Chapter XXXVIII: End of Religious Freedom. the Church-Unseen and the Visible Church-By-Law (2)

It is true that this has been confidently asserted by Protestants, but the text of this sermon, known only through Aurifaber’s Notes, does not justify such an inference.[926] In it the preacher is not treating of the attitude of the Christian authorities towards heresy, but is only showing how the faithful and the preachers must behave, surrounded as they are by wicked folk, by Anabaptists and sectarians. The occasion for speaking of this was supplied by the Sunday Gospel of the Tares, Matt. xiii. 24-30, which grow up together with the wheat in God’s field, and which the Lord wishes to be left undisturbed until the Day of Judgment. Hence he explains how this must be understood, the local conditions probably supplying him with a particular reason for doing so, seeing that, in the County of Mansfeld, there must still have been some Catholics and that the Jews stood in favour. The greater part of the Sermon on the Tares is devoted to describing the passions and lusts which Christians must fight against in their own hearts with patience and perseverance. It is only towards the end that he speaks of the wickedness rampant in the world. He refutes the opinion of those, who “would have a Church in which there is no evil but where all are prudent and pious, and pure and holy”; thus “the Anabaptists, Münzer and such like, wish to root out and put to death everything that is not holy.” Hence “how are we to suffer the heretics and yet not to suffer them? How am I to act? If I tear up or root out the tares in one place then I spoil the wheat [according to the Parable], and the weeds will still grow up again elsewhere. Thus if I root out one heretic, yet the same devil-sown seed springs up again in ten other places.” Hence we must look to it that we do not make matters worse by violence and suppression. “Papists and Jews will ever be with us.” “You will not succeed in this world in entirely separating the heretics and false Christians from the just.” “Look to it that you remain master in your own household; see to it, you preachers, parsons and hearers [it is only to these that he is addressing himself, not to the State authorities], that heretics and seditious men, such as Münzer was, do not rule or dominate; grumble in a corner, that indeed they may do, but that they should mount the rostrum, get into the pulpit or go up to the altar, that, so far as in you lies, you must not allow.” Care must be taken that the “pulpit and the Sacrament are kept undefiled.” “By human might and power we cannot root them out, or make them different. For, in this point, they are often far superior to us, can get themselves a following, draw the masses to them, and, on the top of it all, they have on their side the prince of this world, viz. the devil.”

The main thing therefore is that the heretics “should not rule in our Churches.”

But what are we to do against the tares, against the Papists and Sophists, against Cologne, Louvain and the devil’s other thistles? Of boils it holds good: “Let them swell until they burst. So too it is in secular and domestic government: Where [whether in the Town Council or among the servants] we cannot get rid of the wicked without harm or detriment, there we must put up with them until the time is ripe.”

In this much-discussed Sermon on the Tares Luther is very far from wishing to give the authorities directions as to how to treat the sectarians. On the contrary he makes it plain that some other line of action than that described by him must be followed even by the faithful and the preachers, and much more so by the Christian authorities, whenever the heretics come out of their “corner” and try to climb into the pulpit or mount the altar. What was to be done that the pulpit and the Sacrament might remain undefiled, he had already sufficiently explained elsewhere. Naturally, a sermon on the Gospel which tells us to leave the Tares until the harvest was scarcely the place for Luther to expound his severer theories on the treatment to be meted out to unbelievers and misbelievers, so that his silence here cannot be taken as a repudiation of the measures for which he so long had stood. At the close of the next sermon, the last he was ever to preach, addressing himself to the nobility, he speaks very harshly of the Jews. “If they refuse to be converted, then, as blasphemers, they deserve that we should not suffer or endure them among us.” “You Lords ought not to tolerate but rather expel them.” This duty he bases on his usual principle: “Were I to tolerate the man who dishonours, blasphemes and curses Christ my Master, I should be making myself a partaker in the sins of others.”

His system of coercing and punishing heretics he certainly never repudiated.

_Compulsory Attendance at Church_

“Facts have shown,” Luther wrote to Spalatin in 1527 of the conditions in his new churches, “that men despise the Evangel and insist on being compelled by the law and the sword.”[927] He was very anxious to make attendance at the Lutheran preaching a matter of obligation.

According to his earlier statements, attendance at the preaching had been voluntary, for the matter of the sermons was to be judged by the hearers, in order that they might avoid what was harmful; his subsequent practice of driving all to the preaching made an end of this freedom, or rather duty. Through the authorities, so far as his influence went, he insisted on this principle: “Even though they do not believe they must nevertheless, for the sake of the Ten Commandments, be driven to the preaching, so that they may at least learn the outward work of obedience.” He wrote this at a time when he had already justified such coercion at Wittenberg, viz. on Aug. 26, 1529, in a letter to the “strict and steadfast” Joseph Levin Metzsch of Mila, who was shortly after appointed by the Elector to take part in the Visitation.[928] Instructions sent by Luther on the same day to Thomas Löscher, pastor of the same locality, are to the same effect (“_cogendi sunt ad conciones … audiant etiam inviti_”).[929] The orders of the authorities concerning public worship were represented in the Visitation Rules for the pastors (1528) as universally binding: “All secular authority is to be obeyed because the secular powers are not ordering a new worship but enforcing peace and charity.”[930] The Preface of the Smaller Catechism (1531) was on the same lines. “Although we neither can nor should force anyone into the faith, yet the masses must be held and driven to it in order that they may know what is right or wrong in those among whom they live.”[931]

In the same year Luther advised Margrave George of Brandenburg to compel the people to attend the Catechism “at the behest of the secular authority,” for, since they “are Christians and wish to be so called,” it was only fitting “they should be obliged to learn what a Christian ought to know.” The Ansbach preachers embodied this requirement in the same year in the alterations they proposed in the church-regulations.[932]

Wittenberg served as the pattern. It was to Wittenberg that Leonard Beyer addressed himself when he succeeded Luther’s friend, Nicholas Hausmann, as pastor of Zwickau. Luther answered his letter by describing the system of coercion practised in Wittenberg and the neighbourhood when people persistently neglected to attend the sermons: “With the authority and in the name of our Most Noble Prince it is our custom to affright those who disregard all piety and fail to attend the preaching, and to threaten them with banishment and the law. This is the first step. Then, if they do not amend, the pastors are enjoined by us to ply them for a month or more with instructions and representations, and, finally, in the event of their still proving contumacious, to excommunicate them, and to break off all intercourse with them as though they were heathen.” He concludes: “The words of the Bible [Matt. xviii. 17; 2 Thes. iii. 6] concerning the avoidance of heretics are quite clear.”[933]—He, however, forgets to add that neither he nor the pastors had ever been quite successful in their attempts at excommunication.

The above regulations of the authorities were to remain in force. In 1533 the Prince once more insisted that: No one is to be permitted to absent himself from the “common church-going,” everyone must be “earnestly reminded of this.”[934] In the General Articles of 1557 it was determined by the Elector August, that, whoever absented himself without permission from the sermon on Sundays and festivals, whether in the morning or afternoon, “more particularly in the villages” was to be fined, or, if he was poor, “to be punished with the pillory, either at the church or at some prison.”[935] The parsons, however, were to notify the authorities of any who contemned the preaching and the sacraments, or who obstinately persisted in their false opinion. Even the practice of auricular confession was, at a later date, made a strict law; whoever evaded confession and the Supper was liable to banishment.[936] The Saxon lawyer, Benedict Carpzov (1595-1666) in his “_Iurisprudentia ecclesiastica_” defended as self-evident the legal principle based on the practice of Luther’s own country: “Those, who, after repeated admonitions, maliciously absent themselves from the Supper, are to be expelled from the land; they are to be compelled to sell their goods and emigrate.”[937] The same scholarly lawyer elsewhere alludes to the Saxon custom of condemning seditious and blasphemous heretics to die at the stake.[938]

* * * * *

At Wittenberg strong ramparts were set up for the protection of the Lutheran doctrine and to prevent divergent opinions finding their way in.

The Statutes of the Theological Faculty, probably drawn up in 1533 by Melanchthon with Luther’s approval,[939] made it strictly incumbent on the teachers to preach the pure doctrine in accordance with the Confession of Augsburg; in the event of any difference of opinion a commission of judges was to decide; “after that the false opinion shall no longer be defended; if anyone obstinately persists in so doing, he is to be punished with such severity as to prevent him any more spreading abroad his wicked views.”[940] “The same Luther,” says Paulsen of this, “who, twelve years before, had declared that his conscience would not allow of his conceding to Christendom assembled in Council the right to determine the formula of faith, now claimed for the Wittenberg faculty—for this is what it amounts to—the unquestionable right to decide on faith. From 1535 to the day of his death Luther was without a break Dean of this Faculty.”[941]

Again, subsequent to 1535, the preachers and pastors sent out or officially recommended by Wittenberg had to take the so-called “Ordination Oath” which had been suggested by the Elector in order to exclude false preachers. The ministers to be appointed within the Electorate, and likewise those destined to take up appointments elsewhere, had to submit at Wittenberg to a searching examination on doctrine; only after passing it and taking an oath as to the future could they receive their commission. The examination is referred to in the Certificate of Ordination. Thus, in the Certificate of Heinrich Bock (who was sent to Reval in Livonia) which is dated May 17, 1540, and signed by Luther, Bugenhagen, Jonas and Melanchthon, it is set forth that he had undertaken to “preach to the people steadfastly and faithfully the pure doctrine of the Gospel which our Church confesses.” It is also stated that he adheres to the “consensus” of the “Catholic Church of Christ,” and, for this reason, is recommended to the Church of Reval.[942] A similar Certificate for the schoolmaster Johann Fischer, who had received a call to Rudolstadt “to the ministry of the Gospel,” is dated a month earlier. His doctrine, so it declares, had been found on examination to be pure and in accordance with the Catholic doctrine of the Gospel as professed by the Wittenbergers; a promise had also been received from him to teach the same faithfully to the people; for this reason “his call has been confirmed by public ordination.”[943] Fischer had received the “diaconate.”

As early as 1535 we read of the solemn ordination of a certain Johann (Golhart?), “examined by us and publicly ordained in the presence of our Church with prayers and hymns.” He was “ordained and confirmed by order of our sovereign,” having been called and chosen as “assistant minister” at Gotha by the local congregation headed by their pastor Myconius.[944]

The doctrine of the punishment of heretics was afterwards incorporated by Melanchthon in 1552, in the Wittenberg instructions composed by him and entitled: “The Examination of Ordinands.”[945]

_Opinions of Protestant Historians_

The above account of Luther’s intolerance is very much at variance with the Protestant view still current to some extent in erudite circles, but more particularly in popular literature. Luther, for all the harshness of his disposition, is yet regarded as having in principle advocated leniency, as having been a champion of personal religious freedom, and having only sanctioned severity towards the Anabaptists because of the danger of revolt. Below we shall, however, quote a series of statements from Protestant writers who have risen superior to such party prejudice.

Walther Köhler, in his “Reformation und Ketzerprozess” (1901), wrote:

“In Luther’s case it is impossible to speak of liberty of conscience or religious freedom.” “The death-penalty for heresy rested on the highest Lutheran authority.”[946] According to Köhler there can be no doubt that prosecution for heresy among the Protestants was practically Luther’s doing. “The views of the other reformers on the persecution and bringing to justice of heretics were merely the outgrowth of Luther’s plan, they contributed nothing fresh.”[947] The same writer is of opinion that the question, whether Luther would have approved of the execution of Servetus “must undoubtedly be answered in the affirmative.”[948] “It is certain that Luther would have agreed to the execution of Servetus; heresy as heresy is according to him deserving of death.”[949] One observation made by Köhler is significant enough, viz. “that, when the preaching of the Word proved ineffectual against the heretics,” Luther had recourse to the intervention of the secular authorities.[950]

The matter has been examined with equal frankness by P. Wappler in various studies in which he utilises new data taken from the archives.[951]

“That Luther in principle regarded the death penalty in the case of heretics as just, even where there was no harm done to the ‘_regna mundi_,’” says Wappler, “is plain from the advice given by him on Oct. 20, 1534, to Prince Johann of Anhalt in reply to his inquiry concerning the attitude to be adopted towards the Anabaptists at Zerbst.” “The fact is, that from the commencement of 1530 the reformers cease to make any real distinction between the two classes of heretics [the seditious ones and those who merely taught false doctrines]. Heretics who merely ‘blasphemed’ were always regarded by them, at least where they remained obdurate, as practically guilty of sedition, and, consequently, as deserving the death penalty.” “The principal part in this was played by Luther, Melanchthon being merely the draughtsman of the memoranda in which Luther’s ideas on the question of heretics were reduced to a certain system.”[952] “The many executions, even of Anabaptists who are known to have not been revolutionaries and who were put to death on the strength of the declarations of the Wittenberg theologians, refute only too plainly all attempts to deny the clear fact, viz. that Luther himself approved of the death penalty even in the case of such as were merely heretics.”[953]

Wappler, after showing how Luther’s wish was, that everyone who preached without orders should be handed over to “Master Hans,” adds: “And what he said, was undoubtedly meant in earnest; shortly before this, on Jan. 18, 1530, as Luther had doubtless learned from Melanchthon, at Reinhardsbrunn near Gotha, six such persons had been handed over to Master Hans, i.e. to the executioner, and duly executed.” Wappler regards it as futile to urge that: “Luther could not prevent executions taking place in the Saxon Electorate”; it is wrong to put the blame on Melanchthon rather than on Luther for the putting to death of heretics.[954]

Speaking of the execution of Peter Pestel at Zwickau, the same author[955] declares that it was “a sad sign of the unfortunate direction so early [1536] taken by the Lutheran reformation that its representatives should allow this man, who had neither disseminated his doctrine in his native land nor rebaptised … to die a felon’s death.” “Even contempt of the outward Word,” he says, “carelessness about going to church and contempt of Scripture—in this instance contempt for the Bible as interpreted by Luther—was now regarded as ‘rank blasphemy,’ which it was the duty of the authorities to punish as such. To such lengths had the vaunted freedom of the Gospel now gone.”[956] The introduction of the Saxon Inquisition (See above, vol. v., 593) leads him to remark: “The principle of evangelical freedom of belief and liberty of conscience, which Luther had championed barely two years earlier, was here most shamefully repudiated, particularly by this lay inquisition, and yet Luther said never a word in protest.”[957]

In 1874 W. Maurenbrecher expressed it as his opinion that “Luther’s tolerance in theory as well as in practice amounted to this: The Church and her ministers were to denounce such as went astray in the faith, whereupon it became the duty of the secular authorities to chastise them as open heretics.”[958] In 1885 L. Keller declared: “It merely displays ignorance of the actual happenings of that epoch, when many people, even to-day, take it for granted that such executions and the wholesale persecution of the Anabaptists were only on account of sedition, and that the reformers had no hand in these things.”[959] “Luther indeed demands toleration,” says K. Rieker, “but only for the Evangelicals; he demands freedom, but merely for the preaching of the Evangel.”[960] According to Adolf Harnack “one of the Reformer’s most noticeable limitations was his inability either fully to absorb the cultural elements of his time, or to recognise the right and duty of unfettered research.”[961]

In Saxony, so H. Barge, Carlstadt’s biographer, complains, “the police-force was mobilised for the defence of pure doctrine”; “and Luther played the part of prompter” to the intolerant Saxon government.[962] “Luther’s harsh, violent and impatient ways” and their “unfortunate” outcome are admitted unreservedly by P. Kalkhoff, another Luther researcher.[963] G. Lœsche calls Paulus’s studies on Strasburg a “Warning against the edifying sentimentality of Protestant make-believe.”[964] Luther “demanded freedom for himself alone and for his doctrine,” remarks E. Friedberg, “not for those doctrines, which he regarded as erroneous.”[965] Neander, the Protestant Church-historian, speaking of Luther’s views in general as given by Dietrich, says they “would justify all sorts of oppression on the part of the State, and all kinds of intellectual tyranny, and were in fact the same as those on which the Roman Emperors acted when they persecuted Christianity.”[966]

Two quotations from Catholic authors may be added. The above passage from Köhler reads curiously like the following statement of C. Ulenburg, an olden Catholic polemic; writing in 1589 he said: “When Luther saw that his disciples were gradually falling away from him and, acting on the principle of freedom of conscience, were treating him as he had previously treated the olden Church, he came to think of having recourse to coercion against such folk.”[967]

“Historically nothing is more incorrect,” wrote Döllinger in his Catholic days, “than the assertion that the Reformation was a movement in favour of intellectual freedom. The exact contrary is the truth. For themselves it is true, Lutherans and Calvinists claimed liberty of conscience as all men have done in every age, but to grant it to others never occurred to them so long as they were the stronger side. The complete suppression and extirpation of the Catholic Church, and in fact of everything that stood in their way, was regarded by the reformers as something entirely natural.”[968]—Luther’s principles, aided by the arbitrary interference of the secular power in matters of faith, especially where Catholics were concerned, led both in his age and in the following, “to a despotism” “the like of which,” as Döllinger expresses it, “had not hitherto been known; the new system as worked out by the theologians and lawyers was even worse than the Byzantine practice.”[969]

_Luther’s Spirit in his Fellows_

The question concerning Melanchthon raised by Protestant historians, viz. whether it was he who converted Luther to his intolerance, or, whether, on the other hand, he himself was influenced by Luther, cannot, on the strength of the documents, be answered either affirmatively or negatively. In some respects Melanchthon struck out his own paths, in others he merely followed in Luther’s wake.[970] He was by no means loath to making use of coercion in the case of doctrines differing from his own. His able pen had the doubtful merit of expressing in fluent language what Luther thought and said in private, as we see from the Memoranda still extant. His ill-will with the Papacy and the hostile sects within the new fold, was, it is true, as a rule not so blatant as Luther’s; he was fond of displaying in his style that moderation dear to the humanist; yet we have spontaneous outbursts of his which sound a very harsh note and which doubtless were due to his old and intimate spiritual kinship with Luther.

For instance, we have the wish he expressed, that God would send King Henry VIII a “valiant murderer to make an end of him,”[971] and, again, his warm approval of Calvin’s execution of the heretic Michael Servetus in 1554 (a “pious and memorable example for all posterity”)[972]. He himself wrote about that time a special treatise in defence of the use of the sword against those who spread erroneous doctrines.[973]

With regard to Melanchthon A. Hänel says: To Protestantism “religious freedom was denied at every point.” When Melanchthon wrote to Calvin in praise of the execution of Servetus, his letter, according to Hänel, “was not, as has been imagined, dictated by the mere passion of the moment, but was the harsh consequence of a harsh doctrine.”[974] It must be admitted, remarks the Protestant theologian A. Hunzinger, “that Melanchthon was wont to lose no time in having recourse to fire and sword. This forms a dark blot on his life. Many a man fell a victim to his memorandum, who certainly had no wish to destroy the ‘_regna mundi_.’”[975]

In consequence of the precipitate and often brutal intervention of the authorities against real or alleged heretics Melanchthon had afterwards abundant reason to regret his appeal to the secular power. He himself, as early as Aug. 31, 1530, had foretold, “that, later, a far more insufferable tyranny would arise than had ever before been known,” viz. the tyranny due to the interference of the Princes in whose hands the power of persecution had been laid. Hence his exclamation: “If only I could revive the jurisdiction of the bishops! For I see what sort of Church we shall have if the ecclesiastical constitution is destroyed.”[976] As we know, he was anxious gradually to graft the old ecclesiastical constitution on Luther’s congregations.

Coming from Luther and fostered by Melanchthon, these intolerant ideas profoundly influenced all their friends.

Not as though there was ever any lack of opponents of the theory of coercion among the Protestants, or even in Luther’s own flock. On the contrary there were some who had the sense of justice and the courage to resist the current of intolerance coming from Wittenberg. Indeed it was the protests which Luther encountered at Nuremberg which led him to emphasise his harsh demands.

Already in 1530 Luther’s follower Lazarus Spengler wrote from Nuremberg to Veit Dietrich begging him to seek advice of Luther and to request his literary help; in the town there were some who opposed any measures of coercion against the divergent doctrines, “some of ours, who are not fanatics but are regarded as good Christians,” desire that neither the “Sacramentarians nor the Anabaptists” should be prosecuted so long as they do not “stir up revolt,” nor yet the errors prohibited of “the preachers of the godless Mass and other idolatries”; “they appeal on behalf of this to Dr. Luther’s booklet, which he some while ago addressed to Duke Frederick the Elector of Saxony against the fanatic Thomas Münzer, in which he approves this view and admits it to be quite sound.”[977]

At Augsburg (1533) the Lutheran lawyer, Conrad Hel, siding with his Catholic-minded confrères Conrad Peutinger and Johann Rehlinger[978] openly and courageously denied the Town-Councils any rights in the matter. In 1534 Christoph Ehem, a patrician of Augsburg, who also held Lutheran views, wrote a little work in which he demanded universal and unconditional toleration and invited the Council to place some “bridle and restraint” on the new preachers.[979] At that time (1536) the Lutheran preacher Johann Forster protested very strongly against Bucer, and refused to hear of the forcible suppression of Catholic worship in Cathedral churches outside the jurisdiction of the civic authorities; he appealed in this matter to Luther. Bucer just then was bent on suppressing the Catholic worship with the help of the magistrates. Forster was finally silenced by dint of “ranting, raging and shouting” and was indignantly asked: “Whether he wished to tolerate Popery and submit to such idolatry?”[980]

At Strasburg in 1528 the Protestant Town-Clerk, Peter Butz, set a brave example by openly and severely condemning in the Council the system of coercion planned by some of the preachers. Against the intolerance towards sectarians advocated by Bucer, preachers and scholars like Anton Engelbrecht, Wolfgang Schultheiss, Johann Sapidus and Jacob Ziegler were not slow to protest,[981] though they had nothing to say against the violent abolition of Catholic worship.

At Coire the preacher Johann Gantner came into conflict with Bullinger on account of the coercive measures favoured by the latter; he reproached the inhabitants of Zürich and Berne with having fallen away from the freedom of the Evangel into the Mosaic bondage. Gantner and others, in support of their protest, usually appealed against the prevailing tendency to Sebastian Franck’s “Chronica,” published at Strasburg in 1531.[982]

Sebastian Franck, the witty and learned opponent of Luther, “after Luther himself, the best and most popular German prose writer of the day,” took the line of pushing to its bitter end Luther’s subjectivism. He declared that the new preachers had made of Holy Scripture a paper idol for the benefit of their private views, and that the Lutheran Church was the invisible kingdom of Christ and as such numbered among its members men of every sect; hence he argued that what was termed false doctrine and false worship should not be interfered with.[983] As Kawerau points out, Franck found in the 16th century “not a few readers wherever dissatisfaction prevailed with the Papacy of the theologians”;[984] nevertheless, in 1531, he was expelled from Strasburg on account of his liberal views; later on, when he had taken up his residence at Ulm, Melanchthon wrote thither, in 1535, that he should be “dealt with severely” (“_severe coercendum_”) no less than Schwenckfeld.[985] Driven from Ulm he went to Basle in 1539, but even there the echo of the verdict of the Wittenbergers reached him; in March, 1540, the theologians assembled at Schmalkalden, condemned him and charged him with “inducing people to seek the spirit while neglecting the ‘Word’”; they themselves, they added, had broken with the Churches of the Pope because of their idolatry, but there was “no reason whatever for throwing over the ministry in our own Churches.”[986]

As we have already shown, Landgrave Philip of Hesse was likewise disposed to be less intolerant than Luther, at least with regard to the Anabaptists. Relentlessly as he refused any public toleration to the Catholic faith and banished those Catholics who persisted in their religious practices, yet, in a letter of 1532, addressed to Elector Johann of Saxony, he declared himself against the execution of the Anabaptists; the actual words have been quoted above (p. 256). In another letter, in 1545, to the Elector Johann Frederick, he also points out, that: “If this sect be punished so severely by us, then we, by our example, give our foes, the Papists, reason to treat us in the same way, for they regard us as no better than the Anabaptists.”[987]

* * * * *

These and similar remonstrances were unavailing to change the views which had taken root at Wittenberg.

George Major, Professor of theology at Wittenberg University, was a learned and zealous disciple of Luther’s. He, like Melanchthon, on hearing of the execution of Servetus at Geneva, declared that Calvin was to be commended for having put to death the heretic, and, at a Disputation held in 1555, expressly defended the thesis, that it was the duty of the authorities to punish contumacious heretics with death. They must “get rid of blasphemers, perjurers and wizards. Amongst the blasphemers must, however, be reckoned those who persistently defend idolatrous worship, or heresies which clearly disagree with the articles of the faith.”[988]

Luther’s code of penalties for any deviation from the Wittenberg teaching fitted in well with Bugenhagen’s natural harshness, who showed himself only too ready to make his own the words of Moses concerning the slaying of unbelievers. We may recall how, in conversation, when Luther mentioned the difficulties he had with Carlstadt, Agricola and Schenk, Bugenhagen broke in with the remark: “Sir Doctor, we ought to do what is commanded in Deuteronomy where Moses says they should be put to death.”[989] Bugenhagen, in the many places into which he brought the new faith, was relentlessly severe in enforcing against the Catholics the principles he had carried with him from Wittenberg. Very characteristic is the tone in which he reported to Luther that the Mass had been forbidden in Denmark and the monks driven out of the land as “seditionmongers” and “blasphemers.”[990] Not only had the bishops been imprisoned, but, according to the account of Peter Palladius the superintendent, some of the monks “had been hanged.”[991]

Justus Jonas began his labours at Halle in 1542 by a written invitation to the Town-Council “completely to purge the town of false doctrine and every kind of idolatrous worship”; Luther and Melanchthon had sufficiently proved in their works that this “was incumbent on Christian magistrates.” He declared that the monks still living in the town were “obstinate and impenitent idolaters,” “adders and snakes” whom he “must reduce to silence with the use of the gag”; already, throughout the whole neighbourhood, “merely at the exhortations of the preachers, the monasteries, with their Masses and idolatrous worship, had crumbled into ruins.”[992] Later, in a memorandum addressed to the Town-Council in 1546, Jonas again inveighed against the remaining handful of well-disposed and zealous monks, and called to mind how “our beloved father, Dr. Martin, in the very last sermon he preached at Halle shortly before his decease, had exhorted the Town-Council and the whole Church with all his burning, stormy earnestness to rid themselves of the crawling things.”[993] Jonas appealed to his own “conscience” and threatened to report matters to the Elector of Saxony and “his Electoral Highness’s scholars at Wittenberg.”[994] With the outbreak of the Schmalkalden war, when the Electoral troops laid waste the monasteries his hopes at last found their fulfilment. He announced on March 3, 1547, that, at Halle, the “Papistic idolatry” had now been swept away;[995] when he wrote this he did not expect the change in the position of the Catholics in the town, for which the defeat of the Elector’s troops in the following month was responsible.

We are reminded how greatly Spalatin was imbued with Luther’s exclusivism and spirit of intolerance by his words concerning the “Christian bit” which he wished placed in the mouths of all the clergy.[996] He was at great pains to press upon the sovereign that he was not to permit “unchristian ceremonies” and “idolatry.”[997]

The Elector Johann was merely giving expression to the views with which Spalatin and Luther had inspired him when he declared that, “heretics and contemners of the Word” must in every instance be punished by the authorities.[998] His successor, Johann Frederick, likewise followed obediently the “Wittenberg theologians and lawyers,” as he terms his authorities.[999] He instructed Melanchthon in 1536 to write and have printed a popular “Answer to sundry unchristian articles” against the Anabaptists, which was to be read aloud from the pulpit every third Sunday, and which insisted that the secular authorities were bound to punish “all contempt of Scripture and the outward Word” as “blatant blasphemy.”[1000]

At the Religious Conference at Worms in 1557 quite a number of respected Lutheran theologians (J. Brenz, J. Marbach, M. Diller, J. Pistorius, J. Andreæ, G. Karg, P. Eber and G. Rungius) signed a lengthy statement by Melanchthon aimed at the Anabaptists. As one of the errors of the sect is instanced their teaching that God communicates Himself without the intermediary of the ministry, of preaching or the Sacrament. Those “heads and ringleaders” of the sect who persisted in their doctrines were “to be condemned as guilty of sedition and blasphemy and put to death by the sword”; the death penalty prescribed in Leviticus for blasphemers was asserted to be a “natural law, binding, by virtue of their office, on all in authority,” hence “the judges had done the right thing” when they condemned to death the heretic Servetus at Geneva.[1001]

Johann Brenz, who helped to promote Lutheranism in Würtemberg, had, in 1528, written and published a pamphlet in which he deprecated the Anabaptists’ being put to death “merely on account of heresy” when not guilty of sedition.[1002] He was for this reason regarded by Melanchthon as “too mild.”[1003] His later writings, however, show that the intolerant spirit of Wittenberg finally seized on him too. In his treatment of Catholics—both previous to 1528, and, even more so when the olden worship had been suppressed at Schwäbisch-Halle and he had been called to Stuttgart—he was in the forefront in advising violent measures against Catholic practices. When he reorganised the Church in Würtemberg, in 1536, after the victory of Duke Ulrich, attendance at the Protestant sermons was made obligatory on the Catholics of Stuttgart under pain of a fine, or of imprisonment in the tower on bread and water.[1004] Brenz, though widely extolled as tolerant and broadminded, in his quality of spiritual adviser to Duke Christopher, stooped to the meanest and most petty regulations in order to induce the nuns who still remained faithful to their religion—many of whom were of high birth and advanced in years—to accept the new faith; they were compelled to attend the sermons and religious colloquies, deprived of their books of devotion, their correspondence was supervised, they had to entertain Protestant guests at table and to be served by Lutheran maids, etc.[1005]

* * * * *

The unenviable distinction of having most thoroughly assimilated Luther’s intolerant views was enjoyed by two men in close mental kinship with him, viz. Justus Menius and Johann Spangenberg.

Johann Spangenberg, an enthusiastic pupil of Luther’s, and, later, Superintendent at Eisleben, when preacher at Nordhausen declared in a tract that “fear of God’s wrath and His extreme displeasure” had rightly led the Town-Council to forbid Catholics to attend Catholic sermons, because, there, souls were “horribly murdered”; even Nabuchodonosor and Darius had set the authorities an example of how “blasphemy against religion” was to be treated.[1006]

Justus Menius, Luther’s friend, who worked as superintendent at Eisenach and Gotha, followed Luther in qualifying the Anabaptists as the emissaries of the devil, as “rebels and murderers,” who had fallen under the ban of the authorities because they did not “profess the true faith according to the Word of God” and live a “godly life.” Of the authorities who were negligent in punishing them he exclaims: “The devil rides such rulers so that they sin and do what is unrighteous.” Luther himself wrote laudatory prefaces to his works on the subject. In 1552 Menius demanded from Duke Albert of Prussia a severe prohibition against the new believers’ teaching or writing anything that was at variance with the Confession of Augsburg. When, however, his opponents secured the ear of the Court he had himself to suffer; the ruler pointed out to him that, in accordance with his own theories of the supremacy of the sovereign, it was the duty of the authorities, by virtue of their princely office, to withstand false doctrine and, consequently, he himself must either submit or go to prison; upon this Menius made his escape to Leipzig (†1558).[1007]

Urban Rhegius, appointed General Superintendent by Duke Ernest of Brunswick-Lüneburg after the Diet of Augsburg, not only defended in his writings a relentless system of compulsion whereby Catholic parents were no longer permitted even in their homes to instruct their children in the Catholic faith, but also allowed “Zwinglians and Papists to be beaten with rods and banished from the town.” The authorities he invited to appropriate the property of the clergy. The inglorious war he waged against the nuns of Lüneburg, who, in spite of every kind of persecution, stood true to their religion, has recently been brought to light, and that, thanks to Protestant research; it forms one of the blackest pages in the history of Lutheran intolerance.[1008]

A memorial of the Strasburg preachers dating from 1535 (printed in 1537) which might be termed the fullest and most complete exposition of the Royal Supremacy in church affairs drafted in that period, is the work of Wolfgang Capito, a preacher often extolled for his moderation and prudence.[1009] In it we have the picture of a Government-Church with a “Caliph” (Döllinger’s expression) at its head, who combines in himself the highest secular and spiritual authority.

Martin Bucer though differing from Luther in much else was yet at one with him in asserting that it was the duty of the secular authority to abolish “false doctrine and perverted ceremonials,” and that, as the sole authority, it was to be obeyed by “all the bishops and clergy.” Though anxious to be regarded as considerate and peaceable, he defended the prohibition against Catholic sermons issued at Augsburg by the City-Council in 1534, and even incited it to still more stringent measures against the Catholics. He advocated quite openly “the power of the authorities over consciences.”[1010] “Among us Christians,” he asks, “is injury and slaughter of souls by false worship of less importance than the ravishing of wives and daughters?”[1011] He never rested until, in 1537, with the help of such hot-heads as Wolfgang Musculus, he brought about the entire suppression of the Mass at Augsburg. At his instigation “many fine paintings, monuments and ancient works of art in the churches were wantonly torn, broken and smashed.”[1012] Whoever refused to submit and attend public worship was obliged within eight days to quit the city-boundaries. Catholic citizens were forbidden under severe penalties to attend Catholic worship elsewhere, and special guards were stationed at the gates to prevent any such attempt.[1013]

In other of the Imperial cities Bucer acted with no less violence and intolerance, for instance, at Ulm, where he supported Œcolampadius and Ambrose Blaurer in 1531, and at Strasburg where he acted in concert with Capito, Caspar Hedio, Matthæus Zell and others. Here, in 1529, after the Town-Council had prohibited Catholic worship, the Councillors were requested by the preachers to help to fill the empty churches by issuing regulations prescribing attendance at the sermons. Bucer adhered till his death (1551), as his work “_De Regno Christi_” (1550) proves, to the principle of the rights and duties of authorities towards the new religion.[1014]

In the above survey of those who preached religious intolerance only Luther’s own pupils and followers have been considered; the result would be even less cheering were the leaders of the other Protestant sects added to the list.

At Zürich, Zwingli’s State-Church grew up much as Luther’s did in Germany; Œcolampadius at Basle and Zwingli’s successor, Bullinger, were strong compulsionists. Calvin’s name is even more closely bound up with the idea of religious absolutism, while the task of handing down to posterity his harsh doctrine of religious compulsion was undertaken by Beza in his notorious work “_De hæreticis a civili magistratu puniendis_.” The annals of the Established Church of England were likewise at the outset written in blood.

The sufferings endured by the Catholics in Germany owing to the wave of intolerance which spread from Wittenberg are reflected in the countless complaints we hear at that time. Many writings still tell to-day of the injustice under which they groaned. In a “Manual of Complaint and Consolation for all oppressed Christians” we read as follows: “Oh, what a mockery it is that these tyrants and abusers of power should exclaim everywhere that their gospel is Christian freedom, that they have no wish to tyrannise over consciences when there could never have been worse tyrants than those men who do not scruple to go on unceasingly tormenting the consciences of the people, robbing them of the consolation of the holy sacraments of the religious ministrations of consecrated priests, of all their prayer-books and devotional works, and, even on their death-beds, in spite of their piteous entreaties refusing them the Holy Viaticum!”[1015] This touching complaint is made more particularly in the name of those most defenceless members of society, who were devoid of legal protection and whose very poverty made emigration impossible. “All the iniquities committed in German lands and cities are attested at the Judgment-Seat of God by the souls of thousands of consecrated nuns, who never did wrong to anyone and who asked for nothing more than permission to live and die in their ancient faith, even though their worldly goods should be taken away from them and they shut up within closed walls.”[1016]

2. Luther as Judge

It must not be overlooked that Luther’s severity towards heretics within his fold is to be set down largely to his nervous irritability arising partly out of his natural temperament, partly out of his unceasing labours, so that, if we are to be just to him, his conviction that his doctrine was the only authorised one must not be held to be entirely responsible for his behaviour. At the same time it is plain how deeply he was affected by belief in his higher mission. Thus he practically made himself a religious dictator, when, in 1542, he demanded that the Meissen nobles who had come over to him should not only ratify their new belief by doing penance, but also should “signify their approval of everything which has hitherto been done by us and shall be done in the future.”[1017]

Another point on which we must also do him justice is the service performed by him in his controversies with rivals, in the field both of theology and Scripture-exegesis, by repressing with such energy and general success the dangerous tendencies apparent in the Anabaptist heresy and the Antinomianism of Johann Agricola. In the attacks of the Antinomians on all law, even on the Decalogue, there undoubtedly lay a great danger for morality and religion. Certain of Luther’s own principles were carried to rash, nay, foolhardy, lengths by the Antinomians. Hence it was not unfortunate that Agricola found pitted against him so redoubtable an opponent as Luther who, as was his wont, interfered and nipped the evil in the bud.

_The Conceit and the Obstinacy of the “Heretics”_

Luther bitterly accuses of boundless presumption all the heretics within the New Faith, but particularly Agricola. The latter might even be classed with those doctors who might most fittingly be compared with Arius and treated in the same way.

“This man,” he says of Agricola, “is presumption itself. Neither with the flute nor with tears is he to be won.… I see it is my goodness that puffs him up. He says he is a guiltless Abel. He is, forsooth, being made a martyr at my hands.…” But, so Luther continues, he will be such a martyr as was Arius and Satan.[1018]

In 1542, when the conversation at table turned on the teachers of the New Faith whose opinions differed from Luther’s, a good many names were mentioned, “Those at Zürich” (Zwingli’s pupils), Carlstadt, Bucer and Capito, “Grickel and Jeckel”—some of them living and some of them already dead—all of whom were insufferably presumptuous. It was then that Bugenhagen, who was present, could not refrain from quoting the passage in the Old Testament where Moses had commanded in God’s name “That prophet shall be slain because he spoke to draw you away from the Lord your God.… If thy brother would persuade thee (to serve other gods), thou shalt presently put him to death. Let thy hand be the first upon him and afterwards the hands of all the people. With stones shall he be stoned to death: because he would have withdrawn thee from the Lord thy God. If in one of the cities thou hear that some have withdrawn the inhabitants of their city, inquire carefully and diligently the truth of the thing by looking well into it, and if thou find that which is said to be certain and that this abomination hath been committed, thou shalt forthwith kill the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, and shalt destroy it and all things that are in it, even to the cattle.”[1019]

Hence it was perhaps rather lucky that the Wittenberg tribunal was presided over by the sovereign of the land, and that the sentences pronounced at Luther’s table or in the learned circles of the Theological Faculty required subsequent ratification by the authorities.

Luther’s complaints elsewhere about the pride of the heretics throw still further light on the jealousy which was at work in him (above, p. 260).

“How is it that all the insurgents say ‘I am the man?’ They want all the glory for themselves and hate and are grim with all others, just like the Pope who also wants to stand alone.”[1020] Zwingli appears to be one of the foremost among those desirous of robbing him of his due glory. “He was ambitious through and through.”[1021] On hearing that Zwingli had said that, in three years, he would have France, Spain and England “on his side and for his share,” Luther became very bitter and several times complained of Zwingli’s intention to seize upon his harvest; such words seemed to him the “boasting of a braggart.”[1022] “Œcolampadius, too, fancied himself the doctor of doctors and far above me, even before he had ever heard me.” And in the same way Carlstadt said: “As for you, Sir Doctor, I don’t care a snap! Münzer, too, preached against two Popes, the old one and the new,[1023] said I must be a Saul, and that though I had made a good beginning, the Spirit of God had left me.… Hence let all the theologians and preachers look to it and diligently beware lest they seek their glory in Holy Scripture and in God’s Word; otherwise they will have a fall.”[1024]—“Mr. Eisleben [Johann Agricola] labours under great pride and presumption; he wants to be the only one, and, with his pride and his puffed-up spirit, to surpass all others.”[1025] “They are scamps,” so he abuses them in another passage, “fain would they get at us and surpass us, as though forsooth we were blind and could not see through their tricks.”[1026]

Elsewhere in the Table-Talk we read: “My best friends,” said Dr. Martin, with a deep sigh, “seek to stamp me under foot and to trouble and besmirch the Evangel; hence I am going to hold a disputation.” “Alas, that, in my own lifetime, I should see them strutting about and seeking to rule.” It was with him as with St. Paul to whom God wished to show how much he must suffer for His Name’s sake (Acts ix. 16). Some indeed were trying to persuade him that these foes in his own household were not really against Luther, but only against Cruciger, Rörer, etc. But this was false. “For the Catechism, the Exposition of the Ten Commandments and the Confession of Augsburg are mine, not Cruciger’s or Rörer’s.”[1027]

Of those near him “Mr. Eisleben” (Agricola) seemed to him his chief rival; those abroad troubled him less; for a while Luther was obsessed by the idea that Agricola, “with his cool head, was set on securing the reins and was seeking to become a great lord.”[1028]

Of Carlstadt Luther once said, referring to the rivalry between the pair: “He persuaded himself that there was no more learned man on earth than he; what I write that he imitates and seeks to copy me.” After a profession of personal humility, Luther concludes: “And yet, by God’s Grace, I am more learned than all the Sophists and theologians of the Schools.”[1029]

Though Luther never grows weary of insisting against the heretics at home on the “public, common doctrine,” and of instancing the fell consequences of pride and obstinacy, even going so far as to predict that they will in all likelihood never be converted because founders of sects rarely retrace their steps and recant,[1030] yet he never seems to have perceived that the point of all this might equally well have been turned against himself.

The blindness of such heretics he describes in a tract of 1526 dedicated to Queen Mary of Hungary:

“Here we may all of us well be afraid, and particularly all heretics and false teachers.… Such a temper [obstinacy in sticking to one’s own opinion] penetrates like water into the inmost recesses and like oil into the very bone, and becomes our daily clothing. Then it comes about that one party curses the other, and the doctrine of one is rank poison and malediction to the other, and his own doctrine nothing but blessing and salvation; this we now see among our fanatics and Papists. Then everything is lost. The masses are not converted; a few, whom God has chosen, come right again, but the others remain under the curse and even regard it as a precious thing.… Nor have I ever read of heresiarchs being converted; they remain obdurate in their own conceit, the oil has gone into the bone … and has become part of their nature. They allow none to find fault with them and brook no opposition. This is the sin against the Holy Ghost for which there is no forgiveness.”[1031]

In the same writing he describes the heretics’ way of speaking: “The heretics give themselves up to idle talk so that one hears of nothing but their dreams.… They overflow with words; all evildoers tend to become garrulous. As a boiling pot foams and bubbles over, so they too overflow with the talk of which their heart is full.… They stand stiff upon their doctrine about which there is no lack of ranting.”[1032]

The description (which seats so well on Luther himself) proceeds: “Those are heretics and apostates who follow their own ideas rather than the common tradition of Christendom, who transgress the teaching of their fathers and separate themselves from the common ways and usages of the whole of Christendom, who, out of pure wantonness, invent new ways and methods without cause, and contrary to Holy Writ.”[1033]—“They misread the Word of God according to their whim and make it mean what they please. In short they undertake something out of the common and invent a belief of their own, regardless of God’s Word.… God must put up with their doctrine and life as being alone holy and Godly.”[1034]

Again and again he brands pride as the cause of all heresy: “This is the reason; they think much of themselves, which, indeed, is the cause and well-spring of all heresies, for, as Augustine also says, ‘Ambition is the mother of all heresies.’ Thus Zwingli and Bucer now put forward a new doctrine.… So dangerous a thing is pride in the clergy.”[1035]—“We cannot sufficiently be on our guard against this deadly vice. Vices of the body are gross, and we feel them to be such, but this vice can always deck itself out with the glory of God, as though it had God’s Word on its side. But beneath the outward veil there is nothing but vain glory.”[1036]—“Lo, here you have in brief the cause and ground of all idolatry, heresy, hypocrisy and error, what the prophets inveigh against, and what was the cause of their being put to death, and against which the whole of Scripture witnesses. It all comes from obstinacy and conceit and the ideas of natural reason which puffs itself up … and fancies it knows enough, and can find its way for itself, etc.”[1037]

Such statements of Luther’s are of supreme importance for judging of his Divine Mission. In his frame of mind it became at last an impossibility for him to realise that his hostility and intolerance towards “heretics” within his fold could redound on himself, or that he was contradicting himself in continuing to proclaim freedom, or at least in continuing to make the fullest use of it himself. In reality he was living in a world of his own, and his mental state cannot be judged of by the usual standards.

_“Heretics” who cannot be sure of their Cause_