Chapter XV: Organisation and Public Position of the New Church (2)

At Leisnig in the Saxon Electorate (cf. vol. ii., p. 113) an attempt to call an ideal evangelical community into existence was made in 1523, the Church property being illegally confiscated by the magistrates and members of the parish, and the ancient right of the neighbouring Cistercian house to appoint the parish-priest being set at nought by the congregation choosing its own pastor; here the inevitable dissensions at once broke out within the community and the whole thing was a failure. The internal confusion to which the congregation would be exposed through the doctrine of private illumination and “apostolic” rights, is clear from the very title of the work which Luther composed for Leisnig: “That a Christian assembly or parish has the right and power to judge of doctrine and to give the call to, and appoint and remove, its pastors,” etc.[60]

In spite of the evident impracticability of the scheme, the phantom of the congregational Church engrossed the author of the ecclesiastical schism for about ten years. Nor did he ever cease to cherish the idea of the Church apart. It was this idea which inspired the attacks contained in his sermons upon the multitude of lazy, indolent and unbelieving souls to whom it was useless to preach and who, even after death, were only fit for the flaying-ground because during life they had infected the invisible, living community. He is heedless of what must result, in the towns, villages and families, from any division into Christians and non-Christians, nor does he seem to notice that the system of the Church apart could only produce spiritual pride, hypocrisy and all the errors of subjectivism in those singled out by the Spirit, to say nothing of the obstinacy and wantonness engendered in those who were excluded.

The popular Church, of which it was necessary to make the best, owing to the impracticability of the Church apart, apparently embraced all, yet, within it, according to Luther, the true believers formed an invisible Church, and this in a twofold manner, first, because they were themselves not to be recognised, and, secondly, because the Word and the Sacrament, from which they derived their religious life, concealed a whole treasure of invisible forces.

With such imperfect elements it was, however, impossible to establish a new Church system. A new phase was imminent, towards which everything was gravitating of its own accord; this was the State Church, i.e. the national Church as a State institution, with the sovereign at its head. The various congregational churches formed a visible body frequently impinging on the outward, civil government, and largely dependent on the support of the authorities; hence their gradual evolution into a State Church. The local and national character of the new system paved the way for this development. Luther, whilst at the bottom of his heart anxious to check it—for his ideal was an independent Church—came, under pressure of circumstances, to champion it as the best and only thing. A popular Church or State Church had never been his object, yet he ultimately welcomed the State Church as the best way to meet difficulties; this we shall see more clearly further on. In his efforts to overcome the apathy of the masses he even had recourse to compulsion by the State, inviting the authorities to force resisters to attend Divine Worship.[61]

Luther should have asked himself whether the moral grandeur and strength which, in spite of its favourable appearance, the congregational Church lacked, would be found in the compulsory State Church. This question he should have been able to answer in the negative. It was a radical misfortune that in all the attempts made to infuse life into the branch torn away by Luther from the universal Catholic Church the secular power never failed to interfere. The State had stood sponsor to the new faith on its first appearance and, whether in Luther’s interest or in its own, the State continued to intervene in matters pertaining to the Church. This interweaving of politics with religion failed to insure to the new Church the friendly assistance of the State, but soon brought it into a position of entire subservience—in spite of the protests of the originator of the innovation.

The jurisdiction of the State within the “Church,” in the case of the early Lutheran congregations, did not amount to any actual government of the Church by the sovereign. This, in the appalling form it was to assume, was a result of the later Consistories. What, with Luther’s consent, first passed into the hands of the secular authorities was the jurisdiction in certain external matters which, according to the earlier Canon Law, really belonged to the Bishop’s court. When episcopal authority was abolished the Elector of Saxony assumed this jurisdiction as a sort of bishop _faute-de-mieux_, or, to use Melanchthon’s expression, as the principal member of the Church (“_membrum præcipuum ecclesiæ_”).[62] The jurisdiction in question concerned, above all, matrimonial cases which, according to Luther, belonged altogether to the secular courts, matters of tithes, certain offences against ecclesiastical or secular law and points of Church discipline affecting public order. Luther had declared that the Church possessed no power to govern, that the only object for which it existed was to make men pious by means of the Word, that the secular authority was the only one able to make laws and formally to claim obedience “whether it does right or wrong.”[63] Hence the State in assuming jurisdiction in the above matters was doing nobody any injustice, was merely exercising its right, whilst the authority of which it made use was not “ecclesiastical,” but merely the common law exercised for the purpose of preserving “sound doctrine” and the “true Church.”[64]

The next step was the appointment of ecclesiastical superintendents by the sovereign and, either through these or without them, the nomination of pastors by the State, the removal of unqualified teachers, the convening of ecclesiastical synods or “consultations,” the carrying out of Visitations and the drawing up of Church regulations. Here again no objection on the point of principle was raised by Luther, partly because the power of the keys, according to him, included no coercive authority, partly because the idea of the “_membrum præcipuum ecclesiæ_” was elastic enough to permit of such encroachments on the part of the ruler.[65] In the Protestant Canon Law, compiled by R. Sohm, all the above is described, under appeal to Luther, as coming under the jurisdiction of the State, the Church being “without jurisdiction in the legal sense” and its business being “merely the ministry of the Word.”[66]

The introduction of the Consistories in 1539 was a result of the idea expressed by Justus Jonas in his memorandum, viz. that if the Church possesses no legal power of coercion for the maintenance of order, she is fatally doomed to perish. To many the growing corruption made an imitation of “episcopal jurisdiction in the Catholic style,” such as Melanchthon desiderated, appear a real need.[67] In the event the advice of Jonas was followed, jurisdiction being conferred on the Consistories directly by the ruler of the land. After a little hesitation Luther gave his sanction to the new institution, seeing that, though appointed by the sovereign, it was a mere spiritual tribunal of the Church. The Consistories, more particularly after his death, though retaining the name of ecclesiastical courts gradually became a department of the civil judicature, a good expression of the complete subservience of Church to State.

“The setting up of the civil government of the Church was achieved,” remarks Sohm, by an arrangement really “in entire opposition to the ideas of the Reformation.”[68]

“The lack of system in Luther’s mode of thought is perhaps nowhere so apparent as in his views on the authorities and their demeanour towards religion.”[69] The want of unity and sequence in his teaching becomes even more apparent when we listen to the very diverse opinions of Protestant scholars on the subject. It is no fault of the historian’s if the picture presented by the statements of Luther and his commentators shows very blurred outlines.

“The civil government of the Church,” writes Heinrich Böhmer, in “Luther im Lichte der neueren Forschung”—speaking from his own standpoint—“in so far as it actually represents a ‘government,’ is utterly at variance with Luther’s own principles in matters of religion. Neither can it be brought into direct historical connection with the Reformation.... The so-called congregational principle is really the only one which agrees with Luther’s religious ideal, according to which the decision upon all ecclesiastical matters is to be regarded as the right of each individual congregation.... It is, however, perfectly true that the attempts to reorganise the ecclesiastical constitution on the basis of this idea were a complete failure. Neither at Wittenberg, nor at Allstedt, nor at Orlamünde were the communities from a moral point of view sufficiently ripe.”[70]

The civil government of the Church is also in disagreement with Luther’s conception of the secular power as expressed in some chief passages of his work “Von welltlicher Uberkeytt,” (1523). According to Erich Brandenburg’s concise summary, Luther shows in this work, that “the task of the State and of society is entirely secular; it is not their duty to make men pious. There is no such thing as a Christian State; society and the State were called into being by God on account of the wicked.”[71] Brandenburg also quotes later statements made by Luther concerning the secular authorities, and infers, “that neither the civil government of the Church in the sense accepted at a later date, nor the quasi-episcopate of the sovereign, is really compatible with such views.”[72]

It is true that in his Commentary on the Gospel of St. John (1537-1538), in his annoyance at his unfortunate experiences of State encroachments, Luther declares, that “the two governments should not be intermingled to the end of the world, as was the case with the Jewish nation in Old Testament times, but must remain divided and apart, in order that the pure Gospel and the true faith may be preserved, for the Kingdom of Christ and the secular government are two very different things.”[73] He realises, however, the futility of his exhortations: “You will see that the devil will mingle them together again ... the sword of the Spirit and the secular sword.... Our squires, the nobles and the Princes, who now go about equipped with authority and desire to teach the preachers what they are to preach and to force the people to the sacrament according to their pleasure, will cause us much injury; for it is necessary ‘to render obedience to the worldly authorities,’ hence ‘what we wish, that you must do,’ and thus the secular and spiritual government becomes a single establishment.”[74]

Brandenburg, for his part, is of opinion that “the civil government of the Church had come about in opposition to Luther’s wishes, but had to be endured like other forms of injustice.... Luther reproached himself with strengthening the tyrants by his preaching, with throwing open doors and windows to them. But with the unworldly idealism peculiar to him, he thereupon replied defiantly: ‘What do I care? If, on account of the tyrants, we are to omit the teaching which is so essential a matter, then we should have been forced long since to relinquish the whole Evangel.’”[75]

On the other hand another Protestant theologian, H. Hermelink, who supports the opposite view, viz. that Luther was a staunch upholder of the supremacy of the authorities in matters ecclesiastic, adduces plentiful quotations from Luther’s writings in which the latter, even from the early days of his struggle, declares that the authorities have their say in spiritual matters, that it is their duty to provide for uniformity of teaching in each locality and to supervise Christian worship. He admits, however, that Luther set certain “bounds to the ecclesiastical rights of the authorities.”[76]

These statements in favour of the authorities cannot be disallowed. They arose partly from Luther’s efforts to advance his party with the help of the worldly magnates, partly, as will appear immediately, from the material difficulties of the Lutheran congregations, due to the confiscation of Church property by the secular power.

In any case it was unexpectedly that Luther found himself confronted with all the above problems. When their immediate solution became the most urgent task for the new faith, Luther’s principles were still far from presenting any well-defined line of action. “To these, and similar questions,” remarks Wilhelm Maurenbrecher, the Protestant historian of the Reformation, “Luther had given no sufficient answer; it would even seem as though he had not considered them at all carefully.” Among the questions was, according to Maurenbrecher, the fundamental one: “Who is to decide whether this or that person belongs to the congregation?” If the congregation, where does the Church come in? for, “after all, the congregation is not the Church.”[77] The very idea of the Church had still to be determined.[78]

_Confiscation of Church Property._

In the Saxon Electorate, the home of the religious innovation, it had become imperatively necessary that the parishes which sided with Luther should be set in order by a strong hand, first, and principally, in the matter of the use to which the Church lands were to be put. In these territories, where the civil government of the Church first obtained, it arose through the robbing and plundering of the churches.

“The parsonages all over the country lie desolate,” Luther wrote to the Elector Johann of Saxony on October 31, 1525, “no one gives anything, or pays anything.... The common people pay no attention to either preacher or parson, so that unless some bold step be taken and the pastors and preachers receive State aid from your Electoral Highness, there will shortly be neither parsonages, nor schools, nor scholars, so that the Word of God and His worship will perish. Your Electoral Highness must therefore continue to devote yourself to God’s service and act as His faithful tool.”[79]

Not long afterwards Luther strongly advises the Elector not only to see to the material condition of the parsonages, but also to examine by means of visitors the fitness of the parsons for their office, “in order that the people may be well served in the Evangel and may contribute to his [the parson’s] support.”[80]

The Order for Visitations (1527), which Luther looked over and which practically had his approval, was intended in the first place to better financially the condition of the parishes. Hand in hand with this, however, went supervision of the preaching by the State and the repression by force of whatever Catholic elements still survived.[81] The Electoral Visitors here and there found the utmost indifference towards the new faith prevailing among the people, whose interests were all material. They finally proposed that the Elector should provide for the support of the parsons and assume the right of appointing and removing all the clergy.

Luther himself had written as early as 1526: “The complaints of the parsons almost everywhere are beyond measure great. The peasants refuse to give anything at all, and there is such ingratitude amongst the people for the Holy Word of God that there can be no doubt a great judgment of God is imminent.... It is the fault of the authorities that the young receive no education and that the land is filled with wild, dissolute folk, so that not only God’s command but our common distress compel us to take some measures.”[82]

“Common distress” was, in point of fact, compelling recourse to the authorities who had confiscated the property of the Church; i.e. the heads of the various parishes or the Electoral Court. The magistrates had laid hands upon the smaller benefices, which, as a matter of fact, were for the most part in their own gift or in that of the families of distinction, whilst in case of dispute the Elector himself had intervened. The best of the plunder naturally went to the Ruler of the land.

Luther addressed the Elector as follows: “Now that an end has been made of the Papal and ecclesiastical tyranny throughout your Highness’s dominions, and now that all the religious houses and endowments have come into the power of your Electoral Highness as the supreme head, this involves the duty and burden of setting this matter in order, since no one else has taken it up, nor has a right to do so.”[83]—Nor was Luther backward in pointing out to the Court, when obliged to complain of the meagre support accorded to the churches, the great service he had done in enriching it: “Has the Prince ever suffered any loss through us?” he asks a person of influence with the Elector in 1520. “Have we not, on the contrary, brought him much gain? Can it be considered an insignificant matter, that not only your souls have been saved by the Evangel, but that also considerable wealth, in the shape of property, has begun to flow into the Prince’s coffers, a source of revenue which is still daily on the increase?”[84]

The appropriation of property by the Elector as Ruler of the land necessarily entailed far-reaching obligations with regard to the churches.

Hence, when, on November 22, 1526, Luther represented to the sovereign the financial distress of the pastors, he also told him, that a just ruler ought to prevail upon his subjects to support the schools, pulpits and parsonages.[85] Johann, in his reply, when agreeing to intervene for the better ordering of the churches, likewise appeals to his rights as sovereign of the country: “Because we judge, and are of opinion, that it beseems us as Ruler to attend to them.”[86]

Luther’s invitation to the Princes to effect by force a reformation of the ecclesiastical order had already thrown wide open the doors to princely aggression.

“The secular power,” Luther had said, “has become a member of the Christian body, and though its work is of the body, yet it belongs to the spiritual estate. Therefore its work shall go forward without let or hindrance amongst all the members of the whole body.” The Christian secular authority shall exercise its office in all freedom, if necessary even against Pope, bishop and priest, for ecclesiastical law is nothing but a fond invention of Roman presumption.[87]

If it was the duty of the rulers to intervene on behalf of the general public needs of Christendom, how much more were they bound to provide for the proper standing and pure doctrine of the pastors. It is they who must assist in bringing about a “real, free Council,” since the Pope, whose duty it was to convene it, neglected to do so; “this no one can do so effectively as the secular powers, particularly now that they have become fellow-Christians, fellow-priests and fellow-clergymen, sharing our power in all things; their office and work, which they have from God over all men, must be allowed free course wherever needful and wholesome.”[88]

Luther was wide-awake to the fact, and reckoned upon it, that the gain to be derived from the rich ecclesiastical property would act as a powerful incentive with those in power to induce them to open their lands to the innovations. What ruler would not be tempted by the prospect of coming so easily into possession of the Church’s wealth, that fabulous patrimony accumulated from the gifts previous ages had made on behalf of the poor, of the service of the altar, of the clergy and the churches? They heard Luther declare that he was going to tear Catholic hearts away from “monasteries and clerical mummery”; they also heard him add: “When they are gone and the churches and convents lie desolate and forsaken, then the rulers of the land may do with them what they please. What care we for wood and stone if once we have captured the hearts?”[89] The taking over of the Church property by the rulers was, according to him, simply the just and natural result of the preaching of the Evangel. This was the light in which he wished the very unspiritual procedure of confiscation to be regarded.

He frequently insisted very urgently that the nobles and unauthorised laymen were not to seize upon the church buildings, revenues and real property. He was aware of the danger of countenancing private interference, and preferred to see the expropriation carried out by the power of the State and according to law. In this wise he hoped that the property seized might still, to some extent, be employed in accordance with its original purpose, though, as was inevitable, he was greatly disappointed in this hope. It is spiritual property, he repeats frequently, bestowed for a spiritual purpose, and therefore, even after the departure of its former occupant, it must be used for the salvation of souls in accordance with the Evangel. To the Elector Johann, for instance, he writes: The parsonages must be repaired out of the revenues of the monasteries, “because such property cannot profit your Electoral Highness’s Exchequer, for it was dedicated to God’s service and therefore must be devoted primarily to this object. Whatever is left after this, your Electoral Highness may make use of for the needs of the land, or for the poor.”[90]

His demands were, however, very inadequately complied with. If Luther really anticipated their fulfilment, he was certainly very ignorant of the ways of the world. Who was to prevent the Princes from seizing upon the Church lands with greedy hands so soon as they stood vacant, and employing them for their own purposes, or to enrich the nobles? Even where everything was done in an orderly manner, who could prevent ever-impecunious Sovereigns from making use of the revenues for State purposes and from allotting the first place among the “needs of the land” of which we just heard Luther speak, to their own everyday requirements?

Luther’s subsequent experiences drew from him such words as the following: “This robbing of the monasteries”—he wrote to Spalatin, who was still connected with the Court of the new Elector Johann (since 1525), concerning the condition of things in the Saxon Electorate—“is a very serious matter, which worries me greatly. I have set my face against it for a long while past. Not content with this, when the Prince was stopping here I actually forced my way into his chamber, in spite of the resistance I met with, in order to make representations to him privately.” He goes on to complain that there was little hope of redress so long as certain selfish intrigues were being carried on in the vicinity of the sovereign. Indeed, he does not anticipate much help from this Elector Johann, because he lacks his father’s firmness, and is much too ready to listen to anyone. “A Prince must know how to be angry, a King must be something of a tyrant; this the world demands.” As things are, however, we are imposed upon in all sorts of ways for “the sake of the spoils”; “smoke, fumes and fables” are made to serve, and we do not even know who are at work behind the scenes; at any rate they are hostile to the Evangel and were its foes even in the time of the pious Elector. “Now that they have enriched themselves, they laugh and exult over the fact that it is possible in the name of the Evangel to enjoy all sorts of evangelical freedom, and at the same time to be the Evangel’s worst enemy. This is bitter to me, more bitter than gall.” “I shall have to issue a public admonition to the Prince in order to insist upon some other administration of the religious houses; perhaps then I shall be able to shame those fellows.... I hate Satan’s rage, malice and ambushes, everywhere, in all matters, and unceasingly, and it gives me pleasure to thwart him and injure him wherever I can.”[91]

Thus the consequences were more serious than the ex-monk in his ignorance of the ways of the world had anticipated. “Satan,” on whose shoulders he lays the blame, was not to be so easily expelled. The worst acts of violence perpetrated in the name of the Word of God were the result of the lust for wealth which he had unchained.

“How heavily the negligence of our Court presses upon me,” he sighs in the last years of his life. Much is undertaken presumptuously, and then, after a while, we are left stranded in the mire; they do nothing themselves, and we are left to our fate. But I intend to pour my grievous complaints into the ears of Dr. Pontanus and the Prince himself as soon as I get a chance. I have learnt, to my great annoyance, that the nobles are governing in the Prince’s name.[92]

A few days after the letter to Spalatin, quoted above, in another letter to him, he gives vent to his thoughts on the marriage questions arising within the domain of the new faith.

_Secularisation of the Matrimonial Courts. Against the Lawyers._

The secularisation of the marriage courts appears as a very characteristic subject amongst the questions of jurisdiction arising between State and Church, side by side with the secularisation of Church property. The secularising of these courts was the logical consequence of Luther’s secularising of matrimony, which he regarded—to forestall his later statements[93]—“as an outward, secular matter, subject to the authorities, like food and clothing, house and land.”[94] According to the Confession of Augsburg at the very most it was a sacrament only in the same way that the authority of the magistrates appointed by God was a sacrament.[95] The codicil to the Articles of Schmalkalden required, that the “magistrates shall establish special marriage courts,” because Canon Law “contains pitfalls for conscience.”[96]

As the Church had formerly been the sole authority on questions relating to marriage, and as the custom of referring such matters to her was deeply rooted in the life of the German people, Luther at the outset consented to take this into account and to leave the decision to his preachers; the result of this was, however, that he found himself overwhelmed amidst his other labours by a mass of unpleasant and uncongenial work and was accordingly soon moved to throw the whole burden on the State and the secular lawyers, though here again he met with distressing experiences.

He wrote to Spalatin in 1527: “We have been plagued by so many questions concerning marriage, owing to the connivance of the devil, that we have decided to leave this profane business to the profane courts. Formerly I was stupid enough to expect from mankind something more than mere humanity, and to fancy that they could be directed by the Evangel. Now, facts have shown that they despise the Evangel and insist on being compelled by the law and the sword.” He shows himself very much annoyed in this letter at the position taken up by the jurists with their “law” concerning those marriages which took place contrary to the will of the parents. The lawyers of the Wittenberg Faculty agreed with the older Church in recognising the validity of such unions. Luther, on the other hand, ostensibly on biblical grounds, wished them to be held as null, because duty to the public and the respect due to parents required it. In practice, however, he soon became aware how precarious was this position. “The Gospel teaches,” he explains to Spalatin, “that the father must be ready to give his consent when his son asks what is lawful, and that the son must obey his father; on both sides there must be good-will; this holds good with the pious. But when godless parents hear that the Gospel confirms their authority, they become tyrannical [and refuse to consent to their children’s marriage]. The children, on the other hand, learn that, according to the law of Pope and Emperor, they have the necessary permission, and so they abuse this liberty and despise their parents. Both sides are in the wrong and numerous examples of the same abound.”[97]

In the case of such dissensions between parents and children, he says in an instruction to Spalatin which was printed later, the son “must be sent to the profane, i.e. Imperial Courts of Justice, under which we live in the flesh, and thus you will be relieved of the burden.” Preachers, according to him, as “evangelists,” have nothing to do with legal questions, but merely with peaceable matters; “where there is strife and dissension the Kaiser’s tribunal [the secular courts] must decide.... Should the son get no redress from the secular court, then there is nothing for him but to submit to his father’s tyranny.”[98]

Naturally neither Luther nor the parties concerned found much satisfaction in such expedients. The handing over of the marriage questions to the State was to prove a source of endless and increasing trouble and vexation to Luther in the ensuing years, particularly in connection with the “secret” marriages just referred to. Luther even appealed from the then practice of the lawyers to the law of the old Roman Empire, which exaggerated the paternal rights to the extent of making the children’s marriages altogether dependent on the will of the parents. In the letter to Spalatin, printed in the Wittenberg edition of Luther’s German works, we find the following marginal note which expresses Luther’s opinion: “The old Imperial and Christian laws decree and ordain that children shall marry with the knowledge, consent and advice of their parents, and this the natural law also teaches. But the Pope, like the tyrant and Antichrist he is, has determined to be the only judge in questions of marriage and has abolished the obedience due by children to their parents.”[99] The truth is, that Canon Law, whilst strongly urging both sons and daughters to obey and respect their parents, nevertheless recognised as valid a marriage contract when concluded under conditions otherwise lawful, and this because it saw no reason for depriving the contracting parties of the freedom which was theirs by the natural law.

Luther, greatly incensed by the opposition of the lawyers, at length, in a sermon preached in 1544, launched forth the most solemn condemnation possible of the so-called secret unions contracted without the paternal consent. He declared: “I, Dr. Martinus, command in the name of the Lord our God, that no one shall enter into a secret engagement and then, after the event, seek the parents’ ratification ... and, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, I condemn to the abyss of hell all those who assist in furthering such devil’s work as secret engagements. Amen.”[100]

In the same way he boasted to the Elector, that the jurists had “wanted to play havoc” with his churches “with their annoying, damnable suits which, however, I have resolved to expel from my churches as damnable and accursed to-day and for all eternity.” The principal motive for his action was the “Divine command” he had received “to preach the observance of the Fourth Commandment in these matters.”[101]

What Luther, however, was most sensitive to was that some of the Wittenberg lawyers, conformably with the traditional code, declared the marriages of priests, and consequently his own, to be invalid in law, and the children of such unions to be incapable of inheriting. He keenly felt the blow which was thus directed against himself and his children. His displeasure he gave vent to in some drastic utterances. If what the lawyers say is correct, he continues in the writing above referred to addressed to the Elector, “then I should also be obliged to forsake the Evangel and crawl back into the frock [the religious habit] in the devil’s name, by power and virtue of both ecclesiastical and secular law. Then Your Electoral Highness would have to have my head chopped off, dealing likewise with all those who have married nuns, as the Emperor Jovian decreed more than a thousand years ago” [and as the law still stood in the codes then in use].

Thoughts such as these, on the reprobation of his union with Bora by the law of the Church and of the Christian Roman Empire, stood in glaring contrast to the pleasant moods of domestic life to which he so gladly gave himself up. He sought to find solace from his public cares and conflicts in his family circle, and some compensation for the troubles which the great ones of the earth caused him in the domestic delights in which he would have wished all other fallen priests to share. He succeeded, to an extent which appeared by no means enviable to those who followed a different ideal, in forgetting his priestly state and its demands. In one of the letters just mentioned he writes as a father to Spalatin, who also had had recourse to marriage: “May you live happily in the Lord with your rib [i.e. your wife]. My little Hans sends you greetings; he is now in the month of teething and is beginning to lisp; it is delightful to see how he will leave no one in peace about him. My Katey also sends you her best wishes, above all for a little Spalatin, to teach you what she boasts of having learnt from her little Hans, i.e. the crown and joy of wedded life, which the Pope and his world were not worthy of.”[102]

What Canon Law said of the high calling of the priest and religious and of the depth of the fall of those who proved untrue to it, no longer made the slightest impression on him. It would have been in vain had a St. Jerome of olden days, a mediæval St. Bernard or a Geiler of Kaysersberg championed the cause of Canon Law against Luther and his nun in the glowing language they knew so well how to use. Luther’s own words quoted above concerning the death penalty decreed by Jovian the Christian Emperor against anyone sacrilegiously violating a nun, illuminate as with a lightning flash the antagonism between antiquity and Luther’s doings.

He asserts himself proudly because he considers his heavenly calling to expound the new Evangel, and his Divine mission, had been questioned by the lawyers who represented the authority of the State. When, in defiance of their objections against the legitimacy of his family, he drafted his celebrated will, he was careful to inform them that, for its validity, he has no need of them or of a notary; he was “Dr. Martinus Luther, God’s Notary and Witness to His Gospel,” and was “well known in heaven, on earth and in hell”; that “God had entrusted him with the Gospel of His Dear Son and had made him faithful and true to it,” for which reason, “in spite of the fury of all the devils,” many “in the world regarded him as a teacher of truth.”[103]

3. The Question of the Religious War; Luther’s Vacillating Attitude. The League of Schmalkalden, 1531

After the Diet of Augsburg, Luther, as we have shown (vol. ii., pp. 391, 395 f.), proclaimed the war of religion much more openly than ever before. His writings, “Auff das vermeint Keiserlich Edict” and “Widder den Meuchler zu Dresen,” bear witness to this. The proceedings taken by the Empire on the ground of the resolutions of Worms, and the attitude of the Catholic Princes and Estates, appeared to him merely a plot, a shameful artifice on the part of the “bloodhounds” who opposed him.

In his writing against the Assassin, i.e. Duke George of Saxony, he expounds his politico-religious standpoint in a way which became his rule for the future. Cain and Abel, the devil and the righteous, stand face to face. “The world belongs either to the devil or to the Children of God. The devil’s realm conceals a murderer and bloodhound, Abel, a pious and peaceable heart.” Abel stands for the Lutherans, Cain and the devil for the Papists. It is a “veracious opinion, founded on Scripture and proved by the fruits of the Papists, that they are ever on the watch and lie in wait day and night to destroy us and root us out.”[104] “If the Emperor or the authorities purpose to make war on God [i.e. Luther’s Evangel], then no one must obey them.” In this case everyone must resist, for it is no “disobedience, rebellion or contumacy to refuse to obey and assist in shedding innocent blood.”[105]

Opposition and violent resistance to the lawful authority of the empire and its legitimate action is here justified by the argument that to fight for the Evangel is no revolt.

The defiant resolve to proceed to any extreme regardless of others or of the public weal, finds its strongest expression in Luther’s words during and after the Diet of Augsburg: “Not one hair’s breadth will I yield to the foe,” he wrote from the fortress of Coburg, with a hint at the wavering attitude of Melanchthon and Jonas. This it was which led up to the statement already quoted: “If war is to come, let it come.” “God has delivered them up to be slaughtered.”[106]

_Luther on Armed Resistance, until 1530._

If we glance at Luther’s former attitude towards open resistance, we find that it would be unjust to say that he preferred religious war to peaceful propaganda. He perceived the danger which it involved. At an earlier period he several times had occasion to intervene when warring elements threatened to estrange the German Princes. We find statements of his where he speaks against armed resistance and points out (to use his later words) what a “blot upon our teaching” a “breach or disturbance of the peace of the land would be.”[107] There is no question that such utterances preponderate with him until 1530. From the very first years of his public career he was anxious to impress on all, particularly on his own Sovereign, that the Word alone must work all; he eliminates as far as possible every prospect of a struggle with the Emperor or the other rulers, which was what the Elector really dreaded. He also frequently expounds theoretically, more particularly in his booklet “Von welltlicher Uberkeytt” (1523), the duty of Christians not to resist the authorities, because the Kingdom of God means yielding, humility and submission; every true believer must even allow himself to be “fleeced and oppressed”; he must indeed confess the evangelical faith, but be willing to “suffer” under an authority hostile to the faith (cp. vol. ii., p. 229 f.). When occasion offered he was ready to quote numerous passages from Holy Scripture in order to show that violent revolt and armed intervention on behalf of the Gospel are forbidden, and that the German Princes had nothing to fear from him in this regard.

None the less, his enterprise was visibly drifting towards the employment of force and towards war.

How deeply he felt the premonition of civil war is plain, for instance, from the following:

“There will be no lack of breaches of the peace, and of war only too much,” he wrote in 1528 to the Elector Johann.[108] He and Melanchthon together also wrote in the same strain to the Crown-Prince of Saxony, Johann Frederick, in 1528; “Time will bring enough fighting with it which it will be impossible to avoid, so that we should be grateful to accept peace where we are able.”[109] As early as 1522 he had given to the Elector Frederick one of his reasons for leaving the Wartburg and returning to Wittenberg: “I am much afraid and troubled because I am, alas, convinced that there will be a great revolt in the German lands, by which God will chastise the nation.” The Evangel was well received by the common people, but some were desirous of extinguishing the light by force. And yet “not only the spiritual, but also the secular power, must yield to the Evangel, whether cheerfully or otherwise, as all the accounts contained in the Bible sufficiently show.... I am only concerned lest the revolt should begin with the Lords, and, like a national calamity, engulf the priesthood.”[110]

Nevertheless he is determined to be of good cheer; even should the war ensue, his conscience is “pure, guiltless and untroubled, whereas the consciences of the Papists are guilty, anxious and unclean.” “Therefore let things take their course and do their worst, whether it be war or rebellion according as God’s anger decrees.”[111]

This gives redoubled weight to his determination to press forward relentlessly. “Let justice prevail even though the whole world should be reduced to ruin. For I say throw peace into the nethermost hell if it is to be purchased at the price of harm to the Evangel and to the faith.”[112]

It has been admitted on the Protestant side that “Luther adhered to this view throughout his life, viz.: that his doctrine must be preached even though it should lead to the destruction of all.”[113] In confirmation of this, another passage taken from Luther’s writings is quoted: “It has been said that if the Pope falls Germany will perish, be utterly wrecked and ruined; but how can I help that? I cannot save it; whose fault is it? Ah, they say, if Luther had not come and preached, the Papacy would still be on its legs and we should be at peace. I cannot help that.”[114]

When the same author urges in Luther’s defence that, “he was not really indifferent to the evil consequences of his actions in ecclesiastical and political matters,”[115] we naturally ask whether the author of the schism did not at times feel bitterly his heavy responsibility for these results, and whether he should not have exerted himself in every possible way to ward off the “evil consequences.” His own admissions, to be given elsewhere (see vol. v., xxxii.), concerning his inward struggles, disclose how frequently he was troubled with such reproaches and what difficulty he had in ridding himself of them.

To the inflammatory invitations already given we may subjoin a few others.

“It were better,” Luther says in his Church-postils, “that all the churches and foundations throughout the land were uprooted and burnt to powder—and the sin would be less even though done out of mere wantonness—than that a single soul should be seduced and corrupted by this [Papistical] error.”[116] And, further on: “Here you see why the lightning commonly strikes the churches rather than any other buildings, viz.: because God is more hostile to them than to any others, because in no den of robbers, no house of ill-fame is there such sin, such blasphemy against God, such murder of the soul and destruction of the Church committed as in these houses” [i.e. in the churches where the Catholic worship obtained].[117] Elsewhere, at an earlier date he had said: “Would it be astonishing if the Princes, the nobles and the laity were to hit Pope, bishop, priest and monk on the head and drive them out of the land? It has never before been heard of in Christendom, and it is abominable to hear now, that the Christian people should openly be commanded to deny the truth.”[118]—Besides these, we have the fiery words he flung among the people: “Where the ecclesiastical Estate does not proceed in the way of faith and charity [according to the Evangel], my wish is not merely that my doctrine should interfere with the monasteries and foundations, but that they were reduced to one great heap of ashes.”[119]—In fine: “A grand destruction of all the monasteries and foundations would be the best reformation, for they are of no earthly use to Christendom and might well be spared.... What is useless and unnecessary and yet does such untold mischief, and to boot is beyond reformation, had much better be exterminated.”[120] The word here rendered as “destruction” is one of which Luther frequently makes use to denote violent annihilation, for instance, of the devastation of Jerusalem and its Temple, nor can we well explain it away in the above connection; he certainly never pictured to himself the “grand destruction of all the monasteries and foundations” otherwise than as a general reduction to ruins. The excuse brought forward in modern times in extenuation of Luther is a very strange one, viz.: that, when giving vent to such expressions, he frequently added the qualifying clause “_if_ the Catholics do not change their opinions,” then violence will befall them; hence only in the event of their final refusal to accept the new teaching was the destruction so vividly described to overtake them! Presumably his contemporaries should have shown themselves grateful for this saving clause. The mitigation conveyed by the clause in question in reality amounted to this: Only if the whole world becomes Lutheran will it be saved from destruction.[121]

It is psychologically worth noticing that Luther, in his zeal, seems never to have perceived that the argument might just as well be turned against himself. The Emperor and the Catholic powers of the Empire, with at least as much show of reason, might have urged as he did, that no power, without being doomed to “destruction” and to being “burnt to ashes,” could stand against the Gospel. The Gospel which they defended was that handed down by the Church, whereas Luther’s Evangel, to mention only one point, was novel and hitherto unheard of by theologians and faithful laity alike. On the one occasion when this thought occurred to him, he had the following excuse ready: We are sure of our faith, hence we may and must demand that everything yield to it; the Emperor and his party on the other hand have no such assurance and can never reach it. “We know that the Emperor is not and cannot be certain of it, because we know that he errs and seeks to oppose the Evangel. We are not obliged to believe that he is certain because he does not act in accordance with God’s Word, whereas we on the other hand do; for it is his bounden duty to recognise God’s Word!” Otherwise, Luther adds, “every murderer and adulterer might also plead: ‘I am right, therefore you must approve my act because I am certain I am in the right.’”[122]—“It was with arguments like these that the Protestant Estates were to justify their overthrow of the ancient faith and worship, and to demonstrate the wickedness of the Emperor’s efforts to preserve the faith and worship of his fathers.”[123]

Of the various memoranda which Luther had to draw up for his Sovereign on the question of armed resistance, that of February 8, 1523, prepared for the Elector Frederick, must be mentioned first.[124] In this the Prince’s attention is drawn to the fact, that publicly he had hitherto preserved an attitude of neutrality concerning religious questions, and had merely given out that, as a layman, he was waiting for the triumph of the truth. Hence it was necessary that he should declare himself for the justice of Luther’s cause if he intended to abandon his attitude of submission to the Imperial authority. In that case he might have recourse to arms in the character of a stranger who comes to the rescue, but not as a sovereign of the Empire. Further, “he must do this only at the call of a singular spirit and faith, short of which he must give way to the sword of the higher power and die with his Christians.”[125] Should he, however, be attacked, not by the Emperor, but by the Catholic Princes, then, after first attempting to bring about peace, he must repel force by force.

When, in 1528, the false reports were circulated, of which we hear in the history of the Pack negotiation, to wit, that the Catholic Princes of the Empire were on the point of falling upon the Protesters, Luther sent a letter to Johann, his Elector, regarding the question of law. What was to be done if the Catholic powers, without the authorisation of the Emperor, attacked the Lutheran party? Luther’s verdict was that such an act on the part of “scoundrel-princes” must be resisted by force of arms “as a real revolt and conspiracy against the Empire and His Imperial Majesty,” but that “to take the offensive and anticipate such an action on the part of the Princes was in no wise to be counselled.”[126]

On this occasion he manifested serious apprehension of the mischief which might be caused by a precipitate armed attack on the part of his princely patrons. It was a very different matter to look forward to a mere possibility of war and to find himself directly confronted with an outbreak of hostilities. “May God preserve us from such a horror! This would indeed be to fish with a draw-net and to take might for right. No greater blame could attach to the Evangel, for this would be no Peasant Rising but a Rising of the Princes, which would destroy Germany utterly to the joy of Satan.”[127]

The above memorandum had dealt with the question of an attack by the Princes of the Empire. But what was to be done if the Emperor himself intervened?

The Lutheran Princes and Estates were anxious to exercise the utmost caution and restraint with regard to the Emperor personally, and in this Luther agreed with them. At Spires, in 1526, they had decided to behave “in such a way as to be able to answer for it before God and the Emperor,” which, however, did not prevent them from establishing the “evangelical” worship in contravention of the decrees of Worms. It was hoped that the Emperor, hampered by his foreign policy, would not take up arms. When, accordingly, the protesting Princes, at the time of the Pack business, commenced warlike preparations against the Catholic party in the Empire, they solemnly declared at Rotach, in June, 1528, that they “excepted” the Emperor. In the same way they desired that their action at Spires in 1529, where they “protested” against the Emperor, should be looked upon as an appeal to the Emperor “better instructed.” When the Emperor, on account of the protest, began to take a serious view of the matter, any scruples which the sovereigns of Hesse and the Saxon Electorate may have felt concerning the employment of armed resistance against him soon evaporated. In Saxony it was held that a closer alliance of the Princes favourable to the innovations ought not to be “shorn of its meaning and value” by this “exemption of the Emperor”; the exemption, it was argued, was only of the person of the Emperor, not of his mandataries. A Saxon memorandum at the end of July, 1529, practically made an end of the exemption; “resistance, even to the Emperor, the most dangerous of our foes, belongs to the natural law of humanity.”[128] This was the opinion of the Margrave of Brandenburg, and even more so of the Landgrave of Hesse. At Nuremberg, however, Lazarus Spengler sought to persuade the Council to negative this resolution; he was still entirely under the influence of Luther’s earlier teaching, that the spirit must be ready to endure and suffer under the secular authorities.

Luther, in spite of his frequent threats and urgings, was not immediately to be induced to make common cause with the politicians. In January, 1530, Johann Brenz penned a memorandum in which, in terms of the utmost decision, he denies the lawfulness of resisting the Emperor, whereas on Christmas Day, 1529, in a similar memorandum requested of him by the Elector, Luther expresses himself most ambiguously. He, indeed, just hints at the unlawfulness of such resistance, but qualifies this admission by such words as the following: “There must be no resistance unless actual violence is done, or dire necessity compels”; “without a Council and without a hearing” there must be no war against the Emperor; before this, however, much water is likely to flow under the bridge, and God may easily find means of establishing peace; “hence my opinion is that the project of taking the field should be abandoned for the nonce, unless further cause or necessity should arise.”[129]

In a letter to George, Margrave of Brandenburg, written on March 6, 1530, with the object of winning him over to the war party, Philip of Hesse declared that he had seen “in Luther’s own writings to the Elector, that he sanctioned the latter’s resisting the Emperor.” This probably refers to the above memorandum which lies to-day in the Hessian archives at Marburg, the original of which seems to have been submitted to Philip; it may, however, have been some other letter since lost, or possibly the 1528 memorandum in which Luther speaks of the lawfulness of repelling the anticipated attack of the Catholic Princes.[130]