Life of Luther by Julius Koestlin

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A private letter sent by Luther to Link, in which he spoke of George
as a fool, and said he mistrusted his promises, led afterwards, on
George's learning its contents, to a new and bitter quarrel between
the two. The Duke made a violent attack on Luther in a pamphlet,
which appeared early in 1521, to which the latter replied with equal
violence, denouncing the abuse of 'secret (_i.e._ private) and
stolen letters.' George retorted in the same strain, and persuaded
his cousin John, to whom he addressed a formal complaint, to
prohibit Luther from printing anything more against him without
Electoral permission;--a step which effectually silenced his
opponent.

On November 30, 1528, the Emperor summoned a Diet to meet at Spires
on February 21 of the following year, in order that decisive and
energetic measures should be taken--as recommended once more by the
Pope--to secure the unity and sole supremacy of the Catholic Church.
The chief subjects named for deliberation were, the armament against
the Turks, and the innovations in matters of religion.

As regards the war against the Turks, Luther, who had previously let
fall some occasional remarks about certain wholesome effects it
would have in checking the designs of the Papacy, let his voice be
heard, notwithstanding, in summoning the whole nation to do battle
against the fearful and horrible enemy, whom they had hitherto
suffered so shamefully to oppress them. Since the latter part of the
summer of 1528 he had been engaged upon a pamphlet 'On the War
against the Turks,' the publication of which was accidentally
delayed till March, when he was busy with his Catechism.

In this pamphlet he spoke to his fellow-Germans, with the noblest
fire and in the fulness of his strength, as a Christian, a citizen,
and a patriot, and with a clearness and decision derived from
convictions and principles of his own. He had no wish to preach a
new crusade; for the sword had nothing to do with religion, but only
with bodily and temporal things. But he exhorted and encouraged the
authority, whom God had entrusted with temporal power, to take up
the sword against the all-devouring enemy, with sure trust in God
and certain confidence in his mission. By the 'authority' he meant
the Emperor, in whom he recognised the head of Germany. He it was
who must fight against the Turks; under his banner they must march,
and upon that banner should be seen the command of God, which said
'Protect the righteous, but punish the wicked.' 'But,' asked Luther,
'how many are there who can read those words on the Emperor's
banner, or who seriously believe in them?' He complained that
neither Emperor nor princes properly believed that they were Emperor
and princes, and therefore thought little about the protection they
owed to their subjects. Further on he rebuked the princes for
letting matters go on as if they had no concern in them, instead of
advising and assisting the Emperor with all the means in their
power. He knew well the pride of some of the princes, who would like
to see the Emperor a nonentity and themselves the heroes and
masters. Rebellion, he said, was punished in the case of the
peasants; but if rebellion were punished also among princes and
nobles, he fancied there would be very few of them left. He feared
that the Turk would bring some such punishment upon them, and he
prayed God to avert it. Finally, he bade them remember not to buckle
on their armour too loosely, and underrate their enemies, as Germans
were too prone to do. He warned them not to tempt God by inadequate
preparation, and sacrifice the poor Germans at the shambles, nor as
soon as the victory was won to 'sit down again and carouse until the
hour of need returned.'

At Spires, however, the whole zeal of the imperial commissaries and
of the Catholic Estates was directed, not against the common enemy
of Germany and Christendom, but to the internal affairs of the
Church. They succeeded in passing a resolution or article, declaring
that those States which had held to the Edict of Worms should
continue to impose its execution on their subjects; the other States
should abstain at least from further innovations. The celebration of
the mass was not to be obstructed, nor was anyone to be prevented
from hearing it. The subjects of one State were never to be
protected by another State against their own. By these means, not
only was the Reformation prevented from spreading farther, but it
was cut off at a blow in those places where it had already been in
full swing. By the decision respecting the mass, room was given for
attempts to reinstate it on Evangelical territory; by the other
decision respecting the subjects of different States, power was
given to the bishops of the German Empire to coerce, if they chose,
the local clergy, as their subordinates. Further steps in the
exercise of this power could easily be anticipated.

This resolution of the majority was answered on April 19 by the
Evangelical party with a formal protest, from which they received
the name their descendants still bear--Protestants. They insisted
that the Imperial Recess unanimously agreed on at the first Diet of
Spires in 1526 could only be altered by the unanimous consent of the
States; and they declared 'that, even apart from that, in matters
relating to the honour of God and the salvation of our souls, every
man must stand alone before God and give account for himself.' In
these matters, therefore, "they could not submit to the resolution
of the majority."

The majority, however, as well as Ferdinand, the Emperor's brother
and representative, refused to admit their right of opposition. The
minority must prepare to submit to coercion and the exercise of
force. Against this the Elector and Landgrave concluded, on April
22, a 'secret agreement' with the cities of Nuremberg, Strasburg,
and Ulm. The Landgrave was eager that this alliance should be
strengthened by the admission of Zurich and the other Evangelical
towns in Switzerland. And a similar proposal was made to him by
Zwingli, who, in connection with his ecclesiastical labours, was
carrying on a bold and high policy, in striving to effect an
alliance with the republic of Venice and the King of France against
the Emperor, He certainly far overrated the importance of his town
in the great affairs of the world, and placed a strangely naive
confidence in the French monarch.

Luther, on the contrary, set his face as resolutely now as in the
affair of Pack, against any appeal to the sword in support of the
gospel. He would have his friends rely on God and not on the wit of
man; and, with regard to the last Diet, he was quite content that
God had not allowed their enemies to rage even more. He was willing
even to trust to the Emperor for relief; the Evangelical party, he
said, should represent to his Majesty how their sole concern was for
the gospel and for the removal of abuses which no one could deny to
exist; how, at the same time, they had resisted the iconoclasts and
other riotous fanatics, nay, how the suppression of the Anabaptists
and the peasants was pre-eminently due to them, and how they had
been the first to bring to light and vindicate the rights and
majesty of authority. A representation of this kind, he hoped, must
surely have an influence on the Emperor. He flatly rejected any
alliance with those,--namely, the Swiss,--who 'strive thus against
God and the Sacrament;' such an alliance would disgrace the gospel
and draw down their sins upon their heads. This opinion, in which
the other Wittenberg theologians, and especially Melancthon,
concurred, determined that of the Elector.

The Landgrave did his utmost to remove this obstacle to an alliance
with the Swiss. He urged a personal conference between the rival
theologians on the question of the Sacrament. Luther and Melancthon
were strongly opposed to such a step, inasmuch as the course of the
controversy hitherto had not revealed a single point which offered
any hope of reconciliation or mutual approach. Luther reminded him
how, ten years before, the Leipzig disputation served only to make
bad worse. Intrigues, moreover, were apprehended from the other
side, lest the Lutherans should be held up to odium as the enemies
of unity and obstacles to an alliance, and the Landgrave be
alienated from them. Melancthon, indeed, had brought with him from
Spires, where he had been staying with Philip, a suspicion that the
latter inclined to the Zwinglians, and was right in his conjecture
at least so far, that their doctrine did not appear to him nearly so
questionable as to the Wittenbergers. But the simple fear of
consequences made Luther unwilling and unable to refuse the
Landgrave's urgent invitation, backed as it was with the concurrence
of the Elector. He wrote to him on June 23, declaring his readiness
to 'render him this useless service with all diligence,' and only
entreated him to consider once more whether it would do more good
than harm. The conference was to take place at the Castle of Marburg
on Michaelmas day (1529).

Luther's sentiments in the interval are expressed in a letter which
he wrote on August 2 to a distant friend, the pastor Brismann at
Eiga. 'Philip (Melancthon) and myself,' he says, 'after many
refusals and much vain resistance, have been at length compelled to
give our consent, because of the Landgrave's importunity; but I know
not yet whether our going will come to anything. We have no hopes of
any good result, but suspect artifice on all sides, that our enemies
may be able to boast of having gained the victory.... I am pretty
well in body, but inwardly weak, suffering like Peter from want of
faith; but the prayers of my brethren support me.... That youth of
Hesse is restless, and boiling over with projects.... Thus
everywhere we are threatened with more danger from our own people
than from our enemies. Satan rests not, in his bloodthirstiness,
from the work of murder and bloodshed.'

In the same letter Luther tells of the panic caused by a new
pestilence--the Sweating Sickness--which had appeared in Germany and
at Wittenberg itself. It was a plague, known already many years
before, which used to attack its victims with fever, sweat, thirst,
intense pain and exhaustion, and snatch them off with fearful
rapidity. Luther knew well the danger of it when once it actually
appeared. But he watched without terror the supposed symptoms of its
appearance at Wittenberg, and remarked that the sickness there was
mainly caused by fright. On the 27th he told another friend how the
night before he had awoke bathed in sweat, and tormented with
anxious thoughts, so much so, that had he given way to them he might
very likely have fallen ill like so many others. He named also
several of his acquaintances, whom he had driven out of bed, when
they lay there fancying themselves ill, and who were now laughing at
their own fancies.

The Emperor, meanwhile, concluded a final treaty with the Pope on
June 29, and on August 5 made peace with King Francis. By this
treaty of Barcelona he pledged himself to provide a suitable
antidote to the poisonous infection of the new opinions. By the
peace of Cambray he renewed the promise, given in the treaty of
Madrid, of a mutual cooperation of the two monarchs for the
extirpation of heresy.

At Marburg the meeting now actually took place between the
theological champions of that great religious movement which strove
to set up the gospel against the domination of Rome, and was
therefore condemned by Rome as heretical. It was now to be decided
whether the anti-Romanists could not become united among themselves;
whether the two hostile parties in this movement could not, at least
in face of the common danger, join to make a powerful united Church.
Zwingli's political conduct, and the cheerful and submissive
readiness with which he had complied with the Landgrave's proposal,
afforded ground for expecting that, while steadfastly adhering to
his own doctrine, he would embrace such an alliance, notwithstanding
their doctrinal differences. Everything now really depended upon
Luther.

Zwingli and Oecolampadius met the Strasburg theologians, Butzer and
Hedio, and Jacob Sturm, the leading citizen of that town, on
September 29, at Marburg. The next day they were joined by Luther
and Melancthon, together with Jonas and Cruciger from Wittenberg and
Myeonius from Gotha; and afterwards came the preachers Osiander from
Nuremberg, Brenz from Schwabish Hall, and Stephen Agricola from
Augsburg. The Landgrave entertained them in a friendly and sumptuous
manner at his castle.

On October 1, the day after his arrival, Luther was summoned by the
Landgrave to a private conference with Oecolampadius, towards whom
he had always felt more confidence, and whom he had greeted in a
friendly manner when they met. Melancthon, being of a calmer
temperament, was left to confer with Zwingli. As regards the main
subject of the controversy, the question of the Sacrament, no
practical result was arrived at between the parties. But on certain
other points, in which Zwingli had been suspected by the
Wittenbergers, and in which he partly differed from them--for
instance, concerning the Church doctrine of the Trinity in Unity,
and the Godhead of Christ, and the doctrine of original sin--he
offered explanations to Melancthon, the result of which was that
the two came to an agreement.

The general debate began on Sunday, October 2, at six o'clock in the
morning. The theologians assembled for that purpose in an apartment
in the east wing of the castle, before the Landgrave himself, and a
number of nobles and guests of the court, including the exiled Duke
Ulrich of Wurtemberg. Out of deference to the audience, the language
used was to be German. Zwingli had wished, instead, that anyone who
desired it might be admitted to hear, but that the discussion should
be held in Latin, which he could speak with greater fluency. The
four theologians last mentioned, who were to conduct the debate, sat
together at a table. Luther, however, assumed the lead of his side;
Melancthon only put in a few remarks here and there. The Landgrave's
chancellor, Feige, opened the proceedings with a formal address.

Luther at the outset requested that his opponents should first
express their opinions upon other points of doctrine which seemed to
him doubtful; but he waived this request on Oecolampadius's replying
that he was not aware that such doubts involved any contradiction to
Luther's doctrine, and on Zwingli's appealing to his agreement
recently effected with Melancthon. All he himself had to do, said
Luther, was to declare publicly, that with regard to those doubts he
disagreed entirely with certain expressions contained in their
earlier writings. The chief question was then taken in hand.

The arguments and counter-arguments, set forth by the combatants at
various times in their writings, were now succinctly but
exhaustively recapitulated. But they were neither strengthened
further nor enlarged. The disputants were constrained to listen
during this debate to the oral utterances of their opponents with
more deference than they had done for the most part in their
literary controversy, with its hasty and passionate expressions on
each side.

Luther from the outset took his stand, as he had done before, on the
simple words of institution, 'This is my Body.' He had chalked them
down before him on the table. His opponents, he maintained, ought to
give to God the honour due to Him, by believing His 'pure and
unadorned Word.'

Zwingli and Oecolampadius, on the contrary, relied mainly, as
heretofore, on the words of Christ in the sixth chapter of St. John,
where He evidently alluded to a spiritual feeding, and declared that
'the flesh profiteth nothing.' Honour must be given to God, he said,
by accepting from Him this clear interpretation of His Word. Luther
agreed with them, as previously, that Jesus there spoke only of the
spiritual partaking by the faithful, but maintained that in the
Sacrament He had, in his words of institution, superadded the offer
of His Body for the strengthening of faith and that these words were
not useless or unmeaning, but of potent efficacy through the Word of
God. 'I would eat even crab-apples,' said Luther, without asking
why, if the Lord put them before me, and said "Take and eat."' He
fired up when Zwingli answered that the passage in St. John 'broke
Luther's neck,' the expression not being as familiar to him as to
the Swiss: the Landgrave himself had to step in as a mediator and
quiet them.

In the afternoon Luther's opponents proceeded to argue 'that Christ
could not be present with His Body at the Sacrament, because His
Body was in heaven, and the body, as such, was confined within
circumscribed limits, and could only be present in one place at a
time. Luther then asked, with reference to the objection that Christ
was in heaven and at the right hand of God, why Zwingli insisted on
taking those words in such a nakedly literal sense. He declined to
enter upon explanations as to the locality of the Body, though he
could well have disputed for a long time on that subject: for the
omnipotence of God, he said, by virtue whereof that Body was present
everywhere at the Sacrament, stood above all mathematics. Of greater
weight to him must have been the argument of Zwingli, which at any
rate had a Christian and biblical aspect, that Christ with His flesh
became like his human brethren, while they again at the last day are
to be fashioned like unto his glorified Body, though incapable,
nevertheless, of being in different places at the same time. Luther
rejected this argument, however, on the ground of the distinction he
was careful to draw between the actual attributes which Christ
possessed in common with all Christians, and those which He did not
so possess at all, or possessed in a manner peculiar to Himself, and
exalting him far above mankind. For example, Christ had no wife, as
men have.

The next day, Sunday, Luther preached the early morning sermon. He
connected his remarks with the Gospel for the day, and dwelt with
freshness and power, but without any reference to the controversy
then pending, on forgiveness of sin and justification by faith.

The disputation, however, was resumed later on in the morning. The
subject of discussion was still the presence of Christ's Body in the
Sacrament. Luther persisted in refusing to regard that Body as one
involving the idea of limits: the Body here was not local or
circumscribed by bounds. The Swiss, on the other hand, did not deny
the possibility of a miracle, whereby God might permit a body to be
in more than one place at the same time; but then they demanded
proof that such a miracle was really; effected with the Body of
Christ. Luther again appealed to the words before him: 'This is My
Body.' He said: 'I cannot slur over the words of our Lord. I cannot
but acknowledge that the Body of Christ is there.' Here Zwingli
quickly interrupted him with the remark that Luther himself
restricted Christ's Body to a place, for the adverb 'there' was an
adverb of place. Luther, however, refused to have his off-hand
expression so interpreted, and again deprecated the mathematical
argument. The same day, the second of the debate, Zwingli and
Oecolampadius sought to fortify their theory by evidence adduced
from Christian antiquity. On some points at least they were able to
appeal to Augustine. But Luther put a different construction on the
passages they quoted, and refused altogether to accept him as an
authority against Scripture. That evening the disputation was
concluded by each party protesting that their doctrine remained
unrefuted by Scripture, and leaving their opponents to the judgment
of God, by whom they might still be converted. Zwingli broke into
tears.

Philip in vain endeavoured to bring the contending parties to a
closer understanding. Just then the news came that the fearful
pestilence, the Sweating Sickness, had broken out in the town. All
further proceedings were stopped at once, and everyone hurried away
with his guests. The Landgrave only hastily arranged that in regard
to the points of Christian belief in which it was doubtful how far
the Swiss agreed with the Evangelical faith, a series of
propositions should be drawn up by Luther, and signed by the
theologians on both sides. This was done on the Monday. They are the
fifteen 'Articles of Marburg.' They expressed unity in all other
doctrines, and in the Sacrament also, in so far as they declared
that the Sacrament of the Altar is a Sacrament of the true Body and
Blood of Christ, and that the 'spiritual eating' of that Body is the
primary condition required. The only point left in dispute was
'whether the true Body and Blood of Christ are present bodily in the
bread and wine.'

[Illustration: Fig. 89. FACSIMILE OF THE SUPERSCRIPTION AND
SIGNATURES TO THE MARBURG ARTICLES.]

If we compare the manner in which this disputation at Marburg was
conducted with the previous character of the contest, in which the
one party had denounced their opponents as diabolical fanatics, and
the other as reactionary Papists and worshippers of 'a god made of
bread,' it will be evident that some results of importance at least
had been attained by the discussion itself and the mode in which it
had been held. The tone here, from first to last, was more
courteous, nay, even friendly in comparison. And the moderation now
used by these frank, outspoken men, so passionately excited hitherto,
could not have resulted solely from self-imposed restraint. Luther,
when he wished to speak very emphatically, addressed his opponents
as 'my dearest sirs.' Brenz, who was an eye-witness, tells us one
might have thought Luther and Zwingli were brothers. And, in fact,
on all the main doctrines but that one they agreed. Finer distinctions
of theory, which might have furnished food for argument, were mutually
waived. But the essential divergence between them on the one great
point of the Sacrament, and the spirit manifested in regard to it,
made it impossible for Luther to hold out to Zwingli the right hand
of fellowship, which the latter and his party so earnestly desired.
Luther held to his opinion: 'Yours is a different spirit from ours.'
His companions unanimously agreed with him that though they might
entertain sentiments of friendship and Christian love towards them,
they dared not acknowledge them as brethren in Christ. In the 'Articles'
the only mention made of this matter was that although they had not yet
agreed on that point, still 'each party should treat the other with
Christian charity, so far as each one's conscience would permit.'

On Tuesday afternoon Luther left Marburg, and set out on his journey
homeward. At the wish of the Elector he travelled by way of Schleiz,
where John was then consulting with the Margrave George of
Brandenburg about the Protestant alliance. They desired of Luther a
short and comprehensive confession of evangelical faith, as members
of which they wished to enrol themselves. Luther immediately
compiled one accordingly, upon the basis of the Marburg Articles,
making some additions and strengthening some expressions in
accordance with his own views. About October 18 he returned to
Wittenberg.

This confession was submitted without delay to a meeting of
Protestants at Schwabach. The result was, that Ulm and Strasburg
declined to subscribe a compact from which the Swiss were excluded.

Within the league itself, the question was now seriously considered,
how far the Protestant States might go, in the event of the Emperor
really seeking to coerce them to submission--whether, in a word,
they could venture to oppose force to force. Luther's opinion,
however, on this point remained unshaken. Whatever civil law and
counsellors might say, it was conclusive for them as Christians, in
his opinion, that civil authority was ordained by God, and that the
Emperor, as the lord paramount of Germany, was the supreme civil
authority in the nation. His first consideration was the imperial
dignity, as he conceived it, and the relative position and duties of
the princes of the Empire. As subjects of the Emperor, he regarded
these princes in the same light as he regarded their own territorial
subjects, the burgomasters of the towns and the various other
magnates and nobles, to whom they themselves had never conceded any
right to oppose, either by protest or force, their own regulations,
as territorial sovereigns, in matters affecting the Church. Not,
indeed, that he required a simply passive obedience, however badly
the authorities and the Emperor might behave; on the contrary, he
admitted the possibility of having to depose the Emperor. 'Sin
itself,' he said, 'does not destroy authority and obedience; but the
punishment of sin destroys them, as, for instance, if the Empire and
the Electors were unanimously to dethrone the Emperor, and make him
cease to be one. But so long as he remains unpunished and Emperor,
no one should refuse him obedience.' Nothing, therefore, in his
opinion, short of a common act of the Estates could provide a remedy
against an unjust, tyrannical, and law-breaking Emperor, while at
present it was apparent that Charles and the majority of the Diet
were agreed. Hence he refused to recognise the right of individual
States to an appeal to force, for his theory of the German Empire
involved the idea of a firm and united community or State, and not
in any way that of a league or federation, the independent members
of which might take up arms against a breach of their articles of
agreement. This theory was shared by his Elector and the
Nurembergers. Just as these Protestants for conscience sake had
refused obedience to the resolution of the Diet at Spires, so they
felt themselves bound by conscience to submit to the consequences of
that refusal. Luther's opinion, therefore, as to the proper attitude
for the Protestant States was the same as he had expressed to the
Elector Frederick on his return from the Wartburg. It was their
duty, he said, if God should permit matters to go so far, to allow
the Emperor to enter their territory and act against their subjects,
without, however, giving their assent or assisting him. But he
added: 'It is sheer want of faith not to trust to God to protect us,
without any wit or power of man.... "In quietness and confidence
shall be your strength."'