Life of Luther by Julius Koestlin

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For the use of the pastors, he added to this Catechism a short tract
on Marriage, and in the second edition, which followed immediately
after, he subjoined a reprint of his treatise on Baptism, which he
had published three years before.

The Catechism met the requirements of simple minds and of a
Christian's ordinary daily life, by providing also forms of prayer
for rising, going to bed, and eating, and lastly a manual for
households, with Scriptural texts for all classes. This ends with
the words--

Let each his lesson learn to spell,
And then his house will prosper well.

To the clergy, in particular, Luther addressed himself, that they
might imbue the people in this manner with Christian truth. But he
wished also, as he said, to instruct every head of a household how
to 'set forth that truth simply and clearly to his servants,' and
teach them to pray, and to thank God for His blessings.

The contents of the Catechism were carefully confined to the
highest, simplest, and thoroughly practical truths of Christian
teaching, without any trace or feature of polemics. In its
composition, as for instance, in his exposition of the Lord's
Prayer, and in his small prayers above mentioned, he availed himself
of old materials. How excellently this Catechism, with its
originality and clearness, its depth and simplicity, responded to
the wants not only of his own time, but of after generations, has
been proved by its having remained in use for centuries, and amid so
many different ranks of life and such various degrees of culture.
Except his translation of the Bible, this little book of Luther is
the most important and practically useful legacy which he has
bequeathed to his people.

The visitations were over when the two Catechisms appeared, although
they had not yet been held in all the parishes. Events of another
kind and dangers threatening elsewhere now demanded the first
attention of the Elector and the Reformers.

CHAPTER III.

ERASMUS AND HENRY VIII.--CONTROVERSY WITH ZWINGLI AND HIS FOLLOWERS,
UP TO 1528.

Luther's controversy with Erasmus, the most important of the
champions of Catholic Churchdom, had terminated, it will be
remembered, so far as Luther was concerned, with his treatise 'On
the Bondage of the Will.' To the new tract which Erasmus published
against him, in two parts, in 1526 and 1527, and which, though
insignificant in substance, was violent and insulting enough in
tone, Luther made no reply. Erasmus, nevertheless, to the pleasure
of himself and his patrons in high places, continued his virulent
attacks on the Reformation, which was bringing ruin, he declared, on
the noble arts and letters, and carrying anarchy into the Church,
while he himself, in his own mediating manner, and in the sense and
with the help of the temporal rulers, was doing his best to promote
certain reforms in the Church, within the pale of the ancient
system, and on its proper hierarchical basis. On what principles,
however, that basis was established, and the Divine rights of the
hierarchy reposed, he wisely abstained, now as he had done before,
from explaining. In Luther's eyes he was merely a refined Epicurean,
who had inward doubts about religion and Christianity, and treated
both with disdain.

Luther's letter to Henry VIII., which we have noticed in an earlier
chapter, took a long time before it reached the King, and before the
latter could send an answer to it. The writing of that answer must
have given his royal adversary much satisfaction; it turned out a
good deal coarser than even the one from Duke George; Luther's
marriage in particular afforded Henry an occasion for insulting
language. Emser published it in German early in 1527, adding some
vituperations and falsehoods of his own. Luther's only object in
replying was to dissipate any impression that he had ever declared
to Henry his readiness to recant. His reply consisted of a few but
powerfully written pages. He pointed out that in his letter he had
expressly excepted his doctrines from any offer of retractation;
upon these doctrines he took his stand, let kings and the devil do
their worst. Beyond these he had nothing which so encouraged his
heart, and gave him such strength and joy. To the personal insults
and imputations of sensuality and so forth, which Henry VIII., this
man of unbridled passions, had poured upon him, he replied that he
was well aware that, in regard to his personal life, he was a poor
sinner, and that he was glad his enemies were all saints and angels.
He added, however, that though he knew himself to be a sinner before
God and his dear Christian brethren, he wished at the same time to
be virtuous before the world, and that virtuous he was--so much so
that his enemies were not worthy to unloose the latchet of his
shoes. With regard to his letter to Henry he acknowledged that in
this, as in his letter to Duke George, and others, he had been
tempted to make a foolish trial of humility. 'I am a fool, and
remain a fool, for putting faith so lightly in others.'

Luther reverts in this reply to enemies of a different sort, who
make his heart still heavier. These are to him his 'tender
children,' his 'little brothers,' his 'golden little friends, the
spirits of faction and the fanatics,' who would not have known
anything worth knowing either of Christ or of the gospel, if Luther
had not previously written about it. He alluded, in particular, to
the new 'Sacramentarians,' and to Zwingli their leader.

Although this is the first time that Zwingli makes his appearance in
the history of Luther, and was never treated by him otherwise than
as a new offshoot of fanaticism, it is important, in order to
understand and appreciate him aright, to bear in mind the fact that,
himself only a few months younger than Luther, he had been working
since 1519 among the community at Zurich as an independent and
progressive Evangelical Reformer, and had extended his active
influence over Switzerland, however little noticed he had been at
Wittenberg.

His career hitherto had been made easier for him than was the case
with Luther. The Grand Council of the city of Zurich not only
afforded him their protection, but in 1520 decreed full liberty to
preach the Gospels and Epistles of the Apostles in the sense he
ascribed to them, and in 1523 formally declared their acceptance of
his doctrines, and abolished all idolatrous practices. No Recess of
a Diet was here to disturb or threaten him. The Pope, for political
reasons, behaved with unwonted caution and discretion: he delayed in
this case for several years the ban of excommunication which he had
pronounced so readily against Luther. Even Hadrian, the man of firm
character, to whom Luther was an object of abhorrence, had only
gracious and insinuating words for the Zurich Reformer. The Zurich
authorities, at the same time, acting in concert with Zwingli,
adopted severe measures against any intrusion of fanatics and
Anabaptists, nor did the entire population of the small republic
contain any great number of persons so thoroughly neglected, and so
difficult of influence by preachers, as was the case with the
country people in Germany. Well might Zwingli press forward with a
lighter heart than Luther's in his work.

[Illustration: Fig. 38.--ZWINGLI. (From an old engraving.)]

Personally, moreover, he had never passed through such severe inward
struggles as Luther, nor had ever wrestled with such spiritual
anguish and distress. The thought of reconciliation with God, and
the comforting of conscience by the assurance of His forgiving
mercy, were not with Zwingli, as with Luther, the centre and focus
of his aspirations and religious interests. He knew not that fervour
and intenseness which made Luther grasp at every means for bringing
home God's grace to congregations of believers, or to each individual
Christian according to his spiritual need. His view, from the very
first, extended rather to the totality of religious truth, as revealed
by God in Scripture, but sadly disfigured in the creeds of the Church
by man's additions and misinterpretations; and he aimed, far more than
Luther, at a reconstruction of moral, and especially of communal life,
in conformity with what the Word of God appeared to demand. It was
easier for him, therefore, to break with the past: critical scruples
against tradition did not weigh so heavily on his conscience. His
critical faculties, no doubt, were sharpened by the humanistic culture
he had acquired. Compared with Luther's peculiar meditative mood, and
his half-choleric, half-melancholic temperament, Zwingli evinced, in
all his conduct and demeanour, a more clear and sober intelligence,
and a far calmer and more easy disposition. His practical policy and
conduct was allied with a tendency to judicial severity, in contrast
to the free spirit which animated Luther. So rigorous and narrow-minded
was his zeal against the toleration of images, that the Wittenberg
theologians could not help detecting in him a spirit akin to that
of Carlstadt and the other fanatics. In renouncing the Catholic
doctrine of transubstantiation and the idea of a sacrifice, Zwingli
had rejected altogether the supposition of a Real Presence of Christ's
Body at the Sacrament; nay, as he declared later on, he had never truly
believed in it. He quoted the words of Christ, 'The flesh profiteth
nothing' (St. John vi. 63). He would understand by the Sacrament
simply a spiritual feeding of the faithful, who, by the Word of God
and His Spirit, are enabled to enjoy in faith the salvation
purchased by the death of Christ. He saw no particular necessity for
offering this salvation to them by an administration of Christ's
Body, which had been given for them, through the visible medium of
the bread; nor did he see how by so doing their faith could be
strengthened. In Luther's view the practical significance of the
Real Presence lay in this, that in this special manner the
Christian, who felt his need of salvation, was assured, and became a
partaker, of forgiveness and communion with his Saviour. With
Zwingli, such a visible communication of the Divine gift of
salvation was opposed to his conception of God and the Divine
Nature; just as this conception was opposed to that kind of union of
the Divine and human nature in Christ Himself, by virtue of which,
according to Luther, Christ was able and willing to be actually
present everywhere in the Sacrament with His human, transfigured
body. Inasmuch, said Zwingli, as this spiritual feeding took place
in faith everywhere, and not only at the Sacrament, it was no
essential part of the Sacrament; the real essence whereof consisted
in this, that the faithful here confessed by that act their common
belief in the commemoration of Christ's death, and, as members of
His Body, pledged themselves to such belief: he called the Sacrament
the symbol of a pledge. Luther himself, as we have seen, had taught
from the first that the Sacrament or Communion should represent the
union of Christians with the spiritual Body, or their communion of
the spirit, of faith, and of love. But with him this communion was a
secondary condition; it was the feeding on the Body of Christ
Himself which was to promote such communion with one another and,
above all, with Christ. Zwingli explained the word 'is' of our Lord,
in His institution of the Sacrament, to mean 'signifies.'
Oecolampadius preferred the explanation that the bread was not the
Body in the proper sense of the word, but a symbol of the Body. In
point of fact, this was a distinction without a difference.

Such, briefly stated, was the doctrinal controversy in which the two
Reformers, the German and the Swiss, now engaged, and which had
first brought them into contact.

About the same time Luther made the acquaintance of another opponent
of his doctrine of the Lord's Supper, the Silesian Kaspar
Schwenkfeld. He also, like his friend Valentin Krautwald, denied the
Real Presence; but sought to interpret the words of institution in
yet another manner, connecting with his theory of their meaning
deeper mystical ideas of the means of salvation in general, which at
least in some quarters and to a small extent, have still survived.

In all of them, however--in Carlstadt, Zwingli, Schwenkfeld, and the
rest--Luther, as he wrote to his friends at Reutlingen, perceived
only one and the same puffed up, carnal mind, twisting about and
struggling, to avoid having to remain subject to the Word of God.

His first public declaration against Zwingli's new doctrine was in
1526, in his preface to the Syngramma or treatise of the fourteen
Swabian ministers, written, as his opening words express it,
'against the new fanatics, who put forth novel dreams about the
Sacrament, and confuse the world.'

Blow upon blow followed in the battle thus commenced. While
Oecolampadius was busy composing a reply to the treatise and its
preface, by which he in particular had been assailed, Luther
proceeded to follow up the attack. The same year he published a
'Sermon on the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, against
the Fanatics;' and in the following spring a larger work with the
title 'A Proof that Christ's Words of Institution, "This is My
Body," &c., still stand, against the Fanatics.' He concludes the
latter with the wish, 'God grant that they may be converted to the
truth; if not, that they may twist cords of vanity wherewith to
catch themselves, and fall into my hands.' Just then, however,
Zwingli had written against him, and to him, and the missive arrived
at the moment when he had issued the last-named work. Zwingli wrote
in Latin, entitling his tract, 'A Friendly Exposition of the matter
concerning the Sacrament,' and sent it with a letter to Luther.
These were followed almost immediately by a reply, in German, to
Luther's Sermon, under the title of 'A Friendly Criticism of the
Sermon of the Excellent Martin Luther against the Fanatics.' Zwingli
had scarcely had Luther's last written work in his hands when he
replied to it in a new treatise: 'A proof that Christ's words, "This
is My Body which is given for you," will for all ages retain the
ancient and only meaning, and that Martin Luther in his last book
has neither taught nor proved his own and the Pope's meaning;' the
title thus indicating that Luther's and the Pope's meaning were one
and the same. Oecolampadius at the same time published 'A fair
Reply' to Luther's work. These were the writings of the
Sacramentarians which reached Luther during the troublous time of
the plague at Wittenberg, and filled him with the pain of which we
heard him then complain.

Zwingli's doctrine, from the time of its first announcement, had
seemed to Luther nothing but a visionary--nay, 'devilish' perversion
of the truth and the Word of God. The progress of the controversy,
so far from healing the difference between them, tended only to
sharpen and intensify it. From the first hour the two Reformers met
in opposition, the gulf was already fixed which henceforth divided
Evangelical Protestantism into two separate Confessions and Church
communities.

This is not the place to pass judgment on the matter in controversy,
or to trace minutely the leading points of dogma involved in the
dispute. Regarding it, however, by the light of history, it must be
acknowledged and avowed that this was no mere passionate quarrel
about words alone or propositions of dogmatic and metaphysical
interest, but devoid of any religious importance. Even in the
attempts to establish points of detail, reference was constantly
made, on both sides, to deep questions and views of Christian
religion.

Not only did Zwingli and Oecolampadius, in their anti-literal and
figurative interpretation of the words of institution, endeavour to
support it by Scriptural analogies, more or less appropriate, but
in the practical objections they raised, which Luther treated as
over-curious subtleties of human reason, they were actuated in reality
by motives of a religious character. In their view, a pure and
reverential conception of God was inconsistent with the idea of such
an offertory of Divine gifts, consisting of material elements and
for mere bodily nourishment. Not indeed that Luther, in accepting
the words in their literal sense, had become a slave to the letter,
in contradiction to the free and lofty spirit in which he had
elsewhere accepted the contents of Holy Scripture. The question with
him here was about a word of unique importance--a word used by
Christ on the threshold, so to speak, of His death for our
redemption; and we have already remarked what value he attached to
the actual bodily presence indicated by that word, as assuring and
imparting salvation to those who partook at His table in faith. No
analogies to the contrary, derived from other figurative
expressions, would content him, though of course he never denied
that such expressions could and did occur throughout the Bible. The
text, 'The flesh profiteth nothing,' on which Zwingli primarily
relied, Luther understood as referring not to the flesh of Christ,
but to the carnal mind of man; though he was careful to declare that
it was not the fleshly presence, as such, of our Saviour which gave
the Sacrament its value and importance; nor must the feeding of the
communicants be a mere bodily feeding, but that the word and promise
of Christ were there present, and that faith alone in that word and
promise could make the feeding bring salvation. God's glory was
therein exalted to the highest, that from His pitying love he made
Himself equal with the lowest.

In the doctrine concerning the person of the Redeemer, a point to
which the controversy further led, the Church had hitherto affirmed
simply a union of the Divine and human natures, each retaining the
attributes and qualities peculiar to itself. Luther wished to see in
the Man Jesus, the Divine nature, which stooped to share humanity,
conceived and realised with deeper and more active fervour. As the
Son of God He died for us, and as the Son of Man He was exalted,
with His body, to sit at the right hand of God, which is not limited
to any place, and is at once nowhere and everywhere. It is true,
Luther does not proceed to explain how this body is still a human
body, or indeed a body at all. Zwingli, in keeping the two natures
distinct, wished to preserve the sublimity of his God and the
genuine humanity of the Redeemer; but in so doing, he ended by
making the two natures run parallel, so to speak, in a mere stiff,
dogmatic formulary, and by an artificial interpretation and analysis
of the words of Scripture touching the One Jesus, the Son of God and
man.

The manner, however, in which this controversy was conducted on both
sides betrays an utter failure on the part of either combatant to
apprehend and do justice to the religious and Christian motives,
which, with all their antagonism, never ceased to animate the
opposite party. Luther's attitude towards Zwingli we have already
noticed. We have seen how his zeal, in particular, prompted him too
often to see in the conduct of individual opponents simply and
solely the dominating influence of that spirit, from which certain
pernicious tendencies, according to his own convictions, proceeded
and had to be combated. Thus it was in this instance. It was all
visionary nonsense, nay, sheer devilry, and be attacked it in language
of proportionate violence. From Zwingli a different attitude was to
be expected, from the amicable titles of his treatises and the
personal correspondence with Luther which he himself invited. He
adopted here for the most part, as in other matters, a calm and
courteous tone, and exercised a power of self-restraint to which
Luther was a stranger. But with a lofty mien, though in the same
tone, he rejected Luther's propositions, as the fruit of ludicrous
obstinacy and narrowness of mind, nay, as a retrograde step into
Popery. His letter, moreover, embittered the contest by importing
into it extraneous matter of reproach, such as, in particular,
Luther's conduct in the Peasants' War. Luther had reason to say of him,
'He rages against me, and threatens me with the utmost moderation and
modesty.' Zwingli's later replies evince a straightforwardness we miss
in the earlier ones, but they are marred by much rudeness and coarseness
of language, and display throughout a lofty self-consciousness and a
triumphant assurance of victory.

Luther, after reading the last-mentioned treatises of Zwingli and
Oecolampadius, resolved to publish one answer more, the last; for
Satan, he said, must not be suffered to hinder him further in the
prosecution of other and more important matters. At this time he was
particularly anxious to complete his translation of the Bible, being
now hard at work with the books of the Prophets. His answer to
Zwingli grew ultimately into the most exhaustive of all his
contributions to the dispute. It appeared in March 1528 under the
title of 'Confession concerning the Lord's Supper.' He went over
once more all the most important questions and arguments which had
formed the subject of contention, expounded his ideas more fully on
the Person and Presence of Christ, and explained calmly and
impressively the passages of Scripture relating thereto. He
concluded with a short summary of his own confession of Christian
faith, that men might know, both then and after his death, how
carefully and diligently he had thought over everything, and that
future teachers of error might not pretend that Luther would have
taught many things otherwise at another time and after further
reflection.

Zwingli and Oecolampadius hastened at once to prepare new pamphlets
in reply, and to publish them with a dedication to the Elector John
and the Landgrave Philip. But Luther adhered to his resolve. He let
them have the last word, as he had done with Erasmus. They had not
contributed anything new to the dispute.

While Luther was writing his last treatise against the
Sacramentarians, he found himself obliged to issue a fresh protest
against the Anabaptists. This was a tract entitled 'On Anabaptism;
to two pastors.' But while denouncing these sectaries, he protested
strongly against the manner in which the civil authorities were
dealing with them, by the infliction of punishment and even death on
account of their principles, even when no seditious conduct could be
alleged against them. Everyone, he said, should be allowed to
believe what he liked. Similarly he wrote to Nuremberg shortly
after, where as we have already mentioned, the new errors were
spreading, saying that he could in no wise admit the right to
execute false prophets or teachers; it was quite enough to expel
them. Luther in this distinguished himself above most of the men of
the Reformation. At Zurich, while Zwingli was accusing Luther of
cruelty, Anabaptists were being drowned in public.

The foreground is now occupied again by the struggle with
Catholicism--in other words, by the contest with the German princes
who were hostile to the Reformation, and with the Emperor himself
and the majority of the Diet.

CHAPTER IV.

CHURCH DIVISIONS IN GERMANY--WAR WITH THE TURKS--THE CONFERENCE AT
MARBURG, 1529.

In the war against the Pope and France an imperial army in 1527 had
stormed and plundered Borne. God, as Luther said, had so ordained,
that the Emperor, who persecuted Luther for the Pope, had to destroy
the Pope for Luther. But Charles V. was not then in a position to
break with the Head of the Church. In the treaty concluded with the
Pope in November, mention was again made of extirpating the Lutheran
heresy. And whilst in Italy the war with France was still going on,
the Emperor in the spring of 1528 sent an ambassador to the German
Courts, to rouse fresh zeal for the Church in this matter.

But before the threatened danger actually reached the Evangelical
party, it was preceded by disquieting rumours and false alarms.

In March 1528 a new Diet was to assemble at Ratisbon. Luther heard
in February of strange designs being meditated there by the Papists.
His wish was that Charles's brother Ferdinand might be detained in
Hungary, where he was occupied in fighting the Turks and their
_protege,_ Prince John Zapolya of Transylvania, and that the
Diet should be prevented from meeting. Luther's adversaries, on the
other hand, feared an unfavourable decision from the Estates, and
the Emperor at length peremptorily forbade their meeting.

Just about this time, John Pack, a steward of the chancery who had
been dismissed by Duke George of Saxony, came to the Landgrave
Philip and informed him of a league concluded with King Ferdinand by
the Dukes of Saxony and Bavaria, the Electors of Mayence and
Brandenburg, and several Bishops, to attack the Evangelical princes.
The Electorate of Saxony, where John was just then engaged in
completing the re-organisation of the Church, was to be partitioned
among them, and Hesse was to be allotted to Duke George. John and
Philip quickly formed an offensive and defensive alliance, and
called out their troops. The whole scheme, as was shortly proved
beyond dispute, was an invention, and the pretended treaty a
forgery, of Pack, who had been paid a large sum for his revelations.
Luther himself had no doubt of the genuineness of the document, and
persisted even afterwards in his belief. But while the Landgrave,
with his habitual vehemence, was impatient to strike quickly, before
their enemies were prepared, both Luther and the other Wittenberg
theologians did their utmost to restrain their sovereign from any
act of violence. Luther earnestly bade him remember the words:
'Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth' (St. Matt.
v. 5),--'As much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men' (Rom.
xii. 18),--'Those that take the sword, shall perish with the sword'
(St. Matt. xxvi. 52). He warned them that 'one durst not paint the
devil over one's door, nor ask him to stand godfather.' He feared a
civil war among the princes, which would be worse than a rising of
the peasants, and utterly ruinous to Germany. Philip accordingly
stayed his hand, until the reply of his supposed enemies, from whom
he demanded an explanation, puzzled him as to the meaning of Pack's
overtures.