Chapter XXX (1)

LUTHER AT THE ZENITH OF HIS LIFE AND SUCCESS, FROM 1540 ONWARDS. APPREHENSIONS AND PRECAUTIONS

1. The Great Victories of 1540-1544.

THE opening of the Diet of Ratisbon in 1541[595] coincided with the advance of Protestantism in one of the strongholds of the power and influence of Albert of Mayence. The usual residence of the Archbishop and Elector was at Halle, in his diocese of Magdeburg. Against this town accordingly all the already numerous Protestants in Albert’s sees of Magdeburg and Halberstadt directed their united efforts. Albert was compelled by the local Landtag to abolish the Catholic so-called “Neue Stift” at Halle, and to remove his residence to Mayence. Thereupon Jonas, Luther’s friend, at once, on Good Friday, 1541, commenced to preach at the church of St. Mary’s at Halle. He then became permanent preacher and head of the growing movement in the town, while two other churches were also seized by Lutheran preachers.

The town and bishopric of Naumburg, which had been much neglected by its bishop, Prince Philip of Bavaria, who resided at Freising, fell a prey to the innovations under the Elector Johann Frederick of Saxony; this in spite of being an imperial city under the immediate protection of the Emperor. The Elector had taken advantage of his position as arbitrator, thanks to his influence and to the authority he soon secured, gradually to establish himself in Naumburg. By his orders, in 1541, as soon as Philip was dead, Nicholas Medler began to preach at the Cathedral as “Superintendent of Naumburg”; Julius Pflug, the excellent Provost, who had been elected bishop by the Cathedral chapter, was prevented by the Elector from taking possession of the see. Even the Wittenberg theologians were rather surprised at the haste and violence with which the Elector proceeded to upset the religious conditions there, and—a matter which concerned him deeply—to seize the city and the whole diocese. (See below, p. 191 f.)

The storm was already gathering over the archbishopric of Cologne under the weak and illiterate Archbishop, Hermann von Wied. This man, who was in reality more of a secular ruler, after having in earlier days shown himself kindly disposed to the Church, was won over, first by Peter Medmann in 1539 and then by Martin Bucer in 1541, and persuaded to introduce Lutheranism. Only by the energetic resistance of the chapter, and particularly of the chief Catholics of the archdiocese, was the danger warded off; to them the Archbishop owed, first his removal, and then his excommunication.

On March 28, 1546, shortly before the excommunication, the Emperor Charles V said to Landgrave Philip of Hesse, who had been pleading the cause of Hermann: “Why does he start novelties? He knows no Latin, and, in his whole life, has only said three Masses, two of which I attended myself. He does not even understand the Confiteor. To reform does not mean to bring in another belief or another religion.”[596]

“We are beholders of the wonders of God,” so Luther wrote to Hermann Bonn, his preacher, at Osnabrück; “such great Princes and Bishops are now being called of God by the working of the Holy Ghost.”[597] He was speaking not only of the misguided Archbishop of Cologne but also of the Bishop of Münster and Osnabrück, who had introduced the new teaching at Osnabrück by means of Bonn, Superintendent of Lübeck. Luther, however, was rather too sanguine. In the same year he announced to Duke Albert of Prussia: “The two bishops of ‘Collen’ and Münster, have, praise be to God, accepted the Evangel in earnest, strongly as the Canons oppose it. Things are also well forward in the Duchy of Brunswick.”[598] As a matter of fact he turned out right only as regards Brunswick. Henry, the Catholic Duke, was expelled in 1542 by the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse after the war which broke out on account of Goslar had issued in his loss of the stronghold of Wolfenbüttel; thereupon with the help of Bugenhagen the churches of the land were forcibly brought over to Lutheranism.

In 1544 the appointment at Merseburg of a bishop of the new faith in the person of George of Anhalt followed on Duke Maurice of Saxony’s illegal seizure of the see. So barefaced was this act of spoliation that even Luther entered a protest against “this rapacious onslaught on Church property.”[599] The appointment of an “Evangelical bishop” at Naumburg took place in 1542 under similar circumstances.

From Metz, where the preacher Guillaume Farel was working for the Reformation, an application was received for admission into the Schmalkalden League. The Lutherans there received at least moral support from Melanchthon who, in the name of the League, addressed a writing to the Duke of Lorraine. Not only distant Transylvania, but even Venice, held correspondence with Luther in order to obtain from him advice and instructions concerning the Protestant congregations already existing in those regions.

Thus the author of the religious upheaval might well congratulate himself, when, in the evening of his days, he surveyed the widespread influence of his work.

He was at the same time well aware what a potent factor in all this progress was the danger which menaced Germany from the Turks. The Protestant Estates continued to exploit the distress of the Empire to their own advantage in a spirit far from loyal. They insisted on the Emperor’s granting their demands within the Empire before they would promise effectual aid against the foe without; their conduct was quite inexcusable at such a time, when a new attack on Vienna was momentarily apprehended, and when the King of France was quite openly supporting the Turks.

In the meantime as a result of the negotiations an Imperial army was raised and Luther published his prudent “Vermanunge zum Gebet wider den Türcken.” In this he advised the princes to do their duty both towards God and the Evangel and towards the Empire by defending it against the foe. The Pope is as much an enemy as the Turk, and the world has reached its close, for the last Judgment is at hand.[600]

The Emperor found it advisable to show himself even more lenient than before; the violent encroachments of the Protestants, which so unexpectedly strengthened their position, were allowed to pass unresisted; the ecclesiastical and temporal penalties pronounced against the promoters of the innovations remained a dead letter, and for the time being the Church property was left in their hands. At the Diet of Spires, in 1544, the settlement was deferred to a General Council which the Reichsabschied describes as a “Free Christian Council within the German Nation.”

As was only to be expected, Paul III, the supreme head of Christendom, energetically protested against such a decision. With dignity, and in the supreme consciousness of his rights and position, the Pope reminded the Emperor that a Council had long since been summoned (above, vol. iii., p. 424) and was only being delayed on account of the war. It did not become the civil power, nor even the Emperor, to inaugurate the religious settlement, least of all at the expense of the rights of Church and Pope as had been the case; to the Vicar of Christ and the assembly summoned by him it fell to secure the unity of the Church and to lay down the conditions of reunion; yet the civil power had left the Pope in the lurch in his previous endeavours to summon a Council and to establish peace in Germany; “God was his witness that he had nothing more at heart than to see the whole of the noble German people reunited in faith and all charity”; “willingly would he spend life and blood, as his conscience bore him witness, in the attempt to bring this about in the right way.”[601]

These admonitions fell on deaf ears, as the evil work was already done. The consent, which, by dint of defiance and determination, the Protestant princes wrung from Empire and Emperor, secured the triumph of the religious revolution in ever wider circles.

2. Sad Forebodings

In spite of all his outward success, Luther, at the height of his triumph, was filled with melancholy forebodings concerning the future of his work.

He felt more and more that the new Churches then being established lacked inward stability, and that the principle on which they were built was wanting in unity, cohesion and permanence. Neither for the protection of the faith nor for the maintenance of an independent system of Church government were the necessary provisions forthcoming. Indeed, owing to the very nature of his undertaking, it was impossible that such could be effectually supplied; thus a vision of coming disunion, particularly in the domain of doctrine, unrolled itself before his eyes; this was one of the factors which saddened him.

As early as the ‘thirties we find him giving vent to his fears of an ever-increasing disintegration. In the ‘forties they almost assume the character of definite prophecies.

In the Table-Talk of 1538, which was noted down by the Deacon Lauterbach, he seeks comfort in the thought that every fresh revival of religion had been accompanied by quarrels due to false brethren, by heresies and decay; it was true that now “the morning star had arisen” owing to his preaching, but he feared “that this light would not endure for long, not for more than fifty years”; the Word of God would “again decline for want of able ministers of the Word.”[602] “There will come want and spiritual famine”; “many new interpretations will arise, and the Bible will no longer hold. Owing to the sects that will spring up I would rather I had not printed my books.”[603]

“I fear that the best is already over and that now the sects will follow.”[604] The pen was growing heavy to his fingers; there “will be no end to the writings,” he says; “I have outlived three frightful storms, Münzer, the Sacramentarians and the Anabaptists; these are over, but now others will come.” “I wish not to live any longer since no peace is to be hoped for.”[605] “The Evangel is endangered by the sectarians, the revolutionary peasants and the belly servers, just as once the Roman empire was at Rome.”[606]

“On June 27 [1538],” we read, “Dr. Luther and Master Philip were dining together at his house. They spoke much, with many a sigh, of the coming times when many dangers would arise.” The greatest confusion would prevail. No one would then allow himself to be guided by the doctrine or authority of another. “Each one will wish to be his own Rabbi, like Osiander and Agricola. From this the worst scandals and the greatest desolation will come. Hence it would be best [one said], that the Princes should forestall it by some council, if only the Papists would not hold back and flee from the light. Master Philip replied: The Pope will never be brought to hold a General Council.... Oh, that our Princes and the Estates would bring about a council and some sort of unity in doctrine and worship so as to prevent each one undertaking something on his own account to the scandal of many, as some are already doing. The Church is a spectacle of woe, with so much weakness and scandal heaped upon her.”[607]

Shortly after this Luther instituted a comparison—which for him must have been very sad—between the “false Church [of the Pope] which stands erect, a cheerful picture of dignity, strength and holiness,” and the Church of Christ “which lies in such misery and ignominy, sin and insignificance as though God had no care for her.” He fancied he could find some slight comfort in the Article of the Creed: “I believe in the Holy Church,” for, so he observes, “because we don’t see it, therefore we believe in it.”[608]

In the midst of the great successes of those years he still gives utterance to the gloomiest of predictions for the future of his doctrine, which dissensions would eat to the very core. His pupil Mathesius reports him as holding forth as follows:

“Alas, good God,” he groaned in 1540, “how we have to suffer from divisions!... And many more sects will come. For the spirit of lies and murder does not sleep.... But God will save His Christendom.”[609]—In 1542 someone remarked in his presence: “Were the world to last fifty years longer many things would happen.” Thereupon Luther interjected: “God forbid, things would get worse than ever before; for many sects will arise which yet are hidden in men’s hearts, so that we shall not know how we stand. Hence, dear Lord, come with Thy Judgment Day, for no further improvement is now to be looked for!”[610]—After instancing the principal sects that had arisen up to that time he said, in 1540: “After our death many sects will arise, God help us!”[611] “But whoever after my death despises the authority of this school—so long as the Church and the school remain as they are—is a heretic and an evil man. For in this school [of Wittenberg] God has revealed His Word, and this school and town can take a place side by side with any others in the matter of doctrine and life, even though our life be not yet quite above reproach.... Those who flee from us and secretly contemn us have denied the faith.... Who knew anything five-and-twenty years ago [before my preaching started]? Alas for ambition; it is the cause of all the misfortunes.”[612]

Frequently he reverts to the theory, that the Church must needs put up with onsets and temptations to despair. “Now even greater despair has come upon us on account of the sectarians,” he said in 1537; “the Church is in despair according to the words of the Psalmist (cviii. 92): ‘Unless Thy Law had been my meditation I had then perhaps perished in my abjection.’”[613]

At an earlier period (1531) a sermon of Luther’s vividly pictures this despair: “If, in spiritual matters, it comes about, that the devil sows his seed in Christ’s kingdom and it springs up both in doctrine and life, then we have a crop of misery and distress. In the preaching it happens, that although God has appointed _one_ man and commanded him to preach the Evangel, yet others are found even amongst his pupils who think they know how to do it ten times better than he.... Every man wants to be master in doctrine.... Now they are saying: ‘Why should not we have the Spirit and understand Scripture just as well as anyone else?’ Thus a new doctrine is at once set up and sects are formed.... Hence a deadly peril to Christendom ensues, for it is torn asunder and pure doctrine everywhere perishes.”[614] Christ had indeed “foretold that this would happen”; true enough, it is not forbidden to anyone “who holds the public office of preacher to judge of doctrine”; but whoever has not such an office has no right to do so; if he does this of “his own doctrine and spirit,” then “I call such judging of doctrine one of the greatest, most shameful and most wicked vices to be found upon earth, one from which all the factious spirits have arisen.”[615]

Duke George of Saxony unfeelingly pointed out to the innovator that his fear, that many, very many indeed, would say: “Do we not also possess the Spirit and understand Scripture as well as you?” would only too surely be realised.

“What man on earth,” wrote the Duke in his usual downright fashion, “ever hitherto undertook a more foolish task than you in seeking to include in your sect all Christians, especially those of the German nation? Success is as likely in your case as it was in that of those who set about building a tower in Babylonia which was to reach the very heavens; in the end they had to cease from building, and the result was seventy-two new tongues. The same will befall you; you also will have to stop, and the result will be seventy-two new sects.”[616]

Luther’s letters speak throughout in a similar strain of the divisions already existing and the gloomy outlook for the future; in the ‘forties his lamentation over the approaching calamities becomes, however, even louder than usual in spite of the apparent progress of his cause. Much of what he says puts us vividly in mind of Duke George’s words just quoted.

Amidst the excitement of his struggle with the fanatics he wrote as early as 1525 to the “Christians at Antwerp”: “The tiresome devil begins to rage amongst the ungodly and to belch forth many wild and mazy beliefs and doctrines. This man will have nothing of baptism, that one denies the Sacrament, a third awaits another world between this and the Last Day; some teach that Christ is not God; some say this, some that, and there are as many sects and beliefs as there are heads; no peasant is so rude but that if he dreams or fancies something, it must forsooth be the Holy Spirit which inspires him, and he himself must be a prophet.”[617]

After the bitter experiences of the intervening years we find in a letter of 1536 this bitter lament: “Pray for me that I too may be delivered from certain ungodly men, seeing you rejoice that God has delivered you from the Anabaptists and the sects. For new prophets are constantly arising against me one after the other, so that I almost wish to be dissolved in order not to see such evils without end, and to be set free at last from this kingdom of the devil.”[618]

Even in the strong pillars of the Evangel, in the Landgrave of Hesse and Bucer the theologian, he apprehended treason to his cause and complains of them as “false brethren.” At the time of the negotiations at Ratisbon, in 1541, he exclaims in a letter to Melanchthon: “They are making advances to the Emperor and to our foes, and look on our cause as a comedy to be played out among the people, though as is evident it is a tragedy between God and Satan in which Satan’s side has the upper hand and God’s comes off second best.... I say this with anger and am incensed at their games. But so it must be; the fact that we are endangered by false brethren likens us to the Apostle Paul, nay, to the whole Church, and is the sure seal that God stamps upon us.”[619]

In spite of this “seal of God,” he is annoyed to see how his Evangel becomes the butt of “heretical attacks” from within, and suffers from the disintegrating and destructive influence of the immorality and godlessness of many of his followers.

This, for instance, he bewails in a letter of condolence sent in 1541 to Wenceslaus Link of Nuremberg. At Nuremberg according to Link’s account the evil seemed to be assuming a menacing shape. Not the foe without, writes Luther, but rather “our great gainsayers within, who repay us with contempt, are the danger we must fear, according to the words of the common prophecy: ‘After Antichrist has been revealed men will come who say: There is no God!’ This we see everywhere fulfilled to-day.... They think our words are but human words!”[620]

About this time he often contemplates with sadness the abundance of other crying disorders in his Churches,[621] the wantonness of the great and the decadence of the people; he cries: “Hasten, O Jesus, Thy coming; the evils have come to a head and the end cannot be delayed. Amen.”[622] “I am sick of life if this life can be called life.... Implacable hatred and strife amongst the great ... no hopes of any improvement ... the age is Satan’s own; gladly would I see myself and all my people quickly snatched from it!”[623] The evil spirit of apostasy and fanatism which had raged so terribly at Münster, was now, according to him, particularly busy amongst the great ones, just as formerly it had laid hold on the peasants. “May God prevent him and resist him, the evil spirit, for truly he means mischief.”[624]

And yet he still in his own way hopes in God and clings to the idea of his call; God will soon mock at the devil: “The working of Satan is patent, but God at Whom they now laugh will mock at Satan in His own time.”[625]

We can understand after such expressions descriptive of his state of mind, the assurance with which, for all his confidence of victory, he frequently seems to forecast the certain downfall of his cause. In the German Table-Talk, for instance, we read: “So long as those who are now living and who teach the Word of God diligently are still with us, those who have seen and heard me, Philip, Pomeranus and other pious, faithful and honest teachers, all may be well; but when they all are gone and this age is over, there will be a falling away.”[626] He also sees how two great and widely differing parties will arise among his followers: unbelievers on the one hand and Pietists and fanatics on the other; we have a characteristic prophecy of the sort where he says of the one party, that, like the Epicureans, they would acknowledge “no God or other life after this,” and of the other, that many people would come out of the school of enthusiasm, “following their own ideas and speculations and boasting of the Spirit”; “drunk with their own virtues and having their understanding darkened,” they would “obstinately insist on their own fancies and yield to no one.”[627]

And again he says sadly: “God will sweep His threshing-floor. I pray that after my death my wife and children may not long survive me; very dangerous times are at hand.”[628] “I pray God,” he frequently said, “to take away this our generation with us, for, when once we are gone, the worst of times will follow.”[629] The preacher, “M. Antonius Musa once said,” so he recalls: “We old preachers only vex the world, but on you young ones the world will pour out its wrath; therefore take heed to yourselves.”[630]

This is not the place to investigate historically the fulfilment of these predictions. We shall content ourselves with quoting, in connection with Musa, the words of another slightly later preacher. Cyriacus Spangenberg saw in Luther a prophet, for one reason because his gloomiest predictions were being fulfilled before the eyes of all. In the third sermon of his book, “Luther the Man of God,” he shows to what frightful contempt the preachers of Luther’s unadulterated doctrine were everywhere exposed, just as he himself (Spangenberg) was hated and persecuted for being over-zealous for the true faith of the “Saint” of Wittenberg. “Ah,” he says in a sermon in 1563 couched in Luther’s style, “Shame on thy heart, thy neck, thy tongue, thou filthy and accursed world. Thy blasphemy, fornication, unchastity, gluttony and drunkenness ... are not thought too much; but that such should be scolded is too much.... If this be not the devil himself, then it is something very like him and is assuredly his mother.”[631]

3. Provisions for the Future

Luther failed to make the effectual and systematic efforts called for in order to stave off the fate to which he foresaw his work would be exposed. He was not the man to put matters in order, quite apart from the unsurmountable difficulties this would have involved, seeing he possessed little talent for organisation. He was very well aware that one expedient would be to surrender church government almost entirely into the hands of the secular authorities.

_A Protestant Council?_

The negotiations which preceded the Œcumenical Council of the Catholic Church, had for one result not only to impress the innovators with a sense of their own unsettled state, but to lead them to discuss the advisability of holding a great Protestant council of their own. Luther himself, however, wisely held aloof from such a plan, nay his opposition to it was one of the main obstacles which prevented its fulfilment.

When the idea was first mooted in 1533 it was rejected by Luther and his theologians Jonas, Bugenhagen and Melanchthon in a joint memorandum. “Because it is plain,” so they declare, “that we ourselves are not at one, and must first of all consider how we are to arrive at unity amongst ourselves. In short, though an opposition council might be good and useful it is needless to speak of such a thing just now.”[632]

In 1537 the Landgrave of Hesse, and more particularly the Elector of Saxony, again proposed at Schmalkalden that Luther, following the example of the Greeks and the Bohemians, should summon a council of his own, a national Evangelical council, to counteract the Papal Council.[633] The Elector proposed that it should be assembled at Augsburg and comprise at least 250 preachers and men of the law; the Emperor might be invited to attend and a considerable army was also to be drafted to Augsburg for the protection of the assembly. At that time Luther’s serious illness saved him from an embarrassing situation.

Bucer and Melanchthon were now the sole supporters of the plan of a council. Both were men who believed in mediation and Melanchthon may really have hoped for a while, that the “philosophy of dissimulation,” for which he stood,[634] might, even in a council, palliate the inward differences and issue in something tolerably satisfactory. Luther himself was never again to refer to the Evangelical Council.

It was the theologians headed by Martin Bucer, who, at the Diet of Schmalkalden in 1540 at which Luther was not present, lodged a memorandum on the advisability of holding a council. The petitioners declared it “very useful and called for, both for the saving of unity in doctrine and for the bettering of many other things, that, every one or two years, the Estates should convene a synod.” Visitors chosen there were to “silence any errors in doctrine” that they might discover.[635] The Estates, however, did not agree to this proposal; it was easy to foresee that it would be unworkable and productive of evil. It was only necessary to call to mind the fruitlessness of the great assemblies at Cassel and Wittenberg which had brought about the so-called Wittenberg Concord and the disturbances to which the Concord gave rise.[636]

Bucer keenly regretted the absence of any ecclesiastical unity and cohesion amongst his friends.

“Not even a shadow of it remains,” so he wrote to Bullinger. “Every church stands alone and every preacher for himself. Not a few shun all connection with their brethren and any discussion of the things of Christ. It is just like a body the members of which are cut off and where one cannot help the other. Yet the spirit of Christ is a spirit of harmony; Christ wills that His people should be one, as He and the Father are one, and that they love one another as He loved us.... Unless we become one in the Lord every effort at mending and reviving morals is bound to be useless. For this reason,” he continues, “it was the wish of Œcolampadius when the faith was first preached at Basle, to see the congregations represented and furthered by synods. But he was not successful even amongst us [who stood nearest to him in the faith]. I cannot say that to-day there is any more possibility of establishing this union of the Churches; but the real cause of our decline certainly lies in this inability. Possibly, later on, others may succeed where we failed. For, truly, what we have received of the knowledge of Christ and of discipline will fade away unless we, who are Christ’s, unite ourselves more closely as members of His Body.”

He proceeds to indicate plainly that one of the main obstacles to such a union was Luther’s rude and offensive behaviour towards the Swiss theologians: Luther had undoubtedly heaped abuse on “guiltless brethren.” But with this sort of thing, inevitable in his case, it would be necessary to put up. “Will it not be better for us to let this pass than to involve so many Churches in even worse scandals? Could I, without grave damage to the Churches, do something to stop all this vituperation, then assuredly I should not fail to do so.”[637]

Unfortunately the peacemaker’s efforts could avail nothing against a personality so imperious and ungovernable as Luther’s.

Bucer continued nevertheless to further the idea of a Protestant council, though, so long as Luther lived, only with bated breath. He endeavoured at least to interest the Landgrave of Hesse in his plan for holding small synods of theologians.

It was the want of unity in the matter of doctrine and the visible decline of discipline that drove him again and again to think of this remedy. On Jan. 8, 1544, he wrote to Landgrave Philip: In so many places there is “no profession of faith, no penalties, no excommunication of those who sin publicly, nor yet any Visitation or synod. Only what the lord or burgomaster wished was done, and, in place of one Pope, many Popes have arisen and things become worse and worse from day to day.” He reminds the Prince of the proposal made at Schmalkalden; because nothing was done to put this in effect, scandals were on the increase. “We constantly find that scarcely a third or fourth part communicate with Christ. What sort of Christians will there be eventually?”[638]—In the same way he tells him later: Because no synods are held “many things take place daily which ought really greatly to trouble all of us.”[639] In Würtemberg and in some of the towns of Swabia the authorities were dissuaded by the groundless fear lest the preachers should once more gain too much influence; this was why the secular authorities were averse to synods and Visitations; but “on this account daily arise gruesome divisions in matters of doctrine and unchastity of life; we find some who are daily maddened with drink and who give such scandal in other matters that the enemies of Christ have a terrible excuse for blaspheming and hindering our true Gospel.... At the last Schmalkalden meeting all the preachers were anxious that synods and Visitations should be ordered and held everywhere. But who has paid any heed to this?” And yet this is the best means whereby “our holy religion might be preserved and guarded from the new Papists amongst us, i.e. those who do not accept the Word of God in its purity and entirety, but explain it away, pull it to pieces, distort and bend it as their own sensual passions and temptations move them.”[640]

Once the main obstacle had been removed by Luther’s death, Bucer, who was very confident of his own abilities, again mooted the idea of a great council. In the same letter to Landgrave Philip of Hesse in which he refers to the death of Luther, “the father and teacher of us all,” which had occurred shortly before, he exhorts the Landgrave more emphatically than ever to co-operate, so that “first of all a general synod may be held of our co-religionists of every estate,” to which all the sovereigns should despatch eminent preachers and councillors—i.e. be formally convened by the secular authorities—and, that, subsequently “particular synods be held in every country of the Churches situated there.”[641] “Short of this the Churches will assuredly fare badly.”[642]

The Landgrave was not averse, yet the matter never got any further. The terrible quarrels amongst the theologians in the camp of the new faith after Luther’s decease[643] put any general Protestant council out of the question.

We can imagine what such a council would have become, if, in addition to the theologians, the lay element had been represented to the extent demanded at a certain Disputation held at Wittenberg under Luther’s presidency in 1543.[644] From the idea of the whole congregation taking its share in the government of the Church, Luther could never entirely shake himself free. Nevertheless it is probable, that, in spite of this Disputation, he had not really changed his mind as to the impossibility of an Evangelical council.

If, with Luther’s, we compare Melanchthon’s attitude towards the question of a Lutheran council we find that the latter’s wish for such a council and his observations about it afforded him plentiful opportunity for voicing his indignation at the religious disruption then rampant.[645]

“Weak consciences are troubled,” he said in 1536, “and know not which sect to follow; in their perplexity they begin to despair of religion altogether.”[646]—“Violent sermons, which promote lawlessness and break down all barriers against the passions, are listened to greedily. Such preaching, more worthy of cynics than of Christians, it is which thunders forth the false doctrine that good works are not called for. Posterity will marvel that there should ever have been an age when such madness was received with applause.”[647]—“Had you made the journey with us,” he writes on his return from a visit to the Palatinate and Swabia, “and, like us, seen the woeful desolation of the Churches in so many places, you would doubtless long with tears and sighs that the Princes and the learned should confer together how best to come to the help of the Churches.”[648]—Later again we read in his letters: “Behold how great is everywhere the danger to the Churches and how difficult their government; for everywhere those in the ministry quarrel amongst themselves and set up strife and division.” “We live like the nomads, no one obeys any man in anything whatsoever.”[649]

Two provisions suggested by Luther for the future in lieu of the impracticable synods were, the establishment of national consistories and the use of a sort of excommunication.

_Luther’s Attitude towards the Consistories introduced in 1539_

With strange resignation Luther sought to persuade himself that, even without the help of any synods and general laws, it would still be possible to re-establish order by means of a certain supervision to be exercised with the assistance of the State, backed by the penalty of exclusion. Against laws and regulations for the guidance of the Church’s life, he displayed an ever-growing prejudice, the reason for this being partly his peculiar ideas on the abrogation of all governing authority of the Church, partly the experiences with which he had met.

“So long as the sense of unity is not well rooted in the heart and mind”—he wrote in 1545, i.e. after the establishment of the consistories—“outward unity is not of much use, nor will it last long.... The existing observances [in matters of worship] must not become laws. On the contrary, just as the schoolmaster and father of the family rule without laws, and, in the school and in the home, correct faults, so to speak only by supervision, so, in the same way, in the Church, everything should be done by means of supervision, but not by rules for the future.... Everything depends on the minister of the Word being prudent and faithful. For this reason we prefer to insist on the erection of schools, but above all on that purity and uniformity of doctrine which unites minds in the Lord. But, alas, there are too few who devote themselves to study; many are just bellies and no more, intent on their daily bread.... Time, however, will mend much that it is impossible to settle beforehand by means of regulations.”[650]

“If we make laws,” he continues, “they become snares for consciences and pure doctrine is obscured and set aside, particularly if those who come after are careless and unlearned.... Already during our lifetime we have seen sects and dissensions enough under our very noses, how each one follows his own way. In short, contempt for the Word on our side and blasphemy on the other [Catholic] side proclaim loudly enough the advent of the Last Day. Hence, above all, let us have pure and abundant preaching of the Word! The ministers of the Word must first of all become one heart and one soul. For if we make laws our successors will lay claim to the same authority, and, fallen human nature being what it is, the result will be a war of the flesh against the flesh.”[651]

In other words Luther foresaw a war of all against all as likely sooner or later to be the result of any thoroughgoing attempt to regulate matters by means of laws as the Catholics did in their councils. He and his friends were persuaded that laws could only be made effectual by virtue of the power of the State.

Melanchthon declared: “Unless the Court supports our arrangements, what else will they become but Platonic laws, to use a Greek saying?”[652]

The idea to which Luther had clung so long as there was any hope, viz. to make the congregations self-governing, was but a fanciful and impracticable one; when again, little by little, he came to seek support from the secular authority, he did so merely under compulsion; he felt it to involve a repudiation of his own principles, nor could he control his jealousy when the far-reaching interference of the State speedily became manifest.

In the Saxon electorate the consistories had been introduced in 1539, not so much at the instance of Luther as of the committee representing the Estates. They were to deal with ecclesiastical affairs and disputes, with complaints against, and grievances of, the clergy, but chiefly with the matrimonial cases. The earlier “Visitors” had lacked executive powers. The consistory established by the Elector at Wittenberg for the whole electorate was composed of two preachers (Jonas and Agricola), and two lawyers. Luther raised many objections, particularly to the consistory’s proposed use of excommunication; he feared that, unless they stuck to his theological views, the consistories would lead to “yet another scrimmage.” Later, however, he gave the new organisation his support. It was not till 1541 that the work of the consistories was more generally extended.[653]

Luther consoled himself and Spalatin as follows for the loss of dignity which they apprehended: “The consistory will deal only with matrimonial cases, with which we no longer will or can have any more to do; also with the bringing back of the peasants to some sort of discipline and the payment of stipends to the preachers.”[654]

For the Wittenberg consistory to relieve him of the matrimonial cases was in many respects just what he desired. He had himself frequently dealt with these cases according to the dictates of his own ever-changing views on marriage, so far as he was allowed by his frequent quarrels with the lawyers who questioned his right to interfere. He now declared: “I am glad that the consistoria have been established, especially on account of the matrimonial cases.”[655] As early as 1536, he had written: “The peasants and rude populace who seek nothing but the freedom of the flesh, and likewise the lawyers, who, whenever possible, oppose our decisions, have wearied me so much that I have flung aside the matrimonial cases and written to some telling them that they may do just as they please in the name of all the devils; let the dead bury their dead; for though I give much advice, I cannot help the people when afterwards they are robbed and teased [by the lawyers]. If the world will have the Pope then let it have him if otherwise it cannot be.”

“So far I have not found one single lawyer,” he continues, speaking of a certain matrimonial question, “who would hold with me against the Pope in this or any similar case.... We theologians know nothing, and are not supposed to count.”[656]

It was in part nausea and wounded vanity, in part also his abhorrence for the ecclesiastical and sacramental side of marriage which caused him repeatedly to declare: “I would we were rid of the matrimonial business”;[657] “marriage and all its circumstances is a political affair” (both statements date from 1538);[658] “leave the matrimonial cases to the secular authorities, for they concern, not the conscience, but the external law of the Princes and magistrates” (1532).[659]

Of the ecclesiastical powers of the sovereign he declared however (1539), “We must make the best of him as bishop, since no other bishop will help us.”[660]

“But if things come to such a pass that the Courts try to rule as they please,” so he wrote at a time when this principle had already begun to bear its bitter fruit, “then the last state will be worse than the first ... in that case let the Lords themselves be our pastors and preachers, let them baptise, visit the sick, give communion and perform all the other offices of the Church! Otherwise let them stop confusing the two callings, attend to their own Courts and leave the Churches to the clergy.... It is Satan who in our day is seeking to introduce into the Church the counsels and the authority of the government officials; we shall, however, resist him and keep the two callings separate.”[661]

Yet the “two callings,” the secular and the ecclesiastical, were to become more and more closely intermingled. As was inevitable, the weak spiritual authority set up by Luther was soon absorbed by a strong secular authority well aware of its own aims; the secular power treated the former as its sacristan charged with carrying out the services of the Church, and gradually assumed exclusive control, even in matters of doctrine. A moral servitude such as had never been seen at any period in the history of the German Church was the consequence of the State government of the Church, brought about by the consistories.

In order to understand Luther’s attitude towards the consistories and to gauge rightly his responsibility, some further particulars of their rise and earliest form are called for.

In 1537 the “Great Committee of the Torgau district” demanded, that the Elector should establish four consistories in his lands. On these would devolve the looking after of “all _ecclesiasticæ causæ_, the preaching office, the churches and ministers, their vindication _contra injurias_, all that concerned their conduct and life, and particularly the matrimonial suits.” Some such court was essential in the case of these suits, because, since the dissolution of the bishops’ courts, the utmost disorders had prevailed and nobody even knew by which code the questions pending were to be judged, whether by the old canon law with which the lawyers were familiar, or according to the doctrine and statutes of Luther which were quite a different thing. The disciplinary system too had become so lax that some revision of the Church judiciary appeared inevitable.

As for the principles which were to direct the new organisation: Luther was inclined at times to be forgetful of his theory, that his Churches should have no canon law of their own;[662] even at this grave crisis he does not seem to have been distinctly conscious of it; at the same time his jealousy made him unwilling to see all the authority for governing the new Churches conferred directly by the State, though, with his usual frankness, he admitted it was impossible for things to continue as they were. The most influential men of his circle were, however, determined to have so-called ecclesiastical courts introduced by the sovereign, which should then govern in his name; hitherto, they urged, it was the purely secular courts which had intervened, which was a mistake, as had been shown in practice by their failure. Thus, as R. Sohm put it, “did Melanchthon’s ideas, from about 1537, gradually oust those of Luther in the government of the Lutheran Church.”[663]

It was from this standpoint that, in his Memorandum of 1538 addressed to the Elector, Jonas, the lawyer and theologian, supported the above-mentioned proposal of the Torgau assembly.

He points out that “the common people become daily more savage and uncouth,” and that “no Christian Church can hope to stand where such rudeness and lawlessness prevail.” According to him the authority of the consistories was to embrace the whole domain of Church government. They were, however, to derive their authority direct from the sovereign, “through, and by order of, the prince of the land.” Hence “their _iudices_ were to have the right to enforce their decisions”; they were to be in a position to wield the Greater Excommunication with its temporal consequences, also to inflict bodily punishment, fines and “suitable terms of imprisonment,” and therefore to have “men-at-arms” and “a prison” at their disposal.[664]

Jonas and those who agreed with him fancied that what they were setting up with the help of the secular power was a spiritual court; in reality, however, they were advocating a purely secular, coercive institution.

Luther’s views differed from those of his friends in so far as he wished to see the new courts—which he frowned at and distrusted—merely invested with full powers for dealing with matrimonial suits; even here, however, he made a reservation, insisting on the abrogation of canon law. The Elector’s edict of 1539 appointing the consistories, out of consideration for Luther, was worded rather vaguely. The consistories were, “until further notice,” to see to the “ecclesiastical affairs” which “have occurred so far or shall yet occur and be brought to your cognisance.”[665] According to this their authority was received only “until further notice” from the ruler, to whom it fell to bring cases to their “cognisance,” and, who, naturally kept the execution of the sentence in his own hands.

Luther, it is true, accepted the new arrangement, because, as he said, it represented a “Church court” which could take over the matrimonial cases. But forthwith he found himself in conflict with the lawyers attached to the courts because they insisted on taking their stand on canon law. To his very death, even in his public utterances, he lashed the men of the law for thus submitting themselves to the Pope and to the code against which his life’s struggle had been directed. Yet the lawyers were driven to make use of the old statutes, since they alone afforded a legal basis, and because Luther’s propositions to the contrary—on secret marriages, for instance—lacked any general recognition. The result of Luther’s opposition to the consistories was, that, so long as he lived, they remained without any definite instructions, devoid of the authority which had been promised them, and without the coercive powers they so much needed; for the nonce they were spiritual courts without any outward powers of compulsion, the latter being retained by the sovereign to use at his discretion.

After Luther’s death things were changed. The consistories both in the Saxon Electorate and in most other places where they had been copied became exclusively organs of Church government by the State, though still composed of theologians and lawyers. In 1579 and 1580 the end which Luther had foreseen arrived. “The last things became, as a matter of fact, worse than the first,” as he himself had predicted, nay, as the result of his own action; Satan has introduced “into the Church the counsels and the authority of government officials” (above, p. 182).

This change, which in reality was the realisation of the ideas of Jonas, Melanchthon and Chancellor Brück, leads Rud. Sohm, after having portrayed in detail the circumstances, to exclaim: “The sovereign as head of the Church! How can such a thing be even imagined? The Church of Christ, governed solely by the word of Christ ... and by command of the ruler of the land.”[666] Speaking of the disorder in Luther’s Church, which recognised no canon law, the Protestant canonist says: “Canon law was needed to assist the Word; well, it came, but only to establish the lord of the land as lord also of the Church.” “The State government of the Church is in contradiction with the Lutheran profession of faith.” “If, however, the Church is determined to be ruled by force, then the ruler must be the secular authority.”[667]

The secular authorities to which Protestantism looked for support had been well organised throughout the Empire by the League of Schmalkalden. Subsequent to 1535 the warlike alliance had been extended for a further ten years. In 1539 the state of things became so threatening, that Luther feared lest the Catholic princes should attack the Protestants. In a sermon he referred to the “fury of Satan amongst the blinded Papists who incite the Emperor and other kings against the Evangel”; he, however, also added, that “we, by our boundless malice and ingratitude, have called down the wrath of God.” They ought to pray, “that the Emperor might not turn his arms against us who have the pure Word of Christ.”[668] As a matter of fact, however, the Emperor and the Empire were not in a position even to protect themselves against the wanton behaviour of the innovators.

Amongst the outward provisions made for the future benefit of the new Church, the League of Schmalkalden deserves the first place. In the very year before his death Luther took steps to ensure the prolongation of this armed alliance.[669]

Among the efforts made at home to improve matters a place belongs to Luther’s attempts to introduce a more frequent use of excommunication.

_Luther seeks to introduce the so-called Lesser Excommunication_

The introduction of the ban engrossed Luther’s attention more particularly after 1539, but without any special results. In 1541 we find the question raised under rather peculiar circumstances in one of the numerous letters in which Luther complains of the secular authorities. At Nuremberg, Wenceslaus Link had threatened certain persons of standing with excommunication, whereupon one of the town-councillors hurled at him the opprobrious epithet of “priestling.” Full of indignation, Luther wrote: “It is true the civil authorities ever have been and always will be enemies of the Church.... God has rejected the world and, of the ten lepers, scarcely one takes His side, the rest go over to the prince of this world.” “Excommunication is part of the Word of God.” If they look upon our preaching as the Word of God then it is a disgrace that they should refuse to hear of excommunication, despise the ministers of the Word and hate the God Whom they have confessed; they wickedly blaspheme in thus hurling the term ‘priestling’ at His ministers.[670]

Here we get a glimpse of the difficulty which attended the introduction of the ban: “They refuse to hear of excommunication.”

With the Greater Excommunication which involved civil disabilities, and in particular exclusion to some extent from social intercourse, Luther had no sympathy; he was interested in the reintroduction merely of the Lesser Excommunication prohibiting the excommunicate to take part in public worship, or at least to receive the Supper or to stand as godparent. In his view the Greater Excommunication was a matter for the sovereign and did not in the least concern the ministers of the Church; this he points out in his Schmalkalden Articles.[671] He even was inclined to look upon any such action of the ruler with a jealous eye; from anything of the sort it were better for the sovereign to abstain for fear of any awkward confusion of the spiritual with the secular power.[672]

The “Unterricht der Visitatorn,” printed in 1528, had already suggested to the ministers the use of a kind of Lesser Excommunication, but, in the absence of anything definite, the proposal remained practically a dead letter. We learn, however, that Luther pronounced his first ban of this sort against some alleged witches.[673] Subsequently he had strongly urged at the Court of the Elector that the authorities should at least threaten gross contemners of religion with “exile and punishment” as in the case of blasphemers, and that then the pastors, after instruction and admonition had proved of no avail, should proceed to exclude such men from church membership[674] as “heathen to be shunned.” When mentioning this he fails to state whether or to what extent his proposal was carried out.[675] On the other hand, he often declares that the actual state of the masses rendered quite impossible any ordering of ecclesiastical life according to the Gospel; he is also fond of speaking of the danger there would be of falling back into the Popish regulations abolished by the freedom of the Gospel, were disciplinary measures reintroduced.

What moved Luther in 1538 to advocate the use of the ban was, first, the action of the Elector’s haughty Captain and Governor, Hans Metzsch at Wittenberg, who, in addition to Luther’s excommunication, was threatened with dismissal from his office, or, as Luther expresses it, with the Greater Excommunication of the ruler (1538), and, secondly, the doings of a Wittenberg burgher who (Feb., 1539) dared to go to the Supper in spite of having committed homicide. In the case of Metzsch a form of minor excommunication was resorted to, Luther declaring invalid the absolution and permission to communicate granted by the Deacon Fröschel; whether or not, after this, he pronounced a further excommunication, this much is certain, viz. that, not long after the pair were reconciled.[676]

Many of the well-disposed on Luther’s side were in favour of the ban as a disciplinary measure; others were intensely hostile to it. Of his latest intention, Luther speaks at some length in a sermon of Feb. 23, 1539. He there explains how the whole congregation must be behind the clergy in enforcing the ban; they were to be notified publicly of any man who proved obstinate and were to pray against him; then was to follow the formal expulsion from the congregation; re-admission to public worship was also to take place publicly.