Chapter XIV: From the Peasant War to the Diet of Augsburg (1525-1530) (9)

A second point upon which Luther lays great stress is, that, though I was of so humble and “poor a spirit” I nevertheless performed “noble and exalted spiritual works,” which Münzer certainly has not done. I stood up for the Evangel, which I preached in an “honourable and manly” fashion; indeed “my very life was in danger”: “I have had to risk life and limb for it and I cannot but glory in it,” he says, again with reference to Paul, “as St. Paul also was obliged to do; though it is foolishness and I should prefer to leave it to the lying spirits.”[1065] What exactly are the instances that he is so unwilling to relate of his noble scorn for death? “I stood up at Leipzig to dispute before a most dangerous assembly. I went to Augsburg without escort to appear before my greatest enemy. And I took my stand at Worms before the Emperor and the whole realm, knowing well beforehand that the pledge of a safe conduct would be broken, and that savage malice and cunning were directed against me. But, poor and weak as I then was, my will was nevertheless so determined that, had I known there were as many devils waiting for me as there were tiles on the roofs of Worms, I should still have ridden thither, and yet I had as yet heard nothing of heavenly voices and ‘God’s burdens and works’” (such as the fanatics pretended they had experienced). He commits his cause to Christ the Lord, so he declares, if He will support him then all will be well, but “before men and any assembly he is ready to answer boldly for himself” (as he had done at Leipzig, Augsburg and Worms).

Münzer, in his “Schutzrede,” was not slow to answer Luther’s “boasting” concerning his three appearances in public. It must be touched upon here for the sake of completeness, although it must be borne in mind that it is the utterance of an opponent. Münzer calls Luther repeatedly, and not merely on account of this boasting, “Dr. Liar” and “Lying Luther.” He says to him: “Why do you throw dust in the eyes of the people? you were very well off indeed at Leipzig. You rode out of the city crowned with gilly-flowers and drank good wine at Melchior Lother’s? Nor were you in any danger at Augsburg [as a matter of fact every precaution had been taken], for Staupitz the oracle stood at your side.... That you appeared before the Empire at Worms at all was thanks to the German nobles whom you had cajoled and honeyed, for they fully expected, that, by your preaching you would obtain for them Bohemian gifts of monasteries and foundations which you are now promising to the Princes. Therefore if you had wavered at Worms, you would have been stabbed by the nobles sooner than allowed to go free, as everyone knows.... You made use of wiles and cunning towards your own followers. You allowed yourself to be taken captive by your own councillors [and brought to the Wartburg] and made out that you were ill-used. Anyone ignorant of your knavery would no doubt swear by all the Saints that you were a pious Martin. Sleep softly, dear lump of flesh. I should prefer to sniff you roasting in your defiance under the anger of God.”[1066] The falsity of Luther’s assertion, that the promise of a safe conduct had not been kept at Worms, has been already pointed out (p. 69). The reason of his appearing at Augsburg without an escort for the journey there and back, was, that the Elector trusted Cardinal Cajetan and did not wish Luther to apply for one.

In proof of his being in the right Luther, in the third place, points emphatically to his learning and his success. His cause was thus based on a much firmer foundation than that of the Allstedt fanatic. “I know and am certain that by the Grace of God I am more learned in the Scripture than all the sophists and Papists, but God has thus far graciously preserved me from pride, and will continue to preserve me.” “I have done more harm to the Pope without the use of fists than a powerful king could have done”; “my words have emptied many a convent.” These fanatics “utilise our victory and enjoy it, take wives and relax papal laws, though it was not they who bore the brunt of the fighting.”

Fourthly: “I know that we who possess and understand the Gospel--though we be but poor sinners--have the right spirit, or as Paul says [Rom. viii: 23] ‘_primitias spiritus_,’ the first-fruits of the spirit, though we may not have the fulness of the spirit.... We know what faith, charity and the cross are.... Hence we know and can judge whether a doctrine is true or false, just as we are able to discern and judge this lying spirit,” etc.

Fifthly we must consider the fruits of our teaching. These are those mentioned by St. Paul (Gal. v. 22 f., Rom. viii. 13), viz: “charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity and mildness”; Paul also says, “that the deeds of the flesh must be mortified and the old Adam, together with all his works, crucified with Christ. In a word, the fruit of our spirit is the keeping of the ten commandments of God.” The Allstedt spirit, he adds, ought really to bring forth yet higher fruits since it purports to be a higher spirit. If fruits are lacking then surely we also may admit that, “alas, we do not as much as we ought.”--It is notorious enough that Luther might have made still greater admissions of this sort. Nevertheless, he is able to point to “abundant fruit of the spirit produced by God’s Grace among our followers,” and is ready, “if it comes to boasting,” to set his own person, “which is the meanest and most sinful of all, against all the fruits of the Allstedt spirit, however greatly the fanatics may blame my life.” In order, however, the better to safeguard himself on this point, he remarks that, “on account of the life, the doctrine” must not be condemned, as this spirit “takes offence at our feeble life.” It appears that Münzer had spoken very strongly against Luther and the goings on at Wittenberg.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In this work, entitled “A frightful story and Divine Judgment,”[1076] he says: Had God spoken through him “this [his fall] would not have occurred. For God does not lie but keeps His Word. Since then Thomas Münzer has fallen, it is plain that he spoke and acted through the devil while pretending to do so in the name of God.... More than five thousand,” he continues, “rushed headlong to destruction of body and soul. Alas! the pity of it all! This was what the devil wanted, and what he is seeking in the case of the seditious peasants.” He protests that, “he feels sorry that the people should thus have perished in body and soul,” but he cannot help endorsing their eternal reprobation, as far as in him lies; “to the end they remained hardened in infidelity, perjury and blasphemy,”[1077] therefore if God has so manifestly punished these “noxious, false prophets,” this must serve to teach us to have a great regard for the “true Word of God.”

“I do not boast of an exalted spirit,” Luther says, comparing himself with the fanatics and their like, but “I do glory in the great gifts and graces of my God and of His Spirit, and I do so rightly, so I think, and not without cause.... Münzer is indeed dead, but his spirit is not yet exterminated.... The devil is not asleep, but continues to send out sparks.... These preachers cannot control themselves, the spirit has blinded them and taken them captive, therefore they are not to be trusted.... Beware and take heed, for Satan has come among the children of God!”[1078]

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

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

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

“What else was wanting in Münzer,” he says, “than that he did not rightly expound the Word?... He should have taught the pure Gospel!... It is a great art to be able to distinguish rightly between the Law and the Gospel.... God’s Word is not all of the same sort, but is diverse.... Whoever is able to distinguish rightly between the Law and the Gospel is given a high place and called a Doctor of Holy Scripture, for without the Holy Ghost it is impossible to make this distinction. This I have experienced myself.... No Pope, or false Christian, or fanatic, is able to separate these two [the Law and the Gospel] one from the other.”[1079] But because he had the “Holy Spirit,” Luther was able to make this supremely great discovery, and found thereby the key to the Scriptures, on which alone he builds.

“I, for my part, have, by the grace of God, now effected so much that, thanks be to God, boys and girls of fifteen know more of Christian doctrine than all the Universities and Doctors previously did.” “I have set men’s consciences at rest concerning penance, baptism, prayer, crosses, life, death and the Sacrament of the Altar, and also ordered the question of marriage, of secular authority, of the relations of father and mother, wife and child, father and son, man and maid--in short, every condition of life, so that all know how to live and how to serve God according to one’s state.”[1080]

Given his achievements, Luther was not going too far when he spoke of himself repeatedly as a “great doctor.”[1081] He also showed himself extremely sensitive, as we shall soon see, to the attempts of the sectarians and fanatics to deprive him of the honour of the first place, to discredit his discovery of the Gospel, and either to crown themselves with his laurels and possess themselves of the fruits of his struggles, or, at his expense, to invent novelties and launch them on the world. Seeing that Christ is “destroying the Papacy” through him and is bringing it to its “_exspiravit_,” i.e. to the last gasp, he is naturally annoyed to learn that there are other spokesmen of the new faith who refuse to follow him without question, and who cause “a great falling away from his preaching and much slanderous talk. There are some, who after having read a page or two or listened to a sermon, without further ado take it on themselves to be overbearing and to reproach others, telling them that their conduct is not that of the followers of the Gospel.” This, he declares, he himself had “never taught anyone,” rather, as St. Paul also had done, he had “strictly forbidden it. They merely act in this way because they are desirous of novelties.... They misapply Holy Scripture to their own conceits.”[1082]

All this he says when actually declaring that he has no wish to set himself above anyone, or to be “any man’s master.”

There was scarcely one among the many teachers of the innovations who dared to differ from him whom Luther did not liken to the devil. “I have had more than thirty doctors of the fanatics opposing me,” he said on one occasion, “all anxious to be my instructors”; all these he had driven before him like chaff and vanquished the “devil” in them.[1083]

“Münzer, Carlstadt, Campanus and such fellows, together with the factious spirits and sects, are merely devils incarnate, for all their efforts are directed to doing harm and avenging themselves.”[1084]

Himself he looks upon as the champion of God against the devil, raised, as it were, to the pinnacle of the temple. It is the devil whom by heavenly power he repels and shames in the fanatics who arise in his camp. “Satan,” he says to them, “cannot conceal himself.”[1085] “Such fellows are beguiled by the devil.”[1086] Johann Agricola, a comrade of his, he delivers over to Satan, because he differed from him in some points of doctrine: “He goes on his way, all devoted to Satan as he is, sowing seeds of enmity against us.”[1087] Luther warns him that he may become a martyr, but like Arius and Satan, whom Christ punishes. “Good God, what utter malice! These heretics say of me what the Manichæans said of Christ, viz. that Christ had indeed the Holy Spirit but only in an imperfect degree, whereas they themselves possessed it in its perfection.”[1088]

Caspar Schwenckfeld, like Agricola, he esteemed an heretical theologian desirous of innovations, “a mad fool possessed by the devil”; “it is the devil who spews and excretes his works.” Luther’s malediction on this heretical devil runs, “May God’s curse light on thee, Satan, thy spirit which called thee forth, be with thee to thy destruction.”[1089] Michael Stiefel, the Lutheran preacher and fanatic, is also no less possessed of the devil. “It is soon over with a man,” Luther laments over this old friend, “when the devil possesses him in this way.”[1090] Even Zwingli and the Zwinglians are also possessed through and through by the devil and are the servants of Satan.[1091] All who do not agree with him, but set up their own ideas, merely show that the devil is at work in the world. “This is how the work of the devil goes on. In twenty years I have met more than fifty sectarians desirous of teaching me, but God has preserved me, He Who said of St. Paul, ‘I will show him how great things he must suffer for my name’s sake’” (Acts ix. 16).[1092]

It is these men whom the devil [of pride] carries high up “in the air and sets on the pinnacle of the temple.”[1093]

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

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

The greatest of all crimes is that “no attention is paid to the commands of the Pope of Wittenberg,” Münzer remarks sarcastically; Luther was putting himself up “in place of the Pope,” while at the same time “he curried favour with the Princes”; “you, you new Pope, make them presents of convents and churches.” “You have distracted all Christendom with a false religion and now, when it is necessary, are unable to control it” except with the help of the rulers. He was introducing “a new system of logic-chopping with the Word of God”; he is desirous of “managing everything by the Word” and exalts himself as though he had not come into the world in the ordinary way but had “sprung from the brain.” He speaks of “our safeguard and protection” as though he himself were a Prince; with his “fantastic reason” he was working mischief, while making a great display of humility; he makes much of his own “simplicity,” but this resembled that of the fox, or of an onion which has nine skins. All his adversaries he labelled as “devils,” but he himself raved and ranted like a hound of hell, and if he did not raise an open revolt this was merely because, like the serpent, he glided over the rocks.[1096]

Equally remarkable are the words addressed to Luther by Valentine Ickelsamer, one of the leaders of the fanatics. He tells Luther that his preaching only goes half-way, for it proclaims the right of private judgment in things Divine, but not for all men, and “confuses the people” by its want of logic and instability. Ickelsamer himself is determined to speak, “because the Evangel gives us freedom of belief and the power of judging.” Not only does he find numerous “Scriptural utterances which are against Luther’s views,” but he also inveighs strongly against the gigantic pride which leads Luther to “desire that everyone should look to him”; his self-exaltation leads him to commit the gravest “injustice and tyranny.” “Settle yourself comfortably in the Papal Chair” he cries to Luther, “for after all you only want to listen to your own singing.” Your obstinacy is such, he says, that you would have no scruple in contradicting the statement “Christ is God” “were you unfavourably disposed” towards its author. Would it not be a good thing if “Our Lord God were to smash the idols and set you up in their place?”[1097]

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

“They are lost [the fanatics], they are the devil’s own.”[1099]

On the other hand, Luther makes the devil confirm his own mission. “The devil has been dreading this for years and smelt the roast from afar; he also sent forth many prophecies against it, some of which apply to me so that I often marvel at his great malice. He would also have liked,to kill me.”[1100] The devil desired Luther’s death simply in order to rid himself of his fine preaching.

Another familiar thought which seemed to have an irresistible attraction for him frequently intervenes to confirm this theory. My interior sufferings, he says repeatedly, and my struggles with the devil, set the seal of most certain assurance on my teaching, and this seal the fanatics do not possess.

Here comes Campanus, he says of a refractory theologian in his ranks, and “makes himself out to be the only man who is sure of everything”; “he prides himself on being certain upon all matters and of never being at a loss”; Campanus condemns him as a “liar and diabolical man,” and of this he was “as sure as that God is God.” And yet this Campanus has “never passed through any struggle, nor had a tussle with the devil, and actually glories in the fact.”[1101] On the other hand, he himself, he says, had been “tried by the devil” and proved by “temptation”; that is the true test and is essential for every real “student of theology”; “for as soon as God’s Word dawns upon you, the devil is sure to try you, and in this way you become a doctor in very truth.”[1102]

“But those whom the devil takes captive by false doctrine and a factious spirit, he holds tight. He takes possession of their heart, making them deaf and blind, so that they neither see nor hear anything, and do not pay any heed to the plain, clear and manifest testimony of Holy Scripture; for they are so tightly caught in his clutches that they cannot be torn away.”[1103] At first heretics do not see where Satan is taking them. “They put forward the antecedent most devoutly and with a simulated peace of conscience. Thereupon the devil draws a consequence, which they [the factious spirits] had never dreamt of. Johann Agricola, for instance, does not see the consequence. But the devil is a capital dialectician and has already built up the syllogism, antecedent, consequence and all. And yet we still lull ourselves into a false security and think that the devil is not governing the world.”[1104] Luther refers the prejudice of heretics in favour of their errors to a kind of bewitchment by the devil, for if the devil is able to bewitch the bodily senses, as Luther was convinced he could, then he will also be able, “expert and dangerous adept” as he is, to take captive the hearts and consciences of men “with still greater ease.” “What is nothing but a lie, heresy and horrid darkness, they take for plain, pure truth and are not to be moved from their ideas by any exhortations or remonstrance.... They behave like those parents in the legend of St. Macarius, who, owing to a delusion of the devil, took their daughter for a cow, until they were at last set free from the spell.... Thus the devil in such people effects by false doctrine what he is otherwise wont to bring about by means of delusive pictures and fancies.”[1105]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nevertheless, in his letter of September 23, 1530, to the pastor of Zwickau, Nicholas Hausmann, Luther speaks of the readiness of his party to make concessions in the matter of the bishops, as of a serious and important matter: the Catholic party had required concessions of them which could only be described as “filthy, shameful and degrading.” “Our party have rejected their offers absolutely.” And he continues in the same serious tone: “They offered to admit the jurisdiction of the bishops again, if these would see that the Gospel was taught and all abuses done away with; some festivals also were to be retained. Nothing, however, came of it. Our foes are determined upon their own destruction; their inevitable fate hangs over their heads.”[1120]

What he says to the Landgrave Philip of Hesse scarcely a month later, on looking back upon this matter, is less mystical and more diplomatic. The latter had expressed his “surprise” at the position which had been taken up at Augsburg towards the Catholics, and Luther was forced to seek an excuse. Here he represents the offers made as a mere pretence and thus comes, as a matter of fact, nearer to the truth than in the aforesaid letter to his zealous admirer Hausmann, which was anything but true to fact. We should assuredly have been guilty of a “fault,” he says, and have acted to the detriment of our party, had our advances been accepted, but of that there was little fear; now, however, we profit by our offer, for we can represent ourselves as having been badly treated and thus we get an advantage of the Papists. “I trust that Your Highness will not take offence,” so runs the passage, “that we offered to accept certain things, such as fasting, festivals, meats and chants, for we knew well that they could not accept any such offer, and it serves to raise our repute still further and enables me in my booklet to paint their disrepute still more forcibly. It would indeed have been a mistake on our part had the offer been accepted.”[1121] The Protestant author of the “Hessische Kirchengeschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation” thinks it necessary to make this extenuating remark: “The fact that Luther was here seeking to excuse himself will serve to explain the wording of this letter concerning his behaviour during the negotiations with the Catholics, which otherwise might be easily misunderstood.” He thinks there was no question of any original intention of taking advantage of his opponents’ good faith, but that Luther, merely as an afterthought, sought “to represent this as having been all along his intention.”[1122] But does this really suffice to establish Luther’s honesty and uprightness in the business?

In agreement with what he had said to Philip of Hesse, in his “Warnunge an seine lieben Deudschen” (below, p. 391), which he was then writing, or at least thinking of, Luther made every effort “to enhance our repute” by instancing the ostensibly so conciliatory attitude of the evangelicals at Augsburg. He there speaks of the “humility, patience and pleading” which they “exhibited”;[1123] “our prayers and pleas for peace” were, however, “lost upon these obstinate men.” “The Papists,” he declared further on, quite untruly, had refused to hear of peace, truth or reproof, but, “with their heads down,” insisted upon waging war or raising a revolt. “Our offers, our prayers, our cries for peace” were all wasted. He gives no details concerning the spirit in which these “offers” were made.