Life of Luther by Julius Koestlin

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The subject of the deepest importance to Luther in this treatise was
the sacrament of the altar. He dwells on the mutilated form, without
the cup, in which the Lord's Supper was given to the laity; on the
doctrine invented about the change of the bread, instead of keeping
to the simple word of Scripture; and, lastly, on the substitution of
a sacrifice, supposed to be offered to God by the priest, for the
institution ordained by Christ for the nourishment of the faithful.
The withholding of the cup he calls an act of ungodliness and
tyranny, beyond the power of either Pope or Council to prescribe.
Against the sacrifice of the mass he had published just before a
sermon in German. He was well aware that his principles involved, as
indeed he intended, a revolution of the whole service, and an attack
on an ordinance, upon which a number of other abuses, of great
importance to the hierarchy, depended. But he ventured it, because
God's word obliged him to do it. So now he proceeds to describe, in
contrast to this mass, the one of true Christian institution, and
resting wholly, as he conceived it, on the words of Christ, when
instituting the Last Supper, 'Take, and eat,' etc. Christ would here
say, 'See, thou poor sinner, out of pure love I promise to thee,
before thou canst either earn or promise anything, forgiveness of
all thy sins, and eternal life, and to assure thee of this I give
here my Body and shed my Blood; do thou, by my death, rest assured
of this promise, and take as a sign my Body and my Blood.'

For the worthy celebration of this mass, nothing is required but
faith, which shall trust securely in this promise; with this faith
will come the sweetest stirrings of the heart, which will unfold
itself in love, and yearn for the good Saviour, and in Him will
become a new creature.

As regards baptism Luther lamented that it was no longer allowed to
possess the true significance and value it ought to have for a man's
whole life. Whereas in truth the person baptized received a promise
of mercy from God, to which time after time, even from the sins of
his future life, he might and was bound to turn, it was taught, that
in sinning after baptism, the Christian was like a shipwrecked man,
who, instead of the ship, could only reach a plank; this being the
sacrament of penance, with its accompanying outward formalities.
Whereas further, in true baptism he had vowed to dedicate his whole
life and conduct to God, other vows of human invention were now
demanded of him. Whereas he then became a full partaker of Christian
liberty, he was now burdened with ordinances of the Church, devised
by man.

Concerning this sacrament of penance, with confession, absolution,
and its other adjuncts, Luther rates at its full value the word of
forgiveness spoken to the individual, and values also the free
confession made to his Christian brother by the Christian seeking
comfort. But confession, he said, had been perverted into an
institution of compulsion and torture. Instead of leading the
tempted brother to trust in God's mercy, he was ordered to perform
acts of penance, whereby nominally to give satisfaction to God, but
in reality to minister to the ambition and insatiable avarice of the
Roman see.

From all these abuses and perversions Luther seeks to liberate the
sacraments, and restore them in their purity to Christians.
Nevertheless, he takes care to insist on the fact that it is not the
mere external ceremony, the act of the priest in administering, and
the visible partaking of the receiver, that make the latter a sharer
in the promised grace and blessedness. This, he says, depends upon a
hearty faith in the Divine promise. He who believes enjoys the
benefit of the sacrament, even though its outward administration be
denied him.

The mediaeval Church ordained four other sacraments, namely,
confirmation, marriage, consecration of priests, and extreme
unction. But Luther refuses to acknowledge any of these as a
sacrament. Marriage, he says, in its sacramental aspect, was not an
institution of the New Testament, nor was it connected with any
especial promise of grace. It was but a holy moral ordinance of
daily life, existing since the beginning of the world and among
those who were not Christians as well as those who were. At the same
time he takes the opportunity to protest against those human
regulations with which even this ordinance had been invaded by the
Romish Church, especially against the arbitrary obstacles to
marriage she had created. Even these were made a source of revenue
to her, by the granting of dispensations. For the other three
sacraments there was no especial promise. In the Epistle of St.
James (v. 14), where it speaks of anointing the sick with oil, the
allusion is not to extreme unction to the dying, but to the exercise
of that wonderful Apostolic gift of healing the sick through the
power of faith and prayer. With regard to the consecration of
priests, Luther repeats the principles laid down in his address to
the nobility. Ordination consists simply of this, that out of a
community, all of whom are priests, one is chosen for the particular
work of administering God's word. If, as in consecration, the hand
is laid upon him, this is a human custom and not instituted by the
Lord Himself. But in truth, says Luther, the outrageous tyranny of
the clergy, with their priestly bodily anointing, their tonsure, and
their dress, would arrogate a higher position than other Christians
anointed with the Spirit; these are counted almost as unworthy as
dogs to belong to the Church. And most seriously he warns a man not
to strive for that outward anointing, unless he is earnestly intent
on the true service of the gospel, and has disclaimed all pretension
to become, by consecration, better than lay Christians.

In conclusion Luther declares: he hears that Papal excommunication
is prepared for him, to force him to recant. In that case this
little treatise shall form part of his recantation. After that he
will soon publish the rest, the like of which has never been seen or
heard by the Romish see.

In the beginning of October, probably on the 6th of that month, the
book was issued. Luther had heard some ten days before that Eck had
actually arrived with the bull. He had already caused it to be
posted publicly at Meissen on September 21. Early in October he sent
a copy of it also to the university of Wittenberg.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE BULL OF EXCOMMUNICATION, AND LUTHER'S REPLY.

At Rome, the bull, now newly arrived in Germany, had been published
as early as June 16. It had been considered, when at length, under
the pressure of the influences described above, the subject was
taken up in earnest, very carefully in the Papal consistory. The
jurists there were of opinion that Luther should be cited once more,
but their views did not prevail. As for the negotiations, conducted
through Miltitz, for an examination of Luther before the Archbishop
of Treves, no heed was now paid to the affair.

The bull begins with the words, 'Arise, O Lord, and avenge Thy
cause.' It proceeds to invoke St. Peter, St. Paul, the whole body of
the saints, and the Church. A wild boar had broken into the vineyard
of the Lord, a wild beast was there seeking to devour &c. Of the
heresy against which it was directed, the Pope, as he states, had
additional reason to complain, since the Germans, among whom it had
broken out, had always been regarded by him with such tender
affection: he gives them to understand that they owed the Empire to
the Romish Church. Forty-one propositions from Luther's writings are
then rejected and condemned, as heretical or at least scandalous and
corrupting, and his works collectively are sentenced to be burnt. As
to Luther himself, the Pope calls God to witness that he has
neglected no means of fatherly love to bring him into the right way.
Even now he is ready to follow towards him the example of Divine
mercy which wills not the death of a sinner, but that he should be
converted and live; and so once more he calls upon him to repent, in
which case he will receive him graciously like the prodigal son.
Sixty days are given him to recant. But if he and his adherents will
not repent, they are to be regarded as obstinate heretics and
withered branches of the vine of Christ, and must be punished
according to law. No doubt the punishment of burning was meant; the
bull in fact expressly condemns the proposition of Luther which
denounces the burning of heretics.

All this was called then at Rome, and has been called even latterly
by the Papal party, 'the tone rather of fatherly sorrow than of
penal severity.' The means by which the bull had been brought about,
made it fitting that Eck himself should be commissioned with its
circulation throughout Germany, and especially with its publication
in Saxony. More than this, he received the unheard of permission to
denounce any of the adherents of Luther at his pleasure, when he
published the bull.

Accordingly, Eck had the bull publicly posted up in September at
Meissen, Merseburg, and Brandenburg. He was charged, moreover, by a
Papal brief, in the event of Luther's refusing to submit, to call
upon the temporal power to punish the heretic. But at Leipzig, where
the magistrate, by order of Duke George, had to present him with a
goblet full of money, he was so hustled in the streets by his
indignant opponents, that he was forced to take refuge in the
Convent of St. Paul, and hastened to pursue his journey by night,
whilst the city officials rode about the neighbourhood with the
bull. A number of Wittenberg students, adds Miltitz, made their
appearance also at Leipzig, who 'behaved in a good-for-nothing way
towards him.'

At Wittenberg, where the publication of the bull rested with the
university, the latter notified its arrival to the Elector, and
objected for various reasons to publish it, alleging, in particular,
that Eck, its sender, was not furnished with proper authority from
the Pope. Luther for the first time felt himself, as he wrote to
Spalatin, really free, being at length convinced that the Popedom
was Antichrist and the seat of Satan. He was not at all discouraged
by a letter sent at this time by Erasmus from Holland to Wittenberg,
saying that no hopes could be placed in the Emperor Charles, as he
was in the hands of the Mendicant Friars. As for the bull, so
extraordinary were its contents, that he wished to consider it a
forgery.

Still the promise which Luther had given to his Augustinian
brethren, only a few weeks before, under pressure from Miltitz,
remained as yet unfulfilled. Nor did Miltitz himself wish the
threads of the web then spun to slip from his fingers. Even at this
hour, with the consent and at the wish of the Elector, an interview
had been arranged between Miltitz and Luther at the Castle of
Lichtenberg (now Lichtenburg, in the district of Torgau), where the
monks of St. Antony were then housed. Just as Miltitz, as we have
seen, had thought to be able to avert the bull by getting Luther to
write a letter to the Pope, so now he promised the Elector still to
conciliate the Pope by that means. Only the letter was to be dated
back to the time, before the publication of the bull, when Luther
first gave his consent to write it. Its substance was to be as then
agreed upon; Luther, as Miltitz expressed it, was to 'eulogise the
Pope personally in a manner agreeable to him,' and at the same time
submit to him an historical statement of what he had done. Luther
consented to publish a letter in these terms, in Latin and German,
under date of September 6, and immediately gave effect to his
promise.

It is hardly conceivable how Miltitz could still have nurtured such
a hope. Neither his wish to ingratiate himself with the Elector
Frederick, and to checkmate the plans of Eck whom he detested, nor
his personal vanity and flippancy of character, are sufficient to
account for it. He must have learnt from his own previous personal
intercourse with the Pope, and his experiences of the Papal court,
that Leo did not take up Church questions and controversies so
gravely and so seriously as not to remain fully open all the time to
influences and considerations of other kinds, and that around him
were parties and influential personages, arrayed in mutual hostility
and rivalry. He must have been strangely ignorant of the state of
things at Rome. But as to Luther and his cause there was no longer
any hesitation in that quarter.

In what sense Luther himself was willing to comply with the demand
of Miltitz, the contents of his letter suffice to show. He makes it
clear that nothing was further from his intention than to appease
the angry Pontiff by any dexterous artifices or concealments. The
assurance required from him, that he had no wish to attack the Pope
personally, he construes in its literal terms, apart altogether from
the official character and acts of Leo. And in fact against his
personal character and conduct he had never said a word. But he
takes this opportunity, at the same time, of speaking to him plainly,
as a Christian is bound to do to his fellow-Christian; of repeating
to him, face to face, the severest charges yet made by him against
the Romish chair; of excusing Leo's own conduct in this chair simply
and solely on the ground that he regarded him as a victim of the
monstrous corruption which surrounded him, and of warning him once
more against it as a brother. He tells him to his face that he
himself, the Holy Father, must acknowledge that the Papal see was
more wicked and shameful than any Sodom, Gomorrah, or Babylon; that
God's wrath had fallen upon it without ceasing; that Rome, which
had once been the gate of heaven, was now an open jaw of hell. Most
earnestly he warns Leo against his flatterers,--the 'ear-ticklers'
who would make him a God. He assures him that he wishes him all
that is good, and therefore he wishes that he should not be devoured
by these jaws of hell, but on the contrary, should be freed from
this godless idolatry of parasites, and be placed in a position where
he would be able to live on some smaller ecclesiastical preferment,
or on his own patrimony. As for the historical retrospect which
Miltitz wanted, and which Luther briefly appends to this letter, all
that the latter says in vindication of himself is, that it was not
his own fault, but that of his enemies, who had driven him further
and further onward, that 'no small part of the unchristian doings at
Rome had been dragged to light.'

[Illustration: Fig. 23.--TITLE-PAGE, slightly reduced, of the
original Tract 'On the Liberty of a Christian Man.' The Saxon swords
are represented above, and the arms of Wittenberg below.]

Luther sent with this letter, as a present to the Pope, a pamphlet
entitled 'On the Liberty of a Christian Man.' This is no
controversial treatise intended for the great struggle of churchmen
and theologians, but a tract to minister to 'simple men.' For their
benefit he wished to describe compendiously the 'sum of a Christian
life'; to deal thoroughly with the question, 'What was a Christian?
and how he was to use the liberty which Christ had won and given to
him.' He premises as an axiom that a Christian is a free lord over
all things, and subject to nobody. He considers, first of all, the
new, inner, spiritual man, and asks what makes him a good and free
Christian. Nothing external, he says, can make him either good or
free. It does not profit the soul if the body puts on sacred
vestments, or fasts, or prays with the lips. To make the soul live,
and be good and free, there is nothing else in heaven or on earth
but the Holy Scriptures, in other words, God's Word of comfort by
His dear Son Jesus Christ, through Whom our sins are forgiven us. In
this Word the soul has perfect joy, happiness, peace, light, and all
good things in abundance. And to obtain this, nothing more is
required of the soul than what is told us in the Scriptures, namely,
to give itself to Jesus with firm faith and to trust joyfully in
Him. At first, no doubt, God's command must terrify a man, seeing
that it must be fulfilled, or man condemned; but when once he has
been brought thereby to recognise his own worthlessness, then comes
God's promise and the gospel, and says, Have faith in Christ, in
Whom I promise thee all grace; believe in Him, and thou hast Him. A
right faith so blends the soul with God's word, that the virtues of
the latter become her own, as the iron becomes glowing hot from its
union with the fire. And the soul becomes joined to Christ as a
bride to the bridegroom; her wedding-ring is faith. All that Christ,
the rich and noble bridegroom possesses, He makes His bride's; all
that she has, He takes unto Himself. He takes upon Himself her sins,
so that they are swallowed up in Him and in His unconquerable
righteousness. Thus the Christian is exalted above all things, and
becomes a lord; for nothing can injure his salvation; everything
must be subject to him and help towards his salvation; it is a
spiritual kingdom. And thus all Christians are priests; they can all
approach God through Christ, and pray for others. 'Who can
comprehend the honour and dignity of a Christian? Through his
kingship he has power over all things, through his priesthood he has
power over God, for God does what he desires and prays for.'

But the Christian, as Luther states in his second axiom, is not only
this new inner man. He has another will in his flesh, which would
make him captive to sin. Accordingly, he dare not be idle, but must
work hard to drive out evil lusts and mortify his body. He lives,
moreover, among other men on earth, and must labour together with
them. And as Christ, though Himself full of the Kingdom of God, for
our sake stripped Himself of His power and ministered as a servant,
so should we Christians, to whom God through Christ has given the
Kingdom of all goodness and blessedness, and therewith all that is
sufficient to satisfy us, do freely and cheerfully for our heavenly
Father whatever pleases Him, and do unto our neighbours as Christ
has done for us. In particular, we must not despise the weakness and
weak faith of our neighbour, nor vex him with the use of our
liberty, but rather minister with all we have to his improvement.
Thus the Christian, who is a free lord and master, becomes a useful
servant of all and subject to all. But he does these works, not that
he may become thereby good and blessed in the sight of God; he is
already blessed through his faith, and what he does now he does
freely and gratuitously. Luther thus sums up in conclusion: 'A
Christian lives not in himself, but in Christ and in his neighbour;
in Christ through faith, in his neighbour through love. Through
faith he rises above himself in God, from God he descends again
below himself through love; and yet remains always in God and in
godlike love.'

This tract was a remarkable pendant to Luther's remarkable letter to
the Pope. His Holiness, so he wrote to him in his dedication, might
taste from its contents what kind of occupation the author would
rather, and might with more profit, be engaged in, if only the
godless Papal flatterers did not hinder him. And in fact the Pope
could plainly see from it how Luther lived and laboured, with his
inmost being, in these profound but simple ideas of Christian truth,
and how he was inwardly compelled and delighted to represent them in
their noble simplicity. The whole tone and tenor of this dedication,
so tranquil, fervent, and tender, shows further what profound peace
reigned in the soul of this vehement champion of the faith, and what
happiness the excommunicated heretic found in his God. Next to
Luther's Address to the German Nobility and his Babylonian
Captivity, this tract is one of the most important contributions of
his pen to the cause of the Reformation. It is clear from its pages
that when Luther wrote his letter, at the request of Miltitz, to the
Pope, he had no thought of making peace with the Papacy, or of even
a moment's truce in the campaign.

The bull of excommunication he met in the manner intimated to
Spalatin from the first. He launched a short tract against it, 'On
the new Bull and Falsehoods of Eck,' treating it as Eck's forgery.
This he followed up with another tract in German and Latin, 'Against
the Bull of Antichrist.' He was resolved to unmask the blindness and
wickedness of the Roman evil-doers. He saw partly his own real
doctrines perverted, partly the Christian and Scriptural truth that
his doctrines contained, stigmatised as heresy and condemned. He
declared that if the Pope did not retract and condemn this bull, no
one would doubt that he was the enemy of God and the disturber of
Christianity.

He then solemnly renewed, on November 17, the appeal to a Council,
which he had made two years before. But how was his attitude changed
since then! He, the accused and condemned heretic, now himself
proclaims condemnation and ruin to his enemy, the antichristian
power that seeks to domineer the world. Nor is it only from a future
Council, and one constituted as the previous great assemblies of the
Church, that he expects and demands protection for himself and the
Christian truth; again and again he calls upon the Christian laity
to assist him. Thus in his appeal now published, he invites the
Emperor Charles, the Electors and Princes of the Empire, the counts,
barons, and nobles, the town councils, and all Christian authorities
throughout Germany, to support him and his appeal, that so the true
Christian belief and the freedom of a Council might be saved.
Similarly, in the Latin edition of his tract against the bull, he
calls upon the Emperor Charles, on Christian kings and princes and
all who believe in Christ, together with all Christian bishops and
learned doctors, to resist the iniquities of the Popedom. In his
German version he defends himself against the charge of stirring up
the laity against the Pope and priesthood; but he asks if, indeed,
the laity will be reconciled, or the Pope excused, by the command to
burn the truth. The Pope himself, he says, and his bishops, priests,
and monks are wrestling to their own downfall, through this
iniquitous bull, and want to bring upon themselves the hatred of the
laity. 'What wonder were it, should princes, nobles, and laymen beat
them on the head, and hunt them out of the country?'

Hutten now followed with a stormy demand for a general rising of
Germany against the tyranny of Rome, whose hirelings and emissaries
were to be chased away by main force. When two papal legates,
Aleander and Caraccioli, appeared on the Rhine to execute the bull
and work upon the Emperor in person, he was anxious to strike a blow
at them on his own account, little good as, on calm reflection, it
was evident could have come of it. Luther, on hearing of it, could
not refrain remarking in a letter to Spalatin, 'If only he had
caught them!'

Luther however persisted in repeating to himself and his friends the
warning of the Psalmist, 'Put not your trust in princes, nor in any
child of man, for there is no help in them.' Nay, when Spalatin, who
had gone with the Elector to the Emperor, told him how little was to
be hoped for from the latter, he expressed to him his joy at finding
that he too had learned the same lesson. God, he said, would never
have entrusted simple fishermen with the Gospel, if it had needed
worldly potentates to propagate it. It was to the Last Day that he
looked with full confidence for the overthrow of Antichrist. And,
indeed, his idea that Antichrist had long reigned at Rome was
connected in his mind with the belief that the Last Day was close at
hand. Of this, as he wrote to Spalatin, he was convinced, and for
many strong reasons.

And in fact the Emperor Charles, before leaving the Netherlands, on
his journey to Aix-la-Chapelle to be crowned, had already been
induced by Aleander to take his first step against Luther. He had
consented to the execution of the sentence in the bull, condemning
Luther's works to be burnt, and had issued orders to that effect
throughout the Netherlands. They were burnt in public at Louvain,
Cologne, and Mayence. At Cologne this was done while he was staying
there. It was in this town that the two legates approached the
Elector Frederick with the demand to have the same done in his
territory, and to execute due punishment on the heretic himself, or
at least to keep him close prisoner, or deliver him over to the
Pope. Frederick however refused, saying that Luther must first be
heard by impartial judges. Erasmus also, who was then staying at
Cologne, expressed himself to the same effect, in an opinion
obtained from him by Frederick through Spalatin. At an interview
with the Elector he said to him, 'Luther has committed two great
faults; he has touched the Pope on his crown and the monks on their
bellies.' The Archbishop of Mayence, Cardinal Albert, received
directions from the Pope to take more decisive and energetic steps
against Hutten as well. The burning of Luther's books at Mayence was
effected without hindrance, though Hutten was able to inform Luther
that, according to the account received from a friend, Aleander
narrowly escaped stoning, and the multitude were all the more
inflamed in favour of Luther. The legates in triumph proceeded to
carry out their mission elsewhere.