Chapter XXIX: Ethical Results of the New Teaching (2)

Quite early Luther had declared: “The ‘_fides specialis_,’ or assurance of salvation, of itself impels man to true morality.” For, “faith brings along with it love, peace, joy and hope.... In this faith all works are equal and one as good as the other, and any difference between works disappears, whether they be great or small, short or long, few or many; for works are not pleasing [to God] in themselves but on account of faith.... A Christian who lives in this faith has no need to be taught good works, but, whatever occurs to him, that he does, and everything is well done.” Such are his words in his “Sermon von den guten Wercken” to Duke Johann of Saxony in 1520.[83]

He frequently repeats, that “Faith brings love along with it,” which impels us to do good.

He enlarges on this in the festival sermons in his Church-Postils, and says: When I am made aware by faith, that, through the Son of God Who died for me, I am able to “resist and flaunt sin, death, devil, hell and every ill, then I cannot but love Him in return and be well disposed towards Him, keeping His commandments and doing lovingly and gladly everything He asks”; the heart will then show itself full “of gratitude and love. But, seeing that God stands in no need of our works and that He has not commanded us to do anything else for Him but to praise and thank Him, therefore such a man must proceed to devote himself entirely to his neighbour, to serve, help and counsel him freely and without reward.”[84]

All this, as Luther says in his “Von der Freyheyt eynes Christen Menschen,” must be performed “by a free, willing, cheerful and unrequited serving of our neighbour”;[85] it must be done “cheerfully and gladly for Christ’s sake Who has done so much for us.”[86] “That same Law which once was hateful to free-will,” he says in his Commentary on Galatians, “now [i.e. after we have received the faith and assurance of salvation] becomes quite pleasant since love is poured into our hearts by the Holy Ghost.... We now are lovers of the Law.”[87] From the wondrous well-spring of the imputed merits of Christ there comes first and foremost prayer; if only we cling “trustfully to the promise of grace,” then “the heart will unceasingly beat and pulsate to such prayers as the following: O, beloved Father, may Thy Name be hallowed, Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done.”[88] But all is not prayer and holy desire; even when the “soul has been cleansed by faith,” the Christian still must struggle against sin and against the body “in order to deaden its wantonness.”[89] The Christian will set himself to acquire chastity; “in this work a good, strong faith is of great help, more so here than anything else.” And why? Because whoever is assured of salvation in Christ and “enjoys the grace of God, also delights in spiritual purity.... Under such a faith the Spirit without doubt will tell him how to avoid evil thoughts and everything opposed to chastity. For as faith in the Divine mercy persists and works all good, so also it never ceases to inform us of all that is pleasing or displeasing to God.”[90]

Whence does our will derive the ability and strength to wage this struggle to the end? Only from the assurance of salvation, from its unshaken awareness that it has indeed a Gracious God. For this certainty of faith sets one free, first of all from those anxieties with regard to one’s salvation with which the righteous-by-works are plagued and thus allows one to devote time and strength to doing what is good; secondly this faith in one’s salvation teaches one how to overcome the difficulties that stand in one’s way.[91]

There was, however, an objection raised against Luther by his contemporaries and which even presented itself to his own mind: Why should a lifelong struggle and the performance of good works be requisite for a salvation of which we are already certain? It was re-formulated even by Albert Ritschl, in whose work, “Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung,” we find the words: “If one asks why God, Who makes salvation to depend on Justification by faith, prescribes good works at all, the arbitrary character of the assumption becomes quite evident.”[92] In Luther’s own writings we repeatedly hear the same stricture voiced: “If sin is forgiven me gratuitously by God’s Mercy and is blotted out in baptism, then there is nothing for me to do.” People say, “If faith is everything and suffices of itself to make us pious, why then are good works enjoined?”[93]

In order to render Luther’s meaning adequately we must emphasise his leading answer to such objections. He is determined to insist on good works, because, as he says, they are of the utmost importance to the one thing on which everything else depends, viz. to faith and the assurance of salvation.[94]

In his “Sermon von den guten Wercken,” which deserves to be taken as conclusive, he declares outright that all good works are ordained—for the sake of faith. “Such works and sufferings must be performed in faith and in firm trust in the Divine mercy, in order that, as already stated, all works may come under the first commandment and under faith, and that they may serve to exercise and strengthen faith, on account of which all the other commandments and works are demanded.”[95] Hence morality is necessary, not primarily in order to please God, to obey Him and thus to work out our salvation, but in order to strengthen our “_fides specialis_” in our own salvation, which then does all the needful.[96] It is necessary, as Luther says elsewhere, in order to provide a man with a reassuring token of the reality of his “_fides specialis_”; he may for instance be tempted to doubt whether he possesses this saving gift of God, though the very doubt already spells its destruction; hence let him look at his works; if they are good, they will tell him at the dread hour of death: Yes, you have the “faith.”[97] Strangely enough he also takes the Bible passages which deal with works performed under grace as referring to faith, e.g. “If thou wilt enter into life keep the commandments” (Mt. xix. 17) and, “By good works make your calling and election sure” (2 Peter i. 10). The latter exhortation of St. Peter signifies according to Luther’s exegesis: “Take care to strengthen your faith,” from the works “you may see whether you have the faith.”[98] According to St. Peter you are to seek in works merely “a sign and token that the faith is there”; his meaning is not that you “are to do good works in order that you may secure your election.” “We are not to fancy that thereby we can become pious.”[99]

This thought is supplemented by another frequent exhortation of Luther’s which concerns the consciousness of sin persisting even after “justification.” The sense of sin has, according to him, no other purpose than to strengthen us in our trustful clinging to Christ, for as no one’s faith is perfect we are ever called upon to fortify it, in which we are aided by this anxiety concerning sin: “Though we still feel sin within us this is merely to drive us to faith and make our faith stronger, so that despite our feeling we may accept the Word and cling with all our heart and conscience to Christ alone,” in other words, to follow Luther’s own example amidst the pangs of conscience that had plunged him into “death and hell.”[100] “Thus does faith, against all feeling and reason, lead us quietly through sin, through death and through hell.” “The more faith waxes, the more the feeling diminishes, and vice versa. Sins still persist within us, e.g. pride, avarice, anger and so on and so forth, but only in order to move us to faith.” He refrains from adducing from Holy Scripture any proof in support of so strange a theory, but proceeds to sing a pæan on faith “in order that faith may increase from day to day until man at length becomes a Christian through and through, keeps the real Sabbath, and creeps, skin, hair and all, into Christ.”[101] The Christian, by accustoming himself to trust in the pardoning grace of Christ and by fortifying himself in this faith, becomes at length “one paste with Christ.”[102]

Hence the “_fides specialis_” as just explained, seems to be the chief ethical aim of life.[103] This is why it is so necessary to strengthen it by works, and so essential to beat down all anxieties of conscience.

Here Luther is speaking from his own inward experience. He says: “Thus must the conscience be lulled to rest and made content, thus must all the waves and billows subside.... Our sins towered mountain-high about us and would fain have made us despair, but in the end they are calmed, and settle down, and soon are seen no longer.”[104] It was only very late in his life that Luther reached a state of comparative calm, a calm moreover best to be compared with the utter weariness of a man worn out by fatigue.[105]

_Luther’s Last Sermons at Eisleben on the Great Questions of Morality_

In the four sermons he preached at Eisleben—the last he ever delivered—Luther gives utterance to certain leading thoughts quite peculiar to himself regarding morality and the “_fides specialis_.” These utterances, under the circumstances to be regarded as the ripest fruit of his reflection, must be taken in conjunction with other statements made by him in his old age. They illustrate even more clearly than what has gone before the cardinal point of his teaching now under discussion, which, even more than any other, has had the bad luck to be so often wrongly presented by combatants on either side.

Luther’s four sermons at Eisleben, which practically constitute his Last Will and Testament of his views on faith and good works, were delivered before a great concourse of people. A note on one delivered on Feb. 2, 1546, tells us: “So great was the number of listeners collected from the surrounding neighbourhood, market-places and villages, that even Paul himself were he to come preaching could hardly expect a larger audience.”[106] For the reports of his sermons we are indebted to the pen of his pupil and companion on his journey, Johann Aurifaber.[107] From their contents we can see how much Luther was accustomed to adapt himself to his hearers and to the conditions prevailing in the district where he preached. The great indulgence then extended to the Jews in that territory of the Counts of Mansfeld; the religious scepticism shared or favoured by certain people at the Court; and, in particular, the moral licence—which, taking its cue from Luther’s teaching, argued: “Well and good, I will sin lustily since sin has been taken away and can no longer damn me,” as he himself relates in the third sermon,[108]—all this lends colour to the background of these addresses delivered at Eisleben. In particular the third sermon, on the parable of the cockle (Mt. xiii. 24-30), is well worth notice. It speaks of the weeds which infest the Church and of those which spring up in ourselves; in the latter connection Luther expatiates on the leading principles of his ethics, on faith, sin and good works, and concludes by telling the Christian how he must live and “grow in faith and the spirit.”[109] One cannot but acknowledge the force with which the preacher, who was even then suffering acutely, speaks on behalf of good works and the struggle against sin. What he says is, however, tainted by his own peculiar views.

“God forgives sin in that He does not impute it.... But from this it does not follow that you are without sin, although it is already forgiven; for in yourself you feel no hearty desire to obey God, to go to the sacrament or to hear God’s Word. Do you perhaps imagine that this is no sin, or mere child’s play?” Hence, he concludes, we must pray daily “for forgiveness and never cease to fight against ourselves and not give the rein to our sinful inclinations and lusts, nor obey them contrary to the dictates of conscience, but rather weaken and deaden sin ever more and more; for sin must not merely be forgiven but verily swept away and destroyed.”[110]

He exhorts his hearers to struggle against sin, whether original or actual sin, and does so in words which place the “_fides specialis_” in the first place and impose the obligation of a painful and laborious warfare which contrasts strongly with the spontaneous joy of the just in doing what is good, elsewhere taken for granted by Luther.

“Our doctrine as to how we are to deal with our own uncleanness and sin is briefly this: Believe in Jesus Christ and your sins are forgiven; then avoid and withstand sin, wage a hand-to-hand fight with it, do not allow it its way, do not hate or cheat your neighbour,” etc.[111]

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

Elsewhere too he says, “Good works are performed by faith and out of our heartfelt joy that we have through Christ obtained the remission of our sins.... Interiorly everything is sweet and delicious, and hence we do and suffer all things gladly.”[112] And again, just as we eat and drink naturally, so also to do what is good comes naturally to the believer; the word is fulfilled: Only believe and you will do all things of your own accord;[113] as a good tree must bring forth good fruit and cannot do otherwise, so, where there is faith, good works there must also be.[114] He speaks of this as a “_necessitas immutabilitatis_” and as a “_necessitas gratuita_,” no less necessary than that the sun must shine. In 1536 he even declared in an instruction to Melanchthon that it was not right to say that a believer _should_ do good works, because he can’t help performing them; who thinks of ordering “the sun to shine, a good tree to bring forth good fruit, or three and seven to make ten?”[115]

* * * * *

Of this curious idealism, first noticed in his “Von der Freyheyt eynes Christen Menschen,” we find traces in Luther till the very end of his life.[116] In later life, however, he either altered it a little or was less prone to insist on it in and out of season. This was due to his unfortunate experiences to the contrary; as a matter of fact faith failed to produce the effects expected, and only in rare instances and at its very best was it as fruitful as Luther wished. The truth is he had overrated it, obviously misled by his enthusiasm for his alleged discovery of the power of faith for justification.

He was also fond of saying—and of this assurance we find an echo in his last sermon—that a true and lively faith should govern even our feeling, and as we are so little conscious of such a feeling and impulse to what is good, it follows that we but seldom have this faith, i.e. this lively certainty of salvation.

When a Christian is lazy, starts thinking he possesses everything and refuses to grow and increase, then “neither has he earnestness nor a true faith.” Even the just are conscious of sin (i.e. original sin), but they resist it; but where there is a distaste for the beloved Word of God there can be “no real faith.” Luther, to the detriment of his ethics, was disposed to relegate faith too much to the region of feeling and personal experience; this, however, he could scarcely avoid since his was a “_fides specialis_” in one’s own personal salvation. True religion, in his opinion, is ever to rejoice and be glad by reason of the forgiveness of sins and cheerfully to run the way of God’s service; this idea is prominent in his third sermon at Eisleben. The right faith “is toothsome and lively; it consoles and gladdens.”[117] “It bores its way into the heart and brings comfort and cheer”; “we feel glad and ready for anything.”[118]

But because the actual facts and his experience failed to tally with his views, Luther, as already explained, had recourse to a convenient expedient; towards the close of his life we frequently hear him speaking as follows: Unfortunately we have not yet got this faith, for “we do not possess in our hearts, and cannot acquire, that joy which we would gladly feel”; thus we become conscious how the “old Adam, sin and our sinful nature, still persist within us; this it is that forces you and me to fail in our faith.”[119] “Even great saints do not always feel that joy and might, and we others, owing to our unbelief, cannot attain to this exalted consolation and strength ... and even though we would gladly believe, yet we cannot make our faith as strong as we ought.”[120] He vouchsafes no answer to the objection: But why then set up aims that cannot be reached; why make the starting-point consist in a “faith” of which man, owing to original sin, can only attain to a shadow, except perhaps in the rare instances of martyrs, or divinely endowed saints?

Luther, when insisting so strongly that good works must follow “faith,” as a moral incentive to such works also refers incidentally to our duty of gratitude and love in return for this faith bestowed on us.

Thus in the Eisleben sermons he invites the believer, the better to arouse himself to good works, to address God in this way: “Heavenly Father, there is no doubt that Thou hast given Thy Son for the forgiveness of my sins. Therefore will I thank God for this during my whole life, and praise and exalt Him, and no longer steal, practise usury or be miserly, proud or jealous.... If you rightly believe,” he continues, “that God has sent you His Son, you will, like a fruitful tree, bring forth finer and finer blossoms the older you grow.”[121] In what follows he is at pains to show that good works will depend on the constant putting into practice of the “faith”; the Justification that is won by the “_fides specialis_” is insufficient, in spite of all the comfort it brings; rather we must be mindful of the saying of St. Paul: “If by the spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh you shall live.” “But if your flesh won’t do it, then leave it to the Holy Ghost.”[122]

The motive for good works which Luther here advances, viz. “To thank God, to praise and extol Him,”[123] is worthy of special attention; it is the only real one he furnishes either here or elsewhere. Owing to the love of God which arises in the heart at the thought of His benefits we must rouse ourselves to serve Him. The idea is a grand one and had always appealed to the noblest spirits in the Church before Luther’s day. It is, however, a very different thing to represent this motive of perfect love as the exclusive and only true incentive to doing what is pleasing to God. Yet throughout Luther’s teaching this is depicted as the general, necessary and only motive. “From faith and the Holy Ghost necessarily comes the love of God, and together with it love of our neighbour and every good work.”[124] When I realise by faith that God has sent His Son for my sake, etc., says Luther, in his Church-Postils, “I cannot do otherwise than love Him in return, do His behests and keep His commandments.”[125] This love, however, as he expressly states, must be altogether unselfish, i.e. must be what the Old Testament calls a “whole-hearted love,” which in turn “presupposes perfect self-denial.”[126]

It is plain that we have here an echo of the mysticism which had at one time held him in thrall;[127] but his extravagant idealism was making demands which ordinary Christians either never, or only very seldom, could attain to.

The olden Church set up before the faithful a number of motives adapted to rouse them to do good works; such motives she found in the holy fear of God and His chastisements, in the hope of temporal or everlasting reward; in the need of making satisfaction for sin committed, or, finally, for those who had advanced furthest, in the love of God, whether as the most perfect Being and deserving of all our love, or on account of the benefits received from Him; she invited people to weld all these various motives into one strong bond; those whose dispositions were less exalted she strove to animate with the higher motives of love, so far as the weakness of human nature allowed. Luther, on the contrary, in the case of the righteous already assured of salvation, not only excluded every motive other than love, but also, quite unjustifiably, refused to hear of any love save that arising from gratitude for the redemption and the faith. “To love God,” in his eyes, “is nothing more than to be grateful for the benefit bestowed” (through the redemption).[128] And, again, he imputes such power to this sadly curtailed motive of love, or rather gratitude, that it is his only prescription, even for those who are so cold-hearted that the Word of God “comes in at one ear and goes out at the other,” and who hear of the death of Christ with as little devotion as though they had been told, “that the Turks had beaten the Sultan, or some other such tit-bit of news.”[129]

_Some notable Omissions of Luther’s in the above Sermons on Morality_

Hitherto we have been considering what Luther had to say on the question of faith and morality in his last sermons. It remains to point out what he did not say, and what, on account of his own doctrines, it was impossible for him to say; as descriptive of his ethics the latter is perhaps of even greater importance.

In the first place he says nothing of the supernatural life, which, according to the ancient teaching of the Church, begins with the infusion of sanctifying grace in the soul of the man who is justified. As we know, he would not hear of this new and vital principle in the righteous, which indeed was incompatible with his theory of the mere non-imputation of sin. Further, he also ignores the so-called “infused virtues” whence, with the help of actual grace, springs the new motive force of the man received into the Divine sonship. By his denial of the complete renewal of the inner man he placed himself in opposition to the ancient witnesses of Christendom, as Protestant historians of dogma now admit.[130]

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

Thirdly, he does not give its due to man’s freedom in co-operating in the doing of what is good; it is true he does not expressly deny it, but it was his usual practice in his addresses to the people to say as little as possible of his doctrine of the enslaved will.[131] Along with faith, however, he extols the Holy Ghost. “Leave it to the Holy Ghost!” Indeed faith itself, and the strong feeling which should accompany it, are exclusively the work of the Holy Ghost. It is the Holy Ghost alone Who believes, and feels, and works in man, according to Luther’s teaching elsewhere. This action of God alone is something different from actual grace. In the instructions he gave to Melanchthon in 1536 concerning justification and works,[132] Luther entirely ignores any action on man’s part as a free agent, and yet here we have the “clearest expression” of his doctrine of how good works follow on justification. The Protestant author of “Luthers Theologie in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung” remarks of this work (and the same applies to the above sermons and other statements): “Luther is always desirous, on the one hand of depreciating man’s claim to personal worth and merit, and on the other by his testimony to God’s mercy in Christ, of furthering faith and the impulses and desires which spring from faith and the spirit; here, too, he says nothing of any choice as open to man between the Divine impulses working within him and those of his sinful nature.”[133]

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

The best and theologically most convincing reply to the objection of which he spoke: “Well and good, then I shall sin lustily,” etc. would have been: No, a good moral life is essential for salvation! The strongest Bible texts would have been there to back such a statement, and, to his powerful eloquence, it should have proved an attractive task to crush his frivolous opponents by so weighty an argument. Yet we find never a word concerning the necessity of good works for salvation, but merely an account of the wonders worked by faith of its own accord alone _after_ it has laid hold on the heart. This is readily understood, if justification is purely passive and effected solely by the Spirit of God which enkindles faith and, with it, covers over sin as with a shield, then the very being of the life of faith must be mere passivity, and there can be no more question of attaining to salvation by means of good deeds performed with the aid of grace. In the instruction for Melanchthon mentioned above we find at the end this clear query: “Is this saying true: Righteousness by works is necessary for salvation?” Luther answers by a distinction: “Not as if works operate or bring about salvation,” he says, “but rather they are present together with the faith that operates righteousness; just as of necessity I must be present in order to be saved.” This distinction, however, leaves the question just where it was before. He concludes his remarks on this vital matter with a jest on the purely external and fortuitous presence of works in the man received into eternal life: “I too shall be in at the death, said the rascal when he was about to be hanged and many people were hurrying to see the scene.”[134]

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

The sin that still dwells within us “forces” man to prevent faith and works coming to their own.[135] For “he is not yet without sin, though he has the forgiveness of sins and is sanctified by the Holy Ghost.” In consequence of the “foulness” within him “the longer he lives the worse he gets.” “We cannot get rid of our sinful body.”[136] For this reason even the “best minds” so often are indifferent to eternal life. On account of the evil taint in our flesh we are unable to rise as high as we ought.[137] But if original sin and its workings were declared really sinful in man (for even the very motions against “heartfelt pleasure” in God’s service are, so we are told, “sins”[138]), then it is no wonder that Luther should have been confronted with the question of which he speaks: “If sin be in me, how then can I be pleasing to God?”—a question which formerly could not have been asked of those whose original sin had been washed away in baptism. The teaching of the olden Church had been, that original sin was blotted out by baptism, but that the inclination to evil persisted in man to his last breath, though without any fault on his part so long as consent was lacking.[139]

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

Further, according to Luther, our constant exercise of ourselves in faith and our “rubbing” ourselves against sin was finally to lead “not merely to our sins being forgiven but to their being altogether rooted up and swept away; for your shabby, smelly body could not enter heaven without first being cleansed and beautified.”[140] Taking for granted his mystic assumption that sinful concupiscence can at last be “swept away,” he insists on our continuing hopefully “to amend by faith and prayer our weakness and to fight against it until such a change takes place in our sinful body that sin no longer exists therein,”[141] though, in his opinion, this cannot entirely be until we reach heaven. Yet experience, had he but opened his eyes to it, here once again contradicted him. The “_fomes peccati_,” as the Catholic Church rightly teaches, cannot be extinguished so long as man is on this earth, though it may be damped, and, by the practice of what is right and the use of the means of grace, be rendered harmless to our moral life. The Church expected nothing unreasonable from man, though her moral standards were of the highest. Luther, however, by abandoning the Church’s ethics, came to teach a strange mixture of perverted, unworkable idealism and all too great indulgence towards human frailty.

_Luther’s Vacillation between the Two Faiths, Old and New, in the Matter of Morality and the Assurance of Salvation_

Many discordant utterances, betraying his uncertainty and his struggles, have been bequeathed to us by Luther regarding the main questions of morality and as to how we may insure salvation. First we have his statements with regard to the importance of morality in God’s sight.

In 1537 in a Disputation on June 1 he denounced the thesis, “Good works are necessary for salvation.”[142] In the same way, in a sermon of 1535, he asserted that it was by no means necessary for us to perform good works “in order to blot out sin, to overcome death and win heaven, but merely for the profit and assistance of our neighbour.” “Our works,” he there says, “can only shape what concerns our temporal life and being”; higher than this they cannot rise.[143]

Yet, when thus degrading works, he had again and again to struggle within his own heart against the faith of the ancient Church concerning the merit of good deeds. Especially was this the case when he considered the “texts which demand a good life on account of the eternal reward,”[144] for instance, “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments” (Mt. xix. 17), or “Lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven” (_ib._, vi. 20). With them he deals in a sermon of 1522. The eternal reward, he here says, follows the works because it is a result of the faith which itself is the cause of the works. But the believer must not “look to the reward,” or trouble about it. Why then does God promise a reward?—In order that “all may know what the natural result of a good life will be.” Yet he also admits a certain anxiety on the part of the pious Christian to be certain of his reward, and the favourable effect of such a certainty on the good man’s will.[145] Here he exhorts his listeners; “that you be content to know and be assured that this indeed will be the result,” whilst in another sermon of that same year he describes as follows the promise of eternal life as the reward of works: “It is an incentive and inducement that makes us zealous in piety and in the service and praise of God.... That God should guide us so kindly makes us esteem the more His Fatherly Will and the Mercy of Christ”—but on no account “must we be good as if for the sake of the reward.”[146] He also quotes incidentally Mt. xix. 29, where our Lord says that all who leave home, brethren, etc. for His name’s sake “shall receive a hundredfold and shall possess life everlasting”; also Heb. x. 35 concerning the “great reward” that awaits those who lose not their confidence. Such statements, he refuses, however, to see referred to salvation, which will be the equal portion of all true believers, but, in his arbitrary fashion, explains them as denoting some extra ornament of glory.[147]

* * * * *

“Good works will be present wherever faith is.” As this supposition, a favourite one with Luther from early days, fails to verify itself in practice, and as the expedients he proposed to meet the new difficulty are scattered throughout his writings, an admirer in recent times ventured to sum up these elements into a system under the following headings: “Faulty morality is a proof of a faulty faith.” “The fact of morality being present proves the presence of faith.” “Moral indolence induces loss of faith.” “Zeal for morality causes faith to increase.”[148] The true explanation would therefore seem always to be in the assumption of a want of “faith,” i.e. of a lack of that absolute certainty of personal salvation which should regulate all religious life,[149] in other words moral failings should be held to prove the absence of this saving certainty.

Seen in this light good works are of importance, as the outward demonstration that a person possesses the “_fides specialis_,” and in this wise alone are they a guarantee of everlasting happiness. They prove “before the world and before his own conscience” that a Christian really has the “faith.” This is what Luther expressly teaches in his Church-Postils: “Therefore hold fast to this, that a man who is inwardly a Christian is justified before God solely by faith and without any works; but outwardly and publicly, before the people and to himself, he is justified by works, i.e. he becomes known to others as, and certain in himself that, he is inwardly just, believing and pious. Thus you may term one an open or outward justification and the other an inward justification.”[150] Hence Luther’s certainty of salvation, however strong it may be, still requires to be tested by something else as to whether it is the true “faith” deserving of God’s compassion; for “it is quite possible for a man never to doubt God’s mercy towards him though all the while he does not really possess it”;[151] according to Luther, namely, there is such a thing as a fictitious faith.

In Luther’s opinion “faith” was a grasping of something actually there. Hence if God’s mercy was not there, then neither was there any “faith.” Accordingly, an “unwarrantable assurance of salvation” was not at all impossible, and works served as a means of detecting it. Walther, to whom we owe our summary, does not, it is true, prove the existence of such a state of “unwarrantable assurance” by any direct quotation from Luther’s writings, and, indeed, it might be difficult to find any definite statement to this effect, seeing that Luther was chary of speaking of any failure in the personal certainty of salvation, on which alone, exclusive of works, he based the whole work of justification.

And yet, as Luther himself frequently says, moods and feelings are no guarantee of true faith; what is required are the works, which, like good fruit, always spring from a good tree.—So strongly, in spite of all his predilection for faith alone, is he impelled again and again to have recourse to works. In many passages they tend to become something more than mere signs confirmatory of faith. We need not examine here how far his statements concerning faith and works are consistent, and to what extent the sane Catholic teaching continued to influence him.

What is remarkable, however, is, that, in his commendable efforts to urge the performance of works in order to curtail the pernicious results of his doctrine, Luther comes to attribute a saving action to “faith,” only on condition that, out of love of God, we “strive” against sin. In one of his last sermons at Eisleben he tells his hearers: Sins are forgiven by faith and “are not imputed _so far as you set yourself to fight against them_, and learn to repeat the Our Father diligently ... and to grow in strength as you grow in age; and you must be at pains to exercise your faith by resisting the sins that remain in you ... in short, you must become stronger, humbler, more patient and believe more firmly.”[152] The conditional “so far as” furnishes a key which has to be used in many other passages where works are demanded as well as faith. Faith, there, is real and wholesome “in so far as” it produces works: “For we too admit it and have always taught it, better and more forcibly than they [the Papists], that we must both preach and perform works, and that they must follow the faith, and, that, where they do not follow there the faith is not as it should be.”[153]

Nor does he merely say that works of charity must follow eventually, but that charity must be infused by the Spirit of God together with faith of which it is the fruit.

“For though faith makes us righteous and pure, yet it cannot be without love, and the Spirit must infuse love together with faith. In short, where there is true faith, there the Holy Ghost is also present, and where the Holy Ghost is, there love and all good things must also be.... Love is a consequence or fruit of the Spirit which comes to us wrapped up in the faith.”[154] “Charity is so closely bound up [with faith and hope] that it can never be parted from faith where this is true faith, and as little as there can be fire without heat and smoke, so little can faith exist without charity.”[155] From gratitude (as we have heard him state above, p. 26) the man who is assured of salvation must be “well disposed towards God and keep His commandments.” But if he be “sweetly disposed towards God” this must “show itself in all charity.”

Taking the words at their face value we might find in these and similar statements on charity something reminiscent of the Catholic doctrine of a faith working through love.[156] But though this is what Luther should logically have arrived at, he was in reality always kept far from it by his idea both of faith and of imputation. It should be noted that he was fond of taking shelter behind the assertion, that his “faith” also included, or was accompanied by, charity. He was obliged to do this in self-defence against the objections of certain Evangelicals—who rushed to conclusions he would not accept—or of Catholic opponents. Indeed, in order to pacify the doubters, he even went so far as to say, that love preceded the “faith” he taught, and that “faith” itself was simply a work like any other work done for the fulfilling of the commandments.

It was in this sense that he wrote in the “Sermon von den guten Werken,” composed at the instance of his prudent friend Spalatin for the Duke of Saxony: “Such trust and faith brings with it charity and hope; indeed, if we look at the matter aright, charity comes first, or at least simultaneously with faith. For I should not care to trust God unless I believed He would be kindly and gracious to me, whereby I am well disposed towards Him, trust Him heartily and perform all that is good in His sight.” In the same connection he characterises “faith” as a “work of the first Commandment,” and as a “true keeping of that command,” and as the “first, topmost and best work from which all others flow.”[157] It might seem, though this is but apparent, that he had actually come to acknowledge the reality and merit of man’s works, in the teeth of his denial of free-will and of the possibility of meriting.

Of charity as involved in faith he wrote in a similar strain in 1519 to Johann Silvius Egranus, who at that time still belonged to his party, but was already troubled with scruples concerning the small regard shown for ethical motives and the undue stress laid on faith alone: “I do not separate justifying faith from charity,” Luther told him, “on the contrary we believe because God, in Whom we believe, pleases us and is loved by us.” To him all this was quite clear and plain, but the new-comers who had busied themselves with faith, hope and charity “understood not one of the three.”[158]

We may recall how the enquiring mind of Egranus was by no means entirely satisfied by this explanation. In 1534 he published a bitter attack on the Lutheran doctrine of works, though he never returned more than half-way from Lutheranism to the olden Church.[159]

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

Many truly saw therein an alarming abasement of the moral standard and accordingly returned to the doctrine of their fathers. As the ideal to be aimed at throughout life the Church had set up before them progress in the love of God, encouraging them to put this love in practice by fidelity to the duties of their calling and by a humble and confident trust in God’s Fatherly promises rather than in any perilous “_fides specialis_.”

In previous ages Christian perfection had rightly been thought to consist in the development of the moral virtues, particularly of charity, the queen of all the others. Now, however, Luther represented “the consoling faith in the forgiveness of sins as the sum of Christian perfection.”[160] According to him the “real essence of personal Christianity lies in the confidence of the justified sinner that he shares the paternal love of the Almighty of which he has been assured by the work and person of Jesus Christ.” In this sense alone can he be said to have “rediscovered Christianity” as a religion. We are told that “the essence of Lutheran Christianity is to be found in Luther’s reduction of practical Christianity to the doctrine of salvation.”[161] He “altered the ideal of religious perfection as no other Christian before his day had ever done.” The “revulsion” in moral ideals which this necessarily involved spelt “a huge decline.”[162]

George Wicel, who, after having long been an adherent of Lutheranism, broke away from it in consequence of the moral results referred to, wrote, in 1533, with much bitterness in the defence he addressed to Justus Jonas: “Amongst you one hears of nothing but of remitting and forgiving; you don’t seem to see that your seductions sow more sins than ever you can take away. Your people, it is true, are so constituted that they will only hear of the forgiving and never of the retaining of sin (John xx. 23); evidently they stand more in need of being loosed than of being bound. Ah, you comfortable theologians! You are indeed sharp-sighted enough in all this business, for were you to bind as often as you loose, you, the ringleaders of the party, would soon find yourselves all alone with your faith, and might then withdraw into some hole to weep for the loss of your authority and congregation.” “Ah, you rascals, what a fine Evangelical mode of life have you wrought with your preachment on grace.”[163]

5. Abasement of Practical Christianity

To follow up the above statement emanating from a Protestant source, concerning the “huge decline” in moral ideals and practical Christianity involved in Luther’s work, we shall go on to consider how greatly he did in point of fact narrow and restrict ethical effort in comparison with what was required by the ethics of earlier days. In so doing he was following the psychological impulse discernible even in the first beginnings of his dislike for the austerity of his Order and the precepts of the Church.

_Lower Moral Standards_

1. The only works of obligation in the service of God are faith, praise and thanksgiving. God, he says, demands only our faith, our praise and our gratitude. Of our works He has no need.[164] He restricts our “deeds towards God” to the praise-offering or thank-offering for the good received, and to the prayer-offering “or Our Father, against the evil and badness we would wish to be rid of.”[165] This service is the duty of each individual Christian and is practised in common in Divine worship. The latter is fixed and controlled with the tacit consent of the congregation by the ministers who represent the people; in this we find the trace of Luther’s innate aversion to any law or obligation which leads him to avoid anything savouring of legislative action.[166]

In the preface to his instructions to the Visitors in 1528 he declares, for instance, that the rules laid down were not meant to “found new Papal Decretals”; they were rather to be taken as a “history of and witness to our faith” and not as “strict commands.”[167] This well expresses his antipathy to the visible Catholic Church, her hierarchy and her so-called man-made ordinances for public worship.

Since, to his mind, it is impossible to offer God anything but love, thanksgiving and prayer, it follows that, firstly, the Eucharistic Sacrifice falls, and, with it, all the sacrifices made to the greater glory of God by self-denial and abnegation, obedience or bodily penances, together with all those works—practised in imitation of Christ by noble souls—done over and above the bounden duties of each one’s calling. He held that it was wrong to say of such sacrifices, made by contrite and loving hearts, that they were both to God’s glory and to our own advantage, or to endeavour to justify them by arguing that: Whoever does not do great things for God must expect small recompense. Among the things which fell before him were: vows, processions, pilgrimages, veneration of relics and of the Saints, ecclesiastical blessings and sacramentals, not to speak of holy days and prescribed fasts. With good reason can one speak of a “huge decline.”

He justifies as follows his radical opposition to the Catholic forms of Divine worship: “The only good we can do in God’s service is to praise and thank Him, in which in fact the only true worship of God consists.... If any other worship of God be proposed to you, know that it is error and deception.”[168] “It is a rank scandal that the Papists should encourage people to toil for God with works so as thereby to expiate their sins and secure grace.... If you wish to believe aright and really to lay hold on Christ, you must discard all works whereby you may think you labour for God; all such are nothing but scandals leading you away from Christ and from God; in God’s sight no work is of any value except Christ’s own; this you must leave to toil for you in God’s sight; you yourself must perform no other work for Him than to believe that Christ does His work for you.”[169]

In the same passage he attempts to vindicate this species of Quietism with the help of some recollections from his own earlier career, viz. by the mystic principle which had at one time ruled him: “You must be blind and lame, deaf and dead, poor and leprous, or else you will be scandalised in Christ. This is what it means to know Christ aright and to accept Him; this is to believe as befits a true Christian.”[170]

2. “All other works, apart from faith, must be directed towards our neighbour.”[171] As we know, besides that faith, gratitude and love which are God’s due, Luther admits no good works but those of charity towards our neighbour. By our faith we give to God all that He asks of us. “After this, think only of doing for your neighbour what Christ has done for you, and let all your works and all your life go to the service of your neighbour.”[172]—God, he says elsewhere, asks only for our thank-offering; “look upon Me as a Gracious God and I am content”; “thereafter serve your neighbour, freely and for nothing.”[173] Good works in his eyes are only “good when they are profitable to others and not to yourself.” Indeed he goes so far as to assert: “If you find yourself performing a work for God, or for His Saints, or for yourself and not alone for your neighbour, know that the work is not good.”[174] The only explanation of such sentences, as already hinted, is to be found in his passionate polemics against the worship and the pious exercises of the Catholics. It is true that such practices were sullied at that time by certain blemishes, owing to the abuses rampant in the Church; yet the Catholic could confidently answer in self-defence in the words Luther proceeds to put on his lips: Such “works are spiritual and profitable to the soul of our neighbour, and God thereby is served and propitiated and His Grace obtained.”

Luther rudely retorts: “You lie in your throat; God is served not by works but by faith; faith must do everything that is to be done as between God and ourselves.” That the priests and monks should vaunt their religious exercises as spiritual treasures, he brands as a “Satanic lie.” “The works of the Papists such as organ-playing, chanting, vesting, ringing, smoking [incensation], sprinkling, pilgriming and fasting, etc., are doubtless fine and many, grand and long, broad and thick works, but about them there is nothing good, useful or profitable.”

3. “Know that there are no good works but such as God has commanded.” What, apart from faith, makes a work a good one is solely God’s express command. Luther, while finding fault with the self-chosen works of the Catholics, points to the Ten Commandments as summing up every good work willed by God. “There used to be ecclesiastical precepts which were to supersede the Decalogue.” “The commandments of the Church were invented and set up by men in addition to and beyond God’s Word. Luther therefore deals with the true worship of God in the light of the Ten Commandments.”[175] As for the Evangelical Counsels so solemnly enacted in the New Testament, viz. the striving after a perfection which is not of obligation, Luther, urged on by his theory that only what is actually commanded partakes of the nature of a good work, came very near branding them as an invention of the Papists.

They have “made the Counsels twelve” in number,[176] he says, “and twist the Gospel as they please.” They have split the Gospel into two, into “_Consilia et præcepta_.” “Christ,” so he teaches, “gave only one Counsel in the whole of the Gospel, viz. that of chastity, which even a layman can preserve, assuming him to have the grace.” He sneers at the Pope and the Doctors because they had established not only a clerical order which should be superior to the laity, but also an order of the counsels the duty of whose members it was to portray the Evangelical perfection by the keeping of the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. “By this the common Christian life and faith became like flat, sour beer; everyone rubbed his eyes, despised the commandments and ran after the counsels. And after a good while they at last discovered man-made ordinances in the shape of habits, foods, chants, lessons, tonsures, etc., and thus God’s Law went the way of faith, both being blotted out and forgotten, so that, henceforth, to be perfect and to live according to the counsels means to wear a black, white, grey or coloured cowl, to bawl in church, wear a tonsure and to abstain from eggs, meat, butter, etc.”[177]

In the heat of his excitement he even goes so far as to deny the necessity of any service in the churches, because God demands only the praise and thanks of the heart, and “this may be given ... equally well in the home, in the field, or anywhere else.” “If they should force any other service upon you, know that it is error and deception; just as hitherto the world has been crazy, with its houses, churches and monasteries set aside for the worship of God, and its vestments of gold and silk, etc. ... which expenditure had better been used to help our neighbour, if it was really meant for God.”[178]

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