Life of Luther by Julius Koestlin

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Luther, however, lost no time in following up their execution of the
bull with his reply. On December 10 he posted a public announcement
that the next morning, at nine o'clock, the antichristian decretals,
that is, the Papal law-books, would be burnt, and he invited all the
Wittenberg students to attend. He chose for this purpose a spot in
front of the Elster Gate, to the east of the town, near the
Augustinian convent. A multitude poured forth to the scene. With
Luther appeared a number of other doctors and masters, and among
them Melancthon and Carlstadt. After one of the masters of arts had
built up a pile, Luther laid the decretals upon it, and the former
applied the fire. Luther then threw the Papal bull into the flames,
with the words 'Because thou hast vexed the Holy One of the Lord,
[Footnote: It is obvious that he refers to Christ, who is spoken of
in Scripture as the Holy One of God (St. Mark i. 24, Acts ii. 27),
not, as ignorance and malice have suggested, to himself.] let the
everlasting fire consume thee.' Whilst Luther with the other
teachers returned to the town, some hundreds of students remained
upon the scene, and sang a Te Deum, and a Dirge for the decretals.
After the ten o'clock meal, some of the young students, grotesquely
attired, drove through the town in a large carriage, with a banner
emblazoned with a bull four yards in length, amidst the blowing of
brass trumpets and other absurdities. They collected from all
quarters a mass of Scholastic and Papal writings, and especially
those of Eck, and hastened with them and the bull, to the pile,
which their companions had meanwhile kept alight. Another Te Deum
was then sung, with a requiem, and the hymn 'O du armer Judas.'

Luther at his lecture the next day told his hearers with great
earnestness and emotion what he had done. The Papal chair he said,
would yet have to be burnt. Unless with all their hearts they
abjured the Kingdom of the Pope, they could not obtain salvation.

He next announced and justified his act in a short treatise entitled
'Why the Books of the Pope and his disciples were burnt by Dr.
Martin Luther.' 'I, Martin Luther,' he says, 'doctor of Holy
Scripture, an Augustinian of Wittenberg, make known hereby to
everyone, that by my wish, advice, and act, on Monday after St.
Nicholas' day, in the year 1520, the books of the Pope of Rome, and
of some of his disciples, were burnt. If anyone wonders, as I fully
expect they will, and asks for what reason and by whose command I
did it, let this be his answer.' Luther considers it his bounden
duty, as a baptized Christian, a sworn doctor of Holy Scripture, and
a daily preacher, to root out, on account of his office, all
unchristian doctrines. The example of others, on whom the same duty
devolved, but who shrank from doing as he did, would not deter him.
'I should not,' he says, 'be excused in my own sight; of that my
conscience is assured, and my spirit, by God's grace, has been
roused to the necessary courage.' He then proceeds to cite from the
law-books thirty erroneous doctrines, in glorification of the
Papacy, which deserved to be burnt. The sum total of this Canon law
was as follows: 'The Pope is a God on earth, above all things,
heavenly and earthly, spiritual and temporal, and everything is his,
since no one durst say, What doest thou?' This, says Luther, is the
abomination of desolation (St: Matth. xxiv. 15), or in other words
Antichrist (2 Thess. ii. 4).

Simultaneously with this, he set out in a longer and exhaustive work
the 'ground and reason' of all his own articles which had been
condemned by the bull. He takes his stand upon God's word in
Scripture against the dogmas of the earthly God;--upon the
revelation by God Himself, which, to everyone who studies it deeply
and with devotion, will lighten his understanding, and make clear
its substance and meaning. What though, as he is reminded, he is
only a solitary, humble man, he is sure of this, that God's Word is
with him.

To Staupitz, who felt faint-hearted and desponding about the bull,
Luther wrote, saying that, when burning it, he trembled at first and
prayed; but now he felt more rejoiced than at any other act in all
his life. He now released himself finally from the restraints of
those monastic rules, with which, as we have remarked before, he had
always tormented himself, besides performing the higher duties of
his calling. He was freed now, as he wrote to his friend Lange, by
the authority of the bull, from the commands of his Order and of the
Pope, being now an excommunicated man. Of this he was glad; he
retained merely the garb and lodging of a monk: he had more than
enough of real duties to perform with his daily lectures and
sermons, with his constant writings, educational, edifying, and
polemical, and with his letters, discourses, and the assistance he
was able to give his brethren.

By this bold act, Luther consummated his final rupture with the
Papal system, which for centuries had dominated the Christian world,
and had identified itself with Christianity. The news of it must
also have made the fire which his words had kindled throughout
Germany, blaze out in all its violence. He saw now, as he wrote to
Staupitz, a storm raging, such as only the Last Day could allay; so
fiercely were passions aroused on both sides.

Germany was then, in fact, in a state of excitement and tension more
critical than at any other period of her history. Side by side with
Luther stood Hutten, in the forefront of the battle with Rome. The
bull he published with sarcastic comments: the burning of Luther's
works of devotion he denounced in Latin and German verses. Eberlin
von Gunzburg, who shortly after began to wield his pen as a popular
writer on reform, called these two men 'two chosen messengers of
God.' A German Litany, which appeared early in 1521, implored God's
grace and help for Martin Luther, the unshaken pillar of the
Christian faith, and for the brave German knight Ulrich Hutten, his
Pylades.

Hutten also wrote now in German for the German people, both in prose
and verse. During his stay with Sickingen in the winter at his
Castle of Ebernburg, he read to him Luther's works, which roused in
this powerful warrior an active sympathy with the doctrines of the
Reformation, and stirred up projects in his mind, of what his own
strong arm could accomplish for the good cause.

Pamphlets, both anonymous and pseudonymous, were circulated in
increasing numbers among the people. They took the form chiefly of
dialogues, in which laymen, in a simple Christian spirit, and with
their natural understanding, complain of the needs of Christendom,
ask questions and are enlightened. The outward evils of the Papal
system are put clearly before the people:--the scandals among the
priesthood and in the convents, the iniquities of the Romish
courtiers and creatures of the Pope, who pandered with menial
subservience to the magnates at Rome, in order to fatten on German
benefices, and reap their harvest of taxes and extortions of every
kind. The simple Word of God, with its sublime evangelical truths,
must be freed from the sophistries woven round it by man, and be
made accessible to all without distinction. Luther is represented as
its foremost champion, and a true man of the people, whose testimony
penetrated to the heart. His portrait, as painted by Cranach, was
circulated together with his small tracts. In later editions the
Holy Ghost appears in the form of a dove hovering above his head;
his enemies spread the calumny, that Luther intended this emblem to
represent himself.

Satirical pictures also were used as weapons on both sides in this
contest. Cranach pourtrayed the meek and suffering Saviour on one side,
and on the other the arrogant Roman Antichrist, in the twenty-six
woodcuts of his 'Passion of Christ and Antichrist:' Luther added short
texts to these pictures.

Luther's enemies now began, on their side, to write in German and
for the people. The most talented among them, as regards vigorous,
popular German and coarse satire, was the Franciscan Thomas Murner;
but his theology seemed to Luther so weak, that he only favoured him
once with a brief allusion. He entered now into a longer literary
duel with the Dresden theologian Emser, who had challenged him after
the disputation at Leipzig, and who now published a work 'Against
the Unchristian Address of Martin Luther to the German Nobility.'
Luther replied with a tract 'To the Goat at Leipzig,' Emser with
another 'To the Bull at Wittenberg,' Luther with another 'On the
Answer of the Goat at Leipzig,' and Emser with a third, 'On the
furious Answer of the Bull at Wittenberg.' Luther, whose reply to
Emser's original work had been directed to the first sheets that
appeared, met the work, when published in its complete form, with
his 'Answer to the over-Christian, over-priestly, over-artful Book
of the Goat Emser.' Emser followed up with a 'Quadruplica,' to which
Luther rejoined with another treatise entitled 'A Refutation by
Doctor Luther of Emser's error, extorted by the most learned priest
of God, H. Emser.' When later, during Luther's residence at the
Wartburg, Emser published a reply, Luther let him have the last
word. Nothing new was contributed to the great struggle by this
interchange of polemics. The most effective point made by Emser and
the other defenders of the old Church system, was the old charge
that Luther, one man, presumed to oppose the whole of Christendom as
hitherto constituted, and by the overthrow of all foundations and
authorities of the Church, to bring unbelief, distraction, and
disturbance upon Church and State. Thus Emser says once in German
doggrel, that Luther imagined that

What Church and Fathers teach was nought;
None lived but Luther;--so he thought.

In threatening Luther with the consequences of his heresy, he never
failed to hold up Huss as a bugbear.

In Germany, as Emser complains, there was already 'such quarrelling,
noise, and uproar, that not a district, town, village, or house was
free from partisans, and one man was against another.' Aleander wrote
to Rome saying that everywhere exasperation and excitement prevailed,
and the Papal bull was laughed at. Among the adherents of the old
Church system one heard rumours of strange and terrible import. A
letter written shortly after the burning of the bull, gave out that
Luther reckoned on thirty-five thousand Bohemians, and as many Saxons
and other North Germans, who were ready, like the Goths and Vandals
of old, to march on Italy and Rome. But it was evident, even at this
stage, that from rancorous words to energetic and self-sacrificing
action was a long step to take. Even in central Germany the bull was
executed without any disturbance breaking out; and that in the
bishoprics of Meissen and Merseburg, which were adjacent to Wittenberg.
Pirkheimer and Spengler at Nuremberg, whose names Eck had included in
the bull, now bowed to the authority of the Pope, represented though
it was by their personal enemy.

Hutten, who saw his hopes in the Emperor's brother deceived, and
believed his own liberty and even his life was menaced by the Papal
bull, burned with impatient ardour to strike a blow. He was anxious
also to see whether a resort to force, after his own meaning of the
term, would meet with any support from the Elector Frederick. He
ventured even, when speaking of Sickingen's lofty mission, to refer
to the precedent of Ziska, the powerful champion of the Hussites,
who had once been the terror and abomination of the Germans. He, a
member of the proud Equestrian order, was willing now to join hands
with the towns and the burghers to do battle with Rome for the
liberty of Germany. But, passionate as were his words, it was by no
means clear what particular end under present circumstances he
sought to achieve by means of arms. Sickingen, who had grasped the
situation in a practical spirit, advised him to moderate his
impatience, and sought, for his own part, to keep on good terms with
the Emperor, in whom Hutten accordingly renewed his hopes. Each, in
short, had overrated the influence which Sickingen really possessed
with the Emperor.

In this posture of affairs, Luther reverted, with increased
conviction, to his original opinion, that the future must be left
with God alone, without trusting to the help of man. Hutten himself
had written to him, during the Diet of Worms, as follows: 'I will
fight manfully with you for Christ; but our counsels differ in this
respect, that mine are human, while you, more perfect than I am,
trust solely in those of God.' And when Hutten seemed really bent on
taking the sword, Luther declared to him and to others, with all
decision of purpose: 'I would not have man fight with force and
bloodshed for the Gospel. By the Word has the world been subdued, by
the Word has the Church been preserved, by the Word will she be
restored. As Antichrist has begun without a blow, so without a blow
will Antichrist be crushed by the Word.' Even against the Romish
hirelings among the German clergy, he would have no acts of violence
committed, such as were committed in Bohemia. He had not laboured
with the German nobility to have such men restrained by the sword,
but by advice and command. He was only afraid that their own rage
would not allow of peaceful means to check them, but would bring
misery and disaster upon their heads.

His expectation--not indeed ungrounded--of the approaching end of
the world, to which, as we have seen, he alluded in a letter to
Spalatin on January 16, 1521, Luther now announced more fully in a
book, written in answer to an attack by the Romish theologian
Ambrosius Catharinus. He based his opinion on the prophecies of the
Old and New Testament, on which Christian men and Christian
communities, sore pressed in the battle with the powers of darkness,
had been wont ere then to rely, in the sure hope of the approaching
victory of God. Luther referred in particular to the vision of
Daniel (chap. viii.), where he states that after the four great
Kingdoms of the World, the last of which Luther takes to be the
Roman Empire, a bold and crafty ruler should rise up, and 'by his
policy should cause craft to prosper in his hand, and should stand
up against the Prince of princes, but should be broken without
hand.' He saw this vision fulfilled in the Popedom; which must,
therefore, be destroyed 'without hand,' or outward force. St. Paul,
in his view, said the same in the passage in which (2 Thess. ii.) he
foreshadowed long before the Roman Antichrist. That 'man of sin' who
set himself up as God in the temple of God, 'the Lord shall consume
with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness
of His coming.' So, said Luther, the Pope and his kingdom would not
be destroyed by the laity, but would be reserved for a heavier
punishment until the coming of Christ. He must fall, as he had
raised himself, not 'with the hand,' but with the spirit of Satan.
The Spirit must kill the spirit; the truth must reveal deceit.

Luther, as we shall see, had all his life held firmly to this belief
that the end was near. As his glowing zeal pictured the loftiest
images and contrasts to his mind, so also this assurance of victory
was already before his eyes. In his hope of the near completion of
the earthly history of Christianity and mankind, he became the
instrument of carving out a new grand chapter in its career.

The announcement of the retractation required from Luther by the
bull, was to have been sent to Rome within 120 days. Luther had
given his answer. The Pope declared that the time of grace had
expired; and on the 3rd of January Leo X. finally pronounced the ban
against Luther and his followers, and an interdict on the places
where they were harboured.

CHAPTER IX.

THE DIET OF WORMS.

If we consider the powerful influences then at work to further the
ecclesiastical movement in Germany, it seems reasonable to suppose
that they would succeed in accomplishing its ends through the power
of the Word alone, without any such bloodshed and political
convulsions as were feared; and that Germany, therefore, though
vexed with spiritual tempests--the 'tumult and uproar' whose
outburst Luther already discerned--must inevitably rid herself of
the forms and fetters of Romish Churchdom, by the sheer force of her
new religious convictions. And, indeed, even in the short interval
since Luther had commenced, and only with slow steps had advanced
further in the contest, a success had been attained which no one at
the beginning could have ventured to expect, or even hope for.
Frederick the Wise, the Nestor among the great German Princes of the
Empire, had plainly freed himself inwardly from those fetters, and
though, as yet, he did not feel himself called upon to express his
sentiments by decisive action, his conduct, nevertheless, could not
fail to make an impression on those about him. The nobility and
burgher class, among whom the new doctrines had made most progress,
were, politically speaking, powerfully represented at the Diets. The
most important of the spiritual lords, the Archbishop of Magdeburg
and Mayence, who had most cause to resent Luther's onslaught on
indulgences, had hitherto adopted a cautious and expectant attitude,
which left him free to join at some future time a national revolt
against his Romish sovereign. The Diets, indeed, had hitherto
submitted to their old ecclesiastical grievances without any fear of
the wrath or scolding of the Pope. But, as soon as the conviction
prevailed among the Estates, that the pretensions of the Roman see
had no eternal, Divine foundation, they could take in hand at once,
on their own account, the reformation of the Church. As for the
episcopacy, in particular, Luther had never desired, as his Address
to the Nobility sufficiently showed, to interfere with or disturb it
in any way, provided only the bishops would feed their flocks
according to God's Word. An independent German episcopate would then
have been well able to undertake the reforms necessary in the system
of worship. Luther himself, as we shall see, wished and continued to
wish that those reforms should be as few and simple as possible.

In the various German states which afterwards became Protestant, the
work of reform was in fact accomplished, without any serious
agitation, by the Princes themselves, in concert with their Estates;
and in the free towns by the magistrates and representatives of the
burghers, notwithstanding the fact that its opponents were supported
by the majority of the Empire and by the Emperor himself, who was a
staunch adherent of the Romish system. How much easier, in
comparison, must the work of Evangelical reformation have been, had
it been resolved on by the power of the Empire itself, in accord
with the overwhelming voice of the whole nation.

Reference was made, and in significant terms, to the savage and
cruel war of the Hussites. But no one could deny to Luther's
teaching, a clearness, a religious depth, and a freedom from
fanaticism, peculiar to itself, and utterly wanting in the preaching
of the followers of Huss. Again, the wild Hussite wars, which were
still fresh in the sorrowful memory of the Germans, had in the first
instance been provoked by the use of force, on the part of the
Church, against the Bohemians. When Germany revolted, Rome found no
such means of force at her command.

It might fairly be questioned, if the thought were worth pursuing,
whether Luther at that time had sufficient ground for looking for
the triumph of his cause, not indeed to the power of the Word and
the influences then active in his favour, but to the Day of the
Lord, which he believed was near.

It is true that in such great crises of history as this, the final
issue never depends alone on the character and conduct of particular
personages, however eminent they may be. In this antichristian
system of the Papacy, Luther saw Satanic powers at work, which
blinded the human heart, and might indeed succeed, by dint of
suffering and oppression, in overcoming for the moment the Word of
God, but which could never finally extirpate or extinguish it. And
we Protestants must confess that not only did a great mass of the
German people remain bound by the spell of tradition, but that even
to honest and independent-minded adherents of the old system, the
interests of religion and morality might in reality have seemed to
be seriously endangered by the new teaching and by the breach with
the past. But never did the most momentous issue in the fortunes of
the German nation and Church rest so entirely with one man as they
did now with the German Emperor. Everything depended on this,
whether he, as head of the Empire, should take the great work in
hand, or should fling his authority and might into the opposite
scale.

Charles had been welcomed in Germany as one whose youthful heart
seemed likely to respond to the newly-awakened life and aspirations;
as the son of an old German princely family, who by his election as
Emperor had won a triumph over the foreign king Francis, supported
though the latter was by the Pope. Rumour now alleged that he was in
the hands of the Mendicant Friars: the Franciscan Glapio was his
confessor and influential adviser, the very man who had instigated
the burning of Luther's works.

[Illustration: Fig. 24.--CHARLES V. (From an engraving by B. Beham,
in 1531.)]

He was, however, by no means so dependent on those about him as
might have been supposed. His counsellors, in the general interests
of his government, pursued an independent line of policy, and
Charles himself, even in these his youthful days, knew to assert his
independence as a monarch and display his cleverness as a statesman.

But a German he was not, in spite of his grandfather Maximilian; he
had not even an ordinary knowledge of the German language. First and
foremost, he was King of Spain and Naples; in his Spanish kingdom he
retained, even after his accession to the imperial dignity, the
chief basis of his power. His religious training and education had
familiarised him only with the strict orthodoxy of the Church and
his duties in respect to her traditional ordinances. To these his
conscience also constrained him to adhere. He never showed any
inclination to investigate the opposite opinions of his German
subjects, at least with any independent or critical exercise of
judgment. A strict regard to his rights and duties as a sovereign
was his sole guide, next to his religious principles, in dictating
his conduct towards the Church. In Spain some reforms were being
then introduced, based essentially on the doctrines and hierarchical
constitution of the mediaeval Church. Stricter discipline, in
particular, was observed with regard to the clergy and monks, who
were admonished to attend more faithfully to their duties of
promoting the moral and religious welfare of the people; and the
result was seen in a revival of popular interest in the forms and
ordinances of religion. Furthermore, the crown enjoyed certain
rights independently of the Roman Curia: an absolute monarchy was
here ingeniously united with Papal absolutism. Such a union,
however, sufficed in itself to make any severance of the German
Church from the Papacy impossible under Charles V. The unity of his
dominions was bound up with the unity of the Catholic Church, to
which his subjects, alike in Spain and Germany, belonged. Added to
this, he had to consider his foreign policy. Provoked as he had been
by Leo X., who had leagued with France to prevent his election,
still, with menaces of war from France, he saw the prudence of
cultivating friendship, and contracting, if possible, an alliance
with the Pope. The pressure desirable for this purpose could now be
supplied by means of the very danger with which the Papacy was
threatened by the great German heresy, and against which Rome so
sorely needed the aid of a temporal power. At the same time, Charles
was far too astute to allow his regard for the Pope, and his desire
for the unity of the Church, to entangle his policy in measures for
which his own power was inadequate, or by which his authority might
be shaken, and possibly destroyed. Strengthened as was his
monarchical power in Spain, in Germany he found it hemmed in and
fettered by the Estates of the Empire and the whole contexture of
political relations.

Such were the main points of view which determined for Charles V.
his conduct towards Luther and his cause. Luther thus was at least a
passive sharer in the game of high policy, ecclesiastical and
temporal, now being played, and had to pursue his own course
accordingly.

The imperial court was quickly enough acquainted with the state of
feeling in Germany. The Emperor showed himself prudent at this
juncture, and accessible to opinions differing from his own, however
small cause his proclamations gave to the friends of Luther to hope
for any positive act of favour on his part.

Whilst Charles was on his way up the Rhine, to hold, at the
beginning of the New Year, a Diet at Worms, the Elector Frederick
approached him with the request that Luther should at least be heard
before the Emperor took any proceedings against him. The Emperor
informed him in reply that he might bring Luther for this purpose to
Worms, promising that the monk should not be molested. The Elector,
however, felt doubts on this point: possibly he thought of the
danger to which Huss had been exposed at Constance. But Luther, to
whom he announced through Spalatin the Emperor's offer, replied
immediately, 'If I am summoned, I will, so far as I am concerned,
come; even if I have to be carried there ill; for no man can doubt
that, if the Emperor calls me, I am called by the Lord.' Violence,
he said, would no doubt be offered him; but God still lived, who had
delivered the three youths from the fiery furnace at Babylon, and if
it was not His will that he should be saved, his head was of little
value. There was one thing only to beseech of God, that the Emperor
might not commence his reign by shedding innocent blood to shield
ungodliness: he would far rather perish by the hands of the
Romanists alone. Some time before, Luther had thought of a place to
fly to, in case it were impossible to stay at Wittenberg; Bohemia
was always open to him. But now he roundly declared, 'I will not
fly, still less can I recant.'