Life of Luther by Julius Koestlin

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[Illustration: Fig. 35.--PHILIP OF HESSE. (From a woodcut of
Brosamer.)]

Under these new conditions and circumstances, Luther's work became
limited, as was natural, to a narrower field, and bore no longer the
same character of boldness and independence which had marked it in
his original contest with Rome. But it required, on this account,
all the more perseverance and patience, faithfulness and
circumspection in minor matters, and an adequate regard to what was
actually required and practicable, while clinging firmly to the
lofty aims and objects with which the work of the Reformation had
commenced.

To the portrait of Luther as the Reformer we have to add henceforth
that of the married man and head of the household, whose single
desire is to fulfil, as a man and a Christian, the duties belonging
to this state of life, and to enjoy with a quiet conscience the
blessings of God. In his letters to intimate friends we find happy
home news alternating with the most profound and serious reflections
on the conduct and duties of the Evangelical Church, and on abstruse
questions of theology. His language as a Reformer deals now no
longer, as in his Address to the German Nobility, in particular,
with the problems and interests of political and social life; it is
mainly to religious and spiritual matters, and to the kindred
questions affecting the active work and constitution of the Church,
that his mission is now directed. But his personal relations with
his countrymen became all the more close and intimate in consequence
of this change of life; and that which by many of his friends was
regretted as a lowering of his reputation and influence, becomes a
valuable and essential feature in the historical portrait now
presented to our eyes.

In single dramatic incidents and changes, so to speak, Luther's life
henceforth, as was only natural, is no longer so rich as during the
earlier years of development and struggle. We shall no longer meet
with crises of such a kind as mark a momentous epoch.

CHAPTER II.

CONTINUED LABOURS AND PERSONAL LIFE TO 1529.

Among the particular labours which occupied Luther during the
further course of the year 1525, apart from his persevering industry
as a professor and preacher, we have already had occasion to mention
one, namely, his reply to Erasmus. We find him towards the end of
September entirely engrossed in this work. Not a single proposition
in Erasmus' book, so he wrote to Spalatin, would he admit.

The reckless severity with which he assailed that distinguished
opponent appears all the more remarkable when contrasted with the
conciliatory tone whereby he was then hoping to appease the wrath of
his two bitterest enemies in high places, King Henry VIII. of
England and Duke George of Saxony.

On September 1, 1525, he addressed a humble letter to Henry. King
Christian II. of Denmark, who, after forfeiting his throne by his
arbitrary and despotic rule, had taken refuge with the Elector
Frederick, showed an inclination to favour the new doctrine, and
even came in person to Wittenberg. By him Luther was induced to
believe--for what reason it does not appear--that Henry VIII. had
entirely changed his Church principles; and to hope that, if only he
could make amends for the personal offence he had given him, Henry
might be won over still further for the Evangelical cause. Luther
refers to this hope as follows: 'My Most Gracious Sire the King gave
me good cause to hope for the King of England ... and ceased not to
urge me by speech and letter, giving me so many good words, and
telling me that I ought to write humbly, and that it would be useful
to do so, and so forth, until I am fairly intoxicated with the
idea.' He then cast himself in his letter at the feet of his
Majesty, and besought him to pardon him for the offence he had given
by his earlier pamphlet, 'because from good witnesses he had learned
that the Royal treatise which he had attacked, was not indeed the
work of the King himself, but a concoction of the miserable Cardinal
of York' (Edward Lee). He promised to make a public retractation, in
another pamphlet, for the sake of the King's honour. At the same
time, he wished that the grace of God might assist his Majesty, and
enable him to turn wholly to the gospel, and shut his ears against
the siren voices of its enemies.

With regard to Duke George of Saxony, all that Luther had as yet
heard about him was that he was incessantly bringing fresh
complaints about him to the Elector, that he rigorously excluded the
new teaching from his own territory, and, what was more, that, he
was anxious to go on from the conquest of the peasants to the
suppression of Lutheranism, which had been the cause, he declared,
of all the mischief. Now, however, Luther learned from certain Saxon
nobles, that the Duke himself was not so unfavourably disposed to
the cause, and was willing to treat with mildness and toleration
those who preached or confessed the gospel; that it was with Luther
personally that he was so offended and irritated. Luther wrote to
him on December 22 of this year. 'I have been advised,' he says,
'once more to entreat your Grace in this letter, with all humility
and friendship, for it almost seems to me as if God, our Lord, would
soon take some of us from hence, and the fear is that Duke George
and Luther may also have to go.' He then entreats, with all
submission, his pardon for whatever wrong he had done the Duke by
writing or in speech; but of his doctrine he could, for conscience'
sake, retract nothing. Luther, however, did not humble himself to
George as he had done to King Henry, and his letter bears his
characteristic sharpness of tone. He assured the Duke, however,
that, with all his former severity of language towards him, he was a
better friend to him than all his sycophants and parasites, and that
the Duke had no need to pray to God against him.

Luther undoubtedly wrote the two letters, as he himself says of the
one to Henry, with a simple and honest heart. They show, indeed, how
much genuine good-nature, and at the same time how strange an
ignorance of the world and of men, was combined in him together with
a passionate zeal for combat. George answered him at once with
ferocity, and, as Luther says, with the coarseness of a peasant. The
prince, otherwise not ignoble, was so embittered by hatred against
the heretic as to reproach him with the vulgarest motives of
avarice, ambition, and the lust of the flesh. Never had Luther, even
with his worst enemies, stooped to such personal slander. Concerning
the answer which came afterwards from King Henry, as well as the
reply of Erasmus, we shall speak further on.

Meanwhile, Luther and his friends were directing their attention to
the newly published doctrine of the Last Supper. At first Luther
left others to contest it: Bugenhagen addressed a public letter
against it to his friend Hess at Breslau; Brenz at Schwabish Hall,
together with other Swabian preachers, published tracts against
Oecolampadius. Luther himself, after February 1525, referred
repeatedly to Zwingli's theory in sermons to the congregation at
Wittenberg which were printed at the time. But beyond this he
confined himself to sending warnings by letter, on November 5, 1525,
and January 4, 1526, to Strasburg and Reutlingen, whence he had been
appealed to on the subject, against the false doctrines which had
been put forward concerning the Sacrament, and particularly against
the fanatics. We shall follow later on the further course of the
controversy.

All these polemics, however, were only an adjunct to his positive
labours and activity. His chief task now was to carry out the work
he had begun in his own Church. For this he could rely with
certainty on the inward sympathy of the new Elector, and he hastened
to turn it actively to account as soon as possible, for the
furtherance of his Church objects. During his communications with
the late Elector Frederick, Spalatin had always acted as
intermediary; but to John he addressed himself direct, and, whenever
occasion offered, by word of mouth, and this at times with much
urgency. Spalatin was now the pastor of a parish, as had been his
wish some time before. He was the successor at Altenburg of Link,
who had removed to Nuremberg, and he enjoyed the especial confidence
of John.

In his official capacity Luther was, and always remained, before all
things, a member of the university. He cherished at all times a
lively appreciation of its importance to the cause of evangelical
truth, the Church, and the common welfare of society. He began by
pleading on its behalf to the new Elector, to remedy the defects and
grievances which had crept in during the latter years of the old and
ailing Elector Frederick. The requisite salary, in particular, was
wanting for several of the professorships, and the customary
lectures on many branches of study had been dropped. Luther, as he
himself afterwards told the Elector in a tone of apology, had
'worried him sorely to put the university in order,' so much so that
'his urgency wellnigh surprised the Elector, as though he had not
much faith in his promises.' In September the necessary reforms at
Wittenberg were provided for by a commission specially appointed by
the prince. The interest the latter took in theology made him double
Melancthon's salary, in order to attach him the more closely to the
theological lectures, which originally were not part of his duty.

Luther next devoted all his energies towards the requirements of the
new Church system.

At Wittenberg, and from thence in other places, regulations for the
performance of public worship had already been established, with the
object of giving full and free expression to evangelical truth. The
congregation had the Word of God read aloud to them, and joined in
the singing of German hymns. The portions of the Liturgy, however,
which were sung partly by the priests and partly by the choir, were
still conducted in Latin. Luther now introduced a complete service
in German, changing here and there the old form. To assist him in
the musical alterations required, the Elector sent him two musicians
from Torgau. With one of these in particular, John Walter, Luther
worked with diligence, and continued afterwards on terms of friendly
intercourse. He himself composed a few pieces for the work.

Of these, as of the earlier regulations at Wittenberg, Luther
published a formal account. It appeared at the beginning of the next
year (1526), under the title of 'The German Mass and Order of Divine
Worship at Wittenberg.' But he guarded himself in this publication,
from the outset, against the new Service being construed into a law
of necessary obligation, or made a means of disquieting the
conscience. In this matter, as in others, he wished above all things
that regard should be paid to the weak and simple brethren--to those
who had still to be trained and built up into Christians. Nay, he
had meant it for a people among whom, as he said, many were not
Christians at all, but the majority stood and stared, for the mere
sake of seeing something new, just as though a Christian Service
were being performed among Turks and heathens. The first question
with these was how to attract them publicly to a confession of
belief and Christianity. He thought also, at this time, of another
and, as he termed it, a true kind of Evangelical Service, for which,
however, the people were not yet prepared. His idea in this was that
all individuals who were Christians in earnest, and were willing to
confess the gospel, should enrol themselves by name, and meet
together for prayer, for reading the Word of God, for administering
the Sacraments, and exercising works of Christian piety. For an
assembly of this kind, and for their worship of God, he contemplated
no elaborate form of Liturgy, but, on the contrary, simply a 'short
and proper' means of 'directing all in common to the Word and prayer
and charity,' and in addition thereto, a regular exercise of
congregational discipline and a Christian care of the poor, after
the example of the Apostles. But for the present, he said, he must
resign this idea of a congregation simply from the want of proper
persons to compose it. He would wait 'until Christians were found
sufficiently earnest about the Word to offer themselves for the
purpose, and adhere to it;' otherwise it might serve only to
generate a 'spirit of faction,' if he attempted to carry it through
by himself; for the Germans, he said, were a wild people, and very
difficult to deal with, unless extreme necessity compelled them. The
Elector, however, readily assented to this project, and purposed to
propose it as a model for other churches in his dominions.

At this point, however, a wider field of action opened out, the
details of which could not be comprehended at a single glance, and
which seemed to require a higher care, and the guidance and support
of higher powers and authorities. In many places, nothing as yet, or
at all events nothing of a stable and well-ordered kind, had been
done towards a reconstruction of the Church and the satisfaction of
spiritual requirements in an evangelical sense. There was no
collective Church, and no ecclesiastical office existing by whose
influence and authority reforms might have been made, and a new
organisation established. This was a grievous state of need where,
perhaps, the existing clergy and the majority or the flower of their
congregations were already unanimous and decided in their confession
of evangelical doctrine. And in a number of congregations, indeed,
among the great mass of the country people, there prevailed to a
peculiar degree, that want of understanding, of ripe thought, and of
inward sympathy, which Luther noticed even among many of his
Wittenbergers. The bishops, in their visitations in Saxony under the
Elector Frederick, had been unable to check any longer the progress
of the new teaching, and did not venture on any further
interference. And yet this teaching, as Luther knew better than
anyone, had not yet succeeded, in spite of all its popularity, in
penetrating the souls of men. To a large extent, the masses seemed
to be still stolid and indifferent. Even among the clergy, many were
so unstable, so obscure, and so incompetent, that they failed to
make any progress with their congregations. There were even some
among them who were ready, according to circumstances, to adopt
either the old or the new Church usages. In some places the new
practices were opposed as innovations, especially by various nobles,
and by the priests, who were dependent on the nobles: if such
opposition was to be broken, it could only be done by the authority
and power of the local sovereign. Lastly, and apart from all this,
the new Church system was threatened with imminent disturbance and
dissolution from the insufficiency or misuse of the funds required
for its support. The customary revenues were falling off; payments
were no longer made for private masses; and many of the nobles,
including even those who remained attached to the old system, began
to secularise the property of the Church. 'Unless measures are
taken,' said Luther, 'to secure a suitable disposition and proper
maintenance for ministers and preachers, there will shortly be
neither parsonages nor schools worth speaking of, and Divine Worship
and the Word of God will come utterly to an end.'

The first question was to establish the principles on which a new
organisation of the Church should be based.

The earlier opinions expressed by Luther, especially in his Address
to the German Nobility, might have led one to expect that the new
Church system conformably to his ideas would have to be built up, to
use a modern expression, from below, that is to say, on the basis of
the universal priesthood of all baptized Christians, who should now
therefore, after hearing and receiving the Word of the Gospel, have
proceeded to organise and embody themselves into a new community.
Luther had also, in that treatise, as we have seen, allotted certain
duties to the civil authorities in regard even to ecclesiastical
matters; and it was now from profound and painful conviction that he
confessed that the great bulk of the people were as yet not genuine
Christians, but needed public means of attraction to draw them to
Christianity. Later on we met with his idea of a 'German Mass,'
involving a voluntary union and assembly of genuine Christians, as
explained by him three years before in a sermon. There were elements
here at least, one might have thought, sufficient to constitute an
independent system of congregations. Shortly afterwards, in October
1526, a Hessian synod, convoked by the Landgrave Philip at Homberg,
actually adopted the draft of a constitution, which provided that
those Christians who acknowledged the Word of God should voluntarily
enrol themselves as members of a Christian Evangelical Brotherhood
or congregation, who should elect in assembly their pastors and
bishops, and that the latter, together with other deputies, should
constitute a general synod for the national Church. But Luther, true
to his conviction, previously expressed, that there were not the men
fitted for such an institution, stated now his opinion to Philip,
that he had not the boldness to carry out such a heap of
regulations, and that people were not as fit for them as those who
sat and made the regulations imagined. Moreover he could not
tolerate the idea that the mass of those who remained outside this
community, and who were looked upon, according to the Homberg
scheme, as heathens, should be left to their fate, without preachers
of the Word, and above all, without either baptism or the Christian
education of their children. Added to this, he adhered strenuously
to his belief, which we have noticed long before, that certain
duties with reference to religion and the Church were incumbent on
the civil authorities, the princes and magistrates, in common with
all the rest of Christendom. It was their duty, he declared in those
earlier writings of his, to prohibit, by force if necessary, the
proceedings of those priests who were hostile to the gospel. He now
applied the idea and definition of external, idolatrous practices to
the Papal system of public worship and the sacrifice of the mass. To
suppress these practices, he said, was the duty of those authorities
who watched over the external relations of life: such was his demand
against the Catholics at Altenburg. On the other hand, this province
of external life and external regulations embraced also the material
means required for the external maintenance of the Church. And it
was only a step further for those authorities to forbid any public
exposition of doctrines which they found to be at variance with the
Word of God, and to appoint also preachers of that Word; nay, to
undertake, in short, the establishment and preservation of the
constitution of the Church, so far as the same was external, and
necessary, and incapable of being established by any other power.
The Elector John himself had already, on August 16, 1525, announced
at his palace of Weimar to the assembled clergy of the district,
'that the gospel should be preached, pure and simple, without any
additions by man.'

Under such circumstances, and starting with such views, Luther now
urged the Elector to take in hand a comprehensive regulation of the
Church. As soon as he had discharged his duties at the university
and completed his new Church Service in German, he turned his
efforts to a general 'Reform of parishes.' This, as he said in a
letter at the end of September, was now the stumbling-block before
him. On October 31, 1525, the anniversary of his ninety-five theses,
he represented to the Elector that, now that the reorganisation of
the university and the regulation of public worship had been
completed, there still remained two points which demanded the
attention and care of his Highness, as the supreme temporal
authority in his country. One of these was the miserable condition
of the parishes in general; the other was the proposal that the
Elector, as Luther had already advised him at Wittenberg, should
institute an inspection also of the civil administration of his
councillors and officials, about which there were everywhere
complaints both in the towns and country districts. With regard to
the first point, he went on to explain, on receiving a gracious
reply from the Elector, that the people who wished to have an
evangelical preacher should themselves be made to contribute the
additional income required; and he proposed that the country should
be divided into four or five districts, each of which should be
visited by two commissioners appointed by the prince. He then
proceeded to consider the external maintenance of the parochial
clergy, and the means necessary for that purpose. He suggested
further that ministers advanced in years, or unfit to preach, but
otherwise of pious life and conduct, should be instructed to read
aloud, in person or by deputy, the Gospel, together with the
Postills or short homilies. With regard to those parishes where the
appointment of an evangelical preacher was a matter of indifference
or of actual repugnance, he expressed at present no opinion; but in
his later proposals he assumed the establishment of evangelical
preachers throughout the country. He expresses his conviction that
the Elector will give his services to God in these reforms of the
Church, as a faithful instrument in His hands, 'because,' as he
says, 'your Highness is entreated and demanded to do so by us, and
by the pressing need itself, and, therefore, assuredly by God.'

Readily as the Elector John listened to Luther's words and
exhortations, he found it difficult, nevertheless, to initiate at
once so vast an undertaking as was imposed upon him. Luther was well
aware, as he himself told John, that matters of importance might
easily be delayed at court, 'through the overwhelming press of
business;' and that princely households had much to do, and it was
necessary to importune them perseveringly. He knew his prince--that
with the best will possible, he was not energetic enough with those
about him; and among the latter he suspected that many were
indifferent and selfish with regard to matters of religion and the
Church. The task, however, that now lay before him, was even more
difficult and involved than Luther himself had imagined when first
shaping and propounding his idea.

A whole year went by before the project was taken up
comprehensively. Only in the district of Borna, in January 1526, was
an inspection of parishes effected by Spalatin and a civil official
of the prince; and another one was held during Lent in the
Thuringian district of Tenneberg, in which Luther's friend Myconius
of Gotha, afterwards one of the most prominent Reformers in
Thuringia, took an active part. Meantime, however, the clergy in
general received directions from the Elector to perform public
worship in the manner prescribed by Luther's 'German Mass.'

In the course of the summer the development of the general affairs
of the Empire enabled the desired co-operation of the civil
authorities in the work of Reformation to be established on a basis
of law. And yet, just now, the situation, as regards the Evangelical
cause, had become more critical than at any previous time since the
Diet of Worms. For the Emperor Charles had terminated, by a
brilliant victory, the war with France, which had compelled him to
let his Edict remain dormant; and the peace concluded with the
captured King Francis, in January 1526, at Madrid, was designated by
the two monarchs as being intended to enable them to take up their
Christian arms in common for the expulsion of the infidels and the
extirpation the Lutheran and other heresies. The Emperor issued an
admonition to certain princes of Germany, bidding them take measures
accordingly, and a number of them held a conference together on the
subject. Against the danger thus threatening, the Evangelical party
formed the League of Torgau. But no sooner was King Francis at
liberty and back in France, than he broke the peace so solemnly
contracted. Pope Clement, to whom this peace had offered such a
splendid prospect of purifying and uniting Christendom, set more
store by his political interests and temporal possessions in Italy,
which formed a subject of such jealous rivalry and contention
between himself, the Emperor, and the King. Terrified at the
overwhelming power of the Emperor, the Holy Father made use of his
Divine credentials to absolve the French king from his oath, and
himself concluded a warlike alliance with him against Charles, which
went by the name of the 'Holy League.' Myconius remarked of this
compact that 'whatever Popes do must be called most holy, for so
holy are they that even God, the Gospel, and all the world, must lie
at their feet.' Meanwhile, the Turks from the East were advancing on
Germany. Thus it came to pass that a Diet at Spires, which seemed
originally to have been summoned for the final execution of the
Edict of Worms, led to the Imperial Recess of August 27, 1526,
wherein it was declared that until the General, or at least National
Council of the Church, which was prayed for, should be convoked,
each State should, in all matters appertaining to the Edict of
Worms, 'so live, rule, and bear itself as it thought it could answer
it to God and the Emperor.'