Life of Luther by Julius Koestlin

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Between the ducal, or Albertine, and the Electoral, or Ernestine
lines of the princely house of Saxony, various rights were in
dispute, and among them, in particular, those of supreme
jurisdiction over the little town of Wurzen, belonging to the
bishopric of Meissen. When now the Bishop of Meissen refused to let
the subsidy, levied at Wurzen for the war against the Turks, be
forwarded to the Elector, the latter, in March 1542, quickly sent
thither his troops. Maurice at once called out his own troops
against him. Both continued to arm, and prepared to fight. Luther
thereupon, in a letter of April 7, intended for publication,
appealed to them and their Estates in terms of heartfelt Christian
fervour and perfect frankness. He reminded them of the Scriptural
admonition to keep peace; of the close relationship of the two
princes as the sons of two sisters; of their noble birth; of their
subjects, the burghers and peasants, who were so closely
intermingled by marriage that the war would be no war, but a mere
family brawl; furthermore, of the petty ground of their fierce
contention, just as if two drunken rustics were fighting in a tavern
about a glass of beer, or two idiots about a bit of bread; of the
shame and scandal for the Gospel; and of the triumph of their
enemies and the devil, who would rejoice to see this little spark
kindle into a conflagration. If either of the two, instead of using
force, would declare himself content with what was just and right,
whether it were his own Elector or the Duke, Luther for his part
would assist him with his prayers, and he might then trust himself
with confidence against aggression, and leave spear and musket to
the children of discontent. He told the others that they had
incurred the ban and the vengeance of God; nay, he advised all who
had to fight under such an unpeaceful prince to run from the field
as fast as they could.

The Landgrave Philip, who had hitherto, on account of his second
marriage, continued somewhat on strained terms with John Frederick,
brought about at this critical moment a peaceful understanding
between him and Maurice. The young duke, however, burned with an
ambition which longed to satisfy itself, even at the expense of his
cousin and other Protestant princes, and his power, moreover, was
far superior to the Elector's. Luther augured evil for the future.

The Reformation was now accepted in the territory also of Duke Henry
of Brunswick. The Landgrave Philip and John Frederick had taken the
field together against him, on account of his having attacked the
Evangelical town of Goslar and sought defiantly to execute against
it a sentence, in connection with ecclesiastical matters, which had
threatened it from the Imperial Chamber, but was suspended by the
Emperor. This war against 'Henry the Incendiary' Luther considered
just and necessary, the question being one of protecting the
oppressed. Wolfenbuttel, whose fortress the Duke boasted to be
impregnable, speedily succumbed on August 13, 1542, to the fate of
war and the boldness of Philip. Luther saw with triumph how the
fortress which, it was reputed, could stand a six years' siege, had
fallen in three days by the help of God. He hoped only that the
conquerors would be humble and give the glory of the exploit to God.
They then occupied the land, the prince of which fled, and proceeded
to establish the Evangelical Church, in accordance with the general
wish of the population.

Maurice of Saxony, who still strenuously adhered to the Evangelical
confession and to his rights as protector of the Church, not only
continued the reformation commenced in the Duchy by his father, but
succeeded in extending it peacefully to the bishopric of Merseburg.
The chapter there decided, in 1544, on his nomination, to elect to
the vacant see his young brother Augustus, who, not being himself an
ecclesiastic, delegated at once his episcopal functions to George of
Anhalt, Luther's pious-minded friend. Luther in the summer of the
following year consecrated him, in the same manner as Amsdorf,
together with several superintendents, and with Bugenhagen,
Cruciger, and Jonas.

Events far greater and more important were occurring in the
archbishopric of Cologne. Here an Archbishop at once and Elector,
the aged, worthy Hermann of Wied, had resolved, from his own free
conviction, to undertake a reformation on the basis of the Gospel.
In 1543 he invited Melancthon for this purpose from Wittenberg.
Melancthon's fellow-labourer was Butzer, who had the reputation of
always allowing himself to be carried too far by his zeal for
general unity in the Church, and at the same time, in regard to the
doctrine of the Sacrament, even as accepted by the Wittenberg
Concord, of preferring a more vague conception of his own. Luther,
however, promoted the undertaking with thanks to God, himself
furthered Melancthon's going, assured him of his entire confidence,
and learned from him with joy of the Archbishop's uprightness,
penetration, and constancy. In like manner, the Bishop of Munster
also began to attempt a reformation, in conformity with the wishes
of his Estates.

The Emperor at length, who since 1542 had been again at war with
France, and who needed therefore all the assistance that his German
Estates could give him, displayed at a new Diet at Spires, in 1544,
more gracious consideration to the Protestants than he had ever done
before. In the Imperial Recess he promised not only to endeavour to
bring about a general Council, to be assembled in Germany, but
undertook, since the meeting of such a Council was still uncertain,
to convoke another Diet, which should itself deal with the religion
in dispute. In the meantime, he and the various Estates of the
Empire would consider and prepare a scheme for Christian unity and a
general Christian reformation. The Archbishop Albert, now wholly
embittered against the Reformation, had issued a warning, after the
Diet of 1541, against any agreement to hold a Council on German
soil, as the Protestant poison would here have too powerful an
influence; in a national German Council he foresaw the threatening
danger of a schism. The resolutions passed at Spires brought down
severe reproaches from the Pope against the Emperor. What particularly
scandalised his Christian Holiness was that laymen--aye, laymen, who
supported the condemned heretics--were to sit as judges in matters
concerning the Church and the priesthood.

Protestantism, both in its extent and power, had now reached a point
of progress in the German Empire which seemed to offer a possibility
of its becoming the religion of the great majority of the nation,
and even of this majority being united. Charles V., nevertheless,
kept his eyes steadily fixed on his original goal--nay, he probably
felt himself nearer to it than ever. By his concessions he obtained
an army, which enabled him in the September of that year to conclude
a durable peace with King Francis, stipulating, as before, but
secretly, for mutual co-operation for the restoration of Catholic
unity in the Church. The next thing to be done was to persuade the
Pope at length to convene a Council, which should serve this object
in the sense intended by the Emperor, and then to enforce by its
authority the final subjection of the Protestants.

This possibility of a final triumph of Protestantism might have been
counted on with hope, if only that breath of the Spirit which had
once been stirred by the Reformer and had already responded to his
efforts had remained in full force and vigour in the hearts of the
German people; and if the new Spirit, thus awakened, had really
penetrated the masses, or, at least, the influential classes and
high personages who espoused the new faith, and had purified and
strengthened them to fight, to work, and to suffer. But Luther
complained from the very first, and more and more as time went on,
how sadly this Spirit was wanting to assist him in proclaiming the
Gospel and combating the anti-Christian system of Rome. Thus he
again complained, when hearing of what had happened at Cologne, at
Munster, and at Brunswick, that 'much evil and little good happens
to us;' he adapted to his own Church community the proverb, 'The
nearer Rome, the worse, the Christian,' as well as the words of the
prophets, lamenting the iniquity of Jerusalem, the holy city. In his
zeal he reproached the Evangelical congregations even more severely
than his Catholic and Popish opponents would ever have ventured to
reproach them, inasmuch as their own moral position, to say the
least, was not a whit better. But against the former, his own
brethren, Luther had to complain of base ingratitude to God for the
signal benefits He had vouchsafed them. Thus the peasantry, in
particular, he taxed again and again with their old selfish and
obstinate indifference and stupidity; the burghers with their luxury
and service of Mammon; and his fellow-countrymen in general with
their gluttony and their coarse and carnal appetites. It pained him
most to see these sins prevail among his nearest fellow-townsmen and
followers, his Wittenbergers; and he lashed out with all his force
against the students whom, as a class, he saw addicted to unchastity
and to 'swinish vices,' as he called them. The authorities, in his
opinion, were far too unmindful of their high appointment by God, of
which he had taken such pains to assure them. When Church discipline
came to be really introduced and made more stringent, he foresaw
quite well that it would only touch the peasants, and not reach the
upper classes. Among the great nobles at Court, especially at
Dresden, but also at that of the Elector, he found 'violent Centaurs
and greedy Harpies,' who preyed upon the Reformation and disgraced
it, and in whose midst it was difficult--nay, impossible--even for
an honest, right-minded ruler to govern as a true Christian. He had
already, and especially in these latter years, been in conflict with
lawyers, including some of well-recognised conscientiousness, such
as his colleague and friend Schurf, about many questions in which
they declared themselves unable to deviate from theories of the
canon or even the Roman law, which he considered unchristian and
immoral. He declared it, for example, to be an insult to the law of
God that they should insist so strongly on the obligation of vows of
marriage, made by young people in secret and against their parents'
will. So far from anticipating the triumph of the Evangelical
religion, while such was the condition of Germans and German
Protestants, he predicted with anxiety heavy punishment for his
country, and declared that God would assuredly cause the confessors
of the Gospel to be purged and sifted by calamity.

Just at that time, when a decisive moment was approaching for the
great ecclesiastical contest in Germany, Luther felt himself
constrained to rend asunder once more the bond of peace and mutual
toleration which had been established with such trouble between
himself and the Swiss Evangelicals. In doing so, he had seen no
reason either to change or conceal his old opinion about Zwingli.
The Swiss, on the other hand, offended by Luther's utterances, took,
in a manner, their honoured teacher and reformer under their
protection; from which Luther concluded that they still clung to all
his errors. A lurking distrust of Luther had never been wholly
dispelled among them. Luther heard, moreover, of corrupting
influences still exercised by the Sacramentarians outside
Switzerland. A letter reached him to that effect from some of his
adherents at Venice, whose complaints of the mischievous results of
the Sacramental controversy among their fellow-worshippers ascribed
that controversy to the continued influence of Zwinglianism. In
August 1543 he wrote to the Zurich printer Froschauer, who had
presented him with a translation of the Bible made by the preacher
of that town, saying briefly and frankly that he could have no
fellowship with them, and that he had no desire to share the blame
of their pernicious doctrine; he was sorry 'that they should have
laboured in vain, and should after all be lost.' Even in a scheme of
reformation which Butzer, with Melancthon, had prepared for Cologne,
he now discovered some suspicious articles about the Sacrament, to
which a criticism of Amsdorf had drawn his notice; they passed over,
it appeared, Luther's declaration, already agreed on, about the
substantial presence of Christ's Body in the Sacrament, or merely
'mumbled it,' as was Luther's expression. Nay, he heard it said that
even Wittenberg and himself would not adhere to his doctrine on this
point. Occasion, indeed, was given for this remark by the
circumstance that the ancient usage of the Elevation of the Host,
which, though connected with the Catholic idea of sacrifice, had
nevertheless been hitherto retained, though interpreted in another
sense, was now at length abolished at Wittenberg. After much anger
and discontent, Luther broke out, in September 1544, with the tract,
'Short Confession of the Holy Sacrament.' He had nothing to do with
any new refutation of false teachers--these, he said, had already
been frequently convicted by him as open blasphemers--but simply to
testify once more against the 'fanatics and enemies of the
Sacrament, Carlstadt, Zwingli, Oecolampadius, Schwenkfeld, and their
disciples,' and once and for all to renounce all fellowship with
these lost souls.

Alarming reports were spread about attacks being also meditated by
Luther against Butzer and Melancthon. Melancthon himself trembled;
he seriously feared he should be compelled to retire into exile. But
not a word did Luther say against Butzer, beyond calling him, as he
did now, a chatterbox. Against Melancthon we find nowhere, not even
in Luther's letters to his intimate friends, a single harsh or
menacing expression from his lips. He maintained his confidence in
him, even in respect to the later proceedings in the Church. When
urged to publish a collection of his Latin writings, he long refused
to do so, as he says in the preface to his edition of 1545, because
there were already such excellent works on Christian doctrine, such
as, in particular, the 'Loci Communes' of Melancthon, which its
author had recently revised. It must be regretted that Melancthon,
at moments like these, which must have caused him pain, did not open
his heart with more freedom and courage to the friend whose heart
still beat with such warm and unchanging affection for himself.

Luther never, till the day of his death, bestowed much care or
calculation on the immediate consequences of his acts and of the
work to which he felt himself called and urged by God, and which
certainly brought out in strong relief the individuality of his
nature. While committing, as he did, the cause to God alone, he kept
steadily in view the ultimate goal to which God was surely guiding
it--nay, that goal was immediately before his eyes. His confident
belief in the near approach of the last day, when the Lord would
solve all these earthly doubts and difficulties, and manifest
Himself in the perfect glory and bliss of His kingdom, remained in
him unaltered from the beginning of his struggle to the end of his
labours. We recognise in this belief the intensity of his own
longings, wrestlings, and strivings for this end, as also the
sincerity of his own conviction, little as the days of which we are
now speaking, so busy with events of every kind, corresponded with
the time ordained by God. Luther stretched out his view and
aspirations beyond this world, all the time that he was teaching
Christians again how to honour the world in the moral duties
assigned to them, and to enjoy its blessings and benefits with
thankfulness to God. 'No man knoweth the day or the hour'--of this
he constantly reminded them, and warned them against idle
speculations. But his hopes, nevertheless, he still rested on the
nearness of the end. These hopes he expressed with peculiar
assurance in a small Latin tract, written during these later years
of his life, in which he treats of Biblical chronology, and further
of the epochal years in the history of the world. In referring, for
example, to the wide-spread theory, originating with the Jews, of a
great Week of six thousand years, to be followed by the final and
everlasting Day of Rest, he sought with much ingenuity of reasoning
to prove that of those six thousand years probably only half would
be accomplished. Since now, according to his chronology, the year
1,540 was the 5,500th year of the world, the end was bound to be at
hand--nay, was already overdue--when his little book appeared in
1541. Yet, whatever were his views on this point, he never, like so
many others, allowed himself to be drawn by such hopes and desires
into illusions dangerous in practice.

This year passed by without any further or greater literary labour
on his part.

In addition to this continued polemic against the popedom and false
teachers, we must not omit to mention some characteristic
controversial writings, provoked from him by his indignation at the
attacks on Christianity by Jews, nay, by their seduction of many
Christians. As early as 1538, a strange rumour of a 'Jewish rabble'
in Moravia--a country rich in sectaries--having induced Christians
to accept the Mosaic law, had called forth from him a public 'Letter
against the Sabbathers.' He launched out with vehemence against them
in 1543 in some further tracts, inveighing mainly against the dirty
insults and savage blasphemies which the brazen-faced Jews dared to
employ towards Christ and Christians, and also against the usurers,
in whose toils the Christians were ensnared. He declared even that
their synagogues, the scene of their blasphemies and calumnies,
should be burnt, and they themselves compelled to take to honest
handicraft, or be hunted from the country.

In the grand and beautiful labour of his life, the German
translation of the Bible, he was busily occupied until his death.
After the second chief edition had appeared, in 1541, he endeavoured
to improve, at least in some points, those which followed in 1543
and 1545. He meditated also revising and further improving the most
important of his sermons, which have been left to posterity. After
having undertaken this task in 1540 with a number of them, he caused
three years later the 'Summer-Postills,' which Roth had previously
edited and brought out, to be published in a new form by his
colleague Cruciger. This work was now completed by the addition of
his sermons on the Epistles.

We have already seen how earnestly, even before the great end should
come, Luther longed for his eternal rest, and for release from the
struggles and labours of his earthly life, and the burden of his
bodily suffering. He spoke of his death with calmness but with deep
earnestness, and, indeed, with a touch of humour which pained those
who heard him speak, or read his writings. Thus, when in March 1544
the Elector's wife, Sybil, asked him 'anxiously and diligently'
about his own health and that of his wife and children, he answered:
'Thank God, we are well, and better than we deserve of God. But no
wonder, if I am sometimes shaky in the head. Old age is creeping on
me, which in itself is cold and unsightly, and I am ill and weak.
The pitcher goes to the well until it breaks. I have lived long
enough; God grant me a happy end, that this useless body may reach
His people beneath the earth, and go to feed the worms. Consider
that I have seen the best that I shall ever see on earth. For it
looks as if evil times were coming. God help his own. Amen.'

CHAPTER VII.

LUTHER'S LATER LIFE: DOMESTIC AND PERSONAL DETAILS.

Frequently as Luther complained of his old age and ever-increasing
weakness, lassitude, and uselessness, his writings and letters give
evidence not only of an indomitable power and unquenchable ardour,
but also, and often enough, of those cheerful, merry moods, which
rose superior to all his sufferings, disappointments, and anger. He
himself declared that his many enemies, especially the sectaries,
who were always attacking him, always made him young again. The true
source of his strength he found in his Lord and Saviour, Whose
strength is made perfect in weakness, and to Whom he clung with a
firm and tranquil faith. To this, indeed, we must add one
particularly favourable influence, in regard to his life and
calling, which had been awakened since his marriage. In speaking of
his family, his wife, and his children, he is always full of thanks
to God; his heart swells with emotion, and he breathes amid his
heated labours and struggles a fresh and bracing air. Just as,
during the Diet of Augsburg, he had pointed out encouragingly to the
Elector the happy Paradise which God had allowed to bloom for him in
his little boys and girls, so he himself was permitted to experience
and enjoy this Paradise at home. In his domestic no less than in his
public life he saw a vocation marked out for him by God; not,
indeed, as if he, the Reformer, had here any peculiar path of life,
or exceptional duties to perform, but so that in that holy estate
ordained for all men, however despised by arrogant monks and
priests, and dishonoured by the sensual, he felt himself called on
to serve God, as was the duty of all men and all Christians alike,
and to enjoy the blessings which God had given him.

[Illustration: Fig. 47.--LUTHER. (From a portrait by Cranach, in his
Album, at Berlin.)]

Five children were now growing up. The eldest, John, or Hanschen
(Jack), was followed, during the troublous days of 1527, by his
first little daughter, Elizabeth. Eight months after, as he told a
friend, she already said good-bye to him, to go to Christ, through
death to life; and he was forced to marvel how sick at heart, nay,
almost womanish, he felt at her departure. In May 1529 he was
comforted to some extent by the birth of a little Magdalene or
Lenchen (Lena). Then followed the boys: Martin in 1531, and Paul
in 1533. The former was born only a few days--if not the very
day--before the feast of St. Martin, and the birthday of his father;
hence he received the same name. His son Paul he named in memory of
the great Apostle, to whom he owed so much. At his baptism he
expressed the hope that 'perhaps the Lord God might train up in him
a new enemy of the Pope or the Turks.' The youngest child was a
little daughter, Margaret, who was born in 1534.

His family included also an aunt of his wife, Magdalene von Bora.
She had been formerly a nun in the same cloister as her niece, where
she had filled the post of head-nurse. She lived among Luther's
children like a beloved grandmother. It was she whom Luther meant by
the 'Aunt Lena,' of whom he wrote to his little Hans in 1530 saying,
'Give her a kiss from me;' and when in 1537 he was able to travel
homewards from Schmalkald, where he had been in such imminent peril
of death, he wrote to his wife: 'Let the dear little children,
together with Aunt Lena, thank their true Father in Heaven.' She
died, probably, shortly afterwards. Luther comforted her with the
words: 'You will not die, but sleep away as in a cradle, and when
the morning dawns, you will rise and live for ever.'

[Illustration: Fig. 48.--WITTENBERG. (From an old engraving.)]

At this time Luther had two orphan nieces living with him, Lene and
Else Kaufmann of Mansfeld, sisters of Cyriac, whom we found with him
at Coburg, and also a young relative, of whom we know nothing
further than that her name was Anna. Lene was betrothed in 1538 to
the worthy treasurer of the University of Wittenberg, Ambrosius
Berndt, and Luther gave the wedding. He used also from time to time
to have some young student nephews at his house.

[Illustration: Fig. 49.--THE "_LUTHER-HOUSE_" (previously the
Convent), before its recent restoration.]

When his boys grew up and the time came for them to learn, he had a
resident tutor for them. For his own assistance he engaged a young
man as amanuensis; thus we find Veit Dietrich with him at Coburg in
this capacity. We hear afterwards of a young pupil--indeed, of two
or more--who lived with Dietrich at Luther's house. This seems,
however, to have somewhat overtaxed his wife; in the autumn of 1534
Dietrich left his house on that account.

[Illustration: Fig. 50.--LUTHER'S ROOM.]

Luther, like other professors, used to take several students for
payment to his table. Among these there were men of riper years who
were eager, nevertheless, to share in the studies at Wittenberg,
and, above all things, to make his acquaintance. Besides this, his
house was open to a number of guests, theologians and others, of
high or low degree, who called on him in passing through the town.

The dwelling-place of this large and growing household was a portion
of the former Convent. The Elector John Frederick had assigned it to
Luther for his own. The house, which had not been completed when the
Reformation began, was still unfinished when Luther went there, and
it needed many improvements. The present richer architectural
features of the building date from a very recent restoration. It
stood against the town wall, and was protected by the Elbe. His own
small study looked out in this direction, and formed a gable above
the water of the moat; though, as he complained in 1530, it was
threatened with alterations for military purposes, and perhaps
during his lifetime fell a prey to them. Only one of the larger
rooms of the house, situated in front, has been preserved in the
recollection of posterity, and is now called Luther's room. It was
probably the chief sitting-room of the family.