Life of Luther by Julius Koestlin

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Nevertheless, he again undertook at once, so far as his health
permitted, the official duties of the town pastor, who this time was
absent from Wittenberg for a year and a half, until April 1532;
Luther, accordingly, not only preached the weekly sermons on
Wednesdays and Saturdays, on the Gospels of St. Matthew and St.
John, but attended continuously to the care of souls and the
ordinary business of his office. He would reproach himself with the
fact that under his administration the poor-box of the church was
neglected, and that he was often too tired and too lazy to do
anything. The pains in his head, the giddiness, and the affections
of his heart now recurred, and grew worse in March and June 1531,
while the next year they developed symptoms of the utmost gravity
and alarm.

All this time he worked with indefatigable industry to finish his
translation of the Prophets; in the autumn of 1531 he told Spalatin
that he devoted two hours daily to the task of correction. He
brought out a new and revised edition of the Psalms, and published
some of them with a practical exposition.

In addition to these literary labours, which ever remained his first
delight, Luther's chief task was to advise his Elector upon the
salient questions, transactions, and dangers of Church politics,
which, with the Recess of the Diet and the period thereby allotted
for their consideration, had become matters of real urgency. And, in
fact, it was to his valuable and conscientious advice that the
Protestants in general throughout the Empire looked for guidance.

On November 19 the Recess of the Diet, passed in defiance of the
Protestants, was published at Augsburg. They accepted the time
allowed them for consideration, but the Emperor and the Empire
insisted on maintaining the old ordinances of the Church, and the
Protestants were now required to surrender the ecclesiastical and
monastic property in their hands. The latter observed, moreover,
that the Recess contained no actual promise of peace on the part of
the Emperor, but that the States only were commanded to keep peace.
In fact, the Emperor had already promised the Pope on October 4 to
employ all his force to suppress the Protestants. He immediately
subjected the Supreme Court of the Empire--the so-called Imperial
Chamber--to a visitation, and instructed it to enforce strictly the
contents of the Recess in ecclesiastical and religious matters. Thus
the campaign against the Protestants was to begin with the
institution of processes at law, with reference particularly to the
question of Church property. Furthermore, to secure the authority
and continue the policy of the Emperor during his absence, his
brother Ferdinand was to be elected King of the Romans. John of
Saxony, the only Protestant among the Electors, opposed the
election. He appealed to the fact that the nomination was a direct
violation of a decision of imperial law, the Golden Bull, which
declared that the proposal for such an election, during the lifetime
of the Emperor, must first be unanimously resolved on by the
Electors. The Emperor had a Papal brief in his hands which empowered
him to exclude John, as a heretic, from electing, but he did not
find it prudent to make use of it. The election actually took place
on January 5, 1531.

The Protestants now sought for protection in a firm, well-organised
union among themselves. They assembled for this purpose at
Schmalkald at Christmas 1530.

The more imminent, however, the danger to be encountered, the more
necessary it became to determine the question whether it was lawful
to resist the Emperor. The jurists who advised in favour of
resistance, adduced certain arguments, without, however, stating any
very clear or forcible reasons of law. They quoted principles of
civil law, to show that a judge, whose sentence is appealed against
to a higher court, has no right to execute it by force, and that if
he does so, resistance may lawfully be offered him; and they
proceeded to apply this analogy to the appeal of the Protestants to
a future Council, and the action taken against them, while their
appeal was still pending, by the Emperor. They were nearer the mark
when they argued that, according to the constitution of the Empire
and the imperial laws themselves, the sovereignty of the Emperor was
in no sense unlimited or incapable of being resisted; but then the
difficulty here was, that the right of individual States to oppose
decrees, passed at a regular Diet by the Emperor and the majority of
the members present, was not yet proved. There was a general want of
clearness and precision connected with the theories then being
developed of the relations of the different States and the
interpretation of their rights. Upon this matter, then, Luther was
called on again, with the other Wittenberg theologians, to give an
opinion. The jurists also, especially the chancellor Bruck, were
associated with them in their deliberations.

On the question about Ferdinand's election as King of Rome, Luther
strongly advised his Elector to give way. The danger which, in the
event of his refusal, menaced both himself and the whole of Germany
appeared to Luther far too serious to justify it. The occasion would
be used to deprive him of the Electorship, and perhaps give it to
Duke George; and Germany would be rent asunder and plunged into war
and misery. This, said Luther, was his advice; adding, however, that
as he held such a humble position in the world, he did not
understand to give much advice in such important matters, nay, he
was 'too much like a child in these worldly affairs.'

But a change had now come in his views about the right of
resistance; a change which, though in reality but an advance upon
his earlier principles, led to an opposite result. He taught that
civil authorities and their ordinances were distinctly of God, and
by these ordinances he understood, according to the Apostle's words,
the different laws of different States, so far as they had anywhere
acquired stability. With regard to Germany, as we have seen, his
good monarchical principles did not as yet prevent his holding the
opinion that the collective body of the princes of the Empire could
dethrone an unworthy Emperor. The determining question with him now
was what the law of the Empire or the edict of the Emperor himself
would decide, in the event of resistance being offered by individual
States of the Empire, which found themselves and their subjects
injured in their rights and impeded in the fulfilment of their
duties. The answer to this, however, he conceived to be a matter no
longer for theologians, but for men versed in the law, and for
politicians. Theologians could only tell him that though, indeed, a
Christian, simply as a Christian, must willingly suffer wrong, yet
the secular authorities, and therefore every German prince having
authority, were bound to uphold their office given them by God, and
protect their subjects from wrong. As to what were the established
ordinances and laws of each individual State, that was a matter for
jurists to decide, and for the princes to seek their counsel.
Accordingly, the Wittenberg theologians declared as their opinion
that if those versed in the law could prove that in certain cases,
according to the law of the Empire, the supreme authority could be
resisted, and that the present case was one of that description, not
even theologians could controvert them from Scripture. In condemning
previously all resistance, they said, they 'had not known that the
sovereign power itself was subject to the law.' The net result was
that the allies really considered themselves justified in offering
resistance to the Emperor, and prepared to do so. The responsibility,
as Luther warned them, must rest with the princes and politicians,
inasmuch as it was their duty to see that they had right on their
side. 'That is a question,' he said, 'which we neither know nor
assert: I leave them to act.'

Luther gave open vent to his indignation at the Recess of the Diet
and the violent attacks of the Catholics in two publications, early
in 1531, one entitled 'Gloss on the supposed Edict of the Emperor,'
and the other, 'Warning to his beloved Germans.' In the former he
reviewed the contents of the Edict and the calumnies it heaped upon
the Evangelical doctrines, not intending, as he said, to attack his
Imperial Majesty, but only the traitors and villains, be they
princes or bishops, who sought to work their own wicked will, and
chief of all the arch-rogue, the so-called Vicegerent of God, and
his legates. The other treatise contemplates the 'very worst evil'
of all that then threatened them, namely, a war resulting from the
coercive measures of the Emperor and the resistance of the
Protestants. As a spiritual pastor and preacher he wished to counsel
not war, but peace, as all the world must testify he had always been
the most diligent in doing. But he now openly declared that if,
which God forbid, it came to war, he would not have those who
defended themselves against the bloodthirsty Papists censured as
rebellious, but would have it called an act of necessary defence,
and justify it by referring to the law and the lawyers.

These publications occasioned fresh dealings with Duke George, who
again complained to the Elector about them, and also about certain
letters falsely ascribed to Luther, and then published a reply,
under an assumed name, to his first pamphlet. Luther answered this
'libel' with a tract entitled 'Against the Assassin at Dresden,' not
intended, as many have supposed, to impute murderous designs to the
Duke, but referring to the calumnies and anonymous attacks in his
book. The tone employed by Luther in this tract reminds us of his
saying that 'a rough wedge is wanted for a rough log.' It brought
down upon him a fresh admonition from his prince, in reply to which
he simply begged that George might for the future leave him in
peace.

The imminence of the common danger favoured the attempts of the
South German States to effect an agreement with the German
Protestants, and the efforts of Butzer in that direction. Luther
himself acknowledged in a letter to Butzer, how very necessary a
union with them was, and what a scandal was caused to the gospel by
their rupture hitherto, nay, that if only they were united, the
Papacy, the Turks, the whole world, and the very gates of hell would
never be able to work the gospel harm. Nevertheless, his conscience
forbade him to overlook the existing differences of doctrine; nor
could he imagine why his former opponents, if they now acknowledged
the Real Presence of the Body at the Sacrament, could not plainly
admit that presence for the mouth and body of all partakers, whether
worthy or unworthy. He deemed it sufficient at present, that each
party should desist from writing against the other, and wait until
'perhaps God, if they ceased from strife, should vouchsafe further
grace.' The new explanations, however, were enough to make the
Schmalkaldic allies abandon their scruples to admitting the South
Germans, and they were accordingly received into the league.

Thus then, at the end of March 1531, a mutual defensive alliance for
six years of the members of the Schmalkaldic League was concluded
between the Elector John, the Landgrave Philip, three Dukes of
Brunswick Luneburg, Prince Wolfgang of Anhalt, Counts Albert and
Gebhard of Mansfeld, the North German towns of Magdeburg, Bremen,
and Lubeck, and the South German towns of Strasburg, Constance,
Memmingen, and Lindau, and also Ulm, Reutlingen, Bibrach, and Isny.
Even Luther no longer raised any objections.

By this alliance the Protestants presented a firm and powerful front
among the constituent portions of the German Empire. Their
adversaries were not so agreed in their interests. Between the Dukes
of Bavaria, and between the Emperor and Ferdinand, political
jealousy prevailed to an extent sufficient to induce the former to
combine with the heretics against the newly-elected King. Outside
Germany, Denmark reached the hand of fellowship to the Schmalkaldic
League; for the exiled King of Denmark, Christian II., who had
previously turned to the Saxon Elector and been friendly to Luther,
now sought, after returning in all humility to the orthodox Church,
to regain his lost sovereignty with the help of his brother-in-law,
the Emperor. The King of France also was equally ready to make
common cause with the Protestant German princes against the growing
power of Charles V.

As for Luther, we find no notice on his part of the schemes and
negotiations connected with these political events, much less any
active participation in them. There was just then a rupture pending
between Henry VIII. of England and the Emperor, and the former was
preparing to secede from the Church of Rome. Henry was anxious for a
divorce from his wife Katharine of Arragon, an aunt of the Emperor,
on the ground of her previous marriage with his deceased brother,
which, as he alleged, made his own marriage with her illegal; and
since the Pope, in spite of long negotiations, refused, out of
regard for the Emperor, to accede to his request, Henry had an
opinion prepared by a number of European universities and men of
learning, on the legality and validity of his marriage, which in
fact for the most part declared against it. A secret commissioner of
the former 'Protector of the Faith' was then sent to the
Wittenbergers, and to Luther, whom he had so grossly insulted.
Luther, however, pronounced (Sept. 5, 1531) against the divorce, on
the ground that the marriage, though not contrary to the law of God
as set forth in Scripture, was prohibited by the human law of the
Church. The political side of the question he disregarded
altogether. He expressed himself to Spalatin, in a certain tone of
sadness, about the Pope's evil disposition towards the Emperor, the
intrigues he seemed to be promoting against him in France, and the
animosity of Henry VIII. towards him on account of his decision on
the marriage; and added, 'Such is the way of this wicked world; may
God take our Emperor under His protection!'

With Charles V. and Ferdinand the question of peace or war was, of
necessity, largely governed by the menacing attitude of the Turks;
in fact it determined their policy in the matter. Luther kept this
danger steadily in view; after the publication of the Recess he
promised the wrath of God upon those madmen who would enter upon a
war while they had the Turks before their very eyes. Ferdinand in
vain sought to conclude a treaty of peace with the Sultan, who
demanded him to surrender all the fortresses he still possessed in a
part of Hungary, and reserved the right of making further conquests.
He was even induced, in March 1581, to advise his brother to effect
a peaceful arrangement with the Protestants, in order to ensure
their assistance in arms. Attempts at reconciliation were
accordingly made through the intervention of the Electors of the
Palatinate and Mayence. The term allowed by the Diet (April 15)
passed by unnoticed. The Emperor also directed the 'suspension of
the proceedings, which he had been authorised by the Recess of
Augsburg to set on foot in religious matters, till the approaching
Diet.'

The negotiations were languidly protracted through the summer,
without effecting any definite result. An opinion, drawn up jointly
by Luther, Melancthon, and Bugenhagen, advised against an absolute
rejection of the proposed restoration of episcopal power; the only
thing necessary to insist upon being that the clergy and
congregations should be allowed by the bishops the pure preaching of
the gospel which had hitherto been refused them.

About this time Luther had the grief of losing his mother. She died
on June 30, after receiving from her son a consolatory letter in her
last illness. Of his own physical suffering in this month we have
already spoken. On the 26th, he wrote to Link that Satan had sent
all his messengers to buffet him (2 Cor. xii. 7), so that he could
only rarely write or do anything: the devil would probably soon kill
him outright. And yet not his will would be done, but the will of
Him who had already overthrown Satan and all his kingdom.

Soon afterwards, the desire of the Catholics for coercive measures
was stimulated afresh by the news of a defeat which the Reformed
cities in Switzerland had sustained at the hands of the five
Catholic Cantons, notwithstanding that the balance of force inclined
there far more than in Germany to the side of the Evangelicals. The
struggle which Luther was perpetually endeavouring to avert from
Germany, culminated in Switzerland in a bloody outbreak, mainly at
Zwingli's instigation. Zwingli himself fell on October 11 in the
battle of Cappel, a victim of the patriotic schemes by which he had
laboured to achieve for his country a grand reform of politics,
morality, and the Church, but for which he had failed to enlist any
intelligent or unanimous co-operation on the part of his companions
in faith. Ferdinand triumphed over this first great victory for the
Catholic cause. He was now ready to renounce humbly his claim upon
Hungary, so that, by making peace with the Sultan, he might leave
his own and the Emperor's hands free in Germany. Luther saw in the
fate of Zwingli another judgment of God against the spirit of
Munzer, and in the whole course of the war a solemn warning for the
members of the Schmalkaldic League not to boast of any human
alliance, and to do their utmost to preserve peace.

But the events in Switzerland gave no handle against those who had
not joined the Zwinglians, nor were even the latter weakened thereby
in power and organisation. The South Germans had now to cling all
the more firmly to their alliance with the Lutheran princes and
cities; the Zwinglian movement suffered shortly afterwards (Dec. 1)
a severe loss in the death of Oecolampadius. Finally the Sultan was
not satisfied with Ferdinand's repeated offers, but prepared for a
new campaign against Austria in the spring of 1532, and towards the
end of April he set out for it.

This checked the feverous desire of Germans for war against their
fellow-countrymen, and brought to a practical result the
negotiations for a treaty which had been conducted early in 1582 at
Schweinfurt, and later on at Nuremberg. They amounted to this: that
all idea of an agreement on the religious and ecclesiastical
questions in dispute was abandoned until the hoped-for Council
should take place, and that, as had long been Luther's opinion, they
should rest content with a political peace or _modus vivendi_,
which should recognise both parties in the position they then
occupied. The main dispute was on the further question, how far this
recognition should extend;--whether only to the Schmalkaldic allies,
the immediate parties to the present agreement, or to such other
States of the Empire as might go over to the new doctrine from the
old Church--which still remained the established Church of the
Emperor and the Empire in general--and, perhaps further, to
Protestant subjects of Catholic princes of the Empire. There was
also still the question as to the validity of Ferdinand's election
as King of Rome. Luther was again and again asked for his opinion on
this subject.

He was just then suffering from an unusually severe attack, which
incessantly reminded him of his approaching end. In addition, he was
deeply concerned about the health of his beloved Elector. Early in
the morning of January 22 he was seized again, as his friend
Dietrich, who lived with him, informs us, with another violent
attack in his head and heart. His friends who had come to him began
to speak of the effect his death would have on the Papists, when he
exclaimed, 'But I shall not die yet, I am certain. God will never
strengthen the Papal abominations by letting me die now that Zwingli
and Oecolampadius are just gone. Satan would no doubt like to have
it so: he dogs my heels every moment; but not his will will be done,
but the Lord's.' The physician thought that apoplexy was imminent,
and that if so, Luther could hardly recover. The attack however
seems to have quickly passed away, but Luther's head remained racked
with pain. A few weeks later, towards the end of February, he had to
visit the Elector at Torgau, who was lying there in great suffering,
and had been compelled to have the great toe of his left foot
amputated. Luther writes thence about himself to Dietrich, saying
that he was thinking about the preface to his translation of the
Prophets, but suffered so severely from giddiness and the torments
of Satan, that he well-nigh despaired of living and returning to
Wittenberg. 'My head,' he says, 'will do no more: so remember that,
if I die, your talents and eloquence will be wanted for the
preface.' For a whole month, as he remarked at the beginning of
April, he was prevented from reading, writing, and lecturing. He
informed Spalatin, in a letter of May 20, which Bugenhagen wrote for
him, that at present, God willing, he must take a holiday. And on
June 13 he told Amsdorf that his head was gradually recovering
through the intercessions of his friends, but that he despaired of
regaining his natural powers.

Notwithstanding this condition and frame of mind, Luther continued
to send cordial, calm, and encouraging words of peace, concerning
the negotiations then pending, both to the Elector John and his son
John Frederick.

Concerning Ferdinand's election Luther declared to these two princes
on February 12, and again afterwards, that it must not be allowed to
embarrass or prevent a treaty of peace. If it violated a trifling
article of the Golden Bull, that was no sin against the Holy Ghost,
and God could show the Protestants, for a mote like this in the eyes
of their enemies, whole beams in their own. It must needs be an
intolerable burden to the Elector's conscience if war were to arise
in consequence,--a war which might 'well end in rending the Empire
asunder and letting in the Turks, to the ruin of the Gospel and
everything else.'

An opinion, drawn up on May 16 by Luther and Bugenhagen, was equally
decided in counselling submission on the question as to the
extension of the truce, if peace itself depended upon it. For if the
Emperor, he said, was now pleased to grant security to the now
existing Protestant States, he did so as a favour and a personal
privilege. They could not coerce him into showing the same favour to
others. Others must make the venture by the grace of God, and hope
to gain security in like manner. Everyone must accept the gospel at
his own peril.

Luther began already to hear the reproach that to adopt such a
course would be to renounce brotherly love, for Christians should
seek the salvation and welfare of others besides themselves. He was
reproached again with disowning by his conduct the Protestant ideal
of religious freedom and the equal rights of Confessions. Very
differently will he be judged by those who realise the legal and
constitutional relations then existing in Germany, and the
ecclesiastico-political views shared in common by Protestants and
Catholics, and who then ask what was to be gained by a course
contrary to that which he advised in the way of peace and positive
law. That the sovereigns of Catholic States should secure toleration
to the Evangelical worship in their own territories was opposed to
those general principles by virtue of which the Protestant rulers
took proceedings against their Catholic subjects. According to those
principles, nothing was left for subjects who resisted the
established religion of the country but to claim free and unmolested
departure. Luther observed with justice, 'What thou wilt not have
done to thee, do not thou to others.' With regard to the further
question as to the princes who should hereafter join the
Protestants, it certainly sounds naive to hear Luther speak of a
present mere act of favour on the part of the Emperor. But he was
strictly right in his idea, that a concession, involving the
separation of some of the States of the Empire from the one Church
system hitherto established indivisibly throughout the Empire, and
their organisation of a separate Church, had no foundation whatever
in imperial law as existing before and up to the Reformation, and
could in so far be regarded simply as a free concession of the
Emperor and Empire to individual members of the general body; who,
therefore, had no right to compel the extension of this concession
to others, and thereby hazard the peace of the Empire. Something had
already been gained by the fact that at least no limitation was
expressed. A door was thus left open for extension at a future time;
and for those who wished to profit by this fact, the danger, if only
peace could be assured, was at any rate diminished. If we may see
any merit in the fact that the German nation at that time was spared
a bloody war, unbounded in its destructive results, and that a
peaceful solution was secured for a number of years, that merit is
due in the first place to the great Reformer. He acted throughout
like a true patriot and child of his Fatherland, no less than like a
true Christian teacher and adviser of conscience.