Chapter XXIX: Ethical Results of the New Teaching (6)

Further untruths are found in this booklet: Hitherto, the monks, not the bishops, had “governed the churches”; it was merely his peaceable teaching and the power of the Word that had “destroyed” the monks; this the bishops, “backed by the might of all the kings and with all the learning of the universities at their command had not been able to do.”[429] Let no one accuse him of “preaching sedition,” so he goes on; he had merely “taught the people to keep the peace”;[430] he would much rather have preferred to end his days in retirement; “for me there will be no better tidings than to hear that I had been removed from the office of preacher”; better and more pious heretics than the Lutherans had never before been met with; he cannot deny that there is nothing lacking in his doctrine and in that of his “followers ... whatever their life may be.”[431]

We have here a row of instances of the honesty of his polemics and of the way in which he treated with the State authorities concerning the deepest matters of the Church’s life. Often enough his polemics consist solely of unwarrantable statements concerning his own pacific intentions and salutary achievements, supported by revolting untruths, misrepresentations and exaggerations tending to damage his opponents’ case.

Beyond this we frequently find him having recourse to low and unworthy language, and to filthy and unmannerly abuse. (Vol. iv., p. 318 ff.)

“When they are most angry I say to the Papists,” he cries in his “Warnunge an seine lieben Deudschen,” “My dear sirs, leave the wall, relieve yourselves into your drawers and sling it round your neck.... If they do not care to accept my services, then the devil may well be thankful to them!” etc.[432] “Oh, the shameful Diet, such as has never before been held or heard of ... an everlasting blot on the whole Empire! What will the Turk say ... to our allowing the accursed Pope with his minions to fool and mock at us, to treat us as children, nay, as clouts and blocks, to our behaving contrary to justice and truth, nay, with such utter shamelessness in open Diet as regards their blasphemies, their shameful and Sodomitic life and doctrines?”[433] These were the words in which he described the Diet of Augsburg in 1530.

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

Heinrich Bullinger complains repeatedly, and quite as bitterly, of the frightful storm into which Luther’s eloquence was apt to break out. It is noteworthy that he applies what he says to Luther’s polemics, not merely against the Swiss, but against other opponents. “Here all men have in their hands Luther’s King Harry of England, and another Harry as well, in his unsavoury Hans Worst; _item_, they have Luther’s book on the Jews with its hideous letters of the Bible dropped from the posterior of the pig, which the Jews may swallow, indeed, but never read; then, again, there is Luther’s filthy, swinish Schemhamphorasch, for which some small excuse might have been found had it been written by a swine-herd and not by a famous pastor of souls.”[434]

“And yet most people,” so Bullinger says, “even go so far as to worship the houndish, filthy eloquence of the man. Thus it comes that he goes his way and seeks to outdo himself in vituperation.... Many pious and learned people take scandal at his insolence, which really is beyond measure.” He should have someone at his side to keep a check on him, so Bullinger tells Bucer, for instance, his friend Melanchthon, “so that Luther may not ruin a good cause with his wonted invective, his bitterness, his torrent of bad words and his ridicule.”[435]

And yet Luther at this very time, in his “Warnunge,” calls himself “the German Prophet” and “a faithful teacher.”[436]

The following words of Erasmus contain a general censure: “You wish to be taken for a teacher of the Gospel. In that case, however, would it not better beseem you not to repel all the prudent and well-meaning by your vituperation nor to incite men to strife and revolt in these already troubled times?”[437]—“You snarl at me as an Epicurean. Had I been an Epicurean and lived in the time of the Apostles and heard them proclaim the Gospel with such invective, then I fear I should have remained an Epicurean.... Whoever is conscious of teaching a holy doctrine should not behave with insolence and delight in malicious misrepresentation.”[438]—“To what class of spirits,” he had already asked him, “does yours belong, if indeed it be a spirit at all? And what unevangelical way is this of inculcating the holy Gospel? Has perchance the risen Gospel done away with all the laws of public order so that now one may say and write anything against anyone? Does the freedom you are bringing back to us spell no more than this?”[439]

_Kindlier Traits and Episodes_

The unprejudiced reader will gladly turn his gaze from pictures such as the above to the more favourable traits in Luther’s character, which, as already shown elsewhere,[440] are by no means lacking.

Whoever has the least acquaintance with his Kirchenpostille and Hauspostille will not scruple to acknowledge the good and morally elevating undercurrent which runs below his polemics and peculiar theories. For instance, his exhortations, so warm and eloquent, to give alms to the needy; his glowing praise of Holy Scripture and of the consolation its divine words bring to troubled hearts; again, his efforts to promote education and juvenile instruction; his admonitions to assist at the sermon and at Divine worship, to avoid envy, strife, avarice and gluttony, and private no less than public vice of every kind.

The many who are familiar only with this beautiful and inspiring side of his writings, and possibly of his labours, must not take it amiss if, in a work like the present, the historian is no less concerned with the opposite side of Luther’s writings and whole conduct.

As a matter of fact, gentler tones often mingle with the harsher notes, while the unpleasant traits just described alter at times and tend to assume a more favourable aspect. This is occasionally true of his severity, his defiant and imperious behaviour. He not seldom, thanks to this art of his, achieved good and eminently creditable results, particularly in the protection of the poor or oppressed. Many who were in dire straits were wont to apply to him in order to secure his powerful intervention with the authorities on their behalf.

During the famine of 1539, when the nobles avariciously cornered the grain, Luther made strong representations to the Elector and begged him to come to the assistance of the town. Nor, in the same year, did he hesitate to address a severe “warning” to the Electoral steward, the Knight Franz Schott of Coburg, when the town-council at his instigation was moved to take too precipitate action.[441]

Best known of all, however, was his powerful intervention in the case of a certain man whose misdeeds were the plague of the Saxon Electorate from 1534 to 1540; this was Hans Kohlhase, a Berlin merchant. He had been overreached in a matter of two horses by a certain Saxon squire of Zaschwitz, and had afterwards lost his case in the courts. In order to obtain satisfaction Kohlhase formally gave out, that he would “rob, burn, capture and hold to ransom” the Saxons until he obtained redress. Incendiary fires broke out shortly after in Wittenberg and the neighbourhood which were laid to the charge of Kohlhase’s men. The Elector could think of no better plan than to suggest a settlement between the merchant, now turned robber-knight, and the heirs of the above-mentioned squire; it was then that Kohlhase appealed to Luther for advice.

Luther replied with authority and dignity, not hesitating to rebuke him for his unprincipled action. He would not escape the wrath of God if he continued to pursue his unheard-of course of private revenge, since it stands written that “Vengeance is mine”; the shameful acts of violence which had been perpetrated by his men would be put down to his account. He ought not to take the devil as his sponsor. If in spite of all peaceful efforts he failed to succeed in obtaining his due, then nothing was left but for him to submit to the Divine decree, which was always for our best, and to suffer in patience. He consoled him at the same time in a friendly way for such injury and outrage as he might have endured; nor was it wrong to seek redress, but this must be done within the right bounds.[442]

The well-meaning letter, which does Luther credit, had unfortunately no effect.

The attempted arbitration, owing to the leniency of the Electoral agent, Hans Metzsch, ended so much to the advantage of Kohlhase that the Elector, partly owing to his strained relations with Brandenburg, refused to ratify it. Kohlhase’s bands came from Brandenburg and fell upon the undefended castles and villages in the Saxon Electorate. Their raids were also to some extent connived at by the Elector of Brandenburg. They excited great terror even at Wittenberg itself owing to sudden attacks made in the vicinity of the town. New attempts to reach a settlement brought them to a standstill for a while, but soon the strange civil war—an echo of the Peasant Rising and Revolt of the Knights—broke out anew and lasted until 1539.

Luther told his friends that such things could never have taken place under the Landgrave of Hesse; that, as the principal actor had shed blood, he would himself die a violent death. In 1539 he invited the Elector of Saxony by letter to act as the father of his country; he should come to the assistance of his people who were at the mercy of a criminal, nor should he leave the Elector of Brandenburg a free hand if it were true that he was implicated in the business.[443]

Finally Kohlhase, after committing excesses even in Brandenburg itself, was executed at Berlin on March 22, 1540, being broken on the wheel.

On Luther’s admonition to the robber, Protestant legend soon laid hold, and, even in the second half of the 16th century, we find it further embellished. There is hardly a popular history of Luther to-day which does not give the scene where Kohlhase, in disguise, knocks at Luther’s door one dark night and on his reply to the question, “Art thou Kohlhase?” is admitted by the latter, explains his quarrel in the presence of Melanchthon, Cruciger and others and is reconciled with God and his fellow-men; he then promises to abstain from violence in future as Luther and his people are willing to help him to his rights, and the romantic visit closes by the repentant sinner making his confession and receiving the Supper.

The only chronicler of the March who relates this at the date mentioned above fails to give any authority for his narrative, nor can it, as Köstlin-Kawerau points out, be assigned its place “anywhere in Kohlhase’s life-story as otherwise known to us.”[444] Luther’s own statements concerning the affair, particularly his last ones, do not agree with such an ending; throughout he appears as the champion of outraged justice against a public offender. The not unkindly words in which Luther had answered Kohlhase’s request were probably responsible for the legend, which sprang up all the easier seeing that numerous instances were known where Luther’s powerful intervention had succeeded in restraining violence and in securing victory for the cause of justice against the oppressor.[445]

_The Reformation of the Church and Luther’s Ethics_

The defenders of the ancient faith urged very strongly that the first step towards a real moral reformation of the Church was to depict the Church as she was to be in accordance with Christ’s institution and the best traditions, and then, with the help of this standard, to see how far the Church of the times fell short of this ideal; in order to reform any institution, so they argued, we must be acquainted with its primitive shape so as to be able to revert to it.

This they declared they had in vain asked of Luther, who, on the contrary, seemed bent on subverting the whole Church. They even failed to see that he had suggested any means wherewith to withstand the moral shortcomings of the age. In their eyes the radical and destructive changes on which he so vehemently insisted spelt no real improvement; the discontent with prevailing conditions which he preached to the people could not but create a wrong atmosphere; nor could the abolishing of the Church’s spiritual remedies, the slighting of her commands and the revolting treatment of the hierarchy serve the cause of prudent Church reform.

Luther himself, in his so-called “Bull and Reformation,” put forth his demands for the reform of ecclesiastical conditions as they presented themselves to his mind during the days of his fiercest struggle.[446] The “Bull” does not, however, afford any positive scheme of reformation, as the title might lead one to suppose. It is made up wholly of denials and polemics, and the same is true of his later works.

According to this writing the bishops are “not merely phantoms and idols, but folk accursed in God’s sight”; they corrupt souls, and, against them, “every Christian should strive with body and substance.” One should “cheerfully do to them everything that they disliked, just as though they were the devil himself.” All those who now are pastors must repudiate the obedience which they gave “with the promise of chastity,” seeing that this obedience was promised, not to God, but to the devil, “just as a man must repudiate a compact he has made with the devil.” “This is my Bull, yea, Dr. Luther’s own,” etc.

In this Luther was striking out a new road. Christ and his Apostles had begun the moral reform of the world by preaching the doing of “penance, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” True enough such a preaching can never have been so popular with the masses as Luther’s invitation to overthrow the Church.

Luther’s “Reformation” did not, however, consist merely in the overthrow of the olden ecclesiasticism; it also strove to counteract much that was really amiss.

His action had this to recommend it, that it threw into the full light of day the shady side of ecclesiastical life; after all, knowledge of the evil is already a step towards its betterment. For centuries few had had the courage to point a finger at the Church’s wounds so insistently as Luther; at the ills rampant in the clergy, Church government and in the faith and morals of the people. His piercing glance saw into every corner, and, assisted by expert helpers, some of them formerly officials of the Curia, he laid bare every regrettable disorder, needless to say not without exaggerating everything to his heart’s content. Practically, however, Luther’s revelations represent what was best in the movement which professed to aim at a reform of morals. Had he not embittered with such unspeakable hate the long list of shortcomings with which he persistently confronted the olden Church, had he used it as a means of amendment and not rather as a goad whereby to excite the masses, then one might have been even more thankful to him.

It cannot be gainsaid that, particularly at the outset, ethical motives were at work in him; that he like others felt the burden of the evil, was certainly no lie.

Yet it must not be forgotten that he attacked the Pope and the Church so violently, not on account of any refusal to amend, but in order to clear a path for his subversive views of theology and for the “Evangel” which had been condemned by ecclesiastical authority. The very magnitude of the attack he led on the whole conception of the Church, in itself proves that it was no mere question of defending the rights of Christian ethics; the removal of moral disorders from Christendom was to him but a secondary concern, and, moreover, he certainly did everything he could to render impossible any ordered abolishment of abuses and any real improvement.

One may even ask whether he had any programme at all for the betterment of the Church. The question is made almost superfluous by the history of the struggle. He himself never set up before his mind any regular programme for his work, whether ecclesiastical, social or even ethical, when once he had come to see that the idealist scheme in his “An den christlichen Adel” was impossible of realisation. Hence, when he had succeeded in destroying the old order in a small portion of the Church’s territory, he had perforce to begin an uncertain search after something new whereby to replace it; nothing could be more hopeless than his efforts to build up from the ruins a new Church and a new society, a new liturgy and a new canon law, and to improve the morals of the adherents of his cause. In spite of Luther’s aversion to the scheme, it came about that the whole work of reformation was, by the force of circumstances, left to the secular authorities; from the Consistories down to the school-teachers, from the Marriage Courts down to the guardians of the poor, everything came into the hands of the State. Luther had been wont to complain that the Church in olden days had drawn all secular affairs to herself. Since his day, on the other hand, everything that pertained to the Church was secularised. The actual result was a gradual alienation of secular and ecclesiastical, quite at variance with the theories embodied in the faith. In this it is impossible to see a true reformation in any moral meaning of the word, and Luther’s ethics, which made all secular callings independent of the Church, failed in the event to celebrate any triumph.

The better to appreciate certain striking contrasts between the olden Church and her ratification of morality on the one hand and Luther’s thought on the other, we may glance at his attitude towards canonisation and excommunication.

Canonisation and excommunication are two opposite poles of the Church’s life; by the one the Church stamps her heroes with the seal of perfection and sets them up for the veneration of the faithful; by the other she excludes the unworthy from her communion, using thereto the greatest punishment at her command. Both are, to the eye of faith, powerful levers in the moral life.

Luther, however, laughed both to scorn. The ban he attacked on principle, particularly after he himself had fallen under it; in this his action differed from that of Catholic writers, many of whom had written against the ban though only to lament its abuse and its too frequent employment for the defence of the material position of the clergy.

The Pope, according to Luther, had made such a huge “mess in the Church by means of the Greater Excommunication that the swine could not get to the end with devouring it.”[447] Christians, according to him, ought to be taught rather to love the ban of the Church than to fear it. We ourselves, he cries, put the Pope under the ban and declare that “the Pope and his followers are no believers.”

Later on, however, he came to see better the use of ghostly penalties for unseemly conduct and made no odds in emphasising the right of the community as such to make use of exclusion as a punishment; in view of the increase of disorders he essayed repeatedly to reintroduce on his own authority a sort of ban in his Churches.[448]

As early as 1519 Luther had expressed his disapproval of the canonising of Saints by the Church, a practice which stimulated the moral efforts of the faithful by setting up an ideal and by encouraging daily worship; he added, however, that “each one was free to canonise as much as he pleased.”[449] In 1524, however, he poured forth his wrath on the never-ending canonisations; as a rule they were “nothing but Popish Saints and no Christian Saints”;[450] the foundations made in their honour served “merely to fatten lazy gluttons and indolent swine in the Churches”; before the Judgment Day no one could “pronounce any man holy”; Elisabeth, Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose, Bernard and Francis, even he regarded as holy, though he would not stake his life on it, seeing there was nothing about them in Holy Scripture; “but the Pope, nay, all the angels, had not the power of setting up a new article of faith not contained in Scripture.”[451]

On May 31, 1523, was canonised the venerable bishop Benno of Meissen, a contemporary of Gregory VII. Luther was incensed to the last degree at the thought of the special celebration to be held in 1524 in the town—the Duchy being still Catholic—in honour of the new Saint. He accordingly published his “Against the new idol and olden devil about to be set up at Meyssen.”[452] His use of the term “devil” in the title he vindicates as follows on the very first page: Now, that, “by the grace of God, the Gospel has again arisen and shines brightly,” “Satan incarnate” is avenging himself “by means of such foolery” and is causing himself to be worshipped with great pomp under the name of Benno. It was not in his power to prevent Duke George setting up the relics at Meissen and erecting an artistic and costly altar in their honour. The only result of Luther’s attack was to increase the devotion of clergy and people, who confidently invoked the saintly bishop’s protection against the inroads of apostasy. The attack also led Catholic writers in the Duchy to publish some bitter rejoinders. The rudeness of their titles bears witness to their indignation. “Against the Wittenberg idol Martin Luther” was the title of the pamphlet of Augustine Alveld, a Franciscan Guardian; the work of Paul Bachmann, Abbot of Alte Zelle, was entitled “Against the fiercely snorting wild-boar Luther,” and that of Hieronymus Emser, “Reply to Luther’s slanderous book.” The last writer was to some extent involved in the matter of the canonisation through having published the Legend of the famous Bishop. This he had done rather uncritically and without testing his authorities, and for this reason had been read a severe lesson by Luther.

Luther’s opposition to this canonisation was, however, by no means dictated by historical considerations but by his hatred of all veneration of the Saints and by his aversion to the ideal of Christian self-denial, submissive obedience to the Church and Catholic activity of which the canonised Saints are models. He himself makes it easy to answer the question whether it was zeal for the moral reformation of the Church which drove him to assail canonisation and the veneration of the Saints; nowhere else is his attempt to destroy the sublime ideal of Christian life which he failed to understand and to drag down to the gutter all that was highest so clearly apparent as here. The real Saints, so he declared, were his Wittenbergers. Striving after great holiness on the part of the individual merely tended to derogate from Christ’s work; the Evangelical Counsels fostered only a mistaken desertion of the world.

Judging others by his own standard, he attempted to drag down the Saints of the past to the level of mediocrity. Real Saints must be “good, lusty sinners who do not blush to insert in the Our Father the ‘forgive us our trespasses.’” It was “consoling” to him to hear, that the Apostles, too, even after they had received the Holy Ghost, had at times been shaky in their faith, and “very consoling indeed” that the Saints of both Old and New Covenant “had fallen into great sins”; only thus, so he fancies, do we learn to know the “Kingdom of Christ,” viz. the forgiveness of sins. Even Abraham, agreeably with Luther’s interpretation of Josue xxiv. 2, was represented to have worshipped idols, in order that Luther might be able to instance his conversion and say: Believe like him and you will be as holy as he.[453]

_The Reformation in the Duchy of Saxony considered as typical_

In 1539, after the death of Duke George, at Luther’s instance, the protestantising of the duchy of Saxony was undertaken with unseemly haste; to this end Henry, the new sovereign, ordered a Visitation on the lines of that held in the Saxon Electorate and to be carried out by preachers placed at his disposal by the Elector. Jonas and Spalatin now became the visitors for Meissen. Before this, on the occasion of the canonisation of St. Benno, Spalatin, in a letter to Luther, had treated the canonisation as a laughing matter. On July 14, the visitors, alleging the authority of the Duke, summoned the Cathedral Chapter at Meissen to remove the sepulchre of St. Benno. On this being met by a refusal armed men were sent to the Cathedral the following night. “‘They broke into fragments the richly ornamented sepulchre of the Saint, together with the altar,’ to quote the words of the bishop’s report to the Emperor, ‘they decapitated a wooden statue of St. Benno and stuck it up outside as a butt for ridicule.’”[454]

Luther, for his part, in a letter to Jonas of August 14 of the same year, has his little joke about the visitors’ undoing of the canonisation of Benno. “You have unsainted Benno and have shown no fear of Cochlæus, Schmid, nor of the Nausei and Sadoleti, who teach the contrary. They are indignant with you, ultra-sensitive men that they are, knowing so little of grammar and so much less of theology.”[455]

Nor did the progress of the overthrow of the Church throughout the Duchy bear the least stamp of moral reform. The very violence used forbids our applying such a term to the work. The Catholic worship at the Cathedral was at once abolished and replaced by Lutheran services and preaching. The priests were driven into exile, the bishop alone being permitted to carry on “his godless papistical abominations and practices openly in his own residence” (the Castle of Stolpen). At the demand of the Wittenbergers the professors at Leipzig University who refused to conform to the Lutheran doctrine were dismissed. Melanchthon insisted, that, if they refused to hold their tongues, they must be driven out of the land as “blasphemers.” The new preachers publicly abused the friends, clerical and lay, of the late Duke to such an extent that the Estates were moved to make a formal complaint. Churches and monasteries were plundered and the sacred vessels melted down.[456]

Maurice, the son of Duke Henry, who succeeded in 1541, showed himself even more violent and relentless in extirpating the olden system.

The profoundly immoral character of this reformation, the interference with the people’s freedom of conscience, the destruction of religious traditions which the peaceable inhabitants had received a thousand years before from holy missionaries and bishops, merely on the strength of the new doctrines of a man who claimed to have a better Gospel—all this was expressly sanctioned and supported by Luther.

He wrote in a memorandum on the proceedings: “There is not much room here for discussion. If my gracious Duke Henry wishes to have the Evangel, then His Highness must abolish idolatry, or not afford it protection ... otherwise the wrath of heaven will be too great.” As a “sovereign appointed by God” the ruler “owed it to Him to put down such horrible, blasphemous idolatry by every means in his power.” This was nothing more than “defending Christ and damning the devil”; an example had been given by the “former kings of Juda and Israel,” who had abolished “Baal and all his idolatry,” and later by Constantine, Theodosius and Gratian. For it was as much the duty of princes and lords as of other people to serve God and the Lord Christ to the utmost of their power. Away, therefore, with the abbots and bishops “since they are determined to remain blasphemers ... they are blind leaders of the blind; God’s wrath has come upon them; hence we must help in the matter as much as we can.”[457]

Yet the Christian emperors here appealed to could have furnished Luther with an example of forbearance towards heathen Rome and its religious works of art which might well have shamed him. He did not know that at Rome the defacing and damaging of temples, altars or statues was most strictly forbidden, and that, for instance, Pope Damasus († 384) had been formally assured by the city-prefect that never had a Christian Roman appeared before his tribunal on such a charge.[458] Elsewhere, however, such acts of violence were not unknown.

Luther’s spirit of persecution was quite different from the spirit which animated those Roman emperors who came over to Christianity. It was their desire to hasten the end of an outworn religion of superstition, immorality and idolatry. With them it was a question of defending and furthering a religion sent from heaven to renew the world and which had convincingly proved the divinity of its mission by miracles, by the blood of martyrs and by the striking holiness of so many thousands of confessors.

It was against the faithful adherents of this very religion that, on the pretext of the outward corruption under which it groaned, Luther perpetrated so many acts of violence regardless of the testimony of a thousand years of beneficent labours. His ingratitude towards the achievements of the olden Church in the education of the nations, his deliberate ignoring of the great qualities which distinguished her and in his day could still have enabled her to carry out her own moral regeneration from within, are incompatible with his having been a true moral reformer.

_The Aims of the Reformation and the Currents of the Age_

Looking at the state of the case from the standpoint of the olden Catholic Church a closer historical examination shows that what she needed above all was a strengthening of her interior organisation.[459]

In view of the tendency to split up into separate States, in view of the decay of that outward bond of the nations under the Empire which had once been her stay, and of the rise of all sorts of new elements of culture requiring to be exploited for the glory of God and the spiritual betterment of mankind, a consolidation of the Church’s structure was essential. The Primacy indeed was there, exercised its functions and was recognised, but what was needed was a more direct recognition of a purified Papacy. The bond of unity between the nations within the Church needed to be more clearly put in evidence. This could best be done by allowing the significance of a voluntary submission to the authority appointed by God, and of the Primacy, to sink more deeply into the consciousness of Christendom. This was all the more called for, now that the traditional devotion to Rome had suffered so much owing to the great Schism of the West, to the reforming Councils and the prevalence of Gallican ideas, and that the splendour of the Papacy seemed now on the wane. The excessive concern of the Popes in politics and the struggle they had waged in Italy in the effort to establish themselves more securely had by no means contributed to increase respect for the power of the keys in its own peculiar domain, viz. the spiritual.

Thus any reformer seeking to improve the Church’s condition had necessarily to face this task first of all.—Many other moral requirements arising out of the then state of society had, however, also to be borne in mind.

It was necessary to counteract, by laying stress on what had been handed down, the false subjectivism and universal scepticism which the schools of philosophy had let loose on the world; also to oppose the cynicism, lack of discipline and love of destruction which characterised Humanism, by infusing into education the true spirit of the Church. Both these tasks could, however, be accomplished only by men filled with respect for tradition who while on the one hand broad-mindedly accepting the new learning, i.e. without questioning or distrusting reason and its rights, on the other hand possessed the power and the will to spiritualise the new culture. The disruptive tendency of the nations, the counterpart in international politics of the prevalent individualism, required to be corrected by laying stress on the underlying common ground. The undreamt-of enlargement of the Church through the discovery of new lands had to be met by organisations, the members of which were filled with love of self-denial and zeal for souls. At the same time the materialism, which was a consequence of the great increase of wealth brought from foreign lands, had to be checked. To oppose the alarming growth of Turkish power it was necessary to preach self-sacrifice, manly courage and above all Christian unity amongst those in power, amongst those who in former times had sallied forth against the East strong in the feeling of being one family in the faith. A still worse foe to Christian society was to be found in moral discouragement and exhaustion; there was need of a new spirit to awaken the motive force of religious life and to stir men to a more active use of the means of grace.

If we compare the moral aims and motives which inspired Luther’s reformation, with the great needs of the times, as just described, we cannot fail to see how far short he fell of the requirements.

Most of the aims indicated were quite strange to him. Judging from the standpoint of the olden Church, he frequently sought the very opposite of what was required. Some few instances may be cited.

So little did Luther’s reformation tend to realise the sublime moral principle of the union and comradeship of the nations, that, on the contrary, he encouraged nationalism and separatist tendencies even in Church matters. Where his idea of a National Church prevailed, there the strongest bond of union disappeared completely.[460] The more the authority of the Empire was subverted by the separatists, by religious Leagues and violent inroads of princes and sovereign towns within the Empire, the more the idea of unity, which at one time had been so great a power for good, had to suffer. He complained that the nations and races were as unfriendly to each other as devils. But for him, the rude Saxon, to abuse all who dwelt outside his borders in the most unmeasured terms, and to pour out the vials of his wrath and vituperation on the Latin nations because they were Catholic could hardly be regarded as conducive to better harmony. When he persistently declared in his writings and sermons that the real Turks were to be found at home, or when he fanned the flames of fraternal hatred against the Papists within the Fatherland, such action could scarcely promote a more effectual resistance to the danger looming in the East. The Bible, according to him, was to serve as the means of uniting the people of God. He flung it amongst the people at a time when everything was seething with excitement; yet he himself, in spite of all his praise of Bible study, was moved to execrate the results. It seemed, so he declared, as though it had been done merely “in order that each one might bore a hole where his snout happened to be.”[461]

As to subjectivism, the dominant evil of the age, he himself carried it to its furthest limits, relentlessly condemning everywhere whatever did not appeal to him and exalting his personal views and feelings into a regular law; subjectivism pervades and spoils his whole theology, and, in the domain of ethics, puts both personality and conscience on a new and very questionable basis.[462] The subjective principle as used by him and exalted into an axiom, might be invoked equally by any religious faction for its own ends. We need only recall Luther’s theory of the lonely isolation of the individual in the matter of faith.

Again, if that transition period between mediæval and modern times was suffering from moral and religious exhaustion and was inclined to be pessimistic concerning spiritual goods, and if, for its moral reform, what was needed was a leader deeply imbued with faith in revelation, able by the very strength of his faith to arouse the world of his day, and to inspire the lame and timid with enthusiasm and delight in the ancient treasures of religion—then, again, one is forced to ask whether such a man as Luther, even apart from his new and erroneous doctrines, had the requisite strong and overbearing devotion to supernatural truths? Is it not Luther who speaks so often of the weakness of his faith, of his doubts and his inward trials, and who, in order to reassure himself, declares that everyone, even the Apostles, the martyrs and the saints, were acquainted with the like?

Not only did he not fight against pessimism, but, as the years went by, he even built it into a truly burdensome system. Towards the end of his life, owing both to his theories and to his experiences, he became a living embodiment of dejection, constituting himself its eloquent advocate. His view of the history of the kingdom of Christ was the gloomiest imaginable. Everywhere he saw the power of the devil predominant throughout the whole course of the world’s history.

Not only is everything in the world outside of Christ Satanic, but even the ancient people of God, chosen with a view to the coming Redeemer, according to Luther, “raged and stormed” against the faith. But “the fury of the Jews” was exceeded by the “malice” which began to insinuate itself into the first Church not very long after its foundation. What the Jews did was “but a joke and mere child’s play” compared with the corruption of the Christian religion by means of “human ordinances, councils and Papistry.” Hardly had the light enkindled by Christ begun to shine before it gradually flickered out, until lighted again by Luther. In the East prevailed the rule of the Turks, those devils incarnate, whilst the West groaned under the Papacy, which far exceeds even the Islam in devilry.[463]

His pessimism sees the origin of the corruption in the Church in the fact, that, already in the first centuries, “the devil had broken into Holy Scripture and made such a disturbance as to give rise to many heresies.” To counteract these the Christians surrendered themselves to human ordinances; “they knew of no other way out of the difficulty than to set up a multitude of Councils side by side with Scripture.” “In short, the devil is too clever and powerful for us; everywhere he is an obstacle and a hindrance. If we go to Scripture, he arouses so much dissension and strife that we grow sick of the Word and afraid to trust to it. Yet if we rely on human councils and counsels, we lose Scripture altogether and become the devil’s own, body and soul.” This evil was not solely due to setting up human ordinances in the place of Scripture, but also to the preference shown in theory to works which arose when people saw, that “works or deeds did not follow” from the preaching of the Apostles, “as they should have done.” “Hence the new disciples set to work to improve upon the Master’s building and proceeded to confuse two different things, viz. works and faith. This scandal has been a hindrance to the new doctrine of faith from the beginning even to the present day.”

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

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

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

“Here you are living,” so he writes to one of his friends, “in the devil’s own den of murderers, surrounded by dragons and serpents. Of two things one must happen; either the people become devils to you, or you yourself become a devil.”[464]

Formerly he had looked forward with some courage and confidence to the possibility of a change. But even his courage, particularly at critical junctures, for instance, at the Coburg and during the Diet of Augsburg, more resembled the wanton rashness of a man who seeks to set his own fears at defiance. At any rate his peculiar form of courage in faith was not calculated to give a fresh stimulus, amid the general relaxation and exhaustion, to religious enthusiasm and the spirit of cheerful self-sacrifice for the highest aims of human life. On the other hand, his success was largely due to the discouragement so widely prevalent. We meet with a mournful echo of this discouragement in the sayings of certain contemporary Princes of the Church, who seem to have given up everything for lost. Many who had been surprised and overwhelmed by the sudden bursting of the storm were victims of this depression.

* * * * *

Luther not only failed to direct the unfavourable tendencies of the age into better channels, but even to some extent allowed himself to be carried away by them.

Even so strong a man as he, was keenly affected by the spirit of the age. In some respects it is true his work exercised a lasting effect on the prevalent currents, but in others he allowed his work to be dominated by the spirit then abroad. To the nominalistic school of Occam he owed not only certain of his doctrines but also his disputatious and subversive ways, and his method of ignoring the general connection between the truths of faith and of making the most of the grounds for doubt. Pseudo-mystic influences explain both his subjectivism and those quietistic principles, traces of which are long met with in his writings. Humanism increased his aversion to the old-time scholasticism, his animosity to the principles of authority and tradition, his contempt for all things mediæval, his lack of appreciation for, and unfairness to, the religious orders no less than the paradox and arrogance of his language. A strain of coarse materialism runs through the Renaissance. In Luther, says Paulsen, “we are reminded of the Renaissance by a certain coarse naturalism with which the new Evangel is spiced, and which, in his attacks on celibacy and the religious life, occasionally leads Luther to speak as though to abstain from carnal works was to rebel against God’s Will and command.”[465] To the tendency of the Princes to exalt themselves Luther yielded, even at the expense of the liberties and well-being of the people, simply because he stood in need of the rulers’ support. The spirit of revolt against the hierarchy which was seething amongst the masses and even among many of the theologians, and which the disorders censured in the _Gravamina_ of the various Diets had brought almost to the point of explosion, carried Luther away; even in those writings which contemporaries and aftercomers were to praise as his greatest achievement and, in fact, in his whole undertaking in so far as it involved separation from Rome, he was simply following the trend of his time.

8. The Church Apart of the True Believers

Luther’s sad experiences in establishing a new Church led him for several years to cherish a strange idea; his then intention was to unite the true believers into a special band and to restrict the preaching of the Gospel to these small congregations which would then represent the real Church.

This idea of his of gathering together the true Christians has already been referred to cursorily elsewhere,[466] but it is of such importance that it may well be dealt with somewhat more in detail.

_Luther’s Theory of the Church Apart prior to 1526_

On the whole the idea which Luther, previous to 1526, expressed over and over again as clearly as could be desired and never rejected later, viz. of uniting certain chosen Christians—the true believers—in a “congregation apart” and of regarding the remainder, i.e. the ordinary members of the flock which followed him, or popular Church as it was termed, as a mere lump still to be kneaded, gives us a deep insight into the development which his conception of the Church underwent and into his opinion of the position of his congregations generally. The idea was an outcome more of circumstances than of reflection, more a fanciful expedient than a consequence of his theories; thus it was that it suffered shipwreck on the outward conditions which soon showed that the plan was impossible of realisation. It really originated in the moral disorders rampant in the new Church, particularly at Wittenberg. So few of those who followed him allowed their hearts to be touched by the Evangel, and yet all, none the less, claimed not merely to be called Evangelicals but even to share in the Supper. Luther saw that this state of things was compromising the good name of the work he had started.

After the refusal of the Princes and nobles to listen to his appeal to amend the state of Christendom, he determined to take his stand on the congregational principle. He fondly expected that, thanks to the supposed inward power of reform in the new communities, all his proposals would soon be put into execution, the old system of Church government swept away and a new order established more in accordance with his views. Hence in the writing to the magistrates and congregation of Prague, “_De instituendis ministris ecclesiæ_” (Nov., 1523), which, without delay, he caused to be translated into German,[467] he strove to show, how, everywhere, the new Church system was to be established from top to bottom by the selection of pastors by members of the congregation filled with faith (“_iis qui credunt, hæc scribimus_”).[468] According to this writing, the Visitors and Archbishop yet to be chosen by the zealous clergy, were to live only for the sake of the pastors and the congregations, whom they had to better by means of the Word. The faithful congregations “will indeed be weak and sinful”—Luther had no hope of setting up a Church of the perfect—but, “seeing they have the Word, they are at least not ungodly; they sin indeed, but, far from denying, they confess the Word.”[469] “Luther’s optimism,” says Paul Drews, “saw already whole parishes converted into congregations of real Christians, realising anew the true Church of the Apostolic ideal.”[470]

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

“It must be a faith,” says Luther in this sermon, “which God works in you, and you must know and feel that God is working this in you.” But did it come to a “serious self-examination you would soon see how few are Christians and how few there would be who would go to the Sacrament. But it might be arranged and brought about, as I greatly wish, for those in every place who really believe to be set apart and distinguished from the others. I should like to have done this long ago, but it was not feasible; for it has not been sufficiently preached and urged as yet.” Meanwhile, instead of “separating” the true believers (later on he speaks of private sermons for them to be preached in the Augustinian minster) he will still address his discourse to all, even though it be not possible to know “who is really touched by it,” i.e. who really accepts the Gospel in faith; but it was thus that Christ and the Apostles had preached, “to the masses, to everyone; ... whoever can pick it up, let him do so.... But the Sacrament ought not thus to be scattered broadcast amongst the people in the way the Pope did.”[471]

In the “_Formula missæ_” from about the beginning of Dec., 1523, he again speaks of the examination of the communicants, and adds that it was enough that this should take place once a year, while, in the case of educated people, it might well be omitted altogether; the examination by the “bishop” (i.e. the pastor) must however extend also to the “life and conduct” of the communicants. “If he sees a man addicted to fornication, adultery, drunkenness, gambling, usury, cursing or any other open vice he is to exclude him from the Supper unless he has given proof of amendment.” Moreover, those admitted to the Sacrament are to be assigned a special place at the altar in order that they may be seen by all and their moral conduct more easily judged of all. He would, however, lay down no commands on such matters, but leave everything, as was his wont, to the good will of free Christian men.[472]

The introduction of the innovation was, moreover, to depend entirely on the consent of the congregation, agreeably with his theory of their rights. This he said in a sermon of Dec. 6, 1523.[473] It was probably in that same month that the plan was tried.

These preliminary attempts at the formation of an assembly of true Christians were no more crowned with success than his plan for the relief of the poor by means of the so-called common box, or his efforts to establish a new system of penalties. Hence he declared, that, owing to the Wittenbergers’ want of preparation, he was obliged to put off its execution “until our Lord God forms some Christians.” For the time being “we have not got the necessary persons.” In 1524 he told them that “neither charity nor the Gospel could make any headway amongst them.”[474] In the Wittenberg congregation he could “not yet discern a truly Christian one.”[475] He nevertheless permitted the whole congregation to take its share, when, in the autumn of 1523, the town-council appointed Bugenhagen to the office of parish-priest; this he did agreeably with his ideas concerning the rights of the congregation.

Meanwhile, however, the ideal of a whole parish of true believers seemed about to be realised elsewhere. Full of apparent zeal for the new Evangel, the magistrates and burghers of Leisnig on the Mulde drafted a scheme for a “common box” and begged Luther to send them something confirming their right to appoint a minister—the town having refused to accept the lawfully presented Catholic priest—and also a reformed order for Divine worship. The instructive incident has already been mentioned.[476]

Luther seized eagerly on the opportunity of calling into existence at Leisnig a community which might in turn prove a model elsewhere. From the establishment of such congregations he believed there would result a system of new Churches independent indeed, though supported by the authorities, which might then take the place of the Papal Church now thought on the point of expiry. The idealistic dreams with which, as his writings show, the proceedings at Leisnig filled his mind would seem to have been responsible both for his project for Wittenberg and for his letter to the Bohemians previously referred to. The fact that they belonged to the same time is at any rate a remarkable coincidence.

He promised the town-council of Leisnig (Jan. 29, 1523) that he would have their scheme for the establishment of a common fund printed,[477] and this he did shortly after, adding an introduction of his own.[478]