thuringia,  March  25,  1539,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  173 
("  Brief  wechsel,"  12,  p.  118). 

6  To  Daniel  Cresser,    Oct.    22,   1543,   "  Briefe,"  ed.   De   Wette,  5, 
p.  596,  concerning  certain  occurrences  at  Dresden. 


THE    CONSISTORIES  183 

In  order  to  understand  Luther's  attitude  towards  the  con 
sistories  and  to  gauge  rightly  his  responsibility,  some  further 
particulars  of  their  rise  and  earliest  form  are  called  for. 

In  1537  the  "  Great  Committee  of  the  Torgau  district  "  de 
manded,  that  the  Elector  should  establish  four  consistories  in 
his  lands.  On  these  would  devolve  the  looking  after  of  "  all 
ecclesiasticce  causce,  the  preaching  office,  the  churches  and  ministers, 
their  vindication  contra  injurias,  all  that  concerned  their  conduct 
and  life,  and  particularly  the  matrimonial  suits."  Some  such 
court  was  essential  in  the  case  of  these  suits,  because,  since  the 
dissolution  of  the  bishops'  courts,  the  utmost  disorders  had 
prevailed  and  nobody  even  knew  by  which  code  the  questions 
pending  were  to  be  judged,  whether  by  the  old  canon  law  with 
which  the  lawyers  were  familiar,  or  according  to  the  doctrine 
and  statutes  of  Luther  which  were  quite  a  different  thing.  The 
disciplinary  system  too  had  become  so  lax  that  some  revision  of 
the  Church  judiciary  appeared  inevitable. 

As  for  the  principles  which  were  to  direct  the  new  organisation  : 
Luther  was  inclined  at  times  to  be  forgetful  of  his  theory,  that 
his  Churches  should  have  no  canon  law  of  their  own ; x  even  at 
this  grave  crisis  he  does  not  seem  to  have  been  distinctly  con 
scious  of  it  ;  at  the  same  time  his  jealousy  made  him  unwilling 
to  see  all  the  authority  for  governing  the  new  Churches  conferred 
directly  by  the  State,  though,  with  his  usual  frankness,  he 
admitted  it  was  impossible  for  things  to  continue  as  they  were. 
The  most  influential  men  of  his  circle  were,  however,  determined 
to  have  so-called  ecclesiastical  courts  introduced  by  the  sovereign, 
which  should  then  govern  in  his  name  ;  hitherto,  they  urged,  it 
was  the  purely  secular  courts  which  had  intervened,  which  was 
a  mistake,  as  had  been  shown  in  practice  by  their  failure.  Thus, 
as  R.  Sohm  put  it,  "  did  Melanchthon's  ideas,  from  about  1537, 
gradually  oust  those  of  Luther  in  the  government  of  the  Lutheran 
Church."2 

It  was  from  this  standpoint  that,  in  his  Memorandum  of  1538 
addressed  to  the  Elector,  Jonas,  the  lawyer  and  theologian, 
supported  the  above-mentioned  proposal  of  the  Torgau  assembly. 

He  points  out  that  "  the  common  people  become  daily  more 
savage  and  uncouth,"  and  that  "  no  Christian  Church  can  hope 
to  stand  where  such  rudeness  and  lawlessness  prevail."  According 
to  him  the  authority  of  the  consistories  was  to  embrace  the  whole 
domain  of  Church  government.  They  were,  however,  to  derive 
their  authority  direct  from  the  sovereign,  "  through,  and  by  order 
of,  the  prince  of  the  land."  Hence  "  their  indices  were  to  have  the 
right  to  enforce  their  decisions  "  ;  they  were  to  be  in  a  position 
to  wield  the  Greater  Excommunication  with  its  temporal  conse 
quences,  also  to  inflict  bodily  punishment,  fines  and  "  suitable 
terms  of  imprisonment,"  and  therefore  to  have  "  men-at-arms  " 
and  "  a  prison  "  at  their  disposal.3 

Jonas  and  those  who  agreed  with  him  fancied  that  what  they 

1  See  above  p.  55,  ff.,  and  vol.  ii.,  p.  298. 

2  "  Kirchenrecht,"  1,  1892,  p.  613.  3  R.  Sohm,  ib.,  p.  615. 


184  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

were  setting  up  with  the  help  of  the  secular  power  was  a  spiritual 
court  ;  in  reality,  however,  they  were  advocating  a  purely 
secular,  coercive  institution. 

Luther's  views  differed  from  those  of  his  friends  in  so  far  as 
he  wished  to  see  the  new  courts — which  he  frowned  at  and 
distrusted — merely  invested  with  full  powers  for  dealing  with 
matrimonial  suits  ;  even  here,  however,  he  made  a  reservation, 
insisting  on  the  abrogation  of  canon  law.  The  Elector's  edict 
of  1539  appointing  the  consistories,  out  of  consideration  for 
Luther,  was  worded  rather  vaguely.  The  consistories  were, 
"  until  further  notice,"  to  see  to  the  "  ecclesiastical  affairs  " 
which  "have  occurred  so  far  or  shall  yet  occur  and  be  brought 
to  your  cognisance."  x  According  to  this  their  authority  was 
received  only  "  until  further  notice  "  from  the  ruler,  to  whom 
it  fell  to  bring  cases  to  their  "  cognisance,"  and,  who,  naturally 
kept  the  execution  of  the  sentence  in  his  own  hands. 

Luther,  it  is  true,  accepted  the  new  arrangement,  because,  as 
he  said,  it  represented  a  "  Church  court "  which  could  take  over 
the  matrimonial  cases.  But  forthwith  he  found  himself  in  con 
flict  with  the  lawyers  attached  to  the  courts  because  they  in 
sisted  on  taking  their  stand  on  canon  law.  To  his  very  death, 
even  in  his  public  utterances,  he  lashed  the  men  of  the  law  for 
thus  submitting  themselves  to  the  Pope  and  to  the  code  against 
which  his  life's  struggle  had  been  directed.  Yet  the  lawyers 
were  driven  to  make  use  of  the  old  statutes,  since  they  alone 
afforded  a  legal  basis,  and  because  Luther's  propositions  to  the 
contrary — on  secret  marriages,  for  instance — lacked  any  general 
recognition.  The  result  of  Luther's  opposition  to  the  consis 
tories  was,  that,  so  long  as  he  lived,  they  remained  without  any 
definite  instructions,  devoid  of  the  authority  which  had  been 
promised  them,  and  without  the  coercive  powers  they  so  much 
needed  ;  for  the  nonce  they  were  spiritual  courts  without  any 
outward  powers  of  compulsion,  the  latter  being  retained  by  the 
sovereign  to  use  at  his  discretion. 

After  Luther's  death  things  were  changed.  The  consistories 
both  in  the  Saxon  Electorate  and  in  most  other  places  where  they 
had  been  copied  became  exclusively  organs  of  Church  government 
by  the  State,  though  still  composed  of  theologians  and  lawyers. 
In  1579  and  1580  the  end  which  Luther  had  foreseen  arrived. 
"  The  last  things  became,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  worse  than  the 
first,"  as  he  himself  had  predicted,  nay,  as  the  result  of  his  own 
action  ;  Satan  has  introduced  "  into  the  Church  the  counsels 
and  the  authority  of  government  officials  "  (above,  p.  182). 

This  change,  which  in  reality  was  the  realisation  of  the  ideas 
of  Jonas,  Melanchthon  and  Chancellor  Briick,  leads  Rud.  Sohm, 
after  having  portrayed  in  detail  the  circumstances,  to  exclaim  : 
"  The  sovereign  as  head  of  the  Church  !  How  can  such  a  thing 
be  even  imagined  ?  The  Church  of  Christ,  governed  solely  by 
the  word  of  Christ  .  .  .  and  by  command  of  the  ruler  of  the 
land."2  Speaking  of  the  disorder  in  Luther's  Church,  which 

1  /&.,  p.  623.  2  16.,  p.  618. 


THE   CONSISTORIES  185 

recognised  no  canon  law,  the  Protestant  canonist  says  :  "  Canon 
law  was  needed  to  assist  the  Word  ;  well,  it  came,  but  only  to 
establish  the  lord  of  the  land  as  lord  also  of  the  Church."  "  The 
State  government  of  the  Church  is  in  contradiction  with  the 
Lutheran  profession  of  faith."  "  If,  however,  the  Church  is 
determined  to  be  ruled  by  force,  then  the  ruler  must  be  the 
secular  authority."1 

The  secular  authorities  to  which  Protestantism  looked 
for  support  had  been  well  organised  throughout  the  Empire 
by  the  League  of  Schmalkalden.  Subsequent  to  1535  the 
warlike  alliance  had  been  extended  for  a  further  ten  years. 
In  1539  the  state  of  things  became  so  threatening,  th'at 
Luther  feared  lest  the  Catholic  princes  should  attack  the 
Protestants.  In  a  sermon  he  referred  to  the  "  fury  of  Satan 
amongst  the  blinded  Papists  who  incite  the  Emperor  and 
other  kings  against  the  Evangel  "  ;  he,  however,  also  added, 
that  "  we,  by  our  boundless  malice  and  ingratitude,  have 
called  down  the  wrath  of  God."  They  ought  to  pray, 
"  that  the  Emperor  might  not  turn  his  arms  against  us  who 
have  the  pure  Word  of  Christ."2  As  a  matter  of  fact,  how 
ever,  the  Emperor  and  the  Empire  were  not  in  a  position 
even  to  protect  themselves  against  the  wanton  behaviour  of 
the  innovators. 

Amongst  the  outward  provisions  made  for  the  future 
benefit  of  the  new  Church,  the  League  of  Schmalkalden 
deserves  the  first  place.  In  the  very  year  before  his  death 
Luther  took  steps  to  ensure  the  prolongation  of  this  armed 
alliance.3 

Among  the  efforts  made  at  home  to  improve  matters 
a  place  belongs  to  Luther's  attempts  to  introduce  a  more 
frequent  use  of  excommunication. 

1  Ib.,  p.  632.  Sohm's  standpoint  is,  that  a  Church  with  powers  of 
self-government  or  with  a  "  canon  law,"  as  he  calls  it,  is  practically 
unthinkable.  Cp.  Carl  Miiller,  "  Die  Anfange  der  Konsistorialver- 
fassung  in  Deutschland  "  (Hist.  Zeitschr.  Bd.  102,  3.  Folge  Bd.  6, 
p.  1  ff.).  He  too  arrives  at  the  conclusion,  contrary  to  many  previously 
held  views,  viz.  that  it  was  only  gradually  in  the  course  of  the  16th 
century  that  the  consistories  changed,  from  organs  of  ecclesiastical 
jurisdiction,  into  organs  of  State  government  of  the  Church.  Cp.  also 
O.  Mejer,  "  Zum  KR.  des  Reformations]  ahrh.,"  1891,  p.  1  ff. 
"  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  1,  p.  66. 

3  "  Corp.  ref.,"  5,  p.  720  sq.  Memorandum  as  to  whether  the 
Schmalkalden  League  should  continue,  etc.,  March,  1545,  signed  by 
him  first.  Cp.  "  Briefe,"  ed.  De  Wette,  6,  p.  374. 


186          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

Luther  seeks  to  introduce  the  so-called 
Lesser  Excommunication 

The  introduction  of  the  ban  engrossed  Luther's  atten 
tion  more  particularly  after  1539,  but  without  any  special 
results.  In  1541  we  find  the  question  raised  under  rather 
peculiar  circumstances  in  one  of  the  numerous  letters  in 
which  Luther  complains  of  the  secular  authorities.  At 
Nuremberg,  Wenceslaus  Link  had  threatened  certain  persons 
of  standing  with  excommunication,  whereupon  one  of  the 
town-councillors  hurled  at  him  the  opprobrious  epithet  of 
"  priestling."  Full  of  indignation,  Luther  wrote  :  "  It  is 
true  the  civil  authorities  ever  have  been  and  always  will  be 
enemies  of  the  Church.  .  .  .  God  has  rejected  the  world 
and,  of  the  ten  lepers,  scarcely  one  takes  His  side,  the  rest 
go  over  to  the  prince  of  this  world."  "  Excommunication  is 
part  of  the  Word  of  God."  If  they  look  upon  our  preaching 
as  the  Word  of  God  then  it  is  a  disgrace  that  they  should 
refuse  to  hear  of  excommunication,  despise  the  ministers  of 
the  Word  and  hate  the  God  Whom  they  have  confessed  ; 
they  wickedly  blaspheme  in  thus  hurling  the  term 
'  priestling  '  at  His  ministers."1 

Here  we  get  a  glimpse  of  the  difficulty  which  attended 
the  introduction  of  the  ban  :  "  They  refuse  to  hear  of  ex 
communication  . ' ' 

With  the  Greater  Excommunication  which  involved  civil 
disabilities,  and  in  particular  exclusion  to  some  extent  from 
social  intercourse,  Luther  had  no  sympathy  ;  he  was  in 
terested  in  the  reintroduction  merely  of  the  Lesser  Ex 
communication  prohibiting  the  excommunicate  to  take  part 
in  public  worship,  or  at  least  to  receive  the  Supper  or  to 
stand  as  godparent.  In  his  viewT  the  Greater  Excommunica 
tion  was  a  matter  for  the  sovereign  and  did  not  in  the  least 
concern  the  ministers  of  the  Church ;  this  he  points  out  in 
his  Schmalkalden  Articles.2  He  even  was  inclined  to  look 
upon  any  such  action  of  the  ruler  with  a  jealous  eye  ;  from 
anything  of  the  sort  it  were  better  for  the  sovereign  to  abstain 

1  To  Wenceslaus  Link,  Sep.  8,  1541,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  399. 

2  Pars   3,   art.   9  :     "  Maiorem  excommunicationem,  quam  papa  ita 
nominal,   non  nisi  civilem  poenam  esse  ducimus  non  pertinentem  ad 
nos    ministros    ecclesice"      "  Symbol.    Biicher,"    ed.    Miiller-Kolde10, 
p.  323. 


LESSER  EXCOMMUNICATION       187 

for  fear  of  any  awkward  confusion  of  the  spiritual  with  the 
secular  power.1 

The  "Unterricht  der  Visitatorn,"  printed  in  1528,  had 
already  suggested  to  the  ministers  the  use  of  a  kind  of 
Lesser  Excommunication,  but,  in  the  absence  of  anything 
definite,  the  proposal  remained  practically  a  dead  letter. 
We  learn,  however,  that  Luther  pronounced  his  first  ban  of 
this  sort  against  some  alleged  witches.2  Subsequently  he 
had  strongly  urged  at  the  Court  of  the  Elector  that  the 
authorities  should  at  least  threaten  gross  contemners  of 
religion  with  "  exile  and  punishment  "  as  in  the  case  of 
blasphemers,  and  that  then  the  pastors,  after  instruction 
and  admonition  had  proved  of  no  avail,  should  proceed 
to  exclude  such  men  from  church  membership3  as  "  heathen 
to  be  shunned."  When  mentioning  this  he  fails  to  state 
whether  or  to  what  extent  his  proposal  was  carried  out.4  On 
the  other  hand,  he  often  declares  that  the  actual  state 
of  the  masses  rendered  quite  impossible  any  ordering  of 
ecclesiastical  life  according  to  the  Gospel  ;  he  is  also  fond 
of  speaking  of  the  danger  there  would  be  of  falling  back 
into  the  Popish  regulations  abolished  by  the  freedom  of  the 
Gospel,  were  disciplinary  measures  reintroduced. 

What  moved  Luther  in  1538  to  advocate  the  use  of  the 
ban  was,  first,  the  action  of  the  Elector's  haughty  Captain 
and  Governor,  Hans  Metzsch  at  Wittenberg,  who,  in  addition 
to  Luther's  excommunication,  was  threatened  with  dis 
missal  from  his  office,  or,  as  Luther  expresses  it,  with  the 
Greater  Excommunication  of  the  ruler  (1538),  and,  secondly, 
the  doings  of  a  Wittenberg  burgher  who  (Feb.,  1539) 
dared  to  go  to  the  Supper  in  spite  of  having  committed 
homicide.  In  the  case  of  Metzsch  a  form  of  minor  ex 
communication  was  resorted  to,  Luther  declaring  invalid 

1  To   Tileman   Schnabel   and   the   other  Hessian   clergy,   June   26, 
1533,  "  Brief wechsel,"  9,  p.  317  :    "  Hoc  sceculo  excommunicatio  maior 
ne  potest  quidem  in  nostrum  potestatem  redigi,  et  ridiculi  fteremus,  ante 
vires,  hanc  tentantes.     Nam  quod  vos  sperare  videmini,  ut  executio  vel 
per  ipsum  principem  fiat,  valde  incertum  est,  nee  vellem  politicum  magis- 
tratum  in  id  officii  misceri,^  etc. 

2  N.  Paulus,  "  Hexenwahn  und  Hexenprozess,"  1911,  p.  32,  with 
reference  to  "  Luthers  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  29,  p.  539,  where  the  note 
of  the  Wittenberg  Deacon,  George  Rorer  to  Luther's  sermon  of  Aug.  22 
of  that  year  says  :    "  Hcec  prima  fuit  excommunicatio  ab  ipso  pronun- 
tiata" 

3  Luther  to  Leonhard  Beier,  1533,  "  Brief  wechsel,"  9,  p.  365. 

4  Kostlin-Kawerau,  2,  p.  275. 


188  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

the  absolution  and  permission  to  communicate  granted  by 
the  Deacon  Froschel  ;  whether  or  not,  after  this,  he  pro 
nounced  a  further  excommunication,  this  much  is  certain, 
viz.  that,  not  long  after  the  pair  were  reconciled.1 

Many  of  the  well-disposed  on  Luther's  side  were  in  favour 
of  the  ban  as  a  disciplinary  measure  ;  others  were  intensely 
hostile  to  it.  Of  his  latest  intention,  Luther  speaks  at  some 
length  in  a  sermon  of  Feb.  23,  1539.  He  there  explains  how 
the  whole  congregation  must  be  behind  the  clergy  in  en 
forcing  the  ban  ;  they  were  to  be  notified  publicly  of  any 
man  who  proved  obstinate  and  were  to  pray  against  him  ; 
then  was  to  follow  the  formal  expulsion  from  the  congrega 
tion  ;  re-admission  to  public  worship  was  also  to  take  place 
publicly. 

The  plan  of  using  the  ban  as  a  disciplinary  measure  was, 
however,  brought  to  nought  by  the  efforts  of  the  Court  and 
the  lawyers,  who  wished  all  proceedings  of  the  sort  to 
devolve  upon  the  government  as  represented  in  the  con 
sistories.2  Luther  also  encountered  the  further  difficulty, 
that,  in  many  cases,  the  ban  was  simply  ignored,  even 
greater  scandal  arising  out  of  this  public  display  of  contempt. 
Hence,  owing  to  his  experience,  he  came  to  enjoin  the 
greatest  caution. 

To  his  former  pupil,  Anton  Lauterbach,  preacher  at  Pirna,  he 
sent  the  following  not  over-confident  instructions  :  "  Hesse's 
example  of  the  use  of  excommunication  pleases  me.  If  you  can 
establish  the  same  thing,  well  and  good.  But  the  centaurs  and 
harpies  of  the  Court  will  look  at  it  askance.  May  the  Lord  be 
our  help  !  Everywhere  licence  and  lawlessness  continue  to  spread 
amongst  the  people,  but  it  is  the  fault  of  the  secular  authorities." 3 

The  example  of  Hesse  to  which  Luther  referred  was  the 
Hessian  "  Regulations  for  church  discipline,"  enacted  in  1539 
at  the  instance  of  Bucer,  in  which,  amongst  other  things,  pro 
vision  was  made  for  excommunication.  So-called  "  elders," 
appointed  conjointly  by  the  town  authorities  and  the  congrega 
tion,  were  to  watch  over  the  faith  and  morals  of  all,  preachers 
inclusive  ;  to  them,  together  with  the  preacher,  it  fell,  after 

1  Cp.  the  passages  quoted,  ib.,  p.  675,  and  Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch," 
p.  167. 

2  "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  1,  p.  291  aqq.     Cp.  Kostlin-Kawerau,  2, 
p.  440. 

3  On  April  2,  1543,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  550.     Cp.  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed., 
59,  pp.  162  ff.,   159  f . ;   "We  must  set  up  excommunication  again." 
In  the  latter  passage  he  speaks  of  his  action  against  the  Wittenberg 
Commandant,  Hans  v.  Metzsch. 


LESSER   EXCOMMUNICATION       189 

seeking  advice  of  the  Superintendent,  to  pronounce  the  ban  over 
the  obdurate  sinner.  In  the  Saxon  Electorate,  however,  so  Luther 
hints,  this  would  hardly  be  feasible  on  account  of  the  attitude  of 
the  authorities  and  the  utter  lawlessness  of  the  people. 

In  1538  the  Elector  himself  had  well  put  the  difficulty  which 
would  face  any  such  disciplinary  measure  :  "If  only  people 
could  be  found  who  would  let  themselves  be  excommunicated  !  " 
He  had,  as  Jonas  related  at  Luther's  table,  listened  devoutly  to 
the  sermon  at  Zerbst  and  then  expressed  himself  strongly  on  the 
universal  decline  in  morals,  the  "  outrageous  wickedness,  gluttony 
and  drunkenness,"  etc.  ;  he  had  also  said  that  excommunication 
was  necessary,  but  had  then  uttered  the  despairing  words  just 
quoted. 1 

Yet  in  spite  of  all  Luther  still  continued  at  times  to  hold  up 
the  ban  and  its  consequences  as  a  threat  :  "I  shall  denounce 
him  from  the  pulpit  as  having  been  placed  under  the  ban  " 
this  of  a  burgher  who  had  absented  himself  from  the  Sacrament 
for  fifteen  years — "  and  will  give  notice  that  he  is  to  be  looked 
upon  as  a  dog  ;  if,  after  this,  anyone  holds  intercourse  or  has 
anything  to  do  with  him,  he  will  do  so  at  his  own  risk  ;  if  he  dies 
he  is  to  be  buried  on  the  rubbish-heap  like  a  dog  ;  we  formally  make 
him  over  to  the  authorities  for  their  justice  and  their  laws  to  do 
their  worst  on  him."2 — "  As  for  our  usurers,  drunkards,  libertines, 
whoremongers,  blasphemers  and  scoffers,"  he  says,  "  they  do 
not  require  to  be  put  under  the  ban,  as  they  have  done  so  them 
selves  ;  they  are  in  it  already  up  to  their  ears.  .  .  .  When  they 
are  about  to  die,  no  pastor  or  curate  may  attend  them,  and  when 
they  are  dead  let  the  hangman  drag  them  out  of  the  town  to  the 
carrion  heap.  .  .  .  Since  they  wish  to  be  heathen,  we  shall  look 
upon  them  as  such."3 

Such  self-imposed  excommunication  was  so  frequent  that  the 
other,  viz.  that  to  be  imposed  by  the  preacher,  was  but  rarely 
needed. —  "This  is  the  true  and  chief  reason  why  the  ban  has 
everywhere  fallen  into  disuse,"  Luther  declares,  echoing  the 
Elector,  "  because  real  Christians  are  everywhere  so  few,  so  small 
a  body  and  so  insignificant  in  number."4  He  too  could  exclaim 
with  a  sigh  :  "If  only  there  were  people  who  would  let  themselves 
be  banned." 

But  even  had  such  people  been  forthcoming,  those  who  would 
have  to  pronounce  the  ban  were  too  often  anything  but  perfect. 
What  was  needed  was  prudent,  energetic  and  disinterested 
preachers,  for,  in  order  "  to  make  use  of  the  ban,  we  have  need  of 
good,  courageous,  spiritual-minded  ministers  ;  we  have  too  many 
who  are  immersed  in  worldly  business."  "  I  fear  our  pastors 
will  be  over-bold  and  grasp  at  temporalities  and  at  property."5 

1  Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  42.    His  words  remind  us  of  Luther's 
own  ;   above,  p.  139. 

2  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  59,  p.  160. 

3  /&.,  p.  179  f.    Cp.  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  185  (in  1540). 

4  Ib,,  p.  169  f. 

5  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  278  (in  1542-1543). 


190          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 


The  want  of  a  Hierarchy.     Ordinations 

Sebastian  Franck  of  Donauworth,  a  man  responsible  for 
some  fanatical  doctrines,  but  a  good  observer  of  events, 
wrote  in  1534  in  his  "  Cosmography  "  :  "  Every  sect  has  its 
own  teacher,  leader  and  priest,  so  that  now  no  one  can  write 
of  the  German  faith,  and  a  whole  volume  would  be  necessary, 
and  indeed  would  not  suffice,  to  enumerate  all  their  sects 
and  beliefs."  "  Men  will  and  must  have  a  Pope,"  he  says, 
"  they  will  steal  one  or  dig  one  out  of  the  earth,  and  if  you 
take  one  from  them  every  day  they  will  soon  find  a  new 
one."1 

It  was  not,  however,  exactly  a  "  Pope  "  that  the  various 
sects  desired  ;  the  great  and  commanding  name  of  the 
author  of  the  schism  could  endure  none  other  beside  it,  quite 
apart  from  the  impossibility  of  anything  of  the  sort  being 
realised.  On  the  other  hand,  the  appointment  of  bishops  to 
the  new  Churches,  i.e.  the  introduction  of  a  kind  of  hierarchy, 
had  been  discussed  since  about  1540. 

Luther  saw  well  enough  what  a  firm  foundation  the 
Church  of  the  "  Papists  "  possessed  in  its  episcopate.  Would 
not  the  introduction  of  eminent  Lutheran  preachers  into  the 
old  German  episcopal  sees  and  their  investment  with  the 
secular  authority  and  quality  of  bishops,  serve  to  strengthen 
the  cause  of  the  Evangel  where  it  was  weakest  ?  The 
Superintendents  did  not  suffice,  though  these  officers,  first 
introduced  in  the  Saxon  Visitation  of  1527,  held  a  post  of 
supervision  duly  recognised  in  the  Church. 

:'  The  Papists  boast  of  their  bishops,"  said  Luther,  "  and  of 
their  spiritual  authority  though  it  is  contrary  to  God's  ordin 
ances."2  "  They  are  all  set  on  retaining  the  bishops,  and  simply 
want  to  reform  them."3  "  In  Germany  the  bishops  are  wealthy 
and  powerful,  they  have  a  position  and  authority  and  they  rule 
of  their  own  power."4  "  If  only  we  had  one  or  two  bishops  on 
our  side,  or  could  induce  them  to  come  over  to  us  !  "5 

On  Ascension  Day,  May  15,  1539,  we  are  told  that  "  Luther 
dined  with  his  Elector  and  assisted  at  a  council.  It  was  there 
resolved  to  maintain  the  bishops  in  their  authority,  if  only  they 
would  renounce  the  Pope  and  were  pious  persons  devoted  to  the 
Gospel,  like  Speratus.  In  that  case,  said  Luther,  we  shall  grant 

1  "  Kosmographie,"  Bl.  44',   163.     Janssen,  "Hist,  of  the  German 
People  "  (Engl.  Trans.),  v.,  p.  535. 

2  "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  2,  p.  122.  3  Ib.,  1,  p.  322. 

4  Ib.,  3,  p.  306.          5   "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  60,  p.  367,  Table-Talk. 


THE   NEW   HIERARCHY  191 

them  the  right  and  the  power  to  ordain  ministers.  When  Melanch- 
thon  attempted  to  dissuade  him,  pointing  out  that  it  would  be 
difficult  to  make  sure  of  them  by  examination,  he  replied  :  "  They 
are  to  be  tested  by  our  people  and  then  consecrated  by  the  laying 
on  of  hands,  just  as  I  am  now  a  bishop."1  Instead  of  the  words 
"  as  I  am  now  a  bishop  "  a  more  likely  rendering  is,  "  as  we  have 
already  done  as  bishops  here  at  Wittenberg."2  The  resolution 
indicated  would  seem  to  have  been  merely  provisional  and 
non-committal,  possibly  a  mere  project.  Nor  is  it  likely  that 
Melanchthon  can  have  been  very  averse  to  it. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  Luther  had,  like  a  bishop,  already  ordained 
or  inducted  into  office  such  men  as  had  been  "  called  "  to  the 
ministry,  viz.  by  the  congregations  or  the  authorities  ;  this  he 
did  for  the  first  time  in  1525  in  the  case  of  George  Rorer,  who  had 
been  called  to  the  archdiaconate  of  Wittenberg.  The  ordination 
took  place  with  imposition  of  hands  and  prayer.  Since  1535 
there  existed  a  Wittenberg  oath  of  ordination  to  be  taken  by 
the  preachers  and  pastors  who  should  be  appointed,  by  which 
they  bound  themselves  to  preserve  and  to  teach  the  "  Catholic  " 
faith  as  taught  at  Wittenberg.3 

Luther  did  not  think  that  any  consecration  at  the  hands  of 
the  existing  episcopate  was  necessary  for  a  new  bishop  ;4  such 
necessity  was  incompatible  with  his  conception  of  the  Church, 
the  hierarchy  and  the  common  priesthood ;  as  for  the  Sacrament 
of  Orders  in  the  usual  sense  of  the  word,  it  no  longer  existed. 

A  welcome  opportunity  for  setting  up  a  Protestant  "  bishop  " 
was  presented  to  the  Elector  of  Saxony  and  to  Luther  when  the 
bishopric  of  Naumburg-Zeitz  fell  vacant  (above,  p.  165  f.). 

Johann  Frederick,  the  Elector,  not  satisfied  with  his  rights  as 
protector,  laid  claim  also  to  actual  sovereignty,  and  as  the  inno 
vations  had,  as  stated  above,  already  secured  a  footing  in 
Naumburg,  he  determined  to  introduce  a  Lutheran  preacher  as 
bishop  and  to  seize  upon  the  rights  and  lands  in  spite  of  the 
Chapter  and  larger  part  of  the  nobility  still  being  true  to  the 
Catholic  faith.  He  appealed  to  the  fact  that  the  kings  of  England, 
Denmark  and  Sweden,  and  likewise  the  Duke  of  Prussia,  had  set 
their  bishops  in  "order."5  The  noble  and  scholarly  Julius 
Pflug,  whom  wisely  the  Chapter  at  once  elected  to  the  vacant  see, 
was,  as  related  above,  never  to  be  allowed  to  ascend  the  episcopal 
throne. 

1  "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  3,  p.  306.  In  the  statement  the  year 
given  is  uncertain.  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  60,  p.  368  :  "  Anno  34,"  etc.  ; 
elsewhere  1543.  2  Rebenstock,  in  Bindseil,  1.  c. 

3  P.  Drews,  "  Die  Ordination,  Priifung  und  Lehrverpflichtuiig  der 
Ordinanden  in  Wittenberg"  ("Deutsche  Zeitschr.  fur  KR."),  15,  1905, 
pp.  66  ff.,  274  ft'.,  particularly  p.  281  ff. 

4  Kostlin-Kawerau,  2,  p.  22  f.     Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.   80  : 
"  Doctor  dixit  :    Nos  qui  prcedicamus  Evangelium,  habemus  potestatem 
ordinandi  ;    papa  et  episcopi  neminem  possunt  ordinare  "    (a.    1540). 
P.   226  :    "  Doctor  ad  Cellarium  ;    Vos  cstis  episcopus,  quemadmodum 
ego  sum  papa  "  (a.  1540).      Johannes  Cellarius  was  Superintendent  at 
Dresden.  *  janssen,  ib.  (Engl.  Trans.),  vi.,  181  ff. 


192          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

4.   Consecration  of  Nicholas  Amsdorf  as  "Evangelical 
Bishop"  of  Naumburg  (1542) 

At  first  Luther  was  loath  under  the  circumstances  to 
advise  the  setting  up  in  Naumburg  of  a  bishop  of  the  new 
faith.  To  him  and  to  his  advisers  the  step  appeared  too 
dangerous.  Nevertheless,  on  hearing  of  the  election  of 
Pflug,  he  wrote  as  follows  to  the  Elector  :  These  Naumburg 
canons  "  are  desperate  people  and  the  devil's  very  own. 
But  what  cannot  be  carried  off  openly,  may  be  won  by 
waiting.  Some  day  God  will  let  it  fall  into  your  Electoral 
Highness's  hands,  and  the  devil's  wiseacres  will  be  caught 
in  their  own  wisdom."1 

When,  however,  the  Elector  obstinately  insisted  on 
putting  into  execution  his  plan,  contrary  to  justice  and  to 
the  laws  of  the  Empire  as  it  was,  and  when  his  agents  had 
already  begun  to  govern  the  new  territory,  Luther's  views 
and  those  of  the  Wittenberg  theologians  gradually  changed. 
It  was  difficult,  they  wrote,  to  "  map  out  beforehand  the 
order  "  of  the  German  Church  ;  the  question  whether  they 
would  have  bishops,  or  do  without,  had  not  yet  been 
decided  ;  meanwhile  the  Prince  had  better  establish  a 
consistory.  Later  on,  however,  they  advised  the  appoint 
ment  of  a  bishop,  for  the  Church  cannot  be  without  its 
bishop  and  the  Chapter  had  forfeited  its  rights ;  there  was, 
nevertheless,  to  be  a  real  and  genuine  election  at  which  the 
faithful  were  to  be  represented.2 

Luther  arid  his  friends  wanted  to  have  as  bishop  Prince 
George  of  Anhalt,  Canon  of  Magdeburg  and  Merseburg,  who 
shared  the  Wittenberg  views. 

To  the  Elector,  however,  who  had  other  plans  of  his  own, 
it  seemed,  that,  owing  to  his  position,  this  Prince  might  not 
prove  an  easy  tool  in  his  sovereign's  hands.  Nicholas 
Amsdorf,  preacher  at  Magdeburg,  who  for  long  years  had 
been  Luther's  associate,  was  accounted  one  of  his  most 
determined  supporters  and,  as  time  went  on,  even  gained 
for  himself  the  reputation  of  being  "  more  Lutheran  than 
Luther,"  appeared  a  more  likely  candidate.  It  was  no 
difficult  matter  to  secure  Luther's  consent.  He  gave 
Amsdorf  the  following  testimonial  :  "  He  was  richly 

1  Letter  of  Jan.  24,  1541,  "  Brief wechsel,"  13,  p.  253  f. 

2  Kostlin-Kawerau,  2,  p.  553  ff. 


AMSDORF'S    CONSECRATION        193 

endowed  by  God,  learned  and  proficient  in  Holy  Scripture, 
more  so  than  the  whole  crowd  of  Papists  ;  also  a  man  of 
good  life  and  faithful  and  upright  at  heart."  The  fact  that 
he  was  unmarried  was  a  recommendation  for  the  post,  even 
from  the  point  of  view  of  "  Papal  law."1 

It  has  already  been  mentioned  that  Amsdorf  was  later  on 
to  write  the  book  "  That  good  works  are  harmful  to  Salva 
tion,"  and  that,  previously,  about  1525,  he  was  active  in 
making  matches  between  the  escaped  nuns  and  the  leaders 
of  the  innovations.  Melanchthon,  writing  to  Johannes 
Ferinarius,  says  :  "  He  was  an  adulterer,  and  lay  with  the 
wife  of  his  deacon  at  Magdeburg  "  ;  of  this  we  hear  from 
the  Luther  researcher  J.  K.  Seidemann,  who  quotes  from 
a  Dresden  MS.2 

The  Ceremony  at  Naumburg 

The  20  Jan.,  1542,  was  appointed  for  the  "  consecration  " 
of  the  bishop.  Two  days  before,  the  Elector  of  Saxony  made 
his  solemn  entry  into  the  little  town  on  the  Saale  escorted  by 
some  three  hundred  horsemen,  the  gentlemen  all  clothed  in 
decorous  black.  His  brother  Johann  Ernest  and  Duke 
Ernest  of  Brunswick  were  in  his  train.  Luther,  Melanchthon 
and  Amsdorf  also  took  part  in  the  procession.  It  was  a 
mere  formality  when  the  Chapter  (or  rather  the  magistrates 
of  the  towns  of  Zeitz  and  Naumburg,  and  the  knights, 
though  only  such  as  were  Protestant)  were  asked  to  cast 
their  votes  in  favour  of  Amsdorf  ;  in  reality  the  will  of 
Johann  Frederick  was  law.  Their  scruples  concerning  the 
oath  they  had  taken  under  the  former  bishop,  of  everlasting 
fidelity  to  the  Catholic  Chapter  were,  at  their  desire,  dealt 
with  by  Luther  himself,  who  argued  that  no  oath  taken  by 
the  sheep  to  the  wolves  could  be  of  any  account,  and  that 
no  duty  "  could  be  binding  which  ran  counter  to  God's 
commandment  to  do  away  with  idolatrous  doctrine."3 

The  "  consecration  "  then  took  place  on  the  day  ap 
pointed,  within  the  venerable  walls  of  the  mediaeval 
Cathedral  of  Naumburg,  ostensibly  according  to  the  usage 
of  the  earliest  ages,  when  the  Church  had  not  as  yet  fallen 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  262,  p.  126,  in  the  "  Exempel "  (see  below, 
p.  195). 

2  "  Zeitschr.  f.   KG.,"   3,  p.   302,   according  to  MS.  Dresdense  B 
193,  4.  3  Kostlin-Kawerau,  2,  p.  554  f. 

v. — o 


194          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

away  from  the  Gospel.  The  Blessing  and  imposition  of 
hands  were  to  signify  that  the  Church  of  Naumburg,  i.e.  the 
whole  flock,  was  wedded  to  its  bishop  ;  he  too,  in  like 
manner,  would  ceremonially  proclaim  his  readiness  to  take 
charge  of  this  same  flock.  The  bishops  of  the  adjoining 
sees,  who,  in  accordance  with  the  custom  of  antiquity 
should  have  assembled  to  perform  the  consecration,  were 
represented  by  three  superintendents  and  one  apostate 
Abbot.  "  At  this  consecration  [to  quote  Luther's  own 
words]  the  following  bishops,  or  as  we  shall  call  them 
parsons,  shall  officiate  :  Dr.  Nicholas  Medler,  parson  and 
super-attendant  of  Naumburg,  Master  George  Spalatin, 
parson  and  super-attendant  at  Aldenburg  [the  former 
preacher  at  the  Court  of  the  Elector],  Master  Wolfgang 
Stein,  parson  and  super-attendant  at  Weissenfels  "*  (also 
Abbot  Thomas  of  St.  George's  near  Naumburg). 

Luther  is  silent  concerning  the  two  requirements  which, 
according  to  the  olden  views,  were  the  most  essential  for  the 
consecration  of  a  bishop,  viz.  the  ritual  consecration,  which 
only  a  consecrated  bishop  could  impart,  and  the  jurisdiction 
or  authority  to  rule,  only  to  be  derived  from  bishops  yet 
more  highly  placed  in  the  hierarchy,  or  from  the  Pope. 
Both  these  Luther  himself  had  to  supply. 

At  the  outset  of  the  ceremony  Nicholas  Medler  announced 
the  deed  which  was  about  to  be  undertaken  "  through  God's 
Grace,"  to  which  the  people  assented  by  saying  "Amen." 
After  this  Luther  preached  a  sermon  on  the  Bible-text 
addressed  to  the  Church's  heads  :  "  Take  heed  to  yourselves 
and  to  the  whole  flock,  wherein  the  Holy  Ghost  hath  placed 
you  bishops  to  rule  the  church  of  God  which  He  hath  pur 
chased  with  His  own  blood  "  (Acts  xx.  28).  After  the 
sermon  Amsdorf  knelt  before  the  altar  surrounded  by  the 
four  assistants  and  the  "  Veni  Creator"  was  sung.  Luther 
admonished  the  future  bishop  concerning  his  episcopal 
duties,  and,  on  the  latter  giving  a  satisfactory  answer,  in 
common  with  the  four  others,  he  laid  his  hands  on  his  head  ; 
after  this  Luther  himself  offered  a  prayer  for  him.  The 
"  Te  Deum  "  was  then  sung  in  German.  Hence  the  bishop's 
consecration  took  place  in  much  the  same  way  as  the 
ordination  of  the  preachers,  viz.  by  imposition  of  hands 
and  prayer. 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  262,  p.  125,  in  the  "  Exempel." 


AMSDORF'S   CONSECRATION        195 

Luther  himself  had  some  misgivings  concerning  the  step 
and  its  far-reaching  consequences. 

He  wrote  not  long  after  to  Jacob  Probst,  pastor  at  Bremen, 
whom  he  here  addresses  as  bishop  :  "I  wonder  you  have 
not  heard  the  news,  how,  namely,  on  Jan.  20,  Dr.  Nicholas 
Amsdorf  was  ordained  by  the  heresiarch  Luther  bishop  of 
the  church  of  Naumburg.  It  was  a  daring  act  and  will 
arouse  much  hatred,  animosity  and  indignation  against  us. 
I  am  hard  at  work  hammering  out  a  book  on  the  subject. 
What  the  result  will  be  God  knows."  He  adds  :  "  Jonas  is 
working  successfully  for  the  kingdom  of  Christ  at  Halle 
[where  he  had  been  appointed  pastor]  in  spite  of  the  accursed 
Heinz  and  Meinz  [Duke  Henry  of  Brunswick  and  Arch 
bishop  Albert  of  Mayence].  My  own  lordship  and  Katey  my 
Moses  greet  you  and  your  spouse.  Pray  for  me  that  I  may 
die  at  the  right  hour,  for  I  am  sick  of  this  life,  or  rather  of 
this  unspeakably  bitter  death."1 

Luther's  booklet  on  the  Consecration  of  Bishops 

The  bitter  work  which  Luther,  at  the  request  of  the 
Elector  and  the  Naumburg  Estates,  "hammered  out,"  in 
vindication  of  this  act  of  violence,  appeared  in  the  same 
year,  i.e.  1542,  under  the  title  "  Exempel  einen  rechten 
Christlichen  Bischoff  zu  weihen."2 

The  title  itself  shows  that  the  pamphlet  was  no  mere  attempt 
to  justify  himself  and  those  who  had  taken  part  in  the  act  but 
aims  at  something  more  ;  Luther's  apologia  becomes  a  violent 
attack  ;  a  breach  was  to  be  made  in  the  wall  which  so  far  had 
hindered  Protestants  from  appropriating  the  Catholic  bishoprics 
of  Germany.  "  Our  intention,"  says  Luther  quite  plainly,  "  is 
to  establish  an  example  to  show  how  the  bishoprics  may  be  re 
formed  and  governed  in  a  Christian  manner."3 

The  opening  lines  show  that  the  book  was  intended  to  inflame 
and  excite  the  masses.  The  jocular  tone  blatantly  contrasts  with 
the  august  subject  of  the  episcopate  and  supplies  a  good 
"  example  "  of  the  author's  mode  of  controversy.  The  work 
begins  :  "  Martin  Luther,  Doctor.  We  poor  heretics  have  once 
more  committed  a  great  sin  against  the  hellish,  unchristian 
Church  of  our  most  fiendish  Father  the  Pope  by  ordaining  and 
consecrating  a  bishop  for  the  see  of  Naumburg  without  any 
chrism,  without  even  any  butter,  lard,  fat,  grease,  incense, 

1  On  March  26,  1542,  "  Briefe,"  ed.  De  Wette,  5,  p.  451  :    "  Venera- 
bili  in  Domino  viro  lacobo  Probst  ecclesice  Bremensis  episcopo  vero,"  etc. 

2  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  262,  p.  93  ff.  3  Ib.,  p.  121. 


196          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

charcoal  or  any  such-like  holy  things."  Cheerfully  indeed  did  he 
own,  acknowledge  and  confess  this  sin  against  those,  who  "  have 
shed  our  blood,  murdered,  hanged,  drowned,  beheaded,  burnt, 
robbed  and  driven  us  into  exile,  and  inflicted  on  us  every  manner 
of  martyrdom,  and  now,  with  Meinz  and  Heinz,  have  taken  to 
sacking  the  land." 

With  a  couple  of  Bible  passages  he  bowls  over  the  legal  diffi 
culties  arising  out  of  the  expulsion  of  the  bishop-elect  and  the 
oath  of  the  Estates  :  "  Thou  shalt  have  none  other  Gods  before 
me  "  ;  "  Beware  of  false  prophets  who  come  to  you  in  sheep's 
clothing  but  inwardly  are  ravening  wolves,"  etc.  We  must 
sweep  away  the  "  wolf -bishops  whom  the  devil  ordains  and 
thrusts  in."  "  Oath  and  obedience  stand  untouched,"  for  they 
"  could  take  no  [valid]  oath  to  the  wolf."1  The  further  question, 
"  whether  it  was  right  to  accept  consecration  or  ordination  from 
such  damnable  heretics  [i.e.  as  he],  was  disposed  of  by  saying, 
that  the  Evangel  was  no  heresy,  and  that  though  he  understood 
Holy  Scripture  but  little,  yet  at  any  rate  he  understood  it  far 
better — and  also  knew  better  how  to  consecrate  a  Christian 
bishop — than  the  Pope  and  all  his  men,  who  one  and  all  were 
foes  of  Holy  Writ  and  of  the  Word  of  God."2 

This  screed  stands  undoubtedly  far  below  many  of  Luther's 
other  productions.  It  tends  to  be  diffuse  and  to  harp  tediously 
on  the  same  ideas.  Luther  had  already  overwritten  himself,  and 
when  engaged  on  it  was  struggling  with  bad  health,  the  fore 
runner  of  his  fatal  sickness  three  years  later.  His  disgust  with 
life  spoiled  his  work. 

The  "Popes,  cardinals,  bishops,  abbots,  canons  and  parsons" 
he  implores  to  look  rather  to  the  beam  in  their  own  eye,  to  the 
"  simony,  favouritism,  sharp  practices,  agreements,  conventions 
and  other  horrible  vices  "  which  prevailed  at  their  own  conse 
crations,"  than  at  the  mote  in  the  eye  of  the  Lutherans.  "  You 
strainers  at  gnats  and  swallowers  of  camels,  wipe  yourselves 
first — you  know  where  I  mean — before  coming  and  telling  us  to 
wipe  our  noses.  It  is  not  fitting  that  a  sow  should  teach  a  dove 
not  to  eat  any  unclean  grain  of  corn  while  itself  it  loves  nothing 
better  than  to  feed  on  the  excreta  which  the  peasants  leave 
behind  the  hedge.  As  for  the  rest  you  understand  it  well 
enough."3  "  Let  us  stop  our  ears  and  not  listen  to  their  shouting, 
barking,  bellowing,  their  complaints  and  their  abuse,"  with 
which  I  have  "  put  up  for  many  a  year  from  Dr.  Sow  [Dr.  Eck], 
from  Witzel,  Tolpel,  Schmid,  from  Dr.  Dirtyspoon  [Cochlaeus], 
Tellerlecker,  '  Briinzscherben,'  Heinz  and  Meinz  and  whatever 
else  they  may  be.  .  .  .  The  [Last]  Day  is  approaching  for  which 
we  hope  and  which  they  must  needs  fear,  however  obstinately 
they  may  affect  to  despise  it.  Against  their  defiance  we  pit  ours  ; 
at  least  we  may  look  forward  to  The  Day  with  a  happy,  cheerful 
conscience.  On  that  day  we  shall  be  their  judges,  unless  indeed 
there  is  really  no  God  in  heaven  or  on  earth  as  the  Pope  and  his 
followers  believe."4 

1  Ib.,  pp.  99,  100,  118,  113.       2  P.  124.       3  P.  125.       *  P.  115. 


LETTERS   TO   AMSDORF  197 

How  little  Luther  really  knew  of  the  cunning  policy  of 
his  sovereign  is  plain  from  his  assuring  his  reader  in  the 
same  booklet,  apparently  in  the  best  of  faith,  that  it  was 
no  motive  of  self-interest  that  had  led  the  Elector  to  inter 
vene  in  the  Naumburg  business  ;  "  the  lands  were  to  remain 
the  property  of  the  see,"  the  Elector  did  not  wish  "  to 
subjugate  it,  to  deprive  it  of  its  liberty,  or  alienate  it  from 
the  Empire,"  etc.1  He  declares  that  whatever  reports 
Julius  Pflug  was  spreading  to  the  contrary  were  a  "  stinking 
lie."  Yet  the  Elector  had  ousted  the  rightful  occupant  of 
the  see,  as  he  had  intended  to  do  all  along,  and  those  who 
ventured  to  oppose  his  commands  he  was  to  punish  by 
sequestration  of  lands  and  even  by  imprisonment. 

The  Protestant  bishop  was  assigned  a  miserable  pittance 
of  six  hundred  Gulden  so  that  Amsdorf,  as  Luther  declared, 
had  been  better  off  at  Magdeburg.2  Practically  nothing 
was  done  by  the  sovereign  for  the  ordering  of  the  Church. 
Luther  bewailed  to  Amsdorf  :  "  The  negligence  of  our 
government  gives  me  great  concern.  They  so  often  take 
rash  steps  and,  then,  when  we  are  down  in  the  mire,  snore 
idly  and  leave  us  on  the  lurch.  I  intend,  however,  to  open 
the  ears  of  Dr.  Pontanus  [Chancellor  Briick]  and  of  the 
Prince  and  give  them  some  plain  speaking."3 

"  How  is  this  ?  "  Luther  wrote  about  this  time  to  Justus 
Jonas,  who,  at  Halle,  had  gone  through  much  the  same 
experience,  "  We  pray  against  the  Turk,  we  are  the  teachers 
of  the  people  and  their  intercessors  with  God  and  yet  those 
who  wish  to  be  accounted  '  Evangelicals  '  rashly  excite  the 
wrath  of  God  by  their  avarice,  their  robbing  and  plundering 
of  the  Church.  The  people  let  us  go  on  teaching,  praying 
and  suffering  while  they  heap  sin  upon  sin  !  "4 

Excerpts  from  Luther's  Letters  to  the  New  "  Bishop  " 

Luther's  correspondence  with  his  friend  Amsdorf  affords 
an  instructive  psychological  insight  into  the  working  of  his 
mind.  During  those  last  years  of  his  life  he  took  refuge 
more  and  more  in  a  certain  fanatical  mysticism.  He  sought 
comfort  in  the  thought  of  his  exalted  calling  and  in  a  kind 

1  P.  126  f.  2  Feb.  6,  1542,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  432. 

3  Letter  of  Jan.  13,  1543,  ib.,  p.  532. 

4  Letter  of  July  23,  1542,  ib.,  p.  485. 


198          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

of  inspiration  ;  yet  all  he  could  do  availed  but  little  against 
his  inward  gloom. 

Amsdorf,  the  whilom  Catholic  priest,  found  little  pleasure  in 
his  episcopal  status  and  felt  bitterly  both  his  isolation  and  the 
contrast  between  a  pomp  that  was  irksome  to  him  and  the  real 
emptiness  of  his  position  ;  Luther,  accordingly,  in  the  letters 
of  consolation  he  wrote  him,  appealed  to  the  Divine  inspiration, 
which  had  led  to  his  appointment  as  bishop.  The  consecration 
was  surely  undertaken  at  the  express  command  of  God  which 
no  man  may  oppose.  "  In  these  Divine  matters,"  he  writes, 
"it  is  far  safer  to  allow  oneself  to  be  carried  away  than  to  take 
any  active  part  ;  this  is  what  happened  in  your  case,  and  yours 
is  a  noble  and  unusual  example.  We  are  never  in  worse  case 
than  when  we  fancy  we  are  acting  with  discernment  and  under 
standing,  because  then  self-complacency  slinks  in ;  but  the 
blinder  we  are,  the  more  God  acts  through  us.  He  does  more 
than  we  can  think  or  understand."  We  have  here  the  same 
principle  to  which  he  had  been  so  fond  of  appealing  in  the 
early  days  of  his  career  so  as  to  be  able  to  attribute  to  God  the 
unforeseen  and  far-going  consequences  of  his  deeds,  and  to 
reassure  himself  and  urge  himself  on. 

"  We  must  never  seek  to  know,"  he  said  to  Amsdorf,  "  what 
God  wills  to  accomplish  through  us."  "  The  most  foolish  thing  is 
the  wisest."1  "  God  rules  the  world  by  means  of  fools  and 
children,  He  will  finish  His  work  [in  you]  by  our  means,  just  as 
in  the  Book  of  Proverbs  (xxx.  2),  where  we  are  called  the  greatest 
fools  on  earth."2 

"  It  is  the  counsel  of  a  fool,"  so  Luther  said  in  his  "  Exempel  " 
of  his  intentions  regarding  the  bishops'  sees,  "  and  I  am  a  fool. 
But  because  it  is  God's  counsel,  therefore  it  is  at  least  the  counsel 
of  a  wise  fool."3 

This  pseudo-mystical  bent  though  usual  enough  in  Luther 
seems  to  have  become  very  much  stronger  in  him  at  that  time. 
To  this  his  sad  experiences  contributed.  More  than  ever  con 
vinced,  on  the  one  hand,  that  everything  in  the  world  was  of  the 
devil  and  that  "  Satan  and  his  whole  kingdom,  full  of  a  terrible 
wrath,  were  harassing  "  the  Elector,  as  he  declares  in  a  letter 
to  Amsdorf,4  he  tends,  on  the  other,  to  fall  back  with  a  fanatical 
enthusiasm  on  the  Evangel  "  revealed  "  to  him.  More  than  one 
statement  which  is  no  mere  empty  form,  shows  that  he  was 
really  anxious  to  find  consolation  in  the  Divine  truths ;  again 
and  again  he  strove  to  rouse  himself  to  a  firm  confidence.  He  is 
also  more  diligent  in  his  peculiar  sort  of  prayer  and  strongly 
urges  his  friends,  notably  Amsdorf  to  whom  he  frankly  imparts 
his  fears  and  hopes,  to  seek  for  help  in  prayer.  His  words  are 
really  those  of  one  who  feels  in  need  of  assistance. 

1  To  Amsdorf  after  Jan.  20,  1542,  ib.,  p.  430. 

2  To  Amsdorf,  Feb.  12,  1542,  ib.,  p.  433. 

3  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  262,  p.  123. 

4  Jan.  8,  1546,  "  Brief e,"  5,  p.  773. 


LETTERS   TO   AMSDORF  199 

Amidst  the  trials  of  increasing  bodily  ailments  and  in  other 
temporal  hardships  he  knows  how  to  encourage  his  life's  partner, 
Catharine  Bora,  whose  anxiety  distressed  him.  :  "  You  want  to 
provide  for  your  God,"  he  says  to  her  in  one  of  his  letters,  "  just 
as  though  He  were  not  all-powerful  and  able  to  create  ten  Dr. 
Martins  should  your  old  one  get  drowned  in  the  Saale,  or  smothered 
in  the  coal-hole  or  elsewhere.  Do  not  worry  me  with  your  cares  ; 
I  have  a  better  caretaker  than  even  you  or  all  the  angels.  He 
lies  in  the  crib  and  sucks  at  a  Virgin's  breast,  but  nevertheless  is 
seated  at  the  right  hand  of  God  the  Father  Almighty.  Hence  be 
at  peace,  Amen."1  "  Do  you  pray,"  he  admonishes  her  not  long 
after,  "  and  leave  God  to  provide,  for  it  is  written  :  '  Cast  thy 
care  upon  the  Lord  and  He  shall  sustain  thee,'  Ps.  lv."2 

Such  ready  words  of  encouragement  do  not  however  prevent 
him,  when  dealing  with  other  more  stout-hearted  friends  who 
were  aware  of  the  precarious  state  of  the  cause,  from  giving  full 
voice  to  the  depression,  nay  despair,  which  overwhelmed  him. 
The  following  example  from  his  correspondence  with  the  "  bishop  " 
of  Naumburg  is  characteristic. 

After  an  attempt  to  parry  the  charge  brought  against  him  of 
being  responsible  for  the  public  misfortunes  which  had  arisen 
through  the  religious  revolt,  and  to  reassure  Amsdorf,  and 
incidentally  himself  too,  he  goes  on  gloomily  to  predict  the 
coming  chastisement  :  "  Were  we  the  cause  of  all  the  evils  that 
have  befallen  us  [and  others],  how  much  blood  should  we  have 
already  shed  !  ...  It  is,  however,  Christ's  business  to  see  to 
this,  since  He  Himself  by  His  Word  has  called  forth  so  much  evil 
and  such  great  hatred  on  the  part  of  the  devil.  All  this,  so  they 
fancy,  is  a  scandal  and  a  disgrace  to  our  teaching  !  Nevertheless 
ingratitude  for  God's  proffered  grace  is  so  great,  the  contempt 
for  the  Word  goes  such  lengths,  vice,  avarice,  usury,  luxury, 
hatred,  perfidy,  envy,  pride,  godlessness  and  blasphemy  are 
increasing  by  such  leaps  and  bounds  that  it  is  hard  to  believe 
God  can  much  longer  deal  indulgently  and  patiently  with 
Germany.  Either  the  Turk  will  chastise  us  ["  while  we  brood 
full  of  hate  over  the  wounds  of  our  brethren  "]  or  some  inner  mis 
fortune  [civil  war]  will  break  over  us.  It  is  true  we  feel  the 
chastisement,  we  pay  the  penalty  in  grief  and  tears,  but  yet  we 
remain  sunk  in  terrible  sins  whereby  we  grieve  the  Holy  Ghost 
and  rouse  the  anger  of  God  against  us." 

What  faithful  Catholics  feared  for  him  owing  to  his  obstinacy, 
this,  in  his  sad  blindness,  he  now  predicts  for  the  foes  of  his 
Evangel.  "Who  can  wonder,"  he  cries,  "should  God,  as  Holy 
Scripture  says,  laugh  at  our  destruction  in  spite  of  the  weeping 
and  sighing  of  the  guilty.  .  .  .  The  worst  end  awaits  the  im 
penitent." 

"  Let  none  of  us  expect  the  least  good  of  the  future.  Our  sins 
cry  aloud  to  heaven  and  on  earth  and  there  is  no  hope  of  any 
good.  Now,  in  a  time  of  peace,  Germany  affords  the  eye  a  terrible 

1  Feb.  7,  1546,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  787. 

2  Feb.  10,  1546,  ib.,  p.  790. 


200          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

spectacle,  seeing  that  God's  honour  is  outraged  everywhere  by 
so  many  wicked  men  and  that  the  churches  and  schools  are  being 
destroyed.  .  .  .  Meanwhile,  we  at  least  [the  despised  preachers 
of  the  truth]  will  bewail  our  own  sins  and  those  of  Germany  ; 
we  will  pray  and  humble  our  souls,  devote  ourselves  to  our  office, 
teaching,  exhorting  and  consoling.  What  else  can  we  do  ? 
Germany  has  become  blind  and  deaf  and  rises  up  in  insolence  ; 
we  cannot  hope  against  hope." 

"  But  do  you  be  brave  and  give  thanks  to  the  Lord  for  the 
holy  calling  He  has  deigned  to  bestow  upon  us  ;  He  has  willed 
to  sunder  us  from  these  reprobates,  who  are  bent  on  ruining 
others  too,  to  preserve  us  clean  and  blameless  in  His  pure  and 
holy  Word,  and  will  continue  so  to  preserve  us.  Let  us,  however, 
weep  for  the  foes  of  the  cross  of  Christ,  even  though  they  mock 
at  our  tears.  Though  we  be  filled  with  grief  on  account  of  their 
misery  still  our  grief  will  be  assuaged  by  the  holy  joy  which  will 
attend  the  again-rising  of  the  Lord  on  the  day  of  our  salvation, 
Amen." 

He  concludes  this  curious  letter,  written  on  Easter  Sunday, 
with  the  following  benediction  :  "  May  the  Lord  be  with  you  to 
support  and  comfort  you  together  with  us.  Outside  of  Christ,  in 
the  kingdom  of  the  raging  devil,  there  is  nothing  but  sadness  to 
be  seen  or  heard."  Thus,  at  the  close,  he  returns  to  the  opening 
thought  suggested  by  the  very  object  of  the  letter.  Amsdorf  had 
deplored  the  \varlike  acts  undertaken  by  Duke  Maurice  of  Saxony 
against  the  Elector.  Luther,  in  turn,  had  informed  him,  that 
"  here,  we  are  quite  certain  that  what  the  Duke  is  doing  is  the 
direct  work  of  Satan."1 


5.  Some  Further  Deeds  of  Violence.     Fate  of  Ecclesiastical 
Works  of  Art 

End  of  the  Bishopric  of  Meissen 

The  Elector  of  Saxony,  after  having  been  so  successful  in 
seizing  the  bishopric  of  Naumburg,  sought  to  obtain  control 
of  that  of  Meissen  also. 

Here,  however,  there  was  another  Protestant  claimant  in 
the  field  in  the  person  of  the  young  Duke  Maurice  of  Saxony, 
successor  of  the  late  Duke  Henry.  As  for  the  chartered 
rights,  temporal  and  spiritual,  of  the  bishop  of  Meissen  they 
were  simply  ignored.  The  Elector,  by  a  breach  of  the  peace, 
sent  a  military  force  on  March  22,  1542,  to  occupy  the 
important  town  of  Wurzen,  where  there  was  a  collegiate 
Chapter  depending  on  Meissen.  The  Chapter  was  "re 
formed  "  by  compulsion,  the  prebendaries  who  were  faithful 

1  April  13,  1542,  ib.,  p.  464. 


SEIZURE   OF   MEISSEN  201 

to  the  Church  being  threatened  with  deposition  and  corporal 
penalties,  and  many  sacred  objects  being  flung  out  of  their 
church.  When  eventually  war  threatened  to  break  out 
between  the  two  branches  of  the  house  of  Saxony,  Landgrave 
Philip  of  Hesse  stepped  in  as  mediator  in  the  interests  of 
the  new  Evangel.  He  twice  sent  express  messengers  to 
summon  Luther  to  intervene.  But,  even  before  this,  the 
latter,  horrified  at  the  prospect  of  the  "  dreadful  disgrace  " 
which  civil  war  between  two  Evangelical  princes  would 
bring  upon  the  Evangel,  had  addressed  a  long  and  earnest 
letter  of  admonition  to  both  combatants  :  It  was  the  devil 
who  was  seeking  to  kindle  a  great  fire  from  such  a  spark  ; 
both  sides  should  have  recourse  to  law  instead  of  falling 
upon  each  other  over  so  insignificant  a  matter,  like  tipsy 
yokels  fighting  in  a  tap-room  over  a  broken  glass  ;  if  they 
refused  to  do  this,  he  would  take  the  part  of  the  one  who 
first  suffered  acts  of  violence  at  the  hands  of  the  other  and 
would  free  all  the  latter's  followers  from  their  duty  and 
oath  of  obedience  in  the  war.1  The  writing,  which  was 
intended  for  publication  and  to  be  forwarded  "  to  both 
armies,"  was  only  half -printed  when  the  Landgrave  inter 
vened.  The  author  withdrew  it  in  order  to  be  able  to  take 
up  a  different  attitude  in  the  struggle  and  to  proceed  at  once 
to  denounce  Maurice. 

Luther  it  is  true  admitted  to  Briick,  the  electoral  chancellor, 
that  certain  people  at  Wittenberg  did  not  consider  the  Elector's 
claims  at  all  well-founded.2  At  the  Landgrave's  instigation  he 
also  addressed  a  friendly  request  to  the  Elector,  "  not  to  be  too 
hard  and  stiff  "  ;  of  the  temporal  rights  of  the  case  he  was 
ignorant  ;  seeing,  however,  that  there  was  a  dispute  the  question 
could  not  be  clear ;  at  any  rate  Duke  Maurice  was  acting  wrong 
fully  in  "  pressing  his  rights  by  so  bloodthirsty  an  undertaking. 
At  times  there  may  be  a  good  reason  for  pulling  one's  foot  out 
of  the  tracks  of  a  mad  dog  or  for  burning  a  couple  of  tapers  at  the 
devil's  altar."3  But  on  the  whole  he  took  the  part  of  his  Elector 
against  Maurice,  who,  even  before  this,  had  appeared  to  him  lax 
and  wavering  in  his  support  of  the  new  faith.  In  his  history  of 
Maurice  of  Saxony,  G.  Voigt  gives  as  his  opinion  that  :  "In  this 
matter  Luther  neither  showed  himself  unbiassed  nor  did  he  act 
uprightly  and  honourably."4 

1  To  the  Elector  and  the  Duke,  April  7,  1542,  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed., 
56,  p.  15  ff.     il  Briefe,"  ed.  De  Wette,  6,  p.  304  ff. 

2  Kostlin-Kawerau,  2,  p.  567. 

3  April  9,  1542,  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  56,  p.  liii.     "  Briefe,"  ib.,  p.  311. 

4  Leipzig,  1874,  p.  28  f. 


202  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

To  Amsdorf,  who  had  helped  to  fan  the  flame  of  mutual  hate, 
Luther  speaks  of  Duke  Maurice  as  "  a  proud  and  furious  young 
fellow,  in  whom  we  undoubtedly  see  the  direct  work  of  Satan  "  ; 
it  is  not  he  (Luther)  or  Amsdorf  who  have  to  reproach  themselves 
with  the  conflagration  ;  he  is  to  be  quite  at  rest  on  this  score. 
Rather,  it  is  Christ  Who — by  His  Word — has  given  rise  to  the 
mischief  and  to  all  the  hatred  of  the  demons  against  us.  His 
Word  alone  is  to  blame,  not  we,  that  so  many  confessors  of  our 
faith  have  been  slain,  drowned  and  burnt.  "  In  vain  do  they 
impute  to  us  the  bloody  deeds  which  have  taken  place  owing 
to  Miinzer,  Carlstadt,  Zwingli  and  the  [Anabaptist]  King  of 
Minister." 

"  At  first  Maurice  was  not  regarded  by  Luther,  Melanchthon 
and  most  of  their  contemporaries  as  of  such  importance,  whether 
for  good  or  for  evil,  as  he  soon  after  showed  himself  to  be  ;  they 
fancied  him  far  more  dependent  on  his  nobles  and  councillors 
than  he  really  was."1  Luther  thought  he  detected  the  evil 
influence  of  the  councillors  in  the  twin  businesses  of  Wurzen  and 
Meissen.  In  his  reply  to  the  Landgrave  concerning  the  attempt 
to  bring  the  matter  to  a  peaceful  issue,  without  having  as  yet 
examined  the  cause,  he  speaks  of  Duke  Maurice  as  a  "  stupid 
bloodhound."2  To  his  own  Court  he  wrote,  on  April  12,  as 
though  the  Duke  were  without  question  in  the  wrong  :  "  May 
God  strengthen,  console  and  preserve  my  most  Gracious  Lord 
and  you  all  in  His  Grace  and  in  a  good  conscience,  and  bring 
down  on  the  heads  of  the  hypocritical  bloodhound  of  Meissen 
what  Cain  and  Absalom,  Judas  and  Herodes  deserved.  Amen 
and  again  Amen,  to  the  glory  of  His  name  Whom  Duke  Maurice 
is  outraging  to  the  utmost  by  this  abominable  scandal,  and 
singing  meanwhile  so  blasphemous  a  hymn  of  praise  to  the  devil 
and  all  the  foes  of  God."3 

In  the  meantime,  owing  to  Philip's  exertions,  a  com 
promise  was  effected  between  the  two  parties  ready  for  the 
fray  ;  by  this  it  was  agreed  that  each  should  have  a  free 
hand  in  one  of  the  two  portions  of  the  diocese,  the  Elector 
retaining  Wurzen  ;  as  for  the  defenceless  bishop  of  Meissen, 
who  was  not  even  informed  of  this,  he  had  simply  to  bow 
to  his  fate.  Maurice,  however,  was  so  greatly  angered  that 
he  soon  after  abandoned  the  League  of  Schmalkalden  and 
began  to  make  advances  to  the  Emperor. 

After  the  conclusion  of  peace  "  the  Elector  had  all  the 
images  in  the  chief  church  of  Wurzen  destroyed,  except 
those  which  were  overlaid  with  gold  or  which  represented 
4  serious  events,'  and  the  rest  buried  in  the  vaults."  The 

1  Kostlin-Kawerau,  2,  p.  568. 

2  According  to  Luther's  report  to  Briick,  April  12,  1542,  "  Werke," 
Erl.  ed.,  56,  p.  liv.,  "  Briefe,"  p.  314.  3  Ib. 


DEEDS   OF   ROBBERY  203 

new  teaching  was  then  introduced  throughout  the  diocese.1 
Maurice  on  his  part  carried  off  from  the  cathedral  of  Meissen, 
which  had  fallen  to  his  share,  all  the  gold  and  silver  vessels 
richly  studded  with  jewels  and  precious  stones  and  all  the 
treasures  of  art.  He  was  taking  them,  he  said,  under  his 
protection  "  because  the  times  were  so  full  of  risk  and 
danger."  After  he  had  taken  them  into  his  "  care  "  all 
trace  of  them  disappeared  for  all  time. 

0 
Destruction  of  Church  Property 

The  fate  of  the  treasures  of  Meissen  Cathedral  resembles 
that  which  befell  the  riches  of  many  churches  at  that  time. 

We  are  still  in  possession  of  the  inventory  made  by 
Blasius  Kneusel  of  Meissen  which  gives  us  a  glimpse  of  the 
wealth  and  magnificence  of  the  treasures  of  mediaeval 
German  art  and  industry  which  perished  in  this  way. 

The  list  contains  the  following  entries  among  others  :  "  One 
gold  cross  valued  by  Duke  George  at  1300  florins  ;  in  it  there  is  a 
diamond  valued  at  16,000  florins,  besides  other  precious  stones 
and  pearls  with  which  the  cross  is  covered."  "  A  second  gold 
cross,  worth  6000  florins.  A  third  is  worth  1000  florins,  besides 
the  precious  stones  and  pearls  of  which  the  cross  is  full.  I  value 
the  gold  table  and  the  credence  table,  without  the  precious 
stones,  at  1000  florins  in  gold.  The  large  bust  of  St.  Benno 
weighs  36|  Ibs.  ;  it  is  set  with  valuable  stones  ;  it  was  made 
by  order  of  the  church  and  all  the  congregation  contributed 
towards  it.  The  small  cross  with  the  medallions  of  the  Virgin 
Mary  and  St.  John  weighs  about  50  Ibs." 

The  number  of  these  treasures  of  art  which  fell  a  prey  to  the 
plunderer  amounted  to  fifty-one.2 

Two  years  later  Luther  wrote  to  Duke  Ernest  of  Saxony  to 
seek  help  on  behalf  of  two  fallen  monks  then  studying  theology 
at  Wittenberg  :  in  order  to  support  men  who  "  may  eventually 
prove  very  useful  "  "  the  chalices  and  monstrances  might  well 
be  melted  down."3 

The  ruthless  handling  of  the  Black  Monastery  at  Wittenberg, 
which  had  been  bestowed  on  Luther  after  the  dissolution  of  the 
Augustinian  community,  was  to  set  a  bad  example.  The  fittings 
of  the  church  there  were  scattered  and  the  mediaeval  images  and 

1  Burkhardt,   "  Gesch.  der  sachs.   Kirchen-  u.     Schulvisitationen, 
1524-1545,"  1879,  p.  209  f.     Janssen,  "Hist,  of  the  German  People" 
(Engl.  Trans.),  vi.,  p.  192. 

2  G.  A.  Arndt,  "  Archiv  der  sachs.  Gesch.,"  2,  Leipzig,  1784-1786, 
p.  333  ff.     C.  G.  Gersdorf,  "  Urkundenbuch  von  Meissen,"  3,  Leipzig, 
1867,  p.  375  f.    Janssen,  ib.,  p.  193. 

3  April  29,  1544,  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  56,  p.  91  ;    "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  646. 


204  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

vestments  which,  though  perhaps  only  of  small  material  value, 
would  yet  be  carefully  treasured  by  any  museum  to-day,  were 
calmly  devoted  by  Luther  to  destruction. 

"  Now  at  last,"  he  says,  "I  have  sold  the  best  of  the  pictures 
that  still  remained,  but  did  not  get  much  for  them,  fifty  florins 
at  the  most,  and  with  this  I  have  clothed,  fed  and  provided  for 
the  nuns  and  the  monks — the  thieves  and  rascals."  He  had 
already  remarked  that  the  best  of  the  "  church  ornaments  and 
vessels  "  had  gone  ;  at  the  "  beginning  of  the  Evangel  every 
thing  had  been  laid  waste  "  and  "  even  to  this  very  day  they  do 
not  cease  from  carrying  off  ...  each  man  whatever  he  can 
lay  hands  on."1 

No  one  can  adequately  describe  the  material  damage 
which  the  Catholic  parsonages  and  benefices,  convents  and 
bishoprics  had  to  suffer  on  their  suppression.  A  simple  list 
of  the  spoliations  from  the  hundreds  of  cases  on  record, 
would  give  us  a  shocking  picture  of  the  temporal  conse 
quences  involved  in  the  ecclesiastical  upheaval.  Apart 
from  the  injustice  of  thus  robbing  the  churches  and,  inci 
dentally,  the  numberless  poor  who  looked  to  the  Church  for 
help,  it  was  regrettable  that  there  was  no  other  institution 
ready  to  take  the  place  of  the  olden  Church,  and  assume 
possession  of  the  properties  which  fell  vacant.  The  Catholic 
Church  was  a  firmly  knit  and  well-established  community, 
capable  of  possessing  property.  The  new  Churches  on  the 
contrary  did  not  constitute  an  independent  and  united 
body  ;  the  universal  priesthood,  the  invisibility  of  the 
Church  of  Christ  and  its  utter  want  of  independence  were 
ideas  altogether  at  variance  with  the  legal  conception  of 
ownership  upon  which,  in  the  topsyturvydom  of  that  age  of 
transition  it  was  more  than  ever  necessary  to  insist. 

Hence  the  secular  element  had  necessarily  to  assume  the 
guardianship  of  the  property.  But  of  the  secular  authorities, 
which  was  to  take  control  ?  For  these  authorities,  which 
all  were  looking  forward  expectantly  to  their  share  of  the 
church  property  heaped  up  by  their  Catholic  ancestors, 
were  not  one  but  many  :  There  was  the  sovereign  with  his 
Court,  the  civil  administration,  the  towns  with  their 
councils,  not  to  speak  of  other  local  claimants  ;  to  make 
the  confusion  worse  there  were  the  church  patrons,  the 
trustees  of  monasteries,  the  founders  of  institutions,  and 
their  heirs,  and  also  those  endowed  with  certain  privileges 

1  In  Luther's  household  memoranda,  "  Brief e,"  6,  p.  326. 


RIGHTS   OF  POSSESSION  205 

under  letters  patent.  Moreover,  the  leaders  of  the  religious 
innovations  insisted  that  the  property  acquired  was  to  be 
devoted  to  the  support  of  the  preachers,  the  schools  and 
the  poor.  Hence  to  the  above  already  lengthy  list  of 
claimants  must  be  added  the  preachers,  or  the  consistories 
representing  them,  likewise  the  administrators  of  the  relief 
funds,  the  governors  of  the  schools,  and  the  senates  of  the 
universities  which  had  to  furnish  the  preachers. 

The  war- council  of  the  town  of  Strasburg,  in  1538, 
addressed  a  letter  to  Luther  concerning  their  prospects  or 
intention  of  securing  a  share  of  the  church  property  there. 
On  Nov.  20  of  that  year  he  replied,  peremptorily  telling 
them  to  do  nothing  of  the  sort  ;  under  the  conditions  then 
prevailing  they  must  "  de  facto  stand  still."  Yet  no  less 
plain  was  his  hint  to  them  to  warn  Catholic  owners  "  who 
hold  church  property  but  pay  no  heed  to  the  cure  of  souls," 
to  amend  and  to  accept  the  new  Evangel ;  if  they  "  wished 
to  go,"  i.e.  preferred  banishment,  so  much  the  better, 
otherwise  they  must  once  for  all  by  some  means  be  "at  last 
brought  to  see  that  further  persistence  in  their  wanton 
ness  "  was  out  of  question.1 

To  add  to  the  general  chaos  in  many  places  the  powerful 
nobles,  as  Luther  frequently  laments,  without  a  shadow  of 
a  right,  set  violent  hands  on  the  tempting  possessions,  and, 
by  entering  into  possession,  frustrated  all  other  claims. 

The  leading  theologians  of  Wittenberg  gradually  gave  up 
in  despair  their  attempts  to  interfere,  and  contented  them 
selves  with  exhortations  to  which  nobody  paid  much  heed. 

They  saw  how  the  lion's  share  fell  to  the  strongest,  i.e.  to 
the  Elector,  and  how  everywhere  the  State  took  the  pennies 
of  the  devout  and  the  poor,  using  them  for  purposes  of  its 
own,  which  often  enough  had  nothing  whatever  to  do  with 
the  Church. 

Nowhere  do  we  find  any  evidence  to  show  that  the 
theologians  made  use  of  the  authority  on  which  on  other 
occasions  they  laid  so  much  stress,  or  made  any  serious 
attempt  to  check  arbitrary  action  and  to  point  out  the 
way  to  a  just  distribution,  or  to  lay  down  some  clear  and 
general  rules  in  accordance  with  which  the  graduated  claims 
of  the  different  competitors  might  have  been  settled.  They 
1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  55,  p.  213  ("  Brief wechsel,"  12,  p.  34). 


206  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

might  at  least  have  associated  themselves  with  the  lawyers 
in  the  Privy  Council  and  formulated  some  rule  whereby 
the  rights  of  the  State,  of  the  towns  and  of  the  church 
patrons  could  have  been  protected  against  the  worst  attacks 
of  the  plunderers.  But  no  check  of  this  sort  was  imposed 
by  the  theologians  on  the  prevailing  avarice  and  greed  of 
gain.  It  is  plain  that  they  despaired  of  the  result,  and, 
possibly,  silence  may  not  have  been  the  worst  policy.  No 
one  can  be  blind  to  the  huge  difficulties  which  attended 
interference,  but  who  was  after  all  to  blame  for  these  and 
so  many  other  difficulties  which  had  arisen  in  public  order, 
and  which  could  be  solved  only  by  the  use  of  force  ? 

When  an  exceptionally  conscientious  town-council  sent  a 
messenger  to  Luther  in  1544  to  ask  for  advice  and  instruc 
tions  how  to  deal  with  the  property  of  two  monasteries 
which  had  been  suppressed,  the  "  honourable,  prudent  and 
beloved  masters  and  friends  "  received  from  him  only  a 
short  and  evasive  answer  :  "  We  theologians  have  nothing 
to  do  with  this  .  .  .  such  things  must  be  decided  by  the 
lawyers  .  .  .  our  theology  teaches  us  to  obey  the  worldly 
law,  to  protect  the  pious  and  to  punish  the  wicked."1 

If,  however,  the  lawyers  were  to  follow  the  jurisprudence 
in  which  they  had  been  trained,  then  they  could  but  insist 
upon  the  property  being  restored  to  its  rightful  owners, 
who  had  never  ceased  to  claim  it  for  the  Church,  and  had 
even  appealed  to  the  imperial  authority.  Luther's  reply 
constituted  a  formal  retreat  from  the  domain  of  moral 
questions,  questions  indeed  which  had  become  burning 
largely  through  the  action  of  his  theologians.  It  was  an 
admission  that  their  theology  was  of  no  avail  to  solve  an 
eminently  practical  question  of  ethics  coming  well  within 
its  purview  which  was  the  safeguarding  of  the  moral  law, 
and  for  which,  indeed,  this  theology  was  itself  responsible. 
In  this,  however,  as  in  so  many  other  instances,  they  sowed 
the  wind,  but  when  the  whirlwind  came  they  ran  for  shelter 
to  their  theological  cell.2 

Still,  the  question  of  church  property  caused  Luther  so 
much  heart-burning  in  his  old  age  that  his  death  was 
hastened  thereby. 

1  July  7,  1544,  "  Werke,"  ib.,  p.  104  f. 

2  Cp.  Luther's  attitude  at  the  time  when  the  question  of  armed 
resistance  to  the  Emperor  was  mooted,  vol.  iii.,  56  fi.,  and  his  views  on 
the  relations  of  Church  and  State. 


STATUES   AND   PICTURES  207 

The  lamentations  wrung  from  him  in  1538,  his  description 
of  himself  as  "  tormented  "  and  the  "  unhappiest  of  all 
unhappy  mortals,"1  were  due  in  no  small  measure  to  the 
rapacity  he  had  seen  in  connection  with  the  church  lands. 
The  bulwarks  he  strove  to  erect  against  this  disorder  were 
constantly  being  torn  down  afresh  by  the  unevangelical 
disposition  of  the  Evangelicals,  and  yet  he  refused  to  admit, 
even  to  himself,  that  he  had  been  the  first  to  open  the  way  to 
such  arbitrary  action.  As  in  his  own  house  he  had  set  an 
example  of  destruction  of  church  property,  so  in  his  turn 
he  met  with  bitter  experiences  even  in  his  own  dwelling 
and  in  the  case  of  his  own  private  concerns.  His  tenure  of 
the  Black  Monastery  at  Wittenberg  was  uncertain,  and, 
as  already  stated,  hostile  lawyers  at  Court  even  questioned 
his  right  to  dispose  of  his  possessions  by  Will  on  the  ground 
that  his  marriage  was  null  in  law,  whether  canon  or  civil. 
The  Monastery  had  been  given  him  by  the  Prince,  and 
Luther  and  Catherine  Bora  used  it  both  as  their  residence 
and  as  a  boarding-house  for  lodgers.  It  had  not,  however, 
been  given  to  Luther's  family,  and  from  this  the  difficulty 
arose.  He  was  most  careful  to  note  down  in  his  account 
books  the  things  that  were  to  be  Katey's  inalienable  property 
on  his  death,  but,  when  he  was  no  more,  Katey  and  her 
children  had  in  their  turn  to  make  acquaintance  with  the 
poverty  and  vicissitudes  endured  by  so  many  churchmen 
whose  means  of  livelihood  had  been  filched  from  them. 

Luther  and  the  Images 

Can  the  charge  be  brought  against  Luther's  teaching  of 
being  in  part  responsible  for  the  outbreaks  of  iconoclastic 
violence  which  accompanied  the  spread  of  the  Reformation 
in  Germany  ?  Did  his  writings  contribute  to  the  destruction 
of  those  countless,  admirable  and  often  costly  creations  of 
art  and  piety  which  fell  a  prey  to  the  blind  fury  of  the 
zealot,  or  to  greed  of  gain  ? 

Assuredly  he  would,  had  he  seen  them,  have  disapproved 
of  many  of  the  acts  of  vandalism  which  history  tells  us 
were  perpetrated  against  Catholic  churches,  monasteries 

1  To  Amsdorf,  Nov.  25,  1538,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  136  ("  Brief wechsel," 
11,  p.  38)  :  "  Vides,  quantis  premor  oneribus.  .  .  .  Miserrimis  miserior, 
ut  qui  amplius  nihil  possum  prce  de/ectu 


208          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

and  institutions.  Generally  speaking  the  ideas  of  Carlstadt 
and  Zwingli,  wherever  they  gained  the  upper  hand,  proved 
far  more  destructive  to  ecclesiastical  works  of  art  than 
Luther's  gentler  admonitions  against  the  veneration  of 
images.  Nevertheless,  his  exhortations,  though  more 
guarded,  made  their  way  among  both  the  mighty  and  the 
masses,  and  were  productive  of  much  harm. 

He  himself  declared  frankly,  about  the  end  of  1524,  that 
"  by  his  writings  he  had  done  more  harm  to  the  images  than 
Carlstadt  with  all  his  storming  and  fanaticism  will  ever  do."1 
In  the  course  of  the  next  year  he  boasted  of  having  "  brought 
contempt  "  on  the  images  even  before  Carlstadt 's  time.  He 
had  repudiated  the  latter 's  acts  of  violence  and  his  ill-judged 
appeal  to  the  law  of  Moses  ;2  on  the  other  hand,  he  had 
undermined  the  very  foundations  of  image-worship  by  his 
Evangelical  doctrines  ;  this  was  a  better  kind  of  "  storm 
ing,"  for  in  this  way  those  who  once  had  bowed  to  images 
now  "  refused  to  have  any  made."  As  much  as  the  most 
fanatical  of  the  iconoclasts,  he  too  wished  to  see  the  images. 
"  torn  out  of  men's  hearts,  despised  and  abolished,"  but 
he  "  destroyed  them  [the  images]  outwardly  and  also 
inwardly,"3  and  so  went  one  better  than  Carlstadt,  who 
attacked  them  only  from  the  outside. 

He  had,  so  he  continues,  speaking  to  the  German  people, 
"  consented  "  that  the  images  should  be  "  done  away  with 
outwardly  so  long  as  this  took  place  without  fanaticism  and 
violence,  and  by  the  hand  of  the  proper  authorities."4  "  We 
drive  them  out  of  men's  hearts  until  the  time  comes  for  them 
to  be  torn  down  by  the  hands  of  those  whose  duty  it  is  to  do 
this."5  Meanwhile,  however,  it  was  "  every  man's  duty  " 
to  "  destroy  them  by  the  Evangel,"  "  especially  the  images 
of  God  and  other  idolatrous  ones."6 

In  his  Church-sermons  he  makes  his  own  the  complaint, 
that,  though  these  images  which  attracted  a  great  "  con 
course  of  people  "  should  be  "  overthrown,"  the  bishops 
were  actually  attaching  indulgences  to  them  and  thus 
increasing  the  disorder.7 

1  To  the  Christians  at  Strasburg,  Dec.  15,  1524,  "  Werke,"  Weim. 
ed.,  15,  p.  395  ;  Erl.  ed.,  53,  p.  275  ("  Brief wechsel,"  5,  p.  83). 

2  See  above,  vol.  ii.,  p.  370. 

3  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  18,  p.  67  f.  ;  Erl.  ed.,  29,  p.  141  f.    "  Against 
the  heavenly  Prophets."          4  /&.,  68=143.          5  /&.,  p.  73-148. 

6  /&.,  p.  74=149.  7  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  152,  p.  334. 


STATUES   AND   PICTURES  209 

In  his  sermons  against  Carlstadt  at  Wittenberg  he  had 
said  things,  and  afterwards  disseminated  them  in  print, 
little  calculated  to  impose  restraint  on  the  zeal  of  the  multi 
tude  :  "It  were  better  we  had  none  of  these  images  on 
account  of  the  tiresome  and  execrable  abuse  and  unbelief."1 

The  iconoclasts  at  Wittenberg  were  anxious,  he  says,  to 
set  about  hewing  down  the  images.  His  reply  was  :  "  Not 
yet  !  For  you  will  not  eradicate  the  images  in  this  way, 
indeed  you  will  only  establish  them  more  firmly  than  ever."2 

Accordingly  it  was  then  his  own  opinion  that  they  should 
be  "  abolished  "  and  "  overthrown,"  particularly  such 
images  as  were  held  in  peculiar  veneration  ;  in  1528  he 
again  admitted  that  this  was  his  object,  when  once  more 
proposing  his  own  less  noisy  and  more  cautious  policy  as 
the  more  effectual  ;  in  his  sermons  on  the  Ten  Command 
ments  printed  at  this  time  he  declared  that  the  way  to 
"  hew  down  and  stamp  out  the  images  was  to  tear  and  turn 
men's  hearts  away  from  them."3  Then  the  "  images  would 
tumble  down  of  their  own  accord  and  fall  into  disrepute  ;  for 
they  [the  faithful]  will  say  :  If  it  is  not  a  good  work  to  make 
images,  then  it  is  the  devil  who  makes  them  and  the  pictures. 
In  future  I  shall  keep  my  money  in  my  pocket  or  lay  it  out 
to  better  advantage."4 — "  The  iconoclasts  rush  in  and  tear 
down  the  images  outwardly.  To  this  I  do  not  object  so  much. 
But  then  they  go  on  to  say  that  it  must  be  so,  and  that  it 
is  well  pleasing  to  God  "  ;  this,  however,  is  false ;  it  is  a 
mistake  to  say  that  such  a  Divine  command  exists  to  tear 
them  down.5 

The  grounds  on  which  he  opposed  the  old-time  use  of 
images  were  the  following  :  By  erecting  them  people  sought 
to  gain  merit  in  God's  sight  and  to  perform  good  works  ; 
they  also  trusted  in  images  and  in  the  Saints  instead  of  in 
Christ,  Who  is  our  only  ground  for  confidence  ;  finally — a 
reason  alleged  by  him  but  seldom — people  adored  the 
images  and  thus  became  guilty  of  idolatry.  Here  it  is  plain 
how  much  his  peculiar  theology  on  good  works  and  the 
worship  of  the  saints  contribute  to  his  condemnation  of  the 
ancient  Catholic  practice.  In  his  zeal  against  the  existing 

Ib.,  Weim.  ed.,  10,  3,  p.  26  ;   Erl.  ed.,  28,  p.  225  f. 

Ib.,  p.  29-228. 

Ib.,  16,  p.  440=36,  p.  49. 

Ib.,  p.  440  f.  =  50. 

Ib.,  p.  444  =  54,    Sermon  of  1525, 

v. — p 


210          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

abuses  he  overlooks  the  fact,  that  to  invoke  before  their 
images  the  Saints'  intercession  with  Christ  was  not  in  the 
least  opposed  to  belief  in  Christ  as  the  one  mediator.  As 
for  the  charge  of  adoring  the  images  to  which  he  resorts 
exceptionally — more  with  the  object  of  making  an  im 
pression  and  shielding  himself — it  amounted  to  an  act  of 
injustice  against  all  his  forefathers  to  accuse  them  of  having 
been  so  grossly  stupid  as  to  confuse  the  images  with  the 
divinity ;  even  he  himself  had  elsewhere  sufficiently  absolved 
them  of  the  charge  of  adoring  saints,  let  alone  images.1 

The  real  cause  of  this  premature  attack  on  images  found 
in  these  sermons  was  the  storm  called  forth  by  Carlstadt, 
which  Luther  hoped  to  divert  and  dominate2  by  the  atti 
tude  he  assumed  ;  otherwise  it  is  very  likely  he  would  have 
refrained  from  assailing  the  religious  feelings  of  the  people 
in  so  sensitive  a  spot  for  many  years  to  come,  or  at  any  rate 
would  not  have  done  so  in  the  manner  he  chose  by  way  of 
reply  to  Carlstadt. 

Nor  assuredly  would  he  have  gone  so  far  had  he  himself 
ever  vividly  realised  the  profoundly  religious  and  morally 
stimulating  character  of  the  veneration  of  images,  and  its 
sympathetic  and  consoling  side  as  exemplified  at  many  of 
the  regular  places  of  pilgrimage  at  that  time.  Owing  to  the 
circumstances  of  his  early  years  he  had  never  enjoyed  the 
opportunity  of  tasting  the  refreshment  and  the  blessings 
to  be  found  in  those  sacred  resorts  visited  by  thousands  of 
the  devout,  where  those  suffering  from  any  ill  of  soul  or 
body  were  wont  to  seek  solace  from  the  cares  and  trials  of 
life.  Indeed  it  was  particularly  against  such  images  as 
were  the  object  of  special  devotion  and  to  which  the 
people  "  flocked  "  with  a  "  false  confidence  "  that  his  anger 
was  directed. 

His  animosity  to  image-worship  would  also  appear  to 
have  been  psychologically  bound  up  with  two  tendencies 
of  his  :  first,  with  the  desire  to  attack  the  hated  Church  of 
the  Papists  at  those  very  spots  where  her  influence  with  the 
people  was  most  apparent ;  secondly,  with  his  plan  to  bring 
everything  down  to  a  dead  level,  which  led  him  on  the 
specious  pretext  of  serving  the  religion  of  the  spirit  to 

1  Cp.  Weim.  ed.,  1,  p.  425  ;    "  Opp.  lat.  exeg.,"  12,  p.  51  sq.  (1518, 
against  the  strictures  of  the  Bohemians)  and  Weim.  ed.,  10,  2,  p.  34  ; 
Erl.  ed.,  28,  p.  310. 

2  See  above,  vol.  ii.,  p.  97  f,  j  .vol,  iii.,  p.  385, 


STATUES   AND   PICTURES  211 

abolish,    or   to    curtail,    the    most    popular    and    cheering 
phenomena  of  outward  worship. 

It  is  a  reprehensible  thing,  he  says,  even  in  his  sermons  against 
Carlstadt,  to  have  an  image  set  up  in  the  church,  because  the 
believer  fancies  "he  is  doing  God  a  service  thereby  and  pleasing 
Him,  and  has  thus  performed  a  good  work  and  gained  merit  in 
God's  sight,  which  is  sheer  idolatry."  In  their  zeal  for  their 
damnable  good  works  the  princes,  bishops  and  big  ones  of  the 
earth  had  "  caused  many  costly  images  of  silver  and  gold  to  be 
set  up  in  the  churches  and  cathedrals."  These  were  not  indeed  to 
be  pulled  down  by  force  since  many  at  least  made  a  good  use 
of  them ;  but  it  was  to  be  made  clear  to  the  people  that  if  "  they 
were  not  doing  any  service  to  God,  or  pleasing  Him  thereby," 
then  they  would  soon  "  tumble  down  of  their  own  accord."1 

It  was  a  mistake,  so  he  declared  in  1528  concerning  the  grounds 
of  his  verdict  against  the  images,  to  "  invoke  them  specially,  as 
though  I  sought  to  give  great  honour  or  do  a  great  service  to 
God  with  the  images,  as  has  been  the  case  hitherto."  The  "  trust  " 
placed  in  the  images  has  cost  us  the  loss  of  our  souls  ;  the  Chris 
tians  whom  he  had  instructed  were  now  opposed  to  this  "  trust  " 
and  to  the  opinion  "  that  they  were  thereby  doing  a  special 
service  to  God."2  Amongst  them  memorial  images  might  be 
permitted,  i.e.  such  as  "  simply  represent,  as  in  a  glass,  past 
events  and  things  "  but  "  are  not  made  into  objects  of  devotion, 
trust  or  worship."3 — It  is  dreadful  to  make  them  a  pretext  for 
"  idolatry  "  and  to  place  our  trust  in  anything  but  God.  "  Such 
images  ought  to  be  destroyed,  just  as  we  have  already  pulled 
down  many  images  of  the  Saints  ;  it  were  also  to  be  wished,"  he 
adds  ironically,  "  that  we  had  more  such  images  of  silver,  for  then 
we  should  know  how  to  make  a  right  Christian  use  of  them."4 — 
"  I  will  not  pay  court  to  such  idols ;  the  worship  and  adoration 
must  cease."5  Whoever  "with  his  whole  heart  has  learnt  to 
keep"  the  First  Commandment  would  readily  despise  "all  the 
idols  of  silver  and  gold."6 — Yet  of  the  "  adoration  "  of  the  images 
he  had  said  in  a  letter  of  1522  to  Count  Ludwig  von  Stolberg, 
that  the  motive  of  his  opposition  was  not  so  much  fear  of  adora 
tion,  because  adoration  of  the  Saints — so  he  hints — might  well 
occur  without  any  images;  what  urged  him  on  was,  on  the 
contrary,  the  false  confidence  and  the  opinion  of  the  Catholics 
that  "  they  were  thereby  doing  a  good  work  and  a  service  to 
God."' 

We  have  just  quoted  Luther's  reservation,  viz.  that  he 
was  willing  to  tolerate  the  use  of  images  which  "  simply 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  10,  3,  p.  31  f.  ;   Erl.  ed.,  28,  p.  229  f. 

2  Ib.,  16,  p.  440  =  36,  p.  49.     Sermons  on  the  Ten  Commandments. 

3  Ib.,  28,  p.  677  f.=36,  p.  329  f.    Exposition  of  Deuteronomy. 

4  Ib.,  p.  716-368.  6  P.  553  =  206.  6  P.  715  =  367. 

7  April  25,  1522,  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  53,  p.  133  ("  Briefwechsel," 
3,  p.  347). 


212          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

represent,  as  in  a  glass,  past  events  and  things."  State 
ments  of  this  sort  occur  frequently  in  his  writings.  They 
go  hand  in  hand  with  a  radical  insistence  on  inward  disdain 
for  image-worship,  and  a  tendency  to  demand  its  entire 
suppression  in  the  churches.  It  was  on  these  lines  that  the 
Elector  of  Saxony  acted  when  ordering  the  destruction  of 
the  images  in  the  principal  church  of  Wurzen  (above,  p.  202) ; 
images  which  represented  "  serious  events "  and  those 
overlaid  with  gold  were  not  to  be  hewn  to  pieces. 

In  the  book  "Against  the  Heavenly  Prophets"  Luther,  in  the 
same  sense,  writes  :  "Images  used  as  a  memorial  or  for  a  symbol, 
like  the  image  of  the  Emperor  "  on  the  coins,  were  not  objection 
able  ;  even  in  conversation  images  were  employed  by  way  of  illus 
tration  ;  "  memorial  pictures  or  those  which  bear  testimony  to 
the  faith,  such  as  crucifixes  and  the  images  of  the  Saints,"  are 
honest  and  praiseworthy,  but  the  images  venerated  at  places  of 
pilgrimage  are  "  utterly  idolatrous  and  mere  shelters  of  the 
devil."1  And  in  the  "  Vom  Abendmal  Christi  Bekentnis  "  (1528) 
he  says  :  "  Images,  bells,  mass  vestments,  church  ornaments, 
altars,  lights  and  such  like  I  leave  optional  ;  whoever  wishes  may 
discard  them,  although  pictures  from  Scripture  and  representa 
tions  of  sacred  subjects  I  consider  very  useful,  though  I  leave 
each  one  free  to  do  as  he  pleases  ;  for  with  the  iconoclasts  I  do 
not  hold."2 

In  one  passage  of  his  Church-postils  he  entirely  approves  the 
use  of  the  crucifix  ;  we  ought  to  contemplate  the  cross  as  the 
Israelites  looked  upon  the  serpent  raised  on  high  by  Moses  ; 
we  should  "  see  Christ  in  such  an  image  and  believe  in  Him."3 
<l  If  it  be  no  sin,"  he  says  elsewhere,  "  to  have  Christ  in  my  heart, 
why  should  it  be  a  sin  to  have  it  [His  image]  before  my  eyes  ?  "4 

But  Catholics  were  saying  much  the  same  thing  in  defence  of 
the  veneration  of  images,  though  to  this  Luther  paid  no  attention  : 
If  it  be  no  sin  to  have  in  our  hearts  the  saints  who  are  Christ's 
own  friends  or  Mary  who  is  His  Mother,  how  then  should  it 
be  sinful  to  have  their  images  before  our  eyes  and  to  honour 
them  ? 

As  years  went  by  Luther  became  more  and  more  liberal  in 
recommending  the  use  of  historical  and,  in  particular,  biblical 
representations.  In  1545,  when  he  published  his  Passional  with 
his  little  manual  of  prayers,  he  said  in  the  preface,  alluding  to  the 
woodcuts  contained  in  the  book  :  Such  pictures  ought  to  be  in 
the  hands  of  Christians,  more  particularly  of  children  and  of  the 
simple,  who  can  "  better  be  moved  by  pictures  and  figures  "  ; 
there  was  no  harm  "  in  painting  such  stories  in  rooms  and  apart 
ments,  together  with  the  texts "  ;  he  was  in  favour  of  the 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  18,  pp  74  f.,  82  f.  ;  Erl.  ed.,  29,  pp.  149  1, 
159.  2  Ib.,  26,  p.  509  =  30,  p.  372. 

3  Ib.,  10,  3,  p.  114=  152,  p.  334.          4  Ib.,  18,  p.  83-29,  p.  159. 


WORKS   OF   ART  213 

"  principal  stories  of  the  whole  Bible  "  being  pictorially  shown, 
though  he  was  opposed  to  all  "  abuse  of  and  false  confidence  in  " 
images. * 

Such  kindlier  expressions  did  not,  however,  do  full  justice 
to  the  veneration  of  images  as  practised  throughout  the 
olden  Church,  nor  did  they  counteract  what  he  had  said  of 
the  idols  of  silver  and  gold,  of  the  uselessness  and  harmful- 
ness  of  bestowing  money  on  sacred  pictures  and  religious 
works  of  art  to  be  exposed  for  the  devotion  of  the  people. 
All  was  drowned  in  his  incitement  to  "  destroy,"  "  break  in 
pieces,"  "  pull  down  "  and  "  fall  upon  "  the  images,  first 
by  means  of  the  Evangel,  and,  then  through  the  action  of 
the  authorities.  It  is  plain  what  fate  was  in  store  particu 
larly  for  those  religious  works  of  art  which  served  as  symbols 
of,  or  to  extol,  those  dogmas  and  institutions  peculiarly 
odious  to  him,  for  instance,  the  sacrifice  of  the  Mass,  around 
which  centred  the  ornaments  of  the  altar,  the  fittings  of  the 
choir,  and,  more  or  less,  all  the  decorations  of  the  church. 
As  for  the  sacred  vessels,  often  of  the  most  costly  character, 
and  all  else  that  pertained  to  the  dispensing  of  the  sacra 
ments,  their  destruction  had  already  been  decreed. 

Further  details  regarding  the  Fate  of  the  Works  of  Art  and 
of  Art  itself 

The  account  already  given  above  of  the  squandering  and 
destruction  of  ecclesiastical  works  of  art,  in  particular  of 
the  valuable  images  of  the  Saints  in  the  towns  of  Meissen 
and  Wurzen,2  may  be  supplemented  by  the  reports  from 
Erfurt  of  the  damage  done  there  at  the  coming  of  the 
religious  innovations  ;  we  must  also  bear  in  mind,  that  the 
suppression  of  Catholic  worship  in  this  town  which  looms  so 
large  in  Luther's  life,  took  place  under  his  particular  in 
fluence  and  with  the  co-operation  of  preachers  receiving 
their  instructions  from  Wittenberg. 

Before  the  lawless  peasants  entered  the  town  on  April  28, 
1525,  the  Council  had  already  "  taken  into  safe  custody  " 
the  treasures  of  the  churches  and  monasteries  ;  chalices 
and  other  vessels  of  precious  metal  were  on  this  occasion 
carried  away  in  "  tubs  and  trogs,"  and  eventually  the  public 
funds  were  enriched  with  the  profit  derived  from  their  sale.3 

1  lb.,  63,  p.  391  f.     2  Cp.  above,  p.  203.     3  See  vol.  ii.,  p.  351  f. 


214          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

Amongst  the  objects  taken,  were  :  a  silver  censer  in  the 
shape  of  a  small  boat,  the  silver  caskets  containing  the 
heads  of  Saints  Severus,  Vincentia  and  Innocentia,  the 
silver  reliquary  with  the  bones  of  SS.  Eobanus  and  Adolarius 
in  which  they  were  carried  in  solemn  procession  every  seven 
years.  This  art-treasure  which  belonged  to  St.  Mary's,  was, 
not  long  after,  melted  down  by  the  town-council  when 
pressed  for  money,  "  and  cast  into  bars  which  were  taken  to 
the  mint  at  Weimar."  The  silver  pennies  minted  from 
them  were  later  on  called  coffin  pennies.  Other  valuables 
which  the  Council  had  taken  in  charge  were  put  up  for 
auction  secretly,  without  their  owners  learning  anything 
of  the  matter.  "  The  prebendaries  were  well- justified  in 
urging,"  writes  the  Protestant  historian  who  has  collected 
these  data,  "  as  against  these  high-handed  proceedings 
that  the  Council  should  first  have  laid  hands  on  the  valuables 
belonging  to  the  burghers,  or  at  the  very  least  have  sum 
moned  the  rightful  owners  to  be  present  at  the  sale  of  their 
property,  in  order  that  they  might  make  a  note  of  the  prices 
obtained  and  thus  be  able  to  claim  compensation  later. 
The  Council  suffered  a  moral  set-back,  while  at  the  same 
time  reaping  no  appreciable  material  advantage."1 

Not  only  the  Council  but  the  peasants  too,  led  by  the 
Lutheran  preachers,  were  greatly  to  blame  for  the  destruc 
tion  of  art  treasures  wrought  at  Erfurt  in  that  same  year. 
When,  in  order  to  put  an  end  to  the  rule  over  the  town  of 
the  Elector,  Albert  of  Brandenburg,  they  stormed  the  so- 
called  Mainzer  Hof  at  Erfurt,  "  all  the  jewels,  gold,  silver 
and  valuable  household  stuff  were  carried  off."  Shortly 
after  "  the  peasants,  thanks  to  their  sharpness,  managed  to 
unearth  a  pastoral  staff  in  silver,  worth  300  florins  [in  the 
then  currency],  which  had  been  concealed  in  the  privy 
attached  to  the  room  of  the  master  cook  to  save  it  from  the 
greed  of  the  robbers."2  At  the  Mainzer  Hof  they  removed 
all  monumental  tablets,  pictures  and  statues  as  well  as  the 
elaborate  coats  of  arms  bearing  witness  to  the  Archbishop's 
sovereignty.  A  stone  effigy  of  St.  Martin  which  stood  in 
front  of  the  Rathaus  and  the  ancient  symbols  of  the 
sovereignty  of  Mayence  were  pulled  down  and  smashed  to 
bits.  In  place  of  these  they  scrawled  on  the  new  stone 

1  Th.  Eitner,  "Erfurt  u.  die  Bauernaufstande  im  16.  Jahrh.,"  Halle, 
1903,  pp.  59,  95.  2  Ib.t  p.  72. 


WORKS   OF   ART  215 

edifice  which  had  been  erected  there  another  coat  of  arms  in 
chalk  and  charcoal,  having  a  plough,  coulter  and  hoe  in  the 
shield  and  in  the  field  a  horse-shoe.  "  During  all  this 
Adolarius  Huttner  [with  Eberlin  of  Giinzburg,  the  apostate 
Franciscan]  and  other  Lutheran  preachers  were  going  to 
and  fro  amongst  them."  The  whole  row  of  priests'  houses 
standing  alongside  the  torrent  was  searched  and  the  valu 
ables  plundered.1 

"  The  people  of  Erfurt  did  almost  as  much  damage  as  the 
peasants."2 

As  a  matter  of  fact  the  citizens  frequently  outdid  the 
agricultural  population  in  this  work  of  destruction.  The 
chronicles  of  the  times  relate,  that  they  broke  down  the 
walls  of  the  vaults  of  the  two  collegiate  churches  in  hopes  of 
finding  hidden  treasure  behind  them,  and,  then,  in  their 
disappointment,  sacrilegiously  tore  open  the  tabernacles, 
threw  the  holy  oils  to  the  dogs  and  treated  the  things  in  the 
churches  in  such  a  manner  as  is  "  heartrending  beyond 
description."  The  mob  destroyed  not  merely  the  books  and 
parchments  in  which  their  obligations  were  recorded,  but  a 
number  of  others  of  importance  for  literature  and  learning 
were  also  wantonly  spoiled. 

From  another  contemporary  source  we  have  the  following 
on  the  destruction  of  the  old  writings  :  "  And  besides  all 
this  on  St.  Walpurgis  Day  in  the  Lauwengasse  the  peasants 
and  those  who  were  with  them  tore  up  more  than  two  waggon- 
loads  of  books,  and  threw  them  out  of  the  houses  into  the 
street.  These  the  burgher  folk  carried  home  in  large  baskets. 
While  gathering  up  the  torn  books  as  best  they  could, 
putting  them  into  baskets  and  binding  them  with  ropes  as 
one  does  straw,  a  whirlwind  sprang  up  and  lifted  the  torn 
books,  letters  and  papers  high  into  the  air  and  over  all  the 
houses,  so  that  many  of  them  were  afterwards  found  stick 
ing  to  the  poles  in  the  vineyards."3 

In  very  many  instances,  particularly  during  the  Peasant 
War,  the  destruction  and  scattering  of  ecclesiastical  works 
of  art  went  much  beyond  Luther's  injunctions.  We  shall 
hear  him  protest,  that  many  were  good  Evangelicals  only  so 
long  as  there  were  still  chalices,  monstrances  and  monkish 

1  Ib.,  pp.  74,  84.  2  Ib.,  p.  75. 

3  Ib.,  pp.  78,  76. 


216          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

vessels  to  be  had.1  It  was  naturally  a  very  difficult  task 
to  check  the  greed  of  gain  and  wanton  love  of  destruction 
once  this  had  broken  loose,  particularly  after  the  civil 
authorities  had  tasted  the  sweets  to  be  derived  from  the 
change  of  religion,  and  after  the  peasants  in  the  intoxication 
of  their  newly  found  freedom  of  the  Gospel,  and  in  their 
lust  for  plunder,  had  begun  to  lay  violent  hands  on  property. 
It  was  in  accordance  with  Luther's  express  injunctions 
that  the  "  proper  authorities  "  proceeded  to  destroy  such 
images  as  were  not  a  record  of  history.  They  went  further, 
however,  nor  was  the  zeal  confined  solely  to  the  authorities. 

In  Prussia,  the  land  of  the  Teutonic  Order,  the  crosses  and  the 
images  of  the  Saints  had  been  doomed  to  destruction  by  the 
revolution  of  1525  ;  the  silver  treasures  of  art  in  the  churches 
were  hammered  into  plate  for  use  at  the  new  Lutheran  Duke's 
dining-table.  The  Estates  of  his  country,  when  he  had  asked 
them  to  vote  supplies,  retorted  that  he  might  as  well  help  himself 
to  the  treasures  of  the  churches.  The  result  was,  so  the  chronicler 
of  that  day  relates,  "that  all  the  chalices  and  other  ornaments" 
were  removed  from  the  houses  of  God,  barely  one  chalice  being 
left  in  each  church  ;  some  of  the  country  churches  were  even 
driven  to  use  pewter  chalices.  "  When  they  had  taken  all  the 
silver  they  fell  upon  the  bells  "  ;  they  left  but  one  in  each  village, 
the  rest  being  carried  off  to  Konigsberg  and  sold  to  the  smelters. 2 
At  Marienwerder  only  did  the  prebendaries,  appealing  to  the 
King  of  Poland,  make  a  stand  for  the  retention  of  their  church 
plate  and  other  property,  until  they  themselves  were  sent  in 
chains  to  Preuschmark. 3 

In  1524,  during  the  fair,  the  images  were  dragged  out  of  the 
churches  at  Riesenburg  in  Pomerania,  shamelessly  dishonoured 
and  finally  burnt.  The  bishop-elect,  a  dignitary  whom  the  Pope 
had  refused  to  confirm  and  who  was  notoriously  a  "  zealous 
instrument  of  the  Evangel,"  excused  the  proceeding.  In  other 
towns  similar  outrages  were  perpetrated  by  the  iconoclasts. 

On  the  introduction  of  Lutheranism  at  Stralsund  almost  all 
the  churches  and  monasteries  were  stormed,  the  crucifixes  and 
images  being  broken  up  in  the  presence  of  members  of  the  town- 
council  (1525).4 

In  1525  the  Lutherans  at  Dantzig  took  possession  of  the 
wealthy  church  of  St.  Mary's,  which  was  renowned  for  the 
number  of  its  foundations  and  had  128  clergy  attached  to  it. 

1  See  below,  p.  230. 

2  Chr.  Falk,  "  Elbingisch-Preuss.  Chronik,"  ed.  M.  Toppen  ("  Publik. 
des  Vereins  f.   die  Gesch.   der  Provinzen   Ost-  und  West-Preussen," 
Leipzig,    1879),   p.   157  f.     Janssen,   "  Hist,  of  the  German  People  " 
(Engl.  Trans.),  v.,  p.  112  ff. 

3  v.  Baczko,  "  Gesch.  Preussens,"  4,  p.  173  ff.    Janssen,  ib. 

4  Janssen,  ib. 


WORKS   OF   ART  217 

A  list  of  the  articles  confiscated  or  plundered  comprises  :  ten 
chalices  of  gold  with  precious  stones  of  great  value,  and  as  many 
bejewelled  gold  patens  and  ampullae  ;  a  ciborium  of  gold  with 
corals  and  gems,  two  gold  crosses  with  gems,  an  image  of  the 
Virgin  Mary  with  four  angels  in  gold,  a  silver  statue  of  the  same, 
silver  statues  of  the  Apostles,  four  and  twenty  silver  ciboriums, 
six  and  forty  silver  chalices,  two  dozen  of  them  of  silver-gilt, 
twelve  silver  and  silver-gilt  ampullae,  eleven  ungilt  silver 
ampullae,  twenty-three  silver  vessels,  twelve  of  them  being  gilt, 
twelve  silver-gilt  chalices  with  lids,  twelve  silver-gilt  crosses  with 
corals  and  precious  stones,  two  dozen  small  silver  crosses,  eight 
large  and  ten  small  silver  censers,  etc.,  twelve  chasubles  in  cloth 
of  gold  with  pearls  and  gems,  twelve  of  red  silk  with  a  gold  fringe, 
besides  this  eighty-two  silk  chasubles,  twelve  cloth-of-gold 
antependiums  with  pearls  and  gems,  six  costly  copes,  twelve 
other  silk  copes,  six  and  forty  albs  of  gold  and  silver  embroidered 
flower-pattern,  sixty-five  other  fine  albs,  eighty-eight  costly 
altar  covers,  forty-nine  gold-embroidered  altar  cloths,  ninety- 
nine  less  elaborate  altar  cloths.1 

When  Bugenhagen  had  secured  the  triumph  of  Lutheranism 
in  the  town  of  Brunswick  the  altars  w^ere  thrown  down,  the 
pictures  and  statues  removed,  the  chalices  and  other  church 
vessels  melted  down  and  the  costly  mass  vestments  sold  to  the 
highest  bidder  at  the  Rathaus  (1528).  Bugenhagen,  Luther's 
closest  spiritual  colleague,  laboured  zealously  to  sweep  the 
churches  clean  of  "  every  vestige  of  Popish  superstition  and 
idolatry."  Only  the  collegiate  churches  of  St.  Blasius  and  St. 
Cyriacus,  and  the  monastery  of  St.  Egidius,  of  which  Duke  Henry 
of  Brunswick  was  patron,  remained  intact. 2 

The  wildest  outbreak  of  iconoclasm  took  place  in  1542  in  the 
Duchy  of  Brunswick,  when  the  Elector  Johann  Frederick  of 
Saxony  and  Landgrave  Philip  of  Hesse  occupied  the  country  and 
proceeded  to  extirpate  the  Catholic  worship  still  prevalent  there. 
Within  a  short  while  over  four  hundred  churches  had  been 
plundered,  altars,  tabernacles,  pictures  and  sculptures  being 
destroyed  in  countless  numbers.3 

During  this  so-called  "  Evangelical  War  "  five  thousand 
burghers  and  mercenaries  of  the  town  of  Brunswick,  shouting 
their  war-cry  :  "  The  Word  of  God  remaineth  for  ever,"  set  out, 
on  July  21,  1542,  against  the  monastery  of  Riddaghausen ;  there 
they  broke  down  the  altars,  images  and  organs,  carried  off  the 
monstrances,  mass  vestments  and  other  treasures  of  the  church, 
plundering  generally  and  perpetrating  the  worst  abominations. 
The  mob  also  broke  in  pieces  the  images  and  pictures  in  the 
monastery  of  Steterburg  and  then  demolished  the  building.  Nor 
did  the  abbey  of  Gandersheim  fare  much  better.  The  preben 
daries  there  complained  to  the  Emperor,  that  all  the  crucifixes 
and  images  of  the  Saints  had  been  destroyed  together  with  other 

1  L.    Redner's    "  Skizzen    aus    der    KG.    Danzigs,"    Danzig,    1875 
("  Marienkirchen  "). 

2  Janssen,  ib.,  p.  120.  3  Janssen,  ib.,  vol.  xi.,  p.  34  ff. 


218  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

objects  set  up  for  the  adornment  of  the  church  and  churchyard 
outside. 1 

The  Lutheran  preacher,  K.  Reinholdt,  looking  back  two 
decades  later  on  the  devastation  wrought  in  Germany,  reminded 
his  hearers  that  Luther  himself  had  repeatedly  preached  that, 
"  it  would  be  better  that  all  churches  and  abbeys  in  the  world 
were  torn  down  and  burnt  to  ashes,  that  it  would  be  less  sinful, 
even  if  done  from  criminal  motives,  than  that  a  single  soul  should 
be  led  astray  into  Popish  error  and  be  ruined" ;  "if  they  would 
not  accept  his  teaching,  then,  so  Luther  the  man  of  God  had 
exclaimed,  he  would  wish  not  merely  that  his  doctrine  might  be 
the  cause  of  the  destruction  of  Popish  churches  and  convents, 
but  that  they  were  already  lying  in  a  heap  of  ashes."2 

At  Hamburg  iconoclastic  disturbances  began  in  Dec.,  1528.  The 
Cistercian  convent,  Harvestehude,  where  the  clergy  still  dare  to 
say  Mass,  was  rased  to  the  ground. 3 

At  Zerbst,  in  1524,  images  and  church  fittings  were  destroyed, 
part  of  these  being  used  to  "  keep  up  the  fire  for  the  brewing  of 
the  beer  "  ;4  stone  sculptures  were  mutilated  and  then  used  in 
the  construction  of  the  Zerbst  Town-Hall,  whence  they  were 
brought  to  light  at  a  much  later  date,  when  a  portion  of  the 
building  was  demolished.  The  statues,  headless,  indeed,  but  still 
gleaming  with  gold  and  colours,  gave,  as  a  narrator  of  the  find 
said,  "  an  insight  into  the  horrors  of  the  iconoclasm  which  had  run 
riot  in  the  neighbouring  churches."5 

The  chronicler  Oldecop  describes  how,  at  Hildesheim  in  1548, 
the  heads  of  the  stone  statues  of  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul  which 
stood  at  the  door  of  the  church  of  the  Holy  Rood  were  hewn  off 
and  replaced  by  the  heads  of  two  corpses  from  the  mortuary  ; 
they  were  then  stoned  by  the  boys.  The  magistrates,  indeed, 
fined  the  chief  offender,  but  only  because  forced  to  do  so.6 
Hildesheim  had  been  protestantised  in  great  part  as  early  as 
1524.  At  that  time  the  mob  plundered  the  churches  and 
monasteries,  rifled  the  coffins  of  the  dead  in  search  of  treasure, 
destroyed  the  crucifixes  and  the  images  of  the  Saints,  tore  down 
the  side  altars  in  most  of  the  churches  and  carried  off  chalices, 
monstrances  and  ornaments,  and  even  the  silver  casket  contain 
ing  the  bones  of  St.  Bern  ward.7  From  St.  Martin's,  a  church 
belonging  to  the  Franciscans,  the  magistrates,  according  to  the 
inventory,  removed  the  following  :  sixteen  gilt  chalices  and 
patens,  eleven  silver  chalices,  one  large  monstrance  with  bells, 

1  Ib.,  vol.  vi.,  p.  205. 

2  Whitsuntide  Sermon,  in  Janssen,  ib.,  vol.  xi.,  p.  38.    Cp.  "  Luthers 
Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  72,  pp.  121,  131,  222  f.,  330.     Cp.  Janssen,  ib.,  p.  37, 
the  passages  from  the  sermons  of  the  superintendent  George  Nigrinus. 

3  Janssen,  ib.,  v.,  p.  121. 

4  Beckmann,  "  Historic  des  Fiirstentums  Anhalt,"  6,  p.  43. 

5  "  Repertorium  f.   Kunstwissenschaft,"  20,  p.   46.     Janssen,  ib., 
vol.  xi.,  p.  36. 

6  Oldecop,  in  1548.    Janssen,  ib.,  vol.  xi.,  p.  36. 

7  "  Hist.-pol.  Bl.,"  9,  p.  316  ff.  :    10,  p.  15  ff.     Janssen,  "  Hist,  of 
the  German  People  "  (Engl.  Trans.),  vi.,  p.  209. 


WORKS    OF   ART  219 

one  large  gilt  cross,  three  silver  crosses  with  stands,  a  silver 
statue  of  Our  Lady  four  feet  in  height,  a  silver  censer,  two  silver 
ampullae,  a  silver-gilt  St.  Lawrence  gridiron,  a  big  Pacifical  from 
the  best  cope,  all  the  bangles  from  the  chasubles,  seventeen 
silver  clasps  from  the  copes,  "  the  jewellery  belonging  to  our 
dear  ladies  the  Virgin  Catherine  and  Mother  Anne,"  and,  besides, 
ten  altars  and  also  a  monument  erected  to  Brother  Conrad,  who 
was  revered  as  a  Saint,  were  destroyed ;  the  copper  and  lead  from 
the  tower  was  carried  off  together  with  a  small  bell. x 

When  the  Schmalkalden  Leaguers  began  to  take  up  arms  for 
the  Evangel  the  Evangelical  captain  Schartlin  von  Burtenbach, 
commander-in-chief  of  the  South-German  towns,  suddenly  fell 
upon  the  town  of  Fiissen  on  July  9,  1546,  abolished  the  Catholic 
worship  and  threw  the  "  idols  "  out  of  the  churches.  Before  his 
departure  he  plundered  all  the  churches  and  clergy,  and  "  set 
the  peasants  on  to  massacre  the  idols  in  their  churches  "  ;  the 
proceeds  "  from  the  chalices  and  silver  plate  he  devoted  to  the 
common  expenses  of  the  Estates." 

This  was  only  the  beginning  of  Schartlin's  plundering.  After 
joining  hands  with  the  Wiirtemberg  troops  his  raiding  expeditions 
were  carried  on  on  a  still  larger  scale.2 

During  the  Schmalkalden  campaign  the  soldiers  of  Saxony 
and  Hesse  on  their  retreat  from  the  Oberland,  acting  at  the 
behest  of  the  Elector  of  Saxony  and  the  Landgrave  of  Hesse, 
carried  off  as  booty  all  the  valuable  plate  belonging  to  the 
churches  and  monasteries.  Chalices,  monstrances,  Mass  vest 
ments  and  costly  images,  none  of  them  were  spared.  In  Saxony 
similar  outrages  were  perpetrated. 

In  Jan.,  1547,  the  Elector  caused  all  the  chalices,  monstrances, 
episcopal  crosses  and  other  valuables  that  still  remained  at  Halle 
and  either  were  the  property  of  the  Archbishop  of  Magdeburg, 
Johann  Albert,  or  had  been  presented  to  the  place  by  him,  to  be 
brought  to  Eisleben  and  either  sold  or  coined.  The  Elector's 
men-at-arms  and  the  mob  destroyed  the  pictures  and  statues  in 
the  Dominican  and  Franciscan  friaries.  When,  shortly  after  this, 
Merseburg,  as  well  as  Magdeburg  and  Halberstadt,  was  occupied 
by  the  Saxon  troops,  the  leaders  robbed  the  Cathedral  church  (of 
Merseburg)  of  its  oldest  and  most  valuable  art  treasures,  amongst 
which  was  the  golden  table  which  the  Emperor  Henry  II  had 
presented  to  it.3 

Magdeburg  was  the  rallying-place  of  Lutheran  zealots,  such  as 
Flacius  Illyricus,  and  was  even  called  the  "  chancery  of  God  and 
His  Christ,"  by  Aquila  in  a  letter  to  Duke  Albert  of  Prussia  ;4 
before  it  was  besieged  in  the  Emperor's  name  by  Maurice  of 
Saxony  and  was  yet  under  the  rule  of  a  Council  banned  by  the 

1  "  Hist.-pol.  Bl.,"  10,  p.  17. 

2  Ladurner,    "  Der   Einfall  der   Schmalkaldener  im   Tirol,    1546," 
("  Archiv  f.  Gesch.  u.  Altertumskunde  Tirols,"  1),  p.  415  ff.    Janssen, 
ib.,  vi.,  315  ff.  3  Janssen,  ib.,  vi.,  p.  349. 

4  J.  Voigt,  "  Brief wechsel  der  Gelehrten  des  Zeitalters  der  Refor 
mation  mit  Herzog  Albrecht  von  Preussen,"  1841,  p.  30. 


220          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

Empire,  it  passed  through  a  period  of  wild  outrage  directed 
against  the  Catholic  churches  and  convents,  both  within  and 
outside  the  walls.  The  appeal  addressed  by  the  cathedral 
Chapter  on  Aug.  15,  1550,  to  the  Estates  of  the  Empire  assembled 
at  Augsburg  gives  the  details.1  The  town,  "for  the  protection 
of  the  true  Christian  religion  and  holy  Evangel,"  laid  violent 
hands  on  the  rich  property  of  the  churches  and  cloisters,  and 
committed  execrable  atrocities  against  defenceless  clerics. 
Bodies  were  exhumed  in  the  churches  and  cemeteries.  Never, 
so  the  account  declares,  would  the  Turks  have  acted  with  such 
barbarity.  Even  the  tomb  of  the  Emperor  Otto,  the  founder  of 
the  archdiocese,  was,  so  the  Canons  relate,  "  inhumanly  and 
wantonly  broken  open  and  desecrated  with  great  uproar." 

Several  thousand  men  set  out  from  the  town  for  the  monastery 
of  Hamersleben,  situated  in  the  diocese  of  Halberstadt.  They 
forced  their  way  into  the  church  one  Sunday  during  Divine 
service,  wounded  or  slaughtered  the  officiating  priests,  trampled 
under  foot  the  Sacred  Host  and  ransacked  church  and  monastery. 
Among  the  images  and  works  of  art  destroyed  was  some  magnifi 
cent  stained  glass  depicting  the  Way  of  the  Cross.  No  less  than 
150  waggons  bore  away  the  plunder  to  Magdeburg,  accompanied 
by  the  mob,  who  in  mockery  had  decked  themselves  out  in  the 
Mass  vestments  and  habits  of  the  monks. 2 

Hans,  Margrave  of  Brandenburg-Kiistrin,  was  one  who  had 
war  against  the  Catholic  clergy  much  at  heart.  In  a  letter  to  the 
Elector  Maurice  he  spoke  of  the  clergy  as  "  priests  of  Baal  and 
children  of  the  devil."  It  was  a  proof  of  his  Evangelical  zeal, 
that,  on  July  15,  1551,  he  ordered  the  church  of  St.  Mary  at 
Gorlitz  to  be  pillaged  and  destroyed  by  Johann  von  Minckwitz. 
All  the  altars,  images  and  carvings  were  hacked  to  pieces,  all 
the  costly  treasures  stolen.  Minckwitz  had  great  difficulty  in 
rescuing  the  treasures  from  the  hands  of  a  drunken  mob  of 
peasants  who  were  helping  in  the  work,  and  conveying  them 
safely  to  the  Margrave  at  Kiistrin.3 

In  the  spring  of  1552,  when  Maurice  of  Saxony  levied  a  heavy 
fine  on  the  town  of  Nuremberg  for  having  revolted  against  the 
Emperor,  the  magistrates  sought  to  indemnify  themselves  by 
taking  nearly  900  Ibs.  weight  of  gold  and  silver  treasures  out  of 
the  churches  of  Our  Lady,  St.  Lawrence  and  St.  Sebaldus  and 
ordering  them  to  be  melted  down  or  sold.4 

In  June  and  July,  1552,  Margrave  Albert  of  Brandenburg- 
Kulmbach  laid  waste  the  country  around  Mayence  with  fire  and 
sword  to  such  an  extent,  that  the  bishop  of  Wiirzburg,  in  order  to 
raise  the  unheard-of  sums  demanded,  had,  as  we  find  it  stated 
in  a  letter  of  Zasius  to  King  Ferdinand  dated  July  10,  to  lump 
together  "  all  the  gold  and  silver  plate  in  the  churches,  the 
jewels,  reliquaries,  monstrances,  statues  and  vessels  of  the 

1  Janssen,  ib.,  vi.,  p.  434. 

2  Aug.    19,    1548,    C.    W.    Hase,    "  Mittelalterliche    Baudenkmale 
Niedersachsens,"  Hannover,  1858,  Hft.,  3,  p.  100. 

3  Janssen,  ib.,  vi.,  p.  438  f.  *  /&.,  vi.,  p.  454. 


WORKS    OF   ART  221 

sanctuary  "  and  have  them  minted  into  thalers.  "  At  Neu- 
miinster  one  reliquary  was  melted  down  which  alone  was  worth 
1000  florins."1  The  citizens  of  Wiirzburg  were  obliged  to  give  up 
all  their  household  plate  and  the  cathedral  itself  the  silver  statue 
of  St.  Kilian,  patron  of  the  diocese. 2 

When  the  commanders  and  the  troops  of  the  Elector  Maurice 
withdrew  from  the  Tyrol  after  the  frustration  of  their  under 
taking  owing  to  the  flight  of  the  Emperor  to  Carinthia,  all  the 
sacred  objects  of  value  in  the  Cistercian  monastery  of  Stams  in 
the  valley  of  the  upper  Inn  were  either  broken  to  pieces  or  carried 
off.  The  soldiers  broke  open  the  vault,  where  the  earthly  remains 
of  the  ruling  Princes  had  rested  for  centuries,  dragged  the  corpses 
out  of  their  coffins  and  stripped  them  of  their  valuables.3  The 
inventory  of  the  treasures  of  art  made  of  precious  metal  and 
other  substances  which  perished  at  Stams  must  be  classed  with 
numerous  other  sad  records  of  a  similar  nature  dating  from 
that  time.4 

After  the  truce  of  Passau,  Margrave  Albert  of  Brandenburg, 
with  the  help  of  France,  turned  his  attention  to  Frankfurt, 
Mayence  and  Treves.  At  Mayence,  after  making  a  vain  demand 
for  100,000  gold  florins  from  the  clergy,  he  gave  orders  to  ransack 
the  churches,  and  set  on  fire  the  churches  of  St.  Alban,  St.  Victor 
and  Holy  Cross,  the  Charterhouse  and  the  houses  of  the  Canons. 
He  boasted  of  this  as  a  "  right  princely  firebrand  we  threw  into 
the  damned  nest  of  parsons."  In  Treves  all  the  collegiate 
churches  and  monasteries  were  "sacked  down  to  the  very  last 
farthing,"  as  an  account  relates ;  the  monastery  of  St.  Maximin, 
the  priory  of  St.  Paul,  the  castle  of  Saarburg  on  the  Saar,  Pfalzel 
and  Echternach  were  given  to  the  flames.5  "  Such  proceedings 
were  incumbent  on  an  honourable  Prince  who  had  the  glory  of 
God  at  heart  and  was  zealous  for  the  spread  of  the  Divine  Gospel, 
which  God  the  Lord  in  our  age  has  allowed  to  shine  forth  with 
such  marvellous  light."  So  Albert  boasted  to  an  envoy  of  the 
Archbishop  of  Mayence  on  June  27,  1552,  when  laying  waste 
Wiirzburg. 6 

"The  archbishoprics  of  Treves  and  Mayence,  the  bishoprics  of 
Spires,  Worms  and  Eichstatt  are  laid  waste  with  pillage,"  wrote 
Melchior  von  Ossa  the  Saxon  lawyer,  "  the  stately  edifices  at 
Mayence,  Treves  and  other  places,  where  lay  the  bones  of  so 
many  pious  martyrs  of  old,  are  reduced  to  ashes."7  The  com 
plaints  of  a  Protestant  preacher  who  had  worked  for  a  consider 
able  time  at  Schwabisch-Hall  ring  much  the  same  :  "  Our 
parents  were  willing  to  contribute  towards  the  building  of 

1  See  A.  v.  Druffel,  "  Briefe  und  Akten  zur  Gesch.  des  16.  Jahrh.," 
2,  1873  ff.,  p.  668.  2  Janssen,  ib.,  vi.,  p.  458. 

3  F.  A.  Sinnacher,  "  Beitr.  z.  Gesch.  d.  Kirche  Saben  und  Brixen," 
7,  1830,  p.  441.    D.  Schonherr,  "  Der  Einfall  des  Kurfiirsten  Moritz  in 
Tyrol,"  1868,  p.  101  ff.    Janssen,  ib.,  vi.,  p.  478. 

4  See  Schonherr,  ib.,  p.  137  ff. 

5  Janssen,  ib.,  vi.,  p.  496.  6  Ib.,  vi.,  p.  459. 

7  Melchior  von  Ossa  in  his  diary,  Jan.  1,  1553.  F.  A.  Langenn, 
"  D.  Melchior  von  Ossa,"  1858,  p.  161.  Janssen,  ib.,  p.  505. 


222          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

churches  and  to  the  adornment  of  the  temples  of  God.  .  .  .  But 
now  the  churches  have  been  pilfered  so  badly  that  they  barely 
retain  a  roof  over  them.  Superb  Mass  vestments  of  silk  and 
velvet  with  pearls  and  corals  were  provided  for  the  churches  by 
our  forefathers  ;  these  have  now  been  removed  and  serve  the 
woman-folk  as  hoods  and  bodices  ;  indeed  so  poor  have  some  of 
the  churches  become  under  the  rule  of  the  Evangel,  that  it  is 
impossible  to  provide  the  ministers  of  the  Church  even  with 
a  beggarly  surplice."1 

The  wanton  waste  and  destruction  which  took  place  in 
the  domain  of  art  under  Lutheran  rule  during  the  first  fifty 
years  of  the  religious  innovations,  great  as  they  were,  do  not 
by  any  means  approach  in  magnitude  the  losses  caused 
elsewhere  by  Zwinglianism  and  Calvinism. 

Yet  two  things  in  Lutheranism  had  a  disastrous  effect 
in  checking  the  revival  of  religious  art,  even  when  the  first 
struggles  for  mastery  were  over :  first,  there  was  the 
animosity  against  the  Sacrifice  of  the  Mass  and  the  per 
petual  eucharistic  presence  of  Christ  in  the  tabernacle  ;  this 
led  people  to  view  with  distrust  the  old  alliance  existing 
between  the  Eucharistic  worship  and  the  liberal  arts  for 
exalting  the  dignity  and  beauty  of  the  churches.  After 
the  Mass  had  been  abolished  and  the  Sacrament  had  ceased 
to  be  reserved  within  the  sacred  walls,  respect  for  and 
interest  in  the  house  of  God,  which  had  led  to  so  much  being 
lavished  on  it,  began  to  wane.  The  other  obstacle  lay  in 
Luther's  negative  attitude  towards  the  ancient  doctrine  and 
practice  of  good  works.  The  belief  in  the  meritoriousness 
of  works  had  in  the  past  been  a  stimulus  to  pecuniary 
sacrifices  and  offerings  for  the  making  of  pious  works  of  art. 
Now,  however,  artists  began  to  complain,  that,  owing  to 
the  decline  of  zeal  for  church  matters  their  orders  were 
beginning  to  fall  off,  and  that  the  makers  of  works  of  art 
were  being  condemned  to  starvation. 

"  In  a  protocol  of  the  Council  of  Strasburg,  dated  Feb.  3, 
1525,  we  read  in  a  petition  from  the  artists  :  "  Painters  and 
sculptors  beg,  that,  whereas,  through  the  Word  of  God 
their  handicraft  has  died  out  they  may  be  provided  with 
posts  before  other  claimants."  The  Council  answered  that 
their  appeal  would  "  be  borne  in  mind."2 

1  Dollinger,  "  Reformation,"  2,  p.  318. 

-  "  Mitteil.  der  Gesellschaft  f.  Erhaltung  der  geschtl.  Denkmaler 
im  Elsass,"  15,  1892,  p.  248.  Janssen,  "  Hist,  of  the  German  People  " 
(Engl.  Trans.),  xi.,  p.  46. 


WORKS    OF   ART  223 

The  verses  of  Hans  Sachs  of  Nuremberg  are  well-known  : 

"  Bell-founders  and  organists, 

Gold-beaters  and  illuminists, 
Hand-painters,  carvers  and  goldsmiths, 

Glass-painters,  silk-workers,  coppersmiths, 
Stone-masons,  carpenters  and  joiners, 

'Gainst  all  these  did  Luther  wield  a  sword. 
From  Thee  we  ask  a  verdict,  Lord." 

In  the  poet's  industrious  and  artistic  native  town  the  decline 
must  have  been  particularly  noticeable.  According  to  the 
popular  Lutheran  poet  of  Nuremberg  the  fault  is  with  the 
complainants  themselves,  who, 

"With  scorn  disdain 
From  greed  of  gain  " 

the  Word  of  Christ.  "  They  must  cease  worrying  about 
worldly  goods  like  the  heathen,  but  must  seek  the  Kingdom 
of  God  with  eagerness."1 

It  is  perfectly  true  that  the  words  that  Hans  Sachs  on 
this  occasion  places  in  the  mouth  of  the  complainant  are 
unfair  to  Luther  : 

"All  church  building  and  adorning  he  despises, 
Treats  with  scorning, 
He  not  wise  is."2 

For  in  spite  of  his  attacks  on  the  veneration  of  images,  on 
the  Catholic  doctrine  of  the  Eucharist  and  the  meritorious- 
ness  of  pious  foundations,  Luther  was,  nevertheless,  not  so 
"  unwise  "  as  to  despise  the  "  building  and  adorning  "  of 
the  churches,  where,  after  all,  the  congregation  must 
assemble  for  preaching,  communion  and  prayer.3 

That  Luther  was  not  devoid  of  a  sense  of  the  beautiful 
and  of  its  practical  value  in  the  service  of  religion  is  proved 
by  his  outspoken  love  of  music,  particularly  of  church-music, 
his  numerous  poetic  efforts,  no  less  than  by  that  strongly 
developed  appreciation  of  well-turned  periods,  clearness  and 
force  of  diction  so  well  seen  in  his  translation  of  the  Bible. 
His  life's  struggle,  however,  led  him  along  paths  which  make 

1  E.  Weller,  "  Der  Volksdichter  Hans  Sachs  u.  seine  Dichtungen," 
1868,  p.  118  ff.  2  J6. 

3  He  frequently  laments  that  the  churches  were  too  ill-provided  for. 
Cp.  Walch's  Index,  s.v.  "  Kirche,"  &  "  Gotteshauser." 


224          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

it  easy  to  understand  how  it  is  that  he  has  so  little  to  say  in 
his  writings  in  commendation  of  the  other  liberal  arts.  It 
also  explains  the  baldness  of  his  reminiscences  of  his  visit  to 
Italy  and  the  city  of  Rome  ;  the  young  monk,  immersed  in 
his  theology,  was  even  then  pursuing  quite  other  interests 
than  those  of  art.  It  is  true  Luther,  once,  in  one  of  the  rare 
passages  in  favour  of  ecclesiastical  art,  speaking  from  his 
own  point  of  view,  says  :  "It  is  better  to  paint  on  the  wall 
how  God  created  the  world,  how  Noah  made  the  ark  and 
such-like  pious  tales,  than  to  paint  worldly  and  shameless 
subjects  ;  would  to  God  I  could  persuade  the  gentry  and  the 
rich  to  have  the  whole  Bible  story  painted  on  their  houses, 
inside  and  out,  for  everyone's  eye  to  see;  that  would  be 
a  good  Christian  work."1  Manifestly  he  did  not  intend  his 
words  to  be  taken  too  literally  in  the  case  of  dwelling-houses. 
A  fighter  such  af  Luther  was  scarcely  the  right  man  to  give 
any  real  stimulus  in  the  domain  of  art.  The  heat  of  his 
religious  polemics  scorched  up  in  his  soul  any  good  dis 
positions  of  this  sort  which  may  once  have  existed,  and 
blighted  in  its  very  beginnings  the  growth  of  any  real 
feeling  for  art  among  his  zealous  followers.  Hardly  a  single 
passage  can  be  found  in  which  he  expresses  any  sense  of 
satisfaction  in  the  products  of  the  artist. 

It  is  generally  admitted  that  in  the  16th  century  German 
art  suffered  a  severe  set-back.  For  this  the  bitter  contro 
versies  wrhich  for  the  while  transformed  Germany  into  a 
hideous  battlefield  were  largely  responsible ;  for  such  a  soil 
could  not  but  prove  unfavourable  for  the  arts  and  crafts. 
The  very  artists  themselves  were  compelled  to  prostitute 
their  talents  in  ignoble  warfare.  We  need  only  call  to  mind 
the  work  of  the  two  painters  Cranach,  the  Elder  and  the 
Younger,  and  the  horrid  flood  of  caricatures  and  base 
vilifications  cast  both  in  poetry  and  in  prose.  "  The  rock 
on  which  art  suffered  shipwreck  was  not,  as  a  recent  art- 
writer  says,  the  fact  that  '  German  art  was  too  early  severed 
from  its  bond  with  the  Church,'  but  that,  with  regard  to  its 
subject-matter  and  its  methods  of  expression,  it  was  forced 
into  false  service  by  the  intellectual  and  religious  leaders."2 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  18,  p.  82  f.  ;   Erl.  ed.,  29,  p.  158. 

2  See  P.  Lehfeldt,  "  Luthers  Verhaltnis  zu  Kunst  und  Kiinstlern," 
Berlin,  1892,  p.  84.     Janssen,  ib.,  xi.,  39. — On  the  whole  subject  see 
Janssen,  "Hist,  of  the  German  People"  (Engl.  Trans.),  vol.  xi.,  ch.  ii. 


CHAPTER    XXXI 

LUTHER   IN   HIS    DISMAL   MOODS,    HIS    SUPERSTITION   AND 
DELUSIONS 

1.  His  Persistent  Depression  in  Later  Years 
Persecution  Mania  and  Morbid  Fancies 

AMONG  the  various  causes  of  the  profound  ill-humour  and 
despondency,  which  more  and  more  overshadowed  Luther's 
soul  during  the  last  ten  years  of  his  life,  the  principal  without 
a  doubt  was  his  bitter  disappointment. 

He  was  disappointed  with  what  he  himself  calls  the 
"  pitiable  spectacle  "  presented  by  his  Church  no  less  than 
with  the  firmness  and  stability  of  the  Papacy.  Not  only 
did  the  Papal  Antichrist  refuse  to  bow  to  the  new  Evangel 
or  to  be  overthrown  "  by  the  mere  breath  of  Christ's 
mouth,"  as  Luther  had  confidently  proclaimed  would  be  the 
case,  but,  in  the  evening  of  his  days,  it  was  actually  growing 
in  strength,  its  members  standing  shoulder  to  shoulder  ready 
at  last  to  seek  inward  reform  by  means  of  a  General  Council. 

The  melancholy  to  which  he  had  been  subject  in  earlier 
years  had  been  due  to  other  thoughts  which  not  seldom 
pressed  upon  him,  to  his  uncertainty  and  fear  of  having 
to  answer  before  the  Judge.  In  his  old  age  such  fears 
diminished,  and  the  voices  which  had  formerly  disquieted 
him  scarcely  ever  reached  the  threshold  of  his  consciousness  ; 
by  dint  of  persistent  effort  he  had  hardened  himself  against 
such  "  temptations."  The  idea  of  his  Divine  call  was  ever 
in  his  mind,  though,  alas,  it  proved  only  too  often  a  blind 
guide  incapable  of  transforming  his  sense  of  discouragement 
into  any  confidence  worthy  of  the  name.  At  times  this  idea 
nickers  up  more  brightly  than  usual ;  when  this  happens 
his  weariness  seems  entirely  to  disappear  and  makes  room 
for  the  frightful  outbursts  of  bitterness,  hate  and  anger  of 
a  soul  at  odds  both  with  itself  and  with  the  whole  world. 

Doubtless  his  state  of  health  had  a  good  deal  to  do  with 
v.— Q  225 


226          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

this,  for,  in  his  feverish  activity,  he  had  become  unmindful 
of  certain  precautions.  Lost  in  his  exhausting  literary 
labours  and  public  controversies  his  state  of  nervous  excite 
ment  became  at  last  unbearable. 

The  depression  which  is  laying  its  hand  on  him  manifests 
itself  in  the  hopeless,  pessimistic  tone  of  his  complaints  to 
his  friends,  in  his  conviction  of  being  persecuted  by  all,  in 
his  superstitious  interpretations  of  the  Bible  and  the  signs 
of  the  times,  in  his  expectation  of  the  near  end  of  all,  and  in 
his  firm  persuasion  that  the  devil  bestrides  and  rules  the 
world. 

His  Depression  and  Pessimism 

Disgust  with  work  and  even  with  life  itself,  and  an 
appalling  unconcern  in  the  whole  course  of  public  affairs, 
are  expressed  in  some  of  his  letters  to  his  friends. 

"  I  am  old  and  worked  out — '  old,  cold  and  out  of  shape,'  as 
they  say — and  yet  cannot  find  any  rest,  so  greatly  am  I  tormented 
every  day  with  all  manner  of  business  and  scribbling.  I  now 
know  rather  more  of  the  portents  of  the  end  of  this  world  ;  that 
it  is  indeed  on  its  last  legs  is  quite  certain,  with  Satan  raging  so 
furiously  and  the  world  becoming  so  utterly  beastly.  My  only 
remaining  consolation  is  that  the  end  cannot  be  far  off.  Now  at 
last  fewer  false  doctrines  will  spring  up,  the  world  being  weary 
and  sick  of  the  Word  of  God  ;  for  if  they  take  to  living  like 
Epicureans  and  to  despising  the  Word,  who  will  then  have  any 
hankering  after  heresies  ?  .  .  .  Let  us  pray  '  Thy  will  be  done,' 
and  leave  everything  to  take  its  course,  to  fall  or  stand  or  perish  ; 
let  things  go  their  own  way  if  otherwise  they  will  not  go."  "  Ger 
many,"  he  says,  "  has  had  its  day  and  will  never  again  be  what 
it  once  was  "  ;  divided  against  itself  it  must,  so  he  fancies, 
succumb  to  the  devil's  army  embodied  in  the  Turks.  This  to 
Jakob  Probst,  the  Bremen  preacher.1  Not  long  after  he  wrote 
to  the  same  :  "  Germany  is  full  of  scorners  of  the  Word.  .  .  . 
Our  sins  weigh  heavily  upon  us  as  you  know,  but  it  is  useless  for 
us  to  grumble.  Let  things  take  their  course,  seeing  they  are 
going  thus."2 

To  Amsdorf  he  says  in  a  letter  that  he  would  gladly  die.  "  The 
world  is  a  dreadful  Sodom."  "  And,  moreover,  it  will  grow  still 
worse."  "  Could  I  but  pass  away  with  such  a  faith,  such  peace, 
such  a  falling  asleep  in  the  Lord  as  my  daughter  [who  had  just 
died]  !  "3  Similarly,  in  another  letter  to  Amsdorf  we  read  : 
"  Before  the  flood  the  world  was  as  Germany  now  is  before  her 
downfall.  Since  they  refuse  to  listen  they  must  be  taught  by 
experience.  It  will  cry  out  with  Jeremias  [li.  9]  :  '  We  would 

1  March  26,  1542,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  451. 

2  Oct.  9,  1542,  ib.,  p.  501.          3  Oct.  29,  1542,  ib.,  p.  502. 


HIS   LOW   SPIRITS  227 

have  cured  Babylon,  but  she  is  not  healed;  let  us  forsake  her.' 
God  is  indeed  our  salvation,  and  to  all  eternity  will  He  shield 


us. 


"  We  will  rejoice  in  our  tribulation,"  so  he  encourages  his 
former  guest  Cordatus,  "  and  leave  things  to  go  their  way  ;  it 
is  enough  that  we,  and  you  too,  should  cause  the  sun  of  our 
teaching  to  rise  all  cloudless  over  the  wicked  world,  after  the 
example  of  God  our  Father,  Who  makes  His  sun  to  shine  on  the 
just  and  the  unjust.  The  sun  of  our  doctrine  is  His  ;  what  wonder 
then  if  people  hate  us."  "  Thus  we  can  see,"  so  he  concludes, 
that  "  outwardly  we  live  in  the  kingdom  of  the  devil."2 

Plunged  in  such  melancholy  he  is  determined,  without 
trusting  in  human  help,  so  he  writes  to  his  friend  Jonas,  "  to 
leave  the  guidance  of  all  things  to  Christ  alone  "  ;  of  all 
active  work  he  was  too  weary  ;  everything  was  "  full  of 
deception  and  hypocrisy,  particularly  amongst  the  power 
ful  "  ;  to  sigh  and  pray  was  the  best  thing  to  do  ;  "  let  us 
put  out  of  our  heads  any  thought  and  plans  for  helping 
matters,  for  all  is  alike  useless  and  deceitful,  as  experience 
shows."3 

Christ  had  taken  on  Himself  the  quieting  of  consciences, 
hence,  with  all  the  more  confidence,  "  might  they  entrust  to 
Him  the  outcome  of  the  struggle  between  the  true  Church 
and  the  powers  of  Satan."  "  True,  Christ  seems  at  times," 
he  writes  to  his  friend  Johann  August,  "to  be  weaker  than 
Satan  ;  but  His  strength  will  be  made  perfect  in  our  weak 
ness  (2  Cor.  xii.  9),  His  wisdom  is  exalted  in  our  foolishness, 
His  goodness  is  glorified  in  our  sins  and  misdeeds  in  accord 
ance  with  His  wonderful  and  inscrutable  ways.  May  He 
strengthen  you  and  us,  and  conform  us  to  His  likeness  for 
the  honour  of  His  mercy."4 

During  such  a  period  of  depression  his  fears  are  redoubled 
when  he  hears  of  the  atrocities  perpetrated  by  the  Turks 
at  Stuhlweissenburg ;  the  following  is  his  interpretation 
of  the  event :  "  Satan  has  noticed  the  approach  of  the 
Judgment  Day  and  shows  his  fear.  What  may  be  his 
designs  on  us  ?  He  rages  because  his  time  is  now  short. 
May  God  help  us  manfully  to  laugh  at  all  his  fury  !  "  He 
laments  with  grim  irony  the  greed  for  gain  and  the  treachery 
of  the  great.  "  Devour  everything  in  the  devil's  name,"  he 
cries  to  them,  "  Hell  will  glut  you,"  and  continues  :  "  Come, 

1  Nov.  7,  1543,  ib.,  p.  600.  2  Dec.  3,  1544,  ib.,  p.  702. 

3  March  13,  1542,  ib.,  p.  444.         4  Oct.  5,  1542,  ib.,  p.  501. 


228          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

Lord  Jesus,  come,  hearken  to  the  sighing  of  Thy  Church, 
hasten  Thy  coming ;  wickedness  is  reaching  its  utmost 
limit ;  soon  it  must  come  to  a  head,  Amen." 

Even  this  did  not  suffice  and  Luther  again  adds  :  "I  have 
written  the  above  because  it  seems  better  than  nothing. 
Farewell,  and  teach  the  Church  to  pray  for  the  Day  of  the 
Lord ;  for  there  is  no  hope  of  a  better  time  coming.  God 
will  listen  only  when  we  implore  the  quick  advent  of  our 
redemption,  in  which  all  the  portents  agree."1 

The  outpourings  of  bitterness  and  disgust  with  life,  which 
Antony  Lauterbach  noted  while  a  guest  at  Luther's  table 
in  1538,  find  a  still  stronger  echo  in  the  Table-Talk  collected 
by  Mathesius  in  the  years  subsequent  to  1540. 

In  Lauterbach's  Notes  he  still  speaks  of  his  inner  struggles 
with  the  devil,  i.e.  with  his  conscience  ;  this  was  no  longer  the 
case  when  Mathesius  knew  him  :  "  We  are  plagued  and  troubled 
by  the  devil,  whose  bones  are  very  tough  until  we  learn  to  crack 
them.  Paul  and  Christ  had  enough  to  do  with  the  devil.  I,  too, 
have  my  daily  combats." 2  He  had  learnt  how  hard  it  was  "  when 
mental  temptations  come  upon  us  and  we  say,  '  Accursed  be 
the  day  I  was  born  '  "  ;  rather  would  he  endure  the  worst  bodily 
pains  during  which  at  least  one  could  still  say,  "  Blessed  be  the 
Name  of  the  Lord."3  The  passages  in  question  will  be  quoted 
at  greater  length  below. 

But  according  to  Lauterbach's  Notes  of  his  sayings  he  was  also 
very  bitter  about  the  general  state  of  things  :  "  It  is  the  world's 
way  to  think  of  nothing  but  of  money,"  he  says,  for  instance, 
"  as  though  on  it  hung  soul  and  body.  God  and  our  neighbour 
are  despised  and  people  serve  Mammon.  Only  look  at  our 
times  ;  see  how  full  all  the  great  ones,  the  burghers  too,  and  the 
peasants,  are  with  avarice  and  how  they  stamp  upon  religion. 
.  .  .  Horrible  times  will  come,  worse  even  than  befell  Sodom  and 
Gomorrha  !  "4 — "  All  sins,"  he  complains,  "  rage  mightily,  as  we 
see  to-day,  because  the  world  of  a  sudden  has  grown  so  wanton 
and  calls  down  God's  wrath  upon  its  head."  In  these  words  he 
was  bewailing,  as  Lauterbach  relates,  the  "  impending  mis 
fortunes  of  Germany."5 — "The  Church  to-day  is  more  tattered 
than  any  beggar's  cloak."6  "  The  world  is  made  up  of  nothing 
but  contempt,  blasphemy,  disobedience,  adultery,  pride  and 
thieving  ;  it  is  now  in  prime  condition  for  the  slaughter-house. 
And  Satan  gives  us  no  rest,  what  with  Turk,  Pope  and  fanatics."7 

"  Who  would  have  started  preaching,"  he  says  in  the  same 
year,  oppressed  by  such  experiences,  "  had  he  known  beforehand 

1  Dec.  16,  1543,  ib.,  p.  611  f. 

2  Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  144. 

3  Ib.,  p.  105.  4  Ib.,  p.  140.  *  jb.,  p.  122. 
6  Ib.,  p.  113.               7  Ib.,  p.  132. 


HIS   LOW   SPIRITS  229 

that  such  misfortune,  fanatism,  scandal,  blasphemy,  ingratitude 
and  wickedness  would  be  the  sequel  ?  "x  To  live  any  longer  he 
had  not  the  slightest  wish  now  that  no  peace  was  to  be  hoped 
for  from  the  fanatics.2  He  even  wished  his  wife  and  children  to 
follow  him  to  the  grave  without  delay  because  of  the  evil  times 
to  come  soon  after.3 

In  the  conversations  taken  down  by  Mathesius  in  the  'forties 
Luther's  weariness  of  life  finds  even  stronger  expression,  nor  are 
the  words  in  which  he  describes  it  of  the  choicest  :  "I  have  had 
enough  of  the  world  and  it,  too,  has  had  enough  of  me ;  with  this 
I  am  well  content.  It  fancies  that,  were  it  only  rid  of  me,  all 
would  be  well.  ..."  As  I  have  often  repeated  :  "I  am  the 
ripe  shard  and  the  world  is  the  gaping  anus,  hence  the  parting 
will  be  a  happy  one."4  "As  I  have  often  repeated  "  ;  the 
repulsive  comparison  had  indeed  become  a  favourite  one  with 
him  in  his  exasperation.  Other  sayings  in  the  Table-Talk  contain 
unmistakable  allusions  to  the  bodily  excretions  as  a  term  of 
comparison  to  Luther's  so  ardently  desired  departure  from  this 
world.5  The  same  coarse  simile  is  met  in  his  letters  dating  from 
this  time.6 

The  reason  of  his  readiness  to  depart,  viz.  the  world's  hatred 
for  his  person,  he  elsewhere  depicts  as  follows  ;  the  politicians 
who  were  against  him,  particularly  those  at  the  Dresden  court, 
are  "  Swine,"  deserving  of  "  hell-fire  "  ;  let  them  at  least  leave 
in  peace  our  Master,  the  Son  of  God,  and  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven 
also  ;  with  a  quiet  conscience  we  look  upon  them  as  abandoned 
bondsmen  of  the  devil,  whose  oaths  though  sworn  to  a  hundred 
times  over  are  not  the  least  worthy  of  belief  ;  "  we  must  scorn 
the  devil  in  these  devils  and  sons  of  devils,  yea,  in  this  seed  of 
the  serpent."7 

"  The  gruff,  boorish  Saxon,"8  as  Luther  calls  himself,  here 
comes  to  the  fore.  He  seeks,  however,  to  refrain  from  dwelling 
unduly  on  the  growing  lack  of  appreciation  shown  for  his  au 
thority  ;  he  was  even  ready,  so  he  said,  "  gladly  to  nail  to  the 
Cross  those  blasphemers  and  Satan  with  them."9 

"  I  thank  Thee,  my  good  God,"  he  once  said  in  the  winter 
1542-43  to  Mathesius  and  the  other  people  at  table,  "  for  letting 
me  be  one  of  the  little  flock  that  suffers  persecution  for  Thy  Word's 
sake  ;  for  they  do  not  persecute  me  for  adultery  or  usury,  as  I 
well  know."10  According  to  the  testimony  of  Mathesius  he  also 
said  :  "  The  Courts  are  full  of  Eceboli  and  folk  who  change  with 
the  weather.  If  only  a  real  sovereign  like  Constantino  came  to 

Below,  xxxii.,  6. 

Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  114,  in  1538.          3  /&.,  p.  105. 
Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  ed.  Kroker,  p.  303. 

According  to  Mathesius  ("Historien,"  p.  146)  he  once  said  even 
;he  pulpit  :  "A  full  belly  and  ripe  dung  are  easily  parted." 
To  Anton  Lauterbach,  Nov.  3,  1543,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  598.        7  76. 
Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  156  ;   "  Aufzeichii.,"  p.  117.1 
To  Lauterbach,  ib.  10  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  303. 


230          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

his  Court  [the  Elector's]  we  should  soon  see  who  would  kiss  the 
Pope's  feet."  "  Many  remain  good  Evangelicals  because  there 
are  still  chalices,  monstrances  and  cloistral  lands  to  be  taken."1 
That  a  large  number,  not  only  of  the  high  officials,  but  even  of 
the  "  gentry  and  yokels,"  were  "  tired  "  of  him  is  clear  from 
statements  made  by  him  as  early  as  1530.  Wishing  then  to  visit 
his  father  who  lay  sick,  he  was  dissuaded  by  his  friends  from 
undertaking  the  journey  on  account  of  the  hostility  of  the 
country  people  towards  his  person  :  "I  am  compelled  to  believe," 
so  he  wrote  to  the  sick  man,  "  that  I  ought  not  to  tempt  God  by 
venturing  into  danger,  for  you  know  how  both  gentry  and  yokels 
feel  towards  me."2  "  Amongst  the  charges  that  helped  to  lessen 
his  popularity  was  his  supposed  complicity  in  the  Peasant  War 
and  in  the  rise  of  the  Sacramentarians."3 

"  Would  that  I  and  all  my  children  were  dead,"  so  he  repeats, 
according  to  Mathesius,4  ' '  Satur  sum  huius  vitae  "  ;  it  was  well 
for  the  young,  that,  in  their  thoughtlessness  and  inexperience, 
they  failed  to  see  the  mischief  of  all  the  scandals  rampant,  for 
else  "they  would  not  be  able  to  go  on  living."5 — "The  world 
cannot  last  much  longer.  Amongst  us  there  is  the  utmost  in 
gratitude  and  contempt  for  the  Word,  whilst  amongst  the  Papists 
there  is  nothing  but  blood  and  blasphemy.  This  will  soon  knock 
the  bottom  out  of  the  cask."6  There  would  be  no  lack  of  other 
passages  to  the  same  effect  to  quote  from  Mathesius. 

Some  of  the  Grounds  for  His  Lowness  of  Spirits 

Luther  is  so  communicative  that  it  is  easy  enough  to  fix 
on  the  various  reasons  for  his  depression,  which  indeed  he 
himself  assigns. 

To  Melanchthon  Luther  wrote  :  "  The  enmity  of  Satan  is  too 
Satanic  for  him  not  to  be  plotting  something  for  our  undoing. 
He  feels  that  we  are  attacking  him  in  a  vital  spot  with  the  eternal 
truth." 7  Here  it  is  his  gloomy  forebodings  concerning  the  outcome 
of  the  religious  negotiations,  particularly  those  of  Worms,  which 
lead  him  so  to  write.  The  course  of  public  events  threw  fresh 
fuel  on  the  flame  of  his  anger.  "  I  have  given  up  all  hope  in  this 
colloquy.  .  .  .  Our  theological  gains tanders,"  so  he  says,  "  are 
possessed  of  Satan,  however  much  they  may  disguise  themselves 
in  majesty  and  as  angels  of  light."8 — Then  there  was  the  terrifying 
onward  march  of  the  Turks :  "O  raging  fury,  full  of  all  manner 

1  "  Hist.,"  p.  145'  f.     Ecebolius,  under  the  Emperor  Constantine, 
a  type  of  the  hypocrite. 

2  To  Hans  Luther,  Feb.  15,  1530,  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  24,  p.  130 
("  Brief wechsel,"  7,  p.  230). 

3  Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  127. 

4  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  288. 

5  Ib.,  p.  179.  6  Ib.,  p.  155. 
7  Dec.  7,  1540,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  322.  8  Ib. 


HIS   LOW   SPIRITS  231 

of  devils."  Such  is  his  excitement  that  he  suspects  the  Christian 
hosts  of  "  the  most  fatal  and  terrible  treachery."1 

The  devil,  however,  also  lies  in  wait  even  for  his  friends  to 
estrange  them  from  him  by  delusions  and  distresses  of  conscience  ; 
this  knowledge  wrings  from  him  the  admonition  :  "  Away  with 
the  sadness  of  the  devil,  to  whom  Christ  sends  His  curse,  who 
seeks  to  make  out  Christ  as  the  judge,  whereas  He  is  rather  the 
consoler."2  Satan  just  then  was  bent  on  worrying  him  through 
the  agency  of  the  Swiss  Zwinglians  :  "I  have  already  condemned 
and  now  condemn  anew  these  fanatics  and  puffed-up  idlers."  Now 
they  refuse  to  admit  my  victories  against  the  Pope,  and  actually 
claim  that  it  was  all  their  doing.  "  Thus  does  one  man  toil 
only  for  another  to  reap  the  harvest."3  These  satellites  of  Satan 
who  work  against  him  and  against  all  Christendom  are  hell's 
own  resource  for  embittering  his  old  age. 

Then  again  the  dreadful  state  of  morals,  particularly  at 
Wittenberg,  under  his  very  eyes,  makes  his  anger  burst  forth 
again  and  again ;  even  in  his  letter  of  congratulation  to  Justus 
Jonas  on  the  latter's  second  marriage  he  finds  opportunity  to 
have  a  dig  at  the  easy-going  Wittenberg  magistrates  :  "  There 
might  be  ten  trulls  here  infecting  no  end  of  students  with  the 
French  disease  and  yet  no  one  would  lift  a  finger  ;  when  half  the 
town  commits  adultery,  no  one  sits  in  judgment.  .  .  .  The  world 
is  indeed  a  vexatious  thing."  The  civic  authorities,  according 
to  him,  were  but  a  "  plaything  in  the  devil's  hand." 

At  other  times  his  ill-humour  vents  itself  on  the  Jews,  the 
lawyers,  or  those  German  Protestant  Reformers  who  had  the 
audacity  to  hold  opinions  at  variance  with  his.  Carlstadt,  with 
his  "monstrous  assertions"4  against  Luther,  still  poisons  the  air 
even  when  Luther  has  the  consolation  of  knowing,  that,  on 
Carlstadt's  death  (in  1541),  he  had  been  fetched  away  by  the 
"  devil."  Carlstadt's  horrid  doctrines  tread  Christ  under  foot, 
just  as  Schwenckf eld's  fanaticism  is  the  unmaking  of  the  Churches. 

Then  again  there  are  demagogues  within  the  fold  who  say  : 
"  I  arn  your  Pope,  what  care  I  for  Dr.  Martin  ?  "  These,  according 
to  him,  are  in  almost  as  bad  case  as  the  others.  Thus,  "during 
our  lifetime,  this  is  the  way  the  world  rewards  us,  for  and  on  this 
account  and  behalf  !  And  yet  we  are  expected  to  pray  and  heed 
lest  the  Turk  slay  such  Christians  as  these  who  really  are  worse 
than  the  Turks  themselves  !  As  though  it  would  not  be  better, 
if  the  yoke  of  the  Turk  must  indeed  come  upon  us,  to  serve  the 
Turkish  foeman  and  stranger  rather  than  the  Turks  in  our  own 
circle  and  household.  God  will  laugh  at  them  when  they  cry  to 
Him  in  the  day  of  their  distress,  because  they  mocked  at  Him  by 
their  sins  and  refused  to  hearken  to  Him  when  He  spoke,  implored, 
exhorted,  and  did  everything,  stood  and  suffered  everything, 
when  His  heart  was  troubled  on  their  account,  when  He  called 

1  To  Justus  Jonas,  Jan.  26,  1543,  ib.,  p.  534. 

2  To  Spalatin,  Aug.  21,  1544,  ib.,  p.  679  f. 

3  To  Amsdorf,  April  14,  1545,  ib.,  p.  728. 

4  June  18,  1543,  ib.,  p.  570. 


232          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

them  by  His  holy  prophets,  and  even  rose  up  early  on  their 
account  (Jer.  vii.  13 ;  xi.  7).1  But  such  is  their  way  ;  they  know 
that  it  is  God  Whose  Word  we  preach  and  yet  they  say  :  "  We 
shan't  listen.  In  short,  the  wildest  of  wild  furies  have  broken 
into  them,"  etc.2 

Thus  was  he  wont  to  rave  when  "  excited,"  though  not 
until,  so  at  least  he  assures  us,  having  first  "  by  dint  of  much 
striving  put  down  his  anger,  his  thoughts  and  his  tempta 
tions."  "  Blessed  be  the  Lord  Who  has  spoken  to  me,  com 
forting  me  :  '  Why  callest  thou  ?  Let  things  go  their  own 
way.' '  It  grieves  him,  so  he  tells  us,  to  see  the  country  he 
loves  going  to  rack  and  ruin  ;  Germany  is  his  fatherland,  and, 
before  his  very  eyes,  it  is  hastening  to  destruction.  "  But 
God's  ways  are  just,  we  may  not  resist  them.  May  God 
have  mercy  on  us  for  no  one  believes  us."  Even  the  doctrine 
of  letting  things  go  their  own  way — to  which  in  his  pessim 
ism  Luther  grew  attached  in  later  life — he  was  firmly 
convinced  had  come  to  him  directly  from  the  Lord,  Who 
had  "  consolingly  "  whispered  to  him  these  words.  Even 
this  saying  reeks  of  his  peculiar  pseudo-mysticism. 

All  the  above  outbursts  are,  however,  put  into  the  shade 
by  the  utter  ferocity  of  his  ravings  against  Popery.  Painful 
indeed  are  the  effects  of  his  gloomy  frame  of  mind  on  his 
attitude  towards  Rome.  The  battle-cries,  which,  in  one  of 
his  last  wrorks,  viz.  his  "  Wider  das  Babstum  vom  Teuffel 
gestifft,"  Luther  hurls  against  the  Church,  which  had  once 
nourished  him  at  her  bosom,  form  one  of  the  saddest 
instances  of  human  aberration. 

Yet,  speaking  of  this  work,  the  author  assures  a  friend 
that,  "  in  this  angry  book  I  have  done  justice  neither  to 
myself  nor  to  the  greatness  of  my  anger  ;  but  I  am  quite 
aware  that  this  I  shall  never  be  able  to  do."3  "  For  no  tongue 
can  tell,"  so  he  says,  "  the  appalling  and  frightful  enormities 
of  the  Papal  abomination,  its  substance,  quantity,  quality, 
predicaments,  predicables,  categories,  its  species,  properties, 
differences  and  accidents."4 

1  To  Justus  Jonas,  Feb.  25,  1542,  ib.,  p.  439  :    "  Carlstadii  ista  sunt 
monstra." 

2  Ib.  :     "  Furiis  furiosis  aguntur,   quia  ira  Dei  pervenit  super  eos 
usque  in  finem.    Quare  ergo  propter  istos  perditos  nos  conficere  volumus  ? 
Mitte,  vadere  sicut  vadit." 

3  To    Dr.    Ratzeberger,    the    Elector's    physician,    Aug.    C,    1545, 
"  Briefe,"  5,  p.  754. 

4  April  14,  1545,  ib.,  a  letter  not  in  the  least  intended  as  a  joke. 


HIS   LOW   SPIRITS  233 

The  more  distorted  and  monstrous  his  charges,  the  more 
they  seem  to  have  pleased  him  when  in  this  temper. 

In  a  morbid  way  he  now  heaps  together  his  wonted  hyperboles 
to  such  an  extent,  that,  at  times,  it  becomes  very  tiresome  to 
read  his  writings  and  letters  ;  no  hateful  image  or  suspicion 
seems  to  him  sufficiently  bad.  "  Though  God  Himself  were  to 
offer  me  Paradise  for  living  another  forty  years,  I  should  prefer 
to  hire  an  executioner  to  chop  off  my  head,  for  the  world  is  so 
wicked  ;  they  are  all  becoming  rank  devils."1  He  compares  his 
own  times  to  those  which  went  before  the  Flood;  the  "rain  of 
filth  will  soon  begin  "  ;  he  goes  on  to  say  that  he  no  longer 
understands  his  own  times  and  finds  himself  as  it  were  in  a  strange 
world  ;  "  either  I  have  never  seen  the  world,  or,  while  I  am 
asleep,  a  new  world  is  born  daily  ;  not  one  but  fancies  he  is 
suffering  injustice,  and  not  one  but  is  convinced  he  does  no 
injustice."2  With  a  strange  note  of  contempt  he  says:  "Let 
the  world  be  upset,  kicked  over  and  thrust  aside,  seeing  it  not 
only  rejects  and  persecutes  God's  Word,  but  rages  even  against 
sound  common  sense.  .  .  .  Even  the  seven  devils  of  Cologne,  who 
sit  in  the  highest  temple,  and  who,  like  some  of  the  council,  still 
withstand  us,  will  God  overthrow,  Who  breaks  down  the  cedars 
of  Lebanon.  On  account  of  this  [the  actual  and  hoped-for  suc 
cesses  at  Cologne]  we  will  rejoice  in  the  Lord,  because  by  His 
Word  He  does  such  great  things  before  our  very  eyes."3 

Here,  as  elsewhere  too,  in  spite  of  all  his  ill-humour,  the 
progress  of  his  Evangel  inspires  him  with  hope.  Nor  is  his 
dark  mood  entirely  unbroken,  for,  from  time  to  time,  his 
love  of  a  joke  gets  the  better  of  it.  His  chief  consolation 
was,  howrever,  his  self-imposed  conviction  that  his  teaching 
was  the  true  one. 

A  certain  playfulness  is  apparent  in  many  of  his  letters, 
for  instance,  in  those  to  Jonas,  one  of  his  most  intimate  of 
friends  :  "  Here  is  a  conundrum,"  writes  Luther  to  him, 
"  which  my  guests  ask  me  to  put  to  you.  Does  God,  the 
wise  administrator,  annually  bestow  on  the  children  of  men 
more  wine  or  more  milk  ?  I  think  more  milk  ;  but  do  you 
give  your  answer.  And  a  second  question  :  Would  a  barrel 
that  reached  from  Wittenberg  to  Kemberg  be  large  and 
ample  enough  to  hold  all  the  wine  that  our  unwise,  silly, 
foolish  God  wastes  and  throws  away  on  the  most  ungrateful 
of  His  children,  setting  it  before  Henries  and  Alberts,  the 

1  "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  3,  p.  185.     Rebenstock,  in  Bindseil,  I.e. 

3  To  Amsdorf,  Aug.  18,  1543,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  584.    Cp.  p.  789  :    "  ne 
tandem  fiat  quod  ante  diluvium  factum  esse  scribit  Moises,"  etc. 

4  /&.,  p.  585. 


234          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

Pope  and  the  Turk,  all  of  them  men  who  crucify  His  Son, 
whereas  before  His  own  children  He  sets  nothing  but  water  ? 
You  see  that,  though  I  am  not  much  better  than  a  corpse, 
I  still  love  to  chat  and  jest  with  you."1 

In  the  Table-Talk,  recently  published  by  Kroker  from  the 
notes  taken  by  Mathesius  in  the  last  years  of  Luther's  life, 
the  latter's  irrepressible  and  saving  tendency  to  jest  is  very 
apparent ;  his  humour  here  is  also  more  spontaneous  than 
in  his  letters,  with  the  possible  exception  of  some  of  those 
he  wrote  to  Catherine  Bora.2 

Suspicion  and  Mania  of  Persecution 

A  growing  inclination  to  distrust,  to  seeing  enemies  every 
where  and  to  indulging  in  fearsome,  superstitious  fancies, 
stamps  with  a  peculiar  impress  his  prevailing  frame  of  mind. 

His  vivid  imagination  even  led  him,  in  April,  1544,  to 
speak  of  "  a  league  entered  into  between  the  Turks  and  the 
most  holy,  or  rather  most  silly,  Pope  "  ;  this  was  un 
doubtedly  one  of  the  "great  signs"  foretold  by  Christ; 
"  these  signs  are  here  in  truth  and  are  truly  great."3  "  The 
Pope  would  rather  adore  the  Turk,"  he  exclaims  later,  "  nay, 
even  Satan  himself,  than  allow  himself  to  be  put  in  order 
and  reformed  by  God's  Word  "  ;  he  even  finds  this  con 
firmed  in  a  new  "  Bull  or  Brief."4  He  has  heard  of  the 
peace  negotiations  with  the  Turks  on  the  part  of  the  Pope 
and  the  Emperor,  and  of  the  neutrality  of  Paul  III  towards 
the  Turcophil  King  of  France  ;  he  is  horrified  to  see  in 
spirit  an  embassy  of  peace,  "  loaded  with  costly  presents 
and  clad  in  Turkish  garments,"  wending  its  way  to  Con 
stantinople,  "  there  to  worship  the  Turk."  Such  was  the 
present  policy  of  the  Roman  Satan,  who  formerly  had  used 
indulgences,  annates  and  countless  other  forms  of  robbery 
to  curtail  the  Turkish  power.  "  Out  upon  these  Christians, 
out  upon  these  hellish  idols  of  the  devil  !  "5 — The  truth  is 
that,  whereas  the  Christian  States  winced  at  the  difficulties 

1  Sep.  3,  1541,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  396. 

2  On  the  psychology  of  his  humour,  see  below,  xxxi.,  5. 

3  To  Justus  Jonas,  April  17,  1544,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  642.     Cp.  p.  629  : 
"  testes  fidelissimi  "  report  an  alliance  between  the  Pope,  the  Turks, 
French  and  Venetians  against  the  Emperor.     "  Now  give  a  cheer  for 
the  Pope." 

4  To  Amsdorf,  Jan.  9,  1545,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  713. 

5  To  Amsdorf,  July  17,  1545,  ib.,  p.  750  f. 


PAPAL   POISONERS  235 

or  sought  for  delay,  Pope  Paul  III,  faithful  to  the  traditional 
policy  of  the  Holy  See,  insisted  that  it  was  necessary  to 
oppose  by  every  possible  means  the  Turk  who  was  the 
Church's  foe  and  threatened  Europe  with  ruin.  The  only 
ground  that  Luther  can  have  had  for  his  suspicions  will 
have  been  the  better  relations  then  existing  between  the 
Pope  and  France  which  led  the  Turkish  fleet  to  spare  the 
Papal  territory  on  the  occasion  of  its  demonstration  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Tiber.1 

But  Luther  was  convinced  that  the  Pope  had  no  dearer 
hope  than  to  thwart  Germany,  and  the  Protesters  in  par 
ticular.  It  was  the  Pope  and  the  Papists  whom  he  accused  to 
Duke  Albert  of  Prussia  of  being  behind  the  Court  of  Bruns 
wick  and  of  hiring,  at  a  high  price,  the  services  of  assassins 
and  incendiaries.  To  Wenceslaus  Link  he  says,  that  it  will 
be  the  priests'  own  fault  if  the  saying  "  To  death  with  the 
priests  "  is  carried  into  practice  ;2  to  Melanchthon  he  also 
writes  :  "I  verily  believe  that  all  the  priests  are  bent  on 
being  killed,  even  against  our  wish."3 — It  was  the  Papists 
sure  enough,  who  introduced  the  maid  Rosina  into  his 
house,  in  order  that  she  might  bring  it  into  disrepute  by  her 
immoral  life  ;4  they  had  also  sent  men  to  murder  him,  from 
whom,  however,  God  had  preserved  him  ;5  they  had  like 
wise  tried  to  poison  him,  but  all  to  no  purpose.6  We  may 
reqall  how  he  had  said  :  "I  believe  that  my  pulpit-chair 
and  cushion  were  frequently  poisoned,  yet  God  preserved 
me."7  "  Many  attempts,  as  I  believe,  have  been  made  to 
poison  me."8 

He  had  even  once  declared  that  poisoning  was  a  regular 
business  with  Satan  :  "  He  can  bring  death  by  means  of  a  leaflet 
from  off  a  tree  ;  he  has  more  poison  phials  and  kinds  of  death  at 
his  beck  and  call  than  all  the  apothecaries  in  all  the  world  ;  if  one 
poison  doesn't  work  he  uses  another."9  He  had  long  been  con 
vinced  that  the  devil  was  able  to  carry  through  the  air  those  who 
made  themselves  over  to  him;  "we  must  not  call  in  the  devil, 

1  Cp.  Pastor,  "  Hist,  of  the  Popes  "  (Engl.  Trans.),  vol.  x. 

2  June-July,  1541,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  379. 

3  June,  22,  1541,  ib.,  p.  372. 

4  Vol.  iii.,  pp.  217,  280  f. 

5  "  Colloq,,"  ed.  Bindseil,  3,  p.  155. 

6  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  423.     In  1537. 

7  Above,  vol.  iii.,  p.  116. 

8  "  Colloq.,"  I.e.,  p.  156.     Cp.  Rebenstock,  in  Bindseil,  I.e. 

9  Schlaginhaufen,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  125. 


236          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

for  he  comes  often  enough  uncalled,  and  loves  to  be  by  us, 
hardened  foe  of  ours  though  he  be.  .  .  .  He  is  indeed  a  great  and 
mighty  enemy."1  Towards  the  end  of  his  life,  in  1541,  it  came 
to  his  ears  that  the  devil  was  more  than  usually  busy  with  his 
poisons:  "At  Jena  and  elsewhere,"  so  he  warns  Melanchthon, 
"  the  devil  has  let  loose  his  poisoners.  It  is  a  wonder  to  me  why 
the  great,  knowing  the  fury  of  Satan,  are  not  more  watchful. 
Here  it  is  impossible  any  longer  to  buy  or  to  use  anything  with 
safety."  Melanchthon  was  therefore  to  be  careful  when  invited 
out  ;  at  Erfurt  the  spices  and  aromatic  drugs  on  sale  in  the  shops 
had  been  found  to  be  mixed  with  poison  ;  at  Altenburg  as  many 
as  twelve  people  had  died  from  poison  taken  in  a  single  meal. 
Anxious  as  he  was  about  his  friend,  his  trust  was  nevertheless 
unshaken  in  the  protection  of  God  and  the  angels.  I  myself  am 
still  in  the  hands  of  my  Moses  (Katey),  he  adds,  "  suffering  from 
a  filthy  discharge  from  my  ear  and  meditating  in  turn  on  life 
and  on  death.  God's  Will  be  done.  Amen.  May  you  be  happy 
in  the  Lord  now  and  for  ever."2 

"  A  new  art  of  killing  us,"  so  he  tells  Melanchthon  in  the  same 
year,  had  been  invented  by  Satan,  viz.  of  mixing  poison  with  our 
wine  and  milk  ;  at  Jena  twelve  persons  were  said  to  have  died 
of  poisoned  wine,  "though  more  likely  of  too  much  drink"  ;  at 
Magdeburg  and  Nordhausen,  however,  milk  had  been  found  in 
the  possession  of  the  sellers  that  seemed  to  have  been  poisoned. 
"  At  any  rate,  all  things  lie  under  Christ's  feet,  and  we  shall  suffer 
so  long  and  as  much  as  He  pleases.  For  the  nonce  we  are  supreme 
and  they  [the  Papist  '  monsters  ']  are  hurrying  to  destruction. 
...  So  long  as  the  Lord  of  Heaven  is  at  the  helm  we  are  safe, 
live  and  reign  and  have  our  foes  under  our  feet.  Amen."  Casting 
all  fear  to  the  winds  he  goes  on  to  comfort  Melanchthon  and  his 
faint-hearted  comrades  in  the  tone  of  the  mystic  :  "  Fear  not  ; 
you  are  angels,  nay,  great  angels  or  archangels,  working,  not  for 
us  but  for  the  Church,  nay,  for  God,  Whose  cause  it  is  that  you 
uphold,  as  even  the  very  gates  of  hell  must  admit ;  these,  though 
they  may  indeed  block  our  way,  cannot  overcome  us,  because 
at  the  very  beginning  of  the  world  the  hostile,  snarling  dragon 
was  overthrown  by  the  Lion  of  the  tribe  of  Juda."3 

The  hostility  of  the  Papists  to  Lutheranism,  had,  so 
Luther  thought,  been  manifestly  punished  by  Heaven  in 
the  defeat  of  Henry  of  Brunswick ;  it  had  "  already  been 
foretold  in  the  prophecies  pronounced  against  him,"  which 
had  forecasted  his  destruction  as  the  "  son  of  perdition  "  ; 
he  was  a  "  warning  example  set  up  by  God  for  the  tyrants 

1  Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  156. 

2  To  Melanchthon,  April  20,   1541,  "  Brief  e,"  5,  p.  346  ;    "  Brief - 
wechsel,"  13,  p.  308. 

3  To  Melanchthon,  March  24,  1541,  ib.,  p.  336  =  279. 


SUSPECTS   HIS   FRIENDS  237 

of  our  days  "  ;  for  every  contemner  of  the  Word  is  "  plainly 
a  tyrant."1 

Luther  was  very  suspicious  of  Melanchthon,  Bucer  and 
others  who  leaned  towards  the  Zwinglian  doctrine  on  the 
Supper.  So  much  had  Magister  Philippus,  his  one-time 
right-hand  man,  to  feel  his  displeasure  and  irritability  that 
the  latter  bewails  his  lot  of  having  to  dwell  as  it  were  "  in 
the  very  den  of  the  Cyclopes  "  and  with  a  real  "  tyrant." 
"  There  is  much  in  one's  intercourse  with  Luther,"  so 
Cruciger  said  confidentially,  in  1545,  in  a  letter  to  Veit 
Dietrich,  "that  repels  those  who  have  a  will  of  their  own 
and  attach  some  importance  to  their  own  judgment  ;  if 
only  he  would  not,  through  listening  to  the  gossip  of  out 
siders,  take  fire  so  quickly,  chiding  those  who  are  blameless 
and  breaking  out  into  fits  of  temper  ;  this,  often  enough, 
does  harm  even  in  matters  of  great  moment."2  Luther 
himself  was  by  no  means  unwilling  to  admit  his  faults  in 
this  direction  and  endeavoured  to  make  up  for  them  by 
occasionally  praising  his  fellow-workers  in  fulsome  terms  ; 
Yet  so  deep-seated  was  his  suspicion  of  Melanchthon's 
orthodoxy,  that  he  even  thought  for  a  while  of  embodying 
his  doctrine  on  the  Sacrament  in  a  formulary,  which  should 
condemn  all  his  opponents  and  which  all  his  friends,  par 
ticularly  those  whom  he  had  reason  to  mistrust,  should  be 
compelled  to  sign.  This,  according  to  Bucer,  would  have 
involved  the  departure  of  Melanchthon  into  exile.  Bucer 
expressed  his  indignation  at  this  projected  "  abominable 
condemnation  "  and  at  the  treatment  meted  out  to  Melanch 
thon  by  Luther.3 

Bucer  himself  was  several  times  the  object  of  Luther's 
wrath,  for  instance,  for  his  part  in  the  "  Cologne  Book  of 
Reform  "  :  "  It  is  nothing  but  a  lot  of  twaddle  in  which  I 
clearly  detect  the  influence  of  that  chatterbox  Bucer."4 
When  Jakob  Schenk  arrived  at  Wittenberg  after  a  long 
absence  Luther  was  so  angry  with  him  for  not  sharing  his 
views  as  to  refuse  to  receive  him  when  he  called  ;  he  did 

1  To  Jakob  Probst,  Pastor  at  Bremen,  Oct.  9,  1542,  "  Brief e,"  5, 
p.  501. 

2  On  Feb.  23,  1545,  see  Dollinger,  "  Reformation,"  3,  p.  269,  n.  208, 
from  MS. 

3  Cp.   Kostlin-Kawerau,   2,  p.  582.     On  Melanchthon,  cp.  above, 
vol.  iii.,  p.  370. 

'4  To  Chancellor  Briick,  1544,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  708, 


238          LUTHER   THE   REFORMER 

the  same  in  the  case  of  Agricola,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the 
latter  brought  a  letter  of  recommendation  from  the  Margrave 
of  Brandenburg  ;  in  one  of  his  letters  calls  him  :  "  the  worst 
of  hypocrites,  an  impenitent  man  !  '51  From  such  a  monster, 
so  he  said,  he  would  take  nothing  but  a  sentence  of  con 
demnation.  As  for  his  former  friend  Schenk,  he  ironically 
offers  him  to  Bishop  Amsdorf  as  a  helper  in  the  ministry. 
On  both  of  them  he  persisted  in  bestowing  his  old  favourite 
nicknames,  Jeckel  and  Grickel  (Jakob  and  Agricola). 

Luther's  Single-handed  Struggle  with  the  Powers  of  Evil 

Owing  to  the  theological  opinions  reached  by  some  of  his 
one-time  friends  Luther,  as  may  well  be  understood,  began  to 
be  oppressed  by  a  feeling  of  lonesomeness. 

The  devil,  whom  he  at  least  suspected  of  being  the  cause 
of  his  bodily  pains, 2  is  now  backing  the  Popish  teachers,  and 
making  him  to  be  slighted.  But,  by  so  doing,  thanks  to 
Luther's  perseverance  and  bold  defiance,  he  will  only 
succeed  in  magnifying  Christ  the  more. 

"  He  hopes  to  get  the  better  of  us  or  to  make  us  downhearted. 
But,  as  the  Germans  say,  cacabimus  in  os  eius.  Willy-nilly,  he 
shall  suffer  until  his  head  is  crushed,  much  as  he  may,  with 
horrible  gnashing  of  teeth,  threaten  to  devour  us.  We  preach 
the  Seed  of  the  woman  ;  Him  do  we  confess  and  to  Him  would  we 
assign  the  first  place,  wherefore  He  is  with  us."3  In  his  painful 
loneliness  he  praises  "  the  heavenly  Father  WTio  has  hidden  these 
things  [Luther's  views  on  religion]  from  the  wise  and  prudent  and 
has  revealed  them  to  babes  and  little  ones  who  cannot  talk,  let 
alone  preach,  and  are  neither  clever  nor  learned."4  This  he  says 
in  a  sermon.  The  clever  doctors,  he  adds,  "  want  to  make  God 
their  pupil  ;  everyone  is  anxious  to  be  His  schoolmaster  and 
tutor.  And  so  it  has  ever  been  among  the  heretics.  ...  In  the 
Christian  churches  one  bishop  nags  at  the  other,  and  each  pastor 
snaps  at  his  neighbour.  .  .  .  These  are  the  real  wiselings  of 
whom  Christ  speaks  who  know  a  lot  about  horses'  bowels,  but 
who  do  not  keep  to  the  road  which  God  Himself  has  traced  for 
us,  but  must  always  go  their  own  little  way."  Indeed  it  is  the 
fate  of  "  everything  that  God  has  instituted  to  be  perverted  by 
the  devil,"  by  "  saucy  folk  and  clever  people."  "  The  devil  has 
indeed  smeared  us  well  over  with  fools.  But  they  are  accounted 

1  To  Amsdorf,  May  2,  1545,  ib.,  p.  734. 

2  To  Amsdorf,  Aug.  18,  1543,  ib.,  p.  585  :    "  an  colaphus  Satance  ?  " 

3  To  Anton  Lauterbach,  Nov.  3,  1543,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  599. 

4  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  202,  2,  p.  561  f.,  in  his  last  sermon,  Feb.  14, 
1546,  on  ML  xL  25  fL 


PORTENTS   OF   SATAN  239 

wise  and  prudent  simply  because  they  rule  and  hold  office  in  the 
Churches."1 

Let  us  leave  them  alone  then  and  turn  our  backs  on  them,  no 
matter  how  few  we  be,  for  "  God  will  not  bear  in  His  Christian 
Churches  men  who  twist  His  Divine  Word,  even  though  they 
be  called  Pope,  Emperor,  Kings,  Princes  or  Doctors.  .  .  .  We 
ourselves  have  had  much  to  do  with  such  wiselings,  who  have 
taken  it  upon  themselves  to  bring  about  unity  or  reform."2 
"  They  fancy  that  because  they  are  in  power  they  have  a  deeper 
insight  into  Scripture  than  other  people."3  "The  devil  drives 
such  men  so  that  they  seek  their  own  praise  and  glory  in  Holy 
Scripture."  But  do  you  say  :  I  will  listen  to  a  teacher  "only  so 
long  as  he  leads  me  to  the  Son  of  God,"  the  true  master  and 
preceptor,  i.e.  in  other  words,  so  long  as  he  teaches  the  truth.4 

In  his  confusion  of  mind  Luther  does  not  perceive  to  what 
his  proviso  "  so  long  as  "  amounts.  It  was  practically  the  same 
as  committing  the  decision  concerning  what  was  good  for  salvation 
to  the  hands  of  every  man,  however  ignorant  or  incapable  of 
sound  judgment.  Luther's  real  criterion  remained,  however,  his 
own  opinion.  "  If  anyone  teaches  another  Gospel,"  he  says  in 
this  very  sermon,6  "  contrary  to  that  which  we  have  proclaimed 
to  you,  let  him  be  anathema  "  (cp.  Gal.  i.  8).  The  reason  why 
people  will  not  listen  to  him  is,  as  he  here  tells  them,  because,  by 
means  of  the  filth  of  his  arch-knaves  and  liars,  "  the  devil  in  the 
world  misleads  and  fools  all." 

Luther  was  convinced  that  he  was  the  "  last  trump," 
which  was  to  herald  in  the  destruction,  not  only  of  Satan 
and  the  Papacy,  but  also  of  the  world  itself.  "  We  are  weak 
and  but  indifferent  trumpeters,  but,  to  the  assembly  of  the 
heavenly  spirits,  ours  is  a  mighty  call."  "  They  will  obey  us 
and  our  trump,  and  the  end  of  the  world  will  follow.  Amen."6 

Meanwhile,  however,  he  notes  with  many  misgivings  the 
manifestations  of  the  evil  one.  He  even  intended  to  collect 
in  book  form  the  instances  of  such  awe-inspiring  portents 
("  satance  portenta  ")  and  to  have  them  printed. 

For  this  purpose  he  begged  Jonas  to  send  him  once  more  a 
detailed  account  of  the  case  of  a  certain  Frau  Rauchhaupt,  which 
would  have  come  under  this  category  ;  he  tells  his  friend  that 
the  object  of  his  new  book  is  to  "  startle  "  the  people  who  lull 
themselves  in  such  a  state  of  false  security  that  not  only  do  they 
scorn  the  wholesome  marvels  of  the  Gospel  with  which  we  are 
daily  overwhelmed,  but  actually  make  light  of  the  real  "  furies 
of  furies  "  of  the  wickedness  of  the  world  ;  they  must  read  such 

1  Ib.,  p.  562  ff.  2  Ib.,  p.  565.  3  Ib.,  p.  564. 

4  Ib.,  p.  566  f.  5  Ib.,  p.  571. 

6  To  Ratzeberger,  the  Elector's  medical  adviser,  Aug.  6,  1545, 
"  Briefe,"  5,  p.  754  :  "  Credo  nos  esse  tubam  illam  novissimam,"  etc. 


240          LUTHER   THE   REFORMER 

marvellous  stories,  for  "  they  are  too  prone  to  believe  neither  in 
the  goodness  of  God  nor  in  the  wickedness  of  the  devil,  and  too 
set  on  becoming,  as  indeed  they  are  already,  just  bellies  and 
nothing  more."1 — Thus,  when  Lauterbach  told  him  of  three 
suicides  who  had  ended  their  lives  with  the  halter,  he  at  once 
insisted  that  it  was  really  Satan  who  had  strung  them  up  while 
making  them  to  think  that  it  was  they  themselves  who  committed 
the  crime.  "  The  Prince  of  this  world  is  everywhere  at  work." 
"  God,  in  permitting  such  crimes,  is  causing  the  wrath  of  heaven 
to  play  over  the  world  like  summer  lightning,  that  ungrateful 
men,  who  fling  the  Gospel  to  the  winds,  may  see  what  is  in  store 
for  them."  "  Such  happenings  must  be  brought  to  the  people's 
knowledge  so  that  they  may  learn  to  fear  God."2  Happily  the 
book  that  was  to  have  contained  these  tales  of  horror  never  saw 
the  light ;  the  author's  days  were  numbered. 

The  outward  signs,  whether  in  the  heavens  or  on  the  earth, 
"  whereby  Satan  seeks  to  deceive,"  were  now  scrutinised  by 
Luther  more  superstitiously  than  ever. 

Talking  at  table  about  a  thunder-clap  which  had  been  heard 
in  winter,  he  quite  agreed  with  Bugenhagen  "that  it  was  down 
right  Satanic."  "  People,"  he  complains,  "  pay  no  heed  to  the 
portents  of  this  kind  which  occur  without  number."  Melanchthon 
had  an  experience  of  this  sort  before  the  death  of  Franz  von 
Sickingen.  Others,  whom  Luther  mentions,  saw  wonderful 
signs  in  the  heavens  and  armies  at  grips  ;  the  year  before  the 
coming  of  the  Evangel  wonders  were  seen  in  the  stars  ;  "  these  are 
in  every  instance  lying  portents  of  Satan  ;  nothing  certain  is 
foretold  by  them ;  during  the  last  fifteen  years  there  have  been 
many  of  them  ;  the  only  thing  certain  is  that  we  have  to  expect 
the  coming  wrath  of  God." 3  Years  before,  the  signs  in  the  heavens 
and  on  the  earth,  for  instance  the  flood  promised  for  1524,  had 
seemed  to  him  to  forebode  the  "  world  upheaval  "  which  his 
Evangel  would  bring.4 

Luther  shared  to  the  full  the  superstition  of  his  day.  He  did 
not  stand  alone  when  he  thus  interpreted  public  events  and  every 
day  occurrences.  It  was  the  fashion  in  those  days  for  people, 
even  in  Catholic  circles,  superstitiously  to  look  out  for  portents 
and  signs. 

In  15376  Luther  relates  some  far-fetched  tales  of  this  sort. 
The  most  devoted  servants  of  the  devil  are,  according  to  him, 
the  sorcerers  and  witches  of  whom  there  are  many.6  In  1540 

1  To  Jonas  at  Halle,  Jan.  23,  1542,  ib.,  p.  429. 

2  To  Lauterbach,  July  25,  1542,  ib.,  p.  487. 

. 3  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  385  f.  (Dec.,  1536). 

4  To  Wenceslaus  Link,  Jan.   14,   1521,   "  Brief wechsel,"  3,  p.  72  : 
"  videns,  rem   tumultuosissimo   tumultu   tumultuantem  ;   forte  hcec  est 
inundatio  ilia  prcedicta  anno  Zlfutura" 

5  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  423,  concluding  :    "  Videte,  tanta  est 
potentia    Sathance    in    deludendis    sensibus    externis ;     quid  faciet    in 
animabus  ?  " 

6  Cp.  N.  Paulus,  "  Hexenwahn  und  Hexenprozess  vornehmlich  im 
16.  Jahrh.,"  1910,  particularly  pp.  20  f.,  48  ff. 


THE   END   OF   THE   WORLD         241 

he  related  to  his  guests  how  a  schoolmaster  had  summoned  the 
witches  by  means  of  a  horse's  head.1  "  Repeatedly,"  so  he  told 
them  in  that  same  year,  "  they  did  their  best  to  harm  me  and  my 
Katey,  but  God  preserved  us."  On  another  occasion,  after 
telling  some  dreadful  tales  of  sorcery,  he  adds  :  "  The  devil  is 
a  mighty  spirit."  "Did  not  God  and  His  dear  angels  intervene, 
he  would  surely  slay  us  with  those  thunder-clubs  of  his  which 
you  call  thunderbolts."2  In  earlier  days  he  had  told  them,  that, 
Dr.  "  Faust,  who  claimed  the  devil  as  his  brother-in-law,  had 
declared  that  '  if  I,  Martin  Luther,  had  only  shaken  hands  with 
him  he  would  have  destroyed  me  '  ;  but  I  would  not  have  been 
afraid  of  him,  but  would  have  shaken  hands  with  him  in  God's 
name  and  reckoning  on  God's  protection."3 

According  to  him,  most  noteworthy  of  all  were  the  diaboli 
cal  deeds  then  on  the  increase  which  portended  a  mighty 
revulsion  and  a  catastrophe  in  the  world's  history.  Every 
thing,  his  laboured  calculations  on  the  numbers  in  the 
biblical  prophecies  included,  all  point  to  this.  Even  the 
appearance  of  a  new  kind  of  fox  in  1545  seemed  to  him  of 
such  importance  that  he  submitted  the  case  to  an  expert 
huntsman  for  an  opinion.  He  himself  was  unable  to  decide 
what  it  signified,  "  unless  it  be  that  change  in  all  things 
which  we  await  and  for  which  we  pray."4 

The  change  to  which  he  here  and  so  often  elsewhere  refers 
is  the  end  of  the  world. 


2.  Luther's  Fanatical  Expectation  of  the  End  of  the 
World.     His  hopeless  Pessimism 

The  excitement  with  which  Luther  looks  forward  to  the 
approaching  end  of  the  world  affords  a  curious  psychological 
medley  of  joy  and  fear,  hope  and  defiance ;  his  conviction 
reposed  on  a  wrong  reading  of  the  Bible,  on  a  too  high 
estimate  of  his  own  work,  on  his  sad  experience  of  men  and 
on  his  superstitious  observance  of  certain  events  of  the 
outside  world. 

The  fact  that  the  end  of  all  was  nigh  gradually  became 
an  absolute  certainty  with  him.  In  his  latter  days  it  grew 
into  one  of  those  ideas  around  which,  as  around  so  many 

1  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  227.  2  Ib.,  p.  129. 

3  Ib.,  p.  422,  from  Lauterbach  and  Weller's  Notes  in  the  summer, 
1537. 

4  To  Amsdorf,  June  3,  1545,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  741.    Amsdorf  had  sent 
an  inquiry  "  de  monstro  illo  vulpium" 


242          LUTHER  THE   REFORMER 

fixed  stars,  his  other  plans,  fancies  and  grounds  for  consola 
tion  revolve.  To  the  depth  of  his  conviction  his  excessive 
credulity  and  that  habit — which  he  shared  with  his  con 
temporaries — of  reading  things  into  natural  events  con 
tributed  not  a  little. 

A  remarkable  conjunction  of  the  planets  in  1524, x  "  other 
signs  which  have  been  described  elsewhere,  such  as  earthquakes, 
pestilences,  famines  and  wars,"  a  predicted  flood2 — "  all  these 
signs  agree  "3  in  announcing  the  great  day  ;  never  have  "  more 
numerous  and  greater  signs  "  occurred  during  the  whole  course 
of  the  world's  history  to  vouch  for  the  forthcoming  end  of  the 
world.4  "  All  the  firmaments  and  courses  of  the  heavens  are 
declining  and  coming  to  an  end  ;  the  Elbe  has  stood  for  a  whole 
year  at  the  same  low  level,  this  also  is  a  portent."5  Such  signs 
invite  us  to  be  watchful.6  Over  and  above  all  this  we  have  the 
"many  gruesome  dreams  of  the  Last  Judgment"  with  which  he 
was  plagued  in  later  years.7 

He  describes  to  his  friends  quite  confidently  the  manner  of  the 
coming  of  the  end  such  as  he  pictures  it  to  himself:  "Early  one 
morning,  about  the  time  of  the  spring  equinox,  a  thick  black 
cloud,  three  lightning  flashes  and  a  thunder-clap,  and,  presto, 
everything  will  lie  in  ruins,"  etc.  "  I  am  ever  awaiting  the  day."8 
"Things  may  go  on  for  some  years  longer,"9  perhaps  for  "  five 
or  six  years,"  but  [no  more,  because  "  the  wickedness  of  men 
has  increased  so  dreadfully  within  so  short  a  time."10  "  We  shall 
live  to  see  the  day  "  ;  Aggeus  (ii.  7  f.)  says  :  "  Yet  a  little  while 
and  I  will  shake  the  heaven  and  the  earth  "  ;  look  around  you  ; 
"  surely  the  State  is  being  shaken  .  .  .  the  household  too,  and 
even  the  very  mob,  item  our  own  very  sons  and  daughters.  The 
Church  too  totters."11 

"  All  the  great  wonders  have  already  taken  place  ;  the  Pope 
has  been  unmasked  ;  the  world  rages.  Nor  will  things  improve 
until  the  Last  Day  comes.  I  hope,  however,  now  that  the  Evangel 
is  so  greatly  despised,  that  the  Last  Day  is  no  longer  far  distant, 
not  more  than  a  hundred  years  off,  God's  Word  will  again 
decline  .  .  .  and  the  world  will  become  quite  savage  and 
epicurean."12 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  102,  p.  69  f.    Kirchenpostille.  2  Ib. 

3  To  Jonas,  Dec.  16,  1543,  "Briefe,"  5,  p.  612:   "  congruunt  omnia 
signa." 

4  In  the  "  Chronology  of  the  World,"  "  Werke,"  Walch's  ed.,  14, 
p.  1278,  from  the  Latin  MS.    See  above,  vol.  iii.,  p.  147  f. 

6  Schlaginhaufen,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  22.  6  Ib.,  p.  33. 

7  "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  1,  p.  86. 

8  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  208  ;   "  Historien,"  p.  143.   "  Luthers 
Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  62,  pp.  18,  25,  "  Tischreden." 

9  "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  1.,  p.  85. 
10  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  58,  p.  206. 

"  Ib.,  62,  p.  23.  12  Ib.,  p.  24  f. 


THE  END   OF  THE   WORLD         243 

Reason  and  Ground  of  Luther*  s  Conviction  of  the  near 
End  of  the  World 

The  actual  origin  and  basis  of  this  strange  idea  are  plainly 
expressed  in  the  statement  last  quoted  :  "  The  Pope  is 
unmasked  "  as  Antichrist,  such  was  Luther's  starting-point. 
Further,  "  the  Evangel  is  despised,"  by  his  own  followers 
no  less  than  by  his  foes  ;  this  depressing  sight,  together  with 
the  sad  outlook  for  religion  generally,  formed  the  ground  on 
which  Luther's  conviction  of  the  coming  cataclysm  grew, 
particularly  when  the  fall  of  the  Papacy  seemed  to  be 
unduly  delayed,  and  its  strength  to  be  even  on  the  increase. 
The  Bible  texts  which  he  twists  into  his  service  are  an  out 
come  rather  than  the  cause  of  his  conviction  concerning 
Antichrist,  while  the  "  signs  "  in  the  heavens  and  on  earth 
also  serve  merely  to  confirm  a  persuasion  derived  from 
elsewhere. 

The  starting-point  of  the  idea  and  the  soil  on  which  it 
grew  deserve  to  be  considered  separately. 

Luther's  views  on  the  unmasking  of  Antichrist  and  the 
approaching  end  of  the  world  carry  us  back  to  the  early 
years  of  his  career.  Soon  after  beginning  his  attack  on  the 
Church,  he,  over  and  over  again,  declared  that  he  had  been 
called  to  reveal  the  Pope  as  Antichrist.1  His  breach  with 
the  ecclesiastical  past  was  so  far-reaching  that  he  could  not 
have  expressed  his  position  and  indicated  the  full  extent  of 
his  aims  better  than  by  so  radical  an  apocalyptic  announce 
ment.  Nor  did  it  sound  so  entirely  strange  to  the  world. 
Even  according  to  Wiclif  the  Papal  power  was  the  power  of 
"  Antichrist  "  and  the  Roman  Church  the  "  Synagogue  of 
Satan "  ;  John  Hus  likewise  taught,  that  it  was  Anti 
christ  who,  by  means  of  the  Papal  penalties,  was  seeking  to 
affright  those  who  were  after  "unmasking"  him. 

The  idea  of  Antichrist  in  Luther's  mind  embodied  all  the 
wickedness  of  the  Roman  Church  which  it  was  his  purpose 
to  unmask,  all  the  religious  perversion  of  which  he  wished  to 
make  an  end,  and,  in  a  word,  the  dominion  of  the  devil 
against  which  he  fancied  he  was  to  proclaim  the  last  and 
decisive  combat.  When,  by  dint  of  insisting  in  his  writings, 

1  See  above,  vol.  iii.,  p.  141  ff.,  on  the  rise  of  his  idea  of  the  Pope 
as  Antichrist. 


244          LUTHER   THE   REFORMER 

over  and  over  again,  and  in  the  most  drastic  of  ways,  on  the 
Papal  Antichrist,  the  idea  came  to  assume  its  definitive  shape 
in  his  own  mind,  his  announcement  of  the  end  of  the  world 
could  not  be  any  longer  delayed  ;  for,  according  to  the 
generally  accepted  view,  Antichrist  was  directly  to  precede 
the  coming  of  Christ  to  Judgment,  or  at  least  the  latter 's 
coming  would  not  be  long  delayed  after  the  revelation  of 
Antichrist  in  his  true  colours.1  As  a  rule  Antichrist  was 
taken  to  be  a  person  ;  Luther,  however,  saw  Antichrist  in 
the  Papacy  as  a  whole.  Antichrist  had  had  a  long  spell  of 
life  ;  the  last  Pope  would,  however,  soon  fall,  he,  Luther, 
with  Christ's  help,  was  preparing  his  overthrow,  then  the  end 
would  come — such  is  the  sum  of  Luther's  eschatological 
statements  during  the  first  period  of  his  career. 

Speaking  of  the  end  of  the  world  he  often  says,  that  the  fall 
of  the  Papacy  involves  it.  "  Assuredly,"  he  says,  the  end  will 
shortly  follow  on  account  of  the  manifest  wickedness  of  the  Pope 
and  the  Papists.  According  to  him,  the  Bible  itself  teaches  that, 
"  after  the  downfall  of  the  Pope  and  the  deliverance  of  the  poor, 
no  one  on  earth  would  ever  again  be  a  tyrant  and  inspire  fear." 
"  Tins  would  not  be  possible,"  so  Luther  thinks,  "  were  the  world 
to  go  on  after  the  fall  of  the  Pope,  for  the  world  cannot  exist 
without  tyrants.  And  thus  the  Prophet  agrees  with  the  Apostle, 
viz.  that  Christ,  when  He  comes,  will  upset  the  Holy  Roman 
Chair.  God  grant  it  may  happen  speedily.  Amen  !  "2 

In  his  fantastic  interpretation  of  the  Monk-Calf  he  declares 
in  a  similar  way,  that  the  near  end  of  the  world  is  certain  in  view 
of  the  abominations  of  the  sinking  Papacy  and  its  monkish 
system,  which  last  is  symbolised  in  the  wonderful  calf  :  "  My 
wish  and  hope  are  that  it  may  mean  the  Last  Day,  since  many 
signs  have  so  far  coincided,  and  the  whole  world  is  as  it  were  in 
an  uproar,"3  the  source  of  the  whole  to-do  being  his  triumphant 
contest  with  Antichrist.  In  the  same  way  his  conviction  of  the 
magnitude  and  success  of  his  mission  against  the  foe  of  Christ 
gives  the  key  to  his  curious  reading  of  Daniel  and  the  Epistle 
to  the  Thessalonians  with  regard  to  the  time  of  Antichrist's 
advent  and  the  end  of  the  world,  which  we  find  set  forth  quite 
seriously  in  his  reply  to  Catharinus.4  In  short,  "  Antichrist  will 
be  revealed  whatever  the  world  may  do  ;  after  this  Christ  must 
come  with  His  Judgment  Day."6 

1  Cp.  the  index  to  Walch's  edition,  vol.  xxiii.,  s.v.  "  Antichrist  "  and 
"  Widerchrist." 

2  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  8,  p.  719  ;    Erl.  ed.,  242,  p.  203,  "  Bulla 
Coense  Domini  "  (1522),  appendix. 

3  Cp.  Kostlin-Kawerau,  1,  p.  646.     On  the  Monk-Calf,  see  vol.  iii., 
p.  149  f.  *  On  this  Reply  see  vol.  iii.,  p.  142. 

5  Schlaginhaufen,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  72. 


THE   END   OF   THE   WORLD         245 

When  the  Papacy,  instead  of  collapsing,  began  to  gather 
strength  and  even  proceeded  to  summon  a  Council,  Luther 
did  not  cease  foretelling  its  fall ;  he  predicts  the  end  of  the 
world  in  terms  even  stronger  than  before,  though  the  reason 
he  assigns  for  his  forebodings  is  more  and  more  the  "  con 
tempt  shown  for  the  Word,"  i.e.  for  his  teaching  and 
exhortations.  Disgust,  disappointment  and  the  gloomy 
outlook  for  the  future  of  his  work  are  now  his  chief  grounds 
for  expecting  the  end  of  all  and  for  ardently  hoping  that  the 
Day  will  soon  dawn.  ...  It  is  the  self-seeking  and  vice  so 
prevalent  in  his  own  fold  which  wrings  from  him  the  exclama 
tion  :  "It  must  soon  come  to  a  head,"1  for  things  cannot 
long  go  on  thus. 

The  last  temptation  which  shall  assail  the  faithful,  he  says, 
will  be  "an  undisciplined  life  "  ;  then  we  shall  "  grow  sick  of 
the  Word  and  disgusted  with  it."  "  Not  even  the  Word  of  God 
will  they  endure  ;  .  .  .  the  Gospel  which  they  [his  own  people] 
once  confessed,  they  now  look  upon  as  merely  the  word  of  man." 
"  Do  you  fancy  you  are  out  of  the  world,  or  that  Satan,  the 
Prince  of  this  world,  has  died  or  been  crucified  in  you  ?  "2  It  is 
bitter  experience  that  causes  him  to  say  :  "  The  day  will  dawn 
when  Christ  shall  come  to  free  us  from  sin  and  death."3  "  May 
the  world  go  to  rack  and  ruin  and  be  utterly  blotted  out,"  "the 
world  which  has  shown  me  such  gratitude  during  my  own  life 
time  !  "4  "May  the  Lord  call  me  away,  for  I  have  done,  and 
seen,  and  suffered  enough  evil."5  "  Would  that  the  Lord  would 
put  an  end  to  the  great  misery  [that  among  us  each  one  does  as 
he  pleases]  !  Oh  that  the  day  of  our  deliverance  would  come  !  "6 
"  The  people  have  waxed  cold  towards  the  Evangel.  .  .  .  May 
Christ  mend  all  things  and  hasten  the  Day  of  His  Coming."7 

"  It  is  a  wonder  to  me  what  the  world  does  to-day,"  he  said, 
alluding  to  the  turmoil  in  the  newly  acquired  bishopric  of  Naum- 
burg  ;  he  then  goes  on  to  complain  in  the  words  already  given 
(p.  233),  that  a  new  world  is  growing  up  around  him  ;  no  one 
will  admit  of  having  done  wrong,  of  having  lied  or  sinned  ;  those 
only  who  meet  with  injustice  are  reputed  unrighteous,  liars  and 
sinners.  Verily  it  would  soon  rain  filth.  "  The  day  of  our  re 
demption  draweth  nigh.  Amen."  "  The  world  will  rage,  but 

1  To  Jonas,  Dec.  16,  1543,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  612. 

2  To  Link,  Sep.  8,  1541,  ib.,  p.  398. 

3  To  Jonas,  March  13,  1542,  ib.,  p.  445. 

4  To  Jonas,  Feb.  25,  1542,  ib.,  p.  439. 

5  To  Jonas,  May  3,    1541,   "  Brief wechsel,"    13,   p.   328  :     "  Ego  et 
cegrotus  et  pcene  morosus  sum,  tcedio  rerum  et  morborum.     Utinam  me 
Deus  evocet  misericorditer  ad  sese.    Satis  malorum  fed,  vidi,  passus  swm." 

8  To  Lauterbach,  April  2,  1543,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  551  :  "  ubique 
grassatur  licentia  et  petulantia  vulgi."  Cp.  p.  552. 

7  To  the  Evangelical  Brethren  at  Venice,  June  13,  1543,  ib.,  p.  569. 


246          LUTHER  THE   REFORMER 

good-bye  to  it"  I1 — "The  world  is  indeed  a  contemptible  thing," 
he  groans,  after  describing  the  morals  of  Wittenberg.2 

The  conduct  of  the  great  ones  at  the  Saxon  Court  led  him  to 
surmise  that  "  soon,"  after  but  a  few  days,  hell  would  be  their 
portion.3  For  those  who  infringe  the  rights  of  his  Church  he  has 
a  similar  sentence  ready  :  "  Hell  will  be  your  share.  Come, 
Lord  Jesus,  come,  listen  to  the  groaning  of  Thy  people,  and 
hasten  Thy  coming  !  "•  -"  Farewell  and  teach  your  people  to 
pray  for  the  day  of  the  Lord  ;  for  of  better  times  there  is  no 
longer  any  hope."4 

"  During  our  lifetime,"  he  laments  in  1545,  "  and  under  our 
very  eyes,  we  see  sects  and  dissensions  arising,  each  one  wishing 
to  follow  his  own  fancy.  In  short,  contempt  for  the  Word  on  our 
own  side  and  blasphemy  on  the  other  seem  to  me  to  announce 
the  times  of  which  John  the  Baptist  spoke  to  the  people,  saying  : 
'  The  axe  is  laid  to  the  root  of  the  tree,'  etc.  Accordingly,  since 
the  end  at  least  of  this  happy  age  is  imminent,  there  seems  no 
call  to]|bother  much  about  setting  up,  or  coming  to  an  under 
standing  regarding,  those  troublesome  ceremonies."5 

In  fact,  he  is  determined  not  "  to  bother  much,"  not 
merely  about  the  "  ceremonies,"  but  about  the  whole 
question  of  Church  organisation,  for  of  what  use  doing  so 
when  the  signs  of  the  general  end  of  all  are  increasing  at 
such  a  rate  ?  "To  set  up  laws  "  is,  according  to  him,  quite 
impracticable  ;  let  everything  settle  itself  "  according  to  the 
law  of  God  by  means  of  the  inspection."6 

"  To  Luther  the  end  which  Christ  was  about  to  put  to 
this  wicked  world  seemed  so  near,"  so  we  read  in  Kostlin- 
Kawerau's  biography,7  "  that  he  never  contemplated  any 
progressive  development  and  expansion  of  Christendom  and 
the  Church,  nor  was  he  at  all  anxious  about  the  possible  ups 
and  downs  which  might  accompany  such  development.  .  .  . 
It  is  just  in  his  later  years  that  we  find  him  more  firmly 
established  than  ever  in  the  belief,  that  the  world  will  always 
remain  the  world  and  that  it  must  be  left  to  the  Lord  to 
take  what  course  He  pleases  with  it  and  with  His  Christen 
dom,  until  the  coming  of  the  '  longed-for  Last  Day.'  ' 

At  any  rate,  since  the  sectarians  in  his  own  camp  and  the 
various  centrifugal  forces  inherent  in  his  creation  made 
impossible  any  real  organisation,  he  was  all  the  more  ready 

To  Amsdorf,  Aug.  18,  1543,  ib.,  p.  584. 

To  Jonas,  June  18,  1543,  ib.,  p.  570. 

To  Lauterbach,  Nov.  3,  1543,  ib.,  p.  599. 

To  Jonas,  Dec.  16,  1543,  ib.,  p.  610. 

To  Duke  George  of  Anhalt,  July  10,  1545,  ib.t  6,  p.  370.     6  Ib. 

Vol.  ii,,  p.  522. 


THE   END   OF   THE   WORLD         247 

to  welcome  the  thought  of  the  end  of  the  world  in  that  it 
distracted  his  mind  from  the  sad  state  of  things. 

On  the  top  of  the  schisms  and  immorality  of  the  people 
there  was  also  the  avarice  of  those  in  high  places,  which 
roused  his  hatred  and  contributed  to  make  him  sigh  for  the 
coming  of  the  Day. 

"  They  all  rage  against  God  and  His  Messias."  "  This  is  the 
work  of  those  centaurs,  the  foes  of  the  Church,  kept  in  store  for 
the  latter  days.  They  are  more  insatiable  than  hell  itself.  But 
Christ,  Who  will  shortly  come  in  His  glory,  will  quiet  them,  not 
indeed  with  gold,  but  with  brimstone  and  flames  of  hell,  and  with 
the  wrath  of  God."1  It  was  his  displeasure  against  some  of  the 
authorities  which  wrung  from  him  the  words  :  "  But  the  end  is 
close  at  hand,"  the  end  which  will  also  spell  the  end  of  "  all  this 
seizing — or  rather  thieving  greed  for  Church  property — of  the 
Princes,  nobles  and  magistrates,  hateful  and  execrable  that  it  is."2 
Taking  this  in  conjunction  with  the  attitude  of  the  Catholic 
rulers  he  could  say  with  greater  confidence  than  ever  :  "  Nothing 
good  is  to  be  hoped  for  any  more  but  this  alone,  that  the  day  of 
the  glory  of  our  great  God  and  our  Redeemer  may  speedily 
break  upon  us."  "  From  so  Satanic  a  world  "  he  would  fain  be 
"  quickly  snatched,"  longing  as  he  does  for  the  Day  and  for  the 
"  end  of  Satan's  raging."3 


The  End  of  the  World  in  the  Table-Talk 

In  the  above  we  have  drawn  on  Luther's  letters.  If  we 
turn  to  his  Table-Talk,  particularly  to  that  dating  from  his 
later  years,  we  find  that  there,  too,  his  frequent  allusions  to 
the  approaching  end  of  the  world  are  as  a  rule  connected 
with  his  experience  of  the  corruption  in  his  surroundings, 
especially  at  Wittenberg.  The  carelessness  of  the  young  is 
sufficient  to  make  him  long  for  the  Last  Day,  which  alone 
seemed  to  promise  any  help. 

To  Melanchthon,  who,  with  much  concern,  had  drawn  his 
attention  to  the  lawlessness  of  the  students,  Luther  poured  out 
his  soul,  as  we  read  in  Lauterbach's  Diary :  As  the  students  were 
growing  daily  wilder  he  hoped  that,  "if  God  wills,  the  Last  Day 
be  not  far  off,  the  Day  which  shall  put  an  end  to  all  things."4 
"  The  ingratitude  and  profanity  of  the  world,"  he  also  says, 
"  makes  me  apprehend  that  this  light  [of  the  Evangel]  will  not 
last  long."  "  The  refinement  of  malice,  thanklessness  and  dis- 

1  To  Lauterbach,  Feb.  9,  1544,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  629. 

2  To  Amsdorf,  June  23,  1544,  ib.,  p.  670. 

3  To  Probst,  Dec.  5,  1544,  ib.,  p.  703. 

4  Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch  "  (1538),  p.  34. 


248          LUTHER   THE   REFORMER 

respect  shown  towards  the  Gospel  now  revealed  "  is  so  great 
"  that  the  Last  Day  cannot  be  far  off."1 

In  his  Table-Talk,  where  Luther  is  naturally  more  communi 
cative  than  in  his  letters,  we  see  even  more  plainly  how  deeply 
the  idea  of  the  approaching  Day  of  Judgment  had  sunk  into  his 
mind  and  under  how  curious  a  shape  it  there  abides.  "  Things 
will  get  so  bad  on  this  earth,"  he  says,  for  instance,  "  that  men 
will  cry  out  everywhere  :  O  God,  come  with  Thy  Last  Judgment." 
He  would  not  mind  "  eating  the  agate  Paternoster  "  (a  string  of 
beads  he  wore  round  his  neck)  if  only  that  would  make  the  Day 
"come  on  the  morrow."2  "The  end  is  at  the  door,"  he  con 
tinues,  "  the  world  is  on  the  lees  ;  if  anyone  wants  to  begin 
something  let  him  hurry  up  and  make  a  start."3  "The  next 
day  he  again  spoke  much  of  the  end  of  the  world,  having  had 
many  evil  dreams  of  the  Last  Judgment  during  the  previous  six 
months  "  ;  it  was  imminent,  for  Scripture  said  so  ;  the  present 
hangs  like  a  ripe  apple  on  the  tree  ;  the  Roman  Empire,  "  the 
last  sweet-william"  would  also  soon  tumble  to  the  ground.4 

In  1530  Luther  was  disposed  to  regard  the  Roman  Empire 
under  Charles  V  with  a  rather  more  favourable  eye.  His  im 
pression  then  was  that  the  Empire,  "  under  our  Emperor  Carol, 
is  beginning  to  look  up  and  becoming  more  powerful  than  it  was 
for  many  a  year  "  ;  yet  strange  to  say  he  knew  how  to  bring 
even  this  fact  into  connection  with  the  Judgment  Day  ;  for  this 
strengthening  of  the  Empire  "  seems  to  me,"  so  he  goes  on,  "  like 
a  sort  of  last  effort ;  for  when  a  light  or  wisp  of  straw  has  burnt 
down  and  is  about  to  go  out  it  sends  up  a  flame  and  seems  just 
about  to  flare  up  bravely  when  suddenly  it  dies  out  ;  this  is 
what  Christendom  is  now  doing  thanks  to  the  bright  Evangel."6 
Hence  all  he  could  see  was  the  last  flicker  both  of  the  Empire  and 
of  the  new  teaching  before  final  extinction. 

The  noteworthy  utterance  about  the  last  flicker  of  the  Lutheran 
Evangel  occurs  also  in  the  Table-Talk  collected  by  Mathesius 
dating  from  the  years  1542  and  1543.  "  I  believe  that  the  Last 
Day  is  not  far  off.  The  reason  is  that  we  now  see  the  last  effort 
of  the  Evangel ;  this  resembles  a  light ;  when  a  light  is  about  to 
expire  it  sends  up  at  the  last  a  sudden  flame  as  though  it  were 
going  to  burn  for  quite  a  long  while  and  thereupon  goes  out. 
And,  though  it  appears  now  as  though  the  Evangel  were  about 
to  be  spread  abroad,  I  fear  it  will  suddenly  expire  and  the  Last 
Day  come.  It  is  the  same  with  a  sick  man  ;  when  at  the  point 
of  death  he  seems  quite  cheerful  and  on  the  high  road  to  recovery, 
and,  then,  suddenly,  he  is  gone."6 

The  Table-Talk  from  the  Mathesius  collection  recently  pub- 

1  P.  172  f. 

2  Schlaginhaufen,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  (1531  and  1532),  p.  17. 

3  "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  1,  pp.  85,  86. 

4  Ib.,  p.  86. 

5  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  41,  p.  233. 

6  Mathesius,    "  Tischreden,"   ed.   Kroker,   p.   282.      Cp.   Mathesius, 
"  Aufzeichn.,"  ed.  Lcesche,  p.  393. 


THE   END   OF   THE   WORLD         249 

lished  by  Kroker,  among  other  curious  utterances  of  Luther's 
on  the  end  of  the  world,  contains  also  the  following  : 

In  view  of  the  dissensions  by  which  the  new  Evangel  was  torn 
the  speaker  says,  in  1542-43 :  "If  the  world  goes  on  for  another 
fifty  years  things  will  become  worse  than  ever,  for  sects  will 
arise  which  still  lie  hidden  in  the  hearts  of  men,  so  that  we  shall 
not  know  where  we  stand.  Hence,  dear  Lord,  come  !  Come  and 
overwhelm  them  with  Thy  Judgment  Day,  for  no  improvement 
is  any  longer  to  be  looked  for."1 

Here  too  he  repeatedly  declares  that  he  himself  is  tired  of  the 
world  :  "  I  have  had  enough  of  the  world,"  he  says,  and  goes  on 
to  introduce  the  ugly  comparison  alluded  to  above. 2  He  adds : 
"The  world  fancies  that  if  only  it  were  rid  of  me  all  would  be 
well."  He  is  saddened  to  see  that  many  of  his  followers  make 
little  account  of  him  :  "If  the  Princes  and  gentry  won't  do  it, 
then  things  will  not  last  long."3  Of  the  want  of  respect  shown  to 
his  preachers  he  says  :  "  Where  there  is  such  contempt  of  the 
Divine  Word  and  of  the  preachers,  shall  not  God  smite  with  His 
fist  ?  "  "  But  if  we  preachers  were  to  meet  and  agree  amongst 
ourselves,  as  has  been  done  in  the  Papacy,  there  would  be  less 
need  for  this.  The  worst  of  it  is  that  they  are  not  at  one 
even  amongst  themselves."  He  finds  a  makeshift  consolation 
for  the  divergency  in  teaching  in  the  thought  that  "so  it  always 
was  even  from  the  beginning  of  the  world,  preachers  always  having 
disagreed  amongst  themselves."  "There  is  a  bad  time  coming, 
look  you  to  it  "  ;  things  may  go  on  for  another  fifty  years  now 
that  the  young  have  been  brought  up  in  his  doctrine,  but,  after 
that,  "  let  them  look  out.  Hence,  let  no  one  fear  the  plague,  but 
rather  be  glad  to  die."4  Not  only  did  he  look  forward  to  his  own 
death,  but,  as  we  know,  to  that  of  "  all  his  children,"  seeing  that 
strange  things  would  happen  in  the  world.5 

We  have  heard  him  say,  that  it  was  a  mercy  for  the  young, 
that,  being  thoughtless  and  without  experience,  they  did  not  see 
the  harm  caused  by  the  scandals,  "  else  they  could  not  endure 
to  live."6  And,  that  the  world  could  "not  possibly  last  long." 
Its  hours  are  numbered,  for,  thanks  to  me,  "  everything  has  now 
been  put  straight.  The  Gospel  has  been  revealed."7 

"  Christ  said,  that,  at  His  coming,  faith  would  be  hard  to  find 
on  the  earth  (Luke  xviii.  8).  That  is  true,  for  the  whole  of  Asia 
and  Africa  is  without  the  Evangel,  and  even  as  regards  Europe 
no  Gospel  is  preached  in  Greece,  Italy,  Hungary,  Spain,  France, 
England  or  Poland.  The  one  little  bright  spot,  the  house  of 
Saxony,  will  not  hinder  the  coming  of  the  Last  Day."8 

"  Praise  be  to  God  Who  has  taught  us  to  sigh  after  it  and  long 
for  it  !  In  Popery  everybody  dreads  it."9 

"  Amen,  so  be  it,  Amen  !  "  so  he  sighed  in  1543  in  a  letter  to 

1  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  287.  2  Above,  p.  229. 

3  Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  131. 

4  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  289.  5  Ib.,  p.  288. 
6  Ib.,  p.  179.             7  Ib.,  p.  108.  8  Ib.,  p.  209. 
9  Ib.,  p.  111. 


250          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

Amsdorf  alluding  to  the  end  of  the  world.  "  The  world  was  just 
like  this  before  the  Flood,  before  the  Babylonian  captivity,  before 
the  destruction  of  Jerusalem,  before  the  devastation  of  Rome 
and  before  the  misfortunes  of  Greece  and  Hungary  ;  so  it  will 
be  and  so  it  is  before  the  ruin  of  Germany  too.  They  refuse  to 
listen,  so  they  must  be  made  to  feel.  I  should  be  glad  to  console 
ourselves  both,  by  discussing  this  thought  [of  the  contempt  of  the 
Papists  for  us]  with  you  by  word  of  mouth."  "  We  will  leave 
them  in  the  lurch  "  and  cease  from  attempting  their  conversion. 
"  Farewell  in  the  Lord,  Who  is  our  Helper  and  Who  will  help  us 
for  ever  and  ever.  Amen."1 

"  Under  the  Pope,"  we  read  in  the  Colloquies,  "  at  least  the 
name  of  Christ  was  retained,  but  our  thanklessness  and  presump 
tuous  sense  of  security  will  bring  things  to  such  a  pass  that  Christ 
will  be  no  longer  even  named,  and  so  the  words  of  the  Master 
already  quoted  will  be  fulfilled  according  to  which,  at  His  coming, 
no  faith  will  remain  on  the  earth."2 

As  to  the  circumstances  which  should  accompany  the  end  of 
the  world,  he  still  expected  the  catastrophe  to  take  place  most 
likely  about  Easter  time,  "early  in  the  morning,  after  a  thunder 
storm  of  an  hour  or  perhaps  a  little  more."3 

Here  he  no  longer  gives  the  world  "  a  bare  hundred  years 
more,"  nor  even  something  "not  more  than  fifty  years";4  he 
almost  expects  the  end  to  come  before  the  completion  of  his 
translation  of  the  Bible  into  German.5  The  world  will  certainly 
not  last  until  1548,  so  he  declared,  "  for  this  would  run  counter 
to  Ezechiel."6  He  is  not  quite  sure  whether  the  Golden  Age 
begins  in  1540  or  not,  though  such  was  the  contention  of  the 
mathematicians  ;  but  "  we  shall  see  the  fulfilment  of  Scripture,"7 
or  at  any  rate,  as  he  prudently  adds  elsewhere,  our  descendants 
will.  But  before  this  can  come  the  "  great  light  "  of  faith  would 
have  to  be  dimmed  still  more.8 

Luther  concludes  by  saying  that  he  is  unable  to  suggest  any 
thing  further  ;  he  had  done  all  he  could  ;  God's  vengeance  on 
the  world  was  so  great,  he  declares,  that  he  could  no  longer  give 
any  advice  ;  for  "  amongst  us  whom  God  has  treated  so  merci 
fully  and  on  whom  He  has  bestowed  all  His  Graces  there  is 
nothing  left  that  is  not  corrupted  and  perverted."9  "  On  divine 
authority  we  began  to  amend  the  world,  but  it  refuses  to  hearken  ; 
hence  let  it  crumble  to  ruins,  for  such  is  its  fate  !  "  10 

In  his  predictions  concerning  the  end  of  the  world  Luther 
did  not  sufficiently  take  to  heart  the  mishap  which  befell  his 
pupil  and  friend  Michael  Stiefel,  though  he  himself  had  been 

To  Amsdorf,  Nov.  7,  1543,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  600. 

"  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  1,  p.  87.  3  Ib.,  p.  89. 

Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  172  f. 

"  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  41,  p.  233. 

Schlaginhaufen,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  130. 

"  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  1,  p.  86.  8  Ib.,  p.  87. 

"  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  57,  p.  95  f.       10  Schlaginhaufen,  ib.,  p.  30. 


THE  END   OF  THE   WORLD        251 

at  pains  to  reprove  him.  Stiefel  had  calculated  that  the 
end  of  the  world  would  come  at  8  a.m.  on  Oct.  19,  1533,  at 
which  hour  he  and  his  parishioners  awaited  it  assembled  in 
the  church  at  Lochau.  Their  watch  was,  however,  in  vain  ; 
the  world  continued  to  go  its  way  and  the  Court  judged  it 
expedient  to  remove  the  preacher  for  a  while  from  his  post. 

Taking  these  eschatological  ideas  or  rather  ardent  wishes 
of  Luther's  later  life  in  all  their  bearings,  and  giving  due 
weight  to  the  almost  unbounded  dominion  they  exercised 
over  his  mind,  one  might  well  incline  to  see  in  them  signs 
of  an  unhealthy  and  overwrought  mind.  They  seem  to  have 
been  due  to  excessive  mental  strain,  to  the  reaction  following 
on  the  labours  of  his  long  life's  struggle  in  the  cause  of  his 
mission.  It  is  not  unlikely  that  pathology  played  some 
part  in  the  depression  from  which  he  suffered. 

His  early  theological  development  also  throws  some  light 
on  the  psychological  problem,  owing  to  a  parallel  which 
it  affords. 

The  middle-point  and  mainstay  of  his  theology,  viz.  his 
doctrine  of  Justification,  was  wholly  a  result  of  his  own  per 
sonal  feelings;  after  cutting  it,  so  to  speak,  to  his  own  measure 
he  proceeded  to  make  it  something  of  world-wide  application, 
a  doctrine  which  should  rule  every  detail  of  religious  life, 
and  around  which  all  theology  should  cluster  if  it  is  to  be 
properly  understood.  In  a  similar  way,  after  beginning  by 
adapting  to  his  own  case  the  theory  of  the  near  end  of  the 
world — to  which  he  was  early  addicted — he  gradually  came 
to  find  in  it  the  clue  wherewith  to  unravel  all  the  knotty 
problems  which  began  to  present  themselves.  It  became  his 
favourite  plan  to  regard  everything  in  the  light  of  the  end 
of  the  world  and  advent  of  Christ.  Just  as  he  was  fond  of 
asseverating,  in  spite  of  all  the  contradictions  it  involved, 
that  he  could  find  in  his  dogma  of  Justification  endless 
comfort  for  both  himself  and  the  faithful,  so,  too,  he  came 
to  regard  the  Last  Day,  in  spite  of  all  its  terrors,  as  the 
source  of  the  highest,  nay,  of  the  only  remaining,  joy  of  life, 
for  himself  and  for  all.  With  a  vehemence  incompre 
hensible  to  sober  reason  he  allowed  himself  to  be  carried 
away  by  this  idea  as  he  had  been  by  others.  Such  was  his 
temperament  that  he  could  rejoice  in  the  coming  of  the 
Judge,  Who  should  deliver  him  from  the  bonds  of  despair. 

Hence  Luther's  expectation  of  the  end  of  the  world  was 


252          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

something  very  different  from  that  of  certain  Saints  of 
whom  Church-history  tells  us.  Pope  Gregory  I  or  Vincent 
Ferrer  were  not  moved  to  foretell  the  approaching  end  of 
the  world  by  disgust  with  life,  by  disappointment,  or  as  a 
result  of  waging  an  unequal  struggle  with  the  Church  of 
their  day,  nor  again  because  they  regarded  the  destruction 
of  the  world  as  the  only  escape  from  the  confusion  they 
had  brought  about.  Nor  do  they  speak  of  the  end  of  the 
world  with  any  fanatical  expectation  of  their  own  personal 
salvation,  but  rather  with  a  mixture  of  fear  and  calm  trust 
in  God's  bounty  to  the  righteous  ;  they  have  none  of 
Luther's  pessimism  concerning  the  world,  and,  far  from 
desiring  things  to  "  take  their  course,"1  they  exerted  every 
nerve  to  ensure  the  everlasting  salvation  of  as  many  of  their 
fellow-creatures  as  possible  before  the  advent  of  the  Judge  ; 
to  this  end  they  had  recourse  to  preaching  and  the  means 
of  grace  provided  by  the  Church  and  insisted  greatly  on  the 
call  for  faith  and  good  works.  Above  all,  they  gave  a  speak 
ing  proof  of  their  faith  by  their  works  and  by  the  inspiring 
example  of  heroic  sanctity. 

3.  Melanchthon  under  the  Double  Burden,  of  Luther's 
Personality  and  his  own  Life's  Work 

The  personality  of  Luther  counts  for  much  among  the 
trials  which  embittered  Melanchthon's  life. 

The  passages  already  quoted  witnessing  thereto2  must 
here  be  supplemented  by  what  he  himself  says  of  his  experi 
ences  at  Luther's  side,  in  a  letter  he  wrote  in  1548  to  the 
councillor  Carlowitz  and  the  Court  of  Saxony.  There  was 
some  doubt  as  to  what  attitude  Melanchthon  would  adopt 
towards  Maurice  of  Saxony,  the  new  sovereign,  the  victor  of 
the  Schmalkalden  War,  and  to  his  demands  in  the  matter 
of  religion. 

In  the  letter,  which  to  say  the  least  is  very  conciliatory, 
Melanchthon  says  that  he  will  know  how  to  keep  silence  on  any 
ecclesiastical  regulations,  no  matter  how  distasteful  to  him  they 
may  be  :  for  he  knew  what  it  was  "  to  endure  even  a  truly 
ignominious  bondage,  Luther  having  frequently  given  the  rein 
to  his  own  natural  disposition,  which  was  not  a  little  quarrelsome, 
instead  of  showing  due  consideration  for  his  own  position  and 
the  general  welfare."  He  goes  on  to  explain  the  nature  of  the 

1  See  above,  p.  226.  2  Above,  vol.  iii.,  p.  362  ff. 


HIS   FRIEND   MELANCHTHON       253 

habit  of  silence  he  had  so  thoroughly  mastered  ;  it  meant  no 
sacrifice  of  his  own  doctrine  and  views  ("  non  mutato  genere 
doctrince  ").  For  twenty  long  years,  so  he  complains,  he  had  been 
obliged  to  bear  the  reproaches  of  the  zealots  of  the  party  because 
he  had  toned  down  certain  doctrines  and  had  ventured  to  differ 
from  Luther  ;  they  had  called  him  ice  and  frost,  accused  him  of 
being  in  league  with  the  Papists,  nay,  of  being  ambitious  to  secure 
a  Cardinal's  hat.  Yet  he  had  never  had  the  slightest  inclination 
to  go  over  to  the  Catholics,  for  they  "  were  guilty  of  cruel  injustice." 
He  must,  however,  say  that  he,  who  by  nature  was  a  lover  of 
peace  and  the  quiet  of  the  study,  had  only  been  drawn  into  the 
movement  of  which  Luther  was  the  leader  because  he,  like  many 
wise  and  learned  contemporaries,  thought  he  discerned  in  it  a 
striving  after  that  truth  for  which  he  thirsted  and  for  which  he 
lived.  Luther  it  was  true,  had,  from  the  very  first,  introduced 
a  "  rougher  element  into  the  cause  "  ;  he  himself,  however,  had 
made  it  his  aim  to  set  up  only  what  was  true  and  essentially 
necessary  ;  he  had  also  done  much  in  the  way  of  reforms,  and,  to 
boot,  had  waged  a  war  against  the  demagogues  ("  multa  tribunitia 
plebs  ")  which,  owing  to  the  attacks  of  enemies  at  Court,  had 
drawn  down  on  him  the  displeasure  of  the  sovereign  and  had 
even  put  his  life  in  jeopardy. 

Coming  finally  to  speak  of  the  concessions,  speculative  and  prac 
tical,  which  he  was  prepared  to  make  in  addition  to  preserving 
silence,  he  mentions  "  the  authority  to  be  conceded  to  the  bishops 
and  the  chief  bishop  in  accordance  with  the  Augsburg  Confes 
sion."  He  adds  :  "  Mayhap  I  am  by  nature  of  a  servile  turn  of 
mind  "  ("fortassis  sum  ingenio  servili  "),  but,  after  all  there  is  a  real 
call  to  be  humble  and  open  to  advances.  He  also  refers  to  the 
defeat  of  the  Evangelical  Princes,  but  only  to  assure  Carlowitz 
that  he  attributes  this,  "  not  to  blind  fate,  but  rather  admit  that 
we  have  drawn  down  the  chastisement  on  ourselves  by  many 
and  great  misdeeds."1 

This  is  the  oft-quoted  declaration  which  Protestant  writers  as 
a  whole  regret  more  on  Melanchthon's  than  on  Luther's  account. 
It  was  "  an  unhappy  hour  "  in  which  Melanchthon  wrote  the 
letter  "  which  gives  us  so  profound  an  insight  into  his  soul  "  ;2  he 
forgot  that  he  was  "  a  public  character  "  ;  "in  this  letter  not 
only  what  he  says  of  Luther  and  of  his  relations  with  him,  but 
even  his  account  of  the  share  he  himself  took  in  the  Reformation," 
"  is  scarcely  to  his  credit."3 

Another  Protestant  holds,  however,  a  different  view.  In  this 
letter  we  have,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  "the  expression  of  feelings 
which  for  long  years  Melanchthon  had  most  carefully  kept  under 
restraint  locked  up  in  his  heart.  .  .  .  From  it  we  may  judge  how 
great  was  the  vexation  and  bitterness  Melanchthon  had  to 

1  April  28,  1548,  "  Corp.  ref.,"  6,  p.  879  sqq. 

2  G.  Kawerau,   "  Luthers  Stellung  zu  den  Zeitgenossen  Erasmus, 
Zwingli    und    Melanchthon  "    (Reprint    from    "  Deutsch-evang.    Bl.," 
1906,  1-3),  p.  30. 


f 
fs, 


3  F.  Loofs,  "  DG.,"  4,  1906,  p.  866,  n.  3. 


254          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

endure.  ...  In  an  unguarded  moment  what  had  been  so  long 
pent  up  broke  out  with  elemental  force."  The  historian  we  are 
quoting  then  goes  on  to  plead  for  a  "  milder  sentence,"  especially 
as  "  almost  every  statement  which  occurs  in  the  letter  can  be 
confirmed  from  Melanchthon's  confidential  correspondence  of 
the  previous  twenty  years."1 


Some  of  Melanchthon's  Deliverances 

It  is  quite  true,  that,  in  his  confidential  correspondence, 
Melanchthon  had  long  before  made  allusions  to  the  awkward 
ness  of  his  position. 

He  says,  for  instance,  in  a  letter  to  the  famous  physician 
Leonard  Fuchs,  who  wanted  him  to  take  up  his  abode  at 
Tubingen  :  "  Some  Fate  has,  as  it  were,  bound  me  fast 
against  my  will,  like  hapless  Prometheus,"  bound  to  the 
Caucasian  rock,  of  whom  the  classic  myth  speaks.  Never 
theless,  he  had  not  lost  hope  of  sometime  cutting  himself 
free  ;  happy  indeed  would  he  account  himself  could  he 
find  a  quiet  home  amongst  his  friends  at  Tubingen  where 
he  might  devote  his  last  years  to  study.2 

On  a  later  occasion,  when  bewailing  his  lot,  the  image  of 
Prometheus  again  obtrudes  itself  on  the  scholar.3 

Melanchthon's  uneasiness  and  discontent  with  his  position 
did  not  merely  arise  from  the  mental  oppression  he  experi 
enced  at  Luther's  side  ;  it  was,  as  already  pointed  out,  in 
part  due  to  sundry  other  factors,  such  as  the  persecution 
he  endured  from  disputatious  theologians  within  the  party, 
the  sight  of  the  growing  confusion  which  met  his  eye  day 
by  day,  the  public  dangers  and  the  moral  results  of  the 
religious  upheaval,  and,  lastly,  the  depressing  sense  of  being 
out  of  the  element  where  his  learning  and  humanistic 
tastes  might  have  found  full  and  unhampered  scope.  His 
complaints  dwell,  now  on  one,  now  on  some  other  of  these 
trials,  but,  taken  together,  they  combine  to  make  up  a 
tragic  historical  picture  of  a  soul  distraught ;  this  is  all  the 
more  surprising,  since,  owing  to  the  large  share  he  had  in 
the  introduction  of  the  new  Evangel,  the  cheering  side  of  the 

1  G.  Ellinger,  "  Melanchthon,"  1902,  p.  535  f. 

2  Nov.  12,  1538,  "  Corp.  ref.,"  3,  p.  606. 

3  To  Gelous,  May  20,  1559,  ib.,  9,  p.  822  :    "  Pendeo  velut  ad  Cau- 
casum  adfixus,  etsi  verius  sum  e7n/j.r)d€vs  quam  -rrpo^dev^  et  laceror,  non 
ut  ille  vulturibus  tantum,  sed  etiam  a  cuculis." 


HIS   FRIEND   MELANCHTHON       255 

great  religious  reform  should  surely  have  been  reflected  in 
Melanchthon. 

"It  is  not  fitting,"  writes  the  Protestant  theologian  Carl 
Sell,  "  to  throw  a  veil  over  the  sad  close  of  Melanchthon's 
life,  for  it  was  but  the  logical  consequence  of  his  own  train 
of  thought."  Luther's  theology,  of  the  defects  of  which 
Melanchthon  was  acutely  conscious,  had,  according  to  Sell, 
"  already  begun  to  break  down  as  an  adequate  theory  of 
life  "  ;l  of  the  forthcoming  disintegration  Luther's  colleague 
already  had  a  premonition. 

In  Aug.,  1536,  when  Melanchthon  paid  a  visit  to  his  home  and 
also  to  Tubingen,  he  became  more  closely  acquainted  with  the 
state  of  the  Protestant  Churches,  both  in  the  Palatinate  and  in 
Swabia.  It  was  at  that  time  that  he  wrote  to  his  friend  Myconius  : 
"  Had  you  travelled  with  us  and  seen  the  woeful  devastation  of 
the  Churches  in  many  localities  you  would  undoubtedly  long, 
with  tears  and  groans,  for  the  Princes  and  the  learned  to  take 
steps  for  the  welfare  of  the  Churches.  At  Nuremberg  the  good 
attendance  at  public  worship  and  the  orderly  arrangement  of  the 
ceremonies  pleased  me  greatly ;  elsewhere,  however,  lack  of 
order  and  general  barbarism  is  wonderfully  estranging  the  people 
[from  religion  ;  '  Arabia  et  barbaries  minim  in  modum  alienat 
animos'].  Oh,  that  the  authorities  would  see  to  the  remedying 
of  this  evil!  "2 

After  he  had  reluctantly  resumed  the  burden  of  his  Wittenberg 
office  he  continued  to  fret  about  the  dissensions  in  his  own  camp. 
"  Look,"  he  wrote  to  Veit  Dietrich  in  1537,  "  how  great  is  the 
danger  to  which  the  Churches  are  everywhere  exposed  and  how 
difficult  it  is  to  govern  them,  when  those  in  authority  are  at  grips 
with  one  another  and  set  up  strife  and  confusion,  whereas  it  is 
from  them  that  we  should  look  for  help.  .  .  .  What  we  have  to 
endure  is  worse  than  all  the  trials  of  Odysseus  the  sufferer."3 

In  the  following  year  he  told  the  same  friend  the  real  evil  was, 
that  "  we  live  like  gipsies,  no  one  being  willing  to  obey  another 
in  any  single  thing."4 

In  the  name  of  Wittenberg  University  he  wrote  to  Mohr,  the 
Naumburg  preacher,  who  was  quarrelling  with  his  brethren  in 
the  ministry,  "  What  is  to  happen  in  future  if,  for  so  trivial  a 
matter,  such  wild  and  angry  broils  break  out  amongst  those  who 
govern  the  Church  ?  "5 

The  growing  tendency  to  strife  he  describes  in  1544  in  these 
words  :  "  There  are  at  present  many  people  whose  quarrels  are 

1  C.  Sell,  "  Philipp  Melanchthon  und  die  deutsche  Reformation  bis 
1531  "  ("  Schriften  des  Vereins  f.  RG.,"  14,  3,  1897),  p.  117. 

2  Nov.  13,  1536,  "  Corp.  ref.,"  3,  p.  187. 

3  Dec.  7,  1537,  ib.,  p.  460.  4  Feb.  13,  1538,  ib.,  p.  488. 

5  June  24,  1545,  ib.,  5,  p.  776  :  "  tarn  atrocia  certamina  inter 
collegas" 


256          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

both  countless  and  endless,  and  who  everywhere  find  a  pretext 
for  them."1 

Many  of  his  complaints  concerning  the  morals  of  the  time,  as 
Dollinger  remarks,  sound  very  much  like  those  of  a  "  sworn 
Catholic  criticising  the  state  of  affairs  brought  about  by  the 
Reformation."  Dollinger  also  calls  attention  to  the  saying  of 
1537  :  "  The  only  glory  remaining  in  this  iron  age  is  that  of 
boldly  breaking  down  the  barriers  of  discipline  ('  audacter  dissipare 
vincula  discipline  ' )  and  of  propounding  to  the  people  new  opinions 
neatly  cut  and  coloured."2  A  similar  dictum  dates  from  1538. 
"  Our  age,  as  you  can  see,  is  full  of  malice  and  madness,  and  more 
addicted  to  intrigue  than  any  previous  one.  The  man  who  is 
most  shameless  in  his  abuse  is  regarded  as  the  best  orator.  Oh, 
that  God  would  change  this  !  "3  The  growing  evils  made  him 
more  and  more  downhearted.  "  People  have  become  barbarians," 
he  exclaims  twelve  years  later  to  his  friend  Camerarius,  "  and, 
accustomed  as  they  are  to  hatred  and  contempt  of  law  and  order, 
fear  lest  any  restraint  be  put  on  their  licentiousness  (' metuunt 
frenari  licentiam').  These  are  the  evils  decreed  for  the  last  age  of 
the  world."4 

Over  and  over  again  we  can  see  how  the  timorous  man  en 
deavours  to  clear  the  religious  innovations  of  any  responsibility 
for  the  prevalent  lawlessness,  which,  as  he  says,  deserved  to  be 
bewailed  with  floods  of  tears  ;  after  all,  the  true  Church  had  been 
revived  ;  this  edifice,  this  temple  of  God,  still  remained  amidst 
all  the  chaos  ;  even  in  Noe's  day  it  had  been  exposed  to  damage.5 
At  times,  though  less  frequently  than  Luther,  he  lays  all  the 
blame  on  Satan  ;  the  latter,  by  means  of  the  scandals,  was  seek 
ing  to  scare  people  away  from  the  true  Evangel  now  brought  to 
light,  and  to  vex  the  preachers  into  holding  their  tongues. 

Pessimistic  consideration  of  the  "  last  age  of  the  world  "  was 
quite  in  his  line  ;  the  dark  though  not  altogether  unfriendly 
shadow  of  the  approaching  end  of  all  was  discernible  in  the 
moral  disorders,  in  the  unbelief  and  anti-christian  spirit  of  the 
foe.  He  would  not  dwell,  so  he  once  said,  on  the  state  of  things 
among  the  people  towards  whom  he  was  willing  to  be  indulgent, 
but  it  could  not  be  gainsaid  that,  "  among  the  learned  open  con 
tempt  for  religion  was  on  the  increase  ;  they  lean  either  towards 
the  Epicureans  or  towards  universal  scepticism.  Forgetfulness 
of  God,  the  wickedness  of  the  times,  the  senseless  fury  of  the 
Princes,  all  unite  in  proving  that  the  world  lies  in  the  pains  of 
travail  and  that  the  joyous  coming  of  Christ  is  nigh."6  It  was 
his  hopelessness  and  the  great  solace  he  derived  from  the  approach 
ing  end  of  all  things  that  called  forth  this  frame  of  mind.  It  is 

1  Dec.  25,  1544,  to  Camerarius,  "  Corp.  ref.,"  5,  p.  554. 

2  "  Die  Reformation,"  1,  p.  376. 

3  Oct.  11,  1538,  to  Caspar  Borner,  "  Corp.  ref.,"  3,  p.  596. 

4  April  30,  1550,  ib.,  7,  p.  580. 

5  Cp.  Dollinger,  ib.,  1,  p.  379  f. 

6  From  a  New- Year's  letter  (Jan.  1,  1540)  to  Veit  Dietrich,  "  Corp. 
ref.,"  3,  p.  895, 


HIS   FRIEND   MELANCHTHON       257 

also  plain  that  he  saw  no  prospect  of  improvement.  "  In  these 
last  days,"  he  says,  even  a  zealous  preacher  can  no  longer  hope 
for  success,  though  this  does  not  give  him  the  right  to  quit  his 
post.1  The  poetic  reference  to  the  frenzied  old  age  of  the  world 
("  delira  mundi  senecta  ")  is  several  times  met  with  in  his  letters. 

In  1537  he  grumbled  to  Johann  Brenz,  the  preacher,  of 
the  hostility  of  the  theologians,  especially  of  the  Luther- 
zealots  ;  he  had  seen  what  hatred  the  mitigations  he  had 
introduced  in  Luther's  doctrines  had  excited.  "  I  conceal 
everything  beneath  the  cloak  of  my  moderation,  but  what 
shall  I  do  eventually  faced  by  the  rage  of  so  many  ('  in  tanta 
rabie  multorum  ')  ?  "2  "I  seek  for  a  creephole,"  he  con 
tinues,  "  may  God  but  show  me  one,  for  I  am  worn  out 
with  illness,  old  age  and  sorrow." 

Of  Amsdorf  he  learnt  with  pain  that  he  had  warned 
Luther  against  him  as  a  serpent  whom  he  was  warming  in 
his  bosom.3 

Andreas  Osiander  likewise  wrote  of  Melanchthon  to 
Resold  at  Nuremberg,  that,  since  Apostolic  times,  no  more 
mischievous  and  pernicious  man  had  lived  in  the  Church, 
so  skilful  was  he  in  giving  to  his  writings  the  semblance  of 
wholesome  doctrine  while  all  the  time  denying  its  truth. 
"  I  believe  that  Philip  and  those  who  think  like  him  are 
nothing  but  slaves  of  Satan."  On  another  occasion  the 
same  bitter  opponent  of  Melanchthon  inveighs  against  the 
religious  despotism  which  now  replaced  at  Wittenberg  the 
former  Papal  authority,  a  new  tyranny  which  required,  that 
"  all  disputes  should  be  submitted  to  the  elders  of  the 
Church."4 — It  was  men  such  as  these  who  repaid  him  for 
the  labours  he  had  reluctantly  undertaken  on  behalf  of  the 
Church.  Of  their  bitter  opposition  he  wrote,  that,  even 
were  he  to  shed  as  many  tears  as  there  was  water  in  the 
flooded  Elbe,  he  would  still  not  be  able  to  weep  away 
his  grief.5 

1  Sept.  9,  1541,  to  Veit  Dietrich,  ib.,  4,  p.  654,  where  he  continues  : 
"  Tegere  hcec  soleo,  sed,  mihi  crede,  manent  cicatrices" 

2  About  July  16,  1537,  "  Corp.  ref.,"  3,  p.  390  sq.     Before  this  he 
had  said  in  humanistic  style  :    "  Video  novum  quoddam  genus  sophis- 
tarum  nasci  ;   velut  ex  gigantum  sanguine  alii  gigantes  nati  sunt.  .  .  . 
Metuo  maiores  ecclesice  motus.     Hie  cum  hydra  decerto.     Uno  represso 
alii  tnulti  exoriuntur." 

3  "  Corp.  ref.,"  3,  p.  503  sqq.    Kostlin-Kawerau,  2,  p.  451. 

4  Cp.  "  RE.  f.  prot.  Th.,"  3,  Art.  "  Melanchthon,"  p.  523. 

5  Cp.  Dollinger,  "Reformation,"  1,  p.  394. 


258          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

Melanchthori 's  Strictures  on  Luther.    His  "  Bondage  " 

If  we  consider  more  closely  Melanchthon's  relations  with 
Luther  we  find  him,  even  during  Luther's  lifetime,  in 
dignantly  describing  the  latter's  attacks  on  man's  free-will 
as  "  stoica  et  manichcea  deliria  "  ;  he  himself,  he  declares,  in 
spite  of  Luther's  views  to  the  contrary,  had  always  insisted 
that  man,  even  before  regeneration,  is  able  by  virtue  of  his 
free-will  to  observe  outward  discipline  and,  that,  in  regenera 
tion,  free-will  follows  on  grace  and  thereafter  receives  from 
on  High  help  for  doing  what  is  good.  Later,  after  Luther's 
death,  he  declared,  with  regard  to  this  denial  of  free-will 
which  shocked  him,  that  it  was  quite  true  that  "  Luther  and 
others  had  written  that  all  works,  good  and  bad,  were 
inevitably  decreed  to  be  performed  of  all  men,  good  and  bad 
alike ;  but  it  is  plain  that  this  is  against  God's  Word, 
subversive  of  all  discipline  and  a  blasphemy  against  God."1 

In  a  letter  of  1535  to  Johann  Sturm  he  finds  fault  with  the 
harshness  of  Luther's  doctrine  and  with  his  manner  of  defending 
it,  though,  from  motives  of  caution,  he  refrains  from  mentioning 
Luther  by  name.  He  himself,  however,  was  looked  upon  at  the 
Court  of  the  Elector  as  "  less  violent  and  stubborn  than  some 
others  "  ;  it  was  just  because  they  fancied  him  useful  as  a  sort 
of  valve,  as  they  called  it,  that  they  refused  to  release  him  from 
his  professorial  chair  at  Wittenberg.  And  such  is  really  the  case. 
"  I  never  think  it  right  to  quarrel  unless  about  something  of  great 
importance  and  quite  essential.  To  support  every  theory  and 
extravagant  opinion  that  takes  the  field  has  never  been  my  way. 
Would  that  the  learned  were  permitted  to  speak  out  more  freely 
on  matters  of  importance  !  "  But,  instead  of  this,  people  ran 
after  their  own  fancies.  There  was  no  doubt  that,  at  times,  even 
some  of  their  own  acted  without  forethought.  "  On  account  of 
my  moderation  I  am  in  great  danger  from  our  own  people  .  .  .  and 
it  seems  to  me  that  the  fate  of  Theramenes  awaits  me."2  Thera- 
menes  had  perished  on  the  scaffold  in  a  good  cause — but  before 
this  had  been  guilty  of  grievous  infidelity  and  was  a  disreputable 
intriguer.  Of  this  Melanchthon  can  scarcely  have  been  aware, 
otherwise  he  would  surely  have  chosen  some  less  invidious  term 
of  comparison.  He  was  happier  in  his  selection  when,  in  1544, 
he  compared  himself  to  Aristides  on  account  of  the  risk  he  ran 
of  being  sent  into  exile  by  Luther  :  "  Soon  you  will  hear  that  I 
have  been  sent  away  from  here  as  Aristides  was  from  Athens."3 

1  On  March  9,  1559,  to  the  Elector  August  of  Saxony,  "  Corp.  ref.," 
9,  p.  766  sq.    Cp.  "  RE.,"  ib.,  p.  525. 

2  As  early  as  Aug.  28,  1535,  "  Corp.  ref.,"  2,  p.  917. 

3  Sep.  8,  1544,  to  Peter  Medmann,  ib.,  5,  p.  478. 


HIS   FRIEND   MELANCHTHON      259 

Especially  after  1538,  i.e.  during  the  last  eight  years  of  Luther's 
life,  Melanchthon's  stay  at  Wittenberg  was  rendered  exceedingly 
unpleasant.  In  1538  he  reminds  Veit  Dietrich  of  the  state  of 
bondage  (8ov\6rTjs)  of  which  the  latter  had  gleaned  some  ac 
quaintance  while  in  Wittenberg  (1522-35)  ;  "  and  yet,"  he  con 
tinues,  "  Luther  has  since  become  much  worse."1  In  later  letters 
he  likens  Luther  to  the  demagogue  Cleon  and  to  boisterous 
Hercules. 2 

Although  it  was  no  easy  task  for  Luther,  whose  irritability 
increased  with  advancing  years,  to  conceal  his  annoyance 
with  his  friend  for  presuming  to  differ  from  him,  yet,  as  we 
know,  he  never  allowed  matters  to  come  to  an  open  breach. 
Melanchthon,  too,  owing  to  his  fears  and  pusillanimity, 
avoided  any  definite  personal  explanation.  Both  alike  were 
apprehensive  of  the  scandal  of  an  open  rupture  and  its 
pernicious  effects  on  the  common  cause.  Moreover,  Luther 
was  thoroughly  convinced  that  Melanchthon's  services  were 
indispensable  to  him,  particularly  in  view  of  the  gloomy 
outlook  for  the  future. 

The  matter,  however,  deserves  further  examination  in 
view  of  the  straightforwardness,  clearness  and  inexorable- 
ness  which  Luther  is  usually  supposed  to  have  displayed  in 
his  doctrines. 

When  important  interests  connected  with  his  position 
seemed  to  call  for  it,  Luther  could  be  surprisingly  lenient 
in  questions  of  doctrine.  Thus,  for  instance,  we  can  hardly 
recognise  the  once  so  rigid  Luther  in  the  Concord  signed 
with  the  Zwinglians,  and  again,  when,  for  a  while,  the 
English  seemed  to  be  dallying  with  Lutheranism.  In  the 
case  of  the  Zwinglian  townships  of  South  Germany,  which 
were  received  into  the  Union  by  the  Wittenberg  Concord 
the  better  to  strengthen  the  position  of  Lutheranism  against 
the  Emperor,  Luther  finally,  albeit  grudgingly,  gave  his 
assent  to  theological  articles  which  differed  so  widely  from 
his  own  doctrines  that  the  utmost  skill  was  required  to 
conceal  the  discrepancy.3  As  for  the  English,  Kolde  says : 
"  How  far  Luther  was  prepared  to  go  [in  allowing  matters 
to  take  their  course]  we  see,  e.g.  from  the  fact  that,  in  his 
letter  of  March  28,  1536,  to  the  Elector,  he  describes  the 
draft  Articles  of  agreement  with  the  English — only  recently 

1  Oct.  6,  1538,  ib.,  3,  p.  594. 

2  See  Dollinger,  "  Reformation,"  1,  p.  354,  and  3,  p.  270. 

3  See  above,  vol.  iii.,  p.  421  f. 


260          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

made  public  and  which  (apart  from  Art.  10,  which  might  at 
a  pinch  be  taken  in  the  Roman  sense)  are  altogether  on  the 
lines  of  the  '  Variola  ' — as  quite  in  harmony  with  our  own 
teaching."1  The  terms  of  this  agreement  were  drawn  up  by 
Melanchthon.  As  a  matter  of  fact  "  we  find  little  trace  of 
Luther's  spirit  in  the  Articles.  We  have  simply  to  compare 
[Luther's]  Schmalkalden  Articles  of  the  following  year  to 
be  convinced  how  greatly  Luther's  own  mode  of  thought 
and  expression  differed  from  those  Articles."  "  They  show 
us  what  concessions  the  Wittenberg  theologians,  as  a  body, 
were  disposed  to  make  in  order  to  win  over  such  a  country 
as  England."2 

Concerning  Luther's  attitude  towards  the  alterations 
made  by  Melanchthon  in  the  Confession  of  Augsburg  (above, 
vol.  in.,  p.  445  f.)  we  must  also  assume  "  from  his  whole 
behaviour,  that  he  was  not  at  all  pleased  with  Melanch- 
thon's  action  ;  yet  he  allowed  it,  like  much  else,  to  pass."3 
This,  however,  does  not  exclude  Luther's  violence  and 

1  Kolde  in  the  Preface  to  the  "  Symbol.  Biicher,"  10,  p.  xxvi.,  No.  3. 
The  Articles  of  Agreement  were  published  in  full  by  G.  Mentz  in  1905, 
"  Die  Wittenberger  Artikel  von  1536  "  ("  Quellenschriften  zur  Gesch. 
des  Prot.,"  Hft.  2).     Letter  to  the  Elector,   "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  55, 
p.  128  ;   "  Briefe,"  4,  p.  683  ("  Brief wechsel,"  10,  p.  315,  where  Enders, 
as  late  as  1903,  had  to  admit  :   "  The  doctrinal  articles  herewith  trans 
mitted  are  not  known  ").     On  the  negotiations  with  the  English,  see 
vol.  iv.,  p.  10  f. 

2  Thus  Mentz,  the  editor,  p.  11.    Some  theses  from  these  Articles  of 
Agreement  proposed  by  the  Wittenbergers  but  not  accepted  by  the 
English  deserve  to  be  quoted  from  the  new  sources  ;   their  divergence 
from   Luther's    ordinary   teaching   is   self-evident.      Of   good   works  : 
"  Bona  opera  non  sunt  precium  pro  vita  ceterna,  tamen  sunt  necessaria  ad 
salutem,  quia  sunt  debitum,  quod  necessario  reconciliationem  sequi  debet." 
In  support  of  this  Mt.  xix.  17  is  quoted  :    "  Si  vis  ad  vitam  ingredi  serva 
mandata."    Again  :    "  Docemus  requiri  opera  a  Deo  mandata  et  quidem 
non  tantum  externa  civilia  opera,  sed  etiam  spirituales  motus,  timorem 
Dei,  fiduciam,"  etc.  (p.  34). — "  Hcec  obedientia  in  reconciliatis  fide  iam 
reputatur  esse  iustitia  et  qucedam  legis  impletio  "  (p.  40). — "  Docendce  sunt 
ecclesice  de  necessitate  et  de  dignitate  huius  obedientice,  videlicet  quod  .  .  . 
hcec  obedientia  seu  iusticia  bonce  conscientice  sit  necessaria  quia  debitum 
est,  quod  necessario  sequi  reconciliationem  debet  "   (p.  42). — Merit,  at 
least  in  a  certain  restricted  sense,  is  also  admitted  :    "  Ad  hcec  bona 
opera  sunt  meritoria  iuxta  illud  (1  Cor.  iii.  8)  :    Unusquisque  accipiet 
mercedem  iuxta  proprium  laborem."     (Cp.  the  Apologia  of  the  Con 
fession  of  Augsburg,   "  Symb.  Biicher,"  pp.   120,   148.)      "  Etsi   enim 
conscientia  non  potest  statuere,  quod  propter  dignitatem  operum  detur  vita 
ceterna,  sed  nascimur  filii  Dei  et  hceredes  per  misericordiam  (which  is  also 
the   Catholic   teaching)   tamen  hcec  opera  in   filiis   merentur  prcemia 
corporalia   et   spiritualia   et   gradus   prcemiorum,"    etc.    (p.    46).      The 
ambiguity  concerning  Christ's  Presence  in  the  Eucharist  (p.  62)  is  due 
to  Melanchthon,  not  to  Luther.  3  Kolde,  ib. 


HIS   FRIEND   MELANCHTHON       261 

narrowness  having  caused  an  estrangement  between  them, 
Melanchthon  having  daily  to  apprehend  outbursts  of  anger, 
so  that  his  stay  became  extremely  painful.  The  most 
critical  time  was  in  the  summer  of  1544,  in  consequence  of 
the  Cologne  Book  of  Reform  (vol.  in.,  p.  447).  Luther,  who 
strongly  suspected  Melanchthon's  orthodoxy  on  the  Supper, 
prepared  to  assail  anew  those  who  denied  the  Real  Presence. 
Yet  the  storm  which  Melanchthon  dreaded  did  not  touch 
him ;  Luther's  "  Kurtz  Bekentnis  vom  heiligen  Sacrament," 
which  appeared  at  the  end  of  September,  failed  to  mention 
Melanchthon's  name.  On  Oct.  7,  Cruciger  was  able  by  letter 
to  inform  Dietrich,  that  the  author  no  longer  displayed  any 
irritation  against  his  old  friend.1  Here  again  considera 
tions  of  expediency  had  prevailed  over  dogmatic  scruples, 
nor  is  there  any  doubt  that  the  old  feeling  of  friendship, 
familiarity  and  real  esteem  asserted  its  rights,  We  may 
recall  the  kindly  sympathy  and  care  that  Luther  lavished 
on  Melanchthon  when  the  latter  fell  sick  at  Weimar,  owing 
to  the  trouble  consequent  on  his  sanction  given  to  the 
Hessian  bigamy.2 

Indeed  we  must  assume  that  the  relations  between  the 
two  were  often  more  cordial  than  would  appear  from  the 
letters  of  one  so  timid  and  fainthearted  as  Melanchthon  ; 
the  very  adaptability  of  the  latter's  character  renders  this 
probable.  In  Nov.,  1544,  Chancellor  Briick  declared  : 
"  With  regard  to  Philip,  as  far  as  I  can  see,  he  and  Martin 
are  quite  close  friends  "  ;  in  another  letter  written  about 
that  time  he  also  says  Luther  had  told  him  that  he  was 
quite  unaware  of  any  differences  between  himself  and 
Melanchthon.3 

The  latter,  whenever  he  was  at  Wittenberg,  also  continued 
as  a  rule  to  put  in  an  appearance  at  Luther's  table,  and 
there  is  little  doubt  that,  on  such  occasions,  Luther's  frank 
and,  open  conversation  often  availed  to  banish  any  ill-feeling 
there  may  have  been.  We  learn  that  Magister  Philip  was 

1  "  Corp.  ref.,"  5,  p.  497. 

2  To   Melanchthon,   June    18,    1540,    "  Brief e,"   ed.   De   Wette,    5, 
p.  293  ;   "  Briefwechsel,"  13,  p.  91  ;   "  Ratzebergers  Gesch.,"  p.  102  ff.  ; 
"  Corp.  ref.,"  3,  pp.  1060  sq.,  1077,  1081.     To  Johann  Lang,  July  2, 
1540,  "  Briefe,"  ib.,  p.  297  ;    "  Briefwechsel,"  13,  p.  109  :    "  mortuum 
enim  invenimus  ;   miraculo  Dei  manifesto  vivit."     See  vol.  iii.,  p.  162. 

3  Kostlin-Kawerau,  2,  p.  689  ;    "  Anal.  Luth.,"  ed.  Kolde,  p.  402  ; 
"  Corp.  ref.,"  5,  p.  522. 


262          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

present  at  the  dinner  in  celebration  of  Luther's  birthday  in 
1544,  together  with  Cruciger,  Bugenhagen,  Jonas  and  Major, 
and  that  they  exchanged  confidences  concerning  the  present 
and  future  welfare  of  the  new  religion.1 

When  Melanchthon  was  away  from  Wittenberg  engaged 
in  settling  ecclesiastical  matters  elsewhere  he  was  careful 
to  keep  Luther  fully  informed  of  the  course  of  affairs.  He 
occasionally  expressed  his  thanks  to  the  latter  for  the 
charity  and  kindness  of  his  replies  ;  Luther  in  his  turn 
kept  him  posted  in  the  little  intimacies  of  their  respective 
families,  in  the  occurrences  in  the  town  and  University  of 
Wittenberg,  and  almost  always  added  a  request  for  prayer 
for  help  in  his  struggles  with  "  Satan."  This  intimate 
correspondence  was  carried  on  until  the  very  month  before 
Luther's  death.  Even  in  his  last  letters  Luther  calls  the 
friend  with  whom  he  had  worked  for  so  many  years  "  My 
Philip  "  ;  Melanchthon,  as  a  rule,  heads  his  communications 
in  more  formal  style  :  "  Clarissimo  et  optima  viro  D.  Martino 
Luthero,  doctori  theologice,  instauratori  puree  evangelicce 
doctrince  ac  patri  suo  in  Christo  reverendo  et  charissimo."2 

The  great  praise  which  Melanchthon  bestows  on  the 
deceased  immediately  after  his  death  is  indeed  startling,  but 
we  must  beware  of  regarding  it  as  mere  hypocrisy. 

The  news  of  Luther's  death  which  took  place  at  Eisleben  on 
Feb.  14,  1546,  was  received  by  Melanchthon  the  very  next  day. 
In  spite  of  all  their  differences  it  must  have  come  as  a  shock  to 
him,  the  more  so  that  the  responsibility  for  the  direction  of  his 
friend's  work  was  now  to  devolve  on  him. 

The  panegyric  on  Luther  which  Melanchthon  delivered  at 
Wittenberg  boldly  places  him  on  the  same  footing  with  Isaias, 
John  the  Baptist,  the  Apostle  of  the  Gentiles,  and  Augustine  of 
Hippo.  In  it  the  humanistic  element  and  style  is  more  noticeable 
than  the  common  feeling  of  the  friend.  He  hints  discreetly  at 
the  "  great  vehemence  "  of  the  departed,  but  does  not  omit  to 
mention  that  everyone  who  was  acquainted  with  him  must  bear 
witness  that  he  had  always  shown  himself  kind-hearted  towards 
his  friends,  and  never  obstinate  or  quarrelsome.3  Though  this 
is  undoubtedly  at  variance  with  what  he  says  elsewhere,  still  such 
a  thing  was  expected  in  those  days  in  panegyrics  on  great  men, 
nor  would  so  smooth-tongued  an  orator  have  felt  any  scruple 
about  it.  In  his  previous  announcement  of  Luther's  death  to 

1  "  Corp.  ref:,"  5,  p.  524. 

2  Cp.,  for  instance,  "  Luthers  Brief wechsel,"  12,  pp.  106,  116,  123, 
etc.  ;    13,  pp.  282,  318. 

3  Discourse  of  Feb.  22,  1546,  "  Corp.  ref.,"  11,  p.  726  sqq. 


HIS   FRIEND   MELANCHTHON       263 

the  students  he  had  exclaimed  :  "  The  chariot  of  Israel  and  the 
driver  thereof  have  been  taken  from  us,  the  man  who  ruled  the 
Church  in  these  days  of  the  world's  senile  decay."1 

Melanchthon's  Last  Years 

After  Luther's  death  Melanchthon  had  still  to  endure  fourteen 
years  of  suffering,  perhaps  of  even  more  bitter  character  than  he 
had  yet  tasted.  Whilst  representing  Lutheranism  and  taking  the 
lead  amongst  his  colleagues  he  did  so  with  the  deliberate  inten 
tion  of  maintaining  the  new  faith  by  accommodating  himself 
indulgently  to  the  varying  conditions  of  the  times.  Our  narrative 
may  here  be  permitted  to  anticipate  somewhat  in  order  to  give 
a  clear  and  connected  account  of  Melanchthon's  inner  life  and 
ultimate  fate. 2 

His  half-heartedness  and  love  of  compromise  were  a  cause  of 
many  hardships  to  him,  particularly  at  the  time  of  the  so-called 
Interims  of  Augsburg  and  Leipzig.  It  was  a  question  of  intro 
ducing  the  Augsburg  Interim  into  the  Saxon  Electorate  after  the 
latter,  owing  to  the  War  of  Schmalkalden,  had  come  under  the 
rule  of  the  new  Elector  Maurice.  Melanchthon  had  at  first 
opposed  the  provisions  of  this  Interim,  by  means  of  which  the 
Emperor  hoped  gradually  to  bring  the  Protestants  back  to  the 
fold.  In  Dec.,  1548,  however,  he,  together  with  other  theologians, 
formally  accepted  the  Leipzig  articles,  which,  owing  to  their 
similarity  with  the  Augsburg  Interim,  were  dubbed  by  his 
opponents  the  "Leipzig  Interim,"3  In  this  the  "moot  ob 
servances  (Adiaphora),  i.e.  those  which  may  be  kept  without 
any  contravention  of  Divine  Scripture,"  were  extended  by 
Melanchthon  so  as  to  include  the  reintroduction  of  fasting, 
festivals,  not  excluding  even  Corpus  Christi,  images  of  the  Saints 
in  the  churches,  the  Latin  liturgy,  the  Canonical  Hours  in  Latin 
and  even  a  sort  of  hierarchy.  Melanchthon  also  agreed  to  the 
demand  for  the  recognition  of  the  seven  sacraments.  By  strongly 
emphasising  his  own  doctrine  of  synergism,  he  brought  the  Wit 
tenberg  teaching  on  Justification  much  nearer  to  Catholic  dogma  ; 
he  even  dealt  a  death-blow  to  the  genuine  (Doctrine  of  Luther  by 
appending  his  signature  to  the  following  proposition  :  "  God 
does  not  deal  with  man  as  with  a  block  of  wood,  but  so  draws  him 
that  his  will  also  co-operates."  In  addition  to  this  the  true  char 
acter  of  Luther's  sola  fides,  or  assurance  of  salvation,  was  veiled 
by  Melanchthon  under  the  formula :  "  True  faith  accepts, 
together  with  other  articles,  that  of  the  '  Forgiveness  of  Sins.'  ' 

Hence  when  Flacius  Illyricus,  Amsdorf,  Gallus,  Wigand, 
Westphal  and  others  loudly  protested  against  Melanchthon  as 
though  he  had  denied  Luther's  doctrine,  they  were  not  so  very  far 
wrong.  The  result  of  their  vigorous  opposition  and  of  the  number 
of  those  who  sided  with  them  was  that  Melanchthon  gradually 

1  "  Corp.  ref.,"  6,  p.  59. 

2  For  further  details,  see  below,  vol.  vi.,  xl.,  3. 

3  On  what  follows,  see  Loofs,  "  DG.,"  4,  p.  867  f. 


264          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

ceased  to  be  the  he*ad  of  the  Lutheran  Church,  becoming  merely 
the  leader  of  a  certain  party. 

Later  on,  in  1552,  when  the  position  of  public  affairs  in 
Germany  was  more  favourable  to  Protestantism,  Melanchthon 
admitted  that  he  had  been  wrong  in  his  views  concerning  the 
Adiaphora,  since,  after  all,  they  were  not  so  unimportant  as  he 
had  at  first  thought.  In  order  to  pacify  his  opponents  he  in 
cluded  the  following  proposition  in  his  form  of  examination  for 
new  preachers  :  "  We  ought  to  profess,  not  the  Papal  errors, 
Interim,  etc.  .  .  .  but  to  remain  faithful  to  the  pure  Divine 
teaching  of  the  Gospel."1 

Opposition  to  the  "  Papal  errors  "  was  indeed  the  one  thing 
to  which  he  steadfastly  adhered  ;  this  negative  side  of  his  atti 
tude  never  varied,  whatever  changes  may  have  taken  place  in  his 
positive  doctrines. 

Nevertheless  during  the  ensuing  controversies  he  was  regarded 
as  a  traitor  by  the  stricter  Lutherans  and  treated  with  a  scorn 
that  did  much  to  embitter  his  last  years.  The  attitude  of  his 
opponents  was  particularly  noticeable  at  the  conference  of  Worms 
in  1557.  Even  before  this,  they,  particularly  the  Jena  theologians, 
had  planned  an  outspoken  condemnation  of  all  those  who  "  had 
departed  from  the  Augsburg  Confession,"  as  Melanchthon  had 
done.  They  now  appeared  at  Worms  with  others  of  the  same 
way  of  thinking.  "  I  desire  no  fellowship  with  those  who  defile 
the  purity  of  our  doctrine,"  wrote  one  of  them  ;  "  we  must  shun 
them,  according  to  the  words  of  the  Bible  :  '  If  any  man  come 
to  you  and  bring  not  this  doctrine,  receive  him  not  into  the  house 
nor  say  to  him,  God  speed  you.'  "2  The  friends  of  Flacius 
Illyricus  at  the  very  first  meeting  made  no  secret  of  their  unani 
mous  demand,  so  that  Melanchthon  in  his  justificatory  statement 
could  well  say  :  "I  see  plainly  that  all  this  is  directed  solely 
against  me."  He  opposed  any  condemnation  of  Zwingli  or  of 
Calvin  on  account  of  their  doctrine  on  the  Supper ;  this,  he  said, 
was  the  business  of  a  synod. 

At  the  very  outset  of  the  disputations  with  the  Catholics  it 
became  evident  anew  that  the  divergency  of  the  Protestants  in 
the  interpretation  of  Holy  Scripture  was  too  great  to  allow  of  the 
points  under  discussion  being  satisfactorily  settled  in  conference  ; 
the  abrogation  of  an  ecclesiastical  authority  for  the  exposition 
of  Scripture  had  resulted  in  an  ever-growing  want  of  unity  in  the 
interpretation  of  the  Bible.  Peter  Canisius,  the  Catholic  spokes 
man,  pointed  out  emphatically  what  obstacles  were  presented  by 
the  contradictory  opinions  on  doctrine  amongst  the  Protestants  ; 
where  every  man  traced  his  opinions  back  to  Scripture,  how  was 
it  possible  to  arrive  at  any  decision  ?3  It  was  from  Canisius, 
"  who  during  the  course  of  the  conference  distinguished  himself 
as  the  leader  of  the  Catholic  party  and  later  repeatedly  proved 

1  Ellinger,  "  Melanchthon,"  p.  554. 

2  J6.,  p.  569. 

3  Cp.  the  report  of  Peter  Canisius  to  Lainez,  General  of  the  Jesuits, 
Brauusberger,  "  Epistulae  b.  Petri  Canisii,"  2,  p.  176  sq. 


HIS  FRIEND  MELANCHTHON       265 

himself  a  sharp  observer  of  the  religious  conditions  in  Germany,"1 
that  the  suggestion  came,  that  the  Protestants  should  define 
their  position  more  clearly  by  repudiating  certain  divergent 
sects.  This  led  the  followers  of  Flacius  to  demand  that  all  the 
Evangelicals  should  unite  in  condemning  Zwinglianism,  Osian- 
derism,  Adiaphorism  and  Majorism,  and  also  Calvin's  doctrine 
on  the  Supper.  To  this  Melanchthon  and  his  friends  absolutely 
refused  to  agree.  The  result  was  that  the  followers  of  Flacius 
departed  greatly  incensed,  and  the  conference  had  to  be  broken 
off.  "  The  contradictions  in  the  very  heart  of  Protestantism 
were  thus  revealed  to  the  whole  world."2 

"  No  greater  disgrace  befell  the  Reformation  in  the  16th 
century."3 

From  that  time  Melanchthon  was  a  broken  man.  His  friend 
Languet  wrote  to  Calvin,  "  Mr.  Philip  is  so  worn  out  with  old 
age,  toils,  calumnies  and  intrigues  that  nothing  is  left  of  his 
former  cheerfulness."4 

Melanchthon  characterised  the  Book  of  Confutation  published 
by  the  Duke  of  Saxony  in  1558,  and  finally  revised  by  Flacius,  as 
a  "  congeries  of  sophisms  "  which  he  had  perused  with  great  pain, 
and  as  "  venomous  sophistry."  He  therefore  once  more  begged 
for  his  dismissal.5 

His  longing  for  death  as  a  happy  release  from  such  bitter 
affliction  we  find  expressed  in  many  of  his  letters.  To  Sigismund 
Gelous  of  Eperies  in  Hungary  he  wrote,  on  May  20,  1559,  that  he 
was  not  averse  to  departing  this  life  owing  to  the  attacks  on  his 
person,  and  in  order  that  he  might  behold  "  the  light  of  the 
Heavenly  Academy  "  and  become  partaker  of  its  wisdom.6  He 
looked  forward,  so  he  writes  to  another,  to  that  light  "  where 
God  is  all  in  all  and  where  there  is  no  more  sophistry  or  calumny."7 
Only  a  few  days  before  his  death  he  solaced  himself  by  drawing 
up  some  notes  entitled  :  "  Reasons  why  you  should  fear  death 
less."  On  the  left  of  the  sheet  he  wrote  :  "  You  will  escape  from 
sin,  and  will  be  delivered  from  all  trouble  and  the  fury  of  the 
theologians  ('liberaberis  ab  cerumnis  et  a  rabie  theologorutn ' } "  ; 
and,  on  the  right  :  "  You  will  attain  to  the  light,  you  will  behold 
God,  you  will  look  on  the  Son  of  God,  you  will  see  into  those 

1  Ellinger,  ib.,  p.  570.  2  Ib.,  p.  571. 

3  Thus  the  Protestant  theologian  Nitzsch,  see  "  RE.  f.  prot.  Th.,"  3, 
Art.  "  Melanchthon,"  p.  525.     Loofs,  4,  p. 904.      "  The  religious  confer 
ence  suffered  shipwreck  from  want  of  unity  amongst  the  Evangelicals." 
The  Gnesio-Lutherans  demanded   (Sep.   27)  that  all  errors   on   "  the 
Supper  "  should  be  condemned,  "  whether  emanating  from  Carlstadt, 
Zwingli,   CEcolampadius,   Calvin  or  others."      Calvin's   doctrine  was, 
however,  substantially  identical  with  Melanchthon's  at  tl.at  time. 

4  "RE.,"  ib. 

5  To  Camerarius,  Feb.  16,  1559,  "  Corp.  ref.,"  9,  p.  744. 

6  Ib.,  p.  822.     As  a  Humanist  he  was  fond  of  conjuring  up  heaven 
under  the  image  of  the  Academy.     In  his  address  to  the  students  on 
Luther's  death  he  says,   the  former  had   been   snatched   away   "  in 
ceternam  scholam  et  in  ceterna  gaudia." 

7  To  Buchholzer,  Aug.  10,  1559,  ib.,  p.  898. 


266          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

wonderful  mysteries  which  you  have  been  unable  to  comprehend 
in  this  life,  such  as  why  we  are  created  as  we  are,  and  how  the 
two  natures  are  united  in  Christ."1  He  finally  departed  this  life 
on  April  19,  1560,  from  the  results  of  a  severe  cold. 

Review  of  Melanchthon's  Religious  Position  as  a  whole 

Melanchthon's  last  work  was  a  "  strong  protest  against 
Catholicism,"  which  at  the  same  time  embodied  an  abstract 
of  his  whole  doctrine — such  as  it  had  become  during  the 
later  years  of  his  life.  This  work  he  calls  his  "  Confession  "  ; 
it  is  professedly  aimed  at  the  "  godless  Articles  of  the 
Bavarian  Inquisition,"  i.e.  was  intended  to  counteract  the 
efforts  of  Duke  Albert  of  Bavaria  to  preserve  his  country 
from  the  inroads  of  Protestantism.2 

In  this  "  Confession,"  dating  from  the  evening  of  his  days,  the 
"  so-peaceful  "  Melanchthon  bluntly  describes  the  Pope  and  all 
his  train  (satellites)  as  "  defenders  of  idols  "  ;  according  to  him 
they  "  withstand  the  known  truth,  and  cruelly  rage  against  the 
pious."3  This  book,  with  its  superficial  humanistic  theology, 
justifies,  like  so  many  of  his  earlier  works,  the  opinion  of  learned 
Catholic  contemporaries  who  regretted  that  the  word  of  a  scholar 
devoid  of  any  sound  theological  training  should  exercise  so  much 
influence  over  the  most  far-reaching  religious  questions  of  the 
day. 

Writing  to  Cardinal  Sadoleto,  Johann  Fabri,  Bishop  of  Vienna, 
says,  "  Would  that  Melanchthon  had  pursued  his  studies  on  the 
lines  indicated  by  his  teacher  Capnion  [Reuchlin]  !  Would  that 
he  had  but  remained  content  with  the  rhetoric  and  grammar  of 
the  ancients  instead  of  allowing  his  youthful  ardour  to  carry  him 
away,  to  turn  the  true  religion  into  a  tragedy  !  But  alas  .  .  . 
when  barely  eighteen  years  of  age  he  began  to  teach  the  simple, 
and,  by  his  soft  speeches,  he  has  disturbed  the  whole  Church 
beyond  measure.  And  even  after  so  many  years  he  is  still  unable 
to  see  his  error  or  to  desist  from  the  doctrines  once  imbibed  and 
from  furthering  such  lamentable  disorders."4  To  this  letter 
Fabri  appended  excerpts  from  various  writings  of  Melanchthon's 
as  "  specimens  of  what  his  godless  pen  had  produced  against  the 
truth  and  the  peace  of  the  Church." 

Others,  for  instance  Eck  and  Cochlseus,  in  their  descriptions  of 
Melanchthon  dwell  on  the  traits  that  displeased  them  in  their 
personal  intercourse  with  him. 

1  Ib.,  p.  1098. 

2  Thus  in  his  "  Testament  "  of  April  18,  1560,  ib.,  p.  1099. 

3  Reprinted  in  "  Opera  Ph.  Melanchtonis,"  t.  1,  Vitebergae,  1562, 
p.  364  sqq. 

4  Jan.  28,  1538,  "  Zeitschr.  f.  KG.,"  20,  p.  247  ff.     G.  Kawerau, 
"  Die    Versuche    Melanchthon    zur    kathol.    Kirche    zuriickzufiihren," 
1902  ("  Schriften  des  Vereins  f.  RG.,"  No.  73),  p.  43. 


HIS   FRIEND   MELANCHTHON       267 

Johann  Eck  compares  the  way  in  which  Melanchthon  twice 
outwitted  Cardinal  Campeggio  to  the  false  arts  of  Sinon  the 
Greek,  known  to  us  from  Virgil's  account  of  the  introduction  of 
the  wooden  horse  into  Troy.1  Johann  Cochlseus,  who  had  met 
him  at  Augsburg,  calls  him  the  "  fox,"  and  once  warns  a  friend : 
"  Take  care  lest  he  cheat  you  with  his  deceitful  cunning,  for,  like 
the  Sirens,  he  gains  a  hearing  by  sweet  and  honeyed  words  ;  he 
makes  a  hypocritical  use  of  lying  ;  he  is  ever  planning  how  he 
may  win  men's  hearts  by  all  manner  of  wiles,  and  seduces  them 
with  dishonest  words."2  About  the  same  time  in  a  printed  reply 
to  Melanchthon's  "  Apologia,"  he  drew  an  alarming  picture  of 
the  latter's  trickery  at  the  Diet  of  Augsburg.  By  worming  him 
self  into  the  confidence  of  the  Princes  and  great  men  present, 
Melanchthon  learned,  so  he  says,  things  that  were  little  to  the 
credit  of  the  Catholic  Church  ;  these  he  afterwards  retailed  to 
Luther,  who  at  once,  after  duly  embellishing  them,  flung  the  tales 
broadcast  amongst  the  people  by  means  of  the  press.  Melanch 
thon  made  not  the  slightest  attempt  to  correct  his  statements,  as 
he  was  in  duty  bound  to  do,  and  his  honeyed  words  merely  fed  the 
flames.3  "Most  people,"  he  writes  elsewhere,  "if  not  all,  have 
hitherto  supposed  Melanchthon  to  be  much  milder  and  more 
moderate  than  Luther  "  ;  such  persons  should,  however,  study 
his  writings  carefully,  and  then  they  would  soon  see  how  unspeak 
ably  bitter  was  his  feeling  against  Catholics. 4 

The  latter  assertion  is  only  too  fully  confirmed  by  the  extracts 
already  put  before  the  reader,  particularly  by  those  from  his 
Schmalkalden  tract  on  the  Pope,  from  his  Introduction  to  the 
new  edition  of  Luther's  "  Warnunge  "  and  from  the  "  Confession  " 
just  alluded  to.6  Here  there  glows  such  deep  hatred  of  the  faith 
and  practices  of  the  Catholic  Church  that  one  seeks  in  vain  for 
the  common  ground  on  which  his  professed  love  for  union  could 
thrive. 

His  conciliatory  proposals  were,  however,  in  fact  nothing  more 
than  the  vague  and  barren  cravings  of  a  Humanist. 

In  connection  with  this  a  characteristic,  already  pointed 
out,  which  runs  through  the  whole  of  Melanchthon's 
religious  attitude  and  strongly  differentiates  him  from 
Luther,  merits  being  emphasised  anew.  This  is  the  shallow, 
numbing  spirit  which  penetrates  alike  his  theology  and  his 
philosophy,  and  the  humanistic  tendency  to  reduce  every 
thing  to  uniformity.  '  That,  in  his  theological  vocabulary  he 

1  To  Vergerio,  June  1,  1534,  "  Zeitschr.  f.  KG.,"  19,  p.  222.  Kawerau, 
ib.,  p.  79. 

2  To  Bishop  Cricius,  June  2,  1534,  in  his  "  Velitatio  in  Apologiam 
Ph.  Melanchthonis,"  1534,  Bl.  A.  6  ff.    Kawerau,  ib.,  p.  23  f. 

3  "  Velitatio,"  Bl.  A.  4.    Kawerau,  p.  25. 

4  "  Zeitschr.  f.  KG.,"  18,  p.  424.    Kawerau,  p.  64  f. 

5  Vol.  ii.,  p.  438  ff.,  and  above,  p.  260.    Cp.  vol.  iii.,  p.  447  (Cologne 
Book  of  Reform). 


268          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

is  fond  of  using  classical  terms  (speaking,  for  instance,  of  the 
heavenly  "  Academy  "  where  we  attend  the  "  school  "  of 
the  Apostles  and  Prophets)1  is  a  detail  ;  he  goes  much 
further  and  makes  suspiciously  free  with  the  whole  contents 
of  the  faith,  whether  for  the  sake  of  reducing  it  to  system, 
or  for  convenience,  or  in  order  to  promote  peace.2  It  would 
have  fared  ill  with  Melanchthon  had  he  applied  to  himself 
in  earnest  what  Luther  said  of  those  who  want  to  be  wiser 
than  God,  who  follow  their  crazy  reason  and  seek  to  bring 
about  an  understanding  between  Christ  and  .  .  .  the  devil. 
But  Melanchthon's  character  was  pliant  enough  not  to  be 
unduly  hurt  by  such  words  of  Luther's.  He  was  able,  on  the 
one  hand,  to  regard  Bucer  and  the  Swiss  as  his  close  allies 
on  the  question  of  the  Supper  and,  on  the  other,  while  all 
the  time  sticking  fast  to  Luther,  he  could  declare  that 
on  the  whole  he  entirely  agreed  with  the  religious  views  of 
Erasmus,  the  very  "  antipodes  of  Luther."  It  was  only 
his  lack  of  any  real  religious  depth  which  enabled  him  so  to 
act.  In  a  sketch  of  Erasmus  which  he  composed  for  one  of 
his  pupils  in  1557,  he  even  makes  the  former,  in  spite  of  all 
his  hostility  to  Luther,  to  share  much  the  same  way  of 
thinking,  a  fact  which  draws  from  Kawerau  the  complaint  : 
"  So  easy  was  it  for  Melanchthon  to  close  his  eyes  to  the 
doctrinal  differences  which  existed  even  amongst  the 
4  docti.'  "3 

A  similar  lack  of  any  just  and  clear  appreciation  of  the 
great  truths  of  the  faith  is  also  apparent  in  Melanchthon's 
letters  to  Erasmus,  more  particularly  in  the  later  ones. 
Here  personal  friendship  and  Humanist  fellow-feeling  vie 
with  each  other  in  explaining  away  in  the  most  startling 
manner  the  religious  differences.4  Many  elements  of 
theology  were  dissolved  by  Melanchthon's  subjective 
method  of  exegesis  and  by  the  system  of  philosophy  he  had 
built  up  from  the  classical  authors,  particularly  from  Cicero. 
Melanchthon's  philosophy  was  quite  unfitted  to  throw  light 

1  Cp.  above,  p.  265,  n.  6. 

2  The  authors  of  the  Article  on  Melanchthon  in  the  "  RE.  f.  prot. 
Th.,"  3,  say,  p.  535  :    "A  Humanist  mode  of  thought  forms  the  back 
ground  of  his  theology  "  ;    Melanchthon  strove  for  a  kind  of  com 
promise  between  Christian  truth  and  ancient  philosophy. 

3  "  Versuche,"  p.  83,  with  the  above  example  taken  from  "  Corp. 
ref.,"  12,  p.  269. 

4  Cp.,  for  instance,  the  letter  of  May  12,  1536,  to  Erasmus,  "  Corp. 
ref.,"  3,  p.  68  sq.    Kawerau,  ib.,  p.  32. 


MELANCHTHON   LEGENDS          269 

on  the  doctrines  of  revelation.  To  him  the  two  domains, 
of  philosophy  and  theology,  seemed,  not  only  independent, 
but  actually  hostile  to  each  other,  a  state  of  things  absolutely 
unknown  to  the  Middle  Ages.  If,  as  Melanchthon  avers, 
reason  is  unable  to  prove  the  existence  of  God  on  philo 
sophical  grounds,  then,  by  this  very  fact,  the  science  of  the 
supernatural  loses  every  stay,  nor  is  it  possible  any  longer  to 
defend  revelation  against  unbelief. 

It  is  the  merest  makeshift,  when,  like  other  of  his  Humanist 
contemporaries,  Melanchthon  seeks  to  base  our  knowledge 
of  God's  existence  on  feeling  and  on  a  vague  inward  experi 
ence.1 

Thus  we  can  quite  understand  how  old-fashioned  Protes 
tantism,  after  having  paid  but  little  attention  to  Melanchthon 
either  in  the  days  of  orthodox  Lutheranism  or  of  Pietism, 
began  to  have  recourse  to  him  with  the  advent  of  Rational 
ism.  The  orthodox  had  missed  in  him  Luther's  sparkling 
"  strength  of  faith  "  and  the  courageous  resolve  to  twit  the 
"  devil  "  within  and  without  ;  the  Pietists  failed  to  discern 
in  him  the  mysticism  they  extolled  in  Luther.  Rationalists, 
on  the  other  hand,  found  in  him  many  kindred  elements. 
Even  of  quite  recent  years  Melanchthon  has  been  hailed  as 
the  type  of  the  easy-going  theologian  who  seeks  to  bridge 
the  chasm  between  believing  and  infidel  Protestantism  ;  at 
any  rate,  Melanchthon's  positive  belief  was  far  more  ex 
tensive  than  that  of  many  of  his  would-be  imitators. 

Melanchthon  Legends 

The  tale  once  current  that,  at  the  last,  Melanchthon 
was  a  Lutheran  only  in  name,  is  to-day  rejected  by  all 
scholars,  Protestant  and  Catholic. 

Concerning  the  "  honesty  of  his  Protestantism "  "no 
doubts  "  are  raised  by  Protestant  theologians,  who  call 
his  teaching  a  "  modification  and  a  toning  down  "  of  that 
of  Luther  ;  nor  can  we  conclude  that  "  he  was  at  all  shaky 
in  his  convictions,"  even  should  the  remarkable  utterance 
about  to  be  cited  really  emanate  from  him.2  A  Catholic 
historian  of  the  highest  standing  agrees  in  saying  of  him  : 
"  Even  though  Luther's  teaching  may  not  have  completely 

1  Cp.  the  Article  quoted,  p.  268,  n.  2. 

2  Ib.,  and  pp.  532,  537  of  the  "  Realenzyklopadie." 


270          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

satisfied  Melanchthon,  yet  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt,  that, 
on  the  whole,  he  was  heart  and  soul  on  the  side  of  the 
innovations.  .  .  .  We  may  now  and  then  come  upon 
actions  on  his  part  which  arouse  a  suspicion  as  to  his 
straightforwardness,  but  on  the  whole  his  convictions 
cannot  be  questioned."1 

In  Catholic  literature,  nevertheless,  even  down  to  the  present 
day,  we  often  find  Melanchthon  quoted  as  having  said  to  his 
mother,  speaking  of  the  relative  value  of  the  old  and  the  new 
religion  :  "  Hcec  plausibilior,  ilia  securior  ;  Lutheranism  is  the 
more  popular,  but  Catholicism  is  the  safer."2 

This  story  concerning  Melanchthon  assumed  various  forms  as 
time  went  on.  We  must  dismiss  the  version  circulated  by  Flori- 
mond  de  Raemond  in  1605,  to  the  effect  that  the  words  had  been 
spoken  by  Melanchthon  on  his  death-bed  to  his  mother  who  had 
remained  a  Catholic,  when  the  latter  adjured  him  to  tell  her  the 
truth  ;3  his  mother,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  died  at  her  home  at  Bretten 
in  the  Lower  Palatinate  long  before  her  son,  in  1529,  slightly 
before  July  24,  being  then  in  her  fifty-third  year.4 

Nor  is  there  much  to  be  said  in  favour  of  another  version  of 
the  above  story  which  has  it  that  Melanchthon's  mother,  after 
having  been  persuaded  by  him  to  come  over,  visited  him  in  great 
distress  of  mind,  and  received  from  him  the  above  reply. 

Melanchthon  called  on  her  at  Bretten  in  May,  1524,  during 
his  stay  in  his  native  place,  and  may  have  done  so  again  in  1529 
in  the  spring,  when  attending  the  Diet  of  Spires.  A  passage  in 
his  correspondence  construed  as  referring  to  this  visit  is  by  no 
means  clear,5  though  the  illness  and  death  of  his  mother  would 
seem  to  make  such  a  flying  visit  likely.  On  a  third  occasion 
Melanchthon  went  to  Bretten  in  the  autumn  of  1536. 

We  shall  first  see  what  Protestant  writers  have  to  say  of  the 
supposed  conversation  with  the  mother. 

K.  Ed.  Forstemann,  who,  in  1830, 6  dealt  with  the  family  records 
of  the  Schwarzerd  family,  says  briefly  of  the  matter  :  "  Strobel 
was  wrong  in  declaring  this  story  to  be  utterly  devoid  of  historical 

1  F.  X.  Funk  in  the  "  KL.,"  2,  Art.  "  Melanchthon,"  p.  1212  f. 

2  For   a  supposed  remark   of   Luther's   to   Catherine   Bora  which 
would  seem  even  more  clearly  to  admit  the  uncertainty  of  the  new 
faith,  see  below,  p.  372  f. 

3  "  L'Histoire  de  la  naissance,  progrez  et  decadence  de  Fheresie  de 
ce  siecle,"  1.  2,  ch.  9  (Rouen,  1648),  p.  166  :    "  On  escrit,  qu'estant  sur 
le  poinct  de  rendre  Fame,  Fan  1560,  sa  mere,"  etc.    The  author  is  quite 
uncritical  (see  below,  p.  271). 

4  "  Corp.   ref.,"    1,   p.    1083,   Melanchthon  to   Camerarius.      C.   G. 
Strobel,  "  Melanchthoniana,"  1771,  p.  9. 

5  Cp.  N.  Miiller,  "  Jakob  Schwarzerd,"  1908  ("  Schriften  des  Vereins 
f.  RG.,"  Nos.  96-97),  p.  42,  on  "  Corp.  ref.,"  2,  p.  563.    Miiller  assumes 
(p.  41)  that  the  visit  took  place  in  1524. 

6  "  Theol.  Stud,  und  Krit.,"  1,  1830,  p.  119  ff.,  "  Die  Schwarzerd." 


MELANCHTHON  LEGENDS         271 

foundation."1  C.  G.  Strobel,  in  his  "  M elanchthoniana  "  (1771), 
had  expressed  his  disbelief  in  the  tale  under  the  then  widespread 
form,  according  to  which  Melanchthon  had  spoken  the  words, 
when  visiting  his  dying  mother  in  1529  ;  he  had  been  much 
shocked  to  hear  it  told  in  rhetorical  style  by  M.  A.  J.  Bose  of 
Wittenberg  in  a  panegyric  on  Melanchthon.  Bose,  whose  lean 
ings  were  towards  the  Broad  School,  had  cited  the  story  approv 
ingly  as  an  instance  of  Melanchthon's  large-mindedness  in  re 
ligion.2  Against  the  account  Strobel  alleges  several  a  priori 
objections  of  no  great  value  ;  his  best  argument  really  was  that 
there  was  no  authority  for  it. 

Forstemann's  brief  allusion  was  not  without  effect  on  the 
authors  of  the  article  on  Melanchthon  in  the  "  Realenzyklopadie 
fiir  protestantische  Theologie  "  ;  there  we  read  :  "  The  tale  is 
at  least  not  unlikely,  though  it  cannot  be  proved  with  certainty  "  ;3 
even  G.  Ellinger,  the  latest  of  Melanchthon's  biographers, 
declares  :  "  We  may  assume  that  Melanchthon  treated  the 
religious  views  of  his  mother,  who  continued  till  the  end  of  her 
life  faithful  to  the  olden  Church,  with  the  same  tender  solicitude 
as  he  displayed  towards  her  in  the  later  conversation  in  1529. "4 

It  is  first  of  all  necessary  to  settle  whether  the  conversation 
actually  rests  on  reliable  authority.  Forstemann,  like  Strobel, 
mentions  only  Melchior  Adam  (f  1622),  whose  "  Vitce  theologorum  " 
was  first  published  in  1615  (see  next  page). 

Adam,  a  Protestant  writer,  gives  no  authority  for  his  state 
ment.  JEgidius  Albertinus,  a  popular  Catholic  author,  writing 
slightly  earlier,  also  gives  the  story  in  his  "  Rekreation  "  (see 
next  page),  published  in  1612  and  1613,  likewise  without  indi 
cating  its  source. 

Earlier  than  either  we  have  Florimond  de  Raemond,  whose 
"  Histoire,"  etc.  (above,  p.  270,  n.  3)  contains  the  story  even  in 
the  1605  edition  ;  he  too  gives  no  authority.  So  far  no  earlier 
mention  of  the  story  is  known.  It  seems  to  have  been  a  current 
tale  in  Catholic  circles  abroad  and  may  have  been  printed. 
Strange  to  say  the  work  of  the  zealous  Catholic  convert  and 
polemic,  de  Raemond  (completed  and  seen  through  the  press  by 
his  son),  contains  the  story  under  the  least  likely  shape,  the 
dying  Melanchthon  being  made  to  address  the  words  to  his  mother, 
who  really  had  died  long  before. 

It  is  quite  likely  that  ^Egidius  Albertinus,  the  well-read  priestly 
secretary  to  the  Munich  Council,  who  busied  himself  much  with 

1  P.  122. 

2  In    the    collection    of    essays     published    by    the    Wittenberg 
"  Academy,"   "  Memoria  Ph.  Melanchthonis,  finite  post  eius  exitum 
sseculo  II." 

3  3rd  ed.,  Art.  "  Melanchthon,"  p.  531. 

4  G.  Ellinger,  "  Melanchthon,"  1902,  p.  191.     F.  X.  Funk  remarks 
in  the  "  KL.,"  2,  Art.  "Melanchthon,"  p.  1212:  Melanchthon,  "after 
having  made  her  [his  mother]  repeat  her  prayers,  is  said  to  have 
assured  her,  that  if  she  continued  thus  to  believe  and  to  pray,  she  might 
well  live  in  hopes  of  being  saved." 


272          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

Italian,  Spanish  and  Latin  literature,  was  acquainted  with  this 
passage.  He  nevertheless  altered  the  narrative,  relating  how 
Melanchthon's  "  aged  mother  came  to  him  "  after  he  had  "  lived 
long  in  the  world  and  seen  many  things,  and  caused  many 
scandals  by  his  life."  He  translates  as  follows  the  Latin  words 
supposed  to  have  been  uttered  by  Melanchthon  :  "The  new 
religion  is  much  pleasanter,  but  the  old  one  is  much  safer."1 

Next  comes  the  Protestant  Adam.  The  latter  gives  a  plausible 
historical  setting  to  the  story  by  locating  it  during  the  time  of 
Melanchthon's  stay  at  Spires,  though  without  mentioning  that 
the  mother  was  then  at  death's  door.  "  When  asked  by  her," 
so  runs  his  account,  which  is  the  commonest  one,  "  what  she  was 
to  believe  of  the  controversies,  he  listened  to  the  prayers  [she 
was  in  the  habit  of  reciting]  and,  finding  nothing  superstitious 
in  them,  told  her  to  continue  to  believe  and  to  pray  as  heretofore 
and  not  be  disturbed  by  the  discussions  and  controversies."2 
Here  we  do  not  meet  the  sentence  Hcec  plausibilior,  ilia  securior. 
The  fact  that  Adam,  who  as  a  rule  is  careful  to  give  his  authorities, 
omits  to  do  so  here,  points  to  the  story  having  been  verbally 
transmitted  ;  for  it  is  hardly  likely  that  he,  as  a  Protestant, 
would  have  taken  over  the  statements  of  the  two  Catholic 
authorities  Albertinus  and  Raemond,  which  were  so  favourable 
to  Catholicism  and  so  unfavourable  to  Protestantism.  Probably, 
besides  the  Catholic  version  there  was  also  a  Protestant  one, 
which  would  explain  here  the  absence  of  the  sentence  ending 
with  "  securior."  Both  may  have  risen  at  the  time  of  the 
Diet  of  Spires,  where  Catholics  and  Protestants  alike  attended, 
supposing  that  the  visit  to  Bretten  took  place  at  that  time. 

All  things  considered  we  may  well  accept  the  statement  of  the 
"  Realenzyklopadie,"  that  the  story,  as  given  by  Adam,  apart 
from  the  time  it  occurred,  is  "not  unlikely,  though  it  cannot  be 
proved  with  certainty."  Taking  into  account  the  circumstances 
and  the  character  of  Melanchthon,  neither  the  incident  nor  his 
words  involve  any  improbability.  He  will  have  seen  that  his 
beloved  mother — whether  then  at  the  point  of  death  or  not — 
was  in  perfect  good  faith  ;  he  had  no  wish  to  plunge  her  into 
inward  struggles  and  disquiet  and  preferred  to  leave  her  happy 
in  her  convictions  ;  the  more  so  since,  in  her  presence  and  amid 
the  recollections  of  the  past,  his  mind  will  probably  have  travelled 
to  the  days  of  his  youth,  when  he  was  still  a  faithful  son  of  the 
Church.  He  had  never  forgotten  the  exhortation  given  by  his 
father,  nine  days  before  his  death,  to  his  family  "never  to  quit 
the  Church's  fold."8  The  exact  date  of  the  incident  (1524  or 
1529)  must  however  remain  doubtful.  N.  Miiller  in  his  work  on 
Melanchthon's  brother,  Jakob  Schwarzerd,  says  rightly :  "  No- 

1  "  DesTeutschen  .  .  .  Rekreation,"  Munich,  1612,  4,  p.  143.    The 
author,  who  died  in  1620,  is  no  authority  on  historical  matters  beyond 
his  own  times  and  surroundings. 

2  "  Vitas  theologorum,"  p.  333. 

3  "RE.  f.  prot.  Th.,"  3,  Art.  "Melanchthon,"  p.  531,  with  reference 
to  Melanchthon's  "  Postille,"  2,  p.  477. 


MELANCHTHON   LEGENDS          273 

thing  obliges  us  to  place  the  conversation  between  Melanchthon 
and  his  mother — assuming  it  to  be  historical — in  1529,  for  it  may 
equally  well  have  taken  place  in  1524."1 

r 

Two  unsupported  stories  connected  with  Melanchthon's 
Augsburg  Confession  must  also  be  mentioned  here.  The 
twofold  statement,  frequently  repeated  down  to  the  present 
day,  takes  the  following  shape  in  a  recent  historical  work 
by  a  Protestant  theologian  :  "  When  the  Confession  was 
read  out,  the  Bishop  of  Augsburg,  Christoph  von  Stadion, 
declared,  '  What  has  just  been  read  here  is  the  pure,  unvar 
nished  truth ' ;  Eck  too  had  to  admit  to  the  Duke  of  Bavaria, 
that  he  might  indeed  be  able  to  refute  this  work  from  the 
Fathers  of  the  Church,  but  certainly  not  from  Scripture." 
So  convincing  and  triumphant  was  Melanchthon's  attitude 
at  the  Diet  of  Augsburg. 

The  information  concerning  Stadion  is  found  only  in  the 
late,  Protestant  history  of  the  Diet  of  Augsburg  written  by 
George  Coelestinus  and  published  in  1577  at  Frankfurt;  here' 
moreover  the  story  differs  slightly,  relating,  that,  during  the 
negotiations  on  the  Confession  on  Aug.  6,  Stadion  declared  : 
"  It  was  plain  that  those  who  inclined  to  the  Lutheran  views 
had,  so  far,  not  infringed  or  overthrown  a  single  article  of  the 
faith  by  what  they  had  put  forward  in  defence  of  their  views."2 
Any  decisive  advocacy  of  the  Catholic  cause  was  of  course  not 
to  be  expected  from  this  bishop,  in  view  of  his  general  bearing. 
A  good  pupil  of  Erasmus,  he  had  made  the  latter's  reforming 
ideas  his  own.  He  was  in  favour  of  priestly  marriage,  and  was 
inclined  to  think  that  Christ  had  not  instituted  auricular  con 
fession.  There  is,  however,  no  proof  that  he  went  so  far  in  the 
direction  of  the  innovations  as  actually  to  approve  the  Lutheran 
teaching.  It  is  true  that  the  words  quoted,  even  if  really  his, 
do  not  assert  this  ;  it  was  one  thing  to  say  that  no  article  of  the 
faith  had  been  infringed  by  the  Confession  or  by  what  had  been 
urged  in  vindication  of  Lutheranism,  and  quite  another  to  say 
that  the  Confession  was  nothing  but  the  pure,  unvarnished  truth. 
At  any  rate,  in  the  one  form  this  statement  of  Stadion's  is  not 
vouched  for  by  any  other  authority  before  Ccelestinus  and,  in 
the  other,  lacks  any  proof  whatever.  F.  W.  Schirrmacher,  who 
relates  the  incident  in  his  "  Brief  en  und  Akten  zur  Ges- 
chichte  des  Reichstags  zu  Augsburg  "  on  the  authority  of  Coeles 
tinus,  admits  that  "its  source  is  unknown."3  Moreover  an 
historian,  who  some  years  ago  examined  into  Stadion's  attitude 
at  Augsburg,  pointed  out,  that,  in  view  of  the  further  circum- 

1  Above,  p.  270,  n.  5,  p.  41. 

2  "  Historia  comitiorum  a.  1530  Augustse  celebratorum,"  3,  p.  20, 
8  Gotha,  1876,  p.  191, 

V,— -T 


274          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

stances  related  by  Coelestinus,  the  story  "  sounds  a  little  fabu 
lous."1  He  tells  us  how  on  the  same  occasion  the  bishops  of 
Salzburg  and  Augsburg  fell  foul  of  one  another,  the  former,  in 
his  anger  at  Stadion's  behaviour,  even  going  so  far  as  to  charge 
the  latter  before  the  whole  assembly  with  immorality  in  his 
private  life.  All  this,  told  at  great  length  and  without  mention 
of  any  authority,  far  from  impressing  us  as  historically  accurate, 
appears  at  best  as  an  exaggerated  hearsay  account  of  some 
incident  of  which  the  truth  is  no  longer  known. 

As  for  what  Johann  Eck  is  stated  to  have  said,  viz.  that  he 
could  refute  Melanchthon's  Confession  from  the  Fathers  but  not 
from  the  Bible,  no  proof  whatever  of  the  statement  is  forthcoming. 
The  oldest  mention  of  it  merely  retails  a  piece  of  vague  gossip, 
which  may  well  have  gone  the  rounds  in  Lutheran  circles.  It  is 
met  with  in  Spalatin's  Notes  and  runs  :  "  It  is  said  "  that  Eck, 
referring  to  the  whole  doctrine  of  Melanchthon  and  Luther,  told 
Duke  William  :  "I  would  not  mind  undertaking  to  refute  it 
from  the  Fathers,  but  not  from  Scripture."2  It  is  true  these 
notes  go  back  as  far  as  the  Diet  of  Augsburg,  but  they  notoriously 
contain  much  that  is  false  or  uncertain,  and  often  record  mere 
unauthenticated  rumours.  Neither  Melanchthon  nor  Luther 
ever  dared  to  appeal  to  such  an  admission  on  the  part  of  their 
opponent,  though  it  would  certainly  have  been  of  the  utmost 
advantage  to  them  to  have  done  so. 

Not  only  is  no  proof  alleged  in  support  of  the  saying,  but  it 
is  in  utter  contradiction  with  Eck's  whole  mode  of  procedure, 
which  was  always  to  attack  the  statements  of  his  opponents, 
first  with  Scripture  and  then  with  the  tradition  of  the  Fathers. 
This  is  the  case  with  the  "  Confutatio  confessionis,"  etc.,  aimed  at 
Melanchthon's  Confession,  in  the  preparation  of  which  Eck  had 
the  largest  share  and  which  he  presented  at  the  Diet  of  Augsburg. 

According  to  his  own  striking  account  of  what  happened  at 
the  religious  conference  of  Ratisbon  in  1541,  it  was  to  his  habitual 
and  triumphant  use  of  biblical  arguments  against  Melanchthon's 
theses  that  Eck  appealed  in  the  words  he  addressed  to  Bucer 
his  chief  opponent :  "  Hearken,  you  apostate,  does  not  Eck  use 
the  language  of  the  Bible  and  the  Fathers  ?  Why  don't  you  reply 
to  his  writings  on  the  primacy  of  Peter,  on  penance,  on  the  Sacri 
fice  of  the  Mass,  and  on  Purgatory  ?  "  etc.3 

What  also  weighs  strongly  against  the  tale  is  the  fact  that  a 
charge  of  a  quite  similar  nature  had  been  brought  against  Eck 
ten  years  before  the  Diet  of  Augsburg  by  an  opponent,  who 
assailed  him  with  false  and  malicious  accusations.  What 
Protestant  fable  came  wantonly  to  connect  with  Melanchthon's 
"  Confession  "  had  already,  in  1520,  been  charged  against  the 
Ingolstadt  theologian  by  the  author  of  "  Eccius  dedolatus." 

1  J.  B.  Hablitzel,  "  Liter.  Beil.  zur  Augsburger  Postztng.,"  1905, 
No.  40  f . 

2  Printed    in    the    Jena    edition    of    Luther's    German    works,    6, 
1557,  p.  41. 

3  "  Apologia,"  Ingolstadii,  1542,  p.  clii. 


DEVIL   LORE  275 

There  he  is  told,  that,  in  his  view,  one  had  perforce  (on  account 
of  the  Bible)  to  agree  with  Luther  secretly,  though,  publicly,  he 
had  to  be  opposed.1 

Theodore  Wiedemann,  who  wrote  a  Life  of  Eck  and  who  at 
least  hints  at  the  objection  just  made,  was  justified  in  concluding 
with  the  query  :  "  Is  it  not  high  time  to  say  good-bye  to  this 
historic  lie  ?  "2  When,  as  late  as  1906,  the  story  was  once 
more  burnished  up  by  a  writer  of  note,  N.  Paulus,  writing  in  the 
" Historisches  Jahrbuch,"  could  well  say:  "Eck's  alleged  utter 
ance  was  long  ago  proved  to  be  quite  unhistorical."3 


4.   Demonology  and  Demonomania 

"  Come  O  Lord  Jesus,  Amen  !  The  breath  of  Thy  mouth 
dismays  the  diabolieal  gainsayer."  "  Satan's  hate  is  all  too 
Satanic."4 

Oh,  that  the  devil's  gaping  jaws  were  crushed  by  the 
blessed  seed  of  the  woman  !5  How  little  is  left  for  God.6 
"  The  remainder  is  swallowed  by  Satan  who  is  the  Prince  of 
this  world,  surely  an  inscrutable  decree  of  Eternal  Wisdom." 7 
"  Prodigies  everywhere  daily  manifest  the  power  of  the 
devil !  "  8 

Against  such  a  devil's  world,  as  Luther  descried,  what  can 
help  save  the  approaching  "  end  of  all  "  ? 

"  The  kingdom  of  God  is  being  laid  waste  by  Turk  and 
Jew  and  Pope,"  the  chosen  tools  of  Satan;  but  "greater 
is  He  Who  reigns  in  us  than  he  who  rules  the  world ; 
the  devil  shall  be  under  Christ  to  all  eternity,"9  "The 
present  rage  of  the  devil  only  reveals  God's  future  wrath 
against  mankind,  who  are  so  ungrateful  for  the  Evangel."10 
"  We  cannot  but  live  in  this  devil's  kingdom  which  sur 
rounds  us  "  ; 11  "  but  even  with  our  last  breath  we  must 

1  Willibald  Pirkheimer,  who  was  then  on  Luther's  side,  is  usually 
regarded  as  the  author  of  this  screed  published  under  the  pseudonym 
of  J.  F.  Cottalambergius.     Like  some  others,  K.  Bauer  ("  Schriften  des 
Vereins  f.  RG.,"  No.  100,  1910,  p.  272)  rejects  his  authorship.      The 
passage  in  question  appears  in  Booking's  edition,  "  Hutteni  opp.,"  4, 
1860,  p.  533. 

2  "  Johannes  Eck,"  1865,  p.  275  f.  3  1906,  p.  885. 

4  To  Melanchthon,  Dec.  7,  1540,  "  Brief wechsel,"  13,  p.  227. 

5  To  Melanchthon,  Nov.  21,  1540,  ib.,  p.  215. 

6  To  Link,  Sep.  8,  1541,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  399. 

7  To  Jonas,  Jan.  23,  1542,  ib.,  p.  429. 

8  To  Lauterbach,  April  2,  1543,  ib.,  pp.  551,  552. 

9  To  the  Evangelical  Brethren  at  Venice,  June  13,  1543,  ib.,  p.  569. 

10  To  Lauterbach,  July  25,  1542,  ib.,  p.  487  f. 

11  To  Cordatus,  Dec.  3,  1544,  ib.,  p.  702. 


276          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

fight  against  the  monsters  of  Satan."1  Let  the  Papists, 
whose  glory  is  mere  "  devil's  filth,"  rejoice  in  their  suc 
cesses.2  As  little  heed  is  to  be  paid  to  them  as  to  the 
preachers  of  the  Evangel  who  have  gone  astray  in  doc 
trine,  like  Agricola  and  Schwenckfeld  ;  they  calmly  "  go  their 
way  to  Satan  to  whom  indeed  they  belong  "  ;3  "  they  are 
senseless  fools,  possessed  of  the  devil."  The  devil  "  spues 
and  ructates  "  his  writings  through  them  ;  this  is  the  devil 
of  heresy  against  whom  solemnly  launch  the  malediction  : 
"  God's  curse  be  upon  thee,  Satan  !  The  spirit  that  sum 
moned  thee  be  with  thee  unto  destruction  !  "4 

Luther's  letters  during  his  later  years  are  crammed  with 
things  of  this  sort. 

The  thought  of  the  devil  and  his  far-spread  sphere  of 
action,  to  which  Luther  had  long  been  addicted,  assumes 
in  his  mind  as  time  goes  on  a  more  serious  and  gloomy 
shape,  though  he  continues  often  enough  to  refer  to  the 
Divine  protection  promised  against  the  powers  of  darkness 
and  to  the  final  victory  of  Christ. 

In  his  wrong  idea  of  the  devil  Luther  was  by  no  means 
without  precursors.  On  the  contrary,  in  the  Middle  Ages 
exaggerations  had  long  prevailed  on  this  subject,  not  only 
among  the  people  but  even  among  the  best-known  writers  ; 
on  the  very  eve  of  Luther's  coming  forward  they  formed  no 
small  part  of  the  disorders  in  the  ecclesiastical  life  of  the 
people.  Had  people  been  content  with  the  sober  teaching 
of  Holy  Scripture  and  of  the  Church  on  the  action  of  the 
devil,  the  faithful  would  have  been  preserved  from  many 
errors.  As  it  was,  however,  the  vivid  imagination  of  laity 
and  clergy  led  them  to  read  much  into  the  revealed  doctrine 
that  was  not  really  in  it ;  witness,  for  instance,  the  startling 
details  they  found  in  the  words  of  St.  Paul  (Eph.  vi.  12) : 
"  For  our  wrestling  is  not  against  flesh  and  blood  :  but 
against  principalities  and  powers,  against  the  rulers  of  the 
world  of  this  darkness,  against  the  spirits  of  wickedness  in 
the  high  places."  Great  abuses  had  gradually  crept  into 

1  To  Probst,  Jan.  17  (the  year  of  his  death),  1546,  ib.,  p.  778. 

2  To  Jonas,  Sep.  30,  1543,  ib.,  p.  591  :    "  quorum  glorias  pro  stercore 
diaboli  habeo." 

3  To  Justus  Menius,  Jan.  10,  1542,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  426,  on  "  Master 
Grickel,"  i.e.  Agricola. 

4  To  Caspar  Schwenckfeld's  messenger  (1543),  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  614  : 
"  Increpet  Dominus  in  te,  Satan,"  etc. 


DEVIL   LORE  277 

the  use  of  the  blessings  and  exorcisms  of  the  Church,  more 
particularly  in  the  case  of  supposed  sorcery.  Unfortunately, 
too,  the  beliefs  and  practices  common  among  the  people 
received  much  too  ready  support  from  persons  of  high  stand 
ing  in  the  Church.  The  supposition,  which  in  itself  had  the 
sanction  of  tradition,  that  intercourse  with  the  devil  was 
possible,  grew  into  the  fantastic  persuasion  that  witches 
were  lurking  everywhere,  and  required  to  have  their  mali 
cious  action  checked  by  the  authority  of  Church  and  State. 
That  unfortunate  book,  "The  Witches'  Hammer,"  which 
Institoris  and  Sprenger  published  in  1487,  made  these  de 
lusions  fashionable  in  circles  which  so  far  had  been  but  little 
affected  by  them,  though  the  authors'  purpose,  viz.  to 
stamp  out  the  witches,  was  not  achieved. 

It  is  clear  that  at  home  in  Saxony,  and  in  his  own  family, 
Luther  had  lived  in  an  atmosphere  where  the  belief  in  spirits 
and  the  harm  wrought  by  the  devil  was  very  strong  ;  miners 
are  credited  with  being  partial  to  such  gloomy  fancies  owing 
to  the  nature  of  their  dangerous  work  in  the  mysterious 
bowels  of  the  earth.  As  a  young  monk  he  had  fancied  he 
heard  the  devil  creating  an  uproar  nightly  in  the  convent, 
and  the  state  of  excitement  in  which  he  lived  and  which 
accompanied  him  ever  afterwards  was  but  little  calculated 
to  free  him  from  the  prejudices  of  the  age  concerning  the 
devil's  power.  His  earlier  sermons,  for  instance  those  to  be 
mentioned  below  on  the  Ten  Commandments,  contain  much 
that  is  frankly  superstitious,  though  this  must  be  set  down 
in  great  part  to  the  beliefs  already  in  vogue  and  above 
which  he  failed  to  rise.  Had  Luther  really  wished  to  play 
the  part  of  a  reformer  of  the  ecclesiastical  life  of  his  day,  he 
would  have  found  here  a  wide  field  for  useful  labour.  In 
point  of  fact,  however,  he  only  made  bad  worse.  His  lively 
descriptions  and  the  weight  of  his  authority  merely  served 
to  strengthen  the  current  delusions  among  those  who  looked 
to  him.  Before  him  no  one  had  ever  presented  these  things 
to  the  people  with  such  attractive  wealth  of  detail,  no  one 
had  brought  the  weight  of  his  personality  so  strongly  to 
bear  upon  his  readers  and  so  urgently  preached  to  them  on 
how  to  deal  with  the  spirits  of  evil. 

Among  non-Catholics  it  has  been  too  usual  to  lay  the 
whole  blame  on  the  Middle  Ages  and  the  later  Catholic 
period.  They  do  not  realise  how  greatly  Luther's  influence 


278          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

counted  in  the  demonology  and  demonomania  of  the  ensuing 
years.  Yet  Luther's  views  and  practice  show  plainly  enough, 
that  it  was  not  merely  the  Catholic  ages  before  his  day  that 
were  dishonoured  with  such  delusions  concerning  the  devil, 
and  that  it  was  not  the  Catholics  alone,  of  his  time  and  the 
following  decades,  who  were  responsible  for  the  devil-craze 
and  the  bloody  persecutions  of  the  witches  in  those  dark 
days  of  German  history  in  the  17th  century.1 

The  Mischief  Wrought  by  the  Devil 

Luther's  views  agree  in  so  far  with  the  actual  teaching  of 
the  olden  Church,  that  he  regards  the  devils  as  fallen  angels 
condemned  to  eternal  reprobation,  who  oppose  the  aims  of 
God  for  the  salvation  of  the  world  and  the  spiritual  and 
temporal  welfare  of  mankind.  "  The  devil  undoes  the 
works  of  God,"  so  he  says,  adding,  however,  in  striking  con 
sonance  with  the  teaching  of  the  Church  and  to  emphasise 
the  devil's  powerlessness,  "  but  Christ  undoes  the  devil's 
works  ;  He,  the  seed  [of  the  woman]  and  the  serpent  are 
ever  at  daggers  drawn."2  But  Luther  goes  further,  and 
depicts  in  glaring  and  extravagant  colours  the  harm  which 
the  devil  can  bring  about.  He  declares  he  himself  had  had 
a  taste  of  how  wrathful  and  mighty  a  foe  the  devil  is  ;  this 
he  had  learned  in  the  inward  warfare  he  was  compelled  to 
wage  against  Satan.  He  was  convinced  that,  at  the  Wart- 
burg,  and  also  later,  he  had  repeatedly  to  witness  the  sinister 
manifestations  of  the  Evil  One's  malignant  power. 

Hence  in  his  Church-postils,  home-postils  and  Catechism, 
to  mention  only  these,  he  gives  full  vent  to  his  opinions  on 
the  hostility  and  might  of  Satan. 

In  the  Larger  Catechism  of  1529, 3  "when  enumerating  the 
evils  caused  by  the  devil,  he  tells  of  how  he  "breaks  many  a 
man's  neck,  drives  others  out  of  their  mind  or  drowns  them  in 
the  water  "  ;4  how  he  "  stirs  up  strife  and  brings  murder,  sedition 
and  war,  item  causes  hail  and  tempests,  destroying  the  corn  and  the 
cattle,  and  poisoning  the  air,"  etc.  ;6  among  those  who  break  the 

1  Cp.  for  what  follows  N.  Paulus,  "  Hexenwahn  und  Hexenprozess 
vornehmlich  im  16.  Jahrh.,"  1910,  where  not  only  Luther's  (pp.  20  ff., 
48  ff.)  but  also  the  Zwinglians'  and  Calvinists'  attitude  to  the  matter 
is  dealt  with. 

2  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  305. 

3  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  30,   1,  p.   123  ff.  ;  Erl.  ed.,  21,  p.  26  ff.  ; 
cp.  p.  127  =  28  ff.  4  Ib.,  p.  211-127.  5  /&.,  p.  205  =  121. 


DEVIL'S   POWER   FOR   EVIL        279 

first  commandment  are  all  "  who  make  a  compact  with  the  devil 
that  he  may  give  them  enough  money,  help  them  in  their  love- 
affairs,  preserve  their  cattle,  bring  back  lost  property,  etc.,  like 
wise  all  sorcerers  and  magicians/'1 

In  his  home-postils  he  practically  makes  it  one  of  the  chief 
dogmas  of  the  faith,  that  all  temporal  misfortune  hails  from  the 
devil  ;  "  the  heathen  "  alone  know  this  not  ;  "  but  do  you  learn 
to  say  :  This  is  the  work  of  the  hateful  devil."  "  The  devil's  bow 
is  always  bent  and  his  musket  always  primed,  and  we  are  his 
target  ;  at  us  he  aims,  smiting  us  with  pestilence,  '  Franzosen  ' 
[venereal  disease],  war,  fire,  hail  and  cloudburst."  "It  is  also 
certain  that  wherever  we  be  there  too  is  a  great  crowd  of  demons 
who  lie  in  wait  for  us,  would  gladly  affright  us,  do  us  harm,  and, 
were  it  possible,  fall  upon  us  with  sword  and  long  spear.  Against 
these  are  pitted  the  holy  angels  who  stand  up  in  our  defence."2 

The  devil,  so  he  teaches  in  his  Church-postils,  a  new  edition  of 
which  he  brought  out  in  1543  towards  the  end  of  his  life,  could 
either  of  himself  or  by  the  agency  of  others  "  raise  storms, 
shoot  people,  lame  and  wither  limbs,  harrow  children  in  the 
cradle,  bewitch  men's  members,  etc."3  Thanks  to  him,  "those 
who  ply  the  magic  art  are  able  to  give  to  things  a  shape  other  than 
their  own,  so  that  what  in  reality  is  a  man  looks  like  an  ox  or  a 
cow  ;  they  can  make  people  to  fall  in  love,  or  to  bawd,  and  do 
many  other  devilish  deeds."4 

How  accustomed  he  was  to  enlarge  on  this  favourite  subject 
in  his  addresses  to  the  people  is  plain  from  a  sermon  delivered 
at  the  Coburg  in  1530,  which  he  sent  to  the  press  the  following 
year  :  "  The  devil  sends  plagues,  famines,  worry  and  war, 
murder,  etc.  Whose  fault  is  it  that  one  man  breaks  a  leg,  another 
is  drowned,  and  a  third  commits  murder  ?  Surely  the  devil's 
alone.  This  we  see  with  our  own  eyes  and  touch  with  our  hands." 
"  The  Christian  ought  to  know  that  he  sits  in  the  midst  of  demons 
and  that  the  devil  is  closer  to  him  than  his  coat  or  his  shirt,  nay, 
even  than  his  skin,  that  he  is  all  around  us  and  that  we  must 
ever  be  at  grips  with  him  and  fighting  him."  In  these  words  there 
is  already  an  echo  of  his  fancied  personal  experiences,  particu 
larly  of  his  inward  struggles  at  the  time  of  the  dreaded  Diet  of 
Augsburg,  to  which  he  actually  alludes  in  this  sermon  ;  the  sub 
jective  element  comes  out  still  more  strongly  when  he  proceeds 
in  his  half -jesting  way  :  "  The  devil  is  more  at  home  in  Holy 
Scripture  than  Paris,  Cologne  and  all  the  godless  make-believes, 
however  learned  they  may  be.  Whoever  attempts  to  dispute 
with  him  will  assuredly  be  pitched  on  the  ash  heap,  and  when  it 
comes  to  a  trial  of  strength,  there  too  he  wins  the  day  ;  in  one 
hour  he  could  do  to  death  all  the  Turks,  Emperors,  Kings  and 

1  Ib.,  p.  134-36. 

2  Ib.,  Erl.  ed.,  32,  p.  477  f.,  in  the  first  Sermon  on  the  Angels. 

3  Ib.,  Weim.  ed.,  10,  1,  1,  p.  590  f.  ;    Erl.  ed.,  102,  p.  359.     In  the 
editions  from  1522  to  1540  the  word  "  conjugal  "  is  inserted  before 
"  members." 

4  Ib. 


'280         LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

Princes."1  "  Children  should  be  taught  at  an  early  age  to  fear 
the  dangers  arising  from  the  devil ;  they  should  be  told  :  *  Darling, 
don't  swear,  etc.  ;  the  devil  is  close  beside  you,  and  if  you  do  he 
may  throw  you  into  the  water  or  bring  down  some  other  mis 
fortune  upon  you.'  "2  It  is  true  that  he  also  says  children  must 
be  taught  that,  by  God's  command,  their  guardian  angel  is  ever 
ready  to  assist  them  against  the  devil ;  "  God  wills  that  he  shall 
watch  over  you  so  that  when  the  devil  tries  to  cast  you  into  the 
water  or  to  affright  you  in  your  sleep,  he  may  prevent  him." 
Still  one  may  fairly  question  the  educational  value  of  such  a  fear 
of  the  devil.  Taking  into  account  the  pliant  character  of  most 
children  and  their  susceptibility  to  fear,  Luther  was  hardly 
justified  in  expecting  that  :  "If  children  are  treated  in  this  way 
from  their  youth  they  will  grow  up  into  fine  men  and  women." 

According  to  an  odd-sounding  utterance  of  Luther's,  every 
bishop  who  attended  the  Diet  of  Augsburg  brought  as  many 
devils  to  oppose  him  "  as  a  dog  has  fleas  on  its  back  on  Mid 
summer  Day."3  Had  the  devil  succeeded  in  his  attempt  there, 
"  the  next  thing  would  have  been  that  he  would  have  committed 
murder,"4  but  the  angels  dispatched  by  God  had  shielded  him 
and  the  Evangel. 

When  a  fire  devastated  that  part  of  Wittenberg  which  lay 
beyond  the  Castle  gate,  Luther  was  quite  overwhelmed  ;  watch 
ing  the  conflagration  he  assured  the  people  that,  "it  was  the 
devil's  work."  With  his  eyes  full  of  tears  he  besought  them  to 
"  quench  it  with  the  help  of  God  and  His  holy  angels."  A  little 
later  he  exhorted  the  people  in  a  sermon  to  withstand  by  prayer 
the  work  of  the  devil  manifested  in  such  fires.  One  of  his  pupils, 
Sebastian  Froschel,  recalled  the  incident  in  a  sermon  on  the 
feast  of  St.  Michael.  After  the  example  and  words  of  the  "  late 
Dr.  Martin,"  he  declares,  "  the  devil's  breath  is  so  hot  and 
poisonous  that  it  can  even  infect  the  air  and  set  it  on  fire,  so  that 
cities,  land  and  people  are  poisoned  and  inflamed,  for  instance 
by  the  plague  and  other  even  more  virulent  diseases.  .  .  .  The 
devil  is  in  and  behind  the  flame  which  he  fans  to  make  it  spread," 
etc.6  This  tallies  with  what  Luther,  when  on  a  journey,  wrote 
in  later  years  to  Catherine  Bora  of  the  fires  which  were  occurring  : 
"  The  devil  himself  has  come  forth  possessed  with  new  and  worse 
demons  ;  he  causes  fires  and  does  damage  that  is  dreadful  to 
behold."  The  writer  instances  the  forest  fires  then  raging  (in 
July)  in  Thuringia  and  at  Werda,  and  concludes  :  "  Tell  them  to 
pray  against  the  troublesome  Satan  who  is  seeking  us  out."6 

Madness,  in  Luther's  view,  is  in  every  case  due  to  the  devil ; 
"what  is  outside  reason  is  simply  Satanic."7  In  a  long  letter 

1  /&.,  32,  p.  112ff.  =  182,  p.  64  ff.  2  !&.,  p.  120  =  76. 

3  16.,  34,  2,  p.  263  f.  =  192,  p.  75.  4  Ib.,  32,  p.  114=  182,  p.  68. 

5  "  Drey  Sermon,  Von  den  Heiligen  Engeln,  Vom  Teufel,  Von  der 
Menschen  Seele,"   Witteberg,   1563.      In  the  sermon  "  Vom  Teufel." 
See  N.  Paulus,  "  Augsburger  Postztng.,"  1903,  May  8. 

6  July  26,  1540,  "  Brief wechsel,"  13,  p.  147. 

7  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  ed. 'Kroker,  p.  331. 


DEVIL'S   POWER   FOR   EVIL        281 

to  his  friend  Link,  in  1528,  dealing  with  a  case  raised,  he  proves 
that  mad  people  must  be  regarded  "  as  teased  or  possessed  by 
the  devil."  "  Medical  men  who  are  unversed  in  theology  know 
not  how  great  is  the  strength  and  power  of  the  devil  "  ;  but, 
against  their  natural  explanations,  we  can  set,  first,  Holy  Scrip 
ture  (Luke  xiii.  16  ;  Acts  x.  38)  ;  secondly,  experience,  which 
proves  that  the  devil  causes  deafness,  dumbness,  lameness  and 
fever  ;  thirdly,  the  fact  that  he  can  even  "  fill  men's  minds  with 
thoughts  of  adultery,  murder,  robbery  and  all  other  evil  lusts  "  ; 
al]  the  more  easily  then  was  he  able  to  confuse  the  mental  powers.1 
In  the  case  of  those  possessed,  the  devil,  according  to  Luther, 
either  usurps  the  place  of  the  soul,  or  lives  side  by  side  with  it, 
ruling  such  unhappy  people  as  the  soul  does  the  body.2 

Thus  it  is  the  devil  alone  who  is  at  work  in  those  who  commit 
suicide,  for  the  death  a  man  fancies  he  inflicts  on  himself  is 
nothing  but  the  "  devil's  work  "  ;3  the  devil  simply  hoodwinks 
him  and  others  who  see  him.  To  Frederick  Myconius  he  wrote, 
in  1544  :  "  It  is  my  habit  to  esteem  such  a  one  as  killed  '  simpli- 
citer  et  immediate  '  by  the  devil,  just  as  a  traveller  might  be  by 
highwaymen.  ...  I  think  we  must  stick  to  the  belief  that  the 
devil  deceives  such  a  man  and  makes  him  fancy  that  he  is  doing 
something  quite  different,  for  instance  praying,  or  something  of 
the  sort."4  In  the  same  sense  he  wrote  to  Anton  Lauterbach,  in 
1542,  when  the  latter  informed  him  of  three  men  who  had  hanged 
themselves  :  "  Satan,  with  God's  leave,  perpetrates  such  abomin 
ations  in  the  midst  of  our  congregation.  .  .  .  He  is  the  prince 
of  this  world  who  in  mockery  deludes  us  into  fancying  that  those 
men  hanged  themselves,  whereas  it  was  he  who  killed  them  By 
the  images  he  brought  before  their  mind,  he  made  th&n  think 
that  they  were  killing  themselves  "-—a  statement  at  variance 
with  the  one  last  given.5  Whereas  in  this  letter  he  suggests  that 
the  people  should  be  told  of  such  cases  from  the  pulpit  so  that 
they  may  not  despise  the  "  devil's  power  from  a  mistaken  sense 
of  security,"  previously,  in  conversation  he  had  declared,  that 
it  ought  not  to  be  admitted  publicly  that  such  persons  could  not 
be  damned  not  having  been  masters  of  themselves  :  "  They  do 

1  On  July  14,  1528,  "  Brief wechsel,"  6,  p.  299.     Cp.  Mathesius,  ib., 
p.  179  :    "  Nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  the  insane  are  not  with 
out  their  devils  ;    these  make  them  madder  ;    the  devil  knows  those 
who  are  of  a  melancholy  turn,  and  of  this  tool  he  makes  use."     Thus 
Luther  in  1540. 

2  "  Sic  informal  [diabolus]  animam  et  corpus,  ut  obsessi  nihil  audiant, 
videant,  sentiant  ;   sed  ipse  est  Us  pro  anima,"     Mathesius,  ib.,  p.  198 
(in  1540).    Cp.  also  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  60,  p.  13,  with  reference  to  1  Cor. 
v.  5.     The  passage  occurs  in  the  Table-Talk,  ch.  24,  No.  68.     Cp.  Erl. 
ed.,  vol.  59,  p.  289  to  vol.  60,  p.  75.    This  chapter  is  followed  by  others 
on  similar  subjects.      Demonology   occupies   altogether  a  very  large 
place.    Ch.  59,  "  On  the  Angels,"  comprises  hardly  four  pages. 

3  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  326  (in  1543). 

4  Dec.  1,  1544,  "  Brief e,"  ed.  De  Wette,  5,  p.  699  f. 

6  July  25,  1542  :  "  quitm  ipse  occiderit  eos  et  imaginatione  animis 
impressa  coegerit  eos  putare,  quod  se  ipsos  suspenderent." 


282          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

not  commit  this  wilfully,  but  are  impelled  to  it  by  the  devil.  .  .  , 
But  the  people  must  not  be  told  this."1  Speaking  of  a  woman 
who  was  sorely  tempted  and  worried,  he  said  to  his  friends,  in 
1543  :  "  Even  should  she  hang  herself  or  drown  herself  through 
it,  it  can  do  her  no  harm  ;  it  is  just  as  though  it  all  happened  in 
a  dream."  The  source  of  this  woman's  distress  was  her  low 
spirits  and  religious  doubts.2 


On  all  that  the  Devil  is  able  to  do 

Many,  in  Luther's  opinion,  had  been  snatched  off  alive 
by  the  devil,  particularly  when  they  had  made  a  compact 
or  had  dealings  with  him,  or  had  given  themselves  up  to 
him. 

For  instance,  he  had  carried  off  Pfeifer  of  Miihlberg,  not  far 
from  Erfurt,  and  also  another  man  of  the  same  name  at  Eisenach  ; 
indeed,  the  devil  had  fetched  the  latter  away  in  spite  of  his  being 
watched  by  the  preacher  Justus  'Menius  and  "  many  of  his 
clergymen,"  and  though  "  doors  and  windows  had  been  shut  so 
as  to  prevent  his  being  carried  away  "  ;  the  devil,  however, 
broke  away  some  tiles  "  round  the  stove  "  and  thus  got  in  ; 
finally  he  slew  his  victim  "  not  far  from  the  town  in  a  hazel 
thicket."3  Needless  to  say  it  is  a  great  crime  to  bargain  with  the 
devil. 4  This  Dr.  Eck  had  done  and  likewise  the  Elector  Joachim  I 
of  Brandenburg  (f!535),  who  wanted  to  live  another  fifteen  years  ; 
this,  however,  the  devil  did  not  allow. 5  Amsdorf  too  was  dragged 
into  the  diabolical  affair  ;  one  night  at  an  inn  two  dead  men 
appeared  to  him,  thanks  to  some  "  Satanic  art,"  and  compelled 
him  to  draw  up  a  document  in  writing  and  hand  it  over  to 
Joachim.  Two  spirits  assisted  on  the  occasion,  bearing  candles.6 

During  battles  the  devil  is  able  to  carry  men  off  more  easily, 
but  then  the  angels  also  kill  by  Divine  command,  as  the  Old 
Testament  bears  witness,  for  there  "  one  angel  could  cause  the 
death  of  many  persons."7  In  war  the  devil  is  at  work  and  makes 
use  of  the  newest  weapons  "  which  indeed  are  Satan's  own  inven 
tion,"  for  these  cannon  "  send  men  flying  into  the  air  "  and  that 

1  Schlaginhaufen,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  59.     Mathesius,  "  Aufzeichn.," 
p.  198. 

2  Mathesius,  ib.     Cp.  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  21,  p.  127. 

3  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  60,  p.  24  ;   cp.  pp.  25,  27. 

4  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  269  ;    "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  300. 

5  Mathesius,  in  both  the  passages  quoted.    Cp.  Lauterbach,  "  Tage- 
buch,"  p.  105  (1538) :    "  habuit  fcedus  cum  Sathana  ipse  et  pater  eius,  et 
foedissima  scortatione  occubuit  securissime." 

6  "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  1,  p.  207,  under  the  heading  "  Spectra." 
In  the  same  volume  pp.  218-242  treat  of  the  devil  under  the  heading 
"  Diabolus,  illius  natura,  conatus,  insidice,  figura,  expulsio."     In  the 
second  volume  the  ch.  on  "  tentationes,"  pp.  287-320,  and,  in  the  third, 
that  on  "  fascinationes  et  incantationes,"  pp.  9-14,  are  important. 

7  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  224  f.  (1540). 


DEVIL'S   POWER   FOR   EVIL        283 

"is  the  end  of  all  man's  strength."1  It  is  also  the  devil  who 
guides  the  sleep-walkers  "  so  that  they  do  everything  as  though 
wide  awake,"  "  but  still  there  is  something  wanting  and  some 
defect  apparent."2 

Elsewhere  too  Luther  discerns  the  work  of  the  devil  ;  for 
instance,  when  Satan  sends  a  number  of  strange  caterpillars  into 
his  garden,3  pilfers  things,  hampers  the  cattle  and  damages  the 
stalls4  and  interferes  with  the  preparation  of  the  cheese  and 
milk.5  "  Every  tree  has  its  lurking  demon.6  You  can  see  how, 
to  your  damage,  Satan  knocks  down  walls  and  palings  that 
already  totter  ;7  he  also  throws  you  down  the  stairs  so  as  to  make 
a  cripple  of  you.8 

In  cases  of  illness  it  is  the  devil  who  enables  the  Jews  to  be  so 
successful  in  effecting  cures,  more  particularly  in  the  case  of  the 
"  great  and  those  of  high  standing  "  ;9  on  the  other  hand  he  is 
also  able  maliciously  to  hinder  the  good  effect  of  any  medicine, 
as  Luther  himself  had  experienced  when  he  lay  sick  in  1537.  He 
can  alter  every  medicine  or  medicament  in  the  boxes,  so  that 
what  has  served  its  purpose  well  once  or  twice  no  longer  works 
at  all  ;  "  so  powerful  is  the  devil."10  Luther,  as  his  pupils  bear 
witness,  had  frequently  maintained  that  many  of  his  bodily 
ailments  were  inflicted  on  him  solely  by  the  devil's  hatred. 

Satan  is  a  great  foe  of  marriage  and  the  blessing  of  children. 
"  This  is  why  you  find  he  has  so  many  malicious  tricks  and  ways 
of  frightening  women  who  are  with  child,  and  causes  such  mis 
fortune,  cunning,  murder,  etc."11  "  Satan  bitterly  hates 
matrimony,"  he  says  in  1537, 12 and,  in  1540,  "he  has  great  power 
in  matrimonial  affairs,  for  unless  God  were  to  stand  by  us  how 
could  the  children  grow  up?"13  In  matrimonial  disputes  "the 
devil  shows  his  finger  "  ;  the  Pope  gets  along  easily,  "  he  simply 
dissolves  all  marriages  "  ;  but  we,  "  on  account  of  the  conten 
tions  instigated  by  the  devil,"  must  have  "  people  who  can  give 
advice."14 

Not  him  alone  but  many  others  had  the  devil  affrighted  by  the 
"noisy  spirits."15  These  noisy  spirits  were,  however,  far  more 
numerous  before  the  coming  of  the  Evangel.  They  were  looked 
upon,  quite  wrongly,  as  the  souls  of  the  dead,  and  Masses  and 
prayers  were  said  and  good  works  done  to  lay  them  to  rest  ;16 

1  Ib.,  p.  402  :    "  dixit  de  machinis  bellicis  et  bombardis,"  etc.  (1537). 
"  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  60,  p.  23. 

3  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  262  (1542-43). 

4  Ib.,  p.  380  (1536). 

5  Ib.,  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  32,  p.  291  :    "  We  see  how  the  milk  thieves 
and  other  witches  often  do  great  mischief  "  (1543).     Cp.  Lauterbach, 
"  Tagebuch,"  p.  121. 

6  Schlaginhaufen,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  117  (1532). 

7  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  59,  p.  304.  8  Ib.,  60,  p.  73. 
9  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  322  (1543).          10  Ib.,  p.  412  f. 

11  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  24,  p.  130  ;   Erl.  ed.,  182,  p.  70  (1530). 

12  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  395  f.  (1537).        13  Ib.,  p.  198  (1540). 
14  Ib.,  p.  240.  15  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  60,  p.  70. 


i  c 


Ib.,  Weim.  ed.,  10,  1,  1,  p.  585  ;   Erl.  ed.  102,  p.  354. 


284          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

but  now  "  you  know  very  well  who  causes  this  ;  you  know  it  is 
the  devil  ;  he  must  not  be  exorcised,1  rather  "  we  must  despise 
him  and  waken  our  holy  faith  against  him  ;2  we  must  be  willing 
to  abide  the  "  spooks  and  spirits  "  calmly  and  with  faith  if  God 
permits  them  to  "  exercise  their  wantonness  on  us  "  and  "  to 
affright  us."3  Nevertheless,  as  he  adds  with  much  truth,  "we 
must  not  be  too  ready  to  give  credence  to  everyone,  for  many 
people  are  given  to  inventing  such  things."4 

At  the  present  time  the  noisy  spirits  are  not  so  noticeable  ; 
"  among  us  they  have  thinned  "  ;5  the  chief  reason  is,  that  the 
devils  now  prefer  the  company  of  the  heretics,  anabaptists  and 
fanatics;6  for  Satan  "enters  into  men,  for  instance  into  the 
heretics  and  fanatics,  into  Miinzer  and  his  ilk,  also  into  the 
usurers  and  others  "  ;7  "  the  fanatic  spirits  are  greatly  on  the 
increase."8  The  false  teachers  prove  by  their  devilish  speech 
how  greatly  the  devil,  "  clever  and  dangerous  trickster  that  he 
is,"  "  can  deceive  the  hearts  and  consciences  of  men  and  hold 
them  captive  in  his  craze."  "  What  is  nothing  but  lies,  idle 
error  and  gruesome  darkness,  that  they  take  to  be  the  pure, 
unvarnished  truth  !  "9 

If  the  devil  can  thus  deceive  men's  minds,  surely  it  is  far  easier 
for  him  to  bewitch  their  bodily  senses.  "  He  can  hoax  and  cheat 
all  the  senses,"10  so  that  a  man  thinks  he  sees  something  that  he 
can't  see,  or  hears  what  isn't,  for  instance,  "thunder,  pipes  or 
bugle-calls."  Luther  fancies  he  finds  an  allusion  to  something  of 
the  sort  in  the  words  of  Paul  to  the  Galatians  iii.  1  :  "  Who  hath 
bewitched  you  before  whose  eyes  Jesus  Christ  hath  been  set 
forth  [that  you  should  not  obey  the  truth]  ?  )J11  Children  can  be 
bewitched  by  the  evil  eye  of  one  who  is  under  a  spell,  and  Jerome 
was  wrong  when  he  questioned  whether  the  illness  of  children  in 
a  decline  was  really  due  to  the  evil  eye.12  It  is  certain  that  "  by 
his  great  power  the  devil  is  able  to  blind  our  eyes  and  our  souls," 
as  he  did  in  the  case  of  the  woman  who  thought  she  was  wearing 
a  crown,  whereas  it  was  simply  "cow  dung."13  He  tells  how,  in 
Thuringia,  eight  hares  were  trapped,  which,  during  the  night, 

1  Ib.,  Erl.  ed.,  60,  p.  70.  Cp.  p.  31  and  Weim.  ed.,  10,  1,  1,  p.  585  ; 
Erl.  ed.,  102,  p.  354.  2  Ib.,  Erl.  ed.,  60,  p.  63. 

3  Ib.,  Weim.  ed.,  10,  1,  1,  p.  585  ;  Erl.  ed.,  102,  p.  354. 

4  Ib.,  Erl.  ed.,  60,  p.  63.  5  Ib.,  59,  p.  348.  6  Ib. 
7  Ib.,  60,  p.  70.                                8  Ib.,  59,  p.  348. 

9  Ib.,  Weim.  ed.,  40,  1,  p.  316  ;  Irmischer,  1,  p.  279,  in  the  fuller 
Commentary  on  Galatians  (1535).  Cp.  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden," 
p.  357  :  "  In  Antinomis  furit  Sathan  "  (1539).  Ib.,  p.  206  :  "  Ana- 
baptistce  non  intelligunt  iram  Dei,  sic  exccecantur  a  diabolo  ;  quare  non 
anguntur,  ut  sancti,  qui  hcec  omnia  sentiunt  ;  diabolus  enim  ipsorum  aures 
et  animos  tenet  occupatos,"  etc.  (1540). 

10  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  40,  1,  p.  316  ;  Irmischer,  1,  p.  279.        ll  Ib. 

12  Ib.,  Weim.  ed.,  2,  p.   505  f.  ;    Irmischer,  3,  p.   251,  in  the  first 
Commentary  on  Galatians. 

13  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  97  (1540).    Cp.  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed., 
1,  p.  409  ;    "Opp.  lat.  exeg.,"  12,  p.  23,  in  the  Exposition  6f  the  Ten 
Commandments,  1518. 


THE  DEVIL'S  DWELLING-PLACE    285 

were  changed  into  horses'  heads,  such  as  we  find  lying  on  the 
carrion  heap."1  Had  not  St.  Macarius  by  his  prayers  dispelled 
the  Satanic  delusion  by  which  a  girl  had  been  changed  into  a 
cow  in  the  presence  of  many  persons,  including  her  own  parents  ? 
The  distressed  parents  brought  their  daughter  in  the  semblance 
of  a  cow  to  Macarius  "  in  order  that  she  might  recover  her  human 
shape,"  and  "  the  Lord  did  in  point  of  fact  dissolve  the  spell 
whereby  men's  senses  had  been  misled."  Luther  several  times 
relates  this  incident,  both  in  conversation  and  in  writing.2 

There  is  certainly  no  lack  of  marvellous  tales  of  devils 
either  in  his  works  or  in  his  Table-Talk.3 

The  toils  of  the  sorcerer  are  everywhere.  Magic  may 
prove  most  troublesome  in  married  life,  more  particularly 
where  true  faith  is  absent  ;  for,  as  he  told  the  people  in  a 
sermon  on  May  8,  1524,  "  conjugal  impotence  is  sometimes 
produced  by  the  devil,  by  means  of  the  Black  Art  ;  in  the 
case  of  [true]  Christians,  however,  this  cannot  happen."4 


On  the  Abode  of  the  Devil ;   his  Shapes  and  Kinds 

It  is  worth  while  to  glance  at  what  Luther  says  of  the 
dwelling-places  of  the  devil,  the  different  shapes  he  is  wont 
to  assume,  and  the  various  categories  into  which  demons 
may  be  classed. 

First,  as  to  his  abode.  In  a  sermon  recently  published,  and 
dating  from  June  13,  1529,  Luther  says  :  "  The  devil  inhabits 
the  forests,  the  thickets,  and  the  waters,  and  insinuates  himself 
amongst  us  everywhere  in  order  to  destroy  us  ;  sleep  he  never 
does."  Preaching  in  the  hot  weather,  he  warns  his  hearers 
against  the  cool  waters  in  which  the  devil  lurks  :  "Be  careful 
about  bathing  in  the  cold  water.  .  .  .  Every  year  we  hear  of 
people  being  drowned  [by  the  devil]  through  bathing  in  the 
Elbe."5 

In  another  sermon  incorporated  in  the  Church-postils  he 
explains  how  in  countries  like  ours,  "  which  are  well  watered," 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  59,  p.  321. 

2  /&.,  Weim.  ed.,  40,  1,  pp.  315,  317,  319  ;   Irmischer,  1,  pp.  278,  280, 
283  ;  Erl.  ed.,  49,  p.  19,  in  the  Exposition  of  St.  John  xiv.-xvi.    Erl.  ed., 
59,  p.  335. 

3  Cp.,  for  instance,  Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  pp.  55,  111.  Mathesius, 
"  Tischreden,"    pp.    97,    130,    174,    198,    279,    380,    436.      "  Werke," 
Erl.  ed.,  59,  pp.  317,  320-323  ;    60,  pp.  24,  27,  57,  63,  71,  etc. 

4  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  15,  p.  560. 

5  /&.,   29,  p.   401.      Sermon  of   1529.      Similarly  in  the  sermon  of 
July  2,  1536,  ib.,  41,  p.  633.    Cp.  N.  Paulus,  "  Hexenwahn  "  (see  above, 
p.  278,  n.  1),  p.  31. 


286          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

the  devils  are  fond  of  infesting  the  waters  and  the  swamps ; 
they  sometimes  drown  those  who  venture  there  to  bathe  or  even 
to  walk.  Item,  in  some  places  Naiades  are  to  be  met  with  who 
entice  the  children  to  the  water's  edge,  drag  them  in  and  drown 
them  :  all  these  are  devils.1  Such  devils  can  commit  fornication 
with  the  maidens,  and  "  are  able  to  beget  children  which  are 
simply  devils  "  ;2  for  the  devil  will  often  drag  a  girl  into  the  water, 
get  her  with  child  and  keep  her  by  him  until  she  has  borne  her 
baby  ;  he  then  lays  these  children  in  other  people's  cradles, 
removing  the  real  children  and  carrying  them  off.3 

Elsewhere  the  devils  prefer  "  bare  and  desolate  regions," 
"  woods  and  wildernesses."4  "  Some  are  to  be  found  in  the 
thick  black  clouds,  these  cause  hailstorms,  thunder  and  lightning, 
and  poison  the  air,  the  pastures,  etc."  Hence  "  philosophi  " 
ought  not  to  go  on  explaining  these  phenomena  as  though  they 
were  natural.5  Further,  the  devil  has  a  favourite  dwelling-place 
deep  down  in  the  earth,  in  the  mines,  where  he  "  pesters  and 
deceives  people,"  showing  them  for  instance  what  appears  to  be 
"  solid  silver,  whereas  it  is  nothing  of  the  kind."6  "  Satan  hides 
himself  in  the  apes  and  long- tailed  monkeys,"  who  lie  in  wait 
for  men  and  with  whom  it  is  wrong  to  play.7  That  he  inhabits 
these  creatures,  and  also  the  parrots,  is  plain  from  their  skill  in 
imitating  human  beings.8 

In  some  countries  many  more  devils  are  to  be  found  than  in 
others.  "  There  are  many  evil  spirits  in  Prussia  and  also  in 
Pilappen  [Lapland]."  In  Switzerland  the  devils  make  a  "  fright 
ful  to-do  "  in  the  "  Pilatus  tarn  not  far  from  Lucerne  "  ;  in 
Saxony,  "  in  the  Poltersberg  tarn,"  things  are  almost  as  bad,  for 
if  a  stone  be  thrown  in,  it  arouses  a  "  great  tempest.""  "  Damp 
and  stuffy  places  "  are  however  the  devils'  favourite  resort.10  He 
was  firmly  convinced  that  in  the  moist  and  swampy  districts  of 
Saxony  all  the  devils  "  that  Christ  drove  out  of  the  swine  in 
Jerusalem  and  Judaea  had  congregated  "  ;  "so  much  thieving, 
sorcery  and  pilfering  goes  on  that  the  Evil  One  must  indeed  be 
present  in  person."11  The  fact  of  so  many  devils  inhabiting 
Saxony  was  perhaps  the  reason,  so  he  adds  quaintly  enough, 
"  why  the  Evangel  had  to  be  preached  there,  i.e.  that  they  might 
be  chased  away."  It  was  for  this  reason,  so  he  repeats,  "  that 
Christ  came  amongst  the  Wends  [Prussians],  the  worst  of  all 
the  nations,  in  order  to  destroy  the  work  of  Satan  and  to  drive 
out  the  devils  who  there  abide  among  the  peasants  and  towns- 

"  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  II2,  p.  136.     Sermon  on  Oculi  Sunday. 
Mathesius,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  248. 
"  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  60,  p.  22.    Cp.  p.  38  f. 
16.,  II2,  p.  136.  5  /&.,  59,  p.  287.  6  /&.,  p.  324. 

Lauterbach,    "  Tagebuch,"   p.    110.      "  Colloq.,"   ed.   Bindseil,   2, 
p.  108. 

8  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  179  ;    "  Aufzeichn.,"  pp.  87,  127. 

9  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  60,  p.  13. 

10  Ib.,  59,  p.  287.    There  ever  was  a  widespread  tendency  to  connect 
the  Evil  One  with  the  water. 

11  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  380  (1536). 


THE   DEVIL'S   SHAPES  287 

people."1  That  he  was  disposed  to  believe  that  a  number,  by  no 
means  insignificant,  of  devils  could  assemble  in  one  place  is  plain 
from  several  statements  such  as,  that  at  the  Wartburg  he  him 
self  had  been  plagued  by  "a  thousand  devils,"  that  at  Augsburg 
every  bishop  had  brought  as  many  devils  with  him  to  the  Diet 
as  a  dog  has  fleas  in  hot  weather,  and,  finally,  that  at  Worms 
their  number  was  probably  not  far  short  of  the  tiles  on  the  roofs. 

The  forms  the  devil  assumes  when  he  appears  to  men  are  very 
varied  ;  to  this  the  accounts  sufficiently  bear  witness. 

He  appeared  as  a  goat,2  and  often  as  a  dog  ;3  he  tormented  a 
sick  woman  in  the  shape  of  a  calf  from  which  Luther  set  her  free 
— at  least  for  one  night.4  He  is  fond  of  changing  himself  into 
cats  and  other  animals,  foxes,  hares,  etc.,  "  without,  however, 
assuming  greater  powers  than  are  possessed  by  such  animals."5 
The  semblance  of  the  serpent  is  naturally  very  dear  to  the  devil. 
To  a  sick  girl  at  Wittenberg  with  whom  Luther  happened  to  be, 
he  appeared  under  the  form  of  Christ,  but  afterwards  transformed 
himself  into  a  serpent  and  bit  the  girl's  ear  till  the  blood  came. 6 
The  devil  comes  as  Christ  or  as  a  good  angel,  so  as  to  be  the  better 
able  to  tempt  people.  He  has  been  seen  and  heard  under  the  guise 
of  a  hermit,  of  a  holy  monk,  and  even,  so  the  tale  runs,  of  a  preacher ; 
the  latter  had  "  preached  so  earnestly  that  the  whole  church  was 
reduced  to  tears  "  ;  whereupon  he  showed  himself  as  the  devil  ; 
but  "  whether  this  story  be  true  or  not,  I  leave  you  to  decide."7 
The  form  of  a  satyr  suits  him  better,  what  we  now  call  a  hob 
goblin  ;  in  this  shape  he  "  frequently  appeared  to  the  heathen  in 
order  to  strengthen  them  in  their  idolatry."8  A  prettier  make 
under  which  he  appears  is  that  of  the  "  brownie  "  ;  it  was  in  this 
guise  that  he  was  wont  to  sit  on  a  clean  corner  of  the  hearthstone 
beside  a  maid  who  had  strangled  her  baby.9  From  the  behaviour 
of  the  devils  we  may  infer  that,  "  so  far  they  are  not  undergoing 
any  punishment  though  they  have  already  been  sentenced,  for 
were  they  being  punished  they  would  not  play  so  many  roguish 
tricks."10 

Amongst  the  different  kinds  of  devils  he  enumerates,  using 
names  which  recall  the  humorous  ones  common  in  the  old  folk 
lore  of  Germany,  are  not  merely  the  stupid,  the  playful,  the  mali 
cious  and  the  murderous  fiends,  but  also  the  more  sightly  ones,11 

1  Ib.,  p.  118  (1540). 

"  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  59,  p.  340.  3  Ib.,  60,  pp.  64,  66. 

Ib.,  59,  p.  138. 

Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  129  (1540). 

"  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  58,  p.  129.     The  account  assures  us  that  he 
claimed  to  have  seen  the  apparition  himself. 

Ib.,  31,  p.  363. 

"  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,   25,  p.    140,  in  the  shorter  Exposition  of 
Isaias  iii.  21. 

9  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  60,  p.  71. 

10  Mathesius,  "Tischreden,"  p.  300  (1542-44). 

11  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  60,  p.  73. 


288          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

viz.  the  familiar  and  friendly  demons  ;  then  again  there  are  the 
childish  little  devils  who  allure  to  unchastity  and  so  forth  though 
not  to  unbelief  or  despair  like  the  more  dangerous  ones.1  He  is 
familiar  with  angelic,  shining,  white  and  holy  devils,  i.e.  who 
pretend  to  be  such,  also  with  black  devils  and  the  "  supreme 
majestic  devil."  The  majestic  devil  wants  to  be  worshipped  like 
God,  and,  in  this,  being  "so  quick-witted,"  he  actually  succeeded 
in  the  ages  before  Luther's  day,  for  "  the  Pope  worshipped  him."2 
The  devil  repaid  the  Pope  by  bewitching  the  world  in  his  favour  ; 
he  brought  him  a  large  following  and  wrought  much  harm  by 
means  "  of  lies  and  magic,"  doing  on  a  vast  scale  what  the 
"  witches  "  do  in  a  smaller  way.3 

There  are  further,  as  Luther  jestingly  explains,  house-devils, 
Court-devils  and  church-devils  ;  of  these  "  the  last  are  the  worst." 4 
"  Boundless  is  the  devils'  power,"  he  says  elsewhere,  "  and  count 
less  their  number  ;  nor  are  they  all  childish  little  devils,  but 
great  national  devils,  devils  of  the  sovereigns,  devils  of  the  Church, 
who,  with  their  five  thousand  years'  experience,  have  grown  very 
knowing  ...  in  fact,  far  too  cunning  for  us  in  these  latter  days."5 
"  Satan  knows  his  business  and  no  one  but  Jesus  Christ  can  cope 
with  him."6  Very  dangerous  indeed  are  the  Court-devils,  who 
"never  rest,"  but  "busy  themselves  at  Court,  and  work  all  the 
mischief  in  the  councils  of  the  kings  and  rulers,  thwarting  all 
that  is  good  ;  for  the  devil  has  some  fine  rakehells  at  Court."7 
As  for  the  noisy  devils,  they  had  troubled  him  even  in  his  youth.8 

The  Papists  have  their  own  devils  who  work  supposed  miracles 
on  their  behalf,  for  the  wonders  which  occur  amongst  them  at  the 
places  of  pilgrimage  or  elsewhere  in  answer  to  their  prayers  are 
not  real  miracles  but  devil's  make-believe.  In  fact,  Satan  fre 
quently  makes  a  person  appear  ill,  and,  then,  by  releasing  him 
from  the  spell,  cures  him  again.9 

The  above  ideas  Luther  had  to  a  large  extent  borrowed 
from  the  past,  indeed  we  may  say  that  the  gist  of  his  fancies 
concerning  the  devil  was  but  part  of  the  great  legacy  of 
credulity,  folk-lore  and  the  mistaken  surmises  of  theologians 
handed  down  verbally  and  in  writing  from  the  Middle  Ages. 
Only  an  age-long  accumulation  of  prejudice,  rife  particu 
larly  among  the  Saxon  people,  can  explain  Luther's  rooted 
attachment  to  such  a  congeries  of  wild  fancies. 

1  Ib.,  59,  p.  294  ;   cp.  60,  p.  123.     "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  1,  pp.  235, 
318.      For   an  explanation   of  the   word  here  used  see   Forstemann, 
"  Tischreden,"  3,  p.  132,  n.  3. 

2  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  192,  p.  281  f. 

3  Ib.,  32,  p.  291  in  "  Vom  Schem  Hamphoras,"  1543. 

4  Mathesius,  "Tischreden,"  p.  258  (1542-43). 

5  "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  1,  p.  208.  6  Ib.,  p.  218. 

7  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  46,  p.  211  f.,  in  the  Exposition  of  John  i.  and  ii. 
(1537-38).  8  Ib.,  60,  p.  70. 

9  "  Werke,"  WTeim.  ed,,  40,  1,  p.  315  ;   Irmischer,  1,  p.  277  sq. 


WITCHCRAFT   AND   SORCERY       289 

Assisted  by  the  credulity  of  Melanchthon  and  other  of  his 
associates  Luther  not  only  added  to  the  number  of  such 
ideas,  but,  thanks  to  his  gift  of  vivid  portraiture,  made  them 
far  more  strong  and  life-like  than  before.  Through  his  widely- 
read  works  he  introduced  them  into  circles  in  which  they 
were  as  yet  scarcely  known,  and,  in  particular,  established 
them  firmly  in  the  Lutheran  world  for  many  an  age  to  come. 

The  Devil  and  the  Witches 

"  It  is  quite  certain,"  says  Paulus  in  his  recent  critical 
study  of  the  history  of  witchcraft,  "  that  Luther  in  his  ideas 
on  witchcraft  was  swayed  by  mediaeval  opinion."  "  In 
many  directions  the  innovators  in  the  16th  century  shook 
off  the  yoke  of  the  Middle  Ages  ;  why  then  did  they  hold 
fast  to  the  belief  in  witches  ?  Why  did  Luther  and  many 
of  his  followers  even  outstrip  the  Middle  Ages  in  the  stress 
they  laid  on  the  work  of  the  devil  ?  '?1 

Paulus  here  touches  upon  a  question  which  the  Protestant 
historian,  Walter  Kohler,  had  already  raised,  viz.  :  "  Is  it 
possible  to  explain  the  Reformers'  attachment  to  the  belief  in 
witchcraft  simply  on  the  score  that  they  received  it  from  the 
Middle  Ages  ?  How  did  they  treat  mediaeval  tradition  in  other 
matters  ?  Why  then  was  their  attitude  different  here  ?  "2 

G.  Steinhausen,  in  his  "  Geschichte  der  deutschen  Kultur," 
writes  :  "  No  one  ever  insisted  more  strongly  than  Luther  on 
his  role  [the  devil's] ;  he  was  simply  carried  away  by  the  idea.  .  .  . 
Though  in  his  words  and  the  stories  he  tells  of  the  devil  he  speaks 
the  language  of  the  populace,  yet  the  way  in  which  he  weaves 
diabolical  combats  and  temptations  into  man's  whole  life  is  both 
new  and  unfortunate.  Every  misfortune,  war  and  tempest, 
every  sickness,  plague,  crime  and  deformity  emanates  from  the 
Evil  One."8 

Some  of  what  Luther  borrowed  from  the  beliefs  of  his  own 
day  goes  back  to  pre-Christian  times.  The  belief  in  witches 
comprised  much  heathen  tradition  too  deeply  rooted  for  the  early 
missionaries  to  eradicate.  Moreover,  certain  statements  of  olden 
ecclesiastical  writers  incautiously  exploited  enabled  even  the 
false  notions  of  the  ancient  Grseco-Roman  world  to  become  also 
current.  Fear  of  hidden,  dangerous  forces,  indiscriminating  repe 
tition  of  alleged  incidents  from  the  unseen,  the  ill-advised  dis 
cussions  of  certain  theologians  and  thoughtless  sermons  of  popu 
lar  orators,  all  these  causes  and  others  contributed  to  produce 

1  "  Hexenwahn  "  (see  above,  p.  278,  n.  1),  pp.  45,  67. 

2  "  Theol.  Literaturztng.,"  1909,  p.  147.    Paulus,  ib.,  p.  46. 

3  Leipzig,  1904,  p.  518.     Cp.  Paulus,  ib.,  pp.  1-10. 

V. — U 


290          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

the  crass  belief  in  witches  as  it  existed  even  before  Luther's  day 
at  the  close  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  such  as  we  find  it,  for  instance, 
in  the  sermons  of  Geiler  von  Kaysersberg. 

The  famous  Strasburg  preacher  not  only  accepted  it  as  an 
undoubted  fact,  that  witches  were  able  with  the  devil's  help  to 
do  all  kinds  of  astounding  deeds,  but  he  also  takes  for  granted 
the  possibility  of  their  making  occasional  aerial  trips,  though  it 
is  true  he  dismisses  the  nocturnal  excursions  of  the  women  with 
Diana,  Venus  and  Herodias  as  mere  diabolical  delusion.  He 
himself  never  formally  demanded  the  death-penalty  for  witches, 
but  it  may  be  inferred  that  he  quite  countenanced  the  severe 
treatment  advocated  in  the  "  Witches'  Hammer."  In  his  remarks 
on  witches  he  follows  partly  Martin  Plantsch,  the  Tubingen  priest 
and  University  professor,  partly,  and  still  more  closely,  the 
"  Formicarius "  of  the  learned  Dominican  Johannes  Nider 
(1380-1438).1 

Concerning  the  witches  and  their  ways  Luther's  works 
contain  an  extraordinary  wealth  of  information. 

In  the  sermons  he  delivered  on  the  Ten  Commandments 
as  early  as  1516  and  1517,  and  which,  in  1518,  he  published 
in  book  form,2  he  took  over  an  abundance  of  superstition 
from  the  beliefs  current  amongst  the  people,  and  from  such 
writers  as  Geiler.  In  1518  and  1519  were  published  no  less 
than  five  editions  in  Latin  of  the  sermons  on  the  Decalogue  ; 
the  book  was  frequently  reprinted  separately  and  soon  made 
its  appearance  in  Latin  in  some  collections  of  Luther's 
writings  ;  later  on  it  figures  in  the  complete  Latin  editions 
of  his  works  ;  six  German  editions  of  it  had  appeared  up  to 
1520  and  it  is  also  comprised  in  the  German  collections  of 
his  works.  In  his  old  age,  when  the  "  evils  of  sorcery  seemed 
to  be  gaining  ground  anew,"  he  deemed  it  "  necessary,"  as 
"he  said,3  "to  bring  out  the  book  once  more  with  his  own 
hand  "  ;  certain  tales,  amongst  which  he  instances  one 
concerning  the  devil's  cats  and  a  young  man,  might  serve  to 
demonstrate  "  the  power  and  malice  of  Satan  "  to  all  the 
world.  One  cannot  but  regard  it  as  a  mistake  on  Luther's 
part,  when,  in  his  sermons  on  the  Ten  Commandments,  he 
takes  his  hearers  and  readers  into  the  details  of  the  magic 

1  Cp.  Paulus,  ib.,  pp.  1-19. 

2  "  Werke,"    Weim.    ed.,    1,   p.    398   ff.  ;    "  Opp.    lat.    exeg.,"    12, 
p.  3  sqq. 

3  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  129  (1540)  :    "  hoc  malum  (sagarum) 
invalescit  iterum."    In  1519  he  had  lamented  that  "  this  evil  is  notice 
ably  on  the  increase."     "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  2,  p.  590  ;   Irmiseher,  3, 
p.  426,  first  Commentary  on  Galatians. 


WITCHCRAFT  AND   SORCERY       291 

and  work  of  the  witches,  though  at  the  same  time  emphasis 
ing  very  strongly  the  unlawfulness  of  holding  any  com 
munication  with  Satan.  This  stricture  tells,  however,  as 
much  against  many  a  Catholic  writer  of  that  day. 

It  is  in  his  commentary  on  the  1st  Commandment  that  he  gives 
us  a  first  glimpse  into  the  world  of  witches  which  later  was  to 
engross  his  attention  even  more. 

He  is  anxious  to  bring  home  to  the  "  weaklings  "  how  one  can 
sin  against  the  1st  Commandment.1  He  therefore  enumerates 
all  the  darkest  deeds  of  human  superstition  ;  of  their  reality  he 
was  firmly  convinced,  and  only  seldom  does  he  speak  merely  of 
their  "  possibility,"  or  say,  "  it  is  believed  "  that  this  or  that  took 
place.  He  also  divides  into  groups  the  people  who  sin  against 
the  virtue  of  Divine  love,  doing  so  according  to  their  age,  and 
somewhat  on  the  lines  of  a  Catechism,  in  order  that  "  the  facts 
may  be  more  easily  borne  in  mind." 

"  The  third  group,"  he  says,  "  is  that  of  the  old  women,  etc." 
"  By  their  magic  they  are  able  to  bring  on  blindness,  cause  sick 
ness,  kill,  etc."2  "  Some  of  them  have  their  fireside  devil  who 
comes  several  times  a  day."  "  There  are  incubi  and  succubi 
amongst  the  devils,"  who  commit  lewdness  with  witches  and 
others.  Devil-strumpetry  and  ordinary  harlotry  are  amongst  the 
sins  of  these  women.  Luther  also  speaks  of  magic  potions, 
desecration  of  the  sacrament  in  the  devil's  honour,  and  secret 
incantations  productive  of  the  most  marvellous  effects. 

His  opinion  he  sums  up  as  follows  :  "  What  the  devil  himself 
is  unable  to  do,  that  he  does  by  means  of  old  hags  "  ;3  "  he  is  a 
powerful  god  of  this  world  "  ;4  "  the  devil  has  great  power 
through  the  sorceresses."5  He  prefers  thus  to  make  use  of  the 
female  sex  because,  "it  comes  natural  to  them  ever  since  the 
time  of  Mother  Eve  to  let  themselves  be  duped  and  fooled."6 
"  It  is  as  a  rule  a  woman's  way  to  be  timid  and  afraid  of  every 
thing,  hence  they  practise  so  much  magic  and  superstition,  the 
one  teaching  the  other."7  Even  in  Paradise,  so  he  says,  the  devil 
approached  the  woman  rather  than  the  man,  she  being  the 
weaker.8 

It  is  worthy  of  note  that  he  does  not  merely  base  his  belief  in 
witchcraft  on  the  traditions  of  the  past  but  preferably  on  Scrip 
ture  directly,  and  the  power  of  Satan  to  which  it  bears  witness. 

In  1519  he  had  attempted  to  prove  on  St.  Paul's  authority 
against  the  many  who  refused  to  believe  in  such  things,  that 
sorcery  can  cause  harm,  omitting,  however,  to  make  the  neces- 

"  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  1,  p.  401  ;    "  Opp.  lat.  exeg.,"  12,  p.  7. 

Ib.,  p.  406  f.- 16. 

Ib.,  Erl.  ed.,  60,  p.  57  (heading).  4  16.,  p.  79. 

Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  129  (1540). 

"  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  1,  p.  406  f.  ;    "  Opp.  lat.  exeg.,"  12,  p.  20. 

16.,  12,  p.  345.    Sermon  of  1523. 

"  Opp.  lat.  exeg.,"  1,  p.  190. 


292          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

sary  distinctions.1  In  1538  he  declares  :  "  The  devil  is  a  great 
and  powerful  enemy.  Verily  I  believe,  that,  unless  children  were 
baptised  at  an  early  age  no  congregations  could  be  formed  ;  for 
adults,  who  know  the  power  of  Satan,  would  not  submit  to  be 
baptised  so  as  to  avoid  undertaking  the  baptismal  vows  by  which 
they  renounce  Satan."2 

In  the  Commentary  on  Galatians  he  not  merely  appeals  anew 
to  the  apostolic  authority  in  support  of  his  doctrine  concerning 
the  devil,  but  also  directly  bases  his  belief  in  witchcraft  on  the 
principle,  that  it  is  plain  that  Satan  "rules  and  governs  the  whole 
world,"  that  we  are  but  guests  in  the  world,  of  which  the  devil  is 
prince  and  god  and  controls  everything  by  which  we  live  :  food, 
drink,  clothing,  air,  etc."3  By  means  of  sorcery  he  is  able  to 
strangle  and  slay  us  ;  through  the  agency  of  his  whores  and  sor 
ceresses,  the  witches,  he  is  able  to  hurt  the  little  children,  with 
palpitations,  blindness,  etc.  "  Nay,  he  is  able  to  steal  a  child 
and  lay  himself  in  the  cradle  in  its  stead,  for  I  myself  have  heard 
of  such  a  child  in  Saxony  whom  five  women  were  not  able  to 
supply  with  sufficient  milk  to  quiet  it  ;  and  there  are  many 
such  instances  to  be  met  with."4 

The  numerous  other  instances  of  harm  wrought  by  witches 
with  which  he  is  acquainted,  such  as  the  raising  of  storms,  thefts 
of  milk,  eggs  and  butter,5  the  laying  of  snares  to  entrap  men, 
tears  of  blood  that  flow  from  the  eyes,  lizards  cast  up  from  the 
stomach,6  etc.,  all  recede  into  the  background  in  comparison 
with  the  harlotry,  substitution  of  children,  etc.,  which  the  devil 
carries  out  with  the  witches'  help.  "It  is  quite  possible  that, 
as  the  story  goes,  the  Evil  Spirit  can  carnally  know  the  sorceresses, 
get  them  with  child  and  cause  all  manner  of  mischief."7  Change 
ling  children  of  the  sort  are  nothing  but  a  "  lump  of  flesh  without 
a  soul  "  ;  the  devil  is  the  soul,  as  Luther  says  elsewhere,8  for 
which  reason  he  declared,  in  1541,  such  children  should  simply  be 
drowned  ;  he  recalls  how  he  had  already  given  this  advice  in  one 
such  case  at  Dessau,  viz.  that  such  a  child,  then  twelve  years  of 
age,  should  be  smothered.9 

It  sometimes  happens,  so  he  says,  that  animals,  cats  for  in 
stance,  intent  on  doing  harm,  are  wounded  and  that  afterwards 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  2,  p.  590  ;   Irmischer,  3,  p.  426. 

2  Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  156  ;   Nov.  4,  1538. 

3  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  40,  1,  p.  314  ff.  ;    Irmischer,  1,  p.  277  sqq., 
detailed  Commentary  on  Galatians  which  is  fuller  on  the  question  of 
sorcery   than   the    Commentary   of    1519    ("  Werke,"    Weim.    ed.,    2, 
p.  590  ;   Irmischer,  3,  p.  426). 

4  16.,  40,  1,  p.  314  ;   Irmischer,  1,  p.  277. 

5  Lauterbach,    "  Tagebuch,"    p.    121.      Mathesius,    "  Tischreden," 
p.  380.     "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  3,  p.  12. 

6  See  Lauterbach's  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  117,  for  both. 

7  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  24,  p.  162  ;   Erl.  ed.,  33,  p.  161.      Cp.  Erl. 
ed.,  60,  pp.  37,  39. 

8  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  198  (1540).     "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  60, 
p.  39  f. 

9  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  198.     "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  60,  p.  40. 


WITCHCRAFT   AND    SORCERY       293 

the  witches  are  found  to  have  wounds  in  the  same  part  of  the 
body.  In  such  case  the  animals  were  all  sham. l  A  mouse  trying 
to  steal  milk  is  hurt  somewhere,  and  the  next  day  the  witch  comes 
and  begs  for  oil  for  the  wound  which  she  has  in  the  very  same 
place. 2  If  milk  and  butter  are  placed  on  coals  the  devil,  he  says, 
will  be  obliged  to  call  up  the  witches  who  did  the  mischief.3  "  It 
is  also  said  that  people  who  eat  butter  that  has  been  bewitched, 
eat  nothing  but  mud."4 

In  such  metamorphoses  into  animals  it  was  not,  however,  the 
witches  who  underwent  the  change,  nor  were  the  animals  really 
hurt,  but  it  was  "  the  devil  who  transformed  himself  into  the 
animal  "  which  was  only  apparently  wounded  ;  afterwards, 
however,  "  he  imprints  the  marks  of  the  wounds  on  the  women 
so  as  to  make  them  believe  they  had  taken  part  in  the  occurrence." 6 
At  any  rate  this  is  the  curiously  involved  explanation  he  once 
gives  of  the  difficult  problem. 

In  some  passages  he,  like  others  too,  is  reluctant  to  accept  the 
theory  that  afterwards  grew  so  prevalent,  particularly  during 
the  witch  persecutions  in  the  17th  century,  viz.  that  the  witches 
were  in  the  habit  of  flying  through  the  air.  In  1540  he  says  that 
this,  like  the  changes  mentioned  above,  was  merely  conjured  up 
before  the  mind  by  the  devil,  and  was  thus  a  delusion  of  the 
senses  and  a  Satanic  deception.6  Yet  in  1538  he  assumes  that  it 
was  in  Satan's  power  to  carry  those  who  had  surrendered  them 
selves  to  him  bodily  through  the  air  ;7  he  had  heard  of  one  instance 
where  even  repentance  and  confession  could  not  save  such  a  man, 
when  at  the  point  of  death,  from  being  carried  off  by  the  devil. 
At  an  earlier  date  he  had  spoken  without  any  hesitation  of  the 
witches  who  ride  "  on  goats  and  broom-sticks  and  travel  on 
mantles."8 

The  witches  are  the  most  credulous  and  docile  tools  of  the 
devil  ;  they  are  his  hand  and  foot  for  the  harm  of  mankind. 
They  are  "  devil's  own  whores  who  give  themselves  up  to  Satan 
and  with  whom  he  holds  fleshly  intercourse."9 

"  Such  persons  ought  to  be  hurried  to  justice  ('  supplicia  '). 
The  lawyers  want  too  much  evidence,  they  despise  these 
open  and  flagrant  proofs."  When  questioned  on  the  rack 

1  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  129  (1540). 

2  Ib.,  p.  380  (1536). 

3  Lauterbach,  "   Tagebuch,"    p.    121.     "  Colloq.,"    ed.  Bindseil,   3, 
p.  12.  4  Lauterbach,  ib. 

5  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  129. 

6  Ib.  :    there  is  no   "  motus  de  loco"  etc.,   all  this   "  phantasm,ata 
sunt."      Similarly  in   "  Werke,"   Weim.   ed.,    1,   p.    409  ;     "  Opp.   lat. 
exeg.,"  12,  p.  17  sq.  :    the  metamorphosis  of  old  women  into  tom-cats 
and  the  nocturnal  excursions  of  the  witches  to  banquets  are  "  delusions 
of    the    devil,    not    actual    occurrences  "  ;     he,    however,    admits    the 
possibility.  7  Lauterbach,  "Tagebuch,"  p.  111. 

8  See  Paulus,  ib.,  pp.  25  ft,  49. 

9  Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  111. 


294          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

they  answer  nothing,  "  they  are  dumb,  they  despise  punish 
ment,  the  devil  will  not  let  them  speak.  Such  deeds  are, 
however,  evidence  enough,  and  for  the  sake  of  frightening 
others  they  ought  to  be  made  an  example."1 

"  Show  them  no  mercy  !  "  so  he  has  it  on  another  occasion. 
"  I  would  burn  them  myself,  as  we  read  in  the  Law  [of 
Moses]  that  the  priests  led  the  way  in  stoning  the  evil 
doer."2  And  yet  here  all  the  ado  was  simply  about  ...  a 
theft  of  milk  !  But  sorcery  as  such  was  regarded  by  him  as 
"  lese  majeste  "  [against  God],  as  a  rebellion,  a  crime  whereby 
the  Divine  Majesty  is  insulted  in  the  worst  possible  of  ways. 
"  Hence  it  is  rightly  punished  by  bodily  pains  and  death."3 
He  first  expresses  himself  in  favour  of  the  death-penalty 
in  a  sermon  in  1526, 4  and  to  this  point  of  view  he  adhered 
to  the  end.5 

Luther's  words  and  his  views  on  witches  generally  became 
immensely  popular.  The  invitation  to  persecute  the  witches 
was  read  in  the  German  Table-Talk  compiled  by  Aurifaber 
and  published  at  Eisleben  in  1566.  It  reappeared,  together 
with  the  rest  of  the  contents,  in  the  two  reprints  published 
at  Frankfurt  in  1567,  also  in  the  new  edition  which  Aurifaber 
himself  undertook  in  1568,  as  well  as  in  the  Frankfurt  and 
Eisleben  editions  of  1569. 6  Not  only  were  the  people 
exhorted  to  persecute  the  witches,  but,  intermixed  with  the 
other  matter,  we  find  all  sorts  of  queer  witch-stories  just  of 
the  type  to  call  up  innumerable  imitations.  He  relates,  for 
instance,  the  experiences  of  his  own  mother  with  a  neighbour 
who  was  a  "  sorceress,"  who  used  to  "  shoot  at  her  children 
so  that  they  screamed  themselves  to  death  "  ;  also  the  tale 
told  him  by  Spalatin,  in  1538,  of  a  little  maid  at  Altenburg 

1  Ib.,  p.  117,  Aug.  20,  1538. 

2  16.,  p.  121,  Aug.  25,  1538.     "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  3,  p.  12. 

3  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  60,  p.  79. 

4  "Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  16,  p.  551  (" occidantur"  etc.). 

5  See  Paulus,  ib.,  p.  43  f.,  where  he  quotes  Luther's  "  Von  den 
Conciliis  und  Kirchen  "   (1539),  in  support  of  the  duty  of  burning 
witches  on  account  of  their  compact  with  the  devil,  quite  apart  from 
the  harm  they  may  cause — "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  252,  p.  441  f.  :    The 
witches  or  "  devil's  whores,  who  are  burnt  at  the  stake  whenever  they 
are  caught,  as  is  right,  not  for  stealing  milk  but  because  of  the  blasphemy 
by  which  they  strengthen  the  cause  of  the  devil,  his  sacraments  and 
Churches." 

6  Cp.  the  Eisleben  edition  (1569),  pp.  280,  280'  :    "  They  should  be 
hurried  to  the  stake.     The  lawyers  require  too  many  witnesses  and 
proofs,  they  despise  these  open,  etc."     The  same  occurs  in  the  Frank 
furt  edition  (1568),  p.  218'. 


WITCHCRAFT   AND   SORCERY       295 

over  whom  a  spell  had  been  cast  by  a  witch  and  who  "  shed 
tears  of  blood." 

The  demonological  literature  which  soon  assumed  huge 
proportions  and  of  which  by  far  the  greater  part  emanated 
from  the  pen  of  Protestant  writers,  appealed  constantly  to 
Luther,  and  reproduced  his  theories  and  stories,  and  like 
wise  his  demands  that  measures  should  be  taken  for  the 
punishment  of  the  witches.  It  may  suffice  to  draw  attention 
to  the  curious  book  entitled  "  Pythonissa,  i.e.  twenty-eight 
sermons  on  witches  and  ghosts,"  by  the  preacher  Bernard 
Waldschmidt  of  Frankfurt.  He  demonstrates  from  Luther's 
Table-Talk  that  the  devil  was  able  to  assume  all  kinds  of 
shapes,  for  instance,  of  "  cats,  goats,  foxes,  hares,  etc.,"  just 
as  he  had  appeared  at  Wittenberg  in  Luther's  presence,  first 
as  Christ,  and  then  as  a  serpent.1 

Many  Lutheran  preachers  and  religious  writers  were  accus 
tomed  to  remind  the  people  not  only  of  the  tales  in  the  Table- 
Talk,  but  also  of  what  was  contained  in  the  early  exposition  of 
the  Ten  Commandments,  in  the  Prayer-book  of  1522  and  in  the 
Church-postils,  Commentary  on  Galatians,  etc.  Books  of  instances 
such  as  those  of  Andreas  Hondorf  in  1568  and  Wolfgang  Biittner 
in  1576  made  these  things  widely  known.  David  Meder,  Lutheran 
preacher  at  Nebra  in  Thuringia,  in  his  "  Eight  witch-sermons  " 
(1605),  referred  in  the  first  sermon  to  the  Table-Talk,  also  to 
Luther's  exposition  of  the  Decalogue,  to  his  Commentary  on 
Genesis  and  his  work  "  Von  den  Conciliis  und  Kirchen."  Bernard 
Albrecht,  the  Augsburg  preacher,  in  his  work  on  witches,  1628, 
G.  A.  Scribonius,  J.  C.  Godelmann  and  N.  Gryse  all  did  the  same. 

In  what  esteem  Luther's  sayings  were  held  by  thp  Protestant 
lawyers  is  plain  from  certain  memoranda  of  the  eminent  Frank 
furt  man  of  law,  Johann  Fischart,  dating  from  1564  and  1567. 
Fischart  was  against  the  "  Witches'  Hammer  "  and  the  other 
Catholic  productions  of  an  earlier  day,  such  as  Nider's  "  Formi- 
carius,"  yet  he  expresses  himself  in  favour  of  the  burning  of 
witches  and  appeals  on  this  point  to  Luther  and  his  interpreta 
tion  of  Holy  Scripture. 

Holy  Scripture  and  Luther  were  as  a  rule  appealed  to  by  the 
witch-zealots  on  the  Protestant  side,  as  is  proved  by  the  writings 
of  Abraham  Saur  (1582)  and  Jakob  Grater  (1589),  of  the  preacher 
Nicholas  Lotichius  and  Nicholas  Krug  (1567),  of  Frederick 
Balduin  of  Wittenberg  (1628) — whose  statements  were  accepted 
by  the  famous  Saxon  criminalogist  Benedict  Carpzov,  who  signed 
countless  death  sentences  against  witches — and  by  J.  Volkmar 
Bechmann,  the  opponent  of  the  Jesuit  Frederick  von  Spee.  We 

1   "Pythonissa,"    Frankfurt,    1660,    pp.    471,    472,    from    Luther's 
Works,  Erl.  ed.,  58,  p.  129  (above,  p.  287). 


296          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

may  pass  over  the  many  other  names  cited  by  N.  Paulus  with 
careful  references  to  the  writings  in  question.1 

It  must  be  pointed  out,  however,  that  an  increase  in  the  severity 
of  the  penal  laws  against  witches  is  first  noticeable  in  the  Saxon 
Electorate  in  1572,  when  it  was  decreed  that  they  should  be  burnt 
at  the  stake,  even  though  they  had  done  no  harm  to  anyone,  on 
account  of  their  wicked  compact  with  the  devil.2  As  early  as 
1540,  at  a  time  when  elsewhere  in  Germany  the  execution  of 
witches  was  of  rare  occurrence,  four  persons  were  burnt  at  Witten 
berg  on  June  29  as  witches  or  wizards. 3  Shortly  before  this  Luther 
had  lamented  that  the  plague  of  witches  was  again  on  the  in 
crease.  * 

Even  the  Catholic  clergy  occasionally  quoted  Luther's 
statements  on  witches,  as  given  in  his  widely  read  Table- 
Talk  ;  thus,  for  instance,  Reinhard  Lutz  in  his  "  True 
Tidings  of  the  godless  Witches  "  (1571  ).5  This  writing,  at  the 
very  beginning  and  again  at  the  end,  contains  a  passage  from 
the  Table-Talk  dealing  with  witches,  devils'  children,  incubi 
and  succubi  ;  on  the  other  hand,  it  fails  to  refer  either  to 
the  "  Witches'  Hammer  "  of  1487  or  to  the  Bull,  "  Summis 
desider antes,"  of  Innocent  VIII  (1484). 

Thus  the  making  of  this  regrettable  mania  wras  in  great 
part  Luther's  doing.6  And  yet  a  reformer  could  have  found 
no  nobler  task  than  to  set  to  work  to  sweep  away  the 
abusive  outgrowths  of  the  belief  in  the  devil's  power. 

We  still  have  instructive  writings  by  Catholic  authors  of 
that  day  which,  whilst  by  no  means  promoting  the  popular 
ideas  concerning  the  devil,  are  unquestionably  rooted  in  the 
Middle  Ages.  Such  a  work  is  the  Catechism  of  Blessed 

1  "  Hexenwahn,"  p.  75  ff.  '2  Ib.,  p.  54  ff. 

3  See  Janssen,  "  Hist,  of  the  German  People  "  (Engl.  Trans.),  vol. 
xvi.,  pp.  269  to  526,  a  very  full  account  of  the  Witch  trials,  etc. 

4  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  129.    From  May  21  to  June  11,  1540. 
See  above,  p.  290,  n.  3. 

5  Cp.  N.  Paulus,  "  Hexenwahn,"  pp.  52,  66. 

6  Karl  Adolf  Menzel,   "  Neuere  Gesch.  der  Deutschen,"   32,   1854, 
p.  65,  is  of  opinion  that  the  reformers  of  the  16th  century  lent  the 
whole  weight  of  their  position  and  convictions  to  strengthening  the 
belief  in  witches.     Janssen,  "  Hist,  of  the  German  People,"  loc.  cit.  : 
"  Through  Luther  and  his  followers  belief  in  the  power  and  influence 
of  the  devil,  who  was  active  in  all  men  and  who  exercised  his  arts 
especially   through  witches   and  sorcerers,   received   an  impetus   and 
spread  in  a  manner  never  known  before."     J.  Hansen,  "  Zauberwahn 
und  Hexenprozess  im  MA.,"  1900,  p.  536  f.,  also  admits  that  Protestant 
ism  had  increased  the  readiness  to  accept  such  belief.     Cp.  the  admis 
sions  of  Riezler,  v.  Bezold  and  Steinhausen  quoted  by  Paulus,  "  Hexen 
wahn,"  p.  48  f. 


HIS   DEVIL-MANIA  297 

Peter  Canisius.  One  particular  in  which  the  "  Larger  " 
Canisian  Catechism  differs  from  Luther's  Larger  German 
Catechism  is,  that,  whereas  in  the  latter  the  evil  power  of 
Satan  over  material  things  is  dealt  with  at  great  length,  the 
Catechism  of  Canisius  says  never  a  word  on  the  material 
harm  wrought  by  the  devil.  While  Luther  speaks  of  the 
devil  sixty-seven  times,  Canisius  mentions  him  only  ten 
times.  Canisius's  book  was  from  the  first  widely  known 
amongst  German-speaking  Catholics  and  served  down  to  the 
last  century  for  purposes  of  religious  instruction.1  Though 
this  is  true  of  this  particular  book  of  Canisius,  the  influence 
of  which  was  so  far-reaching,  it  must  in  honesty  be  added 
that  even  a  man  like  Canisius,  both  in  his  other  writings 
and  in  his  practical  conduct,  was  not  unaffected  by  the 
prevailing  ideas  concerning  the  devil. 

Luther's  Devil-mania  ;   its  Connection  with  his  Character  and 
his  Doctrine 

Had  Luther  written  his  Catechism  during  the  last  period 
of  his  life  he  would  undoubtedly  have  brought  the  diabolical 
element  and  his  belief  in  witches  even  more  to  the  fore.  For, 
as  has  been  pointed  out  (above,  pp.  227,  238),  Luther's  views 
on  the  power  the  devil  possesses  over  mankind  and  over  the 
whole  world  were  growing  ever  stronger,  till  at  last  they 
came  to  colour  everything  great  or  small  with  which  he  had 
to  deal ;  they  became,  in  fact,  to  him  a  kind  of  fixed  idea. 

In  his  last  year  (1546),  having  to  travel  to  Eisleben,  he  fancies 
so  many  fiends  must  be  assembled  there  on  his  account,  i.e.  to 
oppose  him,  "  that  hell  and  the  whole  world  must  for  the  nonce 
be  empty  of  devils."2  At  Eisleben  he  even  believed  that  he  had 
a  sight  of  the  devil  himself. 3 

Three  years  before  this  he  complains  that  no  one  is  strong 
enough  in  belief  in  the  devil  ;  the  "  struggle  between  the  devils 
and  the  angels  "  affrights  him  ;  for  it  is  to  be  apprehended  that 
"  the  angels  whilst  fighting  for  us  often  get  the  worst  for  a  time."4 
His  glance  often  surveys  the  great  world-combat  which  the  few 
who  believe  wage  on  Christ's  side  against  Satan,  and  which  has 

1  Cp.  J.  Diefenbach,  "  Der  Zauberglaube  des  16.  Jahrh.  nach  den 
Katechismen  Luthers  und  Canisius,"  1900. 

2  To  Catherine  Bora,  Feb.  7,  1546,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  787. 

3  See  below,  vol.  vi.,  xxxvi.,  3. 

4  Mathesius,    "  Tischreden,"   p.   295   (1542).      "  Werke,"   Erl.   ed., 
61,  p.  117. 


298          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

lasted  since  the  dawn  of  history  ;  now,  at  the  very  end  of  the 
world,  he  sees  the  result  more  clearly.  Christ  is  able  to  save  His 
followers  from  the  devil's  claws  only  by  exerting  all  His  strength  ; 
they,  like  Luther,  suffer  from  weakness  of  faith,  just  as  Christ 
Himself  did  in  the  Garden  of  Olives  ( ! ) ;  they,  like  Luther,  stumble, 
because  Christ  loves  to  show  Himself  weak  in  the  struggle  with 
the  devil ;  mankind's  and  God's  rights  have  come  off  second  best 
during  the  age-long  contest  with  the  devil.  In  Jewry,  for  which 
Luther's  hatred  increases  with  age,  he  sees  men  so  entirely  de 
livered  over  to  the  service  of  the  devil  that  "  all  the  heathen  in  a 
lump  "  are  simply  nothing  in  comparison  with  the  Jews  ;  but 
even  the  "fury  of  the  Jews  is  mere  jest  and  child's  play  "  com 
pared  with  the  devilish  corruption  of  the  Papacy. 

"  The  devil  is  there  ;  he  has  great  claws  and  whosoever  falls 
into  them  him  he  holds  fast,  as  they  find  to  thei^  cost  in  Popery. 
Hence  let  us  always  pray  and  fear  God."  This  in  1543. l  But  we 
must  also  fear  the  devil,  and  very  much  too,  for,  as  he  solemnly 
declares  in  1542  :  "  Our  last  end  is  that  we  fear  the  devil  "  ;  for 
the  worst  sins  are  "  delusions  of  the  devil."2  "  The  whole  age  is 
Satanic,"3  and  the  "activity  of  the  devil  is  now  manifest"  ; 
the  speaker  longs  for  "  God  at  length  to  mock  at  Satan."4  "  The 
devil  is  all-powerful  at  present,  several  foreign  kings  are  his 
train-bearers.  .  .  .  God  Himself  must  come  in  order  to  resist 
the  proud  spirit.  .  .  .  Shortly  Christ  will  make  an  end  of  his 
lies  and  murders."5 

The  whole  of  his  work,  the  struggle  for  the  Evangel,  seems  to 
him  at  times  as  one  long  wrestling  with  the  boundless  might  of 
Satan. 6  All  his  life,  so  he  said  in  his  old  age,  he  had  forged  ahead 
"  tempestuously  "  and  "  hit  out  with  sledge-hammer  blows  "  ; 
but  it  was  all  against  Satan.  "  I  rush  in  head  foremost,  but  .  .  . 
against  the  devil."7  As  early  as  1518,  however,  he  knew  the 
"  thoughts  of  Satan."8 

It  is  not  difficult  to  recognise  the  different  elements  which, 
as  Luther  grew  older,  combined  permanently  to  establish 
him  in  his  devil-mania. 

Apart  from  his  peculiar  belief  in  the  devil,  of  which  he  was 

1  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  317. 

2  16.,  p.  267,  speaking  of  a  case  of  long-continued  adulterous  incest 
between  brother  and  sister  (1542)  :    "  This  was  the  work  of  the  devil 
himself,"  etc. 

3  "  Satanicum  tempus  et  sceculum"     To  Jakob  Probst,  Dec.  5,  1544, 
"  Briefe,"  5,  p.  703. 

4  To  Amsdorf,  Jan.  8,  1546,  ib.,  p.  774. 

5  Mathesius,  "Tischreden,"  p.  174  (1540). 

6  On  the  great  tragedy  between  God  and  Satan  in  which  he  (par 
ticularly  in  1541)  is  so  prominently  entangled,  see  the  letter  to  Melanch- 
thon,  April  4,  1541,  "  Briefwechsel,"  13,  p.  291. 

7  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  307  (1542-43). 

8  To  Johann  Silvius  Egranus,  March  24,   1518,   "  Briefwechsel,"  1, 
p.  173. 


HIS   DEVIL-MANIA  299 

never  to  rid  himself,  there  was  the  pessimism  which  loomed 
so  large  in  his  later  years  ;l  there  was  also  his  habit  of 
regarding  himself  and  his  work  as  the  pet  aversion  and  chief 
object  of  Satan's  persecution,  for  since,  according  to  his  own 
contention,  his  great  struggle  against  Antichrist  was  in 
reality  directed  against  the  devil,  the  latter  naturally 
endeavoured  everywhere  to  bar  his  way.  If  great  scandals 
arise  as  the  result  of  his  sermons,  it  is  Satan  who  is  to  blame  ; 
"  he  smarts  under  the  wounds  he  receives  and  therefore 
does  he  rage  and  throw  everything  into  confusion."2  The 
disorderly  proceedings  against  the  Catholics  at  Erfurt  which 
brought  discredit  on  his  teaching  were  also  due  to  the 
devil.  The  Wittenberg  students  who  disgrace  him  are 
instigated  by  the  devil.  Dr.  Eck  was  incited  against  him 
by  Satan.  The  Catholic  princes  who  resist  him,  like  Duke 
George  of  Saxony,  have  at  least  a  "  thousand  devils  "  who 
inspire  them  and  assist  them.  Above  all,  it  is  the  devil 
himself  who  delivers  his  oracles  through  the  mouthpiece  of 
those  teachers  of  the  innovations  who  differ  from  Luther, 
deluding  them  to  such  an  extent  that  they  lose  "  their 
senses  and  their  reason."3  If  Satan  can  do  nothing  else 
against  the  Evangel  he  sends  out  noisy  spirits  so  as  to 
bolster  up  the  heresy  of  the  existence  "  of  a  Purgatory."4 

Such  ideas  became  so  habitual  with  him,  that,  in  later 
years,  the  conviction  that  the  devil  was  persecuting  his 
work  developed  into  an  abiding  mania,  drawing,  as  it  were, 
everything  else  into  its  vortex. 

Everywhere  he  hears  behind  him  the  footsteps  of  his  old 
enemy,  the  devil. 

"  Satan  has  often  had  me  by  the  throat.  .  .  .  He  has  fre 
quently  beset  me  so  hard  that  I  knew  not  whether  I  was  dead 
or  alive  .  .  .  but  with  God's  Word  I  have  withstood  him."6  He 
lies  with  me  in  my  bed,  so  he  says  on  one  occasion  ;  "he  sleeps 
much  more  with  me  than  my  Katey."6  His  struggle  with  him 
degenerates  into  a  hand-to-hand  brawl,  "  I  have  to  be  at  grips 
with  him  daily."7  His  pupils  related,  that  on  his  own  giving, 
when  he  was  an  old  man  "  the  devil  had  walked  with  him  in  the 

1  See  above,  p.  226  ft. 

2  Thus  as  early  as  June  27,  1522,  to  Staupitz  at  Salzburg,  "  Brief - 
wechsel,"  3,  p.  407,  with  the  emphatic  assurance  :    "  sed  Christus,  qui 
co&pit,  conteret  eum,  frustra  renitentibus  omnibus  portis  inferi." 

3  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  61,  p.  117.  4  Ib.,  59,  p.  342. 
5  Ib.,  57,  p.  65.  6  Ib.,  58,  p.  301. 
7  "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  1,  p.  222. 


300          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

dormitory  of  the  [former]  monastery  .  .  .  plaguing  and  torment 
ing  him  "  ;  that  "  he  had  one  or  two  such  devils  who  were  in  the 
habit  of  lying  in  wait  "  for  him,  and,  "  that,  when  unable  to  get 
the  better  of  his  heart,  they  attacked  and  troubled  his  head."1 
Whether  the  narrators  of  these  accounts  are  referring  to  actual 
apparitions  or  not  does  not  much  matter. 

Later  on,  when  dealing  with  his  delusions,  we  shall  have  to 
speak  of  the  diabolical  apparitions  Luther  is  supposed  to  have 
had.  There  is  no  doubt,  however,  that  Luther's  first  admirers 
took  his  statements  concerning  his  experiences  with  the  devil 
rather  more  seriously  than  he  intended,  as,  for  instance,  when 
Cyriacus  Spangenberg  in  his  "  Theander  Lutherus  "2  relates  a 
disputation  on  the  Winkle-Mass  which  he  supposed  Luther  to 
have  actually  held  with  the  devil,  and  even  goes  so  far  as  to  prove 
from  the  bruises  which  the  devil  in  person  inflicted  on  him  that 
Luther  was  "  really  a  holy  martyr." 3  Even  some  of  his  opponents, 
like  Cochlaeus,  fancied  that  because  Luther  said  "  in  a  sermon 
that  he  had  eaten  more  than  one  mouthful  of  salt  with  the  devil, 
he  had  therefore  most  probably  been  in  direct  communication 
with  the  devil  himself,  the  more  so  since  some  persons  were  said 
to  have  seen  the  two  hobnobbing  together."4  Here  we  shall 
merely  point  out  generally  that  to  Luther  the  power  of  Satan, 
his  delusions  and  persecutions,  were  something  that  seemed  very 
near,5  an  uncanny  feeling  that  increased  as  he  grew  older  and 
as  his  physical  strength  gave  out. 

"  The  devil  is  now  very  powerful,"  he  says  in  1540,  "  for  he 
no  longer  deals  with  us  through  the  agency  of  others,  of  Duke 
George,  for  instance,  of  the  Englishman  [Henry  VIII],  or  of  the 
Mayence  fellow  [Albert],  but  fights  against  us  visibly.  Against 
him  we  must  pray  diligently."6  "Didn't  he  even  ride  many 
grand  and  holy  prophets.  Was  not  David  a  great  prophet  ? 
And  yet  even  he  was  devil-ridden,  and  so  was  Saul  and  '  Bileam  ' 
too."7 

We  must,  moreover,  not  overlook  the  link  which  binds 
Luther's  devil-mania  to  his  doctrinal  system  as  a  whole, 
particularly  to  his  teaching  on  the  enslaved  will  and  on 
justification. 

Robbed  of  free-will  for  doing  what  is  good,  when  once 
the  devil  assumes  the  mastery,  man  must  needs  endure  his 
anger  and  perform  his  works.  Luther  himself  found  a  cruel 
rider  in  the  devil.  Again,  though  man  by  the  Grace  of  God 

1  "  Werke,"   Erl.   ed.,   60,  pp.   73,  55.     Mathesius,   "  Aufzeichn.," 
ed.  Lcesche,  p.  113. 

2  P.  200.    Cp.  above,  p.  174.  3  P.  193'. 

4  "  Cochlsei  Acta,  etc."  (1549),  p.  2  :    "  quod  etiam  corporaliter  visus 
quibusdam  fuerit  cum  eo  conversari." 

5  "  I  feel  him  well  enough."     "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  58,  p.  301. 

6  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  198.  7  Ib.,  p.  331. 


HOW  TO  FIGHT  THE  DEVIL      301 

is  justified  by  faith,  yet  the  old  diabolical  root  of  sin  remains 
in  him,  for  original  sin  persists  and  manifests  itself  in 
concupiscence,  which  is  essentially  the  same  thing  as  original 
sin.  All  acts  of  concupiscence  are,  therefore,  sins,  being 
works  of  our  bondage  under  Satan  ;  only  by  the  free  grace 
of  Christ  can  they  be  cloaked  over.  The  whole  outer  world 
which  has  been  depraved  by  original  sin  is  nothing  but  the 
"  devil's  own  den  "  ;  the  devil  stands  up  very  close  ("  propin- 
quissimus")1  even  to  the  pious,  so  that  it  is  no  wonder 
if  we  ever  feel  the  working  of  the  spirit  of  darkness.  "  Man 
must  bear  the  image  either  of  God  or  of  the  devil."  Created 
to  the  image  of  God  he  failed  to  remain  true  to  it,  but 
"  became  like  unto  the  devil."2 

Hence  his  doctrines  explain  how  he  expected  every  man 
to  be  so  keenly  sensible  of  "  God's  wrath,  the  devil,  death 
and  hell "  ;  everyone  should  realise  that  ours  is  "  no  real  life, 
but  only  death,  sin  and  power  of  the  devil."3  It  is  true  that 
in  his  doctrine  faith  affords  a  man  sufficient  strength,  and 
even  makes  him  master  of  the  devil ;  but,  as  he  remarks,  this 
is  "  in  no  wise  borne  out  by  experience  and  must  be  believed 
beforehand."  Meanwhile  we  are  painfully  "  sensible  "  that 
we  are  "  under  the  devil's  heel,"  for  the  "  world  and  what 
pertains  to  it  must  have  the  devil  for  its  master,  who  also 
clings  to  us  with  all  his  might  and  is  far  stronger  than  we 
are  ;  for  we  are  his  guests  in  a  strange  hostelry."4 


The  Weapons  to  be  used  against  the  Devil 

On  the  fact  that  faith  gives  us  strength  against  all  Satanic 
influences  Luther  insists  frequently  and  in  the  strongest 
terms. 

He  tries  to  find  here  a  wholesome  remedy  against  the 
fear  that  presses  on  him.  He  describes  his  own  attempts  to 
lay  hold  on  it  and  to  fill  himself  with  Christ  boldly  and 
trustfully.  Even  in  his  last  days  such  words  of  confidence 
occasionally  pierce  the  mists  of  his  depression.  "  We  see 
well,"  he  says,  "that  when  the  devil  attacks  a  [true] 
Christian  he  is  put  to  shame,  for  where  there  is  faith  and 

1  To  Wenceslaus  Link,  July  14,  1528,  "  Brief wechsel,"  6,  p.  301. 

2  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  24,  p.  51  ;    Erl.  ed.,  33,  p.  55. 

3  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  51,  p.  90  f.  (1534). 

4  Ib.,  cp.  above,  p.  5. 


302          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

confidence  he  has  nothing  to  gain."  This  he  said  in  1542 
when  relating  the  story  of  an  old-time  hermit  who  rudely 
accosted  the  devil  as  follows,  when  the  latter  sought  to 
disturb  him  at  his  prayers  :  "  Ah,  devil,  this  serves  you 
right  !  You  were  meant  to  be  an  angel  and  you  have 
become  a  swine."1 

"  We  must  muster  all  our  courage  so  as  not  to  dread  the  devil." 2 
We  must  "  clasp  the  faith  to  our  very  bosom  "  and  "  cheerfully 
fling  to  the  winds  the  apparitions  of  the  spirits  "  ;  "  they  seek 
in  vain  to  affright  men."3  Contempt  of  the  devil  and  awakening 
of  faith  are,  according  to  Luther,  the  best  remedies  against  all 
assaults  of  the  devil. 4  A  man  who  really  has  the  faith  may  even 
set  an  example  that  others  cannot  imitate.5  Luther  knows,  for 
instance,  of  a  doctor  of  medicine  who  with  boundless  faith  stood 
up  to  Satan  when  the  latter,  horns  and  all,  appeared  to  him ;  the 
brave  man  even  succeeded  in  breaking  off  the  horns  ;  but,  in  a 
similar  case,  when  another  tried  to  do  the  same  in  a  spirit  of 
boasting,  he  was  killed  by  Satan.6  Hence  let  us  have  faith,  but 
let  our  faith  be  humble  ! 

But,  provided  we  have  faith  and  rely  on  Christ,  we  may  well 
show  the  devil  our  contempt  for  him,  vex  him  and  mock  at  his 
power  and  cunning.  He  himself,  as  he  says,  was  given  to  breaking 
out  into  music  and  song,  the  better  to  show  the  devil  that  he  de 
spised  him,  for  "  our  hymns  are  very  galling  to  him  "  ;  on  the 
contrary,  he  rejoices  and  has  a  laugh  when  we  are  upset  and  cry 
out  "  alas  and  alack  !  "7  To  remain  alone  is  not  good.  "  This  is 
what  I  do  "  ;  rather  than  be  alone  "I  go  to  my  swineherd 
Johann  or  to  see  the  pigs."8 

In  this  connection  Luther  can  tell  some  very  coarse  and  vulgar 
jokes,  both  at  his  own  and  others'  expense,  in  illustration  of  the 
contempt  which  the  devil  deserves  ;  they  cannot  here  be  passed 
over  in  silence. 

Thus,  on  April  15,  1538,  he  relates  the  story  of  a  woman  of 
Magdeburg  whom  Satan  vexed  by  running  over  her  bed  at  night 
"  like  rats  and  mice.  As  he  would  not  cease  the  woman  put  her 
a over  the  bedside,  presented  him  with  a  f —  -  (if  such  lan 
guage  be  permissible)  and  said  :  '  There,  devil,  there's  a  staff, 
take  it  in  your  hand  and  go  pilgriming  with  it  to  Rome  to  the 

1  Mathesius,  "Tischreden,"  p.  279. 

2  "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  1,  p.  235. 

3  "  Werke,"   Weim.   ed.,    10,    1,   1,  p.  586  ;    Erl.  ed.,   102,  p.  355, 
Church-postils. 

4  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  60,  p.  70. 

5  Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  55  f. 

6  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  59,  p.  340.    Lauterbach,  ib.,  p.  56. 

7  "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  1,  p.  228.     "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  60,  p.  60, 
under  the  heading  "  Satan  flees  from  music  "  :     "It  was  thus  that 
David  with  his  harp  abated  Saul's  temptations  when  the  devil  plagued 
him  "  (3  Kg.  xvi.  23). 

8  "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  2,  p.  313. 


HOW  TO   FIGHT   THE   DEVIL       303 

Pope  your  idol.'  "  Ever  after  the  devil  left  her  in  peace,  for  "  he  is 
a  proud  spirit  and  cannot  endure  to  be  treated  contemptuously."1 
According  to  Lauterbach,  who  gives  the  story  in  somewhat 
briefer  form,  Luther  sapiently  remarked  :  "  Such  examples  do 
not  always  hold  good,  and  are  dangerous."2 

He  himself  was  nevertheless  fond  of  expressing  his  contempt 
for  the  devil  after  a  similar  way  when  the  latter  assailed  him  with 
remorse  of  conscience. 

"  I  can  drive  away  the  devil  with  a  single  f —  -"3  "  To  shame 
him  we  may  tell  him  :  Kiss  my  a —  -",4  or  "  Ease  yourself  into 
your  shirt  and  tie  it  round  your  neck,"  etc.5  On  May  7,  1532, 
when  troubled  in  mind  and  afraid  lest  "  the  thunder  should 

strike  him,  he  said  :    '  Lick  my  a ,  I  want  to  sleep,  not  to 

hold  a  disputation.'  "6  On  another  occasion  he  exclaims:  "The 
devil  shall  lick  my  a —  —  even  though  I  should  have  sinned."7 
When  the  devil  teased  him  at  night,  "suggesting  all  sorts  of 
strange  thoughts  to  him,"  he  at  last  said  to  him  :  "  Kiss  me  on 
the  seat  !  God  is  not  angry  as  you  would  have  it."  Of  course, 
seeing  that  the  devil  "  '  fouls  '  the  knowledge  of  God,"  he  must 
expect  to  be  "  fouled  "  in  his  turn.  Luther  frequently  said,  so 
the  Table-Talk  relates,  that  he  would  end  by  sending  "  into  his 

a where  they  belonged  "  those  "  twin  devils  "  who  were  in 

the  habit  of  prying  on  him  and  tormenting  him  mentally  and 
bodily  ;  for  "  they  had  brought  him  to  such  a  pass  that  he  was 
fit  for  nothing."8  The  Pope  had  once  played  him  (Luther)  the 
same  trick  :  "  He  has  stuck  me  into  the  devil's  behind  "  ;9  "  for 
I  snap  at  the  Pope's  ban  and  am  his  devil,  therefore  does  he  hate 
and  persecute  me."10 

He  relates,  in  May,  1532,  according  to  Schlaginhaufen's  Notes, 
his  method  of  dismissing  the  devil  by  the  use  of  stronger  and 
stronger  hints  :  When  the  devil  came  to  him  at  night  in  order  to 
plague  him,  he  first  of  all  told  him  to  let  him  sleep,  because  he 
must  work  during  the  day  and  needed  all  the  rest  he  could  get. 
Then,  if  Satan  continued  to  upbraid  him  with  his  sins,  he  would 
answer  mockingly  that  he  had  been  guilty  of  a  lot  more  sins 
which  the  devil  had  forgotten  to  mention,  for  instance,  he  had, 
etc.  (there  follows  the  choice  simile  of  the  shirt  as  given  above)  ; 
thirdly,  "if  he  still  goes  on  accusing  me  of  sins  I  say  to  him 
contemptuously  :  *  Sancte  Satanas  ora  pro  me  ;  you  have  never 
done  a  wrong  and  you  alone  are  holy  ;  be  off  to  God  and  get 
grace  for  yourself.'  "11 

"  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  59,  p.  343  f. 
Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  56. 
"  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  3,  p.  165. 
Cordatus,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  27. 
"  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  60,  p.  3. 
Schlaginhaufen,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  82. 
"  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  1,  p.  222. 
"  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  60,  pp.  55,  73. 

Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  30.  10  Ib.,  p.  163. 

Schlaginhaufen,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  88  f.     Cp.  "  Luthers  Werke," 
Erl.  ed.,  60,  p.  101  f.,  n.  59. 


304          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

The  way  in  which  Bugenhagen  or  Pomeranus,  the  pastor  of 
Wittenberg,  with  Luther's  fullest  approval,  drove  the  devil  out 
of  the  butter  churn  (vol.  iii.,  p.  229  f.)  became  famous  at  Witten 
berg,  and,  thanks  to  the  Table-Talk,  elsewhere  too.  It  may  here 
be  remarked  that  the  incident  was  no  mere  joke.  For  when,  in 
1536,  the  question  of  the  harm  wrought  by  the  witches  was  dis 
cussed  amongst  Luther's  guests,  and  Bartholomew  Bernhardi,  the 
Provost,  complained  that  his  cow  had  been  bewitched  for  two 
years,  so  that  he  had  been  unable  to  get  any  milk  from  her, 
Luther  related  quite  seriously  what  had  taken  place  in  Bugen- 
hagen's  house.  ("  Then  Pommer  came  to  the  rescue,  scoffed  at 
the  devil  and  emptied  his  bowels  into  the  churn,"  etc.).  Accord 
ing  to  Lauterbach's  "  Diary  "  Luther  returned  to  the  incident 
in  1538  and  stamped  the  whole  proceeding  with  his  approval : 
"  Dr.  Pommer 's  plan  is  the  best,  viz.  to  plague  them  [the  witches] 
with  muck  and  stir  it  well  up,  for  then  all  their  things  begin  to 
stink."1  What  is  even  more  remarkable  than  the  strange 
practice  itself  is  the  way  in  which  Luther  comes  to  speak  of 
"  Pommer 's  plan."  It  is  his  intention  to  show  that  the  method  of 
combating  witches  had  made  progress  since  Catholic  times.  For, 
in  Lauterbach,  the  passage  runs  :  "  The  village  clergy  and  school 
masters  had  a  plan  of  their  own  [for  counteracting  spells]  and 
plagued  them  [the  witches]  not  a  little,  but  Dr.  Pommer's 
plan,  etc.  (as  above).2  Hence  not  only  did  Luther  sanction  the 
superstition  of  earlier  ages,  but  he  even  sought  to  improve  on  it 
by  the  invention  of  new  practices  of  his  own. 

Luther  is  also  addicted  to  the  habit  dear  to  the  German  Middle 
Ages  of  using  the  devil  as  a  comic  figure  ;  as  he  advanced  in  age, 
however,  he  tended  to  drop  this  habit  and  also  the  kindred  one  of 
chasing  the  devil  away  by  filthy  abuse  ;  the  truth  is  that  the 
devil  had  now  assumed  in  his  eyes  a  grimmer  and  more  tragic 
aspect. 

Formerly  he  had  been  fond  of  describing  in  his  joking  way  how 
the  devil,  "  though  he  had  never  actually  taken  his  doctor's 
degree,"3  proved  himself  an  "able  logician  "  in  his  suggestions 
and  disputations  ;  when  he  brought  forward  objections  Luther 
would  reply  :  "  Devil,  tell  me  something  new  ;  what  you  say 
I  already  know."4  In  his  book  on  the  "  Winkle-Mass,"  pretend 
ing  to  "  make  a  little  confession,"  he  tells  how,  "  on  one  occasion, 

1  Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  121.    Cp.  "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  3, 
p.  12,  and  Mathesius,  "Tischreden,"  p.  380,  from  Notes  of  Lauterbach 
and  Weller.     "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  60,  p.  78. 

2  Lauterbach,    ib.     In  the  Latin  "  Colloquia  "  as  well   as   in   the 
German  Table-Talk  (ib.),  in  connection  with  "  the  clergy  and  school 
masters  "  of  the  past,  it  is  related,  that,  in  their  day,  the  head  of  an  ox 
was  taken  from  the  fence  and  thrown  into  the  St.   John's  bonfire, 
whereby   a  great  number   of   witches   were   attracted   to   the   place. 
Then  follows  at  once  in  both  passages,  in  order  to  emphasise  the 
advance  which  had  been  made  :   "  But  Dr.  Pommer's  plan  is  the  best," 
etc.,  etc.    See  vol.  iii.,  p.  230,  n.  2. 

3  "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  1,  p.  218. 

4  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  60,  p.  59. 


HOW  TO   FIGHT  THE   DEVIL       305 

awakening  at  midnight,"  the  devil  began  a  disputation  against 
the  Mass  with  the  words:  "Hearken,  oh  most  learned  Doctor, 
are  you  aware  that  for  some  fifteen  years  you  said  such  Winkle- 
Masses  nearly  every  day  ?  J>1  Whereupon  he  had  "  seized  on  the 
old  weapons  "  which  "  in  Popery  he  had  learnt  to  put  on  and  to 
use  "  and  had  sought  an  excuse.  "  To  this  the  devil  retorted  : 
'  Friend,  tell  me  where  this  is  written,  etc.'  "2  Formerly  he  had 
been  fond  of  poking  fun  at  the  Papists  by  telling  them  how  they 
"  were  beset  merely  by  naughty  little  devils,  legal  rather  than 
theological  ones";3  that  they  were  tempted  only  to  homicide, 
adultery  and  fornication,"  in  short,  to  sins  of  the  second  table  of 
the  Law,  by  "puny  fiendkins  and  little  petty  devils,"  whereas 
we  on  the  other  hand  have  "by  us  the  great  devils  who  are 
doctor es  theologice  "  ;  "  these  attack  us  as  the  leaders  of  the  army, 
for  they  tempt  us  to  the  great  sins  against  the  first  table,"  to 
question  the  forgiveness  of  sins,  to  doubts  against  faith  and  to 
despair.4 

He  was  very  inventive  and  quite  indefatigable  in  devising  new 
epithets  with  the  help  of  the  devil's  name  ;  his  adversaries  were, 
according  to  him,  "full  of  devils,  on  whose  backs  moreover  lived 
other  and  worse  devils  "  ;  it  seems  to  him  to  fall  all  too  short  of 
the  truth  to  say  they  are  "  endevilled,"  "  perdevilled,"  or  "  super- 
devilled  "  and  "the  children  of  Satan."5  The  devil's  mother, 
grandmother  and  brothers  and  sisters  are  frequently  alluded  to 
by  Luther,  particularly  when  in  a  merry  mood.  In  hours  of  gloom 
or  emotion  he  could,  however,  curse  people  with  such  words  as 
"may  the  devil  take  you,"6  "May  the  devil  pay  you  out,"  or 
"  May  he  tread  you  under  foot  !  " 

He  was  perfectly  aware,  nevertheless,  of  the  failings  of  his 
tongue,  and  even  expressed  his  regret  for  them  to  his  friends. 
During  his  illness,  in  1527,  we  are  told  how  he  begged  pardon 
for  and  bewailed  the  "  hasty  and  inconsiderate  words  he 
had  often  used  the  better  to  dispel  the  sadness  of  a  weak 
flesh."  7 

Melancholy  is  "  a  devil's  bath  "  ("  balneum  diaboli  "),  so 
he  remarked  on  another  occasion,  against  which  there  is  no 
more  effective  remedy  than  cheerfulness  of  spirit.8 

1  Ib.,  31,  p.  311.  2  Ib.,  p.  316  f. 

3  Ib.,  60,  p.  61.  4  Ib.,  and  59,  p.  294. 

5  See  below,  xxxiii.,  4. 

6  Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  129. 

7  Cordatus,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  312.     Cp.  "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  3, 
p.  160  sq.,  and  below,  p.  314,  n.  3. 

8  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  179  (1540),  where  Kroker  remarks  : 
"A  favourite  saying  with  Luther,"  and  quotes  Cordatus,  "Tagebuch," 
pp.  130  and  295.    "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  1,  p.  215,  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed., 
60,  p.  124. 


V.— X 


306          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 


5.   The  Psychology  of  Luther's  Jests  and  Satire 

Joking  was  a  permanent  element  of  Luther's  psychology. 
Often,  even  in  his  old  age,  his  love  of  fun  struggles  through 
the  lowering  clouds  of  depression  and  has  its  fling  against 
the  gloomy  anxiety  that  fills  his  mind,  and  against  the  world 
and  the  devil. 

Gifted  with  a  keen  sense  of  the  ridiculous,  it  had  been, 
in  his  younger  days,  almost  a  second  nature  to  him  to  delight 
in  drollery  and  particularly  to  clothe  his  ideas  in  playful 
imagery.  His  mind  was  indeed  an  inexhaustible  source  of 
rich  and  homely  humour. 

Nature  had  indeed  endowed  Luther  from  his  cradle  with 
that  rare  talent  of  humour  which,  amidst  the  trials  of  life, 
easily  proves  more  valuable  than  a  gold  mine  to  him  who 
has  it.  During  his  secular  studies  at  Erfurt  he  had  been 
able  to  give  full  play  to  this  tendency  as  some  relief  after 
the  hardships  of  early  days.  His  preference  for  Terence, 
Juvenal,  Plautus  and  Horace  amongst  the  classic  poets 
leads  us  to  infer  that  he  did  so  ;  and  still  more  does 
Mathesius's  description,  who  says  that,  at  that  time,  he  was 
a  "  brisk  and  jolly  fellow."  Monastic  life  and,  later,  his 
professorship  and  the  strange  course  on  which  he  entered 
must  for  a  while  have  placed  a  rein  on  his  humour,  but  it 
broke  out  all  the  more  strongly  when  be  brought  his  marvel 
lous  powers  of  imagination  and  extraordinary  readiness  in 
the  use  of  the  German  tongue  to  the  literary  task  of  bringing 
over  the  masses  to  his  new  ideas. 

Anyone  desirous  of  winning  the  hearts  of  the  German 
masses  has  always  had  to  temper  earnestness  with  jest, 
for  a  sense  of  humour  is  part  of  the  nation's  birthright. 
The  fact  that  Luther  touched  this  chord  was  far  more 
efficacious  in  securing  for  him  loud  applause  and  a  large 
following  than  all  his  rhetoric  and  theological  arguments. 

Humour  in  his  Writings  and  at  his  Home 

It  was  in  his  polemics  that  Luther  first  turned  to  account 
his  gift  of  humour  ;  his  manner  of  doing  so  was  anything 
but  refined. 

The  first  of  his  German  controversial  works  against  a  literary 
opponent  was  his  "  Von  dem  Bapstum  tzu  Rome  wider  dem 


HUMOUR  AND   SATIRE  307 

hochberumpten  Romanisten  tzu  Leiptzk "  l  (the  Franciscan 
Alveld  or  Alfeld),  dating  from  May  and  June,  1520.  Here  he 
starts  with  a  comical  description  of  the  "  brave  heroes  in  the 
market  place  at  Leipzig,  so  well  armed  as  we  have  never  seen 
the  like  before.  Their  helmets  they  wear  on  their  feet,  their 
swords  on  their  heads,  their  shields  and  breastplates  hang  down 
their  back,  and  their  lances  they  grip  by  the  blade.  ...  If 
Leipzig  can  produce  such  giants  then  that  land  must  indeed  be 
fertile."  On  the  last  page  of  the  same  writing  he  puts  the  con 
cluding  touch  to  his  work  by  telling  Alveld,  the  "  rude  miller's 
beast,"  that  he  does  "  not  yet  know  how  to  bray  his  hee-haw, 
hee-haw  "  ;  were  I,  says  Luther,  "  to  permit  all  the  wantonness 
of  these  thick-heads  even  the  very  washerwomen  would  end  by 
writing  against  me."  "  What  really  helps  it  if  a  poor  frog  [like 
this  fellow]  blows  himself  out  ?  Even  were  he  to  swell  himself 
out  to  bursting-point  he  would  never  equal  an  ox." 

In  his  first  German  booklet  against  Emser,  viz.  his  "  An  den 
Bock  zu  Leyptzck  "  (1521), 2  he  plays  on  the  motto  of  Emser's 
coat-of-arms  "  Beware  of  the  goat."  There  was  really  no  call  for 
Emser  to  inscribe  these  words  on  his  note-paper,  for  from  his 
whole  behaviour  there  was  no  doubt  that  he  was  indeed  a  goat, 
and  also  that  he  could  "do  no  more  than  butt."  Luther's  reply 
to  all  his  threats  would  be  :  "  Dear  donkey,  don't  lick  !  But 
God  save  the  poor  nanny-goats,  whose  horns  are  wrapped  in  silk, 
from  such  a  he-goat  ;  as  for  me,  so  God  wills,  there  is  no  fear. 
Have  you  never  heard  the  fable  of  the  ass  who  tried  to  roar  as 
loud  as  the  lion  ?  I  myself  might  have  been  afraid  of  you  had 
I  not  known  you  were  an  ass,"  etc. 

It  is  certainly  not  easy  to  believe  his  assertion,  that  it  was  only 
against  his  will  that  he  had  recourse  to  all  this  derision  which  he 
heaped  on  his  adversaries  in  religious  matters  of  such  vital  im 
portance.  He  has  it  that  his  words,  "  though  maybe  biting  and 
sarcastic,"  are  really  "  spoken  from  a  heart  that  is  breaking  with 
grief  and  has  been  obliged  to  turn  what  is  serious  into  abuse."3 
As  a  matter  of  fact  the  temptation  to  use  just  such  weapons  was 
too  great,  and  the  prospect  of  success  too  alluring  for  us  to  place 
much  reliance  in  such  an  assurance.  His  "  grief  "  was  of  quite 
another  kind. 

At  a  later  date  his  humour,  or  rather  his  caustic  and  satirical 
manner  of  treating  his  opponents,  looked  to  him  so  characteristic 
of  his  way  of  writing,  that  as  he  said,  it  would  be  quite  easy  to 
tell  at  a  glance  which  were  the  polemical  tracts  due  to  his  pen, 
even  though  they  did  not  bear  his  name.  This  was  his  opinion 
of  his  "  satirical  list  "  of  the  relics  of  the  Cardinal  of  Mayence.4 
Writing  of  this  work  to  his  friend  Jonas  he  says  :  "  Whoever 
reads  it  and  has  ever  been  familiar  with  my  ideas  and  my  pen 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  6,  p.  277  ff.  ;   Erl.  ed.,  27,  p.  86  ff. 

2  16.,  7,  p.  262  ff.  =  27,  p.  200  ff. 

3  In  the  writing  against  Alveld,  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  6,  p.  286 ; 
Erl.  ed.,  27,  p.  87. 

4  "  Brief e,"  6,  p.  321,  of  1542.    See  above,  vol.  iv.,  p.  292. 


308          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

will  say  :  Here  is  Luther  ;  the  Cardinal  too  will  say  :  This  is 
the  work  of  that  scamp  Luther  !  .  .  .  But  never  mind  ;  if  they 
pipe  then  I  insist  on  dancing,  and,  if  I  survive,  I  hope  one  day 
to  tread  a  measure  with  the  bride  of  Mayence  [the  Cardinal]."  He 
had  still  "some  sweet  tit-bits  "  which  he  would  like  "  to  lay  on  her 
red  and  rosy  lips."1  This  last  quotation  may  serve  as  a  specimen 
of  the  rough  humour  found  in  his  controversial  letters. 

The  reader  already  knows  how  the  Papacy  had  to  bear 
the  brunt  of  such  jests  and  of  an  irony  which  often  descends  to 
the  depths  of  vulgarity.  (Above,  vol.  iii.,  p.  232-235 ;  vol.  iv., 
pp.  295  f.,  304  f,  318  ff..) 

But  it  was  not  only  in  his  polemics  that  his  jests  came 
in  useful.  The  jovial  tone  which  often  characterises  his 
domestic  life,  the  humour  that  seasons  his  Table-talk  (even 
though  too  often  it  oversteps  the  bounds  of  the  permissible) 
and  makes  itself  felt  even  in  his  business  letters  and  intimate 
correspondence  with  friends,  appears  as  Luther's  almost 
inseparable  companion,  with  whose  smile  and  whose  caustic 
irony  he  cannot  dispense. 

The  monotony  and  the  hardships  of  his  daily  life  were 
alleviated  by  his  cheerfulness.  His  intercourse  with  friends 
and  pupils  was  rendered  more  stimulating  and  attractive, 
and  in  many  cases  more  useful.  Under  cover  of  a  jest  he 
was  often  able  to  enforce  good  instruction  more  easily  and 
almost  without  its  being  noticed.  His  cheerful  way  of 
looking  at  things  often  enabled  Luther  lightheartedly  to 
surmount  difficulties  from  which  others  would  have  shrunk. 

There  is  not  the  slightest  doubt  that  his  extraordinary 
influence  over  those  who  came  into  contact  with  him  was 
due  in  no  small  part  to  his  kindly  addiction  to  pleasantry. 
It  was  indeed  no  usual  thing  to  see  such  mighty  energy  as 
he  devoted  to  the  world-struggle,  so  agreeably  combined 
with  a  keen  gift  of  observation,  with  an  understanding  for 
the  most  trivial  details  of  daily  life,  and,  above  all,  with 
such  refreshing  frankness  and  such  a  determination  to  amuse 
his  hearers. 

In  order  to  dispel  the  anxiety  felt  by  Catherine  Bora  during 
her  husband's  absence,  he  would  send  her  letters  full  of  affection 
and  of  humorous  accounts  of  his  doings.  He  tells  her,  for 
instance,  how,  in  consequence  of  her  excessive  fears  for  him 
"  which  hindered  her  from  sleeping,"  everything  about  him  had 
conspired  to  destroy  him  ;  how  a  fire  "  at  our  inn  just  next  door 

1  Nov.  6,  1542,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  505  ;   cp.  6,  p.  320. 


HUMOUR  AND   SATIRE  309 

to  our  room  "  had  tried  to  burn  him,  how  a  heavy  rock  had 
fallen  in  order  to  kill  him  ;  "  the  rock  really  had  a  mind  to 
justify  your  solicitude,  but  the  holy  angels  prevented  it."1  In 
such  cheerful  guise  does  he  relate  little  untoward  incidents. 
"  You  try  to  take  care  of  your  God,"  he  writes  to  her  in  a  letter 
already  quoted,  "  just  as  though  He  were  not  Almighty  and  able 
to  create  ten  Dr.  Martins  were  the  old  one  to  be  drowned  in  the 
Saale,  suffocated  in  the  coal-hole,  or  eaten  up  by  the  wolf."2 

He  was  also  joking,  when,  about  the  same  time,  i.e.  during  his 
stay  with  the  Counts  of  Mansfeld,  he  used  the  words  which 
recently  were  taken  all  too  seriously  by  a  Catholic  polemist  and 
made  to  constitute  a  charge  against  Luther's  morals  :  "At 
present,  thank  God,  I  am  well,  only  that  I  am  so  beset  by  pretty 
women  as  once  more  to  fear  for  my  chastity."3 

The  irony  with  which  he  frequently  speaks  and  writes  of  both 
himself  and  his  friends  is  often  not  free  from  frivolity  ;  we  may 
recall,  for  instance,  his  ill-timed  jest  concerning  his  three  wives;4 
or  his  report  to  Catherine  from  Eisleben  :  "  On  the  whole  we 
have  enough  to  gorge  and  swill,  and  should  have  a  jolly  time  were 
this  tiresome  business  to  let  us."5  The  last  passage  reminds  us 
of  his  words  elsewhere :  I  feed  like  a  Bohemian  and  swill  like 
a  German.6  Among  other  jests  at  Catherine's  expense  we  find 
in  the  Table-Talk  the  threat  that  soon  the  time  will  come  when 
"  we  men  shall  be  allowed  several  wives,"  words  which  perhaps 
are  a  humorous  echo  of  the  negotiations  concerning  the  Hessian 
bigamy.7 

Now  and  again  Luther,  by  means  of  his  witticisms,  tried  to 
teach  his  wife  some  wholesome  lessons.  The  titles  by  which  he 
addresses  her  may  have  been  intended  as  delicate  hints  that  her 
management  of  the  household  was  somewhat  lordly  and  high 
handed  :  My  Lord  Katey,  Lord  Moses,  my  Chain  (Kette) 
("catena  mea").  To  seek  to  infer  from  this  that  she  was  a 
"  tyrant,"  or  to  see  in  it  an  admission  on  his  part  that  he  was 
but  her  slave,  would  be  as  mistaken  as  to  be  shocked  at  his 
manner  of  addressing  her  elsewhere  in  his  letters,  e.g.  "  to  the 
holy,  careful  lady,  the  most  holy  lady  Doctor  ;  to  my  beloved 
lady  Doctor  Self -martyr  ;  to  the  deeply-learned  Lady  Catherine," 
etc. 

It  has  already  been  pointed  out  that  many  of  the  mis 
understandings  of  which  Luther's  opponents  were  guilty 
are  due  to  their  inability  to  appreciate  his  humour  ;  they 
were  thereby  led  to  take  seriously  as  indicative  of  "  un 
belief,"  statements  which  in  reality  were  never  meant  in 

1  Feb.  10,  1546,  ib.,  5,  p.  789.     2  Feb.  7,  1546,  ib.,  p.  787. 

3  Feb.  1,  1546,  ib.,  p.  784. 

4  Above,  vol.  ii.,  p.  140  f.  ;  also  vol.  iii.,  pp.  233  ff.,  264  ff.,  301  ; 
vol.  iv.,  pp.  161  ff.,  318  ff. 

5  Feb.  6,  1546,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  786. 

6  Above,  vol.  iii.,  p.  305.         7  Ib.,  p.  268. 


310          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

earnest.1  On  the  other  hand,  however,  certain  texts  and 
explanations  of  Luther's  have,  on  insufficient  grounds,  been 
taken  as  humorous  even  by  Protestant  writers,  often 
because  they  seemed  in  some  way  to  cast  a  slur  upon  his 
memory.  For  instance,  his  interpretation  of  the  Monk- 
Calf  was  quite  obviously  never  intended  as  a  joke.2  nor  can  it 
thus  be  explained  away  as  some  have  recently  tried  to  do. 
Nor,  again,  to  take  an  example  from  Luther's  immediate 
circle,  can  Amsdorf's  offer  of  the  nuns  in  marriage  to 
Spalatin3  be  dismissed  as  simply  a  broad  piece  of  pleasantry. 

Humour  a  Necessity  to  Luther  in  his  Struggle  with  Others 
and  with  Himself 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  a  remarkable  psychological 
feature  is  afforded  by  the  combination  in  Luther  of  cheerful 
ness  with  intense  earnestness  in  work,  indeed  the  per 
sistence  of  his  humour  even  in  later  years  when  gloom  had 
laid  a  firm  hold  on  his  soul  constitutes  something  of  a 
riddle  ;  for  even  the  sufferings  of  the  last  period  of  his  life 
did  not  avail  to  stifle  his  love  of  a  joke,  though  his  jests 
become  perhaps  less  numerous  ;  they  serve,  however,  to 
conceal  his  sadder  feelings,  a  fact  which  explains  why  he 
still  so  readily  has  recourse  to  them. 

First  of  all,  a  man  so  oppressed  with  inner  difficulties  and 
mental  exertion  as  Luther  was,  felt  sadly  the  need  of 

1  On  certain  frivolous  expressions  which  Luther  was  fond  of  using 
of  holy  things  his  opponents  seized  as  proofs  that  he  was  little  better 
than  an  atheist  or  blasphemer.    There  is  indeed  no  doubt  that  religious 
reverence  suffered  by  his  jests.     Do  you  suppose  Christ  was  drunk,  he 
repeatedly  asks,  when  He  commanded  this  or  that  ?    The  Son  of  Man 
came  to  save  what  was  lost,  but  He  set  about  it  foolishly  enough. 
Unless  Our  Lord  God  understands  a  joke,  then  I  shouldn't  like  to  go  to 
heaven.     He  even  has  a  jest  about  the  feathers  of  the  Holy  Ghost, 
pokes  fun  at  the  Saints,  etc.,  etc. — On  the  occasion  of  his  journey  to 
Heidelberg,  in  1518,  undertaken  at  a  grave  juncture  when  the  penalties 
of  the  Church  were  hanging  over  his  head,  he  said  jestingly,  that  he 
had  no  need  of  contrition,  confession  or  satisfaction,  the  hardships  of 
the  journey  being  equal  to  "  contritio  perfecta,"  etc.  ("  Brief wechsel," 
1,  p.  184).    The  Pietists  were  not  so  far  wrong  when  they  asked  in  their 
day  :    "  Who  would  wish  to  approve  all  the  jests  of  that  holy  man, 
our  dearly-beloved  Luther  ?  "     (Cp.  Frank,  "  Luther  im  Spiegel  seiner 
Kirche  "  ("  Zeitschr.  f.  wiss.  Theol.,"  1905,  p.  473.))     "  Some  readers 
may,  for  instance,  be  scandalised  at  the  passages  where  Luther  makes 
fun  of  Scripture  texts  or  articles  of  faith,  e.g.  the  Trinity."    Thus  in  the 
"  Beil.  z.  M.  Allg.  Ztng.,"  1904,  No.  26. 

2  See  vol.  in.,  p.  149  ff.  3  See  vol.  ii.,  p.  137. 


HUMOUR   AND   SATIRE  311 

relaxation  and  amusement.  His  jests  served  to  counteract 
the  strain,  physical  and  mental,  resulting  from  the  rush  of 
literary  work,  sermons,  conferences  and  correspondence. 
In  this  we  have  but  a  natural  process  of  the  nervous  system. 
A  further  explanation  of  his  cheerfulness  is,  however,  to 
be  found  in  the  wish  to  prove  against  his  own  misgivings  and 
his  theological  opponents  how  joyous  and  confident  he  was 
at  heart  concerning  his  cause. 

He  hints  at  this  himself.  I  will  answer  for  the  "  Word  of 
Christ,"  so  he  assures  Alveld  in  his  writing  against  him,  "  with  a 
cheerful  heart  and  fresh  courage,  regardless  of  anyone  ;  for 
which  purpose  God  too  has  given  me  a  cheerful,  fearless  spirit, 
which  I  trust  they  will  be  unable  to  sadden  to  all  eternity."1  He 
often  gives  the  impression  of  being  anxious  to  show  off  his 
cheerfulness.  He  is  fond  of  speaking  of  his  "  steadfast  and 
undaunted  spirit  "  ;  let  Emser,  he  says,  take  note  and  bite  his 
lips  over  the  "  glad  courage  which  inspires  him  day  by  day." 

Seeking  to  display  this  confidence  in  face  of  his  opponents  he 
exclaims  satirically  in  a  writing  of  1518  :  "  Here  I  am."  If  there 
be  an  inquisitor  in  the  neighbourhood  he  had  better  hurry  up.2 

His  courage  and  entire  confidence  he  expressed  as  early  as 
1522  to  the  Elector  Frederick  of  Saxony  who  had  urged  him  to 
fight  shy  of  Duke  George  :  "  Even  if  things  at  Leipzig  were 
indeed  as  bad  as  at  Wittenberg  [they  think  they  are],  I  should 
nevertheless  ride  thither  even  though— I  hope  your  Electoral 
Highness  will  excuse  my  foolish  words — for  nine  days  running  it 
were  to  rain  Duke  Georges,  each  one  nine  times  as  furious  as  he. 
He  actually  looks  upon  my  Lord  Christ  as  a  man  of  straw  !  "3 
In  such  homely  words  did  he  speak,  even  to  his  own  sovereign 
whose  protection  counted  for  so  much,  in  order  to  make  it  yet 
clearer,  that  he  was  quite  convinced  of  having  received  his 
Evangel,  "  not  from  man,  but  solely  from  heaven  through  our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ"  ;  the  Prince,  his  protector,  should  know,  that 
God,  "  thanks  to  the  Evangel,  has  made  us  happy  lords  over 
death  and  all  the  devils."  For  this  reason,  according  to  his 
famous  boast,  he  would  still  have  ridden  to  Worms  in  defiance 
of  the  devils,  even  had  they  outnumbered  the  tiles  on  the 
roofs.4 

From  the  castle  of  Coburg,  though  himself  a  prey  to  all  sorts 
of  anxiety,  he  addressed  the  following  ironical,  though  at  the 
same  time  encouraging,  admonition  to  faint-hearted  Melanch- 
thon  :  Why  don't  you  fight  against  your  own  self  ?  "  What 
more  can  the  devil  do  than  slay  us  ?  What  then  ?  You  fight  in 
every  other  field,  why  not  then  fight  also  against  your  own  self, 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  6,  p.  323  ;   Erl.  ed.,  27,  p.  138. 

2  Ib.,  p.  391  f.  =  23. 

3  March  5,   1522,  ib.,  Erl.  ed.,   53,  p.   106  f.   ("  Brief wechsel,"   3, 
p.  296).  *  Ib. 


312          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

viz.  your  biggest  enemy  who  puts  so  many  weapons  against  you 
in  Satan's  hands  ?  J>1  It  was  thus  that  Luther  was  wont  to  fight 
against  himself  and  to  rob  the  devil  of  his  fancied  weapons. 

Often  enough  did  he  find  salvation  in  humour  alone,  for 
instance,  when  he  had  to  overcome  serious  danger,  or  to  beat 
down  difficulties  or  the  censure  of  his  friends  and  followers. 
The  plague  was  threatening  Wittenberg  ;  hence  he  jokes 
away  his  own  fears  and  those  of  others  with  a  jest  about  his 
"  trusty  weathercock,"  the  governor  Metzsch  ;  the  latter 
had  a  nose  which  could  detect  the  plague  while  yet  five  ells 
below  the  ground  ;  as  he  still  remained  in  Wittenberg  they 
had  good  reason  to  know  that  no  danger  existed.  On  the 
same  occasion  he  laughs  and  cries  in  the  same  breath  over 
the  behaviour  of  the  schoolboys,  all  the  schools  having  been 
already  closed  as  a  measure  of  precaution  ;  the  plague  had 
got  into  their  pens  and  paper  so  that  it  would  be  impossible 
to  make  of  them  "  either  preachers,  pastors,  .  or  school 
masters  ;  in  the  end  swine  and  dogs  will  be  our  best  cattle, 
towards  which  end  the  Papists  are  busily  working."2 

Further  instances  of  jests  of  this  sort,  made  under 
untoward  circumstances,  are  met  with  in  connection  with 
his  marriage.  His  union  with  Catherine  Bora,  as  the  reader 
already  knows,  set  tongues  wagging,  both  in  his  own  camp 
and  outside.  The  resentment  this  aroused  in  him  he 
attempted  to  banish  by  a  sort  of  half -jesting,  half -earnest 
defiance.  "  Since  they  are  already  cracked  and  crazy,  I  will 
drive  them  still  madder  and  so  have  done  with  it  !  "3  He 
jests  incidentally  over  the  suddenness  of  his  marriage,  over 
the  proof  needed  to  convince  even  himself  that  he  was  really 
a  married  man,  over  his  surprise  at  finding  plaits  of  hair 
beside  him  when  he  awoke  ;  he  also  makes  merry  over  his 
not  very  seemly  play  on  the  words  Bore  and  bier.4 

At  a  later  date  he  found  the  arrangement  of  the  new 
ritual  very  irksome,  both  on  account  of  the  difficulty  of 
introducing  any  sort  of  uniformity  and  also  owing  to  the 
petty  outside  interests  which  intruded  themselves.  Here 
again  he  tries  to  throw  such  questions  to  the  winds  by  the 

1  June  27,  1530,  "  Brief wechsel,"  8,  p.  35. 

2  To  the  Elector  Johann  Frederick,  July  9,  1535,  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed. 
55,  p.  95  ("  Brief  wechsel,"  10,  p.  169). 

3  To  Johann  Riihel,  etc.,  June   15,   1525,   "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  53, 
p.  314  ("  Brief  wechsel,"  5,  p.  195). 

4  See  vol.  ii.,  p.  184. 


HUMOUR   AND   SATIRE  313 

use  of  humour :  "  Put  on  three  copes  instead  of  one,  if  that 
pleases  you,"  he  wrote  to  Provost  George  Buchholzer  of 
Berlin,  who  had  sent  him  an  anxious  letter  of  inquiry  ;  and 
if  Joachim,  the  Brandenburg  Elector,  is  not  content  with 
one  procession  "  go  around  seven  times  as  Josue  did  at 
Jericho,  and,  if  your  master  the  Margrave  does  not  mind, 
His  Electoral  Highness  is  quite  at  liberty  to  leap  and  dance, 
with  harps,  kettledrums,  cymbals  and  bells  as  David  did 
before  the  ark  of  the  Lord."1 

During  the  whole  of  his  career  he  felt  the  embarrassment 
of  being  called  upon  by  the  Catholics  to  produce  proof  of  his 
higher  mission.  At  times  he  sought  to  escape  the  difficulty, 
so  far  as  miracles  went,  by  arguing  on,  and  straining  for 
all  they  were  worth,  certain  natural  occurrences  ;  on  other 
occasions,  however,  he  took  refuge  in  jests.  On  one  occasion 
he  even  whimsically  promised  to  perform  a  manifest  miracle. 
This  was  at  a  time  when  he  was  hard  put  to  provide  lodgings 
for  the  nuns  who  had  fled  to  Wittenberg  and  when  it  was 
rumoured  that  he  had  undertaken  a  journey  simply  to 
escape  the  trouble.  "  '  I  shall  arm  myself  with  prayer,'  he 
said,  '  and,  if  it  is  needful,  I  shall  assuredly  work  a  miracle.' 
And  at  this  he  laughed,"  so  the  notes  of  one  present  relate.2 

Luther  frequently  lays  it  down  that  merry  talk  and  good 
spirits  are  a  capital  remedy  against  temptations  to  doubts 
on  the  faith  and  remorse  of  conscience. 

He  exhorts  Prince  Joachim  of  Anhalt,  who  had  much  to  suffer 
from  the  "  Tempter  "  and  from  "  melancholy,"  to  be  always 
cheerful,  since  God  has  commanded  us  ".to  be  glad  in  His 
presence."  "  I,  who  have  passed  my  life  in  sorrow  and  looking 
at  the  black  side  of  things,  now  seek  for  joy,  and  find  it  whenever 
I  can.  We  now  have,  praise  be  to  God,  so  much  knowledge 
[through  the  Evangel]  that  we  can  afford  to  be  cheerful  with  a 
good  conscience."  It  was  perfectly  true — so  he  goes  on  in  a 
strangely  shamefaced  manner,  to  tell  the  pious  but  faint-hearted 
Prince — that,  at.  times,  he  himself  still  dreaded  cheerfulness,  as 
though  it  were  a  sin,  just  as  the  Prince  was  inclined  to  do  ;  "  but 
God-fearing,  honourable,  modest  joy  of  good  and  pious  people 
pleases  God  well,  even  though  occasionally  there  be  a  word  or 
merry  tale  too  much."3 

"  Nothing  does  more  harm  than  a  sadness,"  he  declares  in 
1542.  "  It  drieth  up  the  bones,  as  we  read  in  Prov.  xvii.  [22]. 

1  Dec.  4,  1539,  "  Brief  wechsel,"  12,  p.  317. 

2  Amsdort  to  Spalatin,  April  4,  1523,  see  Kolde,  "  Anal.  Lutherana," 
p.  443. 

3  May  23,   1534,   "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.  55,  p.  54  f.     "  Brief  wechsel," 
10,  p.  48. 


314          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

Therefore  let  a  young  man  be  cheerful,  and  for  this  reason  I  would 
inscribe  over  his  table  the  words  '  Sadness  hath  killed  many, 
etc.'"  (Eccles.  xxx.  25). x — "Thoughts  of  fear,"  he  insists  on 
another  occasion,  "  are  the  sure  weapons  of  death  "  ;  "  Such 
thoughts  have  done  me  more  harm  than  all  my  enemies  and  all 
my  labours."  They  were  at  times  so  insistent  that  my  "  efforts 
against  them  were  in  vain."  .  .  .  "So  depraved  is  our  nature  that 
we  are  not  then  open  to  any  consolation  ;  still,  they  must  be 
fought  against  by  every  means."2 

For  certain  spells,  particularly  in  earlier  years,  Luther  never 
theless  succeeded  so  well  in  assuming  a  cheerful  air  and  in  keep 
ing  it  up  for  a  considerable  while,  in  spite  of  the  oppression  he  felt 
within,  that  those  who  came  into  contact  with  him  were  easily 
deceived.  Of  this  he  once  assures  us  himself  ;  after  referring  to 
the  great  "  spiritual  temptations  "  he  had  undergone  with  "  fear 
and  trembling  "  he  proceeds  :  "  Many  think  that  because  I 
appear  outwardly  cheerful  mine  is  a  bed  of  roses,  but  God  knows 
how  it  stands  with  me  in  my  life."3 

In  a  word,  we  frequently  find  Luther  using  jocularity  as  an 
antidote  against  depression.  As  he  had  come  to  look  upon  it  as 
the  best  medicine  against  what  he  was  wont  to  call  his  "  tempta 
tions  "  and  had  habituated  himself  to  its  use,  and  as  these 
"  temptations  "  practically  never  ceased,  so,  too,  he  was  loath  to 
deprive  himself  of  so  welcome  a  remedy  even  in  the  dreariest 
days  of  his  old  age.  In  1530,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  he 
openly  confesses  that  such  was  the  case.  In  a  letter  to  Spalatin, 
written  from  the  Coburg  at  a  time  when  he  was  greatly  disturbed, 
he  describes  for  his  friend's  amusement  the  Diet  which  the  birds 
were  holding  on  the  roof  of  the  Castle.  His  remarks  he  brings  to 
a  conclusion  with  the  words  :  "  Enough  of  such  jests,  earnest  and 
needful  though  they  be  for  driving  away  the  thoughts  that  worry 
me — if  indeed  they  can  be  driven  away."4 

Still  deeper  is  the  glimpse  we  get  into  his  inmost  thoughts 
when,  in  his  serious  illness  of  1527,  he  voiced  his  regret  for  his 
free  and  offensive  way  of  talking,  remarking  that  it  was  often  due 
to  his  seeking  "  to  drive  away  the  sadness,"  to  which  his  "  weak 
flesh  "  was  liable. 

One  particular  instance  in  which  he  resorted  to  jest  as  a 
remedy  is  related  in  the  Table-Talk;  "In  1541,  on  the  Sunday 
after  Michaelmas,  Dr.  Martin  was  very  cheerful  and  jested  with 
his  good  friends  at  table.  .  .  .  He  said :  Do  not  take  it  amiss  of 
me,  for  I  have  received  many  bad  tidings  to-day  and  have  just 
read  a  troublesome  letter.  Things  are  ever  at  their  best,"  so  he 

1  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  249. 

2  Cordatus,    "  Tagebuch,"    p.    450.      For    other   remedies    against 
sadness  mentioned  here  or  elsewhere  see  above,  p.  92  f.,  and  below, 
p.  323,  and  vol.  iii.,  pp.  175  ff.,  305  ff.  ;   vol.  iv.,  p.  311  f. 

3  Bugenhagen's    account   of   Luther's   illness    and   temptations   of 
1527,  from  the  Latin.     Walch's  ed.  of  Luther's  Works,  21,  p.  158*  ; 
Vogt,  "  Bugenhagens  Brief wechsel,"  1888,  p.  64  ff. 

4  April  23,  1530,  "  Brief  wechsel,"  7,  p.  308. 


HUMOUR   AND   SATIRE  315 

concludes  defiantly,  "  when  the  devil  attacks  us  in  this  way."1 — 
It  is  just  the  same  sort  of  defiance,  that,  for  all  his  fear  of  the 
devil,  leads  him  to  sum  up  all  the  worst  that  the  devil  can  do  to 
him,  and  then  to  pour  scorn  upon  it.  During  the  pressing 
anxieties  of  the  Coburg  days  at  the  time  of  the  Diet  of  Augsburg, 
it  really  seemed  to  him  that  the  devil  had  "  vowed  to  have  his 
life."  He  comforts  himself  with  the  words  :  "  Well,  if  he  eats  me, 
he  shall,  please  God,  swallow  such  a  purge  as  shall  gripe  his  belly 
and  make  his  anus  seem  all  too  small."2 

It  is  a  matter  of  common  knowledge  that  people  addicted 
to  melancholy  can  at  certain  hours  surpass  others  in  cheerful 
ness  and  high  spirits.  When  one  side  of  the  scale  is  weighed 
down  with  sadness  many  a  man  will  instinctively  mend 
things  by  throwing  humour  into  the  other  ;  at  first,  indeed, 
such  humour  may  be  a  trifle  forced,  but  later  it  can  become 
natural  and  really  serve  its  purpose  well.  The  story  often  told 
might  quite  well  be  true  :  an  actor  consulted  a  physician  for 
a  remedy  against  melancholy  ;  the  latter,  not  recognising 
the  patient,  suggested  that  he  might  be  cheered  by  going  to 
see  the  performance  of  a  famous  comedian — who  was  no 
other  than  the  patient  himself. 

More  on  the  Nature  of  Luther's  Jests 

The  character  of  Luther's  peculiar  and  often  very  broad 
and  homely  humour  is  well  seen  in  his  letter-preface  to  a 
story  on  the  devil  which  he  had  printed  in  1535  and  which 
made  the  round  of  Germany.3 

The  devil,  according  to  this  "  historia  .  .  .  which  happened 
on  Christmas  Eve,  1534,"  had  appeared  to  a  Lutheran  pastor  in 
the  confessional,  had  blasphemed  Christ  and  departed  leaving 
behind  a  horrible  stench.  In  the  Preface  Luther  pretends  to  be 
making  enquiries  of  Amsdorf,  "  the  chief  and  true  Bishop  of 
Magdeburg,"  as  he  calls  him,  as  to  the  truth  and  the  meaning  of 
the  apparition.  He  begs  him  "  to  paint  and  depict  the  pious 
penitent  as  he  deserves,"  though  quite  aware  that  Amsdorf,  the 
Bishop,  would  refer  back  the  matter  to  him  as  the  Pope  ("  which 
indeed  I  am  ").  He  had  ready  the  proper  absolution  which 
Amsdorf  was  to  give  the  devil  :  "I,  by  the  authority  of  Our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ  and  the  most  holy  Father  Pope  Luther  the 
First,  deny  you  the  grace  of  God  and  life  everlasting  and  here 
with  consign  you  to  hell,"  etc.  Meanwhile  he  himself  gives  his 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  61,  p.  310. 

2  To  Melanchthon,  June  29,  1530,  "  Brief wechsel,"  8,  p.  43. 

"  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  55,  p.  86  ff.  ("  Briefwechsel,"  10,  p.  127).    The 
preface  is  addressed  to  Amsdorf. 


316          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

view  of  the  tale,  which  he  assumes  to  be  true,  and,  as  so  often 
elsewhere  when  he  has  to  do  with  the  devil,  proceeds  to  mingle 
mockery  of  the  coarsest  sort  with  bitter  earnest.  When  the  Evil 
One  ventures  to  approach  so  close  to  the  Evangel,  every  nerve  of 
Luther  is  strung  to  hatred  against  the  devil  and  his  Roman  Pope? 
both  of  whom  he  overwhelms  with  a  shower  of  the  foulest 
abuse. 

"  The  devil's  jests  are  for  us  Christians  a  very  serious  matter  "  ; 
having  a  great  multitude  of  kings,  princes,  bishops  and  clergy  on 
his  side  he  makes  bold  to  mock  at  Christ  ;  but  let  us  pray  that  he 
may  soil  himself  even  as  he  soiled  himself  in  Paradise  ;  our  joy, 
our  consolation  and  our  hope  is,  that  the  seed  of  the  woman 
shall  crush  his  head.  Hence,  so  he  exclaims,  the  above  absolution 
sent  to  Amsdorf  is  amply  justified.  Like  confession,  like  absolu 
tion  ;  "as  the  prayer,  so  the  incense,"  with  which  words  he  turns 
to  another  diabolical  apparition,  which  a  drunken  parson  had  in 
bed  ;  he  had  meant  to  conclude  the  canonical  hours  by  reciting 
Compline  in  bed,  and,  while  doing  so,  "  se  concacavit,"1  whereupon 
the  devil  appeared  to  him  and  said:  "As  the  prayer,  so  also  is 
the  incense."2 

He  applies  the  same  "  humorous  "  story  to  the  Pope  and  his 
praying  monks  in  his  "  An  den  Kurfursten  zu  Sachsen  und  Land- 
graven  zu  Hesse  von  dem  gefangenen  H.  von  Brunswig  "  (1545).3 
''  They  neither  can  pray  nor  want  to  pray,  nor  do  they  know 
what  it  is  to  pray  nor  how  one  ought  to  pray,  because  they  have 
not  the  Word  and  the  faith  "  ;  moreover,  their  only  aim  is  to 
make  the  "  kings  and  lords  "  believe  they  are  devout  and  holy.4 
"  On  one  occasion  when  a  tipsy  priest  was  saying  Compline  in 
bed,  he  heaved  during  the  recital  and  gave  vent  to  a  big  '  born- 
bart ' ;  Ah,  said  the  devil,  that's  just  right,  as  the  prayer  so  also  is 
the  incense  !  "  All  the  prayers  of  the  Pope  and  "  his  colleges  and 
convents  "  are  not  one  whit  better  "  than  that  drunken  priest's 
Compline  and  incense.  Nay,  if  only  they  were  as  good  there 
might  still  be  some  hope  of  the  Pope  growing  sober,  and  of  his 
saying  Matins  better  than  he  did  his  stinking  Compline.  But 
enough  of  this."6 

Of  this  form  of  humour  we  have  many  specimens  in 
Luther's  books,  letters  and  Table-Talk,  which  abound  in 
unsavoury  anecdotes,  particularly  about  the  clergy  and  the 
monks.  He  and  his  friends,  many  of  whom  had  at  one  time 
themselves  been  religious,  seem  to  have  had  ready  an 
inexhaustible  fund  of  such  stories.  Some  Protestants  have 
even  argued  that  it  was  in  the  convent  that  Luther  and  his 
followers  acquired  this  taste,  and  that  such  was  the  usual 
style  of  conversation  among  "  monks  and  celibates."  It  is 
indeed  possible  that  the  sweepings  of  the  monasteries  and 

1  See  Dietz,  "  Wdrterbuch,  etc."  2  Ib.,  p.  89. 

3  Ib.,  262,  p.  251.  4  Ib.,  p.  275.  6  Ib. 


HUMOUR   AND   SATIRE  317 

presbyteries  may  have  furnished  some  contributions  to  this 
store,  but  the  truth  is  that  in  many  cases  the  tales  tell 
directly  against  the  monks  and  clergy,  and  are  really 
inventions  made  at  their  expense,  some,  of  them  in  pre- 
Reformation  times.  Frequently  they  can  be  traced  back 
to  those  lay  circles  in  which  it  was  the  fashion  to  scoff  at  the 
clergy.  In  any  case  it  would  be  unjust,  in  order  to  excuse 
Luther's  manner  of  speech,  to  ascribe  it  simply  to  "  cloistral 
humour  "  and  the  "  jokes  of  the  sacristy."  The  evil  had  its 
root  far  more  in  the  coarseness  on  which  Luther  prided 
himself  and  in  the  mode  of  thought  of  his  friends  and  table 
companions,  than  in  the  monastery  or  among  the  clergy. 
Nearly  everywhere  there  were  regulations  against  foul 
speaking  among  the  monks,  and  against  frivolous  conversa 
tion  on  the  part  of  the  clergy,  though,  of  course,  the  existence 
of  such  laws  does  not  show  that  they  were  always  complied 
with.  That  Luther's  manner  of  speech  was  at  all  general 
has  still  to  be  proved.  Moreover,  the  reference  to  Luther's 
"  monkish  "  habits  is  all  the  less  founded,  seeing  that  the 
older  he  gets  and  the  dimmer  his  recollections  become,  the 
stronger  are  the  proofs  he  gives  of  his  love  for  such  season 
ing  ;  nor  must  we  forget  that,  even  in  the  monastery,  he 
did  not  long  preserve  the  true  monastic  spirit,  but  soon 
struck  out  a  way  of  his  own  and  followed  his  own  tastes. 

Luther  was  in  high  spirits  when  he  related  in  his  Table- 
Talk  the  following  tales  from  the  Court  of  Brandenburg  and 
the  city  of  Florence.  At  the  Offertory  of  the  Mass  the  grand 
father  of  Margrave  Casimir  of  Brandenburg,  attended  by  a 
trusty  chamberlain,  watching  the  women  as  they  passed  up 
to  make  their  offering  at  the  altar,  amused  themselves  by 
counting  up  the  adulteresses,  supposed  or  real ;  as  each 
passed  the  Margrave  told  the  chamberlain  to  "  draw  "  a 
bead  of  his  rosary.  The  chamberlain's  wife  happening  to 
pass,  the  Margrave,  to  his  courtier's  mortification,  told  him 
to  draw  a  bead  also  for  her.  When,  however,  the  Margrave's 
mother  came  forward  the  chamberlain  had  his  revenge  and 
said  :  Now  it's  your  turn  to  draw.  Upon  which  the  Margrave 
gathered  up  his  rosary  indignantly  with  the  words  :  "  Let 
us  lump  all  the  whores  together  !  "* — The  Florentine  storiette 
he  took  from  a  book  entitled  "  The  Women  of  Florence." 
An  adulteress  was  desirous  of  entering  into  relations  with  a 

1  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  390. 


318          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

young  man.  She  accordingly  complained  quite  untruthfully 
to  his  confessor,  that  he  had  been  molesting  her  against  her 
will  ;  she  also  brought  the  priest  the  presents  she  alleged 
he  had  brought  her,  and  described  how  by  night  he  climbed 
up  to  her  window  by  means  of  a  tree  that  stood  beneath  it. 
The  zealous  confessor  thereupon,  no  less  than  three  times, 
takes  the  supposed  peccant  lover  to  task  ;  finally  he  speaks 
of  the  tree.  Ah,  thinks  the  young  man,  that's  rather  a  good 
idea,  I  might  well  try  that  tree.  Having  learned  of  this  mode 
of  entry  he  accordingly  complies  with  the  lady's  wishes. 
"  And  so,"  concludes  Luther,  "  the  confessor,  seeking  to 
separate  them,  actually  brought  them  together.  Boundless 
indeed  is  the  poetic  ingenuity  and  cunning  of  woman."1 

Strong  as  was  Luther's  whimsical  bent,  yet  we  are 
justified  in  asking  whether  the  delightful  and  morally  so 
valuable  gift  of  humour  in  its  truest  sense  was  really  his. 

"  Genuine  humour  is  ever  kindly,"  rightly  says  Alb. 
Roderich,  "  and  only  savages  shoot  with  poisoned  darts." 
Humour  as  an  ethical  quality  is  the  aptitude  so  to  rise 
above  this  petty  world  as  to  see  and  smile  at  the  follies  and 
light  sides  of  human  life  ;  it  has  been  defined  as  an  optim 
istic  kind  of  comedy  which  laughs  at  what  is  funny  without, 
however,  hating  it,  and  which  lays  stress  on  the  kindlier  side 
of  what  it  ridicules. 

Of  this  happy,  innocent  faculty  gently  to  smooth  the 
asperities  of  life  Luther  was  certainly  not  altogether  devoid, 
particularly  in  private  life.  But  if  we  take  him  as  a  whole, 
we  find  that  his  humour  is  as  a  rule  disfigured  by  a  bitter 
spirit  of  controversy,  by  passion  and  by  hate.  His  wit  tends 
to  pass  into  satire  and  derision.  Here  we  have  anything  but 
the  overflowing  of  a  contented  heart  which  seeks  to  look  at 
everything  from  the  best  side  and  to  gratify  all.  He  may 
have  delighted  his  own  followers  by  his  unmatched  art  of 
depreciating  others  in  the  most  grotesque  of  fashions,  of 
exaggerating  their  foibles,  and,  with  his  keen  powers  of 
imagination,  of  giving  the  most  amusingly  ignominious 
account  of  their  undoing,  but,  when  judged  impartially 
from  a  literary  and  moral  standpoint,  his  output  appears 
more  as  irritating  satire,  as  clever,  bitter  word-play  and 
sarcasm,  rather  than  as  real  humour. 

1  Ib. 


CHAPTER    XXXII 

A    LIFE    FULL    OF    STRUGGLES    OF    CONSCIENCE 

1.   On  Luther's  "Temptations"  in  General 

AN  account  given  by  Luther  himself  in  1537  and  taken 
down  by  his  pupils  from  his  own  lips  is  the  best  introduction 
to  the  subject  now  to  be  considered. 

"  He  spoke  of  his  spiritual  sickness  ('  morbus  spiritualis  '). 
For  a  fortnight  he  had  tasted  neither  food  nor  drink  and  had 
had  no  sleep.  '  During  this  time,'  so  he  said,  '  I  wrestled 
frequently  with  God  and  impatiently  upbraided  Him  with 
His  promises.'  '  While  in  this  state  he  had  been  forced  to 
complain,  with  the  sick  and  troubled  Job,  that  God  was 
killing  him  and  hiding  His  countenance  from  him  ;  like  Job, 
however,  he  had  learnt  to  \vait  for  His  assistance,  for  here 
too  his  case  was  like  that  of  the  "  man  crushed,  and  delivered 
over  to  the  gates  of  death  "  and  on  whom  the  devil  had 
poured  forth  his  wrath.  How  many,  he  adds,  have  to 
wrestle  like  he  and  Job  until  they  are  able  to  say  "  I  know, 
O  God,  that  Thou  art  gracious."1 

Other  statements  of  Luther's  at  a  later  period  supply  us  with 
further  information.  Lauterbach  notes,  on  Oct.  7,  1538,  the 
complaint  already  quoted  :  "I  have  my  mortal  combats  daily. 
We  have  to  struggle  and  wrangle  wTith  the  devil  who  has  very 
hard  bones,  till  we  learn  how  to  crack  them.  Paul  and  Christ 
had  hard  work  enough  with  the  devil."2  On  Aug.  16  of  the  same 
year  Lauterbach  takes  down  the  statement  :  "  Had  anyone  else 
had  to  undergo  such  temptations  as  I,  he  would  long  since  have 
expired.  I  should  not  of  my  own  have  been  able  to  endure  the 
blows  of  Satan,  just  as  Paul  could  not  endure  the  all-too-great 
temptations  of  Christ.  In  short,  sadness  is  a  death  in  itself."3 

With  the  spiritual  sickness  above  mentioned  was  combined,  as 

1  Mathesius,   "  Tischreden,"  p.  406  :    "  Mentionem  fecit  morbi  sui 
spiritualis.     Nam  in   14  diebus  nihil  edit  neque  bibit  neque  dormivit. 
'  Quo  tempore  scepius  disputavi  cum  Deo,'  "  etc. 

2  Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  144. 

3  16.,  p.  113.    Cp.  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  62,  p.  16. 

319 


320          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

has  been  already  pointed  out  (above,  p.  226  f.),  a  growing  state  of 
depression:  "I  have  lived  long  enough,"  he  said  in  1542;  "the 
devil  is  weary  of  my  life  and  I  am  sick  of  hating  the  devil."1 
Terrible  thoughts  of  the  "  Judgment  of  God  "  repeatedly  rose  up 
before  him  and  caused  him  great  fear.2 

Before  this,  according  to  other  notes,  he  had  said  to  his  table 
companions,  that  he  was  daily  "  at  grips  with  Satan  "  ;3  that 
during  the  attacks  of  the  devil  he  had  often  not  known  whether 
he  were  "dead  or  alive."4  "The  devil,"  so  he  assures  them, 
"  brought  me  to  such  a  pitch  of  despair  that  I  did  not  even  know 
if  there  was  a  God."5  "  When  the  devil  finds  me  idle,  unmindful 
of  God's  Word,  and  thus  unarmed,  he  assails  my  conscience  with 
the  thought  that  I  have  taught  what  is  false,  that  I  have  rent 
asunder  the  churches  which  were  so  peaceful  and  content  under  the 
Papacy,  and  caused  many  scandals,  dissensions  and  factions  by 
my  teaching,  etc.  Well,  I  can't  deny  that  I  am.  often  anxious 
and  uneasy  about  this,  but,  as  soon  as  I  lay  hold  on  the  Word, 
I  again  get  the  best."6 

To  the  people  he  said,  in  a  sermon  in  1531  :  "  The  devil  is 
closer  to  us  than  we  dream.  I  myself  often  feel  the  devil  raging 
within  me.  Sometimes  I  believe  and  sometimes  I  don't,  some 
times  I  am  cheerful  and  sometimes  sad."7 — A  year  later  he 
describes  in  a  sermon  how  the  devil,  who  "  attacks  the  pious," 
had  often  made  him  "  sweat  much  and  his  heart  to  beat,"  before 
he  could  withstand  him  with  the  right  weapon,  viz.  with  God's 
Word,  namely,  the  office  committed  to  him  and  the  service  he 
had  rendered  to  the  world,  "  which  it  was  not  his  to  belie  !  "8 
Some  ten  years  before  this  he  had  spoken  still  more  plainly  to 
his  hearers  at  Wittenberg,  telling  them,  strange  to  say,  of  his 
experience  in  early  days  of  the  good  effects  of  confession  :  "I 
would  not  for  all  the  treasures  of  the  world  give  up  private 
confession,  for  I  know  what  strength  and  comfort  it  has  been  to 
me.  No  one  knows  what  it  can  do  unless  he  has  fought  often  and 
much  with  the  devil.  Indeed,  the  devil  would  long  ago  have  done 
for  me,  had  not  confession  saved  me."  In  fact  whoever  tells  his 
troubles  to  his  brother,  receives  from  him,  as  from  God,  comfort 
"  for  his  simple  conscience  and  faint  heart  "  ;  seldom  indeed  did 
one  find  a  "  strong,  firm  faith  "  which  did  not  stand  in  need  of 

1  To  Justus  Menius,  May  1,  1542,  "  Briefe,"  ed.  De  Wette,  5,  p.  467. 

2  Mathesius,   "  Tischreden,"  p.    159,  June    18,   1540  :     "  tentari  de 
blasphemia,  de  iudicio  Dei,  ibi  nee  peccatum  intelligimus  nee  remedia 
novimus"     According  to  other  passages  he  is  here  speaking  from  his 
own  experience. 

3  "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  1,  p.  222. 

4  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  57,  p.  65.  5  Ib.,  p.  66. 

6  Ib.,  60,  p.  82  f. 

7  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  34,  2,  p.  266  ;  Erl.  ed.,  192,  p.  76.    Sermon 
at  Michaelmas.     In  place  of  the  devil's  "  raging  "  ("  Rasen  "),  as  in 
Erl.  ed.,  the  Weim.  ed.  reads  "  nosing  "  ("  Nasen  ")  [?  "  Nahsein  "]. 
Rorer's  MS.  reads  :    "  Et  in  me  sentio  satance  nisum." 

8  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  36,  p.  476  ;  Erl.  ed.,  182,  p.  359,  Sermon  on 
1  John  iv.  (16-21). 


"COMBATS   AND   TEMPTATIONS"     321 

this  ;  hardly  anyone  could  boast  of  possessing  it.  "  You  do  not 
know  yet,"  he  concludes,  "  what  labour  and  trouble  it  costs  to 
fight  with  and  conquer  the  devil.  But  I  know  it  well,  for  I  have 
eaten  a  mouthful  or  two  of  salt  with  him.  I  know  him  well,  and 
so  does  he  know  me."1 

After  all  these  remarkably  frank  admissions  there  can 
remain  no  doubt  that  a  heavy  mist  of  doubts  and  anxieties 
overshadowed  Luther's  inner  life. 

A  closer  examination  of  this  darker  side  of  his  soul  seems 
to  promise  further  information  concerning  his  inner  life. 
Here,  too,  it  is  advisable  to  sum  up  the  phenomena,  retracing 
them  back  to  their  very  starting-point.  Though  much  of 
what  is  to  be  said  has  already  been  mentioned,  still,  it  is 
only  now,  towards  the  end  of  his  life,  that  the  various  traits 
can  in  any  sense  be  combined  so  as  to  form  something  as 
near  a  complete  picture  as  possible.  We  have  to  thank 
Luther's  communicativeness,  talkativeness  and  general 
openness  to  his  friends,  that  a  tragic  side  of  his  inner  life  has 
been  to  some  extent  revealed,  which  otherwise  might  for 
ever  have  been  buried  in  oblivion. 

It  is  true  that,  to  forestall  what  follows,  few  nowadays 
will  be  disposed  to  |ollow  Luther  and  to  look  on  the  devil  as 
the  originator  of  his  doubts  and  qualms  of  conscience.  His 
fantastic  ideas  of  the  "  diabolical  combats  "  he  had  to  wage, 
form,  as  we  shall  see  (below,  p.  329  ff .),  part  of  his  devil-mania. 
Nevertheless  his  many  references  to  his  ordinary,  nay, 
almost  daily,  inward  combats  or  "temptations,"  as  he  is 
accustomed  to  style  them,  are  not  mere  fabrications,  but 
really  seem  to  come  from  a  profoundly  troubled  soul.  In 
what  follows  many  such  utterances  will  be  quoted,  because 
only  thus  can  one  reach  a  faithful  picture  of  his  changing 
moods  which  otherwise  would  seem  barely  credible.  These 
utterances,  though  usually  much  alike,  at  times  strike  a 
different  note  and  thus  depict  his  inner  life  from  a  new  and 
sometimes  surprising  side. 

2.   The  Subject-matter  of  the  "Temptations" 

The  spiritual  warfare  Luther  had  to  wage  concerned 
primarily  his  calling  and  his  work  as  a  whole. 

'  You  have  preached  the  Evangel,"  so  the  inner  voice, 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  10,  3,  pp.  61  f.,  63  f.  ;  Erl.  ed.,  28,  pp.  283, 
285,  at  the  end  of  the  eight  sermons  against  Carlstadt. 


322          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

which  he  describes  as  the  devil's  tempting,  says  to  him  ; 
"  But  who  commanded  you  to  do  so,  '  quis  iussit  ?  '  Who 
called  upon  you  to  do  things  such  as  no  man  ever  did 
before  ?  How  if  this  were  displeasing  to  God  and  you  had 
to  answer  for  all  the  souls  that  perish  ?  '!1 

"  Satan  has  often  said  to  me  :  How  if  your  own  doctrine  were 
false  which  charges  the  Pope,  monks  and  Mass-priests  with  such 
errors  ?  Often  he  so  overwhelmed  me  that  the  sweat  has  poured 
off  me,  until  I  said  to  him,  go  and  carry  your  complaints  to  my 
God  Who  has  commanded  me  to  obey  this  Christ."2 — "  The  devil 
would  often  have  laid  me  low  with  his  argument  :  '  Thou  art  not 
called,'  had  I  not  been  a  Doctor."3 — "I  have  had  no  greater 
temptation,"  he  said  after  dinner  on  Dec.  14,  1531,  "  and  none 
more  grievous  than  that  about  my  preaching  ;  for  I  have  said  to 
myself  :  You  alone  are  at  the  bottom  of  this  ;  if  it's  all  wrong  you 
have  to  answer  for  all  the  many  souls  which  it  brings  down  to 
hell.  In  this  temptation  I  have  often  myself  descended  into  hell 
till  God  recalled  me  and  strengthened  me,  telling  me  that  it  was 
indeed  the  Word  of  God  and  true  doctrine  ;  but  it  costs  much 
until  one  reaches  this  comfort."4 — "Now  the  devil  troubles  me 
with  other  thoughts  [than  in  the  Papacy],  for  he  accuses  me 
thus  :  Oh,  what  a  vast  multitude  have  you  led  astray  by  your 
teaching  !  Sometimes  amidst  such  temptation  one  single  word 
consoles  me  and  gives  me  fresh  courage."5 

Not  merely  does  he  say  this  in  the  Table-Talk  but  even  writes 
it  in  his  Bible  Commentaries.  In  his  exposition  of  Psalm  xlv.  he 
speaks  of  an  "  argumentation  and  objection  "  which  the  devil 
urges  against  him  :  "  Lo,  you  stand  all  alone  and  are  seeking  to 
overthrow  the  good  order  [of  the  Church]  established  with  so 
much  wisdom.  For  even  though  the  Papacy  be  not  without  its 
sins  and  errors,  what  about  you  ?  Are  you  infallible  ?  Are  you 
without  sin  ?  Why  raise  the  standard  of  revolt  against  the 
house  of  the  Lord  when  you  yourself  can  only  teach  them  what 
you  yourself  are  full  of,  viz.  error  and  sin  ?  These  thoughts,"  he 
continues,  "  upset  one  very  much.  .  .  .  Hence  we  must  learn 
that  all  our  strength  lies  in  hearing  God's  Word  and  laying  hold 
on  it,  in  seeing  God's  works  and  believing  in  them.  Whoever 
does  not  do  this  will  be  taken  captive  by  the  devil  and  over 
thrown."  He  is  fully  cognisant  of  the  strength  of  the  objection 
which  dogs  his  footsteps  :  Though  sins  and  faults  are  to  be  met 
with  in  individual  members  of  the  hierarchy,  still  we  must  honour 
their  "  office  and  authority."6 

1  "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  1,  p.  221  sq. 

2  Ib.,  3,  p.  154  sq.    "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  58,  p.  70.    Cordatus,  "  Tage- 
buch,"  p.  107.    Taken  from  Schlaginhaufen,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  26,  1532. 

3  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  59,  p.  243. 

«  Schlaginhaufen,  p.   11  (Dec.   14,   1531).     Cp.  "Werke,"  Erl.  ed., 
60,  p.  46.  5  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  60,  p.  128. 

6  "  Opp.  lat.  exeg.,"  18,  p.  223. 


"COMBATS  AND  TEMPTATIONS"     323 

Among  Luther's  peculiar  doctrines  the  principal  ones 
which  became  the  butt  of  "  temptations  "  were  his  funda 
mental  theses  on  Justification,  on  the  Law  and  on  good 
works. 

With  regard  to  his  doctrine  of  Justification,  on  Dec.  14,  1531, 
he  gave  his  pupil  Schlaginhaufen,  who  also  failed  to  find  comfort 
in  it,  some  advice  as  to  how  he  was  to  help  himself.  The  devil 
was  wont  "  to  come  to  him  "  [Luther]  with  righteousness  and  to 
"insist  on  our  being  actively  righteous,"  and  since  none  of  us  are, 
"  no  one  can  venture  to  stand  up  to  him  "  ;  what  one  should  do 
was,  however,  resolutely  to  fall  back  on  passive  righteousness  and 
to  say  to  Satan  :  Not  by  my  own  righteousness  am  I  justified, 
but  by  the  righteousness  of  the  man  Christ.  "  Do  you  know 
Him  ?  "  In  this  way  we  vanquish  him  by  "  the  Word."  Another 
method,  also  a  favourite  one  of  his,1  so  he  instructs  his  anxious 
pupil,  was  to  rid  oneself  of  such  ideas  by  "  thinking  of  dancing, 
or  of  a  pretty  girl  ;  that  also  is  good,"  eating  and  drinking  are 
likewise  helpful ;  for  one  who  is  tempted,  fasting  is  a  hundred  times 
worse  than  eating  and  drinking."2 — "This  is  the  great  art,"  he 
repeats  at  the  beginning  of  the  following  year,  looking  back  upon 
his  own  bitter  experiences,  "  to  pass  from  my  sin  to  Christ's 
righteousness  to  know  that  Christ's  righteousness  is  mine  as 
surely  as  I  know  that  this  body  is  mine.  .  .  .  What  astonishes 
me  is  that  I  cannot  learn  this  doctrine,  and  yet  all  my  pupils 
believe  they  have  it  at  their  finger-tips."3 

The  doctrine  of  the  Law  in  its  relation  to  the  Gospel,  a  point 
which  he  was  never  able  to  make  quite  clear  to  himself,  con 
stituted  in  his  case  an  obstacle  to  peace  of  mind. 4  In  consequence 
of  his  own  experience  he  warns  others  from  the  outset  against 
giving  way  to  any  anxious  thoughts  about  this  :  "  Whoever,  Law 
in  hand,  begins  to  dispute  with  the  devil  is  already  a  beaten  man 
and  a  prisoner.  .  .  .  Hence  let  no  one  dare  to  dispute  with  him 
about  the  Law,  or  about  sin,  but  let  him  rather  desist  in  good 
time."5  "  When  Satan  reproaches  me  and  says  :  '  The  Law  is 
also  the  Word  of  God,'  I  reply  :  '  God's  Word  is  only  the  promise 
of  God  whereby  He  says  :  Let  me  be  Thy  God.  In  addition  to 
this,  however,  He  also  gives  the  Law,  but  for  another  purpose,  not 
that  we  may  be  saved  thereby."6 

But  God,  as  Luther  was  well  aware,  will,  as  He  threatens, 
judge  people  by  their  fulfilment  of  the  Law  and  only  grant 
salvation  to  those  who  keep  it. 

The  stern  and  clear  exhortations  of  Scripture  on  fidelity  to  the 

1  See  vol.  iii.,  pp.  175  f.,  178  f. 

2  Schlaginhaufen,    "  Aufzeichn.,"   p.    11.     Cp.  ib.,  Veit  Dietrich's 
statement,  and  vol.  iii.,  p.  177  f. 

3  Schlaginhaufen,  p.  41,  Jan.-March,  1532.     Cp.  Cordatus,  p.  131  ; 
"  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  2,  p.  298  ;    "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  58,  p.  402. 

4  Above,  p.  7  ff.  *  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  58,  p.  301. 
6  Ib.,  p.  301  f. 


324          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

Law  and  on  penance  for  its  transgression  often  filled  his  soul 
with  the  utmost  terror,  and  so  did  the  text :  "  Unless  you  do 
penance,  you  shall  all  likewise  perish  "  (Luke  xiii.  3).  Even  in 
one  of  his  sermons  he  confessed  to  the  people  in  this  connection, 
that  he  was  acquainted  from  experience  "  with  the  cunning  of 
the  devil  and  his  malicious  tricks,  how  he  is  wont  to  upbraid  us 
with  the  Law  ...  to  make  a  real  hell  for  us  so  that  the  wide 
world  seems  all  too  narrow  to  hold  us  "  ;  the  devil  depicts  Christ 
"  as  though  He  were  angry  with  sinners  "  ;  "he  grabs  a  text  of 
Holy  Scripture,  or  one  of  Christ's  warnings,  and  suddenly  stabs 
us  so  hard  in  the  heart  .  .  .  that  we  actually  believe  it,  nay,  our 
conscience  would  swear  to  it  a  thousand  times,"  that  "  it  was 
indeed  Christ  Who  inspired  such  thoughts,  whereas  all  the  while 
it  was  the  devil  himself."  "  Of  what  I  say  I  have  had  some 
experience  myself."1  He  then  goes  on  to  quote  the  above 
exhortation  to  penance  as  an  instance  of  the  sort  of  warning  on 
which  the  devil  seizes,  though  these  words  have  ever  been 
regarded  by  God-fearing  Christians  as  a  powerful  incentive  to 
religion  and  not  at  all  as  productive  of  excessive  fear,  at  least  in 
those  who  put  their  trust  in  grace.  Luther,  however,  thinks  it 
right  to  add  :  "  By  fear  the  devil  fouls  and  poisons  with  his  venom 
the  pure  and  true  knowledge  of  Christ." 

Hence  it  is  useless,  or  at  best  but  a  temporary  expedient,  to 
refrain  from  disputing  with  Satan  on  the  Law.  Nor  is  Luther's 
invitation  much  better  :  "  When  a  man  is  tempted,  or  is  with 
those  who  are  tempted,  let  him  slay  Moses  and  throw  every  stone 
at  him  on  which  he  can  lay  hands."2 

His  doctrine  of  good  works  was  no  less  a  source  of  disquietude 
to  Luther.  He  declared  that  Satan  was  sure  of  an  "  easy  victory  " 
"  once  he  gets  a  man  to  think  of  what  he  has  done  or  left  undone." 
What  one  had  to  do  was  to  retort  to  the  devil,  strong  in  one's 
fiducial  faith  :  "  Though  I  may  not  have  done  this  or  that  good 
work,  still  I  am  saved  by  the  forgiveness  of  sins,  as  baptised  and 
redeemed  by  the  flesh  and  blood  of  Christ  "  ;  beyond  this  he 
should  not  go  :  "  Faith  ranks  above  deeds  "  ;  still,  so  he  adds, 
before  a  man  reaches  this  point,  all  may  be  over  for  him.  "It  is 
hard  in  the  time  of  temptation  to  get  so  far ;  even  Christ  found  it 
difficult  "  ;  "  it  is  hard  to  escape  from  the  idea  of  works,"  i.e. 
from  believing  that  they  as  much  as  faith  are  required  for  salva 
tion  and  that  they  are  meritorious.3 

The  "  devil "  also  frequently  twitted  Luther,  so  he 
declares,  with  the  consequences  of  his  doctrines. 

"  Often  he  tormented  me,"  he  says,  "  with  words  such  as  these  : 
'  Look  at  the  cloisters  ;  formerly  they  enjoyed  a  delightful  peace, 

1  16.,  202,  1,  p.  161,  Sermon  on  Gal.  i.  4  f.  (1538). 

2  Schlaginhaufen,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  48,  with  the  addition  :    "  But 
the  Law  must  be  preached  to  those  who  are  well." 

3  "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  1,  p.  222. 


"COMBATS  AND  TEMPTATIONS"     325 

of  which  you  have  made  an  end  ;  who  told  you  to  do  such  a 
thing  ?  '  '  On  one  occasion,  when  making  some  such  admissions 
concerning  the  effect  of  his  teaching  on  the  religious  vows,  one 
interrupted  him  and  tried  to  show  that  he  had  merely  insisted 
that  God  was  not  to  be  worshipped  by  the  doctrines  and  com 
mandments  of  men  (Mt.  xv.  9),  and  that  the  dissolution  of  the 
monasteries  was  not  so  much  his  work  as  a  consequence  ordained 
by  God  ;  Luther  replied  frankly  :  "  My  friend,  before  such  a 
thought  would  have  occurred  to  me  during  such  temptations  I 
should  indeed  have  been  in  a  fine  sweat."1 

"  When  Satan  finds  me  idle  and  not  armed  with  the  Word," 
so  we  read  in  the  notes  made  of  one  of  his  sermons,2  "he  puts  it 
into  my  conscience  that  I  am  a  disturber  of  the  public  order, 
a  preacher  of  false  doctrines  and  a  herald  of  revolt.  This  he  often 
does.  But  as  soon  as  I  make  use  of  the  Word  as  a  weapon  I  get 
the  best,  for  I  answer  him.  ...  It  is  written  you  must  hear  this 
man  [the  Son  of  God]  or  everything  falls.  God  heeds  not  the 
world,  even  were  there  ten  rebellious  worlds.  It  was  thus  that 
Paul,  too,  had  to  console  himself  when  accused  of  preaching 
sedition  against  God  and  the  Emperor."3  In  this  wise  does 
Luther  seek  to  fall  back  on  Christ  and  on  his  divine  commission. 

He  frequently,  indeed  usually,  appeals  to  this  source  of  consola 
tion,  and  it  is  therefore  due  to  him  to  quote  a  few  more  such 
statements.  He  struggles,  in  spite  of  all  his  fears,  not  to  relinquish 
his  peculiar  trust  in  Christ. 

Yet,  as  he  often  complains  in  this  connection,  "  the  devil  knows 
well  how  to  get  me  away."4 

"  He  says  to  me  :  See  how  much  evil  arises  from  your  doctrine. 
To  which  I  reply  :  Much  good  has  also  come  of  it.  Oh,  says  he, 
that  is  a  mere  nothing  !  He  is  a  fine  talker  and  can  make  a  great 
beam  of  a  little  splinter,  and  destroy  what  is  good  and  dissolve 
it  into  thin  air.  He  has  never  been  so  angry  in  his  life.  ...  I 
must  hold  fast  to  Christ  and  to  the  Evangel.  He  frequently 
begins  to  dispute  with  me  about  this,  and  well  knows  how  to  get 
me  away.  He  is  very  wroth,  I  feel  it  and  understand  it  well."3 — 
The  moral  consequences  of  the  religious  innovations,  and  the 
disunion  so  rife  undoubtedly  weighed  heavily  on  Luther.  "  We, 
who  boast  of  being  Evangelical,"  so  he  is  impelled  to  exclaim  in 
1538,  "fling  the  most  holy  Gospel  to  the  winds  as  though  it  were 
but  a  quotation  from  Terence."  "Alas,  Good  God,  how  bitter 
the  devil  must  be  against  us,  to  incite  the  very  ministers  of  the 
Word  against  each  other  and  to  inspire  them  with  mutual 
hatred  !  "6 

Misgivings  as  to  his  own  salvation  also  constituted  a 
source  of  profound  anxiety  for  Luther. 

1  Schlaginhaufen,  ib.,  p.  122. 

2  Mathesius,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  ed.  Lcesche,  p.  411.     Cp.  Khummer,  in 
Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  74. 

3  Cordatus,  "Tagebuch,"  p.  363.         4  "Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  58,  301. 
5  Ib.  6  Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  21. 


326          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

So  repeatedly  did  he  hear  in  fancy  the  devil  announcing 
to  him  in  a  voice  of  thunder  his  eternal  damnation,  that  he 
was,  as  he  confesses,  almost  reduced  to  despair  and  to 
blasphemy. 

"  When  we  are  thus  tempted  to  blasphemy  on  account 
of  God's  judgment,"  so  he  said  on  June  18,  1540,  "  we  fail 
to  see  either  that  it  is  a  sin,  or  how  to  avoid  it,"  "  such 
abominable  thoughts  does  the  prince  of  this  world  suggest 
to  the  mind  :  Hatred  of  God,  blasphemy,  despair  ;  these 
are  the  devil's  own  fiery  darts  ;  St.  Paul  understood  them 
to  some  extent  when  he  felt  the  sting  of  the  devil  in  his 
flesh  [2  Cor.  xii.  7].  These  are  the  high  temptations  [which, 
as  he  explains  elsewhere,  were  reserved  for  himself  and  for 
his  preachers].  No  Pope  has  known  them.  These  stupid 
donkeys  were  familiar  with  no  other  temptations  than  those 
of  carnal  passion.  ...  To  such  they  capitulated,  and  so 
did  c  Jeronimus.'  Yet  such  temptations  are  easily  to  be 
remedied  while  virgins  and  women  remain  with  us."1 — But 
in  that  other  sort  of  temptation  it  is  hard  to  "  keep  cheerful  " 
and  to  tell  the  devil  boldly  :  "  God  is  not  angry  as  you  say."2 

On  one  occasion  Melanchthon  watched  him  during  such 
a  struggle,  when  he  was  battling  against  despair  and  the 
appalling  thought  that  he  had  been  delivered  over  to  the 
"  wrath  of  God  and  the  punishment  of  sin."  Luther,  he 
says,  was  in  "  such  sore  terror  that  he  almost  lost  conscious 
ness,"  and  sighed  much  as  he  wrestled  with  a  text  of  Paul 
on  unbelief  and  grace.3 

Several  incidents  and  many  utterances  noted  down  from 
Luther's  own  lips  give  us  an  even  better  insight  into  the 
varying  character  of  his  "  temptations  "  and  into  their  nature 
as  a  whole. 

3.  An  Episode.     Terrors  of  Conscience  become  Temptations 
of  the  Devil 

Schlaginhaufen  and  Luther 

Johann  Schlaginhaufen,  the  pupil  of  Luther  whom  we 
have  had  so  frequent  occasion  to  mention,  complained  to  his 

1  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  159. 

2  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  60,  p.  47. 

3  "  Vitse  reformatorum,"  ed.  Neander,  "  Vita  Lutheri,"  c.  4,  p.  5. 
The  text  was  Rom.  xi.  32. 


"  COMBATS  AND  TEMPTATIONS  "     327 

master  in  the  winter  of  1531  of  the  deep  anxiety  from  which 
he  could  not  shake  himself  free,  which  led  him  to  fear  for  the 
salvation  of  his  soul.  Luther  sought  in  vain  to  comfort  the 
troubled  man  by  pointing  to  his  own  case.1  The  fact  that 
the  master  attributed  the  whole  matter  to  the  devil  only 
added  to  the  confusion  of  his  unfortunate  pupil.  So  much 
was  Schlaginhaufen  upset,  that  on  one  occasion,  on  New 
Year's  Eve,  1531,  he  actually  swooned  whilst  on  a  visit 
to  Luther's  house.  Luther,  nothing  abashed,  promptly 
exorcised  the  devil  who  had  brought  on  the  fainting-fit, 
using  thereto  the  Bible  words  :  "  The  Lord  rebuke  thee, 
Satan  "  (Zach.  iii.  2  :  "  Increpet  te  Dominus  ")  ;  he  added  : 
"  He  [the  devil],  who  should  be  an  angel  of  life,  is  an  angel 
of  death.  He  tries  us  with  lying  and  with  murder." 

Schlaginhaufen,  after  having  been  put  to  bed,  began  to  come 
to,  whereupon  Luther  consoled  him  thus  :  "  David  suffered  such 
temptations  ;  I  too  have  often  experienced  similar  ones,  though 
to-day  I  have  been  free  from  them  and  have  had  nothing  to 
complain  of  save  only  a  natural  weakness  of  the  head.  Let  the 
godless,  Cochlaeus,  Faber  and  the  Margrave  [Joachim  I  of 
Brandenburg]  be  afraid  and  tremble.  This  is  a  temptation  of  the 
spirit  ;  it  is  not  meant  for  us,  for  we  are  ministers  and  vicars  of 
God."  Here  Schlaginhaufen  groaned  :  "  Oh,  my  sins  !  "  Luther 
now  tried  to  make  him  understand  that  he  must  turn  to  the 
thought  of  grace  and  forget  all  about  the  Law.  "  Oh,  my  God," 
replied  the  young  man,  echoing  his  master's  own  thoughts,  "  the 
tiniest  devil  is  stronger  than  the  whole  world  !  "  But  Luther 
pointed  out  that  there  were  even  stronger  good  angels  present  for 
the  Christian's  protection.  He  went  on,  "  Satan  is  as  hostile  as 
can  be  to  us.  Were  we  only  to  agree  to  worship  the  Pope,  we 
should  be  his  dear  children,  enjoy  perfect  peace  and  probably 
become  cardinals.  It  is  not  you  alone  who  endure  such  tempta 
tions  ;  I  am  inured  to  them,  and  Peter  too  and  Paul  were 
acquainted  with  them.  .  .  .  We  must  not  be  afraid  of  the 
miscreant."  When  Schlaginhaufen  had  sufficiently  recovered  to 
return  to  his  lodgings  close  by,  Luther  paternally  admonished 
him  to  mix  more  freely  with  others  and,  for  the  rest,  to  trust 
entirely  in  his  teacher.  His  own  waverings  did  not  prevent  him 
from  giving  the  latter  piece  of  advice. 2 

Of  the  temptations  by  which  he  himself  was  visited,  "  to 
despair,  and  to  dread  the  wrath  of  God,"  he  had  already  said  to 
Schlaginhaufen,  on  Dec.  14,  1531 :  Had  it  not  been  for  them  he 
would  never  have  been  able  to  do  so  much  harm  to  the  devil,  or 
to  preserve  his  own  humility  ;  now,  however,  he  knew  to  his 
shame  that  "  when  the  temptation  comes  I  am  unable  to  get  the 

1  Cp.  above,  p.  323. 

2  Schlaginhaufen,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  19  ff. 


328          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

better  of  a  single  venial  sin.  Thanks  to  these  temptations  I  have 
attained  to  such  knowledge  and  to  such  gifts,  that,  with  the  help 
of  God,  I  won  that  glorious  victory  ('  illam  prceclaram  victoriam  '), 
vanquishing  my  monkish  state,  the  vows,  the  Mass  and  all  those 
abominations."  "  After  that  I  had  peace,"  he  says,  speaking  of 
those  earlier  years,  "  so  that  I  even  took  a  wife,  such  good  days 
had  I."1 — Yet  his  own  contemporary  statements  show  that 
inward  peace  was  not  his  at  the  time  when  he  took  a  wife. 2 

An  incident  related  of  Luther  by  Schlaginhaufen  shows  how 
a  single  text  of  Scripture,  and  the  train  of  ideas  it  awakened, 
could  reduce  him,  and  Bugenhagen  too,  to  a  state  verging  on 
distraction.  "  The  devil  on  one  occasion,"  so  Luther  said  to  him, 
"  tormented  and  almost  slew  me  with  Paul's  words  to  Timothy 
[1  Tim.  v.  11—12],  so  that  my  heart  melted  in  my  bosom;  the 
reason  was  the  abandoning  by  so  many  monks  and  nuns  of  the 
religious  state  in  which  they  had  vowed  to  God  to  live."  (Paul, 
in  the  passage  cited,  has  strong  things  to  say  of  widows  who  prove 
unfaithful  to  the  widowhood  in  which  they  had  promised  to* live.) 
"  The  devil,"  he  continues  concerning  his  attitude  towards  the 
devil  at  that  time,  "  hid  from  my  sight  the  doctrine  of  Justifica 
tion  so  that  I  never  even  thought  of  it,  and  obtruded  on  me  the 
text  ;  he  led  me  away  from  the  doctrine  of  grace  to  dispute  on 
the  Law,  and  then  he  had  me  at  his  mercy.  Bugenhagen  happened 
to  be  near  at  the  time.  I  submitted  it  to  him  and  went  with  him 
into  the  corridor.  But  he  too  began  to  doubt,  for  he  did  not 
know  that  I  was  so  hard  put  about  it.  Thereupon  I  was  at  first 
much  upset  and  passed  the  night  with  a  heavy  heart.  Next  clay 
Bugenhagen  came  to  me.  '  I  am  downright  angry,'  he  said,  '  I 
have  now  looked  into  that  text  more  closely,  and,  right  enough, 
the  argument  is  ridiculous  ! '  Thus  he  [the  devil]  is  always  on  the 
watch  for  us.  But  nevertheless  we  have  Christ  !  "3 — We  are  not 
told  why  the  argument  from  this  Bible-passage,  which  insists  so 
solemnly  on  the  sacred  character  of  vows,  was  regarded  as 
"  ridiculous." 

The  last  incident  reminds  us  of  the  scene  between  Luther 
and  Bugenhagen  on  June,  1540,  narrated  in  the  Table-Talk  ; 
there  Luther  declares  :  "  No  sooner  am  I  assailed  by 
temptation  than  the  flesh  begins  to  rebel  even  though  I 
understand  the  spirit.  .  .  .  Gladly  would  I  be  formally 
just,  but  I  do  not  find  it  in  me."  And  Bugenhagen  chimed 
in  :  "  Herr  Doctor,  neither  do  I."4 

1  Ib.,  p.  9.     Cp.  above,  vol.  iii.,  p.  177  f. 

2  See  vol.  ii.,  p.  180  f.    Cp.  Melanchthon's  statement,  p.  177. 

3  Schlaginhaufen,  ib.,  p:  10. 

4  Mathesius,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  147  f.,  June  11-19,  1540.    See  vol.  iii., 
p.  203  f. 


"COMBATS  AND  TEMPTATIONS"     329 

From  Remorse  of  Conscience  to  Onslaughts  of  the  Devil 

The  actual  cause  of  Luther's  anxiety,  as  is  plain  from  the 
above,  was  a  certain  quite  intelligible  disquiet  of  conscience. 
Yet,  he  chose  to  regard  all  reproaches  from  within  as  merely 
the  sting  of  the  Evil  One.  As  time  went  on  this  became 
more  and  more  his  habit  ;  it  is  always  the  evil  spirit  who 
is  at  his  heels,  at  whose  person  and  doings,  Luther,  following 
his  bent,  pokes  his  jokes. 

Hieronymus  Weller,  another  pupil  tormented  with  inner 
pangs,  once,  without  any  beating  about  the  bush,  put  down 
all  his  sadness  to  his  conscience  ;  he  declared  in  Luther's 
presence  in  the  spring  of  1532  :  "  Rather  than  endure  such 
troubles  of  conscience  I  would  willingly  go  through  the 
worst  illnesses."1  Luther  tried  his  best  to  pacify  him  with 
the  assurance  that  the  devil  was  "  a  murderer,"  and  that 
"  God's  Mercy  endureth  for  ever  and  ever."  , 

Yet  Luther  himself  had  admitted  to  his  friend  Wenceslaus 
Link,  that  "it  is  extremely  difficult  thoroughly  to  convince 
oneself  that  such  thoughts  of  hopelessness  emanate  from 
Satan  and  are  not  our  very  own,  but  the  best  help  is  to  be 
found  in  this  conviction.  One  must  by  a  supreme  effort 
contrive  to  turn  one's  mind  to  other  things  and  chase  such 
thoughts  away."  "  But  you  can  guess  how  hard  it  is,"  he 
continues,  "  when  the  thoughts  refer  to  God  and  to  our 
eternal  salvation  ;  they  are  of  such  a  nature  that  our 
conscience  can  neither  tear  itself  away  from  them  nor  yet 
despise  them."2  Simply  to  tear  itself  away  from  such 
disquieting  thoughts  was  certainly  not  possible  for  a  con 
science  in  so  luckless  a  position  as  Luther's,  oppressed  as  it 
was  with  the  weight  of  a  world  catastrophe. 

Luther  once,  in  1532,  says  quite  outspokenly  and  not 
without  a  certain  reference  to  himself  :  "  The  spirit  of 
sadness  is  conscience  itself  "  ;  here,  however,  he  probably 
only  means  that  we  are  always  conscious  within  ourselves 
of  a  painful  antagonism  to  the  Law,  for  he  at  once  goes  on  : 
"  This  we  must  ever  endure,"  we  must  necessarily  be  ever 
in  a  state  of  woe  because  in  this  life  we  "  lie  amidst  the 
throes  of  childbirth  that  precede  the  Last  Day ;  "  but  the 
devil  who  condemns  us  inwardly  "  has  not  yet  condemned  " 

1  Schlaginhaufen,  ib.,  p.  39. 

2  July  14,  1528,  "  Brief wechsel,"  6,  p.  300. 


330          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

Christ.  Those  who  are  thus  tempted  "  do  not  feel  those 
carnal  temptations,  which  are  so  petty  compared  with  the 
spiritual."1 

At  any  rate,  so  he  will  have  it,  there  was  a  call  to  struggle 
most  earnestly  against  all  the  inward  voices  that  make 
themselves  heard  against  the  new  teaching  and  the  apostasy, 
just  as  though  they  came  from  the  devil.2 

He  was  helped  in  this,  on  the  one  hand,  by  his  terrible 
energy,  and,  on  the  other,  by  a  theological  fallacy  :  "  God 
has  commanded  that  we  should  look  to  Christ  for  forgiveness 
of  our  sins  ;  hence  whoever  does  not  do  so  makes  God  a 
liar  ;  I  must  therefore  say  to  the  devil  :  Even  though  I  be 
a  scamp,  yet  Christ  is  just."3 

Thus  we  find  him  declaring,  for  instance,  in  July,  1528  : 
"  to  yield  to  such  disquiet  of  conscience  is  to  be  overcome  by 
Satan,  nay,  to  set  Satan  on  the  throne  !  "  "  Such  thoughts 
may  appear  to  be  quite  heavenly  and  called  for,  but  they  are 
nevertheless  Satanic  and  cannot  but  be  so."  When  they 
refuse  to  depart,  even  though  spurned  by  us,  and  we  endure 
them  patiently,  then  do  we  indeed  "  present  a  sublime 
spectacle  to  God  and  the  angels."4 — "  Away  with  the 
devil's  sadness  !  "  so,  at  a  later  date,  in  1544,  he  exhorts  his 
old  friend  Spalatin  ;  "  conscience  stands  in  the  cruel  service 
of  the  devil ;  a  man  must  learn  to  find  consolation  even 
against  his  own  conscience."5 

4.  Progress  of  his  Mental  Sufferings  until  their  Floodtide 
in  1527-1528 

If  we  glance  at  the  history  of  Luther's  so-called  "  tempta 
tions  "  throughout  the  whole  course  of  his  career,  we  shall 
find  that  they  were  very  marked  at  the  beginning  of  his 
enterprise.  Before  1525  they  had  fallen  off,  but  they 
became  again  more  frequent  during  the  terrors  of  the 
Peasant  War  and  then  reasserted  themselves  with  great 
violence  in  1527.  After  abating  somewhat  for  the  next  two 

1  Schlaginhaufen,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  40  :    "  Tristitice  spiritus  est  ipsa 
conscientia"    Cp.  "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  2,  pp.  296,  298,  and  "  Werke," 
Erl.  ed.,  60,  108. 

2  Cp.  above,  p.  66  ff. 

3  Schlaginhaufen,  ib.,  p.  26,  Jan.-March,  1532. 

4  To  Link,  July  14,  1528,  "  Brief wechsel,"  6,  p.  301  f. 

5  March  8,  1544,  "  Brief e,"  5,  p.  635  :    "  solari  contra  conscientiam, 
quce  est  mortis  scevissimum  ministerium."     Cp.  above,  p.  67. 


"COMBATS  AND  TEMPTATIONS"     331 

years  they  again  assumed  alarming  proportions  in  1530  in 
the  solitude  of  the  Coburg  and  thus  continue,  with  occasional 
breaks,  until  1538.  From  that  time  until  the  end  of  his  life 
he  seemed  to  enjoy  greater  peace,  at  least  from  doubts 
regarding  his  own  salvation,  though,  on  the  other  hand, 
gloomy  depression  undoubtedly  darkened  the  twilight  of 
his  days,  and  he  complains  more  than  ever  of  the  weakness 
of  his  own  faith  ;  we  miss,  however,  those  vivid  accounts  of 
his  struggles  of  conscience  which  he  had  been  wont  to  give. 

The  Period  Previous  to  1527 

Let  us  listen  first  of  all  to  Luther's  self-reproach  in  the 
early  days  of  his  public  labours  ;  we  may  recall  those  words 
of  1521  where  he  confesses,  that,  before  he  had  grown  so  bold 
and  confident,  "  his  heart  had  often  quaked  with  fear,"  when 
he  thought  of  the  words  of  his  foes  :  "  Are  you  alone  wise 
and  are  all  others  mistaken  ?  Is  it  likely  that  so  many 
centuries  were  all  in  the  wrong  ?  Supposing,  on  the  con 
trary,  you  were  in  the  wrong  and  were  leading  so  many 
others  with  you  into  error  and  to  eternal  perdition  !  '?1  He 
admits  similarly  that  he  had  still  to  fight  with  his  con 
science  even  after  having  passed  through  the  storm  in 
which,  "  amidst  excitement  and  confusion  of  conscience," 
he  had  discovered  the  true  doctrine  of  salvation.2  That 
discovery  did  not  bring  him  into  a  haven  of  rest  even  though 
we  have  his  word  that,  for  a  while,  he  was  quite  overcome 
with  joy.  "  Oh,  what  great  trouble  and  labour  did  it  cost  me, 
even  though  grounded  on  Holy  Scripture,  to  convince  my 
conscience  that  I  had  a  right  to  stand  up  all  alone  against 
the  Pope,  and  denounce  him  as  Antichrist,  the  Bishops  as 
his  Apostles  and  the  Universities  as  his  brothels."3 

The  days  he  spent  in  the  Wartburg  and  the  opportunity 
they  afforded  him  to  look  back  on  his  past,  awakened  anew 
these  self-reproaches;  whilst  in  the  solitude,  we  hear  him 
complaining,  that  his  "  distress  of  soul  still  persisted  and 

1  To  the  Wittenberg  Augustinians,  Nov.  1,  1521,  in  the  dedication 
of  his  writing  "  De  abroganda  missa  privata,"  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed., 
8,  p.  411  f.  ;    "  Opp.  lat.  var.,"  6,  p.  116  ("  Briefwechsel,"  3,  p.  243). 
Cp.  above,  vol.  ii.,  p.  79  ff. 

2  "  Furebam  ita  sceva  et  perturbala  conscientia,"  etc.      "  Opp.   lat. 
var.,"  1,  p.  22.    Vol.  i.,  p.  388  ff. 

3  From  the  letter  to  the  Augustinians,  p.  411  f.  =  116. 


332          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

that  his  former  weakness  of  spirit  and  of  faith  had  not  yet 
left  him."1  Later  on  he  remembered  having  had  to  battle 
with  every  kind  of  despair  ("  omnibus  desperationibus  ")  for 
three  long  years.2  At  a  much  later  date,  in  1541,  he  reminds 
his  friends  of  the  many  inward  struggles  ("  tot  agones  ")  the 
first  proclamation  of  the  Evangel  and  his  crusade  against 
the  word  of  man  had  cost  him.3 

About  1521  he  must  have  arrived  at  a'  pitch  of  "  despair 
and  temptation  regarding  the  wrath  of  God  "  such  as  he 
never  before  had  tasted ;  for  he  told  one  of  his  pupils,  on 
Dec.  14,  1532,  that  it  was  "  about  ten  years  since  he  had 
felt  this  struggle  so  severely  ;  after  that  better  days  had 
dawned,  but  later  the  difficulties  began  anew."4 

But,  as  he  often  admits,  he  was  all  too  addicted  to 
thoughts  of  despair,  thanks  to  the  devil  who  was  ever  lying 
in  wait  for  him  ;  as  for  the  "  better  days  "  they  might  easily 
be  counted.  "  When  these  thoughts  come  upon  me  I  forget 
everything  about  Christ  and  God,  and  even  begin  to  look 
upon  God  as  a  miscreant  "  ;  the  "  Laudate  "  stops,  so  he 
says,  and  the  "  Blasphemate  "  begins  as  soon  as  we  begin  to 
think  of  the  fate  to  which  from  all  eternity  we  are  pre 
destined.5 

Subsequent  to  1525  his  new  state  of  life  with  its  domestic 
cares  and  distractions,  added  to  his  satisfaction  with  the 
growing  damage  inflicted  on  the  Papacy,  appear  to  have 
contributed  to  diminish  his  trouble  of  mind. 

Later,  however,  in  1527,  it  "  began  anew." 

Atrocious  suffering  of  mind  and  bitter  anxiety  concerning  the 
abuses  in  the  new  Church — "  a  vinegar  sourer  than  all  other 
vinegars,  as  he  calls  it," — immediately  preceded  his  illness  which 
began  about  July  7,  1527. 6  Mental  uneasiness  and  self-reproaches 
accompanied  the  fainting-fits  which  at  that  time  seemed  to 

1  To  Melanchthon,  May  26,  1521,  "  Brief wechsel,"  3,  p.  163. 

2  Khummer    (1539),    in    Lauterbach,   "  Tagebuch,"    p.    36:    "  per 
totum    triennium    laboravi    omnibus    desperationibus"      The    reading 
"  omnibus  desperantibus  "  is  excluded  by  what  follows  :    "  scripserunt 
quidam  ad  me  fratres  ad  constantiam  me  adhortantes" 

3  To  Link,  Sep.  8,  1541,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  399. 

4  Schlaginhaufen,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  9. 

5  Cordatus,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  205.     "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  1,  p.  80. 
"  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  60,  p.  160  f. 

6  "  Acetissimum   mihi   acetum"   speaking   of   the   rapacity   of   the 
despoilers  of  the  churches  and  of  the  use  of  church  property  for  purely 
private  purposes.     To  Spalatin,  Jan.  1,  1527,  "  Brief  wechsel,"  6,  p.  3. 
On  this  illness,  see  below,  vol.  vi.,  xxvi.,  1. 


"COMBATS  AND  TEMPTATIONS"     333 

threaten  his  life.  His  inward  struggles  were  so  severe  that 
Bugenhagen,  who  tried  to  comfort  him,  compares  them  with  the 
darkness  of  the  soul  "  so  frequently  mentioned  in  the  Psalms  as 
illustrative  of  the  spiritual  pangs  of  hell."  "  Dr.  Martin,"  writes 
the  latter,  who  was  pastor  at  Wittenberg  and  Luther's  "  con 
fessor,"  "  had  in  all  likelihood  been  through  other  such  tempta 
tions,  but  none  had  ever  been  so  severe  ;  this  he  admitted  on 
the  following  day  to  Dr.  Jonas,  to  Dr.  Christian  [Schurf]  and  to 
me.  He  said  they  were  worse  and  more  dangerous  than  the 
bodily  ailment  which  befell  him  on  that  same  Saturday  evening 
about  five  o'clock  and  which  was  so  serious  that  we  feared  he 
would  succumb  under  it."  Luther  himself,  in  those  critical  days, 
declared  "  that  he  would  not  retract  his  doctrine,"  and,  after 
making  his  confession  to  Bugenhagen  as  the  latter  relates, 
"  spoke  at  considerable  length  of  the  spiritual  temptation  he  had 
been  through  the  same  morning,  with  such  fear  and  trembling  as 
could  not  be  described  in  words."1  It  was  then  that  the  curious 
complaint  was  involuntarily  wrung  from  him  that  those  who  saw 
his  outward  behaviour  fancied  he  "lay  on  a  bed  of  roses,  though 
God  knew  how  it  stood  with  him."  Bugenhagen  and  Jonas  have 
embellished  their  accounts  of  this  illness  of  their  friend  with  many 
pious  utterances  supposed  to  have  been  spoken  by  him  then.2 

The  Height  of  the  Storm,  1527-28 

The  worst  struggles,  lasting  over  many  months,  followed 
upon  Luther's  illness  of  1527. 

Hardly  had  he  recovered  his  normal  health  than  we  find 
his  letters  full  of  sad  allusions  to  his  abiding  state  of  despair 
and  to  his  fears  concerning  the  faith,  probably  the  most 
melancholy  outpourings  of  his  whole  life. 

"  For  more  than  a  week  I  have  been  tossed  about  between 
death  and  hell,"  he  writes  to  Melanchthon,  "  so  that  I  still 
tremble  in  every  limb  and  feel  utterly  broken.  Waves  and 
storms  of  despair  and  blasphemy  against  God  broke  over  me  and 
I  lost  Christ  almost  entirely.  But,  at  the  intercession  of  the 
saints  [his  friends]  God  has  begun  to  take  pity  on  me  and  has 
delivered  my  soul  from  the  lowest  hell."3 — "This  struggle,"  he 

1  "  Luthers  Werke,"  Walch  ed.,  21,  appendix,  p.   158*,  from  the 
Latin.     Best  rendered  in  the  original  Latin  text  in  O.  Vogt,  "  Brief - 
wechsel  Bugenhagens,"  1888,  p.  64  ff. 

2  Cp.  the  account  of  Jonas,  "  Colloq.."  ed.  Bindseil,  3,  p.  160  sqq., 
and  better  still,    Kawerau,    "  Brief  wechsel  des  Jonas,"    1,    1884-85, 
p.  104  ff.     The  account  begins  :    "  Cum  mane,  ut  ipse  fatebatur  nobis, 
habuisset   grandem   tentationem   spiritualem   et   tamen   utcunque   ad   se 
rediisset."     Kawerau,  ib.,  p.  109  :    "  Dixit  (Lutherus)  hesternam  tenta 
tionem  spiritualem  duplo  fuisse  maiorem,  quam  hanc  cegritudinem  ad 
vesperam  subsecutam" 

8  Aug.   2,    1527,   "  Brief  wechsel,"   6,  p.   71  :     "  Agebar  ftuctibus  et 


334          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

writes  to  Justus  Menius,  "  goes  beyond  my  strength.  ...  I  am 
tried  not  only  in  body  but  still  more,  and. worst  of  all,  in  soul. 
God  allows  Satan  and  his  angels  thus  to  torment  me."1 

In  a  letter  of  Aug.  21,  addressed  to  Johann  Agricola,  then  still 
his  friend,  he  informed  him  that  the  fight  was  not  yet  at  an  end. 
"  Satan  rages  against  me  with  all  his  might.  Like  another  Job 
[Job  xvi.  12),  God  has  set  me  up  as  a  mark,  and  He  tempts  me 
with  intolerable  weakness  of  spirit.  The  prayers  of  holy  men 
indeed  save  me  from  remaining  in  his  hands,  but  the  wounds  I  have 
received  in  my  heart  will  be  hard  to  heal.  I  trust  that  my 
strivings  will  turn  to  the  salvation  of  many."  He  concludes  by 
saying  that  those  in  power  (the  Catholics)  were  unable  to  get  at 
him,  but  that  so  much  the  more  was  he  plagued  in  spirit  "by 
the  Prince  of  this  world."2  He  writes  in  much  the  same  vein  on 
Aug.  26  to  Nicholas  Hausmann. 

Truly,  so  he  again  wrote  to  Johann  Agricola,  on  Aug.  31, 
"  neither  world  nor  reason  can  understand  how  hard  it  is  to 
realise  that  Christ  is  our  righteousness,  so  deeply  rooted  in  us  is 
the  doctrine  of  works,  which  has  grown  up  with  us  and  become 
part  of  us.  That  Christ  may  strengthen  me  I  commend  myself 
to  your  prayers."3  Hence  it  was  his  chief  dogma,  the  very  rock 
of  his  Evangel,  that  "  Satan  "  was  then  tampering  with.  The  call 
for  good  works  was,  as  he  felt,  beyond  even  his  power  to  deny. 

"  For  wellnigh  three  months  I  have  been  feeling  wretched,"  he 
wrote  on  Oct.  8,  "  not  so  much  in  body  as  in  soul,  so  that  I  have 
written  little  or  nothing,  so  greatly  has  Satan  tossed  me  in  the  sieve 
[Luke  xxii.  31]  "4 — "  God  has  not  yet  completely  restored  me  to 
health,"  he  announces  on  Oct.  19,  "  but  in  His  wisdom  leaves  me 
a  prey  to  Satan  who  assails  me  and  buffets  me  ;  but  God  also 
sends  help  and  protection."5 

He  speaks  of  himself,  on  Oct.  27,  as  "a  wretched  and  abject 
worm,  harassed  by  the  spirit  of  sadness,"  "  I  seek  and  thirst  for 
nought  else  than  for  a  gracious  God,  for  as  such  He  reveals  Him 
self  even  to  His  enemies  and  contemners."6  Luther  had  claimed, 
that,  through  his  new  doctrine  and  through  flinging  aside  his 
monkish  frock  he  had  found  "  a  gracious  God,"  and  proclaimed 
Him  to  men  for  their  reconciliation  ;  this  has  been  extolled  as 
the  greatest  gain  achieved  by  the  Lutheran  schism  ;  yet  here  we 
have  his  word  for  it  that  the  solace  of  a  Gracious  God  was  still 
withheld  from  him. — "  I  have  always  been  in  the  habit  of 
comforting  others,"  he  says  in  a  letter  to  Amsdorf  on  Nov.  1  ; 
"  and  now  I  myself  stand  in  desperate  need  of  such  consolation  ; 
only  one  thing,  however,  do  I  wish,  viz.  never  to  be  the  foe  of 
Christ,  although  I  have  offended  Him  by  many  and  great  sins. 

procellis  desperationis  et  blasphemiae.  .  .  .  Deus  emit  animam  meam  de 
inferno  inferiori  "  (Ps.  Ixxxv.  13). 

1  Aug.  12,  1527,  ib.,  p.  73,  "Agon  iste  meus,"  etc. 

2  Ib.,  p.  78.  3  Ib.,  p.  84  f. 

4  To  Michael  Stiefel,  ib.,  p.  104.       6  To  Justus  Jonas,  ib.,  p.  106. 
6  To  Melanchthon,  ib.,  p.  110  :    "  cum  aliud  non  quceram  aut  sitiam 
quam  propitium  Deum" 


"COMBATS  AND  TEMPTATIONS"     335 

Satan  tries  to  make  a  Job  of  me ;  he  would  like  to  sift  me  like 
Peter  and  his  brethren.  Oh,  that  God  would  say  to  him  :  '  Yet 
spare  his  life  '  [Job  ii.  6],  and  to  me  :  '  I  am  thy  salvation  '  [Ps. 
xxxiv.  3].  Even  now  I  still  hope  that  His  anger  at  my  sins  will 
not  last  for  ever.  .  .  .  Meanwhile  fighting  goes  on  outside  and 
fears  reign  within,  yea,  very  bitter  ones  indeed."1 

Thus  in  spite  of  everything  he  tries  to  buoy  himself  up  with 
hope. 

Yet  his  lamentations  continue.  "  Hardly  can  I  breathe  for 
storms  and  faintheartedness.  .  .  .  My  Katey,  however,  is  strong 
in  faith  and  in  good  health.  .  .  .  As  for  me,  my  body  is  whole 
but  I  am  tempted"  (Nov.  4).2 — "From  several  sides  at  once 
fears  rush  in  on  me.  My  temptations  torment  me  .  .  .  for 
months  storms  and  faintness  of  spirit  have  never  left  me  ;  pray 
that  my  faith  may  not  fail  "  (Nov.  7).—"  I  have  surely  troubles 
enough  already,  please  do  not  add  to  them  by  crucifying  me  with 
your  dissensions  "  (Nov.  9). — "  Erasmus  and  the  Sacramentarians 
are  now  come  to  stamp  me  under  foot,  to  persecute  a  man  already 
utterly  worn  out  in  spirit  !  "3 — "  I  endure  God's  wrath  because  I 
have  sinned  against  Him.  My  sins,  death,  and  Satan  with  his 
angels  all  rage  against  me  without  a  break  ;  and  now  Pope  and 
Emperor,  Princes,  Bishops  and  the  whole  world  too  storms  in 
upon  me,  making  common  cause  with  the  crew  who  vex  me  "  ; 
everything  would  be  endurable  provided  only  Christ — for  Whose 
sake  he,  the  "  most  abject  of  all  sinners,"  was  hated — did  not 
desert  one  "  whom  God  has  smitten  "4  and  whom  they  persecute 
(Nov.  10). — "  I  believe  that  it  is  no  mere  fiend  from  the  ranks  of 
the  devil's  hosts  who  fights  with  me,  but  the  Prince  of  the  demons 
himself ;  so  powerful  is  he  and  so  armed  to  the  teeth  with  Bible- 
texts  that  my  knowledge  of  the  Bible  is  left  stranded  and  I  am 
obliged  to  have  recourse  to  the  words  of  others  ;  from  this  you 
may  get  some  idea  of  the  devil's  height,  as  they  say  "  (Nov.  17). 

"  I  am  well  in  body,  but  as  to  how  it  stands  with  me  in  spirit 
I  am  not  certain.  ...  I  seek  only  for  a  gracious  Christ.  .  .  . 
Satan  wants  to  prevent  me  from  writing  and  to  drag  me  down 
with  him  to  hell.  May  Christ  tread  him  under  foot,  Amen  !  " 
(Nov.  22). 5 

His  work  and  his  doctrine  must,  according  to  him,  be  pleasing 
to  heaven  ;  the  difficulties  and  the  attacks  from  without  and 
from  within,  all  these  he  attributes  to  Satan's  raging  and  sees  in 

1  Ib.,  p.  111.    2  Cor.  vii.  5  :   "  Foris  pugnce,  intus  timores  "  ;  Luther  : 
"  pavores." 

2  To  Jonas,  ib.,  p.  113.     He,  however,  has  a  joke  even  here  at  the 
expense  of  Bugenhagen,  who  was  then  staying  in  his  house  :    "  Salutat 
te  Pomeranus,  hodie  cacator  purgandus  factus." 

3  Cp.    Ps.    cviii.    17  :     "  compunctum   corde   mortificare."      Luther, 
quoting  from  memory,  says  :    "  contritum  corde  ad  mortificandum." 

4  "  Novissimus  omnium  hominum"     Cp.  Ps.  liii.  3  :    "  novissimus 
virorum"  of  the  Messias  ;    1  Cor.  iv.  9  :    "  novissimos  ostendit,"  of  the 
Apostles. — "  Quern  Deus  percussit,  persequuntur  "  ;    cp.  Ps.  Ixviii.  27. 

5  For  the  letters  quoted,  see  "  Brief wechsel,"  under  the  dates  given. 


336          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

them  proofs  "  that  our  word  is  the  Word  of  God  ;  this  alone  it  is 
that  makes  him  so  furious  against  us  "  (Dec.  30). — It  has  been 
said  that  Luther  held  fast  to  this  with  a  "  bold  faith  "  ;  it  would, 
however,  be  more  correct  to  say  that  he  catches  at  such  thoughts 
as  a  drowning  man  does  at  a  straw,  a  phenomenon  which  of  itself 
throws  a  lurid  light  on  his  delusions  and  the  misty  trend  of  his 
thoughts.  He  is  determined  to  be  sure  of  his  cause — and  at  this 
very  time,  with  the  help  of  the  State,  he  has  a  Coburg  Zwinglian 
put  to  silence,  because  the  latter  "neither  is  nor  can  be  sure 
of  his  cause."1 

"  I  myself  am  weak  and  in  wretchedness,"  he  again  confesses. 
"  If  only  Christ  does  not  forsake  me.  .  .  .  Satan  expends  his 
fury  on  me  because  I  have  attacked  him  by  deed,  and  word,  and 
writing;  but  I  feel  consoled  when  I  %boldly  believe  (' fortiter 
credo  ')  that  what  I  did  was  pleasing  to  the  Lord  and  to  His 
Christ.  I  am  tossed  about  between  the  two  warring  princes 
[Christ  and  Satan]  till  all  my  bones  are  sore.  Many  works  of 
Satan  have  I  done  and  still  do,  nevertheless  I  hope  to  please  my 
Christ  Who  is  merciful  and  inclined  to  forgive  ;  but  from  Satan 
I  desire  no  forgiveness  for  what  I  have  done  against  him  and  for 
Christ.  He  is  a  murderer  and  the  father  of  lies.  ...  I  feel  in  the 
depths  of  my  soul  how,  with  unbelievable  wrath,  he  plots  against 
me,  assuming  even  the  guise  of  Christ,  to  say  nothing  of  that  of 
the  angel  of  light  "  (Nov.  27,  1527).— The  "  guise  of  Christ  " 
and  of  the  "  angel  of  light,"  to  which  he  here  alludes,  are  sufficient 
to  show  those  who  look  below  the  surface  that  what  was  troubling 
him  was  something  not  very  different  from  the  inner  voice  of 
conscience. 

How  far  he  could  go  in  deluding  himself  the  better  to  appease 
his  conscience  is  plain  from  what  he  says  in  his  letter  "  to  the 
Christians  at  Erfurt  "  :  During  the  whole  time  he  had  spent  at 
Erfurt  in  his  Catholic  days  he  had  longed  in  vain  to  hear  "  a 
Gospel  or  even  a  little  Psalm  "  ;  there,  as  was  everywhere  the  case 
in  Popery,  Holy  Scripture  lay  buried  deep,  and  "  no  one  had  even 
thought  of  preaching  a  really  Christian  sermon. 2 

No  less  vain  than  this  consolation  from  the  past  was  that  which 
he  sought  in  the  future.  He  clung  wildly  to  his  delusion  that  the 
end  of  all  was  at  hand  ;  "  Satan,"  he  cries,  "  has  but  a  short 
respite  before  being  completely  overthrown,  therefore  does  he 
make  such  furious  and  incredible  efforts  "  (Dec.  31). 

"  Now  that  the  Word  is  preached  Satan  plainly  comes  off 
second  best ;  hence  he  persecutes  me  secretly  ;  he  is  unchained, 
and,  with  all  his  engines  he  seeks  to  tear  Christ  from  me."  Thus 
on  Nov.  28). — "  I  am  the  wretched  *  off-scourings  of  Christ ' 
(Nov.  29). — "  I  am  to  all  intents  and  purposes  dead,  as  the 
Apostle  calls  it,  yet  still  I  live  "  (Dec.  10). 

1  To  the   Elector  Johann  of   Saxony,   Jan.    16,    1528,    "  Werke," 
Erl.  ed.,  53,  p.  215  ("  Brief wechsel,"  6,  p.  195). 

2  Jan.  or  Feb.,  1527,  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  23,  p.  15  ;   Erl.  ed.,  53, 
p.  412  ("  Briefwechsel,"  6,  p.  15). 


"COMBATS   AND   TEMPTATIONS"     337 

The  long  and  terrible  year  was  drawing  to  a  close.  He 
had  almost  grown  accustomed  to  his  inward  troubles.  "  I 
have  not  yet  shaken  off  my  temptation,  nor  do  I  desire  to  be 
free  if  it  is  to  God's  glory.  The  devil  rages  against  me 
simply  because  Christ  has  vanquished  him  through  me,  his 
most  wretched  of  vessels  "  (Dec.  14). — "  Well  in  body,  in 
soul  I  am  as  Christ  wills,  to  Whom  I  am  now  bound  only  by 
a  slender  thread.  The  devil  on  the  other  hand  is  moored 
to  me  with  mighty  cords,  nay,  real  cables  ;  he  drags  me 
down  into  the  depths,  but  the  weak  Christ  has  still  the 
upper  hand  owing  to  your  prayers,  or  at  least  He  puts  up  a 
brave  fight  "  (Dec.  29). 

The  Trouble  Continues 

Even  his  lectures  on  the  1st  Epistle  of  St.  John  testify 
to  Luther's  inward  excitement  during  that  unhappy  year 
(1527).  The  Preface  to  the  commentary  as  preserved  in  the 
Vatican  MS.  (Palat.,  1825)  is  dated  Aug.  19,  and  begins  : 
'  You  know  that  we  are  so  placed  by  God  in  this  life  as  to 
be  exposed  to  all  the  darts  of  Satan.  And  not  Satan  alone 
storms  against  us,  but  also  the  world,  and  our  heart,  and 
our  flesh.  Hence  we  must  despair  of  peace  so  long  as  we 
remain  here  below.  Against  all  these  evils  God  has  given 
us  no  other  weapon  than  His  Word  which  He  commands 
us  to  preach,  who  live  in  the  midst  of  wolves.  .  .  .  Thus, 
since  we  are  exposed  to  all  these  dangers,  to  death,  sin, 
heretics  and  the  whole  might  of  Satan,  I  have  undertaken 
to  expound  this  Epistle." 

Amidst  all  this  inward  woe  there  was  a  cheerier  side  of  things 
to  look  at.  A  little  daughter  had  been  born  to  him  at  the  end  of 
1527,  He  and  his  family  had  happily  been  spared  by  the  plague. 
He  had  succeeded  in  imposing  silence  on  most  of  his  opponents 
among  the  preachers  of  the  new  faith.  His  sovereign  too  was 
more  than  ever  resolved  to  support  him  in  his  work.  In  the 
German  lands,  and  even  beyond,  the  Evangel  was  daily  gaining 
new  ground.  Hence  there  was  every  reason  for  self-gratulation. 
In  spite  of  all  this  what  he  says  to  his  friends  retains  a  tone  of 
bitterness  and  apprehension  :  "  Help  me  in  my  agony  !  "  "At 
times  indeed  the  temptation  becomes  less  severe,  but  then  again 
it  overwhelms  me  more  relentlessly  than  before  "  (Dec.  30). — 
"  We  are  all  well  excepting  Luther  himself,  who,  though  he  feels 
well  in  body,  is  tormented  outwardly  by  the  whole  world  and 
inwardly  by  the  devil  and  all  his  angels."  "  Satan  gnashes  his 

V. — z 


338          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

teeth  furiously  all  around  us"  (Dec.  31). — "I  have  been  well 
acquainted  with  such  temptations  from  my  youth  upwards,  but 
that  they  could  assume  such  dimensions  I  had  never  dreamed. 
Christ  holds  His  own  with  the  utmost  difficulty,  yet  so  far  He  has 
been  victorious.  I  commend  myself  to  your  prayers  and  those 
of  your  brethren.  I  have  saved  others  and  cannot  save  myself. 
Praised  be  my  Christ,"  he  adds,  convinced  in  spite  of  all  that  he 
was  in  the  right,  "  praised  be  He  in  the  midst  of  despair,  death  and 
blasphemy.  ...  It  is  our  glory  to  have  lived  in  the  world 
agreeably  with  the  will  of  Christ,  forgetful  of  our  former  very 
evil  life.  Let  it  suffice  that  Christ  is  our  life  and  our  righteousness, 
though  this  is  indeed  a  hard  truth  and  one  which  the  flesh  knows 
not.  It  is  a  bitter  chalice  that  I  must  drink  as  the  end  of  the 
world  draws  nigh  "  (Jan.  1,  1528). 


After  this  sad  New  Year's  letter  Luther's  complaints  of 
his  pains  of  soul  cease  for  a  while,  though,  not  long  after, 
they  reappear  at  intervals  in  an  even  more  startling  form. 

That  bodily  sickness  was  not  entirely  responsible  is  clear 
from  his  frequent  allusions  to  his  good  state  of  health  even 
during  such  spells  of  stress  ;  in  the  end,  too,  he  got  the 
better  of  these  fears,  not  as  the  result  of  any  improvement 
in  bodily  health,  but  thanks  to  the  defiant  spirit  with  which 
he  clung  to  what  he  deemed  was  his  Divine  mission.  Every 
body  knows  how  much  a  forceful  will  is  able  to  do,  even  in 
the  profoundest  depths  of  the  soul.  Nevertheless  the  un 
happy  victory  he  ultimately  succeeded  in  gaining  over  his 
own  self  has  a  right  to  be  accounted  something  quite  out  of 
the  common,  something  of  which  few  in  his  position  would 
have  been  capable.  Hardly  ever  has  a  man  had  such 
Titanic  forces  at  his  disposal  as  Luther.  He  neither  could 
nor  would  go  back,  the  gap  was  already  too  wide  ;  the 
inward  voices  spoke  in  vain  which  urged  him  to  put  away 
the  "  hard  truth  "  of  the  doctrine  he  had  discovered,  and  to 
return  to  the  Church  which  he  had  spurned. 

On  the  contrary,  quite  in  his  own  fashion,  he  declared,  on 
Jan.  27,  1528,  that  "  he  was  determined  still  further  to 
provoke  Satan,  who  was  raging  against  him  with  the  utmost 
fury,"  and  thus  make  an  end  once  for  all  of  his  struggles  and 
fears.  "  But  after  I  am  dead,"  so  he  begs  his  friends, 
"then  do  you  who  survive  me  avenge  me  on  Satan  and  his 
apostles  "  (Jan.  6). 

In  the  same  year,  on  the  strength  of  his  own  experience, 
he  gave  his  friend  Wenceslaus  Link  detailed  directions  for 


-COMBATS   AND   TEMPTATIONS"     339 

those  followers  of  the  Evangel  who  are  "  tempted  in  faith 
and  hope."  They  are  to  make  the  "  greatest  efforts  " 
against  the  devil  who  is  so  plainly  to  be  discerned  ;  they  are 
to  build  blindly  on  the  certainty  that  all  thoughts  to  the 
contrary  are  mere  devil's  treason.  Further,  they  are  to 
cling  to  the  Word  of  a  good  man  as  to  a  voice  from  God  in 
Heaven,  just  as  he  himself  had  often  found  strength  by 
revolving  in  mind  Bugenhagen's  simple  words  :  "  You  must 
not  despise  our  consolation."1  Luther  seems  to  have  sent 
Link  several  such  letters  on  the  means  of  escaping  from 
"  despair."2  He  knew  only  too  well  the  fears  which  many 
underwent  in  the  new  Evangel.3 

"  Our  conscience  tells  us,"  so  he  says  in  one  of  his  sermons, 
"  I  am  a  sinner,  it  goes  ill  with  me,  and  this  I  have  richly 
deserved.  Then  the  conscience  begins  to  quake  and  says  : 
It  will  not  be  well  with  me  when  I  die.  Such  is  fear  of 
death."4 

The  return  of  his  friends  to  Wittenberg  in  1528  and  social 
intercourse  with  his  own  circle  gradually  changed  his  frame 
of  mind.  He  was  very  susceptible  to  the  influence  of 
cheerful  conversation  and  to  the  exhilarating  effects  of  drink. 
The  new  and  important  tasks  which  confronted  him  also 
tended  to  take  his  mind  from  the  trouble  that  reigned 
within  him. 

"  My  Satan,"  he  was  able  to  write  on  Feb.  25,  1528,  "  is 
now  rather  more  bearable  ;  your  prayers  are  taking  effect."5 

But,  in  the  following  year  (1529),  it  became  apparent  that 
the  storm  was  not  yet  over.  As  early  as  Feb.  12  he  again 
asks  his  friend  Amsdorf  for  the  help  of  his  prayers  that  he 
may  not  "be  delivered  into  Satan's  hand."6 — Curiously 
enough,  on  the  very  day  that  the  famous  Protest  of  Spires 
was  made  (April  19,  1529).  Luther  was  again  passing 
through  one  of  the  worst  bouts  of  his  "  wrestling  with  the 
devil " ;  he  poured  out  his  heart  and  conscience  to  his 
friend  Jonas  :  If  it  was  really  an  apostolic  attribute  to  be 

1  July  14,  1528,  "  Brief wechsel,"  6,  p.  300. 

2  Cp.  the  letter  to  Link  of  March  7,  1529,  ib.,  7,  p.  63. 

3  Cp.  vol.  iii.,  p.  218  ff. 

4  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  192,  p.  350  f.,  Sermon  on  Rom.  viii.  31  (1537). 

5  To  Link,  "  Brief  wechsel,"  6,  p.  214. 

6  "  Brief  wechsel,"  7,  p.  52  :    "  ut  Dominus  non  me  deserat  in  tnanu 
Satance" 


340          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

"  in  deaths  often  "  (2  Cor.  xi.  23)  then  indeed  he  was  in 
this  respect  a  "  very  Peter  or  Paul  "  ;  but,  unfortunately, 
he  had  other  less  apostolic  qualities,  "  qualities  better 
fitting  robbers,  publicans,  whores  and  sinners."1 — Elsewhere 
he  indeed  compares  himself  with  the  Apostle  Peter,  but 
with  Peter  while  still  weak  in  the  faith  and  wavering,  as  he 
was  before  the  descent  of  the  Holy  Ghost  :  "  Though  I  feel 
fairly  well  in  body  yet  I  am  weak  in  the  spirit,  and,  like 
Peter's,  my  faith  is  shaky  "2  (July  31). 

When  he  wrote  this  he  had  already  consented  to  take  part 
in  the  Marburg  Conference  with  Zwingli.  We  already  know 
how,  outwardly  at  least,  he  triumphed  over  Zwingli  at 
Marburg  ;  yet,  when  returning  home  in  good  health  and 
spirits,  the  "temptations"  suddenly  came  upon  him  again 
at  Torgau  in  Oct.,  1529,  with  such  violence,  that  he 
admitted  he  had  "  only  with  difficulty  ('  vice  et  cegre ') 
continued  his  journey  to  Wittenberg,  after  having  given  up 
all  hope  of  again  seeing  his  family."3  Very  likely  appre 
hension  of  danger  from  the  Turks  contributed  to  this.  He 
himself  says  :  "It  may  be  that,  by  this  combat  ('  agon  '), 
I  myself  am  doing  my  bit  in  enduring  and  conquering  the 
Turk,  or  at  least  his  god,  viz.  the  devil."4  Just  before  this, 
however,  and  on  this  very  journey  home,  he  had  composed 
the  so-called  Articles  of  Schwabach,  which  contain  not  a 
trace  of  his  doubts  and  self-reproaches,  but,  on  the  contrary, 
are  full  of  that  firm  defiance  which  characterises  his  other 
writings.  They  insist  most  strongly  on  his  views  as  against 
those  of  both  Zwinglians  and  Catholics. 

Before  reaching  Torgau  Luther  preached  several  sermons, 
including  one  at  Erfurt. 

Outbursts  and  Relief 

At  Erfurt,  as  though  to  relieve  his  fears,  Luther  stormed 
against  the  Evangelical  fanatics,  and  likewise  against  the 
monks  and  the  holy-by-works.  Maybe  the  sight  of  the  town 
where  he  had  passed  his  youth  set  him  thinking  of  the 

1  Ib.,  p.  87. 

2  To  Johann  Brismann  at  Riga,  ib.,  p.  139.      On  the  extraordinary 
states  and  temptations  of  certain  Saints  which  some  have  likened  to 
Luther's  "  temptations,"  see  below,  vol.  vi.,  xxxv.,  5,  at  the  end. 

3  To  Link,  Oct.  28,  1529,  ib.,  p.  179  f.    On  the  Marburg  Conference, 
see  vol.  iii.,  p.  381  f. 

4  16.,  p.  180.    Cp.  Kostlin-Kawerau,  2,  p.  180. 


"COMBATS   AND   TEMPTATIONS'3     341 

zealous  and  peaceful  years  he  had  spent  in  the  monastery 
and  thus  added  to  his  sense  of  disquiet.  Nor  was  this  the 
first  time  that  his  anger  had  gushed  forth  on  Erfurt  in  one 
of  those  outbursts  by  which  he  was  wont  to  forestall  the 
reproaches  of  his  conscience. 

One  such  eruption  of  an  earlier  date  may  serve  as  an  instance 
of  the  fits  of  rage  to  which  he  was  liable  when  battling  with  his 
temptations. 

The  Erfurt  Evangelicals  had  failed  to  silence  the  Franciscan 
preacher,  Dr.  Conrad  Kling.  That  this  valiant  friar,  the  ablest 
priest  at  Erfurt  and  a  powerful  pulpit  orator,  should  continue  to 
attract  large  crowds,  annoyed  Luther  exceedingly.  In  his  writing 
to  the  "  Christians  at  Erfurt  "  of  Jan.  or  Feb.,  1527,  he  invoked 
"  God's  anger  and  judgments  "  upon  them  and  threatened  all 
with  Christ's  warnings  against  "  Capharnaum,  Chorozain  and 
Bethsaida  "  unless  at  the  order  of  their  Councillors  they  expelled 
the  preacher  and  in  this  way  safeguarded  the  "  great  fulness  and 
wealth  of  the  Word  "  which  he  himself  had  proclaimed  to  them. 
Satan,  verily,  was  not  asleep  in  their  midst,  as  they  could  very 
well  see  from  the  working  of  that  "  doctor  of  darkness,"  the 
shameless  monk.1 

Kling,  who  was  much  esteemed  by  the  Catholics,  and  was 
seeking  to  save  the  last  remnants  of  the  faithful,  was  pictured  by 
the  fanatism  of  his  furious  opponent  as  a  glaring  example  of  that 
most  dreadful  of  all  sins,  viz.  the  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost. 
Now  that  the  world,  by  the  preaching  of  the  Evangel,  has  been 
delivered  from  the  lesser  sins  of  "  blindness,  error  and  darkness," 
so  Luther  told  the  people  of  Erfurt,  "  why  do  we  rage  with  the 
other  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost  and  provoke  God's  wrath  to 
destroy  us  in  time  and  for  all  eternity  ?  God  will  not  forgive  this 
sin,  nor  can  He  endure  it  ;  there  is  no  need  to  say  more."  "When 
they  start  wantonly  fighting  against  the  plain,  known  truth,  then 
there  is  no  further  help  or  counsel."2 

Such  action  can  only  be  explained  by  a  quite  peculiar  mental 
state.  Boundless  irritation,  probably  not  unconnected  with  his 
struggles  of  conscience,  combined  with  a  positive  infatuation  for 
his  own  ideas,  was  the  cause  of  the  following  outbursts,  which 
almost  remind  us  of  the  ravings  of  a  maniac. 

In  1528,  in  the  preface  to  a  book  of  Klingenbeyl,  he  inveighs 
against  the  celibacy  of  the  clergy  :  "  .They  are  devils  in  human 
skins  and  so  are  all  who  knowingly  and  wilfully  hold  with  them." 
"  Amongst  themselves  they  are  the  worst  of  all  whoremongers, 
adulterers,  women-stealers  and  girl-spoilers,  so  that  their  shame 
less  record  of  sins  fills  the  heaven  and  the  earth."  Their  wicked- 

1  "Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  23,  p.  13;  Erl.  ed.,  53,  p.  411  ("  Brief  - 
wechsel,"  6,  p.  15).  Cp.  the  article  on  Kling  by  N.  Paulus,  "  Katholik," 
1892,  1,  p.  146  ff. 

"  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  23,  p.  322  ;  Erl.  ed.,  63,  p.  259,  in  the 
Preface  to  the  work  of  Justus  Menius  against  Conrad  Kling  :  "  Etlicher 
gottloser  Lere  .  .  .  Verlegung,"  etc.,  1527. 


342          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

ness  is  matched  only  by  their  stupidity.  "  The  people  [the 
Papists]  have  become  a  Pope-Ass,  so  that  they  are  and  remain 
donkeys  however  much  we  may  boil  them,  roast  them,  flay  them, 
turn  them  over,  baste  them,  or  break  them  ;  all  they  can  do  is 
abuse  Luther.  .  .  .  And  because  I  have  driven  them  to  Scripture 
and  they  can  neither  understand  nor  make  use  of  it,  God  help  us 
what  a  wild  bawling  and  outcry  I  have  caused.  Here  one  howls 
about  the  sacrament  under  one  kind,  there  another  bellows 
against  the  marriage  of  the  clergy  ;  one  shrieks  about  the  Mass, 
and  another  yells  about  good  works."  "  The  vermin  and  the 
ugly  crew  I  have  rounded  up  understands  not  a  bit  even  its  own 
noise  and  howling."  "  Hence  you  may  see  how  they  love  justice, 
viz.  their  own  tyranny." 

To  the  measure  of  their  viciousness,  stupidity  and  obstinacy 
must  be  added  vulgar  impudence  of  the  worst  sort  :  "  They 
shamelessly  and  scandalously  relieve  themselves  of  their  filth  in 
front  of  all  the  world."  "  Such  rude  fellows  remind  me  of  a 
coarse  clod-hopper  who  would  ease  himself  in  the  marketplace 
before  everyone,  all  the  while  pointing  to  a  house  where  a  little 
child  is  modestly  and  privily  relieving  nature,  and  who  would 
imagine  that  he  had  thereby  excused  himself  and  provoked 
everybody  to  laugh  at  the  child."  "  Ought  not  such  rascals  to 
be  hunted  down  with  hounds  and  driven  out  with  rods.  .  .  .  Let 
them  go,  blind  leaders  of  the  blind  that  they  are  !  God's  endless 
wrath  has  come  upon  them  so  that  now  they  can  no  longer  see 
anything."1 

According  to  recent  research  it  is  to  this  trying  time  of  inward 
conflict,  after  his  recovery  from  his  illness  in  1527,  that  Luther's 
famous  Hymn  "  A  safe  stronghold  our  God  is  still  "  (."  Ein'  feste 
Burg")  belongs.  This  "great  hymn  of  the  evangelical  com 
munity,"  as  Kostlin  termed  it,  proclaims,  in  the  words  of  the 
Psalmist,  that  God  is  the  strong  bulwark  and  sure  refuge  of 
Luther's  cause. 

"  The  ancient  Prince  of  Hell 

Hath  risen  with  purpose  fell  ; 
Strong  mail  of  Craft  and  Power 
He  weareth  in  this  hour, 
On  Earth  is  not  his  fellow. 

And  were  this  world  all  devils  o'er, 

And  watching  to  devour  us, 
We  lay  it  not  to  heart  so  sore, 

Not  they  can  overpower  us. 

God's  Word,  for  all  their  craft  and  force, 
Shall  not  one  moment  linger."2 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  26,  p.  530  ff.  ;   Erl.  ed.,  63,  p.  271. 

2  lb.,  Erl.  ed.,  56,  p.  343  f.    Cp.  below,  xxxiv.,  4.    [We  give  it  above 
in  Carlyle's  rendering,  "  Miscellanies,"  "  Luther's  Psalm."] 


"  COMBATS  AND  TEMPTATIONS  "     343 

"  This  hymn  came  from  the  very  bottom  of  his  heart,"  says 
Kostlin,  "  being  written  with  a  bold  faith  under  stress  of  tempta 
tion,"  The  first  trace  of  the  hymn  is  now  believed  to  be  found 
in  a  recently  discovered  Leipzig  hymn-book,  which  is  supposed  to 
be  a  reprint  of  the  Wittenberg  "  Gesangbiichlein  "  of  1528,  in 
which  this  hymn  may  have  figured.1 

A  Protestant  researcher,  P.  Tschackert,  has  pointed  out, 
that,  in  that  same  year  (1528),  the  Wittenbergers  went  in  fear 
of  an  attack  on  the  Evangelicals  by  the  Catholic  Estates. 
Luther's  attitude  towards  the  supposed  menace,  intensified 
as  it  was  by  his  inward  struggles  about  that  time,  calls  for 
some  further  remarks. 

The  alleged  disclosures  of  Otto  von  Pack  to  the  Landgrave 
of  Hesse  concerning  the  secret  plans  of  the  Catholics  to 
dethrone  the  Protestant  Princes  by  force  of  arms  had  proved 
to  be  a  mere  fabrication.2  Luther,  nevertheless,  stormed 
against  the  Duke  of  Saxony  who  was  supposed  to  be  impli 
cated  most  deeply  in  the  business.  He  wrote  :  "  Duke 
George  is  a  foe  of  my  doctrine,  hence  he  rages  against  the 
Word  of  God  ;  I  must  therefore  believe  he  rages  against 
God  Himself  and  His  Christ.  But  if  he  rages  against  God, 
then,  privily,  I  must  believe  him  to  be  possessed  of  the  devil. 
If  he  is  possessed  of  the  devil,  then  in  my  heart  I  must 
believe  that  he  cherishes  the  worst  of  intentions."3  Thanks 
to  such  dialectics,  Luther  again  formulates  the  charges 
embodied  in  the  Pack  disclosures.  As  Tschackert  points 
out,  Luther  persisted  in  crediting  his  opponents  with  all  that 
was  worst. 

In  1528  he  preached  on  John  xvii. ;  in  the  tone  of  these  sermons, 
printed  in  1530,  we  find  several  remarkable  echoes  of  Luther's 
hymn  "  Ein'  feste  Burg."4 

The  preacher  speaks  to  his  hearers  both  of  inward  temptations 
and  of  outward  hardships,  and  uses  words  which  recall,  now  his 
complaints  of  his  experiences  with  the  devil,  now  the  trustful 
defiance  he  voices  in  his  hymn  on  the  "  Safe  stronghold." 

"  We  must  know  that  there  is  no  way  of  resisting  the  devil's 
temptations  than  by  holding  fast  to  the  plain  word  of  Scripture 

1  Kostlin-Kawerau,  2,  pp.  177,  646. 

2  Cp.  vol.  iii.,  pp.  48  f.,  325  f. 

3  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  30,  2,  p.  41  ;    Erl.  ed.,  31,  p.  20.     "  Von 
heimliche  und  gestolen  Brieften,"  1529. 

4  P.  Tschackert,  "  Die  Entstehung  des  Lutherliedes  '  Ein'  feste,'  " 
etc.  ("  Theol.  Literaturblatt,"   1905,  No.  2,  and  before,  in  the  "  N. 
kirchl.  Zeitschr.,"  1903,  Hft.  10). 


844          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

and  not  thinking  or  speculating  further.  .  .  .  Whoever  does  not 
do  this  will  be  disappointed,  and  err,  and  have  a  fall." l  If  you  do 
not  simply  believe  in  the  Word,  he  repeats  to  the  people,  you  will 
"  rush  in  headlong  and  be  overthrown  ;  for  the  devil  is  able  to 
persuade  our  heart  that  he  is  God,  and  to  disguise  himself  in 
great  splendour  and  majesty  "  ;  "in  the  assumption  of  prudence, 
holiness  and  majesty  no  one  in  the  world  excels  him  "  ;  "  hence 
no  one  can  cheat  him  better  than  by  tying  himself  to  the  tree 
where  God  has  placed  him  ;  otherwise,  if  he  seizes  you,  you  are 
lost  and  he  will  carry  you  off  as  the  hawk  does  the  chick  from 
under  the  wing  of  the  clucking  hen."2 

In  the  same  sermon,  however,  he  also  prophesies  the  shame  and 
destruction  of  "  our  wrathful  foes  who  seek  to  stifle  the  Evangel 
and  to  stamp  out  the  Christians,  many  of  whom  they  have 
already  burned  and  murdered  ;  for  even  prouder  kings  and  lords — 
in  comparison  with  whom  our  princes  and  lords  are  the  merest 
beggars3 — have  come  to  grief  over  the  Evangel  and  been  wrecked 
by  it."  Speaking  of  the  Catholic  princes  headed  by  the  Emperor 
Charles  V,  he  exclaims :  "  Our  furious  tyrants,  when  they  abuse 
the  Evangel,  and  persecute,  murder  and  burn  all  our  people  are 
termed  Christian  princes,  and  defenders  of  the  Church  ;  this 
exonerates  whatever  shameful  and  wicked  practices  they  may 
commit  against  both  God  and  man."4 

Again  he  extols  the  Word,  making  Christ  say  :  "I  have  given 
them  the  Word  whereby  Thy  Name  has  been  made  known  to 
them"  ("Das  Wort  sie  sollen  lassen  stahn,"  as  the  original  of 
the  hymn  runs) ;  "  but  neither  the  Papacy  nor  any  other  fanatics 
will  accept  it,"  i.e.  the  knowledge  of  Christ  ;  "  for  this  reason  we 
are  forced  unceasingly  to  wrangle,  grapple  and  fight  with  them 
and  the  devil."5  Still,  "all  our  protection,  our  redemption  from 
sin,  death,  the  world  and  the  devil's  power  is  comprised  in  the 
Word  alone  "  ;  holding  fast  to  this  we  have  all  the  prophets, 
martyrs,  apostles  and  the  whole  of  Christendom  on  our  side. 
But  Christendom  is  a  "  powerful  lady,  Empress  of  heaven  and 
earth,  at  whose  feet  devil,  world,  death  and  hell  must  fall  as  soon 
as  she  drops  a  word."  "For,"  so  he  continues,  thinking  of  him 
self,  "  who  can  check  or  harm  a  man  who  has  so  defiant  a 
spirit  ?  "  "  Whether  the  devil  attacks  singly  a  weak  member  of 
Christendom  and  fancies  he  has  gobbled  him  up  [cp.  the  use  of 
this  same  word  below,  p.  347]  or  even  Christendom  as  a  whole," 
he  must  nevertheless  "  tremble  and  fall  to  the  ground."  "  If  a 
sin  attacks  him  [the  Christian],  and  seeks  to  affright,  gnaw,  and 
oppress  his  conscience  and  threaten  him  with  devil,  death  and 
hell,  then  God  and  His  multitude  [the  saints  and  angels]  will  say  : 
'  Good  sin,  let  him  be  ;  death,  do  not  slay  him  ;  hell,  do  not 
swallow  him  !  '  "6 

1  Exposition  of  John  xvii.,  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  28,  p.  91  ;  Erl.  ed., 
50,  p.  174.  2  Ib.,  p.  137  =  213.  3  Ib.,  p.  85  f.  =  169. 

4  Ib.,  p.  159  f.=233  f.  5  Ib.,  p.  199  =  264. 

6  Ib.,  p.  182  ff.  =  252  f. 


u  COMBATS  AND  TEMPTATIONS  "     345 

"  But  here  faith  comes  in,"  he  at  once  goes  on,  "  for,  to  the 
eyes  of  the  world  and  to  reason,  everything  seems  just  the 
reverse."  ["  And  were  the  world  all  devils  o'er,"  sings  the  hymn 
on  the  "  Safe  stronghold."] 

The  outside  menace  from  the  Papists  and  their  princes,  and  the 
inward,  "  sudden,  baneful  attacks  of  the  devil  in  our  conscience," 
Luther  writes  in  his  interpretation  of  John  xviii.  (v.  28),  all 
"  this  is  written  to  put  to  blush  our  high-priests  and  elders, 
viz.  the  bishops  and  princes  who  go  about  the  world  with  noses 
in  the  air  as  though  they  were  pious  and  holy,  wrhereas  they 
drive  out  of  their  land  the  pious,  God-fearing  Christians  and 
preachers.  Who  in  the  devil's  name  gave  them  power  to  pass 
judgment  on  the  teaching  of  the  Evangel  ?  "  But  the  devil,  too, 
persecutes  us  with  his  machinations.  "  When  he  finds  some  poor 
conscience  that  would  fain  be  pious,  he  attacks  it  with  trifles.  .  .  . 
Amongst  us  Evangelicals  there  is  not  one  who  has  not  great,  big 
sins  and  difficulties,  such  as  doubts,  and  waverings  in  the  faith, 
and  other  awkward  knots.  But  such  big  sins  and  great  difficulties 
the  devil  is  willing  to  discard  while  he  attacks  us  about  some 
paltry  thing  .  .  .  and  torments  and  plagues  our  conscience." 
But  when  thereby  we  are  ' '  upset  and  become  troubled  ' '  we  ought 
to  "  console  ourselves  and  say  :  '  If  Our  Lord  God  can  have 
patience  with  me  even  though  my  faith  in  Him  be  not  firm,  but 
often  wavering  and  doubtful,  why  then  do  you  torment  me,  you 
devil,  with  other  petty  matters  and  sins  ?  I  can  see  through  all 
your  artfulness  and  wicked  malice  ;  you  cloak  over  the  great  sins 
and  big  difficulties  so  that  I  may  not  heed  them,  or  make  any 
conscience  of  them,  nor  seek  forgiveness  for  them.  .  .  .'  There 
fore  a  Christian  must  learn  not  to  allow  himself  to  be  too  easily 
troubled  with  remorse  of  conscience  ;  but  if  he  believes  in  Christ, 
wishes  to  be  pious,  strives  against  sin  as  far  as  he  is  able  and  yet 
occasionally  makes  mistakes,  stumbles  and  falters,  he  must  not 
allow  such  stumbling  to  upset  him  in  conscience,  but  rather  he 
must  say  :  Away  with  this  error  and  this  stumbling  !  Let  it  join 
my  other  faults  and  crimes  and  be  included  among  the  other 
sins  of  which  the  Creed  teaches  us  the  forgiveness."1 

The  further  course  of  Luther's  inner  history  will  show 
more  clearly  how  far  the  article  of  the  forgiveness  of  sins 
served  its  purpose  in  his  own  case  and  how  he  contrived  to 
prop  up  a  faith,  which,  during  the  years  1527  and  1528,  was 
so  distressingly  inclined  to  "  doubt  and  wavering." 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  28,  p.  295  ff.  ;   Erl.  ed.,  50,  p.  328  f. 


346          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

5.  The  Ten  Years  from  1528-38.     How  to  win  back 
Peace  of  Conscience 

The  Years  Previous  to  1537 

During  the  time  when  the  Diet  of  Augsburg  was  in 
preparation  Luther's  complaints  about  his  inward  struggles 
recede  somewhat  into  the  background,  outward  events 
engrossing  all  his  attention. 

Matters  changed,  however,  when  the  Diet  actually  began 
its  sessions  and  he  himself  took  up  his  residence  in  the 
fortress  of  Coburg.  There  he  was  a  prey  to  overwhelming 
suffering  both  of  body  and  of  mind. 

His  nervous  ailments,  particularly  the  noises  in  his  head, 
became  much  worse  at  that  time,  owing  partly  to  his  deep 
concern  for  his  cause,  partly  to  his  too  great  literary  output 
during  his  sojourn  in  the  solitude.  Against  his  inner 
anxieties  he  tried  the  weapon  of  humour.1  But  all  in  vain. 
The  "  spiritual  temptations  "  set  in,  and  his  loneliness  made 
them  even  worse.  It  was  at  the  beginning  of  May  that  he 
received  Satan's  famous  "  embassy."  Because  he  had  been 
left  quite  alone  (in  the  absence  of  Veit  Dietrich  and  Cyriacus 
Kaufmann),  so  he  says,  Satan  had  so  far  got  the  better  of 
him  that  he  had  been  obliged  to  flee  from  the  room  and  to 
seek  the  society  of  men.  When  writing  to  Melanchthon 
about  this  he  uses  some  strange-sounding  words  :  "  Hardly 
can  I  await  the  day  when  I  shall  at  last  behold  the  tremen 
dous  power  of  this  spirit  and  his  majesty,  which,  in  its  kind, 
is  quite  divine  ('  planeque  divinam  maiestatem  quandam  ')."' 
Here  he  is  presumably  alluding  to  the  time  of  his  death  and 
of  the  judgment  when  he  would  behold  Satan.  He  had, 
however,  not  to  wait  so  long,  for,  in  the  following  month  and 
while  still  at  the  Coburg,  he  was  vouchsafed  a  glimpse  of  the 
Enemy  under  a  certain  shape  ;  at  least  such  was  his  belief  ; 
the  actual  vision  will  be  described  later  (vol.  vi.,  xxxvi.,  3). 

He  must  have  suffered  grievously  from  his  fears  whilst  in 
the  castle  ;  he  compares  himself  to  the  parched  country 
surrounding  it,  so  greatly  was  he  tried  inwardly  by  storms 
and  heat  ;3  but  "  our  cause  is  safe  if  our  Word  is  true,  and 

1  To   Spalatin,   April   23,    1530,    "  Brief wechsel,"    7,   p.    308.      See 
above,  p.  315. 

2  To  Melanchthon,  May  12,  1530,  ib.,  p.  332  f. 

3  To  Jonas,  May  19,  1530,  ib.,  p.  338. 


"  COMBATS  AND  TEMPTATIONS  "     347 

that  it  is  true  is  sufficiently  demonstrated  by  the  ferocity 
and  frenzy  of  our  foes."1  He  was  visited  by  thoughts  of 
death,  and,  during  these,  he  sought,  as  he  related  later,  the 
spot  in  the  castle  chapel  where  he  would  be  laid  to  rest.2 
Then,  when  his  disquiet  of  mind  began  to  abate,  intense 
bodily  weakness  again  made  him  think  of  death  ;  this  too, 
in  his  opinion,  was  Satan's  doing.  When  ultimately  he  left 
the  Coburg  he  felt  himself  a  broken  man  and  began  to  sigh 
more  and  more  over  his  burden  of  years,  though,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  he  was  still  comparatively  young. 

Nevertheless,  in  a  letter  to  Melanchthon  of  June  29,  1530, 
he  praised  the  comfort  of  his  place  of  residence.  Above  all  he 
was  able  to  report  that  "  the  spirit  who  formerly  beat  me 
with  fists  [in  mind]  seems  to  be  losing  heart."3  Yet,  allud 
ing  to  his  bodily  pains,  he  says  sadly  :  "I  fancy  that 
another  has  taken  his  [the  other  tormentor's]  place  and 
plagues  my  body  ;  but  I  prefer  to  endure  this  torture  of  the 
body  rather  than  that  hangman  of  the  spirit.  But  he  has 
sworn  to  have  my  life,  this  I  feel  plainly,  and  will  never  stop 
until  he  has  gobbled  me  up."4 

But  when  he  had  returned  safe  and  sound  to  Wittenberg 
he  was  disposed  to  look  back  with  utter  horror  on  what  he 
had  gone  through,  physically  and  mentally,  when  at  the 
Coburg.  "  Now  my  shoulders  are  really  beginning  to  feel 
the  weight  of  my  years,"  he  writes  to  trusty  Amsdorf  ;  "  and 
my  powers  are  going.  The  angel  of  Satan  has  indeed  dealt 
hardly  with  me."5 

"  My  thoughts  did  me  more  harm  than  all  my  work,"  he 
said,  in  May,  1532,  speaking  of  those  which  came  by  night 
("  curce  nocturnes").6  Nothing,  so  he  says  elsewhere,  had 
brought  him  so  nigh  to  death  as  these  ;  with  them  all  his 
labours,  to  which  the  great  numbers  of  letters  he  received 
bore  witness,  were  not  to  be  compared.7  To  young  Schlagin- 
haufen  Veit  Dietrich  related,  as  a  memory  of  the  Coburg 
days,  how  Luther  had  said  to  him  there  :  "  Were  I  to  die 

To  Melanchthon,  May  15,  1530,  ib.,  p.  335. 
Kostlin-Kawerau,  2,  p.  203. 

"  Spiritus  ille,  qui  me  colaphizavit  hactenus."     Cp.  2  Cor.  xii.  7  : 
igelus  satance,  qui  me  colaphizet." 
"  Brief wechsel,"  8,  p.  43. 
Oct.  31,  1530,  ib.,  p.  301. 
Schlaginhaufen,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  87. 
Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  374,  Oct.  28-Dec.  12,  1536. 


348          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

now  and  be  cut  open,  my  heart  would  be  found  all  shrivelled 
up  in  consequence  of  my  distress  and  sadness  of  spirit."1 

His  having  to  wrestle  with  such  moods  is  also  in  great 
part  responsible  for  the  stormy  and  extravagant  tone  of  the 
works  he  wrote  during,  or  shortly  after,  his  stay  at  the 
Coburg.2 

"  /  should  have  Died  without  any  Struggle  " 

In  1537,  in  his  second  serious  illness,  at  Schmalkalden,  and 
on  the  return  journey  from  this  town  to  Wittenberg,  Luther 
displayed  the  same  stubborn  spirit  as  in  1527.  In  1537  it 
was  an  attack  of  stone  which  brought  him  to  the  brink  of 
the  grave.  Later  on  he  himself  declared  of  this  crisis,  that 
he  would  have  died  quite  easily  and  trustfully.  Into  his 
deepest  feelings  at  that  time  we  have,  of  course,  no  means 
of  probing,  but  it  may  be,  that,  by  dint  of  persistently 
repressing  his  earlier  scruples,  he  had  indeed  reached  the 
state  of  calm  resignation  he  depicts.  At  the  same  time  his 
great  bodily  exhaustion  will  probably  have  reacted  on  his 
spirit,  his  very  weakness  thus  explaining  the  silence  of  the 
inward  voices. 

"  At  Gotha  [on  my  way  back],"  so  he  told  his  friends  in  1540, 
"  I  was  quite  certain  I  was  to  die  ;  I  said  good-bye  to  all,  called 
Bugenhagen,  commended  to  him  the  Church,  the  school,  my  wife 
and  all  else,  and  begged  him  to  give  me  absolution.  .  .  .  Thus 
I  should  have  died  in  Christ  with  a  perfectly  quiet  soul  and  with 
out  a  struggle.  But  the  Lord  wished  to  preserve  me  in  life.  My 
'  Catena  '  [Katey]  too,"  so  he  goes  on  to  speak  of  one  of  his  wife's 
illnesses,  "  when  once  we  had  already  given  up  all  hopes  for  her 
life,  would  have  died  gladly,  and  readily,  and  with  a  quiet  soul  ; 
she  merely  repeated  a  thousand  times  over  the  words  :  '  In  Thee, 
O  Lord,  have  I  hoped,  I  shall  not  be  confounded  for  ever.'  "  From 
such  experiences  in  her  case  and  in  his  own  Luther  draws  the 
conclusion,  that  "  at  times  the  devil  desists  from  tempting  to 
blasphemy."  "  At  other  times  God  allows  him,"  so  he  thinks, 
"  to  try  us  thereby,  so  that  we  may  not  become  indolent  but  may 
learn  to  fight.  At  the  end  of  our  life,  however,  all  such  tempta 
tions  cease  ;  for  then  the  Holy  Spirit  is  at  the  side  of  the  faithful 
believer,  restrains  the  devil  by  force  and  pours  into  the  heart 
perfect  peace  and  security."3 

Such  was  his  interpretation  of  the  case. 

1  Schlaginhaufen,  ib. 

2  See  above,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  391  ff.  ;   vol.  iv.,  pp.  191  ff. 

3  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  115,  March  21  to  June  11,  1540. 


"COMBATS  AND  TEMPTATIONS"     349 

At  other  times  Luther  expresses  wonder  at  the  wrong-headed 
sectarians  who  can  with  such  confidence  look  even  death  itself 
in  the  face.  He  refuses  to  apply  to  them  what  has  just  been  said  ; 
it  is  no  real  peace  that  they  die  in,  rather  they  are  blinded  by 
Satan's  delusions.  "  This  new  sect  of  the  Anabaptists,"  he  says 
indignantly,  "  grows  marvellously,  they  live  with  a  great  show 
[of  the  spirit]  and  boldly  face  death  by  fire  and  water."1  He  is 
thinking  of  the  Anabaptists  who  were  executed  in  1527 — "  May 
God  have  mercy  on  these  poor  captives  of  Satan.  .  .  .  They  can 
not  be  coerced  either  by  fire  or  by  the  sword  ;  so  greatly  does 
Satan  rage  in  this  hour  because  it  is  his  last."  And  yet  the  whole 
thing  was  little  more  than  a  joke  of  Satan's. 

"  With  me,  however,  he  certainly  does  not  jest  ;  I  believe  that 
I  am  pleasing  to  God  and  displeasing  to  Satan."2 

He  overlooks  the  fact  that  the  Anabaptists,  too,  fancied  they 
were  pleasing  Christ,  nay,  were  passionately  convinced  that  they 
were  living  for  Christ  and  not  for  Satan  ;  they  even  exposed 
themselves  of  their  own  accord  to  the  worst  torments  of  the 
executioner  before  they  passed  out  of  life,  obstinately  declaring 
that  it  was  impossible  for  them  to  recant.  The  words  in  which 
Luther  complains  of  their  obstinacy  are  a  two-edged  sword. 

He  is  fond  of  bewailing  the  stubbornness  of  the  heretics  ;  it  was 
a  subject  of  wholesome  fear  for  all  ;  it  penetrated  "  like  water 
into  their  inward  parts  and  like  oil  into  their  bones"  :  so  far  do 
they  go  that  they  see  "  salvation  and  blessing  "  in  their  own 
doctrine  alone  ;  few  are  they  who  "  come  right  again,"  "  the  others 
remain  under  their  own  curse."  "Neither  have  I  ever  read," 
he  assures  us,  "  of  any  teacher  who  originated  a  heresy  being 
converted  "  ;  "  the  true  Evangel  which  teaches  the  contrary  of 
their  doctrine  is  and  always  will  be  to  them  a  devil's  thing."3 — 
"  No  heretic,"  he  cries,  "  will  let  himself  be  talked  over.  .  .  . 
A  man  is  soon  done  for  when  the  devil  thus  lays  hold  of  him."4 
Such  a  one  boasts  that,  "he  is  quite  certain  of  things  "  ;  "  No 
Christian  ever  held  so  fast  to  his  Christ  as  a  Jew  or  a  fanatic  does 
to  his  pet  doctrine."5  He  also  believes  his  opponent  to  be  a  liar 
"as  surely  as  God  is  God."6  And  yet,  so  Luther  argues,  the 
sectarian  or  fanatic  can  never  be  certain  at  all  ;  not  one  of  his 
gainsayers  is  sure  of  his  cause  ;  not  one  has  "  felt  the  struggle  and 
been  at  grips  with  the  devil  "  like  himself.7 

But  I,  "  I  am  certain  that  my  word  is  not  mine  but  the  word 
of  Christ,"  and  "  every  man  who  speaks  the  word  of  Christ  is 


1  To  Jakob  Probst,  Dec.  31,  1527,  "  Brief wechsel,"  6,  p.  169. 

2  To  Johann  Hess,  Jan.  27,  1528,  ib.,  p.  199  f. 

3  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  19,  p.  609  f.  ;   Erl.  ed.,  38,  p.  445  f.,  "Vier 
trostliche  Psalmen  "  (1526). 

4  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  295.    In  1542-43. 

5  Ib.,  p.  317,  Spring,  1543.    His  statement  runs,  that  "  no  heresiarch 
can  be  converted."     "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  26,  p.  262  ;    cp.  23,  p.  73  ; 
Erl.  ed.,  30,  p.  22. 

6  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  61,  p.  5.  7  Ib. 


350          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

free  to  boast  that  his  mouth  is  the  mouth  of  Christ."1 — "  Had  not 
the  devil  attacked  us  with  such  power  and  cunning  during  all 
these  years,"  he  says  in  his  second  exposition  of  the  1st  Epistle 
of  Peter  (published  in  1539),  "  we  should  never  have  acquired  this 
certainty  on  doctrine." 2  It  is  to  his  awful  "  temptations,"  that,  as 
we  have  heard  him  repeatedly  assure  us,  he  owes  the  strength 
of  his  faith. 3  Unceasingly  did  he  strive  to  acquire  a  feeling  of 
strong  certainty  in  defiance  of  the  devil,  as  indeed  his  theology 
demanded  :  We  must  by  fiducial  faith  have  made  our  position 
secure  against  the  devil,  otherwise  we  have  no  stay  at  all. 4 

"  Even  though  I  stumble  yet  I  am  resolved  to  stand  by  what 
I  have  taught."  And,  as  though  to  falter  in  this  way  was  inevit 
able,  he  continues  :  "  for  although  a  Christian  holds  fast  until 
death  to  his  doctrine,  yet  he  often  stumbles  and  begins  to  doubt  ; 
but  it  is  not  so  with  the  fanatics,  they  stand  firm."5  And  yet, 
according  to  Luther,  everyone  must  "  stand  firm,"  for  in  theology 
there  is  no  room  for  "  fears  and  doubts."  And  we  must  have 
certainty  concerning  God.  But  in  conversing  with  other  men  we 
must  be  modest  and  say,  '  If  anyone  knows  better  let  him 
say  so.'  "6 


The  "Struggles  by  Day  and  by  Night"  gradually  Wane 

Hardly  had  Luther  recovered  from  his  second  bout  of 
illness  than  the  gloomy  thoughts  once  more  emerged  from 
their  hiding-place  and  began  again  to  dog  his  footsteps, 
though  perhaps  not  quite  so  persistently  as  after  his  recovery 
from  his  previous  sickness  ten  years  earlier.  It  is  as  though 
on  both  occasions  the  sight  of  the  gaping  jaws  of  death  had 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  8,  p.  683  ;   Erl.  ed.,  22,  p.  53.     Eyn  trew 
Vormanung,"  etc.      Cp.  his  outbursts  against  the   "  obstinacy  of  the 
heretics,"   "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  2,  p.  37  sqq.  :   "  Temeritas  Schwer- 
meriorum  pestilentissima  est,"  etc.     P.  40,  under  the  heading  :    "  Quo- 
modo  sit  cum  fanaticis  agendum." 

2  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  52,  p.  24  f.    According  to  his  sermons. 

3  Cp.  below,  p.  355  f . 

4  "  There  is  only  one  article  and  rule  in  theology,  viz.  true  faith  or 
trust   in    Christ.   .   .   .  The   devil   has   opposed   this   article   from   the 
beginning  of  the  world."     "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  58,  p.  398. — "  A  Chris 
tian  must  be  quite  convinced  that  a  thing  is  so  and  not  otherwise  .   .  . 
so  that  he  may  be  able  to  withstand  every  temptation  and  stand  up  to 
the  devil  and  all  his  angels,  nay,  even  to  God  Himself,  without  waver 
ing."    Ib.,  p.  394. — "  Whoever  is  not  sure  of  his  teaching  and  faith,  and 
yet  wishes  to  dispute,  is  done  for."    Ib. — "  Satan  comes  to  accuse  what 
is  best  ;    hence  a  man  must  have  certainty."     "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil, 
1,  p.   221. — "  For  it  is  absolutely  necessary  that  consciences  should 
reach   certainty   and   confidence   in   all   matters  ;     if   never   a   doubt 
remains,    then   everything    wobbles."      To    N.    Hausmann,    Dec.    17, 
1533,  "  Brief wechsel,"  9,  p.  363. 

5  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  317. 

6  "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  2,  p.  38. 


"COMBATS  AND  TEMPTATIONS"     351 

set  free  the  troubled  spirits  within,  and  as  though  the  spell 
which  momentarily  restrained  his  terrors  of  soul  had  been 
loosed  as  soon  as  his  bodily  powers  returned.  This  was  the 
last  great  attack  he  had  to  endure,  or  at  least  from  this  time 
onward  definite  allusions  to  his  struggles  of  conscience  are  not 
forthcoming  as  before. 

In  1537  he  lay  for  a  fortnight  under  the  stress  of  that 
"  spiritual  malady  "  (above,  p.  319),  during  which  he 
"  disputed  with  God,"  was  scarcely  able  to  take  food,  to 
sleep  or  to  preach,  in  spite  of  his  "  understanding  a  little  " 
"  the  Psalter  and  its  consolation,"  viz.  that  one  must  be 
patient.1— On  Oct.  7,  1538,  he  bewails  his  "  daily  agony."2 
In  the  same  year  he  wrings  some  comfort  out  of  Paul,  who 
also  had  been  unable  to  "  lay  hold  of  "  what  was  right  ;3  he 
also  has  a  poke  at  the  devil :  "  Why  arraign  us  so  sternly 
before  God  as  though  you  were  quite  holy,  and  the  highest 
judge  !  "4 

He  then  realised  in  his  own  person  how  one  thus  oppressed 
with  terrors  of  soul  could  be  tempted,  like  Job  (iii.  1  ff.),  to 
curse  the  day  of  his  birth.  After  having,  during  the  night 
of  Aug.  1,  1538,  suffered  severe  pains  in  the  joints  of  the 
arm,  he  said  next  day,  that  such  pains  were  tolerable  in 
comparison  with  others  :  "  The  flesh  can  get  used  to  this  sort 
of  thing.  But  when  the  spiritual  temptations  come  and  the 
4  Cursed  be  the  day  I  was  born  '  follows,  that  is  a  harder 
matter.  Christ  was  tried  in  a  similar  way  in  the  Garden  of 
Olives  .  .  .  He,  on  account  of  His  temptations,  is  our  best 
advocate  in  all  temptations.  .  .  .  Let  us  but  cling  fast  to 
hope  !  "5 

It  cannot  be  established  that  he  was  speaking  seriously  or 
was  prompted  by  despair  when  he  wished  that  "  he  had 
died  as  a  child,"  nay,  "  had  never  been  born,"  and  stated 
that  he  would  gladly  see  "  all  his  books  perish."  We  must 
beware  of  laying  too  great  stress  on  occasional  deliverances 
spoken  in  moments  of  irritation,  or  on  little  tricks  of  speech 
such  as  his  depreciatory  remarks  concerning  his  books.6 

1  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  406,  March  21-28,  1537.    Cp.  above, 
p.  319,  n.  1. 

2  Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  144. 

3  Ib.,  p.  128,  Sep.  10. 

4  Ib.,  p.  4,  Jan.  5. 

5  Ib.,  p.  106. 

6  See  below,  p.  369  ff.    Cp.  the  previous  passage. 


352          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

It  may  be  to  the  purpose  to  quote  here  some  undated  state 
ments  of  Luther's  which  paint  in  lurid  style  his  frequent  struggles 
of  mind  and  his  manner  of  resistance. 

Jerome,  Augustine  and  Ambrose  had  "  carnal  and  childish 
temptations  "  ;  "  these  are  nothing  compared  with  Satan  who 
strikes  us,  the  <r/c6Xo^,  that,  as  it  were,  fastens  us  to  the  gallows ; 
then  Jerome's  and  the  others'  child-temptations  are  chased  away 
entirely."1 — "On  one  occasion  I  was  greatly  tempted  in  my 
garden  near  the  bush  of  lavender,  whereupon  I  sang  the  hymn 
'  Now  praise  we  Christ  the  Holy  One,'  otherwise  I  should  have 
expired  on  the  spot.  Hence,  when  you  feel  such  a  thought,  say, 
'  This  is  not  Christ.'  .  .  .  This  I  preach  and  write,  but  I  am  not 
yet  at  home  in  this  art  when  tempted  in  this  way."2 

The  worst  temptations  of  all  are  those  when  "  one  does  not 
know  whether  God  is  the  devil  or  the  devil  God."3  " The  Apostle 
Judas,  when  the  hour  [of  temptation]  came,  walked  into  the  snare 
and  knew  not  how  to  get  out.  But  we  who  have  taken  the  field 
against  him  [the  devil]  and  are  at  grips  with  him  know,  by  God's 
grace,  how  to  meet  and  resist  him."4 — "  The  devil  can  affright  me 
to  such  an  extent  that  in  my  sleep  the  sweat  breaks  out  all 
over  me  ;  otherwise  I  do  not  trouble  about  dreams  or  signs.  .  .  . 
Sad  dreams  are  the  work  of  the  devil.  Often  has  he  driven  me 
from  prayer  and  put  such  thoughts  into  my  head  that  I  have  run 
away  ;  the  best  fights  I  have  had  with  him  were  in  my  bed  by 
the  side  of  my  Katey."5 

Elsewhere,  however,  he  says  :  "I  have  found  the  nocturnal 
encounters  far  harder  than  the  daylight  ones  "  ;  "  but,  that 
Christ  is  master,  this  I  can  show  not  merely  by  Holy  Scripture  but 
also  by  experience  "  ;  "  God  gives  richly  of  both.  But  all  has 
become  bitter  to  me  through  these  temptations."6 — "  I  know 
from  my  owrn  experience  what  we  read  of  in  the  Psalms  (vi.  7)  : 
'  Every  night  I  will  wash  my  bed  :  I  will  water  my  couch  with 
my  tears.'  In  my  temptations  I  have  often  wondered  and  asked 
myself  whether  I  had  any  heart  left  in  my  body,  so  great  a 
murderer  is  Satan  ;  but  he  will  not  long  keep  the  upper  hand,  for 
he  has  indeed  burnt  his  fingers  on  Christ."7 

To  add  to  the  terrors  of  such  struggles  came  thoughts  of 
suicide.  When  Leonard  Beyer,  an  Augustinian,  who  had 
become  pastor  of  Guben,  spoke  to  Luther  of  his  temptations 
to  take  his  own  life,  and  of  the  voice  which  occasionally 
whispered  to  him  "  Stick  a  knife  into  yourself,"  Luther 
answered  :  "  This  used  to  be  the  same  with  me.  No  sooner 

1  "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  2,  p.   315.     The  passage  2  Cor.  xii.   7  : 
"  Datus  est  mihi  stimulus  carnis  mece,  angelus  satance,  qui  me  colaphizet," 
is  generally  taken  with  St.  Thomas  to  refer  to  temptations  of  the  flesh. 

2  Khummer  in  Lauterbach's  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  73  f.     In  1539. 

3  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  61,  p.  197.  4  Ib.,  58,  p.  286. 
5  Mathesius,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  49.  6  Ib.,  p.  97. 

7  Schlaginhaufen,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  39,  Jan.  to  March,  1532, 


REMEDIES  FOR  "TEMPTATIONS"      353 

did  I  take  a  knife  in  my  hand,  than  such  thoughts  came  to 
me  ;  nor  could  I  kneel  down  to  pray  without  the  devil 
driving  me  out  of  the  room.  We  have  to  suffer  from  the 
great  devils,  the  '  theologies  doctores '  ;  but  the  Turks  and 
Papists  have  only  the  little  devils  "  to  tempt  them.1  It 
would  indeed  be  no  wonder  if  Luther  in  his  excited  frame 
of  mind  was  for  a  while  troubled  by  such  thoughts  of  suicide. 
By  thoughts  of  the  sort  sufferers  of  gloomy  disposition  are 
often  tormented  quite  involuntarily  and  without  any  fault 
of  their  own.  It  is  hardly  worth  our  while  to  prove  that 
another  passage,  which  occurs  in  Cordatus,  is  not  at  all  to  the 
point  though  it  has  been  quoted  against  Luther  as  showing 
his  inclination  to  suicide.  There,  in  his  usual  vein  of  exag 
geration,  he  says  that  he  "  would  hang  himself  on  the 
nearest  tree  "  were  Satan  to  succeed  in  dragging  down 
Christ  from  heaven.  Surely  there  was  just  as  little  likelihood 
of  his  being  his  own  hangman  as  of  the  enemy  succeeding 
in  this.2  And  yet  some  Catholic  polemists  who  believed  in 
the  fable  that  Luther  killed  himself,  seized  on  such  passages 
in  order  to  show  that  Luther  had  long  been  bent  on  suicide. 

How  to  find  Peace  of  Conscience 

If,  towards  the  end  of  the  'thirties,  Luther  was  more  suc 
cessful  in  countering  his  inward  anxieties,  this  may  have 
been  due  to  the  means  he  used  and  the  efficacy  of  which  he 
frequently  extols.  Some  of  the  remedies  to  which  he  had 
recourse  appear  comparatively  innocent,  and  had  even  been 
recommended  by  Catholic  spiritual  writers  to  be  used  when 
the  circumstances  demanded.  Others,  however,  must  be 
described  as  doubtful  and  even  dangerous,  particularly  con 
sidering  what  his  moral  position  was. 

Above  all  he  recommends  distraction  ;  people  tempted 
should  engage  in  cheerful  intercourse,  or  in  games  ;  in  his 
own  case  he  had  urgently  desired  the  return  of  his  friends, 
"  in  order  that  Satan  may  no  longer  rejoice  that  we  are  so 
far  apart."3  He  also  bears  witness  to  the  improvement 
which  resulted  from  cheerful,  animated  conversation. 

1  Ib.,  p.  214.     "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  60,  p.  60.     Mathesius,   "  Auf- 
zeichn.,"  p.  213  f.     Leonard  Beyer  had  defended  Luther's  Theses  as 
a  young  Augustinian  at  the  Heidelberg  Disputation  in  1518. 

2  Cordatus,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  129. 

3  To  Jonas,  Dec.  30,  1527,  "  Briefwechsel,"  6,  p.  167. 

V.— 2  A 


354          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

He  also  advises  people  to  awaken  some  "  stronger  emotion 
so  as  to  counteract  the  disquieting  thoughts.1  For  instance, 
it  is  a  good  thing  "  to  break  out  into  scolding,"2  or  to  give 
vent  to  a  "  brave  outburst  of  anger."3 

Further,  animal  pleasures  are,  according  to  him,  of 
advantage  ;  he  himself,  on  his  own  admission,  sought  to 
distract  his  thoughts  by  sensual  joys  of  the  most  material 
kind.4  In  the  case  of  gloomy  thoughts  "  a  draught  of  beer  " 
was,  so  he  avers,  of  much  greater  use  than,  e.g.  astrology.5 

Sensuality,  however,  is  not  always  sufficiently  powerful 
or  effective.  It  is  better  to  have  recourse  from  the  beginning 
to  religious  remedies.  "  If  I  but  seize  the  Scripture  [text] 
I  have  gained  the  day,"6  but,  unfortunately,  the  verse 
wanted  often  won't  come.  In  general,  what  is  required  is 
prayer,  much  patience  and  the  arousing  of  confidence.7 
One's  patience  may  be  fortified  by  the  thought  that  "  per 
haps,  thanks  to  these  temptations,  I  shall  become  a  great 
man,"  as  he  himself  had  actually  become,  thanks  largely  to 
his  temptations.8 

Further,  the  words  oj:  "  great  and  learned  men  to  one  who 
is  tempted  may  serve  him  as  an  oracle  or  prophecy,  which 
indeed  they  may  really  be."9  To  hold  fast  to  a  single  word 
spoken  by  a  stranger  had  often  proved  very  helpful.  We 
may  recall  how  he  compared  Bugenhagen's  words  to  him  : 
"  You  must  not  despise  our  consolation,"  to  "  a  voice  from 
heaven."10  Another  saying  of  his  same  friend  and  confessor, 
had,  so  he  declares,  greatly  strengthened  him.  "  Surely 
enough,  God  thinks  :  '  What  more  can  I  do  for  this  man 
[Luther]  ?  I  have  given  him  such  excellent  gifts  and  yet 
he  despairs  of  my  grace  !  "X1 

In  these  "  temptations,"  whether  in  his  own  case  or  in  that 

1  Cordatus,    "Tagebuch,"   p.    450:    "  aliquis  vehementior  affectus." 
Vol.  iii.,  p.  174,  n.  1. 

2  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  69,  p.  129  ;   above,  vol.  iv.,  p.  311. 

3  Kostlin-Kawerau,  2,  p.  515. 

4  Cordatus,    "  Tagebuch,"    p.    450.      "  Colloq.,"    ed.    Bindseil,    2, 
p.  299.     To  Hier.  Weller,  July  (?),   1530,   "  Brief wechsel,"   8,  p.   160. 
Schlaginhaufen,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  11.    See  vol.  iii.,  p.  175  ff. 

5  From  Veit  Dietrich's  MS.  Notes,  in  Kostlin-Kawerau,  2,  p.  516. 

6  Mathesius,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  97. 

7  To  Wenceslaus  Link,  July  14,  1528,  "  Brief  wechsel,"  6,  p.  301. 

8  To  Hier.  Weller,  July  (?)    1530,  ib.,  8,  p.  160.  9  Ib. 

10  To  Wenceslaus  Link,  in  the  passage  quoted  under  n.  7  ;  above, 
p.  339. 

11  Kostlin-Kavrerau,  2,  p.  176,  from  Veit  Dietrich. 


REMEDIES  FOR  "TEMPTATIONS"     355 

of  others,  he  hardly  gives  a  thought  to  penance  and  morti 
fication,  such  as  olden  Churchmen  had  always  recommended 
and  employed.  On  the  contrary,  ascetic  remedies  of  the 
sort  would,  according  to  him,  only  make  things  worse. 
Needless  to  say,  even  Catholics  were  anxious  that  such 
remedies  should  not  be  applied  without  discretion,  since 
lessening  of  the  bodily  powers  might  conceivably  weaken 
the  resistance  of  the  spirit,  nay,  even  promote  fears  and 
temptations.  Luther  says,  in  1531 :  "  Were  I  to  follow  my 
inclination  I  should  [when  in  this  state]  go  three  days  with 
out  eating  anything.  This  then  is  a  double  fasting,  to  eat 
and  drink  without  the  least  appetite.  When  the  world  sees 
it,  it  looks  on  it  as  drunkenness,  but  God  will  judge  whether 
it  is  drunkenness  or  fasting.  They  will  have  fasts,  but  not 
as  I  fast.  Therefore  keep  head  and  belly  full.  Sleep  also 
helps."1  Sleep  seemed  to  him  especially  important,  not 
merely  as  a  condition  for  hard  work,  but  also  to  enable  one 
to  resist  low  spirits.  It  was  when  unable  to  sleep,  that,  as 
he  tells  us,  "  the  devil  had  annoyed  him  until  he  said  : 
'  Lambe  mihi  nates,'  etc.  We  have  the  treasure  of  the 
Word  ;  God  be  praised."2 

His  practice  and  teaching  with  regard  to  inward  sources 
of  troubles  were  indeed  miles  apart  from  those  of  earlier 
Catholic  times,  and  even  from  what  in  his  own  day  Catholic 
masters  of  the  first  rank  in  the  spiritual  life  had  written  for 
the  benefit  of  posterity.  Everybody  knows  how  these 
writers  are,  above  all,  desirous  to  provide  their  readers  with 
a  method  whereby  they  may  discern  between,  on  the  one 
hand,  the  voice  of  conscience,  whether  it  warns  us  to  desist 
from  wrong  or  encourages  us  to  do  what  is  good,  and,  on  the 
other,  the  promptings  of  the  Evil  Spirit.  They  say  that  it 
is  the  devil's  practice  alternately  to  disquiet  and  to  cheer, 
though  in  a  way  very  different  from  that  of  the  spirits  from 
above.  It  was  unfortunate  for  Luther  that  he  chose  to 
close  his  eyes  to  any  such  "  discerning  of  the  spirits."  He 
resolutely  steeled  his  conscience  once  for  all  against  even 
wholesome  disquietude  and  anxiety,  and  of  set  purpose  he 
bore  down  all  misgivings.  Of  one  thing  he  was  determined 
to  be  convinced  :  "  Above  all  hold  fast  to  this,  that  thoughts 

1  Schlaginhaufen,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  11,  Nov.  to  Dec.,  1531.     Same 
in  Veit  Dietrich.    Cp.  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  60,  p.  47. 

2  Schlaginhaufen,  ib. 


356          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

bad  and  sad  come,  not  from  God,  but  from  the  devil ;  "  "  make 
it  your  wont  at  once  to  tell  all  inward  reproaches  :  c  You 
were  not  sent  by  God.'  ' 

"  At  first,"  he  adds,  as  though  describing  his  own  case, 
"  this  struggle  is  hard,  but  practice  makes  it  easier."1 

He  claimed  that,  owing  to  the  amount  of  practice  he  had 
had  in  inward  combats,  his  "  faith  had  been  much  strength 
ened  "  ;  the  "  temptations  "  had  won  for  him  a  "  wealth 
of  Divine  gifts,"  had  taught  him  humility  and  qualified  him 
for  his  task,  nay,  had  set  a  Divine  seal  on  his  mission ; 2  his 
"  theologia  "  he  had  learnt  in  the  school  of  the  devil's  tempta 
tions  ;  without  such  a  devil  to  help,  one  remains  a  mere 
speculative  theologian.3 

Such  sayings  lead  us  to  ask  whether  his  life  of  faith  really 
underwent  a  strengthening  as  he  advanced  in  years. 

6.    Luther  on  his  Faith,  his  Doctrine  and  his  Doubts, 
particularly  in  his  Later  Years 

Whoever  would  judge  correctly  of  the  remarkable  state 
ments  made  by  Luther  which  we  are  now  about  to  consider 
must  measure  them,  at  least  in  the  lump,  by  the  standard 
of  his  doctrine  on  faith.  If  anything  in  him  calls  for  explan 
ation  and  consideration  in  the  light  of  the  views  on  doctrine 
which  he  held,  surely  this  is  especially  the  case  with  the 
mental  state  now  under  discussion  to  which  he  alludes  so 
frequently  in  both  public  and  private  utterances.  At  the 
same  time  it  must  not  be  overlooked  that  occasionally  he  is 
speaking  with  his  wonted  hyperbole  and  love  of  paradox,  and 
that  sometimes  what  he  says  is  not  meant  quite  seriously  ; 
moreover,  that  sometimes,  when  apparently  blaming  him 
self,  he  is  really  only  trying  to  describe  the  heights  which 
he  fain  would  attain  ;  the  true  standard  by  which  to  judge 
all  these  many  statements  which  are  yet  so  remarkably 
uniform  must,  however,  be  sought  in  the  theological  ground 
work  of  his  attitude  towards  faith. 

1  To  Hier.  Weller,  June  19,  1530,  "  Briefwechsel,"  8,  p.  5. 

2  Schlaginhaufen,  ib.,  pp.  9,  88.     "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  2,  p.  316. 
"  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  52,  p.  24  f. 

3  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  57,  p.  99. 


THE   NEW   FAITH  357 

Luther's  Notion  of  Faith 

As  we  already  know,  by  faith  he  understands  on  the  one 
hand  the  accepting  of  all  the  verities  of  revelation  as  true  ; 
more  often,  however,  he  means  by  it  simply  a  believing 
trust  in  salvation  through  Christ,  a  certainty  of  that  justi 
fication  by  faith  which  constitutes  his  "  Evangel."1 

For  faith  in  the  former  sense  he  rightly  appeals  to  the 
firm  and  immovable  foundation  of  God's  truth.  But,  as 
regards  the  source  whence  mankind  obtains  its  knowledge 
of  revealed  truth,  he  practically  undermines  the  authority 
of  Scripture — which  he  nevertheless  esteems  so  highly- 
first,  by  his  wanton  rejection  of  whole  books  of  the  Bible 
and  by  his  neglect  of  the  criteria  necessary  for  determining 
which  books  belong  to  Holy  Scripture  and  for  recognising 
which  are  canonical;2  secondly,  by  his  interpretation  of  the 
Bible,  more  particularly  in  ascertaining  the  Divine  truths 
therein  contained,  he  flings  open  the  door  to  subjectivism 
and  leaves  each  one  to  judge  for  himself,  refusing  even  to 
furnish  him  with  any  sure  guidance.3  He  set  aside  the  teach 
ing  office  of  the  Church,  which  had  been  for  the  Catholic 
the  authentic  exponent  of  Scripture,  and  at  the  same  time 
had  guaranteed  the  canonicity  of  each  of  its  parts.  Of  the 
Church's  olden  creeds  he  retained  only  a  fragment,  and  even 
this  he  interpreted  in  his  own  sense.4 

Thus,  under  the  olden  name  of  faith  in  revelation  he  had 
really  introduced  a  new  objective  faith,  one  utterly  devoid 
of  any  stay. 

It  is  sufficient  to  consider  certain  of  his  quite  early  theses 
to  appreciate  the  blow  dealt  at  the  Church's  traditional  view 
of  faith.  To  these  theses  he  was  moved  by  his  polemics 
against  certain,  to  him,  distasteful  dogmas  of  the  ancient 
Church,  but  from  the  very  outset  his  attack  was,  at  bottom, 
directed  against  all  barriers  of  dogma,  and,  even  later,  con 
tinued  to  threaten  to  some  extent  the  very  foundations  of 
that  religious  knowledge  which  he  held  in  common  with  all 
other  Christians.5  The  unrestrained  freedom  of  opinion 
which  many  Protestants  claim  to-day  as  part  of  the  heirloom 

1  See  vol.  iii.,  p.  13  ff.  ;  vol.  iv.,  pp.  413  ff.,  440  ff.,  444,  448. 

2  Above,  vol.  iv.,  p.  398  ff. 

3  Above,  vol.  iv.,  p.  403  ff.    4  /&.,  pp.  404  f.,  410  ff.,  414  f. 
5  Above,  vol.  iii.,  pp.  8  ff.,  18  ff.,  and  below,  xxxiv.,  1. 


358          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

of  Christianity  they  are  wont  to  justify  by  citing  passages 
from  Luther's  writings,  e.g.  from  his  work  of  1523,  "  Das  eyn 
Christliche  Versamlung  odder  Gemeyne  .  .  .  Macht  habe, 
alle  Lere  zu  urteylen,"  etc.1 

The  fact  of  having  taught  faith  in  the  second  sense  men 
tioned  above,  and  of  having  put  it  in  the  place  of  faith  in 
the  first  and  olden  sense  is,  according  to  many  moderns,  the 
achievement  that  more  than  any  other  redounds  to  Luther's 
credit. — He  made  an  end  of  the  "  unevangelical  idea  of 
faith  as  a  mere  holding  for  true,  and  of  the  submission  of  the 
most  inward  and  tender  of  questions  to  the  decision  of 
courts  of  law";2  in  the  trustful  belief  in  Christ  he  redis 
covered  the  only  faith  deserving  of  the  name  and  thereby 
brought  back  religion  to  mankind. 

This  trusting  faith,  however,  by  its  very  nature  and 
according  to  Luther's  express  admission  is,  as  has  already 
been  pointed  out  in  detail,  also  devoid  of  any  true  stay,  is 
ever  exposed  to  wavering  and  uncertainty  and  is  wholly 
dependent  on  feeling  ;  above  all,  for  a  conscience  oppressed 
with  the  sense  of  guilt  to  lay  hold  on  the  alien  righteousness 
of  Christ  by  faith  alone  is  a  task  scarcely  within  its  power  ; 
it  admittedly  involves  an  unceasing  struggle  ;3  lastly,  true 
faith,  according  to  Luther,  comes  only  from  God,  from  whom 
man,  who  has  no  free-will,  can  only  passively  look  for  it,4 
nay,  it  belongs  in  the  last  instance  only  to  the  Revealed 

1  The    "  Siiddeutsche    Blatter   f.    Kirche   u.    freies    Christentum " 
(1911,  No.  24)  appealed,  as  against  the  deposition  of  Pastor  Jatho  by 
the  Spruchkollegium  of  Berlin,  to  Luther's  words  in  the  above  writing : 
"  In  this  matter,  i.e.  in  judging  of  doctrine,  deposing  teachers  or  those 
holding  a  cure  of  souls,  we  must  pay  no  heed  to  human  regulations  and 
laws,  to  ancient  custom  and  usage,  etc.  .  .  .  the  soul  must  be  ruled 
and  gripped  only  by  the  Eternal  Word."     "  It  is  high  time,"  adds  the 
Editor,  "  for  us  again  to  call  to  mind  that  view  of  faith  which  gives  to 
the  soul  and  the  conscience  that  sacred  and  inalienable  right  to  which 
every  man  has  a  claim";   he  also  points   out,   again   appealing   to 
Luther,  the  "impossible  state   of  things"  to  which  any  compulsion 
exercised   under  plea  of   the  Creed  must  lead,  of  which  each  of  the 
twelve  judges  of  the  Spruchkollegium  has  a  different   opinion.     "  It 
is  admittedly  allowable  to  deviate  to  a  certain  extent  from  the  Con 
fession  of  the  Church.     In  this  case,  however,  the  judges  suddenly  turn 
on  a  man  and  say :  But  not  so  far  as  this.     The  question  is :  How 
far  then  may  one  go  ? 

2  "  Siiddeutsche  Bl.,"  ib. 

3  See  above,  vol.  iv.,  p.  441. 

4  Vol.  i.,  pp.  92,  203  f.,  213,  231  f.  ;    vol.  ii.,  pp.  232  ff.,  286  ff.  ; 
vol.  iv.,  p.  434  f. 


DIFFICULTIES    OF   BELIEF         359 

God,  for  of  the  dispensations  of  the  Hidden  Will  of  God 
concerning  our  future  in  heaven  or  in  hell  we  are  entirely 
ignorant.1 

Here  too,  then,  we  have  a  new  kind  of  faith. 

This  explains  how  it  is  that  in  Luther's  statements  con 
cerning  his  personal  faith,  his  preaching,  his  absorption  in 
the  religious  point  of  view  he  has  discovered,  his  doubts 
and  his  fears,  we  meet  with  so  much  that  sounds  strange. 
We  say  strange,  for  they  cannot  but  unpleasantly  surprise 
anyone  accustomed  to  regard  faith  in  the  truths  of  religion  as 
a  firm  possession  of  the  mind  and  heart,  above  all  a  Catholic 
believer.  Before  Luther's  day  scarcely  can  a  single  Christian 
teacher  be  instanced  who  was  so  open  in  speaking  of  the 
weakness  of  his  own  faith  or  who  so  frequently  and  so  per 
sistently  insisted  on  pitting  his  own  experience  against  the 
calm  inward  certainty  with  which  God  ever  rewards  a 
humble  and  heartfelt  faith,  even  in  those  most  beset  with 
temptations. 

When,  in  spite  of  this,  we  find  Luther  throughout  his  life 
plainly  and  indubitably  accepting  as  true  a  large  portion  of 
the  common  body  of  faith  (as  we  have  repeatedly  admitted 
him  to  have  done),2  then  it  is  easy  to  see  that  in  so  doing 
he  is  not  taking  his  stand  on  his  new  and  shaky  foundations, 
but  on  the  old  and  solid  basis  to  which  he  reverts  with  a 
happy  want  of  logic,  often  perhaps  unconsciously.  We 
should  see  him  taking  his  stand  on  this  foundation  even  more 
frequently  had  not  his  sad  breach  with  the  whole  past  moved 
his  soul  to  its  very  depths.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  his 
terrors  of  conscience,  or  "  struggles  with  the  devil,"  had 
much  to  do  in  inducing  the  condition  in  which  he  reveals 
himself  to  the  reader  of  what  follows. 

Luther  as  Pictured  by  Himself  during  Later  Years 

It  is  clear  that,  in  order  to  judge  of  Luther's  life  of  faith, 
stress  must  not  be  laid  on  isolated  statements  of  his  torn 
from  their  context,  but  that  they  must  be  taken  in  the  lump. 

When  speaking  of  his  temptations,  as  a  man  of  fifty-six,  he 
bewailed  the  prevailing  unbelief,  at  the  same  time  including  him 
self  :  "If  only  we  could  believe  concerning  the  [Divine]  promises 

1  Vol.  i.,  p.  187  ff.  ;  vol.  ii.,  pp.  268  ff.,  291. 

2  Vol.  ii.,  p.  397  ff.  ;  vol.  iv.,  p.  526  f.,  etc. 


360          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

that  it  was  God  Who  spoke  them !  If  only  we  paid  heed  to  His 
Word  we  should  esteem  it  highly.  But  when  we  hear  it  [God's 
Word]  from  the  lips  of  a  man,  we  care  no  more  for  it  than  for  the 
lowing  of  a  cow."1 — Shortly  before  this,  again  including  all,  he 
consoles  himself  as  follows  :  Our  weakness  was  ever  disposed  to 
doubt  of  God's  mercy,  and  even  Paul  felt  his  shortcomings.  "  I 
am  comforted  when  I  see  that  even  Paul  did  not  rise  high  enough. 
Away  with  the  ambitious  who  pretend  they  have  succeeded  in 
everything  !  We  have  God's  words  to  strengthen  us  and  yet  even 
we  do  not  believe."2  "I  have  preached  for  five-and-twenty 
years,"  so  he  said  about  that  time,  "  and  do  not  yet  understand 
the  text  '  The  just  man  liveth  by  faith.'  "3 

Of  his  trusting  belief  in  his  personal  salvation  he  admits,  in 
1543,  that  he  did  not  feel  it  to  be  very  steadfast,  and  that  it  still 
lagged  behind  that  of  ordinary  believers.  He  speaks  of  a  woman 
at  Torgau  who  had  told  him  that  she  looked  upon  herself  as 
"  lost,"  and  shut  out  from  salvation,  because  she  was  unable  to 
believe  (i.e.  trust).  He  had  thereupon  asked  her  whether  she  did 
not  hold  fast  to  the  Creed,  and  when  she  assured  him  that  she  did 
he  had  said  :  "  My  good  woman,  go  in  God's  name  !  You  believe 
more  and  better  than  I  do."  "  Yes,  dear  Dr.  Jonas,"  so  he  said, 
turning  to  his  friend,  "  yes,  if  a  man  could  verily  believe  it  as  it 
there  stands,  his  heart  would  indeed  jump  for  joy  !  That  is 
certain."4 

So  strongly  did  he  express  himself  on  this  point  on  May  6,  1540, 
that,  taking  the  words  as  they  stand,  he  would  seem  to  deny  his 
belief  in  Christ's  miracles  and  work.  "  I  cannot  believe  it  and  yet 
I  teach  others.  I  know  it  is  true,  but  I  am  unable  to  believe  it. 
I  think  sometimes :  '  Sure  enough  you  teach  aright,  for  you  are 
in  the  sacred  ministry  and  are  called,  you  are  helpful  to  many  and 
glorify  Christ  ;  for  we  do  not  preach  Aristotle  or  Csesar,  but  Jesus 
Christ.'  But  when  I  consider  my  weakness,  how  I  eat,  drink, 
joke  and  am  a  merry  man  about  the  town,  then  I  begin  to  doubt. 
Oh,  if  only  a  man  could  believe  it  !  "5  These  words  were  spoken 
on  Ascension-Day,  after  Luther  had  expressed  his  marvel  at  the 
strong  faith  of  the  Apostles  in  the  Divinity  of  Him  Who  was 
ascending  into  heaven.  "  Wonderful  ;  I  cannot  understand  it 
nor  can  I  believe  it,  and  yet  all  the  Apostles  believed."6  "  I  am 
fond  of  Jonas  [who  was  seated  near  him]  but  if  he  were  to  ascend 

1  Khummer,  in  Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  73.     For  Khummer's 
Notes    (which   end   in    1554)    see    Kroker,    Mathesius,    "  Tischreden," 
p.  xxii.,  and  Lauterbach,   "  Tagebuch,"  Introduction,  p.  ix.  f. — Cp. 
"  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  3,  p.  219. 

2  Lauterbach,   "  Tagebuch,"  p.   128,  in  1538. — Cp.   "  Colloq.,"  ed. 
Bindseil,  2,  p.  229  sq. 

3  Lauterbach,  ib.,  p.  81  (1538).     Cp.  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  58,  p.  374. 

4  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  313.     Cp.  "  Historien,"  p.  147'. 

5  Mathesius,    "  Tischreden,"   p.    79.      Cp.    "  Werke,"   Erl.   ed.,    58, 
p.  103  :    "  That  I  eat  and  drink  and  am  at  times  merry  and  a  good 
boon  companion,"  etc. 

6  "  Ego  non  intelligo  nee  possum  credere,   et  omnes  apostoli  credi- 
derunt  "  (even  before  the  descent  of  the  Holy  Ghost). 


DIFFICULTIES    OF   BELIEF          361 

into  heaven  here  and  now,  and  disappear  out  of  our  sight,  what 
should  I  think  ?  " 

"  Oh,  if  only  a  man  could  believe  it  !  " 

It  is  evident  that  he  did  not  wish  by  such  words  to  give  him 
self  out  as  an  unbeliever  or  a  sceptic  in  religious  matters.  What 
he  was  painfully  aware  of  was  the  fact  that  that  strong,  clear 
faith  in  the  ordinary  truths  of  revelation  and  matters  of  faith, 
which  he  himself  was  wont  to  depict  as  essential,  was  absent  in 
his  own  case.  His  former  violent  struggles  of  conscience  seem  in 
later  years  to  have  been  replaced  by  this  uncomfortable  feeling. 

The  depressing  sense  of  the  feebleness  of  his  religious  belief 
was  not  removed  by  the  frequent  references  Luther  was  so  fond 
of  making  in  his  old  age  to  the  coming  of  the  Redeemer  and  Judge 
of  the  world,  and  to  the  nighness  of  the  devil's  downfall,  who  is 
the  Lord  of  this  world.1  We  know  already  the  psychological 
reasons  for  the  stress  he  lays  on  such  expectations.  Yet  all  the 
unnatural  ardour  he  showed  in  voicing  them  could  not  disguise 
the  fact  that  his  faith  lacked  any  real  strength  or  fervour. 
Spiritual  coldness  could  quite  well  co-exist  with  a  virulent  hatred 
of  the  devil  and  a  longing  desire  for  the  end  of  the  world. 

"  The  devil  is  an  evil  spirit  ...  as  I  do  not  fail  to  realise  day 
after  day  ;  for  a  man  waxes  cold,  and  the  more  so  the  longer  he 
lives."  Thus  to  Count  Albert  of  Mansfeld  in  1542. 2— He  was  "  in 
pain  and  very  morose,"  he  tells  Jonas  in  1541,  "  feeling  disgusted 
w.ith  everything,  especially  with  his  illnesses.3  In  1544,  and 
frequently  about  that  time,  he  declares  that  he  was  quite  tired  of 
the  devil  and  of  his  struggles  with  him  ;  his  only  wish  was  to  see 
the  "  end  of  his  raging,"  and  to  "  die  a  good  and  wholesome 
death."4  "God  Himself  may  see  to  my  soul's  lodging"  ;  He 
loved  souls,  says  Luther,  and  it  was  a  good  thing  that  his  salva 
tion  was  not  in  his  own  hands,  otherwise  he  "  would  soon  be 
gobbled  up  by  Satan  "  ;  but  God's  care  and  the  "  many  mansions  " 
in  His  gift  were  a  sufficient  consolation  (1539).5 

On  one  occasion,  in  1542,  he  mentioned  that,  unless  he  had 
escaped  from  certain  "  thoughts  and  temptations,"  he  would 
have  been  drowned  in  them  and  would  have  long  ago  found  him 
self  in  hell  "  ;  for  such  "  devilish  thoughts  "  breed  "  desperate 
people,"  and  "  contemners  of  God."6 

"  Though,  towards  the  end  of  life,  such  temptations  are  wont 
to  cease,"  he  says,  in  1540,  yet  other  inward  worries  remain  :  "I 
am  often  angry  with  myself  because  I  find  so  much  in  me  that  is 
unclean.  But  what  can  I  do  ?  I  cannot  strip  off  my  nature. 
Meanwhile  Christ  looks  upon  us  as  righteous  because  we  desire  to 
be  righteous,  abhor  our  uncleanliness,  and  love,  and  confess  the 
Word."7 — Others,  like  Spalatin,  in  their  old  age,  felt  the  bite  of 

1  See  above,  p.  241  ff.          2  Dec.  8,  1542,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  514  f. 

3  May  5,  1541,  "  Briefwechsel,"  13,  p.  328. 

4  To  Jakob  Probst,  Dec.  5,  1544,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  703.    Above,  p.  226  ff. 

5  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  360. 

6  To  Count  Albert  of  Mansfeld,  Dec.  8,  1542,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  513. 

7  Mathesius,  "Tischreden,"  p.  115. 


362          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

conscience  more  strongly  than  did  Luther  ;  they  had  not  been 
through  the  same  violent  struggles  and  mental  gymnastics  as 
Luther,  nor  had  they  learnt  how  to  suppress  the  voice  from 
within.  It  was  to  Spalatin,  then  sunk  in  melancholy,  that,  in 
1544,  Luther  addressed  the  words  already  quoted :  He  (Spalatin) 
was  "too  timid  a  sinner"  ("  nimis  tener  peccator").  "Unite 
yourself  with  us  great  and  hardened  sinners,  in  a  believing  trust 
in  Christ  !  "l 

Earlier  Undated  Statements 

Many  utterances  and  confidences  of  Luther's  still  exist, 
about  the  meaning  of  which  there  can  be  no  doubt,  though 
it  is  difficult  correctly  to  place  them.  Some  of  these  con 
cern  the  subject  now  under  discussion  ;  several  may  well 
date  from  Luther's  later  years,  and  thus  throw  light  on  his 
interior  in  his  old  age.  We  shall  give  first  of  all  his  state 
ments  concerning  St.  Paul  in  their  bearing  upon  himself. 

Speaking  once  of  a  pet  view  of  his  in  which  he  seems  to 
have  found  great  consolation,  viz.  that  even  Paul  had  not 
believed  firmly  (neque  Paulum  fortiter  credidisse),  Luther 
went  so  far  as  to  question  the  apostle's  belief  in  the  "  crown 
of  justice"  which  he  professed  to  look  for,  as  "laid  up 
for  him  in  heaven  "  (2  Tim.  iv.  8).  Jonas,  who  was  present, 
had  declared  "  he  could  not  bestow  any  credence  on  this 
statement  of  Paul's."  Luther  replied  :  It  is  quite  true 
that  Paul  did  not  believe  it  firmly,  "  for  it  was  above  him. 
I  too  am  unable  to  believe  as  I  preach,  although  they  all 
think  I  believe  these  things  firmly."  He  goes  on  to  allege 
the  Divine  Clemency,  and  jestingly  says  :  Were  we  to  fulfil 
the  will  of  God  perfectly  we  should  be  cheating  God  of  His 
Godhead  ;  and  what  would  then  become  of  the  article  of 
the  forgiveness  of  sins  ?2  At  any  rate  he  would  fain  have 
believed  his  own  doctrines  more  strongly  and  vividly. 

"  Temptations  against  the  faith,"  says  Luther,  "  are  St.  Paul's 
goad  and  sting  of  the  flesh  [2  Cor.  xii.  7],  a  great  skewer  and  roast- 
ing-spit  which  pierces  right  through  both  spirit  and  flesh,  both 
body  and  soul."3 — And  elsewhere  :  "At  times  I  think  :  I  really 
do  not  know  where  I  stand,  whether  I  preach  aright  or  not. 
This  was  also  St.  Paul's  temptation  and  martyrdom,  which,  as 

1  Aug.  21,  1544,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  680.    See  above,  vol.  iii.,  p.  197,  n.  1. 

2  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  58,  pp.  380,  393.     "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  1, 
p.   59  sq.      Cordatus,    "  Tagebuch,"   p.   209.      From   Schlaginhaufen's 
"  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  132  f.,  June  to  Sept.,  1532. 

3  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  60,  p.  113. 


DIFFICULTIES   OF   BELIEF         363 

I  believe,  he  found  it  hard  to  speak  of  to  many."  Yet,  so  Luther 
opines,  Paul  sufficiently  hinted  at  it  in  the  words  "  I  die  daily  " 
(1  Cor.  xv.  31).  —The  fact  is,  the  Apostle  is  far  from  attributing  to 
himself  doubts  on  the  faith  either  here  or  elsewhere.  Luther, 
however,  would  gladly  have  us  believe,  that,  with  his  doubts,  he 
had  been  through  precisely  that  experience  to  which  St.  Paul 
refers  when  he  says,  *'  I  die  daily  "  ;  he,  too,  has  his  agonies,  he, 
too,  has  descended  into  hell.1  Not  merely  in  this  does  he  re 
semble  Paul,  but  also  in  his  inability  to  distinguish  between  the 
Law  and  the  Gospel  :  "  Paul  and  I  have  never  been  able  to 
manage  this."2  He  saw  also  another  point  of  similarity  between 
himself  and  the  Apostle  of  the  Gentiles.  For,  like  him,  St.  Paul, 
too,  "  had  been  much  bothered  by  the  objection,  that,  one  should 
listen  to  the  Fathers  (cp.  Rom.  ix.  5)  and  not  oppose  the  whole 
world  single-handed.3 

Not  Paul  alone,  according  to  Luther,  but  all  the  other  Apostles 
too  had  been  assailed  by  doubts. 

He  was  always  consoled  to  find  new  and  illustrious  com 
panions  in  his  misery.  Christ,  he  declares,  had  foretold  this  to 
the  Apostles  ;  He  had  also  spoken  to  them  of  this  sort  of  perse 
cution  :  "  Your  conscience  will  grow  weak  so  that  you  will  often 
think  :  '  Who  knows  whether  I  have  been  right  ?  Alas,  have 
I  not  gone  too  far  ?  '  Thus  in  the  eyes  of  the  world  and  to  your 
own  conscience  you  will  seem  to  be  in  the  wrong  "  ;  it  had, 
however,  been  the  duty  of  the  Holy  Ghost  to  comfort  the  Apostles 
in  all  such  trials.4 

And  did  not  "  even  the  man  Christ  have  His  momentary  failing 
in  the  Garden  ?  "6  Did  not  Christ  then  confess  :  "  '  I  know  not 
how  I  stand  with  God,  or  whether  I  am  doing  right  or  not.'  This 
occurred  even  in  the  case  of  Christ." 6  "  All  who  are  tempted  must 
set  Christ,  Who  also  was  tempted  in  everything,  as  a  model  before 
their  eyes  ;  but  it  was  much  harder  for  Him  than  for  us  and  for 
me."7  Luther  fails  to  take  into  account  the  world- wide  difference 
between  the  sadness  of  Christ,  Who  could  never  waver  in  the 
Truth,  and  his  own  doubts  and  wavering  in  the  faith. 

"  O,  my  God,"  he  said  on  another  occasion,  "  the  article  on 
faith  won't  go  home  ;  hence  so  many  sad  moods  arise.  Often 
I  have  to  take  myself  to  task  for  failing  to  master  such  moods 
when  they  come,  I  who  have  so  often  taught  in  lectures,  sermons 
and  writings  how  such  temptations  are  to  be  overcome."8 

His  pupil  Mathesius  relates  the  following  in  his  sermons  on 
Luther,  the  preface  to  the  printed  edition  of  which  he  wrote  in 
1565  :  "  Antony  Musa,  pastor  of  Rochlitz,  told  me  that  he  once 
complained  bitterly  to  the  Doctor  of  being  unable  to  believe  him- 

1  Ib.,  58,  p.  26.  2  Ib.,  p.  308. 

3  "  Opp.  lat.  exeg.,"  18,  p.  223,  Expos,  of  Psalm  xlv. 

4  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  58,  p.  159. 

5  Schlaginhaufen,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  1,  in  1531. 

6  Ib.,  p.  84,  May,  1532.  7  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  60,  p.  45. 

8  Cordatus,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  452.  Cp.  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  60, 
p.  110  f. 


LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

self  what  ho  preached  to  others.  '  Praise  uiul  thanks  bo  to  God,' 
replied  the  Doctor,  '  Unit  tlii.s  also  happens  to  others.  I  fancied 
it  was  true  only  in  my  case.'  All  his  life  Musa  never  forgot  this 
consolation."1  So  full  of  admiration  for  Luther  was  Mathesius, 
and  probably  so  well  schooled  by  his  master  in  the  theory  and 
practice  of  a  faith  which  has  ever  to  strive  after  firmness,  that  he 
saw  in  this  statement  nothing  at  all  unfavourable  to  his  hero.  On 
the  contrary,  he  includes  the  story  in  a  list  of  "all  manner  of  wise 
sayings"  which  had  fallen  from  the  lips  of  Luther.  JIc  even 
assures  us  at  the  beginning  of  these  notes  that,  "  The  man  was 
full  of  grace  and  of  the  Holy  (Jhost,  hence  all  who  went  to  him  for 
advice  as  to  a  prophet  of  (.Joel  found  what  they  sought."2  .Judging 
by  this  Mathesius  must  have  been  very  easily  satisfied  in  the 
matter  of  firmness  of  faith.  Perhaps  had  his  faith  been  stronger 
it  would  have  fared  better  with  him  in  the  melancholy  which  came 
upon  him  towards  the  end  of  his  life.1' 

"  Ah,"  said  Dr.  Martin,  so  we  read  elsewhere  in  Notes  made  by 
his  pupils,  "  I  \ised  to  believe  every  single  thing  that  the  Tope 
and  the  monks  chose  to  say,  but  now  I  actually  cannot  believe 
even  what  Christ  says.  Who  assuredly  does  not  lie.  This  is  very 
sad  and  distressing.  Never  mind,  we  must  and  will  keep  it  for 
that  Day."4 — "When  the  words  of  the  prophet  Hosoa,  'Thus 
saith  the  Lord/  wet.  to  music  by  Josquinus,  were  sung  at  Dr. 
Martin  Luther's  table,  the  Doctor  said  to  Dr.  Jonas  :  '  As  little 
as  you  believe  this  singing  to  bo  good,  so  little  do  1  believe 
theology  to  bo  true.  ...  1  do  indeed  love  Christ,  but  my  faith 
ought  to  be  much  stronger  and  warmer."6 — "Many  boast  of 
having  at  their  fingers'  ends  the  doctrine  of  the  forgiveness  of 
sins,  and  J,  wretch  that  1  am,  find  so  little  comfort  in  the  passion, 
resurrection,  and  forgiveness  of  sins  !  One  thing  indeed  1  can  do, 
viz.  eat  our  Lord  (lod's  bread  and  drink  His  beer  ;  but-  to  take 
that  far  more  necessary  treasure  which  is  the  free  forgiveness  of 
sins,  this  I  cannot  succeed  in  doing."0 

Not  merely  does  he  ascribe  his  own  experiences  to  the 
iirst  followers  of  Christ,  vi/.  to  Paul  and  the  other  Apostles, 
but  again  and  again  he  seeks  to  make  them  out  l<>  be  an 
evil  common  to  nil,  an  heritage  of  all  Christians,  nay,  some 
thing  iict.iiii.lly  involved  in  the  idea  of  failh.  Often  lie  speaks 
of  faith  as  of  something  altogether  mystical  and  intangible 
of  the  presence  of  \vhieh  no  man  ean  be  conscious.  Faith, 
he  thinks,  might  well  not  be  present  at  nil  just  when  a  man 
fancies  he  possesses  it;  again,  it  might  exist  in  the  man  who 
thought  lie  lucked  it.  ;  or  "  at  any  rale  such  is  the  cji.se  in 

1  Muthrsius,  "  I  listorion,"  p.   147'. 

2  Ib.,  p.  147.  3  Seo  above,  vol.  iv.,  p.  218  IT. 

4  "  Worke,"  Krl.  <><!.,  57,  p.  21W,  and  similarly.  58,  p.  .'185. 
1  lh.,  58,  p.  397.  n   "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindaeil,  ,'J,  p.  51!  «</. 


DIFFICULTIES   OF   BELIEF         365 

times  of  stress  and  temptation  ;  for  it  often  happens  with 
faith  that  he  who  fancies  he  believes,  believes  nothing  at 
all,  while  the  man  who  thinks  he  believes  nothing  and  lies 
in  despair,  really  believes  the  most.  .  .  .  He  who  has  it, 
has  it.  We  must  believe,  but  we  neither  must  nor  can  know 
it  for  certain  "  [i.e.  whether  we  really  believe].  Thus  in 
1528.1  Needless  to  say  this  theory  of  his  was  far  removed 
from  the  strong,  simple  and  perfectly  conscious  faith  of  so 
many  thousands  even  of  the  humblest  followers  of  the  olden 
religion. 

Some  years  before  this,  in  a  work  intended  for  all,  he  had 
made  a  practical  application  to  himself  of  this  curious  doc 
trine  of  the  frequent  impossibility  of  saying  whether  one 
really  has  the  faith.  Owing  to  his  temptations  he  admitted 
that  he  was  not  qualified  to  be  reckoned  an  authority  on 
this  question,  nor  "  even  a  disciple,  much  less  a  master." 

"  Whoever  boasts,"  he  says  in  his  work  on  Psalm  cxvii., 
"  that  he  knows  very  well  we  must  be  saved  without  our 
works  by  the  grace  of  God,  does  not  know  what  he  is  saying  "; 
"  it  is  an  art  which  keeps  us  ever  schoolboys,"  a  scent  after 
which  we  must  "  sniff  and  run."  "  Let  anyone  who  chooses 
take  me  as  an  example  of  this,  which  I  admit  myself  to  be. 
Several  times,  when  I  was  not  thinking  of  this  cardinal 
doctrine,  the  devil  has  caught  me  and  plagued  me  with  texts 
from  Scripture  till  heaven  and  earth  seemed  too  tight  to 
hold  me.  Then  human  works  and  laws  would  serin  quite 
right  and  not  an  error  would  be  noticed  in  the  whole  of 
Popery.  In  short,  no  one  but  Luther  had  ever  erred  ;  and 
all  my  best  works,  doctrines,  sermons,  books  were  con 
demned.  .  .  .  You  hear  now  how  I  am  confessing  to  you 
and  admitting  what  the  devil  was  able  to  do  against  Luther, 
who  of  all  men  ought  surely  to  have  been  a  very  adept  in 
this  art.  For  he  has  preached,  told,  written,  spoken,  sung 
and  read  so  much  about  it  and  yet  remains  a,  tyro  in  it,  and 
is  at  times  not  even  a  disciple,  much  less  a  master."2 

What  he  is  trying  to  impress  on  the  reader  is,  that  even 

1  "  Worko,"  Woim.  od.,  2<>,  p.  1/35  ;  Krl.  od.,  2(>2,  p.  2<K>.  "  Von  dor 
Widdortauffo."  In  this  passage  ho  trios  to  provo  that  tho  toxt  :  "  Ho 
who  bolioves  and  is  baptised  shall  bo  saved  "  (Mk.  xvi.  1C)),  could  not 
!>(>  (jiiolcil  iii  fjiviuir  <>f  iv  l»;i|il  ism  ;  lln>  |><TSIUI  I  >:i  |  >l  i  ;in:'  could  mil  In- 
cortairi  that  tho  adults  brought  faith  with  thorn  to  baptism,  nor  could 
tho  adult  catochumon  always  bo  certain  ho  had  tho  faith. 

a  "  Worke,"  Erl.  od.,  40,  p.  325  f.,  in  1530. 


366          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

if  you  "  can  do  all  things,"  take  care  that  "  your  art  does 
not  fail  you." 

Thus  he  did  not  enjoy  the  happiness  which,  according  to 
the  testimony  of  Catholics  both  learned  and  unlearned,  was 
shared  by  all  the  faithful  so  long  as  they  paid  attention  to 
their  religious  duties.  Guided  from  their  youth  by  the  hand 
of  the  Church  they  were  acquainted  with  no  fears  and  un 
certainties,  for,  thanks  to  her  divine  commission  and  gift  of 
infallibility,  she  could  make  up  for  the  insufficiency  of  human 
knowledge.  Catholics  did  not  look  for  salvation  in  a  blind 
and  unattainable  trust  in  an  imputation  of  Christ's  righteous 
ness. 

Their  attitude  indeed  presents  a  striking  contrast  to 
Luther's  restless  struggle  after  faith. 

Not  only  in  the  last  cold,  barren  years  of  his  life  but  even 
at  an  earlier  period  we  notice  in  him  a  tendency  to  regard 
this  clutching  at  faith  as  the  one  great  matter.  In  some 
quite  early  statements  he  depicts  himself  as  on  the  look-out 
for  a  believing  trust,  as  violently  striving  to  clasp  it  to  his 
breast,  and,  generally,  as  making  this  the  end  of  all  religious 
effort. 

Even  in  1517  in  his  unpublished  Commentary  on  Hebrews  we 
find  a  remarkable  and  oft-repeated  admonition  which  bears  on 
the  subject  in  hand.  He  sees  the  troubled  conscience  "in  fear 
and  oppressed  whichever  way  it  turns  "  ;  hence  it  must  learn 
to  embrace  faith  in  the  power  of  Christ's  blood  :  "  By  faith 
conscience  is  cleansed  and  put  to  rest."  It  is  this  faith  in  the 
blood  of  Christ  which  we  must  seek  with  all  our  powers  to  reach. 
It  follows,  "  that  the  best  of  contemplating  the  sufferings  of  Christ 
is  that  it  awakens  in  the  soul  this  faith  or  believing  trust."  "  The 
oftener  he  dwells  on  the  Passion,  the  more  strongly  will  every  man 
believe  that  the  blood  of  Christ  was  shed  for  his  own  sins.  This 
is  '  to  eat  and  drink  spiritually,'  i.e.  to  feed  on  Christ  in  faith  and 
thus  become  one  body  with  Him."1 

1  According  to  the  MS.  in  the  Vatican  Library  (Palat.  1825,  fol. 
117) :  "Dum  (conscientia  mala)  prceteritum  peccatum  non  potest  mutare 
et  iram  futuram  nullo  modo  vitare,  necesse  est,  ut,  quocunque  vertatur, 
angustetur  et  tribuletur  ;  nee  ab  his  angustiis  liberatur,  nisi  per  sanguinem 
Christi,  quern  si  per  ftdem  intuita  fuerit,  credit  et  intelligit,  peccata  sua 
in  eo  abluta  et  ablata  esse.  Sic  per  fidem  purificatur  simul  et  quietatur, 
ut  iam  nee  pcenas  formidet  prce  gaudio  remissionis  peccatorum.  Ad  hanc 
igitur  munditiam  nulla  lex,  nulla  opera  et  prorsus  nihil  nisi  unicus 
sanguis  Christi  facere  potest  ;  ne  ipse  quidem,  nisi  cor  hominis  crediderit 
eum  esse  effusum  in  remissionem  peccatorum." — Fol.  117'  :  "  Quce  (fides 
remissionis  peccatorum)  haberi  non  potest  nisi  in  verbum  Dei,  quod 
prcedicat  nobis,  sanguinem  Christi  effusum  esse  in  remissionem  pecca 
torum''' — Fol.  118  :  "  Unde  sequitur,  quod  hi  qui  meditantur  Christi 


DIFFICULTIES    OF   BELIEF          367 

On  the  other  hand,  the  teaching  of  antiquity  concerning 
meditation  on  Christ's  Passion  and  likewise  the  hints  contained 
in  the  language  of  the  Church's  liturgy,  do  not  stop  short  at  such 
an  arousing  of  faith.  Taking  for  granted  the  Christian's  faith, 
what  they  seek  to  awaken  is  a  real  love  ;  meditation  on  the 
sufferings  and  death  of  our  Lord  was  above  all  to  stimulate  the 
faithful  to  feelings  of  loving  gratitude,  holy  compassion  and  self- 
sacrifice  ;  in  wholesome  compunction  people  were  wont,  by 
dwelling  on  the  sufferings  of  the  innocent  Lamb,  to  rouse  them 
selves  to  a  sense  of  shame,  to  a  holy  desire  to  imitate  Christ  by 
good  works  of  self-conquest  and  by  zeal  for  souls.  The  ancient 
hymn,  the  "  Stdbat  Mater,"  which  is  at  the  same  time  so  profound 
and  wonderful  a  prayer,  says  never  a  word  of  faith,  precious  as 
this  grace  is,  but,  taking  it  for  granted  as  the  ground-work,  it 
teaches  us  to  pray  :  '  Fac  ut  tecum  lugeam — fac  ut  ardeat  cor  meum 
in  amando  Christum  Deum — passionis  fac  consortem,"  etc.  This 
is  surely  something  higher  than  that  mere  appropriation  of 
trusting  faith  in  which  Luther  sums  up  all  the  heights  and  depths 
of  our  union  with  Christ. 

Luther,  in  his  exaggerated  language,  declares  that  it  was 
something  "  almost  Gentile  "  for  a  man  when  contemplating  the 
Passion  of  Christ  to  "  strive  after  anything  else  but  faith  "  ;  this 
statement,  however,  he  refutes  in  practice  by  himself  occasionally 
introducing  other  good  and  moral  reflexions  on  the  Passion, 
though  he  is  always  chiefly  concerned  with  its  bearing  on  his 
own  peculiar  view  of  faith. 

He  was  too  ready  to  confuse  the  sentiment  of  faith  with  actual 
faith. 

Religious  writers  before  Luther's  day,  when  dealing  with 
distrust  and  unbelief,  had  been  careful  to  distinguish  between  the 
involuntary  acts  of  man's  lower  nature  which  do  not  rise  above 
the  realm  of  feeling,  and  those  which  have  the  definite  consent  of 
the  will  and  which  alone  they  regarded  as  grievous  sins  against 
faith  or  the  virtue  of  hope.  With  Luther  everything  is  sin  ;  he 
bewails  the  actual  distrust,  and  real  weakness  of  faith  springing 
from  a  fault  of  the  will  ;  but,  according  to  him,  the  involuntary 
movements  of  our  corrupt  nature  also  deserve  God's  signal  anger  ; 
original  sin  whereby  we  bring  this  upon  ourselves  must  daily  be 
cloaked  over  by  means  of  the  faith  wrought  by  God.  But  since 
it  is  God  alone  Who  works  this  faith  Luther  might  well  have 
excused  himself  even  had  he  lost  the  faith  completely.  When  he 
is  upset  and  begins  to  reproach  himself  as  he  often  does  on 
account  of  the  weakness  of  his  faith,  he  is  really  saying  good-bye 
to  his  own  teaching  and  again  reverting  to  the  standpoint  of  the 
olden  faith,  for  only  the  assumption  of  man's  free-will  can  justify 
self-reproaches. 

passionem,  tantum  ut  compatiantur  aut  aliud  quam  fidem  consequantur, 
prope  infructuose  et  gentiliter  meditantur.  .  .  .  Quo  frequentius  medi- 
tetur,  eo  plenius  credatur,  sanguinem  Christi  pro  suis  peccatis  effusum. 
Hoc  est  enim  bibere  et  manducare  spiritualiter,  scilicet  hac  fide  in  Christum 
impinguari  et  incorporari," 


368          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

"  Sin  "  and  "  the  devil  "  are  made  to  bear  the  blame  for  the 
deeds  of  man  who  lacks  free-will. 

"  The  sin  which  still  persists  in  us,"  says  Luther,  in  his  last 
sermon  at  Eisleben,1  "  compels  us  not  to  believe."  "  Because  we 
have  it  daily  before  our  eyes  and  at  our  door,  it  goes  in  at  one  ear 
and  out  at  the  other."  "  This  is  what  the  rude,  savage  folk  do 
who  care  nought  for  God  and  place  no  trust  in  Him  ;  we,  the  best 
of  Christians,  also  do  the  same."  "  We  are  too  prone  to  obey 
original  sin,  the  taint  of  evil  which  yet  sticks  to  our  flesh,  and 
although  we  would  willingly  believe,  and  are  fond  of  hearing  and 
reading  God's  Word,  still  we  cannot  rise  as  high  as  we  ought."2 
Before  this  he  had  said  :  "  If  a  man  were  to  ask  you  :  Good 
fellow,  do  you  believe  that  the  Son  of  God  .  .  .  died  for  your 
sins  ?  and  that  it  is  really  true  ?  You  would  have  to  say — did 
you  wish  to  answer  right  and  truthfully  and  as  you  really  feel — 
and  confess  with  dismay,  that  you  cannot  after  all  believe  it  so 
strongly  and  indubitably.  .  .  .  You  would  have  to  say  .  .  . 
Alas,  I  see  and  feel  that  I  do  not  .  .  .  believe  as  I  ought."3  Later 
he  returns  to  this  thought  which  evidently  was  much  before  his 
mind  :  "  Although  we  cannot  now  believe  so  strongly  as  we 
should,  still  God  has  patience  with  us."4  Yet  "  we  ought  to  go  on 
and  believe  more  firmly  and  be  angered  with  ourselves  and  say  : 
Heavenly  Father,  is  it  true  that  I  must  believe  that  Thou  didst 
send  Thine  only-begotten  Son  into  the  world  ?  .  .  .  And  whej| 
I  hear  that  there  is  no  doubt,  then  I  shall  go  on  to  say  :  Wen, 
for  this  shall  I  thank  God  all  the  days  of  my  life  and  praise  and 
extol  Him."5 

In  reality,  according  to  him,  we  should  "  run  and  jump  for 
joy  "  because  by  faith  "  we  hear  the  Lord  Christ  speaking." 
"  The  life  of  the  Christian  ought,  by  rights,  to  be  all  joy  and 
delight,  but  there  are  few  who  really  feel  this  joy."  The  martyrs, 
with  their  glad,  nay,  even  jubilant  confession  of  faith  amidst 
their  torments,  are  to  him  an  example  of  a  sound,  hardy,  unshaken 
faith,  for  in  them  the  Word  was  strong  and  the  teaching  of  the 
Gospel  all-powerful.6  But,  as  he  had  remarked  in  another  of  his 

i   "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  202,  2,  p.  502  ff.  2  Ib.,  p.  548  f. 

3  Ib.,  p.  547.  4  Ib.,  p.  573. 

5  Ib.,  p.  554.  It  is  obvious  that  words  such  as  :  I  do  not  believe  as 
I  ought,  and  :  We  cannot  rise  as  high  as  we  ought,  may,  in  themselves, 
be  taken  in  the  best  sense  seeing  they  are  to  be  met  with  even  on  the 
lips  of  saints.  The  prayer  "Credo  Domine,  sed  adiuva  incredulitatem 
meam  "  was  a  usual  one  with  the  faithful,  even  the  most  devout.  Nor 
was  Luther  alone  in  envying  the  children  their  pious  faith  (below, 
p.  369).  These  passages  are,  however,  not  the  most  characteristic  of 
Luther's  faith  and  doubts,  rather  all  those  other  sayings,  for  which  he 
was  first  and  solely  responsible  and  which  are  placed  in  their  true  light 
by  his  theological  doctrines,  must  be  taken  together.  The  plausible- 
sounding  words  given  above  may  well  be  accepted  as  proofs  of  deep 
feeling,  seeing  they  stand  side  by  side  with  other  strong  expressions  of 
his  belief  in  certain  central  truths  of  Christianity.  The  longing  for 
improvement  may  quite  well  have  remained  alive  even  though  the 
spirit  of  faith  frequently  felt  itself  slighted.  6  Ib.,  p.  549. 


MISUNDERSTANDINGS  369 

Eisleben  sermons,  "  We,  owing  to  the  weakness  of  our  faith,  feel 
doubts  and  fears,  as  by  our  very  nature  we  cannot  help  doing"  ; 
yet  we  must  "  have  wisdom  enough  again  and  again  to  run  to 
Christ  and  cry  aloud  and  awaken  Him  with  our  shouts  and 
prayers."1 

Luther's  farewell  address  where  these  words  occur  furnishes 
at  the  same  time  an  example  of  how,  throughout  his  life,  when 
assailed  by  doubts  and  fears,  or  when  the  Evangel  was  in  danger, 
as  it  then  was  owing  to  the  Emperor's  warlike  preparations,  he 
carried  out  his  injunction  of  "  running  to  Christ."  He  seeks  to 
pour  into  his  faith  a  little  of  the  strengthening  cordial  of  defiance, 
and  calls  upon  all  his  followers  to  do  the  same  :  "  Christ  says  .  .  . 
Obey  me  ;  if  you  have  My  Word,  hold  fast  to  it.  ...  Leave 
Pope,  Emperor,  the  mighty  and  learned  to  be  as  wise  as  ever 
they  please,  but  do  not  you  follow  them.  .  .  .  Do  not  that  which 
even  the  angels  in  heaven  may  not  do.  ...  The  poor,  wretched 
creatures,  the  Pope,  Emperor,  kings  and  all  the  sects  fear  not  to 
presume  this  ;  but  God  has  set  His  Son  at  His  right  hand  and 
said,  Thou  art  My  Son,  I  have  given  Thee  all  the  kings  and  the 
whole  world  for  Thy  possession,  etc.  To  Him  you  kings  and  lords 
must  hearken."  "  I  will  give  you  courage,"  Christ  says,  "  to 
laugh  when  the  Turk,  Pope  and  Emperor  rage  and  storm  their 
very  worst ;  come  ye  only  to  me.  Though  you  be  burdened,  faced 
by  death  or  martyrdom,  though  Pope  and  Turk  and  Emperor 
attack  you,  fear  ye  not."2 

It  is,  in  fact,  quite  characteristic  of  his  faith,  that,  when  in 
difficulties,  the  more  he  becomes  conscious  of  its  lack  of  theological 
foundation  and  of  its  purely  emotional  character,  the  more  he 
arms  himself  with  the  weapons  of  defiant  violence.  On  the  one 
hand  he  can  say,  as  he  does  in  the  Table-Talk  of  Cordatus  :  "Had 
I  such  great  faith  as  I  ought  to  have,  I  should  long  ago  have  slain 
the  Turk  and  curbed  every  tyrant.3  "  I  have  indeed  tormented 
myself  greatly  about  them.  But  my  faith  is  wanting."  And  yet 
on  another  occasion,  with  a  sadness  which  does  him  credit,  he 
expresses  his  envy  of  the  "  pure  and  simple  faith  "  of  the  children, 
and  laments  :  "  We  old  fools  torment  ourselves  and  make  our 
hearts  heavy  with  our  disputations  on  the  Word,  whether  this  be 
true,  or  whether  that  be  possible."4 


Luther's  Pretended  Condemnations  of  his  whole  Life-work 

Certain  controversialists  have  alleged  that  Luther  came 
outspokenly  to  disown  his  doctrine  and  his  work  ;  they  tell 
us  that  he  expressed  his  regret  for  ever  having  undertaken 
the  religious  innovation.  Words  are  even  quoted  as  his 

1  Ib.,  p.  523.  2  Ib.,  pp.  568  f.,  571. 

3  Cordatus,    ':  Tagebuch,"    p.    209.     Cp.    "  Werke,"    Erl.    ed.,    58. 
pp.  92,  373. 

4  "  Werke,"  ib.,  p.  362. 

v.— 2  B 


370          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

which  furnish  "  the  tersest  condemnation  of  the  Reforma 
tion  by  the  Reformer  himself." 

No  genuine  utterances  of  his  to  this  effect  exist. 

The  first  abjuration  of  the  whole  of  his  life's  work  is  supposed 
to  be  contained  in  the  statement  :  "  Well,  since  I  have  begun  it 
I  will  carry  it  through,  but,  not  for  the  whole  world  would  I  begin 
it  again  now."1  But  why  was  he  disinclined  to  begin  again 
anew  ?  Not  by  a  single  word  does  Luther  give  us  to  understand 
the  reason  to  be  that  he  regarded  what  he  had  done  as  repre 
hensible  ;  on  the  contrary,  he  explains  that  he  would  not  begin  it 
again  "  on  account  of  the  great  and  excessive  cares  and  anxieties 
this  office  brings  with  it."  That  he  by  no  means  regarded  the 
office  itself  as  blameworthy  is  plain  from  the  words  that  im 
mediately  follow  :  "  If  I  looked  to  Him  Who  called  me  to  it,  then 
I  would  not  even  wish  not  to  have  begun  it ;  nor  do  I  now  desire 
to  have  any  other  God."  And  before  this,  in  the  same  passage, 
extolling  his  office,  he  had  said  :  Moses  had  besought  God  as 
many  as  six  times  to  excuse  him  from  so  arduous  a  mission. 
"  Yet  he  had  to  go.  And  in  the  same  way  God  led  me  into  it. 
Had  I  known  about  it  beforehand  He  would  have  had  difficulty 
in  inducing  me  to  undertake  it.  It  was  Luther's  wont  thus  to 
represent  the  beginning  of  his  undertaking  as  having  been 
entirely  directed  by  God.  He  is  fond  of  saying  that  he  had 
foreseen  neither  its  final  aims  nor  its  immense  difficulties  and 
then  to  proceed  :  My  ignorance  was  a  piece  of  luck  and  a  dis 
pensation  of  providence,  for,  otherwise,  affrighted  by  the  dangers, 
I  should  have  drawn  back  from  my  labours.  Here  his  idea  is 
much  the  same,  and  is  as  far  removed  as  possible  from  any  self- 
condemnation.  Of  course  the  question,  whether  his  idea  that 
God  alone  was  responsible  for  his  work  was  based  on  truth,  is 
quite  another  one. 

The  second  utterance  of  Luther's  which  has  been  brought 
forward  against  him  merely  voices  anew  his  disappointment  with 
this  wicked  world  and  his  complaint  of  the  cold  way  in  which 
people  had  received  his  Evangel  though  it  is  the  Word  of  God  : 
"  Had  I  known  when  I  first  began  to  write  what  I  have  now  seen 
and  experienced,  namely  that  people  would  be  so  hostile  to  the 
Word  of  God  and  would  so  violently  oppose  it,  I  would  assuredly 
have  held  my  tongue,  for  I  should  never  have  been  so  bold  as  to 
attack  and  anger  the  Pope  and  indeed  all  mankind."2  Here, 
moreover,  we  have  little  more  than  a  rhetorical  exaggeration  of 
the  difficulties  he  had  overcome. 

Nor  is  it  hard  to  estimate  at  its  true  value  a  third  utterance 
wrung  from  him  :  "I  can  never  rid  myself  of  the  thought  and 
wish,  that  I  had  better  never  have  begun  this  business."3  The 
feeling  which  prompted  this  deliverance  is  plainly  expressed  in 
what  follows  immediately  :  "  Item,  I  would  rather  be  dead  than 
witness  such  contempt  of  God's  Word  and  of  His  faithful 

1  /&.,  59,  p.  245.  2  /&.,  57,  p.  32. 

3  /&.,  58,  p.  429. 


MISUNDERSTANDINGS  371 

servants."  Here  again  he  is  simply  giving  vent  to  his  ill-temper, 
that  his  preaching  of  the  divine  truths  should  receive  such  scant 
attention  ;  not  in  the  least  can  this  be  read  as  an  admission  of 
the  falsehood  of  his  mission. 

Two  other  curious  statements  which  have  further  been  cited, 
besides  having  been  spoken  under  the  influence  of  the  dis 
appointment  above  referred  to,  also  bear  the  stamp  of  his  peculiar 
rhetoric  which  alone  can  explain  their  tenor.  The  context  at 
any  rate  makes  it  impossible  to  find  in  them  any  repudiation  of 
his  previous  conduct. 

One  of  these  sayings  of  Luther's  does  indeed  ring  strange  : 
"  The  tyrants  in  the  Papacy  "  "  plagued  the  world  with  their 
violence  "  ;  but  the  people,  now  that  they  have  been  delivered 
from  them,  refuse  to  lend  an  ear  to  those  who  preach  "  at  God's 
command,"  but  prefer  to  run  after  seducers.  "  Hence  I  am  going 
to  help  to  set  up  again  the  Papacy  and  raise  the  monks  on 
high,  for  the  world  cannot  get  along  without  such  clowns  and 
comedians." — The  truth  is,  however,  that  Luther  never  seriously 
contemplated  carrying  out  such  a  threat  or  countenancing  the 
rule  of  "  Antichrist."  People  simply  misapprehended  him  when 
they  read  into  this  jest  of  his  a  real  intention  to  re-establish  "the 
Papal  rule." 

In  the  other  saying  brought  up  against  him  he  states  :  "  Had 
I  now  to  begin  to  preach  the  Evangel,  I  would  set  about  it  other 
wise."  Here  he  is  referring  to  a  preceding  remark,  viz.  that  a 
preacher  must  have  great  experience  of  the  world.  He  then 
proceeds  :  "I  would  leave  the  great,  rude  masses  under  the 
dominion  of  the  Pope,  for  they  are  no  better  off  for  the  Evangel 
but  only  abuse  its  freedom.  But  I  should  preach  the  Evangel  and 
its  comfort  to  the  troubled  in  spirit  and  the  meek,  to  the  despon 
dent  and  the  simple-minded."  A  preacher,  he  declares,  could  not 
paint  the  world  in  colours  bad  enough,  seeing  that  it  belongs 
altogether  to  the  devil  ;  he  must  not  be  such  a  "  simple  sheep  " 
as  he  himself  (Luther)  had  been  at  the  outset  when  he  had 
expected  all  "  at  once  to  flock  to  the  Evangel."1 — Thus  there  is 
again  no  question  of  any  repentant  condemnation  of  the  whole 
work  of  his  lifetime.  He  clothes  in  his  strange  "  rhetoric  "  an  idea 
which  is  indeed  peculiar  to  him,  viz.  the  special  value  of  his 
Evangel  for  those  troubled  in  mind.  It  is  his  sad  experiences,  his 
personal  embitterment  and  also  a  certain  irritation  with  his  own 
party  that  lead  him  here  to  lay  such  stress  on  the  preference  to  be 
shown  to  troubled  consciences,  even  to  the  abandonment  of  all 
others.  Of  his  own  exaggeration  he  himself  was  perfectly  aware, 
for  he  also  makes  far  too  much  of  his  simplicity  and  lack  of 
prudence.  The  resemblance  between  what  we  have  just  heard 
him  say  and  his  theory  of  the  Church  Apart  of  the  True  Believers, 
can  hardly  escape  the  reader.2 

The  wish  Luther  is  supposed  to  have  expressed,  viz.  never  to 
have  been  born,  and  some  other  strong  things  to  which  he  gave 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  59,  p.  242.  2  See  above,  p.  133  ff. 


372          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

vent,  when  in  a  state  of  depression,  have  likewise  been  quoted  in 
support  of  the  assertion  that  he  himself  branded  his  work  "  more 
cruelly  than  any  foe  dared  to  do."  If,  however,  we  take  the 
statements  in  their  setting  we  find  they  have  quite  a  different 
meaning.  As  an  instance  we  may  quote  one  passage  from  a  tract 
of  1539  "Against  the  Antinomians  >?1  where,  apparently,  he 
curses  the  day  of  his  birth  and  regrets  that  all  his  writings  had 
not  been  destroyed.  Alluding  to  Johann  Agricola,  an  opponent 
within  the  camp,  he  writes  :  "I  might  in  good  sooth  expect  my 
own  followers  to  leave  me  in  peace,  having  quite  enough  to  do 
with  the  Papists.  One  might  well  cry  out  with  Job  and  Jeremias  : 
'  Would  that  I  had  never  been  born  ! '  and  in  the  same  way  I  am 
tempted  to  say  :  '  Would  I  had  never  come  with  my  books,'  I  care 
nothing  for  them,  I  should  not  mind  had  they  all  been  destroyed 
and  did  the  works  of  such  great  minds  [as  Agricola]  outsell  them 
in  all  the  booksellers'  shops — as  they  would  like,  being  so  desirous 
of  being  fed  up  with  honour." 

Here  both  his  good  wishes  to  his  adversary  and  his  repudia 
tion  of  his  own  books  are  the  merest  irony,  though,  reading 
between  the  lines,  we  get  a  glimpse  of  his  pain  and  annoyance  at 
the  hostility  he  encountered.  In  the  same  vein  of  mingled  grief 
and  sarcasm  he  continues  :  Christ  too  (like  himself)  had  com 
plained  through  the  Prophet  (Isaias  xlix.  4)  :  "I  have  laboured 
in  vain  "  ;  but  it  was  plain  (so  little  does  he  condemn  his  own 
preaching),  that  "  the  devil  is  master  of  the  world  "  since  the 
Gospel  of  the  "  beloved  master  of  the  house,"  which  Luther 
taught,  was  so  violently  attacked.  "  We  must  and  shall  strive 
and  suffer,"  so  he  cries,  "  for  it  cannot  fare  better  with  us  than 
with  the  dear  prophets  and  apostles  who  also  had  to  bear  these 
things."  Seeing  that,  throughout  the  tract,  he  is  inveighing 
against  "  devilish  "  deformations  of  his  doctrine,  is  it  likely  that 
here  he  is  cursing  the  day  of  his  birth  out  of  remorse  for  his 
teaching  ?2 

An  old  story  that  has  repeatedly  found  its  way  even  in  recent 
times  into  popular  writings  tells  how  Luther,  in  conversation, 
sadly  admitted  to  Catherine  that  "  heaven  is  not  for  us." 

"  One  fine  evening,"  so  the  tale  goes,  "  Luther  was  in  the 
garden  with  Catherine  and  both  were  looking  up  at  the  starlit  sky. 
'  Oh,  how  beautiful  heaven  is,'  Catherine  exclaimed.  '  Yes,' 
said  Luther  ruefully,  '  but  I  fear  it  will  not  be  ours.'  '  Will  not  be 
ours  ?  '  cried  Catherine,  '  then  in  God's  name  let  us  retrace  our 
steps.'  '  It  is  too  late,'  replied  Luther,  and  went  back  into  his 
study  with  a  heavy  heart." 

A  recent  work  against  Luther  quotes  in  support  of  the  legend 
a  modern  Danish  writer,  Pastor  Stub.  It  would  have  been  better 
to  cite  J.  M.  Audin,  an  uncritical  French  author  of  a  "  Vie  de  M. 
Luther,"  who  helped  to  spread  the  story.3  Audin,  on  his  side, 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  32,  1  ff.    Cp.  "  Briefe,"  5,  pp.  147  ff.,  183. 

2  Cp.  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  32,  p.  9,  in  the  same  work. 

3  German  Trans.,  Augsburg,  1843,  p.  212. 


MISUNDERSTANDINGS  373 

refers  to  George  Iwanek,  S.  J.  (fl693),  who  relates  it  in  his  "  Norma 
Vitce  J>1  ;  also  to  Johannes  Kraus,  S.J.,  author  of  a  rather 
credulous  polemical  work  entitled  "  Ovicula  ex  lutheranismo 
redux."z  Kraus  certainly  took  it  from  Iwanek,  but  from  what 
source  the  latter  had  it  we  do  not  know.  He  mentions  no 
authority  and  probably  took  the  legend  on  hearsay  and  gave 
it  too  ready  credence.  As  Luther  seems  occasionally  to  have 
said  his  night  prayers  in  the  open  air,  and  as  he  frequently  enough 
admits  his  struggles  of  conscience,  the  two  together  may  have 
given  rise  to  the  legend. 

Far  from  being  sorry  for  the  work  he  had  undertaken 
Luther,  on  the  contrary,  is  ever  throwing  on  the  devil  the 
blame  for  all  its  drawbacks.  He  it  is  who  has  to  bear  the 
blame  for  Luther's  own  wretchedness,  for  inward  wavering 
no  less  than  for  the  lack  of  order,  faith  and  morals  among 
the  Evangelical  preachers  and  laity.  He  so  works  upon  me 
"that  I  sometimes  believe,  and  sometimes  do  not."3  He 
could  not  view  Satan's  raging  as  of  small  account  ;  it  was 
far  more  to  be  dreaded  than  all  the  persecution  of  men. 
"  You  see  from  my  books  what  scorn  I  have  for  those  men 
who  withstand  me.  I  look  upon  them  as  fools  "  ;  even  the 
lawyers  I  am  ready  to  defy  ;  "  but  when  these  fellows,  the 
evil  spirits,  come,  then  the  congregation  must  back  me  up 
in  the  fight,"  for  then  the  devil,  the  very  "  Lord  of  the 
world,"  is  entering  the  lists  against  me.4  A  glance  at  what 
has  gone  before  shows  how  these  "  combats  "  must  be 
understood. 

The  tone  he  adopts,  though  frequently  humorous  and 
satirical,  does  not  conceal  the  deep  depression  which  un 
questionably  underlies  many  of  his  utterances. 

Such  depression  would  quite  well  explain  passing  fits  of 
real  sorrow  for  all  he  had  done.  But  that  he  really  felt  such 
sorrow  is  not  sufficiently  attested,  so  that  all  one  can  say 
is,  that  the  ground  for  such  a  feeling  of  remorse  was  there. 

1  "  Norma  vitce  ad  instituendas  recte  actiones"  Pragse,  1685,  p.  276. 
This  very  rare  book  has  only  been  found  in  the  Gymnasialbibliothek  at 
Mariaschein  in  Bohemia. 

2  Op.  cit.,   Pragse,   1709,  pars  II.,  p.   39.      "  Erigebat  illos  [oculos] 
interdum  hceresiarcha  Lutherus  ad  ccelum,  cum  illud  sub  mortem  scintil- 
lantibus  stellis  pulcherrime  rutilaret  ;    sed  quia  turpissimo  voluptaum 
cceno  animum  gerebat  immersum,  simul  ita  dicebat  :  Quam  pulchrum  est, 
Marline,  ccelum,  sed  non  est  pro  te."    The  passage  occurs  in  connection 
with  the  Feast  of  the  Ascension.     The  dialogue  with  Catherine  was 
a  later  addition  to  the  story. 

3  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  34,  2,  p.  266  ;    Erl.  ed.,  192,  p.  76. 

4  Mathesius,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  411. 


374          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

A  discouraging  sense  of  the  instability  of  his  doctrine  and 
"  reformation "  might  well  have  aroused  contrition,  for 
Luther  himself  saw  only  too  plainly,  as  Dollinger  rightly 
remarks,  that,  though  he  was  strong  enough  to  bring  about 
an  apostasy  from  the  ancient  Church  yet  he  was  powerless 
to  effect  a  moral  regeneration,  or  even  to  preserve  religious 
order.1  Dollinger  adds  very  truly  :  The  reasons  for  his 
doubts  were,  "  first  of  all  the  recognition  of  the  evil  effects 
produced  by  his  doctrine,  then  the  consciousness  of  having 
cut  himself  adrift  from  the  Church  for  the  sake  of  a  new 
doctrine  previously  unknown,  and  lastly  the  inward  con 
tradictions  from  which  his  doctrinal  system  suffered  and  the 
impossibility  of  squaring  it  with  the  many  Bible  passages 
which  embody  or  presuppose  a  contrary  doctrine."2 

The  words  "  agonies  "  and  "  nocturnal  combats  "  which 
Luther  so  often  used  to  describe  his  struggles  of  conscience 
remain  to  testify  to  their  severity. 

In  the  years  immediately  preceding  Luther's  death,  these 
seem  to  have  become  less  violent.  Remorse  of  conscience, 
as  experience  teaches,  however  great  it  may  at  one  period 
have  been,  can  in  progress  of  time  be  lulled  to  rest.  We  may 
quote  in  this  connection  the  words  of  one  of  the  most  highly 
esteemed  of  the  older  Catholic  spiritual  guides,  without 
however  applying  them  unconditionally  to  Luther,  as  it  is 
always  difficult  to  gauge  the  extent  and  working  of  inward 
prejudice  in  the  various  stages  of  a  man's  mental  growth, 
particularly  in  the  case  of  such  a  man  as  Luther.  "  Some 
times  God  withdraws  himself  from  the  soul,"  writes  this 
author,  "  on  account  of  secret  grievous  sins  which  have  been 
committed  from  culpable  ignorance,  or  from  that  ignorance 
which,  at  the  instigation  of  the  Evil  One,  seeks  to  hide  itself 
beneath  a  mantle  of  virtue.  God  then  departs  from  the 
man,  though  the  latter  is  not  aware  of  it,  and  may  remain 
unaware  for  the  rest  of  his  life  until  the  night  of  death  comes. 
The  deluded  man  fancies .  he  possesses  God,  but,  to  his 
infinite  pain  and  loss,  ultimately  finds  that  he  has  been  all 
the  while  without  Him.  In  the  Book  of  Proverbs  (xiv.  12) 
it  is  written  :  '  There  is  a  way  which  seemeth  just  to  a  man, 
but  the  ends  thereof  lead  to  death.'  "3 

1  Cp.  Dollinger,  "  Reformation,"  3,  p.  259.  2  /&.,  p.  246. 

3  Louis  de  Ponte  (de  la  Puente),  "  Meditaciones,"  1605  ;  Latin  ed. 
of  1857,  t.  2,  p.  216. 


MORAL   RESPONSIBILITY          375 

Who  would  venture  to  determine  in  Luther's  case  when 
exactly  he  first  clearly  realised  his  moral  responsibility,  and 
when  exactly  he  succeeded  in  forming  himself  a  false  con 
science  ?  Though  on  the  one  hand  it  is  certain  to  every 
Catholic  that  at  first,  and  for  a  considerable  while,  his  attack 
on  the  Church  was  extremely  culpable,  still  one  cannot 
close  one's  eyes  to  the  fact  that  Luther  himself  was  con 
vinced  that  he  was  in  the  right,  and  that  this  conviction 
grew  with  advancing  years.  (See  vol.  iv.,  p.  306  f .)  It  was, 
however,  of  his  own  free-will  that  he  persisted  in  the  un 
happy  attitude  of  apostasy  and  revolt  which  had  become  a 
habit  with  him  and  thus,  in  itself,  his  burden  of  moral 
responsibility  remained.1 

1  Cp.  what  Suarez  says  of  habit  :  "  Habitus  quidem  per  se  ac  forma- 
liter,  seu  facta  suppositione,  minuit  libertatem,  quia  inclinando  magis 
voluntatem  ad  alterant  partem  minuit  indifferentiam  eius  ;  tamen  moraliter 
et  in  ordine  ad  effectus  morales  non  censetur  minuere,  quamdiu  ilia 
consuetudo  libera  ac  voluntaria  est,  propter  eandem  rationem,  quia 
dispositio  libera,  ut  sic,  non  minuit  liberum.  "  Opp."  4,  Paris.,  1856, 
p.  209,  n.  16. 


CHAPTER    XXXIII 

THE     COUNCIL     OF     TRENT     IS     CONVOKED,     1542. 
POLEMICS    AT    THEIR    HIGHEST    TENSION 

1.  Steps  taken  and  Tracts  Published  subsequent  to  1537 
against  the  Council  of  the  Church 

AT  the  meeting  held  in  1537  by  the  protesting  Princes  and 
Estates  at  Schmalkalden  the  General  Council,  which  had 
been  suggested  as  a  means  of  bringing  about  a  settlement 
and  of  establishing  religious  peace,  was  most  outspokenly 
rejected,  and  that  in  a  way  very  insulting  to  Rome.1  In  its 
blunt  refusal  the  assembly  was  more  logical  than  Luther 
and  his  theologians,  who  as  yet  were  averse  to  an  absolute 
repudiation  of  the  Council.  The  hatred  of  the  Pope  which 
Luther  himself  had  been  so  earnest  in  inculcating  at  Schmal 
kalden  caused  those  with  whom  the  decision  rested  to  over 
look  certain  considerations  of  prudence  and  diplomacy. 

If  Luther  opposed  a  thoroughgoing  rejection  of  the  Coun 
cil  it  was  not  because  he  had  the  slightest  intention  of  accept 
ing  any  Council  that  did  not  at  once  declare  in  his  favour. 
He  knew  very  well  that  under  the  conditions  on  which  he  in 
sisted  there  could  be  no  question  of  a  real  Council  as  the 
Church  had  always  understood  it.  The  real  motive  for  his 
hesitation  was  that,  for  him  and  his  followers,  it  was  a 
delicate  matter,  irf  view  of  the  attitude  they  had  previously 
adopted  on  this  question,  to  oppose  too  abruptly  the  idea 
of  a  Council.  He  foresaw  that  the  Catholic  Imperialists 
would  overwhelm  the  Protestants  with  most  righteous  and 
bitter  reproaches  for  now  turning  their  backs  upon  the 
Council  after  having  at  one  time  been  loudest  in  their 
demands  for  it,  and  outdone  themselves  in  complaints  and 
murmurs  on  account  of  its  postponement.  What  impression 
would  the  attitude  of  the  protesting  Princes  make  on  the 
Emperor,  who  was  now  full  of  plans  for  the  Council  ?  And 

1  See  vol.  iii.,  p.  430  ff. 
376 


"VON   DEN   CONCILIIS"  377 

would  not  many  be  scared  away  who  were  still  halting  at 
the  parting  of  the  ways  and  were  inclined  to  delay  their 
decision  until  the  looked-for  Council  ?  "  The  Papists  assert 
that  we  are  so  reprobate,"  wrote  Luther,  "that  we  refuse 
to  listen  to  anybody,  whether  Pope,  Church,  Emperor,  or 
Empire,  or  even  the  Council  which  we  had  so  often  called 
for."1  Such  considerations,  however,  were  not  strong 
enough  to  prevent  him  at  once  lending  the  whole  weight  of 
his  voice  in  support  of  the  resolution  arrived  at  by  the 
Schmalkalden  Leaguers. 

After  so  offensive  a  rejection  of  any  further  attempts  at 
reunion,  the  armed  conflict  with  the  Emperor  which  had 
so  long  been  threatening  now  seemed  bound  to  come. 
Luther,  putting  all  subterfuge  aside,  looked  this  contingency 
boldly  in  the  face.  In  a  memorandum  to  his  Elector  dating 
from  the  end  of  January,  1539,  he  expressed  himself  even 
more  strongly  than  before  in  favour  of  the  right  of  armed 
resistance  to  the  Emperor  and  the  Empire  ;  should  the 
former  have  recourse  to  violent  measures  against  the  Evangel, 
then  there  wrould  be  no  difference  between  the  Emperor  and 
a  hired  assassin  ;  if  the  overlord  attempts  to  impose  on  his 
subjects  blasphemy  and  idolatry,  he  must  expect  to  meet 
with  bloody  resistance  on  the  part  of  those  attacked.2 

While  negotiations  on  which  hung  war  or  peace  were  in 
progress  at  Frankfurt,  and  while,  in  consequence  of  this, 
the  question  of  the  Council  receded  once  more  into  the  back 
ground,  Luther  was  putting  the  finishing  touch  to  his  "  Von 
den  Conciliis  und  Kirchen,"  which  appeared  in  the  spring  of 
1539. 3  In  spite  of  being  weak  and  unwell  his  powers  of  work 
seemed  inexhaustible  ;  his  own  troubles  and  worries  were 
all  forgotten  when  it  was  a  question  of  entering  the  lists  as 
the  leader  of  the  movement.  The  work  was  intended  to 
forestall  the  (Ecumenical  Council  should  it  ever  become  an 
accomplished  fact,  and  to  frustrate  as  far  as  possible  its 
harmful  effects  on  himself.  In  it  with  the  utmost  audacity 
the  author  pits  his  own  authority  against  that  of  the  highest 
secular  and  ecclesiastical  powers  ;  his  tone  is  at  once  so  self- 
confident  and  so  coarse  that  here  again  it  provides  the 
psychologist  with  an  enigma. 

1  To  Amsdorf,  July  9,  1546,  "  Briefe,"  ed.  De  Wette,  5,  p.  746. 

2  See  vol.  iii.,  p.  59  ff.,  particularly  p.  70. 

3  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  252,  p.  278  ff. 


378          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

With  his  projected  Council,  so  he  says  at  the  commencement, 
the  Pope  in  reality  only  wanted  to  deal  the  Emperor  and  all 
Christians  "  a  blow  on  the  snout."  He  held  out  the  Council  to 
them  just  as,  in  playing  with  a  dog,  we  offer  him  a  morsel  on  the 
point  of  a  knife,  and,  when  he  snaps  at  it,  we  hit  him  with  the 
handle.  He  declares  roundly  that,  "  the  Papists  would  not  and 
could  not  hold  a  Council  unless  indeed  they  first  took  captive  the 
Emperor,  the  kings  and  all  the  princes."1  If  the  Emperor  and 
the  Princes  wished  "reprobates  to  slap  their  cheeks,"  then  let 
them  continue  to  debate  about  the  Council.  The  alleged  im 
possibility  of  the  Council  he  proclaims  still  more  rudely,  asserting 
that,  the  Papists  being  what  they  are,  the  whole  world  must 
despair  of  any  amelioration  of  the  Church  :  "  They  would  rather 
leave  Christendom  to  perish,  and  have  the  devil  himself  for  their 
God  and  Lord,  than  accept  Christ  and  give  up  even  one  jot  of 
their  idolatry."  Hence  we  must  look  for  reformation  from  Christ 
our  Lord,  "  and  let  them  fare  devilwards  as  they  are  bent  on 
doing."2 

He  then  goes  on  to  explain  that  amendment  was  impossible  on  the 
olden  principles  of  the  Fathers  and  canons,  but  could  come  about 
only  by  means  of  Holy  Scripture  ;  the  Fathers  and  canons  were 
not  at  one  ;  even  the  first  four  (Ecumenical  Councils — the  history 
of  which  he  treats  summarily  though  with  little  real  historical 
knowledge — had  only  been  able  to  ratify  the  belief  laid  down  in 
Scripture  ;  for  faith  a  surer  and  more  stable  foundation  was 
necessary  than  that  of  ecclesiastical  Councils  ever  subject  to  make 
mistakes.  At  the  same  time  he  has  nothing  but  scorn  for  the 
claims  of  the  ancient  and  universal  Church  to  be  the  permanent 
infallible  teacher  on  matters  of  faith  ;  he  has  no  eye  for  her 
divinely  guaranteed  power  as  it  had  been  exemplified  in  the 
General  Councils,  so  solemnly  representing  the  Churches  of  the 
whole  world.  On  the  other  hand,  his  own  pretensions  are  far 
above  question.  He  knows,  so  he  asserts,  much  more  about  the 
ancient  Councils  than  all  the  Papists  in  a  lump.  He  could 
instruct  the  Council,  should  one  actually  be  summoned,  on  its 
procedure  and  its  standards.  It  has,  according  to  him,  no  power 
in  the  Church  save  to  reject  new  errors  which  do  not  agree  with 
Scripture  (as  though  a  Council  had  ever  adopted  any  other 
course).  Even  the  office  of  a  clergyman  or  schoolmaster  may,  he 
says,  be  compared  with  that  of  the  Councils  in  so  far  as,  within 
their  own  small  sphere,  they  judge  human  opinions  and  human 
rules  by  the  standard  of  the  Word  of  God,  and  seek  to  oppose  the 
devil.  But  just  as,  in  the  case  of  these,  he  cannot  guarantee  that 
they  will  always  read  Holy  Scripture  aright,  so  also  in  the  case 
of  the  Councils. 

If,  however,  such  a  solemn  Council  was  convened — and  such  a 
thing  might  conceivably  be  of  some  use — then  the  first  require 
ment,  so  he  declares  with  surprising  frankness,  was  "  that,  in  the 
Council,  the  Pope  should  not  merely  lay  aside  his  tyranny  of 
human  law,  but  also  hold  with  us.  ...  The  Emperor  and  the 

1  P.  281.  2  P.  282  f. 


'VON  DEN   CONCILIIS"  379 

kings  must  also  help  in  this  and  compel  the  Pope  should  he 
refuse."1  This  he  wrote  for  the  disabusal  of  the  infatuated,  for  at 
that  time,  strange  to  say,  some  Germans  of  the  greatest  influence 
still  fancied  it  possible  to  pave  the  way  for  a  reconciliation  by 
means  of  negotiations  and  religious  conferences,  and  were  anxious 
to  leave  the  Lutheran  question  in  suspense  until  a  General  Council 
should  meet.  Luther  further  demands,  that  "  the  thoroughly 
learned  in  Holy  Scripture  .  .  .  and  a  few  prudent  and  well- 
disposed  laymen  .  .  .  should  also  be  invited  to  the  Council.  Then 
the  abominations  of  the  Pope  would  speedily  be  condemned." 

He  adds  :  "  Yes,  you  will  say,  but  of  such  a  Council  there  is  no 
hope.  That  is  what  I  think  too." 2 

He  is  ready,  however,  to  be  content  with  a  Provincial  Council 
of  the  same  sort  held  in  Germany,  and  expresses  the  strange  hope, 
that  "  the  other  monarchs  would  in  time  approve  and  accept  the 
decisions  of  such  a  Council."  With  this  reference  to  the  Provincial 
Council  he  is  dallying  with  a  proposal  made  by  some  shortsighted 
imperial  advisers,  viz.  that  a  "  free,  German  Council  "  should 
attempt  to  settle  the  controversy. 

The  author  then  proceeds  to  set  forth  his  jumbled  theories  on 
the  "  Church  "  and  finally  brings  the  lengthy  work  to  a  con 
clusion  with  a  protestation  that  his  doctrine  forms  the  very  pillars 
on  which  the  Church  rests  :  "  Whoever  teaches  differently,  even 
were  he  an  angel  from  heaven,  let  him  be  anathema  "  (Gal.  i.  8). 
"  We  are  determined  to  be  the  Pope's  master  and  to  tread  him 
under  foot,  as  Psalm  xci.  [13]  says :  Thou  shalt  walk  upon  the 
asp  and  the  basilisk  and  thou  shalt  trample  under  foot  the  lion  and 
the  dragon."3 

In  many  parts  of  the  "  Von  den  Conciliis  und  Kirchen  " 
Luther  is  inclined  to  repeat  himself,  whilst  the  style  exhibits 
a  certain  dreariness  and  monotony  often  met  with  in  this 
class  of  Luther's  productions,  at  least  when  the  ardour  of 
his  polemics  begins  to  fail,  or  when  his  object  in  view  is  not 
popular  instruction  and  edification.  He  himself  on  its  com 
pletion  wrote  of  it  to  Melanchthon  who  was  attending  the 
meeting  at  Frankfurt  :  "  The  book  sadly  vexes  me,  I  find 
it  weak  and  wordy."4  At  any  rate  with  many  who  lacked 
any  real  discernment  it  no  doubt  served  to  cover  Luther's 
and  his  friends'  retreat  from  a  position  they  had  so  long  and 
persistently  defended,  viz.  that  a  Council  was  the  chief 
thing  called  for. 

The  fruitless  meetings  of  Frankfurt  and  Hagenau  and  the 
equally  fruitless  conferences  of  Worms  and  Ratisbon  were 

1  P.  408.  2  P.  409  f.  3  P.  448. 

4  March  14,  1539  :  "  mire  me  piget  eius  scripti,  quod  tarn  tenue  et 
verbosumsit  .  .  .  tempus  et  labor  fuit  ultra  vires  meas."  "  Brief  wechsel," 
12,  p.  115  f. 


380          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

followed,  in  1541,  by  the  Ratisbon  Interim.  This,  as  might 
have  been  foreseen,  satisfied  neither  party.  As  for  the 
Council  it  had  been  repeatedly  postponed  by  Paul  III  on 
account  of  the  embroilments  between  the  Emperor  and 
France  and  the  opposition  of  the  Protestants. 

At  last,  on  May  22,  1542,  the  Pope  convened  a  General 
Synod  to  begin  in  the  town  of  Trent  on  Nov.  1  of  that  same 
year.  The  head  on  earth  of  the  Catholic  Church,  in  the  Bull 
summoning  the  Council,  spoke  of  the  political  obstacles  now 
at  last  happily  removed.  The  aim  of  the  assembly  was  to 
be  to  debate,  and  by  the  light  of  divine  wisdom  and  truth, 
settle  on  such  steps  "  as  might  appear  effective  for  the  safe 
guarding  of  the  purity  and  truth  of  the  Christian  religion,  for 
the  restoration  of  good  morals  and  the  amendment  of  the  bad, 
for  the  establishing  of  peace,  harmony  and  concord  among 
Christians,  both  rulers  and  ruled,  and  lastly  for  opposing  the 
inroads  of  the  unbelievers  [the  Turks]."  The  Pope  most 
earnestly  implores  the  Emperor  and  the  other  Christian 
monarchs  "  by  the  mercy  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  Whose 
faith  and  religion  are  being  most  violently  assailed  both 
from  within  and  from  without,"  not  to  forsake  God's  cause 
but  by  active  co-operation  to  support  it  in  every  way. 

The  grand  project  of  a  Council  was,  however,  further 
delayed  by  the  war  which  suddenly  broke  out  between 
Charles  V  and  France.  Only  on  Dec.  13,  1545,  could  the 
first  session  be  held  at  Trent.  It  was  then  indeed  high  time, 
for  the  Emperor  Charles  V,  in  the  hope  of  securing  a  united 
front  against  the  French,  had  shown  himself  much  too  dis 
posed  to  yield  to  the  German  Protestants,  as  is  evident  from 
the  Reichsabschied  of  Spires  in  1544. 

As  to  Luther  :  up  to  the  very  last  moment  he  scoffed  at 
the  efforts  of  Rome,  as  though  her  proposals  for  reform  were 
all  mere  sham.  Under  this  cloak  of  contempt  he  concealed 
his  real  annoyance  at  the  opening  of  the  Council. 

As  soon  as  the  new  Bull  of  Convocation  for  1545  appeared  he 
wrote  to  his  old  friend,  Wenceslaus  Link  :  "I  have  seen  the 
Pope's  writing  and  the  Bull  convening  the  Council  to  Trent  for 
Lsetare  Sunday.  May  Christ  laugh  last  at  the  reprobates  who 
laugh  at  Him.  Amen."1  A  few  days  later  he  said  in  a  letter  to 
his  confidant,  Justus  Jonas  :  "To  believe  the  Pope's  promises 
would  be  like  placing  faith  in  the  father  of  lies  whose  own  darling 

1  Jan.  17,  1545,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  714. 


14 DAS   BAPSTUM  ZU   ROM"         381 

son  he  is."1 — "  The  Pope  is  mad  and  foolish  from  top  to  toe,"  so 
he  informs  his  Elector.2  A  "  Feast  of  Fools  "3  is  the  only  fit  word 
with  which  he  can  describe  the  assembly  of  the  ablest  and  most 
learned  men  in  the  Church,  who  came  from  every  land,  honourably 
intent  on  bringing  peace  to  Christians  and  gaining  a  victory 
for  truth.  Luther  had  not  the  slightest  doubt  where  the  real 
well-spring  of  truth  undefiled  was  to  be  found ;  on  the  same  day 
that  he  wrote  to  his  Elector  the  words  just  quoted,  in  a  letter  to 
Nicholas  Amsdorf,  the  "  true  and  genuine  bishop  of  the  Church 
of  Naumburg,"  as  he  styles  him,  he  says  :  "I  glory  in  the  fact 
that  this  at  least  is  certain  :  The  Son  of  God  is  seated  at  the  right 
hand  of  the  Father  and  by  His  Spirit  speaks  most  sweetly  to  us 
here  below,  just  as  He  spoke  to  the  Apostles  ;  we,  however,  are 
His  disciples  and  hear  the  Word  from  His  lips.  Praise  be  to  God 
Who  has  chosen  us  unworthy  sinners  to  be  thus  honoured  by  His 
Son  and  has  permitted  us  to  hearken  to  His  Majesty  through  the 
Word  of  the  Evangel.  The  angels  and  the  whole  of  God's  creation 
wish  us  luck  ;  but  the  Pope,  Satan's  own  monster,  grieves  and  is 
affrighted,  and  all  the  gates  of  hell  shake.  Let  us  rejoice  in  the 
Lord.  For  them  the  Day  approaches  and  the  end.  I  have  in 
mind  another  book  against  Popery,  but  the  state  of  my  head  and 
my  endless  correspondence  hinders  me.  Yet  with  God's  help  I 
shall  set  about  it  shortly."4  What  he  is  thinking  of  is  a  continua 
tion — which  death  prevented  him  from  carrying  out — of  a  new 
book  with  which  we  must  now  deal. 


2.  "  Wider  das  Bapstum  zu  Rom  vom  Teuffel  Gestifft." 
The  Papacy  renews  its  Strength 

Luther's  anger  against  the  Papacy  had  been  kindled  into 
a  glowing  flame  by  the  sight  of  the  unity  displayed  by  the 
Catholic  Church  in  view  of  the  Council.  It  seemed  in 
credible  to  him  that  the  old  body  which  he  had  pronounced 
dead  should  again  sit  in  Council  and  prepare  to  infuse  new 
life  into  itself,  to  revive  ecclesiastical  discipline  and  to  con 
demn  the  Church  he  himself  had  founded.  His  soreness  at 
such  a  consolidation  of  Catholicism  he  relieved  by  a  sort  of 
last  effort  in  his  book  "  Against  the  Roman  Papacy  founded 
by  the  devil."5 

It  was  only  his  broken  health,  a  foretoken  of  approaching 
death,  and  his  many  cares  that  prevented  his  following  it  up 
as  he  had  threatened  in  his  letter  to  Amsdorf  just  quoted. 
As  he  says  there,  he  only  hopes  that  God  will  give  him 

1  Jan.  26,  1545,  ib.,  p.  720. 

2  May  7,  1544,  ib.,  p.  736.  3  Below,  p.  383. 

4  May  7,  1544,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  737. 

5  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  262,  p.  131  ff. 


382          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

"  bodily  strength  and  ghostly  energy  enough  "  to  enable 
him,  "like  Samson  of  old,  to  wreak  one  act  of  vengeance 
on  these  Philistines."  The  simile  is  truly  a  horrible  one ; 
the  unhappy  man,  broken  down  from  the  effects  of  a  life  of 
tireless  labour  and  endless  excitement,  still  burns  with  the 
desire  once  more  to  shake  the  pillars  of  the  ancient  Church 
so  as  to  bury  all  faithful  Catholics  beneath  her  ruins.  As 
to  what  would  be  his,  the  blind  Samson's,  fate  beneath  the 
ruins  he  does  not  consider  as  seriously  as  the  true  members 
of  the  ancient  Church  would  have  wished  him  to  do. 

The  occasion  of  the  book  was  the  following.  Pope  Paul  III 
had  sent  to  the  Emperor  two  briefs  in  quick  succession  to 
dissuade  him  from  making  perilous  concessions  to  the 
Protestants,  and,  in  particular,  in  the  interests  of  the 
(Ecumenical  Council,  to  oppose  the  project  of  holding  a 
German  National  Council.  Luther  received  from  two 
different  quarters  an  invitation  to  write  against  the  supposed 
interference  of  the  Pope.  His  Elector,  through  Chancellor 
Briick,  requested,  "  that  the  said  Martin  may  deal  with  the 
Pope's  writing,  particularly  as  the  formal  announcement  of 
the  Council  is  now  to  hand  ;  for  we  have  no  doubt  that  he 
is  well  able  to  do  this.  The  same  might  then  be  printed  and 
launched  into  the  public."1  Another  invitation  to  the  same 
effect,  supported  by  information  to  be  used  against  the  Pope, 
reached  Luther  indirectly  from  the  Imperial  chancery  itself 
through  the  intermediary  of  Nicholas  Perrenoti,  a  councillor  ; 
some  of  the  officials  seem  to  have  been  anxious  to  avenge 
themselves  on  Paul  III  for  crossing  their  plans.2 

The  work  was  published  on  March  26,  1545.  As  early  as 
April  13,  Marsupino,  Secretary  to  King  Ferdinand,  was  able 
to  present  a  copy  to  the  Papal  Legates  at  the  Council  of 
Trent.  Justice  Jonas  at  once  brought  out  a  Latin  transla 
tion  entitled  "  Contra  papatum  romanum  a  diabolo  inventum." 
Thus  at  the  very  time  the  General  Council  made  its  bow 
before  the  world,  Luther's  attack  was  brought  to  the  notice 
of  educated  readers  of  all  nations.  No  great  harm  was  done 
to  Catholic  interests  by  Luther's  hanging  up  the  drastic  pic 
ture  of  himself,  depicted  in  this  scurrilous  writing,  as  a  warn- 

1  "  Corp.  ref.,"  5,  p.  655,  n.  3118. 

2  Druftel,  "  Kaiser  Karl  V  und  die  Romische   Kurie  1544-46,"  in 
the  "  Abh.  Bayr.  Akad.  der  Wiss.,  hist.  Kl.,"  vol.  13,  Abt.  2,  p.  215. 
"  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  262,  p.  129  ff. 


'DAS   BAPSTUM   ZU   ROM"          383 

ing  to  the  whole  world  ;  humanistic  culture  and  the  grand 
classic  idiom  had,  however,  scarcely  ever  before  suffered 
such  degradation  as  in  the  Latin  rendering  of  this  foul  book. 

The  first  and  chief  part  of  the  work  was  to  prove,  that  it 
was  both  wrong  and  presumptuous  for  the  Popes  to  style 
themselves  heads  of  Christendom,  and  that  it  was  the  devil 
alone  who  had  put  such  a  notion  into  their  heads.  In  the 
second  part  it  is  demonstrated  that  in  particular  the  claim 
made  by  the  Popes  that  no  one  had  the  right  to  judge  or  to 
depose  them  was  of  fiendish  origin.  Finally,  in  the  third, 
it  is  shown  that  the  alleged  handing  over  of  the  Roman 
Empire  by  the  Greeks  to  the  Germans  through  the  instru 
mentality  of  the  Popes  was  also  a  mere  hellish  lie. 

Sincere  admirers  of  Luther  read  with  amazement  this 
book,  which,  for  all  its  ferocity,  is  so  reminiscent  of  the 
gutter.  Some,  even  of  his  followers,  again  openly  expressed 
the  opinion  that  by  it  he  had  harmed  himself  more  than 
any  foe  could  have  done — so  unmeasured  are  his  words  and 
so  utterly  crazy  the  things  he  propounds.  At  times  the 
pages  seem  to  have  been  written  in  nothing  short  of  a 
paroxysm  of  hate,  and  can  only  be  understood  by  bearing  in 
mind  the  author's  frightful  state  of  inward  turmoil. 

The  very  first  words  give  us  a  glimpse  of  what  is  to  come  : 
"  The  most  hellish  Father,  St.  Paulus  Tertius,  as  though  he  were 
Bishop  of  the  Roman  Churches,  has  written  two  briefs  to  Carolus 
Quintus,  our  Lord  Emperor.  .  .  .  He  has  also,  to  speak  by  per 
mission,  issued  a  Bull  almost  for  the  fifth  time,  and  now  once 
more  the  Council  is  to  meet  at  Trent  ;  no  one,  however,  may 
attend  it  but  only  his  own  brew,  the  Epicureans  and  those  who 
please  him."  Luther  proceeds  to  ask  whether  this  can  really  be 
a  Council,  which  is  ruled  by  the  "  gruesome  abomination  at  Rome, 
who  styles  himself  Pope,"  and  not  rather  some  "  puppet-show  got 
up  during  the  Carnival  to  tickle  the  Pope's  fancy." 

The  fury  of  the  writer  increases  as  he  proceeds  and  he  goes  on 
to  make  the  following  demands  :  "  Now  let  Emperor,  kings, 
princes,  lords  and  whoever  can,  set  the  axe  to  the  root,  and  may 
God  give  no  luck  to  hands  that  hang  idle.  First  of  all  let  them  take 
from  the  Pope,  Rome,  Romandiol,  Urbino,  Bononia  and  all  that 
he  holds  as  Pope.  .  .  .  He  won  them  by  blasphemy  and  idolatry, 
and  has  laid  waste  the  kingdom  of  Christ,  wherefore  he  is  termed 
the  abomination  of  desolation  [Mt.  xxiv.  15].  After  this  the  Pope 
himself,  the  Cardinals  and  the  whole  scoundrely  train  of  his 
idolatrous  Popish  Holiness  should  be  seized,  and,  as  blasphemers, 
have  their  tongues  torn  from  their  throats  and  nailed  in  a  row 
on  the  gallows-tree,  in  like  manner  as  they  affix  their  seals  in  a 
row  to  their  Bulls  ;  though  even  this  would  be  but  slight  punish- 


384          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

ment  for  all  their  blasphemy  and  idolatry.  After  this  let  them 
hold  as  many  Councils  as  they  please  on  the  gallows,  or  in  hell 
with  all  the  demons.  .  .  .  They  are  criminal,  shameless,  obstinate 
creatures."1 

The  gloomy  fancy  that  inspires  his  furious  pen  has,  however, 
another  kind  of  death  in  readiness  for  such  opponents.  "  Were  I 
Emperor  I  know  full  well  what  I  should  do  :  I  would  couple 
together  all  the  blasphemous  knaves,  Pope,  Cardinals  and  all  the 
Popish  crew,  bind  them  and  take  them  down  to  Ostia  where 
there  is  a  little  stretch  of  water  called  in  Latin  the  Mare 
Tyrrhenum.  .  .  .  Into  it  I  would  drop  the  lot  and  give  them 
a  good  bath,  along  with  the  keys  with  which  they  bind  and  loose 
everything.  .  .  .  They  might  also  take  their  pastoral  staves  so 
as  to  be  able  to  smite  the  face  of  the  waters.  .  .  .  And,  lastly,  as 
refreshing  fodder  and  drink,  they  might  have  all  the  decrees, 
decretals,  bulls,  indulgences,  etc.  What  do  you  wager  that  after 
half  an  hour  in  this  healing  bath  all  their  diseases  would  cease  ? 
.  .  .  On  it  I  would  risk  Christ  our  Lord."2 

"The  Pope,"  so  he  exclaims  on  the  same  page,  "is  the  head 
of  the  accursed  Churches  of  all  the  worst  knaves  upon  earth, 
a  Vicar  of  the  devil,  a  foe  of  God,  an  adversary  of  Christ  and  a 
destroyer  of  His  Churches,  a  teacher  of  all  lies,  blasphemy  and 
idolatry,  an  arch-church-thief  and  robber  of  the  Church's  keys, 
a  murderer  of  kings  and  an  inciter  to  all  kinds  of  bloodshed, 
a  whoremonger  above  all  whoremongers  and  the  author  of  every 
kind  of  immorality,  even  of  that  which  may  not  be  mentioned,  an 
antichrist,  a  man  of  sin,  a  child  of  destruction,  a  real  werewolf. 
Whoever  refuses  to  believe  this,  let  him  fare  away  with  his  God, 
the  Pope."3 

"As  an  elect  teacher  and  preacher  to  the  Churches  of  Christ 
bound  to  speak  the  truth,  I  have  herewith  done  my  part.  He 
who  is  set  on  stinking  may  go  on  stinking.  .  .  .  Let  a  Church  be 
where  it  may  throughout  the  world  it  can  have  no  other  Gospel 
.  .  .  than  we  have  here  in  our  Churches  at  Wittenberg."4 

As  to  how  high  Luther  as  a  preacher  and  man  of  learning  set 
himself  and  his  Church  above  the  Pope  and  his,  we  can  see  from 
what  follows  :  "  The  whole  Roman  mob  is  nothing  else  but  a 
stable  full  of  great,  rude,  loutish,  shameless  donkeys,  who  know 
nothing  of  Holy  Scripture,  or  of  God,  or  of  Christ,  or  what  a 
bishop  is,  what  God's  Word,  or  the  Spirit,  or  baptism  is,  or 
what  are  sacraments,  the  keys  and  good  works.  ...  I,  Dr. 
Martin,  am  still  living,  and  having  been  brought  up  in  the  Pope's 
school  and  donkey's  stable  became  a  Doctor  of  Theology,  and  was 
even  accounted  a  good  and  learned  Doctor,  which  I  assuredly  was, 
so  that  I  can  truly  testify  how  deep,  and  high,  and  broad,  and 
long  is  their  skill  in  Holy  Scripture."5 — And  lest  someone  should 
object  :  "  Have  you  any  right  to  judge  ?  "  he  replies  light- 
heartedly  :  "  It  is  enough  for  us  to  know  that  the  Pope- Ass  has 
been  condemned  by  God  Himself  and  all  the  angels."  "  We 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  262,  p.  176.  2  /&.,  p.  229. 

s  P.  230,  4  P,  231.  5  P.  233. 


THE  "  WITTENBERG  REFORMATION  "  385 

cannot  be  heretics,  for  we  have  believed  and  confessed  the 
Scriptures."1 

An  earlier  saying  of  his  to  the  effect  that  :  "I  am  carried  away 
and  know  not  by  what  spirit"  ("  rapior  nescio  quo  spiritu"), 
conies  before  the  mind  of  the  reader  when  Luther  describes  yet 
a  third  form  of  death  for  the  Pope  and  his  courtiers.  He  would 
fain  see  him,  the  Cardinals  and  the  whole  court,  dealt  with 
according  "  to  fox-law,  their  hides  being  dragged  over  their  heads, 
that  they  may  thus  be  taught  to  pay  with  their  skins  ;  after  this 
the  hides  may  be  thrown  into  the  healing  bath  of  Ostia,  or  into 
the  fire."  "  See  and  behold,"  he  exclaims,  "  how  my  blood  boils  ! 
How  it  longs  to  see  the  Papacy  punished  though  my  spirit  is  well 
aware  that  no  temporal  penalty  can  make  amends,  even  for  one 
single  Bull  or  decree  !  "2 

Luther's  defenders  have,  strange  to  say,  thought  it  necessary 
to  lay  stress  on  the  fact  that  these  three  proposals  cannot  have 
been  seriously  meant.3  Everyone  will  admit  that  they  are  not 
a  settled  plan,  for  the  carrying  out  of  one  would  have  rendered 
the  others  difficult  or  unfeasible.  But  does  this  fact  modify  in 
any  way  the  revolting  character  of  these  words  or  cancel  the 
invitation  to  make  use  of  violence  ?  It  would  be  better  to  argue, 
that,  owing  to  his  fanatism  about  which  only  a  pathologist  can 
judge,  he  was  not  fully  aware  of  what  he  was  doing. — Some 
Catholics  have  suggested  that  the  abnormal  virulence  of  many 
pages  of  this  book  was  due  to  the  excitement  caused  by  intoxicat 
ing  liquors.  Of  this  unfortunately  there  is  no  proof.  That  the 
reason  for  his  horrible  language  must  be  sought  rather  in  mental 
overstrain,  in  the  preponderance  just  then  of  an  abnormal  side  of 
his  spiritual  life,  seems  fairly  clear  also  from  the  other  quotations 
from  this  work  which  we  were  obliged  to  adduce  elsewhere.4 

Some  time  before  the  work  in  question  was  written,  Briick, 
the  Chancellor,  had  written  to  the  Elector  that,  if  the 
Council  convened  by  the  Pope  "  were  to  resume  and  con 
tinue  its  knavery  "  it  would  be  necessary  for  Luther  "  to 
put  the  axe  to  the  root  of  the  tree,  which  by  the  Grace  of  God 
he  is  better  able  to  do  than  other  men  " ;  this  he  wrote  on 
Jan.  20,  1545.5 

At  that  same  time  a  calmer  scene  was  being  enacted  in 
Saxony.  On  Jan.  14,  the  Wittenberg  theologians,  headed 
by  Luther,  presented  to  the  Elector  the  so-called  Wittenberg 
Reformation,  drawn  up  at  the  sovereign's  request.  This 
work  had  a  close  connection  with  the  GEcumenical  Council. 
It  is  true  it  was  merely  written  in  view  of  the  approaching 
negotiations  at  the  Diet,  to  facilitate  one  of  those  "  religious 

1  P.  235  f.        2  P.  242.        3  P.  91,  n.  6. 

4  See  vol.  iii.,  p.  234  f. 

5  "  Corp.  ref.,"  5,  p.  662  sq.,  n.  3123. 

v. — 2  c 


386          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

compromises  "  which  had  now  become  so  common.  It  was, 
however,  at  the  same  time,  so  to  speak,  a  theological 
manifesto  of  the  Protestants  called  forth  by  the  Council. 
Hence  it  had  been  drawn  up  by  Melanchthon  (and  not  by 
Luther)  in  terms  cautious  and  moderate.  "  The  theologians," 
wrote  Briick,  "  have  drawn  up  their  '  Reformation  '  very 
courteously,  nor  is  there  any  trace  of  Dr.  Martin's  boisterous- 
ness  "  in  it.1 

The  "  Reformation  "  treats  successively  of  "  doctrine  true 
and  undefiled,"  which  it  asserts  is  to  be  found  in  the  Con 
fession  of  Augsburg,  "  of  the  right  use  of  the  sacraments," 
of  the  preaching  office  and  episcopal  government,  of  the 
ecclesiastical  courts  and  spiritual  jurisdiction,  of  learning 
and  the  schools,  and  of  the  defence  and  support  of  the 
churches.  Many  useful  elements  which  meet  the  actual 
needs  of  the  time  are  found  scattered  through  the  docu 
ment.  Stress  is  laid  on  the  need  of  some  direction  and 
supervision  of  the  preachers  in  such  a  way  as  to  suggest 
the  recognition  of  episcopal  authority  ;  the  German  episco 
pate  is  to  be  retained  .  .  .  provided  it  accepts  Luther's 
doctrine  !2 

It  would  in  many  respects  be  instructive  to  draw  a 
parallel  between  the  "  Wittenberg  Reformation  "  and  the 
Catholic  reformation  proclaimed  by  the  Council  of  Trent  in 
the  course  of  its  successive  sessions.  We  shall  emphasise 
only  one  point.  In  the  case  of  proceedings  against  "  false 
doctrine  "  the  Wittenbergers  go  much  further  than  the 
Council  in  their  demands  for  submission  on  the  part  of  the 
individual.  According  to  them  the  ecclesiastical  courts 
(Consistories)  were  to  lend  their  firm  support  to  Luther's 
own  doctrine  and  interpretation  of  the  Bible — for  which,  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  his  name  offered  the  sole  guarantee — 
these  courts  were  moreover  to  comprise" "  God-fearing  men, 
chosen  from  among  the  laity  of  high  standing  in  the  Church." 
The  question  of  any  deviation  from  the  faith,  was,  with  their 
assistance,  "first  to  be  examined  into  and  then  judgment 
pronounced  in  the  ordinary  way."  So  painful  a  sub 
ordination  of  the  individual  to  private  opinions  concerning 
faith,  and  so  uncalled-for  an  introduction  of  the  lay  element 

1  "  Corp.  ref.,"  5,';p.  661.    In  the  same  letter. 

2  For  text  see  "  Corp.  ref.,"  5,  p.  461  sq. ;  also  in  "  Luthers  Werke," 
Walch's  ed.,  17,  p.  1422  ff. 


THE   COUNCIL   OF  TRENT  387 

into  the  spiritual  courts,  never  entered  the  mind  of  any 
member  of  the  Council. 

Conscious  of  its  divine  right  the  Council  of  Trent,  even 
during  Luther's  lifetime,  solemnly  laid  the  foundations  of 
those  decisions  on  doctrine  which  are  now,  and  for  ever  will 
be,  binding  on  the  Catholic  Church.  It  rose  .far  above  the 
quarrels  of  the  day  and  the  personal  attacks  on  the  successor 
of  Peter  and  the  venerable  hierarchy  ;  in  what  it  laid  down 
it  was  careful  ever  to  preserve  intact  the  great  bond  with 
the  past. 

It  was  but  a  few  days  before  Luther  departed  this  life  that 
the  "  Holy  (Ecumenical  and  General  Synod  legitimately 
called  together  in  the  Holy  Ghost,"  as  in  accordance  with 
ancient  usage  it  styles  itself,  declared  in  its  third  session, 
that  its  highest  task  was  to  oppose  the  heresies  of  the  day 
and  to  reform  the  morals  of  the  people.  During  this  session, 
on  Feb.  4,  1546,  the  Council  renewed  the  creed  of  the  Roman 
Church  as  the  "  basis  on  which  all  who  confess  the  faith 
of  Christ  are  agreed  and  as  the  one  firm  foundation  against 
which  the  gates  of  hell  cannot  prevail." 

As  the  opposing  camp  had  the  habit  of  constantly  appeal 
ing  to  Holy  Writ  so  the  Council,  in  its  next  session,  held 
after  Luther's  death  on  April  8,  1546,  solemnly  declared 
Holy  Scripture  to  be  the  "  Spring  of  wholesome  truth  and 
discipline  of  morals,"  though  at  the  same  time,  agreeably  to 
the  ancient  and  uninterrupted  teaching  of  the  Church,  it 
also  included  tradition  :  "  Which  truth  is  contained  in  the 
written  books,  and  the  unwritten  traditions  which  the 
Apostles  received  from  the  lips  of  Christ  .  .  .  and  which, 
having  been  as  it  were  handed  down,  have  survived  to  our 
own  day  " ;  it,  on  the  one  hand,  declared  the  sacred  books 
of  both  Old  and  New  Testament,  the  Canon  of  which  it 
fixed  anew,  to  have  God  for  their  author  ("  Deus  auctor  ") 
and  to  be  worthy  of  equal  affection  and  reverence  ;  on  the 
other,  it  reasserted  the  rights  of  the  teaching  office  of  the 
Church  and  of  the  tradition  handed  down  from  ages  past, 
both  of  which  Protestantism  had  questioned.  To  prevent 
any  abuse  of  the  Word  of  God,  it  also  enacted  that  no 
member  of  the  Church,  relying  on  his  own  prudence,  should, 
in  matters  of  faith  and  morals,  twist  Holy  Writ  so  as  to 
make  it  mean  anything  else  "  than  Holy  Mother  Church 


388          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

held  and  holds,  seeing  that  it  is  hers  to  interpret  Scripture  " 
in  accordance  "  with  the  unanimous  consensus  of  the 
Fathers."  The  Council's  first  reforming  decree  also  seeks 
to  safeguard  the  treasure  of  Holy  Scripture  by  forbidding 
any  profanation  of  it  or  its  use  for  superstitious  purposes. 

After  long  adjournments,  necessitated  by  the  state  of 
public  affairs  and  after  the  ground  had  been  prepared  by 
careful  study  of  the  Bible,  the  Fathers  and  the  Schoolmen, 
there  followed,  in  1546  and  1547,  the  weighty  discussions  on 
original  sin  and  justification.  In  the  final  Canon  on  the 
justification  of  the  sinner  by  grace  (vol.  iii.,  p.  185),  the  point 
on  which  all  the  questions  raised  by  the  innovations  turned, 
the  Synod  pronounces  an  anathema  on  any  man  who  shall 
declare  that  the  Catholic  doctrine  it  has  just  laid  down 
"  detracts  from  the  glory  of  God  or  the  merits  of  Jesus 
Christ  our  Lord,  and  does  not  rather  enhance  the  truth  of 
our  faith  and  the  glory  of  God  and  of  Jesus  Christ."  There 
followed  resolutions  concerning  the  sacraments  in  general, 
then,  in  1551,  on  the  Holy  Eucharist  and  the  Sacrament  of 
Penance  ;  and  finally,  to  pass  over  other  points,  in  1562  and 
1563,  the  decrees  on  Communion,  the  Sacrifice  of  the  Mass, 
the  Sacrament  of  priestly  ordination,  and  on  Marriage.  The 
25th  and  last  session,  on  Dec.  4,  1563,  was  devoted  to  the 
doctrine  of  Purgatory,  of  the  veneration  of  the  saints  and 
relics,  indulgences,  fast-days  and  festivals,  and  also  to  the 
drawing  up  of  various  far-reaching  regulations  on  discipline. 

The  Synod  had  striven  throughout  to  make  its  disciplinary 
decrees  keep  pace  with  its  doctrinal  promulgations.  Thereby 
it  provided  a  lasting  and  effectual  foundation  for  the  reform 
of  the  Church.  This,  taken  in  connection  with  so  clear  a 
statement  of  the  unanimity  of  the  Church's  teaching 
throughout  the  ages,  deprived  the  separatists  of  every 
pretext  for  remaining  estranged  from  the  unity  of  the  faith. 
The  main  point  was  that  the  Church,  purified  from  the 
many  abuses  to  which  human  frailty  had  given  rise,  or  at 
least  earnestly  resolved  to  remove  those  still  remaining, 
stood  forth  again  as  the  city  on  the  hill,  visible  afar  off  in 
her  splendour  and  calling  all  to  her  in  order  to  make  them 
sharers  in  the  hope  of  life.  She  was  confident  that  He  Who 
had  said  :  "I  will  be  with  you  all  days,  even  to  the  consum 
mation  of  the  world,"  had  extended  His  protecting  Hand  over 
the  assembly,  and  had  spoken  through  it  for  the  instruction 


ON   THE   COUNCIL   OF   TRENT     389 

of  the  faithful  and  also  of  the  erring  brethren.  The  infalli 
bility  of  such  general  Councils  was  never  questioned  by  any 
Catholic. 

A  fresh  outburst  of  zeal  was  the  result,  and  the  ancient 
Church  soon  showed  that  she  had  within  her  unsuspected 
powers  for  self -improvement. 

3.  Some  Sayings  of  Luther's  on  the  Council  and  his  own 
Authority 

"  They  now  seek  to  get  at  us  under  cover  of  a  nominal 
Council,"  says  Luther,  "  in  order  to  be  able  to  shriek  at  us. 
.  .  .  This  is  Satan's  wisdom  as  against  the  foolishness  of 
God.  How  will  God  extricate  Himself  from  their  cunning 
schemes  ?  Still,  he  is  the  Lord  Who  will  mock  at  His 
contemners.  If  we  are  to  submit  to  this  Council  we  might 

O 

as  well  have  submitted  twenty-five  years  since  to  the  lord 
of  the  Councils,  viz.  the  Pope  and  his  Bulls.  We  shall  not 
consent  to  discuss  the  matter  until  the  Pope  admits  that  the 
Council  stands  above  him,  and  until  the  Council  takes  sides 
[with  us]  against  the  Pope,  for  even  the  Pope's  own  con 
science  already  reproaches  him.  They  are  mad  and  crazy. 
4  Deo  gr  alias'  'u 

A  series  of  similar  utterances  may  be  quoted. 

"  The  Papists  are  ashamed  of  themselves  and  stand  in  fear  of 
their  own  conscience.  Us  they  do  not  fear  because,  like  Virgil  of 
old,  they  console  themselves  with  having  already  survived  worse 
things.  The  paroxysm  will  cease  suddenly.  .  .  .  They  put  to 
death  the  pious  John  Hus,  who  never  departed  in  the  least 
from  the  Papacy  but  only  reproved  moral  disorders."2  "  For  it 
was  then  not  yet  the  time  to  unmask  the  [Roman]  beast  "  (this 
having  been  reserved  for  me).  "  I,  however,  have  not  attacked 
merely  the  abuses  but  even  the  doctrine,  and  have  bitten  off  the 
[Pope's]  heart.  I  don't  think  the  Pope  will  grow  again.  .  .  .  The 
article  of  Justification  has  practically  taken  the  shine  out  of  the 
Pope's  thunderbolts."  3 

"  Our  Church  by  the  grace  of  God  comes  quite  near  to  that  of 
the  Apostles,  because  we  have  the  pure  doctrine,  the  catechism, 
the  sacraments  and  the  [right]  use  of  government,  both  in  the 
State  and  in  the  home.  If  the  Word,  which  alone  makes  the 
Church,  stands  and  flourishes,  then  all  is  well.  The  Papists,  how 
ever,  who  seek  to  erect  a  Church  on  conciliar  decrees  and  decretals 
will  only  arouse  dissensions  among  themselves  and  '  wash  the 

1  To  Amsdorf,  July  9,  1545,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  746. 

2  Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  48.  3  Ib.,  p.  68. 


390          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

tiles  ' — however  much  they  may  pride  themselves  on  their  reason 
and  wisdom."1 

"  I  must  for  once  boast,  for  it  is  a  long  while  since  I  did  so  last. 
A  Council  whereby  the  Church  might  be  reformed  has  long  been 
clamoured  for.  I  think  I  have  summoned  such  a  Council  as  will 
make  the  ears  of  the  Papists  tingle  and  their  heart  burst  with 
malice  :  for  I  take  it,  that,  even  should  the  Pope  hold  a  General 
Council,  he  will  not  be  able  to  effect  so  much  by  it.  First,  I  have 
driven  the  Papists  to  their  books,  particularly  to  Scripture,  and 
deposed  the  heathen  Aristotle  and  the  '  Summists.'  .  .  .  Secondly, 
I  have  made  them  to  be  more  reserved  about  their  indulgences. 
Thirdly,  I  have  almost  put  an  end  to  the  pilgrimages  and  field- 
devilry."  Only  look,  he  says,  at  the  reduction  of  the  monasteries 
and  the  many  other  things  which  no  Council  could  ever  have 
achieved  but  which  have  been  brought  about  by  "  our  people." 
Everything  had  been  lost,  the  "  Our  Father,  the  Creed,  the  Ten 
Commandments,  Penance,  Baptism,  Prayer  [etc.,  he  enumerates 
twenty-one  similar  things]."  "  No  institution,  no  monastery, 
university  or  presbytery "  taught  even  one  of  these  articles 
aright  ;  now,  however,  "  I  have  set  all  things  in  order."2 

I  can  "  write  books  as  well  as  the  Fathers  and  the  Councils," 
and  this  I  may  say  "without  pride."3  This  is  because  I  have 
"  exercised  myself  "  in  the  Word  of  God  by  "  prayer,  meditation 
and  temptations"  ("  oratio,  meditatio,  tentatio  ").4  In  my 
"temptation"  the  devil  raged  against  me  in  every  way,  but  God 
in  a  wonderful  manner  "  kept  alight  His  torch  so  that  it  did  not 
go  out."5  Persecution  overtook  me  "like  the  Apostles,"  who 
"  fared  no  better  than  their  Lord  and  Master."6  But  the  devil 
has  entered  into  His  foes  the  Papists,  to  whom,  "in  spite  of  all 
our  good  and  well-meant  admonitions,  prayers  and  entreaties,"7 
they  have  surrendered  themselves  ;  and  rightly  so,  for  the 
Papists  (as  I  know  from  my  own  youthful  experience  when  I  did 
the  same  myself)  refuse  even  to  recognise  the  Gospel  as  a  mystery.8 
They  simply  make  an  end  of  all  religion. 

But,  all  this  notwithstanding,  as  the  Council  shall  learn  "  I  am 
really  a  defender  and  prop  of  the  Pope.  After  my  death  the  Pope 
will  suffer  a  blow  which  he  will  be  unable  to  withstand.  Then 
they  will  say  :  Would  that  we  now  had  Luther  to  give  some 
advice ;  but  if  anyone  offers  advice  now  they  refuse  it ;  when  the 
hour  is  passed  God  will  no  longer  be  willing."9 

After  "  God  had  given  me  that  splendid  victory  which  enabled 
me  to  get  the  better  of  my  monkish  vocation,  the  vows,  masses 
and  all  the  other  abominations  .  .  .  Pope  and  Emperor  were 

1  Ib.,  p.  191. 

2  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  26,  p.  530  f.  ;   Erl.  ed.,  63,  p.  271.    Preface 
to  Klingebeyls'  writing.    Cp.  an  equally  grotesque  enumeration,  above, 
vol.  iv.,  p.  343. 

3  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  63,  p.  403.     Preface  to  his  German  writings 
(1539).  4  Ib. 

6  Ib.,  p.  408.     German  Preface  (1548,  compiled  from  Luther's  own 
words).          6  Ib.,  p.  412.          7  Ib.,  p.  297  (1531).          8  Ib.,  p.  369. 
9  "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  3,  p.  157. 


ON   THE   COUNCIL   OF   TRENT     391 

alike  unable  to  stop  me."    It  is  true  that  I  still  have  temptations 
to  humble  me,  "  but  we  remain  victorious  and  shall  conquer."1 

"  These  Italians  [at  Trent  they  were  present  in  large  numbers] 
are  profane  men  and  Epicureans.  No  Pope  or  cardinal  for  the 
last  six  hundred  years  has  read  the  Bible.  They  understand  less 
of  the  catechism  than  does  my  little  daughter.  May  God  preserve 
us  from  such  blindness  and  leave  us  His  divine  Word."2 

This  was  the  frame  of  mind  in  which  Luther  confronted 
the  Council. 

We  shall  be  better  able  to  appreciate  the  strangeness  of 
his  attitude  if  we  imagine  Luther,  attended  by  a  few 
theologians  of  his  own  circle,  journeying  to  the  Council  at 
Trent  and  there  holding  converse  with  the  foreign  prelates, 
as  he  had  done  at  Wittenberg  with  the  Legate  Vergerio. 

In  his  wonted  fashion  lie  would  not  have  hesitated  to 
express  plainly  his  views  concerning  his  own  authority. 
Some  examples  of  his  opinions  of  himself  have  already  been 
given.3  What  impression  would  the  Wittenberger's  novel 
claims  have  made  on  bishops  and  theologians  from  distant 
lands  where  the  Church  was  still  in  perfect  peace,  and  where 
the  spiritual  supremacy  of  the  hierarchy  was  unquestioned  ? 
With  what  astonishment  would  they  have  listened  to  those 
strange  replies,  which  the  Saxon  had  always  ready  in  plenty, 
to  such  objections  as  they  might  have  raised  on  the  score  of 
his  disturbance  of  the  peace  of  both  Church  and  State,  of 
the  disorders  within  his  own  fold  and  of  his  own  private  life 
and  that  of  his  followers  ? 

A  number  of  other  statements  taken  from  his  writings  and 
conversations  with  his  intimates  may  help  to  make  the 
picture  even  more  vivid. 

"  I  have  the  Word,"  we  can  hear  him  saying  to  the  bishops  in 
his  usual  vein,  "  that  is  enough  for  me  !  Were  even  an  angel  to 
come  to  me  now  I  should  not  believe  him."4 

"  Whoever  obtrudes  his  doctrine  on  me  and  refuses  to  yield, 
must  inevitably  be  lost ;  for  I  must  be  right,  my  cause  being  not 
mine,  but  God's,  Whose  Word  it  also  is.  Hence  those  who  are 
against  it  must  go  under.  Hence  my  unfailing  defiance.  ...  I 
have  risked  my  life  on  it  and  will  die  for  it.  Therefore  whoever 
sets  himself  against  me  must  be  ruined  if  a  God  exists  at  all."5 

1  Schlaginhaufen,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  10. 

2  Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  48. 

3  Vol.  iv.,  p.  329  ff. 

4  Mathesius,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  49. 

5  Schlaginhaufen,  ib.,  p.  74. 


392          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

To  friend  and  foe  I  can  only  say  :  "  Take  in  faith  what  Christ 
says  to  you  through  me  ;  for  I  am  not  deceived,  so  far  as  I  know. 
It  is  not  the  words  of  Satan  that  I  speak.  Christ  speaks  through 
me."1 

"  Though  there  are  many  who  regard  my  cause  as  diabolical 
and  condemn  it,  yet  I  know  that  my  word  and  undertaking  is  not 
of  me  but  of  God,  and  neither  death  nor  persecution  will  teach  me 
otherwise."2 

And  before  anyone  can  slip  in  a  word  of  rejoinder  he,  again, 
as  his  way  was,  appeals  to  his  personal  knowledge.  "  I  know 
that  God  together  with  all  His  angels  bears  me  witness  that  I  have 
not  falsified  His  Word,  baptism  or  sacrament,  but  have  preached 
rightly  and  truthfully."3 

This  doctrine  I  learnt  in  my  "  temptations,"  during  which 
"  I  had  to  ponder  ever  more  and  more  deeply."  "  What  is 
lacking  to  the  fanatics  and  the  mob  is  that  they  have  not  that 
real  foeman  who  is  the  devil  ;  he  certainly  teaches  a  man 
thoroughly."4 

The  hostility  met  with,  particularly  from  false  brethren,  is  also 
"  God's  sure  seal  upon  us  "  ;  by  such  "  we  have  become  like 
St.  Paul,  nay,  like  the  whole  Church."5 

The  chief  thing  for  me,  however,  so  he  continues,  is  conscience 
and  conviction.  "  Take  heed,"  such  is  my  axiom,  "  not  to  make 
mere  play  of  it.  If  you  wish  to  begin  it,  then  begin  it  with  such 
a  clear  conscience  that  you  may  defy  the  devil.  .  .  .  Be  a  man 
and  do  everything  that  goes  against  and  vexes  them  [the  oppo 
nents]  and  omit  everything  that  might  please  them."6 

To  those  who  ask  whether  his  conscience  did  not  upbraid  him 
for  breaking  the  peace  and  for  overthrowing  all  order,  he  replies  : 
It  is  quite  true  "  Satan  makes  my  conscience  to  prick  me  for 
having  by  false  doctrine  thrown  the  world  into  confusion  and 
caused  revolts.  .  .  .  But  I  meet  him  with  this  :  The  doctrine  is 
not  mine,  but  the  Son  of  God's  ;  whole  worlds  are  nothing  to  God, 
even  should  ten  of  them  be  rent  by  rebellion  and  go  headlong  to 
destruction.  It  is  written  in  Holy  Scripture  [Mt.  xvii.  5],  '  Hear 
ye  Him'  (Christ),  or  everything  will  fall  into  ruins,  and  again 
[Ps.  ii.  10],  'Hearken,  ye  kings,'  or  else  ye  shall  perish.  It  was 
thus  that  Paul  too  had  to  console  himself,  when,  in  the  Acts,  he 
wTas  accused  of  treason  against  God  and  Csesar.  God  wills  that 
the  article  of  Justification  shall  stand,  and  if  men  accept  it  then 
no  State  or  government  will  perish,  but,  if  not,  then  they  alone 
are  the  cause  of  their  misfortune."7 

With  no  less  confidence  is  he  prepared  to  counter  the  other 

1  To  Spalatin,  Aug.  21,  1544,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  680. 

2  To  the  same,   March   7,    1522,    "  Werke,"    Erl.   ed.,    53,   p.    110 
("  Brief wechsel,"  3,  p.  298). 

3  "Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  36,  p.  452;  Erl.  ed.,  182,  p.  339,  Sermon  on 
Charity,  1532. 

4  Ib.,  Erl.  ed.,  59,  p.  141  f. 

5  To  Melanchthon,  April  4,  1541,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  338. 

6  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  63,  p.  127. 

7  Cordatus,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  363. 


ON   THE   COUNCIL   OF   TRENT      393 

objections.  My  doctrine  breeds  evil?  "After  the  proclamation 
of  the  Evangel  it  is  true  we  see  in  the  world  great  wickedness, 
ingratitude  and  profanation ;  this  followed  on  the  overthrow  of 
Antichrist  [which  I  brought  about] ;  but  in  reality  it  is  only,  that, 
formerly,  before  the  dawn  of  the  Evangel,  we  did  not  see  so 
plainly  these  sins  which  all  were  already  there,  but  now  that  the 
morning  star  has  risen  the  whole  world  awakens,  as  though  from 
a  drunken  sleep,  and  perceives  the  sins  which  previously,  while 
all  men  were  asleep  and  sunk  in  the  gloom  of  night,  they  had 
failed  to  recognise.  But  [in  view  of  all  the  wickedness]  I  set  my 
hopes  on  the  Last  Day  being  not  far  distant  ;  things  cannot  go  on 
for  more  than  a  hundred  years  ;  for  the  Word  of  God  will  again 
grow  weaker  ;  owing  to  lack  of  ministers  of  the  Word  darkness 
will  arise.  Then  the  whole  world  will  grow  savage  and  so  lull 
itself  into  a  state  of  security.  After  this  the  voice  will  resound 
(Mt.  xxv.  6):  'Behold,  the  bridegroom  cometh.'  Then  God  will 
not  be  able  to  endure  it  any  longer."1 

Is  our  own  life  any  objection  ?  It  is  no  question  of  life  but  of 
doctrine,  "  and,  as  to  the  doctrine,  it  is  indubitable  that  it  is  the 
Word  of  God.  '  The  words  that  I  speak,'  saith  the  Lord  [John 
xiv.  10],  'are  not  mine  but  the  Father's.'  "  Certainly  "I  should 
not  like  God  to  judge  me  by  my  life." 2  -"  My  doctrine  is  true  and 
includes  the  forgiveness  of  sins,  because  my  doctrine  is  not  mine ; 
Christ  also  says,  'My  doctrine  is  not  Mine.'  My  doctrine  stands 
fast,  be  my  life  what  it  may."3  "True  enough,  it  is  hard  when 
Satan  comes  and  upbraids  us  saying  :  You  have  laid  violent  hands 
on  this  marvellous  edifice  of  the  Papacy,"  you,  "  a  man  full  of 
error  and  sin."  "  But  Paul  also,  according  to  Rom.  ix.,  had 
at  times  to  endure  similar  reproaches."  "  We  answer  :  We  do 
not  attack  the  Pope  on  account  of  his  personal  errors  and 
trespasses  ;  we  must  indeed  condemn  them,  but  we  will  overlook 
them  and  forgive  them  as  we  ourselves  wish  to  be  forgiven.  Thus 
it  is  not  a  question  for  us  of  the  Pope's  personal  faults  and  sins, 
but  of  his  doctrine  and  of  submission  to  the  Word.  The  Pope 
and  his  followers,  quite  apart  from  their  own  sins,  offend  against 
the  glory  and  the  grace  of  God,  nay,  against  Christ  Himself,  of 
whom  the  Father  says  :  Hear  ye  Him.  But  the  Pope  would 
have  men's  ears  attentive  only  to  what  he  says  !  "4 

But,  because  my  doctrine  is  true,  so  he  concludes,  this  had  to 
come  about,  "  as  I  had  long  ago  foreseen  ;  in  spite  of  the  purity 
of  my  theology  I  [like  Paul]  was  alleged  to  have  preached 
'  scandal  '  to  the  holy  Jews  and  '  foolishness  '  to  the  sapient 
heathen."5— Nevertheless,  "whoever  teaches  otherwise  than 
I  have  taught,  or  condemns  me,  condemns  God  and  must  remain 
a  child  of  hell."6 — "  For  the  future  I  will  not  do  the  Papists  the 

Lauterbach,  "  Tagebuch,"  p.  173. 

Schlaginhaufen,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  139. 

Ib.,  from  Veit  Dietrich's  collection. 

"  Enarratio  in  Ps.  xlv.,"  "  Opp.  lat.  exeg.,"  18,  p.  223  sq. 

July  10,  1518,  to  Wenceslaus  Link,  "  Brief wechsel,"  1,  p.  211. 

"  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  10,  2,  p.  229  f.  ;   Erl.  ed.,  28,  p.  347. 


394          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

honour,"  of  permitting  them,  "  or  even  an  angel  from  heaven,  to 
judge  of  my  doctrine,  for  we  have  had  too  much  already  of  foolish 
humility."1 

With  what  wonder  and  perplexity  at  so  unaccountable  an 
attitude  would  the  foreign  bishops  have  listened  to  words  such 
as  these ! 


4.  Notable  Movements  of  the  Times  accompanied  by  Luther 
with  "Abuse  and  Defiance  down  to  the  very  Grave."  The 
Caricatures 

Brunswick,  Cleves,  the  Schmalkalden  Leaguers 

Luther  followed  with  great  sympathy  and  perturbation 
the  warlike  proceedings  instituted  by  the  Elector  of  Saxony 
and  the  Landgrave  of  Hesse  against  Duke  Henry  of  Bruns 
wick,  whom  he  had  himself  already  attacked  with  the  pen 
in  his  "  Wider  Hans  Worst."  They  made  war  on  the  Duke 
in  the  summer  of  1542,  seized  upon  his  lands  and  of  their 
own  initiative  introduced  the  innovations,  their  troops  at 
the  same  time  committing  unexampled  excesses. 

Luther  acclaimed  the  victory  as  a  deed  of  God  ;  such  a 
proceeding  could  not  be  described  as  the  work  of  man  ;  such 
a  success  foreboded  the  approach  of  the  Day  of  Judgment 
and  retribution.2 

The  Imperial  Chamber  of  Justice  protested  against  the 
violent  appropriation  of  the  country  by  the  Schmalkalden 
Leaguers,  and,  on  Sep.  3,  summoned  the  two  princes  and 
their  confederates  to  Spires  to  answer  for  the  breach  of  the 
peace  committed  at  the  expense  of  Duke  Henry.  Thereupon 
all  the  members  of  the  League  of  Schmalkalden  repudiated 
their  obedience  to  the  "  wicked,  dissolute,  Popish  rascals," 
as  the  Landgrave  Philip  politely  styled  the  Imperial  Court. 
In  this  he  was  at  one  with  Luther,  who,  in  former  years,  had 
called  the  Imperial  Chamber  "  a  devil's  whore."3 

A  new  war  of  the  Leaguers  on  Henry,  who  was  anxious 
to  recover  his  lands,  was  crowned  in  1545  by  a  still  more 
notable  success  on  the  part  of  the  rebels,  who  this  time 
contrived  to  take  the  Duke  himself  prisoner.  When,  how 
ever,  Philip  of  Hesse,  out  of  consideration  for  the  Emperor, 

1  Ib.,  p.  107-144. 

2  Kostlin-Kawerau,  2,  p.  560. 

3  Cp.  Janssen,   "  History  of  the  German  People  "   (Engl.  Trans.), 
vi.,  p.  218. 


OBJECTS   OF   HIS   WRATH          395 

seemed  inclined  to  set  the  captive  free,  Luther  intervened 
with  a  circular  letter  addressed  to  Philip  and  his  own 
Elector.  He  was  determined  to  characterise  any  idea  of 
setting  free  the  "  mischievous,  wild  tool  of  the  Roman  idol " 
as  an  open  attack  not  merely  on  the  Evangel,  but  even  on 
the  manifest  will  of  God  as  displayed  in  the  recent  war 
which  had  been  waged  "by  His  angels."  Here  his  pseudo- 
mysticism  is  again  much  to  the  fore.  The  circular  letter 
was  soon  printed  and  spread  broadcast.1 

Without  any  deep  insight  into  the  real  state  of  affairs, 
either  political  or  ecclesiastical,  unmindful  even  of  diplomacy, 
Luther  seeks  to  work  on  the  fears  of  the  Protestant  princes 
by  an  extravagant  description  of  the  Divinft  Judgments 
which  were  overtaking  blasphemers,  and  tells  them  they 
will  be  sharers  in  the  sin  of  others  if,  now  that  God  had 
"  broken  down  the  bulwark  "  of  the  Papacy,  they  were  to 
set  it  up  anew. 

To  the  Papists  he  says  :  "  Stop,  you  mad  fools,  Pope  and 
Papists,  and  do  not  blow  the  flame  that  God  has  kindled. 
For  it  will  turn  against  yourselves  so  that  the  sparks  and 
cinders  will  fly  into  your  eyes.  Yes,  indeed,  this  is  God's 
fire,  Who  calls  Himself  a  consuming  fire.  You  know  and 
are  convinced  in  your  own  conscience  that  your  cause  is 
wicked  and  lost  and  that  you  are  striving  against  God."2 

He  writes  confidently  :  We  on  this  side,  without  causing 
either  Emperor  or  Pope  "to  raise  a  hair,  have  unceasingly 
prayed,  implored,  besought  and  clamoured  for  peace,  as  they 
very  well  know  ;  this,  however,  we  have  never  been  able  to 
obtain  from  them,  but  have  had  daily  to  endure  nothing 
but  insults,  attacks  and  extermination."  The  defensive 
alliance  of  the  Catholic  Princes  and  Estates  became  in  his 
eyes  a  robber-league,  established  under  pretext  of  religion  ; 
"  what  they  wanted  was  not  the  Christian  religion  but  the 
lands  of  the  Elector  and  Landgrave."3  The  captive  Duke 
had  obtained  help  from  Italy,  very  likely  from  the  Pope. 
"  In  short,  we  all  know  that  the  Pope  and  the  Papists  would 
gladly  see  us  dead,  body  and  soul,  whereas  we  for  our  part 
would  have  them  all  to  be  saved  body  and  soul  together 
with  us."4  The  whole  writing,  with  its  combination  of  rage 
and  mysticism,  and  likewise  much  else  dating  from  that 

1  "  Briefe,"  ed.  De  Wette,  6,  p.  386.    After  Oct.  24,  1545. 

2  P.  402.  3  P.  391.  4  P.  401. 


396          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

period,  may  well  raise  grave  doubts  as  to  the  state  of  the 
author's  mind. 

The  inroad  into  Brunswick  was  merely  a  preliminary  to 
the  religious  wars  soon  to  break  out  and  ravage  Germany. 
No  sooner  had  Luther  closed  his  eyes  in  death  than  they 
began  on  a  larger  scale  with  the  Schmalkalden  War,  which 
was  to  prove  so  disastrous  to  the  Protestants.  His  words 
just  quoted  to  the  princes  of  his  party  were  repeated  almost 
word  for  word  in  the  Protestant  manifestos  during  the 
religious  \vars. 

It  is  possible  that  he  may  have  been  roused  to  make 
such  attacks  on  the  Catholics  by  certain  disagreeable  events 
which  occurfed  from  1541  onwards.  Political  steps  were 
being  taken  which  were  unfavourable  to  Lutheranism  and 
not  at  all  adequately  balanced  by  the  Protestants'  victory 
in  Brunswick  and  elsewhere. 

Luther  was  made  painfully  aware  of  the  unexpected 
weakening  of  the  League  of  Schmalkalden  which  resulted 
from  the  bigamy  of  Landgrave  Philip  of  Hesse.  By  virtue 
of  a  secret  compact  with  the  Emperor,  into  which  Philip  of 
Hesse  had  found  himself  forced  (June  13,  1 541  J,1  the  latter, 
in  his  position  of  head  of  the  German  Protestants,  had 
bound  himself  not  to  consent  that  Duke  William  of  Cleves, 
who  inclined  to  Protestantism,  should  be  admitted  into 
the  Schmalkalden  League  ;  he  had  also  to  refuse  any  assist 
ance  to  the  Duke  when  the  Emperor  Charles  V  took  the 
field  against  him  on  account  of  the  union  of  Guelders  with 
Cleves.  The  progress  of  Protestantism  in  these  districts 
was  checked  by  the  Emperor's  victory  in  1543.  The  formal 
introduction  of  the  new  faith  into  Metz  was  frustrated  by 
the  Emperor  ;  at  Cologne  too  the  Reformers  saw  all  their 
efforts  brought  to  naught. 

The  Diet  of  Spires,  in  1544,  it  is  true  brought  the  Protestants 
an  extension  of  that  peace  which  was  so  favourable  to  their 
interests,  but  the  campaign  which  Charles  V  thereupon 
undertook  against  Fran£ois  I — whom  Philip  of  Hesse  and 
the  Schmalkaldeners  were  compelled  by  the  above- 
mentioned  compact  to  leave  on  the  lurch — led  to  the 
humiliation  of  the  Frenchman,  who  was  compelled  to  make 
peace  at  Crespy  on  Sep.  14,  1544.  There  the  King  of  France 

1  See  vol.  iv.,  p.  68  f. 


OBJECTS   OF   HIS   WRATH          397 

promised  the  Emperor  never  again  to  side  with  the  German 
Protestants. 

Luther  was  also  troubled  by  the  dissensions  within  the 
League  of  Schmalkalden,  by  the  refusal  of  Joachim  II  of 
Brandenburg,  of  Louis,  Elector  of  the  Palatinate,  and 
especially  of  Duke  Maurice  of  Saxony  to  join  the  League  ; 
the  last  sovereign's  intimate  relations  with  the  Emperor 
were  also  a  source  of  anxiety.  At  Wittenberg  it  was  clearly 
seen  what  danger  threatened  Lutheranism  should  the 
Imperial  power  gather  strength  and  intervene  on  behalf  of 
the  Roman  Church. 

The  Roman  Church,  so  Luther  exclaims  fretfully  in  his 
"  Kurtz  Bekentnis  "  (1545),  is  made  up  of  "  nothing  but 
Epicureans  and  scoffers  at  the  Christian  faith."  The  Pope, 
"  the  greatest  foe  of  Christ  and  the  real  Antichrist,  has  made 
himself  head  of  Christendom,  nay,  the  very  hind-piece  and 
bottom-hole  of  the  devil  through  which  so  many  abomina 
tions  of  Masses,  monkery  and  immorality  are  cacked  into 
the  world."1 

The  Zwinglian  "  Sacramentarians  " 

One  controversy  which  greatly  excited  Luther  at  this 
time  was  that  with  the  Swiss  Sacramentarians.  Once  more 
his  old  feud  with  Zwinglianism  was  to  break  out  and 
embitter  his  days.  When,  in  1542,  the  elevation  was 
abolished  in  the  parish  church  of  Wittenberg  (to  some 
extent  out  of  deference  to  the  wishes  of  the  Landgrave  of 
Hesse  who  objected  to  this  rite),  some  people  too  hastily 
concluded  that  Luther  was  renouncing  his  own  doctrine  in 
favour  of  that  of  the  Swiss  ;  hence  he  deemed  it  necessary 
once  more  to  deny,  in  language  too  clear  to  be  mistaken, 
any  intention  to  make  common  cause  with  a  company, 
which,  as  he  puts  it,  had  been  "  infected  and  intoxicated 
with  an  alien  spirit." 

Moreover,  Caspar  Schwenckfeld,  with  the  object  of 
moving  the  feelings  of  Luther's  opponents,  made  known  to 
them  Luther's  rude  and  so  discreditable  letter.2  The 
animosity  of  the  Swiss  and  of  their  South  German  sympa 
thisers  now  assumed  serious  dimensions.  Luther  accord 
ingly  determined  to  address  the  reply  which  he  had  been 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  32,  p.  417.  2  Above,  p.  83. 


398          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

planning  for  some  time  to  the  Sacramentarians  as  a  body, 
declaring  that  that  "  slanderer  "  Schwenckfeld  was  not 
worth  a  single  line. 

He  was  also  very  desirous  of  once  more  before  his  death  giving 
vigorous  and  lasting  expression  to  the  positive  faith  which  he 
still  shared  and  to  which  he  was  wont  eagerly  to  fly  when  hard 
pressed  by  the  devil.  The  spectre  of  scepticism  of  which,  as  many 
of  his  statements  show,  he  dreaded  the  advent  among  his 
followers  as  soon  as  he  himself  had  been  taken  away,  was  to  be 
exorcised  beforehand. 

The  writing  against  the  Swiss  is  the  work  just  alluded  to,  which 
appeared  at  the  end  of  Sep.,  1544,  under  the  title  "  Kurtz 
Bekentnis  vom  heiligen  Sacrament."1 

After  briefly  disposing  of  their  arguments,  with  which  he  had 
already  sufficiently  dealt,  the  work  culminates  in  a  most  out 
spoken  condemnation  of  the  errors  and  arbitrary  opinions  of  the 
Swiss,  the  most  striking  sentence  of  all  being  the  following  : 
"  Hence,  in  a  word,  either  believe  everything  fully  or  else  nothing 
at  all."2  This  was  practically  what  the  Catholic  Church  had  said 
to  him  at  his  own  apostasy  :  The  principle  of  faith  permits  of  no 
picking  and  choosing  between  the  truths  revealed  by  God  and 
guaranteed  by  the  Church's  teaching  authority  ;  one  must  choose 
between  either  accepting  the  whole  body  of  the  Church's  doctrines, 
or  leaving  her.3 

For  the  rest  the  writing  was  another  bad  example  of  the 
boundless  fury  and  off ensiveness  of  his  mode  of  controversy.  In 
the  first  lines  he  declares  :  "  It  is  quite  the  same  to  me  .  .  .  when 
the  accursed  mob  of  fanatics,  Zwinglians  and  the  like  praise  or 
abuse  me,  as  when  Jews,  Turks,  Pope  or  all  the  devils  in  unison 
scold  or  laud  me.  For  I,  who  am  now  about  to  go  down  into  the 
grave,  am  determined  to  bring  this  testimony  and  this  boasting 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  32,  p.  396  ff.     See  above,  p.  260  f.,  on  the 
difference  between  Luther's  doctrine  on  the  Sacrament  and  that  of 
Melanchthon. 

2  P.  415. 

3  We  may  compare  this  with  some  other  true  remarks  of  Luther's  : 
"It  is  the  way  with  all  heretics  to  tamper  first  with  only  one  article 
and  then  gradually  to  deny  all."     After  a  comparison  with  the  ring 
which  on  the  slightest  break  ceases  to  be  a  ring,  and  the  bell  which  ever 
so  small  a  crack  makes  to  lose  its  sound,  he  proceeds  :    "  You  may  say  : 
'  Dear  Luther,  it  is  to  be  hoped  .  .  .  that  God  will  not  be  so  severe  and 
cruel  as  to  damn  men  on  account  of  one  article  if  they  faithfully  keep 
all  the  rest.'     For  this  is  the  way  not  only  that  the  heretics  console 
themselves,  but  also  other  sinners.  ...  In  reply  to  this  we  must  say 
that  it   cannot  be   hoped   that   God   will   overlook  His   poor,   blind, 
wretched  creatures'   behaving  so   madly  and  proudly  towards  their 
Creator  and  Lord."     He  insists  that   "it  is  impossible  to  deny  or 
blaspheme  a  single  word  without  thereby  accusing  the  Divine  revela 
tion    of    falsehood"    (p.  419).      The  heretics  are,  according  to  him, 
godless  fools  whom  God  "  will  some  day  judge  much  more  severely," 
because  they  have  His  Word  on  their  lips. 


CALVIN  399 

with  me  to  the  Judgment-seat  of  my  dear  Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus 
Christ,  that  I  have  with  the  utmost  earnestness  condemned  and 
shunned  the  fanatics  and  Sacramentarians,  Carlstadt,  Zwingli, 
(Ecolampadius,  Stinkfield  and  their  disciples,  whether  at  Ziirich 
or  wherever  else  they  were,  according  to  His  command,  Titus  iii. 
10  :  'A  man  that  is  a  heretic  avoid.'  "*• — He  goes  on  to  call  the 
Zwinglian  Sacramentarians  "  devourers  and  murderers  of  souls, 
who  have  an  endevilled,  perdevilled,  supradevilled  and  blas 
phemous  heart  and  a  lying  jaw."  "  Hence  no  Christian  can  or 
ought  to  pray  for  the  fanatics  or  to  assist  them.  They  are  repro 
bates.  .  .  .  They  want  to  have  nothing  to  do  with  me,  and  I  want 
to  have  nothing  to  do  with  them.  They  boast  that  they  have 
nothing  from  me,  for  which  I  heartily  thank  God  :  I  have  borrowed 
even  less  from  them,  for  which,  too,  God  be  praised."2 

In  this  writing  against  the  Zwinglians  Luther  also  attacks  the 
Papacy  with  unspeakable  coarseness.  Was  it  perhaps  that  he  was 
seeking  to  atone  in  this  way  for  his  apparent  agreement  with  the 
Catholics  in  their  belief  in  the  Presence  of  Christ  in  the  Sacra 
ment  ?  This  agreement  with  the  Papacy  was,  however,  as  he 
boasts,  only  due  to  his  holding  fast  to  the  ancient  doctrine,  to  that 
doctrine  which  the  "  true  olden  Christian  Church  has  held  for 
fifteen  hundred  years."3  He  did  not  bethink  himself  of  his 
treatment  of  many  other  doctrines  of  this  "  true,  olden  Church." 
Moreover,  even  his  doctrine  of  the  Sacrament  was  but  a  shadow 
of  the  ancient  one.  He  insisted  on  denying  any  change  of 
substance  in  the  Bread  and  on  affirming  that  the  Body  of  Christ 
is  actually  and  everywhere  in  heaven  and  on  earth  present  as 
a  body.  He  is  also  known  to  have  praised  Calvin  for  a  writing  in 
which  the  latter  belied  the  "  local  presence  "  of  Christ  in  the 
Bread,4  and  that  he  declared  his  readiness  to  "  learn  something 
from  so  able  a  mind."  Thus  what  he  retained  was  but  a  distorted 
fragment  of  the  ancient  doctrine  of  the  Sacrament,  salved  from 
the  shattered  treasure  of  his  former  Catholic  convictions. 


Calvin 

Very  different  from  that  which  he  displayed  towards 
Zwingli  and  his  co-religionists  was  Luther's  attitude  towards 
Calvin,  the  head  of  the  theocracy  of  Geneva,  whose  power 
in  the  "  Swiss  Rome  "  had  developed  so  amazingly  since 
1541,  when  he  had  returned  after  six  years'  exile  at  Stras- 
burg  in  the  companionship  of  Bucer. 

Thanks  to  Bucer,  Calvin's  opinions,  which  in  the  main 
had  always  been  Lutheran,  had  been  directed  more  towards 

i  P.  397.  2  P.  404.  3  P.  402. 

4  To  Martin  Bucer,  Oct.  14,  1539,  "  Briefwechsel,"  12,  p.  260  : 
"  salutabis  Dn.  loannem  Sturmium  et  lohannem  Calvinum  reverenter, 
quorum  libellos  cum  singulari  voluptate  legi."  Kostlin-Kawerau,  2, 
p.  577.  See  below,  p.  401. 


400          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

that  form  of  Lutheranism  represented  by  Bucer  and  Melanch- 
thon,  his  earlier  humanistic  education  making  this  all  the 
easier.  On  account  of  his  views  some  have,  not  so  wrongly, 
dubbed  him  the  "  South- German  Lutheran,"1  though  his 
stiffness  and  harshness  were  not  at  all  in  keeping  with  the 
South-German  character.  Being  in  close  touch  with 
Lutheranism  he  had  frequently  visited  Germany  during  his 
theological  wanderings,  and  as  the  representative  of  the 
Strasburg  Protestants.  He  had  taken  a  part  in  the  negotia 
tions  at  the  Frankfurt  Convention  and  at  the  religious 
conferences  at  Hagenau,  Worms  and  Ratisbon. 

Calvin  esteemed  Luther  far  higher  than  Zwingli.  "  If  we 
compare  them,"  he  wrote  to  his  friend  Guillaume  Farel, 
"  Luther  towers  far  above  him,  as  you  yourself  are  well 


Calvin's  doctrine,  as  exemplified  in  his  frequently  quoted 
"  Institutio  religionis  christiance  "  (1536)  and  in  his  later  writings, 
like  that  of  Luther,  excludes  any  participation  of  the  human  will 
in  the  work  of  salvation  ;  all  freedom  is  abolished,  everything 
being  enacted  by  the  unchangeable  "  Providentia  Dei  "  in  the 
deterministic  sense ;  with  him,  as  with  Luther,  Adam's  fall  was 
inevitable,  owdng  to  the  divine  Predestination,  and  so  was  the 
consequent  enthralling  of  the  whole  of  the  human  race  under  the 
bondage  of  sin.3 

On  the  elect,  however,  more  particularly  on  those  who  follow 
Calvin's  doctrines  and  admonitions,  the  assurance  of  salvation  is 
infallibly  bestowed,  just  as  he  possesses  it  himself.  Those  thus 
predestined  cannot  be  lost,  while  such  as  are  predestined  to  hell 
must  inevitably  incur  the  penalty  of  eternal  suffering  ;  amongst 
the  latter  are  not  only  all  the  heathen,  but  also  those  who  oppose 
the  new  belief  ;  they  are  a  reprobate  mass  of  humanity  who  have 
forfeited  all  right  to  live  by  rising  up  against  God  and  the  authori 
ties.4  In  his  doctrine  of  predestination  Calvin,  who  is  the  more 
logical  of  the  two,  sets  aside  the  distinction  insisted  on  by  Luther 
between  the  Revealed  Will  of  God  that  all  men  should  be  saved 

1  F.  Loofs,  "  Leitfaden  der  DG.,"  4  p.  881. 

2  Feb.  26,  1540,  "  Calvini  opp.,"  11  ("  Corp.  ref.,"  p.  24  :    "  Si  inter 
se  comparantur,  scis  ipse,  quanta  intervallo  Lutherus  excellat."     Calvin 
finds  fault  namely  with  Zwingli's  "  profane  doctrine  "  of  the  sacra 
ments.     "  Calvini  opp.,"  11,  p.  438.    Loofs,  "  DG.,"  4  p.  881. 

3  Loofs,  ib.,  p.  887. 

4  He  writes  of  the  treatment  of  the  Catholics  in  England  :   that  all 
the   Catholics   who   had   risen  in   rebellion   against   Edward   VI   and 
refused  to  give  up  their  superstition  "  meritent  bien  d'etre  reprimes  par 
le  glaive  qui  vous  est  commis,  vu  qu'ils  s'attaquent,  non  seulement  au 
roi,  mais  a  Dieu."     "  Opp.,"  13  ("  Corp.  ref.,"  41),  p.  68.     W.  Holler, 
"Lehrb.  der  KG.,"  33,  ed.  G.  Kawerau,  1907,  p.  188,  and  still  better, 
N.  Paulus,  "  Protestantismus  und  Toleranz,"  p.  250. 


CALVIN  401 

and  His  Hidden  Will  which  nullifies  it.  The  predestinarian  ideas 
of  both  are  at  bottom  identical,  but  with  Luther,  as  Friedrich 
Loofs  expresses  it,  "reprobation  tends  to  recede  more  and  more 
into  the  background  and  thus  to  hold  only  a  secondary  place  ; 
Calvin,  on  the  other  hand,  is  ever  and  of  set  purpose  dwelling  on 
this  background,  because  (according  to  him)  it  is  also  part  of  the 
revealed  doctrine  of  salvation,  and  also  because  it  is  only  another 
aspect  of  predestination.1 

Calvin  taught  Justification  in  the  same  way  as  Luther,  and,  like 
him,  denied  entirely  any  merit  to  good  works. 

It  was  with  unmixed  joy  that  Luther  saw  "  so  able  a 
mind  "  coming  forward  as  a  champion  of  the  new  theology 
against  the  Roman  errors. 

This  explains  how  Melanchthon  could  announce  to  Bucer 
at  Strasburg,  in  a  note  evidently  intended  for  Calvin  himself, 
that,  though  certain  persons  had  tried  to  incite  Luther 
against  Calvin  on  account  of  a  statement  [on  the  Supper] 
which  was  at  variance  with  Luther's  views,  "  Calvin  stands 
in  high  favour  [with  Luther]  "  ("  magnam  gratiam  iniit  "). 
Calvin  himself  with  great  satisfaction  quoted  this  passage  in 
a  letter  to  Farel.2  As  for  Luther,  writing  to  Bucer  on  Oct. 
14,  1539,  he  sent  his  "  respectful  greetings  "  to  Calvin  and 
mentioned  that  he  had  perused  "  with  peculiar  pleasure  "3 
his  writing  (the  "  Responsio  "  against  Jacopo  Sadoleto  in 
which  was  the  incriminated  statement). 

When,  in  April,  1545,  Luther  glanced  through  a  newly 
published  Latin  translation  of  Calvin's  principal  work  on 
the  Supper,  "Petit  traicte  de  la  sainte  cene "  (1541),  he 
observed,  that  the  author  was  a  learned  and  pious  man  ; 
had  GEcolampadius  and  Zwingli  expressed  themselves  in  this 
way  from  the  beginning,  then  no  such  quarrel  would  have 
arisen.  Thus  Luther  accepted  the  Genevese  theologian's 
essay  "  in  a  friendly  way  and  without  misgiving  " — though 
"  in  it,  Calvin  recognised  a  bodily  presence  in  Luther's  sense 
as  little  as  before."4  On  the  contrary,  Calvin  agrees  in  the 
main  with  Zwingli 's  denial  of  the  Real  Presence,  though  he 

1  "  DG.,"  4  p.  889. 

2  It  is  known  only  from  Calvin's  letter,  Nov.  20,  1539,  "  Opp.,"  10 
("  Corp.   ref.,"   38),  p.   432.     Cp.  Enders-Kawerau,   "  Luthers  Brief- 
wechsel,"  12,  p.  261. 

3  To  Bucer,  "  Briefwechsel."  12,  p.  260.    Above,  p.  399,  n.  4. 

4  Kostlin-Kawerau,  2,  p.  603  f.,  which  also  contains  an  account  of 
Luther's  remarks. 


402          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

insists  very  strongly  on  the  spiritual  working  of  the  Body  of 
Christ  enthroned  in  heaven  on  the  recipients  of  the  Supper, 
so  strongly  indeed  as  to  speak  of  the  "  real  substance  of  His 
Body  and  Blood  "  which  Christ  communicates.1  As  Loofs 
puts  it  :  "  He  had  come  nearer  to  Luther's  view,  at  least  so 
far  as  terminology  went."  Later  on,  however,  so  Loofs  adds, 
"  the  delusive  terminological  approximation  to  Luther  dis 
appeared  "  ;  in  support  of  this  Loofs  quotes  from  the  1559 
edition  of  the  "  Institutio  "  :  "  Christ  breathes  life  into  our 
souls  from  the  substance  of  His  Flesh  .  .  .  though  the  flesh 
of  Christ  does  not  enter  us."2 

It  was  fortunate  for  the  relations  between  the  leaders  at 
Wittenberg  and  Geneva  that  Luther  was  no  longer  amongst 
the  living  when  Calvin  expressed  such  a  view  of  the  Supper. 

The  amenities  and  courtesies  between  the  two  heads 
would  have  ceased  and  Luther's  wrath  would  have  once 
again  asserted  itself.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  ambiguity  of 
which  Calvin  had  learnt  the  use  in  Bucer's  school  came  to 
an  end  very  shortly  after  Luther's  death,  when  Calvin  and 
Farel  reached  an  agreement  with  Bullinger  of  Zurich  (The 
"  Consensus  Tigurinus  ")  ;  here  the  Genevese  without  any 
reservation  put  forward  the  theses  :  "  Any  idea  of  a  local 
presence  of  Christ  [in  the  Sacrament]  must  be  set  aside  .  .  . 
it  is  a  wrong  and  godless  superstition  to  circumscribe  Christ 
as  man  under  elements  of  this  world."3  The  words  "  This 
is  My  Body  "  are,  on  the  contrary,  to  be  understood  by 
metonymy,  the  name  of  the  thing  represented  being  trans 
ferred  to  the  "  sign." — Now  it  was  just  the  fact  that  Zwingli 
and  the  sacramentarians  made  of  the  Eucharist  nothing 
more  than  a  "  sign  "  that  had  kept  alive  Luther's  indignation 
against  them  even  till  his  last  hour. 

"  On  the  Jews  and  their  Lies."     "  On  Shew,  Hammephorash," 

1543 

Amongst  the  prominent  events  of  the  day  in  Central 
Germany  the  Jewish  movement  deserves  a  place  ;  on  the 

1  "  Jesus  Christ  nous  donne  en  la  cene  la  propre  substance  de  son 
corps  et  son  sang."      "  Opp."  5  ("Corp.  ref."  33),  p.  440. 

2  Loofs,  ib.,  p.  890  f.,  from   the  "Institutio"  1.   4,    c.    17,   n.  32, 
"Opp.,"  2  ("Corp.  ref.,"  30),  p.  1033:    " quamvis  in  nos  non  ingredi- 
atur  ipsa  Christi  caro." 

3  "  Opp.   Calvini,"   7  ("   Corp.   ref.,"   35),   p.    689  sq.     Cp.   Moller- 
Kawerau,3  p.  185. 


"VON  DEN  JUDEN'  403 

one  hand  there  was  an  increase  in  the  influence  and  power 
of  the  Jews,  and,  on  the  other,  repressive  measures  secured 
their  banishment  from  several  territories.  In  this  movement 
Luther  took  a  leading  part. 

In  the  Saxon  Electorate  the  expulsion  of  the  Jews  had 
taken  place  in  1536  by  virtue  of  an  edict  of  Johann 
Frederick's.  They  were  even  refused  the  usual  safe  conduct 
through  the  country  and  threatened  with  the  severest 
penalties  should  they  be  caught  within  the  borders.  In  the 
matter  of  this  regulation  Luther  sided  with  the  sovereign. 
When  the  Jew,  Josel  Rosheim,  a  zealous  advocate  of  his 
race,  besought  Luther  repeatedly  in  the  most  urgent  manner 
by  letter  to  procure  him  an  audience  with  the  Elector, 
Luther  not  only  refused  to  do  anything  for  him,  on  the 
grounds  that  the  Jews  were  hostile  to  Christianity,  but  even 
declared  his  intention  to  attack  their  obstinacy  in  print  as 
soon  as  God  granted  him  time  and  opportunity.1 

It  was  the  accounts  he  received  towards  the  close  of  1542 
of  the  intrigues  and  the  spread  of  the  so-called  Sabbatarians, 
a  sect  of  Christians  settled  in  Moravia  who  had  been  led 
astray  by  the  Jews  to  introduce  circumcision,  the  observance 
of  the  Saturday-Sabbath  and  other  Mosaic  ceremonies,  which 
prompted  him  to  undertake  a  slashing  work  against  the 
Jews. 

He  had  been  acquainted  with  the  sect  since  1532.  In  his 
lectures  on  Genesis  he  lamented  that  the  plague  of  Sabbatarianism 
was  flourishing  greatly  in  those  districts  where  the  madness  of  the 
Catholic  rulers  would  not  permit  of  the  Evangel  taking  root  ;  the 
Sabbatarians  were  the  very  apes  of  the  Jews  and  were  busy 
Judaising  Austria  and  Moravia.2  In  March,  1538,  he  had  sent  to 
the  press  his  "  Brieff.  .  .  .  wider  die  Sabbather "  in  which  he 
proves  that  the  Messias  had  already  come  and  had  abrogated  the 
Mosaic  law.3  In  the  preface  which  Justus  Jonas  prefixed  to  his 
Latin  translation  of  the  letter  it  was  pointed  out,  that  the  treasure 
of  Holy  Scripture  had  been  unlocked  in  this  age  by  the  preaching 
of  the  Evangel  ;  that  it  was  the  duty  of  the  Evangelical  teachers 
to  strive  to  bring  the  Jews  into  the  right  path  by  means  of  the 

1  For  Josel  and  the  efforts  referred  to,  see  Reinhold  Lewin,  "  Luthers 
Stellung  zu  den  Juden,"  Berlin,  1910  ("  Neue  Studien  zur  Gesch.  der 
Theol.  und  der  Kirche,"  ed.  N.  Bonwetsch  and  R.  Seeberg,  10),  p.  62  f. 
—Luther  to  Josel,  June  11,  1537,  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  55,  p.  186,  also  in 
Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  419  ("  Brief wechsel,"  11,  p.  240). 

2  "  Opp.  lat.  exeg.,"  3,  p.  227  ;   cp.  4,  p.  46.    Lewin,  ib.,  p.  73. 

3  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  31,  p.  417  ff. 


404          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

new  light  ;    and  that  the  Jews  in  every  country  would  be  well 
advised  to  be  guided  by  Luther's  booklet.1 

The  idea  of  defending  Christianity  in  detail  by  the  light  of  the 
new  knowledge  of  the  Scriptures  against  the  madness  of  the  Jews 
took  firm  hold  on  Luther's  imagination  ;  he  cherished  the  idea 
that  "perchance  some  among  them  might  be  won  over."2  He 
was  greatly  incensed  against  Ferdinand,  the  German  King,  who, 
as  he  said,  was  laying  waste  the  Evangelical  Churches,  while 
permitting  the  Jews — who  in  their  insolence  oppress  the  Chris 
tians — to  reside  in  his  lands.3  On  May  18,  1542,  he  received  news 
of  the  expulsion  of  the  Jews  from  Bohemia  and  other  territories. 
But  later  in  the  year  a  writing  of  the  Sabbatarians  was  sent  him, 
which,  in  dialogue  form,  attacked  him  and  proselytised  for  the 
sect.  This  Jewish  movement  began  also  to  gain  ground  outside 
the  borders  of  Moravia. 

This  gave  the  necessary  stimulus  "  to  the  fanatical  cam 
paign  against  the  Jews  which  the  Reformer  started  in  the 
winter  of  1542."4 

At  the  end  of  1542  he  published  his  "  Von  den  Jiiden  und 
jren  Ltigen,"  and  in  March,  1543,  his  "  Vom  Schem  Ham- 
phoras."5 

In  the  first  he  begins  by  proving  against  the  Jews  the 
Messianic  character  of  Christ,  answers  their  objections  and 
lays  bare  their  falsehoods,  after  which  he  considers  how  the 
Jews  should  be  dealt  with.  In  the  second  he  discusses  the 
Jewish  legend  concerning  Christ's  miracles,  and  in  par 
ticular  scourges  the  superstitions  connected  with  the  use  of 
the  "  Shem  Hammephorash  ";  he  then  examines  the  genealo 
gies  of  Christ  in  the  Gospels  in  order  to  refute  the  objections 
of  the  Jews  in  this  connection,  and  again  discusses  the 
proofs  that  Christ  was  the  Messias,  at  the  same  time  defend 
ing  in  detail  His  birth  of  a  Virgin.  Both  writings  he  addresses 
to  the  Christians  in  order  to  strengthen  them  in  the  faith  in 
view  of  the  dangers  which  threatened  from  Judaism. 

Full  of  zeal  for  the  defence  of  the  fundamental  doctrines 
of  Christianity,  the  coming  and  the  benefits  bestowed  by  the 
Messias,  he  refutes  at  great  length  the  supposed  learned 
proofs  of  his  Jewish  opponents.  On  the  other  hand,  he 
thunders  furiously  against  the  blasphemies,  the  unseemly 

1  Kawerau,  "  Briefwechsel  des  Justus  Jonas,"  1,  p.  322. 

2  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  23,  p.  276.     "  Die  drei  Symbola,"   printed 
1538,  written  early  in  1537. 

3  Lewin,  ib.,  p.  66.    Cp.  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  419. 

4  Lewin,  ib.,  p.  74. 

5  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  32,  pp.  99  ff.  and  275  ff. 


"VON   DEN   JUDEN'  405 

behaviour  and  the  usury  of  the  Jews  who  stood  in  high 
favour  at  several  of  the  Courts  ;  he  even  demands  with 
"  great  earnestness  "  that  their  synagogues  and  private 
houses,  the  scene  of  their  blasphemies,  be  set  on  fire  and 
levelled  to  the  ground  ("  Let  whoever  can,  throw  brimstone 
and  pitch  upon  them"1),  that  their  books  be  taken  away 
from  them  and  "  not  one  page  left,"  that  their  Rabbis  be 
forbidden  on  pain  of  death  to  teach  henceforth,  and  that  all 
be  hindered  from  "  praising  God  publicly,  thanking  Him, 
praying  or  teaching  "  ;2  further,  that  the  streets  and  high 
ways  be  closed  against  them,  that  they  be  forbidden  to 
practise  usury,  and  be  expelled  from  the  land  unless 
indeed  willing  to  earn  their  bread  at  the  sweat  of  their  brow 
with  axe  and  spade,  spindle  and  distaff.  All  these  counsels 
were,  of  course,  addressed  primarily  to  the  authorities,  but, 
such  was  their  nature,  that  they  might  easily  have  provoked 
the  people  to  an  unchristian  persecution  of  their  Jewish 
fellow-citizens.  These  writings,  with  their  unmeasured 
vituperation  and  their  obscenity,  also  bear  painful  witness  to 
the  deterioration  of  his  language  with  advancing  years. 

"  Fie  on  you,"  he  cries,  "fie  on  you  wherever  you  be,  you 
damned  Jews,  who  dare  to  clasp  this  earnest,  glorious,  consoling 
Word  of  God  to  your  maggoty,  mortal,  miserly  belly,  and  are  not 
ashamed  to  display  your  greed  so  openly."3 — "  Whenever  you  see 
or  think  of  a  Jew,  say  to  yourself  ^^ook,  that  mouth  that  I  see 
before  me  has  every  Saturday  cursed,  execrated  and  spat  upon 
my  dear  Lord  Jesus  Christ  Who  redeemed  me  with  His  precious 
Blood,  and  also  invoked  malediction  on  my  wife  and  child  and 
all  Christians  that  they  might  be  murdered  and  perish  miserably  ; 
he  himself  would  gladly  do  it  if  he  could,  if  only  in  order  to  get 
hold  of  our  goods  ;  mayhap  he  has  already  to-day  many  times 
spat  on  the  ground,  as  it  is  their  custom  to  do,  when  the  name  of 
Jesus  is  mentioned,  so  that  his  venomous  spittle  still  hangs  about 
his  mouth  and  beard  and  leaves  scarcely  room  to  spit  again. 
Were  I  to  eat,  drink  or  speak  with  such  a  devilish  mouth,  I  might 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  32,  p.  252,  in  "  Von  den  Jiiden."        2  Ib. 

3  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  32,  p.  177  f.,  4i  Von  den  Jiiden."  The  rest  of 
the  passage  ("  that  Bible  only  should  you  explore,"  etc.)  is  given  in 
vol.  iv.,  p.  285  f.,  where  we  had  to  quote  some  of  the  above  writings 
against  the  Jews  in  describing  Luther's  mode  of  controversy  and  the 
violence  of  his  angry  language.  Cp.  also  vol.  iii.,  p.  270.  Since  in  the 
selection  of  these  passages  the  object  was  to  show  to  what  depths 
Luther  could  descend,  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  point  out  that  the 
passages  quoted  are  about  the  strongest  to  be  met  with  in  these  two 
works,  the  remainder  being  written  in  a  somewhat  calmer  and  more 
seemly  vein. 


406          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

as  well  eat  and  drink  out  of  a  can  or  vessel  brimful  of  devils, 
and  thus  become  partaker  with  the  devils  who  dwell  in  the  Jews 
and  spit  at  the  I?recious  Blood  of  Christ.  From  which  may  God 
preserve  me."1  / 

"  I,  accursed  *  Goi '  that  I  am,  cannot  understand  whence  they 
[the  Jews]  have  this  great  art,  unless  it  is,  that,  when  Judas 
Scharioth  hanged  himself  and  his  bowels  gushed  forth,  and,  as 
happens  in  such  cases,  his  bladder  also  burst,  the  Jews  were  ready 
to  catch  the  Judas-water  and  the  other  precious  things,  and  that 
then  they  gorged  and  swilled  on  the  merd  among  themselves,  and 
were  thereby  endowed  with  such  a  keenness  of  sight  that  they 
can  perceive  glosses  in  the  Scripture  such  as  neither  Matthew,  nor 
Isaias  himself,  nor  all  the  angels,  not  to  speak  of  us  accursed 
'  Goiim,'  would  be  able  to  detect  ;  or  perhaps  they  looked  into 
the  loins  of  their  God  '  Shed  '  and  found  these  things  written  in 
that  smokehole."2 

"  Where  are  they  now,  those  dissolute  Christians  who  have 
been  made  or  wish  to  become  Jews  ?  Here  for  a  kiss  !  The  devil 
has  eased  himself  and  emptied  his  belly  again.  That  is  a  real 
halidom  for  Jews  and  would-be  Jews  to  kiss,  batten  on,  swill  and 
adore  ;  and  then  the  devil  in  his  turn  also  devours  and  swills 
what  these  good  pupils  spue  and  eject  from  above  and  from 
below.  Hosts  and  guests  are  indeed  well  met  and  the  dishes  are 
well-cooked  and  served."  The  devil  should  have  been  an  angel 
but  "  became  a  devil,  who  with  his  angelic  snout  devours  what 
exudes  from  the  oral  and  anal  apertures  of  the  Jews  ;  this  is 
indeed  his  favourite  dish  on  which  he  battens  like  a  sow  behind 
the  hedge  about  St.  Margaret's  Day  ;  that  is  just  as  he  would 
have  it  !  Therefore  the  Jews  have  got  their  deserts."  They 
renounced  their  dignity  as  the  chosen  mouthpiece  of  God,  there 
fore  the  "  devil  denies  and  bespatters  them  so  much  that  nothing 
but  devil's  ordure  bursts  forth  from  him  everywhere  ;  this  indeed 
is  quite  to  their  taste,  and  they  wallow  in  it  like  the  swine."3 

In  this  way  Luther  unloads  himself  of  his  fury  against 
both  devil  and  Jews  ;  two  things  are  characteristic  of  his 
hatred  of  the  Jews ;  first,  that  the  devil  is  made  to  bear  the 
greater  share, 4  though  the  latter  promptly  shifts  the  burden 
back  on  to  the  shoulders  of  the  Jews ;  secondly,  that  the 
presumption  of  the  Jews  in  seeking  to  be  first  everywhere  is 
castigated  with  all  Luther's  native  coarseness. 

"It  is  thus  that  the  wicked,  scoundrelly  foe  mocks  at  his 
captive  Jews  ;  he  makes  them  say  '  Schem  Hamphoras  '  and 
believe  and  expect  great  things  from  it ;  he,  however,  means 
'  Scham  Hamperes,'  i.e.  '  hither  filth,'  not  that  which  lies  in  the 

^  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  32,  p.  141.    "  Von  den  Jiiden." 

2  /&.,  p.  342  f.    "  Vom  Schem  Hamphoras." 

3  Ib.,  p.  282.     "  Vom  Schem  Hamphoras." 

4  Cp.  vol.  iv.,  p.  285  f. 


"VOM   SCHEM   HAMPHORAS"       407 

gutters,  but  that  which  forthcomes  from  the  belly.  .  .  .  The  devil 
has  taken  the  Jews  captive  so  that  they  must  do  his  will  (as  St. 
Paul  says)  and  deceive,  lie,  blaspheme  as  also  curse  God  and 
everything  that  is  God's.  In  return  for  this  he  makes  a  mock 
of  them  with  his  '  Scham  Hamperes,'  and  leads  them  to  believe 
that  this  and  all  their  other  lying  and  tomfoolery  is  something 
precious."1 

The  blinded  presumption  of  the  Jews  is  nevertheless  so  great 
that  they  fancy  themselves  far  superior  to  the  Christians.  "  Do 
you  think  a  Jew  is  so  badly  off  ?  God  in  heaven  and  all  the  angels 
must  laugh  and  dance  when  they  hear  a  Jew  nictate,  that  you, 
accursed  '  Goi,'  may  know  for  the  future  how  fine  a  thing  it  is  to 
be  a  Jew."  And  yet  they  lie  and  use  bad  language  if  a  man  ven 
tures  to  hold  up  to  public  obloquy,  as  an  "arch  prostitute,"  one 
of  his  pious  cousins.2 — "  Have  I  not  told  you  above,  what  a  grand 
and  precious  gem  a  Jew  is  ;  he  has  but  to  break  wind,  for  God  to 
dance  and  all  His  angels,  and  even  were  he  to  do  something  even 
grosser,  it  would  still  be  looked  upon  as  a  golden  Talmud  ;  what 
such  a  man  voids,  whether  from  above  or  from  below,  that  the 
accursed  '  Goiim  '  are  forsooth  to  regard  as  a  holy  thing."3 

"  Nay,  were  a  Rabbi  to  ease  himself  into  a  vessel  under  your 
nose,  both  thick  and  thin,  and  to  say  :  '  Here  you  have  a  delicious 
conserve,  you  would  have  to  say  you  had  never  tasted  a  better 
dish  in  your  life.  Risk  your  neck  and  say  differently  !  For  if  a 
man  has  the  power  to  say  [like  the  Rabbis]  that  right  is  left  and 
left  right,  regardless  of  God  and  all  His  creatures,  he  can  just  as 
well  say  that  his  anus  is  his  mouth,  that  his  belly  is  a  pudding- 
dish  and  that  a  pudding-dish  is  his  belly."4 

In  exoneration  of  Luther  it  has  been  said  that,  in  this 
case,  in  making  use  of  such  "  shocking  comparisons,"  he  was 
not  merely  following  his  natural  bent,  on  the  contrary,  "  in 
his  angry  zeal  he  deliberately  sought  for  them."  It  is 
perfectly  true  that  neither  his  angry  zeal  nor  his  deliberate 
intention  can  be  denied  any  more  than  his  desire  to  "  stir  up 
the  world  against  what  was  in  itself  shameful  and  disgusting," 
and  his  longing  to  do  something  towards  its  removal.  But 
surely  there  was  another  kind  of  language  and  a  different 
tone  with  the  help  of  which  he  might  have  effected  more, 
such,  for  instance,  as  had  been  used  by  great  and  pious  men 
in  the  past  whose  inspired  and  glowing  words  contrast 
glaringly  with  Luther's  hideous  obscenities. 

The  results  achieved  by  Luther  with  these  two  writings 
were  but  of  trifling  importance. 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  32,  p.  298.     "  Vom  Schem  Hamphoras." 

2  Ib.,  p.  224.     "  Von  den  Jiiden." 

3  Ib.,  p.  226.     "  Von  den  Jiiden." 

4  16.,  p.  285  f.     "  Vom  Schem  Hamphoras." 


408          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

We  hear  practically  nothing  of  any  conversions  of  Jews  or 
apostate  Christians  being  due  to  them.  Luther  had  been 
wise  himself  to  declare  that  he  did  not  expect  any  conver 
sions  to  result  from  them.  In  the  Saxon  Electorate,  how 
ever,  the  unjust  enactment  of  1536  was,  on  May  6,  1543, 
revived  against  the  Jews  by  a  public  mandate  abrogating 
that  mitigation  of  it  which  Josel  Rosheim  had  been  successful 
in  obtaining.  "  Official  reports  go  to  prove  that  the  cruel 
persecution  of  the  Jews  [in  the  Saxon  Electorate]  was  no 
mere  paper  measure  ;  only  after  Luther's  death  did  things 
settle  down."1  JnJHesse  a  severe  decree  against  the  Jews, 
issued  in  1543,  seems  "to  have  owed  its  origin  "  to  the 
writings  of  the  Reformer.  This  being  so  the  rebuff  with 
which  Luther  met  in  the  Electorate  of  Brandenburg  must 
have  been  all  the  more  annoying."2 

One  of  the  lasting  effects  of  these  two  screeds  was,  that, 
in  the  subsequent  anti-Jewish  risings  the  charges  there 
contained,  and  couched  in  language  so  fervid  and  eloquent, 
were  constantly  appealed  to  in  vindication  of  the  measures 
used.  No  distinction  was  made  between  Avhat  was  true  and 
what  was  false,  or  between  the  horrible  exaggerations  and 
the  actual  fact,  though  the  unreliability  of  many  of  the 
statements  is  often  quite  palpable. 

Even  in  the  few  passages  we  had  room  to  quote  the  reader  may 
have  seen  how  Luther's  charges  against  the  Jews  amount  to 
calumnies  ;  the  Jews,  he  alleges,  were  in  the  habit  of  cursing  and 
blaspheming  God  and  all  that  is  God's  ;  "  regardless  of  God  "  they 
made  out  right  to  be  left  and  left  right.  His  love  of  exaggeration 
leads  him  to  say  that  all  Jews  curse  the  Christians  every  Sabbath, 
and  are  ever  desirous  of  stabbing  them  and  their  wives  and  children. 
Theft  and  robbery  he  makes  into  crimes  common  to  every  Jew  ; 
all  of  them  he  accuses  indiscriminately  of  murder  ;  "  all  their 
most  heartfelt  sighing,  hopes  and  longings  are  set  on  this,  viz.  to 
be  -able  to  treat  us  heathen  as  they  treated  the  heathen  in 
Persia  in  the  days  of  Esther  .  .  .  for  they  fancy  they  are  the 
chosen  people  in  order  that  they  may  murder  and  slay  the 
heathen  .  .  .  just  as  they  had  made  this  plain  to  the  world  by 
the  way  they  had  treated  us  Christians  in  the  beginning,  and 
would  still  gladly  do  even  now  were  they  able,  yea,  have  often 
done  so."3 

It  is  true  he  refuses  credulously  to  believe  all  the  crimes  with 
which  rumour  charged  them,  for  instance,  their  poisoning  of  the 

1  Lewin,  "  Luthers  Stellung  zu  den  Juden,"  p.  103.      2  Ib.,  p.  104. 
3  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  32,  p.  120.     "  Von  den  Jiiden."     Cp.  pp.  182 
and  230;  and  Lewin,  p.  92. 


"ROUNDISH   ELOQUENCE"         409 

wells.1  The  calumnies  he  made  his  own  were,  nevertheless,  so 
great,  that,  after  the  magistrates  of  Strasburg  had  been  repeatedly 
approached  by  Josel  von  Kosheim  with  the  proposal  to  forbid  the 
circulation  of  the  two  writings,  they  finally  decided  to  prohibit 
their  being  printed  in  the  city.  The  councillors  were  of  opinion 
that  the  very  enormity  of  the  assertions  would  prove  the  best 
refutation.  They  wrote,  that  it  was  better  to  keep  silence  and  to 
leave  the  calumnies  to  sink  into  oblivion  ;  to  this  the  petitioner 
agreed. 2 

Josel  von  Rosheim,  the  zealous  spokesman  of  the  Jews, 
achieved  a  brilliant  success  with  the  Emperor  Charles  V. 
Certain  extensive  privileges  were  guaranteed  him  on  April  3, 
1544,  and  were  made  public  in  1546,  whereby  all  the  rights 
and  liberties  of  the  Jews  were  confirmed. 

Nor  was  there  any  lack  of  condemnation  of  these  two 
writings  of  Luther  at  the  hands  of  the  Protestants  them 
selves. 

On  Dec.  8,  1543,  Bullinger  of  Zurich  made  to  Bucer  his  com 
plaint  'already  referred  to,  concerning  the  "lewd  and  houndish 
eloquence  "  of  the  Wittenberger  ;  he  adds  that  such  effusions 
were  unseemly  in  a  theologian  already  advanced  in  years  ;  no  one 
could  tolerate  a  work  so  obscenely  ("  impurissime  ")  written,  as 
"  Vom  Schem  Hamphoras  "  ;  Reuchlin,  were  he  still  alive,  would 
declare,  that,  in  Luther,  all  the  old  foes  of  the  Jews — Tungern, 
Hoogstraaten  and  Pfefferkorn — had  come  to  life  again  [though 
their  language  fell  short  of  Luther's]  :  he  was  sorry  for  Luther's 
murderous  hatred  of  the  Hebrew  commentators  and  for  the  undue 
stress  he  laid  on  his  own  German  translation,  which  was  far  from 
being  devoid  of  prejudice.3  Bullinger  expressed  himself  much 
more  strongly,  in  1545,  when  the  split  between  Zurich  and 
Wittenberg  had  been  accentuated  by  Luther's  "  Kurtz  Bekent- 
nis  "  :  No  one  writing  on  questions  of  faith  and  matters  of  grave 
importance  had  ever  expressed  himself  in  a  way  so  utterly  at 
variance  with  propriety  and  modesty  as  Luther,  etc.4 

1  P.  182.     "  Von  den  Juden." 

2  Enders,  "  Luthers  Briefwechsel,"  11,  p.  242. 

3  Cp.  above,  vol.  iv.,  p.  325  f.     Lenz,  "  Briefwechsel  Philipps  von 
Hessen  rait  Bucer,"  2,  p.  224,  and  Lewin,  ib.,  p.  98.    The  latter,  though 
a  Rabbi,  does  not  mind  letting  his  opponents,  Luther  included,  speak 
for  themselves. — Bullinger  in  the  letter  in  question  says  of  Luther's 
third  writing  against  the  Jews,  viz.  his  "  On  the  Last  Words  of  David  "  : 
"  Everyone  must  be  astonished  at  the  harsh  and  presumptuous  spirit 
of  the  man  so  haughtily  displayed  in  the  '  Last  Words  of  David.'    That 
such  a  theologian,  after  having  arrived  at  his  years,  should,  be  guilty  of 
such  extravagant  acts  and  writings  is  a  matter  that  can  only  be  left  to 
the  just  Judgment  of  God.     The  opinion  of  posterity  will  be  that 
Luther  was  not  only  a  man,  but  a  man  ruled  by  criminal  passions." 

4  Cp.  above,  p.  115,  and  vol.  iv.,  p.  325.    Dollinger,  "  Reformation," 
3,  p.  262  f. 


410          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

The  Nuremberg  preacher,  Andreas  Osiander,  at  that  time  one 
of  the  greatest  authorities  on  Hebrew  and  on  Rabbinic  writings, 
wrote  so  strong  a  letter  about  the  untruth  of  certain  of  Luther's 
anti- Jewish  strictures  that  no  one  ventured  to  bring  it  under  the 
Reformer's  notice.  Cruciger  relates  that  Osiander  afterwards 
withdrew  some  of  the  strongest  things  he  had  said  in  the  letter, 
but  that  he  still  maintained  that  Luther  had  not  in  the  least 
understood  what  the  Shem  Hammephorash  meant  to  educated 
Jews. l 

The  Shem  Hammephorash  or  "  peculiar  name  "  was, 
according  to  Luther,  a  cabalistic  formula  of  the  Jews, 
supposed  to  be  endowed  with  the  most  marvellous  magic 
power  ;  it  was  made  up  of  seventy-two  three-lettered  names 
of  angels,  themselves  formed  from  a  rearrangement  of  the 
letters  of  the  Scripture  text,  Ex.  xiv.  19-21,  concerning  the 
pillar  of  cloud  that  went  before  the  Jews  on  their  departure 
from  Egypt.  To  each  of  these  angelic  names  was  appended 
a  verse  from  the  Psalter  with  the  "  great  name  of  God, 
Jehovah,  also  called  the  Tetragrammaton."  So  great  was 
the  power  of  this  magic  formula  that  it  could  strike  blind  or 
dumb  all  Christians  everywhere  in  the  world,  could  drive 
them  mad,  nay,  kill  them  outright,  if  only  the  words  were 
rightly  uttered  arid  in  a  mood  pious  enough.  Even  the 
superstitious  use  of  the  Tetragrammaton  alone,  was,  accord 
ing  to  Luther,  responsible,  in  the  case  "  of  the  devil  and  the 
Jews,"  for  "  much  sorcery  and  all  kinds  of  abuse  and 
idolatry."  2  They  call  it  the  Tetragrammaton  because  they 
are  chary  of  pronouncing  the  four  consonants  of  the  all-too- 
sacred  name  of  Jehovah,  but,  "  in  their  heart  they  abuse 
and  blaspheme  God."  They  do  not  see  that  they  are  "  using 
the  Holy  Name  in  the  shameful  abuse  they  practise  with 
their  4  Scham  Hamperes.'  "3 

The  cause  of  the  mad  aberrations  of  the  Jews  is,  however, 
in  Luther's  eyes,  due  to  the  "  Word  of  God  not  enlightening 
them  and  showing  them  the  way."  Now,  however,  God's 
Word  has  risen  and  shines  brightly  ;  it  even  casts  its  beam 
into  those  parts  where  the  Papacy  reigns  .  .  .  for  there 
"  thick  darkness,  lies  and  abominations  were  worshipped 
with  Masses,  Purgatory,  Invocation  of  Saints,  monkery  and 
one's  own  works."4  It  was  a  great  and  godly  work  that  he 

1  Lewin,  ib.,  p.  99  f.        2  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  32,  p.  291  ff.,  296,  305. 
3  Ib.,  p.  308.     On  the  indecent  meaning  of  '  Scham  Hamperes,'  see 
above,  p.  406.  4  P.  309. 


ON   THE   JEWS  411 

had  undertaken  in  unmasking  not  only  these  but  also  the 
many  Jewish  abominations. 

As  to  the  sources  whence  Luther  derived  his  information, 
he  uncritically  took  his  material  mainly  from  anti-Jewish 
writings.  The  book  "  Victoria  adversus  impios  Hebrceos  "  of 
the  Carthusian,  Porchetus  de  Salvaticis,  dating  from  the 
beginning  of  the  14th  century,  provided  him  with  the 
Jewish  blasphemies  against  Christ,  and  in  particular  with 
the  supposed  mysteries  of  the  Shem  Hammephorash ; 
Antonius  Margaritha  supplied  him  with  more  recent  material 
in  his  work  "  Der  gantz  jiidisch  Glaub  "  of  1530.  It  is 
probable  that  he  also  made  use  of  the  "  Dialogus  "  against 
the  Jews  by  Paul  of  Burgos  (1350-1435),  which  he  quotes  in 
his  lectures  on  Genesis.  He  also  mentions  incidentally  as  his 
authorities  Jerome,  Eusebius,  and  Sebastian  Minister.1 

Comparison  with  an  earlier  Jewish  writing  of  Luther's 

A  more  accurate  insight  into  the  psychological  and 
historical  significance  of  the  two  screeds  against  Judaism  is 
obtained  by  comparing  them  with  an  earlier  writing  of 
Luther's,  dating  from  1523,  which  is  perfectly  fair  to  the 
Jews.  The  comparison  will  lead  the  reader  to  ask  what  was 
the  real  reason  for  his  extraordinary  change  of  attitude. 

Filled  as  yet  with  great  and  unrealisable  hopes  of  that 
conversion  of  the  whole  Jewish  race  which  he  fancied  he  saw 
coming,  Luther  had,  in  1523,  published  a  booklet  entitled 
"  Das  Jhesus  Christus  eyn  geborner  Jude  sey."2 

In  it  he  points  out  that  the  Jews  were  blood-relations,  cousins 
and  kinsmen  of  the  Saviour.  No  other  people,  so  he  warmly 
declared,  had  been  so  marked  out  by  God,  hence  they  must  be 
dealt  with  amicably  and  soberly  instructed  out  of  Holy  Scripture 
and  not  be  scared  away  by  pride  and  contempt,  as  had  hitherto 
been  the  wont  ;  the  fools,  Popes,  bishops,  sophists  and  monks, 
the  great  dunderheads,  had  hitherto  indeed  behaved  in  such  a 
way  that  any  good  Christian  would  have  preferred  to  become  a 
Jew.  Hence  he  exerts  himself  in  this  work,  in  a  calm  and  friendly 
way,  to  prove  to  the  Jews  from  the  Bible,  that  their  Messias  had 
already  come.  At  the  same  time  he  indignantly  scourges  "the 
lying  tales  "  and  false  charges  brought  against  them,  as  for 
instance,  that,  "  to  repress  their  stench  they  must  have  the 

1  For  further  particulars,  see  Lewin,  op.  cit.,  p.  86. 

2  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  11,  p.  314  ff.  ;   Erl.  ed.,  29,  p.  45  ff. 


412          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

blood  of  Christians."  The  main  thing  was  to  treat  them  accord 
ing  to  Christian,  not  Popish,  charity. 

So  far  was  he  disposed  to  go  the  better  to  win  over  the  Jews, 
that  he  was  even  desirous  that  Christ  should  not  at  the  outset 
be  put  before  them  as  the  God-man,  but  merely  as  the  Messias. 
He  also  declared  in  a  sermon  shortly  after,  that;  when  instruct 
ing  a  Jew  on  Christ,  the  catechumen  was  only  to  be  told  that 
Christ  was  a  man  like  other  m,en,  sent  by  God  to  do  good  to 
mankind  ;  only  when  the  heart  had  been  stirred  to  love  of  Him 
was  mention  to  be  made  of  His  Godhead.1 

"  The  Jews  merely  interest  him,"  says  Reinhold  Lewin,  speak 
ing  of  this  book,  "  as  subjects  for  conversion ;  this  is  the  stand 
point  from  which  he  regards  the  whole  Jewish  question."  "  Should 
the  new  method  not  succeed  and  kindness  prove  of  no  avail  .  .  . 
then  it  will  not  be  worth  while  any  longer  to  make  use  of  it  ; 
harsher  measures  will  then  serve  the  purpose  better."2  The  same 
writer  also  quotes  the  preface  to  the  Latin  translation  by  Justus 
Jonas  as  expressive  of  the  wish  of  the  Wittenbergers  :  "  May 
the  Jewish  business  speed  its  way  as  rapidly  as  the  outspreading 
of  the  Word  of  God  which  has  wrought  so  marvellous  a  change 
and  so  sublime  a  work  of  God."3 

It  is  perfectly  true  that,  had  the  optimistic  expectations 
of  Luther  and  his  friends  been  realised,  it  would  have  been 
of  incalculable  advantage  to  their  cause,  for  they  would 
have  succeeded  where  the  ancient  Church  had  failed.  "  The 
conversion  of  the  Jews,"  says  Lewin,  "  an  idea  which  can  be 
read  between  Luther's  lines  without  any  danger  of  forcing 
them — is  to  be  the  coping-stone  of  the  grand  edifice  he  had 
erected  ;  the  Papacy  [in  Luther's  view]  had  failed,  not 
merely  because  it  had  recourse  to  wrong  methods  but  above 
all  because  its  foundations  rested  on  forgery  and  falsehood."4 

The  fact  is,  however,  that  no  increase  in  the  number  of 
conversions  took  place.  This  disappointing  experience,  the 
sight  of  the  growing  insolence  of  the  Jews,  their  pride  and 
usury,  not  to  speak  of  personal  motives,  such  as  certain 
attempts  he  suspected  them  to  have  made  on  his  life  at  the 
instigation  of  the  Papists,  brought  about  a  complete  change 
in  Luther's  opinions  in  the  course  of  a  few  years.  As  early 
as  1531  or  1532,  when  a  Hebrew  baptised  at  Wittenberg  had 
brought  discredit  upon  him  by  relapsing  into  Judaism,  he 

1  Sermon  of  Feb.  14,  1524,  ib.,  15,  p.  447  =  65,  p.  125  f.  :  He  would 
"  tell  them  that  He  [Christ]  was  a  man  like  any  other  man,  sent  by 
God "  ;  after  this  he  would  lead  the  would-be  converts  further. 
Lewin,  ib.,  p.  36.  2  Lewin,  ib.,  p.  31. 

3  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  11,  p.  309  f.  ;  Kawerau,  "  Briefwechsel 
des  Jonas,"  1,  p.  92  f.  4  P.  36. 


ON   THE   JEWS  413 

gave  vent  to  the  angry  threat,  that,  should  he  find  another 
pious  Jew  to  baptise  he  would  take  him  to  the  bridge  over 
the  Elbe,  hang  a  stone  round  his  neck  and  push  him  over 
with  the  words  :  I  baptise  thee  in  the  name  of  Abraham  ; 
for  "  those  scoundrels,"  so  he  adds,  "  scoff  at  us  all  and  at 
our  religion."1 

From  that  time  he  begins  to  put  the  Jews  in  the  same 
category  with  the  Turks  and  the  Papists. 

The  more  he  studies  the  text  of  the  Old  Testament,  and 
the  Old  Jewish  commentators,  the  more  indignant  he  grows 
at  the  misrepresentations  and  trivialities  to  be  met  with  in 
the  works  of  the  Rabbis.  According  to  him,  they  are  oxen 
and  donkeys  ;  they  are  as  bad  as  the  monks  ;  with  their 
droppings  they  make  of  Holy  Scripture,  as  it  were,  a  sink 
into  which  to  empty  their  obscenity  and  stupid  imaginings.2 
He  is  also  aghast  to  discover  that  they  led  astray  even  great 
churchmen  like  St.  Jerome,  and  Nicholas  of  Lyra  of  whom  he 
was  particularly  fond.3  What  was  even  worse,  they  were 
ensnaring  learned  contemporaries  who  were  familiar  with 
Hebrew,  particularly  those  who  fancied  they  could  improve 
upon  Luther's  translation  of  the  Old  Testament  thanks  to 
their  closer  acquaintance  with  the  original  text,  men,  for 
instance,  of  the  type  of  Sebastian  Miinster  of  Basle  (the 
pupil  of  the  Jewish  grammarian  Elia  Levita).  Miinster, 
according  to  Luther,  was  a  regular  "  Judaiser,"  seeing  that 
he  paid  heed  neither  to  the  faith,  nor  to  the  words,  nor  to 
their  setting  ;  albeit  hostile  to  the  Jews,  he,  too,  was  under 
mining  the  New  Testament.  Much  of  Luther's  anger  in  his 
writings  against  the  Jews  was  intended  for  their  Judaising 
pupils.  Hence  on  the  publication  of  the  work  "  Von  den 
Jiiden  und  jren  Liigen  "  we  hear  him  declaring  :  "  We 
have  been  at  great  pains  with  the  Bible  and  been  careful 
that  the  sense  should  agree  with  the  grammar.  This  has  not 
pleased  Minister.  Oh,  those  Hebrews — including  even  our 
own — are  great  Judaisers  ;  hence  I  had  them  also  in  mind 
when  I  wrote  my  booklet  against  the  Jews."4 

1  Cordatus,   "  Tagebuch,"  p.   196.     Schlaginhaufen,   "  Aufzeichn.," 
p.    131.     In  both  the    passage    begins  :     "  Should   I  again  baptise  a 
Jew,"  thus   pointing  to  an  unfortunate  experience  of  Luther's  own, 
which  is  related  more  in  detail  in  Schlaginhaufen's  report.     In  the 
corresponding  passage  in  "Colloq.,"  ed.,  Bindseil,  1,  p.  460,  we  read 
further  :    "  sicut  fecit  ille,  qui  hie  Wittebergce  baptizabatur." 

2  Passages  in  Lewin,  ib.,  p.  91.  3  Ib.,  p.  57. 
4  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  296. 


414          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

Some  special  motives  for  his  Polemics  against  the  Jews 

The  real  cause  of  Luther's  deadly  hostility,  voiced  in  his 
later  writings  against  the  Jews,  was  the  blasphemous 
infidelity  displayed  in  their  treatment  of  Scripture  and  in 
their  life  as  a  whole. 

"  The  Jews  with  their  exegesis,"  he  says,  "  are  like  swine 
that  break  into  the  Scripture  "  ;  the  end  and  object  of  their 
Jife  and  intercourse  with  us,  is,  as  the  movement  started  in 
Moravia  proves,  to  make  us  all  Jews  ;  "  they  never  cease~ 
trying  to  entice  Christians  over."1  They  are  quite  at  liberty 
to  prefer,  as  indeed  they  do,  the  law  of  Moses  to  the  Papal 
decretals  and  their  mad  articles,2  but  they  have  no  right 
to  prefer  it  to  the  pure  Evangel.  Sooner  than  this  let  us  have 
a  struggle  to  the  death  ! — Such  were  the  thoughts  uppermost 
in  his  mind  when  he  sat  down  to  pen  those  two  writings 
which  constitute  a  phenomenon  in  the  history  of  literature. 

On  the  other  hand,  Luther's  most  recent  biographer  is 
wrong  when  he  explains  the  whole  controversy  by  saying  : 
"  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  radical  change  in  his 
attitude  on  the  Jewish  question  was  an  outcome  of  his 
increasing  depression."3  That,  on  the  contrary,  it  was 
Luther's  religious  excitement  which  was  the  prime  psycho 
logical  mover  is  plain  from  many  of  the  effusions  contained 
in  both  these  writings.  That,  however,  his  state  of  depression, 
had  some  share  in  it  is  perfectly  true. 

"  The  wrath  of  God  has  come  upon  them,"  he  writes  in  one 
such  passage,  "  of  which  I  do  not  like  to  think,  nor  has  this  book 
been  a  cheerful  one  for  me  to  write,  for  I  have  been  forced  to 
avert  my  eyes  from  the  terrible  picture,  sometimes  in  anger, 
sometimes  in  scorn  ;  and  it  is  painful  to  me  to  have  to  speak  of 
their  horrible  blasphemies  against  our  Lord  and  His  dear  Mother, 
to  which  we  Christians  are  loath  indeed  to  listen  ;  I  can  well 
understand  what  St.  Paul  means  in  Romans  x.  1,  when  he  says 
that  his  heart  was  sore  when  he  thought  of  them  ;  such  is  the 
case  with  every  Christian  who  earnestly  dwells,  not  on  the 
temporal  misery  and  misfortune  of  which  the  Jews  complain,  but 
on  their  addiction  to  blasphemy,  to  cursing,  to  spitting  at  God 
Himself  and  all  that  is  God's,  even  to  their  eternal  damnation,  and 
who  yet  refuse  to  listen  or  lend  an  ear  but  will  have  it  that  all 

1  "Werke,"   Erl.   ed.,    32,  p.    100.      "Von  den  Jiiden."      Cp.   the 
quotations  given  by  Lewin,  p.  89,  n.  3. 

2  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  44,  p.  363  ft.     Sermon  of  Sept.  25,  1539. 

3  Hausrath,  "  Luthers  Leben,"  2,  p.  442.     But  cp.  p.  445. 


ON   THE   JEWS  415 

they  do  is  done  out  of  zeal  for  God.  O  God,  our  Heavenly  Father, 
turn  aside  Thy  wrath  and  let  there  be  an  end  of  it  for  the  sake  of 
Thy  dear  Son.  Amen."1 

"  O  my  God,"  he  groans  elsewhere,  "  my  beloved  Creator  and 
Father,  do  Thou  graciously  take  into  account  my  unwillingness 
to  have  to  speak  so  shamefully  of  Thine  accursed  enemies,  the 
devil  and  the  Jews.  Thou  knowest  I  do  so  out  of  the  ardour  of 
my  faith  and  to  the  glory  of  Thy  Divine  Majesty,  for  it  pierces  me 
very  quick."2 

If,  however,  we  look  more  closely  into  the  matter  we  shall 
see  that  the  "  ardour  of  his  faith  "  was  also  fed  from  other 
sources.  There  was,  for  instance,  the  reaction  of  his  own 
protracted  struggle  in  defence  of  the  new  doctrines  and 
against  the  Papacy,  a  struggle  which  left  deep  marks  on  all 
his  labours  and  on  all  his  writings. 

Towards  the  end  of  a  career  which  had  worked  such  untold 
disaster  to  the  Christianity  of  the  past  he  feels  keenly  the 
need  of  vindicating  the  dignity  of  Christ  if  only  to  soothe  his 
own  conscience  ;  he  was  resolved  to  hammer  it  in  with  the 
utmost  defiance,  just  as  formerly  he  had  clung  to  the  idea 
that,  by  his  doctrine,  he  was  defending  the  rights  of  Christ 
against  the  Pope.  He  is  now  resolved  again  to  take  his 
stand  on  this,  his  efforts  becoming  the  more  violent  the  more 
the  sight  of  the  ruin  wrought  by  his  own  work  affrights  him. 
Hence  his  eagerness  to  take  advantage  of  Jewish  attacks  on 
the  pillars  of  the  faith  in  order,  while  triumphing  over  them, 
to  enjoy  the  sense  of  his  comradeship  with  Christ,  the  Son  of 
God  now  so  soon  to  come  in  Judgment.  Here  again  he 
allows  his  vanity  to  mislead  him  and  to  paint  his  inter 
vention  on  behalf  of  the  great  truth  of  Christianity  as  far 
more  successful  than  that  of  any  of  the  Popes  ;  this  helps 
him  to  close  his  eyes  to  the  wounds  which  the  inner  voice 
tells  him  he  had  inflicted  on  the  Christian  truths  and  on  the 
public  life  of  Christendom.  For  was  he  not  doing  for  Christ 
what  the  Pope  was  quite  unable  to  do  ?  Indeed,  "  the  world, 
the  Turk,  the  Jew  and  the  Pope  are  all  raging  blasphem 
ously  against  the  name  of  the  Lord,  laying  waste  His 
Kingdom  and  deriding  His  Will ;  but  c  greater  is  He  that  is 
with  us  than  he  that  is  with  the  world  '  ;  He  triumphs,"  so 
he  wrote  at  that  time  to  some  foreign  sympathisers,  "  and 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  32,  p.   259.     "  Von  den  Jiiden."     Cp.  above, 
vol.  iv.,  p.  265. 

2  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  32,  p.  303.     "  Vom  Schem  Hamphoras." 


416          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

will  triumph  in  you  to  all  eternity  ;  may  He  console  you  by 
His  Holy  Spirit  in  which  He  has  called  you  to  oneness  with 
His  Body."1 

It  is  true,  so  he  says  elsewhere,  that  the  Pope  admits  the 
existence  of  Christ,  but,  in  spite  of  this,  neither  Jews  nor  Turks 
are  quite  so  bad  ;  the  Jews  have  far  better  arguments  than  the 
Papists  for  themselves  and  their  religion  ;  the  foundations  of  the 
latter  are  easily  shaken  ;  the  Papist  Church  is  a  worse  "  den  of 
murderers  "  than  Turks,  Tartars,  or  Jews.2 

All  the  more  glorious  and  creditable  to  the  new  Evangel  is 
therefore  the  victory  won  by  Luther  over  the  Jews  ;  it  may  serve 
to"  show  the  world  that  his  school's  study  of  the  Bible  could 
furnish  the  weapons  ;o  bring  about  such  a  result.  The  Pope,  with 
his  unbiblical  treatment  of  the  Jews,  had  merely  succeeded  in 
making  them  doubly  un-Christian  ;  but  to  us  God  has  unlocked 
the  Holy  Books,  hence  on  us  devolves  the  duty  of  pointing  out 
to  the  Jews  their  errors.3  Luther  accordingly  claims,  that  his 
"  Von  den  Jiiden  "  was  the  first  real  work  of  instruction  on  Juda 
ism,  one  which  "might  teach  us  Germans  from  history  what  a 
Jew  is  and  warn  our  Christians  against  them  as  against  veriest 
devils."  It  was  only  fitting  that  he  who  had  unearthed  Scripture 
should  also  "  wipe  clean  the  holy  old  Bible  from  Jewish  '  Ham- 
peres  '  and  '  Judas-water.'  "4 

Nevertheless  everything  else — even  his  yeoman  service  in 
the  cause  of  the  Bible,  and  his  shaming  of  the  Papacy,  which 
had  so  ineffectively  struggled  against  the  Jews — recedes  into 
the  background  before  his  determination  to  crown  his  whole 
lifework  by  snatching  from  the  Jewish  devil  the  honour  of 
Christ  our  one  Salvation. 

This  was  admittedly  his  motive  for  taking  up  his  pen  yet 
a  third  time. 

The  Third  Work  against  the  Jews,  1543 

As  early  as  June,  1543,  Luther  was  engaged  on  a  new 
polemical  work  against  the  Jews  entitled  "  On  the  last  words 
of  David."5  It  is  a  lengthy  essay  on  2  Kings  xxiii.  1-7,. 

1  "  To  the  venerable  brothers  at  Venice,  Vicenza,  and  Treviso," 
June  13,  1543,  "  Briefe,"  ed.  De  Wette,  5,  p.  569  :    "  Mundus,  Turca, 
ludaeus,  Papa  furunt  blasphemando  noinen  Domini,  vastando  regnum 
eius"  etc. 

2  Lewin,  "  Luthers  Stellung  zu  den  Juden,"  p.  45,  ns.  2,  3,  4.     Cp. 
the  "  murderers'  den  "  in  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  26,  p.  40. 

3  Lewin,  ib.,  p.  77. 

4  Ib.,  p.  72.    In  "  Vom  Schem  Hamphoras."     See  above,  p.  406. 

5  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  37,  p.  1  ff. 


THE   TURKS  417 

and  certain  other  striking  passages,  with  the  object  of 
proving  that  the  Messias  was  to  be  a  God-man  and  of 
vindicating  the  mystery  of  the  Trinity. 

He  intended  to  show  by  these  examples  how  helpful  Hebrew 
learning  and  Bible  study  can  be  in  defending  Scripture  against 
the  attacks  of  unbelievers  ;  he  also  wanted  to  establish  that 
neither  Jews  nor  Papists  possessed  the  real  key  to  the  Bible,  viz. 
the  knowledge  of  Christ  ;  "  for  in  this  all  sticks,  and  lies,  and 
rests  :  Whosoever  has  not  or  will  not  have  this  man  called  Jesus 
Christ,  the  Son  of  God,  whom  we  Christians  preach  [the  new 
Evangel  undefiled],  let  him  avoid  the  Bible  ;  such  is  my 
conscientious  advice,  else  he  will  certainly  come  a  cropper,  and 
become  ever  blinder  and  more  crazy  the  more  he  studies."1 

In  David's  final  words  on  the  Messias,  Luther  saw  something 
peculiarly  solemn  ;  David,  when  "  about  to  die  and  depart," 
gives  his  parting  injunction  and  adds  :  "  This  is  my  firm  belief  ; 
on  this  I  stand  fast  and  immoveable.  .  .  .  Hence  I  am  joyful, 
and  will  gladly  live  or  die  as  and  when  God  wills."2 

"  Whoever  can  boast  [like  David]  that  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord 
speaks  through  him,  and  that  His  word  is  on  his  tongue,  must 
indeed  be  very  sure  of  his  cause."3 

In  this  writing  the  Jews  are  not  attacked  in  such  un 
measured  language  as  in  the  two  others  just  considered  ; 
Hie  tone  of  the  whole  is  much  calmer,  indeed  comparatively 
kind.  It  may  be  that  the  representations  made  to  him 
concerning  his  violence  had  not  been  without  some  effect. 

The  end,  like  the  beginning,  expresses  the  wish  that, 
without  suffering  ourselves  to  be  led  astray  by  the  false 
readings  of  the  Jews,  we  should  "  plainly  and  clearly  find 
and  recognise  our  dear  Lord  and  Saviour  in  Holy  Writ."4 
This  is  what  leads  Melanchthon  to  praise  the  work  as  enjoy 
able  reading,  because  there  is  nothing  sweeter  to  the  pious 
than  to  deepen  their  knowledge  of  the  God-man  and  to  learn 
the  art  of  real  prayer  so  different  from  that  of  the  heathen, 
the  Jew  and  the  Turk.5 

Against  the  Turks 

The  honour  of  Christianity  and  of  its  Divine  Founder  was 
also  what  Luther  had  at  heart  in  the  two  books  which  in  his 
later  years  he  was  instrumental  in  publishing  against  the 
Turks,  viz.  his  "  Vermanunge  zum  Gebet  wider  den  Tiircken" 

1  Ib.,  p.  3.  2  P.  6  f.  3  P.  11.  4  P.  104. 

5  "  Corp.  ref.,"  5,  p.  164  sq.    Lewin,  op.  cit.,  p.  106. 

v.— 2  E 


418          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

(1541)  and  his  new  edition  (1542)  of  an  old  work  against  the 
Koran,  the  "  Verlegung  des  Alcoran  Bruder  Richardi." 

In  one  passage  of  the  Vermanunge  he  even  couches  this 
thought  in  the  form  of  a  prayer  : 

"  Yes,  indeed,  this  is  our  offence  against  them  [the  Turks], 
that  we  preach,  believe  and  confess  Thee,  God  the  Father,  as  the 
only  True  God,  and  Thy  Beloved  Son  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  and 
the  Holy  Ghost  as  one  eternal  God."  "Thou  knowest,  God  the 
Father  Almighty,  that  we  have  not  sinned  in  any  other  way 
against  the  devil,  Pope  or  Turk  and  that  they  have  no  right  or 
power  to  punish  us."  Most  fervently,  as  in  the  very  presence  of 
God,  he  declares  that  he  must  withstand  the  devil  who  is  helping 
the  Turk  to  set  up  "  his  Mahmed  in  the  stead  of  Jesus  Christ  Thy 
Beloved  Son."1  Speaking  of  prayer  against  the  Turk  he  makes 
every  Christian  say  to  God  :  "  Thou  tellest,  nay,  compellest,  me 
to  pray  in  the  name  of  Thy  Beloved  Son  Our  Lord  Jesus  Christ."2 

In  this  writing  he  strongly  reprobates  both  the  public 
disorders  on  the  side  of  the  new  Evangel  and  the  Papists' 
obstinate  resistance  to  the  Word  of  God  ;  both  would  be 
terribly  punished  by  means  of  the  Turks  unless  people  set 
about  amending  their  lives  and  giving  themselves  up  to 
earnest  prayer.  Now,  after  the  Evangel  had  been  preached 
for  so  many  years,  "  everyone  knew,  thank  God,  what  each 
class  and  individual  man  should  do  or  leave  undone,  which, 
alas,  formerly  we  did  not  know,  though  we  would  gladly  have 
done  it."3  Should  our  prayer  fail  to  achieve  the  desired 
object,  "  then  let  us  say  a  longer  and  a  better  one."  "  How 
happy  should  we  be  were  our  prayers  against  the  Turk  again 
to  prove  of  no  avail,  but,  instead,  the  Last  Day  came — which 
indeed  cannot  any  longer  be  far  off — spelling  the  end  of  both 
Turk  and  Pope  as  I  do  not  for  a  moment  doubt."4 

At  any  rate  Luther  might  have  used  better  weapons 
against  the  Turks  than  he  actually  did  in  this  so-called 
admonition. 

About  the  time  he  wrote  it  we  hear  Luther  occasionally 
expressing  a  hope  that  the  Turks  may  be  converted  to  the 
Evangel,  now  shining  so  brightly  and  convincingly. 

"  I  should  like  to  see  the  Evangel  make  its  way  amongst 
the  Turks,  which  may  indeed  very  well  happen."  "  It  is 
quite  in  God's  power  to  work  a  miracle  and  make  them  listen 
to  the  Evangel.  ...  If  a  c  Wascha  '  [Pasha]  were  to 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  32,  p.  89.  z  Ib.,  p.  87. 

3  Ib.,  p.  80.  4  76.,  p.  92. 


THE   TURKS  419 

accept  the  Gospel  we  should  soon  see  what  effect  it  would 
have  on  the  Grand  Turk  ;  and  as  he  has  many  sons  it  is 
quite  likely  one  of  them  might  reach  it." — He  despaired  of 
the  overthrow  of  the  Turkish  empire,  but  was  fond  of  dream 
ing  of  the  coming  of  a  "  good  man  who  should  withstand  the 
dogma  of  Mohamed."1 

"  The  Turk  rules  more  mightily  by  his  religion  than  by 
arms  "  ;  such  was  Luther's  opinion.  He  had  to  be  con 
fronted  with  the  belief  in  Christ,  that  belief  which  Luther 
had  learnt  "  amidst  the  bitter  pangs  of  death,"  viz.  "  that 
Christ  is  God  "  ;  in  great  temptations  nothing  could  help 
us  but  this  faith,  "  the  most  powerful  consolation  that  is 
bestowed  on  us  "  ;  this  same  article  of  faith  God  was 
vindicating,  even  by  miracles,  against  Turk  and  Pope.  To 
this  he  too  would  cleave  in  spite  of  any  objections  of 
reason.2 

He  did  not,  however,  patiently  wait  till  the  "  good  man  " 
came  who  was  to  oppose  the  dogma  of  the  Turks  ;  he  him 
self  set  about  this  undertaking  in  March,  1542.3  After  having, 
shortly  before,  become  acquainted  with  the  Koran  in  a  poor 
translation,  he  proceeded  himself  to  translate  into  German 
a  work  against  the  Koran,  written  in  1300,  by  the  Dominican 
Richardus  (Ricoldus).  To  it  he  appended  a  preface  of  his 
own  and  a  "  Treue  Warming."4 

He  had  undertaken,  so  he  says,  to  disclose  and  answer  the 
devil-inspired  "  infamies  "  contained  in  the  Alcoran,  "  the 
better  to  strengthen  us  in  our  Christian  faith."5 — This  out- 
of-date  book  of  a  mediaeval  theologian  was,  however,  hardly 
the  work  to  furnish  an  insight  into  the  Koran,  particularly 
as  it  built  far  too  much  on  badly  read  texts  and  doubtful 
st®ries  uncritically  taken  for  granted  ;  from  such  defects  the 
refutation  was  bound  to  suffer. 

Some  of  Lubher's  own  additions  are  characteristic. 

Here  he  gives  up  all  hope  of  any  conversion  of  the  Moslem  ;  he 
likewise  despairs  of  the  success  of  the  Christian  armies.6 — 
"  Mahmet,"  so  he  teaches,  "  leads  people  to  eternal  damnation 

1  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  301  f.     Winter  of  1542-43. 

2  /&.,  p.  149.    June,  1540. 

3  "  Versor  iam  in  transferendo  libro  qui  vocatur  Confutatio  Alcorani 
Mahumetis.     Deus  bone,  quanta  est  ira  tua  super  ecclesiam,  sed  maxime 
contra  Turcam  et  Mahumetem  f    Superat  fidem  bestialitas  Mahumetis.'''' 
To  Jakob  Probst,  March  26,  1542,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  452. 

4  Preface  and  Warming  in  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  65,  p.  189  ff. 

5  Ib.,  p.  200.     Warming.  s  j^ 


420          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

as  the  Pope  also  did  and  still  does."  He  reigns  "in  the  Levant" 
as  the  Pope  does  "  in  the  land  of  the  setting  sun,"  thanks  to  a 
system  of  "wilful  lying."1  "Oh,  Lord  God!  Let  all  who  can, 
pray,  sigh  and  implore  that  of  God's  anger  we  may  see  an  end," 
as  Daniel  says  (Dan.  xi.  36). 2 

Bad  as  Mahmet  was,  Luther  was  loath  to  see  in  him  Antichrist ; 
"  the  Pope,  whom  we  have  with  us,  he  is  the  real  Antichrist,  with 
his  '  Drecktal,'  Alcoran  and  man-made  doctrines."  "  The  chaste 
Pope  takes  no  wife,  but  all  women  are  his.  .  .  .  Obscene  Mahmet 
at  least  makes  no  pretence  of  chastity.  .  .  .  As  for  the  other 
points  such  as  murder,  avarice  and  pride,  I  will  not  enumerate 
them,  but  here  again  the  Pope  far  outdoes  Mahmet."  "  May 
God  give  us  His  grace  and  punish  both  the  Pope  and  Mahmet 
together  with  their  devils.  I  have  done  my  part  as  a  faithful 
prophet  and  preacher."3 

Words  such  as  these  were  certainly  as  little  calculated  to 
further  the  common  cause  of  the  Christians  against  the 
Turks  as  had  been  the  somewhat  similar  thoughts  which,  at 
an  earlier  date,  he  had  been  wont  to  weave  into  his  exhorta 
tions  to  resist  the  Turks.4 

As  a  last  straw  Luther  in  the  "  Treue  Warnung  "  goes  on 
to  declare,  that,  unless  Christians  mend  their  life,  are  con 
verted  to  the  Evangel  and  live  up  to  it,  it  is  to  be  hoped  that 
the  Turkish  arms  will  prove  victorious. 

For  amongst  those  who  "  pretend  to  be  Christians  and  to 
constitute  the  holy  Church  "  there  are,  so  he  declares,  so  many 
who  "  knowingly  and  wantonly  despise  and  persecute  the  known 
truth  and  vindicate  their  open  and  notorious  idolatry,  lying  and 
unrighteousness."  Such  Christians,  of  whom  the  forces  that  had 
been  raised  chiefly  consisted,  formed,  so  he  thought,  an  army 
which  might  itself  well  be  styled  Turkish.  "  If  then  two  such 
'Turkish'  armies  were  to  advance  against  one  another,  the  one 
called  Mahmetish  and  the  other  dubbing  itself  Christian,  then, 
good  friend,  I  should  suggest  you  might  give  Our  Lord  God 
some  advice,  for  He  would  assuredly  need  it,  as  to  which  Turks 
He  is  to  help  and  carry  to  victory.  I,  the  worst  of  advisers,  would 
counsel  Him  to  give  the  victory  to  the  Mahmetish  Turks  over  the 
Christian  Turks,  as  indeed  He  has  done  hitherto  without  any 
advice  from  us  and  even  contrary  to  our  prayers  and  complaints. 
The  reason  is,  that  the  Mahmetish  Turks  have  neither  God's 
Word  nor  those  who  might  preach  it.  ...  Had  they  preachers 
of  the  Godly  Word  they  might  perhaps,  some  of  them  at  least, 
be  presently  changed  from  swine  into  men.  But  our  Christian 
Turks  have  the  Word  of  God  and  preachers,  and  yet  they  refuse 
to  listen,  and  from  men  become  mere  swine.6 

1  16.,  p.  192.  2  P.  199.  3  P.  202  ff. 

*  Cp.  our  vol.  iii.,  pp.  78  ff.,  91  f.          5  "  Werke,"  ib.,  p.  196  f. 


"THE   PAPACY   PICTURED"        421 

The  public  danger  which  threatened  owing  to  the  advance 
of  the  Turks  caused  Luther,  however,  about  this  time  to 
promote  the  sale  of  the  Latin  translation  and  confutation  of 
the  Koran  brought  out  under  Melanchthon's  auspices  by 
Bibliander  (Buchmann)  of  Zurich.  In  a  popular  hymn  which 
he  composed  he  also  took  care  to  couple  the  Turkish  danger 
with  that  to  be  apprehended  from  the  Papists.  This  short 
hymn,  "  which  became  a  favourite  with  the  German  Evan 
gelicals  "  (Kostlin),  begins : 

"  In  Thy  Word  preserve  us,  Lord, 
Ward  off  Pope  and  Turkish  sword." 

The  picture  which  Luther  incidentally  paints  of  himself 
in  his  effusions  against  the  Jews  and  the  Turks,  receives  its 
final  touch  in  his  last  great  and  solemn  pronouncement 
against  Popery  which  the  lines  just  quoted  may  serve 
to  introduce. 

The  Hideous  Caricatures  of  "Popery  Pictured" 

One  cannot  contemplate  without  sadness  Luther's  last 
efforts  against  the  Papacy. 

Fortunately  for  literature  the  projected  continuation  of 
the  frightful  book  "  Wider  das  Bapstum  vom  Teuffel 
gestifft"  never  saw  the  light;  Luther's  intention  had  been 
to  make  it  even  worse  than  the  first  part. 

His  final  labours,  aimed  directly  at  the  Pope  and  the 
Council  of  Trent,  consisted  in  suggesting  the  subjects  and 
drafting  the  versified  letterpress  for  a  number  of  woodcuts, 
designed  expressly  to  ridicule  and  defame  the  Papal  office 
in  the  eyes  of  the  lower  classes.  Even  apart  from  the  verses 
the  caricatures  were  vulgar  enough  in  all  conscience. 
Nudities  in  the  grossest  postures  alternate  with  comicalities 
the  better  to  ensure  success  with  the  populace. 

An  attempt  has  been  made  to  exonerate  him  of  direct 
responsibility  for  the  pictures,  and  to  set  them  down  to  the 
account  of  the  draughtsman  who,  according  to  a  passage  in 
a  letter  of  Luther's,  was  believed  to  be  his  friend,  the  famous 
painter  Lucas  Cranach. 

That  the  whole  was  really  a  child  of  Luther's  own  mind 
is  proved,  however,  by  the  very  title-page  "  Popery 
Pictured  by  Dr.  M.  Luther,"  Wittenberg,  1545,  as  well  as  by 
his  clear  and  outspoken  statement  shortly  before  his  death 
to  Pastor  Matthias  Wanckel  of  Halle.  "  I  still  have  much 


422          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

that  ought  to  be  told  the  world  concerning  the  Pope  and  his 
kingdom,  and  for  this  reason  I  have  published  these  images 
and  figures,  each  of  which  stands  for  a  separate  book  to  be 
written  against  the  Pope  and  his  kingdom.  I  wanted  to 
witness  before  the  whole  world  what  I  thought  of  the  Pope 
and  his  devil's  kingdom  ;  let  them  be  my  last  Will  and 
Testament."  "  I  have  greatly  vexed  the  Pope  with  these 
nasty  pictures,"  "  Oh,  how  the  sow  will  lift  her  tail  !  But, 
even  should  they  kill  me,  they  must  gorge  on  the  filth  that 
the  Pope  holds  in  his  hand.  I  have  placed  a  golden  thing  in 
the  Pope's  hands  [i.e.  in  the  picture  to  be  described  im 
mediately]  that  he  may  pledge  them  in  it."1 — Again,  in  a 
letter  to  Amsdorf,  he  alludes  to  a  scene  in  which  the  Furies 
figure,  saying  that  he  had  designed  them  ("  appingerem  "), 
and  describing  in  detail  what  he  meant  the  figures  to  stand 
for.2 

Hence  it  is  impossible  to  contest  Luther's  real  authorship. 

It  is  true  that,  on  one  occasion,  he  speaks  of  Cranach  the 
painter  as  the  draughtsman  of  one  of  the  pictures  ;  he  may, 
however,  have  simply  meant  that  it  originated  in  his  studio. 
According  to  expert  opinion  the  technique  of  the  woodcuts 
differs  so  much  from  the  master's  that  they  cannot  be 
attributed  to  him  ;  they  may,  however,  have  been  executed 
by  one  of  his  pupils  under  his  direction.3 

We  may  now  glance  at  the  nine  pictures  which  make  up 
the  "  Abbildung  des  Bapstum,"  commencing  with  that  just 
referred  to.4 

1  This  he  said,  according  to  Wanckel's  Notes  in  the  Wittenberg 
copy  of  the  caricatures  ;   cp.  C.  Wendeler,  "  Archiv  f.  Literaturgesch.," 
14,  1,  1886,  p.  18  :    "  Et  sint  meum  testamentum."    From  "  Unschuldige 
Nachrichten,"  1712,  p.  951. 

2  May  8,  1545,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  740  :    "  De  tribus  furiis  nihil  habebam 
in  animo,  cum  eas  papce  appingerem,  nisi  ut  atrocitatem  abominationis 
papalis  atrocissimis  verbis  in  lingua  latina  exprimerem."     The  word 
"  appingere,"   of  course,  merely  means  that  he  suggested  the  scene. 
See  below,  p.  427  f. 

3  Cp.  P.  Lehfeldt,  "  Luthers  Verhaltnis  zu  Kunst  und  Kimstlern," 
Berlin,  1892.    This  writer  says,  p.  71  :    "  Unfortunately  our  knowledge 
of  Cranach  compels  us  to  say  that  the  pictures,  as  they  have  come  down 
to  us,  cannot  be  regarded  as  Cranach's  work,"  etc.     See  allusion  below 
to  "  Master  Lucas,"  p.  429. 

4  Copies  of  the  set  of  pictures  with  nine,  or  ten,  woodcuts  are  to 
be  found  in  the  Marienbibliothek  at  Halle,  in  the  Lutherhalle  at  Witten 
berg  and  in  the  Lutherbibliothek  at  Worms.     No.  562*  f.  28  in  the 
British  Museum  with  fourteen  pictures  is  a  rnade-up  copy,  four  cuts  of 
which  are  not  uniform  with  the  rest  of  the  set.     [Note  of  the  English 
Editor.] 


4 'THE   PAPACY  PICTURED"         423 

The  picture  with  the  Furies  to  which  Luther  refers  is  that 
which  represents  the  "  birth  and  origin  of  the  Pope,"  as  the  Latin 
superscription  describes  it.  Here  is  depicted,  in  a  peculiarly 
revolting  way,  what  Luther  says  in  his  "  Wider  das  Bapstum 
vom  Teuffel  gestifft,"  viz.  the  Pope's  being  born  from  the  "  devil's 
behind."  The  devil-mother  is  portrayed  as  a  hideous  woman  with 
a  tail,  from  under  which  Pope  and  Cardinals  are  emerging  head 
foremost.  Of  the  Furies  one  is  suckling,  another  carrying,  and 
the  third  rocking  the  cradle  of  the  Papal  infant,  whom  the 
draughtsman  everywhere  depicts  wearing  the  tiara.  These  are 
the  Furies  Megaera,  Alecto  and  Tisiphone.1 

Another  picture  shows  the  "  Worship  of  the  Pope  as  God  of  the 
World."  This,  too,  expresses  a  thought  contained  in  the  "  Wider 
das  Bapstum,"  where  Luther  says  :  "  We  may  also  with  a  safe 
conscience  take  to  the  closet  his  coat  of  arms  with  the  Papal  keys 
and  his  crown,  and  use  them  for  the  relief  of  nature."2  As  a 
matter  of  fact  in  this  picture  we  see  on  a  stool  decorated  with  the 
papal  insignia  a  crown  or  tiara  set  upside  down  on  which  a  man- 
at-arms  is  seated  in  the  action  of  easing  himself  ;  a  second,  with 
his  breeches  undone,  prepares  to  do  the  same,  while  a  third  who 
has  already  done  so  is  adjusting  his  dress. 

The  picture  with  the  title  "  The  Pope  gives  a  Council  in 
Germany  "  shows  the  Pope  in  his  tiara  riding  on  a  sow  and 
digging  his  spurs  into  her  sides.  The  sow  is  Germany  which  is 
obliged  to  submit  to  such  ignominious  treatment  from  the 
Papists  ;  as  for  the  Council  which  the  Pope  is  giving  to  the 
German  people  it  is  depicted  as  his  own,  the  Pope's,  excrement, 
which  he  holds  in  his  hand  pledging  the  Germans  in  it,  as  Luther 
says  in  the  passage  quoted  above  (p.  422).  The  Pope  blesses  the 
steaming  object  while  the  sow  noses  it  with  her  snout.  Under 
neath  stands  the  ribald  verse  : 

"  Sow,  I  want  to  have  a  ride, 
Spur  you  well  on  either  side. 
Did  you  say  '  Concilium '  ? 
Take  instead  my  '  merdrum.'  "3 

"  Here  the  Pope's  feet  are  kissed,"  are  the  words  over  another 
picture,  and,  from  the  Pope  who  is  seated  on  his  throne  with  the 
Bull  of  Excommunication  in  his  hand,  two  men  are  seen  running 
away,  showing  him,  as  Kostlin  says,  "  their  tongues  and  hinder 
parts  with  the  utmost  indecency."4  The  inscription  below  runs  : 

"  Pope,  don't  scare  us  so  with  your  ban  ; 
Please  don't  be  so  angry  a  man  ; 
Or  else  we  shall  take  good  care 
To  show  you  the  '  Belvedere.'  " 

1  Cp.  Kostlin,  "  M.  Luther  "2,  p.  614.    In  the  5th  edition  the  passage 
is  worded  otherwise. 

2  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  262,  p.  175. 

3  The  picture  in  Denifle- Weiss,  p.  840. 

4  "Martin  Luther"2,  p.  614,  without  the  verse.     The  5th  ed.,  2, 
p.  602,  again  runs  differently. 


424          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

Kostlin's  description  must  be  supplemented  by  adding  that  the 
two  men,  whose  faces  and  bared  posteriors  are  turned  towards 
the  Pope,  are  depicted  as  emitting  wind  in  his  direction  in  the 
shape  of  puffs  of  smoke  ;  from  the  Pope's  Bull  fire,  flames  and 
stones  are  bursting  forth. 

Of  the  remaining  woodcuts  one  reproduces  the  scene  which 
formed  the  title-page  to  the  first  edition  of  the  "  Wider  das 
Bapstum,"  viz.  the  gaping  jaws  of  hell,  between  the  teeth  of 
which  is  seen  the  Pope  surrounded  by  a  cohort  of  devils,  some  of 
whom  are  crowning  him  with  the  tiara  ;  another  portrays  the 
famous  Pope-Ass,  said  to  have  been  cast  up  by  the  Tiber  near 
Rome;  it  shows  "what  God  Himself  thinks  of  Popery,"1  yet 
another  depicts  a  pet  idea  of  Luther's,2  viz.  the  "  reward  of  the 
'  Papa  satanissimus  '  and  his  cardinals,"  i.e.  their  being  hanged, 
while  their  tongues,  which  had  been  torn  out  by  the  root,  are 
nailed  fast  to  the  gallows.  "  How  the  Pope  teaches  faith  and 
theology  "  ;  here  the  Pope  is  shown  as  a  robed  donkey  sitting 
upright  on  a  throne  and  playing  the  bagpipes  with  the  help  of 
his  hoofs.  "  How  the  Pope  thanks  the  Emperors  for  their 
boundless  favours  "  introduces  a  scene  where  Clement  IV  with 
his  own  hand  strikes  off  the  head  of  Conradin.  "  How  the 
Pope,  following  Peter's  example,  honours  the  King  "  is  the 
title  of  a  woodcut  where  a  Pope  (probably  Alexander  III)  sets 
his  foot  on  the  neck  of  the  Emperor  (Frederick  Barbarossa  at 
Venice).3  It  is  not  necessary  to  waste  words  on  the  notorious 
falsehoods  embodied  in  the  last  two  pictures.  Luther,  moreover, 
further  embellished  the  accounts  he  found,  for  not  even  the 
bitterest  antagonist  of  the  Papacy  had  ever  dared  to  accuse 
Clement  IV  of  having  slain  with  his  own  hand  the  last  of  the 
Staufens.  Among  the  ignorant  masses  to  whom  these  pictures 
and  verses  were  intended  to  appeal,  there  were,  nevertheless, 
many  who  were  prepared  to  accept  such  tales  as  true  on  the  word 
of  one  known  as  the  "  man  of  God,"  the  Evangelist,  the  new 
Elias  and  the  Prophet  of  Germany. 

In  the  "  Historien  des  ehrwirdigen  in  Gott  seligen  thewren 
Mannes  Gottes,"  Mathesius  says  of  Luther  :  "In  the  year  [15J45 
he  brought  out  the  Inighty,  earnest  book  against  the  Papacy 

1  See  vol.  iii.,  pp.  151  f.,  355  f.    The  picture  in  Denifle-Weiss,  p.  837. 

2  Cp.  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  262,  p.  177.    Above,  p.  3 83  f.— According  to 
the  Table-Talk  ("  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  60,  p.  239)  Luther  was  once  shown 
a  picture  of  the  Pope  being  hanged  on  his  keys.     Possibly  this  is  the 
same  caricature  of  the  Pope,  which,  according  to  Lauterbach's  "  Tage- 
buch,"  p.  64,  he  altered  and  amended  with  "  technce  veraces  et  odiosce  " 
on  Good  Friday,  1538.     It  has  no  connection  with  the  present  picture 
on  which  the  keys  do  not  appear. 

3  Luther  wrote  a  special  work  in   1545  on  the  supposed  deed  of 
Alexander  III.     Others  with  less  reason  take  the  picture  to  represent 
Gregory  VII  and  Henry  IV  ;  the  verses  are  of  quite  a  general  character. 
[Was   it   not   rather   suggested   by   an   incident   in    the   pontificate   of 
Alexander's  English  predecessor,  viz.  Adrian  IV  ?     Note  to  English 
Edition.] 


"THE   PAPACY   PICTURED"        425 

founded  by  the  devil  and  maintained  and  bolstered  up  by  lying 
signs,  and,  in  the  same  year,  also  caused  many  scathing  pictures 
to  be  struck  off  in  which  he  portrayed  for  the  benefit  of  those 
unable  to  read,  the  true  nature  and  monstrosity  of  Antichrist, 
just  as  the  Spirit  of  God  in  the  Apocalypse  of  St.  John  depicted 
the  red  bride  of  Babylon,  or  as  Master  John  Hus  summed  up  his 
teaching  in  pictures  for  the  people,  of  the  Lord  Christ  and  of 
Antichrist."  k'  The  Holy  Ghost  is  well  able  to  be  severe  and 
cutting,"  says  Mathesius  of  this  book  and  the  caricatures  :  "  God 
is  a  jealous  God  and  a  burning  fire,  and  those  who  are  driven  and 
inflamed  by  His  Spirit  to  wage  a  ghostly  warfare  against  the  foes 
of  God  show  themselves  worthy  foemen  of  those  who  withstand 
their  Lord  and  Saviour."1  Mathesius,  like  many  others,  was  full 
of  admiration  for  the  work. 

The  woodcuts  pleased  Luther  so  well  that  he  himself 
wrote  autograph  inscriptions  above  and  below  a  proof  set, 
and  hung  them  up  in  his  room.2 

"  The  devil  knows  well,  that,  when  the  foolish  people 
hear  high-sounding  words  of  abuse,  they  are  taken  in  and 
blindly  believe  them  without  asking  for  any  further  grounds 
or  reasons."  The  words  are  Luther's  own,  though  written  at 
an  earlier  date.3  That  they  applied  even  more  to  caricatures 
Luther  was  well  aware,  nor  was  this  the  first  time  that  he 
had  flung  such  pictures  amongst  the  masses  the  better  to 
excite  them.  As  early  as  1521,  at  Luther's  instigation,  with 
the  help  of  Cranach's  pencil,  Melanchthon  and  Schwertfeger 
had  done  something  of  the  sort  in  the  "  Passional  Christi 
und  Antichrist!."4  In  a  booklet  of  1526,  "  Das  Bapstum 
mit  seinen  Gliedern,"  containing  sixty-five  caricatures  and 
scurrilous  doggerel  verses  composed  by  Luther,  everything 
religious,  from  the  Pope  down  to  the  monks  and  nuns,  was 
held  up  to  ridicule.5 

The  use  of  caricature  was,  it  is  true,  not  unusual  in  those 
days  of  violent  controversy,  nor  were  Catholics  slow  to  have 
recourse  to  it  against  Luther  ;  Cochlseus,  for  instance,  in  his 
"  Lutherus  Septiceps  "  has  a  crude  illustration  of  a  figure 

1  Bl.  177'  and  178. 

2  Wendeler  (above,  p.  422,  n.  1),  p.  33.     Lehfeldt  (above,  p.  422, 
n.  3),  p.  71. 

3  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  26,  p.  170  ;    Erl.  ed.,  262,  p.  316,  in  "  Von 
der  Widdertauffe,"  1528. 

4  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  9,  p.  701  ff.    16.,  the  pictures.    This  ridicule 
of  the  Papacy  greatly  appealed  to  him  ("  mire  placet  "),  as  he  writes  to 
Melanchthon  on  May  26,  1521  ("  Brief wechsel,"  3,  p.  162). 

5  "  Werke,"  ib.,  19,  p.  7  ff.,  with  the  woodcuts  in  which  the  pig  plays 
a  part. 


426          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

with  seven  heads.  But  everything  of  this  nature,  his  own 
earlier  productions  included,  was  put  into  the  shade  by 
Luther's  final  pictures  of  the  Papacy. 

At  the  end  of  his  "  Wider  das  Bapstum  "  Luther  had  ventured 
to  hope  that  he  would  be  able  to  go  even  further  in  another 
booklet,  and,  that,  should  he  die  in  the  meantime,  God  would 
raise  up  another  man  who  would  "  make  things  a  thousand  times 
hotter."  His  threat  he  practically  carried  out  in  his  "  Popery 
Pictured,"  in  what  Paul  Lehfeldt  calls  his  "  highly  offensive  and 
revolting  woodcuts,"  which  "  certainly  made  things  a  thousand 
times  worse  seeing  the  appeal  they  made  to  the  imagination."1 
The  fact,  that,  "  in  spite  of  the  numerous  reprints,"  very  few 
copies  indeed  have  survived  is  attributed  by  Lehfeldt  to  the 
indignation  felt  in  both  camps,  Lutheran  and  Catholic,  which  led 
to  the  wholesale  destruction  of  the  book. 

So  pleased  was  the  Elector  of  Saxony  with  the  "  Wider  das 
Bapstum  "  that  he  helped  to  push  it  ;  he  bought  twenty  florins' 
worth  of  copies  and  had  them  distributed  ;  this  Luther  hastened 
to  tell  Amsdorf  with  all  the  greater  satisfaction,  seeing  that  he 
had  heard  that  others  were  expressing  their  disapproval  of  the 
book.2  It  may  be  that  the  Elector  also  helped  to  spread  the 
caricatures.  If  we  may  believe  a  sermon  by  Cyriacus  Spangen- 
berg,  some  of  Luther's  own  friends  nevertheless  made  representa 
tions  and  begged  him  "  to  desist  from  publishing  such  figures,  as  of 
late  he  had  caused  to  be  circulated  against  the  Pope." 3  Yet  three 
years  after  Luther's  death  the  fanatical  Flacius  Illyricus,  in  bring 
ing  out  a  new  edition  of  the  caricature  of  the  Pope  on  the  sow, 
with  a  fresh  description  of  it,  characterised  it  as  a  "prophetic 
picture  by  Elias  the  Third  of  blessed  memory,"  and  took  severely 
to  task  all  who  felt  otherwise.4  He  has  it,  that  "  Many  who  walk 
according  to  the  flesh  rather  than  in  the  wisdom,  piety  and  retire 
ment  of  the  spirit,  did  a  few  years  ago  [1545]  actually  dare  to  call 
these  and  certain  other  like  figures  shameless  prints,  and  fancies 
of  a  brainless  old  fool."  The  writer  thinks  he  has  proved,  that, 
"  far  from  being  an  outcome  of  wanton  stupidity  they  proceeded 
from  a  ghostly,  godly  wisdom  and  zeal."5 

Such  attempts  at  vindication  only  prove  that  Luther  was 
not  alone  in  allowing  himself  to  be  dominated,  and  his  mind 
darkened  by  such  morbid  fancies. 

The  psychology  reflected  in  these  much-debated  woodcuts 
deserves  more  careful  scrutiny. 

Those   undoubtedly   take  too   superficial   a   view  of  the 

1  Pp.  67,  69.  2  April  14,  1545,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  727. 

3  Wendeler,  p.  30.    From  Sermon  12  in  "  Lutherus  Theander,"  1569. 

4  "  Erklerung    der    schendlichen    Siinde    derjenigen,"    etc.      Eight 
pages,  1548.  5  Bl.  A2.    Denifle-Weiss,  p.  841. 


"THE   PAPACY   PICTURED"        427 

matter,  who,  in  their  desire  to  exonerate  Luther,  refuse  to 
see  in  these  caricatures  anything  more  than  the  exuberant 
effusions  of  ridicule  gone  mad.  On  the  other  hand,  some  of 
Luther's  enemies  are  no  less  wrong  in  failing  to  see  that  the 
indignation  which  speaks  from  these  drawings  is  meant  in 
bitter  earnest. 

If,  as  is  only  right,  we  view  this  frivolous  imagery  in  the 
light  of  Luther's  mental  state  at  the  time  and  of  his  whole 
attitude  then,  it  will  stand  out  as  a  sort  of  confession  of 
faith  on  the  part  of  the  author,  appalling  indeed,  but 
absolutely  truthful,  a  picture  of  his  deepest  thoughts  and 
feelings,  steeped  as  they  were  in  his  sombre  pseudo-mysti 
cism  and  devil-craze.  The  same  holds  good  likewise  of  the 
'  Wider  das  Bapstum  "  of  which  this  set  of  illustrations 
is  a  sort  of  supplement. 

The  revolting  images  which  rise  before  his  mind  like 
bubbles  to  the  surface  of  the  fermenting  tan,  seem  to  him 
so  true  to  fact  that  he  protests  that  the  cuts  are  in  no  sense 
defamatory  ;  "  should  anyone  feel  offended  or  hurt  in  his 
feelings  by  them  I  am  ready  to  answer  for  their  publication 
before  the  whole  Empire."1 

So  much  had  he  brooded  over  the  illustrations,  that,  as  is  shown 
by  his  answer  to  Amsdorf  concerning  the  Furies,  he  could 
describe  their  every  detail  with  an  enthusiasm  and  minuteness 
such  as  few  artists  could  equal,  even  when  descanting  on  their 
own  work.  In  the  midst  of  his  sufferings  of  body  and  mind  and 
of  all  his  toil,  he  finds  leisure  to  explain  to  his  friend  how  :  The 
first  Fury,  Megaera,  assists  at  the  birth  of  the  Pope-Antichrist, 
because  she  is  the  incarnation  of  hate  and  envy  and  thus  shows 
that  the  Pope  "  as  the  true  imitator,  nay,  ape,  of  Satan  hinders 
all  that  is  good  "  ;  the  second,  Alecto,  according  to  classic 
teaching,  has  the  special  task  of  symbolising  that  "  the  Pope 
works  all  that  is  evil  "  ;  in  this  he  is  helped  by  the  "  old  serpent 
of  Paradise  "  ;  the  latter  it  is  who  is  to  blame  for  all  the  mis 
fortunes  of  the  human  race  from  the  beginning,  and  for  still 
"  daily  filling  the  world  with  new  misfortunes  by  means  of  the 
Pope,  Mohamed,  the  Cardinals,  the  Archbishop  of  Mayence,  etc. ; 
and  who  simply  can't  cease  its  sad  abominations  "  ;  as  for  the 
third  Fury,  Tisiphone,  she  is  passive,  she  arouses  God's  anger, 
whereby  the  tyrants  and  the  wicked,  as,  for  instance,  Cain,  Saul 
and  Absalom,  are  punished  for  the  doings  of  the  two  other 
Furies,"  etc.  "  Such  is  the  devil  of  those  possessed  and  of  the 
insane,  who  also  blaspheme  God.  This  Fury  rules  more  par- 

1  He  spoke  in  much  the  same  way  to  Wanckel  according  to  the 
passage  cited  on  p.  422,  n.  1. 


428          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

ticularly  in  the  opinions  of  the  Pope  and  the  heretics  and  in  their 
blasphemous  doctrines  which  fall  under  a  well-merited  reproba 
tion."1 

It  is  characteristic  of  the  mental  attitude  of  the  writer  that,  in 
the  very  next  letter  to  the  same  friend,  he  replies  to  a  question 
of  Amsdorf 's  regarding  a  fox  of  abnormal  shape  recently  caught  ; 
according  to  Luther  "  it  might  well  portend  the  end  of  all  things  "  ; 
this  end  he  will  "  pray  for  and  await  "  ;  but  "  of  any  Council  or 
negotiations  "  he  is  determined  "  to  hear  nothing,  believe  nothing, 
hope  nothing  and  think  nothing."  "  Vanity  of  vanities,"  such  is 
his  greeting  to  Trent  ;  as  for  Germany,  he  can  only  discern  "  the 
spark  of  the  coming  fire  prepared  for  its  chastisement,  the  decline 
of  all  justice,  the  undermining  of  law  and  order  and  the  end  of  the 
Empire."  "  May  God  remove  us  and  ours  before  the  desolation 
comes  !  "2 

When  in  such  a  mood  he  is  convinced  that  the  fresh  revelation 
of  Antichrist  in  the  new  engravings  constitute  a  grand  service  to 
the  Kingdom  of  God.  He  knows  already  the  exalted  reward  of 
their  faith  prepared  for  himself  and  his  faithful  followers.  "  I 
have  this  great  advantage  :  my  Master  is  called  Shevlimini  [see 
above,  vol.  iv.,  p.  46]  ;  He  told  us  :  'I  will  raise  you  up  at  the 
last  day  '  ;  then  He  will  say  :  '  Dr.  Martin,  Dr.  Jonas,  Mr.  Michael, 
come  forth,'  and  summon  us  all  by  our  names  as  Christ  says  in 
John  :  '  And  He  calls  them  all  by  name.'  Therefore  be  not 
affrighted."  This  he  said  shortly  before  his  death,  reviewing  his 
last  publications.3 

By  a  similar  misuse  of  the  words  of  the  Bible  he  invites  all  his 
followers,  and  that  too  in  the  name  of  the  "  Spirit,"  to  do  to  the 
Pope  just  what  the  three  rude  fellows  are  doing  over  the  inverted 
tiara  of  the  Pope  in  the  woodcut  entitled  "  The  worship  of  the 
Pope  as  God  of  the  world."  The  verses  below  the  picture  are 
scarcely  credible  : 

"  To  Christ's  dear  Kingdom  the  Pope  has  done 
What  they  are  doing  to  his  own  crown. 
Says  the  Spirit  :    Give  him  quits, 
Fill  it  brimful  as  God  bids." 

In  the  margin  express  reference  is  made  to  the  solemn  words  of 
God  (Apoc.  xviii.  6),  where  the  voice  from  heaven  proclaims 
judgment  on  Babylon  :  "  Render  to  her  as  she  also  hath  rendered 
to  you,  and  double  unto  her  double  according  to  her  works  :  in 
the  cup  wherein  she  hath  mingled,  mingle  ye  double  unto  her." 

It  would  surely  be  hard  to  find  anywhere  so  filthy  a  parody  of 
the  sacred  text  as  Luther  here  permits  himself. 

The  same  must  be  said  of  the  utter  hatred  which  gleams  from 
every  one  of  the  pictures.  Into  it  we  gain  some  insight  from  a 

1  The  letter  cited  on  p.  422,  n.  2.     On  the  strength  of  this  letter, 
Lehfeldt  (ib.,  p.   71)  comes  to  the  conclusion  that  Luther  gave  the 
draughtsman  detailed  instructions  for  his  work. 

2  June  3,  1545,  "  Brief e,"  5,  p.  741. 

3  Wanckel's  statement,  see  p.  422,  n.  1. 


"THE   PAPACY  PICTURED"        429 

letter  of  Luther's  to  Jonas  :  To  console  his  suffering  colleague  he 
has  a  fling  at  the  Council  of  Trent :  "  God  has  cursed  them  as  it 
is  written  :  '  Cursed  be  he  who  trusts  in  man.'  '  God,  says  he, 
will  surely  destroy  the  Council,  legates  and  all. x  Jonas  was  ailing 
from  stone,  besides  being  tormented  with  "  dire  fancies." 2  Luther, 
who  himself  suffered  severely  from  stone,  exclaimed  to  his  friend 
Amsdorf  :  Would  that  the  stone  would  pass  into  the  Pope  and 
these  Gomorrhaic  cardinals  !3  A  prey  to  anger  and  depression, 
to  hatred,  defiance  and  fear  of  the  devil,  he  is  yet  determined  to 
mock  at  Satan  who  is  ever  at  his  heels  in  small  matters  as  well  as 
in  great.  "  I  shall,  please  God,  laugh  at  Satan  though  he  seeks 
to  deride  me  and  my  Church."4 

Such,  judging  by  the  letters  he  wrote  in  that  period,  was 
the  soil  which  produced  both  the  caricatures  and  the  "  Wider 
das  Bapstum  vom  Teuffel  gestifft." 

So  deeply  seated  in  Luther's  devil-lore,  not  to  say  devil- 
mania,  was  the  tendency  that  inspired  the  woodcuts,  that, 
when  once  his  conscience  pricked  him  on  account  of  the 
excessive  coarseness  of  one  of  the  scenes,  he  could  not  be 
moved  to  admit  any  more  than  that  the  drawing  might  be 
improved  on  the  score  of  decency  and  be  made  to  look  .  .  . 
"  more  diabolical."  The  picture  in  question  was  that  of  the 
"  Birth  of  the  Pope- Antichrist."  Evidently  some  friends  had 
protested  against  the  cynical  boldness  of  the  birth-scene. 
Luther  writes  to  Amsdorf  :  "  Your  nephew  George  has 
shown  me  the  picture  of  the  Pope,  but  Master  Lucas  is  a 
coarse  painter.  He  might  have  spared  the  female  sex  as 
the  creature  of  God  and  for  the  sake  of  our  own  mothers. 
He  could  well  design  other  figures  more  worthy  of  the  Pope, 
i.e.  more  diabolical ;  but  do  you  be  judge."5  Later  on, 
when  Amsdorf  still  betrayed  some  scruple,  Luther  promised 
him  :  "I  shall  take  diligent  steps  should  I  survive  to  see 
that  Lucas  the  painter  substitutes  for  this  obscene  picture 

1  July  1,  1545,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  743.     "  Unschuldige  Nachrichten," 
1712,  p.  952. 

2  "  Imagination's  dirce,"  for  which  reason  Jonas  had  decided  to 
give  up  wine.    Ib. 

3  June  15,  1545,  "  Briefe,"  ib.  :    He  had  just  started  on  the  con 
tinuation  of  the  "  Wider  das  Bapstum  "  when,   "  ecce  irruit  calculus 
meus,  utinam  non  meus  sed  etiam  papce  et  Gomorrhceorum  cardinalium  !  " 

4  To  Lauterbach,  July  6,  1545,  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  745. 

5  June   3,    1545,    "  Briefe,"    5,   p.    742.      When  he   here  speaks   of 
"  Master  Lucas  "  and,  in  the  following  letter,  of  "  Lucas  pictor,"  he  is 
certainly  alluding  to  the  celebrated  Lucas  Cranach.     On  his  part  in  the 
matter  see  above.    Luther's  words  mean  no  more  than  that  the  Master 
had  something  to  do  with  the  particular  woodcut  under  consideration. 


430          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

a  more  seemly  one."1  So  far  as  is  known,  however,  no  such 
substitution  took  place,  and  still  less  was  the  caricature 
withdrawn  from  circulation ;  nor,  again,  would  it  have  been 
at  all  easy  even  for  the  cleverest  painter  to  produce  some 
thing  "  more  diabolical." 

For  the  coarseness  of  the  drawings  there  exists  no  shred 
of  excuse. 

Luther  had  indeed  never  disdained  to  be  coarse  and 
vulgar  when  this  served  his  purpose  ;  as  time  went  on, 
however,  his  love  for  the  language  of  the  gutter  became 
much  more  noticeable,  at  least  in  his  controversial  writings. 
To  some  extent  this  was  the  reaction  of  the  impression  he  saw 
produced  on  the  masses  by  his  words,  his  growing  sense  of 
the  power  of  his  tongue  being  in  part  responsible  for  the 
ever  more  frequent  recourse  he  had  to  this  "  original  "  mode 
of  speech  ;  to  some  extent  too  his  obscene  language  and 
imagery  were  simply  an  outcome  of  his  devil-craze,  with 
which,  indeed,  they  were  in  perfect  keeping. 

Certain  admirers  have  sought  to  excuse  Luther  by  pointing 
out  that,  after  all,  none  of  his  obscenities  was  of  a  nature 
to  excite  concupiscence  ;  this  we  must  indeed  allow,  but  the 
admission  affords  but  a  small  crumb  of  comfort.  Without 
finding  anything  actually  lascivious,  either  in  the  draughts 
manship  of  these  pictures  or  in  the  filthy  language  to  which 
Luther  was  generally  addicted,  one  can  still  regret  his 
"  peculiarity  "  in  this  respect. 

That,  in  those  days,  people  were  more  inured  than  our 
refined  contemporaries  to  the  controversial  use  of  such 
revolting  coarseness  has  been  stated  and  is  indeed  perfectly 
true.  The  fact  is,  however,  that  what  contributed  to  harden 
the  people  was  the  frequency  with  which  the  Protestants 
in  their  polemics  had  recourse  to  the  weapon  of  obscenity. 
Who  had  more  responsibility  in  the  decline  in  the  sense  of 
modesty  and  propriety  among  German  folk  than  the  Witten 
berg  writer  whose  works  enjoyed  so  wide  a  circulation  ? 
It  has  been  pointed  out  elsewhere  that  though  certain 
Catholic  writers  of  that  age,  and  even  of  earlier  times,  were  not 
entirely  innocent  of  a  tendency  to  indelicacy,  Luther  outdid 
them  all  in  this  respect.2  Nevertheless,  however  great  the 

1  June  15,  1545,  ib.,  p.  743. 

2  Above,  vol.  ii.,  p.   152  f .  ;  iii.,  p.  233  ff.,  and  in  particular,  iv., 
p.  322  ff. 


"THE   PAPACY   PICTURED"        431 

lack- of  refinement  may  have  been,  though  the  lowest  classes 
then  may  have  been  even  more  prone  than  now  to  speak 
with  alarming  frankness  of  certain  functions  of  the  body, 
and  though  even  the  better  classes  and  the  writers  may 
have  followed  suit,  yet  so  far  did  Luther  venture  to  go,  that 
the  humanist  Willibald  Pirkheimer  was  expressing  the 
feeling  of  very  many  when  he  said,  in  1529  :  "  Such  is  the 
audacity  of  his  unwashed  tongue  that  Luther  cannot  hide 
what  is  in  his  heart ;  he  seems  either  to  have  completely 
gone  off  his  head  or  to  be  egged  on  by  some  evil  demon."1 

As  day  is  to  night  so  is  the  contrast  between  such  stric 
tures  and  the  praise  bestowed  on  Luther  by  his  own  side, 
not  indeed  so  much  for  the  works  last  mentioned  as  for  his 
literary  labours  in  general.  The  unprejudiced  historian 
must  admit  that  there  is  some  ground  for  such  praise 
(cp.  xxxiv.,  2).  That  Luther's  popular  writings  must 
contain  much  that  is  really  instructive  and  edifying  amidst 
a  deal  of  dross  is  surely  clear  from  the  favourable  reception 
they  met  even  in  quarters  not  at  all  blinded  by  prejudice. 
In  what  has  gone  before  we  ourselves  have  repeatedly  dwelt 
on  the  better  elements  often  to  be  found  in  the  non-polemical 
portion  of  Luther's  literary  legacy. 

1  To  Prior  Leib  of  Rebdorf,  1529,  in  Bellinger,  "  Reformation,"  I2, 
p.  588,  and  J.  Schlecht,  "  Kilian  Leibs  Briefwechsel  und  Diarien,"  1909, 
p.  12. 


CHAPTER    XXXIV 


REVIEWED 

1.  Towards  a  Christianity  void  of  Dogma.     Protestant 
Opinions 

WITH  the  concluding  years  of  Luther's  life  we  reach  a  point 
whence  may  be  undertaken  with  advantage  a  survey  of  the 
character  of  his  theological  and  literary  labours  from  several 
sides  from  which  we  have  not  as  yet  had  opportunity  to 
approach  them. 

We  naturally  turn  first  of  all  to  the  religious  content  of 
his  literary  life-work  ;  here  it  may  be  advisable  to  hear  what 
Protestant  theologians  have  to  say. 

These  theologians  will  tell  us  how  many  of  the  olden 
dogmas  Luther,  explicitly  or  implicitly,  relinquishes,  and 
whether  and  how  he  undermines  the  very  idea  of  faith  as 
known  to  Christians  of  old  ;  we  shall  also  have  to  consider 
the  Protestant  strictures  which  assert  that  the  doctrines, 
which  he  either  retained  or  set  up  for  the  first  time,  were 
fraught  with  so  much  that  was  illogical  that  they  may  be 
said  to  bear  within  them  the  seeds  of  dissolution.  The  con 
clusions  reached  will  show  whether  or  not  he  was  actually 
heading  for  a  "  Christianity  void  of  dogma." 

(a)  Protestant  Critics  on  Luther 's  Abandonment  of  Individual 
Christian  Dogmas  and  of  the  Olden  Conception  of  Faith 

It  is  hard  to  deny  that  a  certain  amount  of  truth  lurks  in 
the  contention  of  a  certain  modern  school  of  Protestant 
thought  which  insists  that  Luther  practically  made  an  end 
of  "  the  old,  dogmatic  Christianity."1  Luther  did  not,  of 
course,  look  so  far  ahead,  nor  were  the  consequences  of  his 

1  A.  Harnack,  "  Lehrb.  der  Dogmengesch.,"  34,  1910,  p.  861. 

432 


A   RELIGION   MINUS   DOGMA        433 

own  action  at  all  clear  to  him,  and  when  Catholics  took  pains 
to  point  them  out  he  was  not  slow  to  repel  them  with  the 
utmost  indignation.  Still,  logic  is  inexorable  in  demanding 
its  rights.1 

Here  we  are  happily  able  to  state  the  case  almost  entirely 
in  the  words  of  Protestant  theologians  of  the  modern  school, 
such  as,  for  instance,  Adolf  Harnack. 

"  The  acknowledged  authorities  on  dogma,"  says  Harnack, 
speaking  of  Luther's  attitude  towards  the  pillars  of  the 
Church's  teaching,  "  have  been  torn  down,  and  thereby 
dogma  itself,  qua  dogma,  i.e.  the  unfailing  teaching  institu 
tion  ordained  by  the  Holy  Ghost,  has  been  done  away  with. 
.  .  .  The  revision  has  been  extended  even  beyond  the 
second  century  of  the  Church's  history  and  up  to  its  very 
beginnings,  and  has  everywhere  been  carried  out  radically. 
An  end  has  been  made  of  that  history  of  dogma  which 
started  in  the  age  of  the  apologists,  nay,  of  the  Apostolic 
Fathers."2  Harnack  therefore,  in  his  detailed  work  on  the 
history  of  dogma,  refrained  from  dealing  with  any  theo 
logians  later  than  Luther,  instead  of  following  the  usual 
course  among  Protestant  authors,  and  giving  an  account  of 
the  development  of  doctrine  in  later  Protestantism  and 
among  Luther's  followers.  He  pertinently  asked  :  "  How 
can  there  be  in  Protestantism  any  history  of  dogma  after 
Luther's  Prefaces  to  the  New  Testament  and  his  great 
reformation  writings  ?  "3 

Addressing  the  representatives  of  Lutheran  "  dogmatic 
theology,"  Harnack  says:  "Luther's  reformation  created 
a  new  point  of  departure  for  the  development  of  the  Christian 
belief  in  the  Word  of  God  "  ;  "  it  set  aside  every  form  of 
infallibility  that  might  have  offered  an  outward  assurance 
for  one's  belief,  the  Church's  infallible  organisation  and 
infallible  tradition  and  the  infallible  code  of  Scripture.  Thus 
an  end  was  made  of  the  conception  of  Christianity  from 
which  dogma  had  sprung,  viz.  the  Christian  faith,  the  sure 
knowledge  of  the  final  causes  of  all  things  and  thus  of  the 
whole  Divine  scheme  of  salvation.  Christian  faith  has  now 
become  merely  a  firm  assurance  of  receiving  forgiveness  of 

1  Cp.  the  Protestants  already  quoted,  vol.  iii.,  pp.  8,  15-19  ;  vol.  iv., 
p.  483  ff.  ;  see  also  above,  p.  9  ff.  2  Ib.,  p.  861. 

3  The  words  still  occur  in  the  3rd  ed.  of  the  "  Lehrb.  der  Dogmen- 
gesch.,"  3,  p.  810.    In  the  4th  the  ending  is  different, 
%v.— 2  F 


434          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

sins  from  God,  as  the  Father  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  of  living 
under  Him  in  His  kingdom.  This  at  the  same  time  spells 
the  ruin  of  any  infallible  dogma  ;  for  how  can  any  dogma 
be  unchangeable  and  authentic,  thought  out  and  formulated 
as  it  was  by  finite  men,  living  in  sin,  and  devoid  of  every 
outward  guarantee  ?  "  If,  nevertheless,  Luther  accepted 
and  maintained  certain  aspects  of  ancient  dogma,  he  did  so, 
not  as  establishing  "  side  by  side  with  faith  a  law  of  faith 
based  on  particular  outward  promises,"  but  rather  "  from 
his  unshaken  conviction  that  much  of  this  dogma  corre 
sponded  exactly  with  the  Gospel  or  Word  of  God,  and  that 
this  correspondence  was  self-evident  "  ;  "as  dogma,  it  did 
not  constitute  a  rule."1 

In  some  respects,  for  instance  in  this  very  matter,  what 
Harnack  says  stands  in  need  of  correction.  He  is  at  times  too 
fond  of  making  out  his  own  Christianity  without  dogma  to  have 
been  also  that  of  Luther.  We  just  heard  him  say  that  the 
remnant  of  olden  dogma  which  Luther  preserved,  "  as  dogma, 
did  not  constitute  a  rule."  He  would,  however,  have  been  nearer 
the  truth  in  saying  that,  logically,  as  dogma,  it  ought  not  to  have 
constituted  a  rule.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Luther — as  will 
be  shown  below — insists,  though  in  contradiction  with  other 
"  basic  ideas  and  with  the  spirit  of  his  reformation,"  that  the 
Christian  verities  which  he  leaves  standing  must  be  embraced 
as  revealed  articles  of  the  Christian  belief  and  indubitable  truths 
of  faith.  Even  where  he  does  not  insist  upon  this  he  still  takes 
it  for  granted  that  faith  in  the  whole  of  revelation  ("fides 
historica  ")  precedes  that  faith  which  consists  in  the  assurance 
of  the  forgiveness  of  sins.  Even  Harnack  has  to  admit,  that,  with 
Luther,  "  dogma  qua  dogma,  remains  to  some  extent  in  force  " 
owing  "  to  the  logic  of  things."2 

Luther,  according  to  another  passage  in  Harnack,  "  under 
the  pressure  of  circumstances  "  and  the  storms  raised  against 
him  by  the  fanatics  and  the  Anabaptists,  was  drawn  into  a 
dogmatising  current  of  which  the  issue  was  the  Augsburg 
Confession.  To  the  question  :  Did  Luther's  reformation  do 
away  with  the  ancient  dogma  ?  we  must  reply,  that,  at  least, 
it  "  demolished  its  foundation — as  indeed  our  Catholic  op 
ponents  rightly  object  against  us — that  it  was  a  mighty 
principle  rather  than  a  new  doctrine,  and  that  its  subsequent 
history  through  the  age  of  Orthodoxy,  Pietism  and  Rational 
ism  down  to  the  present  day  is  less  a  falling  away  than  a 
natural  development."3 

1  Ib.,  34,  p.  682  ff.  8  16.,  p.  684.  8  P.  685. 


A   RELIGION  MINUS   DOGMA        435 

Even  before  Harnack's  day  this  was  virtually  the  stand 
point  of  some  of  the  best  Protestant  judges.  It  had  been 
perceived  long  before  that  the  purely  Evangelical  theory 
led  much  further  from  the  ancient  dogmas  than  Protestant 
orthodoxy  was  disposed  to  admit.  Even  according  to  so 
conservative  a  theologian  as  Johann  August  Ncander,  "  the 
spirit  of  the  Reformation  did  not  at  once  attain  to  a  clear 
consciousness  of  itself  "  ;  Luther  indeed,  even  here,  "  had 
reached  the  consciousness  of  the  pure  Evangelical  belief, 
thanks  to  the  principle  of  a  faith  which  is  a  free  outgrowth 
of  the  Divine  power  within  ;  yet,  owing  to  the  controversies 
on  the  Supper  and  to  the  Peasant  War,  this  clear  conscious 
ness  again  became  eclipsed."1  Neander  finds  the  best 
statement  of  Luther's  new  ideas  in  those  works  which  are 
most  radically  opposed  to  the  traditional  teaching  of  the 
Church  of  old.  Albert  Ritschl,  the  well-known  leader  of 
the  free  Protestant  school,  likewise  declared  :  "  The  Lutheran 
theory  of  life  has  not  remained  true  to  itself  ;  it  has  been 
hemmed  in  and  dulled  by  the  stress  laid  on  objective  dogma. 
The  pure  doctrine  as  taught  in  the  schools  is  in  reality  merely 
a  passing,  not  the  final,  form  of  Protestantism."2 

All  these  critics,  Harnack  in  particular,  though  blaming 
Luther  for  not  drawing  the  right  conclusions,  are  nevertheless 
at  one  in  their  outspoken  admiration  of  the  powerful  thinker 
and  brave  spokesman  of  the  new  belief,  and  particularly  of 
those  theses  of  his  which  approach  most  closely  their  own 
ideal  of  an  unfettered  theology.  In  their  opinion  Luther  is 
to  remain  the  hero  of  yore,  though  his  garb  and  attitude 
will  no  longer  be  the  same  as  those  to  which  Protestantism 
had  previously  been  accustomed.  It  is  perhaps  not  super 
fluous  to  mention  this  because  otherwise  the  strong  things 
some  of  the  critics  say  might,  taken  together,  give  the 
impression  that  their  main  aim  and  endeavour  was  to  decry 
Luther.  Probably  enough  Harnack  and  his  friends  failed 
to  foresee  how  unfavourable  a  view  their  censures,  taken  in 
the  lump,  might  produce  of  Luther's  person  and  work. 
Harnack,  however,  in  one  passage,  pays  a  strange  tribute 
to  Luther's  conservatism,  one,  no  doubt,  which  would 
appeal  to  the  Reformer's  more  old-fashioned  friends.  He 
points  out,  that,  "  we  owe  it  to  him,  that,  even  to  the  present 

1  "  Evang.  Kirchenztng.,"  1830,  p.  20. 

2  "  Gesch.  des  Pietismus,"  2,  pp.  88  f.,  60  f.    Cp.  1,  pp.  80  f.,  93  f. 


436          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

day,  these  formularies  [the  olden  creeds]  are  still  in 
Protestantism  a  living  power  "  ;  nay,  such  is  his  ignorance 
of  the  state  of  things  in  Catholicism,  that  he  is  convinced 
that  it  is  only  in  Protestantism  that  these  creeds  still  "  live," 
whereas,  "  in  the  Roman  Church,  they  are  but  a  dead  and 
obsolete  heirloom  "  ;  Luther,  according  to  one  bold  dictum 
of  Harnack's,  was  really  "  the  restorer  of  ancient  dogma."1 


Among  the  olden  doctrines  thrown  over  by  Luther  his 
Protestant  critics  rightly  instance  the  Canon  of  Scripture 
and  the  right  of  the  Church  to  interpret  the  Bible.  They 
corroborate  strikingly  from  Luther's  writings  the  results 
which  we  reached  above,2  a  circumstance  which  may 
surprise  Protestant  readers. 

If,  according  to  Luther,  the  doctrine  of  the  oldest  con 
fessions  of  faith  are  only  to  be  retained  because  they  can  be 
directly  proved  from  the  Bible,  then  the  Bible  itself  with  all 
its  books,  so  such  Protestants  argue,  must  stand  firm  and 
inviolable.  Now,  awkwardly  enough,  Luther  himself  saps 
the  authority  of  the  Canon. 

"  If  the  attitude  is  justified  which  Luther  takes  up  in  his 
famous  Prefaces  to  the  various  books  of  the  New  Testament," 
says  Harnack  "  (cp.  prefaces  to  the  Epistle  of  James,  to  the 
Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  and  to  the  Apocalypse),  then  an  end 
is  made  of  the  infallible  Canon  of  Scripture.  It  is  here  of  the 
utmost  importance  historically,  though  in  itself  a  matter  of 
indifference,  that  we  find  Luther,  especially  after  the  controversy 
on  the  Supper,  making  statements  to  the  effect  that  every  letter 
of  Scripture  is  fundamental  to  the  Christian  faith  ;  the  flagrant 
contradiction  involved  in  the  assertion  that  a  thing  holds  and  at 
the  same  time  does  not  hold  can  only  be  solved  by  saying  that  it 
does  not.  The  same  follows  from  Luther's  views  on  faith,  for, 
according  to  him,  this  is  produced  by  the  Holy  Ghost  through  the 
preaching  of  the  Word  of  God.  To-day  too,  all  Protestants 
are  agreed  that  historical  criticism  of  Scripture  is  not  unevan- 
gelical,  though  this  unanimity  of  opinion  extends  only  as  far  as 
the  'principle,'  and  many  refuse  to  carry  it  out  in  practice."3— 

1  "  Lehrb.  der  DG.,"  34,  p.  814.     Harnack's  statement  concerning 
the  "  life  "  of  the  old  formulas  of  the  faith  in  Protestantism  is  signifi 
cant  :    "  We  have  to  thank  Luther,   that  the  formulas  of  the  faith 
possess  a  living  force  in  Protestantism  to-day,  and,  indeed,  in  the 
West,  nowhere  else.    Here  men  live  in  them,  vindicate  them  or  oppose 
them."    Ib. 

2  See  above,  p.  356  ff.    Cp.  vol.  iv.,  p.  398  ff. 

3  "  Lehrb.  der  DG.,"  34,  p.  683,  n.  1. 


A   RELIGION   MINUS   DOGMA       437 

"  Luther,  at  the  very  time  when  he  was  waging  so  brave  a  war 
against  the  authority  of  the  Councils,  also  opposed  Scriptural  in 
fallibility,  and,  indeed,  how  could  he  do  otherwise  ?  .  .  .  There 
can  be  no  doubt  that  Luther's  attitude  towards  the  New  Testa 
ment,  as  we  find  it  set  forth  in  the  Prefaces  and  in  one  or  two 
other  passages,  is  the  correct  one,  i.e.  that  which  really  tallies 
with  his  belief."1 

As  F.  Loofs  points  out,  Luther  leaves  us  without  any  outward 
guarantee  for  the  authority  of  the  Canon  of  the  Bible.2  Loofs 
quotes,  for  instance,  Luther's  saying  :  "  Hence  God  must  tell  you 
within  your  heart :  This  is  God's  Word."3  "  Luther's  criticism," 
the  same  writer  says,  "  did  not  spare  even  those  books  which  he 
allowed  to  be  truly  prophetic  or  apostolic.  .  .  .  He  frankly 
admitted  the  human  element  in  Scripture."4 

If  Luther's  fundamental  opposition  to  the  faith  once  delivered 
is  already  apparent  from  his  criticism  of  the  Bible,  still  more  is 
this  the  case  when  we  come  to  look  into  the  freedom  he  allowed 
in  the  interpretation  of  the  sense  of  the  Bible. 

As  Harnack  puts  it  :  In  Luther's  view  "  the  Church  is  based 
on  something  which  every  Christian,  no  matter  how  humble,  can 
see  and  test,  viz.  on  the  Word  of  God  as  apprehended  by  pure 
reason.  This,  of  course,  was  tantamount  to  a  claim  to  ascertain 
the  true  verbal  sense  of  Holy  Scripture.  .  .  .  But  Luther  never 
foresaw  how  far  this  rule  would  lead."5 

Luther  himself  often  put  his  principle  to  such  arbitrary  usage 
as  to  prove  a  warning  to  others  (above,  vol.  iv.,  pp.  406  f.,  418  f.), 
and  to  exclude  the  possibility  of  any  settled  dogma.  "  The 
flagrant  contradiction,"  says  Harnack,  "  into  which  he  was 
led  by  criticising  the  Bible  whilst  all  the  time  holding  the  idea 
he  did  about  its  inspiration,  he  contrived  to  explain  away  by 
reading  the  Evangel  itself  into  texts  which  presented  a  difficulty." 6 
"  In  Holy  Scripture,  the  infallible  authority,  only  that  was  to 
be  found,  which  on  other  grounds  was  already  established  as 
the  true  doctrine."7 

Hence  in  the  matter  of  the  Bible,  so  Harnack  has  it,  "  Criticism, 
in  order  to  be  according  to  Luther's  mind,  would  have  to  go 
against  him  in  the  interests  of  faith."8 

Luther's  abandonment  of  the  Church's  standpoint  with 
regard  to  the  Bible  is  closely  bound  up  with  his  renuncia 
tion  of  the  Church's  teaching  office,  of  the  hierarchy  and  of 
all  respect  for  tradition.  This  meant,  as  modern  Protestant 
critics  admit,  the  destruction  of  the  whole  theory  of  tradi 
tion  and,  in  fact,  of  all  ecclesiastical  authority,  though,  on 
Harnack's  own  admission,  ancient  Church  writers,  especially 
"  subsequent  to  Irenseus,"  rely  much  on  such  authority. 

1  Ib.,  p.  858.  2  Leitfaden  der  DG."4,  1906,  p.  743. 

3  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  132,  p.  230,  Kirchenpostille. 

4  Ib.,  p.  745  f.  5  "  Lehrb.  der  DG.,"  34,  p.  827  f. 
6  16.,  p.  868.  7  P.  879.  8  P.  879. 


438         LUTHER    THE    REFORMER 

"  Luther  was  antagonistic  to  all  these  authorities,"  says 
the  same  scholar,  "  to  the  infallibility  of  Church,  Pope,  and 
Councils,  to  every  constitutional  right  of  the  Church  to 
pronounce  on  the  truth  and,  on  principle,  to  all  the  doc 
trinal  formularies  of  the  past."1  His  later  writing  :  "  Von 
den  Conciliis,"  etc.  (1539)  proves  this. 

Nor  have  we  yet  exhausted  the  list  of  grievances  against 
Luther.  Not  only  did  he  forsake  the  ancient  teaching  on 
justification,  merit  and  works,  but  he  even  declared  war  on 
human  free  will,  though  belief  in  its  existence  is  a  truth  of 
natural  philosophy  and  though  the  Church  had  ever  held 
it  in  the  highest  esteem.  He  put  aside  in  its  primitive  form 
the  basic  dogma  of  original  sin.  The  doctrine  of  actual  sin 
and  its  distinction  into  mortal  and  venial  found  no  favour 
with  him,2  nor  did  the  related  doctrine  of  the  existence  of 
a  purgatory.  He  completely  destroyed  the  teaching  of 
antiquity  on  Grace  by  his  new  discovery  of  the  law  of  abso 
lute  necessity  which  rules  all  things,  not  excluding  even  the 
actions  of  the  human  mind  and  heart ;  according  to  Luther 
"  Grace  is  the  fatherly  disposition  of  God  towards  us,  Who 
for  Christ's  sake  calls  sinful  man  to  Him,  accepts  him  and 
wins  his  confidence  through  faith  in  the  Christus  passus."3 
This  fatherly  disposition  of  God  no  man  can  ever  in  the  least 
resist  if  destined  by  the  Divine  Omnipotence  to  receive  the 
faith  ;  those,  however,  who  are  not  numbered  among  the 
elect,  know  not  any  such  invitation,  or  rather  constraint, 
for  the  secret  Will  of  God  unfailingly  dooms  them  to  damna 
tion.4 

After  giving  the  above  definition  of  Grace,  Harnack  asks, 
"  What  room  then  is  there  for  a  Sacrament  ?  "  For  Catholics 
the  Sacraments  were  pillars  of  the  Church's  life  and  of  her 
teaching.  With  them  Luther  was  perfectly  willing  to 
dispense. 

"  He  not  only  strove,"  says  Harnack,  "  to  break  away  com 
pletely  from  the  ancient  or  mediaeval  conception,  but  he  actually 
brought  it  to  nought  by  his  doctrine  of  the  one  sacrament,  which 
is  the  Word."  5  The  Sacraments  being  to  him  a  "  peculiar 
form  of  the  saving  Word  of  God,  viz.  of  the  realisation  of  the 

1  P.  858. 

2  For  the  reason  why,  see  J.  Mausbach,  "  Die  kathol.  Moral  und 
ihre  Gegner,"  1911,  pp.  215  ff.,  229  f. 

3  "  DG.,"  34,  p.  852.  4  Cp.  Mausbach,  ib.,  p.  137  ff. 
*  "  DG.,"  34,  p.  868. 


A  RELIGION   MINUS   DOGMA       439 

'  promissio  Dei,'  he  reduces  them  to  two  (three),  or,  indeed, 
to  one,  viz.  the  Word  of  God;  He  showed  that  even  the  most 
enlightened  Fathers  had  had  but  a  dim  notion  of  this  so  im 
portant  matter.  .  .  .  Having  practically  laid  the  whole  system  in 
ruins,  he  rests  again  on  the  one,  simple  grand  act,  which  is 
constantly  being  repeated  in  every  Christian's  life,  viz.  the 
awakening  of  faith  thanks  to  the  'gratia.'  "l 

Luther  turned  his  back  not  only  on  the  ancient  teaching 
concerning  the  Sacraments,  particularly  the  Sacrifice  of  the  Mass, 
but  also  on  the  whole  outward  worship  of  the  Church. 

"  His  attitude  towards  Divine  Worship  in  the  Church  was  a 
radical  one.  Here  too  he  destroyed  not  only  the  mediaeval 
tradition,  but  even  that  of  the  ancient  Church  such  as  we  may 
trace  it  back  right  into  the  2nd  century.  The  public  worship 
of  the  Church,  to  him,  is  nothing  more  than  the  worship  of 
individuals  united  in  time  and  place.  .  .  .  The  priest  and  the 
sacrifice  in  the  usual  sense  of  the  terms  are  done  away  with,  and 
all  worth  is  denied  to  those  specific  ecclesiastical  actions  which 
were  formerly  held  to  be  both  wholesome  and  necessary."  "  The 
'  divine  service,'  particularly  that  of  the  Word,  in  which  he 
nevertheless  wished  the  congregation  to  take  part,"  "can  have 
no  other  motive  .  .  .  than  to  promote  individual  worship,  for 
God  deals  with  us  only  through  the  Word  which  is  not  tied  up 
with  any  particular  persons."  2  Hence  public  worship  does  no 
more  than  "  edify  faith  through  the  preaching  of  the  Divine 
Word  and  the  common  offering  of  prayer  and  praise."  3 

Of  vast  importance  in  this  change  and  even  more  far- 
reaching  in  its  consequences  was  Luther's  abrogation  of  the 
ancient  conception  of  the  Church.  As  bound  up  with  it, 
he  also  harshly  set  aside  the  invocation  of  Saints,  that  vital 
element  of  the  olden  worship. 

The  ancient  teaching  on  perfection  had  to  make  room  for 
new  theories,  for  it  seemed  to  him  to  lay  too  much  stress 
on  man's  own  works.4  And  yet  "  we  cannot  but  admit," 
says  Harnack,  "  that  Luther's  efforts  to  create  a  new  ideal 
of  life  were  not  characterised  by  any  clear  discrimination." 
The  reason  may  be  "  that  the  times  were  not  yet  ripe  for 
it."  In  those  days  of  public  stress  "  religion's  chief  business 
was  to  bring  consolation  amidst  the  miseries  of  life.  To 
heal  the  soul  oppressed  with  sorrow  for  sin  and  to  alleviate 
the  evils  in  the  world,"  this  was  what  was  mainly  aimed  at.5 
This,  however,  was  scarcely  to  do  justice  to  religion  and  to 
its  sublime  tasks. 

According  to   Luther  the   Church   had,   even   from  the 

1  P.  851.  2  P.  855.  3  P.  856. 

*  Cp.  Mausbach,  ib.,  p.  243  ff.  5  "  DG.,"  34,  p.  834. 


440        LUTHER    THE    REFORMER 

outset,  given  to  human  reason  a  larger  sphere  than  was  due 
to  it.  Even  at  the  cradle  of  the  Church  Christian  philosophy 
had  taken  her  stand,  and,  with  her  torch  of  reason,  had 
pointed  out  the  road  to  faith.  Luther,  however,  conceived 
"  a  distrust  of  reason  itself  not  to  be  explained  simply  by 
his  distrust  of  it  as  the  main  prop  of  self -righteousness.  He 
grew  hardened  in  his  bold  defiance  of  reason,  surrendering 
himself  to  that  suspicious  Catholic  [!]  way  of  looking  at 
things,  which  reveres  the  wisdom  of  God  and  sees  the  stamp 
of  the  divine  truth  in  paradox  and  in  the  contradictio  in 
adiecto.  .  .  .  No  one,  however,  can  despise  reason  and 
learning  with  impunity,  and  Luther  himself  was  punished 
by  the  darkening  of  his  own  views  on  faith."1  "  That  is  a 
dangerous  kind  of  theologism  which  fancies  that  the  know 
ledge  which  comes  from  worldly  education  may  simply  be 
ignored.  The  reformers  were  too  ready  to  cut  themselves 
adrift  from  worldly  culture  where  the  latter  seemed  to 
trench  on  the  domain  of  faith.  .  .  .  The  Reformation 
buried  beneath  a  mass  of  hatred  and  injustice  much  of  the 
valuable  learning  the  age  possessed  and  thereby  made  itself 
responsible  for  the  later  crises  of  Protestantism."2 

"  Luther,"  says  Loofs,  "  by  laying  stress  on  that  anti 
thesis  between  human  reason  and  the  divine  '  foolishness,' 
which  was  so  intimately  bound  up  with  his  own  deepest  and 
most  fundamental  views  (and  who  ever  thundered  more 
loudly  against  the  '  Frau  Hulda  '  of  natural  reason,  that 
'  devil's  whore  '  and  '  arch  enemy  of  the  faith  '  than  did 
Luther?),  imposed  on  his  following  the  old  Catholic  idea 
(which  he  himself  had  overthrown)  of  the  verbal  inspiration 
of  the  Canon,  and  did  so  so  thoroughly  that  after-ages  were 
unable  to  shake  themselves  free  of  it.  Nay,  by  rightly 
proscribing  any  allegorical  exegesis,  he  made  the  burden  of 
this  old  Catholic  heritage  even  more  oppressive  in  Protestant 
ism  than  it  had  ever  been  before."3 

Depreciation  of  reason,  had,  in  Luther's  case,  a  bad 
effect  on  his  whole  teaching  concerning  God.  As  far  back 
as  theology  went  this  had  formed  the  centre  of  religious 

1  P.  869. 

2  P.   870  f .     Harnack  congratulates  Luther  on  his  opposition  to 
the  fanatics,   and   concludes  :    "  The   German   Reformation  banished 
the  fanatics,  but,  in  their  stead,  it  had  to  face  the  rationalists,  the 
atheists  and  modern  positive  theology,"  p.  871. 

3  "  Leitfaden  der  DG.,"  4,  p.  747. 


A   RELIGION   MINUS   DOGMA       441 

discussion.  The  Fathers  had  by  preference  dwelt  on  ques 
tions  which  concerned  God,  His  Oneness  and  Triunity, 
His  attributes  and  His  relations  with  the  world  and  man. 
Luther,  according  to  the  admission  of  Protestant  critics, 
introduced  here  certain  arbitrary  and  very  unfair  limita 
tions.  It  was  his  wish,  as  he  frequently  declares,  that  God 
should  be  meditated  on  only  as  Jesus  Christ  our  Consoler 
and  our  Saviour.  He  has  a  strange  and  seemingly  instinc 
tive  aversion  to  concerning  himself  with  the  Almighty 
Being,  in  Whom  nevertheless  "  we  live,  and  move,  and  are." 
The  Deus  absconditus  appals  him.  According  to  him  it  is 
impossible  to  "treat  of  Predestination  without  being  cruci 
fied  and  suffering  the  pains  of  death,  or  without  loss  to  our 
selves  and  secret  anger  against  God."  Predestination  "  deter 
mines  in  the  first  instance  who  is  and  who  is  not  to  believe, 
who  is  and  who  is  not  to  be  saved  from  sin  "  ;  of  this  Luther 
cannot  speak  without  at  the  same  time  solemnly  emphasis 
ing  that  it  is  only  thanks  to  it  that  we  can  "  hope  to  con 
quer  sin,"  as  otherwise  the  devil,  "  as  we  know,  would  soon 
overpower  us  all."  Yet  we  ought  not,  like  the  "  reprobate 
spirits,"  "  explore  the  abyss  of  Divine  Providence," 
because  otherwise  we  shall  either  "  be  brought  to  despair  or 
kick  over  the  traces."  The  old  Adam  must  "  have  been 
put  to  death  before  being  able  to  endure  this  and  to  drink 
the  strong  wine,"  i.e.  a  man  must  first  have  learnt,  like 
Luther,  "  to  stake  all  in  God,"  and  "  defy  "  all  things  in 
Him.1 

Thus  it  comes  about  that  Luther  ladles  out  reproaches 
indiscriminately  to  the  philosophers  who  occupy  them 
selves  with  God  as  known  to  reason,  and  the  theologians 
who  pursue  the  supernatural  knowledge  of  God. 

"  Often  enough  did  Luther  deride  as  a  product  of  blind  reason," 
writes  Harnack,  "that  knowledge  of  God,  which  instead  of 
thinking  of  God  in  Christ  alone,  '  sophistically  '  enumerates  His 
attributes  and  speculates  on  His  will,  viz.  the  whole  '  metaphysical' 
doctrine  of  God."2  If  "  God  be  considered  apart  from  Christ," 
then  He  appears,  according  to  Luther,  merely  as  the  "  terrible 
Judge  from  Whom  we  can  await  nothing  but  punishment."3 

According  to  Luther,  "  there  is,  outside  of  Christ,  no  certainty 
concerning  the  Will  of  God  "  ;  for  the  secret  Will  of  God  threatens 
us  with  the  dreadful  sword  of  predestination  to  hell.  Hence 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  63,  p.  134  f.  Preface  to  the  Epistle  to  the 
Romans.  2  "  DG.,"  34,  p.  849.  3  16.,  p.  835. 


442         LUTHER    THE    REFORMER 

Harnack  even  goes  so  far  as  to  say,  that  what  is  presupposed  in 
Luther's  theories  on  the  assurance  of  salvation  is  a  belief  "  not 
in  God  in  se — for  God  in  se  belongs  to  the  Aristotelians — but 
rather  in  the  God  Whom  the  Holy  Ghost  reveals  to  the  soul  as 
manifest  in  Christ."1 

"  God  in  se  "  and  "  God  quoad  nos  "  are  two  different  things. 
By  establishing  such  a  distinction  Luther  "  sets  himself  at 
variance  with  all  theology  as  it  had  existed  since  the  days  of  the 
apologists  ;  here  his  aversion  to  the  olden  dogma  is  even  more 
evident  than  in  his  reprobation  of  certain  of  its  parts.  Again 
and  again,  whenever  the  occasion  arises,  he  repudiates  what  the 
olden  theology  had  said  of  God  and  Christ,  of  the  Will  and 
Attributes  of  God,  of  the  two  natures  in  Christ,  etc.,  with  the 
remark  :  '  This  He  has  in  se.  Thereupon  he  immediately  pro 
ceeds,  with  the  words  '  But,  quoad  nos,'  to  introduce  his  own  new 
view,  which  to  him  is  the  main  thing,  if  not  the  whole."2 

Such  doctrines  as  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  justification  of 
the  sinner  or  the  "  confession  of  faith,  as  a  personal  experience," 
recede  so  much  into  the  background  that  Harnack  feels  justified 
in  saying  :  "  Though,  under  the  formulas  '  God  in  se,'  *  the  Hidden 
God,'  '  God's  Hidden  Will,'  Luther  left  these  old  ideas  standing, 
still  they  had  practically  ceased  to  exist  as  doctrines  of  faith. 
Of  this  there  can  be  no  doubt.  That  he  did  not  throw  them 
over  completely  is  due  to  two  facts,  on  the  one  hand  to  his 
impression  that  he  found  them  in  the  Bible,  and,  on  the  other, 
to  his  never  having  systematically  thought  out  the  problems 
involved."3  It  must,  however,  be  noted,  that,  as  will  be  seen 
more  clearly  when  we  come  to  discuss  Luther's  idea  of  faith,  he 
was  by  no  means  ready  to  allow  that  such  dogmas  were  not  real 
"  articles  of  faith."  This  may  be  what  leads  Harnack  here  to  say 
that  they  had  "  practically  "  ceased  to  exist  as  "  actual  articles 
of  faith." 

In  connection  with  the  dogmas  touching  God  it  must  not  be 
lost  to  sight  that  Luther,  by  his  doctrine  of  predestination,  of 
man's  unfreedom  and  of  the  inevitability  of  all  that  occurs,  really 
endangered,  if  indeed  he  did  not  actually  destroy,  the  Church's 
olden  conception  of  God  as  the  Highest  and  Most  Perfect  Being. 
The  cruel  God  of  absolute  predestination  to  hell  is  no  longer  a 
God  worthy  of  the  name. 

"  Nor  can  it  be  gainsaid,"  writes  the  Protestant  theologian 
Arnold  Taube,  "  that,  given  Luther's  idea  of  God  and  His  Om- 

1  P.  836. 

2  P.  859  f .    Harnack  refers  here  to  the  passage  in  Luther's  Works, 
Weim.  ed.,   16,  p.  217  ;  Erl.  ed.,  35,,  p.  207  f.  (Exposition  of  certain 
chapters  of  Exodus)  :  "  The  sophists  [Schoolmen]  depicted  Christ  as 
God  and  as  Man.  .  .  .  But  Christ  is  not  called  Christ  because  He  has 
two  natures.    What  does  this  matter  to  me  ?    But  He  bears  this  grand 
and  consoling  name  on  account  of  the  office  and  work  He  undertook. 
That  He  is  by  nature  God  and  Man  concerns  Himself,  but  that  He  is 
my  Saviour  and  Redeemer  is  for  my  comfort  and  salvation." 

3  "  DG.,"  34,  p.  860. 


A   RELIGION  MINUS   DOGMA        443 

nipotence,  the  negation  of  man's  free-will  is  a  simple  and  natural 
consequence."  "  Luther's  conception  of  God  is  at  variance  with 
the  ethical  personality  of  the  God  of  Christianity,  just  as  Schleier- 
macher's  whole  pantheistic  scheme  of  theology  is  useless  in 
enabling  us  to  grasp  a  religion  so  eminently  moral  as  Christianity." 
"  Schleiermacher  was  quite  logical  in  carrying  to  their  con 
sequences  Luther's  ideas  on  predestination  and  free-will." 
Luther's  idea  of  God,  according  to  Taube,  is  simply  "  determinist." 
"  The  negation  [of  free-will]  can  be  escaped  only  by  a  theory  of 
the  Divine  Omnipotence  which  regards  God  as  controlling  His 
own  Power  and  thus  as  practically  exercising  restraint  over 
Himself  and  limiting  His  Power.  This,  however,  was  not  Luther's 
theory,  who  takes  the  Divine  Omnipotence  to  signify  that  which 
works  all  in  all."1 

To  an  outsider  it  sounds  strange  to  hear  Harnack  and 
others  affirm  that  Luther  swept  away  all  the  positive 
doctrines  of  antiquity  ;  no  less  strange  is  it  to  see  Luther, 
the  furious  opponent  of  Catholicism,  being  made  by  men 
who  call  themselves  his  followers  into  an  advocate  of 
the  Rationalism  which  they  themselves  profess.  In  the 
interests  of  Rationalism  these  theologians  take  as  their 
watchword  Wilhelm  Herrmann's  dictum  of  Luther's  doc 
trine  of  penance  :  "  We  must  strive  to  push  ahead  with 
what  Luther  began  and  left  undone."  The  least  they  de 
mand  is,  that,  as  Ferdinand  Kattenbusch  puts  it,  Protestant 
theology  should  hold  fast  to  the  "  earlier  "  Luther,  to  those 
days  "  when  Luther's  genius  was  as  yet  unbroken."  In 
this  wise  they  contrive  to  wrench  away  Luther  from  the 
foundations  of  that  faith  to  which  he  still  wished  to  remain 
true  and  which  the  "  orthodox  "  at  a  later  date  claimed 
him  to  have  ever  retained.2 

It  is  well  known  how,  following  in  Ritschl's  footsteps, 
Harnack's  ability,  learning,  and  outspokenness  have  proved 
extremely  awkward  to  the  more  conservative  theologians. 
He  "  carried  on  Luther's  interrupted  work,"  declares  Herr 
mann,  and  set  up  again  in  all  its  purity  Luther's  early  con 
ception  of  faith  against  a  theology  which  had  been  stifled 
in  orthodoxy  and  pietism.3 

1  "  Luthers  Lehre  \iber  Freiheit  und  Ausriistung  des  natiirlichen 
Menschen   bis    1525.      Eine    dogmatische    Kritik,"    Gottingen,    1901, 
pp.  19  f.,  49. 

2  Cp.  A.  Galley,  "  Die  Busslehre  Luthers  und  ihre  Darstellung  in 
neuester  Zeit,"  1900,  Introd.,  p.  1  ft7.,  where  the  quotations  in  question 
occur.  3  Ib. 


444         LUTHER    THE    REFORMER 

We  must,  however,  in  the  light  of  Protestant  criticism, 
examine  a  little  more  closely  Luther's  attitude  towards  the 
ancient  Christian  conception  of  faith. 

Starting  first  of  all  from  faith  subjectively  considered 
and  examining  Luther's  doctrine  of  the  personal  appro 
priation  of  the  content  of  faith,  we  immediately  find  our 
selves  brought  face  to  face  with  his  doctrine  of  justification, 
for  he  has  scarcely  anything  to  say  of  the  faith  of  the  in 
dividual  save  in  so  far  as  this  faith  operates  justification. 
Here  all  the  other  truths  to  be  believed  tend  to  disappear 
from  his  purview  and  one  only  truth  remains,  viz.  :  Through 
Christ  I  am  pleasing  to  God.  It  is  no  wonder  if  many  of 
his  followers,  even  to  the  present  day,  see  in  this  doctrine 
of  the  certainty  of  having  in  Christ  a  Gracious  God,  the 
only  dogma  handed  down  by  Luther.  Does  he  not,  for 
instance,  in  one  of  the  most  widely  read  passages  of  his 
works,  viz.,  in  the  Preface  to  Romans  in  his  translation  of 
the  New  Testament,  concisely  define  faith  as  a  "  daring 
and  lively  trust  in  the  grace  of  God,  so  strong  that  one 
would  be  ready  to  die  for  it  a  thousand  times  over  "  ? 
"  Such  a  trust  makes  a  man  cheerful,  defiant  and  light- 
hearted  in  his  attitude  towards  God  and  all  creatures  ; 
such  is  the  working  of  the  Holy  Ghost  by  faith."  "  Faith 
is  the  work  of  God  in  us  whereby  we  are  transformed  and 
born  anew  in  God."1 

Again,  if  we  take  faith  objectively,  i.ef  as  the  sum-total 
of  revelation,  then  again,  at  least  according  to  many  pas 
sages,  faith  must  be  merged  in  the  one  consoling  conviction 
that  we  receive  the  forgiveness  of  sins  from  God  in  Christ. 

"  The  Reformation,"  says  Harnack  quite  rightly,  regarded  all 
the  rest  of  dogma  as  little  more  than  "  a  grand  testimony  to  God, 
Who  has  sent  Jesus  Christ,  His  Son,  to  liberate  us  from  sin,  to 
save  us  and  set  us  free.  Finding  this  testimony  in  dogma,  every 
other  incentive  to  determine  it  more  accurately  disappeared." 
It  is,  however,  important  to  note,  that  "  ancient  dogma  was  not 
merely  the  witness  of  the  Gospel  to  a  Gracious  God,  to  Christ  the 
Saviour,  and  to  the  forgiveness  of  sins  "  ;  it  comprised  a  number 
of  other  profound  and  far-reaching  doctrines  also  binding  upon 
all,  "  above  all  a  certain  knowledge  of  God  and  of  the  world,  and 
a  law  of  belief."  According  to  Harnack,  however,  "  faith  and 
this  knowledge  of  God  and  law  of  belief  were  unguardedly  jumbled 
up."  In  short,  "a  conservative  attitude  towards  olden  dogma  is 
not  imposed  on  the  Reformation  by  its  principles."2 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  63,  p.  124  f.          2  "  DG.,"  34,  p.  684  f. 


A   RELIGION  MINUS   DOGMA       445 

"  The  orthodoxy  of  the  Luther-zealots  of  the  16th  century  had 
its  basis  in  the  reformers'  retention  of  a  series  of  old  Catholic 
presuppositions  and  dogmas  which  were  really  in  disagreement 
with  their  own  fundamental  ideas."1  "  Thus,"  proceeds  Harnack, 
"  the  Reformation,  i.e.  the  conception  of  the  Evangelical  faith, 
spells  the  end  of  dogma  unless  indeed,  in  the  stead  of  the  old- 
time  dogma,  we  put  a  sort  of  phantom  dogma."  The  Reforma 
tion  replaced  the  demand  for  faith,  which  corresponds  with  the 
law,  by  the  freedom  of  the  children  of  God,  who  are  not  under 
the  constraint  of  the  law  of  belief  but  rejoice  in  the  gift  bestowed 
on  them,  viz.  in  the  promise  of  the  forgiveness  of  sins  in  Christ.2 

In  this,  again,  there  is  much  that  is  true,  even  though  we  may 
not  be  willing  to  subscribe  to  all  the  author  says.  Luther  un 
doubtedly  lays  undue  stress  on  those  tenets  of  the  faith  which 
seem  to  him  to  refer  to  justification  and  spiritual  freedom,  and  he 
does  so  to  the  detriment  of  what  remains.  "  Hence  the  Gospel," 
Luther  says  for  instance,  "  is  nothing  else  but  the  preaching  of 
Christ,  the  Son  of  God  and  the  Son  of  David,  true  God  and  Man, 
Who  by  His  death  and  again-rising  from  the  dead  has  overcome 
sin,  death  and  hell  for  all  those  who  believe  in  Him."  The 
Evangelists,  so  he  says,  describe  the  conquest  of  "  Sin,  death  and 
hell  "  at  great  length,  the  others  "  more  briefly  like  St.  Peter  and 
St.  Paul  "  ;  at  any  rate  the  "  Gospel  must  not  be  made  into  a 
code  of  laws  or  a  handbook."  3  This  was  indeed  to  raise  the 
standard  of  revolt  against  doctrine.  Well  might  Adolf  Hausrath, 
in  a  passage  already  quoted,  speak  of  Luther  as  "  the  greatest 
revolutionary  of  the  16th  century." 

The  question  touched  upon  above  deserves,  however,  to  be 
looked  into  still  more  closely  in  the  light  of  what  other  more 
moderate  Protestant  theologians  say. 

Gustav  Kawerau,  speaking  from  such  a  standpoint,  points  out 
that  Luther  "  runs  the  risk  of  confusing  the  Evangelical  view  of 
faith  with  that  which  sees  in  faith  the  acceptance  of  a  string  of 
doctrinal  propositions,  i.e.  with  that  faith  which  is  made  up  of 
so  and  so  many  articles,  all  of  such  importance  that  to  reject  one 
involves  the  dropping  of  the  others."4 

This  is  so  true  that  the  historian  and  theologian  in  question 
rather  understates  the  case  by  saying  that  Luther  merely  "  runs 
the  risk."  It  is  no  difficult  task  in  this  connection  to  instance 
definite  statements  to  this  effect  made  by  him,  or  even  to 
enumerate  the  actual  "  articles  "  of  faith  he  regarded  as  essential. 
In  No.  12  of  the  articles  of  Schwabach  (Torgau)  he  says,  as 
Kawerau  himself  points  out  :  "  Such  a  Church  is  nothing  else 
than  the  faithful  who  hold,  believe  and  teach  the  above  articles 
and  propositions.  .  .  .  For  where  the  Gospel  is  preached  and  the 
Sacraments  are  rightly  used,  there  we  have  the  holy  Christian 
Church."5 

1  Fr.  Loofs,  "  Leitfaden  der  DG.,"  4,  p.  463.          2  Ib.,  p.  698  f. 

3  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  63,  p.  112.    Preface  to  the  New  Testament. 

4  "  Luthers  Stellung  zu  Erasmus,  Zwingli,"  etc.  (reprint  from  the 
"  Deutsch-evang.  Blatter,"  1906,  Heft  1-3),  p.  28. 

5  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  30,  3,  p.  181  ;    Erl.  ed.,  242,  p.  343. 


446         LUTHER    THE    REFORMER 

Amongst  such  articles  Luther,  following  the  example  of  the 
oldest  Creeds,  includes  even  the  Virginity  of  Mary.1 

It  was  to  this  that  the  theologian,  Otto  Scheel,  recently  alluded 
when  compelled  to  make  a  stand  against  those  theologians  who, 
particularly  during  the  years  1519-1523,  miss  in  Luther  any 
adherence  to  the  articles  of  the  faith.  Scheel  appeals  to  what 
Luther  says  of  Mary's  Virginity  in  his  German  version  of  his 
"  De  votis  monasticis  "  (1521  and  1522).  In  one  passage  Luther, 
referring  to  the  thesis  that  every  single  article  of  faith  must  be 
believed,  otherwise,  no  matter  how  earnest  and  virtuous  be 
one's  life,  everlasting  damnation  is  certain,  brings  forward  as  an 
instance  our  Lady's  virginity  :  The  religious,  in  their  "  bawdy- 
houses  of  Satan  "  [the  monasteries],  by  their  blasphemous  vows 
deny  the  whole  Gospel  truth,  consequently  far  more  than  merely 
that  article  concerning  Mary.  Hence  they  cannot  be  saved  even 
did  they  possess  "  Mary's  virginity  and  holiness."  "  Here  we 
have,"  rightly  concludes  Scheel,  "  even  as  early  as  1521-22  a 
view  of  faith  which  does  not  differ  materially  from  that  which 
we  meet  with  in  Luther  after  the  controversies  on  the  Sacrament." 
This,  however,  means,  according  to  him,  "  that  we  must  regard 
Luther's  development  in  a  light  different  from  that  now  usual."2 

Which  then  does  Scheel  hold  to  be  the  correct  view  ?  He  finds 
in  Luther  at  all  times  contradictions  which  admit  of  no  escape : 
"  The  contradictions  which  clearly  exist  at  a  later  date  in  Luther's 
life's  work  were,  in  point  of  fact,  always  latent  within  him.  .  .  . 
This  is  equivalent  to  saying  that  we  must  regard  Luther's  work  as 
a  whole,  and  that,  too,  just  in  its  most  vital  parts,  as  one  marred 
by  contradictions  which  it  is  impossible  to  explain  away."3 

Since  Luther's  demand  that  all  the  articles  of  faith  should  be 
accepted  without  distinction  was  one  which  he  had  taken  over 
from  Catholicism,  we  should,  continues  Scheel,  "  seek  in  the 
Middle  Ages  the  clue  to  his  attitude  instead  of  assigning  to  him 
the  solution  of  modern  problems  as  some  are  disposed  to  do." 
In  this,  however,  Scheel  is  proposing  nothing  new,  but  rather 
something  that  stands  to  reason  ;  the  method  he  suggests  has, 
moreover,  always  been  followed  by  Catholic  critics  of  Luther's 
theology. 

Catholics  found  without  difficulty  plentiful  statements 
of  Luther's  in  support  of  the  inviolability  of  the  whole 
chain  of  olden  dogma,  so  great  had  been  the  influence 
exerted  over  him  by  the  convictions  of  his  youth.  It  was 
an  easy  matter  for  controversialists  to  turn  such  statements 

1  Cp.  Kostlin,  "  Luthers  Theol.,"  22,  p.  136. 

2  "  Luthers   Werke,"   ed.   Buchwald,   etc.,    Suppl.   vol.   ii.,   p.   44, 
N.   54  to  Luther's  "  De  votis  monasticis,"   "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  8, 
p.  583,  "  Opp.  lat.  var.,"  6,  p.  252  :  "  Si  quis  Mariam  neget  virginem, 
aut  alium  quemvis  singularem  articulum  fidei  non  crediderit,  damnatur, 
etiam  si  alioqui  ipsius  Virginia  et  virginitatem  et  sanctitatem  haberet." 

3  16.,  p.  44  f. 


A  RELIGION  MINUS   DOGMA        447 

of  his  against  Luther  himself,  the  more  so,  since,  eminently 
justified  though  they  were  within  Catholicism,  they  were 
utterly  out  of  place  on  his  mouth  and  furnish  a  striking 
condemnation  of  his  own  rash  undertaking — a  fact  to  which 
he,  however,  refused  to  open  his  eyes.  For  instance,  in  the 
very  evening  of  his  days  when  he  himself  could  look  back 
on  his  destruction  of  so  many  of  the  dogmas  of  the  olden 
Church,  speaking  to  the  Sacramentarians,  Luther  says  of 
the  traditional  doctrines  :  "  This  is  what  I  thought,  yea 
and  said  too,  viz.  that  the  devil  is  never  idle  ;  no  sooner  has 
he  started  one  heresy  than  he  must  needs  start  others  so 
that  no  error  ever  remains  alone.  When  the  ring  has  once 
been  broken  it  is  no  longer  a  ring ;  it  has  lost  its  strength 
and  is  ever  snapping  anew.  .  .  .  Whoever  does  not  or  will 
not  believe  aright  one  article  assuredly  does  not  believe  any 
article  with  a  true  and  earnest  faith.  .  .  .  Hence  we  may 
say  straight  out  :  Believe  all,  or  nothing  !  The  Holy  Ghost 
will  not  allow  Himself  to  be  divided  or  sundered,  so  as  to 
teach  or  make  us  believe  one  article  aright  and  another 
awry."  "  Otherwise,"  so  he  concludes,  all  unconsciously 
justifying  his  Catholic  critics,  "  no  heretic  would  ever  be 
condemned  nor  would  there  be  a  heretic  on  all  the  earth  ; 
for  it  is  the  nature  of  heretics  to  tamper  first  with  one 
article  only  and  then  bit  by  bit  to  deny  them  all.  ...  If 
the  bell  have  but  a  single  crack,  it  no  longer  rings  true  and 
is  quite  useless."1 

It  was  on  the  strength  of  this  principle  of  the  absolutely 
binding  character  of  all  the  truths  of  religion  (at  least  of 
those  which  he  himself  retained)  that  he  ventured  to  depict 

Zwingli  as  the  biggest  rebel  against  the  faith. 

, 

"  Zwingel,  who  was  miserably  slain  on  the  battlefield,  and 
CEcolampadius  who  died  of  grief  on  that  account,  perished  in 
their  sins  because  they  obstinately  persisted  in  their  errors."  2 
He  could  not  "  but  despair  of  Zwingel's  salvation,"  for  the  latter 
was  an  arch-heretic. 

So  harsh  a  judgment  on  Zwingli  is,  however,  quite  unjustifiable 
if  we  start  from  the  more  liberal  conception  of  faith  which  Luther 
had  once  advocated  together  with  the  stricter  view,  and  which 
indeed  he  never  in  so  many  words  retracted.  On  such  grounds 
Kawerau  may  well  take  Zwingli  under  his  wing  against  Luther. 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  32,  p.  414  f.      Kurtz  Bekenntnis.     A  similar 
passage  occurs  in  "  Comm.  in  Gal.,"  ed.  Irmischer,  2,  pp.  334,  seq.,  336. 

2  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  32,  p.  399. 


448         LUTHER    THE    REFORMER 


His  words  will  £e  quoted  a  little  further  on.  Meanwhile,  however, 
it  must  be  pointed  out  that  Luther's  unkindly  criticism  of  Zwingli 
is  not  to  be  explained  merely  by  the  above  view  of  faith.  In  his 
Life  of  Luther  Adolf  Hausrath  throws  some  light  on  its  psycho 
logical  side.  "  Language  so  insulting  as  Luther's,"  he  says,  "  no 
bishop  had  ever  used  against  Zwingli,"1  and  he  lays  his  hand 
boldly  on  the  weak  spot  with  the  object  of  bringing  out  Luther's 
astounding  want  of  logic.  He  had  proclaimed  the  right  of 
examining  Scripture  freely  and  without  being  tied  down  by  the 
teaching  of  the  Church,  yet  he  refused  to  allow  Zwingli  such 
freedom  ;  the  latter  "  had  applied  the  principle  indiscriminately 
to  everything  (?)  handed  down  by  the  Church,  whereas  Luther 
wished  to  put  aside  merely  what  was  contrary  to  his  convictions 
on  justification  by  faith  alone,  or  to  the  plain  sense  of  Scripture."2 
Luther  "  fancied  he  could  guess  who  had  inspired  the  Sacra- 
mentarians  with  their  blasphemies.  Thereby  he  envenomed  the 
controversy  from  the  very  outset.  For  him  there  could  be  no 
truce  with  the  devil."  3  "In  any  sign  of  life  given  by  the  Swiss 
he  at  once  sniffed  the  '  devil's  breeches.'  "  *  Luther  himself 
admits  that  "  to  begin  with,  it  was  Zwingli's  wrong  doctrine  and 
the  fact  '  that  the  Swiss  wished  to  be  first,'  "  5  which  had  led  to 
the  estrangement.  The  "  wrong  doctrine  "  he  detected,  thanks 
to  that  gift  of  infallibility  which  led  the  Sacramentarians  to  call 
his  behaviour  "  papistic."  We  have  here,  according  to  Hausrath, 
a  "  religious  genius,  who,  by  the  force  of  his  personality  and 
word,  sought  to  make  all  others  bow  to  the  law  of  his  mind." 
"  We  must  resign  ourselves  to  the  fact  that  this  great  man  had 
the  shortcomings  which  belong  to  his  virtues.  Disputatiousness 
and  love  to  pick  a  quarrel,  faults  which  simply  represented  the 
other  side  of  his  firm  faith,  and  which  some  had  already  deplored 
in  the  young  monk  at  Erfurt,  Wittenberg  and  Leipzig,  had 
naturally  not  been  abated  by  his  many  victorious  combats,  and, 
now,  more  than  ever,  Oldecop's  words  were  true  :  '  He  wanted  to 
be  in  the  right  in  all  the  disputations  and  was  fond  of  quarrelling.' 
The  fact  is  that  Luther  was  no  exception  to  the  rule,  that  man 
finds  nothing  harder  to  bear  well  than  success."6 

Nevertheless,  to  return  to  the  question  of  faith,  Luther  had 

*  already  laid  down  in  his  writings   certain  marks  by  which  it 

might  be  ascertained  whether  a  man  is  a  believer  or  not,  and 

which  at  any  rate  scarcely  tally  with  the  criteria  he  applies  to 

Zwingli.    Judged  by  these  Zwingli  would  emerge  quite  blameless. 

Kawerau  points  this  out  in  defence  of  Zwingli  :  "  The  idea  of 
faith,"  he  says,  "  which  Luther  had  newly  evolved,  in  opposition 
to  the  Catholic  assent  to  the  teaching  of  the  Bible  and  the  Church, 
led  logically  to  determining  from  a  man's  attitude  towards  Christ 

1  "  Luthers  Leben,"  2,  p.  189. 

2  "  Formerly  it  had  not  been  the  way  with  Martinus  Eleutherius 
to  make  eternal  salvation  depend  on  agreement  with  a  single  dogma, 
and  even  in  the  Preface  to  Romans  he  had  meant  by  justifying  faith 
something  very  different." 

3  /6.,  p.  189.  4  P.  222.  5  P,  197.  G  P.  189, 


PROTESTANT   STRICTURES         449 

and  His  saving  Grace  whether  he  was  a  true  believer  or  not  ; 
Luther  himself  frequently  made  this  his  criterion  ;  for  instance, 
in  answer  to  the  question  :  Who  is  a  member  of  the  Church,  and 
whom  must  I  regard  as  my  dear  brother  in  Christ  ?  He  replies, 
all  those  '  Who  confess  Christ  as  sent  by  God  the  Father  in  order 
to  reconcile  us  to  Him  by  His  death  and  to  obtain  for  us  grace  '  ; 
or  again  :  All  '  those  who  put  their  trust  in  Christ  alone  and 
confess  Him  in  faith,'  or  yet  again  :  '  All  those  who  seek  the 
Lord  with  their  whole  heart  and  soul .  .  .  and  who  trust  in  nothing 
but  in  God's  mercy.'  "  J  But  had  not  Zwingli  loudly  proclaimed 
himself  to  be  one  of  these  ? 

"  In  such  utterances  of  Luther's  we  find,"  according  to  Kawerau, 
' '  summed  up  the  purely  religious  and  Evangelical  conception  of 
faith."  Here  there  is  no  question  of  any  accepting  of  the  several 
articles  of  faith,  of  any  submission  to  a  "  string  of  doctrinal 
propositions,"  of  any  "  faith  made  up  of  so  and  so  many  '  articles  ' 
all  of  such  importance  that  to  reject  one  involves  the  dropping  of 
the  others."  2  According  to  this  theologian  Luther  was  untrue 
to  his  own  basic  theories  when  he  assailed  Zwingli  as  he  did. 
Kawerau  also  agrees  with  Hausrath  in  holding  that  the  principal 
cause  of  Luther's  estrangement  was  a  psychological  one  which 
indeed  constituted  the  weakest  spot  in  his  whole  position,  viz. 
his  identification  of  his  own  theological  outbuilding  of  an  article 
of  faith,  with  its  religious  content,3  or,  to  speak  more  plainly, 
his  setting  himself  up  as  the  sole  authority  after  having  set  aside 
that  of  the  Church. 


(b)  The  Melting  away  of  Luther's  Dogmas  viewed  in  the 
Light  of  Protestant  Criticism 

We  have  already  put  on  record  those  doctrines  of  the 
olden  Church,  which,  inclusive  of  the  idea  of  faith  itself, 
Luther  threw  overboard  ;  we  now  come  to  the  doctrines 
which  he  retained,  which  deserve  to  be  considered  in  con 
nection  with  the  strictures  of  modern  Protestant  theologians, 
particularly  of  Harnack.  At  least  these  strictures  bring 
out  very  clearly  their  contradictory  and  illogical  character. 
Evidently  Harnack  is  not  altogether  wrong  when  he  uses 
as  a  page-heading  the  words  "  Exit  dogma  in  Protestant 
ism,4  and  elsewhere:5  "Embarrassments  and  problems  in 
Luther's  heritage." 

Luther,  to  quote  Harnack,  "  frequently  hardened  his 
heart  against  certain  consequences  of  his  own  religious 
principles."6  But  "  if  '  the  whole  Luther  '  is  to  be  set  up 

1  "  Luthers  Stellung  "  (see  p.  445,  n.  4),  p.  28.       2  Ib.,  p.  27  f. 
3  P.  28.  4  From  p.  808.  5  From  p.  871. 

6  "  DG.,"  34,  p.  864,  n. 

V. — 2    G 


450         LUTHER    THE    REFORMER 

as  the  law  of  faith  for  the  Evangelical  Church,  then,  where 
it  is  a  question  of  matters  of  history,  such  consequences 
cannot  be  simply  ignored."  "  The  Lutheran  Reformation," 
writes  Fr.  Loofs,  "  would  have  ended  otherwise  as  regards 
the  history  of  dogma,  had  Luther  braved  tradition  and 
followed  up  his  theories  to  their  logical  conclusion.  The 
shreds  of  the  old  which  remained  hampered  the  growth  of 
the  new  ideas,  even  in  Luther's  own  case."1 


Original  Sin  and  Unfreedom  ;  Law  and  Gospel  ; 
Penance 

Luther  took  over  from  the  olden  Church  the  doctrine  of 
the  existence  of  original  sin,  but  he  so  changed  it,  particu 
larly  by  affirming  that  it  resulted  in  the  destruction  of  free 
will,  that  the  doctrine  itself  becomes  untenable. 

Of  this  all-important  groundwork  of  his  anthropology  the 
theologian  Taube  says  :  "  It  is  not  surprising  that  Luther  fails 
to  remain  faithful  to  the  attitude  he  has  assumed.  It  is  as  im 
possible  to  him,  as  to  any  other  thinking  mind,  to  fail  to  find  free 
dom  presupposed  in  every  corner,  in  his  personal  Christianity, 
and  in  his  own  work  as  pastor,  preacher  or  reformer.  Facts  are 
stronger  than  theories  and  a  priori  reasonings.  .  .  .  Either  the 
data  of  experience  must  be  held  to  be  mere  illusion,  or  absolute 
determinism  must  be  thrown  over.  We  cannot  answer  the  same 
question  both  in  the  negative  and  in  the  affirmative  and  then 
declare  it  to  be  a  mystery  ;  it  would  be  no  mystery  but  simply 
a  contradiction."2 

Still,  Luther  found  it  easier  than  Taube  thinks  to  proclaim 
things  to  be  mysteries  which  palpably  were  nothing  but  con 
tradictions.  A  glance  at  Kostlin's  "  Luthers  Theologie  "  shows 
how  often  Luther  attempts  to  distract  the  reader  from  the 
difficulties  he  himself  enumerates  with  the  consoling  words  : 
This  we  must  not  seek  to  pry  into. — Taube  too  is  optimistic  with 
regard  to  the  fate  of  the  doctrine  of  unfreedom  in  modern 
Protestant  theology  ;  appealing  to  the  above  contradictions,  he 
writes  :  "  It  is  not  surprising  that  the  Lutheran  theology,  closely 
as  it  keeps  to  Luther's  views  in  many  other  matters,  has  never 
ventured  to  follow  him  on  this  all-important  point,  and,  in  fact, 
has  departed  ever  further  from  him.3  The  truth  is  that  the 
period  of  withdrawal  inaugurated  by  Melanchthon  in  1527  has 
been  succeeded  in  our  own  day  by  one  of  closer  approximation. 
(Cp.  above,  vol.  ii.,  p.  292,  n.  4.) 

1  "  Leitfaden  der  DG.,"4,  p.  740  f.     Quoted  by  Harnack,  p.  864. 

2  "  Luthers  Lehre  iiber  Freiheit,"  etc.  (p.  443,  n.  1),  p.  47. 

3  Ib.,  p.  48. 


PROTESTANT   STRICTURES          451 

Apart  from  the  theory  of  man's  absolute  depravity  and  lack  of 
free-will  there  are  other  things  which  are  damaging  to  Luther's 
doctrine  of  original  sin,  particularly  his  opinion  that  original  sin 
persists  after  baptism. 

"  The  doctrine  of  original  sin  as  taught  by  the  olden  Church," 
says  Harnack,  "  was  amended  by  Luther  and  made  to  agree  with 
his  own  principles,"  but  it  was  against  his  principles  "  to  make  of 
such  things  articles  of  faith.  His  own  sense  of  sin  and  the  need 
he  felt  of  pacifying  his  conscience  occupied  in  it  so  large  a  place 
that  he  transformed  what  was  in  reality  a  piece  of  Christian 
self-judgment  into  an  historical  fact  of  universal  appliance 
concerning  the  beginnings  of  the  human  race."  At  any  rate 
Luther's  exaggeration  of  the  impotence  of  fallen  man  served 
"  as  a  ground  of  excuse  for  our  own  guilt."1 

As  regards  his  doctrine  of  the  Law  and  the  Gospel  ; 
Luther  hoped,  by  contrasting  it  with  the  Gospel,  to  bring 
the  Law  into  prominence.  By  the  Law  he  understood  the 
sum-total  of  what  was  commanded  not  merely  in  the  Old 
but  also  in  the  New  Testament ;  the  teaching  of  the  Gospel, 
on  the  other  hand,  contained  only  consoling  thoughts  on 
the  fulfilment  of  the  Law  by  Christ  and  the  appropriation 
of  Christ's  merits  by  faith.2 

"  Plain  as  it  is,"  says  Harnack,  "  what  Luther  really  desired 
by  his  distinction  between  the  Law  and  the  Gospel,  still,  coming 
to  details,  we  find  that  the  Reformer's  statements  do  not  always 
agree.  Thus  it  is  partly  left  to  our  own  private  judgment  to 
select  those  utterances  which  we  consider  more  important  ; 
Luther  himself  nevertheless  gives  the  preference  to  certain  ideas 
which  in  perpetuum  invest  the  Law  with  a  peculiar  independent 
significance.  Is  it  not,  however,  our  duty  to  depict  the  Reformer 
in  accordance  with  his  most  original  ideas  ?  "3 

Such  an  "  original  "  idea  is  that  of  the  abrogation  of  the  Law 
for  the  Christian  who  is  really  redeemed  and  who  voluntarily 
and  without  compulsion  leaves  faith  to  express  itself  in  action. 
"  Certainty  of  the  abrogation  of  the  Law  constitutes  a  certain 
demand  which  can  be  met  only  in  one  way."  Luther  carries  the 
paradox  so  far  as  to  say  :  The  Law  is  given  to  be  broken.  And 
yet  .  .  .  Luther  ever  cherishes  the  "  assumption  that  the  Law  is 
the  expression  of  God's  immutable  will,  and,  in  this  sense,  has  its 
own  enduring  sphere  of  action  side  by  side  with  the  Gospel,  as 
though  the  Will  of  God  were  not  implicitly  contained  in  the 
latter.  But  this  admission  involved  a  place  being  found  for  the 
Law  even  in  Christianity."  Of  this  difficulty  Luther  was  perfectly 
conscious,  but  he  was  deft  enough  in  circumventing  it.  "  The 
Law  qua  lex  is  undoubtedly  abrogated  for  the  Christian  ;  whoever 

1  "DG.,"  34,  p.  877  f. 

2  See  above,  p.  7  ff.  3  P.  843  n. 


452         LUTHER    THE    REFORMER 

tries  to  act  up  to  the  Law  must  needs  go  to  hell ;  but  in  God's 
sight  it  still  holds  good,  i.e.  God's  Will  remains  expressed  therein 
and  He  must  watch  over  its  fulfilment."  If  the  law  is  not  ful 
filled  God  must  demand  penance.1 

In  the  question  of  penance  we  again  see  Luther  assume 
an  attitude  which  is,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  subversive  of  his 
own  doctrine.  His  ideas  on  this  point  are  so  contradictory 
that  Protestant  writers  on  dogma  have  not  been  able  to 
agree  in  their  accounts,  and  needless  to  say,  still  less  in 
their  judgments. 

Alfred  Galley,  one  of  the  most  recent  writers  on  "  Luther's 
doctrine  of  penance,"  admits  :  "  The  various  attempts  made  to 
solve  the  matter  have  so  far  yielded  no  satisfactory  result."  2 
And  yet  for  ten  years  Lipsius,  Herrmann  and  others  had  been 
carefully  exploring  this  central  point  of  Luther's  practical 
theology.  Galley's  own  efforts,  kindly  disposed  as  he  is  to  Luther, 
and  in  spite  of  his  mastery  of  the  texts,  have  not  as  yet  rallied 
other  theologians  to  his  opinion. 

Luther's  original  doctrine  of  Penance,  to  which  frequent 
allusion  has  already  been  made,  started,  according  to  Loofs, 
(1906)  with  the  assumption  that  contrition  is  produced  solely  by 
the  "  love  of  righteousness,"  and  that  true  penance  "  does  not 
come  from  the  Law,"  because  the  latter  does  nothing  but  "  kill, 
curse,  render  guilty  and  pronounce  judgment  "  ;  penance  pro 
duced  by  the  Law  led  only  to  hypocrisy.  "Thus,  before  one  has 
faith,  to  think  of  sin  and  of  the  Law  is  harmful."  Luther,  how 
ever,  gradually  acquiesced  in  the  modifications  introduced  by 
Melanchthon  in  favour  of  the  Law  and  of  that  sorrow  which 
arises  from  the  thought  of  the  penalties.  That  "Luther  to  a  cer 
tain  extent  adopted  Melanchthon's  ideas  on  penance  is  still  more 
apparent  in  the  Antinomian  controversy  [1537-1540],"  yet  the 
ideas  of  his  opponent,  Agricola,  bore  some  "resemblance"  to 
"  Luther's  earlier  ideas  "  on  Christian  penance.3 

As  for  Harnack,  he  emphasises  the  confusion  which  arose  in 
the  Lutheran  theology  owing  to  Luther's  illogical  attitude 
towards  so  eminently  practical  a  question  as  the  doctrine  of 
penance  ;  even  during  Luther's  lifetime  the  doctrine  of  penance 
had  been  a  real  "  labyrinth."  "  Here  too,"  says  Harnack,  "  Luther 
himself  took  the  lead,  and  then  quietly  winked  at  what  was 
contrary  to  his  own  early  principles,  which,  moreover,  he  had 
never  retracted.  That  the  mediaeval  Catholic  view  had  its  after 
effect  on  him  ought  not  to  be  denied."  "  He  was  convinced  that 
faith  works  penance,  the  '  dying  daily,'  which  indeed  is  but  the 
negative  side  of  faith,"  and  that  "  only  such  penance  as  comes 
from  faith  [from  the  Gospel]  is  of  value  in  God's  sight.  .  .  .  This 
is  certainly  a  view  which  may  easily  grow  into  its  dreadful  op- 

1  P.  884.  2  Above,  p.  443,  n.  2,  p.  6. 

3  "  Leitfaden  der  DG.,"  4,  p.  719  ff. 


PROTESTANT   STRICTURES         453 

posite,  viz.  the  comfortable  presuming  on  salvation.  ...  If  people 
are  told  that  they  must  always  be  performing  penance,  and  that 
particular  acts  of  penance  are  of  no  avail,  few  will  ever  have  re 
course  to  penance  at  all."1 

Hence,  according  to  Harnack,  Luther  made  a  change  in  the 
doctrine  of  penance  and  more  importance  was  given  to  the  Law  ; 
"  for  each  separate  act  of  sin  on  the  part  of  the  baptised  "  satis 
faction  must  be  made,  and  "  Christ  must  intervene  anew  with 
His  fulfilment  of  the  Law."2  By  this  means,  by  the  creative 
action  of  God,  "  faith  "  is  constantly  revived  in  the  man  who 
has  fallen,  and  God,  as  Luther  now  assumes,  works  by  means  of 
the  Law.  In  this  wise,  faith,  however,  becomes,  says  Harnack, 
"  a  meritorious  work,"  seeing  that  it  is  the  seal  of  our  recon 
ciliation  ;  moreover  "  personal  responsibility  and  personal 
action  must  play  some  part."3  But  how  is  man  to  do  this, 
devoid  as  he  is  of  any  freedom  of  the  will  ? 

Again,  for  all  his  alteration  of  his  doctrine  of  penance  Luther 
failed  to  "  attain  the  object  he  was  after,  viz.  to  check  laxity  and 
frivolity.  On  the  contrary,  the  new  doctrine  tended,  in  its  later 
developments,  to  promote  and  foster  them."4  Nor  was  much 
gained,  when,  in  order  to  promote  penance  and  greater  earnest 
ness  of  life  the  Law  was  "  placed  before  the  Gospel.  This 
Melanchthoii  did  with  Luther's  consent  in  the  '  Instructions  for 
the  Visitors.'5  Occasion  was  taken  at  the  same  time  to  insist 
strongly  on  the  use  of  the  confessional  in  order  to  check  at  least 
the  worst  sins."  "  The  intervention  of  the  clergyman,  which  was 
undoubtedly  needed  by  the  '  common  people,'  "  constituted 
merely  "  a  Lutheran  counterpart  of  the  Catholic  sacrament  of 
penance,"  though,  adds  Harnack,  "  minus  its  burdensome 
Romish  additions."6 

Luther's  Doctrine  of  Justification  and  Good  Works, 
as  seen  by  Protestant  Critics 

According  to  Harnack,  "  the  idea  of  justification,"  the 
central  point  of  Luther's  teaching,  "  shrinks  into  a  merely 
outward  act  of  God's  designed  to  quieten  consciences.  Here 
again  the  superiority  of  the  Catholic  doctrine  could  not  fail 
to  appear  ;  for  to  be  content  with  the  '  fides  sola  '  could  not 
but  involve  a  very  questionable  laxity.  It  would,  from  this 
point  of  view,  have  been  far  better  to  have  represented  the 

1  "  DG.,"  34,  p.  883  f.  2  Ib.,  p.  884  f. 

3  P.  887.    Harnack  here  quotes  a  passage  to  the  point  from  "  Corp. 
ref.,"  26,  p.  51  seq.,  where  the  "  Instruction  "  seeks  to  pacify  those  who 
fancied  that,  by  the  above  statement,   "  our  previous  teaching  was 
being    repudiated."      Melanchthon    says    that,    "  the    rude,    common 
man  "   must   learn   to    accept   "  commandment,   law,   fear,"   etc.,   as 
"  articles  of  faith  "  which  precede  penance. 

4  "  DG.,"  34,  p.  884.  5  Above  vol.  hi.,  p.  323  ff. 
6  P.  885  f. 


454         LUTHER    THE    REFORMER 

4  fides  caritate  formata '  as  alone  of  any  value  in  God's  sight."1 
In  his  doctrine  of  justification  by  faith  alone,  Luther  never 
got  over  the  weak  point,  viz.  his  exclusion  of  charity,  at 
least  a  commencement  of  which,  together  with  faith,  hope 
and  repentance,  had  been  required  by  the  olden  Church  as 
a  preparation  for  justification.  Some  return  to  the  Catholic 
requirements  was  called  for.  "  Hence  it  is  not  in  the  least 
surprising,  .  .  .  that  Melanchthon  at  a  later  date  abandoned 
the  '  sola  fides '  and  came  to  advocate  a  modified  form  of 
synergism.  The  Luther-zealots  were  thrown  into  hopeless 
confusion  by  the  necessity  in  which  they  found  themselves, 
of  harmonizing  the  older  Evangelical  theory  with  the 
doctrine  of  penance  whilst  avoiding  the  pitfall  of  Melanch- 
thon's  synergism."  They  found  themselves,  so  Harnack  says, 
face  to  face  with  two  "  iustificationes"  that  by  faith  alone, 
and  that  by  law  and  penance,  not  to  speak  of  a  third,  the 
"iustificatio"  of  infants  by  the  act  of  baptism.  "These 
contradictions  become  still  further  accentuated  when  the 
"  regeneratio "  was  taken  into  account,"  etc.2  It  is  not 
worth  while  to  pursue  any  further  Harnack's  criticism 
which  at  times  tends  to  become  carping. 

As  regards  the  doctrine  of  good  works,  Protestant  theology 
of  late  has  been  disposed  to  take  offence  at  Luther's  undue 
extension  of  freedom,  which  seems  to  endanger  good  works 
and  the  zealous  keeping  of  the  Law. 

It  is  the  Christian's  art,  so  Loofs  sums  up  Luther's  teaching,  to 
allow  no  thought  of  the  Law  to  trouble  his  conscience,  but  simply 
to  regard  Christ  as  the  bearer  of  his  sins.  "  Here  the  one-sided 
view  of  the  '  Law,'  seen  only  from  the  standpoint  of  the  need  of 
acquiring  merit  by  works,  has  a  disturbing  effect  "  ;  such  is  Loofs's 
opinion.  According  to  Luther  such  contempt  for  the  Law  is 
often  impossible,  hence  he  determined  to  conquer  the  "  dualism 
of  the  old-new  man  "  of  which  we  like  St.  Paul  (Gal.  ii.  20)  are 
conscious  :  I  live,  and  yet  I  do  not  ;  I  am  dead,  and  yet  I  am  not  ; 
a  sinner,  and  yet  no  sinner  ;  I  have  the  Law  and  yet  I  have  it 
not.  We  ought,  according  to  Luther,  to  say  to  ourselves  :  There 
is  a  time  to  die  and  a  time  to  live,  a  Law  to  be  obeyed  and  a  Law 
to  be  despised.  "  Even  during  the  Antinomian  controversy," 
concludes  Loofs,  "  Luther  did  not  abandon  such  thoughts."3 

Luther's  want  of  discrimination  is  most  apparent,  he  says,  in 
the  fact,  that,  owing  to  his  "  peculiar  interest  in  the  preaching  of 

1  P.  886. 

2  "  DG.,"  34,  p.  886. 

3  "  Leitfaden  der  DG.,"4,  p.  775  ff. 


PROTESTANT   STRICTURES  455 

the  grace  of  God,"  he  depreciated  works  and  the  Law  as  the  very 
fount  of  self  -righteousness. l 

Loofs  rightly  refers  to  a  sermon  in  the  Church-postils  where 
Luther  inveighs  against  the  "  Papists,  Anabaptists  and  other 
sects  "  who  scream  against  us  :  "  What  is  the  use  of  your  preach 
ing  so  much  of  faith  and  Christ  ?  What  good  does  it  do  the 
people  ?  "  2  Luther  could  not  in  fact  "  sufficiently  decry  the 
Law  or  urge  too  strongly  that  it  was  useless  to  Christians."3 

In  the  passage  quoted  Luther  says  of  the  exhortations  to  works 
and  the  preaching  of  the  Commandments  :  "  This  preaching 
does  nothing  else  but  kill,  i.e.  far  from  being  good  or  useful  it  is 
only  harmful  .  .  .  rank  poison  and  death." 

And  he  goes  on  :  "  All  our  works,  however  precious  they  may 
be,  are  nothing  but  poison  and  death.  .  .  .  People  may  indeed 
boast  loudly  and  say  :  '  If  you  live  in  this  way,  take  pains  to  keep 
the  Law  and  perform  many  good  works,  you  will  be  saved.' 
But  that  these  are  only  vain  words,  nay,  a  harmful  doctrine,  will 
soon  be  apparent."4  It  is  not  in  man's  power  to  keep  the  Com 
mandments  by  the  performance  of  the  right  and  necessary 
works,  hence  he  becomes  troubled  and  at  last  despairs  if  he 
strives  after  works.  "  The  human  race  is  so  depraved  that  no  one 
can  be  found  who  does  not  transgress  all  God's  commandments 
even  though  the  wrath  of  God  and  his  eternal  damnation  be  held 
up  before  him  and  preached  to  him  daily  ;  indeed  if  this  is  im 
pressed  upon  a  man  over  much  he  only  begins  to  rage  against  it 
more  horribly."5  It  is  merely  "  reason  with  its  human  ideas  " 
which  "  cannot  get  beyond  this,  viz.  that  God  is  gracious  to  all 
who  live  in  this  manner  and  do  what  the  Ten  Commandments 
require  ;  for  reason  knows  nothing  of  the  misery  of  our  depraved 
nature,  nor  does  it  know  that  no  one  is  able  to  keep  God's  com 
mand."  For  this  cause  Luther  had  at  last  brought  to  light  and 
taught  "  that  other  doctrine  in  which  grace  and  reconciliation  are 
proclaimed  "  to  us  according  to  the  "  spirit  and  letter  "of  St. 
Paul,  whereas  even  the  old  doctors,  Origen,  Jerome  and  others, 
had  not  grasped  St.  Paul's  meaning."6 

In  Popery  "  Scripture  and  St.  Paul's  Epistles  "  were  pushed 
under  the  bench,  and,  instead,  we  wallowed  in  human  foolish 
ness  like  the  swine  in  their  sties."7 

"  Of  what  use  is  it  to  us  that  Moses  and  the  Law  say  :  This 
shalt  thou  do,  this  would  God  have  of  thee  ?  Yes,  good  Moses,  I 
know  this  well  and  it  is  indeed  quite  true.  But  do  you  tell  me 
how  it  is  that,  unfortunately,  I  neither  keep  it  nor  am  able  to 
keep  it  ?  It  is  no  easy  thing  to  spend  money  with  an  empty 
purse  or  to  drink  out  of  an  empty  can  ;  if  I  am  to  pay  my  debts 

1  Cp.  Mausbach,  "  Die  kath.  Moral,"  pp.  214  ff.,  226  ff. 

2  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  92,  p.  237  ff. 

3  Ib.,  p.  774.    Cp.  pp.  702,  706,  721,  769. 

4  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  92,  p.  239.     Cp.  ib.,  63,  p.  112,  where  Luther 
points  out  that  the  Gospel  condemns  works  in  so  far  as  they  are  in 
tended  to  make  us  pious  and  to  save  us. 

5  P.  233.  6  P.  228.  7  P.  237. 


456         LUTHER    THE    REFORMER 

and  to  quench  my  thirst,  then  please  tell  me  how  I  may  come  by 
a  full  purse  and  a  brimming  can.  To  this  the  babblers  have  no 
answer,"  etc.1 

And  yet  the  Catholic  writers  whom  he  dubs  babblers,  Erasmus 
and  Eck  for  instance,  had  demonstrated  from  Scripture  and 
tradition  that  first,  man  is  by  no  means  so  helpless  and  depraved 
as  Luther  assumes,  and,  secondly,  that  the  grace  of  God  is  at  his 
disposal  every  moment  in  order,  by  supernatural  assistance,  to 
enable  his  natural  powers  to  keep  the  Law.  While  pointing 
this  out  they  appeal  at  the  same  time  to  those  passages  of  Scrip 
ture  which  spur  us  on  to  good  works,  and  even  make  our  heavenly 
reward  dependent  on  them. 

Of  these  latter  passages  Loofs  also  asks  :  "In  reality  are  not 
those  alone  saved  who,  besides  their  faith,  can  point  to  good 
works  or  at  least  to  their  fulfilment  of  the  first  Commandment  ? 
Does  not  Scripture  over  and  over  again  speak  of  our  being  judged 
according  to  our  works,  and  of  the  eternal  reward  ?  "  Luther, 
however,  so  he  remarks,  got  over  the  difficulty  "  by  assuming, 
that,  in  such  passages,  faith  is  meant  even  when  they  speak  of 
good  works  "  ;  Luther  actually  finds  a  parallel  in  the  "  rule  of 
the  '  communicatio  idiomatum  ' ' '  which  deals  with  the  Divine 
attributes  of  Christ  made  man.2 

Another  attempt  to  evade  the  difficulty,  so  Loofs  declares,  is 
found  in  Luther's  statement  regarding  the  reward  promised  in  the 
Bible  to  the  just  for  their  works.  He  argued  that  there  must  be 
some  difference  between  the  saved  in  their  "  degree  of  brightness 
and  glory,"  and  thus,  "  accidentaliter,"  he  makes  some  account 
of  the  reward. 3  Loofs,  however,  also  draws  attention  to  the  fact 
that  in  the  same  sermons  on  Matthew,  when  touching  cursorily 
on  this,  Luther  "  pokes  fun  at  the  idea  of  God  setting  some 
'  particular  Saint  '  in  a  topmost  place  in  heaven,  and  inveighs 
against  the  traditional  idea  of  the  '  prccmium  accidentale.'  "4  This 
is  quite  true,  for  Luther's  statements  do  not  agree  even  here. 
In  the  passage  quoted  he  is  explaining  his  doctrine  according 
to  which,  in  this  world,  all  the  justified  are  equal  in  sanctity, 
the  sinner  who  has  just  been  converted  being  as  pleasing  to 
God  as  the  Apostles.  "  For  were  St.  Peter  a  better  Christian 
than  I  am,  he  would  have  to  have  a  better  Christ,  a  better  Gospel 
and  a  better  baptism.  But,  seeing  that  the  heritage  we  enjoy 
is  one  and  the  same,  we  must  all  be  equal  in  this."5 

There  are  few  sayings  of  Luther's  where  the  wholly  mechanical 
nature  of  the  forgiveness  and  sanctification  taught  by  him, 
stands  out  more  clearly. 

1  Ib. 

2  "  Leitfaden  der  DG.,"  4,  p.  769  f.   Cp.  "  Comm.  in  Gal."    "  Werke," 
Weim.  ed.,  40,  1,  p.  415  f.    Irmischer,  1,  p.  382  seq. 

3  Cp.  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  43,  p.  367  f.  :  "  Whoever  works  more  and 
suffers  more  will  also  have  a  more  glorious  reward."     Ib.,  58,  p.  354  f.  : 
"  Opera  .  .  .  accidentaliter  glorificabunt  personam." 

4  Ib.,  p.  771,  with  a  reference  to  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  43,  pp.  361,  366. 

5  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  92,  p.  259. 


PROTESTANT   STRICTURES         457 

That,  in  spite  of  all  this,  he  does  not  exclude  works,  is  suf 
ficiently  remarkable.  In  the  very  passage  where  Luther  brings 
forward  the  objection  of  the  Papists  and  Anabaptists  :  It  must 
be  done,  i.e.  good  works,  must  be  performed,  he  hastens  to  reply  : 
"  We  have  the  Ten  Commandments  which  we  teach  and  keep 
as  well  as  they  "  ;  1  the  only  difference  was,  that,  he  by  his 
Evangelical  preaching  taught  how  the  Commandments  were 
really  to  be  honoured. 

Loofs  can  even  say  that  Luther  proclaims  the  need  of  good 
works.  He  quotes  the  following  utterances,  for  instance,  from 
Luther's  later  years  :  "  Opera  habent  suam  necessitatem  "  ;  "  they, 
too,  must  be  there  "  ;  "  On  account  of  the  hypocrites  we  must 
say  that  good  works  are  requisite  for  salvation  ('  necessaria  ad 
salutem'),"2  "he  did  not  shrink  from  speaking  in  this  way 
when  giving  counsel."3  It  is  quite  true,  that,  when  preaching 
to  the  people,  mindful  of  their  faults  and  vices,  he  is  fond,  as  Loofs 
shows,  of  recalling  how  Christ  says  "drily  and  clearly"  :  "If 
thou  wilt  enter  into  life,  keep  the  commandments  [Mt.  xix.  17]; 
item,  Do  this  and  thou  shalt  live,  etc.  [Luke  x.  28].  This  must 
be  taken  as  it  stands  and  without  debate."4  Hence  Luther 
even  calls  those  folk  "  mad  "  who  say  :  "  '  Only  believe  and  you 
will  be  saved.'  No,  good  fellow,  that  will  not  do,  and  you  will 
never  get  to  the  kingdom  of  heaven  unless  you  keep  the  Com 
mandments.  .  .  .  For  it  is  written  plainly  enough  :  '  If  thou  wilt 
enter  into  life,  keep  the  commandments.'  " 5  And  Luther  supports 
this  text  by  others  which  speak  of  works,  of  their  merit  and 
demerit,  their  reward  and  punishment.6 

And  yet  immediately  after  he  goes  on  to  complain  :  "  How 
are  we  to  do  what  the  Law  perpetually  urges  and  requires,  seeing 
that  we  are  unable  to  comply  with  its  demands  ?  "7 

Finally  he  reaches  his  usual  answer  :  "I  will  do  it,  says  Christ, 
and  fulfil  it  "  ;  first  of  all  He  again  and  again  obtains  forgiveness 
for  us,  "  seeing  that  we  are  unable  to  keep  the  Law  "  ;  Christ, 
however,  did  not  wish  us  "to  continue  sinning  "  ;  on  the  contrary, 
the  grace  He  infuses  makes  us  keep  the  Law  "  willingly  and 
gladly  "  ;  good  works,  more  particularly  those  of  charity  towards 
our  neighbour,  spring  up  of  themselves  after  "  we  have  crept 
beneath  Christ's  mantle  and  wing."8  Where  faith  is  present  "  it 
cannot  but  work  unceasingly  what  is  good.  It  does  not  ask 
whether  there  be  a  call  to  do  good  works,  but  even  before  the 
question  is  put  it  has  already  done  them,  and, is  ever  after  doing 

1  Ib.,  p.  237. 

2  And  yet  Luther,  on  June  1,   1537,  boldly  denounced  the  Thesis 
"  Bona   opera   sunt   necessaria   ad   salutem"      "  Disputationen,"    ed. 
Drews,  ib.,  p.  159.    Loofs,  ib.,  pp.  770,  857. 

3  Ib.,  p.  770.  4  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  142,  p.  178  ff. 

5  Ib.,  p.  179. 

6  He   also  defends  the  Law  in  the  same  way  against  the  Anti- 
nomians,  speaking  very  much  in  Melanchthon's  style.     Cp.  Loofs,  ib., 
p.  861. 

7  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  142,  p.  181. 

8  Ib.,  p.  183.    Cp.  above,  p.  26  f. 


458         LUTHER    THE    REFORMER 

them."1  Those  Christians — presumably  the  majority — who  fail 
to  find  themselves  in  such  a  state  receive  but  poor  consolation  : 
"Whoever  does  not  perform  such  works  is  an  unbelieving  man, 
who  gropes  and  looks  about  for  faith  and  good  works  but  knows 
neither  the  one  nor  the  other."2 

Luther  did  not  see  that  he  was  endangering  both  faith  and 
works  and  undermining  their  very  foundations. 

For,  as  his  opponents  objected,  the  last  category  of  Christians, 
however  careless  they  might  be  in  the  matter  of  good  works, 
and  however  much  they  might  fail  to  keep  the  Commandments, 
could,  nevertheless,  for  the  most  part,  at  least  boast  of  having 
the  faith,  whether  regarded  in  the  light  of  a  "  loving  confidence 
in  God's  grace  "  or  in  the  more  usual  and  ordinary  sense  of  an 
acceptance  of  the  divine  revelation  as  true.  Their  faith,  it 
was  urged,  was  according  to  Luther  at  the  outset  very  closely 
in  touch  with  sin,  indeed  they  had  been  justified  by  faith  without 
either  repentance  or  change  of  heart,  faith  having  merely  spread 
a  cloak  over  their  evil  deeds  ;  and  yet  now  here  was  Luther 
telling  them  that  they  had  lost  the  faith  unless  they  lived  by  it, 
or  if  they  transgressed  the  Commandments  even  by  a  venial 
sin — for  Luther  sees  no  distinction  between  mortal  sin  and 
venial. 

Loofs  is  certainly  not  overstating  things  when  he  says 
that,  "Luther  was  not  clear  in  his  own  mind"3  as  to  his 
doctrine  on  the  great  questions  of  works  and  the  Law, 
and  that  his  "  opinion  comprised  much  that  did  not 
tally."4 

Loofs  adds  :  "  How  far  Luther  himself  was  aware  that 
much  of  .what  he  said  voiced  merely  his  own  personal  opinion 
it  would  be  hard  to  tell.  .  .  .  Without  his  wealth  of  ideas 
and  his  ability  to  insist  now  on  one,  now  on  another  side  of 
a  subject  Luther  would  not  have  been  so  successful  as  a 
reformer.  But  he  was  hampered  by  his  own  qualities  so 
soon  as  it  became  a  question  of  putting  his  new  views  in 
didactic  form."5 

Loofs,  like  Harnack,  spares  no  praise  when  speaking  of 
Luther's  "  qualities  "  and  the  "  happy  intuition  "  which 
enabled  him  to  overthrow  the  olden  order  and  to  call  into 
being  a  new,  "  religious,"  Christianity. 

1  Cp.  ib.,  63,  pp.  113  ff.,  125,  134.     Preface  to  the  translation  of 
Romans. 

2  Cp.  Kostlin-Kawerau,  1,  p.  566,  on  this  Preface.     See  also  above, 
pp.  39  f.,  47  ff. 

3  Ib.,  p.  771.  4  Ib.,  p.  778.  5  P.  781  f. 


PROTESTANT   STRICTURES         459 

Luther's  Doctrine  of  Merit  in  the  Eyes  of  Protestant 
Critics 

One  such  "  happy  intuition  "  Loofs  sees  in  the  fact,  that, 
in  the  question  of  works  and  merit  Luther  "  clearly  per 
ceived  and  got  the  better  of  the  opinion,  untenable  in 
religion,  that  a  scale  of  merit  exists  as  between  God  and 
man."1  The  critic  abstains  from  discussing  the  Catholic 
teaching  on  supernatural  merit.  Its  earlier  no  less  than  its 
later  defenders  rightly  emphasised,  in  opposition  to  Luther, 
that  the  olden  doctrine  of  merit  rested  on  the  express 
promise  of  God  to  reward  faithful  service,  and  not,  as  Luther 
insinuated,  on  any  absolute  right  of  the  works  in  them 
selves  to  such  reward.  The  act  which  was  to  meet  with 
such  a  reward  must,  they  said,  be  not  only  good  in  itself  but 
also  supernaturally  good,  i.e.  it  must  be  performed  by 
man's  powers  aided  by  supernatural  grace  ;  even  this, 
however,  would  not  suffice  were  there  not  the  gracious 
promise  on  God's  part,  guaranteed  by  revelation,  that  such 
an  act  would  be  requited  by  a  heavenly  reward.  Yet  this 
was  not  to  deny  a  certain  "  condignitas  in  actu  primo  "  in 
herent  in  the  act  itself. 

Luther,  it  is  true,  laughs  to  scorn  the  Popish  doctrine  of 
merit  which  makes  God  Himself  our  debtor.  Yet  long 
before  St.  Augustine  had  answered  the  objection  :  "  God 
has  become  our  debtor,  not  as  though  He  has  received 
something  from  us,  but  because  He  has  promised  what 
pleased  Him.  It  is  a  different  thing  when  we  say  to  a  man  : 
You  are  my  debtor  because  I  have  given  you  something, 
and  when  we  say  to  God  :  Give  us  what  Thou  hast  promised, 
for  we  have  done  what  Thou  didst  command."2 

In  the  fragments  of  the  ancient  doctrine  of  religious 
morality  which  Luther  saw  fit  to  retain  he  put  germs  of 
disintegration  owing  to  his  failure  to  recognise  the  above 
truth.  Because  he  would  hear  nothing  of  merit  and  every 
where  scented  righteousness-by-works,  he  built  up  a  theory 
of  good  works  which  lacks  a  foundation.  In  the  last  resort 
everything  is  coloured  by  his  dread  of  self-righteousness 
and  of  any  human  co-operation.  "  The  '  Law,'  to  Luther, 
seemed  conditioned  by  that  '  condicio  meriti,'  "  says  Loofs, 
"  which  belonged  to  the  Law  of  Moses,  and,  which,  owing 

1  P.  771.  2  Sermo  158,  c.  2. 


460         LUTHER    THE    REFORMER 

to  the  craving  of  the  natural  man  for  self-righteousness, 
also  becomes  part  of  the  natural  law."1 

So  strongly  does  Luther  denounce  merit  and  self- 
righteousness  that  he  practically  does  away  with  his  own 
doctrine  of  works. 

First,  his  denial  of  free-will  and  the  absolute  determinism 
of  his  doctrine  makes  an  end  of  all  spontaneous,  meritorious 
action  on  man's  part.  Further,  he  is  untrue  to  his  position, 
repudiating  it  in  his  sermons  and  popular  writings  as  far 
as  possible,  and  replacing  it  by  one  morally  more  defensible. 
In  later  years  we  find  him  casting  over  his  own  teaching 
even  in  his  theological  disputations  ;  in  his  anxiety  to 
counter  the  Antinomians,  he  goes  so  far  as  to  declare  works 
necessary  for  salvation. 

Even  earlier  the  fanatics  and  Anabaptists  had  helped  to 
some  extent  in  the  work  of  demolition.  Their  conclusions 
as  to  the  dangers  of  Luther's  system  and  their  protests 
against  its  evil  moral  consequences  are  really  much  more 
vigorous  and  damaging  than  might  appear  from  Luther's 
bitter  rejoinders.  "  The  unjust  attitude  of  the  reformers 
towards  the  '  fanatics,'  "  says  Harnack,  "  was  disastrous  to 
themselves  and  their  cause.  How  much  might  they  not 
have  learnt  from  these  despised  people  even  though  obliged 
to  repudiate  their  principles."2 

The  work  of  demolition  was,  moreover,  being  carried  out 
under  Luther's  very  eye  by  Philip  Melanchthon  and  his 
friends.  Luther's  doctrine,  as  has  already  been  pointed  out, 
was  not  at  all  to  the  taste  of  the  dialectician  of  Lutheranism. 
"  The  Philippists,"  says  Loofs,  "  were  very  far  from  holding 
Luther's  own  views,"  "  as  far  removed  as  "  the  Antinomians. 
Luther  himself,  however,  "  was  partly  to  blame  for  the 
confusion."  From  the  standpoint  adopted  by  Melanchthon 
"  it  was  impossible  to  comply  "  with  Luther's  demand  for 
a  clear  "  distinction  to  be  made  between  Law  and  Gospel  "  ;3 
yet,  according  to  Luther,  this  was  one  of  "  the  things  on 
which  theology  hinges . "  4  According  to  Loofs,  Melanchthon's 
theology  was  a  means  of  spoiling  some  "  valuable  reforma 
tion  truths,"  nay,  "  the  most  priceless  of  Luther's  new 
ideas."5  As  for  Melanchthon's  allegation,  viz.  that  he  had 

1  "  Leitfaden,"  «,  p.  773  f.  2  "  DG.,"  34,  p.  870. 

3  Ib.,  p.  900.  4  P.  770. 

5  P.  856  f.    Cp.  G.  Kruger's  opinion,  vol.  iii.,  p.  352,  n.  2. 


PROTESTANT   STRICTURES  461 

merely  put  Luther's  doctrine  more  mildly,  Loofs  says 
bluntly  :  "  If  he  meant  this,  then  he  deceived  himself."1 
As  to  the  points  under  discussion,  Luther  not  only  thought 
differently  from  Melanchthon  at  an  earlier  date,  but  per 
sisted  in  so  doing  till  his  very  death.  Luther,  nevertheless, 
never  expressed  any  disapproval  of  Melanchthon's  ideas, 
widely  as  they  differed  from  his  own. 

Luther's  teaching  on  the  Sacraments  and  on  the  Supper 
according  to  Protestant  Teaching 

In  Harnack's  opinion  Luther,  by  his  teaching  on  the  one 
sacrament,  viz.  the  Word,  "  destroyed  the  olden  ecclesi 
astical  view.  Yet  he  unconsciously  retained  a  certain 
remnant  .  .  .  which  had  fatal  results  on  the  development 
of  his  doctrine.  Though  here  again  we  find  truth  and  error 
side  by  side  in  Luther,  we  may  not  shut  our  eyes  to  the  fact 
that  he  opened  the  door  to  errors  of  a  grave  character."2 

The  principal  error  in  his  doctrine  of  the  sacraments  con 
sisted,  according  to  Harnack,  in  his  having  made  his  own  a 
reminiscence  of  the  Catholic  view.  Instead  of  teaching  that 
the  Holy  Ghost  acts  by  the  Word  alone,  he  came,  as  his  state 
ments  subsequent  to  1525  show,  to  regard  this  Spirit  as  operating 
by  the  "  Word  and  the  Sacraments."3 

"  In  his  teaching  on  the  sacraments  he  forsook  the  attitude 
he  had  once  adopted  as  a  reformer  and  accepted  views  which 
tended  to  confuse  his  own  doctrine  of  faith  and  still  more  the 
theology  of  his  followers.  In  his  efforts  to  thwart  the  fanatics  he 
came  to  embrace  .  .  .  some  highly  questionable  propositions. 
.  .  .  This  relapse  in  his  views  on  the  means  of  grace  wrought 
untold  damage  to  Luther anism."4  Here  his  desire  to  get  the 
better  of  the  fanatics  played  a  part,  and  so  did  likewise  the 
psychological  starting-point  of  his  whole  teaching.  He  reverted 
to  the  means  of  grace,  "  because  he  wished  to  provide  real 
consolation  for  troubled  consciences,  and  to  preserve  them  from 
the  hell  of  uncertainty  concerning  that  state  of  grace  of  which 
the  fanatics  appeared  to  make  so  small  account.  ...  It  was, 
however,  not  merely  by  his  rejection  of  certain  definite  acts  as 

1  P.  857.  2  P.  868. 

3  Harnack  (p.  880)  refers  to  Miiller,  ib.,  p.  321  f.,  i.e.  to  Luther's 
Schmalkalden  Articles  of  1537,  where  we  read  ("  Symbol.  Bucher," 
par.  3,  Art.  8,  ed.  Miiller-Kolde10  :  "  Ita  prcemuniamus  nos  adversum 
enthusiastas  .  .  .  quod  Deus  non  velit  nobiscum  aliter  agere  nisi  per 
vocale  verbum  et  sacramental  But  similar  passages  occur  in  the  book 
Harnack  also  quotes,  "  Widder  die  hymelischen  Propheten  "  (1525), 
"  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  18,  p.  62  ff. ;  Erl.  ed.,  29,  p.  134  ff.,  particularly 
136  ff.  =  208  ff.  4  "  DG.,"  34,  p.  879  f. 


462         LUTHER    THE    REFORMER 

means  of  grace  that  Luther  returned  to  the  narrow  views  of  the 
Middle  Ages  which  he  had  previously  forsaken — the  spirit  lives 
not  (as  Luther  knew  better  than  any  other  man),  thanks  to  any 
means  of  grace,  but  thanks  rather  to  that  close  union  with  its 
God  on  Whom  it  lays  hold  through  Christ — he  did  so  still  more 
by  seeking,  first,  to  vindicate  Infant  Baptism  as  a  means  of  grace 
in  the  strict  sense ;  secondly,  by  accepting  Penance  as  at  least 
a  preparation  for  grace,  and,  thirdly,  by  maintaining  that  the 
Real  Presence  of  the  Body  and  Blood  of  Christ  in  the  Supper 
constitutes  the  essential  part  of  this  sacrament."1  It  is  true  he 
"  never  ceased  to  maintain  that  the  means  of  grace  were  nothing 
but  the  Word  whereby  faith  is  awakened,"  but,  in  spite  of  this, 
the  "  opus  operatum  "  of  the  olden  Church  "  had  again  made  its 
appearance  and  weakened  or  obscured  the  strict  relations 
between  Gospel  and  faith."2 

Of  Infant  Baptism  in  Luther's  system  Harnack  rightly  says  : 
"  If  Luther's  Evangelical  theory  holds  good,  viz.  that  grace  and 
faith  are  -inseparably  linked, 3  then  Infant  Baptism  is  in  itself  no 
sacrament,  and  can  be  no  more  than  an  ecclesiastical  rite  ;  if  it 
is  a  sacrament  in  the  strict  sense,  then  evidently  his  theory  is  at 
fault.  We  cannot  escape  the  dilemma,  either  by  appealing  to  the 
faith  of  the  parents  or  god-parents  [as  Luther,  to  begin  with,  did] 
— for  this  is  the  worst  kind  of  the  '  fides  implicita  ' — or  by 
assuming  that  faith  is  given  in  baptism,4  for  an  unconscious  faith 
is  almost  as  bad  as  that  other  '  fides  implicita.'  Hence  the 
proper  thing  for  Luther  to  have  done  would  have  been  either  to 
abolish  Infant  Baptism  .  .  .  or  to  admit  that  it  was  a  mere  rite 
to  be  completed  later.  .  .  .  Luther,  however,  did  neither  ;  on 
the  contrary,  he  retained  Infant  Baptism  as  the  sacrament  of 
regeneration  and  accepted  as  an  efficacious  act  what  should,  given 
his  theory,  have  at  most  been  a  symbol  of  God's  preventing 
grace.  This  was,  however  much  he  might  deny  it,  to  hark 
back  to  the  *  opus  operatum  '  and  to  dissolve  the  link  between 
faith  and  the  working  of  grace."5 

Again,  according  to  Harnack,  the  mould  in  which  Luther  cast 
his  doctrine  of  the  Supper  once  more  involved  him  in  contra 
dictions  which  rendered  his  position  untenable. 

On  the  one  hand,  by  so  strenuously  insisting  on  the  belief  in 
the  Real  Presence  as  a  binding  doctrinal  formula  he  was  untrue 
to  his  own  theory  that  doctrine  was  not  to  be  formulated  ;  on 
the  other  hand,  his  restatement  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Supper 
emptied  it  of  all  content.  It  was  "  in  part  the  fault  of  his 

1  Ib.,  p.  881.  2  P.  881  f. 

3  "  Where  faith  is  not  present  [baptism]  remains  nothing  but  a 
barren  sign."    "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  30,  1,  p.  221  ;   Erl.  ed.,  21,  p.  140. 
Larger  Catechism,  Part  IV  :    on  Baptism. 

4  "  We  bring  the  child  for  this  [Baptism],  thinking  and  hoping  that 
it  believes,  and  praying  God  to  give  it  the  faith." 

5  Ib.,  p.  882.    Cp.  above,  vol.  iv.,  p.  487  ff.,  the  works  of  the  Protes 
tant  theologians  :    J.  Gottschick,  O.  Scheel,  E.  Rietschel,  E.  Haupt, 
W.  Herrmann  and  E.  Bunge,  on  how  Baptism  suffered  in  Luther's 
system. 


PROTESTANT   STRICTURES  463 

formulating  of  the  faith  that  the  later  Lutheran  Church,  with  its 
Christology,  its  teaching  on  the  Sacrament  .  .  .  and  the  false 
standard  by  which  it  judged  divergent  doctrines  and  pronounced 
them  heretical,  threatened  for  a  while  to  become  a  sort  of 
caricature  of  the  Catholic  Church."1 

Harnack  notes  how  Luther,  the  better  to  reach  the  real  meaning 
of  the  words  "  This  is  My  Body,"  actually  called  tradition  to  his 
aid,  in  his  case  an  extremely  illogical  thing  to  do.  His  conscious 
ness  that  in  holding  fast  to  the  Real  Presence  he  was  backed  by 
the  whole  Church  of  yore  lends  his  words  unusual  power.  "  Even 
were  a  hundred  thousand  devils  and  all  the  fanatics  to  fall  upon 
it,  still  the  doctrine  must  stand  firm."2  We  may  add,  that,  with 
regard  to  this  sacrament,  Luther  outdid  his  adversaries  in  his 
attachment  to  tradition  and  antiquity,  reintroducing  communion 
under  both  kinds  as  being  alone  in  strict  accord  with  Scripture. 

There  was  also  much  that  was  personal  and  arbitrary  in  the 
doctrine  of  the  Sacrament  of  the  Altar  as  shaped  anew  and 
established  by  Luther.  For  one  thing,  he  dwelt  far  too  exclu 
sively  on  this  sacrament  being  the  pledge  of  the  forgiveness  of 
sins.  Again,  in  his  desire  to  counter  Zwingli,  he  put  forward 
theories  on  the  sacrament,  which  embody  all  sorts  of  disad 
vantages  and  contradictions  not  to  be  found  in  the  teaching  of 
the  earlier  Church.  He,  indeed,  denied  Transubstantiation,  but 
the  "  Swiss  could  not  for  the  life  of  them  see  why  he  did,  since  he 
admits  that  a  stupendous  miracle  takes  place  in  the  Supper."3 

For  the  Church's  ancient  doctrine  of  Transubstantiation  he 
substituted  Impanation,  and  even  this  he  admitted  only  in  the 
actual  celebration  and  reception.4  "  The  awkward  part  was," 
says  Harnack,  "  that,  according  to  Luther,  the  Body  and  Blood 
of  Christ  were  present  in  the  Supper  only  for  the  purpose  of 
reception,  though  they  might  be  partaken  of  even  by  an  un 
believer  or  a  heathen.5  The  concomitance  (presence  of  both 
Body  and  Blood  under  either  kind)  taught  by  the  olden  Church, 
which,  indeed,  was  a  natural  corollary  of  the  Real  Presence,  he 
set  aside,  urged  thereto  by  his  theory  that  in  Communion  both 
kinds  must  be  received  ;  the  only  result  was  to  introduce  a  new 
and  uncalled-for  miracle.  To  this  must  be  added  what  Harnack 
calls  the  "  crazy  speculations  on  the  ubiquity  of  the  Body  of 
Christ,"6  which  furnished  Melanchthon  his  principal  reason  for 

1  Ib.,  p.  894. 

2  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  30,  1,  p.  224  ;   Erl.  ed.,  21,  p.  143. 

3  Hausrath,  "  Luthers  Leben,"  2,  p.  223.     Cp.  on  Zwingli,  vol.  iii., 
p.  379  ff.,  and  below,  p.  465,  n.  1. 

4  Of  the  doctrine  of  Impanation,  Loofs  ("  Leitfacten,"  p.  905)  says, 
that  the  famous  formulary  on  the  Real  Presence  of  the  Body  and 
Blood  of  Christ  :    sub  pane,  in  pane,  cum  pane,  cannot  be  traced  to 
Luther,   but  was  only  gathered  after  his  day  from  the  Larger  and 
Smaller  Catechism   (Weim.   ed.,   30,    1,   pp.   223,   315 ;    Erl.   ed.,   21, 
p.  143,  19). 

5  "  Dogmengesch.,"  34,  p.  894, 

6  Ib.,  p.   875.     Loofs  speaks  (p.   920)  of  the  "  christological  enor 
mities  inseparable  from  Luther's  doctrine  of  the  sacrament." 


464         LUTHER    THE    REFORMER 

giving  up  Luther's  doctrine  of  the  Supper,  and,  like  Zwingli  and 
Bucer,  denying  the  Real  Presence.  According  to  Luther,  the 
ubiquity  of  the  Body  of  Christ  rested  on  the  supposed  "  real 
communication  of  the  Divine  '  idiomata '  (and  consequently  of  the 
Divine  omnipresence)  to  the  humanity  of  Christ."1 

Nor  does  the  Real  Presence,  according  to  Luther,  begin  at  the 
consecration  ;  as  to  when  it  does,  he  leaves  the  faithful  in  the 
dark  ;  nor  does  he  enlighten  them  as  to  when  it  ceases  in  the 
remains  left  over  after  communion  ;  in  the  latter  regard  his 
practice  was  full  of  contradictions. — In  allowing  communion  to 
be  carried  to  the  sick  in  their  own  houses  he  was  again  un 
faithful  to  his  tenets.2  To  any  processions  of  the  sacrament  he 
was  averse,  because  Christ  was  only  present  at  the  time  of 
reception. 

He  proposed,  as  the  better  plan,  that  the  sacrament  should  not 
be  adored  save  by  bending  the  knee  when  receiving  it,  and  yet 
his  own  behaviour  did  not  tally  with  his  proposal. 3  It  was  enacted 
at  Wittenberg,  in  1542,  that  there  should  be  no  elevation,  and 
yet  Luther  had  retained  this  rite  at  an  earlier  date,  in  order  to 
defy  Carlstadt,  as  he  says,  and  so  as  not  to  seem  in  this  "  in 
different  matter  "  to  sanction  by  his  attitude  Carlstadt's  attack 
on  the  sacrament.4  He  was,  to  say  the  least,  verbally  illogical 
when  he  termed  the  Eucharist  the  "  sacrificium  eucharisticum," 
meaning  of  course  thereby  that  it  was  a  "  thank-offering  "  on  the 
part  of  the  faithful. 

1  Cp.  Loofs,  ib.,  p.  811. 

2  Cp.  Luther's  letter  to  Anton  Lauterbach,  Nov.  26,  1539,  "  Brief- 
wechsel,"    12,   p.    295,   where  he  expresses  himself  opposed  to  such 
private    communions,    though    tolerating    them   for    the    time    being. 
Communion  in  the  church  three  or  four  times  a  year  would  suffice  in 
order  to  be  able  to  die  "  fortified  by  the  Word."     In  a  time  of  public 
sickness,  such  as  the  plague,  the  communion  of  the  sick  would  become 
an  insupportable  burden,  and  further  the  Church  must  not  be  enslaved 
("facere  servilem  ")  to  the  sacraments,  particularly  in  the  case  of  those 
who  had  previously  despised  them. 

3  In  the  work  "  Von  Anbeten  des  Sacramets  "  (1523)  Luther  says 
that  each  one  should  be  left  free  to  adore  or  not,  and  that  those  who 
do  not  adore  the  sacrament  are  not  to  be  termed  heretics,  for  it  is  not 
commanded,  Christ  not  being  there  in  His  glory  as  He  is  in  heaven." 
Those  do  bes.t  who  forget  "  their  duty  towards  the  sacrament  "  and 
therefore   do   not   adore,   because   there   is    "  danger  "   in   adoration. 
"Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  11,  p.  448  f.  ;  Erl.  ed.,  28,  p.  410  f.— Still,  in 
1544,  writing  to  the  Princes  Johann,  George  and  Joachim  of  Anhalt, 
he  says  :    "  Cum  Christus  vere  adest  in  pane,  cur  non  ibi  summa  rever- 
entia  tractaretur  et  adoraretur  etiam  ?  "     Prince  Joachim  declared  that 
he  "  had  seen  Luther  kneel  down  and  reverently  adore  the  sacrament 
at  the  elevation."    Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  341  (Notes  by  Besold, 
1544). 

4  He  told  the  three  princes  just  referred  to  not  to  abolish  the 
elevation.     "  Nam  alia  res  circumferri,  alia  elevari."     The  dignity  of 
the  sacrament  might  suffer  were  it  carried  about.    He  was  even  think 
ing  of  reviving  the  elevation  (see  vol.  iv.,  p.   195,  n.  4,  and  above, 
p.  146)  which  had  been  abolished  by  Bugenhagen. 


PROTESTANT   STRICTURES          465 

It  is  not  surprising  that  belief  in  the  Real  Presence,  though  so 
strongly  defended  by  Luther,  gradually  evaporated  in  his  Church 
largely  owing  to  the  inconsistencies  just  noticed.  Eventually 
the  Lutherans  made  their  own  the  views  of  Zwingli  and  Melanch- 
thon  on  the  sacrament,  though  they  retained  an  affection  for 
certain  vague  and  elastic  terms  concerning  the  reception  of  the 
Body  and  Blood  of  Christ.1  Luther  spoke  of  the  attempts  to 
introduce  Zwingli's  rationalistic  doctrine  of  the  sacrament  at 
Frankfurt-on-the-Main  as  "a  diabolical  jugglery  with  the  words 
of  Christ,"  "  whereby  simple  souls  are  shamefully  duped  and 
robbed  of  their  sacrament."  The  thing  was  "  handled  in  such 
a  way  that  no  one  was  certain  what  was  meant  or  what  to 
believe."2 


Luther's  views  on  the  Church  and  on  Divine  Worship 
according  to  Protestant  Criticism 

A  mass  of  inconsequence  lies  in  the  doctrine  on  the  Church, 
which  he  is  supposed  to  have  retained,  though,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  he  completely  altered  it.  Thanks  to  his  conception 
of  the  Church  as  a  practically  invisible  body  his  view  of  it 
was  so  broad  as  to  leave  far  behind  the  old,  Catholic  idea  ; 
nevertheless,  by  and  by  his  conception  of  the  Church 
grew  so  narrow,  that,  as  Harnack  justly  remarks,  "  in 
comparison,  even  the  Roman  view  of  it  seems  in  many 
respects  more  elastic  and  consequently  superior.  .  .  .  The 
Church  threatened  to  become  a  mere  school,  viz.  the  school 
of  '  pure  [Wittenberg]  doctrine.'  '  In  this  way  arose  "  the 
Christianity  of  the  theologians  and  pastors.  .  .  .  Luther 
on  his  own  side  repeatedly  broke  away  from  this  view."3 
It  is  quite  true  that  many  contradictions  are  here  apparent, 
as  we  shall  have  occasion  to  see  later  (vol.  vi.,  xxxviii.). 
"  His  idea  of  the  Church  became  obscured.  The  con 
ception  of  the  Church  (communion  of  faith  and  communion 

1  "  If  I  am  right,"  says  G.  Kawerau,  "  the  peculiar  Melanchthonian 
form  of  the  doctrine  of  the  sacrament  is  pretty  widely  spread  at  the 
present  time  among  Evangelicals,  whether  theologians  or  laity,  as  the 
form  under  which  Luther's  religious  views  on  the  sacrament  are  to  be 
accepted,"  etc.     "  Luthers  Stellung  "  (above,  p.  445,  n.  4),  p.  41.     On 
this  point  Melanchthon,  as  is  notorious,  really  agreed  with  Zwingli. 
Of  Zwingli,  owing  to  his  denial  of  the  Real  Presence,  Luther  wrote  : 
"  I,  for  my  part,  regard  Zwingli  as  an  unbeliever"  ("  Werke,"  Weim. 
ed.,  26,  p.  342  ;   Erl.  ed.,  30,  p.  225),  and  for  the  same  cause  he  "  would 
show  him  only  that  charity  which  we  are  bound  to  display  even  to 
our  foes."     To  J.  Probst,  June  1,  1530,  "  Brief wechsel,"  7,  p.  354  f. 

2  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  30,  3,  p.  558  f.  ;   Erl.  ed.,  262,  p.  372  f, 

3  "  DG.,"  34,  p.  872. 

V,— 2   H 


466         LUTHER    THE    REFORMER 

of  pure  doctrine)  became  as  ambiguous  as  the  conception 
of  the  '  doctrina  evangelii.9 ' 

Then,  with  regard  to  his  teaching  on  public  worship. 
Though,  as  remarked  above  (p.  147  f.),  he  had  in  principle 
abandoned  the  view  held  by  the  olden  Church  regarding 
the  necessity  of  external  worship,  and  had  robbed  it  of  its 
focus,  viz.  the  Sacrifice  of  the  Altar,  yet  he  was  very  far 
from  logically  following  this  out  in  practice. 

His  standpoint,  according  to  Harnack,  was  originally  this  : 
"If  it  is  certain  that  man  may  not,  and  indeed  cannot  do  any 
thing  for  God's  sake,  if  the  very  idea  of  moving  God  by  our 
works  is  the  death  of  true  piety,  if  the  whole  relationship  between 
God  and  man  depends  on  a  believing  disposition,  i.e.  on  un 
shakable  trust  in  Him,  humility  and  constant  prayer,  if  lastly 
no  ceremony  has  any  worth,  then  there  can  be  no  '  Divine 
Service  '  in  the  true  sense  of  the  term.  The  only  direct  service 
of  God  there  is,  is  faith,  otherwise  the  rule  that  obtains  every 
where  is  that  we  serve  God  by  charity  towards  our  neighbour."1 

Very  soon,  however,  we  find  that  in  practice  Luther  reverts  to 
some  sort  of  common  worship  for  the  sake  of  the  "  common 
man,"  who  requires  to  hear  the  Word,  to  assist  at  public  prayers, 
and  who  must  also  have  some  kind  of  liturgy.  At  times  Luther 
seems  to  speak  of  public  worship  as  merely  a  "  school  for  the 
imperfect,"  and,  occasionally,  he  may  really  have  meant  it  (above, 
p.  149  f.).  By  reforming  the  Mass  and  by  the  other  directions 
he  gave  concerning  public  worship,  scanty  and  faltering  though 
they  be,  he  introduced  a  practice  which  is  at  variance  with  his 
principles.  ;'  The  seemingly  conservative  attitude  he  adopted  in 
his  emendation  of  the  Missal,  and  his  refusal  to  undertake  a 
thorough  reconstruction  of  divine  worship  led  to  many 
'  Lutherans  '  in  the  16th,  and  again  in  the  19th  century,  enter 
taining  questionable  views  on  the  specific  religious  value  of 
public  worship,  its  object  and  its  practice.  How  very  unlike 
Luther  this  is — seeing  that  Luther  here  can,  and  must,  be 
corrected  in  his  own  light — and  what  a  vast  difference  exists 
between  the  Evangelical  and  the  Catholic  doctrine  of  divine 
worship."2  Harnack  appeals  to  Gottschick's  "Luthers  Anschau- 
ungen  vom  christlichen  Gottesdienst  "  (1887),  as  clearly  demon 
strating  this.  According  to  Gottschick  the  old  Lutheran  liturgy 
is  not  "  even  relatively  a  genuine  product  of  the  real  spirit  of  the 
Reformation."  In  this  theologian's  opinion,  Luther  "  really 
adopted  the  Roman  Mass,  contenting  himself  with  a  few  altera 
tions."  Gottschick  urges  that  an  attempt  should  be  made  to 
construct  "  an  entirely  new  edifice  on  the  basis  of  the  principles 
embodied  in  Luther's  reforming  views,"  etc.3 

Gottschick   is    also   right   when   he   points    out,   that   Luther 

1  P.  830  f.    Cp.  above,  p.  44  ft.  2  P.  855,  n.  1. 

3  Freiburg,  1887,  p.  3. 


PROTESTANT   STRICTURES         467 

"  took  but  little  interest  in  liturgy."1  He  was,  however,  set  on 
bringing  the  people  into  the  new  faith  and  Church  with  the 
utmost  circumspection  and  with  as  little  fuss  as  possible.  It  is 
not  necessary  to  recall  here  how  successful  was  his  policy  of 
retaining  the  external  forms,  particularly  on  the  unschooled 
masses  who  were  unable  to  see  below  the  surface.  (Cp.  vol.  ii., 
p.  319  ff.) 

Luther  declared  that  he  himself,  "  with  a  few  friends, 
really  constituted  the  ancient  Church  " — "a  remarkable 
point  of  view,"  says  Harnack,  "  explicable  only  by  the 
idealism  of  his  faith."2 

This  enabled  him,  so  Harnack  continues,  "  to  abandon 
and  assail  the  Catholic  Church,  and  nevertheless  all  the 
while  to  protest  that  he  stood  with  the  olden  Church. 
Though  in  assuming  this  attitude  his  faith  was  so  strong 
that  it  mattered  nothing  to  him  how  great  or  how  small 
was  the  number  of  those  who  refused  to  bend  the  knee  to 
Baal,  yet  it  was  of  the  greatest  interest  to  him  to  show  that 
he  was  a  true  member  of  that  Church  which  had  existed 
through  the  ages.  Hence,  he  was  compelled  to  prove  the 
historical  continuity  of  his  position.  But  how  could  this  be 
proved  more  surely  than  by  means  of  the  old  creeds  of  the 
ancient  Church  still  in  force  ?  "3 

Here,  again,  we  are  confronted  by  the  contradiction 
which  runs  through  the  whole  of  Luther's  theology. 

Even  the  very  Creeds  he  had  undermined  by  that 
subjectivism  which  he  had  exalted  into  a  principle.  Every 
Creed  must  submit  to  being  tested  by  the  Word  of  God, 
either  by  Luther  himself  or  by  any  other  man  who  considered 
himself  equal  to  the  task.  Furthermore,  the  Word  of  God  is 
subservient  to  the  Canon  set  up  by  Luther  or  any  other 
Christian  scholar,  and  its  sense  may  be  determined  by  any 
Christian  sufficiently  enlightened  to  understand  it.  This  was 
to  open  up  the  road  to  a  Christianity  minus  any  creed  or 
dogma. 

1  Ib.  2  "  DG.,"  34,  p.  866. 

3  Ib.,  cp.  p.  865  :  "  Luther  believed  he  was  fighting  merely  against 
the  errors  and  abuses  of  the  medieval  Church.  It  is  true  he  frequently 
declared  that  he  was  not  pleased  with  the  '  dear  Fathers,'  and  that  all 
of  them  had  gone  astray  ;  he  was  not,  however,  clear-sighted  enough 
to  say  to  himself,  that,  if  the  Fathers  of  the  Church  had  erred,  then 
their  definitions  at  the  Councils  could  not  possibly  embody  the  truth. 
.  .  .  Unconsciously  he  himself  still  laboured  under  the  after-effects  of 
the  theory  that  the  outward  Church  is  the  real  authority." 


468         LUTHER    THE    REFORMER 

Luther's  claims,  whether  to  represent  the  olden  Church 
or  to  have  furnished  a  better  and  firmer  basis  for  the  future, 
have  never  been  more  vigorously  questioned  by  any  Protes 
tant  theologian  of  modern  days  than  by  Adolf  Harnack. 

If  we  sum  up  in  Harnack's  words  the  results  of  modern 
Protestant  criticism  exercised  on  Luther's  teaching,  we  find 
that  they  do  not  in  the  least  countenance  the  obsolete  view 
of  some  of  Luther's  latest  admirers,  viz.  that  he  preserved 
what  was  good  and  "  wholesome  "  of  the  existing  dogmas 
and  merely  added  "one,  or  two  supplementary  doctrines."1 
Even  to-day  we  still  hear  it  said  that  his  belief  and  the 
"  ancient  dogma  "  were  really  "  in  complete  harmony  "  ; 
people,  in  support  of  this  statement,  appeal  to  what  might 
naturally  be  considered  the  best  witness,  viz.  to  Luther 
himself,  who  was  quite  of  this  opinion.  But  when  the  de 
fenders  of  this  view  begin  to  speak  of  Luther's  "  alteration  " 
of  dogma  and  of  his  having  "  reconstructed  "  it,  then,  says 
Harnack,  it  becomes  "  hard  to  tell  what  the  words  are 
intended  to  convey,"  in  any  case,  it  is  an  admission  that 
"  Luther's  conception  of  faith  in  some  way  or  other  modified 
the  whole  of  dogma."2 

It  would  be  more  correct,  according  to  Harnack,  to  say, 
that  "  Luther  overthrew  the  whole  doctrine  of  the  olden 
and  mediaeval  Church,  retaining  only  a  few  fragments."3 
His  own  "attitude  of  mind  towards  ancient  dogma"  was 
not  "altogether  consistent."  His  "Christianity"  is,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  "  no  longer  inwardly  bound  up  "  with 
ancient  dogma  ;  his  "  conception  of  faith,  i.e.  what  ad 
mittedly  constituted  his  main  contribution,"  stands  in  no 
need  of  the  olden  doctrinal  baggage.4  "  In  Luther's 
Reformation  the  old,  dogmatic  Christianity  was  set  aside 
and  replaced  by  a  new,  Evangelical  conception.  The 
Reformation  is  really  [for  Harnack's  Protestantism]  the  end 
of  the  history  of  dogma.  ...  If  Luther  agrees  with  this 
or  that  definition  of  the  ancient  or  mediaeval  Church,  the 
agreement,  seen  from  this  standpoint,  is  partly  only  apparent, 
partly  a  coincidence  which  can  never  be  the  result  of  any 
a  priori  submission  to  tradition."5 

"  So  far  as  Luther  left  a  '  Theology  '  to  his  followers  it 
appears  as  an  extremely  complicated  affair.  .  .  .  He  did 

1  /&.,  p.  834.  2  P.  819.  3  P.  834. 

4  P.  820.  5  P.  861. 


PROTESTANT   STRICTURES          469 

not  therein  give  its  final  expression  to  Evangelical  Chris 
tianity,  but  merely  inaugurated  it."1  "  A  philosopher  may, 
at  a  pinch,  find  the  dogmas  of  the  Greek  Church  wise  and 
profound,  but  no  philosopher  could  possibly  find  any 
savour  in  Luther's  faith.  Luther  himself  was  not  aware  of 
the  chasm  that  separated  him  from  the  ancient  dogma, 
partly  because  he  interpreted  it  in  his  own  sense,  partly 
because  he  retained  some  vestige  of  respect  for  the  definitions 
of  the  Councils,  partly,  too,  because  he  was  only  too  pleased 
to  be  able  to  confront  the  Turks,  heathen,  Jews  and  fanatics 
with  something  definite,  assured,  exalted  and  incompre 
hensible.2 

We  may  well  make  Harnack's  concluding  words  our  own  : 
"  It  has  been  shown  that  the  scraps  of  the  olden  belief  which 
he  retained  do  not  tally  with  his  views  as  a  whole.  .  .  .  The 
whole  does  not  merely  rise  above  this  or  that  dogma,  but 
above  all  dogmatic  Christianity  in  general," 3  i.e.  the 
doctrines  of  the  Christian  faith  are  no  longer  binding. 

1  P.  871.  2  P.  875. 

3  P.  896.  Harnack  takes  great  care  to  prevent  his  criticism  of 
Luther  giving  rise  to  any  impression  that  he  himself  is  favourably 
disposed  or  indifferent  towards  Catholic  dogma  and  Catholic  life.  He 
is  shocked  at  the  attitude  of  Erasmus,  the  defender  of  the  Catholic 
view  of  man's  free  will  even  under  Divine  Grace,  and  declares  his 
Diatribe  against  the  "  servum  arbitrium"  a  "profoundly  irreligious 
work,"  whereas  Luther  "  had  restored  religion  to  religion  "  (see  above, 
vol.  ii.,  p.  292,  n.  4). — He  asks  :  "  What  does  original  sin  represent 
to  Catholics  ?  "  ("  Dogmengesch.,"  34,  p.  749),  as  though  Catholic 
dogma  discarded  it.  He  mocks  at  the  "  whole,  half  and  quarter 
dogmas  "  of  Catholics  (ib.,  p.  764)  and  at  their  handbooks  of  theology 
(p.  763).  The  Catholic  "  system  of  religion,"  so  Harnack  teaches, 
gave  rise  to  "  a  perversion  of  the  moral  principles  "  (p.  749)  ;  "  this 
system  still  works  disaster  both  in  theology  and  in  ethics.  .  .  .  Since 
the  17th  century  the  imparting  of  forgiveness  of  sins  has  been  made 
a  regular  art."  "  But  conscience  is  able  to  discover  God  even  in  its 
idol  "  (ib.).  In  other  passages  he  places  "  devotion  to  the  Sacred 
Heart  "  and  "  Mariolatry  "  on  a  par  with  the  veneration  of  idols, 
though  he  admits  that  in  Catholics  "  the  Christian  sense  is  not 
actually  stifled  by  their  idols  "  (p.  748).  Only  in  these  devotions  and 
in  the  anxiety-breeding  confessional  does  piety  still  live  "  (ib.). 

Of  the  Pope  he  exclaims  :  "  The  Church  has  an  infallible  master, 
she  has  no  need  to  trouble  about  her  history,  the  living  voice  alone  is 
right."  He  asks  whether  "  the  mediaeval  doctrine,  now  condemned  to 
insignificance,  would  not  gradually  disappear,"  whether  in  time  the 
Pope  would  not  be  credited  "  with  a  peculiar  miraculous  power,"  and 
whether  ultimately  he  would  not  be  regarded  as  a  "  sort  of  incarnation 
of  the  Godhead,"  etc.  (p.  759). 

"  The  saintly  and  so  holy  Liguori  is  the  very  opposite  of  Luther. 
.  .  .  All  his  mortifications  only  entangled  him  more  and  more  in  the 
conviction  that  no  conscience  can  find  rest  save  in  the  authority  of  a  con- 


470         LUTHER    THE    REFORMER 


2.  Luther  as  a  Popular  Religious  Writer.     The  Catechism 

During  the  last  years  of  his  life  Luther  was  able  to  put 
the  last  touch  to  his  literary  labours  by  undertaking  a  new 
revision  of  some  of  his  more  important  earlier  works,  and 
by  assisting  in  the  compilation  of  complete  editions  of  his 
writings. 

Thanks  partly  to  his  own  literary  labours,  partly  to  the 
help  and  support  of  friends  and  pupils,  he  succeeded  in 
gathering  together  those  works  which  he  desired  to  see 
handed  down  to  posterity. 

In  1541  and  1545  Luther's  German  translation  of  the 
Bible  also  received  its  finishing  touch,  and  a  new,  amended 
edition  was  brought  out,  which,  though  slightly  altered, 
still  serves  the  Protestant  congregations  to-day.  Moreover, 
the  sermons  of  the  Postils  were  revised  afresh  in  order  to 
furnish  reading  matter  for  the  people  and  to  help  the 
preachers.  In  1540  he  himself  published  the  first  part  of  the 
Church-Postils  (the  winter  term)  and,  in  1543,  appeared  the 
second  portion,  previously  revised  by  Cruciger.1  The  Home- 
Postils  appeared  for  the  first  time  in  1544,  edited  by  Veit 
Dietrich.  At  the  same  time  a  beginning  was  made  with  the 
complete  editions  of  his  literary  works,  the  first  volume  of 
the  German  edition  appearing  in  1539  and  the  first  volume 
of  the  Latin  edition  in  1545. 

fessor.  .  .  .  Thanks  to  Liguori,  absolute  ethical  scepticism  now 
prevailed,  not  only  in  morals  but  even  in  theology.  ...  In  a  number 
of  questions,  adultery,  perjury  and  murder  inclusive,  he  had  known 
how  to  make  light  of  what  was  really  most  serious  "  (p.  755).  The 
doctrine  of  Probabilism  was  to  blame  for  this,  according  to  Harnack. 
Cp.  J.  Mausbach,  "  Die  kath.  Moral  und  ihre  Gegner,"  1911,  p.  163  ff., 
and  the  "  Kolnische  Volksztng.,"  1910,  Nos.  485  and  571.  The  latter 
passage  contains  further  proofs  from  Harnack's  "  Dogmengesch."  of 
his  insulting  language  and  his  lamentable  ignorance  of  Catholic 
doctrines,  practices  and  institutions. 

1  Of  the  Church-Postils  the  first  half  of  the  winter  part  up  to  the 
Epiphany  had  been  published  by  Luther  as  early  as  1522,  and  then 
continued  down  to  Easter.  The  second  part  (summer  portion)  had 
been  brought  out  in  1527  by  his  friend  Stephen  Roth.  The  sermons 
on  the  Epistles  were  only  included  in  the  collection  in  1543,  when  the 
new  edition  appeared.  W.  Kohler  begins  his  critical  edition  of  the 
book  of  Church-Postils  in  Weim.  ed.,  10  (1911). 


PREFACE  TO  COLLECTED  WORKS  471 


His  Collected  Works  ;   his  New  Edition  of  the 
Church-  Postils 

Luther's  German  writings  were  collected  by  Cruciger  and 
Rorer  and  printed  at  Wittenberg.  The  second  volume  was 
published  only  in  1548,  after  Luther's  death.  The  com 
pilation  of  the  Latin  writings  was  carried  out  with  the  aid 
of  various  friends,  for  instance,  of  Spalatin  and  Rorer,  and 
also  first  saw  the  light  at  Wittenberg.  Both  these  editions 
were  eagerly  sought  after  by  the  booksellers  and  a  great  sale 
was  anticipated. 

In  the  introductions  which  Luther  prefixed  to  both 
collections  he  not  only  followed  the  then  universal  fashion  of 
seeking  to  make  a  favourable  impression  on  the  reader  by 
an  extravagant  display  of  humility,  but  also  gave  free  play 
to  his  love  for  grotesque  exaggerations.  He  had  no  inten 
tion  of  writing  any  "  Retractations,"  as  St.  Augustine  had 
done,  however  much  such  might  be  called  for.  Instead  of 
this  he  professes  to  repudiate  his  books  wholesale — though 
only,  of  course,  to  bring  them  forward  again  all  the  more 
vigorously.  Whoever  is  familiar  with  Luther's  ways  will 
not  need  to  be  told  how  to  interpret  and  appreciate  what 
he  here  says.  There  is  no  doubt,  however,  that  countless 
readers  of  these  introductions  fell  into  the  trap  and  ex 
claimed  :  How  great  and  yet  how  humble  is  the  man 
who  speaks  in  these  pages  j! 

Luther  begins  the  prefaces  to  his  German  works1  with  the 
wish,  which  we  have  heard  him  express  before  :  "  Gladly  would 
I  see  all  my  books  unwritten  or  destroyed."2  Why  ?  "That 
Holy  Scripture  might  be  read  and  studied  the  more,"  that  Word 
of  God,  "  which  so  long  lay  forgotten  under  the  bench."  Because, 
in  the  Church,  "  many  books  and  large  libraries  "  had  been 
collected  "  apart  from  and  in  addition  to  Scripture,"  and  "  with 
out  any  discrimination,"  the  "  true  understanding  of  the  Divine 
Word  had  at  last  been  lost."  At  any  rate  it  was  "  good  and 
profitable  that  the  writings  of  some  of  the  Fathers  and  Councils 
had  remained  as  witnesses  and  histories."  I  myself,  he  says, 
"  may  venture  to  boast  without  pride  or  lying  that  I  do  not  fall 
far  short  of  some  of  the  Fathers  in  the  matter  of  the  making  of 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  63,  p.  401  ff. 

2  Cp.  his  words  to  Wolfgang  Capito,  July  9,  1537,  "  Brief wechsel," 
11,  p.  247  :   "  Magis  cuperem  eos  (libros  meos)  omnes  devoratos.    Nullum 
enim   agnosco   meum   iustum   librum,    nisi    forte    De    servo   arbitrio   et 
calechismum."    Cp.  above,  p.  370  f. 


472         LUTHER    THE    REFORMER 

books  ;  my  life,  however,  I  would  not  dare  to  liken  to  theirs." 
It  is,  however,  his  books  that  "provide  the  'pure  knowledge'  of 
the  Word."  Nevertheless,  he  seeks  comfort  in  the  thought, 
"  that,  in  time,  my  books,  too,  will  lie  dusty  and  forgotten," 
"  particularly  now  that  it  has  begun  to  rain  and  hail  books." 
But  whoever  reads  them,  "  let  him  see  well  to  it  that  they  do  not 
prove  a  hindrance  to  his  studying  Scripture  itself." 

He  then  goes  on  to  give  some  quite  excellent  directions  as  to 
how  best  to  study  Holy  Scripture.  He  himself  had  pursued  this 
method,  and  were  the  reader  too  to  make  it  his  own  he  would 
be  able,  "  if  necessary,  to  compose  as  good  books  as  the  Fathers 
and  the  Councils." 

In  the  first  place  you  must  "  altogether  renounce  your  own 
judgment  and  reason,"  and  rather  beg  God  "  humbly  and 
earnestly  to  ...  enlighten  you"  ;  but  if  anyone  "falls  on  it  with 
his  reason  "...  then  the  result  is  only  a  new  crop  of  fanatics. 
Secondly,  he  recommends  that  the  text  of  the  Bible,  i.e.  "  the 
literal  words  of  the  book,  should  be  ever  studied,  read  and 
re-read  with  diligent  attention  and  reflection  as  to  what  the  Holy 
Ghost  means  thereby."  Thirdly,  temptations  :  "As  soon  as  the 
Word  of  God  is  being  made  known  to  you,  the  devil  will  attack 
you,  make  a  real  doctor  of  you,  and,  by  his  temptations,  teach 
you  to  seek  and  love  God's  Word."  He,  too,  had  to  thank  his 
Papists  and  the  raging  of  the  devil  at  their  bidding  for  having 
made  him  "  a  pretty  fair  theologian."  Hence  "  oratio,  meditatio, 
tentatio." 

But  if  anyone  seeks  to  win  praise  by  writing  books,  then  let 
him  pull  his  own  ears  and  he  will  find  "  a  fine  long  pair  of  big 
rough  donkey's  ears  "  ;  these  he  may  adorn  with  golden  bells 
so  that  everyone  may  point  at  him  and  say  :  "  There  goes  the 
elegant  animal  who  writes  such  precious  books."  No,  so  he 
concludes  his  preface,  "  in  this  book  all  the  praise  is  God's." 

% 

In  the  preface  to  the  first  volume  of  his  Latin  works 
Luther  seeks,  not  so  much  to  enhance  his  knowledge  of 
Scripture  as  he  does  in  the  German  preface,  but  rather  to 
explatn  in  his  own  way  how  he  was  led  to  take  up  the 
position  he  did. 

He  represents  the  indulgence  controversy  as  the  sole  cause  of 
his  breach  with  Catholicism  and  does  so  in  language  in  which 
readers,  unacquainted  with  the  real  state  of  the  case,  would 
detect  simply  a  defence  of  his  struggle  against  the  "  fury  and 
wrath  of  Satan."  Of  the  real  motive  of  the  struggle,  viz.  his 
rupture  with  the  doctrines  of  the  Church  even  previous  to  the 
Leipzig  Disputation,  or,  indeed,  to  the  Theses  against  Tetzel,  he 
says  never  a  word.  On  the  other  hand,  he  launches  out  into  a 
dissertation  on  his  Popish  views  at  that  time,  which  he  urges  had 
been  deeper  and  more  ingrained  than  those  of  Eck  and  all  his 
opponents,  and,  which,  unfortunately,  had  disfigured  his  earliest 


WORKS    OF   EDIFICATION  473 

writings.  He  had  been  terribly  afraid  of  the  Last  Judgment  but 
at  the  same  time  had  longed  ardently  to  be  eternally  saved.  God 
knew  that  it  was  only  by  the  merest  chance  that  he  had  been 
drawn  into  public  controversy  ("  casu,  non  voluntate  nee  studio  "). 
Only  when  beginning  his  second  exposition  of  the  Psalms 
(1518-19)  had  the  knowledge  dawned  upon  him  of  that  "  Justice 
of  God,"  whereby  we  are  justified  ;  before  this  he  had  hated  the 
term  "  Justice  of  God."1  He  is  at  great  pains  to  impress  on  the 
reader  that  he  had  "  gradually  advanced,  thanks  to  much  writing 
and  teaching,"  and  was  not  one  of  those,  "  who  [like  the  fanatics], 
from  nothing,  become  all  at  once  the  greatest  of  men  .  .  . 
without  labour,  or  temptations,  or  experience."  No  great  stress 
need  be  laid  on  the  statement  he  again  makes  at  the  commence 
ment  of  this  preface,  viz.  that  he  would  fain  see  all  his  books 
"  buried  in  oblivion,"  and  that  only  the  urgent  entreaties  of 
friends  had  won  his  consent  to  their  bringing  out  a  complete 
edition  of  his  "  muddled  books." 

In  the  evening  of  his  life  Luther  could  look  back  with  a 
certain  satisfaction  on  the  numerous  popular  works  he  had 
composed  for  the  instruction  and  edification  of  the  masses 
and  the  "  simple,"  and  on  the  success  with  which  they  had 
been  crowned.  Again  and  again  his  fondness  for  thus 
instructing  the  populace  had  drawn  him  into  this  sphere  of 
work  ;  he  had  always  striven  with  great  perseverance  and 
patience  to  better,  both  as  to  their  language  and  their 
matter,  the  little  tracts  he  composed.  How  highly  he 
valued  such  works  of  instruction  we  can  see  from  the 
writings  which  appeared  from  time  to  time  as  precursors  of 
his  Catechisms.  They  show  how  diligent  he  was  in  dealing 
with  popular  religious  subjects. 

He  himself  bears  witness  to  his  laborious  literary  labours 
and  their  results  in  the  preface  to  his  Church-Postils  of 
1543.2  Conscious  of  what  he  had  achieved  he  there  quotes 
the  passage  where  St.  Paul  says  that  the  faithful  were 
"  enriched  in  all  things,  in  all  knowledge  and  understand 
ing,"  etc.  (1  Cor.  i.  5).  "In  the  same  way  we  may  say  to  our 
Germans  that  God  has  richly  given  us  His  Word  in  the 
German  tongue.  .  .  .  For  what  more  can  we  have  or 
desire  ?  "  He  points  to  the  catechism  which  he  has  preached 
"  clearly  and  with  power,"  to  his  exposition  of  the  Com 
mandments,  of  the  Our  Father  and  the  Creed  ;  in  his 
writings  they  would  find  explained  "  Holy  Baptism,  the 

1  Cp.  above,  vol.  i.,  p.  388  ff. 

2  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  72,  p.  18  ff. 


474         LUTHER    THE    REFORMER 

Sacrament  of  the  Body  and  Blood  of  our  Lord,  the  keys,  the 
ban,  and  absolution.  We  have  been  instructed  definitely 
how  each  one  is  to  understand  his  own  state  and  calling  and 
behave  himself  ;  whether  he  be  a  cleric  or  a  layman,  or  of 
high  or  low  estate.  We  know  what  conjugal  life  is,  what 
widowhood  and  maidenhood,  and  how  we  are  to  live  and 
act  therein  in  a  Christian  manner." — Although  the  people 
were  already  sufficiently  instructed  on  these  points,  and 
though  Luther's  teaching  in  so  far  as  it  was  something  new 
cannot  meet  with  our  approval,  yet  it  must  be  admitted  that 
in  his  writings  for  the  people  Luther  treated  of  these  things, 
according  to  his  light,  in  language  both  popular  and  forcible. 
Herewith,  so  he  says  in  the  same  preface,  you  receive  from 
my  friend  Cruciger  the  Church-Postils  amended  and  enlarged, 
with  its  "  lucid  and  amusing  "  explanations  of  the  Gospel- 
lessons.  Just  as  a  mother  pulps  the  food  for  her  baby,  so 
the  Epistles  and  Gospels  of  the  year  have  been  pulped  for 
you.  As  now  they  had  already  in  print  a  corrected  edition 
of  the  lives  of  the  Saints,  a  German  version  of  the  Psalter 
and,  in  particular,  the  whole  Bible  in  "  good  German,"  the 
preachers  should  be  better  able  to  teach  the  people  how 
to  be  saved.  "  We  have  done  our  part  faithfully  and  in  full 
measure  ;  let  us  therefore  be  for  ever  thankful  to  God,  the 
Father  of  all  mercies."  Luther's  allusion  to  his  Postils  as 
being  "  lucid  and  amusing,"  and  to  the  "  good  German  " 
of  his  translation  of  the  Bible,  are  perfectly  justified. 

Luther,  in  1527,  spoke  of  his  Church-Postils  as  the  "  best 
book  I  ever  wrote  .  .  .  which,  indeed,  pleases  even  the 
Papists."1  It  is  obvious  that  he  bestowed  this  praise  upon 
it  in  view  of  its  positive  contents.  It  is  true  that,  some  eight 
or  nine  years  later,  he  declared  with  his  customary  exaggera 
tion,  he  wished  the  "  whole  of  this  book  could  be  blotted 
out  "  ;  this  was,  however,  at  a  time  when  he  was  already 
planning  a  new  edition  to  be  undertaken  by  Cruciger, 
"  which  might  be  useful  to  the  whole  Church."*  The  work, 
however,  even  in  its  first  dress,  undoubtedly  contained  much 
that  was  good. 

1  Ib.,  Weim.  ed..  23,  p.  278  f.  ;    Erl.  ed.,  30,  p.  148.     "Das  diese 
Wort  .  .  .  noch  fest  stehen." 

2  To  Nicholas  Gerbel  at  Strasburg,  Nov.  24,  1535  (1536  ?),  "  Brief- 
wechsel,"  11,  p.  127. 


WORKS   OF   EDIFICATION  475 

Good  Points  and  Shortcomings  of  Luther's  Popular  Works 

Not  only  is  the  number  of  popular  writings  Luther  com 
posed  surprising,  but  they  are  distinguished  by  the  energy 
and  originality  of  their  style,  and,  in  many  passages  where 
no  fault  is  to  be  found  with  what  he  says,  his  instructions 
and  exhortations  are  admittedly  seasoned  with  much  that 
is  truly  thoughtful  and  edifying.  In  spite  of  all  the  ad 
mixture  of  falsehood  to  the  ancient  treasure  of  doctrine 
a  certain  current  of  believing  Christianity  flows  through 
these  popular  writings  and  contrasts  agreeably  with  both 
the  more  or  less  infidel  literature  of  recent  times  and  the 
shallow  religious  productions  of  an  earlier  date. 

The  mediaeval  language,  feelings  and  world  of  thought, 
all  so  instinct  with  faith  and  piety,  find  a  splendid  exponent 
in  Luther  as  soon  as,  putting  controversy  aside,  he  seeks  to 
seize  the  hearts  of  the  people  ;  such  passages  even  make  the 
reader  ask  whether  the  author  can  really  be  one  and  the 
same  with  the  writer  who  elsewhere  fulminates  with  such 
revolting  malice  against  the  Church  of  the  past.  Then, 
again,  the  plentiful  quotations  from  the  Bible  in  which  he 
was  so  much  at  home,  impart  a  devout  tone  to  what  he  says 
without,  however,  in  the  least  rendering  it  insipid  or  un 
natural.  From  the  latter  fault  he  was  preserved  by  a 
certain  soberness  of  outlook,  by  his  native  realistic  coarse 
ness  and  his  general  tendency  to  be  rude  rather  than 
sentimental. 

Nor  would  it  by  any  means  be  right  were  Luther's 
opponents  to  attribute  the  above  favourable  traits  in  his 
writings  exclusively  to  the  influence  of  the  Catholic  past. 
It  is  true  that  it  is  the  latter  which  is  mainly  responsible 
for  the  elements  of  truth  found  in  his  writings,  and  also,  not 
seldom,  for  the  attractive  and  sympathetic  way  in  which  he 
presents  his  matter  to  the  reader  ;  but  to  deny  that  the 
author's  peculiar  talent  for  speaking  to  the  people  and  his 
rare  gift  of  adapting  himself  to  his  German  readers  had  also 
its  share,  would  be  to  go  too  far.  Luther,  who  hailed  from 
among  the  lower  class  and  had  ever  been  in  touch  with  it, 
knew  the  German  character  as  well  as  any  man  (see  vol.  iii., 
p.  93  ff.).  In  his  style  he  embodied  to  some  extent  the 
nation's  mode  of  thought  and  speech.  Hence  his  success 
with  the  Germans,  whom  he  drew  by  the  strongest  ties, 


476          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

viz.  those  of  nationalism,  into  circles  where  the  motherly 
warnings  of  the  Church  were  no  longer  heard. 

We  are,  however,  unable  to  discern  in  his  writings  the 
mystical  qualities  which  some  of  his  admirers  find  every 
where.  Echoes  of  the  sayings  of  the  olden  mystics,  such  as 
we  have  had  occasion  to  quote  from  his  earlier  works, 
obviously  do  not  suffice  to  prove  his  own  mystic  gifts. 
Moreover,  these  echoes  tend  to  become  feebler  as  time  goes 
on,  and  the  nearer  his  literary  labours  draw  to  their  close  the 
less  can  they  be  considered  to  bear  the  character  of  true 
mystical  productions.  Certain  leanings  met  with  in  Luther 
at  the  beginning,  and  even  later,  we  have  already  had  to 
characterise  as  the  outcome  of  an  untheological  pseudo- 
mysticism.1 

In  his  Exposition  of  the  Magnificat  (1521),  for  instance,  we 
meet  with  trains  of  thought  expressed  in  words  which  by  their 
beauty  recall  those  of  the  mystics  of  old.  One  cannot  read 
without  being  edified  what  he  says  at  the  commencement  of  this 
little  work,  of  the  love  of  God  which  makes  "  the  heart  overflow 
with  joy,"2  or  of  the  glories  of  Mary ;  of  her,  nothing  greater  can 
be  said  than  that  she  was  the  Mother  of  God,  "  even  had  one  as 
many  tongues  as  there  are  leaves  on  the  trees,  blades  of  grass  in 
the  field,  stars  in  heaven,  or  grains  of  sand  on  the  sea-shore."3 
— Akin  to  this  is  the  touching  conclusion  of  his  little  writing  on 
the  Our  Father,  where  he  pictures  the  soul  as  pouring  forth  its 
desires  to  God  the  Father. 4  Such  jewels  are,  however,  not  offered 
to  his  readers  as  frequently  as  his  talent  in  this  respect  would 
have  rendered  desirable. 

To  what  good  account  he  put  this  gift  in  his  earlier  years  is 
well  seen  even  in  his  controversial  "  Von  der  Freyheyt  eynes 
Christen  Menschen  "  (1520),  where  he  is  at  pains  to  expound  the 
sum  of  the  Christian  life,  though  "  only  for  the  plain  man."  Our 
present  subject  invites  us  to  return  once  more  to  this  side  of  the 
writing. 5 

Of  works  of  charity  Luther  there  speaks  as  follows  :  "  The 
inward  man  is  at  one  with  God,  is  joyful  and  merry  by  reason  of 
Christ  Who  has  done  so  much  for  him,  and  all  his  joy  is  in  wishing 
to  serve  God  in  return  freely  and  out  of  pure  love.  In  his  flesh, 
however,  he  finds  a  will  which  is  quite  other  and  which  wishes  to 
serve  the  world  and  to  seek  what  it  pleases.  But  this,  faith  cannot 
bear,  and  it  sets  vigorously  to  work  to  check  and  restrain  it.  As 
St.  Paul  says,  Rom.  vii.  [23]  :  I  see  another  law  in  my  members 

1  Vol.  i.,  p.  175  ff. 

2  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  7,  p.  548  ;   Erl.  ed.,  45,  p.  217. 

3  Ib.,  p.  573  =  250. 

4  Ib.,  2,  pp.  128-130-45,  pp.  204-207. 

5  Cp.  above,  vol.  ii.,  p,  28  ff. 


WORKS   OF   EDIFICATION         477 

fighting  against  the  law  of  my  mind  and  ensnaring  me  in  the 
law  of  sin."1 

Later,  coming  to  the  works  imposed  upon  man  by  self-restraint, 
he  says  :  "So  much  of  works  in  general,  such  as  it  suits  a  Chris 
tian  to  practise  against  his  own  flesh.  Now  we  have  to  speak  of 
works  which  he  does  for  other  men.  For  on  this  earth  man  does 
not  live  by  himself  but  among  other  folk.  Hence  he  cannot  live 
without  performing  works  for  them,  for  he  has  to  speak  and  have 
dealings  with  them.  .  .  .  Look  how  plainly  Paul  makes  the 
Christian  life  to  consist  in  works  done  for  the  good  of  our  neigh 
bour.  .  .  .  He  instances  Christ  as  our  example  and  says  [Phil, 
ii.  6—7]  :  '  Let  this  mind  be  in  you  which  was  also  in  Christ  Jesus, 
Who  being  in  the  form  of  God  thought  it  no  robbery  to  be  equal 
to  God,  and  yet  emptied  Himself,  taking  the  form  of  a  servant,' 
and  doing  and  suffering  all  things  for  our  sakes  alone.  In  the 
same  way  the  Christian  man,  though  he  is  free,  ought  willingly 
to  become  a  slave  in  his  neighbour's  service,  and  treat  him  as 
God  through  Christ  has  treated  us,  and  all  this,  too,  without 
reward  ;  to  seek  nothing  thereby  but  to  be  well-pleasing  to  God, 
and  to  think  thus  :  See,  God  in  and  through  Christ  has  bestowed 
on  me,  unworthy  and  guilty  wretch  that  I  am,  without  any 
merit,  and  solely  out  of  pure  mercy,  an  abundance  of  riches, 
piety  and  salvation.  .  .  .  Hence,  in  my  turn,  I  will  readily, 
gladly  and  without  reward  do  what  is  well-pleasing  to  such  a 
Father  Who  has  heaped  upon  me  His  unspeakable  riches,  and  be 
a  Christ  to  my  neighbour  as  Christ  was  to  me  ;  only  what  I  see 
him  to  need  and  what  is  useful  and  profitable  to  him,  will  I  do, 
now  that,  by  my  faith,  I  myself  have  all  things  abundantly  in 
Christ.  See,  how  joy  and  love  of  God  spring  from  faith,  and, 
how,  from  love  comes  a  ready,  willing,  cheerful  life  of  service 
towards  our  neighbour."2  "It  is  thus  that  God's  gifts  must 
flow  from  the  one  to  the  other  and  become  common  to  all,  so 
that  each  one  cares  as  much  for  his  neighbour  as  he  does  for 
himself.  They  flow  to  us  from  Christ,  Who,  in  His  life,  took  us 
on  Him  as  though  He  had  been  what  we  are.  From  us  they 
should  flow  to  those  who  need  them."3 

Though,  intermingled  with  such  excellent  matter,  we  find 
ever-recurring  allusions  to  his  peculiar  doctrine  of  justification 
by  faith  alone,  and  though  he  fails  to  see  the  true  organic  con 
nection  between  good  works  and  the  life  of  faith  and  thus 
condemns  to  inanity  all  works  not  performed  out  of  perfect 
charity,  yet  it  cannot  be  gainsaid  that  certain  aspects  of  neigh 
bourly  love  are  here  admirably  portrayed. 

Later  on  we  often  miss  this  sympathetic  tone,  for  it  was 
blighted  by  his  polemics.  As  for  his  aptitude  for  instructing 
the  people  he  retained  it,  however,  to  the  end. 

In  the  Exposition  of  the  Our  Father,  of  which  the  dialogue 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  7,  p.  30  ;   Erl.  ed.,  27,  p.  189. 

2  Ib.,  p.  34f.  =  195f.  3  16.,  p.  37  =  199. 


478         LUTHER    THE    REFORMER 

of  the  soul  with  God  forms  a  part,  he  lays  down  at  the  outset 
in  striking,  popular  guise  the  need  of  prayer,  the  value  of  the 
simple  Paternoster,  the  profit  to  be  derived  from  weighing 
well  its  contents,  and  also  the  beauty  of  the  virtue  of 
humility.1  His  explanation  of  the  Hail  Mary,  for  all  its 
brevity,  contains  practical  and  valuable  hints  as  to  how 
God  is  to  be  honoured  in  all.2 

In  a  very  useful  booklet  entitled  "Einfeltige  Weise  zu 
beten  "3  (1534),  Luther  assumes  the  garb  of  an  instructor  on 
prayer  and  attempts  to  show  how  the  forms  in  common  use, 
the  Our  Father,  Ten  Commandments  and  Creed,  provide 
matter  for  prayer  even  for  busy  laymen,  and  how  the  latter, 
by  meditating  on  each  separate  word  or  clause,  may  rise  to 
perfect  prayer.  "  When  good  thoughts  press  in  upon  us," 
he  says,  for  instance,  explaining  the  latter  practice,  "  then 
the  other  prayers  may  be  neglected  and  all  our  attention 
given  to  such  thoughts  which  should  be  listened  to  in  silence 
and  on  no  account  be  thwarted,  for  then  the  Holy  Ghost 
Himself  is  preaching  to  us  ;  one  word  of  His  sermon  is  far 
better  than  a  thousand  prayers  of  ours.  And  I,  too,"  he 
adds,  "  have  often  learnt  more  in  one  such  prayer  than  I 
could  from  much  reading  and  composing."4 

In  the  "  Vermanunge  zum  Gebet  wider  den  Tiirckcn,"5 
exhorting  all  to  pray  for  the  public  needs,  he  speaks  alluringly 
and  with  great  religious  fervour.  Urging  his  readers  to  pray 
for  the  divine  assistance,  he  takes  one  by  one,  as  was  indeed 
his  wont,  the  thoughts  suggested  by  the  Our  Father.6  "  Our 
comfort  and  defiance,  our  pride,  our  daring  and  our  arro 
gance,  our  insistence,  our  victory  and  our  life,  our  joy,  our 
honour  and  our  glory  are  seated  at  the  right  hand  of  God 
the  Father  Almighty.  There,  devil,  just  you  touch  a  hair  of 
His  !  "  The  power  of  his  words  is  heightened  by  his  refer 
ences  to  the  nearness  of  the  Last  Day,  the  advent  of  which 
was  foreshadowed  in  the  downfall  of  both  Papal  and  Turkish 
power.  He  even  declares  that  the  certainty  of  being  heard 
depended  on  the  spiritual  struggle  being  waged  in  defence 
of  the  Evangel  against  the  popish  "  blasphemers,  perse 
cutors  and  God-forsaken  children  of  the  devil  "  ;  where 

1  Ib.,  Weim.  ed.,  2,  p.  80  ff.,  9,  p.  122  ff. ;  Erl.  ed.,  21,  p.  159  ff. 

2  Ib.,  152,  p.  318  ff.    3  Ib.,  23,  p.  215  ff.    4  Ib.,  p.  221. 
5  Ib.,  32,  p.  75  ff.      6  Ib.,  p.  89  f.  Cp.  above,  p.  418  ff. 


WORKS   OF   EDIFICATION  479 

these  had  their  way  and  were  fighting,  there  nothing  was  to 
be  looked  for  save  ruin  ;  there  God's  "  angry  hand  was 
raised  in  vengeance  against  all  the  devils  and  Turks,  against 
Mahmed,  Pope,  Meinz,  Heinz  and  all  the  miscreants."1 
Hence,  even  in  a  tract  intended  as  an  exhortation  to  prayer 
and  to  promote  a  great  work  of  Christian  charity,  quite  other 
sentiments  gain  for  the  time  the  upper  hand. 

This  brings  us  back  to  the  remark  we  have  frequently  had  to 
make  when  describing  other  writings  of  Luther's  meant  for  the 
common  people. 

All  too  often  his  exhortations  are  disfigured  by  unmeasured 
vituperation  or  uncalled-for  controversy  of  the  most  bitter  kind. 
In  the  "  Vermanunge  zum  Gebet  wider  den  Tiircken,"  referred 
to  above,  Luther  is  seen  at  his  worst  in  the  excursion  he  makes 
therein  against  the  abuses — then  indeed  very  bad — of  the  usurers, 
particularly  because  they  had  ventured  to  say  that  "  Luther 
does  not  even  know  what  usury  is."2  He,  altogether  forgetful 
of  meekness,  also  attacks  the  ungrateful  Evangelicals  in  a  highly 
unseemly  manner,  because  they  refused  to  submit  to  the 
stern  reproofs  of  their  preachers  :  "  Let  them  fare  to  the  devil 
and  die  like  pigs  and  dogs,  without  grace  or  sacrament,  and  be 
buried  on  the  carrion-heap.  .  .  .  Those  men  who  wish  to  go 
unreproved  thereby  admit  that  they  are  downright  rogues.  .  .  . 
They  deserve  to  hear  Mahmed,  the  Turk,  the  Pope  and  the 
devil  and  his  mother  rather  than  God.  Amen,  Amen,  if  they 
will  have  it  so."3  Of  the  Catholics  he  says  in  the  same  "  Ver 
manunge,"  that  the  foes  of  the  Evangel  among  the  Catholic 
princes,  "  traitors,  murderers  and  incendiaries  that  they  are," 
knew  full  well  that  his  was  the  "  true  Word  of  God,"  yet,  instead 
of  accepting  it,  they  would  "  much  prefer  to  behave  towards  us 
like  Turks,  or  were  it  possible,  like  very  devils,  not  to  speak  of 
their  being  ready  to  serve,  aid,  counsel  and  abet  the  Turks  "  ; 
they  said,  "  If  God  in  heaven  won't  help  us,  then  let  us  call  in  all 
the  devils  from  hell.  .  .  .  This  I  know  to  be  true."4 

It  was  no  mere  passing  fit  of  temper  that  induced  him  in  his 
old  age  so  to  disfigure  his  exhortations.  In  another  pious  writing, 
the  "  Circular  Letter  to  the  Pastors,"  sent  around  two  years 
previous,  and  also  dealing  with  the  war  against  the  Turks,  he 
says  :  "  The  Papists  do  not  pray  and  are  so  bloodthirsty  that 
they  cannot  pray  "  ;  hence  let  us  pray,  he  says  ;  "  but,  when  they 
start  with  their  bloodthirsty  designs  against  the  Evangel,  then 
all  must  fall  upon  them  as  upon  a  pack  of  mad  dogs."5  Such 
words  scattered  broadcast  over  Germany  could  not  possibly 
serve  to  promote  union  or  to  strengthen  the  resistance  to  be 
offered  to  the  danger  looming  from  the  East.  They  merely 
throw  a  lurid  light  on  the  chasm  Luther  cleft  in  the  heart  of  the 

1  Ib.  2  P.  77.  3  P.  84. 

4  P.  97.  6  "  Briefe,"  5,  p.  169,  Feb.,  1539. 


480         LUTHER    THE    REFORMER 

nation,  and  on  the  internal  dissensions  which  were  weakening 
the  Empire  and  making  it  an  object  of  ridicule  to  the  Turkish 
unbelievers. 

In  the  preface  to  his  Church-Postils  (1543),  Luther  exhorts 
the  pastors  to  leave  those,  who  "  wish  to  be  left  unpunished,"  to 
"  die  like  dogs  "  ;  the  rooks  and  ravens,  jackdaws  and  wolves 
would  sing  the  best  vigils  and  dirges  for  the  souls  of  such  proud 
wiselings.1  He  not  only  wishes  them  to  fulminate  against  such 
men  but  also  desires,  that,  in  the  sermons,  "  certain  instances 
of  the  Papal  tyranny  under  which  we  once  groaned  in  misery  be 
introduced."2 

Such  was  his  anger  with  his  foes  that  Luther  even  goes  so  far 
as  to  say  in  his  exposition  of  the  Hail  Mary,  that  the  Papists 
"cursed"  instead  of  blessed,  the  fruit  of  Mary's  womb.3 — In 
the  tract  "  How  to  pray  "  "  Peter  Balbier  "  is  warned  to  bear  in 
mind  the  "  idolatry  of  the  Turk,  the  Pope  and  all  false  teachers  "  ;4 
nor  is  ridicule  of  the  praying  priestlings  wanting  ;5  he  then 
exhorts  Peter  in  the  most  pious  of  language  to  imitate  his 
example,  viz.  "  to  suck  at  the  Paternoster  like  a  baby,  and  to  eat 
and  drink  it  like  a  man,"  "  never  wearying  of  it  "  ;  he  was  also 
"very  fond  of  the  Psalter,"  turning  "the  whole  as  far  as  possible 
into  a  prayer,"6  and,  when  he  had  "  grown  cold  and  disgusted 
with  saying  prayers,"  would  take  his  "  little  Psalter  and  escape 
into  his  own  room,"  etc.7 — But  even  his  homely  exposition  of  the 
Our  Father  is  not  free  from  a  polemical  bias.8 

With  the  beautiful  and  useful  thoughts  contained  in  his 
preface  to  the  Larger  Catechism,  to  the  annoyance  of  the  thought 
ful  reader,  he  mingles  abuse  of  the  "  lazy  bellies  and  presumptuous 
saints  "  of  his  own  party,9  to  say  nothing  of  the  inevitable  out 
bursts  against  Catholic  practices.  Here,  too,  the  thought  of  the 
devil,  by  which  he  is  ever  obsessed,  makes  him  represent  Satan's 
w*iles  as  the  best  and  most  powerful  incentive  to  the  study  of  the 
Catechism. 

Even  his  earlier  Exposition  of  the  Magnificat  is  spoilt  by  a 
controversial  colouring,10  and,  moreover,  is  overclouded  by  the 
circumstance  that  he  wrote  it  at  the  very  time  when  the  menace 
of  the  Diet  of  Worms  was  at  its  worse.  Looking  out  for  a  powerful 
protector,  he  dedicated  his  writing  to  Duke  Johann  Frederick  of 
Saxony,  the  future  Elector,  who  had  wished  him  luck  in  his 
crusade  against  the  Papal  Ban.  Luther  extols  the  Duke's  piety 
at  the  beginning  of  the  work.  But  was  he  not  anxious  to  make 
a  good  impression  himself  by  his  Exposition  of  the  Magnificat  ? 
To  impress  his  readers  that  he  was  a  man  enlightened  by  God 
and  living  in  union  with  Him  ?  We  may  notice  how  pathetically 
he  depicts  the  righteous  man  (and  we  naturally  think  of  him) 

1   "  Werke,"  Erl,  ed.,  72,  p.  21.  2  Ib.,  p.  22. 

3  Ib.,  152,p.  319.  4  Ib.,  23,  p.  217.  5  Ib.,  p.  222. 

6  P.  223.  7  P.  215.  8  Cp.  ib.,  p.  215  f. 

9  Ib.,  Weim.  ed.,  30,  1,  p.  126  ;   Erl.  ed.,  21,  p.  28. 
10  Ib.,  7,  pp.  551  ff.,  558,  565  f.,  568,  580,  596,  599,  602  =  45,  pp.  222 
fL,  231,  240  f,,  244,  259,  280,  285,  289. 


WORKS   OF   EDIFICATION         481 

submitting  to  be  persecuted  for  the  Word  of  God,  and  awaiting 
with  heavenly  resignation  succour  from  on  high,  without  in  the 
least  striving  to  protect  himself.  He  who  is  persecuted,  he  writes, 
"  must  humble  himself  before  God  as  unworthy  that  such  great 
things  should  be  done  through  him  and  commend  everything  to 
His  mercy  with  prayer  and  supplication."1 

Another  motive  which  inspired  the  publication  of  his  works  of 
edification  was,  as  he  himself  admits,  to  wrest  the  Catholic 
prayer-books  from  the  people's  hands.  It  is  true,  he  says,  his 
intention  is  "  simply  and  honestly  "  to  supply  the  people  with 
spiritual  food.  But  he  also  alludes  to  the  "  manifold  wretched 
ness  arising  out  of  confession  and  sin,"  and  the  "  unchristian 
stupidity  found  in  the  little  prayers  offered  to  God  and  His 
Saints,"  which  he  is  obliged  to  assail.  Even  where  his  peculiar 
doctrine  makes  no  appearance  in  his  instructions  he  is  not 
oblivious  of  its  interest,  even  though  he  assures  us,  seemingly 
with  the  utmost  sincerity,  that  he  was  going  to  see  whether,  by 
his  writings,  "  he  could  not  do  his  very  foes  a  service.  For  my 
object  is  ever  to  be  helpful  to  all  and  harmful  to  none."2  He  saw 
well  of  what  help  the  mere  existence  of  pious  books  would  prove 
to  his  party  ;  the  more  pious  and  innocent  they  were,  the  more 
they  would  promote  his  cause  and  smooth  the  way  for  him.  The 
simplicity  of  the  dove  thus  openly  flaunted,  nevertheless  contrasts 
unpleasantly  with  the  wisdom  of  the  serpent  which  is  only  too 
apparent. 

As  to  what  is  lacking  in  Luther's  religious  writings  : 
Any  reader  familiar  with  the  manuals  of  instruction  and 
piety  in  use  towards  the  close  of  the  Middle  Ages  will  at  once 
perceive  a  great  difference  between  the  importance  they 
attach  to  self-denial,  self-conquest  and  the  struggle  against 
the  evil  inclinations  of  nature  and  that  attached  to  them  by 
Luther. 

In  the  "  Imitation  of  Christ,"  for  instance,  the  great  stress 
laid  on  self-denial  gives  an  effective  spur  to  every  inward 
virtue.  In  Luther,  with  his  twin  ideas  of  faith  alone  and  the 
irresistible  power  of  grace,  this  main  feature  of  the  religious 
warfare  falls  decidedly  into  the  background.  Is  it  a  mere 
coincidence  that  in  the  Larger  Catechism  self-denial  and 
penance  are  not  mentioned  among  the  means  for  preserving 
chastity  ?3  Chastity  itself  is  there  dealt  with  in  a  curiously 
grudging  fashion.  The  so-called  Evangelical  Counsels, 
which  fell  from  our  Lord's  own  lips  and  had  been  eagerly 
pursued  in  the  past  by  those  seeking  to  lead  a  life  of 

1  Ib.,  p.  584  =  265  ;   cp.  p.  586  =  267. 

2  76.,  2,  p.  80  =  21,  p.  160. 

3  Cp.  ib.,  30,  1,  p.  160  ff.=  21,  p.  69  ff. 

v,— 2  I 


482         LUTHER    THE    REFORMER 

perfection,  are  naturally  altogether  ignored  by  Luther. 
With  him,  too,  the  wholesome  incentive  to  good  provided 
by  the  hope  of  supernatural  merit  for  heaven  had  also, 
owing  to  his  theory,  to  be  set  aside.  The  appeals  to  the 
motive  of  holy  fear  which  he  makes  are  too  rare  and  too 
powerless  to  be  of  much  avail.  He  had  clipped  with  a  rude 
hand  the  two  wings  of  the  spiritual  life,  viz.  fear  and  the 
hope  of  reward,  which  bear  it  upwards  and  without  which 
man  cannot  rise  above  the  things  of  sense. 

In  Luther's  works  of  edification,  as  pointed  out  above,  we 
miss  the  school  of  virtue,  the  advance  from  one  step  of 
virtue  and  perfection  to  another,  such  as  had  grown  up  into 
a  wise  and  recognised  system,  thanks  to  the  experience  of 
antiquity  and  the  Middle  Ages.1  With  him  everything  begins 
with  a  rash  breach  with  the  past.  Even  the  use  made  of  the 
example  of  the  Saints  is  painfully  defective.  An  easy-going 
tendency  hides  the  poverty  of  the  aims  and  a  shallow 
mediocrity  lames  the  upward  flight.  Here,  again,  the  fact 
that  the  author  turns  his  back  so  rudely  on  the  traditions  of 
the  earliest  ages  and  the  holy  practices  of  his  fathers,  brings 
its  own  punishment.  For  a  multitude  of  inspiring  and 
perfectly  legitimate  acts  of  prayer  and  virtue  in  which 
the  Christian  heart  had  found  strength  and  gladness  are 
passed  over  by  him  in  dead  silence,  or  else  scoffed  at  as 
mere  "  holiness-by-works."  While  this  is  true  of  his 
practice,  his  theory,  too,  was  wanting  in  that  clear  and 
solid  justification  and  development  which  the  theology  of 
the  older  divines  had  enabled  them  to  introduce  into  their 
teaching. 

Lovers  of  Luther  can,  however,  claim  that  in  him  two 
qualities  were  united  which  are  rarely  to  be  found  com 
bined,  and  possibly  belong  to  no  other  popular  religious 
writer  of  the  age,  viz.  first,  a  wealth  of  ideas  suggested  by 
reminiscences,  now  of  the  Bible,  now  from  the  pages  of 
human  life ;  secondly,  the  writer's  wonderful  imagination, 
which  enables  him  to  clothe  all  things  in  the  best  dress  in 
order  the  more  easily  to  win  his  way  into  the  hearts  of  his 
readers. 

In  consequence  of  this  his  writings  will  always  find 
approving  friends,  not  only  in  Lutheran  circles  but  also 
among  those  who  for  literary  or  historical  reasons  are  inter- 
1  Above,  p.  84  ff . 


THE   CATECHISM  483 

ested  in  a  form  of  literature  bearing  so  individual  a  stamp, 
and  know  how  to  overlook  their  imperfections.  The 
reasons,  however,  are  sufficiently  obvious  why  the  Church 
by  a  general  prohibition  (though  it  does  admit  of  exceptions) 
has  set  up  a  barrier  against  the  study  of  any  of  Luther's 
works  by  her  children,  and  why  she  bids  her  faithful  to 
seek  spiritual  food  only  in  those  books  of  instruction  and 
edification  which  she  sanctions. 

The  Catechism 

The  ignorance  of  the  people  in  religious  things,  of  which 
Luther  was  made  aware  during  the  Visitation  in  the  Saxon 
Electorate  in  1527,  led  him  to  compose  a  sort  of  Catechism, 
"  which  should  be  a  short  abstract  and  recapitulation  of 
Holy  Scripture."1  He  was  desirous  of  providing  in  this  way 
a  manual  for  the  "  instruction  of  the  children  and  the 
simple,"  and  more  particularly  of  supplying  fathers  of 
families  with  an  easy  means  "  of  questioning  and  catechising 
their  children  and  dependents  at  least  once  a  week  (as  was 
their  duty),  and  seeing  what  they  knew  or  had  learnt  of  it."2 

Thus,  at  the  commencement  of  1529,  or  possibly  as  early 
as  1528,  he  was  at  work,  first,  on  the  (Shorter)  Catechism 
"  for  the  rude  country-folk,"  as  he  writes  to  a  friend,3  and 
also  preparing  mural  tablets  ("  tabulce  ")  which  set  out  the 
matter  "  in  the  shortest  and  baldest  way."4  Of  these  tablets 
his  pupil  Rorer  says,  on  Jan.  20,  that  some  of  them  hung 
on  his  walls  while  the  Catechism  ("  prcedicatus  pro  rudibus 
et  simplicibus  ")  was  still  in  process  of  making.5  It  was  in 
this  form  that  the  "  Shorter  Catechism  "  first  appeared,  but, 
in  the  same  year  (1528)  these  tablets  were  collected  into  a 
booklet  entitled  the  "Enchiridion."6 

Luther  was  at  the  same  time  at  work  on  a  fuller  German 
Catechism  which  was  intended  to  supply  the  heads  of 

1  Great  Catechism.    Preface  of  1530.    See  below,  n.  6. 

2  Ib. 

3  To   Martin   Gorlitz,   Jan.    15,    1529,    "  Brief wechsel,"    7,   p.    43  : 
"  pro  rudibus  paganish 

4  See  above,  vol.  iv.,  p.  234. 

5  The  passage  first  given  by  G.  Buchwald,  now  in  the  Weim.  Luther 
ed.,  30,  1,  p.  428  f. 

6  Ed.   O.  Albrecht,  Weim.   ed.,   30,   1,  p.   239  ff.     Formerly  Erl. 
ed.,  21,  p.  5  ff.  ;   "Symbol,  Biicher,"  10ed.  Miiller-Kotde,  p.  349  ff., 
etc. 


484          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

families,  and  more  particularly  the  preachers,  with  further 
matter  for  their  instructions.  This  work,  under  the  title  of 
"  Deudsch  Catechismus,"  was  finished  and  printed  in 
April,  1529,1  and  in  May  appeared  a  Latin  translation  of 
the  same.  This  was  what  was  eventually  termed  the  Larger 
Catechism. 

In  the  preface  to  the  Shorter  Catechism  Luther  puts  on  the 
shoulders  of  the  Catholic  bishops  the  blame  for  the  fact,  that, 
the  "  common  folk,  particularly  in  the  villages,  knew  nothing 
whatever  of  Christian  doctrine."  He  also  admits,  however,  that, 
among  the  Evangelicals,  there  were  "  unfortunately  many 
pastors  who  are  quite  unskilled  and  incapable  of  teaching." 
Hence  it  came  about  that  the  people  "  knew  neither  the  Our 
Father,  the  Creed  nor  the  Ten  Commandments,"  and  "  lived  like 
so  many  brute  beasts  and  senseless  swine."  "  And  how  can  it 
be  otherwise,"  he  asks  the  pastor  and  preacher,  "  seeing  that 
you  snooze  and  hold  your  tongue  ?  "  He  accordingly  requires  of 
the  ministers,  first,  that,  in  their  teaching,  they  should  keep  to 
one  form  of  the  "  Ten  Commandments,  Creed,  Our  Father  arid 
Sacrament,"  etc.,  and  not  "  alter  a  syllable  "  ;  and  "  further, 
that,  when  they  had  taught  the  text  thoroughly,  they  should  see 
that  the  meaning  of  it  is  also  understood  "  ;  finally,  the  pastor 
was  to  take  the  Larger  Catechism  and  study  it  and  then  "  explain 
things  still  more  fully  to  his  flock  "  according  to  their  needs  and 
their  power  of  comprehension. 

In  spite  of  all  this  he  has  no  wish  that  the  particular  method 
and  form  of  his  Catechism  should  be  made  obligatory  ;  here 
again,  according  to  his  principle,  everything  must  be  spon 
taneous  and  voluntary.  "  Choose  whatever  form  you  please 
and  then  stick  to  it  for  ever." 

Nevertheless  whoever  refuses  to  "learn  by  heart"  the  text 
selected  is  to  be  treated  as  a  denier  of  Christ,  "  shall  be  allowed 
not  a  shred  of  Christian  freedom,  but  simply  be  handed  over 
to  the  Pope  and  his  officers,  nay,  to  the  devil  himself.  Parents 
and  masters  are  also  to  refuse  them  food  and  drink  and  to  warn 
them  that  the  sovereigns  will  drive  such  rude  clowns  out  of  the 
land,"  etc.  This  agrees  with  a  letter  Luther  wrote  to  Joseph 
Levin  Metzsch  on  August  26,  1529,  in  which  he  says  that  those 
who  despise  the  Catechism  and  the  Evangel  are  to  be  driven  to 
church  by  force,  that  they  may  at  least  learn  the  outward  work 
of  the  Law  from  the  preaching  of  the  Ten  Commandments.2 

Filled  with  anxiety  for  the  future  of  his  Church  he  warmly 
exhorts  the  pastors  to  provide  for  a  constant  supply  of  preachers 
and  worthy  officials.  They  were  to  tell  the  authorities  and  the 
parents,  "  of  what  a  gruesome  crime  they  were  guilty,  when 
they  neglected  to  help  to  educate  children  as  pastors,  preachers, 

1  Ed.  O.  Albrecht,  Weim.  ed.,  30,  1,  p.  123  ft.    Formerly  Erl.  ed.,  21, 
p.  26  if.  ;    "  Symbol.  Bucher,"10  p.  375  ff. 

2  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  54,  p.  97  ("  Briefwechsel,"  7,  p.  149). 


THE   CATECHISM  485 

and  writers,  etc.  .  .  .  The  sin  now  being  committed  in  this 
respect  by  both  parents  and  authorities  is  quit3  beyond  words  ; 
this  is  one  way  the  devil  has  of  displaying  his  cruelty."  We  see 
from  this  that  Luther's  solicitude  for  the  teaching  of  the  Cate 
chism  had  a  practical  motive  beyond  that  lying  on  the  surface. 
He  wished  to  erect  not  only  a  bulwark  but  also  a  nursery  for  the 
Church  to  come  ;  for  this  same  reason,  in  his  efforts  about  this 
time  on  behalf  of  the  schools  (see  vol.  vi.,  xxxv.,  3),  what  he 
had  in  view  was,  that,  with  the  help  of  the  Bible  and  the  Cate 
chism,  they  should  become  seminaria  ecclesiarum. 

In  the  preface  to  the  Larger  Catechism  of  1530  Luther  lashes 
those  among  his  preachers  who  turned  up  their  noses  at  the 
Catechism. 

Many,  he  says,  despise  "  their  office  and  this  teaching,  some 
because  they  are  so  very  learned,  others  out  of  laziness  and  belly- 
love  "  ;  they  will  not  buy  or  read  such  books  ;  "  they  are,  in 
fact,  shameful  gluttons  and  belly-servers,  better  fitted  to  look 
after  the  pigs  and  the  hounds  than  to  be  pastors  having  the 
cure  of  souls."  To  them  he  holds  up  his  own  example.  He  too 
was  "  a  Doctor  and  preacher,  nay,  as  learned  and  experienced  as 
any  of  them,"  and  yet  he  read  and  recited  every  morning,  and 
whenever  he  had  time,  "  like  a  child,  the  Ten  Commandments, 
Creed,  Our  Father,  Psalms,  etc."  ;  he  never  ceased  being  a 
student  of  the  Catechism.  "  Therefore  I  beg  these  lazy  bellies  or 
presumptuous  saints,  that,  for  God's  sake,  they  let  themselves 
be  persuaded,  and  open  their  eyes  to  see  that  they  are  not  in 
reality  so  learned  and  such  great  Doctors  as  they  imagine." 

The  exhortations  in  this  preface,  to  all  the  clergy  to  make  use 
of  and  teach  the  Catechism  diligently,  contain  much  that  is  useful 
and  to  the  point. 

In  other  passages  he  nevertheless  sees  fit  to  emphasise  what 
he  says  by  false  and  odious  reflections  on  the  Papacy.  "  Our 
office  is  now  quite  other  from  what  it  was  under  the  Pope  ;  now 
it  is  serious  and  wholesome,  and  thus  much  more  arduous  and 
laborious  and  full  of  danger  and  temptation."1  Before  him  "  no 
Doctor  on  earth  had  known  the  whole  of  the  Catechism,  that  is 
the  Our  Father,  Ten  Commandments  and  Creed,  much  less 
understood  them  and  taught  them  as  now,  God  be  praised,  they 
are  taught  and  learnt  even  by  little  children.  In  support  of  this 
I  appeal  to  all  their  books,  those  of  the  theologians  as  well  as 
those  of  the  lawyers.  If  even  one  article  of  the  Catechism  can 
be  learnt  aright  from  them,  then  I  am  willing  to  let  myself  be 
broken  on  the  wheel  or  bled  to  death. '"- 

In  the  plan  of  both  the  Larger  and  Smaller  Cateehism 
Luther  keeps  to  the  traditional  threefold  division,  viz.  the 
Ten  Commandments,  Apostles'  Creed  and  Our  Father.  To 

1  Preface  to  the  Smaller  Catechism. 

"  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  21,  p.  2,  quoted  by  the  editor  in  the  Introduc 
tion  to  the  Catechisms. 


486          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

these  he  appends  a  fourth  part  on  baptism  and  a  fifth  on 
the  Supper,  the  only  two  sacraments  he  recognises.  He 
also  slipped  in  a  short  supplementary  instruction  on  the  new 
form  of  Confession  before  the  chapter  on  the  Supper.1  The 
Smaller  Catechism  was  provided  from  the  very  first  with 
morning  and  evening  prayers,  grace  for  meals  and  an 
eminently  practical  "  Household  Table  of  Texts,"  consisting 
of  appropriate  verses  for  pastors,  for  their  subordinates  and 
pupils  in  general,  for  temporal  authorities,  for  subjects, 
married  people,  parents,  masters,  children  and  also  for  the 
"  young  in  general,  for  widows  and  for  the  parishes." 

The  language,  more  particularly  of  the  Shorter  Catechism, 
is  throughout  a  model  of  simplicity  and  clearness. 

We  may  find  an  example  of  his  brevity  and  concision  at 
the  end  of  the  "  Creed  "  ;  the  passage  will  also  serve  to 
show  how  greatly  his  teaching  differed  from  that  of  the 
Church.  After  the  words  :  "I  believe  in  the  Holy  Ghost, 
the  Holy  Christian  Church,  the  communion  of  saints,  the 
forgiveness  of  sins,  the  resurrection  of  the  dead  and  life 
everlasting,  Amen,"  there  follows  in  the  Catechism  the 
usual  question  :  "  What  means  this  ?  "  and  the  answer, 
with  regard  to  the  Church,  is  that  the  Holy  Ghost  "  calls, 
gathers  together,  enlightens,  hallows  and  holds  the  whole  body 
of  Christians  on  earth  in  Jesus  Christ  in  one  true  faith  ;  in 
which  body  of  Christendom  He  free-handedly  forgives  me 
and  all  the  faithful  all  our  sins  daily,"  etc.  The  paragraph 
ends,  as  do  all  the  articles  on  the  Creed,  in  the  usual  form  : 
"  This  is  true." 

In  spite  of  all  peculiarity  of  doctrine  in  the  Shorter 
Catechism  all  polemical  attacks  on  the  olden  Church  are 
carefully  eschewed.  In  the  Larger  Catechism,  on  the 
contrary,  they  abound.  Even  under  the  First  Command 
ment,,  speaking  of  the  worship  of  God,  the  author  alludes  to 
what  "  hitherto  we  have  in  our  blindness  been  in  the  habit 
of  practising  in  Popery  "  ;  "  the  worst  idolatry  "  had  held 
sway,  seeing  that  we  sought  "  help,  consolation  and  salva 
tion  in  our  own  works."  In  the  explanation  of  the  article 
on  the  "  Holy  Christian  Church,  the  Communion  of  Saints  " 
it  is  set  forth  at  the  outset,  that,  "  in  Popery,"  "  faith  had 
been  stuck  under  the  bench,"  "  no  one  having  acknow- 

1  Cp.  O.  Albrecht,  Weim.  ed.,  31,  1,  p.  442  f.  On  the  new  Confession 
see  above,  vol.  iv.,  p.  248  ff. 


THE   CATECHISM  487 

ledged  Christ  as  Lord."  "  Formerly,  before  we  came  to 
hear  [God's  Word]  we  were  the  devil's  own,  knowing  nothing 
of  God  or  of  Christ."1 

On  the  other  hand,  several  of  Luther's  doctrines  find  no 
place  whatever  in  either  of  the  Catechisms.  For  instance, 
those,  which,  according  to  the  testimony  of  Protestant 
scholars  quoted  above,  necessarily  lead  to  a  "  Christianity 
void  of  dogma  "  (above,  p.  432  ff.).  The  people  and  the 
pastors  learn  nothing  here  of  their  right  of  private  judgment 
with  regard  to  the  text  of  the  Bible  and  the  articles  of  faith. 
Nor  is  anything  said  of  that  view  of  original  sin  \vhich 
constituted  the  very  basis  of  the  new  system,  viz.  that  it  is 
destructive  of  every  predisposition  to  what  is  good  ;  nor 
of  the  enslaved  will,  which  is  ridden  now  by  God,  now  by  the 
devil ;  nor  of  the  fact  that  man's  actions  have  only  the 
value  imputed  to  them  by  God  ;  nor,  finally,  do  we  find 
anything  of  predestination  to  hell,  of  the  "  Hidden  God  " 
Who  quashes  the  Will  of  the  "  Revealed  God  "  that  all  men 
be  saved,  and  Who,  to  manifest  His  "  Justice,"  gloats  over 
the  endless  torment  of  the  countless  multitudes  whom  He 
infallibly  predestined  to  suffer  eternally.2  The  reason  for 
the  suppression  of  these  doctrines  in  catechisms  intended 
for  the  general  reader  is  patent.  The  dogmas  they  embody, 
in  so  far  as  they  vary  from  the  traditional,  are  too  contradic 
tory  to  form  a  solid  theological  structure.  To  what  dangers 
would  not  the  new  doctrine  have  been  exposed,  and  what 
would  have  been  the  bad  impression  on  the  reader,  had 
mention  been  made  in  the  Catechisms  of  such  theories,  even 
though,  in  reality,  they  formed  the  very  backbone  of  the 
new  theology  ? 

Luther's  Catechisms  were  well  received  and  were  fre 
quently  reprinted.3  Many  enactments  of  the  secular  rulers, 
particularly  in  the  Saxon  lands,  insisted  that  his  Shorter 
Catechism  should  be  learnt  by  heart  and  his  Larger  Cate 
chism  be  made  the  basis  of  the  sermons.4 

1  "Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  31,   1,  pp.   134  f.,   188,  190;  Erl.  ed.,  21, 
pp.  36  f.,  101,  103. 

2  Cp.  vol.  i.,  p.  187  ff.,  etc. 

3  Cp.    the    "  Bibliographie    zum    Grossen    Katechismus,"    by    O. 
Albrecht  and  J.  Luther,  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  31,  1,  p.  499  ff.  ;   cp.  ib., 
p.  666  ff . 

4  For  proofs,  see  Th.  Kolde,  "  Symbol.  Biidier,"10  p.  Ixiii. 


488          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

Mathesius  wrote  :  "If  Dr.  Luther  during  his  career  had  done 
nothing  more  than  introduce  the  two  Catechisms  into  the  homes, 
the  schools  and  the  pulpits,  reviving  prayers  before  and  after 
meals  and  on  rising  and  going  to  bed,  even  then  the  whole  world 
could  not  sufficiently  thank  or  repay  him."1 — "Luther's  book 
let,"  declares  O.  Albrecht,  "  became  a  practical  guide  to  pious 
patriarchal  discipline  in  the  home,  and  the  very  foundation  of 
the  education  of  the  people  in  those  German  lands  which  had 
come  under  the  influence  of  his  Reformation.  .  .  .  Even  in  the 
Latin  schools  his  Parvus  catechismus  became,  in  the  16th  century, 
one  of  the  most  widely  disseminated  handbooks."2 

In  the  heyday  of  their  triumph  the  Catechisms  were  incor 
porated  in  the  Book  of  Concord,  first  in  German  in  1580  and 
then  in  Latin  in  1584,  and  were  thus  bodily  incorporated  in  the 
Creed  of  the  Lutheran  Evangelical  Church.  They  were  accepted 
"  as  the  layman's  Bible  in  which  all  is  comprised  that  is  dealt 
with  in  Holy  Scripture  and  which  it  is  necessary  for  a  Christian 
man  to  know."3  Highly  as  Luther  valued  his  Catechism,4  still 
he  certainly  had  never  intended  it  to  be  enforced  as  a  rule  of 
faith,  for  we  have  heard  him  express  his  readiness  to  sanction 
the  use  of  any  other  short  and  concise  form  of  instruction.  (See 
above,  p.  484.) 

Luther  had  nevertheless  taken  great  pains  over  his  work. 

He  had  been  thinking  of  it  long  before  he  actually  set  to 
work  on  it.  As  early  as  1526  he  had  spoken  in  his  "  Deudsche 
Messe  und  Ordnung  Gottis  Diensts  "  of  the  need  of  a  "  rude, 
homely,  simple  and  good  work  on  the  Catechism  for  the 
congregation  of  true  Christians  which  he  was  planning  ; 
indeed,  he  had  already  dealt  writh  certain  portions  of  the 
Catechism  in  his  "  Kurcz  Form  der  czehen  Gepott  "  (1520), 
and  in  his  "  Betbiichlin  "  (1522).  It  was  probably  owing  to 
his  influence  that  Jonas  and  Agricola  were  entrusted  with 
the  drafting  of  a  catechism  for  boys.  While  engaged  on  this 
work,  in  1528,  he,  as  a  final  preparation  for  it,  preached 
three  courses  of  sermons  on  the  Catechism.  These  sermons 
were  first  published  in  1894  by  G.  Buchwald  in  "  Die 
Entstehung  der  Katechismen  Luthers,"  being  taken  from 
the  notes  by  Rorer  ;  Buchwald  draws  attention  to  the  close 
connection  existing  between  the  sermons  and  the  text  of 
the  Catechism.5 

1  "  Historien,"  Bl.  63'.  2  Weim.  ed.,  30,  1,  p.  655. 

3  "  Symbol.  Biicher,"10  p.  518. 

4  We  may  recall  his  statement  that  he  would  like  to  see  all  his  books 
destroyed  except  two  :     "  Nullum  enim  agnosco  meum  iustum  librum 
nisi  forte  De  servo  arbitrio  et  Catechismum."     To  Capito,  July  9,  1537, 
"  Briefwechsel,"  11,  p.  247.    See  above,  p.  471,  n.  2. 

5  New  edition  by  Buchwald,  Weim.  ed.,  31,  1,  p.  1  ff . 


THE   CATECHISM  489 

So  well  did  Luther  promote  the  teaching  of  the  elementary 
truths  of  religion,  that,  in  a  notice  given  from  the  pulpit  on 
Nov.  29,  1528,  he  was  able  to  speak  of  a  rule  according  to 
which  it  was  the  custom  at  Wittenberg  four  times  in  the 
year  to  preach  four  sermons  on  the  Catechism  spread  over 
a  fortnight.1 

This  custom  lasted  long  and  spread  to  other  places.2 
Bugenhagen,  so  it  is  said  on  reliable  authority,  always 
carried  Luther's  Catechism  with  him. 3  He  declared,  in  1542, 
that  he  had  already  preached  about  fifty  times  on  the 
Catechism, 4  and  he  seems  to  have  organised  and  kept  up  the 
practice  of  the  "  catechism  weeks  "  when  pastor  of  Witten 
berg  ;  at  any  rate  the  rules  he  drew  up  subsequent  to  1528 
insist  repeatedly  on  such  sermons  being  preached  on  the 
Catechism. 5 

Luther's  Catechism  and  Ecclesiastical  Antiquity 

In  the  passage  of  his  "  Deudsche  Messe  "  where  he  speaks 
of  his  idea  on  the  teaching  of  the  Catechism,  Luther  says, 
that  he  knew  no  better  way  to  give  such  instruction  than 
"  that  in  which  it  had  been  given  from  the  earliest  days  of 
Christianity  and  until  now,  viz.  under  the  three  heads  :  The 
Ten  Commandments,  the  Creed  and  the  Our  Father  "  ; 
these  three  things  contained  all  that  was  called  for. 6  Hence 
he  himself  was  far  from  sharing  the  opinion  of  certain  later 
Protestants,  viz.  that,  in  the  selection  and  methodical 
treatment  of  these  three  points  he  had  struck  out  an  entirely 
new  line.  He  simply  adapted  the  existing  form  of  instruction 
to  his  new  doctrines,  which  he  cast  into  a  shape  suitable  for 
popular  consumption. 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  27,  p.  444. 

2  Mathesius,  "  Historien,"  Bl.  61  :    "  Just  as  at  Wittenberg  and  in 
many  other  churches  the  useful  custom  still  prevails  of  preaching  on 
this  Catechism  four  times  a  year  for  a  fortnight,  and  of  daily  assembling 
for  that  purpose  the  children,  servants  and  artisans.     Many  ministers 
also  teach  the  Catechism  on  Sundays  in  addition  to  the  Gospel,  and 
assemble  the  children  in  summer  for  the  recitation  and  explaining  of 
the  Catechism,  as  is,  thanks  be  to  God,  the  custom  with  us  to-day." 

3  /&.,  Bl.  62'. 

4  O.  Albrecht,  "  Der  kleine  Katechismus  Luthers  vom  Jahre  1536," 
1905,  p.  94. 

5  Albrecht,  Weim.  ed.,  30,  1,  p.  441. 

6  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  19,  p.  76  ;    Erl.  ed.,  22,  p.  232  (cp.  p.  75-= 
231,  and  Weim.  ed.,  30,  1,  p.  434). 


490          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

The  Decalogue,  together  with  Confession  with  which  it 
naturally  goes  hand  in  hand,  had  assumed,  ever  since  the 
13th  century,  an  ever-growing  importance  in  the  instruc 
tions  intended  for  the  people.  In  esteeming,  as  he  did,  the 
Ten  Commandments,  the  Creed  and  the  Lord's  Prayer, 
Luther  was  simply  following  in  the  footsteps  of  the  14th 
and  15th  century.  Johann  Wolff,  the  Frankfurt  preacher, 
who  is  described  on  his  tombstone  as  "  Doctor  decent  prcecep- 
torum"  as  his  Handbook  for  Confession  of  1478  shows,  was 
quite  indefatigable  in  his  propaganda  on  behalf  of  the  use  of 
the  Decalogue  in  confession  and  in  popular  instructions."1 

We  must  here  call  attention,  above  all,  to  the  instruction 
habitually  given  in  the  home  by  parents  and  godparents 
before  Luther's  day  ;  this  "  consisted  chiefly  in  teaching 
the  Creed  and  the  Our  Father,  two  points  belonging  to  the 
oldest  catechetical  formularies  of  the  ancient  Church."2 
Luther  himself  had  learnt  these  in  the  Latin  school  with  the 
rest  contained  in  the  hornbooks,  and  on  them  in  turn  he 
based  his  own  Catechism.3 

Melanchthon  speaks,  in  1528,  of  the  "Children's  manual  con 
taining  the  Alphabet,  the  Our  Father,  the  Creed  and  other 
prayers,"4  as  the  first  school  primer  which  had  come  down  from 
the  past. 

Even  Mathesius  admits  that,  "  parents  and  schoolmasters 
taught  their  children  the  Ten  Commandments,  the  Creed  and  the 
Our  Father,  as  I  in  my  childhood  learnt  them  at  school  and  often 
repeated  them  with  the  other  children,  as  was  the  custom  in  the 
olden  schools  "  ;  he  adds,  however,  that  the  "  tiresome  devil  " 
had  smuggled  additions  into  the  Catholic  "  A. B.C.  book  "  and 
corrupted  it  with  Popish  doctrine,  whereby  servitors  are 
"turned"  towards  the  Mass;  the  devil  "had  also  introduced 
into  the  school  primer  the  idolatrous  '  Salve  Regina  '  which 
detracted  from  the  honour  due  to  Jesus  Christ,  our  one  Mediator 
and  Intercessor."5 

1  Thus  Albrecht  in  his  introduction  to  his  new  edition  of  the  two 
Catechisms  of  Luther,  Weim.  ed.,  p.  435  ;  he  refers  also  to  Falk's  and 
Battenberg's  editions  of  Wolff's  "  Beichtbiichlein  "  (see  vol.  iv..  p.  254) 
and   to   J.    Greving's    "  Zum   vorreformatorischen   Beichtunterricht  " 
("  Veroffeiitl.  aus  dem  K.-h.  Seminar  zu  Miinchen,"   3,   1,   1907,  pp. 
46-81). 

2  Albrecht,  ib.,  p*436.          3  Ib.         4  Cp.  Weim.  ed.,  26,  p.  237. 

5  "  Historien,"  Bl.  63.  Mathesius,  however,  will  only  admit  that, 
on  the  whole,  "  some  fragments  of  the  Catechism  "  had  been  retained  in 
Popery.  Luther's  admirer  cannot  even  recall  that  in  Popery  he  "  had 
ever  heard  .  .  .  the  Ten  Commandments,  Creed,  Our  Father  or 
Baptism  spoken  of  from  the  pulpit.  ...  Of  the  absolution  and 
consolation  arising  from  a  believing  reception  of  the  Body  and  Blood 


THE   CATECHISM  491 

In  the  15th  and  16th  century  priests  were  often  urged  to  recite 
from  the  pulpit  every  Sunday  the  Creed  and  Our  Father,  some 
times  also  the  Hail  Mary,  and  the  Decalogue  was  not  unfrequently 
added.1  A  work  by  the  Basle  parish-priest,  Johann  Surgant, 
which  appeared  in  1502  and  was  many  times  republished,  deals 
exclusively  with  the  expounding  of  the  above  points  to  the 
people,  supplies  each  with  explanatory  notes,  and  requires,  in 
accordance  with  the  existing  rules,  that  the  priests  should  care 
fully  instruct  the  people  in  them  ("  diligenter  informent  ").  It 
was  an  old  custom  to  preach  on  the  Catechism  during  Lent  as 
Luther  also  had  done  in  his  younger  days,  taking  for  his  subject 
the  Ten  Commandments  and  the  Our  Father  ;  this  custom,  too, 
had  probably  been  handed  down  from  the  time,  when,  during  the 
weeks  preceding  the  great  day  for  baptism,  viz.  Holy  Saturday, 
the  catechumens  were  instructed  in  the  Creed  and  the  Our 
Father  ("  traditio  symboli  et  orationis  dominicce  "). 

The  courses  of  sermons  preached  four  times  a  year  at  Witten 
berg  also  had  their  analogy  in  the  Church's  past.  As  early  as 
1281,  a  synod  meeting  in  London  under  Archbishop  Peckham 
of  Canterbury  had  required,  in  the  10th  Canon,  that  the  parish- 
priest  should  rehearse  every  three  months  the  principal  doctrines 
of  the  Christian  faith  and  morals  simply  and  concisely. 

Even  in  his  Confession  or  examination  before  Communion  of 
15232  Luther  had  merely  revived,  under  another  form,  an  in 
stitution  of  the  Mediaeval  Church,  for,  in  the  Confession  before 
Communion,  it  had  been  customary  to  recite  the  principal 
articles  of  Christian  faith.3 

As  to  what  Luther  says,  viz.  that  the  instruction  given  to  the 
people  had  formerly  borne  only  on  the  three  points  named  above, 
and  that  of  the  two  sacraments  treated  of  in  his  Catechism 
"sad  to  say  nothing  had  hitherto  been  taught,"4  it  is  only 

of  Christ  I  had  to  my  knowledge  never  heard  a  word  all  my  days  before 
I  came  to  Wittenberg,  either  in  the  churches  or  the  schools,  just  as  I 
cannot  recall  having  seen  any  written  or  printed  explanation  of  the 
Catechism  in  Popery  "  (Bl.  63  and  63'). — The  ignorance  of  the  facts 
of  the  case  revealed  in  the  latter  statement  is  met  with  elsewhere  in 
the  rest  of  the  passage  of  Mathesius's  writing  ;  he  may  have  been 
unfortunate  in  his  own  personal  experience,  but  he  certainly  exagger 
ates.  That,  before  Luther's  day,  preaching  was  not  everywhere 
sufficiently  supplemented  by  catechetical  instruction  was  undoubtedly 
to  be  regretted. 

1  Albrecht,  ib.,  referring  to  P.  Bahlmann,  "  Deutschlands  Kate- 
chismen  bis  zum  Ende  des  16.  Jahrh.,"  1894,  p.  38,  and  F.  Cohrs, 
"  Evangel.  Katechismusversuche  vor  Luthers  Enchiridion,"  ("  Mon. 
Germ.  Psedag.,"  vol.  20  ff.  ;  vol.  23,  1902,  pp.  233,  271).  For  popular 


cp.  249  ff. 

2  See  above,  p.  134  f.,  and  vol.  iv.,  p.  251. 

3  Albrecht,  ib.,  p.  444. 

4  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  30,  1,  p.  212  ;    Erl.  ed.,  21,  p.  128. 


492          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

necessary  to  say  that  numerous  prayer-books  and  manuals  on 
confession  dating  from  the  close  of  the  Middle  Ages  contain 
abundant  matter  both  on  the  sacraments  and  on  other  things 
touching  doctrine.1 

Before  Luther's  day  the  term  Catechism  had  not  been 
taken  to  mean  the  book  itself,  but  the  subject-matter  which 
was  taught  by  word  of  mouth  and  was  confined  to  the  points 
indicated  above.  It  was  in  this  sense  that  he  said,  for 
instance  in  the  Table-Talk  :  "  The  Catechism  must  remain 
and  be  supreme  in  the  Christian  Church."2  It  was  he  and 
Melanchthon3  who  initiated  the  custom  of  applying  the 
term  not  only  to  the  contents  of  the  volume  but  also  to  the 
volume  itself.4  Hence,  it  is  verbally  true,  that,  before 
Luther's  day,  there  existed  no  "  Catechism  "  ;  the  religious 
writings  dealing  with  the  subject  bore  other  and  different 
titles.  Nor  was  the  arrangement  of  question  and  answer 
regarded  as  essential  to  the  body  of  instructions  which  went 
under  the  term  of  Catechism,  a  circumstance  which  also 
seemed  to  favour  the  assertion,  that,  before  Luther's  day, 
no  such  thing  was  known.  But  if  question  and  answer 
be  essential,  then,  even  his  own  Larger  Catechism  could 
not  rightly  have  borne  the  title,  seeing  that  it  has  not  this 
form.  Nevertheless  the  system  of  question  and  answer  had 
always  been  highly  prized  and  had  sometimes  been  made 
use  of  on  the  model  of  the  questions  put  at  baptism. 

Amongst  the  older  writings  that  most  nearly  approach 
the  ideal  of  the  Catholic  Catechism,  deserve  to  be  mentioned 
two  books  then  widely  known  which  are  constantly  making 
their  appearance  in  the  thirty  years  before  Luther's  day, 
viz.  the  "  Fundamentum  ceternce  felicitatis  "  and  the  "  Dis- 
cipulus  de  eruditione  Christi — fidelium  compendiosus"  the 
second  of  which  also  contains  questions  and  objections. 
Both  go  beyond  the  three  main  points  given  above  and 
include  a  popular  summary,  intended  for  the  use  of  the 
clergy,  of  the  seven  sacraments,  the  nine  sins,  the  works  of 

1  Albrecht,  ib.,   p.  445,  referring  to  Geffcken's  "  Der  Bilderkate- 
chismus  des  aiisgehenden  MA.,"  1855,  pp.  86,  98  f.,  108,  177,  etc.,  and 
particularly  to  Thalhofer,  "  Die  katechetischen  Lehrstiicke  im  MA.," 
("  Mitteil.  der  Gesellschaft  f.  deutsche  Erziehungs-  und  Schulgesch.," 
15,  1905,  p.  188  ff. 

2  Cp.  Weim.  ed.,  30,  1,  p.  454. 

3  "  Corp.  ref.,"  1,  p.  643  (1523). 

4  Albrecht,  ib.,  p.  454  f. 


THE   CATECHISM  493 

mercy  and  the  seven  gifts  of  the  Holy  Ghost.1  It  was  also 
the  usual  thing  for  books  on  the  Decalogue  to  include  other 
points  of  importance,  and  thus  to  deal  with  almost  the  whole 
of  the  matter  treated  of  in  the  Catechism.  In  fact,  as 
Zezschwitz  says,  there  was  rather  an  "  over-abundance  of 
material  in  the  domain  of  catechetics  "  than  any  dearth. 

Finally,  the  use  of  the  so-called  tables,  i.e.  sheets  printed 
only  on  one  side  and  each  giving  a  different  point  of  the 
Catechism,  which,  as  we  saw,  was  the  form  under  which 
Luther's  Shorter  Catechism  first  appeared  (above,  p.  483), 
was  nothing  new  either.  "  Luther  followed  in  this  respect  a 
custom  then  widespread,"2  as  is  shown  by  the  studies  of 
Geffcken,  Cohrs  and  Falk  (1908) ;  Falk,  in  particular,  care 
fully  sought  out  the  Catholic  tablets  of  the  kind  still  in 
existence.  So  far  only  one  example  of  Luther's  printed 
tablets,  and  that  in  Low  German,  has  been  brought  to  light.3 

Hence  the  statement  that  Luther's  Catechism  was  his 
own  "  creation  "  calls  for  considerable  revision. 

The  directness  and  concision  of  his  style  must,  however, 
always  commend  themselves  to  the  reader,  even  to  those 
who  regret  that  in  this  work  he  tampered  with  the  doctrines 
of  the  olden  Church.  But,  as  regards  the  division,  the  work 
rests  on  a  foundation  hallowed  by  centuries  of  ecclesiastical 
usage.  This  even  Protestants  have  now  begun  to  see. 

According  to  F.  Cohrs,  even  in  Luther's  "  Kurcz  Form,"  we  see 
"  Evangelical  catechetics  springing  up  on  the  soil  of  the  popular 
religious  literature  of  the  Middle  Ages."4 

Otto  Albrecht,  like  others,  admits,  that,  in  his  appreciation 
of  the  three  chief  points  of  instruction,  and  more  particularly 
of  the  Decalogue,  Luther  "is  in  agreement  with  the  similar 
efforts  made  in  the  14th  and  15th  century."  It  was  according 
to  him  "  only  natural  "  that  Luther,  in  his  "  Kurcz  Form  "  of 
1520  and  again  in  his  "  Deudsche  Messe  "  of  1526,  should  protest, 
that,  "  in  these  three  points,  he  was  safeguarding  the  heirloom 
of  the  Church."  In  this  instance  his  critical  attitude  towards  the 
past  comes  out  only  in  his  exclusion  of  the  Hail  Mary,  in  his  re 
arrangement  of  the  three  parts,  and,  of  course,  above  all,  in  the 
new  meaning  he  gives  to  them.  Moreover,  according  to  Albrecht, 
Luther's  gradual  enlargement  of  his  "  Betbiichlin  "  shows  that 

1  F.  J.  Knecht,  loc.  cit.,  p.  292  f.     The  "  Discipulus  "  was  compiled 
as  early  as  1416.    Cp.  "  Zeitschr.  f.  kath.  Th.,"  1902,  p.  419  ff. 

2  Albrecht,  ib.,  p.  561. 

3  Facsimile,  ib.,  p.  241,  and  better  still  in  Otto  Albrecht's  "  Der 
kleine  Katechismus  Luthers,"  1905. 

4  "  Katechismus versuche  "  (see  above,  p.  491,  n.  1),  p.  241. 


494          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

the  latter  was  but  an  "  Evangelical  version  of  the  mediaeval  prayer 
and  confession  handbooks,  which  themselves,  in  turn,  had  led  up 
to  the  Catechisms  of  the  16th  century."1 

Such  a  view  also  fits  in  with  Luther's  own  words  far  better 
than  did  the  exaggerations  formerly  current.  He  says,  for 
instance,  in  1532,  in  his  "  Brieff  an  die  zu  Franckfort  am 
Meyn  "  :  "  This  we  have  received  even  from  the  first 
beginnings  of  Christianity.  For  there  we  see  that  the  Creed, 
the  Our  Father  and  the  Ten  Commandments  were  summar 
ised  as  a  short  form  of  doctrine  for  the  young  and  the  simple, 
and  were,  even  from  the  very  first,  termed  the  Catechism."2 
Even  in  the  original  preface  to  the  Larger  Catechism  he 
had  declared  that,  "  for  the  sake  of  the  common  people  he 
was  keeping  to  the  three  points  which  have  ever  been  the 
rule  in  Christendom  in  ages  past."3 

3.    The  German  Bible 

Already  at  the  Wartburg  Luther  had  begun  the  great 
work  of  substituting  for  the  existing  vernacular  translations 
of  Holy  Scripture  one  written  in  good  German  and  based  on 
the  original  languages  of  the  books  of  the  Bible. 

The  idea  seems  to  have  dawned  on  him  during  his  enforced 
rest  at  the  Wartburg,  when,  as  he  tells  a  friend,  he  passed 
his  time  reading  the  Bible  in  Greek  and  Hebrew  and  in 
studying  these  two  languages.4  Just  then  he  was  entirely 
under  the  sway  of  those  new  views  of  his  which  prompted 
him  to  set  up  the  Bible  in  the  stead  of  all  ecclesiastical 
authority.  Melanchthon,  too,  so  it  would  appear,  had  also 
some  share  in  his  resolution. 

The  Work  of  Translation  and  its  Conclusion 

In  his  solitude  Luther  first  broached  the  New  Testament, 
first  because  its  contents  more  nearly  touched  the  contro 
versy  in  which  he  was  engaged,  and,  secondly,  because  the 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed..  31,  1,  pp.  435-437. 

2  /&.,  30,  3,  p.  567  ;   Erl.  ed.,  262,  p.  383  f. 

3  76.,  30,   1,  p.   130  =  21,  p.   31.      Cp.  above,  p.  147  f.,  the  passage 
taken  from  Luther's  "  Deudsche  Messe." 

4  To  Spalatin,  May  14,  1521,  "  Briefwechsel,"  3,  p.  154  :    "  Bibliam 
grcEcam  et  hebrceam  lego"     To  the  same,  June  10,   1521,  ib.,  p.   171  : 
"  Hcbraica  et  Grceca  disco  et  sine  intermissione  scribo" 


THE   GERMAN   BIBLE  495 

New  Testament  could  be  translated  more  easily  without 
learned  assistance.  When  first  announcing  his  plan,  on 
Dec.  18,  1521,  he  mentions,  that,  "  our  people  are  asking  for 
it."1  "I  shall  put  the  Bible  into  German,"  so  he  tells 
his  Wittenberg  colleague,  Canon  Nicholas  Amsdorf,  on 
Jan.  13,  1522,  "  though  in  so  doing  I  am  taking  upon  myself 
a  burden  beyond  my  strength.  Now  I  see  what  translating 
means,  and,  why,  so  far,  no  one  who  undertook  it  ever  put 
his  name  to  it.  As  for  the  Old  Testament  I  cannot  touch  it 
unless  you  are  here  and  give  me  your  help.  Could  I  find  a 
hiding-place  with  one  of  you,  I  would  come  at  once  so  as  to 
start  the  work  of  translation  from  the  outset  with  your 
assistance.  The  result  ought  to  be  a  translation  worthy  of 
being  read  by  all  Christians.  I  hope  we  shall  give  our 
German  folk  a  better  one  than  that  which  the  Latins  have. 
It  is  a  great  and  glorious  work  at  which  we  all  should  toil, 
for  it  is  a  public  matter  and  is  meant  to  serve  the  common 
weal.  Tell  me  what  hopes  you  have  of  it."2 

In  barely  three  months,  with  the  aid  of  the  few  helpers 
he  was  able  to  secure  in  his  Patmos,  he  had  finished  the 
first  rough  draft  of  the  New  Testament,  which  he  took  with 
him  on  leaving  the  Wartburg  for  revision  among  his  friends 
at  Wittenberg.  "  Philip  and  I,"  so  he  wrote  from  Witten 
berg,  on  March  30,  1522,  to  Spalatin,  who  was  then  Court 
preacher,  "  have  now  begun  to  furbish  the  translation  of 
the  New  Testament  ;  it  will,  please  God,  turn  out  a  fine 
work.  We  shall  need  your  help  too,  here  and  there,  for  the 
choice  of  words  ;  hence  get  ready.  But  send  us  simple  words, 
not  the  language  of  the  men-at-arms  or  of  the  Court  ;  the 
translation  must,  above  all,  be  a  homely  one.  May  I  ask 
you  to  send  me  straightaway  the  [German]  names  and  the 
colours  of  the  precious  stones  mentioned  in  Apocalypse  xxi., 
or  better  still  the  stones  themselves,  if  you  can  get  hold  of 
them  at  Court  or  elsewhere."3  Luther  finally  received 
specimens  of  the  stones  through  the  good  offices  of  Cranach. 
In  order  the  better  to  understand  certain  texts,  he  also 
wrote  to  Spalatin,  Mutian  and  Dr.  George  Sturz  on  the 
subject  of  ancient  coinage.4  He  also  incidentally  consulted 
the  Court  preacher  as  to  the  exact  German  translation  of 
the  names  of  various  wild  animals  with  which  the  latter 

1  To  Johann  Lang,  ib.,  p.  256.  2  Ib.,  p.  271. 

3  Ib.,  p.  325.  4  Cp.  ib.,  n,  4  in  Enders. 


496         LUTHER    THE    REFORMER 

would  probably  be  acquainted  owing  to  the  hunts  indulged 
in  by  the  Court  in  that  neighbourhood.1 

The  printing  of  the  New  Testament  was  begun  at  Witten 
berg  by  Melchior  Lotther  in  the  first  days  of  May.  Proof- 
sheets  were  sent  to  Spalatin  and  Duke  Johann  of  Saxony. 
From  the  beginning  of  July  three  printing  presses  are  said 
to  have  run  off  daily  10,000  "  charts,"  i.e.  5000  folio 
sheets,  so  as  to  produce  an  edition  of  3000  copies.  On 
Sep.  21,  1522,  the  New  Testament  appeared  with  a  frontis 
piece  and  a  number  of  woodcuts  by  Lucas  Cranach ; 
the  title-page  bore  the  words  :  "  Das  Newe  Testament 
Deutzsch.  Vuittemberg."  Neither  year  nor  printer's  name 
were  given,  nor  even  the  name  of  the  translator,  probably 
in  order  not  to  prejudice  the  sale  of  the  book  in  those  regions 
where  Luther  stood  in  bad  odour.  Luther  received  no  fee 
for  the  work  any  more  than  for  his  other  writings.  As  the 
first  edition  was  at  once  sold  out  a  new  and  amended  one 
was  published  in  Dec.  ;  the  two  editions  afterwards  became 
known  as  the  September  and  December  Bibles.  Editions 
still  further  amended  were  published  at  Wittenberg  in  1526 
and  1530.  Altogether  some  sixteen  editions  of  the  New 
Testament  were  printed  in  this  town  before  1557,  while  at 
the  same  time  more  than  fifty  reprints  saw  the  light  in 
Germany,  for  instance,  fourteen  at  Augsburg,  thirteen  at 
Strasburg  and  twelve  at  Basle. 

While  still  busy  on  the  New  Testament  Luther  set  to 
work  on  the  Old,  this  time  with  the  regular  and  expert 
assistance  of  Melanchthon  and  Matthseus  Aurogallus,  the 
Wittenberg  Professor  of  Hebrew.  Owing  to  the  difficulty 
of  the  work  and  the  constant  hindrances  encountered  by  the 
author,  the  work  did  not  appear  all  at  once,  but  only  piece 
meal.  As  early  as  1523  the  Books  of  the  Pentateuch  were 
published  at  Augsburg  and  Basle  in  two  successive  editions, 
four  times  reprinted  in  the  same  year.  The  historical  books 
from  Josue  to  Esther  followed  in  1524.  The  remainder, 
comprehensively  described  as  the  "  Prophets,"  followed  in 
separate  parts,  Job,  the  Psalms  and  the  "  Books  of  Solomon  " 
in  1524,  and  the  Prophets,  properly  so-called,  only  at  longer 
intervals.2 

1  Dec.    12    (?),    1522,    "  Briefwechsel,"    4,   p.    37:    "  Bestias   istas 
describas  et  nominee  per  species  suas."    There  follows  the  list. 

2  See  the  list  of  Luther's  writings  at  the  end  of  our  vol.  vi. 


THE   GERMAN  BIBLE  497 

The  difficulties  of  the  work  and  the  unwearied  pains 
taken  by  the  compiler  are  frequently  apparent  in  Luther's 
letters  to  his  friends. 

He  writes,  for  instance,  to  Spalatin  :  "  Job  gives  us  much 
trouble  owing  to  the  exceptional  grandeur  of  his  style  ;  he  seems 
as  reluctant  to  submit  to  our  translation  as  to  the  consolations 
of  his  friends  ;  he  refuses  to  march  and  wants  to  remain  for  ever 
seated  on  his  dunghill  ;  it  almost  seems  as  though  the  writer  of 
the  book  had  wished  to  make  a  translation  impossible.  For  this 
reason  the  printing  of  the  third  part  of  the  Bible  [i.e.  of  the  Old 
Testament]  proceeds  but  slowly."1 — Later,  in  the  preface  to  the 
Book  of  Job,  he  said  :  "In  our  work  on  '  Hiob,'  we,  Master 
Philip,  Aurogallus  and  I,  were  sometimes  barely  able  to  get 
through  three  lines  in  four  days.  But  now,  my  friend,  that  it  is 
translated  into  German  everyone  can  read  it  and  master  it  and 
run  his  eyes  over  three  or  four  pages  without  meeting  a  single 
obstacle,  nor  does  he  perceive  what  hindrances  and  stumbling- 
blocks  lay  in  the  path  he  now  glides  along  as  easily  as  down  a 
greasy  pole  ;  to  us,  however,  it  cost  much  toil  and  sweat  to 
remove  all  the  hindrances  and  stumbling-blocks."2 

He  writes  to  his  friend  Wenceslaus  Link  of  his  difficulties  with 
the  prophet  Isaias  on  which,  with  Melanchthon,3  he  was  hard  at 
work  in  June,  1528  :  "  We  are  now  sweating  at  the  translation 
of  the  prophets.  Good  God,  what  a  great  and  arduous  task  it  is 
to  cram  the  Hebrew  writers  into  a  German  mould  !  They  abso 
lutely  refuse  to  submit  to  the  barbarism  of  the  German  tongue. 
It  is  as  though  a  nightingale  were  being  forced  to  exchange  its 
sweet  melodies  for  the  call  of  the  cuckoo."4 

With  particular  care  did  Luther  devote  himself  to  polishing  up 
each  new  edition  of  the  Psalms  ;  it  is  easy  to  see  his  efforts,  not 
merely  to  render  the  words  accurately,  but  also  to  breathe  into 
his  translation  some  of  the  fervour  and  poetic  feeling  of  the 
sacred  text. 

As  to  the  prophets  ;  with  the  exception  of  Isaias,  he  set  to 
work  on  them  only  in  1530,  beginning  with  Ezechiel  during  his 
stay  at  the  Coburg.  In  Feb.,  1532,  he  had  finished  the  prophets, 
which  appeared  in  a  volume  apart.  He  was  now  at  last  able  to 
set  to  work  on  what  he  called  the  "  Apocrypha  "  ;  regarding 
them  as  popular  tales  his  translation  of  them  was  very  free. 
Among  these  he  included  Judith,  the  Book  of  Wisdom,  Tobias, 
Ecclesiasticus,  Baruch,  the  first  and  second  Book  of  the  Macha- 
bees,  portions  of  Esther,  etc.  They  found  a  place  at  the  end  of 
his  Old  Testament. 

1  Feb.  23,  1524,  "  Briefwechsel,"  4,  p.  300. 

2  "  Sendbrieff  von   Dolmetzschen,"    1530,    "  Werke,"    Weim.   ed.. 
30,  2,  p.  636  ;   Erl.  ed.,  65,  p.  109. 

3  "  Briefwechsel,"  6,  p.  277,  n.  4. 

4  June  14,  1528,  ib.t  p.  291. 

V.— 2  K 


498         LUTHER    THE    REFORMER 

At  the  commencement  of  1534  his  Bible,  which  was  now 
finished,  was  published  for  the  first  time  as  a  complete  work 
under  the  title  :  "  Biblia,  das  ist  die  gantze  Heilige  Schrift 
Deudsch,"  with  his  name  and  that  of  the  printer,  Hans  Luft 
(Lufft).  The  Old,  like  the  New  Testament,  was  illustrated 
by  Lucas  Cranach,  the  subjects  having  been  selected  and 
distributed  by  Luther  himself.  The  Old  Testament  was 
also  furnished  by  Luther  with  marginal  glosses  in  the  form 
of  short  notes  explanatory  of  the  text,  or  giving  his  own 
commentary  on  it.  Prefaces  were  prefixed  to  each  division. 
A  new  edition  of  the  Old  Testament  was  ready  as  early 
as  1535. 

New  reprints  of  the  whole  Bible  or  of  portions  of  it  were 
constantly  making  their  appearance,  those  appearing  at 
Wittenberg  always  embodying  the  author's  latest  emenda 
tions.  From  1530-40  the  latest  bibliographer  of  Luther's 
Bible  enumerates  thirty-four  Wittenberg  editions  and 
seventy-two  reprints  in  other  parts  of  Germany ;  from 
1541-46  there  were  eighteen  Wittenberg  editions  and  twenty- 
six  similar  reprints.1  According  to  a  fairly  reliable  authority 
no  less  than  100,000  complete  Bibles  left  Lotther's  press 
at  Wittenberg  between  1534  and  1584. 2  The  same  biblio 
grapher  describes  in  the  Weimar  edition  eighty -four 
original  editions  and  253  reprints  as  having  appeared 
during  Luther's  lifetime.  Since  each  edition  may  be 
reckoned  to  have  comprised  from  one  to  five  thousand  copies, 
one  is  almost  justified  in  saying  that  Germany  was  flooded 
with  the  new  work  or  portions  of  it.  Half  the  South- German 
printers  found  a  living  in  printing  Bibles.  In  this  respect 
the  history  of  Luther's  works  supplies  the  best  data  for  the 
history  of  the  printing  and  bookselling  trade  in  that  age. 

It  is  true,  no  doubt,  that  many  bought  Bibles,  because, 
among  Protestants,  it  was  considered  the  right  thing  for 
every  man  of  means  to  have  his  Family-Bible.  In  the  case 
of  many  alienated  from  the  practices  of  the  Church,  the 
possession  and  the  reading  of  the  Bible  constituted,  as  a 
Protestant  recently  put  it,  a  sort  of  "  opus  operatum"  yet, 
according  to  the  same  writer,  "  the  contradiction  between 
the  Bible  and  the  moral  behaviour  "  of  some  of  its  most 

1  Paul  Pietsch,  in  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  "  Deutsche  Bibel,"  2. 

2  Ib.,  p.  xxiv,  in  the  preface  by  K.  Drescher,  the  present  chief 
editor  of  the  Weimar  edition. 


THE  GERMAN  BIBLE  499 

zealous  readers  "cannot  in  many  instances  be  questioned."1 
Others,  however,  no  doubt  provided  themselves  with  the 
new  Bible  from  really  religious  motives  and  interests,  and 
refreshed  and  fortified  themselves  with  its  sublime  and 
edifying  eloquence.  We  may  assume  this  to  have  been  the 
effect  of  Luther's  Bible  in  the  case  of  the  simple  folk  who 
had  been  led  unconsciously  into  Lutheranism,  or  had  grown 
up  in  it,  and  who  owed  their  acquaintance  with  the  work 
to  its  use  in  public  worship,  though  they  themselves  may 
have  been  unable  to  read,  or,  maybe,  not  rich  enough  to 
purchase  a  Bible  of  their  own.2 

His  success  encouraged  Luther,  diligently  to  revise  his  work. 
So  far,  not  a  single  edition  had  appeared  without  some  alterations, 
and,  as  we  see  from  certain  recently  discovered  data,  he  again 
went  through  the  Psalter  in  1531,  "  with  great  pains  and  labour," 
and  also  set  about  revising  the  whole  of  his  Bible  subsequent  to 
Jan.  24,  1534 — being  assisted  in  both  these  undertakings  by 
Melanchthon  and  Cruciger.  Nevertheless  another  revision  of  the 
Bible  on  a  large  scale  was  begun  in  1539,  as  we  have  fully  learnt 
only  in  our  own  day  from  two  witnesses  and  from  the  notes  in 
Luther's  own  private  copy. 

One  of  the  witnesses  is  George  Rorer,  the  Wittenberg  deacon 
who  corrected  the  Bible  proofs,  and  who  declares  :  "In  1539 
they  went  through  the  Bible  once  more,  from  the  beginning  even 
to  the  Apocrypha  [i.e.  the  Old  Testament],  and  gave  a  clearer 
German  rendering  to  certain  words  and  phrases,  as  may  be  seen 
from  the  book  with  the  sermons  [i.e.  the  notes]  delivered  by  this 
same  man  in  1541-2. "3 

The  other  witness  is  Mathesius,  who  had  been  a  guest  at 
Luther's  table  in  the  spring  of  1540  and  whose  detailed  account 
was  already  generally  known,  though,  owing  to  the  fresh  data 
discovered,  it  now  appears  in  a  stronger  light.  "  When  first 
the  whole  German  Bible  had  appeared  and  temptations  had 
improved  it  day  by  day,  the  Doctor  once  more  gathered  the  Holy 
Books,  and,  with  great  earnestness,  diligence  and  prayer,  went 
through  them  again  ;  and  .  .  .  D.  Luther  formed  a  sort  of 
Sanhedrin  of  his  own,  composed  of  the  best  men  then  to  be  had, 
who  met  for  several  hours  once  a  week  before  supper  in  the 
Doctor's  monastery,  namely,  D.  Johann  Bugenhagen,  D.  Justus 
Jonas,  D.  Cruciger,  Master  Philip,  Matthseus  Aurogallus  and 
also  M.  George  Rorer,  the  proof-reader.  Doctors  and  learned 

1  Pastor    Risch,    "  Welche    Aufgabe    stellt    die    Lutherbibel    der 
wissenschaftl.  Forschung  ?  "   ("  N.  kirchl.  Zeitschr.,"   1911,  pp.  59  ff., 
116  ff.),  p.  129  f.     "  Die  deutsche  Bibel  in  ihrer  gesch.  Entwicklung," 
1907,  by  the  same  author. 

2  Cp.  Risch,  ib.,  p.  121  f.     O.  Reichert,  "  Luthers  deutsche  Bibel  " 
("  RG1.  Volksbiicher,"  iv.,  13,  1910),  pp.  8,  14,  24,  31,  44. 

3  Reichert,  "  Luthers  deutsche  Bibel,"  p.  32. 


500          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

men  from  outside  frequently  took  part  in  this  sublime  work,  for 
instance,  Dr.  Bernard  Ziegler  [Professor  of  Hebrew  at  Leipzig], 
D.  Forstemius  [Professor  at  Tubingen,  who  in  1540  became 
Provost  of  Nuremberg].  .  .  .  The  Doctor,  having  first  gone 
through  the  Bible  already  published,  .  .  .  came  into  the  con 
sistory  with  his  old  Latin  and  new  German  Bibles,  always  bring 
ing  also  the  Hebrew  text  along  with  him.  Mr.  Philip  brought 
with  him  the  Greek  text,  and  Dr.  Cruciger  both  the  Chaldean 
and  the  Hebrew  Bible.  The  professors  had  also  their  Rabbinic 
books  with  them.  D.  Pommer  had  also  a  Latin  copy  before 
him  with  which  he  was  very  well  acquainted.  Each  one  had 
prepared  beforehand  the  text  to  be  discussed  and  had  con 
sulted  the  commentators,  Greek,  Latin  and  Jewish.  Then  the 
President  propounded  a  text  and  listened  to  what  each  one  in 
turn  had  to  say  on  the  peculiarity  of  the  language  or  on  the 
commentaries  of  the  ancient  doctors.  Beautiful  and  instructive 
things  are  said  to  have  been  said  during  this  work,  some  of  which 
M.  George  [Rorer]  noted  down,  which  were  afterwards  printed 
as  short  glosses  and  notes  in  the  margin  of  the  text."1 

At  the  meetings  the  minutes  were  taken  by  Rorer,  a 
capable  amanuensis.  What  has  been  preserved  of  them 
gives  us  a  glimpse  into  the  workshop,  where,  from  1539  to 
1541,  the  revision  of  the  Bible  undertaken  by  Luther  was 
carried  out.  Of  Rorer's  minutes  those  are  still  extant  which 
record  the  conferences  on  the  revision  of  the  translation  of 
the  Psalms,  and  also  a  considerable  portion  of  those  on  the 
work  of  1539  on  the  Old  Testament  of  which  Mathesius 
speaks.2 

The  account,  as  is  so  often  the  case  with  the  Table-Talk,  is 
written  in  a  mixture  of  Latin  and  German  ;  it  is  also  distinguished 
by  the  same  spontaneity  and  absence  of  constraint.  It  records 
discussions  on  all  the  books  of  the  Old  Testament  saving 
Chronicles,  Esdras  and  the  "Apocrypha."  We  have,  in  all,  notes 
of  meetings  held  on  thirty-two  various  dates.  Very  often  the 
sessions  were  broken  owing  to  the  members  being  otherwise 
engaged,  or  absent  on  journeys.  The  speakers  mentioned  by 
name,  Luther  in  particular,  often  give  their  views  on  the  sense  of 
the  original  or  on  its  German  rendering.  As  a  rule  Luther  first 
submits  his  proposals  or  difficulties  and  then  listens  to  the  views 
of  the  rest.  At  times  interesting  side-lights  are  thrown  on  con 
temporary  history,  and  we  also  meet  some  noteworthy  obiter 
dicta. 

1  "  Historien,"  Bl.   160'  ff.     G.  Lcesche,  "  Joh.  Mathesius'  Ausge- 
wahlte  Werke,"  3  ("  Bibliothek  deutscher  Schriftsteller  aus  Bohmen," 
9),  p.  315  ff. 

2  Discovered   at  Jena  by   Buchwald,   but   only   known  so   far  in 
extracts.    See  p.  501,  n.  3,  and  "  Brief wechsel,"  13,  p.  353,  n.  12. 


THE  GERMAN  BIBLE  501 

On  Genesis  xii.  1 1  ff .  Melanchthon,  alluding  to  Abraham's  lie 
in  Egypt  when  he  declared  his  wife  to  be  his  sister,  says  :  "I 
think  he  did  this  rather  out  of  greatness  than  out  of  weakness  of 
faith."  Luther,  who  elsewhere  does  not  blame  Abraham  for 
this1  and  also  sees  its  reason  in  the  greatness  of  his  faith,2  here 
nevertheless  disagrees  with  Melanchthon  and  says,  "  I  prefer 
to  regard  it  as  weakness,  for,  we  are  all  of  us  in  the  same  hospital." 

Regarding  the  building  of  Solomon's  Temple  (3  Kings  vi.), 
he  says  :  ' '  We  shall  have  much  trouble  over  this  horrid  building. 
I  should  like  to  know  where  the  seventy  or  eighty  thousand 
carpenters  with  their  axes  came  from.  Did  the  whole  land 
ever  hold  so  many  inhabitants  ?  It  is  a  queer  business.  Maybe 
the  Jews  corrupted  the  text.  They  cannot  have  had  any  carts 
but  must  have  carried  everything.  I  wish  I  had  done  with  the 
book.  I  am  a  very  unwilling  builder  at  Solomon's  Temple.  .  .  . 
It  was  finished  about  Pentecost.  It  must  have  been  very  lofty, 
some  hundred  cubits  in  height ;  our  tower  here  is  not  much  over 
sixty  cubits." 

Now  and  then  Luther  brings  the  words  of  the  Bible  into 
relation  with  his  own  experiences.  This  he  does  especially  in 
the  minutes  of  the  meetings  held  for  the  revision  of  the  Psalter, 
which,  of  course,  lends  itself  more  easily  to  such  application. 
In  one  passage  (Ps.  xviii.  [xvii.]  15)  he  says,  referring  to  his 
"  combats  "  :  "At  the  Coburg  I  saw  my  devils  flying  over  the 
forest."  When  discussing  Ps.  Ixxiv.  (Ixxiii.)  he  lets  fall  the 
words  :  "I  will  send  this  as  a  farewell  to  my  Papists  and  hope 
they  will  howl  Amen  to  it,  if  God  so  will.  Amen."  Of  Ps.  ciii. 
(cii.)  he  remarks  :  "  I  recite  this  Psalm  daily  when  I  am  merry  ; 
it  is  a  fine,  cheerful  Psalm  for  a  poor  soul."  Of  Isaias  xi.  he  says, 
extolling  the  prophet  :  "  No  prophet  speaks  so  grandly  as 
'  Jesaia,'  "  and,  on  1  Kings  iii.,  again  having  a  fling  at  the  Papists  : 
"  Things  went  on  pretty  much  the  same  as  they  do  in  Popery  ; 
nobody  studied  and  the  Bible  was  thrust  aside." 

Only  excerpts  of  the  records  of  these  meetings  have  so  far 
appeared  in  print.  They  are,  however,  to  be  published  in  the 
Weimar  edition  of  Luther's  works.3 

Besides  the  minutes,  a  small  copy  of  both  Testaments  with 
notes  which  Luther  made  use  of  in  his  revision  has  been  dis 
covered  at  Jena.  It  is  an  edition  printed  in  1538-9,  or  possibly 
in  1540,  then  the  most  recent  edition.  The  notes  show  a  great 
many  alterations  in  the  text,  chiefly  such  as  had  been  agreed 
upon  at  the  meetings,  in  Genesis,  for  instance,  no  less  than  two 
hundred.  The  entries,  so  far  as  they  represent  the  result  of  the 
conferences,  constitute  the  link  between  Rorer's  minutes  and 
the  new  edition  subsequently  published.  The  alterations  in 

1  "  Opp.  lat.  exeg.,"  3,  p.  139  sqq. 

2  Ib.,  p.  142.     See  vol.  iv.,  p.  109. 

3  Cp.  what  O.  Reichert  says  in  "Die  Wittenberger  Bibelrevisions- 
kommissionen  von   1521    bis    1541,"  in  Koffmane,  "  Die  hds.  Ueber- 
lieferung  von  Werken  Luthers,"  1,  1907,  p.  97  ff.,  and  Risch's  Articles 
(above,  p.  499,  n.  1),  p.  78  ff. 


502          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

the  latter  seem  to  be  taken,  sometimes  from  the  minutes,  some 
times  from  Luther's  copy.  "  The  Jena  Old  Testament,"  says 
O.  Reichert,  is  "a  document  that  exemplifies  Luther's  way  of 
working  ;  it  proves  that  he  felt  he  had  never  done  enough  for 
his  best  work,  that  he  was  always  busy  at  it  and  was  indefatigable 
in  his  efforts  to  produce  a  German  Bible  from  the  original  text."1 

The  outcome  of  the  work  of  revision  was  a  great  im 
provement  in  the  Wittenberg  Bible  of  1540  and  1541  printed 
by  Hans  Lufft.  Another  edition,  dating  from  1542,  em 
bodied  in  the  main  most  of  the  new  emendations.  The 
edition  most  highly  prized  is,  however,  the  last  that 
appeared  during  Luther's  lifetime,  viz.  that  of  1545,  which 
also  contains  new  corrections.  It  has  been  called  the 
"  editio  typica  "  of  Luther's  Bible,  though,  possibly,  that  of 
1546,  with  new  alterations  by  Rorer,  to  which  Luther  is 
supposed  to  have  given  his  approval,  should  be  regarded  as 
such. 

The  detailed  account  of  this  revision  is  not  the  only 
witness  we  have  to  the  care  and  pains  Luther  bestowed  on 
the  work,  for  we  have  also  the  recently  discovered  manu 
script  copy  of  his  translation,  which  Luther  sent  to  the 
printers.  The  latter  consists  of  portions  of  the  Old  Testa 
ment  written  with  his  own  hand  :  Part  of  the  Book  of 
Judges,  then  Ruth,  Kings,  Paralipomena,  Esdras,  Nehemias 
and  Esther,  also  Job,  the  Psalter,  Proverbs,  the  Preacher 
and  the  Canticle  of  Canticles.  They  were  published  by  the 
Magdeburg  pastor,  E.  Thiele,  in  the  Weimar  edition  from 
two  MSS.  at  Zerbst  and  Berlin.2  Here  we  see  how  assidu 
ously  Luther  corrects  and  deletes,  how  frequently  he 
wrestles,  so  to  speak,  after  the  correct  expression  and  cannot 
at  times  satisfy  himself.3  Luther's  manuscript  copy  of  the 
New  Testament  has  not  so  far  been  discovered. 

In  consequence  of  the  above  publications  the  examination 
into  the  origin  of  the  text  of  Luther's  Bible  and  into  the 
principles  which  determined  its  compilation  enters  upon  a 
new  phase.  In  the  same  way  the  significance  of  the  text  for 

1  "  Luthers  deutsche  Bibel,"  p.  41,  where  examples  are  given  from 
the  notes  and  emendations  to  be  published  later. 

2  Weim.  ed.,  1  and  2. 

3  Reichert  says,  ib.,  p.  26  :    "  There  is  hardly  a  more  interesting 
document  to   be   found   in   the   domain   of  research   concerned   with 
Luther's  German  Bible."     He  gives  a  facsimile  of  Ps.  xlv.  (xliv.),  xlvi. 
(xlv.).    Four  facsimiles  in  Thiele,  vol.  2. 


THE  GERMAN  BIBLE  503 

the  history  of  the  German  language  stands  out  more  clearly 
because  such  discoveries  bear  the  strongest  testimony  to 
Luther's  untiring  endeavours  to  adapt  himself  to  the  true 
German  mode  of  expression,  to  his  dexterity  in  finding 
synonyms  and  to  his  skill  in  construing. 


On  the  Language  and  the  Learning  Displayed  in 
Luther1  s  Bible 

The  excellence  of  Luther's  translation  of  the  Bible  from 
the  point  of  view  of  its  German  is  unquestionable. 

For,  what  the  author  above  all  aimed  at,  viz.  a  popular 
rendering  of  the  text  which  should  harmonise  with  the 
peculiarities  of  the  German  language,  that  he  certainly 
achieved.  Through  his  Bible,  too,  owing  to  its  general  use 
throughout  so  large  a  portion  of  the  nation,  he  exerted  a 
greater  influence  on  the  upbuilding  of  the  German  tongue 
than  by  all  his  other  vernacular  works. 

In  his  other  writings,  in  which  he  was  ever  striving  to 
improve  his  mode  of  speech,  we  may  often  find  real  models 
of  good  German,  which,  consciously  or  not,  had  a  widespread 
influence  on  the  language.  In  the  case  of  his  Bible,  however, 
this  was  far  more  noticeable,  for  not  only  was  his  language 
there  more  polished,  but  the  fact  of  the  text  being  so 
frequently  committed  to  memory,  quoted  from  the  pulpit 
and  surrounded  by  that  halo  which  befits  the  Word  of  God, 
helped  to  extend  its  sway. 

Not  only  did  he  take  infinite  pains  to  translate  aright  such 
phrases  as  ring  unfamiliar  to  Western  ears,  but  he  was  also 
assisted  by  his  happy  gift  of  observation  and  his  knack  of 
catching  the  true  idiom.  His  habit  of  noting  the  words  that 
fell  from  the  lips  of  the  populace,  or,  as  he  says,  of  "  looking 
into  the  jaw  of  the  man  in  the  street,"  1  was  of  the  utmost 
service  to  him  in  his  choice  and  use  of  terms.  "  No  German 
talks  like  that,"  "  that  is  not  put  c  germanice,'  '  "  the 
German  tongue  won't  stand  that,"  and  similar  utterances, 
frequently  recur  in  the  minutes  of  the  conferences  when  he 
is  finding  fault  with  the  renderings  proposed  by  others  or 
even  with  his  own  earlier  ones. 

1  Ib.,  65,  p.  110,  "  Sendbrieff  von  Dolmetzschefi,"  Sep.  8,  1530. 
Cp.  Janssen,  "  Hist,  of  the  German  People,"  Engl.  Trans.,  14,  p.  401  ft . 


504          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

It  was  fortunate  for  him,  that,  as  his  medium  of  inter 
course,  he  chose  to  use  a  kind  of  German,  not  indeed  un 
known  before,  but,  which,  with  his  rare  gifts,  he  exploited 
with  greater  independence  and  vigour.  Wittenberg  was 
favourably  situated  from  the  geographical  point  of  view, 
and  the  students  who  flocked  thither  from  every  part  of 
Germany  were  ever  bringing  Luther  fresh  elements,  thus 
enabling  him  to  select  among  the  various  dialects  what  was 
common  to  all.  The  short  journeys  he  made  and  his 
correspondence  with  so  many  people  in  every  part  of 
Germany  were  also  of  assistance  to  him. 

"  I  have,"  Luther  says  himself,  "  no  particular,  special 
German  language  of  my  own,  but  I  use  the  common  German 
language  so  that  both  the  Upper  and  the  Lower  Lands  may 
understand  me.  I  write  according  to  the  speech  of  the 
Saxon  Chancery  which  is  used  by  all  the  princes  and  kings 
of  Germany.  All  the  Imperial  Cities  and  Royal  Courts  in 
writing  make  use  of  the  language  of  the  Saxon  Chancery 
and  of  our  sovereign  ;  hence  this  is  the  kind  of  German  most 
widely  spoken.  The  Emperor  Maximilian,  the  Elector 
Frederick  and  the  Duke  of  Saxony,  etc.,  have  fused  all  the 
different  modes  of  German  speech  in  the  whole  Roman 
Empire  into  a  uniform  language."1  Hence,  on  his  own 
admission,  the  language  was  not  new.  '  The  language  of 
Upper  Germany,"  he  says,  "  is  not  the  real  German  ;  it 
is  broad  and  uncouth  and  sounds  harsh.  But  the  Saxon 
tongue  flows  quietly  and  easily."2 

When  we  try  to  determine  in  detail  the  language  of  which 
Luther  made  use,  and  how  much  he  actually  did  to  further 
its  development,  we  are  met  by  great  difficulties.  German 
philologists  have  not  yet  been  able  thoroughly  to  explore 
this  domain,  because  so  little  is  known  of  the  German  prints 
of  the  15th  century,  of  the  manuscripts  and  the  various 
groups  of  writers.3  Protestant  theologians  have  often  con 
tented  themselves  with  a  few  quotations  from  certain 
German  philologists  and  historians,  which  exaggerate 
the  case  in  Luther's  favour.4  Of  such  exaggerations 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  62,  p.  313.    Table-Talk. 

2  Ib.,  p.  421.    Cp.  "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  1,  p.  378. 

3  K.  Miillenhoff  and  W.  Scherer,    "  Denkmaler  deutscher  Poesie  und 
Prosa,  8-12  Jahrh.,"  1864,  p.  xxix. 

4  Cp.  Risch,  p.  138,  in  the  article  mentioned  above,  p.  499,  n.  1. 


THE  GERMAN  BIBLE  505 

Protestant  scholars  had  been  guilty  even  in  the  16th  century; r 
for  instance,  the  German  preacher  and  grammarian,  Johann 
Clajus,  says,  in  1578  :  "As  the  Holy  Ghost  spoke  pure 
Hebrew  through  Moses  and  Greek  through  the  Apostles,  so 
He  spoke  pure  German  through  His  chosen  instrument 
Martin  Luther.  It  would  not  otherwise  have  been  possible  for 
a  man  to  speak  so  accurately."2 

In  answer  to  the  question,  "  What  is  the  task  imposed 
upon  learned  research  by  Luther's  Bible  ?  "  Risen,  an 
authority  on  this  subject,  remarks  :  "  The  historical  connec 
tion  of  the  language  used  by  Luther  in  his  Bible  with  the 
German  language  of  yore  has  still  to  be  brought  to  light  "  ; 
the  studies  undertaken  so  far  have  dealt  too  exclusively  with 
one  particular  side  of  the  question,  viz.  with  the  vowel 
sounds  used  by  Luther  and  by  his  predecessors  ;  too  much 
stress  has  also  been  laid  on  the  Middle-High  German 
diphthongs  (i,  u,  iu[ii],  becoming  ei,  au,  eu).3  Luther's 
relations  with  the  past  in  the  matter  of  the  construction  of 
sentences  and  arrangement  of  words,  and  more  particularly 
in  his  vocabulary  and  the  meaning  he  gives  to  his  words, 
have  not  been  set  forth  scientifically  enough,  though 
abundant  material  for  so  doing  is  to  be  found  in  Grimm's 
German  dictionary,  in  Hermann  Paul's  and  elsewhere. 

Then  again,  as  Paul  Pietsch  points  out  in  the  intro 
duction  to  the  1st  volume  of  Luther's  Bible  in  the  Weimar 
series,  we  have  not  been  sure  hitherto  even  of  the 
exact  text  of  Luther's  translation.  Owing  to  the  divergencies 
in  the  text  it  was  "  not  possible,  with  the  help  of  the  various 

1  H.  Stephan,  "  Luther  in  den  Wandlungen  seiner  Kirche,"   1907, 
p.    30,    remarks  :     The    orthodox    period    of    Lutheranism    venerated 
"  Luther's  translation  of  the  Bible  with  an  admiration  as  boundless 
and  naive  as  had  it  been  a  palladium." 

2  Cp.   H.   Bohmer,    "  Luther  im  Lichte  der  neueren  Forschung," 
1906,  p.  143,  who  there  (in  the  first  edition,  though  not  in  the  second) 
points  out  that  even  Grimm's  colleagues  and  successors  did  not  share 
his   own   warm   appreciation   of   the   language  of   the  German  Bible. 
According  to  Miillenhoff  the  foundation  of  New  High  German  had 
been  laid  a  century  and  a  half  before  Luther,  who  represents,  not  its 
beginning  but  its  zenith  period  (see  pp.  504,  note  3).     "  If  in  spite  of 
this,"  says  Bohmer,  "  it  cannot  be  denied  that  the  German  of  Luther 
played  an  important  part  in  reducing  the  German  language  to  unity, 
still  this  was  not  Luther's  doing."   "  The  stress  laid  by  Protestants  on  the 
language  of  Luther  undoubtedly  did  more  to  hamper  than  to  further 
the  victory  of  the  common  language  "  (p.  144).     "  Luther  himself  was 
the  first  to  protest  against  being  considered  the  founder  of  a  new 
German  tongue  "  (p.  145).  3  /&.,  p.  132  f. 


506         LUTHER    THE    REFORMER 

editions  scattered  throughout  the  world,  to  arrive  at  any 
final  opinion  concerning  the  language  employed  in  the  Bible 
or  the  alterations  it  underwent."  Hence,  only  on  the  com 
pletion  of  the  Weimar  series  shall  we  be  able  to  form  "  an 
adequate  idea  of  the  position  Luther's  translation  holds  in 
the  history  of  New  High  German."1 

Finally,  there  is  still  some  doubt  as  to  what  Luther  actually 
meant  by  his  statement  concerning  the  German  of  the 
Chanceries  of  Saxony,  the  Empire  and  the  Imperial  Cities 
being  the  model  on  \vhich  his  own  language  was  based,  and 
as  to  how  far  he  was  speaking  the  truth.  We  must  in  all 
probability  go  much  further  back  than  the  time  of  the 
Emperor  Maximilian  of  whom  Luther  speaks,  viz.  to  the 
Chancery  of  the  Luxemburg  kings  of  Bohemia,  for  it  was 
the  latter  who  established,  about  the  middle  of  the  14th 
century,  a  sort  of  New  High  German  which  later  on  spread  to 
Silesia,  to  Upper  and  Lower  Lusatia,  and,  then,  thanks  to 
the  Emperor  Frederick  III,  to  the  Chancery  of  the  Haps- 
burgs  and  to  those  of  the  Saxon  Electorate,  Hesse  and 
Mayence.  In  those  early  days  the  new  language  was  a 
mixture  of  the  dialects  of  Upper  and  Central  Germany,  of 
those  of  Austria  and  of  Meissen.2 

Chancery  German,  however,  restricted  as  it  was  by  its 
very  nature  within  certain  well-defined  limits  and  hampered 
by  the  stiffness  of  the  Court,  was  not  likely  to  prove  of 
much  service  to  Luther,  who  sought  a  language  which 
should  be  understood  by  the  people  and  be  full  of  strength 
and  variety.  Hence  we  are  driven  to  surmise  that  it  was 
rather  in  the  homes  of  the  people  that  he  sought  his  language, 
turning  to  good  account  his  gift  for  coining  what  he  needed 
from  the  various  German  dialects. 

As  regards  the  state  of  the  language  in  Germany  at  that  time, 
E.  Gutjahr  has  recently  endeavoured  to  prove  that  the  efforts 
at  colonisation  and  the  movement  of  the  people,  more  particu 
larly  from  the  12th  to  the  14th  century,  had  paved  the  way  in 
Saxony  for  the  rise  and  spread  of  a  new,  common  language  (New 
High  German),  and  that  in  towns  like  Halle  a  new  patrician  type 
of  language  had  sprung  up  which  Luther  had  only  to  assimilate. 
In  his  "  Anfange  der  neuhochdeutschen  Sprache  vor  Luther  " 
(1910),  the  author  gives  us  an  outline  of  the  conclusions  he  has 

1  Preface  to  the  first  volume  of  the  Bible,  p.  x. 

2  Mullenhoff,  etc.,  ib.,  p.  xxvii  ff. 


THE  GERMAN  BIBLE  507 

reached  and  which  he  hopes  to  set  forth  at  greater  length  later. 
Whether  he  will  succeed  in  making  out  his  case  remains,  how 
ever,  to  be  seen. 

The  language  of  the  Saxon  Chancery  was,  according  to  Gut- 
jahr,  even  in  Luther's  day,  not  merely  the  "  polite  language 
of  general  intercourse,"  but  one  in  which  all  the  German 
Courts  were  versed,  the  Imperial,  Austrian  one  of  Maximilian,  as 
much  as  that  of  the  Saxon  Electorate  under  Frederick  the 
Wise."1  From  this  language,  "into  which  he  infused  new 
elements  taken  from  the  mouth  of  the  people,"  Luther  forged  a 
mighty  weapon  for  his  work,  being  all  the  more  readily  led  to  do  so 
seeing  that  the  "  reforming  movement  found  its  mainstay  among 
the  patrician  classes  of  the  Saxon  Electorate."2  Nevertheless 
we  must  not  assume  the  existence  in  Luther's  day  of  any  common 
written  language  in  the  modern  sense.  The  foundation  for  such 
a  common  language  had  indeed  been  laid,  but  as  yet  it  did  not 
exist.  Before  our  nation  could  lay  claim  to  a  common  language 
of  its  own — our  Modern  High  German  as  written — a  long  time 
had  still  to  elapse."3 

The  language  used  by  Luther  in  his  Bible  was  made  still 
more  widely  known  owing  to  the  work  being  at  once  re 
printed  even  where  other  dialects  prevailed,  though  as  a 
rule  some  alterations  were  made  to  bring  it  into  line  with 
the  idiom  in  use  ;  at  times  the  printers  did  no  more  than 
append  a  short  vocabulary  explaining  such  Saxon  phrases 
as  might  be  strange  to  the  reader.  In  this  way  the  new 
Bible,  the  language  of  which  was  so  admirably  suited  to 
become  a  common  one,  penetrated  everywhere,  even  into 
out  of  the  way  districts  where  the  most  divergent  dialects 
obtained.4 

Its  influence  was  all  the  more  important  now  that  small 
principalities  were  springing  up  at  the  expense  of  the  unity 
of  Germany  and  threatened  the  language  with  further  dis 
integration.  The  Lutherans  were  the  first  to  perceive  and 
work  against  this  danger,  though  the  Catholics  were  by  no 
means  unmindful  of  it  too.  Catholics,  too,  sought  to  take 
advantage  of  the  translation,  and,  in  some  cases,  even 
went  too  far  in  this.  Luther  once  declares  in  his  usual  vein  : 
"  Our  opponents  read  it  more  than  do  our  own  people  "  ;5 
he  also  mentions  that  Duke  George  had  said  :  "  Let  the 

i  P.  223  f.  2  P.  224.  3  P.  222. 

4  Cp.   Zerener  Holm,    "  Studien  iiber  das  beginnende  Eindringen 
der  Lutherischen  Bibeliibersetzung  in  die  deutsche  Literatur,"   1911 
("  Archiv.  f.  RG.,"  Erganzungsband,  4). 

5  Mathesius,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  251. 


508         LUTHER    THE    REFORMER 

monk  finish  translating  the  Bible  into  German  and  then  get 
himself  gone."1 

What  in  the  case  of  Protestants  favoured  the  influence 
Luther's  Bible  exerted  on  the  language,  was,  on  the  one  hand 
the  profound  interest  aroused  in  the  reader  by  his  inspiring 
pen,  and,  on  the  other,  its  appearance  at  a  time  when,  though 
the  art  of  printing  had  been  invented,  the  whole  world,  and 
more  particularly  Germany,  judged  from  a  literary,  theo 
logical  standpoint,  was  still  lying  to  a  large  extent  fallow 
and  was  thus  more  readily  dominated  by  such  a  work  as 
his,  and  that  not  merely  as  regards  the  matter  but  also  as 
regards  the  style.  Men  of  learning,  owing  to  humanistic 
influences,  wrote  almost  exclusively  in  Latin.  The  use  of  the 
German  language  for  theological  and  religious  subjects,  save 
in  sermons  and  popular  writings,  was  something  unusual  ;  in 
fact,  such  a  thing  was  rather  discountenanced  owing  largely 
to  the  publication  of  German  works  which  had  made  a  wrrong 
use  of  Scripture. 

In  Lutheranism  the  New  High  German  of  the  Bible  found 
its  way  not  only  into  educated,  ecclesiastical  circles  but  also 
to  the  common  folk,  into  whose  ears  the  preachers  assidu 
ously  dinned  countless  favourite  texts  in  their  new  form  ; 
it  also  became  familiar  to  the  teachers  and  children  in  the 
schools.  No  more  powerful  lever  for  the  furtherance  of 
New  High  German  could  have  been  found.  A  century  after, 
New  High  German  had  become  the  language  of  the  churches 
and  schools  in  the  regions  subject  to  Luther's  influence, 
whilst  the  South  German  and  Low  German  dialects  had 
largely  lost  their  hold. 

When  all  is  said,  however,  the  secret  of  such  success  is 
not  to  be  entirely  understood  unless  we  also  take  into 
account  the  religious  position  Luther  occupied  in  the  eyes 
of  his  followers.  All  who  venerated  him  as  having  thrown 
a  new  light  on  religion,  valued  and  honoured  the  language 
used  by  a  mind  so  imperious,  so  strong  and  versatile,  and, 
when  it  so  pleased,  so  sympathetic.  H.  Bohmer  says  very 
truly  of  the  old  German  Protestants  :  "  Luther  became  for 
the  Germans  the  authority  on  speech  because  he  was 
their  supreme  authority  on  faith  and  personal  conduct. 
Had  he  not  been  a  religious  reformer  and  had  he  not  be 
queathed  to  Evangelical  Germany  in  his  Bible  a  book,  which, 

1  Ib. 


THE  GERMAN  BIBLE  509 

on  account  of  its  religious  importance  was  bound  to  be  looked 
upon  as  a  model  of  language,  he  would  never  have  exercised 
so  powerful  an  influence  on  the  written  and  spoken  lan 
guage."1 

Nevertheless,  to  assert,  that,  by  his  German  Bible  and  his 
other  writings  Luther  was  the  actual  founder  of  New  High 
German  is  to  go  too  far,  quite  apart  from  the  fact  that 
German,  as  now  written,  is  no  longer  identical  with  the 
German  of  Luther's  Bible  and  other  writings.  We  cannot 
take  seriously  Grimm's  assertions  that  "  New  High  German 
may  in  point  of  fact  be  called  the  Protestant  dialect,"  or 
that  "  Luther's  language,  owing  to  its  noble,  almost 
marvellous  purity  and  its  mighty  influence,  was  both  the 
germ  and  the  foundation  of  the  New  High  German  tongue."2 

"  Protestants,"  says  Pastor  Risch,  "  have  hitherto  been 
disposed  to  undervalue  the  literary  use  made  of  the  German 
language  before  Luther's  day,  particularly  in  the  religious 
domain,  and  to  exaggerate  Luther's  importance  in  the 
history  of  the  tongue.  Only  in  so  far  as  he  succeeded  in 
seizing  upon  and  bringing  out  all  the  forces  and  possibilities 
latent  in  the  language,  was  it  possible  for  his  work  to  be 
truly  creative  and  epoch-making.  To  catch  the  idiom  of 
the  people,  not  to  force  a  new  language  upon  it  with  his 
German  Bible,  was,  on  his  own  admission,  Luther's  aim. 
The  German  language  prepared  the  way  for  Luther  to  a 
greater  extent  than  at  first  sight  appears."3 

Two  other  considerations  will  serve  still  further  to  curtail 
the  importance  of  Luther's  services  to  the  German  tongue. 

First  of  all  it  must  be  pointed  out  that  many  very  coarse 
elements  found  their  way  into  his  popular  works,  and  thus, 
unhappily,  into  the  written  language,  and,  secondly,  that 
a  large  number  of  words  and  phrases  peculiar  to  South 
Germany  and  which  were  accordingly  unknown  to  Luther, 
find,  for  this  reason,  no  place  in  works,  with  the  result  that 
the  German  language  suffered. 

We  may  speak  with  less  reserve  of  the  merits  of  the  new 
translation  so  far  as  it  is  based  on  the  original  languages  of 
the  Bible,  and  on  the  Latin  Vulgate  then  in  general  use. 
Even  before  Luther  started  on  his  work  attention  had  been 

1  "  Luther  im  Lichte  der  neueren  Forschung,"  p.  150. 

2  Jakob  Grimm,  "  Deutsche  Grammatik,"  1,  I3,  1870,  Preface,  p.  x. 

3  In  the  articles  referred  to  above,  p.  499,  n.  1  (p.  137  f.). 


510          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

called  to  the  original  text ;  indeed,  as  it  happens,  the  scholar 
who  was  the  primary  cause  of  Luther's  studying  the  original 
language  was  his  Catholic  opponent,  Erasmus,  who  himself 
brought  out  the  Greek  edition  of  the  New  Testament.  To 
Luther,  however,  belongs  the  honour  of  having  been  the 
first  to  tread  the  new  philological  paths  with  a  German 
version. 

In  his  somewhat  hurried  version  of  the  New  Testament 
he  used  the  Greek  text  as  well  as  the  Vulgate.  In  the  same 
way,  in  his  translation  of  the  Old  Testament,  he  went  back 
to  the  original  so  far  as  his  knowledge  of  Hebrew  allowed, 
and,  where  this  was  insufficient,  sought  the  help  of  others. 

The  principle  he  followed,  viz.  to  make  the  Bible  plain  to 
the  German  reader  by  explaining  its  meaning,  so  far  as  this 
can  be  done  by  a  translation,  brings  us,  however,  face  to 
face  with  other  questions. 

Luther  had  a  high  opinion  of  the  accuracy  and  clearness 
of  his  work.  He  says  of  it  :  "I  can  with  a  good  conscience 
testify  that  I  have  shown  the  utmost  fidelity  and  diligence 
therein,  and  have  never  thought  to  deceive."1 

"  No  one  would  believe  what  labour  it  has  cost  except 
those  who  worked  with  us,"  so  he  said  in  his  last  years  accord 
ing  to  Mathesius,  when  looking  back  on  the  success  of  his 
undertaking.  "  This  Bible — not  that  I  would  praise  myself 
but  the  work  speaks  for  itself — is  so  good  that  it  is  better 
than  the  Greek  or  Latin  translation,  and  more  is  to  be  found 
in  it  than  in  all  the  commentaries.  For  we  remove  the 
"  hindrances  and  stumbling-blocks  out  of  the  way  so  that 
other  people  may  be  able  to  read  without  difficulty."2 
Reducing  this  eulogy  to  its  proper  proportions  we  may  indeed 
allow  that  Luther  eliminated  the  "  hindrances  and  stumbling- 
blocks  "  from  his  German  translation,  being  no  literalist,  but 
anxious  above  all  to  put  into  plain  German  what  sounded 
strange  or  difficult. 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  30,  2,  p.  640  ;  Erl.  ed.,  65,  p.  114.  "  Send- 
brieff  von  Dolmetzschen."  Before  this  he  had  said  :  "  Of  what  an 
art  and  labour  translating  is  I  have  full  experience,  and  therefore  I  will 
allow  no  Pope-ass  or  Mule-ass,  who  has  never  attempted  it,  to  set 
himself  up  as  judge  or  critic.  ...  If  there  is  to  be  any  faultfinding, 
I  will  attend  to  it  myself."  And  later  :  "  Their  abuse  is  my  highest 
praise  and  glory.  I  am  resolved  to  be  a  Doctor  .  .  .  and  they  shall 
not  rob  me  of  this  title  till  the  Judgment  Day  ;  this  much  I  know  for 
certain."  2  "  Historien,"  p.  82. 


THE  GERMAN  BIBLE  511 

Yet  such  a  system  of  translation  can  only  within  certain 
limits  be  regarded  as  the  right  one.  As  to  whether  Luther 
always  kept  within  these  limits,  and  as  to  how  we  are  to 
regard  the  use  he  made  of  this  freedom  in  particular  instances, 
is  a  point  on  which  even  the  greatest  admirers  of  the  German 
Bible  disagree.  Pastor  Risch,  the  expert  repeatedly  referred 
to  above,  remarks  pessimistically  :  "  Scarcely  any  of  those 
who  have  written  on  Luther's  method  of  translating  have 
gone  beyond  mere  generalities.  They  are  satisfied  with 
dishing  up  again  more  or  less  skilfully  Luther's  principles  as 
set  forth  in  his  '  Von  Dolmetzschen.'  Not  even  my  own 
work  on  the  German  Bible  (1907)  do  I  exempt  from  this 
criticism.  Research  must  bring  us  by  inductive  reasoning 
to  the  recognition  of  the  root  principle  which  alone  can 
explain  the  many  thousand  variant  readings  we  meet  with 
to-day  in  the  [Weimar]  German  Bible  (vols.  i.  and  ii.),  and 
in  Bindseil's  critical  edition,"1 — It  is,  however,  to  be  feared 
that  in  very  many  instances  the  "  root  principle  "  supposed 
to  underlie  Luther's  work  will  fail  in  practice.  His  hasty, 
precipitate  work  in  the  Wartburg  (the  completion  of  the 
New  Testament  in  three  months)  puts  any  real  scholarly 
method  out  of  the  question.  The  fact  that  barely  a  week 
was  allotted  to  each  Gospel  precludes  the  use  of  any  well- 
considered  principles  in  the  work  of  translation. 

Again,  Luther  often  deviates  far  too  much  from  the 
original  text  and  takes  too  many  liberties  in  his  efforts  to  be 
plain.  To  this  must  be  added  the  fact,  that,  owing  to  his 
insufficient  linguistic  attainments,  he  fails  in  many  instances 
to  reach  the  real  sense  of  the  original  sacred  text,  to  say 
nothing,  of  course,  of  the  numerous  critical  emendations 
made  at  a  later  date  in  the  texts.  Hence  Protestants  have 
sometimes  judged  the  scholarship  of  Luther's  Bible  rather 
harshly.  Josias  Bunsen,  for  instance,  called  Luther's 
translation  "  one  of  the  most  inaccurate,  though  showing 
signs  of  great  genius,"  and  declared  that,  in  it,  there  are 
"three  thousand  passages  which  call  for  revision."2  E. 
Nestle,  the  Protestant  philologist  and  Bible  expert,  referring 
to  the  revision  which  had  taken  place  in  Germany,  says  of 
the  defects  of  Luther's  Bible  :  "A  comparison  with  the 

1  Ib. 

2  F.  W.  Nippold,  "  Christian  Josias  Freiherr  von  Bunsen,"  Leipzig, 
1868-1871,  3,  p.  483. 


512          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

English  or  Swiss  work  of  revision  shows  how  much  further 
we  might  and  ought  to  have  gone."1 

The  most  outspoken  critic  is,  however,  Paul  de  Lagarde,  the 
Protestant  theologian  and  Orientalist  of  Gottingen.  In  an  article 
likewise  dealing  with  the  so-called  "Revised  Bible"  of  1883, 2 
he  devotes  more  than  five  pages  to  a  list  of  passages  from  Isaias, 
the  Book  of  Proverbs  and  the  Psalms,  which  Franz  Delitzsch  had 
been  compelled  to  retranslate  even  earlier.3  To  this  list  he 
appends  another  long  one  of  passages,  which  he  holds  to  be 
manifestly  mistranslations  of  the  original. 

Thus,  to  quote  only  one  important  instance,  the  Messianic 
prophecy  of  Jacob  in  Genesis  xlix.  10,  should  be  rendered  : 
"  The  sceptre  shall  not  be  taken  away  from  Juda  .  .  .  till  he 
come  that  is  to  be  sent,"  or  "  that  is  prayed  for  "  (rbw), 
whereas  Luther  translates  rh*&  incorrectly  by  "  hero  "  and 
thus  robs  the  wonderful  text  of  some  of  its  force.  De  Lagarde 
notes,  that  elsewhere  Luther  himself  renders  Malachias  iii.  1  : 
**  The  Lord  Whom  you  seek  shall  speedily  come  to  His  temple, 
and  the  angel  of  the  covenant  whom  you  desire."  Beside  such 
mistakes  Luther's  allusion  to  the  hedgehog  that  builds  nests 
and  lays  eggs  (Isaias  xxxiv.  15)  can  only  be  regarded  as  a  curiosity 
and  a  slip  on  his  part.  This  hedgehog  was  among  the  victims 
sacrificed  in  the  revised  Bible  of  1883. 

The  same  critic  also  complains,  that,  Rom.  iii.  23,  even  in  the 
revised  Bible,  has  :  "  For  they  are  sinners,"  whereas  the  Aorist 
demands  the  translation  :  "  They  all  have  sinned."  He  shows 
how,  as  early  as  1839,  Tholuck  had  drawn  attention  to  the  vast 
dogmatic  importance  of  Luther's  suppression  of  this  Aorist.4 

With  still  greater  show  of  reason  De  Lagarde  finds  fault 
with  other  wilful  deviations  from  the  text  ;  he  refers  to 
those  pointed  out  by  Dollinger  in  "  Die  Reformation  "  and 
again  insisted  on  by  Janssen,  and  then  by  Paulsen  in  his 
"  Geschichte  des  gelehrten  Unterrichts."  These  false 
renderings  have,  however,  out  of  a  wrong  regard  for  Luther, 
been  retained  in  the  Lutheran  Bible  even  to  the  present  day. 

Luther's  scant  concern  for  the  text  where  it  runs  counter 
to  his  ideas  calls  for  further  discussion. 

Luther's  German  Bible  Considered  Theologically 

Bearing  in  mind  Luther's  character  we  can  well  under 
stand  how  sorely  he  was  tempted  during  his  work  to  make 

1  "  RE.  f.  prot.  Theol.,"3,  Art.  "  Bibelubersetzungen,"  p.  72. 

2  "  Mitteilungen,"  vol.  3,  Gottingen,  p.  1899,  p.  335  ff.  (reprint  of 
the  art.  in  the  "  Gott.  Gel.  Anzeigen,"  1885,  2). 

3  P.  359  ff.  4  P.  365. 


THE  GERMAN  BIBLE  513 

the  text  square  with  his  own  doctrine,  the  more  so  since 
the  translation  was  intended  as  a  popular  explanation  of 
the  Bible.  When,  moreover,  one  remembers  his  arbitrary  way 
of  proving  his  doctrine,  and  the  entire  freedom  with  which 
he  was  wont  to  handle  other  religious  matters  connected 
with  antiquity,  which,  though  not  in  the  Word  of  God,  were 
nevertheless  historical  facts  easy  of  verification,  it  will  not 
greatly  surprise  even  those  readers  who  are  prejudiced  in 
his  favour  to  find,  that,  in  his  treatment  of  the  original  text 
of  Holy  Scripture — which  most  people  are  not  able  to 
verify — he  did  not  scruple  here  and  there  to  introduce  ideas 
of  his  own.  "  What  does  it  matter,"  so  he  said  later  in  his 
blind  conviction  of  being  in  the  right,  in  reply  to  those  who 
accused  him  of  having  altered  the  text,  "  so  long  as  at 
bottom  the  thing  is  clear,"  so  long  as  "it  evidently  is  so," 
and  "  is  demanded  by  the  state  of  the  case  ?  "  "  Not  only 
is  it  right  but  even  highly  necessary  that  it  should  be  set 
forth  in  the  clearest  and  fullest  manner,"  etc.1 

It  is  chiefly  in  the  question  of  justification  by  faith  alone 
that  he  twists  his  text  so  much  that  his  version  ceases  in 
reality  to  be  a  translation.  He  indeed  speaks  of  his  additions 
as  "  commentaries,"  but  no  one  could  thus  have  "  com 
mented  "  on  the  passages  who  was  not,  like  Luther,  entirely 
taken  up  with  the  new  dogma  of  grace,  justification  and 
faith. 

In  his  efforts  to  provide  his  doctrine  with  a  firm  foundation  in 
the  eyes  of  his  readers,  he  added  the  word  "  only  "  in  Rom.  iv.  15 
and  Rom.  iii.  20,  thus  making  these  Pauline  texts  into  a  condem 
nation  of  the  Law  :  "  The  law  worketh  only  wrath,"  "  by  the  law 
only  is  the  knowledge  of  sin." 

Again,  in  Rom.  iii.  25  f.,  the  Apostle  speaks  of  Christ  "  whom 
God  hath  proposed  to  be  a  propitiation  through  faith  in  his  blood 
to  the  showing  of  his  justice  for  the  remission  of  former  sins 
through  the  forbearance  of  God  for  the  showing  of  his  justice 
in  this  time,  that  he  himself  may  be  just  and  the  justification  of 
him  who  is  of  the  faith  of  Jesus  Christ."  Luther,  however,  in  the 
interests  of  his  new  doctrine,  makes  him  say  that  God  had  "  set 
up  Christ  as  a  mercy  seat  through  faith  in  his  Blood,  in  order 
that  he  may  present  the  righteousness  which  is  acceptable  to 
him,  forgiving  the  sins  which  had  remained  till  then  under  divine 
forbearance,  that  he  might  in  his  season  offer  the  righteousness 
which  is  acceptable  to  him  that  he  might  himself  alone  be  just 
and  the  justifier  of  him  that  is  of  the  faith  of  Jesus."  The  offering 

1  "  Sendbrieff  von  Dolmetzschefi,"  p.  642  =  117. 
v.— 2  L 


514         LUTHER    THE    REFORMER 

of  the  righteousness  that  is  acceptable  to  God — an  expression 
twice  repeated — is  not  found  in  the  original  text,  but  of  course 
is  highly  favourable  to  Luther's  doctrine  of  a  merely  imputed 
righteousness.1  In  the  same  way  he  here  speaks  of  God  as 
"  alone  "  being  just,  an  interpolation  of  which  the  origin  must 
also  be  sought  in  the  translator's  theology.2 

Another  passage  falsely  rendered  is  Rom.  viii.  3  :  "  He  con 
demned  sin  in  the  flesh  by  sin,"  instead  of  "on  account  of  sin  " 
(the  Son  of  God  was  sent)  as  the  Greek  text  (-n-epl  a^apTias)  plainly 
states. 

The  frequent  substitution  of  the  word  "  pious  "  for  "  just  " 
would  seem  innocent  enough,  but  this  too  was  done  purposely. 
Here  a  pet  term  of  Luther's  theology  is  made  to  replace  the  right 
word  in  order  the  better  to  represent  holiness  as  something 
merely  imputed.  "  To  be  pious,"  according  to  Luther,  is  to  have 
faith,  and,  through  faith,  imputed  justice.3  Thus  Noe  becomes 
a  "  pious  man  without  reproach  "  (Gen.  vi.  9)  instead  of  a  "  just 
and  perfect  man."  Zachary  and  Elizabeth  are  described  as 
"  pious,"  but  not  as  "  just  "  before  God  (Luke  i.  6),  and  similarly 
with  Simeon  (ib.,  ii.  25),  and  Joseph,  the  husband  of  Mary  (Mt.  i. 
19).  Job,  too,  is  not  asked,  as  in  the  Sacred  text  :  "  What  doth 
it  profit  God  if  thou  be  just  ?  "  but  "  What  pleasure  is  it  to  the 
Almighty  if  thou  makest  thyself  pious  ?  "  (Job  xxii.  3).  The 
exhortation  in  Apoc.  xxii.  11  :  "He  that  is  just  let  him  be 
justified  still,"  appears  in  the  weakened  form  :  "  He  that  is  pious 
let  him  be  pious  still."4 

From  his  constant  use  of  the  word  "  congregation  "  instead  of 
"  Church  "  the  latter  conception  unquestionably  suffers.  In 
Luther's  translation  the  word  church  is  used  only  of  the  heathen 
temples  and  illegal  sanctuaries  of  the  Israelites.  He  also  terms 
the  heathen  priests  and  soothsayers  "  parsons,"  and  unmistak 
ably  likens  them  and  their  practices  to  those  of  Catholicism. 
Baruch  vi.  30,  for  instance,  which  describes  the  heathen  priests  is 
rendered  as  follows  :  "  And  the  priests  sit  in  their  temples  in 

1  Cp.  Bellinger,  "  Reformation,"  3,  p.   142  f.     Theodore  Zahn  the 
Protestant  exegete  says  :   "  Luther  by  adding  the  words  '  The  righteous 
ness  which  is  acceptable  to  God  '   (here  and  iii.  21,  x.  3  ;    cp.  iii.  22) 
exceeded  the  task  of  a  translator  by  implying  that  the  recognition  of 
this  righteousness  by  God  is  merely  the  consequence  of  its  origin  in  God. 
'  A  righteousness  that  comes  from  God,'  as  in  Phil.  iii.  9,  would  be  less 
open  to  objection,  though  here  again  Luther  goes  beyond  his  text." 
"  Brief  des  Paulus  an  die  Romer,"  Leipzig,  1910,  p.  82. 

2  De  Lagarde  (p.  358)  rightly  refers  to  Dollinger,  ib.,  pp.  140-144, 
where   the   latter  quotes   another  passage   which   calls  for  revision  : 
"  The  commandments  are  given  only  in  order  that  man  may  be  made 
aware  of  his  inability  to  do  what  is  good  and  thus  learn  to  despair 
of  himself."  3  Dollinger,  ib.,  p.  144. 

4  Many  other  passages  could  be  given  where  the  sense  is  weakened 
owing  to  Luther's  want  of  accuracy.  For  instance,  John  vi.  56  :  "  My 
flesh  is  the  true  meat  and  my  blood  is  the  true  drink,"  whereas  Christ 
says  :  "  My  flesh  is  meat  indeed  (aXrjduis)  and  my  blood  is  drink 
indeed." 


THE  GERMAN  BIBLE  515 

their  voluminous  copes  [!]  ;  with  shaven  faces  and  wearing 
tonsures  they  sit  there  bareheaded  and  howl  and  cry  aloud 
before  their  idols."  "It  is  perfectly  obvious  at  whom  this  is 
aimed,"  remarks  a  Protestant  critic.1 

The  licence  of  the  translator  here  is,  however,  of  less  import 
ance  than  in  his  treatment  of  the  passages  on  faith  and  justice, 
of  which  we  shall  give  two  further  instances.  These  also  show 
how  Luther,  even  where  he  does  not  essentially  alter  the  text, 
nevertheless  succeeds  in  construing  the  words  of  Holy  Scripture 
in  such  a  way  as  to  favour  his  own  doctrine.  When  Paul's  state 
ments  were  obscure  they  should  have  been  left  in  their  obscurity, 
or,  at  any  rate,  they  should  not  have  been  translated  in  such  a 
way  as  to  contradict  the  doctrine  elsewhere  taught  by  the 
Apostle. 

And  yet  this  is  just  what  Luther  does  in  Rom.  x.  4.  The 
passage  according  to  the  Greek  runs  :  "  For  the  aim  of  the  law 
is  Christ  unto  the  justice  of  everyone  that  believeth,"  whereas 
Luther's  version  is  :  "  For  Christ  is  the  end  of  the  law,  and 
whoever  believeth  in  Him  is  just." 

The  same  is  the  case  with  the  oft-quoted  text  Rom.  iii.  28,  of 
which  Luther's  Bible  makes  a  kind  of  palladium  for  the  new 
teaching  by  the  arbitrary  addition  of  the  word  "  alone."  The 
text  has  been  immortalised  in  its  Lutheran  shape  even  to  our 
own  day  in  inscriptions  on  Protestant  churches  and  pulpits. 
There  Luther  makes  the  Apostle  say  :  "  Thus  we  hold  that  a 
man  is  justified  by  faith  alone  without  the  works  of  the  law," 
whereas  the  old  Latin  of  the  Vulgate  rightly  rendered  it  : 
"  Arbitramur  enim  iustificari  hominem  per  fidem  sine  operibus" 

The  word  "  alone  "  is  not  called  for  either  by  the  text  or  the 
context.  It  is  indeed  true  that  the  Apostle  wishes  to  emphasise 
the  exclusive  action  of  faith,  nevertheless,  if  we  take  this  faith 
as  he  understands  it,  i.e.  as  a  strong  and  vivifying  faith  and  no 
mere  dead  thing,  then  it  naturally  comprises  the  works  wrought 
by  faith  and  man's  co-operation  under  the  influence  of  grace. 
Of  this  faith  to  which  the  Apostle  expressly  refers,  for  instance 
in  Romans  ii.  6  ff.  and  in  Galatians  v.  6,  he  might  quite  well  have 
said  in  the  above  passage  that  it  justifies  without  works,  i.e. 
without  such  as  are  performed  apart  from  faith  and  grace.  In 
fact,  taken  in  this  sense,  Luther's  interpolation  of  the  word 
"  alone  "  is  not  reprehensible,  though  in  the  sense  in  which  he 
intended  it  it  is  altogether  inadmissible  ;  for  he  would  fain  make 
the  Apostle  say,  that  faith  "  alone,"  without  any  works  of  the 
law,  operates  justification,  the  works  being  merely  an  aspect  of 
faith.  The  addition  of  the  word  "  alone  "  amounted  to  a  quite 
unjustifiable  usurpation  of  the  famous  Pauline  dictum  for  the 
uses  of  his  own  party.  It  must  also  at  least  be  termed  a  subjective 
falsification,  even  though,  objectively,  it  be  capable  of  a  better 
interpretation.  If,  as  we  have  heard  Luther  say,  he  really  wished 

1  Riehm,  "  Luther  als  Bibeliibersetzer,"  "  Theol.  Stud.  u.  Krit .," 
57,  1884,  p.  306  ;  cp.  p.  312  f.  On  the  whole  subject  see  Janssen, 
"  Hist,  of  the  German  People  "  (Engl.  Trans.),  14,  p.  401  ff. 


516          LUTHER  THE   REFORMER 

to  show  in  his  translation  "  the  utmost  fidelity  and  industry  and 
had  never  a  thought  of  deception,"  then  he  should  not  have  made 
St.  Paul  say  more  than  he  does  in  the  original,  viz.  that  man  is 
justified  by  faith  without  works. 

Contemporary  Catholic  pens  were  not  slow  in  assailing  in  the 
strongest  terms  Luther's  translation  on  account  of  his  surreptitious 
introduction  of  the  word  "  alone."  The  translator  also  regarded 
the  protest  as  of  sufficient  importance  to  warrant  his  devoting 
his  leisure  in  the  Coburg  in  September,  1530,  to  composing  a 
reply.  The  tract  in  question,  entitled  "  Sendbrieff  von  Dolmetz- 
schen,"  he  sent  to  his  friend  Wenceslaus  Link  at  Nuremberg 
instructing  him  to  have  it  printed.1 

In  it  he  gives  two  reasons  in  vindication  of  his  arbitrary 
action  :  He  had  been  obliged  in  this  instance  to  add  the  word 
"  alone  "  in  order  first  of  all  to  render  the  Apostle's  meaning  in 
correct  German,  for  it  was  the  German  usage  to  use  the  word 
"alone"  or  "  only,"  when,  of  two  things,  people  wanted  to  deny 
one  and  affirm  the  other,  for  instance,  if  one  wished  to  say  that  a 
peasant  had  brought  the  wheat  asked  for  but  not  the  money, 
then  he  would  not  say  "he  has  brought  the  wheat  but  not  the 
money,"  but  "he  has  brought  no  money  but  only  corn."2 
Luther,  however,  was  only  able  to  show  that  this  was  in  accord 
ance  with  the  spirit  of  the  language  in  certain  instances,  not  that 
it  was  necessary  or  indispensable  in  every  case,  particularly  in 
the  instance  in  question  ;  still  less  could  he  prove  that  there  were 
not  circumstances  affecting  the  words  and  the  meaning  where 
such  a  use  of  "  alone  "  or  "  only  "  must  be  avoided  in  order  not 
to  change  the  tenor  of  the  sentence.  It  might  rightly  have  been 
urged  against  him  that  fidelity  was  far  more  important  a  matter 
than  good  phraseology. — The  second  reason  he  alleges  in  support 
of  the  interpolation  bears  directly  on  his  erroneous  view  of  the 
Apostle's  doctrine  :  "I  have  not  followed  merely  linguistic 
considerations,  for  the  text  and  the  meaning  of  St.  Paul  absolutely 
demand  it."  "  He  deliberately  cuts  away  all  works."  "  Who 
ever  would  speak  bluntly  and  plainly  of  such  a  dismissal  of  works 
must  say  :  faith  alone,"  etc.  If  "  this  be  so  obvious,"  "  why 
then  not  say  so  "  ?3  Thus  he  makes  the  word  "  alone  "  a  sort  of 
hall-mark  of  his  own  "  public  "  teaching. 

He  is  determined  to  defy  his  opponents  and  to  challenge  them 
yet  again.  "  And  I  repent  me,"  he  cries,  "  that  I  did  not  add 
thereto  the  word  all,  thus  :  without  all  works,  all  law  whatsoever, 
so  that  it  might  be  spoken  out  with  a  full,  round  sound.  Thus 
therefore  it  shall  remain  in  my  New  Testament,  and  though  all 
Pope-asses  should  go  raving  mad  they  will  not  alter  my  decision." 4 
— In  a  similar  way  and  with  redoubled  energy  he  turns  on  those 
who  had  found  fault  with  his  translation  of  the  Hail  Mary 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  30,  2,  p.  632  ff.  ;    Erl.  ed.,  65,  p.  103  ff.  ; 
the  accompanying  letter  to  Link  dated  Sept.    12,    1530,  in   "  Brief  - 
wechsel,"  8,  p.  257. 

2  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed,,  30,  2,  p.  637  ;   Erl.  ed.,  65,  p.  110. 

3  P.  640  ff.=  115-1 17.  4  P.  643  =  118  f. 


THE  GERMAN  BIBLE  517 

because  he  had  discarded  "  full  of  grace  "  in  favour  of  "  gracious." 
"  The  Papists  are  furious  with  me  for  having  spoilt  the  Angelical 
Salutation,  but,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  in  good  German  I  ought  to 
have  said,  '  God  greet  thee,  dear  Mary.'  I  shall  translate,  not 
as  they,  but  as  I  please  !  "l 

The  remarkable  "  Sendbrieff,"  other  portions  of  which  are  of 
the  highest  psychological  interest,  must  be  regarded  as  in  reality 
a  product  of  the  author's  mental  overstrain  at  that  time.  On  the 
one  hand  he  was  on  tenterhooks  wondering  what  the  fate  of  the 
new  Evangel  would  be,  threatened  as  it  was  by  the  Diet  of 
Augsburg  ;  on  the  other  hand  he  was  overmastered  by  the  sight 
of  his  own  achievements,  particularly  his  much-belauded  transla 
tion  of  the  Bible.  He  was  also  profoundly  exasperated  by  the 
translation  of  the  New  Testament  published  by  Emser  (see  below, 
p.  519),  the  "Dresen  [Dresden]  Scribbler  "  as  Luther  called  him,2 
and  by  the  prohibition  issued  at  Leipzig  against  the  sale  of  his 
German  Bible  in  the  duchy  of  Saxony. 

Hence  he  relieves  his  feelings  in  his  usual  way  by  an  outburst 
of  noisy  vituperation  :  "  All  the  Papists  in  a  lump  "  are  not 
"  clever  enough  to  understand  or  translate  a  single  chapter  of 
Scripture  aright,  no,  not  even  the  first  two  words."  Their 
braying,  their  "  he-haw,  he-haw,  is  too  weak  to  harm  my  transla 
tion.  I  know  full  well  what  art,  industry,  reason  and  common 
sense  go  to  make  a  good  translation,  but,  as  for  them,  they  under 
stand  this  less  even  than  the  miller's  beast."3  It  is  quite  true, 
so  he  says,  that  the  four  letters,  s  o  I  a,  do  not  occur  in  Romans, 
"  which  letters  these  blockheads  stare  at  as  stupidly  as  a  cow  does 
at  a  new  gate  "  ;  but,  so  he  goes  on,  it  is  not  our  business  to 
inquire  "of  the  Latin  letters  how  to  speak  German,  as  these 
donkeys  do."  "  No  Pope-ass  or  mule-ass,  who  has  never  even 
attempted  it  himself,  shall  I  suffer  to  be  my  judge,  or  to  find  fault 
with  me  in  this  matter.  Whoever  does  not  want  my  version  has 
simply  to  let  it  alone  and  ...  be  rewarded  with  the  devil's 
thanks."3  "  For  the  future  I  shall  simply  despise  them  and  get 
others  to  do  the  same,  so  long  as  they  remain  such  people,  I  beg 
your  pardon,  donkeys."4 

In  his  efforts  to  express  his  contempt  in  the  strongest  words 
at  his  command  we  have  the  key  to  what  he  says  in  conclusion, 
which  some  of  his  opponents  took  too  seriously.  The  famous 
"  Sic  volo,  sic  iubeo  "  with  which  his  tract  ends,  though  of  course 
not  meant  in  earnest,  is  nevertheless  very  characteristic  of  him. 
"If,"  he  writes,  "  your  new  Papist  makes  much  ado  about  the 
word  sola,  just  say  straight  out  to  him  :  Dr.  Martin  Luther 
will  have  it  so  and  says  Papist  and  donkey  are  one  and  the 
same  thing.  .  .  .  Sic  volo,  sic  iubeo,  sit  pro  ratione  voluntas." 
He  too  would  boast  for  once  and  rail  against  the  blockheads  as 
St.  Paul  [!]  had  done  against  his  crazy  saints.  Hence  he 
parodies  St.  Paul's  words  and  scoffs  at  the  Papists  who  wished  to 
make  themselves  out  to  be  doctors,  preachers,  theologians  and 

1  P.  638=112.  2  P.  634=106. 

3  P.  633- 104  f.  4  Pp.  636,  639-108,  109,  113  f. 


518         LUTHER   THE   REFORMER 

disputants,  reiterating  for  each  category  the  words  "  And  so 
am  I."  He  then  goes  further  :  "I  am  able  to  interpret  the 
Psalms  and  the  Prophets,  which  they  cannot  do.  I  can  translate, 
which  they  can't.  I  can  read  Holy  Scripture,  they  cannot.  And 
to  come  to  other  matters  :  I  am  better  acquainted  with  their 
dialectics  and  their  philosophy  than  the  whole  lot  of  them 
together,  and  know  for  certain  that  not  one  of  them  understands 
his  Aristotle.  And  if  there  is  one  among  them  who  understands 
one  introduction  or  chapter  of  Aristotle,  then  I  am  ready  to  be 
tossed  in  a  blanket."1 

The  whole  tract  is  one  of  the  most  extravagant  examples  of 
this  stamp  of  polemical  satire.  It  is  hardly  possible  to  determine 
where  exactly  the  "  great  doctor  "  ceases  and  the  satirical 
rhetorician  begins. 


In  addition  to  the  mistakes  and  the  wilfulness  of  the 
translation,  the  character  of  the  glosses  appended  by 
Luther,  and  still  more  his  attitude  towards  the  Canon  of 
the  Bible,  laid  his  work  open  to  objections  of  the  most 
serious  kind. 

In  the  glosses  on  many  passages  he  shows  wonderful  skill 
in  manipulating  the  text  in  favour  of  his  wrong  views.  This 
is  carried  so  far  that,  to  the  account  of  the  anointing  of  Our 
Lord's  feet  by  the  Magdalen  (Mat.  xxvi.  10),  he  adds  the 
marginal  gloss  :  "  Thus  one  sees  that  faith  alone  makes  the 
work  good,"  because  only  faith  could  transform  this  seeming 
waste  into  a  good  work.2  Of  Mat.  xvi.  18  :  "  Thou  art  Peter 
and  on  this  rock  I  will  build  my  church,"  he  gives  the 
following  explanation,  which  plainly  rests  on  his  own 
partisan  and  anti-Papal  standpoint  :  By  Peter  all  Christians 
together  with  Peter  are  meant,  and  their  confession  is  the 
rock.  "  All  Christians  are  Peters  on  account  of  the  confes 
sion  which  here  Peter  makes,  which  also  is  the  rock  on  which 
Peter  and  all  the  other  Peters  are  built.  The  confession  is 
common  to  all ;  hence  also  the  name."3 

It  was  partly  the  defects  of  the  translation  itself,  partly 
the  cleverly  calculated  and  thus  all  the  more  dangerous 
marginal  glosses,  which  called  forth  objections  and  warnings 
from  Catholic  writers  as  soon  as  the  work  was  published. 


1  P.   635  =  107.     The  passage  was  given  verbally  above,  vol.  iv., 
p.  345  f.     The  words  of  St.  Paul  which  he  plays  upon  occur  in  2  Cor. 
xi.  18  ff.  :    "  They  are  Hebrews,  so  am  I ;   they  are  Israelites,  so  am  I  ; 
they  are  the  seed  of  Abraham,  so  am  I." 

2  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  64,  p.  197.  3  16.,  p.  194. 


THE  GERMAN  BIBLE  519 

Hier.  Emser  complains  that  Luther  "  made  Scripture  to  turn 
everywhere  on  faith  and  works,  even  when  neither  faith  nor 
works  are  thought  of."  Emser  speaks  of  more  than  1400 
passages  which  Luther  had  rendered  in  a  false  and  heretical 
sense,  though  many  of  the  passages  he  instances  are  not  of  any 
great  importance.1 

Johann  Hasenberg,  the  Leipzig  Professor,  even  went  so  far  as 
to  enumerate  three  thousand  passages  badly  rendered  in  the 
German  Bible.2 

The  theological  faculty  at  Leipzig  had  declared  as  early  as 
Jan.  6,  1523,  that  Luther  had  introduced  his  erroneous  doctrines 
into  the  German  Bible,  a  verdict  on  which  Duke  George  took  his 
stand  when  issuing  his  prohibition.  Emser  now  set  to  work  to 
carry  out  the  Duke's  further  instructions,  viz.  that  "  he  should 
revise  anew  the  New  Testament  in  accordance  with  the  tenor 
and  arrangement  of  the  old,  authentic  text,  and  restore  it  and 
set  it  in  order  throughout."3  His  purpose  was  mainly  to  weed 
out  the  theological  errors.  His  new  edition  of  Luther's  text  was 
revised  according  to  the  Vulgate  and  provided  with  notes  on  the 
Greek.  He  also  bought  from  Cranach  the  blocks  for  the  illustra 
tions  (see  below,  p.  528),  rejecting,  however,  such  of  the  cuts  as 
were  too  insulting,  for  instance,  those  in  which  the  Papal  tiara 
appears.  The  many  excellencies  of  the  language  of  Luther's 
version,  and  almost  all  the  fruits  of  his  labours,  thus  passed  into 
Eraser's  edition,  which  appeared  at  Leipzig  in  1527.  Absence  of 
copyright  laws  explains  to  some  extent  Eraser's  action.  Eraser's 
Bible,  which  was  also  made  up  to  resemble  Luther's  folio  volumes, 
bore  no  translator's  name  and  was  simply  entitled  :  "  Das  Naw 
Testament  nach  Lawt  der  christlichen  Kirchen  bewertem  Text 
corrigiert  un  wiederumb  zurecht  gebracht,"  and  thus  made  no 
claim  to  being  a  new  or  original  translation.  As,  however, 
Luther,  the  original  translator,  had  been  severely  censured  in 
Duke  George's  Introduction  we  can  readily  understand  that  he 
was  much  vexed  at  the  revision  of  his  work  and  accused  the 

1  "  Auss  was  Grand  uund  Ursach  Luthers  Dolmatschung  iiber  das 
Newe  Testament  dem  gemeinen  Man  billich  verbotten  worden  sey," 
Leipzig,   1523,  Bl.  3. — In  Bl.  2'  Emser,  having  instanced  the  formal 
theological   decision,    goes   on   to   remark,    that   Luther   declared   the 
secular  authorities  had  no  right  to  forbid  books  concerning  the  faith, 
although  lie  and  his  preachers  were  in  the  habit  of  teaching  that  all 
were  subject  to  the  secular  power.      "  Thus  the  man  can  never  handle 
a  matter  with  moderation,   but  either  goes  too   far  or  else  not  far 
enough  "  ;    the  authorities  had  a  perfect  right  to  punish,  in  life  anci 
property,  "  those  whom  the  Church  publicly  proclaimed  to  be  heretics." 
He  vainly  urged  the  German  bishops  at  the  end  of  the  book,   "  to 
summon  one,  or  ten,  learned,  experienced  and  God-fearing  men  and 
to  see  that  a  trustworthy,  reliable  and  uniform  German  Bible  was 
made  from  the  old  and  new  [Lutheran]  translation." 

2  Soffner,  "  Ein  Lutherspiel  aus  alter  Zeit,"  1889,  p.  16.     Kostlin- 
Kawerau,  1,  p.  783.     On  Hasenberg  see  vol.  iv.,  p.  173  f. 

3  G.  Kawerau,  "  Hier.  Emser  "  ("  Schriften   des  Vereins  f.  RG.," 
No.  61),  1898,  p.  65. 


520          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

editor  of  plagiarism.1  As  Kawerau,  however,  remarks,  "  had  he 
(Emser)  laid  claim  to  being  an  actual  '  translator,'  then  his  work 
would  indeed  have  deserved  to  be  styled  a  piece  of  plagiarism, 
as  it  has  even  down  to  our  own  day  ;  but  this  he  did  not  do,  and 
merely  wished  to  be  regarded  as  the  corrector  of  the  Lutheran 
translation  ;  hence  this  charge  may  be  dismissed  as  unfair."2 
The  second  edition,  however,  which  appeared  after  his  death, 
bore  Emser 's  name  as  the  translator  :  "  Das  New  Testament,  so 
Emser  saliger  verdeutscht."  This  second  edition  was  brought 
out  by  Augustine  Alveld,  as  recent  research  has  proved.3  In  it 
certain  coarse  expressions  which  Emser  had  borrowed  from 
Luther's  Bible  were  supplanted  by  more  "seemly"  words  "for 
the  sake  of  the  maidens  and  the  pure  of  heart,"  a  circumstance 
which  incidentally  shows  that  even  Luther's  more  moderate  style 
of  writing,  as  we  find  it  in  his  Bible,  was  felt  to  be  unusual  and 
not  always  quite  proper. 

Johann  Dietenberger,  a  Bible  expert  and  contemporary  of 
Luther's,  wrote  :  Although  Luther  constantly  appeals  to  Holy 
Scripture,  yet  there  is  no  one  who  takes  away  from  or  adds  to  it 
more  than  he.  "  Of  the  Bible  he  rejects  and  adds  what  he  pleases 
in  order  to  establish  his  errors."4  Dietenberger,  a  Mayence 
Dominican,  published  a  complete  translation  of  Holy  Scripture 
in  1534,  making  considerable  use  for  this  purpose  of  Luther's 
German  Bible.  He  says  in  his  Preface,  in  explanation  of  this,  that 
he  had  been  urgently  requested  to  "go  through  the  recent 
German  translation  of  the  Bible  (Luther's)  and  remove  all  that 
was  not  in  accordance  with  the  faith."5 

Johann  Eck,  who  undertook  a  new  translation  of  the  whole 
Bible  (1537),  acted  more  independently  ;  but,  however  good  as 
a  critic  of  Luther's  Bible,  his  own  work  met  with  but  little 
success.  His  stilted  German  translation  found  but  few  readers.6 

Even  to  the  followers  of  the  new  faith  Luther's  translation 
gave  offence  owing  to  its  want  of  fidelity,  Bullinger,  writing  to 
Bucer  on  a  certain  question,  remarks  :  "  Luther  admits  that  he 
has  not  been  faithful  in  his  translation  of  the  Bible,  in  fact  he  is 

1  In  the  "  Sendbrieff  von  Dolmetzschefi,"  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  30, 
2,  p.  634 ;   Erl.  ed.,  65,  p.  106  f.     Luther's  charge  against  Emser,  the 
"  Dresen  Scribbler,"  in  which  he  says  :   He  "  wrote  his  name,  a  preface 
and  glosses  to  it  and  thus  sold  my  New  Testament  under  his  own 
name,"  is  not  grounded  on  fact.     Still  more  unjust  and  insulting  to 
the  deceased  was  the  statement  he  made  later  to  some  of  his  friends  : 
The   miscreant    "  knew   the   truth   better   than   he   wrote   it  "  ;     "he 
altered  a  word  here  and  there  against  his  conscience  "  in  order  to 
retain    the    favour    of    the    Duke.      Cordatus,    "  Tagebuch,"    p.    79. 

'  '  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  1,  p.  149. 

2  Ib.,  p.  72. 

3  L.   Lemmens,    O.F.M.,    "  Aus  ungedruckten  Franziskanerbriefen 
des    16.   Jahrh."    ("  RG1.   Studien,"   ed.   H.   Greving,   Hft.    20),    1911, 
p.  38. 

4  Janssen,  "  Hist,  of  the  German  People  "  (Engl.  Trans.),  14,  p.  429  f. 
6  Janssen,  ib.  6  Ib. 


THE  GERMAN  BIBLE  521 

almost  inclined  to  withdraw  it."1  J.  L.  Holler,  who  in  1654 
wrote  a  pamphlet  about  his  return  from  Protestantism  to  the 
Catholic  Church,  says  that  what  moved  him  to  take  this  step 
was  his  discovery  of  Luther's  dishonest  rendering.  He  gave  a 
long  list  of  passages  where  Luther's  Bible  departs  from  the  true 
text.2 

In  his  treatment  of  the  Canon  of  the  Bible  Luther  proceeds 
with  his  customary  licence.  Those  books  of  the  Bible  in 
which  he  thought  he  found  his  own  doctrines  most  clearly 
enunciated  he  speaks  of  in  the  Prefaces  as  "  the  best,"  viz. 
the  Gospel  and  1st  Epistle  of  St.  John,  the  Epistles  of 
St.  Paul,  particularly  those  to  the  Romans,  the  Galatians 
and  the  Ephesians,  and  the  1st  Epistle  of  Peter  ;  the 
remaining  books  he  arbitrarily  ranks  below  these,  and 
sometimes  goes  so  far  in  depreciating  them  that  their 
biblical  character  is  jeopardised  (below,  p.  522,  n.  6). 

"  The  standard  by  which  the  greater  or  lesser  value  of  each 
book  is  determined,"  says  Adolf  Hausrath,  is  the  degree  of 
clearness  with  which  the  doctrine  of  justification  by  faith  is 
proclaimed.  "  Protestant  Bible  criticism  had  its  originator  in 
Luther,  only  that  his  successors  shrank  from  persevering  in  his 
footsteps."'1 

Of  2  Machabees  he  had  said  even  at  the  Leipzig  Disputation 
that  it  did  not  belong  to  the  Canon,  simply  because  of  the  diffi 
culty  presented  by  the  passage  quoted  by  Eck  concerning 
Purgatory  which  Luther  denied.  Of  this  book  and  the  book  of 
Esther,  which  also  found  no  favour  in  his  eyes,  he  said  later  in 
the  Table-Talk,  that  "  they  were  too  much  inclined  to  judaise 
and  contained  much  heathen  naughtiness."  The  so-called 
deuterocanonical  books,  though  they  are  found  in  the  Septuagint, 
were  practically  denied  the  status  of  inspired  books  by  the  very 
way  in  which  he  grouped  them  ;  in  his  translation  they  appear 
as  a  mere  appendix  to  the  rest  of  Scripture.  According  to  the 
Preface,  they  were  "  not  to  be  regarded  as  equal  to  the  Bible, 
though  good  and  profitable  to  read." 

He  denied  that  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  emanated  from  an 
Apostle  ;  it  was  "  a  made-up  Epistle,"  consisting  of  fragments 
amongst  which,  "  mayhap,  there  is  wood,  hay  and  chaff."4 

The  Apocalypse  he  regarded  as  neither  "  apostolic  nor  pro 
phetic."6  "  Let  each  one  judge  of  it  as  he  thinks  fit ;  my  spirit 

1  Dec.  28,  1534,  in  Lenz,  "  Brief wechsel  Philipps  von  Hessen,"  2, 
p.  224  :    "  Fatetur  se  parum  syncere  biblia  vertisse  et  earn  interpreta- 
tionem  tanlum  non  revocat." 

2  A.   Rass,   "  Die  Konvertiten  seit  der  Reformation,"    7,  p.   99  f., 
with  the  list. 

3  "  Luthers  Leben,"  2,  p.  145  f. 

4  In  the  Preface  of  1522,  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  63,  p.  153. 

5  Preface  of  1522,  "  Werke,"  ib.,  p.  169. 


522          LUTHER  THE   REFORMER 

cannot  find  its  way  in  the  book."1  In  the  Preface  to  the  Epistle 
of  Jude  he  is  very  unfair  to  this  portion  of  Holy  Scripture. 2  He 
regards  it  as  merely  an  excerpt  from,  the  2nd  Epistle  of  Peter  and 
says  it  was  "  an  unnecessary  missive  and  should  be  ranked  below 
the  main  books  [of  the  Bible]."3  The  words  of  approval  he  else 
where  bestows  on  these  books  do  not  avail  to  undo  his  criticism 
in  this  instance. 

As  regards  his  animosity  to  the  Epistle  of  James  ;  Luther 
questions  its  authenticity  chiefly  because,  so  he  says,  this  Epistle, 
"  in  direct  contrast  to  St.  Paul  and  the  rest  of  Scripture, 
attributes  righteousness  to  works."4  As  further  grounds  for 
doubting  its  genuineness,  he  points  out,  that,  though  "  it  under 
takes  to  teach  Christian  people,  yet  throughout  its  whole  length 
it  never  once  considers  the  sufferings,  the  resurrection  and  the 
spirit  of  Christ,"  further,  it  uses  the  language  of  the  apostolic 
writings  in  such  a  way,  "  that  it  is  plain  that  he  [the  author] 
lived  long  after  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul."5 — On  these  grounds,  at 
the  close  of  his  preface  to  the  New  Testament  of  1522,  he  character 
ised  it  as  an  epistle  of  straw  compared  with  the  other  canonical 
writings  :  "  Hence  the  Epistle  of  James  is  nothing  but  an  epistle 
of  straw  in  comparison  with  them,  for  it  has  nothing  evangelical 
about  it."6 — In  1515  and  1516,  when  he  wrote  his  unprinted 
commentary  on  Romans,  he  had  as  yet  no  objection  to  raise 
against  the  canonical  character  of  the  Epistle  of  James.  On  the 
contrary  he  sought  to  combine  the  doctrine  of  this  epistle  on  good 
works  with  that  of  St.  Paul  ;  he  wrote  :  "  When  James  and  Paul 
say  a  man  is  justified  by  works,  they  are  refuting  the  false  views 
of  those  who  imagine  that  faith  suffices  without  its  works."7  But 
as  early  as  the  Leipzig  Disputation  in  1519  he  expressed  himself 
unfavourably  concerning  the  Epistle  of  James.  He  repeats  his 
condemnation  in  the  commentary  on  Genesis  and  even  goes  so 
far  as  to  remark  bitterly,  that  James  was  mad  (delirat)  with 
his  crazy  doctrine  of  works  ;8  in  the  same  way,  in  the  marginal 
notes  to  his  private  copy  of  the  New  Testament  he  says,  in  1530 

1  Preface  of  1545,  ib.,  p.  159.    This  preface  replaced  the  former  one, 
but,  in  it,  he  still  leaves  it  "  doubtful  "  whether  the  Apocalypse  was 
to  be  taken  as  one  of  the  books  of  the  Bible  or  not. 

2  Zahn,  "  Einleitung  in  das  N.T.,"2  Leipzig,  1900,  p.  84. 

3  Preface  of  1522,  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  63,  p.  158. 

4  Preface  of  1522,  ib.,  p.  156.  5  Ib. 

e  "  Truly  an  Epistle  of  straw  as  compared  with  them  "  (the  Gospel 
and  1st  Epistle  of  John,  the  epistles  of  Paul,  particularly  to  the  Romans, 
Ephesians  and  Galatians,  and  the  1st  Epistle  of  Peter).  These  were  the 
"  best  "  books  of  the  New  Testament  because  in  them  "  faith  in 
Christ  "  is  "  painted  in  a  masterly  manner."  Ib.,  114f. — The  con 
clusion  of  the  preface  in  question  was  omitted  in  Luther's  own  later 
editions  but  was  often  reintroduced  later. 

7  M.    Meinertz,    "  Luthers    Kritik    am    Jakobusbriefe    nach    dem 
Zeugnis   seiner   Anhanger  "    ("  Bibl.    Zeitschr.,"    3,    1905),    p.    273  ff. 
Cp.  the  same  author,  "  Der  Jakobusbrief  und  sein  Verfasser  in  Schrift 
und  tfberlieferung  "  ("  Bibl.  Studien  "),  10,  Hft.  1-3,  1905. 

8  "  Opp.  lat.  exeg.,"  5,  p.  227,  on  Gen.  xxii.     Meinertz,  "  Luthers 
Kritik,"  etc.,  ib. 


THE  GERMAN  BIBLE  523 

for  instance,  of  James  ii.  12  :  "Oh  what  a  chaos  !  "l  That  he 
eventually  altered  his  opinion,  as  has  been  asserted,  cannot  be 
proved  merely  from  the  circumstance  that  the  later  editions  of 
his  translation  of  the  Bible  do  not  contain  the  above  words 
concerning  the  Epistle  of  straw.  Although  he  occasionally 
expresses  himself  more  favourably  to  this  Epistle,  still,  against 
this,  must  be  set  other  unfavourable  utterances,  nor  did  he  ever 
retract  his  severe  public  condemnation.2 

Even  in  his  own  day  many  who  favoured  the  innovations  spoke 
out  against  his  condemnation  of  the  Epistle  of  James.  Carlstadt 
in  his  "  De  canonicis  scripturis  "  objected  in  the  strongest  terms 
to  the  attacks  on  the  Epistle,  though  he  refrains  from  naming 
Luther.  Luther's  opinion  at  that  time,  viz.  that  Jerome  might 
be  the  author,  was  characterised  quite  openly  by  Carlstadt  as 
"  a  baseless  supposition,"  and  his  proofs  as  "  frivolous  argu 
ments  by  which  he  sought  to  discredit  the  Epistle  of  James."3 
Zwingli,  Calvin  and  H.  Bullinger  also  disclaimed  Luther's  views. 
"  In  the  17th  and  18th  centuries  James  stood  in  high  favour  with 
Protestants,"  and  they  even  sought  to  exonerate  Luther  as  best 
they  could,  sometimes  on  very  strange  grounds.4  The  following 
is  the  final  judgment  of  a  Protestant  critic  of  modern  times  who 
had  also  vainly  tried  to  excuse  Luther's  action  :  "It  remains  an 
act  of  injustice  no  less  natural  than  regrettable."5 

Says  Carlstadt 's  biographer  :  "  What  lent  Carlstadt  a 
decided  advantage  in  his  polemics  (against  Luther's  attitude 
towards  the  Epistle  of  James)  was  the  utter  inconsistency  oi 
Luther's  critical  attitude  towards  Holy  Scripture  at  that 
time."6  Luther  "  read  his  theology  into  the  Bible,"  remarks 
another  Protestant  critic,  "  just  as  his  mediaeval  predecessors 
had  done  with  theirs."7  "  With  a  wondrous  pertinacity  he 
pitted  his  theology  and  his  Christ  against  everything  that 
did  not  accord  with  it,  against  Popery,  against  Tradition, 
yea,  against  the  Bible  itself."8 

The  halo  of  learning  that  had  so  long  surrounded  Luther's 
German  Bible  seemed  to  threaten  to  fade  when,  after  long 
preparation,  the  revised  edition  was  published  at  Halle  in 
1883  (and,  with  new  emendations,  in  1892).  A  commission  of 

1  "  Werke,"  Walchs  ed.,  9,  p.  2774  ff.    Cp.  Walther,  "  Theol.  Stud, 
u.  Krit.,"  66,  1,  1893,  p.  595  ff.    Meinertz,  ib. 

2  Meinertz,  ib.,  p.  278. 

3  H.    Barge,    "  Andreas   Bodenstein  von   Carlstadt,"    1,   p.    197  f. 
Carlstadt  himself  was  doubtful  as  to  who  was  the  author. 

4  Meinertz,  ib.,  p.  276. 

5  Zahn,  "  Einleitung  in  das  N.T.,"2  p.  84. 

6  Barge,  ib.,  p.  197  f. 

7  His  mediaeval  predecessors,  however,  usually  had  behind  them 
tradition  and  the  authority  of  the  Church. 

8  W.  Kohler,  "  Theol.  Literaturztng.,"  1905,  No.  16. 


524         LUTHER   THE   REFORMER 

learned  Protestant  theologians  "of  various  shades  of  opinion  " 
was  entrusted  by  the  German-Evangelical  Conference  of 
Eisenach  with  the  work.  Out  of  too  great  respect  for  Luther 
the  alterations  made  were,  however,  all  too  few  ;  veneration 
for  his  memory  explains  why  the  translation  was  not  raised 
to  the  present  standard  of  learning.  The  result  was  that 
many  Protestant  congregations,  more  particularly  in  North 
Germany,  looked  askance  at  the  new  edition  and  it  was  not 
generally  introduced.1  A  proposal  was  made,  but  to  ho 
purpose,  that  an  exact  counterpart  of  the  Luther  Bible  of 
1545  should  be  reproduced  as  a  literary  monument  which 
would  best  serve  to  honour  the  author's  memory.  The 
severe  objections  which  scholars  have  brought  against  the 
revised  edition  cause  it  to  resemble  already  a  ruin,  which, 
having  had  the  misfortune  to  date  from  a  period  when  the 
demands  made  by  learning  were  less  insistent  than  to:day, 
now  towers  lonely  and  forsaken  in  our  midst. 

It  is  true  that  the  revised  Bible,  with  its  heavy  type 
showing  exactly  where  it  departs  from  the  wording  of  the  old 
Luther  Bible,  exhibits  a  huge  number  of  freshly  hewn 
stones  built  into  the  old,  crumbling  fabric.  Nevertheless 
De  Lagarde  could  say  of  the  scholars  who  had  taken  part  in 
the  work  : 

"  These  theologians  of  acknowledged  standing  have  given  us 
a  Bible  in  a  language  which  is  not  our  own,  a  Bible  in  which  one 
seeks  in  vain  for  the  indispensable  emendations  with  which  the 
revisers  were  familiar,  a  Bible  the  revisers  of  which  have  of  set 
purpose  ignored  the  labours  of  their  most  painstaking  and  self- 
sacrificing  colleagues,  a  Bible  which  passes  over  in  silence  all  the 
essential  developments  in  theology  and  religion."2 

"  A  language  that  is  not  ours,"  is  also  the  main  complaint  of 
the  Protestant  theologian  S.  Oettli  concerning  this  Bible  ;  he  also 
numbers  among  its  failings  its  retention  of  certain  old  German 
words  and  of  Luther's  German  rendering  of  the  Divine  names  and 
the  expressions  Scheol,  Hades,  Daemon,  etc.  The  principles 
which  ruled  the  revision  were  "  anything  but  unexceptionable," 
and  the  result  of  the  work  seemed  "  unsatisfactory."  Oettli 
demonstrates  the  "  backwardness  "  of  the  church  Bible  by  com 
paring  portions  of  the  Bible  taken  from  the  revised  text  with 
exact  translations  of  the  same  passages.3 

1  Nestle,   Art.  "  Bibelubersetzungen,   deutsche  "  in  "  RE.  f.  prot. 
Theol.,"3  p.  73. 

2  In  the  article  on  the  "  revised  "  Luther  Bible  of  1883,  in  "  Gottin- 
ger  Gel.  Anziegen,"   1885,  Hft.  2,  reprinted  in  De  Lagarde's  "  Mitteil- 
ungen,"  3,  1889,  335  ff.     Cp.  above,  p.  512. 

3  Oettli,  "  Die  revidierte  Lutherbibel,"  1908. 


THE  GERMAN  BIBLE  525 

All  the  surreptitious  alterations  and  ambiguities  we  have 
alluded  to  above,  for  which  Luther's  theology  was  responsible, 
have  been  left  untouched,  save  for  the  few  exceptions  already 
mentioned.  And  yet  the  introduction  which  tells  the  story  of 
the  revision  and  is  printed  at  the  beginning  of  the  edition  of  1883 
admits,  though  with  extreme  caution,  that,  in  places,  Luther 
"  had  been  led  to  put  his  own  explanations  into  his  translation  of 
certain  passages."1  In  spite  of  the  admitted  incorrectness  of  the 
renderings  in  question  the  revisers  chose  to  "be  governed  by  the 
strange  principle,  that  "  texts  to  which  the  people  have  become 
attached  under  the  form  given  them  by  Luther,  owing  to  their 
use  in  the  church  and  in  works  of  piety,  are,  as  far  as  possible, 
to  be  retained  unchanged,  or  only  to  undergo  slight  alteration."2 
Owing  to  their  laxity  in  this  respect  they  were  to  hear  from  their 
co-religionists  that,  in  the  new  Bible,  they  had  "  sacrificed  their 
understanding  "  to  Luther,3  and  again  :  "  If  the  [Lutheran] 
Church  after  three  and  a  half  centuries,  with  the  help  of  her  best- 
esteemed  theologians,  can  produce  nothing  better  than  this 
revision  of  her  principal  treasure,  then  sentence  has  already  been 
passed  on  her.  What  can  flourish  in  the  Lutheran  Church  if  the 
study  of  the  Word  of  God  does  not  ?  "4 

We  may  add  :  How  much  better  would  not  the  results  have 
been,  and  with  what  emulation  would  not  the  work  have  been 
undertaken  had  Protestant  scholars  been  summoned  to  labour  in 
unison  to  supply  the  members  of  their  communion  with  a  brand 
new  translation,  quite  independent  of  Luther's,  which  should 
tally  with  the  best  present-day  knowledge  ?  In  asking  this 
question  we  are,  of  course,  ignoring  the  inward  difficulties 
presented  by  the  difference  of  standpoint.  In  any  case,  however, 
the  unprejudiced  observer  will  see  in  the  history  of  this  revision 
and  of  similar  attempts  at  revision  made  in  the  past,  how  heavily 
the  burden  of  a  single  great  name  may  weigh  on  whole  generations. 

A  result  of  greater  importance  for  the  present  subject  is, 
however,  that  Luther's  German  Bible,  in  spite  of  all  the 
pains  taken  by  its  author,  falls  far  short  of  the  ideal  of 
scholarship  and  impartial  fidelity.  For  these  defects  the 
real  merits  of  its  German  garb  cannot  compensate. 

Psychological  Aspects  of  Luther's   Work  on  the 
German  Bible 

In  Protestant  works  on  Luther  written  in  a  pious  vein 
we  often  find  him  depicted  as  animated  solely  by  the  desire 
to  enjoy  the  heavenly  consolation  of  the  holy  Word  of  God 
and  to  make  it  known  to  his  fellow  Germans.  In  such  works 
all  his  secondary,  personal  and  polemical  motives  tend  to 

1  P.  lix.        2  Ib.        3  De  Lagarde,  art.  quoted,  p.  524,  n.  2.        4  Ib. 


526         LUTHER  THE   REFORMER 

disappear  from  view,  and  his  guiding  star  during  the  three 
and  twenty  long  years  during  which  he  was  busy  on  the 
Bible  seems  to  be  nothing  but  the  desire  to  satisfy  the  soul 
that  craves  for  God  and  the  glory  of  the  Master. 

Were  this  the  case,  then  the  task  chosen  was  certainly  of 
an  eminently  peaceful  and  religious  character.  Yet  we  find 
often  enough  in  Luther  allusions  to  purposes  of  a  different 
kind  to  which  too  little  attention  is  generally  paid  in 
Protestant  literature  of  the  sort  we  are  referring  to.  Indeed 
the  question  arises  whether,  psychologically,  the  secondary 
aims  are  not  to  be  regarded  as  quite  as  powerful  as  his 
supposed  leading  motive. 

The  tendencies  which  his  statements  betray  are  various  ; 
first  and  foremost  we  have  those  of  a  polemical  nature,  also 
his  desire  to  enhance  his  own  personal  position.  As  we  are 
here  dealing  with  the  German  Bible,  which  a  recent  writer 
has  described  as  the  "  crown  of  Luther's  creations,"  we  are 
amply  justified  in  looking  into  these  psychological  motives, 
the  more  so  since  they  throw  a  new  light  on  the  alterations 
in  the  sacred  text  referred  to  above  which  Luther  undertook 
in  the  interests  of  his  theology. 

The  Bible,  so  he  declares  in  his  "  Von  den  letzten  Wort  en 
Davids  "  in  1543,  could  not  be  interpreted  by  Papists  or 
Jews  but  only  by  those  who  "  truly  and  rightly  "  possess 
Christ.  Speaking  from  the  standpoint  of  his  own  teaching 
he  says  :  "  Whoever  does  not  really  and  truly  hold,  or 
wish  to  hold,  this  man  Who  is  called  Jesus  Christ,  the  Son 
of  God,  Whom  we  Christians  preach,  let  him  leave  the  Bible 
alone.  .  .  .  What  else  did  the  Pope  lack  ?  Had  they  not 
the  sure,  bright  and  mighty  word  of  the  New  Testament  ? 
What  else  is  wanting  to  our  sects  at  the  present  time  ?  ??1 
Since  the  Papists  will  not  join  those  who  had  re-discovered 
the  "  mind  of  Christ  "2  and  revealed  it  to  humanity,  let  them 
keep  their  hands  off  the  Bible.  Another  will  interpret  it 
for  them. 

But,  even  apart  from  the  "  mind  of  Christ,"  something 
else  was  wanting  to  the  Papists  which  Luther  could  boast 
of  possessing,  viz.  learning  and  a  knowledge  of  the  German 
language  :  "  If  I,  Dr.  Luther,  could  have  felt  sure,"  so  he 
wrote  in  his  "  Sendbrieff  von  Dolmetzschen  "  of  1530, 
"that  all  the  Papists  taken  in  a  lump  were  sufficiently 
1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  37,  p.  3.  2  Ib.,  p.  5. 


THE  GERMAN  BIBLE  527 

skilful  to  be  able  to  translate  even  one  chapter  of  the  Bible 
into  German  faithfully  and  rightly  I  should  in  good  sooth 
have  been  humble  enough  to  beg  their  help  and  assistance 
in  translating  the  New  Testament  into  German.  But 
because  I  knew  and  still  see  with  my  own  eyes  that  not  one 
of  them  knows  how  to  translate  or  to  speak  German  aright, 
I  have  not  troubled  about  it."1 

It  was  now  his  intention,  as  he  declares  at  the  beginning 
of  his  preface  to  the  German  New  Testament,  that  the  great 
work  he  had  produced  should  make  an  end  of  the  "  old 
delusion"  in  which  the  whole  world  was  sunk,  viz.  "that 
men  do  not  really  know  what  is  the  Law  or  the  Gospel,  or 
what  the  New  or  the  Old  Testament."2  He  is  determined, 
so  he  tells  us,  by  popularising  his  New  Testament  to  show 
the  people  that  the  Gospel  is  not  to  be  turned  into  a  "  code 
of  laws  or  a  handbook,"  as  had  "  hitherto  been  the  case  and 
as  certain  earlier  prefaces  even  by  St.  Jerome  "  had  proposed. 
For  the  Gospel  does  not  really  require  our  works  that  we 
may  become  devout  and  thus  be  saved,  nay,  it  condemns 
such  works,  but  it  does  demand  that  we  should  believe  that 
Christ  has  overcome  sin,  death  and  hell  for  us  and  therefore 
that  He  makes  us  pious,  vivifies  us  and  saves  us,  not  by  our 
own  works  but  by  His  work,  i.e.  by  His  death  and  passion. 
"  Hence  it  is,  that,  no  Law  is  given  to  the  believer  whereby 
he  may  be  justified  before  God."3  It  was  his  old  antagonism 
to  the  importance  of  man's  co-operation  with  grace  and  to 
good  works  that  made  him  place  at  the  head  of  both  his 
German  Testaments  his  motto  against  works,  so  indicative 
of  his  tendency.  In  the  beginning  of  the  preface  to  the  first 
part  of  the  Old  Testament  (1523)  we  read  that  Moses,  in  his 
1st  Book,  taught  that  "  it  was  not  by  the  Law  or  by  our  own 
works  that  sin  and  death  were  to  be  vanquished,"  but  only 
by  the  seed  of  the  woman,  that  is  Christ  ;  "in  order  that 
faith  may  be  exalted  from  the  beginning  of  Scripture  above 
all  works,  Law  or  merit.  Thus  the  1st  Book  of  Moses 
contains  hardly  anything  but  examples  of  faith  and  unbelief, 
and  of  the  fruits  of  faith  and  unbelief,  and  is  thus  almost  an 
evangelical  book."4 

That  the  German  Bible  was  intended  as  a  bulwark  of  the 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  30,  2,  p.  633  ;   Erl.  ed.,  65,  p.  104. 

2  Preface  of  1522,  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  63,  p.  108. 

3  /&.,  p.  112f.  4  Ib.,  p.  9. 


528         LUTHER   THE   REFORMER 

Evangel  was  also  plain  from  the  illustrations.  For  the  New 
Testament  contained,  as  Duke  George  complained  when 
interdicting  it,  "  many  disgraceful  pictures,  ridiculing  and 
deriding  His  Holiness  the  Pope  and  fortifying  his  [Luther's] 
doctrines."1  Emser,  too,  refers  to  these  pictures  in  his 
protest  :  "  How  should  Christians  accept  the  work  of  one 
who  has  been  openly  branded  as  a  heretic,  a  work  which 
lacks  the  approbation  of  the  church,  and,  moreover,  insults 
and  reviles  the  Pope  in  abusive  figures,  pictures,  words  and 
insinuations  ?  "2  Thus,  for  instance,  in  the  woodcuts 
appended  to  the  Apocalypse  the  scarlet  woman  of  Babylon 
and  likewise  the  dragon,  the  monster  from  the  pit,  both  wear 
the  papal  tiara.  In  Apoc.  xiv.  Babylon  is  depicted  as  Rome, 
Sant'  Angelo,  St.  Peter's,  the  Belvedere  of  the  Pope's  palace 
and  Santa  Maria  Rotunda  are  all  collapsing,  whilst  in 
chapter  xviii.  these  same  buildings  are  shown  in  flames.3 

In  Luther's  Bible  the  Catholic  rulers  were  directly 
attacked  in  the  heading  chosen  in  1529  for  the  book  of 
Wisdom  :  "  The  Wisdom  of  Solomon  for  the  Tyrants." 
"  The  book  should  above  all  be  read,"  he  here  says,  "  by 
the  big  Johnnies  who  rage  against  their  subjects  and 
against  the  guiltless  on  account  of  the  Word  of  God  "  ;  for 
"  in  this  book  the  tyrants  are  violently  taken  to  task  and 
scourged."  "  Hence  this  book  is  very  much  in  place  in  our 
day."4 

The  introduction  to  Romans  (1522)  not  only  exposes  at 
length  the  doctrine  of  faith  alone,  which  Luther  supposed 
Paul  to  have  taught  in  this  Epistle,  but  also  warns  all  against 
the  "  verminous  medley  of  men-made  laws  and  ordinances 
under  which  the  whole  world  groans."  Rightly  enough  had 
Paul  said  of  the  makers  of  these  laws,  that  their  God  is  their 
belly.5 

As  we  are  here  less  concerned  with  the  theological  import 
ance  of  Luther's  German  Bible  than  with  the  spirit  which 
inspired  its  composition,  we  shall  only  remind  the  reader 
briefly,  that  the  work  of  translation  was  intended  as  a 
solemn  expression  of  the  author's  root  ideas  according  to 
which  the  Bible  was  the  only  true  source  of  faith.  From 

1  Cp.  Hausrath,  "  Luthers  Leben,"  2,  p.  141. 

2  In  the  preface  to  the  work   "  Auss  was  Grund,"   etc.     Above, 
p.  519,  n.  1.    G.  Kawerau,  "  Hier.  Emser,"  p.  60. 

3  Kawerau,  ib.,  p.  66. 

4  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  63,  p.  95  f.  5  16.,  p.  137. 


THE  GERMAN  BIBLE  529 

the  Bible  alone,  so  he  taught,  all  must  derive  their  faith 
and  find  the  way  of  salvation  under  the  direct  inspiration 
of  the  spirit  from  on  high  ;  it  ought  to  be  in  the  hands  of 
all,  even  of  the  unlearned.  Hence,  in  his  "  To  the  German 
Nobility  "  of  1520,  he  had  declared  that  the  Bible,  and 
particularly  the  Gospel,  ought  to  be  in  the  hands  of  every 
body,  even  of  the  boys  and  girls.1 

We  find  Luther,  says  Risch,  regarding  the  Bible  and  its  use 
from  "  a  new  standpoint  diametrically  opposed  to  the  Catholic, 
and  which  found  its  ripest  expression  in  his  German  Bible."2 

O.  Reichert  likewise  has  it,  that  the  "  chief  incentive  to  his 
translation  of  the  Bible,"  was  the  determination  in  which  his 
whole  life's  work  centred,  of  unlocking  for  the  German  people 
by  means  of  a  thoroughly  German  translation,  that  book  with 
the  help  of  which  "  each  one  could  live  up  to  his  faith  and  be 
assured  of  his  salvation."3 

"  Only  now,"  says  Hausrath,  speaking  of  the  spread  of  Luther's 
Bible,4  "  could  the  burghers  feel  that  they  had  attained  to  man 
hood  in  the  matter  of  religion,  and  that  the  universal  priesthood 
had  become  a  reality.  The  head  of  each  household  had  now  the 
well-spring  of  all  religious  truth  brought  to  his  very  door.  To 
the  Papists  this  seemed  an  abomination,  as  Cochlaeus  admits 
when  he  says,  that  every  cobbler  and  old  crony  was  poring 
over  the  New  Testament  as  a  source  of  all  truth.5  Even  the 
populace  took  part  in  the  controversies  of  the  learned,  having 
now  begun  to  see  that  the  faith  concerned  them  too.  For  a  while 
this  could  lead  to  strange  excesses,  as  the  theology  of  the  New 
Prophets  showed."  Still,  "  the  advent  of  the  German  Bible  was 
the  dawn  of  freedom." 

Johann  Fabri,  who  had  recognised  Luther's  aims,  was  at  one 
with  Cochlseus  and  Emser  in  lending  support  to  the  prohibition 
issued  against  the  German  Bible.  To  Luther  he  said  :  "  Your 
Testament  works  more  harm  than  all  the  idolatrous  books  of 
Ephesus  (Acts  xix.  19),  nay,  than  the  hail  in  Egypt."6  This  was, 
as  it  were,  his  answer  to  the  wish  Luther  had  expressed  to  his 
friend  Lang  as  early  as  Dec.  18,  1521  :  "  Oh,  that  every  little 

Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  6,  p.  461  ;   Erl.  ed.,  21,  p.  349. 

N.  kirchl.  Zeitschr.,"  1911,  p.  123. 

Luthers  deutsche  Bibel,"  p.  6. 

Luthers  Leben,"  1,  p.  136. 

Comment,  de  actis  et  scriptis  Lutheri,"  p.  55.  Cochlseus 
laments  in  this  passage  the  disputations  which  the  common  people 
entered  upon  with  the  clergy,  and  describes  the  universal  Bible  reading 
of  the  unlearned  as  one  of  the  causes  of  the  spread  of  the  apostasy. 
Nor  does  he  conceal  the  fact  that  some  of  the  laity  were  able  in  contro 
versy  to  quote  Scripture  with  greater  fluency  than  the  Catholic  priests 
and  monks. 

6  "  Christenliche  Underrichtung  Dr.  Johann  Fabri,"  etc.,  Dresden, 
1528.    Bl.  Biij.,  Kostlin-Kawerau,  1,  p.  783, 

V, — 2  M 


530          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

town  had  its  translator  !  Oh,  that  this  book  might  be  found  on 
the  lips  of  all,  in  their  hands,  before  their  eyes,  and  in  their  ears 
and  hearts."1 

A  surprising  psychological  trait  is  the  haughty  self- 
satisfaction  evinced  by  Luther  with  his  grand  achievement 
when  objections  were  raised. 

He  had  repeatedly  proclaimed  that  he  intended  every 
thing  solely  for  the  honour  of  God.2  But  woe  to  anyone  who 
in  any  way  attacked  his  own  honour  !  For,  by  this  work, 
Luther  had  vindicated  his  mission  as  the  appointed  preacher 
to  the  Germans  ;  only  at  Wittenberg,  where  the  Bible  was 
taken  really  seriously,  were  people  able  to  fathom  the 
secrets  of  this  sealed  book. 

"  What  is  needed,"  he  says  in  1530,  in  his  "  Sendbrieff  von 
Dolmetzschefi,"  speaking  of  the  work  of  translation,  "is  a  truly 
pious,  faithful,  God-fearing,  Christian,  learned,  tried  and  experi 
enced  heart.  Hence  I  hold  that  no  false  Christian  or  sectarian 
can  translate  faithfully."3  Not  only  does  he  deem  himself 
qualified  for  the  task,  but,  as  he  declares  in  1523,  he  knows 
nobody  else  who  "  can,  within  a  twentieth  part,"  do  as  well  as  he, 
though  many  find  fault  with  his  Bible.  "  I  know  that  I  am  more 
learned  than  all  the  Universities,  those  sophists  by  the  grace  of 
God."  True  enough,  "  even  if  we  all  set  to  work  with  a  will,  we 
should  still  have  enough  to  do  to  bring  the  Bible  to  light,  one  by 
means  of  his  reason,  another  by  his  knowledge  of  languages." 
But  all  these  critics,  "  who  blame  me  here  and  there,"  "  know 
that  they  themselves  are  unable  to  do  it,  yet  they  would  fain 
make  themselves  out  to  be  proficient  in  an  art  that  is  entirely 
foreign  to  them."  To  him  their  objections  were  but  "  the  mud 
that  clings  to  the  wheels."4 

Thanks  to  himself,  he  says,  "  the  German  language  has  now 
a  better  Bible  than  the  Latin  [the  Vulgate]  ;  in  support  of  this 
I  appeal  to  the  reader."5 

Of  the  superiority  of  his  Bible  over  the  Latin  Vulgate  in  the 
matter  of  accuracy  he  had  not  the  slightest  doubt.  "  St.  Jerome," 
he  wrote  in  1533,  "  and  many  others  from  among  the  masses, 
have  made  more  mistakes  in  translating  than  we,  both  in  the 
Latin  and  in  the  Greek."6 — Should  anyone  attempt  to  translate 
the  Psalms  and  refuse  to  be  guided  in  his  work  by  Luther's 
German  Psalter, so  he  says  in  the  same  passage,  "he  would  translate 
the  Psalter  in  such  a  way  that  precious  little  would  remain  in  it 
either  of  German  or  of  Hebrew."  "  But  a  man  who  is  unable  to 

1  "  Brief wechsel,"  3,  p.  256. 

2  Cp.  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  30,  2,  p.  640  ;    Erl.  ed.,  65,  p.  114. 

3  Ib.,  p.  640=115. 

4  Ib.,  Erl.  ed.,  63,  p.  24  f.     Preface  to  the  Old  Testament. 
6  Ib.,  p.  25.  6  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  37,  p.  £65. 


THE  GERMAN  BIBLE  531 

do  anything  good  himself  likes  to  court  praise  and  to  appear  an 
adept  by  abusing  and  crying  down  the  good  work  of  others."1 

Of  Emser  he  remarked,  that  he  had  admitted  by  his  amended 
edition  of  the  German  Bible  that,  "  my  German  is  good  and 
sweet  ;  he  saw  plainly  that  he  could  not  better  it,  and  yet  he 
wished  to  dishonour  it,  hence  he  took  my  Testament  and  copied 
it  almost  word  for  word."  "  I  am  glad  to  see  even  my  very  foes 
compelled  to  further  my  work."2 

"  If  anyone  will  translate  me  72  or  73  verses  aright,"  he 
assures  his  friends,  "I  will  give  him  50  florins.  But,  for  this,  he 
must  not  make  use  of  our  translation."3 — "  Since  the  heathen 
Church  has  existed  we  have  never  had  a  Bible  that  could  be  read 
and  understood  so  easily  and  readily  as  that  which  we  have 
produced  at  Wittenberg,  and,  praise  be  to  God,  put  into  German."4 

To  irritate  ("  irritare  ")  the  Papists  by  his  work,  to  rouse 
them  to  fury  ("  furiam  concitare  ")  and  to  let  loose  their 
"  calumnious  attacks  "  on  his  translation,  was  a  real 
pleasure  to  him.5  As  in  the  case  of  the  Papists,  so  also  in 
that  of  rivals  within  his  fold,  his  work  for  the  Bible  spelt 
their  undoing.  This  it  was  which  justified  him  against  all 
opponents. 

People  like  Osiander,  he  told  his  friends  in  1540,  single  out 
one  word  of  my  translation  "  in  order  to  find  a  ground  for  dis 
agreeing  with  us.  They  dispute  about  a  single  word  but  they 
are  after  more.  They  should  be  compelled  to  translate  the  whole 
Bible  and  then  we  should  see  what  they  are  able  to  do.  And 
Amsdorf  said  :  If  I  were  the  sovereign  I  should  clap  these 
wiseacres  into  cells  and  order  them  to  translate  Holy  Scripture 
without  making  use  of  Luther's  Bible.  Then  we  should  soon  see 
what  they  could  do."6  "When  we  were  at  Marburg  [at  the 
religious  Conference  in  1529],"  Luther  once  remarked,  "  Zwingli 
always  spoke  in  Greek  "  ;  he  declared  he  had  studied  the  Greek 
Testament  for  thirteen  years  ;  "  Oh,  no,  something  more  is 
needed  than  the  mere  reading  of  the  Testament,  but  these  people 

1  16.,  p.  265  f. 

2  "  Sendbrieff  von  Dolmetzschen,"    "  Werke,"    Weim.   ed.,    30,    2, 
p.  634  f.  ;    Erl.  ed.,  65,  p.  106  f. 

3  "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  2,  p.  213. 

4  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  57,  p.  4,  Table-Talk. 

5  To  Nic.  Hausmann,  Jan.  21,   1531,   "  Brief wechsel,"   8,  p.  349  : 
"  Recudimus    iam    psalterium    germanicum    pro    calumniatoribus    irri- 
tandis"     Cp.  to  the  same,  Feb.  25,  1530,  ib.,  7,  p.  232,  on  the  fresh 
edition  of   the  New  Testament   then   undertaken  with  Melanchthon  : 
"  Novam  furiam  concitaturi  contra  nos  apud  papistas"  and  to  Wen- 
ceslaus  Link,  Jan.    15,    1531,  ib.,   8,  p.  345  :    "  Dabimus  operam  .  .  . 
ut  (David)  purius  Germanum  sonet,  multam  occasionem  calumniatoribus 
dantes,  ut  habeant,  quo  in  translationem  nostram  suam  rabidam  invidiam 
exerceant  et  acuant,  nee  tamen  exsaturent." 

6  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  121. 


532          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

are  blinded  by  ambition  "  ;  that  was  why  Zwingli  had  used 
Greek  and  Hebrew  when  preaching  at  Marburg.1  Carlstadt,  too, 
was  always  making  a  display  of  his  Greek  and  Hebrew,2  but  all 
of  them  were  only  able  to  "  pick  holes  in  the  Scriptures  "  which 
Luther  had  translated.3 

He  was  determined  that  nobody  should  be  allowed  to  interfere 
in  his  Bible  and  protests  in  his  own  way  against  any  alterations. 
He  wrote  in  1539  :  "I  beg  all  my  friends,  foes,  masters,  printers 
and  readers  to  look  upon  this  New  Testament  as  my  own  ;  if  they 
have  any  fault  to  find  with  it,  then  let  them  make  a  new  one  for 
themselves.  I  know  full  well  what  I  am  about,  and  I  can  also  see 
what  others  are  able  to  do.  But  this  Testament  is  to  be  Luther's 
own  German  Testament  !  For  of  criticism  and  cavilling  there  is 
now  no  end."4 

Which  of  his  rivals  had  ever  had  to  contend  with  "  tempta 
tions  "  when  engaged  on  the  Bible  ?  He,  however,  had  to 
thank  his  "  combats  "  for  having  been  his  instructors.5 
Minister,  so  Luther  said  in  1536,  accused  him  of  making 
certain  mistakes  in  his  translation  of  the  book  of  Jonas. 
"  Yes,  dear  Miinster,  you  have  never  been  through  these 
temptations.  I,  like  Jonas,  have  looked  into  the  belly  of 
the  whale  where  all  seemed  given  over  to  despair."6  "  The 
pious  are  like  unto  Jonas  ;  they  are  cast  into  the  sea  of 
despair,  nay,  into  hell  itself."7 

Discontent  and  vexation — temptations  of  another  kind— 
frequently  overwhelmed  him  whilst  engaged  on  his  Bible. 
Even  his  unprecedented  success  did  not  satisfy  him  ;  the 
Bible  did  not  seem  to  him  to  be  selling  quick  enough,  nor  to 
be  made  use  of  to  the  extent  he  wished ;  again,  he  feared, 
that  in  the  future,  it  would  lose  its  interest. 

"  I  fear,"  he  said  in  Nov.,  1540,  "  that  the  Bible  will  not  be 
much  read,  for  people  are  very  weary  of  it  and  no  one  reprints  it 
now."8  His  views  regarding  the  future  were  even  more  gloomy  : 
"  When  I  die  there  will  not  be  a  curate,  teacher  or  sacristan  who 
will  not  set  to  work  to  render  the  Bible  on  his  own.  Our  version 
will  no  longer  be  valued.  All  our  works  will  be  thrown  aside,  yea, 
even  the  Bible  and  the  Postils,  for  the  world  ever  yearns  for 
something  new."9 — "  I  am  sick  of  Holy  Scripture  ;  see  that  you 

i  16.,  p.  121  f.  2  /&.,  p.  175. 

3  Cp.  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  23,  p.  69  f.  ;   Erl.  ed.,  30,  p.  19. 

4  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  63,  p.  115. 

5  Cp.  Preface  of  1539,  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  63,  p.  405. 

6  Mathesius,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  384. 

7  Do.  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  291. 

8  Do.,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  240.     Cp.  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  82. 

9  Do.,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  273. 


THE  GERMAN  BIBLE  533 

make  a  good  use  of  it  after  my  death.  It  has  cost  us  enough  toil 
yet  is  but  little  regarded  by  our  own  people."1  "  So  profitable  is 
the  German  Bible  that  no  one  knows  how  to  esteem  it  high 
enough  ;  no  one  sees  what  knowledge  it  has  unlocked  to  the 
world.  What  formerly  we  sought  with  much  trouble  and 
constant  study  and  even  then  were  unable  to  find,  is  now  offered 
to  us  in  the  plainest  language  ;  though  we  looked  for  it  in  vain  in 
the  obscurity  of  the  olden  version."2 — He  does  not  tell  us  whether 
it  is  the  Vulgate  or  the  mediaeval  German  Bible  which  he  here 
refers  to  as  so  obscure  in  comparison  with  his  own  Bible. 

What  appears  to  have  afforded  him  most  satisfaction  was 
that  he  had  been  able  to  counteract  the  false  translations 
and  commentaries  of  the  Jews.  Often  does  he  mention  this  as 
one  of  the  advantages  of  his  Bible,  and  it  is  perfectly  true 
that  his  felicitous  and  correct  exposition  particularly  of 
the  Messianic  predictions  based  on  the  Hebrew  text  is 
deserving  of  all  praise. 

He  pointed  out  incidentally  to  his  friends,  that,  in  his  Bible,  he 
had  "protested  very  strongly  against  the  Rabbis,"3  and,  in  his 
"  On  the  Last  Words  of  David,"  he  congratulated  himself  when 
comparing  his  own  interpretation  with  that  of  the  Jews  :  "  The 
Jews,  because  they  do  not  accept  Christ,  cannot  know  or  under 
stand  what  is  said  by  Moses,  the  Prophets  and  the  Psalms.  .  .  . 
Scripture  must  seem  to  them  as  an  epistle  does  to  a  man  who 
cannot  read."  "  Unless  we  devote  our  energies  to  bringing  t^e 
Hebrew  Bible,  wherever  this  is  possible,  into  touch  with  the  New 
Testament  in  a  sense  contrary  to  the  Eabbinists,  then  it  would 
be  better  to  keep  to  the  old  version  [the  Vulgate]  which,  after  all, 
is  the  best."4 — His  statement  here,  provided  of  course  that  the 
proviso  "  wherever  this  is  possible,"  be  rigidly  observed,  is  not 
altogether  devoid  of  truth. 

In  spite  of  this,  however,  his  conscience  often  told  him  that  his 
acquaintance  with  Hebrew  was  not  equal  to  that  of  the  Jewish 
commentators.  He  admitted  even  in  later  years  that  he  was  no 
"  grammatical  or  regular  Hebraist."5  "  His  familiarity  with  the 
language  of  the  Old  Testament  was  due,  for  the  most  part,  as  he 
himself  says,  to  his  constant  reading  of  it  and  to  his  comparing 
together  the  different  passages  in  order  to  arrive  at  their  true 
meaning."6 

Julius  Kostlin,  Luther's  best-known  biographer,  from 
whom  the  words  just  quoted  are  taken,  declares,  that,  in  his 
translation  of  the  Bible,  Luther  "bestowed  on  his  German 

1  Do.,  "  Aufzeichn.,"  p.  251.  2  Ib.,  p.  281. 

3  Do.,  "  Tischreden,"  p.  145,  1540. 

4  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  37,  p.  4. 

6  Kostlin- Kawerau,  1,  p.  569.  6  Ib. 


534          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

people  the  greatest  possible  gift  "  ;  Luther  wished  to  make 
of  the  Book  of  Books  "  an  heirloom  of  the  whole  German 
nation."1  Similar  enthusiastic  allusions  to  "  the  gift  to  the 
nation  "  are  often  met  with  in  Protestant  writers.  They, 
however,  overlook  the  fact  that  it  was  only  to  a  fraction  of 
the  German  nation,  viz.  to  his  co-religionists,  that  Luther 
offered  this  gift  ;  moreover,  they  seem  forgetful  of  a  remark 
once  made  by  Luther  to  a  very  intimate  friend,  which  is  far 
from  enthusiastic  and  anything  but  complimentary  to  his 
German  fellow-countrymen.  The  remark  in  question 
occurs  in  a  letter  of  Luther's  dated  Feb."  4,  1527,  and 
addressed  to  Johann  Lang  of  Erfurt  ;  evidently  he  was 
extremely  annoyed  at  the  time.  It  runs  as  follows  :  "I  am 
busy  with  Zacharias  [the  translation  of  which  was  then  in 
the  press]  and  have  begun  the  translation  of  the  Prophets, 
a  work  that  is  quite  in  keeping  with  the  gratitude  I  have 
hitherto  met  with  from  this  heathenish,  nay,  utterly  bestial 
nation."2  Even  so  severe  a  stricture  must  not  be  lost  to 
sight  by  the  historian  desirous  of  tracing  a  psychological 
picture  of  the  author's  feelings  at  the  time  he  was  engaged 
on  the  translation. 

Finally  it  is  instructive  from  the  psychological  standpoint 
to  trace  the  development  in  Luther's  mind  of  the  fable — to 
l?e  dealt  with  more  fully  below — that,  under  Popery,  the 
Bible  had  been  discarded  and  that  he,  Luther,  had  brought 
it  once  more  to  light.3 

To  begin  with,  he  merely  claimed  to  have  discovered  the  true 
meaning  of  Scripture  on  the  controversial  points  he  himself  had 
raised. 4  It  was  the  more  easy  for  him  to  attribute  to  his  Catholic 
contemporaries  ignorance  of  the  Bible,  seeing  that  in  those  years 
the  exegetical  side  of  sacred  learning  had  been  to  some  extent 
neglected  in  favour  of  the  discussions  of  the  schoolmen.  When 
afterwards  he  had  been  dazed  by  his  great  success  with  his 
translation  of  the  Bible  he  was  led  to  fancy  that  he  was  the  first 
to  open  up  the  domain  of  Holy  Scripture.  This  impression  is 
closely  bound  up  with  the  arbitrary  pronouncements,  even  on 
the  weightiest  questions  of  the  Canon,  which  we  find  scattered 
throughout  his  prefaces  to  the  books  of  the  Bible.  He  frequently 
repeats  that  he  had  forced  all  his  opponents  to  take  up  the  study 
of  the  Bible  and  that  it  was  he  alone  who  had  made  them  see  the 

1  Ib. 

2  "  Dignissimum  opus  gratitudine,  qua  me  hactenus  excepit  barbara 
hcec  et  vere  bestialis  natio."  3  See  the  next  section. 

4  See  below,  p.  541,  his  statement  against  Eraser. 


THE  GERMAN  BIBLE  535 

need  of  their  devoting  themselves  to  this  branch  of  learning — so 
as  to  be  able  to  refute  him.  Here  of  course  he  is  exaggerating 
the  facts  of  the  case.  Accustomed  as  he  was  to  hyperbole,  we 
soon  find  him  declaring,  first  as  a  paradox  and  then  as  actual 
fact,  that  the  Bible  had  been  buried  in  oblivion  among  the 
Catholics.  The  Papal  Antichrist  had  destroyed  all  reverence 
for  the  Bible  and  all  understanding  of  it  ;  only  that  all  men 
without  exception  might  not  run  headlong  to  spiritual  destruc 
tion  had  Christ,  as  it  were  by  "  force,"  preserved  the  "  simple 
text  of  the  Gospel  on  the  lecterns  "  "  even  under  the  rule  of 
Antichrist."1 

Luther  utterly  discarded  the  principles  of  antiquity 
concerning  the  Bible,  but  nevertheless  he  made  abundant 
use  in  his  translation  of  the  literary  assistance  afforded  him 
by  the  Catholic  past. 

In  the  Old  Testament,  the  Church's  Latin  translation, 
viz.  the  Vulgate,  and  the  Greek  Septuagint  were  of  great 
service  to  him,  but  he  also  made  use  of  the  Latin  translation 
of  Santes  Pagninus  (not  to  speak  of  that  of  the  Protestant, 
Seb.  Miinster)  and  likewise  of  the  Commentaries,  as,  for 
instance,  of  the  "  Glossa  ordinaria "  and  the  works  of 
Nicholas  of  Lyra  (f  1340). 

An  unkindly  saying  current  at  a  later  date  in  Catholic 
circles  concerning  Lyra's  widely-known  Bible  Postils 
declared  :  "  Si  Lyra  non  lyrasset,  Lutherus  non  saltasset." 
The  saying  is,  however,  met  with  under  another  form  even 
before  Luther's  day,  and  in  this  older  guise  serves  to  show 
the  high  esteem  in  which  Lyra's  Commentary  was  held  ; 
here  it  runs  :  "  Nisi  Lyra  lyrasset,  nemo  doctorum  in  bibliam 
saltasset."2  Not  only  Lyra  but  many  other  Bible  commen 
tators  stood  in  high  favour  among  Catholic  scholars  at  the 
close  of  the  Middle  Ages,  nor  was  there  before  Luther's  day 
any  such  absence  of  respect  for  the  Bible  or  ignorance  of  its 
contents,  whether  in  the  original  text  or  in  German  transla 
tions  as  he  would  have  us  believe. 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  30,  2,  p.  645  ;    Erl.  ed.,  65,  p.  122,  "  Send- 
brieff  von  Dolmetzschen." 

2  The  saying  appears  in  this  shape  in  Reisch's  "  Margarita  philo- 
sophica,"   Argentorati,    1508.      See  Nestle,    "  Jahrb.  f.   deut.   Theol.," 
1877,  p.  668.     In  fact  it  is  there  described  as  a  common  "  proverbi^m 
inter  theologos."     Another  later  form  ran  :    "Si  Lyra  non  lyrasset,  tot  us 
mundus  delyrasset." 


536          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 


The  Bible  in  the  Ages  before  Luther 

It  would  be  to  perpetuate  a  prejudice  all  too  long  current 
among  Protestants,  founded  on  Luther's  often  false  or  at 
least  exaggerated  statements,  were  one  to  fail  to  recognise 
how  widely  the  Bible  was  knowTn  even  before  Luther's  day 
and  to  what  an  extent  it  was  studied  among  educated 
people.  Modern  research,  not  seldom  carried  out  by  open- 
minded  Protestants,  has  furnished  some  surprising  results 
in  this  respect,  so  that  one  of  the  most  recent  and  diligent  of 
the  Protestant  workers  in  this  field  could  write  :  "If  every 
thing  be  taken  into  account  it  will  no  longer  be  possible  to 
say  as  the  old  polemics  did,  that  the  Bible  was  a  sealed  book 
to  both  theologians  and  laity.  The  more  we  study  the  Middle 
Ages,  the  more  does  this  fable  tend  to  dissolve  into  thin 
air."  "  The  Middle  Ages  concerned  themselves  with  Bible 
translation  much  more  than  was  formerly  supposed."1 

According  to  a  careful  summary  recently  published  by  Franz 
Falk  no  less  than  156  different  Latin  editions  of  the  Bible  were 
printed  in  the  period  between  the  discovery  of  the  art  of  print 
ing  and  the  year  of  Luther's  excommunication,  i.e.  from  1450  to 
1520.  To  this  must  also  be  added  at  that  time  many  transla 
tions  of  the  whole  Bible,  many  of  them  emanating  from  what 
was  to  be  the  home  of  the  innovations,  viz.  17  German,  11  Italian, 
10  French,  2  Bohemian,  1  Belgian,  1  Limousine  and  1  Russian 
edition,  making  in  all,  with  the  6  Hebrew  editions  also  known,  199 
editions  of  the  complete  Bible.  Of  the  German  editions  14  are 
in  the  dialect  of  Upper  Germany.2 

Besides  this  the  common  people  also  possessed  extracts  of  the 
Sacred  Book,  the  purchase  of  the  entire  Bible  being  beyond 
their  slender  means.  The  Psalter  and  the  Postils  were  widely 
known  and  both  played  a  great  part  in  the  religious  life  of  the 
Middle  Ages.  The  Psalter,  or  German  translation  of  the  150 
Psalms,  was  used  as  a  manual  of  instruction  and  a  prayer- 
book  for  both  clergy  and  laity.  Twenty-two  translations  dating 
from  the  Middle  Ages  are  extant,  and  the  latter  editions  extend 
from  the  'seventies  of  the  15th  to  the  'twenties  of  the  16th 
century.  The  Postils  was  the  collection  of  lessons  from  both  Old 
and  New  Testaments,  prescribed  to  be  read  on  the  Sundays.  This 
collection  sufficed  for  the  people  and  provided  them  with  useful 
reading  matter,  with  which,  moreover,  they  were  rendered  even 

1  Kropatscheck,  "  Das  Schriftprinzip  der  lutherischen  Kirche,"   1, 
1904,  p.  163. — On  the  German  translations  see  below,  p.  542  ff. 

2  F.  Falk,   "  Die  Bibel  am  Ausgange  des  MA.  ihre  Kenntnis  und 
ihre  Verbreitung,"  Cologne,  1905,  pp.  24,  91  ff. 


THE  GERMAN  BIBLE  537 

more  familiar  owing  to  the  homilies  on  these  very  excerpts 
usually  given  on  the  Sundays.  The  early  printers  soon  helped 
to  spread  this  form  of  literature.  We  still  have  no  fewer  than 
103  printed  German  editions  of  the  Postils  (often  known  as 
Plenaries)  dating  from  the  above  period.1 

Of  the  importance  of  the  Plenaries  Risch  remarks  very  aptly  : 
"  In  them  the  ideal  of  a  popular  exposition  and  translation  of  the 
Bible  before  Luther's  day  finds  its  first  actual  expression.  That 
these  Plenaries — it  would  be  interesting  to  know  which  kind — 
were  the  first  incentive  to  Luther's  popular  works  of  piety,  and, 
at  times,  thanks  to  his  good  memory,  supplied  him  with  a  ready- 
made  German  translation  of  the  Bible,  appears  to  me  beyond 
question."  "  Thanks  to  these  Gospel-Books,  as  they  were 
frequently  called,  a  kind  of  German  '  Vulgate  '  covering  certain 
portions  of  the  Sacred  text  may  have  grown  up  even  before 
Luther's  day."2  "  Even  a  superficial  glance  at  the  Middle  Ages," 
says  Risch,  "  cannot  fail  to  show  us  the  gradual  upgrowth  of  a 
fixed  German  Biblical  vocabulary.  Luther  here  could  dip  into 
a  rich  treasure-house  and  select  the  best.  ...  In  laying  such 
stress  on  Luther's  indebtedness  to  the  past  we  have  no  wish  to 
call  into  question  the  real  originality  of  his  translation."3 

"  That,  during  the  Middle  Ages,"  says  another  Protestant 
scholar,  "  more  particularly  in  the  years  which  immediately 
preceded  Luther's  appearance,  the  Bible  was  a  well-spring 
completely  choked  up,  and  the  entrance  to  which  was  jealously 
guarded,  used  to  be,  and  probably  still  is,  the  prevailing  opinion. 
The  question  is,  however,  whether  this  opinion  is  correct."  "  We 
have  before  us  to-day  so  complete  a  history  of  the  Bible  in  the 
various  modern  languages  that  it  can  no  longer  be  said  that  the 
Vulgate  alone  was  in  use  and  that  the  laity  consequently  were 
ignorant  of  Scripture.  It  greatly  redounds  to  the  credit  of 
Protestant  theologians,  that  they,  more  than  any  others,  took  so 
large  a  part  in  collecting  this  enormous  store  of  material."  "  We 
must  admit  that  the  Middle  Ages  possessed  a  quite  surprising 
and  extremely  praiseworthy  knowledge  of  the  Bible,  such  as 
might  in  many  respects  put  our  own  age  to  shame."  "  We  have 
to  acknowledge  that  the  Bible  at  the  present  day  no  longer  forms 
the  foundation  of  our  knowledge  and  civilisation  to  the  same 
extent  as  it  did  in  the  Middle  Ages."4 

Who,  however,  was  responsible  for  the  prevalent  belief  that 
the  Middle  Ages  knew  nothing  of  the  Bible  ?  Who  was  it  who  so 
repeatedly  asserted  this,  that  he  misled  the  people  into  believing 
that  nobody  before  him  had  studied  Holy  Scripture,  and  that  it 
was  only  through  him  that  the  "  Word  of  God  had  been  drawTn 
forth  from  under  the  bench  "  ?  A  Protestant  quite  rightly 

1  Falk,  ib.,  p.  27  ff. 

2  Cp.  Moureck,   "  SB.  der  kgl.  Bohm.  Gesellschaft  d.  Wissensch., 
Phil.  KL,"  1892,  p.  176  ff. 

3  "  N.  kirchl.  Zeitschr.,"  1911,  p.  141. 

4  E.  v.   Dobschiitz,    "  Deutsche  Rundschau,"    101,    1900,  p.  61  ff. 
Falk,  ib.,  p.  86. 


538          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

reproves  the  "  bad  habit  "  of  accepting  the  estimate  of  ecclesi 
astical  conditions,  particularly  of  divine  worship,  current  "  with 
Luther  and  in  his  circle  "  j1  it  is,  however,  to  fall  short  of  the 
mark,  to  describe  merely  as  a  "  bad  habit  "  Luther's  flagrant 
and  insulting  falsehoods  against  the  ecclesiastical  conditions  at 
the  close  of  the  Middle  Ages,  falsehoods  for  which  his  own 
polemical  interests  were  solely  responsible. 

The  psychology  of  Luther's  gradual  approach  to  the 
statement  that  the  Bible  before  his  day  lay  under  the  bench, 
has  already  been  described  (p.  534  f.).  As  some  Protestants 
have  sought  to  clear  him  of  the  authorship  of  so  glaring  a 
fable  and  to  insinuate  that  the  expression  belongs  rather  to 
his  pupil  Mathesius,  we  must  here  look  a  little  more  closely 
into  the  words. 

Luther  himself  uses  the  saying,  for  instance,  when  claim 
ing  credit  in  his  Commentary  on  the  Prophet  Zacharias 
(chap,  viii.)  with  having  rendered  the  greatest  possible 
service  to  Scripture.  He  says  :  "  They  [the  Papists]  are 
still  angry  and  refuse  to  listen  when  people  say,  that,  with 
them,  Scripture  lay  under  the  bench,  and  that  their  mad 
delusions  alone  prevailed."  In  this  connection  the  Weimar 
editor  of  the  Commentary  refers  to  a  wrork  of  the  former 
Dominican,  Petrus  Sylvius,  aimed  at  Luther  and  entitled 
"  Von  den  vier  Evangelein,  so  eine  lange  Zeit  unter  der 
Bank  sein  gelegen.": — Popery,  Luther  says  in  another 
passage,  "  kicked  Scripture  under  the  bench."3  He  speaks 
repeatedly  in  the  Table-Talk4  of  the  "  Bible  under  the 
bench,"  which,  since  "  it  lay  forgotten  in  the  dust,"  he  had 
been  obliged  to  drag  again  into  the  light  of  day. 5 

Elsewhere  he  describes  in  detail  the  trouble  he  had  in 
pulling  the  Bible  from  "  under  the  bench,"  particularly 
owing  to  his  theological  rivals  and  the  sectarians  within  the 
camp  ;  on  this  occasion  his  black  outlook  as  to  the  future  of 
the  Bible  he  had  thus  set  free  scarcely  redounds  to  the 
credit  of  his  achievement.  He  says  in  his  tract  against 
Zwingli  ("  That  the  words  of  Christ,  '  This  is  My  Body,' 
still  stand  fast,"  1527)  :  "  When  in  our  own  day  we  saw 

1  E.  SchrSder,  "  Gott.  Gel.  Anzeigen,"  1888,  p.  253. 

2  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  23,  p.  606  ;    Erl.  ed.,  42,  p.  280.     Cp.  N. 
Paulus,  "  Die  deutschen  Dominikaner  im  Kampf  gegen  Luther,"  p.  61. 

3  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  25,  p.  444. 

4  16.,  63,  pp.  401,  402. 

6  Cp.  "  Colloq.,"  ed.  Bindseil,  3,  p.  270  ;  "  Annis  30  ante  biblia 
erant  incognita,  prophetce  innominati,"  etc. 


THE  GERMAN  BIBLE  539 

how  Scripture  lay  under  the  bench,  and  how  the  devil  was 
deluding  us  and  taking  us  captive  with  the  hay  and  straw 
of  men-made  prayers,  we  tried,  by  the  Grace  of  God,  to  mend 
matters,  and  have  indeed  with  great  and  bitter  pains 
brought  Scripture  back  to  light  once  more,  and,  sending 
human  ordinances  to  the  winds,  set  ourselves  free  and 
escaped  from  the  devil."  But  then,  so  he  goes  on,  others 
[on  his  own  side]  fell  upon  him,  raised  up  an  uproar  and 
raged  against  him  ;  Zwingli,  in  particular,  had  riddled  a 
single  line  of  Scripture  "  with  ten  holes,"  "  so  that  I  have 
never  read  of  a  more  disgraceful  heresy  "  ;  which,  even  in 
the  beginning,  "  comprised  as  many  factions  and  divisions 
as  it  had  heads."  There  would,  however,  in  future  "  be 
such  a  turmoil  in  Scripture,  such  dissensions  and  so  many 
factions,  that  we  might  well  say  with  St.  Paul  4  the 
mystery  of  ungodliness  is  already  at  work  '  '  (2  Thess. 
ii.  7).  "  He  [the  devil]  will  bring  about  factions  and  dissen 
sions  in  Scripture  so  that  you  will  not  know  what  is  Scripture, 
or  faith,  or  Christ,  or  even  where  you  stand."1 

Words  of  Luther's  such  as  these,  which  we  meet  with  repeatedly 
under  various  shapes,  point  indirectly  to  the  reason  why  the 
Church  preferred  to  see,  in  the  hands  of  people  unversed  in 
theology,  only  those  extracts  from  Holy  Scripture  approved  by 
herself,  in  particular  the  Postils  and  Plenaries  ;  for  the  dangers 
of  misunderstanding  and  disagreement  were  very  real,  especially 
in  an  age  so  prone  to  sectarianism. 

"  To  put  into  the  people's  hands  the  complete  Bible,"  says 
Franz  Falk  bluntly  enough,  "  was  to  give  them  something  both 
dangerous  and  superfluous.  The  Postils  were  amply  sufficient 
for  the  Christian  people.  Even  in  Protestant  circles  to-day 
people  are  deciding  in  favour  of  an  expurgated  Bible  for  use  in 
the  school  and  the  home."2  W.  Walther  in  his  "Deutsche 
Bibeliibersetzungen  des  Mittelalters  "  gives  a  favourable  account 
of  the  Catholic  practice  :  "  According  to  what  we  have  stated 
the  attitude  of  the  mediaeval  Church  to  the  German  Bible  appears 
to  have  been  quite  definite.  Janssen  seems  perfectly  right  when 
he  says,  '  The  Church  opposed  no  resistance  to  its  spread  so 
long  as  strifes  and  divisions  within  her  own  body  brought  no 
pet  abuses  to  light.'  "3  "Men  of  insight,"  continues  Janssen, 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  23,  p.  69  ;    Erl.  ed.,  30,  p.  19.     For  similar 
predictions  see  above,  p.    169  ft'.     On  the  famous   "  bench  "  cp.  also 
Weim.  ed.,   6,  p.  460  ;   Erl.  ed.,  21,  p.   348  ;   also   below,  p.  541  and 
vol.  iv.,  p.  159. 

2  "  Die  Bibel  am  Ausgange  des  MA.,"  p.  32. 

3  Walther,  p.  742.    Janssen,  "  Hist,  of  the  German  People  "  (Engl. 
Trans.),  2,  p.  303.    Walther  also  observes  :    "  Thus  it  was  not  from  the 


540         LUTHER   THE   REFORMER 

"  such  as  Geiler  von  Kaysersberg  and  Sebastian  Brant  doubted 
from  the  beginning  the  advisability  of  putting  the  entire  Scriptures 
in  the  hands  of  the  people.  They  feared,  and  rightly  feared,  that 
the  Bible  would  be  grossly  and  wilfully  perverted  by  the  ignorant 
and  the  light-minded,  and  be  made  to  uphold  all  sorts  of  doctrinal 
and  moral  teaching.  God  Himself  had  not  placed  His  Divine 
Word  indiscriminately  in  the  hands  of  all,  for  He  had  not  made 
the  reading  of  it  a  condition  of  salvation.  All  errors  had  sprung 
out  of  false  interpretation  of  Holy  Scripture.  Even  to  learned 
commentators  the  Scriptures  presented  difficulties  enough,  how 
much  more  to  the  ignorant  masses  ?  "  . 

No  one  to  whom  it  might  prove  of  use  was  debarred  access  to 
the  complete  German  translation  or  to  the  Sacred  Text  in  the 
original  languages  ;  in  their  case  restrictions  were  waived.  The 
large  number  of  complete  editions  would  in  fact  be  inexplicable 
except  on  the  assumption  of  a  certain  freedom  in  this  respect. 
Numerous  instances  might  also  be  cited  where  educated  people 
during  the  Middle  Ages  made  use  of  the  complete  Bible. x 

Sebastian  Brant  says  in  the  "  Narrenschiff  "  :  "  Every  country 
is  now  filled  with  Holy  Scripture."  "  The  rapidity  with  which 
the  different  editions  followed  each  other,"  wrote  Janssen,2 
"  and  the  testimony  of  contemporary  writers  point  to  a  wide 
distribution  of  German  Bibles  among  the  people." 

As  regards  other  countries,  too,  there  is  no  lack  of  sufficient 
data  for  arriving  at  a  like  conclusion,  viz.  that  the  Bible  was 
already  widely  disseminated  before  the  religious  revulsion  came. 
We  may  instance  the  recent  works  of  A.  C.  Paues  and  A.  Gasquet 
on  England  and  those  of  the  Dominican  Mandonnet  on  his  own 
Order's  relations  with  the  Bible  during  the  Middle  Ages,  from 
which  we  may  see  how  familiar  the  Bible  must  have  been  in 
certain  circles.3 

The  honest  admission  made  by  a  Protestant,  viz.  "  that, 
so  far  as  outward  acquaintance  with  the  Bible  went,  it 
would  be  untrue  to  say  that  it  lay  under  the  bench  before 
the  Reformation,"4  does  not,  however,  sufficiently  counter 

Church  that  the  translations  emanated  ;  it  was  not  the  Church  that 
recommended  the  study  of  the  Bible  to  the  laity.  This  would  indeed 
have  been  contrary  to  her  principles.  But  neither  did  the  Church 
show  herself  hostile  at  the  outset  to  every  translation.  So  long  as  it 
contained  nothing  to  promote  '  divisions  '  or  to  undermine  reverence 
for  the  Church  and  her  doctrines  she  permitted  this  movement,  as  she 
did  every  other  that  did  not  infringe  her  authority."  Ib. 

1  Cp.  Franz  Falk,  ib.,  pp.  33-66. 

2  Janssen,  ib.,  1,  p.  60. 

3  Paues,   "  A  Fourteenth    Century    Biblical   Version,"    Cambridge, 
1902.      Gasquet,    "  The  Eve  of  the  Reformation,"    1900,   and  in  the 
"  Dublin  Review,"  1894.     Cp.  "  Stimmen  aus  Maria  Laach,"  66,  1904, 
p.  349  ff. — Mandonnet,  "  Diet,  de  la  Bible,"  2,  Art.  Dominicains.     Cp. 
"  Katholik,"  1902,  2,  p.  289  ff. 

4  W.  Kohler,  "  Katholizismus  und  Reformation,"  p.  13. 


THE  GERMAN  BIBLE  541 

what  Luther  says,  for  his  grievance  in  reality  was,  that, 
among  the  Papists,  it  was  rather  the  true  meaning  of  the 
Bible  that  "  lay  under  the  bench." 

It  is  plain  that  they  "  abuse  and  revile  Scripture,  thrust  it 
under  the  bench,  pretend  that  it  is  shrouded  in  thick  fog,  that 
the  interpretation  of  the  Fathers  is  needed  and  that  light  must 
be  sought  in  the  darkness."  Thus  did  he  write  against  Emser  in 
1521. x  A  recent  champion  .of  Luther  has  also  thought  it  worth 
while  to  write  :  "  The  Bible  before* Luther's  day  was  not  regarded 
as  in  Luther's  opinion  it  should  have  been  regarded,  or  treated 
as  it  should  have  been  treated  ;  it  was  indeed  studied  by  the 
learned  but  only  in  the  same  way  as  people  studied  Augustine, 
Jerome  and  Thomas  Aquinas — and,  moreover,  not  with  the  same 
zeal  or  to  the  same  extent." 

Did  one  wish  to  deal  adequately  with  the  standing  thus  taken 
up  by  Luther  and  his  defenders  there  would  be  a  whole  book  to 
be  written  full  of  interesting  facts  ;  for  what  Luther  presupposes 
in  such  repeated  statements  is  that  his  theology  was  right  and 
that  of  the  Church  all  wrong.  Sufficient  light  has,  however, 
already  been  thrown  in  this  work  on  the  value  of  this  assertion 
of  Luther's. 

Denifle,  who,  thanks  to  his  expert  acquaintance  with  the 
material,  was  able  to  examine  so  many  of  Luther's  theological 
assertions  concerning  the  Middle  Ages,  deals  amongst  other 
tilings  with  the  question,  whether  Luther  was  really  the  first  to 
advance  the  theory,  "  that  Christ  is  the  whole  content  of  Scrip 
ture,"2  the  enunciation  of  which  had  been  claimed  as  "the 
greatest  service  rendered  by  I^uther  to  the  Church  and  to 
theology." — The  truth  is,  however,  that  the  Church  of  old  was 
so  full  of  the  idea  that  the  "  Holy  Scriptures  before  Christ  were 
written  only  to  proclaim  Him  and  His  Church,"  that  it  was  an 
easy  task  for  Denifle  to  overwhelm  his  adversaries  beneath  a 
mass  of  quotations,  for  instance,  from  Augustine,  Thomas 
Aquinas  and  J.  Perez  of  Valencia  (the  latter  representing  Luther's 
older  contemporaries). 

Catholics  have  rightly  gone  even  further,  and  asked  whether 
it  was  not  Luther  himself,  who,  by  his  arbitrary  treatment  of 
some  parts  of  Scripture,  and  its  actual  words, — to  say  nothing 
of  its  interpretation — thrust  the  Bible  under  the  bench  ?  Surely, 
his  destruction  of  the  Canon  of  Scripture,  his  alterations  in  the 
text  and  the  liberty  he  arrogated  to  himself  in  his  glosses3  are 

1  "  Auff  das  ubirchristlich  Buch,"  etc.,  1521,  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed., 
7,  p.  641  ;   Erl.  ed.,  27,  p.  247. 

2  "  Luther  und  Luthertum,"  I1,  p.  376  ff. 

3  Cochlaeus  wrote   ("  Commentarius  de  actis  et  scriptis  Lutheri," 
p.  54)  :    "  Quis  satis  enarrare  queat,  quantus  dissidiorum  turbationumque 
et  ruinarum  fames  et  occasio  fuerit  ea  novi  Testamenti  translatio.     In  qua 
vir  iurgiorum  data  opera  contra  veterem  et  probatam  ccclesice  lectionem 
multa  immutavit,   multa  decerpsit,   multa  addidit  et  in  alium  sensum 
detorsit,   multas   adiecit   in   marginibus  passim   glossas   erroneas   atque 


542         LUTHER   THE   REFORMER 

but  little  calculated  to  qualify  him  to  be  called  the  saviour  and 
liberator  of  the  Bible. — It  is  nothing  more  than  an  appeal  to  the 
imagination  of  the  populace,  when,  in  connection  with  this, 
popular  works  on  Luther  refer  to  the  Bible,  which  the  youthful 
Luther  when  still  a  student  in  the  world,  found  chained  in  the 
library  at  Erfurt  (though  this  itself  is  a  matter  of  history).  To 
hear  of  the  Bible  having  been  "  bound  in  chains  before  Luther's 
day  "  may  sound  very  dreadful,  but,  as  all  should  know,  the  only 
reason  why  valuable  books  were  chained  in  those  days  was  to 
guarantee  their  preservation  for  the  use  of  the  reader.  Scholars 
are  well  aware  that  the  printed  works  which  were  then  so  costly, 
and  still  more  the  manuscripts,  were  usually  kept  chained  in  the 
libraries  in  order  to  prevent  visitors  carrying  them  off  ;  the 
custom  still  obtains  in  Rome  to-day  in  the  parlours  of  some  of 
the  convents,  where  books  are  displayed  for  the  perusal  of  those 
waiting.  Wattenbach  in  his  "  Schriftwesen  des  Mittelalters  5>1 
enumerates  a  whole  series  of  instances  from  earlier  centuries. 
One  of  the  most  remarkable  which  goes  back  to  about  Luther's 
day,  is  that  of  the  Medicean  library  of  manuscripts,  the  so-called 
Lauren tiana  at  Florence,  where,  even  to-day,  the  valuable  MSS. 
in  their  splendid  book-cases  are  fastened  by  chains  and  have  to 
be  unlocked  when  called  for  for  use  in  the  Reading-Room.  In  his 
catalogue  of  the  Greek  Codices  in  the  Laurentiana  Bandini  gives 
an  interesting  sketch  of  these  curious  bookcases.  Even  under 
the  Elector  Johann  Frederick  of  Saxony,  in  1535,  in  Luther's 
own  time,  the  books  belonging  to  the  Princely  Library  at  Witten 
berg  were  chained. 2  On  the  other  hand,  the  copy  of  Holy  Scripture 
which  Luther  was  given  during  his  student  years  at  the  Erfurt 
monastery,  and  the  diligent  study  of  which  was  enjoined  upon 
him  both  by  the  rule  of  his  Order  and  the  words  of  his  Superior, 
was  evidently  not  thus  chained. 


Finally  as  regards  the  German  translations  of  the  Bible 
before  Luther's  day.  Of  the  seventeen  printed  editions  of 
the  whole  Bible  referred  to  above  (p.  536)  as  dating  from 
the  years  1450-1520,  the  oldest  is  the  so-called  Mendel 
edition  of  Strasburg,  probably  dating  from  1466,3  in  which 
year  the  copy  was  purchased  which  now  lies  in  the  Munich 
State  Library.  The  German  Plenaries  commence  with  the 
year  1470.  We  hear,  for  instance,  of  a  printed  German 

cavillosas,  et  in  prcefationibus  nihil  malignitatis  omisit,  ut  in  partes  suas 
traheret  lector  em"  He  concludes  by  saying  that  many  persons  had 
collected  more  than  a  thousand  errors  in  the  translation. 

1  Second  ed.,  1875,  p.  529. 

2  Kostlin-Kawerau,  2,  p.  659  (N.  3,  p.  282). 

3  Franz  Falk,  "  Die  Bibel  am  Ausgange  des  MA.,"  p.  90.     Earlier 
than  this  we  find  five  Latin  Bibles  printed  at  Mayence,  Strasburg,  and, 
perhaps,  Bamberg. 


THE  GERMAN  BIBLE  543 

Bible  being  bought  for  nine  florins.1  The  lower  price  of  the 
Plenaries,  on  the  other  hand,  made  them  easier  to  obtain. 
Thus  according  to  the  data  collected  by  Franz  Falk,  Johann 
Schoffer,  a  printer,  in  1510,  sent  from  Mayence  to  the 
Easter  fair  at  Leipzig,  amongst  other  books,  seventy-three 
German  Postils  (Plenaries),  priced  at  five  copies  a  florin. 
In  the  following  year  Schoffer's  agent  had  to  render  an 
account  after  the  Michaelmas  fair  for  the  sale  of  seventy-two 
postils.2  The  German  postils  in  those  days  served  much  the 
same  purpose  as  Goffine  does  to-day. 

Besides  the  printed  editions,  the  manuscript  translations 
still  preserved  must  also  be  taken  into  account.  Some 
twenty  years  ago  Wilhelm  Walther,  the  Protestant  theo 
logian,  devoted  a  study  to  this  particular  branch  of  research.3 
The  results  he  then  arrived  at  have  since  been  amplified 
and  corrected  by  Franz  Jostes  and  others,  and  still  awrait 
further  additions.  Walther  examined  202  MSS.  German 
Bibles,  or  portions  of  Bibles,  and  came  to  the  conclusion 
that  they  represented  no  less  than  thirty-four  various  forms 
of  translation.  They  have  indeed  much  in  common,  though 
they  differ  slightly  according  to  the  dialect  of  the  locality 
they  hail  from,  or  the  alterations  made  by  their  writers. 
The  translations  are,  in  every  case,  made  on  the  Latin 
Vulgate. 

Yet  all  the  printed  German  Bibles  dating  from  before 
Luther's  time  resemble  each  other  so  much  in  the  translation 
that  we  can,  in  reality,  speak  only  of  one  German  Bible. 
They  all  sprang  originally  from  a  single  MS.  translation 
and  practically  constitute  a  sort  of  German  vulgate.  The 
type  was  not,  however,  of  Waldensian  origin,  as  some 
formerly  thought  owing  to  the  fact  that  the  Tepler  Bible, 
which  had  been  placed  first  on  the  list,  shows  traces  of  that 
heresy.  The  earliest  German  translation  is,  on  the  contrary, 
as  orthodox  as  the  printed  editions.  This  is  probably  the 
fragmentary  Bible  translated  by  Master  Johann  Rellach. 
It  seems  to  be  older  than  the  Tepler  Bible,  and  the  first 
Mendel  edition  and  all  the  others  might  well  go  back  to  it. 
Franz  Jostes  was  the  first  to  suppose  that  "  the  pre-Lutheran 
printed  version  of  the  Bible  is  the  work  of  Master  Johann 

1  Falk,  "  Die  Druckkunst  im  Dienste  der  Kirche,"  1879,  pp.  29  and 
80.  Do.,  "  Die  Bibel,"  etc.,  pp.  32,  61.  2  Ib.,  p.  33. 

3  "  Die  deutsche  Bibeliibersetzung  des  MA.,"  1889-92. 


544          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

Rellach."1  The  translator  was,  so  he  opines,  a  Dominican 
belonging  to  a  convent  in  the  diocese  of  Constance.  He 
happened  to  be  in  Rome  in  1450,  the  Jubilee  year,  and, 
hearing  from  Bishop  Leonard  of  Chios  of  the  destruction  of 
the  magnificent  library  at  Constantinople  he  and  his  brethren 
were  led  to  vow  to  make  good  this  loss  to  the  best  of  their 
ability  by  translating  the  Bible  into  German.  They  doubt 
less  made  use  of  even  older  translations  in  their  work. 

As  for  the  slight  difference  shown  in  the  seventeen  printed 
editions  of  this  translation  still  extant,  they  are  easily 
explained.  The  printers,  out  of  consideration  for  their 
readers,  were  pretty  free  in  introducing  dialect  forms. 

If  we  glance  at  the  language,  we  shall  find  here  some  good 
points,  but  as  the  original  manuscripts  of  which  Johann 
Rellach  made  use  were  not  all  equally  good,  the  same  holds 
of  all  the  printed  translations.  Of  the  different  varieties 
which  never  appeared  in  print  at  all,  Walther  praises  some 
on  account  of  their  excellent  German,  for  instance,  the  one 
he  places  second  on  his  list,  and  which  may  date  from  the 
second  half  of  the  14th  century.  As  a  whole,  however, 
particularly  in  the  printed  translation,  the  language  suffers 
from  a  too  slavish  adherence  to  the  style  of  the  Latin  text. 
A  more  exact  classification,  according  to  the  excellence  of 
the  language,  is,  however,  impossible  until  the  whole  field 
has  been  explored  by  our  German  philologists.2 


Owing  to  the  matter  not  having  yet  been  sufficiently 
investigated,  we  cannot  determine  accurately  what  influence 
the  earlier  translations  had  on  the  German  Bible  published 
by  Luther.  Luther  himself  says  never  a  word  of  having 
used  them. 

It  would,  however,  be  just  as  bad  to  say,  on  the  one  hand, 
that  Luther  made  no  use  whatever  of  the  older  version  and 
had  not  even  a  copy  of  it  to  refer  to  in  the  Wartburg  during 

1  "  Die  Waldenserbibeln  und  Meister  Johannes  Rellach  "   ("  Hist. 
Jahrb.,"  1894,  p.  771  ff.),  p.  792.     On  the  other  side  see  W.  Walther  in 
the  "  N.  kirchl.  Zeitschr.,"  1896,  Hft.  3,  p.  194  ff.     Cp.  also  Nestle  in 
the  "  RE.  f.  prot.  Theol.,"3  Art.  "  Bibelubersetzungen,  deutsche,"  and 
the  work  of  R.  Schellhorn  there  mentioned. 

2  G.    Grupp   gave   a  critical  account   of  the   results   of  Walther's 
researches    in    the    "  Hist.-pol.    Blatter,"    115,    1895,    p.    931,    which 
amongst  other  things  considerably  raises  Walther's  estimate  of  the 
number  of  manuscript  and  printed  copies. 


THE  GERMAN  BIBLE  545 

his  work  on  the  New  Testament  or,  on  the  other,  as  some 
have  done,  that  Luther  stole  the  best  part  of  his  work  from 
earlier  German  translators. 

When  he  wrote  from  the  Wartburg  that  now  he  knew 
what  it  was  to  translate,  and  why,  hitherto,  no  translator 
had  dared  to  put  his  name  to  his  work,1  he  proves  that  he 
was  aware  that  all  previous  German  translations  were 
anonymous,  a  fact  which  presupposes  some  acquaintance 
with  them.  Older  translations  cannot  have  been  inacces 
sible  to  him  at  the  Wartburg,  and  might  well  have  been 
sent  him  by  friends  at  Eisenach  or  Wittenberg,  who,  as  we 
know,  did  occasionally  send  him  books  ;  when  he  had 
returned  home,  moreover,  he  could  easily  have  found  copies 
in  his  old  monastery  or  at  the  University.  Portions  of  the 
Bible,  viz.  the  Plenaries,  were  doubtless  within  his  reach 
from  the  first,  and  since  he  finished  his  translation  of  the 
New  Testament  in  so  short  a  time  as  three  months,  though 
all  the  while  engaged  on  a  number  of  other  works,  it  is  only 
natural  to  suppose  that  he  lightened  his  labours  by  the  use 
of  other  versions  within  his  reach  as  any  other  scholar  would 
have  done,  though  undoubtedly  he  used  his  own  judgment 
in  his  selection.  That,  in  the  work  of  revision  at  Wittenberg 
at  a  much  later  date,  the  mediaeval  text  was  employed, 
appears'  quite  plain  from  the  alterations  introduced  by 
Luther. 

J.  Geffcken  was  probably  not  far  wrong  when  he  wrote 
in  1855  in  "  Der  Bilderkatechismus  des  15.  Jahrhunderts," 
"  that  the  similarity  between  Luther's  version  and  the  old 
translations  could  not  be  merely  fortuitous."2 

The  same  was  repeated  with  still  greater  emphasis  by 
Krafft  in  1883  after  he  had  instituted  fresh  comparisons  : 
"  Whoever  compares  these  passages  can  no  longer  doubt 
that  the  agreement  between  Luther's  work  and  the  mediaeval 
German  Bible  is  not  merely  accidental."3  The  result  of 
further  research  will  probably  be  to  confirm  the  guarded 
opinion  expressed  as  long  ago  as  1803  by  G.  W.  Meyer  of 

1  See  above,  p.  495. 

2  P.  6.    See  W.  Walther,  "  Luthers  Bibeliibersetzung  kem  Plagiat, 
p.  2.     This  writing  appeared  previously  (without  illustrations)  in  the 
"  N.  kirchl.  Zeitschr.,"  1,  p.  359  ff.,  and  has  been  reproduced  since  in 
"  Ziir  Wertung  der  deutschen  Reformation,"  1909,  p.  723  f. 

3  "  Tiber  die  deutsche  Bibel  vor  Luther,"  1883  ;    cp.  Walther,  ib.t 
p.  8,  as  also  pp.  2  and  4. 

V.— 2   N 


546          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

Gottingen  in  his  "  Geschichte  der  Schrifterklarung  "  :  to 
assume  that  "  the  older  translation  was  not  unknown  to 
him,"  "that  he  consulted  it  here  and  there,"  and  even 
"  made  his  own  some  of  its  happy  renderings,"  is  quite 
compatible  with  a  high  esteem  for  Luther's  translation.1 

Modern  Protestant  writers  in  this  field  are  also  somewhat 
sceptical  about  the  theory  of  Luther's  complete  ignorance 
of  the  older  translation  of  the  Bible,  and  the  assertion  that 
he  made  no  use  whatever  of  it.  O.  Reichert,  for  instance, 
in  his  new  work  "  Luthers  deutsche  Bibel  "  makes  the 
following  remarks  on  Luther's  work  in  the  Wartburg,  with 
which  we  may  fittingly  conclude  this  section  :  "  Although 
he  probably  was  able  to  make  use  of  Lang's  translation  of 
1521  in  his  rendering  of  Matthew,  and  as  a  matter  of  fact 
did  have  recourse  to  it,  and  though  he  most  likely  also  had 
the  old  German  translation  at  his  elbow,  as  is  apparent  from 
many  coincidences,  nevertheless,  what  Luther  accomplished 
is  an  achievement  worthy  of  all  admiration."2 

4.   Luther's  Hymns 

Amongst  the  means  to  be  employed  for  the  spread  and 
consolidation  of  the  new  Evangel  Luther  included,  in 
addition  to  his  Bible,  German  hymns  for  use  in  public 
worship. 

In  1523  and  1524  especially,  he  busied  himself  in  the 
making  of  verses.  In  his  Formula  Missce  (1523)  he  ex 
presses  the  wish  that  as  many  German  hymns  as  possible 
be  introduced  into  the  revised  service  of  the  Mass  and  sung, 
not  only  by  the  choir,  but  by  the  whole  congregation, 
though,  for  the  nonce,  the  customary  Latin  hymns  might 
be  used.3  With  his  wonted  energy  and  industry  he  at  once 
entrusted  the  work  of  composing  hymns  to  some  of  his 
Wittenberg  friends,  and  despatched  letters  so  as  to  obtain 
help  even  from  afar.  He  was  particularly  anxious  to  see 
the  Psalms  in  a  German  dress.  His  translation  of  the 
Psalter,  which  he  had  just  completed,  naturally  drew  his 
thoughts  to  the  Psalms  which  so  admirably  express  all  the 
religious  emotions  of  the  soul,  especially  its  trusting  reliance 
upon  God.  He  was  not  very  confident  of  his  own  powers  of 

i  Ib.,  p.  1.  2  "  Luthers  deutsche  Bibel,"  p.  23. 

3  "  Opp.  lat.  var.,"  6,  p.  17.     "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  12,  p.  205  ff. 


HYMNOLOGY  547 

composition  :  "  I  have  not  the  knack  of  doing  this  as  well 
as  I  wish  to  have  it  done,"  he  writes  to  his  old  friend  Spalatin 
at  Nuremberg.1  He  asks  him  and  his  other  friends  for  an 
eminently  simple,  popular  versification  of  the  Psalms,  in 
pure  German,  "free  from  the  new-fangled  words  used  at 
Court  "  ;  it  should  keep  as  closely  as  possible  to  the  sense 
and  yet  not  be  stilted.  For  this  Spalatin  was  qualified  by 
"  a  rich  flow  of  eloquence,  and  by  many  years'  experience." 
Luther  sends  him  at  the  same  time  a  poetic  effort  of  his  own. 

In  view  of  the  beauty  and  the  deep  albeit  simple  grandeur 
of  the  olden  Catholic  hymns  the  task  Luther  had  under 
taken  of  composing  something  new  was  naturally  not  an 
easy  one.  He  himself  had  much  to  say  in  praise  of  the 
magnificent  old  hymns  in  which  the  faithful  praised  their 
Creator  or  poured  forth  their  griefs  before  Him.  "  In 
Popery,"  he  once  said  in  a  sermon,  "  they  used  to  sing  some 
fine  hymns  :  4  He  who  broke  the  might  of  Hell,'  item 
'  Jesus  Christ  to-day  is  risen.'  This  comes  from  the  heart."2 
"  A  beautiful  sequence  is  also  sung  in  Advent,"  he  says,  thus 
paying  tribute  even  to  a  Latin  hymn,  viz.  the  Mittitur  ad 
Virginem.  "  It  is  well  done  and  not  too  barbarous."3 

Luther  nevertheless  persevered  in  his  own  efforts  in 
spite  of  his  misgivings,  especially  as  the  contributions  of  his 
assistants  failed  to  reach  his  standards.  Of  the  eight  hymns 
contained  in  the  so-called  Wittenberg  "  Achtliederbuch  " 
four  were  composed  by  Luther,  while  of  the  twenty-five  in 
the  Erfurt  "  Enchiridion  "  eighteen  were  his  ;  the  collection, 
however,  which  he  characterised  as  having  been  started 
by  himself,  the  "  Geistliche  Gesangbiichlein  "  of  Johann 
Walther,  consisting  chiefly  of  translations  or  adaptations, 
contained  thirty-two  hymns,  twenty-four  of  them  being 
written  by  Luther.  This  was  the  result  of  his  efforts  up  to 
the  end  of  1524. 4 

In  later  years  only  twelve  other  hymns  were  published  by 
him,  of  which  some,  like  the  familiar  "  A  safe  stronghold," 
and  that  intended  in  the  first  instance  for  children  :  "In 

1  "  Brief wechsel,"  4,  p.  273  :    "  Ego  non  habeo  tantum  gratice,  ut  tale 
quid  possem  quale  vellem." 

2  «  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  53,  p.  23.  3  /&.,  62,  p.  311. 

4  Kostlin-Kawerau,  p.  536  ff.  We  can  hardly  concur  in  the  opposite 
conclusions  arrived  at  by  F.  Spitta,  "  Em'  feste  Burg  ist  unser  Gott,  Die 
Lieder  Luthers,"  Gottingen,  1905,  owing  to  the  problematical  character 
of  his  chronology. 


548          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

Thy  Word  preserve  us,  Lord,"  were  not  originally  meant  for 
use  in  public  worship.  A  hymn,  likewise  not  written  for 
public  worship,  yet  one  of  the  oldest,  as  it  dates  from  the 
summer  of  1523,  is  the  one  where  Luther  extols  the  glorious 
martyrdom  of  two  of  his  followers,  who  were  executed  in 
the  Netherlands  as  heretics.  Including  this  the  number  of 
his  compositions  rises  to  thirty-seven. 

The  number  is  not  excessive  considering  how  prolific  his 
genius  as  a  rule  was,  but  among  them  are  hymns,  which, 
owing  to  their  simple  vigour  and  fine  wording,  bear  witness 
to  the  author's  real  talent  for  this  form  of  literature.  Thus, 
for  instance,  "  From  highest  heaven  on  joyous  wing,"  "  Ah 
God,  look  down  from  heaven  and  see,"  "  Dear  is  to  me  the 
Holy  Maid  "  (the  Church),  finally  and  above  all  the  hymn 
"  A  safe  stronghold  our  God  is  still  "  ("  Bin'  feste  Burg  "), 
which  for  ages  has  had  so  stimulating  an  effect  on  his 
followers.  When,  in  these  compositions,  Luther  shakes  off 
the  trammels  of  pedantry  and  leaves  his  spirit  to  go  its  own 
way,  he  often  strikes  the  true  poetic  note.1  He  was  endowed 
with  a  powerful  fancy,  nor  was  there  ever  any  lack  of 
warmth,  nay  passion,  in  his  expression  of  his  inward 
experiences  ;  in  addition  to  this  there  was  his  rare  gift  of 
language,  his  keen  appreciation  of  music  and  song,  which  he 
regarded  as  the  "  very  gift  of  God  "  and  to  which,  "  next  to 
theology,"  he  allotted  the  first  place;2  the  art  he  possessed 
of  making  the  whole  congregation  to  share  in  what  he  him 
self  felt,  and  his  careful  avoidance  of  any  conscious  striving 
after  originality  contributed  to  render  many  of  these  pro 
ductions  acknowledged  works  of  genius. 

Most  characteristic  of  all  in  this  respect  is  the  rousing 
hymn  "  Ein'  feste  Burg."  The  result,  as  shown  above,3  of 
outward  circumstances  as  well  as  of  inward  experiences,  it 
gives  the  fullest  expression  to  Luther's  own  defiance.  In  so 
far  as  Luther  succeeded  in  depicting  his  cause  as  that  of  all 
his  followers,  and,  with  rare  power,  made  his  own  defiant 
spirit  ring  from  every  lip,  we  may  accept  the  opinion  of  a 
recent  Luther  biographer  on  the  hymn  in  question,  viz.  that 

1  Janssen  remarks,  he  not  "  infrequently  revealed  himself  as  a  true 
poet  "  ("Hist,  of  the  German  People,"  Engl.  Trans.,  11,  p.  258),  and, 
that,  "  in  his  work  of  adapting  and  expanding,  he  not  seldom  shows 
himself  a  true  poet." 

2  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.  62,  p.  311.     Table-Talk. 

3  Above,  p.  342  ff . 


HYMNOLOGY  549 

it  expresses  the  "  defiance  of  Protestantism."  "  So  entirely 
does  Luther's  hymn  spring  from  the  feeling  common  to  the 
whole  of  Protestantism,  that  we  seem  to  hear  Protestants 
yet  unborn  joining  in  it.  The  trumpets  of  Gustavus 
Adolphus  and  the  cannon  of  Liitzen  are  audible  in  this  hymn 
of  defiance.  It  reminds  us  of  Torstensson  and  Coligny,  of 
Cromwell  and  William  of  Orange."1  We  must,  however, 
remember  that  part  of  the  impression  it  creates  must  be 
attributed  to  the  powerful  pre-reformation  melody  to  which 
the  words  are  set. 

We  give  the  hymn  below  in  Carlyle's  fine  rendering2 : 

PSALM  XL VI.  (XLV.) 
Deus  Nosier  Refugium  et  Virtus 

1.  A  safe  stronghold  our  God  is  still, 
A  trusty  shield  and  weapon. 
He'll  help  us  clear  from  all  the  ill 
That  hath  us  now  o'ertaken. 

The  ancient  Prince  of  Hell 
Hath  risen  with  purpose  fell, 
Strong  mail  of  Craft  and  Power 
He  weareth  in  this  hour, 
On  Earth  is  not  his  fellow. 

2.  With  force  of  arms  we  nothing  can, 
Full  soon  were  we  down-ridden. 
But  for  us  fights  the  proper  Man 
Whom  God  Himself  hath  bidden. 

Ask  ye,  Who  is  this  name  ? 
Christ  Jesus  is  His  name, 
The  Lord  Zebaoth's  Son, 
He  and  no  other  one 
Shall  conquer  in  the  battle. 

3.  And  were  this  world  all  Devils  o'er 
And  watching  to  devour  us, 

We  lay  it  not  to  heart  so  sore 
Not  they  can  overpower  us. 

1  Hausrath,  "  Luthers  Leben,"  2,  pp.  155,  158. 

2  Ph.  Wackernagel,   "  Das  deutsche  Kirchenleid  von  der  altesten 
Zeit  bis  zum  17.  Jahr.,"  3,   1870,  p.  20.     Cp.   "  Form  und  Ordnung 
gaystlicher    Gesang,"    etc.,    Augsburg,    1529.     Cp.    Wackernagel,    ib., 
p.  20,  the  text  of  the  first  High  German  reproduction  of  the  Witten 
berg  Hymnbook.  and  the  less  accurate  reprint,  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  56, 
p.  343  f.,  and  Nelle,  "  Gesch.  des  deut.  ev.  Kirchenliedes,"1  1904,  p.  24 
(2nd  ed.,  1909). 


550          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

And  let  the  Prince  of  111 
Look  grim  as  e'er  he  will, 
He  harms  us  not  a  whit, 
For  why  ?     His  doom  is  writ, 
A  word  shall  quickly  slay  him. 

4.  God's  Word,  for  all  their  craft  and  force, 
One  moment  shall  not  linger, 
But,  spite  of  Hell,  shall  have  its  course, 
'Tis  written  by  His  finger. 

And  though  they  take  our  life, 

Goods,  honour,  children,  wife, 

Yet  is  their  profit  small. 

These  things  shall  vanish  all, 

The  City  of  God  remaineth. 

Though  Protestants  are  fond  of  extolling  the  sincere  faith 
expressed  in  Luther's  hymns  (nay  even  speak  of  the  "  over 
whelming  fervour  of  his  faith  J>1)  we  must  not  forget,  that 
in  some  of  them  bitter  polemics  strike  a  harsh  and  very 
unpoetic  note,  quite  out  of  harmony  with  the  otherwise 
good  and  pious  thoughts.  The  "  Children's  Hymn  "  to  be 
sung  against  the  two  arch-enemies  of  Christ  and  His  holy 
Church,  viz.  the  Pope  and  the  Turk,  dating  from  1541  at 
the  latest,  begins  with  the  verse  : 

Lord,  by  Thy  Word  deliverance  work 
And  stay  the  hand  of  Pope  and  Turk 
•  Who  Jesus  Christ  Thy  Son 

Would  hurl  down  from  His  throne.2 

This  hymn  became  ultimately  "  One  of  the  principal  hymns 
of  the  Evangelical  flock."3 

No  less  noticeable  is  Luther's  anti-Catholic  prejudice  in  his 
"  Song  of  the  Two  Martyrs  of  Christ  at  Brussels  "  and  in  the 
hymn  "  To  new  strains  we  raise  our  voices."  But  even  when 
the  words  do  not  sound  directly  controversial  the  substance 
often  serves  as  a  weapon  against  the  old  faith  and  was  thus 
understood  by  his  followers  ;  this  was  the  case,  for  instance, 
with  the  hymn  just  referred  to  on  the  Church.  The  hymns, 
in  fact,  were  intended,  as  he  says  in  his  preface  to  Johann 

1  In    an    advertisement   of   Will   Vesper,    "  Luthers    Dichtungen," 
Munich,  1905. 

2  Wackernagel,  ib.,  3,  p.  26.     Cp.  "  Luthers  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  56, 
p.  354.  3  Kostlin-Kawerau,.  2,  p.  587. 


HYMNOLOGY  551 

Walther's  collection,  "  to  advance  and  further  the  Holy 
Gospel  which  by  the  grace  of  God  has  once  more  dawned." 
To  this  end  he  would  gladly  see  "  all  the  arts,  more  par 
ticularly  that  of  music,  employed  in  the  service  of  Him  Who 
created  them  and  bestowed  them  on  us."1  The  more  he 
was  animated  by  the  righting  instinct,  the  better  he  fancies 
he  can  compose.  "  If  I  am  to  compose,  write,  pray  or 
preach  well,  I  must  be  angry."  "Then  my  blood  boils  and 
my  understanding  grows  keener."2  His  opponents  com 
plained  that  his  popular  hymns  against  the  Church  excited 
the  people  and  that  they  "  sang  themselves  into  "  the  new 
faith. 

Just  as  the  polemics  of  their  author  detracts  from  the 
real  poetic  value  of  some  of  the  hymns,  so,  in  spite  of  all  his 
good-will,  there  are  other  defects  to  decrease  the  value  of 
his  work.  Owing  to  hasty  workmanship  his  poesy  has 
suffered.  His  roughness  explains  how  "  much  in  his  work 
sounds  harsh  and  clumsy."3  Nevertheless  the  very  fact 
that  they  were  Luther's  own  made  them  praiseworthy  in 
the  eyes  of  his  olden  admirers.4 

Owing  to  their  hearty  reception  in  Protestant  circles,  to 
their  use  both  in  public  worship  and  elsewhere,  and  also 
because  they  served  as  a  model  and  exerted  a  powerful 
influence  on  later  Protestant  efforts  to  promote  hymnology, 
they  won  for  their  author  the  proud  title  of  the  Father  of 
Protestant  psalmody.  The  earliest  Protestants,  in  their 
ignorance  of  what  obtained  in  Catholicism  previous  to  his 
day,  even  pushed  their  esteem  for  his  labours  so  far  as  to 
call  him  simply  the  Father  of  Hymnology.  "  What  made 
him  the  great  poet  of  our  nation,"  a  modern  Protestant 
historian  declares,  "  was  his  individuality  and  the  boldness 
of  his  expression.  He  was  not,  nor  did  he  wish  to  be,  the 
Father  of  German  psalmody,  but  he  was  in  very  truth  the 
Father  of  Evangelical  psalmody."5 

When  the   introduction  of  hymns  in  the  new  form  of 

1  At  the  beginning  of  the  "  Geistliche  Gesangbiichlein  "  of  Johann 
Walther.    Kostlin-Kawerau,  1,  p.  538. 

2  Cp.  Hausrath,  "  Luthers  Leben,"  2,  p.  167. 

3  Kostlin-Kawerau,  1,  p.  541. 

4  G.  Gervinus,  "  Gesch.  der  deutschen  Dichtung,"  35,  1871,  p.  20. 

5  Spitta,   "Bin*  feste  Burg,"  p.  372.     W.  Baumker,  "Das  kathol. 
Kirchenlied  in  seinen  Singweisen,"    1,    1886,  p.    32,   makes  a  similar 
distinction.     Cp.  p.  16ff. 


552          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

public  worship  came  up  for  discussion,  Luther,  owing  to  the 
exigencies  of  the  case,  showed  himself  by  no  means  intolerant 
of  the  numerous  hymns  dating  from  Catholic  times  then 
still  in  use. 

We  can  the  more  readily  understand  this  seeing  the  praise 
he  himself  lavished  on  these  hymns,  the  inspiring  strains  of 
which  still  rang  in  his  ears  from  the  days  of  his  youth.  It 
is  true  that  not  many  of  them  appeared  to  him  to  have  the 
"  true  spirit."  In  his  service  of  the  Mass  where  this  remark 
occurs  he  wished  only  three  of  these  to  be  retained  for  the 
time  being,  viz.  the  Communion  hymn,  "  Praised  be  God  and 
blest,  Who  Himself  becomes  our  Guest,"  the  Whitsun  hymn, 
"  Now  we  crave  of  the  Holy  Ghost  "  and  the  Christmas 
hymn,  "  A  tender  Child  is  born  To  us  this  very  morn."  The 
Whitsun  hymn  and  the  Communion  hymn  were  enlarged 
later,  i.e.  revised.  He  also  took  from  an  older  model  the 
first  verse  of  another  Whitsun  hymn  which  he  composed. 
His  Easter  hymn,  "  Christ  lay  in  His  Winding-sheet,"  was 
a  revision  of  the  older  Catholic  hymn,  "  Jesus  Christ  to-day 
is  risen,"  into  which  he  has  introduced  part  of  the  Latin 
Easter  sequence.  His  hymns,  "  In  the  midst  of  life  cruel 
death  surrounds  us"  and  "God  our  Father  bide  with  us" 
are  also  adaptations  of  older  Catholic  hymns  for  use  in 
processions.  In  his  rendering  of  the  Ten  Commandments 
into  German  verse  he  seems  to  have  taken  as  his  model  a 
similar  composition  dating  from  earlier  days  and  also  used 
in  processions.  "  Heirlooms  of  Catholicism  "  are  also  three 
old  chants  which  he  translated  from  the  Latin,  "  Come,  Holy 
Ghost,  Creator,  come,"  "Saviour  of  the  heathen  known" 
and  "  Now  praise  we  Christ  the  Holy  One."1 

The  Middle  Ages  had  always  been  noted  for  their  render 
ings  of  the  Psalms  and  hymns  of  the  Church,  and  their 
productions  compare  favourably  with  Luther's  compositions, 
the  more  so  since  he  is  seldom  at  his  best  when  he  is  not  free 
to  develop  his  own  thoughts.2  Speaking  of  translations  and 
alluding  to  those  made  by  his  colleagues  Luther  declared  in 
1529  :  "  Some  have  now  given  proof  of  their  ability  and 
have  increased  the  number  of  hymns  ;  they  far  outstrip  me 

1  On  the  above  see  Kostlin-Kawerau,  1,  p.  536  ff. 

2  In  Luther's  hymns  for  public  worship  modelled  on  the  Psalms 
"  no  poetic  enthusiasm  is  apparent."      Spitta,  ib.,  p.   355.     He  also 
assigns  the  lowest  place  to  the  translations  of  the  Latin  hymns. 


HYMNOLOGY  553 

and  must  be  regarded  as  experts  in  this  field."1  Many  had 
been  the  poets  who  had  turned  the  old  Latin  hymns  into 
German  ;  particularly  worthy  of  mention  were  the  monk  of 
Salzburg  in  the  14th  and  Heinrich  of  Laufenberg  in  the  15th 
century.  Many  of  these  hymns  can  take  their  place  beside 
Luther's  rendering  of  Psalm  xlvi.  (xlv.),  "Ein'  feste  Burg," 
though  the  trust  in  God  they  express  and  the  unshaken  faith 
of  their  childlike  language  is  far  removed  from  any  pre 
sumptuous  reliance  on  private  judgment  in  religious  matters 
or  subjective  revelations.  Of  the  use  of  German  hymns 
Provost  Gerhoch  of  Reichersberg  wrote  as  early  as  the  12th 
century  :  "  The  whole  people  breaks  out  into  praise  of  the 
Saviour  in  the  hymns  of  their  mother  tongue  ;  especially  is 
this  the  case  with  the  Germans  whose  language  lends  itself 
so  well  to  melody."2  At  the  close  of  the  Middle  Ages  it 
might  be  said  with  truth  :  "  The  German  nation  possessed  a 
hoard  of  hymns,  such  as  no  other  nation  in  the  world  could 
show."3 

It  is  not  only  Luther  who  frequently  admits  that  he  had 
"  included  in  his  hymnbook  some  of  the  songs  of  our  fore 
fathers  "  as  "  bearing  witness  to  the  good  Christians  who 
lived  before  our  day,"4  but  even  the  Apologia  for  the 
Confession  of  Augsburg  had  to  admit  in  its  defence  of  the 
Protestant  ritual  :  "  The  use  [of  German  hymns]  has 
always  been  regarded  as  praiseworthy  in  the  churches  ; 
though  more  German  hymns  are  sung  in  some  places  than 
in  others,  nevertheless,  in  all  the  churches  the  people  have 
always  sung  something  in  German,  hence  the  practice  is  not 
at  all  novel."5 

That  something  was  always  sung  in  German  is  perfectly 
correct  ;  in  the  liturgy  properly  so-called,  viz.  the  Mass,  the 
rule  was  to  sing  in  Latin  the  Proper,  Kyrie,  Gloria,  Credo, 
etc.  Hence  the  standing  of  vernacular  hymns  was  different 

1  In  the  Preface  to  the  new  edition  of  his  hymnbook  (1529).  Kostlin- 
Kawerau,  2,  p.  587. 

2  Migne,  "  P.L.,"  185,  p.  391.     E.  Michael  ("  Gesch.  des  deutschen 
Volkes  vom  13.  Jahrh.  bis  zum  Ausgang  des  MA.",  43,  1906,  p.  327  ff.) 
shows  not  only  that  German  psalmody  existed  in  the  1 3th  century,  but 
also  that  it  can  be  traced  back  with  certainty  to  the  llth  and  12th 
centuries.     Cp.  also  Baumker,  "  KL.,"  art.  "  Kirchenlied,"  72,  p.  G02. 

3  Baumker,  ib.,  p.  604. 

4  Ib.,  p.  605. 

5  "  Confess.  Aug.,"  art.  24  de  missa. — Cp.  for  the  foregoing,  Janssen, 
ib.  (Engl.  Trans.),  1,  p.  264  ff. 


554          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

in  the  case  of  Catholics  from  what  it  was  withTrotestants. 
With  the  latter  the  edification  of  the  congregation  was  the 
principal  thing,  whereas,  for  the  Catholic,  public  worship 
had  in  the  eucharistic  sacrifice  something  quite  independent 
of  private  devotion  ;  it  was  in  keeping  with  the  character  of 
this  universal  sacrifice  offered  by  all  nations  and  tongues 
that  its  rites  should  be  conducted  in  Latin,  the  universal 
language.  The  only  strictly  liturgical  Psalmody  in  the 
Middle  Ages  was  the  Latin  Gregorian  chant.  The  German 
hymn  held  only  a  subordinate  place  in  the  liturgy,  being 
inserted  sometimes  in  connection  with  the  sequence  after 
the  Gradual,  or,  more  usually,  before  and  after  the  sermon. 
On  the  other  hand,  recourse  to  German  hymns  was  usual  in 
extra-liturgical  devotions,  in  processions,  pilgrimages  and 
in  pious  gatherings  of  the  people  whether  at  home  or  in  the 
church. 

The  hymn  tunes  made  use  of  in  the  Middle  Ages  were 
also  in  every  case  either  Gregorian  or  quasi-Gregorian.  Thus 
the  musical  language  of  popular  piety  was  able  to  maintain 
its  dignity,  was  preserved  faithful  to  the  traditions  of  the 
great  ages  of  the  Church  and  secure  from  the  inroads  of 
private  fancy. 

The  melodies  to  which  Luther  set  his  own  compositions 
and  those  of  his  friends  had  also  been  handed  down  from 
earlier  times.  Some  of  them  were  purely  Gregorian,  others 
were  those  of  older  Catholic  hymns  or  of  popular  ditties. 
The  melody  of  "  A  Safe  Stronghold,"  as  already  observed, 
is  derived  from  the  Latin  chant,  and  so  is  that  of  "  Jesaia 
dem  Propheten  "  and  others.  Even  the  setting  of  the 
versified  creed  "  We  all  believe  in  one  true  God  "  is  borrowed 
from  a  15th-century  composition. 

Protestant  admiration  for  Luther  has  indeed  led  "  to  his 
being  represented  as  a  notable  composer,1  and  thus  many 
of  these  tunes  bear  his  name.  Careful  research  has,  how 
ever,  shattered  this  delusion.  .  .  .  Many  other  melodies, 
which  so  far  it  has  been  impossible  to  trace  to  the  Middle 
Ages,  probably  form  part  of  the  pre-reformation  treasury  of 
hymns.  .  .  .  Whether,  as  modern  research  is  inclined  to 
think,  the  simple  new  melody  to  '  Saviour  of  the  heathen 

1  According  to  Heinr.  v.  Stephan,  "  Luther  als  Musiker,"  Bielefeld 
(1899),  p.  16,  he  was  even  "  the  reformer  of  German  music." 


HYMNOLOGY  555 

known,'  ...  is  Luther's  own,  it  is  not  possible  to  deter 
mine."1 

The  traditional  fondness  of  Germans  for  song  was  used 
to  spread  erroneous  doctrines  not  by  Luther  alone,  but  also 
by  others  of  the  New  Believers  ;  this  was  particularly  the 
case  with  the  followers  of  Schwenckfeld,  who  exploited  it  in 
the  interests  of  their  sect.  Luther's  hymnbook  even  stood 
in  danger  of  being  "spoilt  "  by  outside  additions,  hence  the 
precaution  he  took  of  appending  the  authors'  names  to  the 
various  hymns  ;  he  also  prefixed  a  special  "  Warnung  "  to 
the  Preface  of  an  edition  brought  out  towards  the  end  of  his 
life  (1542).2 

Among  the  songs  falsely  attributed  to  Luther  is  one  on  the 
"  Out-driving  of  Antichrist."  In  old  editions  this  "Song  for  the 
Children,  wherewith  to  drive  out  the  Pope  in  Mid-Lent  "3  is 
indeed  ascribed  to  Luther,  but  we  learn  from  Mathesius's 
"  Historien  "  that  it  was  he  who  brought  the  text  of  it  to  Luther 
in  the  spring  of  1545  on  the  occasion  of  his  last  visit.  The  song 
is  a  modification  of  an  older  one  still  sung  in  places  even  to-day, 
on  Laetare  Sunday,  for  the  chasing  away  of  winter.  The  unknown 
versifier,  who  was  perhaps  Mathesius  himself,  has  transferred  to  the 
Pope-Antichrist  what  was  intended  for  the  winter.  Luther  was 
pleased  with  the  verses  and  himself  undertook  their  publication. 4 
There  is  a  great  difference  between  the  cheerful,  innocent  verses 
still  sung  by  children  to-day  :  "  Now  let  us  drive  the  Winter 
out,"  etc.,5  and  the  malicious  version  which  Luther  popularised 
and  which  was  even  included  in  many  of  the  Lutheran  hymn- 
books,  for  instance  in  the  collection  dating  from  1547,  "  Etliche 
trostliche  Gebet,  Psalmen  und  geistliche  Lieder,"  etc.  There  it 
is  entitled  "A  Christian  song  for  Children."  It  occurs  in  the 
Konigsberg  Enchiridion  of  15GO,  together  with  another  Old 
German  children's  song,  to  be  sung  on  the  way  home. 6 

1  Kostlin-Kawerau,  1,  p.  541  f.     Cp.  Janssen,  ib,  (Engl.  Trans.),  11, 
p.  242  ff . 

2   "  Vil  falscher  Meister  itzt  Lieder  dichten 
Siehe  dich  fur  und  lern  sie  recht  richten. 
Wo  Gott  hinbawet  sein  Kirch  und  sein  Wort, 
Da  wil  der  Teuffel  sein  mit  Trug  und  Mord." 

3  Wackernagel,  ib.,  3,  p.  30. 

4  Loesch,    "  Mathesius,"   2,   p.   214  ff.      "  Historien,"   Bl.    179  :    "  I 
brought  him  the  song  with  which  the  children  (in  the  Joachimsthal) 
drive  out  the  Pope  in  Mid-Lent.   .   .   .  This  song  he  published  and  him 
self  wrote  the  title  :  '  Ex  montibus  et  vallibus,  ex  sylvis  et  campestribus.'  " 
The  broadsheet  of  1541  mentioned  by  Schamelius  in  his  IW  Lieder-Com- 
mentarius,"  1757,  p.  57,  if  it  ever  existed,  must  have  preceded  Luther's 
publication,  and  be  by  some  unknown  author. 

5  Cp.,  for  instance,  the  May-song  in  the  Baden  Collection,  by  A. 
Earner,  lift.  2,  No.  14,  p.  15.  6  Wackernagel,  ib.,  3,  p.  31. 


556          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

The  first  lines  of  the  hymn  for  the  Out-driving  of  Antichrist  run 
as  follows  :l 

1.  Now  let  us  drive  the  Pope  from  out 
Christ's  kingdom  and  God's  house  devout, 
For  murderously  he  has  ruled, 

And  countless  souls  to  ruin  fooled. 

2.  Be  off  with  you,  you  damned  son, 
You  scarlet  bride  of  Babylon  ; 
Horror  and  antichrist  thou  art, 
Lies,  murder,  cunning  fill  thy  heart. 

1  Wackernagel,  ib.,  p.  30.    Cp.  Janssen,  ib.  (Engl.  Trans.),  11,  p.  286. 


CHAPTER    XXXV 

LUTHER'S  ATTITUDE  TOWARDS  SOCIETY  AND  EDUCATION 

1.  Historical  Outlines  for  Judging  of  his  Social  Work 

IT  would  be  beyond  our  present  scope  to  examine  in  detail 
all  the  views  advanced  concerning  Luther's  social  and 
economic  attitude.  Recent  research  in  social  economics  has 
already  rectified  many  of  these. 

What  the  historian  of  sociology  chiefly  misses  is  any 
appreciation  of  Luther  in  the  light  of  the  theories  and 
conditions  prevailing  at  the  close  of  the  Middle  Ages.  It  has 
been  remarked  quite  rightly,  that,  from  the  way  in  which  the 
matter  is  dealt  with  in  Protestant  Church-history  and 
"  practical  theology,"  it  is  perfectly  clear  that,  hitherto,  the 
Middle  Ages  have  in  many  instances  been  altogether  mis 
judged.1 

There  is  still  much  for  historical  research  to  do  in  this 
field.  Neglect  to  study  as  they  deserved  whole  centuries  of 
our  history,  prolific  though  they  were  in  great  things,  has 
avenged  itself  by  the  one-sided  character  of  the  prevalent 
views  concerning  them.  In  the  case  of  many  writers  too 
much  attention  to  the  verdicts  pronounced  by  Luther  on 
every  possible  occasion  against  the  Church  of  the  past  is 
what  is  chiefly  responsible  for  their  disinclination  to  pursue 

1  Cp.,  for  instance,  L.  Feuchtwanger,  "  Gesch.  der  sozialen  Politik 
und  des  Armenwesens  im  Zeitalter  der  Reformation,"  in  "  Jahrb.  f. 
Gesetzgebung,"  etc.,  ed.  G.  Schmoller,  N.F.  32,  1908,  p.  168  ff.  and 
33,  1909,  p.  191  ff.,  more  particularly  p.  179  f.  (The  2nd  art.  is  quoted 
below  as  II.)  With  regard  to  the  Protestant  theologians  (G.  Uhlhorn 
and  others)  Feuchtwanger  says,  p.  180  :  "In  their  hands  the  question 
of  the  care  for  the  poor  since  1500  has  degenerated  into  a  sectarian 
controversy  on  priority,  and  thus  the  way  to  the  solution  of  the 
problem  has  been  blocked  by  a  falsification  of  the  true  question."  He 
regards  Uhlhorn's  work  as  written  from  an  "  extreme  sectarian " 
standpoint.  To  Feuchtwanger,  as  it  had  been  to  Strindberg,  it  is  a 
marvel,  how,  "  as  soon  as  you  begin  to  speak  of  God  and  charity,  your 
voice  grows  hard  and  your  eyes  become  filled  with  hate." 

557 


558          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

the  matter  further  ;  they  are  too  prone  to  regard  things 
from  the  watch-tower  of  Lutheran  theology.  It  is  not  so 
very  long  since  hardly  any  paradox  or  calumny  against  the 
social  "  disorders  "  prevalent  amongst  the  clergy  and  the 
monks,  in  family  life  and  the  commonwealth  under  Popery, 
was  too  monstrous,  provided  it  had  been  uttered  by  the 
Wittenberg  Professor,  to  be  dished  up  again,  though  possibly 
under  somewhat  politer  form,  by  the  occupants  of  Protestant 
pulpits  and  chairs  of  theology. 

Statements  such  as  the  following,  taken  word  for  word 
from  recent  works,  which,  following  our  habit,  we  shall 
refrain  from  naming,  are  based  on  the  traditional  assertions 
of  controversy  and  on  insufficient  acquaintance  with  the 
Middle  Ages. 

"  Luther  accomplished  something  eminently  positive  when  he 
put  the  State-idea  on  tWbse  lines  which  it  was  ultimately  to 
follow  in  his  own  country."  For,  "  according  to  him,  the  duty  of 
the  State  is  the  promotion  of  the  general  welfare."  "  We  have  the 
fullest  right  to  appeal  to  the  spirit  of  his  State  policy,  above  all, 
because,  in  opposition  to  the  mediaeval  view,  it  conceded  to  the 
State  an  independent  status."  :'  The  State,  according  to  him, 
was  to  put  in  practice  in  social  life  the  principle  of  '  serving  our 
neighbour.'  ' 

We  often  find  all  "  political  "  as  well  as  all  "  civil  freedom  " 
traced  back  to  Luther.  He  it  was,  so  we  are  told,  who  introduced, 
or  laid  the  foundations  for,  the  real  mutual  tolerance  displayed 
by  citizens  in  the  State,  just  as  he  did  for  the  principle  of  nation 
ality,  for  scientific  freedom,  for  the  freedom  for  invention,  and, 
finally,  for  the  freedom  of  the  Press. 

He  "  laid  constant  stress  on  charity  towards  our  neighbour  in 
direct  contrast  to  the  individualism  of  the  Middle  Ages,  when 
even  almsgiving  resolved  itself  ultimately  into  mere  selfish 
interest,  the  giver  living  in  hope  of  a  heavenly  reward."  "  He 
proclaimed  that  :  Mendicancy  was  to  be  done  away  with.  .  .  . 
The  number  of  the  destitute,  and  their  claim  on  public  benevo 
lence  he  reduced  to  a  minimum.  These  principles  are  in  direct 
contrast  with  the  devout  and  indiscriminate  almsgiving  of  the 
Middle  Ages  and  paved  the  way  for  the  modern  poor-law  system." 

"  The  sanctity  of  the  home  and  the  family  had  suffered  severely 
under  the  influence  of  monasticism."  Luther  had  to  "  reorganise 
the  methods  of  education  in  order  to  make,  of  the  home  and  the 
family,  institutions  for  the  public  welfare."  He  became  the 
"  father  of  the  modern  National  Schools." 

"  In  his  plans  for  the  maintenance  and  direction  of  civic  affairs 
Luther  once  more  brought  into  their  own  the  '  principles  of  social 
responsibility.'  " 

He  set  aside   the  mediaeval   "  contempt   for   material  things 


HIS   WORK  FOR  SOCIETY         559 

and  for  labour  as  a  means  of  production."  Luther  performed  a 
signal  service  to  economics  by  restoring  respect  for  work ;  for, 
"  maybe,  there  was  no  phenomenon  of  mediaeval  life  which 
presented  a  greater  obstacle  to  material  happiness  than  laziness." 
"  Economic  progress  was  impossible  "  where  the  theory  prevailed, 
that  "the  contemplative  life  was  of  greater  value  than  the  active." 
"  Luther  bestowed  new  dignity  not  only  on  work  in  general,  but 
also  on  its  every  branch  "  ;  according  to  him  "  no  work  is 
degrading  which  serves  the  interests  of  mankind." 

He  was  the  "  guardian  and  promoter  of  the  interests  of 
society,"  and  the  "  importance  of  his  influence  is  still  more 
enhanced  by  the  fact  that  he  showed  himself  a  conservative  and 
guiding  spirit  in  the  midst  of  social  disorder  and  confusion  of 
ideas." 

If  this  holds  good  of  the  service  he  rendered  to  society  as  a 
whole,  he  was  also  within  narrower  limits  the  "  reformer  and 
restorer"  of  family  life.  His  own  marriage  was  "one  of  his 
greatest  reforming  acts,  by  which  he  confirmed  his  rehabilitation 
of  the  conjugal  state,  and,  by  his  labours  as  a  whole,  he  secured 
to  marriage,  and  thus  to  the  very  foundation  of  family  life,  the 
prerogative  of  being  a  '  divine  institution.'  "  He  brought  the 
duties  of  the  family  into  respect,  whereas,  formerly,  "  the 
Church,  which  permeated  everything,  had  been  the  cause  of  their 
neglect." 

"  It  remains  an  historical  truth  that  the  greatness  of  the  German 
people  in  politics,  economics  and  intellectual  life  may  be  traced 
back  to  those  divine  powers  which  the  Reformation  set  free  by  its 
recognition  of  the  free  grace  of  God  in  Christ." 

There  are,  however,  other  Protestant  scholars,  who  are  not 
theologians,  who  regard  such  praise  of  Luther's  social 
importance  as  either  quite  mistaken  or  at  least  greatly 
exaggerated  ;  in  their  opinion  Luther's  services  lay  rather 
in  his  work  for  religion,  and  on  behalf  of  the  knowledge  of 
God  and  union  with  Him  by  faith. 

L.  Feuchtwanger,  for  instance,  a  representative  sociologist, 
recently  spoke  in  tones  almost  ironical  of  the  view  held  "  by  most 
[Protestant]  Church-historians,"  who  praise  "  the  religion  of 
Luther  as  having  produced  autonomous  ethics,  the  modern  State, 
a  society  that  despises  idleness,  the  German  family,  in  short  all 
that  is  great  and  good."  He  is  of  opinion  that  such  views  call  for 
"revision"  ;  nor  would  such  a  revision,  so  he  says,  "detract 
from  the  eminent  importance  of  the  reformation."1  We  shall 
speak  later  on  of  the  proofs  he  adduces  to  show  the  error  of  the 
"  obstinate  opinion,"  as  he  terms  it,  "  that  Protestantism  created 
the  modern  system  of  public  charity,"2  and  that  Luther  brought 
about  the  regeneration  of  benevolence. 

E.  Troeltsch,  the  Heidelberg  theologian,  says  in  "  Die  Bedeu- 

1  "  Gesch.  der  sozialen  Politik,"  etc.,  II.,  p.  207.      2  Ib.,  p.  221. 


560          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

tung  des  Protestantismus  fur  die  Entstehung  der  modernen 
Welt  "  :  "  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  importance  of  Protestantism 
must  not  be  one-sidedly  exaggerated.  The  foundations  of  the 
modern  world  in  the  State,  in  society,  in  economics,  learning  and 
art  were  established  in  a  great  measure  independently  of 
Protestantism,  partly  as  an  outgrowth  of  the  later  Middle  Ages, 
partly  as  the  result  of  the  Renaissance,  particularly  of  the 
Renaissance  as  assimilated  by  Protestantism,  partly — as  in  the 
case  of  the  Catholic  countries,  Spain,  Austria,  Italy  and  especially 
France — after  the  rise  of  Protestantism  and  concurrently  with 
it."  "With  the  principle  of  nationalism,"  writes  Troeltsch,  "  his 
[Luther's]  system  of  an  established  Church  had  no  connection. 
The  latter  merely  promoted  the  solidification  and  centralisation 
of  the  chief  authorities,  whereas  the  former  is  a  product  of  the 
entirely  modern  democratic  awakening  of  the  masses  and  the 
romantic  idea  of  a  national  spirit."  In  another  passage  he  says  : 
"  There  can  be  no  question  of  [Protestantism]  having  paved  the 
way  for  the  modern  idea  of  freedom — of  science,  of  thought,  or  of 
the  press — nor  of  its  having  inspired  the  scholarship  which  it 
controlled  with  new  aims,  or  led  it  to  break  new  ground."1 

There  are  even  Protestants  who  are  disposed  to  deny  that 
Luther  took  any  interest  in  the  State  and  in  public  affairs.  "  It 
follows  from  Luther's  views  of  life,"  writes  Erich  Brandenburg, 
the  author  of  "  Luthers  Anschauung  vom  Staate  und  der  Gesell- 
schaft,"  "  that  a  Christian  neither  can  nor  ought  to  care  for  the 
outbuilding  of  the  existing  order  of  the  State  and  society.  For 
'*  God  has  thrown  us  into  the  world  and  put  us  under  the  rule  of 
the  devil,  so  that  here  we  have  no  paradise  but  look  forward 
hourly  to  every  kind  of  misfortune  to  life  and  limb,  wife  and 
child,  goods  and  honour.'2  .  .  .  By  the  fact  of  his  birth  the 
Christian  [according  to  Luther]  has  been  given  a  definite  place. 
...  To  seek  for  a  better  one,  or  to  wish  to  create  an  entirely 
different  state  of  things  would  be  to  rebel  against  the  Will  of 
God.  Far  from  its  being  the  Christian's  duty  to  strive  after  an 
improvement  in  the  order  of  the  State  or  of  society,  any  such 
striving  would  be  really  sinful."  "  He  [Luther]  regards  civil  life 
as  merely  one  aspect  of  the  probation  which  he  has  to  endure  on 
earth  "  ;  in  his  eyes  the  struggle  for  political  freedom  simply 
implies  an  "  unlawful  devotion  to  earthly  aims,  an  absence  of 
trust  in  God,  and  an  attempt  to  create  a  paradise  on  earth  by  our 
own  strength."3  Where  tyranny  prevails  one  is  not  even  allowed 
to  emigrate,  so  Luther  insists,  unless  indeed  the  ruler  will  not 
suffer  the  Evangel,  when  it  became  lawful  and  advisable,  to  seek 
another  home.4  Nowadays  people  have  a  different  conception, 

1  (Munich  and  Berlin,  1906),  pp.  13,  41,  49,  reprinted  from  "  Hist. 
Zeitschr.,"  97,  1906,  p.  1  ff.,  republished  in  1911  in  an  enlarged  form. 

2  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,   19,  p.   644  ;    Erl.  ed.,   22,  p.   169.      "  Ob 
Kriegsleutte,"  etc.,  1526.  3  16.,  30,  2,  p.  138=31,  p.  67  f. 

4  Ib.,  19,  p.  634=22,  p.  258.  Those  who  emigrate  become  "  faith 
less  and  break  their  oath  to  their  rulers  "  ;  "  they  do  not  bear  in  mind 
the  divine  command,  that  they  are  bound  to  remain  obedient  until 


HIS   WORK   FOR   SOCIETY          561 

so  Brandenburg  points  out,  of  national  greatness  and  political 
freedom.1 

Albert  Kalthoff,  a  Bremen  preacher,  who  belongs  to  the 
extreme  left  of  the  Protestant  party,  goes  still  further  :  "  There 
is  a  considerable  amount  of  conceit  sticking  to  our  Protestant 
churches,  indeed  the  Reformation  festival  seems  to  afford  it  a 
fitting  occasion  for  celebrating  each  year  its  orgy.  What  is  not 
Protestantism  supposed  to  have  brought  to  the  world  ?  National 
freedom  and  prosperity,  modern  science  and  technicology,  all 
this  we  hear  described  as  the  fruit  of  the  tree  of  Protestant  life ; 
not  long  since  I  even  read  of  a  German  professor  who  quite 
seriously  ascribed  the  whole  of  our  present-day  civilisation  to 
Luther."2 

Luther's  favourable  traits  in  respect  of  social  conditions, 
his  eloquent  admonitions  on  family  life  and  love  of  our 
neighbour  deserve  a  high  place.  There  is  no  call  again  to 
bring  forward  examples  after  all  we  have  quoted  elsewhere. 
Luther  is  even  fond  of  including  under  the  "  neighbourly 
love  "  of  which  he  so  frequently  speaks  the  whole  of  our 
social  activity  on  behalf  of  our  fellow  men.3 

His  struggle  against  voluntary  celibacy  and  renunciation 
of  the  world,  however  ill  advised,  had  at  least  one  good 
result,  viz.  that  it  afforded  him  an  opportunity  to  speak 
strongly  on  the  duties  of  the  home,  which  were  so  often 
neglected,  on  the  importance  of  the  humble,  everyday  tasks 
involved  in  matrimony  and  the  training  of  children,  on  work 
at  home  and  for  the  community,  whether  in  a  private  or  a 
public  capacity.  That  plentiful  children  were  a  blessing,  a 
principle  which  had  always  been  recognised  in  the  Christian 
world,  he  insisted  upon  emphatically  in  connection  with  his 
advocacy  of  marriage.  The  keeping  of  the  fourth  command 
ment,  which  had  always  been  regarded  as  the  corner-stone  of 
society,  was  warmly  emphasised  by  him  as  regards  the 

they  are  prevented  by  force  or  are  put  to  death  "  ;  they  are  "  robbing 
their  sovereign  of  his  rights  and  authority  "  over  them.  On  such 
general  grounds  Luther  concludes  that  it  was  not  lawful  to  desert  and 
join  the  Turks. 

1  Pages  17,  26. 

2  "  Das  Zeitalter  der  Reformation,"  Jena,    1907,  p.    1.     Cp.   "  M. 
Luthers  Werke,"    "  revised  and  edited  for  the  German  people,"  by 
Julius  Boehmer,  Stuttgart,  1907,  Introd.,  p.  ix,  where  the  theological 
editor  says  :    "  With  Luther  a  new  era  begins.     He  has  been  and  is 
considered  the  author  of  a  new  civilisation,  different  from  that  of  the 
Middle  Ages  and  of  antiquity.   .   .   .  The  emancipation  of  the  human 
intellect  began  in  the  domain  of  religion  and  has  gradually  extended 
thence  into  other  spheres  in  spite  of  obstacles  and  difficulties." 

3  See,  for  instance,  above,  pp.  45  f.,  476  f .,  and  vol.  iv.,  p.  472  ff. 


562          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

relations  both  to  parents  and  to  other  secular  authorities. 
It  would  be  hard  to  gainsay  that  his  teaching  has  bequeathed 
to  Protestantism  a  wealth  of  instructions  on  the  cultivation 
of  family  affection  and  the  maintenance  of  a  well-ordered 
household.  From  the  first  it  was  beneficial  to  the  social 
foundations  of  society,  and  its  good  influence  has  been 
apparent  even  down  to  our  own  times.  Luther's  writings 
and  sermons,  as  we  soon  shall  see,  also  contain  some  excel 
lent  admonitions  against  usury  as  well  as  against  begging  ; 
he  preaches  contentment  with  our  lot  as  well  as  honest 
industry  ;  he  has  also  much  to  say  of  relief  of  the 'poor  and 
education  of  the  young  either  for  the  learned  professions  or 
for  life  in  general.  In  the  same  way  that  he  sought  to 
interest  the  community  more  and  more  in  the  relief  of  the 
indigent — though  by  rather  novel  means,  which  it  seemed 
to  him  might  take  the  place  of  the  help  formerly  afforded  by 
the  churches,  monasteries  and  private  charity — so  also  his 
appeals  on  behalf  of  the  schools  were  addressed  more  to  the 
congregation,  the  authorities  and  the  State  than  had  been 
customary  in  the  days  of  the  Church  schools.  The  increased 
share  now  taken  by  these  bodies  in  this  work,  if  kept  within 
reasonable  bounds,  might  indeed  turn  out  advantageous, 
though  the  results  did  not  reach  his  expectations,  and  in 
fact  did  not  show  themselves  until  much  later,  and  then 
were  due  to  factors  altogether  independent  of  Protestantism. 

It  must  also  be  pointed  out  to  Luther's  credit  that  he  at 
once  vigorously  withstood  the  communistic  views  which  had 
begun  to  make  their  appearance  even  before  his  day,  as  soon 
as  experience  had  opened  his  eyes  to  their  dangers.  He 
perceived  the  radical  trend  of  the  Anabaptists — which  it  is 
true  was  not  without  some  affinity  with  his  own  doctrines. 
He  came  after  a  while  to  oppose  in  popular  writings  the 
extravagant  social  demands  of  the  peasants,  and,  in  spite 
of  the  crass  exaggeration  of  his  language,  his  tracts  give 
many  a  useful  hint  for  the  improvement  of  existing  con 
ditions  on  Christian  lines. 

The  charge  he  brings  against  earlier  times,  viz.  that, 
owing  to  the  too  great  number  of  clergy  and  religious  a 
premium  had  been  placed  on  idleness, x  is  perhaps  not  devoid 
of  a  grain  of  truth  ;  nor  was  his  complaint  that  the  indolence 
of  so  many  people  who  lived  by  the  Church  endangered  the 
1  See  above,  vol.  i.,  p.  49  f. 


HIS   WORK  FOR   SOCIETY          563 

welfare  of  the  State  and  was  opposed  to  the  interests  of  the 
community  altogether  unjustified.1  The  strongly  worded 
passages  where  Luther  speaks  in  favour  of  work  and  exhorts 
the  authorities  to  cultivate  and  promote  labour  were  quite 
in  place,  though  it  is  true  they  can  be  matched  by  a  whole 
row  of  equally  vigorous  admonitions  by  Catholic  writers, 
dating  from  the  Middle  Ages  and  from  the  years  immediately 
preceding  Luther's  day.2 

Owing  to  his  having  by  his  attacks  on  ecclesiastical  insti 
tutions  dried  up  many  of  the  existing  sources  of  charity 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  indirectly  he  contributed  to 
awaken  those  who  were  less  well  off  to  a  sense  of  their  duty 
to  work  for  their  own  living.  In  this  wise  the  sense  of 
responsibility  was  aroused  in  the  masses.  The  secular 
authorities  were  also  obliged  to  intervene  more  frequently 
owing  to  the  falling  off  in  the  support  afforded  by  the 
Church  to  the  needy  and  oppressed,  particularly  in  cases 
where  all  the  labour  and  exertion  of  the  individual  were 
insufficient  to  guarantee  subsistence  or  legal  protection. 
In  so  far  therefore,  viz.  in  regard  of  the  growing  needs  of 
social  life,  it  has  been  truly  remarked  that  the  religious 
revolution  of  the  16th  century  smoothed  the  way  for  the 
material  conditions  of  modern  society  and  new  cultural 
problems  ;  in  this  sense  Luther  assisted  in  bringing  about 
the  economic  conditions  of  the  present  day.  We  shall  say 
nothing  here  of  the  rise  of  the  modern  spirit  with  its  rejec 
tion  of  authority  and  its  principle  of  unrestrained  intellectual 
freedom. 

Luther  also  helped  in  a  certain  sense  to  set  the  worldly 
authorities  on  their  own  feet  and  to  make  them  more  inde 
pendent.  This  was  an  outcome  of  his  violent  struggle 
against  the  influence  previously  exerted  over  the  State  by 
the  olden  Church,  or  to  speak  more  accurately  of  his  assault 
on  the  Church  as  such,  albeit  it  was  attended  by  the  other 
eminently  unfortunate  results.  In  the  course  of  history, 

1  H.  Boehmer,  "  Luther  im  Lichte  der  neueren  Forschung,"  1906, 
p.   133,  however,   calls  it  a   "  great  exaggeration  "   when  Eberlin  of 
Giinzburg,  the  former  Franciscan  who  afterwards  became  a  follower 
of  Luther,  asserts  that  in  Germany  only  one  man  in  fifteen  did  any 
work.    He  has  also  the  best  of  reasons  for  disbelieving  Agricola's  state 
ment,  that  the  monks  and  nuns  in  Germany  then  numbered  over 
1,400,000  souls. 

2  Cp.  N.  Paulus,   "  Die  Wertung  der  weltlichen  Berufe  im  MA." 
("  Hist.  Jahrb.,"  1911,  p.  725  ff),  particularly  p.  746  ff. 


564          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

according  to  the  Divine  plan,  new  and  useful  elements  not 
seldom  spring  up  from  evil  seed.  Owing  to  a  too  close 
union  of  the  two  powers  and  the  assumption  of  many 
worldly  functions  by  the  Church,  the  representatives  of  the 
latter  were  too  often  exposed  in  their  work  to  a  not  un 
justifiable  criticism.  The  Church  was  charged  with  being 
inefficient  in  her  management  of  o'utward  business  and  this 
detracted  from  the  respect  due  to  her  spiritual  functions  ; 
unnecessary  jealousy  was  aroused  and  social  developments 
in  themselves  desirable  were  frequently  retarded.  Thus, 
though  the  storm  let  loose  by  Luther  wrought  great  devasta 
tion,  yet  it  is  not  to  be  regretted  that  since  then  many 
temporal  forces  now  transferred  from  the  Church  to  the 
State  have  been  set  to  work  with  satisfactory  results  such 
as  might  otherwise  not  have  been  attained.  In  some  places 
certainly  they  had  come  into  operation  long  before  this,  but 
speaking  generally,  things  in  this  respect  were  still  in  a 
backward  state. 

Important  factors  for  judging  of  Luther's  social  work  are 
two  ideas  on  which  he  laid  great  stress  and  which  we  have 
already  discussed.  One  is  the  separation  of  the  Church  from 
the  world,  which,  albeit,  in  very  contradictory  fashion,  he 
attempted  to  carry  out  ;  the  other  is  his  plea  that  the 
Church,  which  he  sought  to  divest  of  all  legislative  power, 
possessed  no  authority  to  make  binding  laws.  What  has 
been  said  already  may  here  be  summed  up  anew  with  a  few 
more  quotations  to  the  point. 

We  have  in  the  first  place  the  separation  of  the  spiritual 
and  supernatural.  Luther's  work  did  great  harm  in  the 
sphere  of  the  supernatural  and,  so  far  as  his  influence 
extended,  alienated  society  from  it.1  His  doctrine,  par 
ticularly  concerning  the  state  of  man,  grace  and  good  works 
was  of  such  a  nature  as  in  reality  to  withdraw  society  from 
the  supernatural  atmosphere,  however  much  he  might  extol 
the  "  knowledge  of  the  free  grace  of  God  in  Christ,"  which 
he  claimed  had  been  won  by  his  exertions. 

The  detachment  of  the  supernatural  life  expressed  itself 

also    in    a    systematic,    jealous    exclusion    of   any    worldly 

meddling  in  the  spiritual  domain,  for  the  rule  of  the  Gospel 

must,  according  to  Luther,  be  something  quite  distinct  from 

1  Cp.  above,  pp.  49-60. 


HIS   WORK   FOR   SOCIETY          565 

the  worldly  rule.  By  his  principles  and  his  writings  he 
materially  contributed  to  the  secularisation  of  society  and 
the  State.  According  to  him  Christ  simply  says  without  any 
reservation  :  "  My  kingdom  is  no  business  of  the  Roman 
Emperor."  The  spiritual  rule  must  be  as  far  apart  from  the 
temporal  rule  "  as  heaven  is  from  earth."1 

"  What  is  most  characteristic  of  the  kingdom  of  grace,"  so 
writes  E.  Luthardt,  one  of  the  best-known  Lutheran 
moralists,  who,  however,  fails  to  point  out  its  want  of  clear 
ness,  "  is  the  order  of  grace,  whilst  what  is  most  character 
istic  of  the  kingdom  of  the  world  and  the  world's  life  is  the 
order  of  law  ;  they  are  quite  different  in  kind  nor  do  they 
run  on  the  same  lines  but  belong  to  entirely  different  worlds. 
To  the  one  I  belong  as  a  Christian,  to  the  other  as  a  man  ; 
for  we  live  at  once  in  two  different  spheres  of  life,  and  are  at 
the  same  time  in  heaven  and  on  earth."  "  Each  one  must 
keep  within  his  own  limits,"  and  "  not  make  of  the  Gospel 
outward  laws  for  life  in  the  world,  for  Jesus  gave  His  law 
only  for  Christians,  not  for  the  rest."2 

Luthardt  rightly  appeals  to  Luther's  words  :  "  This  is  what 
the  Gospel  teaches  you  :  It  has  nothing  to  do  with  worldly  things, 
but  leaves  them  as  God  has  already  disposed  them  by  means  of 
the  worldly  authorities."  "  The  kingdom  of  Christ  has  nothing 
to  do  with  outward  things,  but  leaves  them  all  unaltered  to  follow 
their  own  order."  "  In  God's  kingdom  in  which  He  rules  through 
the  Gospel  there  is  no  going  to  law,  nor  have  we  anything  to  do 
with  law,  but  everything  is  summed  up  in  forgiveness,  remission 
and  bestowing,  and  there  is  no  anger  or  punishment,  nothing  but 
benevolence  and  service  of  our  neighbour."  As  to  the  temporal 
matters,  "  there  the  lawyers  are  free  to  help  and  advise  how 
things  are  to  be."  "  If  anyone  were  to  try  and  rule  the  world 
according  to  the  Gospel,  just  think,  my  good  friend,  what  the 
result  would  be.  He  would  break  the  chains  and  bonds  th%t  hold 
back  the  wild  and  savage  beasts."3— It  is  true  that  he  here 
altogether  overlooks  the  fact  that  religion  has,  on  the  contrary,  to 
help  in  governing  the  world  by  her  moral  laws,  restraining  the 
"  wild  and  savage  "  elements  by  means  of  her  laws,  her  authority 
and  her  means  of  grace  ;  just  as  when  speaking  above  of  the  two 
spheres  of  life  in  which  man  is  placed  he  forgets  that  we  are  en 
dowed  with  but  one  conscience  and  one  responsibility,  viz.  that 
of  the  Christian,  which  is  inseparable  from  man  as  he  is  at 
present  constituted. 

1  E.  Luthardt,  "  Die  Ethik  Luthers,"2  1875,  where  the  above  and 
other  texts  are  quoted. 

2  Ib.,  pp.  81,  88. 

3  For  the  passages  see  Luthardt,  ib. 


566          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

"  Now,  praise  be  to  God,  all  the  world  knows,"  says  Luther,  of 
his  sundering  of  the  two  spheres  of  life,  "with  what  diligence 
and  pains  I  have  laboured  and  still  labour  to  distinguish  between 
the  two  offices  or  rules,  the  temporal  and  the  spiritual,  and  to 
keep  them  apart ;  each  one  now  is  instructed  as  to  his  own  work 
and  kept  to  it,  whereas  in  Popery  it  was  all  so  entangled  and  in 
such  confusion  that  no  one  kept  within  his  own  powers,  dominion 
and  rights."1 

Protestants  have  found  the  essential  difference  between 
Protestantism  and  Catholicism  to  consist  in  the  fact,  that, 
according  to  Luther's  directions,  Protestantism  separates 
"  religion  and  theology,  faith  and  knowledge,  morality  and 
politics,  Christianity  and  art,"  whereas  Catholicism,  according 
to  the  motto  of  Pius  X,  seeks  to  "  renew  all  things  in  Christ." 
"  We  know  that  revelation  has  only  an  inward  mission  to  the 
individual  soul ;  the  Catholic  believes  in  its  public  mission  for 
universal  civilisation."  "  We  should  fear  for  the  purity  of  our 
faith  and  no  less  for  morality  and  civilised  order  should  these 
domains  ever  be  christianised."2 

The  result  of  forbidding  the  "  spiritual  rule  "  ever  to 
encroach  on  the  temporal  domain  was  so  to  enfeeble  the 
precepts  of  ethics  as  to  deprive  them  of  any  real  authority 
for  making  themselves  felt  as  a  power  in  secular  government. 

With  Luther  everything  is  constructed  without  any  basis 
of  authority  ;  he  proffers,  as  he  is  fond  of  saying,  "  opinions 
and  advice,"3  and  even  this  he  does  without  a  trace  of  theory 
or  method  ;  as  for  binding  regulations  he  has  none  ;  nor  has 
he  any  Church  behind  him  that  can  set  up  an  obligatory 
ethical  standard  ;  he  recognises  indeed  the  universal  priest 
hood,  but  no  Church  with  any  paramount  authority  in 
spiritual  things,  no  hierarchy  and  no  social  institution  such 
as  the  Catholic  Church  is.  This  is  the  chief  reason  why  his 
moral  instructions  lack  any  definite  and  binding  force  over 
people's  minds.  The  great  mass  of  mankind  must  be  guided 
by  clear  and  fixed  rules,  counsels  which  address  themselves 
to  man's  good-will  are  in  themselves  practically  useless  for 
the  direction  or  guidance  of  the  masses,  constituted  as  they 
are.  The  Gospel,  moreover,  in  spite  of  what  Luther  says  to 
the  contrary,  though  it  brings  the  glad  tidings  of  salvation 
and  forgiveness,  also  contains  a  large  number  of  strict  moral 
precepts ;  the  Divine  Founder  of  the  Church,  in  His  wisdom, 
also  equipped  her  with  full  power  to  issue,  on  the  lines 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  30,  3,  p.  206  ;   Erl.  ed.,  23,  p.  94. 

2  F.  M.  Schiele,  "  Christliche  Welt,"  1908,  No.  37. 

3  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  30,  3,  p.  206  ;   Erl.  ed.,  23,  p.  95. 


HIS   WORK   FOR   SOCIETY          567 

traced  out  by  Himself,  the  commands  called  for  by  the  needs 
of  every  age.  She  disposes  of  spiritual  penalties  and  has 
the  right  to  excommunicate  offenders  when  this  is  necessary 
to  emphasise  her  laws. 

With  Luther  the  last  resource  lay  in  the  system  of  the 
State-Church.  The  "  Christian  authorities  "  became  the 
authorities  of  the  congregations  (see  below,  p.  579  ff.).1 
Thus  the  founder  of  the  new  religion  frequently  requires  the 
rulers  who  had  rallied  to  his  system  to  make  use  of  their 
power  in  order  to  lend  their  sanction  and  authority  to  the 
ethical  regulations  he  gave  to  his  followers,  and  which  he 
himself  was  unable  to  enforce. 

Here  we  shall  only  consider  one  class  of  cases  where  it  was 
of  great  importance  to  him  to  see  his  "  opinion  and  advice  " 
followed.  According  to  him,  as  Luthardt  himself  admits  in 
his  "  Ethik  Luthers,"2  "  The  authorities  were  to  serve  and 
promote  the  cause  of  the  Evangel.  .  .  .  From  this  Luther 
went  on,  however,  to  give  advice  which  really  was  at 
variance  with  his  fundamental  views.  It  is  true  when  he 
demands  that  the  rulers  should  not  suffer  any  such  sects  as 
deny  the  rights,  etc.,  of  the  authorities,  he  was  merely 
imposing  on  them  the  fulfilment  of  one  of  the  duties  of  the 
State, 3  but  when  he  requires  the  rulers  to  make  use  of  their 
powers  to  check  the  scandal  of  heresy  and  false  worship, 
which  was  the  most  horrible  and  dangerous  form  of  scandal ; 
or,  when  heresy  had  been  proved  from  Scripture,  to  forbid 
its  preaching  ;  '  to  insist  on  the  true  worship,  to  punish  and 
forbid  false  doctrine  and  idolatry  and  to  risk  everything 
rather  than  allow  themselves  and  their  people  to  be  forced 
into  idolatry  and  falsehood  '  ;  or  '  to  banish  from  the  land 

1  Above,  vol.  iii.,  p.  22  ff.  2  Second  ed.,  p.  124. 

3  Luthardt  refers  here  to  Luther's  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  39,  p.  250  f., 
where  the  latter  says  in  his  exposition  of  Psalm  Ixxxii.  (Ixxxi.)  1530  : 
"  Because  the  rulers,  besides  their  other  duties,  must  promote  God's 
Word  and  its  preachers,"  "  they  must  punish  public  blasphemers  "  ; 
among  these  were  the  false  teachers  and  those  who  teach  that  each  one 
must  himself  make  satisfaction  for  his  sins  (he  means  the  Catholics). 
"  Whoever  wishes  to  live  amongst  the  burghers  must  keep  the  laws  of 
the  borough  and  not  dishonour  or  abuse  them,  else  they  must  go," 
i.e.  the  rulers  must  compel  those  Catholics  who  were  living  amongst 
Protestants  to  emigrate.  "  The  offender  was  acting  contrary  to  the 
Gospel  and  the  common  article  of  the  creed  which  we  recite  :  '  I 
believe  in  the  forgiveness  of  sins.'  Such  articles  held  by  the  whole  of 
Christendom  have  already  been  sufficiently  examined,  proved  and 
decided  by  Scripture  and  the  confession  of  the  whole  of  Christendom, 
confirmed  by  many  miracles  and  sealed  with  the  blood  of  the  martyrs." 


568  LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

those  who  deny  such  articles  as  the  Divinity  of  Christ  and 
the  redemption,'  etc. ;  or  again,  when  two  opposing  parties 
confront  each  other,  as,  for  instance,  the  Lutherans  and  the 
Papists,  to  decide  according  to  Scripture  and  forbid  the 
party  that  failed  to  agree  with  Scripture  to  preach,1 — all 
these  and  similar  matters  are  plainly  based  on  the  assump 
tion  that  the  ruler  had  a  right  to  form  an  independent 
opinion  as  to  whether  a  doctrine  was  or  was  not  in  accord 
ance  with  Scripture,  an  assumption  which  Luther,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  strongly  deprecates  in  theory.  When  Luther 
speaks  in  this  way  he  is  taking  it  for  granted  that  he  has  to 
do  with  a  Christian  ruler,  who  as  such  does  not  merely 
perform  his  office  of  ruler  like  the  heathen  Emperor  or  the 
Grand  Turk,  but  is  influenced  by  the  Gospel  and  recognises 
the  Word  of  God." 

Expressed  in  different  words  Luthardt's  ideas  would 
amount  to  this  :  According  to  Luther  it  is  imperative  that 
the  rulers  should  be  good  Lutherans  and  accept  the  Evangel 
and  the  Word  of  God  as  he  taught  it.  No  other  Christian 
ruler  may  venture  to  put  the  above  measures  in  force,  for 
the  truth  is  he  is  no  Christian  at  all. 

This  leads  us  to  look  closer  into  Luther's  ideas  on  the 
secular  authority  and  the  State-Church. 

2.   The  State  and  the  State  Church 

Most  Protestant  writers  become  very  eloquent  and  go  into 
great  detail  when  dealing  with  the  main  ideas  Luther  is 
supposed  to  have  expressed  on  the  State  and  on  social  order. 

He  maintained,  so  they  assert,  and  impressed  strongly  on  all 
ages  to  come,  that  the  purpose  of  the  State  was  to  keep  the  peace 
and  uphold  the  right  against  the  wicked  by  means  of  legislation 
and  penalties  :  "  Magistratus  instrumentum,  per  quod  Deus  pacem 
et  iura  conservat."2  This  temporal  peace  was  the  best  earthly 
possession  and  comprised  all  temporal  blessings  ;  in  point  of 

1  In  the  continuation  of  the  above  passage  Luther  says  of  such 
controversies  :     "  Let  the  rulers  step  in  and  examine  the  case  and 
whichever  party  is  not  in  agreement  with  Scripture,  let  him  be  com 
manded  to  be  silent.  .  .  .  For  it  is  not  good  for  the  people  to  hear 
contradictory  preaching  in  the  parish  or  district,"  etc.     Luther,  how 
ever,   not  only  demands,   as    Luthardt  says,   that  these   "  heretics  " 
should  be  banished,  but  also  that  they  should  be  punished  as  public 
blasphemers.     Cp.  below,  p.  578. 

2  "  Opp.  lat.  exeg.,"  20,  p.  97. 


THE   STATE  AND   ITS  DUTIES      569 

fact  the  "  true  preaching  office  "  should,  so  he  declared,  bring 
peace,  but  with  the  greater  number  "  this  is  not  the  case,"1  so 
that  the  authority  of  the  ruler  was  necessary  for  the  maintenance 
of  outward  peace.  "  This  worldly  government,"  according  to 
him,  "  preserves  temporal  peace,  rights  and  life,"  indeed  he  says 
it  makes  wild  beasts  into  men  and  saves  men  from  becoming  wild 
beasts.2  The  true  Evangelical  doctrine,  unlike  the  earlier  one, 
leads  to  the  secular  government  being  regarded  as  "  the  great 
gift  of  God  and  His  own  gracious  order,"3  notwithstanding  that 
all  authority  was  instituted  by  God  on  account  of  the  sin  that 
reigns  in  man.  Human  reason  and  experience,  and  also  the  Holy 
Ghost,  must  teach  the  authorities  how  to  fulfil  their  duty.  They 
must,  so  far  as  this  is  possible,  work  for  the  common  welfare  of 
their  subjects  in  this  world.  Since,  according  to  Luther,  they 
must  punish  what  is  evil  in  their  subjects'  external  behaviour  and 
take  care  that  "  all  public  scandal  be  banished  and  removed,"4  their 
task  seems  to  trench  on  morals  and  on  religion.  Good  sovereigns 
instruct  their  people  concerning  temporal  things,  "  how  to  manage 
their  homes  and  farms,  how  to  rule  the  land  and  the  people,  how 
to  make  money  and  secure  possessions,  how  to  become  rich  and 
powerful,"  further,  "  how  we  are  to  till  the  fields,  plough,  sow, 
reap  and  keep  our  house."5  In  short  the  ruler  must  interest 
himself  in  the  needs  of  his  subjects  as  "  though  they  were  his  very 
own."6  The  worldly  rulers  must  provide  for  the  support  of  their 
subjects,  and  particularly  for  the  poor,  the  widows  and  orphans, 
and  extend  to  them  their  fatherly  protection. 

Other  fine  sayings  of  Luther's  on  this  subject  and  on  the  duties 
he  assigns  to  the  rulers  are  instanced  in  plenty. 

The  ruler  "  holds  the  place  of  a  father,  only  that  his  sway  is 
more  extensive,  for  he  is  not  merely  the  father  of  one  family,  as 
it  were,  but  of  as  many  as  there  are  inhabitants,  citizens  or 
subjects  in  his  country.  .  .  .  And  because  they  bear  this  name 
and  title  and  look  upon  it  as  in  all  honour  their  greatest 
treasure,  it  is  our  duty  to  respect  them  and  regard  them  as  our 
dearest,  most  precious  possession  on  earth."7  Luther  insisted 
in  the  strongest  terms  on  the  duty  of  obedience,  more  par- 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  30,  2,  p.  538  ;  Erl.  ed.,  172,  p.  392.    Luther, 
however,  emphasises  the  true  preaching  office  so  much  that  he  repre 
sents  his  pure  Gospel  teaching  as  alone  capable  of  preserving  peace, 
a  fact  which  is  usually  passed  over.     "  No  University,  institution  or 
monastery  "  had  been  able  to  accomplish  what  the  preaching  office  was 
now  able  to  do  ;    the  "  blind  bloodhounds  abandoned  the  preaching 
office  and  gave  themselves  up  to  lies." 

2  "Werke,"  ib.,  p.  555  =  402.  3  /&.,  p.  537f.  =  392. 

4  Reference   is   made   here   to   the   passage   in   the   Home-Postils, 
"  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  32,  p.  450.    Here  we  read,  p.  449,  that  the  "  rulers 
must  promote  matrimony  and  the  management  of  the  home,  and  see 
that  the  young  are  properly  educated  "  ;    for  this  reason  theirs  was 
"  a  divine  and  holy  state." 

5  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  42,  p.  388,  in  the  Home-Postils. 

6  Cp.  the  passages  in  Kostlin,  "  Luthers  Theologie,"  22,  p.  321. 

7  Weim.  ed.,  31,  1,  p.  153  ;   Erl.  ed.,  21,  p.  60. 


570          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

ticularly  after  his  experiences  during  the  Peasant  War.  He 
emphasises  very  strongly,  in  opposition  to  the  fanatics,  that  the 
secular  Courts  must  rule  and  their  authority  be  recognised,  and 
also  that  the  oath  must  be  taken  when  required. 

He  even  tells  the  rebels  :  "  God  would  rather  suffer  the  rulers 
who  do  what  is  wrong  than  the  mob  whose  cause  is  just.  The 
reason  is  that  when  Master  Omnes  wields  the  sword  and  makes 
war  on  the  pretence  that  he  is  in  the  right,  things  fare  badly. 
For  a  Prince,  if  he  is  to  remain  a  Prince,  cannot  well  chop  off  the 
heads  of  all,  though  he  may  act  unjustly  and  cut  off  the  heads  of 
some."  For  he  must  needs  retain  some  about  him,  continues 
Luther  with  a  touch  of  humour  ;  but  when  the  mob  is  in  revolt 
then  "  off  go  all  the  heads."1  "  Even  where  a  ruler  has  pledged 
himself  to  govern  his  subjects  in  accordance  with  a  constitution — 
'  according  to  prearranged  articles  ' — Luther  will  not  admit  that 
it  is  lawful  to  deprive  him  of  his  authority  should  he  disregard  his 
oath.  .  .  .  No  one  has  the  right  or  the  command  from  God  to 
enforce  a  penalty  in  the  case  of  the  authorities."2  But  things 
ought  not  to  reach  such  a  pass  in  the  case  of  the  prince's  govern 
ment.  Obedience  should  make  everything  smooth  for  him.  He 
cherishes  and  provides  for  all,  as  many  as  he  has  subjects,  and 
may  thus  be  called  the  father  of  them  all,  just  as  in  old  days  the 
heathen  called  their  pious  rulers  the  fathers  and  saviours  of  the 
country."3 

These  ideas  are  not,  however,  peculiar  to  Luther.  They 
were  current  long  before  his  time  and  had  been  discussed 
from  every  point  of  view  by  Christian  writers  who,  in  turn, 
had  borrowed  them  from  antiquity. 

In  all  this,  which,  furthermore,  Luther  never  summed  up 
in  a  theory,  all  that  is  new  is  his  original  and  forcible  manner 
of  putting  forward  his  ideas .  ' c  It  is  hardly  possible  to  argue, ' ' 
says  Frank  G.  Ward,  one  of  the  latest  Protestant  writers  in 
this  field,  "  that  his  view  of  the  duty  of  the  State  contained 
anything  very  new.  .  .  .  The  opinion  that  the  State  had 
an  educational  duty  was  held  even  in  classical  antiquity."4 
If  it  was  held  in  Pagan  times,  still  more  so  was  this  the  case 
in  the  Christian  Middle  Ages.  It  is  to  classical  antiquity 
that  we  just  heard  Luther  appeal  when  he  referred  to  the 
"  pater  patrice."  He  had  become  acquainted  in  the  Catholic 
schools  with  the  ideas  of  antiquity  purified  by  Christian 
philosophy. 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  50,  p.  294. 

2  Kostlin-Kawerau,  2,  p.  10.    See  below,  p.  577,  n.  1. 

3  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  39,  p.  240. 

4  "  Darstellung  und  Wiirdigung  der  Ansichten  Luthers  vom  Staat 
und  seinen  wirtschaftlichen  Aufgaben,"  Jena,  1898,  No.  22  ("  Sammlung 
nationalokonomischer  und  statistischer  Abhandlungen,"  21. 


THE   STATE  AND   ITS  DUTIES      571 

Still,  there  is  much  that  is  really  new  in  Luther's  views  on 
the  State  and  the  rulers  which  does  not  come  out  in  the 
passage  quoted  above  ;  what  is  new,  however,  far  from 
being  applauded  by  modern  Protestant  judges,  is  often 
reprehended  by  them. 

As  the  accounts  we  had  to  give  elsewhere  were  already  so 
full  it  will  not  be  necessary  again  to  go  into  details  ;  it  is, 
however,  worth  while  again  to  emphasise  the  conclusions 
already  arrived  at  by  calling  attention  to  some  data  not  as 
yet  taken  into  consideration. 

In  the  first  place  one  thing  that  was  new  was  the  energetic 
application  made  by  Luther  in  his  earlier  years  of  his 
peculiar  principle  of  the  complete  separation  of  world  and 
Church.  The  State,  or,  rather,  ordered  society  (for  there 
was  as  yet  no  political  State  in  the  modern  sense),  was 
consequently  de-Christianised  by  him,  at  least  in  principle, 
at  least  if  we  ignore  the  change  which  soon  took  place  in 
Luther  himself  (see  below,  p.  576  f.).  The  proof  of  this  de- 
Christianisation  is  found  in  his  own  statements.  In  his 
writing  of  1523,  "Von  welltlicher  Uberkeytt,"  he  expressly 
told  the  rulers  of  the  land  that  they  had  no  concern  with 
good  people  and  "  that  it  was  not  their  business  to  make 
them  pious,"  but  that  they  were  only  there  to  rule  a  world 
estranged  from  God,  and  to  maintain  order  by  force  when 
the  peace  was  disturbed  or  men  suffered  injustice.  Amongst 
real  Christians  there  would,  according  to  Luther,  be  no 
secular  rulers.1  Even  when  Luther,  in  this  tract  of  which 
he  thought  so  highly,  is  instructing  a  pious  Christian  ruler 
on  his  duties,  he  has  nothing  to  say  of  his  duty  to  protect 
and  further  the  Church,  though  in  earlier  days  all  admoni 
tions  to  the  princes  had  insisted  mainly  on  this. 

His  view  of  the  two  powers  at  work  in  the  social  order  was 
new,  particularly  as  regards  the  spiritual  sphere  and  the 
position  of  those  holding  authority  in  the  Church.  The 
believing  Christians  in  Luther's  eyes  formed  merely  a  union 
of  souls,2  without  any  hierarchy  or  a  jot  of  spiritual  authority 
or  power  ;  there  is  in  fact  only  one  power  on  earth  qualified 
to  issue  regulations,  viz.  the  secular  power  ;  the  combination 
of  the  two  powers,  which  had  formed  the  basis  of  public 
order  previously,  was  thrown  over,  any  spiritual  ruler  being 
out  of  place  where  all  the  faithful  were  priests.  There  is 
i  See  above,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  297  ff.,  307  f.  2  Ib.,  p.  302  f. 


572          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

but  a  "  ministry  "  of  the  word,  conferred  by  election  of  the 
faithful,  and  its  one  duty  is  to  bring  the  Gospel  home  to 
souls  ;  it  knows  nothing  of  law,  vengeance  or  punishment.1 
The  ministry  of  the  Word  must  indeed  stand,  but  is  by  no 
means  a  supervising  body,  in  spite  of  the  "  neo-Lutheran 
conception  of  the  office,"  as  some  Protestant  theologians 
of  the  present  day  disapprovingly  call  it. 

Carl  Holl,  in  his  "  Luther  und  das  landesherrliche  Kirchen- 
regiment  "  (1911),  says  with  some  truth  :  "  Luther  knows  as  little 
of  a  Christian  State  as  he  does  of  a  Christian  shoemaking  trade  "  ; 
"  Our  life  here  below  is  only  Christian  in  so  far  as  the  individuals 
concerned  are  Christians.  Their  sphere  of  action  is  not  prescribed 
to  Christians  by  Christianity  but  rather  by  the  divine  order  of 
nature."2 — Hence  the  whole  public  congregational  system,  so  far 
as  it  needs  laws  to  govern  it,  must  remain  on  a  purely  natural  basis. 

This  view  is  confirmed  by  the  following  odd-sounding  state 
ments  of  Luther's  : 

Among  Christians  the  sword  can  have  no  place,  "  hence  you 
cannot  make  use  of  it  on  or  among  Christians,  who  have  no  need 
of  it  "  ;  still  the  world  "  cannot  and  may  not  do  without  it  " 
(this  power)  ;  in  other  words,  as  Christians,  both  subjects  and 
rulers  suffer  injustice  gladly  according  to  the  Gospel,  but,  for  the 
sake  of  their  neighbours  and  for  the  keeping  of  order  in  the  world, 
both  favour  the  use  of  force.  Secular  rule  does  not  extend  beyond 
"life  and  limb  and  what  is  outward  on  this  earth."3  "Our 
squires,  our  princes  and  our  bishops,  shall  see  what  fools  they 
are,"  when  they  "  order  us  to  believe  the  Church,  the  Fathers  and 
the  Councils  though  there  is  no  Word  of  God  in  them.  It  is  the 
apostles  of  the  devil  who  order  such  things,  not  the  Church." 
And  yet  "  our  Emperor  and  the  clever  princes  are  doing  this 
now."4  Hence  the  princes  must  keep  to  their  own  outward 
sphere,  viz.  only  coerce  the  wicked,  and  .not  seek  to  rule  over 
Christians. 

"  Christians  can  be  governed  by  nothing  but  the  Word  of  God. 
For  Christians  must  be  ruled  by  faith,  not  by  outward  works. 
.  .  .  Those  who  do  not  believe  are  not  Christians,  nor  do  they 
belong  to  the  kingdom  of  Christ,  but  to  the  kingdom  of  the  world, 
hence  they  must  be  coerced  and  driven  with  the  sword  and  by  the 
outward  government.  Christians  do  everything  that  is  good  of 
their  own  accord  and  without  being  compelled,  and  God's  Word 
is  enough  for  them."5 

When  Luther  contrasts  in  this  way  the  kingdom  of  Christ  and 
the  true  life  of  a  Christian  with  the  temporal  kingdom  and  the 
functions  of  the  authorities,  he  goes  so  far  in  his  "  Von  wellt- 
licher  Uberkeytt,"  and  even  in  his  sermons,  as  strongly  to 

1  Above,  p.  58  f.  2  P.  15. 

3  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  11,  p.  255  ;   Erl.  ed.,  22,  p.  73. 

4  /&.,  p.  262  f.  =  82  ff.    Cp.  p.  269  ff.  =  92  ff. 
*  /&.,  p.  271  =  p.  94. 


THE   STATE  AND   ITS   DUTIES      573 

depreciate  the  secular  or  civil  power.  He  teaches,  for  instance, 
that  the  Christian  who  holds  the  office  of  ruler,  must  do  things 
that  are  forbidden  to  Christians  as  such,  for  nstance,  pronounce 
sentence,  put  to  death  and  use  other  strong  measures  against  the 
unruly.  But  all  this  belongs  in  reality  to  hell. — "  Whoever  is 
under  the  secular  rule,"  so  we  read  in  a  curious  sermon  in  Luther's 
Church-Postils,  "is  still  far  from  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  for  the 
place  where  all  this  belongs  is  hell  ;  for  instance,  the  prince 
who  governs  his  people  in  such  a  way  as  to  allow  none  to  suffer 
injustice,  and  no  evildoer  to  go  unrequited,  does  well  and  receives 
praise.  .  .  .  Nevertheless,  as  explained  above,  this  is  not 
appointed  for  those  who  belong  to  heaven  but  merely  in  order 
that  people  may  not  sink  yet  deeper  into  hell  and  make  things 
even  worse.  Therefore  no  one  who  is  under  the  secular  govern 
ment  can  boast  that  he  is  acting  rightly  before  God  ;  in  His  sight 
it  is  still  all  wrong  "  ;  for  of  Christians  more  is  required  ;  who 
ever  wishes  to  act  according  to  the  Gospel  must  ever  be  ready  to 
suffer  injustice.1  But  the  secular  authority  must,  either  "of  its 
own  initiative  or  at  the  instance  of  others,  without  any  complaint, 
entreaty  or  exertion  of  his,  help  and  protect  him.  Where  it  does 
not  he  must  allow  himself  to  be  fleeced  and  abused,  and  not  resist 
evil,  according  to  the  words  of  Christ.  And  be  assured  that  this 
is  no  counsel  of  perfection  as  our  sophists  lyingly  and  blas 
phemously  assert,  but  a  strict  command  binding  on  all  Chris 
tians."2  There  is  a  huge  gulf  between  the  kingdom  of  such  a 
Christian  and  that  of  the  "  jailers,  hangmen,  lawyers,  advocates 
and  such-like  rabble." 

Such  are  the  epithets  Luther  flings  at  the  secular  power,  the 
State  and  its  ministers,  whose  task  it  is  to  "  seek  out  the  wicked, 
convict  them,  strangle  and  put  them  to  death."3  These  authori 
ties  must  indeed  exist  and  a  Christian  must  submit  to  them 
willingly — not  for  his  own  sake  but  for  that  of  his  neighbour, 
i.e.  for  the  sake  of  the  common  good  ;  he  himself  has  no  need  of 
them  ;  the  behaviour  of  the  Christian  towards  this  secular  power 
must  be  dictated  by  his  Christian  love  for  his  neighbour. 

A  Protestant  critic  writes  :  "  Luther  hardly  recognises  any 
so-called  Christian  State.  .  .  .  We  find  Luther  warning  his 
hearers  against  seeing  anything  particularly  useful  or  indis 
pensable  behind  the  work  of  the  government.  The  ruler's  sense 
of  responsibility  was  to  be  something  purely  human.  .  .  .  The 
Christian  in  fact  has  no  need  of  any  ruler."4  "  Luther's  interest 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  142,  p.  281.     Cp.  Weim.  ed.,  18,  p.  307  ;    Erl. 

'  "2  "  Werke,"'  Weim.  ed.,  11,  p.  259  ;  Erl.  ed.,  22,  p.  78  f.  In  order 
to  understand  the  phrase  "  let  himself  be  fleeced  "  it  should  be  noted 
that  those  Lutherans  who  lived  under  the  rule  of  Catholic  princes  were 
unable  to  escape  the  action  of  the  Edict  of  Worms. 

3  He  here  says  :    "  God  hangs,  breaks  on  the  wheel,  strangles  and 
makes  war  ;   all  this  is  His  work."    Ib.,  19,  p.  626  =  22,  p.  250. 

4  Gustav  v.  Schulthess-Rechberg,  "  Luther,  Zwingli  und  Calvin  m 
ihren  Ansichten  iiber  das  Verhaltnis  von   Staat   und   Kirche, 

("  Zurcher  Beitrage  zur  Rechtswissenschaft,"  24),  p.  168. 


574          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

in  things  political  (see  below)  is  practically  nil  ;  where  the  State 
can  be  of  any  use  to  him  he  welcomes  it  and  even  gives  it  its  meed 
of  praise.  .  .  .  His  appreciation  of  the  State  is  usually  just  a 
matter  of  feeling. ' ' 1  We  come  to  see  that ' '  he  took  no  independent 
interest  in  politics.  .  .  .  He  even  goes  so  far  as  to  characterise 
the  outward  order  of  the  State  as  a  necessary  evil.  State  organisa 
tion  in  his  eyes  is  simply  a  kind  of  enforced  charity  towards  our 
neighbour."2 

"  Luther  knows  no  Christian  State,"  says  another  Protestant 
writer  of  Luther's  theories.  "  The  State  is  as  worldly  a  thing  as 
eating  and  drinking  "  ;  indeed  its  commands  and  its  deeds  "  all 
belong  to  hell."3 

This  worldly  bond  of  union  is  good,  when,  with  God's  help,  it 
follows  the  dictates  of  reason.  It  is  the  only  union  that  exists,  for 
Luther  does  not  recognise  State  and  Church  as  two  unions.  This, 
says  Holl,  is  now  regarded  "  as  an  axiom."4  We  may,  it  is  true, 
admit  with  Holl  that  Luther  is  not  quite  consistent  in  this,  but 
this  is  only  because  he  reverts  inadvertently  to  the  old  ideas,  and, 
even  in  his  "  Von  welltlicher  Uberkeytt,"  incidentally  speaks  of 
a  spiritual  authority  and  of  bishops  in  whom  it  is  invested.5 

Some  Protestant  writers,  quite  erroneously,  extol  the 
"  Christendom  "  equipped  with  both  spiritual  and  secular 
authority  which  Luther  substituted  for  the  twin  powers  of 
yore.  It  was  only  owing  to  his  want  of  logic,  and  out  of 
practical  considerations  for  the  interests  of  his  religion  (see 
below),  that  he  was  able  to  endow  as  he  did  the  State  with 
spiritual  authority.  And,  besides,  "  Christendom,"  to 
which  indeed  he  often  enough  refers,  had,  in  reality,  been 
completely  abrogated  by  him  at  least  in  the  traditional 
sense,  viz.  of  the  kingdom  of  God  on  earth  which  embraces 
as  in  one  family  all  the  baptised.  For  had  he  not  deprived 
baptism  of  its  dignity  and  made  membership  of  the  Church 
dependent  on  the  faith  of  the  adult  ? 

1  /&.,  p.  57.  2  Ib.,  166. 

3  E.   Brandenburg,   "  Luthers  Anschauungen  vom  Staate,"    1901, 
p.  13  f.     Cp.  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  11,  p.  258  ;    Erl.  ed.,  22,  p.  77  f.  : 
"  His  kingdom  [Christ's]  is  not  made  up  of  ploughmen,  princes,  hang 
men  or  jailers,  nor  does  it  include  the  sword  or  secular  law,  but  only  the 
Word  of  God  and  His  Spirit ;   by  it  His  subjects  are  governed  in  their 
hearts  inwardly."     All  the  successors  of  the  Apostles  and  "  spiritual 
rulers  "  were  to  be  satisfied  with  the  Word. — Erl.  ed.,  39,  p.  330  :   "  The 
secular  government  has  only  to  rule  over  bodily  and  temporal  posses 
sions." — P.  331  :    "  Whoever  wishes  to  become  learned  and  wise  in 
secular  government  let  him  study  the  heathen  books  and  writings, 
these  have  indeed  described  and  painted  it  most  beautifully  and  fully." 

4  K.    Holl,    "  Luther  und   das   landesherrliche   Kirchenregiment," 
1911,  p.  20. 

6  See  above,  vol.  ii.,  p.  301  :   The  bishops  must  "  restrain  heretics." 


THE   STATE  AND   ITS  DUTIES      575 

"  Luther  drags  away  the  corner  stone  on  which  the  whole 
edifice  [of  Christendom]  rests,"  says  Holl.  "  According  to 
his  teaching  we  are  not  simply  baptised  into  the  Church  as 
was  the  case  according  to  the  Catholic  doctrine.  Baptism, 
indeed,  even  to  him,  constitutes  the  foundation  of  Chris 
tianity,  but  the  grace  of  the  sacrament  is  only  effective  in 
those  who  believe  in  the  promises  offered  therein  ('  Sacra- 
menta  non  implentur  dum  fiunt,  sed  dum  creduntur ').  .  .  . 
Luther,  by  making  admission  into  the  spiritual  society 
dependent  on  a  personal  condition,  destroyed  the  idea  of 
Christendom  in  the  mediaeval  Catholic  sense  "  ;x  this  Holl 
regards  as  his  chief  merit. 

This  is  undoubtedly  so  true,  that,  in  the  case  of  the  wars 
against  the  Turks,  Luther  refused  to  hear  of  any  "  Christen 
dom  "  in  the  traditional  sense  which  might  be  pitted  against 
the  Crescent,  and  this  on  the  ground  that  but  few  of  the 
combatants  were  real  Christians,  i.e.  real  believers  in  the 
Evangel  he  preached.2  He  also  reserves  the  honourable 
title  of  Christians,  as  the  headings  of  many  of  his  writings 
show,  for  those  who  personally  professed  the  new  faith.3 

Was  Luther  the  Founder  of  the  Modern  State  ? 

The  question  seems  so  extraordinary,  that  we  must  hasten 
to  say  that  some  of  Luther's  more  passionate  admirers  have 
actually  claimed  for  him  that  he  prepared  the  way  for  the 
modern  State. 

The  difficulty  of  proving  that  he  is  really  entitled  to  such 
an  honour  becomes  obvious  as  soon  as  we  recall  that  all 
modern  theories  of  government  agree  in  seeing  the  ideal 
community  in  a  well-knit  body  with  equal  rights  and  equal 

1  Holl,  ib.,  p.  20  f.     Luther's  words  are  from  "  De  capt,  babyl.," 
"  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  6,  p.  533  ;   "  Opp.  lat,  var.,"  5,  p.  64.    Cp  "  Nisi 
hcec  adsit  aut  paretur  fides,  nihil  prodest  baptismus  imo  obest,  non  solum 
turn  cum  suscipitur,  sed  toto  post  tempore  vitce."     Ib.,  p.   527f.  =  57. 
Cp.  above,  vol.  iv.,  p.  487. 

2  "  He  protests  against  the  war  with  the  Turks  being  carried  on 
under  the  pretext  of  Christianity,   '  as  though  our  people  could  be 
termed  an  army  of  Christians  fighting  the  Turks,'  when  in    the  whole 
army  there  are  perhaps  barely  five  Christians  [real  Lutheran  believers  J. 

.  .   .  Thus  he  deliberately  calls  into  question  the  Christianity  of  the 
German  people  and  hence  demands  that  the  war  should  be  undertaken 
as  a  merely  secular  thing."    Holl,  ib.,  p.  22,  with  a  reference  to  '  Werke 
Erl.  ed.,  31,  p.  37,  and  to  a  letter  to  Spalatin,  Dec.  21,  1518,      Brief- 
wechsel,"  1,  p.  333.    Cp.  above,  p.  402,  and  vol.  iii.,  p.  77  ff. 

3  Above,  vol.  ii.,  p.  108. 


576          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

liberties  for  all,  religious  freedom  included.  The  same 
standard  of  justice  applies  without  exception  to  every  citizen 
and  all  religions  (such  at  least  is  the  programme)  are  esteemed 
alike  ;  moreover,  to  this  standard  of  justice,  all,  even  the 
monarch  or  the  supreme  representative  of  the  republic,  must 
bow,  seeing  that  the  heads  of  the  State  have  ceased  to  be 
absolute. 

But  what,  according  to  Luther's  theory  and  practice,  was 
the  position  of  the  Lutheran  ruler  in  respect  of  his  civil  and 
religious  authority  ?  How  did  it  stand  with  the  freedom 
and  independence  of  his  subjects,  particularly  where 
different  religious  practices  co-existed  ? 

It  is  true  that,  taking  his  instructions  to  the  rulers  just 
discussed,  which  he  derived  from  his  principle  of  the  separa 
tion  of  Church  and  world,  we  should  expect  him  to  recognise 
freedom  of  conscience.  The  instructions,  however,  though 
seemingly  addressed  to  all,  sprang  from  his  opposition  to  the 
Catholic  rulers.  The  latter,  particularly  in  the  infancy  of 
Protestantism,  were  above  all  to  be  urged  to  grant  entire 
liberty  and  not  to  trouble  about  religion  ;  what  Luther 
wished  to  impress  upon  them  was  that  they  had  no  right  to 
interfere  with  the  Lutheran  movement  within  their  juris 
diction.1 

Luther  spoke  quite  otherwise  when  dealing  with  princes 
who  were  favourable  to  his  preaching,  or  who  had  introduced 
the  new  religious  system.  In  proportion  as  the  rulers  and 
municipalities  that  favoured  his  cause  grew  more  numerous, 
he  came  to  confer  on  them  full  powers  to  stamp  out  the 
Catholic  faith,  and  even  made  it  their  duty  so  to  do.  He 
also  perceived  all  too  well  the  extent  to  which  zealous 
Protestant  princes,  such  as  Johann  of  Saxony  and  Philip  of 
Hesse,  could  further  his  innovations.  From  that  time 
forward  he  promoted  the  growing  authority  of  the  sovereigns 
over  the  Churches,  above  all  by  warmly  defending  the 
principle  that  in  every  country  uniformity  of  worship  and 
doctrine  must  prevail,  short  of  which  there  would  always  be 
"  revolts  and  sects,"  as  he  said  in  1526. 2 

This  was,  however,  to  destroy  the  main  groundwork  of  the 
modern  State  theory,  viz.  the  personal  freedom  of  the 

1  See   our  examination   of   the    "  Von   welltlicher   Uberkeytt  "    in 
vol.  ii.,  pp.  297-306. 

2  The  passages  are  cited  below,  p.  577,  n.  2. 


THE  STATE  AND  ITS  DUTIES       577 

individual.  It  was  to  interfere  with  the  evenness  of  justice 
and  with  the  sacred  right  of  conscience.  What  other  rights 
of  the  subject  would  the  sovereign  regard  as  sacred  once  the 
door  had  been  opened  to  arbitrary  action  in  the  domain  of 
religious  practice  ?x 

The  argument  with  which  Luther  conceals  his  selfish  aim 
of  securing  new  fields  for  his  own  religious  system,  and  veils 
the  real  motive  of  his  struggle  against  Popery,  is  deserving 
of  special  attention  in  spite  of  all  its  frivolity. 

According  to  Luther's  new  modification  of  his  views  each 
locality  was  to  have  but  one  form  of  worship.  Any  divergency 
in  preaching  or  worship  must  always  sow  the  seeds  of  dissension, 
revolt  and  mob-law  ;  the  authorities  ought  not  to  permit  such  a 
state  of  things  if  they  valued  the  preservation  of  order  ;  so  as  to 
insure  uniformity  of  preaching  and  worship  dissenting  preachers 
must  be  removed.  It  was  for  this  reason  that  the  inhabitants 
of  Nuremberg  had  "  silenced  their  monks  and  shut  up  their 
monasteries."2  In  this  way,  encouraged  by  the  wisdom  of  a 
"  prudent  "  town-council,  which  did  not  look  beyond  the  city 
walls,  Luther  came  to  make  his  notorious  request  to  his  sovereign, 
viz.  that  Catholics  who  remained  true  to  their  faith  should  be 
banished  from  the  country  ;  for  "  madcaps,"  who  refuse  to  take 
the  proposed  arrangement  in  good  part  and  in  the  spirit  of 
Christian  charity,  are  not  to  be  suffered  among  Christians  but 
must  be  swept  away  like  "  chaff  from  the  threshing  floor."3  As 
though  the  secular  power  had  not  even  then  ample  means  at  its 
disposal  for  checking  or  punishing  any  real  disturbance  of  the 
peace  on  the  part  of  a  congregation.  At  the  present  day  we  can 
afford  to  smile  at  the  strange  reason  assigned  for  measures  so  far- 
reaching  against  innocent  citizens  of  the  State  ;  the  assertion 

1  Luther's  answer  to  the  question  he  raises,  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  62, 
p.  207,  in  the  Table-Talk  :    "  Whether  it  be  lawful  to  kill  a  tyrant,  who 
at  his  own  pleasure  acts  contrary  to  right  and  justice  "  is  aimed  at 
absolutism.      He   replies    confidently  :     Yes,    where   the   latter   really 
oppresses  his  subjects  by  crying  deeds  of  wrong  and  where  the  "  citizens 
and  subjects  unite  together  "  to  make  an  end  of  him  as  they  would  of 
any  "  other  murderer  or  highwayman."    In  his  "  Ob  Kriegsleutte  auch 
ynn  seligen   Stande  seyn  kiinden,"    1526,   Luther  does  not  sanction 
private  revenge  nor  any  disorderly  or  violent  action  on  the  part  of  the 
mob,  "  whereby  the  people  rise  and  depose  their  lord  or  strangle  him." 
He  emphasises  in  this  passage  as  the  reason  the  absence  of  legal 
proceedings  :    "It  does  not  do  to  pipe  too  much  to  the  mob,  or  it  will 
only  too  readily  lose  its  head."      "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,   19,  p.  635  ; 
Erl.  ed.,  22,  p.  259. 

2  To  the  Elector  Johann,  Feb.  9,  1526,  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  53,  p.  368 
("  Brief wechsel,"  5,  p.  318),  on  the  introduction  of  Lutheranism  into 
Altenburg.     Cp.  vol.  ii.,  p.  315  f.  ;    the  principal  reason  why  the  ruler 
was  to  intervene  was,  that  he  might  not  deliberately  tolerate  "  idolatry." 

3  Cp.  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  26,  p.  200  ;   Erl.  ed.,  23,  p.  9.     Luther's 
preface  to  the  Instructions  of  the  Visitors,  1528. 

v.— 2  p 


578          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

that  difference  of  worship  gives  rise  to  unendurable  discord 
sounds  ridiculous  to  one  used  to  the  principles  of  liberty  para 
mount  in  the  civilised  States  of  to-day.  At  any  rate,  this  dictum 
did  not  make  of  Luther  the  founder  of  the  modern  State. 

In  strange  contrast  with  the  modern  ideas  of  justice  is  the 
excuse  he  brings  forward  to  vindicate  the  violent  conversion  to 
Protestantism  so  often  practised  by  the  magistrates  or  petty 
rulers  in  their  own  territories.  "  What  is  done  by  the  regular 
authorities  is  not  to  be  regarded  as  revolt."1  Is  it  really  a  fact 
that  subversion  ano!  violence  cease  to  be  wrong  when  practised 
by  the  regular  authorities  ?  The  modern  State — in  theory  at 
any  rate — recognises  no  such  principle. 

It  must  be  added,  that  both  Luther  and  the  princes  devoted  to 
him  were  fond  of  declaring  that  the  really  Christian  rulers  were 
bound  to  put  an  end  to  insults  and  blasphemies  against  God, 
regardless  of  any  disturbance  of  civil  life  which  might  ensue. 
Luther  made  a  beginning  by  exhorting  the  sovereign  and  the 
congregation  to  abolish  the  Mass  at  Wittenberg  which,  like 
Catholic  worship  in  general,  was  a  perpetual  blasphemy  of 
God.  "  The  regular  authorities  "  must  rise  up  against  "  such 
blasphemy."  The  scandal  given  being  public,  no  indulgence 
was  to  be  shown  by  Christians. 2  Eventually  every  false  doctrine 
was  accounted  a  public  scandal,  i.e.  every  opinion  expressed  in 
writings  or  sermons  which  deviated  from  the  true  Evangel.  "  It 
is  the  duty  "  of  the  authorities,  he  says,  "  to  punish  public 
blasphemers  .  .  .  and  in  the  same  way  they  should  punish,  or 
at  least  not  brook,  those  who  teach  that  Christ  did  not  die  for 
our  sins,  but  that  each  one  must  make  satisfaction  for  himself."3 
This,  according  to  him,  was  notoriously  the  teaching  of  the 
Catholics. 

But  if  the  Papists  and  the  Lutherans  as  they  are  called, 
"preach  against  each  other  in  a  parish,  town  or  district  "  and 
neither  party  will  yield,  "  then  let  the  authorities  step  in  and 
try  the  case,  and  whichever  party  does  not  agree  with  Scripture, 
let  him  be  ordered  to  hold  his  tongue."4  Thus  the  official 
delegated  by  the  prince — where  the  prince  himself  was  loath  to 
take  the  chair — is  to  decide  which  is  the  true  meaning  of  the 
Bible,  and  which  party  really  conforms  to  it. 

How  opposed  this  was  to  the  ground  principles  of  the  modern 
State  it  is  scarcely  necessary  to  point  out  here.  The  freedom 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  8,  p.  679  ;   Erl.  ed.,  22,  p.  48.     "  Eyn  trew 
Vormanung  .   .  .  sich  zu  vorhuten  fur  Auffruhr  und  Emporung,"  1522. 
In  connection  with  this  the  author  says  :    It  is  not  lawful  for  the 
individual  to  rebel  against  "  Endchrist,"  i.e.  the  Papacy,  and  to  make 
use  of  force,  but  the  secular  authorities  and  the  nobles  "  ought  from  a 
sense  of  duty  to  use  their  regular  authority  for  this  purpose,  each  prince 
and  ruler  in  his  own  land,"  etc.    This  he  wrote  on  the  eve  of  composing 
his  "  Von  welltlicher  Uberkeytt,"  according  to  which  the  prince  was 
not  to  trouble  at  all  about  the  religion  of  his  country. 

2  Above,  vol.  ii.,  p.  88  f.  ;    vol.  iv.,  p.  510  f.     N.  Paulus,  "  Protes- 
tantismus  und  Toleranz  im  16.  Jahrh.,"  1911,  p.  7  ff. 

3  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  39,  p.  250  f.  4  76.,  p.  252. 


THE  SOVEREIGN  AS  PATRIARCH     579 

postulated  by  the  latter  was  absolutely  unknown  to  Luther  ;  had 
his  mind  ever  risen  to  such  heights  he  would  never  have  proposed 
the  farcical  Bible  examination  to  be  held  by  the  authorities. 

The  relation  between  such  demands  as  these  and  Luther's  own 
former  attitude  has  not  escaped  the  censure  of  Protestant  writers. 

"  Luther  here  contradicts  himself,"  remarks  Drews  j1  "as  late 
as  1524  he  had  said  that  men  must  be  allowed  to  disagree,  and 
a  year  later  that  the  authorities  have  no  right  to  prevent  every 
man  from  '  teaching  and  believing  whatever  he  wished,  whether  it 
be  Gospel  or  lie  '  ;  it  was  sufficient  if  they  checked  the  preaching 
of  rebellion  and  any  disturbance  of  the  peace."2 

The  Elector  Johann  Frederick  of  Saxony  adopted  the  view 
that  uniformity  of  doctrine  was  called  for.  He  would,  so  he 
declared,  "  recognise  or  tolerate  no  sects  or  divisions  in  his  lands 
or  principalities,"  in  order  the  better  "  to  prevent  harmful  revolt 
and  other  unrighteousness."  But  at  the  same  time  he  assured 
his  subjects  that  it  was  not  his  intention  to  "  prescribe  to  anyone 
what  he  should  hold  or  believe."3 


The  Prince  as  Absolute  Patriarch 

Things  drifted,  thanks  to  Luther's  own  action,  slowly  but 
surely  towards  an  entire  control  of  the  Church  by  the  State. 
Luther  knew  of  no  better  means  of  stimulating  the  Evan 
gelical  rulers  to  take  action  in  ecclesiastical  things  than  by 
setting  up  before  them  the  example  of  King  David. 

He  describes  in  1534,  in  his  exposition  of  Psalm  ci.  (c.),4  how, 
in  order  to  exterminate  false  doctrine,  David  "  made  a  visitation 
of  the  whole  of  his  kingdom."  "  He  always  checked  any  public 
inroads  of  heresy.  For  the  devil  never  idles  or  sleeps,  hence 
neither  must  the  spiritual  authorities  be  idle  or  slumber."  "  Oh 
what  a  great  number  of  false  teachers,  idolaters  and  heretics  was 
he  not  obliged  to  expel,  or  in  other  ways  stop  their  mouths.  .  .  . 
The  true  teachers  on  the  other  hand  he  had  everywhere  sought  out, 
promoted,  called,  appointed  and  commanded  to  preach  the  Word 
of  God  purely  and  simply.  .  .  .  He  himself  diligently  instituted, 
ordered  and  appointed  true  teachers  everywhere,  himself  writing 
Psalms  in  which  he  points  out  how  they  are  to  teach  and  praise 
God."  "  David  in  this  was  a  pattern  and  masterpiece  to  all  pious 
kings  and  lords  .  .  .  showing  them  how  they  must  not  allow 
wicked  men  to  lead  souls  astray."5  "I  say  again,  let  whoever 
can,  be  another  David  and  follow  his  example,  more  particularly 
the  princes  and  lords."6  David,  so  he  continues  later,  led 

1  Paul    Drews,    "  Entsprach    das    Staatskirchentum    dem    Ideale 
Luthers  ?  "  ("  Zeitschr.  fur  Theol.  and  Kirche,"  1908,  Erganzungsheft), 
p.  99.    Cp.  p.  90. 

2  Cp.  Luther's  statements,  in  Paulus,  loc.  cit.,  p.  25  ff. 

3  Drews,  ib.,  p.  100.  4  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  39,  p.  313  ff. 
5  Ib.,  p.  320.  6  P.  323. 


580          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

"  pious  kings  and  princes  rightly  and  in  a  Christian  manner  to  the 
churches,"  but  he  was  also  a  "  model  in  secular  government," 
which  "  can  have  its  own  rule  apart  from  the  kingdom  of  God  "  ; 
to  this  all  Popish  princes  should  restrict  themselves  and  not 
try  to  instruct  Christ  how  to  rule  His  Church  and  spiritual 
realm. x 

Hence  all  that  he  had  once  written  quite  generally  of  the 
separation  of  the  kingdom  of  God  with  "  its  own  rule  "  from  the 
"  worldly  government  "  was  in  fact,  as  he  now  says  more  out 
spokenly,  only  to  apply  to  the  "  false  priestlings,"  and  their 
princes. 

But  when  according  to  David's  example  a  Lutheran  preacher 
"by  virtue  of  his  office,"  or  a  Lutheran  prince,  demanded  the 
suppression  of  the  false  teaching,  this  "  spiritual  rule  is  nothing 
more  than  a  service  offered  to  God's  own  supremacy  "  ;  the 
Lutheran  prince  is  not  thereby  intruding  on  the  "  spiritual  or 
divine  authority  but  remains  humbly  submissive  to  it  and  its 
servant." 

"  For,  when  directed  towards  God  and  the  service  of  His 
Sovereignty,  everything  must  be  equal  and  made  to  intermingle, 
whether  it  be  termed  spiritual  or  secular."  "  Thus  they  must  be 
united  in  the  same  obedience  and  kneaded  together  as  it  were 
in  one  cake."2 — It  is  hardly  possible  to  believe  our  eyes  when  we 
meet  with  such  phrases  coming  from  the  same  pen  that  had 
formerly  so  strongly  championed  the  complete  sundering  of  the 
spiritual  from  the  temporal.  Yet  Luther  even  seeks  to  justify 
the  contradiction  on  more  serious  grounds.  When  it  was  a  case 
of  the  true  Word  of  God  and  of  the  Evangel,  then  matters  stood 
quite  otherwise. 

"  The  secular  and  spiritual  government  "  are  most  improperly 
confused,  so  he  declares,  when  "  spiritual  or  secular  princes  and 
lords  seek  to  change  and  control  the  Word  of  God  and  to  lay 
down  what  is  to  be  taught  or  preached  "  ;  here  he  is  referring 
to  the  non-Lutheran  authorities.  Quite  a  different  thing  is  it 
"  when  David  concerns  himself  with  the  divine  or  spiritual 
government,"  and  really  restores  God's  glory.  Had  David  said  : 
"  My  good  people,  act  differently  from  what  God  has  taught  you," 
then  this  would  indeed  have  spelt  a  "  confusion  of  the  spiritual 
and  temporal,  of  the  divine  and  human  government  " — such  as 
Luther's  opponents  are  now  guilty  of.  But  David,  the  servant 
of  God  and  pattern  of  all  pious  princes  and  kings,  because  he 
acted  otherwise,  was  adorned  with  such  high  and  kingly  virtues 
even  in  his  temporal  government  that  it  must  have  been  the 
work  of  God,  i.e.  His  peculiar  grace  ;  but  this  same  grace  is  with 
all  pious  princes  in  order  that,  under  their  sway  and  in  spite  of 
the  hatred  of  the  devil,  the  temporal  rule  and  "  God's  own  Rule  " 
may  prosper.  Supported  by  such  grace  David  could  say  of  the 
two  authorities  he  combined :  "  I  suffer  neither  ungodly  men  in 
the  spiritual  domain  nor  yet  evildoers  in  the  temporal."3 

1  P.  324  f.  2  P.  327  f.  3  P,  358  f. 


THE  SOVEREIGN  AS  PATRIARCH     581 

Thus,  in  the  hands  of  a  pious  Evangelical  prince,  the 
co-existence  of  these  two  rules  involves  no  disturbance  of 
order.  And  they  may  all'  the  more  readily  be  put  into  the 
hand  of  one  who  serves  God  according  to  His  "  Word  " 
seeing  that  there  is  in  reality  but  a  single  power  ;  according 
to  Luther,  the  hierarchy  having  been  destroyed,  there  was 
no  one  holding  spiritual  authority  ;  as  for  the  semblance  of 
spiritual  authority  which  the  congregation  had  once  pos 
sessed  it  had  willingly  resigned  it  into  the  hands  of  the 
Christian  David  on  the  princely  throne.  There  is  but  one 
authority  that  embraces  everything  temporal  and  spiritual 
and  that  works  in  the  two  "governments"  (read:  spheres 
of  life),  i.e.  in  the  temporal  life  of  the  subjects,  which  is 
founded  on  reason  and  earthly  laws,  and  in  the  spiritual 
domain  to  which  the  Gospel  lifts  them  up.  In  both  orders 
man  is  admonished  to  obedience  towards  God  by  the  pious 
ruler  who  regulates  everything  either  himself  or  by  means 
of  the  preachers. 

Thus  Luther's  conception  of  the  State  finally  grows  into 
a  kind  of  theocracy. 

The  theocracy  of  the  Israelites  is  therefore  held  up  to  the 
rulers  in  the  example  not  only  of  David  but  also  of  the  other 
pious  Jewish  kings.  In  the  political  sphere  Old  Testament 
imagery  exercised  far  too  great  an  influence  On  Luther  and 
his  arbitrary  new  creations.  How  widely  different  from  the 
Jewish  theocracy  was  it  to  see  the  Father  of  the  country 
made  the  highest  authority  not  merely  on  practical  questions 
of  Church  government  but  even  on  differences  concerning 
faith  ?  The  "  absolute  patriarch  J?1  at  Luther's  express 
demand  drives  his  negligent  or  reluctant  subjects  to  hear 
the  preachers  ;  on  him  depends  the  introduction  and  use  of 
the  greater  excommunication,  should  this  weapon  ever 
become  necessary  ;  he  removes  from  their  posts  those 
professors  of  the  theological  or  other  faculties  who  oppose 
the  ruling  faith,  just  as  he  makes  his  authority  felt  on  the 
preacher  who  forsakes  the  right  path.  He  is,  according  to 
Luther,  the  chief  guardian  of  the  young  and  of  all  who 
need  his  protection,  in  order,  that,  where  his  subjects  do 
not  take  thought  for  their  salvation  and  act  accordingly, 
he  may  "  force  them  to  do  so,  in  the  same  way  as  he  obliges 

1  The  expression  is  H.  Boehmer's  ("  Luther  im  Lichte  der  neueren 
Forschung,"1)  1906,  p.  135. 


582          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

them  to  give  their  services  for  the  repair  of  bridges,  roads 
and  ways,  or  to  render  such  other  services  as  their  country 
may  require."1 

On  one  occasion  Luther  points  out,  that  in  the  past,  the 
Pope  of  Rome  had  been  all  in  all.  Now  it  is  the  sovereign 
of  the  land,  who,  as  God's  own  Vicar,  is  all  in  all. 

Thus  we  have  here,  writes  Frank  Ward  in  his  "  Darstel- 
lung  der  Ansichten  Luthers  vom  Staat,"  "  almost  the 
counterpart  of  the  old  ecclesiastical  absolutism,  seeing  that 
all  ecclesiastical  functions  and  conditions  so  far  as  they 
belong  to  the  outward  domain  are  put  under  the  State."2 
Instead  of  its  being  "  almost  the  counterpart,"  it  would  be 
better  to  say  that  it  was  an  absolute  caricature  of  the 
supposed  ecclesiastical  absolutism  of  the  past.  Ward, 
however,  goes  on  to  say  that  in  the  chapter  in  question 
he  had  only  shown  how,  "  Luther  gave  the  State  an  in 
dependent  dignity  and  position,  and  how  he  had  enlarged 
and  strengthened  its  claims." 

In  direct  contrast  to  those  writers  who  see  in  Luther's  political 
theory  the  foundation  of  the  modern  State,  is  a  recent  statement 
of  Heinrich  Boehmer's. 

"  Luther's  political  and  social  views,"  says  this  author,3  "  are 
in  every  essential  point  quite  mediaeval,  antiquated  and  un- 
modern.  People  speak  of  '  Luther's  views  '  or  even  of  '  Luther's 
teaching  on  the  State  and  society.'  But  it  would  be  better  to 
refrain  from  using  such  terms  which  can  only  serve  to  arouse 
false  expectations.  As  little  as  the  reformer  was  familiar  with 
the  words  state  and  society,  so  little  did  he  know  their  meaning. 
For  no  State  or  society  in  the  modern  sense  of  the  word  existed 
at  the  time  in  central  or  northern  Germany,  but  merely  a  large 
number  of  bodies  somewhat  resembling  States,  all  of  which, 
however,  fell  far  short  of  the  ideal  of  a  State."  He  goes  on  to 
explain,  that,  for  this  reason,  Luther  always  speaks  to  the 
"  authorities,"  they  being  in  his  eyes  the  most  potent  factor  in 
the  political  organisations  he  knew  ;  yet,  in  determining  their 
duties,  "  his  mind  moves  on  quite  mediaeval  lines  "  ;  "in  the 
matter  of  political  theory  he  is  far  behind  even  Thomas  of  Aquin, 
for  Thomas  had,  in  the  Italian  cities,  an  example  of  a  far  more 
highly  developed  State,  whilst  in  the  school  of  Aristotle  he  had 
made  acquaintance  with  a  number  of  political  ideas  and  views 
which  had  led  him  to  a  very  thorough  study  of  politics."  Boehmer 
points  out  that,  according  to  Luther,  the  Natural  Law  upbears 
the  outward  order  with  which  alone  he  was  conversant — viz.  the 

1  To  the  Elector  Johann,  Nov.  22,  1526,  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  53,  p.387 
("  Brief wechsel,"  5,  p.  406).  2  P.  17. 

3  "  Luther  im  Lichte  der  neueren  Forschung,"2  p.  164. 


THE  SOVEREIGN  AS  PATRIARCH     583 

landed-aristocratic  society  which  predominated  at  the  time  of 
the  reformation — until  it  came  to   appear  as  almost  a  divine  ' 
institution,    any  attempt  to   overthrow   which   amounted  to   a 
crime,  "  a  view  which  indeed  explains  much  of  the  success  of 
Lutheranism,  but  which  is  anything  but  modern."1 

Luther's  "Patriarchal  theory,"  according  to  H.  Boehmer,  had 
an  even  greater  influence  on  the  political  conditions  of  Lutheran 
countries  than  his  other  theory  of  the  rights  of  the  nobility.  The 
princes  within  the  domain  of  the  new  church  system  entered 
eagerly  into  the  theory  of  their  supposed  paternal  rights  and 
finally  built  it  out  into  a  quite  insufferable  absolutism.  Such  an 
undue  growth  of  the  secular  power  was  the  more  to  be  feared 
seeing  that  any  independent  spiritual  power,  which  might,  as  in 
the  Middle  Ages,  have  served  as  a  counterweight,  no  longer 
existed,  having  been  swallowed  up  in  the  authority  of  the  prince. 
Everything  had  indeed  been  secularised,  and,  to  the  Lutheran 
ruler,  as  God's  own  representative,  it  now  was  left  to  direct  the 
religious  and  temporal  concerns  of  the  population  on  the  lines 
laid  down  in  the  Bible. 

"  The  Lutheran  prince,"  says  Boehmer,  "  as  father  of  the 
country,  undertook  to  provide  for  his  subjects  in  every  depart 
ment  of  life ;  his  rule  was  absolute,  though  indeed  patriarchal, 
an  ideal  of  the  State  quite  in  accordance  with  Luther's  views."2 

"  Any  separation  or  division  of  Church  and  State  Luther 
neither  recognised  nor  desired,"  now  that  he  had  invested  the 
Evangelical  princes  with  the  supreme  episcopate.3 

The  term  "  Zwangskultur,"  often  used  of  the  absolutism 
obtaining  in  the  Lutheran  order  of  society,  is  not  altogether  in 
correct,  in  spite  of  the  protests  of  Protestant  theologians.  Other 
Protestant  authors  find  a  parallel  between  Luther's  view  of  the 
State  and  certain  late  mediaeval  ones  ;  both,  according  to  them, 
have  been  influenced  by  humanism,  with  its  Csesarean  con 
ception  of  unfreedom,  and  by  theocratic  absolutism. 

Carl  Sell  notes  how  the  Reformation,  "  in  its  own  way,  put 
new  life  into  the  mediaeval  idea  of  a  new  theocracy."  "  How 
deeply  the  theocratical  idea  was  rooted  in  the  Protestant  State- 
system  may  be  seen  from  the  time  it  took  before  the  States  would 
consent  to  surrender  their  religious  character."4 

After  the  Reformation,  says  G.  Steinhausen,  "  the  theological 
spirit  more  than  ever  laid  hold  of  the  world  and  mankind  and 
fettered  the  ardent  longing  for  freedom.  Herein  lies  the  chief 
harm  wrought  by  the  Reformation."5 

"  It  was  the  Reformation,"  so  O.  Gierke  says,  "  that  brought 

1  Ib.,  p.  166  ;    1st  ed.,  p.  135.  2   1st  ed.,  p.  135. 

3  Frank  Ward,   "  Darstellung  der  Ansichten  Luthers  vom  Staat," 
p.  15.     On  p.  17,  he  says  that  according  to  Luther  "  all  ecclesiastical 
functions  and  relations,  in  so  far  as  they  concern  external  things,  are 
subject  to  the  State." 

4  "  Der  Zusammenhang  von  Reformation  und  pohtischer  treineit  ^ 
in  "  Theol.  Arbeiten  aus  dem  rhein.-wissensch.  Predigerverem,  N.F., 
Hft.  12,  Tubingen,  1910,  p.  47  f. 

5  "  Gesch.  der  deutschen  Kultur,"  Leipzig,  1904,  p,  o04. 


584          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

about  the  energetic  revival  of  the  theocratic  ideal.  In  spite  of 
all  their  differences  Luther,  Melanchthon,  Zwingli  and  Calvin 
agree  in  emphasising  the  Christian  call,  and,  consequently,  the 
divine  right  of  the  secular  authority.  Indeed,  on  the  one  hand 
by  subordinating  the  Church  more  or  less  to  the  State,  and  on  the 
other  by  making  the  State's  authority  dependent  on  its  fulfilling 
its  religious  duties,  they  give  to  the  Pauline  dictum  '  All  authority 
comes  from  God  '  a  far  wider  scope  than  it  had  ever  had  before."1 

Luther's  Real  Merit  and  his  Claims 

If  anyone  ever  really  believed  that  the  modern  State  was 
in  any  way  embodied  in  Luther's  ideal  or  that  he  paved  the 
way  for  it,  the  easiest  way  to  disprove  such  an  assumption 
would  be  to  show  that  the  most  essential  feature  of  the 
modern  State  is  entirely  wanting  in  the  Lutheran,  patri 
archal  one,  viz.  freedom  and  the  political  co-operation  of 
the  people,  and,  above  all,  the  vital  atmosphere  of  personal 
and  corporate  independence  in  religious  matters. 

In  point  of  fact  the  most  that  can  be  argued  is  that  Luther 
to  some  extent,  though  in  an  entirely  negative  way,  paved 
the  road  for  the  modern  conception  of  the  State. 

This  he  did  by  his  relentless  opposition  to  the  Church, 
which  had  so  long  held  sway.  As  early  as  the  days  of 
Boniface  VIII  attempts  had  been  made  to  curtail  her  action 
in  politics.  The  efforts  of  some  of  the  Catholic  sovereigns, 
who,  without  denying  the  inherent  rights  of  the  spiritual 
authority,  laboured  to  establish  State-Churches  also  tended 
in  the  same  direction.  Luther  was,  however,  the  first  who 
sought  to  destroy  all  ecclesiastical  authority,  as  a  mere 
symbol  of  Antichrist.  Hence,  for  those  rulers  who  took  his 
part,  one  of  the  chief  obstacles  that  had  withstood  the 
growth  of  modern  conditions  was  swept  away.  Nevertheless, 
wellnigh  three  hundred  years,  full  of  gloomy  experiences, 
had  to  elapse  before  a  way  could  be  found  out  of  the  new 
labyrinth  of  despotism,  indolence  and  disorder  ;  and,  all 
this  while,  the  theocratic  patriarch  of  Lutheranism  almost 
invariably  stood  as  an  obstacle  in  the  way  of  development. 

Frank  Ward  may  indeed  assert,  that  it  is  possible  "  to 
appeal  at  least  to  the  spirit  of  his  theory  of  the  State,  if  not 
to  its  every  detail."2  This,  however,  is  only  possible  if  by 

1  "  Joh.  Althusius  und  die  Entwicklung  der  naturrechtlichen  Staats- 
theorie,"  2  Breslau,  1902,  p.  64  f.     Paulus,  ib.,  p.  349. 

2  Ib. 


"JAILERS  AND  HANGMEN"         585 

"  its  spirit  "  we  understand  not  what  was  new  but  the  old, 
wholesome,  traditional  elements  which  Luther  retained, 
i.e.  the  political  ideas  handed  down  by  antiquity  and  the 
Christian  philosophy  of  the  past,  on  which  he  so  skilfully 
impressed  his  own  drastic  touch.  To  these  olden  elements 
Luther  was,  however,  scarcely  fair. 

According  to  what  he  says  and  reiterates  there  had  devolved- 
on  him  alone  the  incredibly  onerous  task  of  finding  a  way  out  of 
the  gruesome  darkness  into  which  the  relations  between  prince 
and  hierarchy,  State  and  Church,  spiritual  and  temporal  order 
had  been  plunged  in  the  past  :  "  This  is  how  things  stood  then. 
No  one  had  heard  or  taught,  nor  did  anyone  know  anything 
concerning  the  secular  authority,  whence  it  came,  what  its  office 
or  work  was,  or  how  it  should  serve  God.  The  most  learned  men 
—  I  will  not  name  them  —  looked  upon  the  secular  power  as  a 
heathen,  human  and  ungodly  thing,  as  a  state  dangerous  to 
salvation.  ...  In  short  princes  and  lords,  even  such  as  wished 
to  be  pious,  regarded  their  station  and  office  as  of  no  account.  .  .  . 
Thus  the  Pope  and  the  clergy  were  at  that  time  all  in  all,  over 
all  and  in  all,  like  a  very  god  in  the  world,  and  the  secular  power 
lay  unknown  and  uncared  for  in  the  darkness."1 

Yet  he  himself  had  abased  the  authorities  by  reducing  them  in 
his  writing  of  1523  to  the  position  of  "  jailers  and  hangmen," 
working  in  a  domain  foreign  to  all  that  was  spiritual.2  This,  of 
course,  was  at  a  time  when  he  had  not  as  yet  found  patrons 
amongst  the  rulers  as  he  was  to  do  later.  According  to  him,  those 
who  wielded  the  secular  power,  i.e.  the  princes,  were  no  Christians. 
In  1522  he  complains  of  the  princes  to  whom  he  had  appealed  in 
vain  :  "  Now  they  let  everything  go  and  one  stands  in  the  way 
of  the  other.  Some  even  help  and  further  the  cause  of  Antichrist. 
They  are  at  loggerheads  and  do  not  show  themselves  at  all  willing 
to  help  matters  on."3  Thus,  according  to  him,  Christ  is  left  to 
Himself  ;  but  "  He  is  the  Lord  of  life  and  death.  .  .  .  Together 
with  Him  we  too  shall  conquer  and  despise  even  the  princes. 
"  God  Himself  will  shortly  make  an  end  of  Popery  by  His  Word. 
...  A  new  Church  will  arise  but  not  by  the  doing  of  the  princes 
but  of  those  in  whom  the  Word  of  God  has  really  taken  root.  J 
Luther  then  wished,  as  we  have  already  shown,  to  bring  about 
the  establishment  of  a  Congregational  Church  ;  later  on  he  ever 

"  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  30,  2,  p.  109  ;   Erl.  ed     31,  p.  34  f. 
See  vol.  ii.,  p.  297  f.,  from  the  writing,  "  Von  wellthcher  I 


Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  8,  p.  680  ;   Erl.  ed     22   p.  48  f.     Cp.  letter 
to  the  Elector  Frederick,  March  7,  1522,  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  53,  p.  1 


L&arch  19,  1522,  «  Bnefwechsel,"  3,  p.  315. 

D 

Ideale  Luthers  ?  "  p.  28. 


586          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

dreamed  of  assembling  together  only  the  true  believers.  As, 
however,  the  Congregational  Churches  did  not  thrive  and  as  it 
proved  impossible  to  carry  out  the  scheme  of  a  Church  apart,  he 
allowed  the  State  to  intervene,  and,  with  its  help,  there  came  the 
National  Church ;  this  soon  grew  into  a  State-Church  with  the 
sovereign  at  its  head. 

Luther  still  remained,  however,  the  great  teacher.  He  con 
tinued  to  vaunt  his  ambiguous  "  Von  welltlicher  Uberkeytt." 
In  1529  he  even  related  how  Duke  Frederick  had  caused  this 
writing  to  be  copied  and  "specially  bound;  he  was  very  fond 
of  it  because  it  showed  him  what  his  position  was."1  In  1533, 
looking  back  on  the  whole  of  his  writings  concerning  the  authori 
ties  he  says  :  "In  Popery  such  views  of  the  secular  power  lay 
under  the  bench  "  ;  "  since  the  time  of  the  Apostles  no  doctor  or 
scribe  "  has  instructed  the  worldly  estates  so  "  well  and  out 
spokenly  "  as  he,  not  even  "  Ambrose  and  Augustine."2 

We  may  here  recall  the  sober  and  perfectly  true  remark  of 
Fr.  v.  Bezold.  Luther  may  have  plumed  himself  on  having  been 
the  first  to  revive  a  right  understanding  of  and  respect  for  the 
secular  authority,  but  that  "  the  indefensibility  of  this  and 
similar  claims  has  long  since  been  demonstrated."3 

Luther's  error  is  evident,  though  unfortunately  not  to  all, 
as  we  can  convince  ourselves  by  reading  the  eulogies  of 
Luther  which  are  still  so  common  under  the  pen  of  Protestant 
writers  ;  for  instance,  that  Luther  had  "  deepened  Augus 
tine's  view  of  the  State  "  ;  that  he  was  ever  moving  forward 
"  in  a  straight  line,"  expanding  and  perfecting  the  know 
ledge  already  acquired  ;  and  that  even  in  his  "  Von  wellt 
licher  Uberkeytt  "  "he  was  already  at  his  best,"  etc. 

It  may,  therefore,  be  all  the  more  useful  to  look  a  little 
more  closely  into  one  side  of  the  present  subject  which  has 
not  yet  been  dealt  with  but  which  leads  to  interesting 
disclosures,  viz.  into  the  question  of  the  various  circum 
stances,  some  outward,  some  inward  and  personal,  which 
led  Luther  to  evolve  his  theory  of  the  patriarchal,  absolutist 
State.  Here  the  Visitation  of  1527-28  stands  out  as  a 
milestone  on  the  road  of  his  development. 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  30,  2,  p.  109  ;   Erl.  ed.,  31,  p.  35. 

2  Ib.,  Erl.  ed.,  31,  p.  236,  "  Verantwortung  der  auffgelegten  Auffrur." 
See  vol.  ii.,  p.  294.     Cp.  ib.,  Weim.  ed.,  19,  p.  625  ;   Erl.  ed.,  22,  p.  248, 
where  he  says,  already  in  1526,  in  the  writing  "  Ob  Kriegsleutte,"  etc.  : 
"  So  that  I  should  like  to  boast  that,  since  the  time  of  the  Apostles,  the 
secular  sword  and  authority  has  never  been  so  clearly  and  grandly 
described  and  extolled  as  by  me,  as  even  my  foes  must  admit." 

3  See  vol.  ii.,  p.  295,  n.  1. 


THE  STATE  CHURCH  587 


Other  Factors  which  assisted  in  the  Establishment  of  the 
State-Church 

It  was  a  common  phenomenon  in  all  the  earlier  struggles 
against  the  ecclesiastical  hierarchy  for  the  separatists  to 
seek  for  support  and  assistance  from  the  secular  power  and 
the  State.  From  the  time  of  the  earliest  controversies  in  the 
Church  this  tendency  had  been  noticed  among  those  who 
broke  away.  Luther  too,  from  the  time  of  his  first  public 
rupture,  had  cast  his  eyes  on  the  secular  power  ;  nay,  even 
earlier,  in  his  Commentary  on  Romans,  he  betrays  a  tendency 
to  put  the  secular  before  the  spiritual.1 

To  these  ideas  he  gave  full  play  in  the  call  to  reform  the 
Church  which  he  addressed  "  To  the  Christian  Nobility  of 
the  German  Nation." 

For  the  next  few  years,  however,  the  ideas  are  less  to  the 
fore.  Luther  was  very  well  aware  that  a  quiet  and  gradual 
procedure  would  appeal  far  more  to  the  then  Elector, 
Frederick  the  Wise,  than  any  urging  on  of  the  innovations 
at  high  pressure  and  with  State  interference.  The  Elector 
was  in  fact  so  averse  to  taking  any  strong  measures,  that  on 
the  contrary  he  frequently  impressed  on  the  Wittenberg 
leaders  the  need  there  was  for  caution. 

Matters  assumed  another  aspect,  when,  in  1525,  there 
came  a  change  of  ruler.  The  Elector  Johann  of  Saxony  was 
a  zealous  friend  of  Luther's  and  soon  became  the  real  patron 
of  Lutheranism.  His  attitude  towards  the  innovations, 
taken  with  Luther's  new  tendencies,  constituted  a  prime 
factor  in  the  rise  of  a  State-governed  Church. 

Another  factor  was  the  condition  of  the  Lutheran  congre 
gations  which  had  so  far  sprung  up.  They  were  scattered 
and  devoid  of  organisation.  Not  seldom  they  bore  within 
them  seeds  of  dissension  born  as  they  had  been  out  of 
quarrels  within  the  parishes,  and  maintained  for  the  most 
part  only  by  the  violent  action  of  a  majority  of  the  council. 
The  petty  rulers  naturally  sought  to  link  themselves  up  with 
the  greater  powers  so  as  to  maintain  both  the  ecclesiastical 
innovations  and  their  newly  acquired  rights.  The  sovereign 
was  a  pillar  of  strength  on  whom  they  leaned,  when  in  doubt 
when  it  was  a  question  of  defending  the  preachers  they  had 

1  Cp.  above,  vol.  i.,  p.  284  f. 


588          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

appointed,  of  removing  persons  they  regarded  with  disfavour, 
or  of  allaying  disputes  amongst  the  burghers. 

To  all  this,  however,  must  be  added  a  further  circumstance 
which  contributed  to  bring  about  the  State  supremacy  of  a 
later  date,  viz,  the  corruption  of  many  of  the  newly  formed 
congregations,  a  corruption  which  urgently  called  for  a 
strong  hand  and  adequate  means  of  coercion.  "  When, 
after  the  Peasant  War,"  writes  Carl  Muller,  "  the  dreadful 
decline  in  things  ecclesiastical  made  itself  felt,  the  parsonages 
and  schools  threatening  to  fall  into  ruins  and  the  agricultural 
population  to  relapse  into  savagery,  the  time  arrived  for  the 
rulers  of  the  land  to  come  into  greater  prominence.  It  was 
now  no  longer  a  question  of  individual  congregations  but 
rather  of  the  whole  country,  and  above  all  of  the  rising 
generation."1 

The  intervention  of  the  prince  subsequent  to  the  victory 
over  the  peasants  in  1525  also  greatly  promoted  the 
increased  devotion  with  which  men  of  influence,  Luther 
included,  attached  themselves  to  the  authority  of  the  ruler 
as  a  bulwark  against  revolution.  The  arrogance  of  the 
country  folk  had  to  be  broken  by  strengthening  the  power 
of  the  sovereign  ;  this  Luther  repeated  so  often  and  so 
loudly  that  his  foes  began  to  call  him  a  footlicker  of  the 
princes. 

Significance  of  the  Visitation  and  Inquisition  held  in  the 
Saxon  Electorate 

The  decisive  importance,  for  the  inward  development  of 
the  new  Church  system  and  for  Luther's  position,  of  the 
Visitation  of  the  churches  of  the  Saxon  Electorate  held  in 
1528  has  already  been  pointed  out  cursorily.2  The  Visitation 
brought  to  a  head  a  growth  which  had  long  been  in  process. 
The  princely  supremacy  in  ecclesiastical  affairs  which  then 
came  about  and  was  formally  sanctioned  in  Saxony  became, 
with  Luther's  consent,  which  was  partly  given  freely,  partly 
wrung  from  him,  something  permanent  in  the  birthplace  of 
the  new  Church,  the  Visitations  continuing  to  be  carried  out 
in  the  same  way  by  the  prince  of  the  land.  Saxony  provided 
a  model  which  was  gradually  followed  in  other  districts 

1  "  Kirche,  Gemeinde  und  Obrigkeit  nach  Luther,"  Tubingen,  1910, 
p.  63.  2  Above,  p.  140  ff.  ;  vol.  ii.,  p.  332  f. 


THE  VISITORS'  INSTRUCTIONS     589 

where  Lutheranism  prevailed,  while  the  then  tendency  to 
strengthen  the  reigning  houses  so  as  to  enable  them  to  hold 
their  own  against  Emperor  and  Empire  also  exercised  a 
powerful  influence. 

The  Electoral  Visitation  which  Luther  had  counselled  and 
to  which  he  most  zealously  lent  his  help,  had  for  its  aim, 
according  to  his  own  words,  which  we  must  take  in  their 
most  literal  sense,  "  the  constituting  of  the  churches  " 
because  "  everything  is  now  so  mangled."1  So  much  did  he 
expect  from  it  that  he  even  expressed  the  hope  that  it  would 
clear  up  for  the  future  the  whole  problem  of  the  new 
"  Church  "  and  its  organisation,  which,  strange  to  say,  he 
had  never  seen  fit  to  think  out  theoretically.  As  a  matter 
of  fact  it  was  "  cleared  up,"  and  that  by  the  very  programme 
for  the  Visitation  issued  by  the  Court.  What  was  to  be 
instituted  was  to  be. neither  a  Church  apart,  nor  a  number 
of  free  Congregational  Churches,  nor  a  great  independent 
National  Church,  but  a  State  Establishment,  a  compulsory 
Church  in  fact,  though  calling  itself  a  National  Church 
upheld  by  the  charity  of  the  State.2 

We  have  the  programme  of  the  Visitation  in  the  three 
documents  which  follow  in  chronological  order,  the  "  Instruc 
tions  "  for  the  Visitors  themselves  issued  by  the  Elector  on 
June  16,  1 527, 3  the  "Instructions  of  the  Visitors  addressed 
to  the  ministers  of  the  Saxon  Electorate  "  and  the  Preface 
to  the  same  which  Luther  composed,  both  of  which  appeared 
in  print  together  in  March,  1528.4 

It  can  scarcely  be  doubted  that  Luther  had  a  hand  in  the 
drafting  of  the  Electoral  Instructions,  which  form  a  sort  of 
Magna  Charta  of  princely  supremacy  in  Church  matters. 
All  his  previous  written  communications  with  the  Court  had 
been  tending  towards  this  end.  In  his  earliest  efforts  to 
bring  about  the  Visitation  he  had  told  the  ruler  that  it 
pertained  to  his  "  office  "  to  see  that  the  Evangelical  workers 

1  To  Nicholas  Hausmann,  Jan.  10,  1527,  "  Brief wechsel,"  6,  p.  10  : 
"  constitutis  ecclesiis  .  .  .  laceris  autem  ita  rebus,"  etc.  Only  after  the 
Churches  had  been  constituted  could  the  ban  be  introduced  as  his 
friend  wished. — For  earlier  Visitations  see  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  26, 
p.  176  ff.  2  See  above,  p.  140  ff,  and  vol.  iii.,  p.  28  ff. 

3  Printed  in  E.  Sehling,  "  Die  evangel.  Kirchenordnungen  des  16. 
Jahrh.,"  1,  1902,  p.  142  ff.,  and,  before  this,  by  A.  E.  Richter,  "  Die 
evangel.  Kirchenordnungen  des  16.  Jahrh.,"  1,  1846,  p.  77  ff. 

4  Both  in  Luther's  Works,  Weim.  ed.,  26,  p.  195  ff.,  and  Erl.  ed.,  23, 
p.  Iff. 


590          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

were  remunerated,  that,  into  his  hands  "  as  the  supreme 
head  "  had  fallen  "  all  the  monasteries  and  foundations  " 
and,  with  them,  the  "  duty  and  obligation  of  seeing  into  a 
matter  in  which  no  one  else  could  or  had  a  right  to  interfere." 
"  Not  God's  command  alone  but  our  own  needs  require  that 
some  step  should  here  be  taken."  Thus  he  demands  that 
the  prince,  by  virtue  of  his  own  authority  as  "  one  appointed 
by  God  for  the  matter  and  empowered  to  act,"  should 
nominate  four  persons  as  Visitors,  who  by  his  "  orders 
should  arrange  for  the  erection  and  support  of  schools  and 
parsonages  where  this  was  wanted  "  ;  of  these  persons,  two 
were  to  attend  to  the  material  needs,  and  two  who  had  had 
a  theological  training  were  to  examine  into  the  doctrine, 
preaching  and  performance  of  spiritual  duties.1 

Such  were  the  "  principles  which  were  eventually  carried 
into  practice.  For  ages  after,  the  Lutheran  sovereigns 
asserted  their  right  to  draw  up  rules  concerning  the  doctrine 
and  constitution  of  their  National  Churches,  and,  to  this  end, 
not  only  laid  claim  to  the  old  ecclesiastical  revenues  but  also 
to  the  right  to  levy  special  taxes  on  their  subjects."2 

Luther  was  moved  to  take  up  his  new  standpoint  not 
merely  by  the  needs  of  the  day  but  also  by  pious  Lutherans, 
such  as  Nicholas  Hausmann,  the  pastor  of  Zwickau,  who  by 
examples  taken  from  the  Bible  had  pointed  out  to  the 
Elector  himself  what  his  rights  and  duties  were  in  this  field  ;3 
an  even  stronger  influence  was,  maybe,  exerted  on  him  by 
the  lawyers  of  the  Court,  who  were  intent  on  making  the 
most  of  the  rights  of  the  sovereign,  especially  by  Chancellor 
Briick,  their  spokesman,  with  whom  Luther  was  brought 
into  closer  contact  when  seeking  to  remedy  the  existing 
distress.  He  himself,  as  we  shall  see,  hesitated  a  little  about 
entering  upon  this  new  course.  The  supremacy  of  the  prince 
nevertheless  seemed  inevitably  called  for  by  the  secularisa 
tion  of  Church  property,  also  for  the  appointment  and 
payment  of  the  pastors,  for  the  removal  of  incapable 

1  Nov.  22,  1526,  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  53,  p.  386  ("  Brief wechsel,"  5, 
p.  406).     Enders  says  of  this  work  :    "  Almost  all  the  proposals  Luther 
makes  here  with  the  object  of  stimulating  the  project  of  a  Visitation 
which  had  come  to  a  standstill  are  again  found  in  the  Instructions  to 
the  Visitors."     From  Luther's  previous  letters  Miiller  proves  that  he 
approved  the  Instructions,  ib.,  p.  69  ff. 

2  Thus  the  Weimar  editors  in  their  Introduction  to  the  "  Instructions 
of  the  Visitors,"  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  26,  p.  179. 

3  Ib.,  p.  177. 


THE  VISITORS'  INSTRUCTIONS     591 

preachers  and  those  who  excited  the  mob, — especially  those 
of  "  fanatic  "  inclinations — and,  lastly,  for  the  final  and 
violent  uprooting  of  Catholic  worship  where  it  still  lingered. 

A  Visitation  was  begun  in  the  Electorate  in  Feb.,  1527, 
by  a  very  characteristic  commission  appointed  by  the 
sovereign  assisted  by  the  University  of  Wittenberg  ;  it  was 
composed  of  the  following  members  :  the  lawyer,  Hierony- 
mus  Schurff,  the  two  noblemen  Hans  von  der  Planitz  and 
Asmus  von  Haubitz,  and  Melanchthon.  The  Electoral 
Instructions  of  June,  1527,  referred  to  above  were  the  result 
of  previous  experience,  and  had  the  approval  of  both  Luther 
and  Melanchthon.  The  practical  experience  already  gained 
also  proved  useful  in  the  drawing  up  of  the  "  Unterricht  der 
Visitatorn  an  die  Pharhern  "  which  was  of  a  more  theo 
logical  and  practical  character.  It  is  almost  entirely  the 
work  of  Melanchthon,  though  it  was  formally  approved  and 
accepted  by  Luther  after  some  slight  alterations.  It  was 
sent  to  Luther  by  the  Elector,  who  had  carefully  gone  into 
its  details,  and  who  directed  him  to  look  through  it  and  also 
write  an  historical  preface  ("narration")  to  it,  though  the 
work  as  a  whole  was  to  appear  to  come  from  the  Court.  In 
due  time  both  the  "  Instructions  "  and  the  Preface  were 
sent  to  the  press  by  the  Elector. 

What  had  transpired  of  the  contents  of  the  "  Unterricht  " 
had  already  aroused  considerable  opposition  within  the 
Lutheran  camp  ;  it  was  displeasing  to  the  zealots  to  find 
Melanchthon  again  returning  half-way  to  the  Catholic 
doctrine  in  the  matter  of  penance,  free-will  and  good  works. 
They  openly  declared  that  official  Lutheranism  was  "  slink 
ing  back."  After  its  appearance  further  criticism  was 
aroused  among  both  Protestants  and  Catholics.  Of  the 
Catholic  writers,  Cochlseus  ironically  drew  attention  in  his 
"  Luiherus  septiceps  "  to  the  withdrawal  that  had  taken 
place  from  Luther's  former  crass  assertions.  He  also 
incidentally  describes  the  strange  appearance  of  the  State 
Visitors  :  "  Here  comes  the  Visitor  wearing  a  new  kind  of 
mitre,  setting  up  a  new  form  of  Papacy,  prescribing  new 
laws  for  divine  worship,  and  reviving  what  had  long  since 
fallen  into  disuse  and  dragging  it  forth  into  the  light  once 
more."1  Joachim  von  der  Heyden  in  his  printed  letter  to 

1  In  the  Preface  to  the  reader  :  "  Violator  nova  mitra  infulatur, 
novum  ambiens  papatum,"  etc. 


592          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

Catherine  Bora  even  declared,  that,  in  the  rules  for  the 
Visitation,  Luther  "  had  resumed  the  Imperial  rights," 
which  he  had  "  for  a  while  discarded."  He  is  referring  to 
certain  of  the  rules  dealing  with  Church  property,  which 
were  to  Luther's  personal  interest.1 

The  Elector's  Instruction  to  the  Visitors  themselves  is, 
however,  of  even  greater  importance  in  the  history  of  the 
rise  of  the  Lutheran  State  Church. 

"  In  this  Instruction,  not  only  do  we  meet  everywhere 
with  traces  of  Luther's  wishes,"  but  it  also  follows  him  "  in 
applying  the  property  of  monasteries  and  pious  foundations 
to  the  support  of  the  churches  and  schools.  In  all  this,  true 
to  Luther's  ideas,  it  sees  the  duty  of  the  sovereign  who 
constitutes  the  Christian  authority."2 

In  this  Instruction  the  attitude  adopted  by  the  Elector  with 
regard  to  doctrine  is,  that,  in  view  of  the  Word  of  God,3  he,  the 
supreme  lord,  is  not  free  to  brook  the  practice  of  false  worship 
and  the  teaching  of  false  dogma  in  his  lands.  What  the  true 
doctrine  really  is,  is  taken  for  granted  as  known,  though  it  is 
never  expressly  stated.  On  the  other  hand,  in  the  Preface  to  the 
"  Unterricht,"  Luther  tells,  how,  "  now,  by  the  unspeakable 
grace  of  God  the  Gospel  has  mercifully  been  brought  back  to  us 
once  more,  or,  rather,  has  dawned  on  us  for  the  first  time."4  It 
was  the  duty  of  the  sovereign,  so  the  Instruction  says,  to  abolish 
public  scandals  and  hence  to  remove  unworthy  clerics.  He  must 
proclaim  the  Gospel  to  his  subjects  by  means  of  those  called  to  do 
so,  and  admonish  them  through  the  Visitors  to  take  the  same  to 
heart.  The  congregations  must,  when  necessary,  assist  in 
supporting  the  preachers.  The  Visitors  had  the  right  to  insist  in 
the  sovereign's  name  on  the  contributions  called  for  by  the  law, 
and  into  their  hands  the  Elector  committed  the  management  of 
the  Church  property. 

The  ruler  must  take  steps,  as  the  divinely  appointed  authority, 
in  obedience  to  the  Word  of  God,  and  in  the  interests  of  his 
country  to  abolish  the  remnants  of  Popish  error  by  means  of  a 
Visitation.  Those  ministers  who  were  papistically  inclined  were 
simply  to  be  removed  and  all  the  preachers  "  who  advocate, 
preach  or  hold  any  erroneous  doctrine  are  to  be  told  to  quit  our 
lands  in  all  haste  and  also,  that,  should  they  return,  they  will  be 
severely  dealt  with."  Whoever  refuses  to  abide  by  the  regula 
tions  of  the  sovereign  in  the  dispensing  of  the  sacraments,  is  to 
leave  the  Electorate.  For,  "  though  it  is  not  our  intention  to 

1  Aug.  10,  1528,  "  Briefwechsel,"  6,  p.  337. 

2  Words   of   K.   Miiller,    "  Kirche,   Gemeinde  und   Obrigkeit  nach 
Luther,"  p.  71  f.    He  also  gives  a  survey  of  the  Instructions. 

3  For  the  text  see  Sehling,  ib.,  p.  143. 

4  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  26,  p.  197  ;   Erl.  ed.,  23,  p.  5. 


THE   VISITORS'  INSTRUCTIONS     593 

prescribe  to  anyone  what  he  is  to  hold  or  believe,  yet  we  will  not 
tolerate  any  sect  or  division  in  our  principality  in  order  to 
prevent  harmful  revolt  and  other  mischief."1 

Thus  a  formal  "  Inquisition  "  was  introduced,  even  to  the  very 
name,  which  was  to  be  undertaken  by  the  Visitors  in  respect  not 
merely  of  the  clergy  but  even  of  the  laity,  attention  being  paid 
to  the  information  laid  Before  the  Visitors  by  the  officials  and 
members  of  the  nobility.  Any  layman  who  refused  to  desist  from 
his  "  error  "  when  summoned  to  do  so  was  obliged  within  a 
certain  term  to  sell  out  and  leave  the  country  "  with  a  warning 
of  being  severely  dealt  with  "  similar  to  that  addressed  to 
clergymen. 

Hence  by  means  of  this  "  Instruction  "  the  foundation 
was  laid  for  the  State  supremacy  in  religious  matters. 
"  Spalatin's  wish  was  now  fulfilled,"  says  N.  Paulus  ;  "  the 
sovereign  had  now  put  the  '  Christian  bit  '  in  the  mouth  of 
all  the  clergy,  and  they  could  now  preach  nothing  else  than 
the  Lutheran  doctrine."2  "  Oh,  what  a  noble  work  it  would 
be,"  Spalatin  had  written  in  1525,  when  first  proposing  such 
a  use  of  the  'bit,'  "and  what  great  good  would  result  for 
the  whole  of  Christendom."3  "  Spalatin's  pious  wish,"  drily 
remarks  Th.  Kolde,  "  was  to  be  more  thoroughly  realised 
than  probably  he  bargained  for."4 

Luther  himself  was  pleased  with  the  Instructions.  He 
never  ventured  to  bring  forward  any  real  objection  against 
it,  greatly  as  the  document  ran  counter  to  his  earlier 
principles  ;  after  the  appearance  of  the  "  Unterricht  ' 
addressed  to  the  pastors,  headed  by  Luther's  remarkable 
preface,  it  was  once  more  printed  without  any  protest.  Yet 
the  Preface  bears  witness  to  his  misgivings. 

Luther's  Misgivings  in  the  Preface  to  the  Visitors' 
Directions 

The  standpoint  taken  up  by  the  Wittenberg  Professor  in 
his  Preface  to  the  "  Unterricht  "  is  so  curious  that  it  has 
even  been  said  that  a  "  manifest  contradiction  "  exists 
between  it  and  the  Instructions  which  follow.5 

1  Muller   ib     p    67      N.  Patilus,  "  Protestantismus  und  Toleranz," 

p.  14.  2  Ib- 

3  See  Th.  Kolde,  "  Friedrich  der  Weise,"  1881,  p.  69  f. 

5  Carl  Holl  "  Luther  und  das  Landesherrliche  Kirchenregiment  " 
("  1  Erganzungsheft  zur  Zeitschr.  fur  Theol.  und  Kirche  "),  Tubingen, 
1911,  p!  54,  against  C.  Muller,  "  Kirche,  Gemeinde  und  Obngkeit  nach 

v.— 2  Q 


594          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

In  it,  albeit  cautiously,  he  made  certain  reservations, 
which  show  that  the  absolutist  system  of  Church  govern 
ment  proposed  by  the  Prince  did  not  really  appeal  to  him. 
It  is  clear  he  did  not  feel  quite  at  ease  about  the  Instructions, 
because  of  his  former  advocacy  of  the  independence  of  the 
congregations  in  ecclesiastical  matters,  because  of  the 
future  subserviency  of  Church  to  State  and  because  the 
directions  were  at  variance  with  honest  convictions  deeply 
rooted  in  his  mind  from  the  days  of  his  youth.  At  the  same 
time  his  misgivings  are  expressed  only  with  the  greatest 
restraint. 

He  says  :  "  Although  His  Electoral  Highness  is  not  com 
manded  to  teach  and  to  exercise  a  spiritual  rule,  yet  it  is  his  duty 
as  the  secular  authority  to  insist  that  no  dissensions,  factions  and 
revolt  take  place  among  his  subjects  "  ;  for  which  reason  too  the 
Emperor  Constantine  had  exhorted  the  Christians  to  unity  in 
faith  and  doctrine.  He  adds  :  His  Highness,  the  Prince,  had 
settled  on  the  Visitation  at  Luther's  request  "  out  of  Christian 
charity  and  for  God's  sake,  though  this  was  not  indeed  required 
of  him  as  a  secular  ruler." 

These,  however,  were  mere  Platonic  excuses  by  which  he  sought 
to  reassure  himself,  to  explain  the  contradictions  involved  in  his 
position,  and,  probably,  to  defeat  those  who  looked  askance  at 
this  Visitation  ordained  by  the  State. 

It  is  easy  to  perceive  from  the  language  of  the  Preface  that  one 
of  the  writer's  objects  was  to  meet  the  objections  he  feared  from 
his  own  party.  Among  the  ministers  were  some,  who,  it  was  to 
be  apprehended,  would  "  ungratefully  and  proudly  despise  "  the 
action  of  the  Prince  ;  "  madcaps,  who  out  of  utter  malice  cannot 
tolerate  anything  that  is  common  and  applies  to  all."  These  he' 
reminds  of  the  sovereign's  powers  of  coercion  by  which  they 
would  be  "  sundered."  Seemingly  he  also  tries  to  defend  himself 
from  the  very  natural  charge  of  having  introduced  an  incompetent 
authority  into  the  Church  Visitation  ;  this  he  does  by  limiting 
the  sovereign  power  as  we  just  heard  him  do.  The  charge,  that 
the  Instructions  of  the  Visitors  were  untrue  to  his  former  doctrine 
(he  means  more  particularly  that  of  good  works)  he  answers  by 
a  rhetorical  assertion  to  the  contrary. 

He  also  thinks  it  necessary  to  defend  the  measures  aimed  at 
those  whose  belief  is  different ;  this  he  does  by  a  reference  to  the 
"  unity  of  the  spirit,"  which  sounds  rather  strange  coming  from 

Luther."  Holl  says  :  "  The  two  documents  cannot  be  reconciled,  for 
each  attempts  not  merely  to  describe  or  emphasise  one  side  of  the 
matter,  but  to  set  forth  the  whole,  and  this  they  do  from  totally 
different  points  of  view.  One  seeks  to  represent  the  Visitation  as  the 
outcome  of  the  paternal  care  of  the  Elector,  the  other  as  an  act  of  self- 
help  on  the  part  of  the  Church.  It  is  impossible  to  harmonise  these 
two  points  of  view." 


THE   VISITORS'  INSTRUCTIONS     595 

him.  To  the  Catholics  who  were  obliged  to  quit  their  country 
since,  for  the  sake  of  peace,  conformity  was  required,  Luther 
sends  the  following  greeting  :  "Be  careful  to  keep,  as  Paul 
teaches,  the  unity  of  the  spirit  in  the  bond  of  peace  and  charity, 
Amen  "  (Eph.  iv.  3). 

When  judging  the  Preface  the  fact  must  be  taken  into  account 
that  the  "  Unterricht  '*•  which  Luther  is  launching  on  the  public 
introduces  amongst  other  things  the  office  of  the  "  super- 
attendents  "  (superintendents).  In  these  directions  coercion  is 
defended  in  the  strongest  terms.  Whoever  preaches  or  teaches 
"  against  the  Word  of  God,"  what  is  "  conducive  to  revolt 
against  the  authorities,"  is  to  be  "  prohibited  "  from  doing  so 
by  the  Superintendent  ;  if  this  be  of  no  avail  then  the  matter 
is  to  be  "notified  at  once  to  the  officer,  in  order  that  His 
Electoral  Highness  may  take  further  steps."  All  this  simply  on 
the  authority  of  the  sovereign. 

Hence  had  Luther  really  wished,  as  has  been  asserted,  to 
protest  against  the  powers  claimed  by  the  sovereign  and  his 
Visitors  this  should  have  been  very  differently  worded. 

The  passage  regarding  the  "  super-attendent  "  in  itself  shows 
that  Luther  did  not  regard  the  "  Unterricht "  merely  as  a 
spiritual  guide,  as  has  been  recently  asserted,  or  as  representing 
that  purely  spiritual  function  which,  according  to  him,  is  con 
cerned  only  with  the  conscience,  with  doctrine  and  advice,  and 
knows  nothing  of  any  law  or  command.  This  naturally  follows 
from  the  above,  even  though  the  elastic  Preface  contains  a 
qualifying  statement,  viz.  that  he  could  not  allow  the  directions 
in  the  "  Unterricht  to  be  issued  as  a  strict  law  lest  we  set  up 
new  Papal  Decretals  "  ;  it  is  his  intention  to  send  them  forth  as 
a  "  history  or  account,  and  also  as  a  testimony  and  confession  of 
our  faith."  In  this,  again,  we  can  only  see  his  desire  to  explain 
away  the  disagreeable  expedient  into  which  he  had  been  forced 
by  circumstances. 

Since  the  beginning  of  the  Church,  he  goes  on,  there  had 
always  been  an  episcopal  Visitation  though  now  this  had  ceased 
and  "  Christendom  lay  torn  and  distracted  "  ;  none  of  us  (the 
Wittenberg  Professors)  having  been  called  or  definitely  appointed 
to  this,  he  had  come  "  to  play  the  part  of  conscience  "  and  had 
moved  the  sovereign  to  take  this  step.  In  other  words,  no  one  on 
earth  has  the  right  to  "  constitute  "  new  churches,  not  even  the 
man  who  discovered  the  new  Evangel ;  it  was  merely  a  venture 
on  Luther's  part,  when,  owing  to  the  urgency  of  the  case,  he 
called  in  the  assistance  of  the  secular  power.  Such  a  mental 
process,  is,  to  say  the  least,  highly  involved. 

It  is  sufficiently  evident  that  this  Preface,  inscribed,  so  to 
speak,  over  the  portals  of  the  new  State-governed  Church, 
may  lay  claim  to  great  psychological  interest. 

The  interest  deepens  if  we  turn  our  attention  to  the 
demonological  ideas  Luther  here  brings  into  play.  At  that 


596          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

time  he  was  suffering  from  the  after-effects  of  his  dreadful 
struggles  with  the  "  devil  "  (1527-28)  and  with  his  own 
conscience.  That,  here  too,  the  devil  might  not  be  absent,  he 
shows  in  the  Preface  how  Satan  had  wrought  all  sorts  of 
mischief  amongst  the  Papists  (this  is  Luther's  consolation) 
by  neglect  of  the  Visitations,  and  had  set  up  nothing  but 
"  spiritual  delusions  and  monk-calves."1  The  "  idle,  lazy 
bellies  "  had  been  forced  to  serve  Satan.  He  gives  this 
warning  for  the  future  :  "  The  Devil  has  not  grown  good  or 
devout  this  year,  nor  will  he  ever  do  so."  "  Christ  says  in 
John  viii.  that  the  devil  is  a  murderer."2 

The  words  Luther  uses  when  he  characterises  the  inter 
vention  of  the  secular  authorities  in  Church  matters  as 
merely  a  work  of  necessity  or  charity  on  the  part  of  the 
chief  member  of  the  Church,  are  of  psychological  rather  than 
of  doctrinal  importance. 

What  Luther  says  of  the  rights  of  the  State  authorities  in 
Church  affairs  reveals  how  little  his  heart  was  in  this  abandon 
ment  of  ecclesiastical  authority  to  the  secular  arm.  It  shows 
the  need  he  felt  of  concealing  beneath  fair  words  the  road 
he  had  thus  opened  up  to  State-administration  of  the  Church.3 
The  Saxon  Elector  is  a  "  Christian  member  "  ;  he  is  a 
"  Christian  brother  "  in  the  Church,  who,  as  sovereign,  must 
play  his  part ;  his  intervention  here  appears  as  a  service 
performed  by  the  ruler  towards  the  Christian  community. 
"  Our  emergency  Bishop,"  such  is  the  title  Luther  once 
bestows  on  Johann  Frederick.  The  state  of  financial  con 
fusion  amongst  the  Protestants  is  what  chiefly  demands, 
he  says,  that  "  His  Electoral  Highness,  the  embodiment  of 
the  secular  authority,  should  look  into  and  settle  things." 

1  Reference  to  the  title  of  his  writing,  "  Deuttung  .  .  .  des  Munch- 
kalbs  zu  Freyberg,"  1523.     See  above,  vol.  iii.,  p.  149  f. 

2  The  latter  saying  occurs  in  the   "  Unterricht,"  Weim.  ed.,   26, 
p.  212  ;   Erl.  ed.,  23,  p.  28.        « 

3  There  is  no  call  to  lay  so  much  stress  on  the  Preface  as  to  be 
obliged  to  say  with  Holl,  ib.,  54  :  It  "  necessarily  assumes  the  signi 
ficance  of  a  silent  protest.  .  .  .  Luther  is  defending  the  Church's 
independence  of  the  State  by  painting  the  Visitation  in  its  true  light." 
Holl  also  says,  p.  59,  that  Luther,  here,  entered  upon  "  a  struggle  for 
the  integrity  of  his  whole  work."  "  To  him  it  was  of  vital  importance 
whether  the  ruler  of  the  land  was  obeyed  as  the  highest  member  of  the 
congregation,  or  as  a  Christian  Prince."  P.  60  :  "  All  the  efforts 
directed  to-day  towards  greater  independence  of  the  Church  and 
larger  liberty  within  the  Church  have  a  good  right  to  appeal  to  Luther 
on  this  question." 


DIVERGENT   DRIFTS  597 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  not  of  his  secular  authority,  but 
simply  of  his  authority,  that  Luther  speaks  in  the  writing  he 
addressed  to  the  Elector  on  Nov.  22,  1526,  where  he  appeals 
to  him  to  make  an  end  of  the  material  and  spiritual  mischief 
by  establishing  "  schools,  pulpits  and  parsonages."  He  says, 
"  Now  that  all  spiritual  order  and  restraint  have  come  to  an 
end  in  the  principality  and  all  the  monasteries  and  institu 
tions  have  fallen  into  the  hands  of  Your  Electoral  Highness 
as  the  supreme  head,  this  brings  with  it  the  duty  and  labour 
of  regulating  this  matter,  which  no  one  else  either  can  or 
ought  to  undertake."  "  God  has  in  this  case  called  and 
empowered  Your  Electoral  Highness  to  do  this."1  The 
supervision  of  the  doctrine  as  well  as  of  the  personal  conduct 
of  the  ministers,  and  not  merely  the  providing  for  their 
material  wants,  all  come  within  the  ordinary  province  of  the 
"  supreme  head." 

Divergent  Currents 

The  psychological  significance  of  Luther's  hesitation  to 
sanction  the  ruler's  supremacy  in  church  government  lies  in 
its  affording  us  a  fresh  insight  into  the  various  drifts  of  his 
mind  and  temperament. 

On  the  one  hand,  he  helped  to  raise  State-ecclesiasticism 
into  the  saddle,  and,  on  the  other,  he  would  fain  see  it  off 
again  and  looks  at  it  with  the  unfriendliest  of  eyes.  He  not 
only  gives  us  to  understand  in  the  most  unmistakable 
manner  that  it  is  not  his  ideal,  but,  up  to  the  very  last,  he 
says  things  of  it  which  ring  almost  like  an  anathema  ;  nor 
does  he  forbear  to  heap  reproaches  on  the  natural  conse 
quences  of  an  institution  of  which  notwithstanding  he  him 
self  was  the  father.  Only  error,  with  its  ambiguity  and  want 
of  logic,  combined  with  an  obstinate  will,  could  issue  in  such 
contradictions . 

His  earlier  and  truer  recognition  of  the  independence  of 
the  spiritual  power  refused  to  be  entirely  extinguished.  It 
was  the  same  here  as  with  Luther's  doctrine  of  faith  alone, 
of  justification  and  good  works  ;  again  and  again  the  old, 
wholesome  views  break  out  from  under  the  crust  of  the  new 
errors  and,  all  involuntarily,  find  expression  in  quite 

i  "Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  53,  p.  386  ("  Brief wechsel,"  5,  p.  406).     See 
above,   p.   581.     The  other  passages  mentioned  here  are  quote 
P.  Drews,  ib.,  pp.  95  ff.,  98. 


598          LUTHER  THE  REFORMER 

excellent  moral  admonitions.  So  too  his  former  orthodox 
views  concerning  the  dignity  of  the  Bible  are  at  variance 
with  the  liberties  he  takes  with  the  Word  of  God,  and,  even 
according  to  Protestant  divines,  lead  him  to  an  ambiguous 
theory  and  to  a  practice  full  of  contradictions.1  Yet  again, 
his  call  to  make  use  of  armed  force  against  the  Emperor  is 
contrary  to  what  he  had  taught  for  long  years  regarding  the 
unlawfulness  of  such  resistance  ;  the  disquiet  and  perturba 
tion,  the  consciousness  of  this  causes  him  he  seeks  to 
drown  beneath  ever  louder  battle  cries.2  We  find  something 
similar  throughout  the  whole  field  of  his  psychology  :  every 
where  we  can  detect  gainstriving  currents. 

In  the  questions  bearing  on  the  rights  of  the  State  and  the 
Church,  his  temperament,  which  was  so  susceptible  to 
sudden  changes,  needed  only  some  strong  impulse  from 
without  in  order  to  bring  to  light  one  or  other  of  these 
opposing  trends.  One  powerful  stimulus  of  the  sort  was 
afforded  by  the  attractive  outlook  of  bettering  the  frightful 
condition  of  the  Lutheran  congregations  in  Saxony,  making 
his  disputed  cause  victorious,  and  at  the  same  time  getting 
rid  of  the  remaining  Papists.  By  this  alluring  prospect  he 
was  taken  captive.  It  would  seem  to  have  led  him  to  shut 
his  eyes  to  the  iron  fetters  which  State  supremacy  in  Church 
matters  would  forge  about  his  Church  system  not  merely 
in  Saxony  but  far  beyond  its  borders.  When,  afterwards,  he 
would  willingly  have  retraced  his  steps,  it  was  already  too 
late.  He  was  condemned  to  make  statements  extolling 
freedom  in  spiritual  matters,  the  futility  of  which  was  plain 
to  himself,  and  which,  therefore,  Protestants  should  not 
take  so  seriously  as  some  of  them  do. 

It  is  not  sufficiently  realised  how  such  opposing  tendencies 
run  side  by  side  from  the  very  outset  of  his  career. 

Even  in  his  "  An  den  christlichen  Adel,"  in  spite  of  the  violence 
with  which  he  incites  the  nobility  against  the  Church's  administra 
tion  we  can  see  that  he  wishes  to  set  his  new  allies  more  against 
the  alleged  "  robberies  and  exactions  "  of  the  Church  and  the 
abuses  which  he  supposed  to  be  beyond  remedy,  than  against  the 
Church  as  such.  It  is  true,  that,  by  his  universal  priesthood,  he 
breaks  down  the  walls  which  mark  the  field  of  her  sway  ;  God 
can  speak  "  through  the  mouth  of  any  pious  man  against  the 
Pope  "  ;  "in  principle  every  Christian  has  the  right  to  summon 

1  See  above,  vol.  iv.,  pp.  413  and  418  f.,  for  the  corroborative  state 
ments  of  Scheel  and  Seeberg.  2  Vol.  iii.,  pp.  48  ff.  and  58  ff. 


DIVERGENT  DRIFTS  599 

a  Council  "  ;*  but,  should  the  secular  powers  gather  together  the 
Council  he  desired,  they  would,  according  to  him,  do  so  simply 
at  the  will  and  command  of  the  Christian  congregation  which  he 
also  takes  into  account  and  which  he  admits  possesses  a  certain 
spiritual  sword  "  which  exists  side  by  side  with  the  secular 
sword,  though  only  for  the  benefit  of  souls.  Thus  the  spiritual 
power  still  exists  as  a  dream.  Only  a  Christian  ruler,  a  "  brother 
Christian,  brother  priest  and  sharer  in  the  same  spirit-world  " 
may  demand  that  violent  reformation  for  which  Luther  yearns. 2— 
Thus,  even  in  this  stormy  work,  the  two  contrary  drifts  are  to 
some  extent  discernible. 

With  the  same  desire  to  retain  intact  some  sort  of  spiritual 
order  distinct  from  the  secular,  Luther  here  and  elsewhere  seeks 
to  reserve  to  the  Christian  congregation  the  right  of  choosing 
their  pastors  ;  circumstances  were,  however,  to  prove  too  strong 
for  him. 

"Throughout  Christendom  things  should  be  so  ordered  that 
every  town  chooses  from  amongst  its  congregation  a  learned  and 
pious  burgher,  commits  to  him  the  office  of  pastor  and  sees  that 
he  is  given  enough  for  his  upkeep."3  The  congregation  is  also  to 
have  the  right  to  depose  him  should  his  preaching  not  turn  out 
in  accordance  with  the  Word  of  God.  What  Luther  has  in  mind 
is  united  action  on  the  part  of  all  the  true  believers.  But  here, 
again,  he  has  perforce  to  lean  rather  on  the  authorities.  For,  in 
the  congregation,  we  have  first  of  all  the  Town-Council,  which,  even 
when  only  a  minority  of  the  burghers  is  in  favour  of  the  religious 
reform,  receives  from  Luther  a  power  which  does  not  belong  to  it, 
viz.  of  seeing  that  the  people  it  rules  are  supplied  with  the  right 
preachers.  Above  the  Council,  moreover,  stands  the  supreme 
authority,  viz.  the  sovereign.  The  latter  must  naturally  assist 
the  Council  in  choosing  good  Evangelical  preachers  and  must 
himself  take  steps  when  dissensions  cause  the  Council  to  refuse  to 
move.  Luther,  again,  will  do  nothing  in  opposition  to  the  Court ; 
for  instance,  he  will  not  allow  any  pastor  to  enter  upon  his  office 
who  is  not  a  "  persona  grata  "  at  the  Court,  even  though  he  should 
have  been  duly  called  by  the  congregation.4  Every  parish  is 
indeed  independent  by  divine  right,  but  the  prince  also  acts  by 
divine  right  when,  as  protector  and  defender,  he  intervenes, 
regardless  of  the  traditional  rights  of  patron  and  warden,  etc.5 

1  See  Holl,  ib.,  p.  9,  with  a  reference  to  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  21,  p.  289 
(Weim.  ed.,  6,  p.  413),  on  the  Christian  who,  according  to  Mt.  xviii., 
summons  the  culprit  before  the  congregation  :  "  If  I  am  to  accuse  him 
before  the  congregation,  I  must  first  assemble  the  congregation." 

2  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  6,  p.  413  ;   Erl.  ed.,  21,  p.  290. 

3  Ib.,  p.  440=  322.    Holl,  ib.,  p.  16.    It  is  to  Roll's  credit  that  he  so 
strongly  emphasises  this  tendency  of  Luther's  in  favour  of  the  inde 
pendent  rights  of  the  congregation. 

4  Cp.   his   letter  to   Spalatin,   May   29,    1522,    "  Brief wechsel,"    3, 
p.  378  f.  :    "  Faciat  princeps  et  aula  hac  in  re  quod  voluerint,  ego  Spiritui 
sancto  non  resistant  ipsi  viderint."    See  also  "  Brief  wechsel,"  3,  pp.  381 
and  561. 

5  C.  Muller,  ib.,  p.  54,  who  emphasises  Luther's  bias  towards  the 


600         LUTHER  THE   REFORMER 

In  Saxony,  where  the  ruler  was  favourable  to  Lutheranism,  his 
authority  was  indispensable  for  the  establishment  of  the  Church. 
On  the  other  hand,  where  the  conditions  were  less  favourable  to 
Luther,  there,  according  to  his  "  De  instituendis  ministris,"  the 
principal  work  must  devolve  on  the  town  councillors  and  the 
patrons  as  well  as  on  the  preachers  appointed  by  them  to  the 
congregations;1  to  these  it  falls  to  elect  bishops,  so  that  every 
thing  may  be  put  on  independent  ecclesiastical  lines. — Thus 
Luther  was  not  so  averse  to  changing  both  methods  and  principles. 

The  change  in  Luther's  views  comes  out  most  clearly  in  the 
leave  he  gives  to  the  highest  secular  power  to  annul  the  choice 
made  by  the  congregation.  The  instructions  for  the  Visitation 
prescribed  that,  on  the  bare  authority  of  the  prince  and  regard 
less  of  the  rights  of  the  congregation,  those  pastors  who  taught 
what  was  erroneous  or  who  had  proved  otherwise  unsatisfactory 
were  to  be  deposed  and  replaced  by  others.  This  held  even  of 
those  who  were  strongly  backed  by  their  congregation.  "  In 
point  of  fact,"  says  Carl  Miiller,  "  this  was  practically  to  shift 
the  responsibility  from  the  congregation  and  its  authorities  to  the 
sovereign.  It  is  also  clear,  that,  where  there  was  a  divergency  of 
opinion  concerning  the  orthodoxy  of  a  preacher,  the  sovereign 
naturally  had  his  own  way."2  But,  even  before  this,  Luther  had 
refused  to  sanction  the  demand  of  the  Erfurt  burghers,  viz.  that 
the  parishes  should  themselves  appoint  their  pastors  even  against 
the  wishes  of  the  Town-Council  ;  it  was  "  seditious,"  so  he  wrote 
in  1525,  "  that  the  parishes  should  seek  to  choose  or  dismiss  their 
pastors  regardless  of  the  Council."3  Here  the  Council  happened 
to  be  on  his  side  ;  where  this  was  not  the  case,  Luther  was  just  as 
ready  to  set  aside  its  rights  in  favour  of  those  of  the  ruler. 

In  this  wise  the  right  of  the  congregation  to  elect  its  pastor,  a 
right  which  he  had  once  praised  so  highly,  even  in  his  own  day 
was  so  whittled  away  as  to  become  quite  meaningless.  Of  the 
two  tendencies  which  had  been  apparent  in  him  from  the  first, 
one  inclining  towards  the  authorities  and  the  other  towards 
freedom  of  election,  the  former  had  won  the  day. 

We  already  know  that  Luther  inclined  for  a  long  while  to 
the  establishment  of  a  Church- Apart  or  assembly  of  true 
believers.  Yet,  at  the  same  time,  he  was  working  for  a 
National  Church,  albeit  he  was  convinced  that  such  a 
Church  would  for  the  most  part  be  composed  of  non- 
Christians.  Eventually  the  latter  was  to  hold  the  field 
owing  to  the  force  of  outward  circumstances.4 

He  was  in  favour  of  a  Church  which  should  be  entirely  free, 
and  at  the  same  time  of  a  confessional  Church  with  binding 

State  government  of  the  Church  with  as  much  reason  as  Holl  (see  above, 
p.  596,  n.  3)  does  his  ideas  on  the  independence  of  the  Church. 

1  Miiller,  ib.,  p.  61.  2  P.  79. 

3  Vol.  ii.,  p.  358.  4  Cp.  above,  pp.  135  f.,  139  f. 


DIVERGENT  DRIFTS  601 

dogmas.  So  strongly  did  he  stand  for  freedom  in  all  ecclesi 
astical  matters  that  he  not  only  refused  to  recognise  the 
existence  of  any  spiritual  "  authority  "  among  his  followers, 
but  also  declared  no  Pope,  no  angel,  no  man  had  the  power 
to  rob  the  faithful  of  this  freedom  or  to  impose  anything  on 
him.1  At  the  same  time,  however,  he  was  in  favour  of  that 
strict  disciplinary  government  which  finds  its  expression  in 
the  regulations  for  the  Visitation. 

According  to  Luther  there  is  no  real  Canon  Law.  He 
refuses  to  recognise  State  and  Church  as  two  bodies  which 
exist  side  by  side.2  And  yet  he  complains  of  the  way  in 
which  the  rights  of  the  Church,  i.e.  of  his  Church,  were 
being  thwarted  by  the  lawyers.3 

He  wished  a  distinction  to  be  drawn  between  the  Prince 
and  the  Christian,  and  declared  :  "  His  princely  authority 
has  nothing  to  do  with  his  Christianity  "  ;  and  yet  he 
himself  united  the  spiritual  and  the  secular  power  in  the 
prince's  hands  so  closely  that  they  were  never  afterwards 
to  be  wrenched  apart.  As  Carl  Miiller  truly  remarks,  we 
must  not  "press  too  much  the  term  'emergency  bishop 
for  the  time  being  '  which  Luther  applies  to  the  secular 
ruler."4 

True  to  one  of  his  ruling  tendencies,  he  based  on  the  Bible 
the  rights  and  duties  of  the  authorities  in  every  department 
of  the  spiritual  sphere.  "  If  the  authorities  do  not  wish  it, 
then  neither  must  you."  Nevertheless,  almost  in  the  same 
breath,  he  scoffs  at  the  claims  of  the  authorities  when  they 
did  not  happen  to  fall  in  with  his  wishes,  or  when  they  proved 
an  obstacle  to  the  expulsion  of  Popery  :  "  Why  pay  attention 
to  him  [the  Elector]  ?  He  has  no  right  to  command  except 
in  worldly  things."5 

He  stood  for  the  Consistories  and  promoted  their 
establishment  in  spite  of  Spalatin's  objections  ;  and  yet, 
on  the  other  hand,  he  opposed  them,  saying,  that  the  Courts 
were  after  ruling  the  Churches  as  they  pleased,  and  that 
Satan  was  bent  on  introducing  the  secular  power  into  the 
Church.6  Hence,  from  about  1540,  he  attempted  to  set  up 
Protestant  bishops  as  in  the  case  of  Nicholas  Amsdorf.7  The 

1  "  Werke,"  Weim.  ed.,  6,  p.  536.     "  Opp.  lat.  var.,"  5,  p.  68.    "  De 
capt.  babylonica." 

2  Cp.  Holl,  ib.,  p.  19  f.    Miiller,  ib.,  p.  74  ff.    See  above,  55  f. 

3  See  below,  p.  602  f.  4  P.  77.          5  See  above,  vol.  ii.,  p.  329. 
6  Cp.  above,  p.  181  ff.          7  See  above,  p.  191. 


602          LUTHER  THE   REFORMER 

Consistories  displeased  him  and  made  life  unbearable.  Still, 
because  the  ecclesiastical  edifice  he  had  erected  could  not  do 
without  them,  he  bridled  his  tongue  ;  very  different  is  the 
picture  of  Luther  from  that  of  the  champions  of  the  Church's 
independence  in  the  early  days  of  Christianity,  for  instance, 
Ambrose  or  Chrysostom,  who,  regardless  of  self,  staked  all 
they  had  in  the  struggle  against  the  oppressors  of  the  Church. 
His  habit  of  making  the  naughty  lawyers  of  the  Court  the 
butt  of  his  complaints  is  significant  enough,  for  the  really 
responsible  party  was  the  Court  itself  and  the  Elector  in 
person,  who  used  his  newly  acquired  power  to  rule  more 
autocratically  in  Church  matters  than  any  Pope  had  ever 
done. 

Conclusion 

The  prince  did  not  rule  as  a  member  of  a  religious  common 
wealth  which  also  had  rights  of  its  own,  but  rather  as  one 
holding  the  highest  powers  of  the  episcopate  ;  he  nominated 
the  pastors  and  provided  for  their  support  ;  he  watched 
over  the  lives  and  behaviour  of  the  clergy,  and,  at  Luther's 
instance,  took  proceedings  against  the  false  teachers  and  the 
remnants  of  Popery  ;  he  alone  controlled  the  consistory 
which  acted  in  his  name  ;  matrimonial  cases  were  already 
being  dealt  with  by  his  lawyers  and  the  disposal  and  manage 
ment  of  the  property  which  had  formerly  belonged  to  the 
Church  depended  entirely  on  the  Court.  The  right  of  the 
congregations  "  to  appoint  and  dismiss  preachers  and  to 
pronounce  on  doctrine  "  seemed  now  forgotten.  If  a  layman 
dared  to  call  a  preacher  to  task  the  authorities  were  bound 
to  take  proceedings  against  him  for  disturbance  of  the  public 
peace  and  order. 

Not  that  Luther  hesitated  to  complain  or  express  his  dis 
pleasure  with  the  State-Church  system  whenever  he  found  it  in 
his  way,  or  when  he  saw  Catholic  princes  make  use  of  his 
principles,  or  when  he  thought  the  cause  of  the  new  religion 
compromised.  On  such  occasions  we  hear  him  bewailing  :  "  The 
worldly  rulers,  the  princes,  kings  and  nobles  throughout  the  land, 
not  to  speak  of  the  magistrates  in  the  villages,  want  to  wield  the 
sword  of  the  Word  and  teach  the  pastors  how  and  what  they  are 
to  preach  and  how  they  must  govern  their  Churches.  But  do  you 
boldly  say  to  such  :  You  fool,  you  brainless  dolt,  look  to  your  own 
calling  and  don't  try  to  preach  ;  leave  that  to  your  pastor."  He 
declares  in  the  same  way  :  "  The  secular  government  does  not 
extend  over  the  conscience,  though  there  are  many  crazy  princes 


DIVERGENT   DRIFTS  603 

who  seek  to  raise  their  power  and  influence  over  the  welkin  itself 
and  even  to  rule  consciences,  also  to  settle  what  is  to  be  believed 
or  not  ;  yet,  the  worldly  power  has  only  to  do  with  that  which 
reason  grasps."1 

He  considered  that  the  interests  of  his  new  Church  were 
endangered  when,  in  1533,  the  Hessian  theologians  advocated 
the  enforcement  of  the  greater  excommunication  by  the  sovereign  ; 
he  saw  in  this  a  real  peril  in  the  then  state  of  things  ;  he  wrote  : 
"  I  would  not  have  the  temporal  authorities  meddle  in  this  office  ; 
they  should  let  it  be,  in  order  that  the  real  distinction  between 
the  two  powers  be  upheld  ('  ut  staret  vera  et  certa  distinctio 
utriusque  potestatis  ')."2 

But  where  in  the  domain  of  Protestantism  at  that  time,  was 
there  to  be  found  any  real  ecclesiastical  ruler  who  could  act  with 
"  power  "  ? 

The  only  factor  that  kept  his  anger  from  breaking  forth  was  his 
consciousness  that  he  owed  everything  he  had  achieved  to  the 
ruler  of  the  land.  But  "  at  heart  he  saw  only  too  well,"  remarks 
a  Protestant  Church-historian  whom  we  have  repeatedly  quoted, 
"  that  the  Princes,  under  the  cloak  of  the  Christian  name  which 
they  did  not  deserve  to  bear,  were  solely  intent  on  their  own 
aggrandisement  when  they  laid  their  hands  on  ecclesiastical 
authority.  He  also  saw  that  he  himself,  in  his  '  Unterricht,'  was 
to  blame  for  this."3  Hence  it  is  all  the  stranger  to  hear  Luther 
declaring  when  at  odds  with  the  officials,  that  they  must  never 
tire  of  "  insisting,  impressing,  urging  and  driving  home  the 
distinction  between  the  secular  and  the  spiritual  rule  .  .  .  for 
the  troublesome  devil  will  not  cease  cooking  and  brewing  up  the 
two  kingdoms  together."  And  yet  we  have  heard  him  say  that 
the  two  should  form  "  one  cake."4 

Concerning  his  attitude  towards  the  authorities  some  recent 
theologians  of  his  own  camp  have  expressed  themselves  very 
differently  from  what  might  have  been  expected  : 

"  Thus,  with  Luther,  the  end  tallies  with  the  beginning,"  they 
write  ;  "  everything  has  been  thought  out  clearly  and  is  in 
perfect  agreement." 

And  similarly  :  "  The  principles  which  guided  him  [in  his 
scheme  and  arrangement  of  the  Visitation]  are  precisely  the  same 
as  appear  in  his  earlier  writings."  "It  is  evident  that  Luther's 
opinions,  though  ever  in  a  state  of  growth,  were  yet  in  their 
fundamental  lines  always  the  same." 

The  opinion  expressed  by  another  Protestant  theologian  comes 
closer  to  the  truth  ;  he  declares  openly  :  The  want  of  logic  in 
Luther's  mode  of  thought  is  perhaps  "  nowhere  more  apparent 
than  in  his  views  on  the  authorities  and  their  duty  towards 
religion.  ...  It  will  never  be  possible  to  get  away  from  the 

1  "  Werke,"  Erl.  ed.,  46,  p.  184. 

2  To  Tileman  Schnabel,  etc.,  June  26,   1533,   "  Brief wechsel,"    9, 
p.  317. 

3  P.  Drews,  ib.,  p.  101  f.  4  P.  580. 


604          LUTHER   THE   REFORMER 

contradictions  in  his  theory  and  between  his  theory  and  his 
practice."1 

It  only  remains  to  add,  that,  of  the  diverging  currents, 
that  one  is  always  the  strongest  which  seems  most  likely  to 
promote  his  work,  the  diffusion  of  his  doctrine  and  the 
growth  of  his  Church.  A  glance  at  the  weather-cock  of 
expediency  will  tell  us  which  tendency  we  may  expect  to 
find  predominant,  for,  as  a  rule,  it  is  the  prospect  of  success 
that  decides  him.  At  the  same  time  it  must  be  admitted, 
that,  in  his  zeal  for  his  cause,  he  is  at  times  hardly  aware 
of  the  extent  to  which  he  is  proving  untrue  to  his  original 
plans. 

The  present-day  observer  of  such  vacillation  even  in 
matters  so  far-reaching  and  fundamental  will  naturally  ask 
himself  how  it  was  that  Luther's  fickleness  failed  to  dis 
courage  his  followers.  The  answer  is,  however,  not  far  to 
seek.  He  himself,  as  a  general  rule,  concealed  the  actual 
state  of  the  case  under  the  veil  of  his  eloquence,  and  his 
partisans  were  either  not  aware  of  how  things  really  stood 
or  else  followed  him  with  a  blind  enthusiasm  for  the  common 
aims  and  the  common  struggle  which  all  his  changes  and 
contradictions  could  not  avail  to  quench.  This  was  the 
origin  of  the  picture  which  so  many  German  Protestants 
cherish  of  Luther.  To  them  he  was  a  champion  of  the 
Church  and  the  State,  faithful  to  his  principles  to  the  last. 
Such  a  portrait  differs  widely  from  that  which  the  historian 
draws  from  an  impartial  study  of  Luther's  writings  and 
correspondence. 2 

1  Wilhelm  Hans,  quoted  in  full,  vol.  ii.,  p.  312.     What  he  says  is 
corroborated  by  Emil  Friedberg,  the  authority  of  law,  who,  speaking 
of  the  work  of  Carl  Miiller  so  often  quoted  above,  says,  that  it  is  a 
"  difficult  business  to  determine  Luther's  views,"  since  they  are  not 
always  the  same  in  his  various  writings,  and  since,  under  stress  of 
circumstances,  Luther  sometimes  said  things  that  went  directly  against 
the  principles  elsewhere  advocated  by  him."      "  Deutsche  Zeitschr.  f. 
KR.,"  20,  1911,  p.  414. 

2  The  vacillation  which  characterised  Luther's  attitude  towards  the 
State-Church  system  and  which  came  from  his  early  ideas  concerning 
the  true  Christians  who  had  no  need  of  any  authority  over  them,  has 
recently  been  set  forth  as  follows  by  the  Protestant  lawyer  and  historian 
Gustav    v.    Schulthess-Rechberg  :      "  Luther's    true    Christians    were 
Utopian  persons  and  hence  his  Church  was  the  same.     In  his  idealistic 
confidence  in  God  he  had  expected  too  much  from  them.     And  thus 
there  came  for  his  Reformation  an  era  of  hesitancy  and  groping,  which 
refused  for  a  while  to  make  way  for  more  stable  conditions.     The 
Church  which  Luther  had  characterised  as  a  necessary  expedient  for 


CONCLUSION  605 

A  Protestant  Church-historian,  H.  Hermelink,  recently 
attempted  to  place  Luther  side  by  side  with  the  "  greatest 
politicians  "  of  our  nation.1  Although  worldly  diplomacy 
and  organisation  were  not  Luther's  strong  point,  still  there 
is  much  truth  in  this  idea.  All  that  we  have  said  tends 
to  confirm  this,  though  possibly  not  quite  in  the  sense 
intended  by  Hermelink.  At  the  same  time  what  Carl  Muller 
says  is  also  not  without  its  justification  :  "Luther  lacked  an 
insight  into  the  character  of  the  secular  government,  which, 
once  it  has  been  pushed  in  a  given  direction,  cannot  be 

furthering  the  kingdom  of  God  on  earth  now  itself  needed  to  be  assisted 
and  supported  from  without,  if  it  was  to  suffice  for  its  task.  To  achieve 
this  we  find  Luther  leaving  no  means  untried.  But  his  schemes  were 
not  very  satisfactory.  He  put  a  patch  here  and  another  one  there, 
appealed  to  the  princes  and  then  to  the  peasants,  seeking  to  curry 
favour  of  one  and  the  other  simply  for  the  sake  of  some  small  con 
cession  and  in  order  to  interest  them  in  his  Church.  ...  At  last 
Luther  thought  he  had  found  a  remedy  :  this  was  that  the  Church 
should  seek  support  in  the  secular  power.  When  quite  at  the  end  of  his 
resources  he  had  begun  to  remind  the  princes  of  their  duties  as  rulers. 
From  mere  occasional  allusions  he  soon  passed  on  to  energetic  admo 
nitions  addressed  to  the  '  great  ones,'  accompanied  by  his  customary 
threats  and  abuse.  It  had  indeed  gone  against  the  grain  to  summon  the 
authorities  to  carry  out  his  wishes,  hence,  at  every  opportunity,  he 
insists  on  his  independence  of  them.  .  .  .  Luther  had  in  the  event  to 
submit  to  reproaches  which  he  could  not  always  honestly  shift  on  to 
the  shoulders  of  the  '  false  priestlings  and  factious  spirits.'  " 

Of  Luther's  later  years  Schulthess-Rechberg  d&ys  :  "  An  era  dawns 
when  Luther  can  no  longer  see  an  ounce  of  good  in  the  State  ;  when  he 
even  tells  the  unworthy  servant  of  God  [the  prince]  to  mind  his  own 
business.  It  is  then  that  we  find  Luther  declaring  that  the  secular 
authorities  have  no  power  to  watch  over  souls  or  to  exercise  the  teach 
ing  office,  that  they  have  no  authority  over  the  clergy,  etc.  Here  we 
see  plainly  how  he,  more  than  any  other  reformer,  was  driven  by  force 
of  circumstances,  and  this  again  is  a  proof  that  Luther's  work  was 
really  more  than  he  had  bargained  for.  Luther  .  .  .  never  succeeded 
in  viewing  the  relations  between  Church  and  State  objectively.  This 
and  his  constant  efforts  to  disengage  himself  from  Rome  frequently 
gave  an  unexpected  turn  to  his  views.  For  instance,  when  he  insists  at 
times  that  heresy  and  unbelief  do  not  concern  the  authorities  (Erl.  ed., 
22,  pp.  90,  93).  Hardly  has  he  said  this  than  he  finds  himself  compelled 
to  hedge  and  practically  to  eat  his  words."  "  Luther,  Zwingli  und 
Calvin,"  etc  (above,  p.  573,  n.  4),  pp.  170-172. 

1  In  an  article  against  P.  Drews  ("  Zeitschr.  f.  KG.,"  29,  1908, 
p.  478  ff.),  p.  488.  Hermelink  adds:  (p.  489)  "It  is  true  that  the 
system  of  an  established  Church  did  not  correspond  with  Luther's 
ideal,  but  it  was  a  political  necessity  and  therefore  seemed  to  him 
willed  by  God."  Hermelink's  reference  to  the  false  ideals  and 
eschatology  which  influenced  Luther's  theory  of  Church  and  State  may 
be  admitted  as  in  part  correct.  He  is  also  right  when  he  says  :  Luther, 
according  to  his  frequent  statement,  wished  to  assemble  the  Christians 
from  the  kingdom  of  Antichrist  before  the  end  of  the  world.  Ib.,  p.  313. 


606          LUTHER   THE   REFORMER 

expected  to  stand  still  at  the  point  which  he  fixes  as  the 
limit  of  its  powers.  Thus  the  longer  he  lived  the  more 
reason  he  had  to  complain  of  the  lawyers,  and,  when  he  was 
dead,  the  process  went  on  even  further."1 

1  "  Kirche,  Gemeinde  und  Obrigkeit  nach  Luther,"  p.  81. 


END    OF    VOL.    V. 


PRINTED    BY 

WM.    BRENDON    AND    SON,    LTD, 
PLYMOUTH,    ENGLAND. 


Grisar,  Hartmai 
Luther . 


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