Life of Luther by Julius Koestlin

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At the university Luther was also busily engaged with the necessary
preparations for many lectures that were not theological. He
steadily persisted in his efforts to secure the appointment of a
competent professor of Hebrew. He also worked hard to get a
qualified printer, the son of the printer Letter at Leipzig, to
settle at the university, and set up there for the first time a
press for three languages, German, Latin, and Greek. For everything
of this kind that was submitted to the Elector, who took a constant
interest in the prosperity of the university, his friend Spalatin
was his confidential intermediary. As early as 1518 Luther had
expressed to him the wish and hope that Wittenberg, in honour of
Frederick the Wise, should, by a new arrangement of study, become
the occasion and pattern for a general reform of the universities.
In addition to his constant and arduous labours of various kinds, he
took part also in the social intercourse of his colleagues, although
he complained of the time he lost by invitations and entertainments.

In the town church at Wittenberg he continued his active duties not
only on Sundays but during the week. His custom was to expound
consecutively in a course of sermons the Old and New Testaments, and
he explained particularly to children and those under age, the
Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments. This work alone, he once
complained to Spalatin, required properly a man for it and nothing
else. These services he gave to the town congregation gratuitously.
The magistracy were content to recognise them by trifling presents
now and then; for instance, by a gift of money on his return from
Leipzig, where he had had to live on his own very scanty means. In
simple, powerful, and thoroughly popular language, Luther sought to
bring home to the people who filled his church, the supreme truth he
had newly gained. Here in particular he employed his own peculiar
German, as he employed it also in his writings.

Both he and Melancthon formed a close personal intimacy with several
worthy townsmen of Wittenberg. The most prominent man among them,
the painter Lucas Cranach, from Bamberg, owner of a house and estate
at Wittenberg, the proprietor of an apothecary's and also of a
stationer's business, besides being a member of the magistracy, and
finally burgomaster, belonged to the circle of Luther's nearest
friends. Luther took a genuine pleasure in Cranach's art, and the
latter, in his turn, soon employed it in the service of the
Reformation.

[Illustration: Fig. l8.--LUCAS CRANACH. (From a Portrait by
himself.)]

While occupied thus in delivering simple and practical sermons to
his congregation in the town, he continued to publish written works
of the same character and purport, in addition to his labours in the
field of learned ecclesiastical controversy, thus showing the love
with which he worked for them at large in this matter. These
writings were little books, tracts, so-called sermons. It did not
disturb him, he once said, to hear daily of certain people who
despised his poverty because he only wrote little books and German
sermons for the unlearned laymen. 'Would to God,' he said, 'I had
all my life long and with all my power served a layman to his
improvement; I should then be content to thank God, and would very
willingly after that let all my little books perish. I leave it to
others to judge whether writing large books and a great number of
them constitutes art and is useful to Christianity; I consider
rather, even if I cared to write large books after their art, I
might do that quicker, with God's help, than making a little sermon
in my fashion. I have never compelled or entreated anyone to listen
to me or read my sermons. I have given freely to the congregation of
what God has given to me and I owe to them; whoever does not like
His word, let him read and listen to others.'

In this spirit he composed, after the Leipzig disputation, a little
consolatory tract for Christians, full of reflection and wisdom. He
dedicated it to the Elector, an illness of whom had prompted him to
write it. Even his most bigoted opponents could not withhold their
approbation of the work. Luther's pupil and biographer Mathesius,
thought there had never been such words of comfort written before in
the German language. In a similar strain Luther wrote about
preparation for dying, the contemplation of Christ's sufferings, and
other matters of like kind. He explained to the people in a few
pages the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer. At the
desire of the Elector, conveyed to him through Spalatin, and
notwithstanding the difficulty he had in finding time for such a
large work, he applied himself to a practical exposition of the
Epistles and Gospels read in church, intended principally for the
use of preachers.

At the same time he made steady progress with his own Scriptural
researches, which led him away more and more from the main articles
of the purely traditional doctrines of the Church. And the light
which dawned upon him in these studies he took pains to impart at
once to his congregation. But it was no mere negative or
hypercritical interest that led him on and induced him to write. In
connection with the saving efficacy of faith, which he had gathered
from the Bible, new truths, full of import, unfolded themselves
before him. On the other hand, such dogmas of the Church as he found
to have no warrant in Scripture, nor to harmonise with the
Scriptural doctrine of salvation, frequently faded from his notice,
and perished even before he was fully conscious of their hollowness.
The new knowledge had ripened with him before the old husk was
thrown away.

Thus he now learnt and taught others to understand anew the meaning
of the Christian sacrament of the Lord's Supper. The Church of the
middle ages beheld with wonder in this sacrament the miracle of
transubstantiation. The body of our Lord, moreover, here present as
the object of adoration, was to serve above all as the bloodless
repetition of the bloody sacrifice for sin on Golgotha, to be
offered to God for the good of Christendom and mankind. To offer
that sacrifice was the highest act which the priesthood could boast
of, as being thought worthy to perform by God. This whole
mysterious, sacred transaction was clothed in the mass, for the eye
and ear of the members of the congregation, with a number of
ritualistic forms. In giving them, moreover, the consecrated
elements in the sacrament, the priest alone partook of the cup.
Luther, on the contrary, found the whole meaning of that institution
of the departing Saviour, according to His own words, 'Take, eat,
and drink,' in the blessed and joyful communion here prepared by Him
for the congregation of receivers, each one of whom was verily to
partake of it in faith. Here, as he taught in a sermon on the
Sacrament in 1519, they were to celebrate and enjoy real communion;
communion with the Saviour, who feeds them with His flesh and blood;
communion with one another, that they, eating of one bread, should
become one cake, one bread, one body united in love; communion in
all the benefits purchased by their Saviour and Head; and communion
also in all gifts of grace bestowed upon His people, in all
sufferings to be endured, and in all virtues alive in their hearts.
Above all, he appealed to Christ's own words, that He had shed His
blood for the forgiveness of sins. Here at His holy Supper, He
wished to dispense this forgiveness, and, with it, eternal life to
all His guests; He pledged it to them here by the gift of His own
body. Luther, but only incidentally, remarked in this sermon, when
speaking of the cup: 'I should be well pleased to see the Church
decree in a General Council, that communion in _both kinds_
should be given to the laity as to the priests.' Even then he
regarded as unfounded that idea of sacrifice at the mass which in
his later writings he so strenuously denied and combated. At the
same time he pointed out the sacrifice which Christendom, and indeed
every Christian, must continually offer to God, namely, the
sacrifice to God of himself and all that he possesses, offered with
inward humility, prayer, and thankfulness. The question as to a
change of the elements, which Melancthon had already denied, Luther
passed by as an unnecessary subtlety. Lastly, together with the
sacrifice supposed to be offered by the priest, he dismissed also
the notion of a peculiar priesthood; for with the real sacrifice
offered by Christians, as he understood it, all became priests.
Instead of the difference theretofore existing between priests and
laymen, he would recognise no difference among Christians but such
as was conferred by the public ministration of God's word and
sacrament.

Whilst discoursing in a sermon, in a similar manner, on the inner
meaning of baptism, he passed from the vow of baptism to the vow of
chastity, so highly prized in the Catholic Church. He admits this
vow, but represents the former one as so immeasurably higher and
all-embracing, as to deprive the Church of her grounds for attaching
such value to the latter.

He enlarged on moral and religious life in general in a long sermon
'On Good Works,' which he dedicated early in 1520 to Duke John, the
brother of the Elector. In clear and earnest language he explained
how faith itself, on which everything depended, was a matter of
innermost moral life and conduct, nay, the very highest work
conformable to God's will; and further, how that same faith cannot
possibly remain merely passive, but, on the contrary, the faithful
Christian must himself become pleasing to God, on whose grace he
relies, must love Him again, and fulfil His holy Will with energy
and activity in all duties and relations of life. These duties he
proceeds to explain according to the Ten Commandments. He will not,
however, have the conscience further laden with duties imposed by
the Church, for which no corresponding moral obligation exists. He
turns then with earnest exhortation to rebuke certain common faults
and crimes in the public life of his nation, the gluttony and
drunkenness, the excessive luxury, the loose living, and the usury,
which was then the subject of so much complaint. Against this last
practice he preached a special sermon, in which, agreeably with the
older teaching of the Church, he spoke of all interest taken for
money as questionable, inasmuch as Jesus had exhorted only to
lending without looking for a return. The creditor, at any rate, he
said, should take his share of the risks to which his capital, in
the hands of the debtor, was exposed from accident or misadventure.

The essence of the Church of Christ he placed in that inner
communion of the faithful with one another and their heavenly Head,
on which he dwelt with such emphasis in connection with the
sacrament of the Lord's Supper. For the stability and prosperity of
this Church he considered no externals necessary beyond the
preaching of God's Word and the administration of the Sacraments, as
ordained by Christ,--no Romish Popedom, nor any other hierarchical
arrangements. But in the same spirit of love and brotherly
fellowship with which he embraced Hussites, as well as the Eastern
Christians who were denounced as Schismatics, he still wished to
hold fast to the visible community of the Church of Rome, declining
to identify it with the corrupt Romish Curia. That love, he said,
should make him assist and sympathise with the Church, even in her
infirmities and faults.

He was anxious also to fulfil personally all the minor duties
incumbent on him as a monk and a priest. And yet the higher
obligations of his calling, that incessant activity in proclaiming
the word, both by speech and writing, were of much greater
importance in his eyes. He performed with diligence such duties as
the regular repetition of prayers, singing, reading the
_Horae_, and never dreamed of venturing to omit them. He
relates afterwards, how wonderfully industrious he had been in this
respect. Often, if he happened to neglect these duties during the
week, he would make up for it in the course of the Sunday from early
morning till the evening, going without his breakfast and dinner. In
vain his friend Melancthon represented to him that, if the neglect
were such a sin, so foolish a reparation would not atone for it.

Measures, however, were now taken by the Romish Church and its
representatives, which, by attacking the word, as he preached it,
drove him further into the battle.

It will be remembered that the Papal bull, directed against his
theses on indulgences, had not actually mentioned him by name.
Contemptuously, therefore, as the Pope had spoken of him as an
execrable heretic, he had never yet uttered a formal public judgment
upon him. Two theological faculties, those of the universities of
Cologne and Louvain, were the first to pronounce an official
condemnation of him and his writings. The latter were to be burnt,
and their author compelled publicly to recant. This sentence, though
pronounced after the disputation at Leipzig, related only to a small
collection of earlier writings. In a published reply he dismissed,
not without scorn, these learned divines, who, in a spirit of vain
self-exaltation and without the smallest grounds, had presumed to
pass sentence on Christian verities. Their boasting, he said, was
empty wind; their condemnation frightened him no more than the curse
of a drunken woman.

The first official pronouncement of a German bishop touched him more
nearly. This was a decree, issued in January 1520 by John, Bishop of
Meissen, from his residence at Stolpen. Herein, Luther's one
statement about the cup, which the Church, as he said, would do well
to restore to the laity, was picked out of his Sermon on the
Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. The people were to be warned against
the grievous errors and inconveniences which were bound to ensue
from such a step; and the sermon was to be suppressed. Luther was
now classed as an open ally of the Hussites, whose very ground of
contention was the cup. Duke George in alarm complained of him to
the Elector Frederick. It was rumoured about him even that he had
been born and educated among the Bohemians.

To this episcopal note, which he ridiculed in a pun, Luther
published a short and pungent reply in Latin and German. He was
particularly indignant that this occasion should have been seized to
tax his sermon with false doctrine, since the wish he there
expressed did not contain, as even his enemies must admit, anything
contrary to any dogma of the Church. For his enemies, no doubt, this
one point was of more practical importance than many deviations from
orthodoxy with which they might have reproached him in his doctrine
of salvation; for it concerned a jealously guarded privilege of
their priestly office, and was connected with the 'Bohemian heresy.'
As for Huss, however, Luther now confessed without reserve the
sympathy he shared with his evangelical teaching. He had learned to
know him better since the Leipzig disputation. He now wrote to
Spalatin: 'I have hitherto, unconsciously, taught everything that
Huss taught, and so did John Staupitz, in short we are all Hussites,
without knowing it. Paul and Augustine are also Hussites. I know
not, for very terror, what to think as to God's fearful judgments
among men, seeing that the most palpable evangelical truth known for
more than a century, has been burnt and condemned, and nobody has
ever ventured to say so.'

On the part of the Elector, Luther still continued to reap the
benefit of that placid good-will which disregarded all attempts,
either by friendly words or menaces, to set that prince against him.
Luther for this thanked him publicly, without meeting with any
demurrer from the Elector, as well in a dedication of the first part
of his new work on the Psalms, which he had sent to the press early
in 1519, as in another prefixed to his tract on Christian comfort,
already noticed. This last work he had been encouraged to write by
Spalatin, the confidant of the sick prince whom it was intended to
please. In the dedication prefixed to the Psalms, he expressed his
joy at hearing how Frederick had declared in a conversation reported
by Staupitz, that all sermons, made by man's wit and uttering man's
opinions, were cold and powerless, and the Scriptures alone inspired
with such marvellous power and majesty that one must needs say,
'There is something more there than mere Scribe and Pharisee; there
is the finger of God;' and how, when Staupitz had concurred in the
remark, the prince had taken his hand and said, 'Promise me that you
will always think thus.' Luther also thanked Frederick for having,
as all his subjects knew, taken more care of his safety than he had
done himself. In his thoughtlessness, he himself had thrown the die,
and had already prepared himself for the worst, and only hoped to be
able to retire into some corner, when his prince had come forward as
his champion.

At the same time the Elector remained constant in his efforts to
check the impetuosity of Luther. We have noticed how he encouraged
him, through Spalatin, to peaceful work in the service of Christian
preaching. When the episcopal missive from Stolpen threatened to
make the storm break out afresh, he sent, by Spalatin, an urgent
exhortation to Luther to restrain his pen, and further advised him
to send letters of explanation, in a conciliatory spirit, to Albert,
Archbishop of Magdeburg and Mayence, and the Bishop of Merseburg.

Luther wrote to both in a tone of perfect dignity. He begged them
not to lend an ear to the complaints and calumniations which were
being circulated against him, especially in reference to giving the
cup to the laity, and to the Papal power, until the matter had been
seriously examined. He spoke at the same time of malicious accusers,
who on those points held secretly the same opinions as himself.

But from this contest with the Bishop of Meissen he refused to
withdraw. To Spalatin he broke out again in February 1520, in terms
more decided than any he had previously given vent to, and which led
people to expect still sharper utterances. 'Do not suppose,' he
said, 'that the cause of Christ is to be furthered on earth in sweet
peace: the Word of God can never be set forth without danger and
disquiet: it is a Word of infinite majesty, it works great things,
and is wonderful among the great and the high; it slew, as the
prophet says (Psalm lxxviii. 31), the wealthiest of them, and smote
down the chosen ones of Israel. In this matter one must either
renounce peace or deny the Word; the battle is the Lord's, who has
not come to bring peace into the world.' Again he says: 'If you
would think rightly of the Gospel, do not believe that its cause can
be advanced without tumult, trouble, and uproar. You cannot make a
pen out of a sword: the Word of God is a sword; it is war,
overthrow, trouble, destruction, poison; it meets the children of
Ephraim, as Amos says, like a bear on the road, or like a lioness in
the wood.' Of himself he adds: 'I cannot deny that I am more violent
than I ought to be; they know it, and therefore should not provoke
the dog. How hard it is to moderate one's heat and one's pen you can
learn for yourself. That is the reason why I was always unwilling to
be forced to come forward in public; and the more unwilling I am,
the more I am drawn into the contest; that this happens so is due to
those scandalous libels which are heaped against me and the Word of
God. So shameful are they that, even if my heat and my pen did not
carry me away, a very heart of stone would be moved to seize a
weapon, how much more myself, who am hot and whose pen is not
entirely blunt.'

The two dignitaries of the Church answered not ungraciously. They
merely expressed an opinion that he was too violent, and that his
writings would have a questionable influence with the mass of the
people. They refrained from giving judgment on the matter; a proof
that, in the Catholic Church in Germany, the questions raised by
Luther could not then have been considered of such importance as the
upholders of the strict Papal system maintained and desired. Even
Albert, the Cardinal, Archbishop, and Primate of the German Church,
ventured to speak of the whole question about the Divine or merely
human right of the Papacy as an insignificant affair, which had but
little to do with real Christianity, and therefore should never have
become the occasion of such passionate dispute.

From Rome was now awaited the supreme judicial decision as to Luther
and his cause. The Pope had already in 1518 indicated clearly enough
to Frederick the Wise in what sense he intended to give this
decision. But it kept on being delayed, because, on the one hand, it
still appeared necessary to act with caution and consideration, and,
on the other, because Roman arrogance continued to underestimate the
danger of the German movement. Meanwhile Eck, by a report of his
disputation and by letters had stirred the fire at Rome. The
theologians of Cologne and Louvain worked in the same direction, and
called on the whole Dominican Order to assist them with their
influence. The Papal pretensions which Luther had disputed were now
for the first time proclaimed in all their fulness of audacity and
exaggeration. Luther's old opponent Prierias, in a new pamphlet,
extended them to the temporal as well as the spiritual sovereignty
of the world; the Pope, he said, was head of the Universe. Eck now
devoted an entire treatise to justifying the Divine right of the
Papal primacy, resting his proofs boldly, and without any attempt at
critical inquiry, on spurious old documents. With this book he
hastened in February 1520 to Rome, in order personally to push
forward and assist in publishing the bull of excommunication which
was to demolish his enemy and extinguish the flame he had kindled.

But Luther's work, in proportion as it advanced and became bolder,
had stirred already the minds of the people both wider and deeper.
Opponents of Rome who had risen up against her in other quarters, on
other grounds, and with other weapons, now ranged themselves upon
his side. Among all alike the ardour of battle grew the more
powerful and violent, the more it was attempted to smother them with
edicts of arbitrary power.

CHAPTER VI.

ALLIANCE WITH THE HUMANISTS AND THE NOBILITY.

We have already seen how astonished Miltitz was at the sympathy with
Luther which he found among all classes of the German people. The
growth of this sympathy is shown in particular by the increasing
number of printed editions of his writings; the perfect freedom then
enjoyed by the press contributed largely to their wide circulation.
In 1520 alone there were more than a hundred editions of Luther's
works in German. Though the ordinary book-trade as now carried on
was then unknown, there were a multitude of colporteurs actively
employed in going with books from house to house, some of them
merely in the interests of their trade, others also as emissaries of
those who were friends of the cause, thus intended to be furthered.
As reading was a difficult matter to the masses, and even to many of
the higher classes, there were travelling students who went about to
different places, and proffered their assistance. The earnest,
deeply instructive contents of Luther's small popular tracts met the
needs of both the educated and uneducated classes, in a manner never
done by any other religious writings of that time, and served to
stimulate their appetite for more. And to this was added the strong
impression produced directly on their minds by the elementary
exposition of his doctrine, irreconcilable with all notions of the
Church system hitherto prevailing, and stigmatised by his enemies as
poison. All, in short, that this condemned heretic wrote, became
dear to the hearts of the people.

Luther found now, moreover, most valuable allies in the leading
champions of that Humanistic movement, the importance of which, as
regards the culture of the priesthood and the religious and
ecclesiastical development of that time, we had occasion to notice
during Luther's residence at the university of Erfurt. That
Humanism, more than anything else, represented the general
aspiration of the age to attain a higher standard of learning and
culture. The alliance between Luther and the Humanists inaugurated
and symbolised the union between this culture and the Evangelical
Reformation.

Luther, even before entering the convent, had formed a friendship with
at least some of the young 'poets,' or enthusiasts of this new learning.
Later on, when, after the inward struggles and heart-searchings of
those gloomy years of monastic experience, the light dawned upon him
of his Scriptural doctrine of salvation, we find him expressing his
sympathy and reverence for the two leading spirits of the movement,
Reuchlin and Erasmus; and this notwithstanding the fact that he never
approved the method of defence adopted by the supporters of the former,
nor could ever conceal his dislike of the attitude taken up by Erasmus
in regard to theology and religion.