'<•:* The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924073651782 LIFE OF LUTHER ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS. LUTHER. (From a Portrait by Cranach in the Town;Church at Weimar.) LIFE OF LUTHER ^. JULIUS KOSTLIN / ° / t>. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS PROM AUTHENTIC SOURCES TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN SECOND EDITION LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 1898 All rights reserved \}\\A 3^5 m BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. First published, November, 1S83. Second Edition, January, 1895. Re-issued in " Silver Library," January, i8g8. AUTHOR'S DEDICATION TO MY DEAR WIFE PAULINE WITH THE WORDS OF LUTHER ' God's highest gift on earth is to have a pious, cheerful, God-fearing, home-keeping wif? " AUTHOR'S PREFACE. No German has ever influenced so powerfully as Luther the religious life, and, through it, the whole history, of his people ; none has ever reflected so faithfully, in his whole personal character and conduct, the peculiar features of that life and history, and been enabled by that very means to render us a service so effectual and so popular. If we recall to fresh life and remembrance the great men of past ages, we Germans shall always put Luther in the van : for us Protestants, the object of our love and venera- tion, who will not prevent, however, or prejudice the most candid historical inquiry ; for others, a rock of offence, whom even slander and falsehood will never overcome. I have already in my. larger work, Martin Luther : his Life and Writings, 2 vols., 1875, P^t together all the materials available for that subject, together with the necessary references, historical and critical, and have endeavoured to explain and illustrate at length the subject matter of his various writings. I now offer this sketch of his life to the wide circle of what are called educated German readers. For further explanations and proofs of statements herein contained I would refer them to my larger work. Further investigation has prompted me to X AUTHCnrS PREFACE. make some alterations, but only a few, in matters of detail. For the illustrations and illustrative documents I beg to express m}- warm thanks, and those of the publisher, to the friends who have kindly assisted us in the work. J. KOSTLIN, Professor at the University of Halle- Wittenberg. Oct. 31, i88t, the Anniversary of Luther's 95 Theses. CONTENTS PART I. LUTHER'S CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH, UP TO HIS ENTERING THE CONVENT.— 1^83-1505. CHAPTER PACK I. Birth and Parentage i II. Childhood and School-days . 9 III- Student-days at Erfurt, and Entry into the Convent, 1501- 1505 23 PART II. LUTHER AS MONK AND PROFESSOR, UNTIL HIS ENTRY ON THE WAR OF REFORMATION.— 1505-1517. I. At the Convent at Erfurt, till 1508 .,,... 33 II. Call to Wittenberg. Journey to Rome ... -47 III. Luther as Theological Teacher, to 1517 . . • • 53 PART III. THE BREACH WITH ROME, UP TO THE DIET OF WORMS.— 15171521. I. The Ninety-five Theses , . 68 II. The Controversy concerning Indulgences 80 III. Luther at Augsburg, before Caietan. Appeal to a Council . . gi xii CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE IV. Miltitz and the Disputation at Leipzig, with its Results . . 102 V. Luther's further Work, Writings, and Inward Progress, until 1520 ........... 126 VI. Alliance with the Humanists and Nobility .... i^i VII. Crisis of Secession; Luther's Works— to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, and on the Babylonian Captivity . 158 VIII. The Bull of Excommunication, and Luther's Reply . . .171 IX. The Diet of Worms 188 PART IV. FROM THE DIET OF WORMS TO THE PEASANTS' WAR AND LUTHER'S MARRIAGE. I. Luther at the Wartburg, to his Visit to Wittenberg in 1521 . 208 II. Luther's further Sojourn at the Wartburg, and his Return to Wittenberg, 1522 222 III. Luther's Reappearance and firesh Labours at Wittenberg, 1522 23 r IV. Luther and his anti-Catholic Work of Reformation, up to 1525 242 V. The Reformer against the Fanatics and Peasants, up to 1525 257 VI. Luther's Marriage . 275 PART V. LUTHER AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH, TO THE FIRST RELIGIOUS PEACE.— 1525.1532. I. Survey ... ..... 285 II. Continued Labours and Personal Life 292 III. Erasmus and Henry VIII. Controversy with Zwingji and his Followers, up to 1528 . , . . , , . 315 CONTENTS. xiii LHAl'TER PAGE IV. Church Divisions in Germany. War with the Turlts. The Conference at Marburg, 1529 . 325 V. The Diet of Augsburg, and Luther at Coburg, 1530 . 340 VI. From the Diet of Augsburg to the Religious Peace of Nijrem- berg, 1532. Death of the Elector John . . 361 PART VI. FROM THE RELIGIOUS PEACE OF NUREMBERG TO THE DEATH OF LUTHER. I. Luther under John Frederick . . . 347 II. Negotiations respecting a Council and Union among the Pro- "j testants. The Legate Vergerius, 1535. The Wittenberg Concord, 1536 ..... . . 392 III. Negotiations respecting a Council and Union among the Pro- testants (continued). The Meeting at Schmalkald, 1537. Peace with the Swiss. Luther's Friendship with the Bohe- mian Brethren . . 403 IV. Other Labours and Proceedings, 1535-39. The Archbishop Albert and Schonitz. Agricola . 414 V. Luther and the Progress and Internal Troubles of Protes- tantism, r538-4i ■ 425 VI. Luther and the Progress and Internal Troubles of Protes- tantism (continued), 1541-44 . . 439 VII. Luther's Later Life : Domestic and Personal 452 VIII. Luther's Last Year and Death 475 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. FIG. I'AGK Luther. (From a Portrait by Cranach in the Town Church at Weimar) . . . Frontispiece 1. Coat of Arms . . . .2 2. Hans Luther, (From a Portrait by Cranach, 1527) . 5 3. Margaret Luther. (From a Portrait by Cranach, 1527) . . 6 4. Luther's Cell at Erfurt. . 36 5. Staupitz. (From the Portrait in St. Peter's Convent at Salzburg) 43 Facsimile from Luther's Psalter, at WoLFENBiJTTEL to face 54 5. Title and Preface of Penitential Psalms 62 7. Spalatin. (From L. Cranach's Portrait) . 64 8. Erasmus. (From the Portrait by A. Diirer) . 65 g. Leo X. (From his Portrait by Raphael) . . . . 6g Facsimile of Placard of Indulgences, 1517 to face 70 Facsimile of Letter of Absolution . ,, 70 10. The Archbishop Albert. (From Diirer's engraving). . 71 11. Title-page of a Pamphlet written at the Beginning of the Reformation, with an Illustration showing the Sale of Indul- gences . : -73 12. The Castle Church. (From the Wittenberg Book of Relics, 1509) • • • • 75 13. The Emperor Maximilian. (From his Portrait by Albert Diirer) 107 14. Duke George of Saxony. (From an old woodcut) . . 112 15. Luther. (From an engraving of Cranach, in 1520) . 117 16. Dr. John Eck. (From an old woodcut) ... iig 17. Melancthon. (From a Portrait by Diirer) . . . I2g 18. Lucas Cranach. (From a Portrait by himself) . . . 132 ig. W. Pirkheimer. (From a Portrait by Albert Diirer) . 145 20. Ulrich von Hutten. (From an old woodcut) . 149 21. Francis von Sickingen. (From an old engraving) . . . 152 22. Title-page of the Second Edition of Luther's Treatise to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation . . 165 LIST OF iLLVSTJiATJOiVS. XV 17 /3 FIG. 23. Title-page of the Original Tract On the Liberty of a Christian Man . .... 24. Title-page of Luther's Tract On the Answer of the Goat at Leipzig . . ... 183 25. Charles V. (From an engraving by B. Eeham, in 1531) . igi 26. Luther. ■ (From an engraving by Cranach, in 1321) . 201 27. LuTKER as " Squire George "- (From a woodcut Ly Cranach) 2og 28. Bugenhagen. (From a picture by Cranacli in his album, at Berlin, 1543) . ■ • 235 29. Munzer. (From an old woodcut). . . 273 30. Luther. (From a Portrait by Cranach in 1525, at Wittenberg; 280 31. Catharine von Bora, Luther's Wife. (From a Portrait by Cranach about 1525, at Berlin) . . . . 281 32. Luther's Ring from Catharine . . . . 283 33. Luther's Double Ring 283 34. The Saxon Electors, Frederick the Wise, John, and John Frederick. (From a Picture by Cranach, at Nuremberg) . 287 35. Facsimile of Fi-ederick'-s Signature 288 36. Philip of Hesse. (From a woodcut of Brosamer) 290 37. Luther. (From a Portrait by Cranach in 1528, at Berlin) . 306 38. Luther's Wife. (From a Portrait by Cranach in 152;;, at Berlin) . . 307 39. Zwingli. (From an old engraving) . 318 40. Facsimile of the Superscription and Signatures to Txie Marburg Articles . 336 41. Veit Dietrich, as Pastor of Niiremberg. (From an old woodcut) 343 42. Luther's Seal. (Taken from letters written in 1517; 352 43. Luther's Coat of Arms. (From old prints) 352 44. The New Testament, from the First Edition of the Tkans- lation of the Bible 379 45. The First Illustration from the New Testament of 1534 381 46. BuTZER. (From the old original woodcut of Reusner) 390 47. Agricola. (From a miniature Portrait by Cranach, in the Uni- versity Album at Wittenberg, 1531) . . . 421 48. Title-page of the Pamphlet Against Hans Worst 434 49. Jonas. (From a Portrait by Cranach, in his Album at Berhn, 1543) -440 50. Amsdorf. (From an old woodcut) . 443 51. Luther. (From a Portrait by Cranach, in his Album at Berlin) . 453 52. Wittenberg. (From an old engraving) . . . 455 xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. FIG. PAGE 53. The " Luther-House " (previously the Convent), before its re- cent restoration . 456 54. Luther's Room . . . . . 457 55. Luther's Daughter " Lene ". (From Cranach's Portrait) . 461 56. Doorway of Luther's House at Wittenberg . 465 57. Mathesius. (From an old woodcut) . . 469 58. Luther in 1546. (From a woodcut of Cranach) . 483 ,59. Jonas' Drinking-Glass . 484 60. Address of Luther's Letter of 7TH February . 488 61. Luther after Death. (From a Picture ascribed to Cranach) 491 62. Cast of Luther after Death. (At Halle) . . . 492 Facsimile of Part of the Edict of Worms, 8th May (1521), being the title and conclusion, with the signature of the Emperor Charles .... . . . 496 Title and Commencement of the Gospel of St. Matthew, IN THE First Edition of the New Testament, 1522. (From the original in the Royal Public Library at Stuttgart) 498 Facsimile of concluding portion of Luther's Will, with the attestations of Melancthon, Cruciger, and Bugenhagen. (At Pesth) Facsimile of Letter of Luther to his Wife, of 7TH Febru- ary, 1546. (At Breslau) . . ... LUTHER'S LIFE. PART I. LUTHER'S CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH, UP TO HIS ENTERING THE COATFfiWT.— 1483-1505. CHAPTER I. BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. On the loth of November, 1483, their first child was born to a young couple, Hans and Margaret Luder, at Eisleben, in Saxony, where the former earned his living as a miner. That child was Martin Luther. His parents had shortly before removed thither from Mohra, the old home of his family. This place, called in old records More and More, lies among the low hills where the Thuringian chain of wooded heights runs out westwards towards the valley of the Werra, about eight miles south of Eisenach, and four miles north of Salzungen, close to the railway which now con- nects these two towns. Luther thus comes from the very centre of Germany. The ruler there was the Elector of Saxony. Mohra was an insignificant village, without even a priest of its own, and with only a chapel affiliated to the church of the neighbouring parish. The population consisted for the most part of independent peasants, with house and farmstead, cattle and horses. Mining, moreover, was being carried on there in the fifteenth century, and copper was being discovered in the copper schist, of which the names of Schieferhalden and Schlackenhaufen still survive to remind us. The soil was not very favourable for agriculture, and consisted partly of moor- I 2 LUTHER'S CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. land, which gave the place its name. Those peasants who possessed land were obliged to work extremely hard. They were a strong and sturdy race. From this peasantry sprang Luther. "I am a peasant's son," he said once to Melancthon in conversation. " My father, grandfather— all my ancestors were thorough peasants." His father's relations were to be found in several families and houses in Mohra, and even scattered in the country around. The name was then written Luder, and also Ludher, Luder, and Leuder. We find the name of Luther for the first time as that of Martin Luther, the Professor at Wittenberg, shortly before he entered on his war of Reformation, and from him it was adopted by the other branches of the family. Originally it was not a surname, but a Christian name, identical with Lothar, which signifies one renowned in battle. A very singular coat of arms, consisting of a cross- bow, with a rose on each side, had been handed down through, no doubt, many generations in the family, and is to be seen on the seal of Luther's brother James. The origin of these arms is un- CoatofArms. known ; the device leads one to conclude that the family must have blended with another by inter- marriage, or by succeeding to its property. Contemporaneous records exist to show how conspicuously the relatives of Luther, at Mohra and in the district, shared the sturdy character of the local peasantry, always ready for self- help, and equally ready for fisticuffs. Firmly and reso- lutely, for many generations, and amidst grievous persecu- tions and disorders, such as visited Mohra in particular during the Thirty Years' War, this race maintained its ground. Three families of Luther exist there at this day, who are all engaged in agriculture ; and a striking likeness to the features of Martin Luther may still be traced in many of his descendants, and even in other inhabitants of Mohra. Not less remarkable, as noted by one who is familiar with the present people of the place, are the depth of feeling and strong common sense which distinguish them, in general, to this day. The house in which Luther's grandfather lived, or rather that which was afterwards built on the site, can still, it is believed, but not with certainty, be identified. Near this house stands now a statue of Luther in bronze. At Mohra, then, Luther's father, Hans, had grown up to BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 3 manhood. His grandfather's name was Henry, but of him we hear nothing during Luther's time. His grandmother died in 1521. His mother's maiden name was Ziegler ; we afterwards find relations of hers at Eisenach ; the other old account, which made her maiden name Lindemann, pro- bably originated from confusing her with Luther's grand- mother. What brought Hans to Eisleben was the copper mining, which here, and especially in the county of Mansfeld, to which Eisleben belonged, had prospered to an extent never known around Mohra, and was even then in full swing of activity. At Eisleben, the miners' settlements soon formed two new quarters of the town. Hans had, as we know, two brothers, and very possibly there were more of the family, so that the paternal inheritance had to be divided. He was evidently the eldest of the brothers, of whom one, Heinz, or Henry, who owned a farm of his own, was still living in 1540, ten years after the death of Hans. But at Mohra the law of primogeniture, which vests the possession of the land in the eldest son, was not recognised ; either the property was equally divided, or, as w as c ustomary in other parts of the country, the^estate fell to the sharFof the youngest. This custom was referred to in after years by Luther in his remark that in this world, according to civil law, the youngest son is the heir of his father's h»use. We must not omit to notice the other reasons which have been assigned for his leaving his old home. It has been re- peatedly asserted, in recent times, and even by Protestant writers, that the father of our great Reformer had sought to escape the consequences of a crime committed bj' him at Mohra. The matter stands thus : In Luther's lifetime his Catholic opponent Witzel happened to call out to Jonas, a friend of Luther's, in the heat of a quarrel, " I might call the father of* your Luther a murderer ". Twenty years later the anonymous | author of a polemical work which appeared at Paris actually j calls the Reformer "the son of the Mohra assassin". With - these exceptions, not a trace of any story of this kind, in the writings of either friend or foe, can be found in that or in the following century. It was at the beginning of the eighteenth century, in an official report on mining at Mohra, that the story, evidently based on oral tradition, assumed all at once a more definite shape ; the statement being that Luther's father 4 LUTHER'S CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. had accidentally killed a peasant, who was minding some horses grazing. This story has been told to travellers in our own time by people of Mohra, who have gone so far as to point out the fatal meadow. We are forced to notice it, not, indeed, as being in the least authenticated, but simply on account of the authority recently claimed for the tradition. For it is plain that what is now a matter of hearsay at Mohra was a story wholly unknown there not many years ago, was first intro- duced by strangers, and has since met with several variations at their hands. The idea of a criminal flying from Mohra ' to Mansfeld, which was only a few miles off, and was equally subject to the Elector of Saxony, is absurd, and in this case is strangely inconsistent with the honourable position soon at- •tained, as we shall see, by Hans Luther himself at Mansfeld. Moreover, the very fact that Witzel's spiteful remark was long known to Luther's enemies, coupled with the fact that they never turned it to account, shows plainly how little they ven- tured to make it a matter of serious reproach. Luther during his lifetime had to hear from them that his father was a • Bohemian heretic, his mother a loose woman, employed at the j baths, and he himself a changeling, born of his mother and the devil. How triumphantly would they have talked about the murder or manslaughter committed by his father, had the charge admitted of proof! Whatever occurrence may have given rise to such a story, we have no right to ascribe it either to any fault or any crime of the father. More on this subject it is needless to add ; the two strange statements we have mentioned do not attempt to establish any definite connection between the supposed crime and the removal to Eisleben. The day, and even the very hour, when her first-born came into the world, Luther's mother carefully treasured in her mind. It was between eleven and twelve o'clock at night. Agreeabl}' to the custom of the time, he was baptised in the Church of St. Peter the next day. It was the feast of St. Martin, and he was called after that saint. Tradition still identifies the house where he was born ; it stands in the lower part of the town, close to St. Peter's Church. Several conflagrations, which de- vastated Eisleben, have left it undestroyed. But of the original building only the walls of the ground-floor remain : within these there is a room facing the street, which is pointed out as the one where Luther first saw the light. The church was re- built soon after his birth, and was then called after St. Peter BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 5 and St. Paul ; the present font still retains, it is said, some portions of the old one. When the child was six months old, his parents removed to the town of Mansfeld, about six miles off. So great was the number of the miners who were then crowding to Eisleben, the most important place in the county, that we can well under Fig. 2. — Hans Luther. stand how Luther's father failed there to realise his expectations, and went in search of better prospects to the other capital of the rich mining district. Here, at IVIansfeld, or, more strictly, at Lower Mansfeld, as it is called, from its position, and to dis- tinguish it from Cloister-Mansfeld, he came among a people whose whole life and labour were devoted to mining. The 6 LUTHER'S CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. town itself lay on the banks of a stream, enclosed by hills, on the edge of the Harz country. Above it towered the stately castle of the Counts, to whom the place belonged. The character of the scenery is more severe, and the air harsher than in the neighbourhood of Mohra. Luther himself called his Mansfeld countrymen sons of the Harz. In the main, these Harz people are much rougher than the Thuringians. Fig. 3. — Margaret Luther. Here also, at first, Luther's parents found it a hard struggle to get on. " My father," said the Reformer, " was a poor miner ; my mother carried in all the wood upon her back ; they worked the flesh off their bones to bring us up : no one nowadays would ever have such endurance.'' It must not, however, be forgotten that carrying wood in those days was BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 7 less a sign of poverty than now. Gradually their affairs im- proved. The whole working of the mines belonged to the Counts, and they leased out single portions, called smelting furnaces, sometimes for lives, sometimes for a term of years. Hans Luther succeeded in obtaining two furnaces, though only on a lease of years. He must have risen in the esteem of his town fellows even more rapidly than in outward prosperity. The magistracy of the town consisted of a bailiff, the chief landowners, and four of the community. Among these four Hans Luther appears in a public document as early as 149 1. His children were numerous enough to cause him constant anxiety for their maintenance and education : there were at least seven of them, for we know of three brothers and three sisters of the Reformer. The Luther family never rose to be one of the rich families of Mansfeld, who possessed furnaces by inheritance, and in time became landowners ; but they associated with them, and in some cases numbered them among their intimate friends. The old Hans was also personal!}' known to his Counts, and was much esteerned by them. In 1520 the Reformer publicly appealed to their personal acquaintance with his father and himself, against the slanders circulated about his origin. Hans, in course of time, bought himself a substantial dwelling-house in the principal street of the town. A small portion of it remains standing to this day. There is still to be seen a gateway, with a well- built arch of sandstone, which bears the Luther arms of cross- bow and roses, and the inscription J. L. 1530. This was, no doubt, the work of James Luther, in the year when his father Hans, died, and he took possession of the property. It is only quite recently that the stone has so far decayed as to cause the arms and part of the inscription to peel off. The earliest personal accounts that we have of Luther's parents date from the time when they already shared in the honour and renown acquired by their son. They frequently visited him at Wittenberg, and moved with simple dignity among his friends. The father, in particular, Melancthon describes as a man, who, by purity of character and conduct, won for himself universal affection and esteem. Of the mother he says that the worthy woman, amongst other virtues, was distinguished above all for her modesty, her fear of God, and her constant communion with God in prayer. Luther's friend, the Court-preacher Spalatin, spoke of her as a rare and 8 LUTHER'S CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. exemplary woman. As regards their personal appearance, the Swiss Kessler describes them in 1522 as small and short persons, far surpassed by their son Martin in height and build ; he adds, also, that they were dark-complexioned. Five years later their portraits were painted by Lucas Cranach : these are now to be seen in the Wartburg, and are the only ones of this couple which we possess.^ In these portraits, the features of both the parents have a certain hardness ; they indicate severe toil during a long life. At the same time, the mouth and eyes of the father wear an intelligent, lively, energetic, and clever ex- pression. He has also, as his son Martin observed, retained to old age a " strong and hardy frame ". The mother looks more wearied by life, but resigned, quiet, and meditative. Her thin face, with its large bones, presents a mixture of mildness and gravity. Spalatin was amazed, on seeing her for the first time in 1522, how much Luther resembled her in bearing and features. Indeed, a certain likeness is observable be- tween him and her portrait, in the eyes and the lower part of the face. At the same time, from what is known of the ap- pearance of the Luthers who lived afterwards at Mohra, he must also have resembled his father's family. ^ Strange to say, subsequently and even in our own days, a portrait of Martin Luther's wife in her old age has been mistaken for one of his nnother. CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOLDA YS. CHAPTER 11. CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOLDAYS. As to the childhood of Martin Luther, and his further growth and mental development^ at Mansfeld and elsewhere, we have absolutely no information from others to enlighten us. For this portion of his life we can only avail ourselves of occasional and isolated remarks of his own, partly met with in his writings, partly culled from his lips by Melancthon, or his physician Ratzeberger, or his pupil Mathesius, or other friends, and by them recorded for the benefit of posterity. These remarks are very imperfect, but are significant enough to enable us to under- stand the direction which his inner life had taken, and which prepared him for his future calling. Nor less significant is the , fact that those opponents who, from the commencement of his ' war with the Church, tracked out his origin, and sought therein for evidence to his detriment, have failed, for their part, to con- tribute anything new whatever to the history of his childhood ' and youth, although, as the Reformer, he had plenty of enemies at his own and his parents' home, and several of the Counts of Mansfeld, in particular, continued in the Romish Church. There was nothing, therefore, dark or discreditable, at any rate, to be found attaching either to his home or to his own youth. It is said that childhood is a Paradise. Luther in after years found it joyful and edifying to contemplate the happiness of/ those little ones who know neither the cares of daily life nor the ' troubles of the soul, and enjoy with light hearts the good things which God has given them. But in his own reminiscences of ( life, so far as he has given them, no such sunny childhood is reflected. The hard time,__which his parents at first had to struggle through at Mansfeld, had to be shared in by the children, and the lot fell most hardly on the eldest. As the former spent their days in hard toil, and persevered in it with unflinching severity, the tone of the house was unusually lo LUTHER'S CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. earnest and severe. The upright, honourable, industrious father was honestly resolved to make a useful man of his son, and enable him to rise higher than himself. He strictly maintained at all times his paternal authority. After his death, Martin recorded, in touching language, instances of his father's love, and the sweet intercourse he was permitted to have with him. But it is not surprising, if, at the period of childhood, so peculiarly in need of tender affection, the severity of the father was felt rather too much. He was once, as he tells us, so severely flogged by his father that he fled from him, and bore him a temporary grudge. Luther, in speaking of the discipline of children, has even quoted his mother as an example of the way in which parents, with the best intentions, are apt to go too far in punishing, and forget to pay due attention to the peculiarities of each child. His mother, he said, once whipped him till the blood came, for having taken a paltry little nut. He adds, that, in punishing children, the apple should be placed beside the rod, and they should not be .chastised for an offence about nuts or cherries as if they had broken open a money-box. His parents, he acknowledged, had meant it for the very best ; but they had kept him, nevertheless, so strictly that he had be- come shy and timid. Theirs, however, was not that unloving severity which blunts the spirit of a child, and leads to artfulness and deceit. Their strictness, well intended, and proceeding from a genuine moral earnestness of purpose, furthered in him a strictness and tenderness of conscience, which then and in after years made him deeply and keenly sensitive of every fault committed in the eyes bf God ; a sensitiveness, indeed, which, so far from relieving him of fear, made him apprehensive on account of sins that existed only in his imagination. It was a later consequence of this discipline, as Luther himself informs us, that he took refuge in a convent. He adds, at the same time, that it is better not to spare the rod with children even from the very cradle, than to let them grow up without any punishment at all ; and that it is pure mercy to young folk to bend their wills, even though it costs labour and trouble, and leads to threats and blows. We have a reference bj' Luther to the lessons he learned in childhood from his experience of povert}' at home, in his re- marks in later life, on the sons of poor men, who by sheer hard work raise themselves from obscurity, and have much to endure, and no time to strut and swagger, but must be humble CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOLDAYS. ii and learn to be silent and to trust in God, and to whom God also has given good sound heads. As to Luther's relations with his brothers and sisters we have the testimon}' of one who knew the household at Mansfeld, and particularly his brother James, that from childhood they were those of brotherly companionship, and that from his mother's own account he had exercised a governing influence both by word and deed on the good conduct of the younger members of the family. His father must have taken him to school at a very early age. Long after, in fact only two years before his death, he noted down in the Bible of a "good old friend," Emler, a townsman of Mansfeld, his recollection how, more than once, Emler, as the elder, had carried him, still a weakly child, to and from school; a proof, not indeed, as a Catholic opponent of the next century imagined, that it was necessary to compel the boy to go to school, but that he was still of an age to benefit by being carried. The schoolhouse, of which the lower portion still re- mains, stood at the upper end of the little town, part of which runs with steep streets up the hill. The children there were taught not only reading and writing, but also the rudiments of Latin, though doubtless in a very clumsy and mechanical fashion. From his experience of the teaching here, Luther speaks in later years of the vexations and torments with de- clining and conjugating and other tasks which school children in his youth had to undergo. The severity he there met with from his teacher was a very different thing from the strict- ness of his parents. Schoolmasters, he says, in those days were tyrants and executioners, the schools were prisons and hells, and in spite of blows, trembling, fear, and misery, no- thing was ever taught. He had been whipped, he tells us,i fifteen times one morning, without any fault of his own, having been called on to repeat what he had never been taught. At this school he remained till he was fourteen, when his father resolved to send him to a better and higher-class place of education. He chose for that purpose Magdeburg; but what particular school he attended is not known. His friend Mathesius tells us that the town-school there was "far re- nowned above many others ". Luther himself says that he went to school with the Null-brethren. These Null-brethren or Noll-brethren, as they were called, were a brotherhood of pious clergymen and laymen, who had combined together, but 12 LUTHER'S CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. without taking any vows, to promote among themselves the salvation of their souls and the practice of a godly life, and to labour at the same time for the social and moral welfare of the people, by preaching the Word of God, by instruction, and b}' spiritual ministration. They undertook in particular the care of youth. They were, moreover, the chief originators of the great movement in Germany, at that time, for promoting in- tellectual culture, and reviving the treasures of ancient Roman and Greek literature. Since 1488 a colony of them had ex- isted at Magdeburg, which had come from Hildesheim, one of their head-quarters. As there is no evidence of their having had a school of their own at Magdeburg, they may have de- voted their services to the town-school. Thither, then, Hans Luther sent his eldest son in 1497. The idea had probably been suggested by Peter Reinicke, the overseer of the mines, who had a son there. With this son John, who afterwards rose to an important office in the mines at Mansfeld, Martin Luther contracted a lifelong friendship. Hans, however, only let his son remain one year at Magdeburg, and then sent him to school at Eisenach. Whether he was induced to make this change by finding his expectations of the school not sufficiently realised, or whether other reasons, possibly those regarding a cheaper maintenance of his son, may have determmed him in the matter, there is no evidence to show. What strikes one here only is his zeal for the better education of his son. Ratzeberger is the only one who tells us of an incident he heard of Luther from his own lips, during his stay at Magde- burg; and this was one which, as a physician, he relates with interest. Luther, it happened, was lying sick of a burning fever, and tormented with thirst, and in the heat of the fever they refused him drink. So one F'riday, when the people of the house had gone to church, and left him alone, he, no longer able to endure the thirst, crawled off on hands and feet to the kitchen, where he drank off with great avidity a jug of cold water. He could reach his room again ; but having done so he fell into a deep sleep, and on wakening the fever had left him. The maintenance his father was able to afford him was not sufficient to cover the expenses of his board and lodging as well as of his schooling, either at Magdeburg or afterwards at Eisenach. He was obliged to help himself after the manner CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOLDAYS. 13 of poor scholars, who, as he tells us, went about from door to door collecting small gifts or doles by singing hymns. " I myself," he says, "was one of those young colts, particularly at Eisenach, my beloved town." He would also ramble about the neighbourhood with his schoolfellows ; and often, from the pulpit or the lecturer's chair, would he tell little anecdotes about those days. The boys used to sing quartettes at Christ- mas-time in the villages, carols on the birth of the Holy Child at Bethlehem. Once, as they were singing before the door of a solitary farmhouse, the farmer came out and called to them roughly, " Where are you, young rascals ? " He had two large sausages in his hand for them ; but they ran away terrified, till he shouted after them to come back and fetch the sausages. So intimidated, says Luther, had he become by the terrors of school discipline. His object, however, in relating this incident was to show his hearers how the heart of man too often con- strues manifestations of God's goodness and mercy into mes- sages of fear, and how men should pray to God perseveringly, and without timidity or shame-facedness. In those da3'S it was not rare to find even scholars of the better classes, such as the son of a magistrate at Mansfeld, and those who, for the sake of a better education, were sent to distant schools, seeking to add to their means in the manner we have mentioned. After this, his father sent him to Eisenach, bearing in mind the numerous relatives who lived in the town and surrounding country, and who might be of service to him. But of these no mention has reached us, except of one, named Konrad, who was sacristan in the church of St. Nicholas. The others, no doubt, were not in a position to give him any material assist- ance. About this time his singing brought him under the notice of one Frau Cotta, who with genuine affection took up the promising boy, and whose memory, in connection with the great Reformer, still lives in the hearts of the German people. Her husband, Konrad or Kunz, was one of the most influential citizens of the town, and sprang from a noble Italian family who had acquired wealth by commerce. Ursula Cotta, as her name was, belonged to the Eisenach family of Schalbe. She died in 1511. Mathesius tells us how the boy won her heart by his singing and his earnestness in prayer, and she welcomed him to her own table. Luther met with similar acts of kindness from a brother or other relative of hers, and 14 LUTHER'S CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. also from an institution belonging to Franciscan friars at Eisenach, which was indebted to the Schalbe family for several rich endowments, and was named, in consequence, the Schalbe College. At Frau Cotta's, Luther was first introduced to the life in a patrician's house, and learned to move in that society. At Eisenach he remained at school for four years. Many years afterwards we find him on terms of friendly and grateful intercourse with one Father Wiegand, who had been his school- master there. Ratzeberger, speaking of the then schoolmaster at Eisenach, mentions a " distinguished poet and man of learn- , ing, John Trebonius," who, as he tells us, every morning, on entering the schoolroom, would take off his biretta, because God might have chosen many a one of the lads present to be a future mayor, or chancellor, or learned doctor ; a thought which, as he adds, was amply realised afterwards in the person of Doctor Luther. The relations of these two at the school, which contained several classes, must be a matter of conjecture. But the system of teaching pursued there was praised after- wards by Luther himself to Melancthon. The former ac- quired there that thorough knowledge of Latin which was then the chief preparation for University study. He learned to write it, not only in prose, but also in verse, which leads us to suppose that the school at Eisenach took a part in the Human- istic movement already mentioned. Happily, his active mind and quick understanding had already begun to develop ; not only did he make up for lost ground, but he even outstripped those of his own age. As we see him growing up to manhood, the future hero of the faith, the teacher, and the warrior, the most important question for us is the course which his religious development took from childhood. He who, in after years, waged such a tremendous warfare with the Church of his time, always gratefully acknowledged, and in his own teaching and conduct kept steadily in view, how, within herself, and underneath all the corruptions he de- nounced, she still preserved the groundwork of a Christian life, the charter of salvation, the fundamental truths of Christianity, and the means of redemption and blessing, vouchsafed by the grace of God. Especially did he acknowledge all that he had himself received from the Church since childhood. In that House, he says on one occasion, he was baptised, and catechised in the Christian truth, and for that reason he would CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOLDAYS. 15 always honour it as the House of his Father. The Church would at any rate take care that children, at home and at school, should learn by heart the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments ; that they should pray, and sing psalms and Christian hymns. Printed books, containing them, were already in existence. Among the old Christian hymns in the German language, of which a surprisingly rich collection has been formed, a certain number, at least, were in common use in the churches, especially for festivals. "Fine songs" Luther called them, and he took care that they should live on 1 in the Evangelical communities. Those old verses form in f part the foundation of the hymns which we owe to his own poet- ical genius. Thus for Christmas we still have the carol of those ' times, Rin Kindelein so lobelich ; and the first verse of Luther's Whitsun hymn, 'Nmi bitten wir den Heiligen Geist, is taken, he tells us, from one of those old-fashioned melodies. Of the portions of Scripture read in church, the Gospels and Epistles were given in the mother-tongue. Sermons, also, had long been preached in German, and there were printed collections of them for the use of the clergy. The places where Luther grew up were certainly better off in this respect than many others. For, in the main, very much was still wanting to realise what had been recommended and striven for by pious Churchmen, and writers and religious fraternities, or even enjoined by the Church herself. The Reformers had, indeed, a heavy and an irrefutable indictment to bring against the Catholic Church system of their time. The grossest ignorance and shortcomings were exposed by the visitations which they undertook : and from these we may fairly judge of the actual state of things existing for many years be- fore. It appeared, that even where these portions of the catechism were taught by parents and schoolmasters, they never formed the subject of clerical instruction to the young. It was precisely one of the charges brought against the enemies of the Reformation, that, notwithstanding the injunctions of their Church, they habitually neglected this instruction, and preferred teaching the children such things as carrying banners in processions and holy tapers. Priests were found, in the course of these visitations, who had scarcely any knowledge of the chief articles of the faith. His own personal experience of this neglect, when young, is not noticed by Luther in his later complaints on the subject. i6 LUTHER'S CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. But the main fault and failing which he recognised in after life, and which, as he tells us, was a source of inward suffering to him from childhood, was the distorted view, held up to him at school and from the pulpit, of the conditions of Christian salvation, and, consequently, of his own proper religious atti- tude and demeanour. Luther himself, as we learn from him in later life, would have Christian children brought up in the happy assurance that God is a loving Father, Christ a faithful Saviour, and that it is their privilege and duty to approach their Father with frank and childlike confidence, and, if aroused to a consciousness of sin or wrong, to entreat at once His forgiveness. Such, however, he tells us, was not what he was taught. On the contrary, he was instructed, and trained up from childhood in that narrow- ing conception of Christianity, and that outward form of religious- ness, against which, more than anything, he bore witness as a Reformer. God was pictured to him as a Being unapproachably sub- lime, and of awful holiness ; Christ, the Saviour, Mediator, and Advocate, whose revelation can only bring judgment to those who reject salvation, as the threatening Judge, against whose wrath, as against that of God, man sought for intercession and mediation from the Virgin and the other saints. This latter worship, towards the close of the middle ages, had increased in importance and extent. Peculiar honour was paid to par- ticular saints, in particular places, and for the furtherance of particular interests. The warlike St. George was the special saint of the town and county of Mansfeld : his effig}' still sur- mounts the entrance to the old school-house. Among the miners the worship of St. Anne, the mother of the Virgin, soon became popular towards the end of the century, and the mining town of Annaberg, built in 1496, was named after her. Luther records how the "great stir" was first made about her, when he was a boy of fifteen, and how he was then anxious to place himself under her protection. There is no lack of religious writings of that time, which, with the view of preserving the Catholic faith, warn men earnestly against the danger of over- valuing the saints, and of placing their hopes more in them than in God ; but we see from those very warnings how necessary they were, and later history shows us how little fruit they bore. As for Luther, certain beautiful features in the lives and legends of the saints exercised over him a power of attrac- CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOLDAYS. 17 tion which he never afterwards renounced ; and of the Virgin he always spoke with tender reverence, only regretting that men wished to make an idol of her. But of his early religious belief, he says that Christ appeared to him as seated on a rain- bow, like a stern Judge ; such as, for instance, he found Him represented upon an ancient monument in the Parish Church at Wittenberg, and upon the old seal there, still in use. From Christ men turned to the saints, to be their patrons, and called on the Virgin to bare her breasts to her Son, and dispose Him thereby to mercy. An example of what deceptions were some- times practised in such worship came to the notice of the Elector John Frederick, the friend of Luther, and probably originated in a convent at Eisenach. It was a figure, carved in r wood, of the Virgin with the infant Saviour in her arms, which j was furnished with a secret contrivance by means of which the ; Child, when the people prayed to Him, first turned away to His j mother, and only when they had invoked her as intercessor, i bowed towards them with His little arms outstretched. On the other hand, the sinner who was troubled with cares about his soul and thoughts of Divine judgment, found himself directed to the performance of particular acts of penance and pious exercises, as the means to appease a righteous God. He received judgment and commands through the Church at the confessional. The Reformers themselves, and Luther especially, fully recognised the value of being able to pour out the inner temptations of the heart to some Christian father-confessor, or even to some other brother in the faith, and to obtain from his lips that comfort of forgiveness which God, in His love and mercy, bestows freely on the faithful. But nothing of this kind, they said, was to be found in the confessional. The conscience was tormented with the enumeration of single sins, and bur- dened with all sorts of penitential formalities ; and it was just with a view that every one should be drawn to this discipline of the Church, should use it regularly, and should seek for no other way to make his peace with God, that the educational activity of the Church, both with young and old, was especially directed. Luther, in after life, as we have already remarked, always recognised and found comfort in the fact that, even under such conditions as the above, enough of the simple message of sal- vation in the Bible could penetrate the heart, and awaken a faith which, in spite of all artificial restraints and perplexing dogmas, should throw itself, with inward longing and childlike i8 LUTHER'S CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. trust, into the arms of God's mercy, and so enjoy true forgive- ness. He received, as we shall see, some salutary directions for so doing from later friends of his, who belonged to the Romish Church, nor was that character of ecclesiastical re- ligiousness, so to speak, stamped everywhere, or to the same degree, on Christian life in Germany during his youth. Never- theless, his whole inner being, from boyhood, was dominated by its influence ; he, at all events, had never been taught to appreciate the Gospel as a child. Looking back in later 3'ears on his monastic days, and the whole of his previous life, he declared that he never could feel assured that his baptism in Christ was sufficient for his salvation, and that he was sorely troubled with doubt whether any piety of his own would be able to secure for him God's mercy. Thoughts of this kind he said induced him to become a monk. Men have never been wanting, either before or since the time of Luther's youth, to denounce the abuses and corruptions of the Church, and particularly of the clergy. Language of this sort had long found its way to the popular ear, and had proceeded also from the people themselves. Complaints were made of the tyranny of the Papal hierarchy, and of their en- croachments on social and civil life, as well as of the worldliness and gross immorality of the priests and monks. The Papacy had reached its lowest depth of moral degradation under Pope Alexander VL We hear nothing, however, of the impressions produced on Luther, in this respect, in the circumstances of his early life. The news of such scandals as were then en- acted at Rome, shamelessly and in open day, very likely took a long while to reach Luther and those about him. With regard to the carnal offences of the clergy, against which, to the honour of Germany be it said, the German conscience especially revolted, he made afterwards the noteworthy re- mark, that although during his boyhood the priests allowed themselves mistresses, they never incurred the suspicion of anything like unbridled sensuality or adulterous conduct. Ex- amples of such kind date only from a later period. The loyalty with which Mansfeld, his home, adhered to the ancient Church, is shown by several foundations of that time, all of which have reference to altars and the celebration of mass. The overseer of the mines, Reinicke, the friend of Luther's family, is among the founders : he left provision for keeping up services in honour of the Virgin and St. George. CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOLDAYS. 19 A peculiarly reverential demeanour, in regard to religion and the Church, is observable in Luther's father, and one which was common no doubt among his honest, simple, pious fellow- townsfolk. His conduct was consistently God-fearing. In his house it was afterwards told how he would often pray at the bedside of his little Martin, — how, as the friend of godliness and learning, he had enjoyed the friendship of priests an^ school-teachers. Words of pious reflection from his lips re- mained stamped on Luther's memory from his boyhood. Thus Luther tells us, in a sermon preached towards the close of his life, how he had often heard his dear father say, that, as his own parents had told him, the earth contains many more who require to be fed than there are sheaves, even if collected from all the fields in the world ; and yet how wondrously does God know how to preserve mankind ! In common with his fellow- townsmen, he followed the precepts and commands of his Church. When, in the }'ear in which he sent his son to Magdeburg, two new altars in the church at Mansfeld were consecrated to a number of saints, and sixty days' indulgence was granted to any one who heard mass at them, Hans Luther, with Reinicke and other fellow-magistrates, was among the first to make use of the invitation. The enemies of the Re- former, while fain to trace his origin to a heretic Bohemian, had not a shadow of a reason for suspecting his real father of any leanings to heresy. Nor do we hear a word in later years from the Reformer, after his father had separated with him from the Catholic Church, to show a trace of any hostile or critical remark against that Church, remembered from the lips of his father during childhood. Quietly but firmly the latter asserted his own judgment, and framed his will accordingly. He was firm, in particular, in the consciousness of his paternal rights and duties, even against the pretensions of the clergy. Thus, as his son Martin tells us, when he lay once on the point of death, and the priest admonished him to leave some- thing to the clergy, he replied in the simplicity of his heart, "I have many children : I will leave it them, for they want it more". We shall see how unyieldingly, when his son entered a convent, he insisted, as against all the value and usefulness of monasticism, on the paramount obligation of God's com- mand, that children should obey their parents. Luther also tells us how his father once praised in high terms the will left by a Count of Mansfeld, who without leaving any property to 20 LUTHER'S CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. the Church, was content to depart from this world trusting solely to the bitter sufferings and death of Christ, and com- mending his soul to Him. Luther himself, when a young student, would have considered, as he tells us, a bequest to churches or convents a proper will to make. His father afterwards accepted his son's doctrine of salvation without hesitation, and with the full conviction that it was right. But remarks of his such as we have quoted, were consistent with a perfectly blameless demeanour in regard to the forms of conduct and belief as prescribed by the Church, with an avoid- ance of criticism and argument on ecclesiastical matters, which he knew were not his vocation, and above all with a complete abstention from such talk in the presence of his children. As to what concerns further the positive religious influence which he exercised over his children, any such impressions as he might have given by what he said of the Count of Mansfeld, were fully counterbalanced by the severity and firmness of his paternal discipline. Concurrent with the doctrine of salvation through the inter- cession of the saints and the Church, and one's own good works, which Luther had been taught from his youth, were the dark popular ideas of the power of the devil — ideas, which, though not actually invented, were at least patronised by the Church, and which not only threaten the souls of men, but cast a bane- ful spell over all their natural life. Luther, as is well known, has frequently expressed his own opinions about the devil, in connection with the enchantments supposed to be practised by the Evil One on mankind, and, more especially, on the subject of witchcraft. Of one thing he was certain, that in God's hand we are safe from the Evil One, and can triumph over him. But even he believed the devil's work was manifested in sudden accidents and striking phenomena of Nature, in storms, con- flagrations, and the like. As to the tales of sorcery and magic, which were told and believed in by the people, some he declared to be incredible, others he ascribed to the hallucinations effected by the devil. But that witches had power to do one bodily harm, that they plagued children in particular, and that their spells could affect the soul, he never seriously doubted. From his earliest childhood, and especially at home, ideas of that kind had been instilled into Luther, and accordingly they ministered strong food to his imagination. They had just then spread to a remarkable extent among the Germans, CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOLDAYS. 21 and had developed in remarkable wa3's. They had affected 1 the administration of ecclesiastical and civil law, they had/ given rise to the Inquisition and the most barbarous cruelties' in the punishment of those who were pretended to be in leaguei with the devil, and they had gradually multiplied their baneful/ effects. The year after Luther's birth appeared the remarkA/^f^ able Papal bull which sanctioned the trial of witches. When | a boy Luther heard a great deal about witches, though lat er in l ife h e thoughjt_there^wa s no longer so much talk about them, ^ and he would not scruple to tell stories of how^they harmed men and cattle, and brought down storms and hail. Nay, of his 1 own mother he believed that she had suffered much from the witcheries of a female neighbour, who, as he said, "plagued her 1 children till they nearly screamed themselves to death". De- lusions such as these are certainly dark shadows in the picture of Luther's youth, and are important towards understanding ( his inner life as a man. But while admitting the existence of these superstitious and pseudo-religious notions, we must not imagine that they com- posed the whole portraiture of Luther's early life. He was, as Mathesius describes him, a merry, jovial young fellow. In his later reflections on himself and his youthful da3S, the very war he was waging against the false teachings of the Church, from which he himself had suffered, made him dwell, as was natural, on this side of his early life. But amidst all those trials and depressing influences, the fresh and elastic vigour of his nature stood the strain — a vigour innate and inherited, and which afterwards shone forth in a new and brighter light, under a new aspect of religious life. His childlike joy in Nature around him, which afterwards distinguished so remarkably the theologian and champion of the faith, must be referred back to his original bent of mind and his life, when a boy, amid Nature's surround- ings. How much he lived, from childhood, with the peasantry, is shown by the natural ease with which he spoke in the popular dialect, even when he was learning Latin and enjoying a higher culture, and by the frequency with which the native roughnesses of that dialect broke out in his learned discourses or sermons. In n© other theologian, nay, in no other known German writer I of his century, do we meet with so many popular proverbs as[ in Luther, to whom they came naturally in his conversations ' and letters. German legends also, and popular tales, such as \ 2 2 LUTHER'S CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. the history of Dietrich von Bern and other heroes, or of Eulenspiegel or Markolf, would hardly have been remembered so accurately by him in later years, if he had not familiarised himself with them in childhood. He would at times inveigh against the worthless, and even shameless tales and " gossip," as he called it, which such books contained, and especially against the priests who used to spice their sermons with such stories ; but that he also recognised their value we know from his allusion to " some people, who had written songs about Dietrich and other giants, and in so doing had expounded much greater subjects in a short and simple manner ". The pleasure with which he himself may have read or listened to them, can be gathered from his remark that " when a story of Dietrich von Bern is told, one is bound to remember it afterwards, even though one has only heard it once " He maintained through life a faithful devotion to the places where he had grown up. Eisenach remained, as we have alread}' seen, his beloved town. Mansfeld was particularly dear to him as his home, and the whole country as his " father- land " ; he calls it with pride a " noble and famous country" The miners also, who were his fellow-countrymen and his dear father's work-mates, he loved all his life long. But a wider horizon was not opened to him among the people of the little town of Mansfeld, or where he afterwards went to school. To this fact, and to his quiet life as a monk, we must ascribe the peculiar feature of his later activity, namely, that while pro- secuting with far-seeing eye and a warm heart the highest and most extensive tasks for his Church and for the German people in general, still, at the beginning of his work and campaign, he understood but little of the great world outside, and of politics, I or even of the general state of Germany ; nay, he shows at I times a touchingly childlike simplicit}' in these matters. The last few years of his school-life enabled him to make brave progress pn the road to intellectual culture, which his father wished him to pursue. Thus equipped, he was prepared, at the age of eighteen, to remove, in the summer of 1501, to the University of Erfurt. STUDENT-DA YS AT ERFURT 23 CHAPTER III. STUDENT-DAYS AT ERFURT, AND ENTRY INTO THE CONVENT. 1501-1505. Among the German universities, that of Erfurt, which could count already a hundred years of prosperous existence, occupied at this time a brilliant position. So high, Luther tells us, was its standing and reputation, that all its sister institutions were regarded as mere pigmies by its side. His parents could now afford to give him the necessary means for studying at such a place. " My dear father," he says, " maintained me there with loyal affection, and by his labour and the sweat of his brow enabled me to go there." He had now begun to feel a burning thirst for learning, and here, at the " fountain of all knowledge," to use Melancthon's words, he hoped to be able to quench it. He began with a complete course of philosophy, as that science was then understood. It dealt, in the first place, with the laws and forms of thought and knowledge, with language, in which Latin formed the basis, or with grammar and rhetoric, as also with the highest problems and most abstruse cfuestions of physics, and comprised even a general knowledge of natural science and astronomy. A complete study of all these subjects was not merely requisite for learned theologians, but frequently served as an introduction to that of law, and even of medicine. When Luther first came from Eisenach to. Erfurt, there was nothing yet about him that attracted the attention of others so far as to call forth any contemporary account of him. Enough, however, is known of the most eminent teachers there, at whose feet he sate, and also of the general kind of intellectual food which they administered. He gained entrance into a circle of older and younger men than himself, teachers and fellow- students, who in later years, either as friends or opponents, 24 LUTHER'S CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. were able to bear witness, favourably or the reverse, as to his life and work at Erfurt. The leading professor of philosophy at Erfurt was then Jodocus Trutvetter, who, three years after Luther's arrival, be- came also doctor of theology and lecturer of the theological faculty. Next to him, in this department, ranked Bartholomew Arnoldi of Usingen. It was to these two men above others, and particularly to the former, that Luther looked for his instruction. The philosophy which was then in vogue at Erfurt, and which found its most vigorous champion in Trutvetter, was that of the Scholasticism of later days. It is common to associate with the idea of Scholasticism, or the theological and philosophical School-science of the middle ages, a system. of thought and instruction, embracing, indeed, the highest questions of know- ledge and existence, but at the same time not venturing to strike into any independent paths, or to deviate an inch from tradition, but submitting rather, in everything connected, or supposed to be connected, with religious belief, to the dogmas and decrees of the Church and the authority of the early Fathers, and wasting the understanding and intellect in dry formalism or subtle but barren controversies. This conception fails to appreciate the vast labour of thought bestowed by leading minds on the attempt to unravel the mass of ecclesiastical teaching which had twined round the innermost lives of themselves and their fellow-Christians, and at the same time to follow those general questions under the guidance of the old philosophers, especially Aristotle, of whom they knew but little. But it is applicable, at any rate, to the Scholasticism of later days. The confidence with which its older exponents had thought to explain and establish orthodoxy by means of their favourite science, was gone ; all the more, therefore, should that science keep silence in the face of the commands of the Church. Men, moreover, had grown tired of the old questions of philosophy, about the reality and real existence of Universals. It had been formerly a question of dispute whether our general ideas had a real existence, or whether they were nothing more than words or names, mere abstractions, comprehending the in- dividual, which alone was supposed to possess Reality. At that time the latter doctrine, that of Nominalism, as it was called, prevailed. At length, these new or "modern" philo- sophers abandoned the question of Realism, and the relation STUDENT-DA YS AT ERFUR T. 2 5 of thought to Reality, in favour of a system of pure logic or dialectics, dealing with the mere forms and expressions of thought, the formal anah'sis of ideas and words, the mutual j relation of propositions and conclusions — in short, all that con- stitutes what we call formal logic, in its widest acceptation. , At this point, the far-famed scholastic intellect, with its subtle-' ties, its fine distinctions, its nice questions, its sophistical conclusions, reached its zenith. To this logic Trutvetter also devoted himself, and in it he taught his pupils. He had just then published a series of treatises on the subject. To him this study was real earnest. Compared with others, he has shown in these excursions a cautious and discreet moderation, and no inclination for the quarrels and verbal combats often dear to logicians. The same can be said of his colleague Usingen. Trutvetter has shown also that he enjoyed and was widely read in earlier and modern, especially, of course, in scholastic literature, including the works not only of the most important, but also of very obscure authors. We can imagine what delight he took in all this when in his professor's chair, and how much he expected from his pupils. At Erfurt meanwhile, and by this same philosophical faculty, a fresh and vigorous impulse was being given to that study of classical antiquity, which gave birth to a new learning, and ushered in a new era of intellectual culture in Germany. We have already had occasion to refer to the movement and influ- ence of Humanism at the schools which Luther attended at Magdeburg and Eisenach. He now found himself at one of the chief nurseries of these " arts and letters " in Germany, nay, at the very place where their richest blossoms were unfolded. Erfurt could boast of having issued the first Greek book printed in Germany in Greek type, namely a grammar, printed in Luther's first year at the university. It was the Greek and Latin poets, in particular, whose writings stirred the enthusiasm and emulation of the students. For refined expression and learned intercourse the fluent and elegant Latin language was studied, as given in the works of classical writers. But far more im- portant still was the free movement of thought, and the new world of ideas thus opened up. In proportion as these young disciples of antiquity learned to despise the barbarous Latin and insipidity of the monkish and scholastic education of the day, they began to revolt against 26 LUTHER'S CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. Scholasticism, against the dogmas of faith propounded by the Church, and even against the religious opinions of Christendom in general. History shows us the different paths taken, in this respect, by the Humanists ; and we shall come across them, in another way, during the career of the Reformer, as having an important influence on the course of the Reformation. With many, an honest striving after religion and morality allied itself with the impulse for independent intellectual culture, and tried to utilise it for improving the condition of the Church. When the struggle of the Reformation began, some followed Luther and the other religious teachers on his side, some, shrinking back from his trenchant conclusions, and, above all, concerned for their own stock-in-trade of learning, counselled others to practise prudence and moderation, and themselves retired to the service of their muses. Others, again, broke away altogether from the Christian faith and the principles of Christian morality. They took delight in a new life of Heathenism, devoted some- times to sensual pleasures and gross immoralities, sometimes j to the indulgence of refined tastes and the enjoyment of art. ' These latter never raised a weapon against the Church, but for I the most part accommodated themselves to her forms. lusher I teachings, her__ordinances , and her discipline, they saw some- thing indispensable to the^multitude, as whose'~conscious superiors they' behaved. "Indeed, they themselves wielded this government in the Church, and comfortably enjoyed their authority and its fruits. In Italy, at Rome, and on the Papal chair these despotic pretensions were then asserted without shame or reserve. In German}', on the other hand, the leading champions of the new learning, even when in open arms against the barbarism of the monks and clergy, sought, for themselves and their disciples, to remain faithful on the ground of their Mother Church. At Erfurt, in particular, the relations between them and the representatives of Scholasticism were peaceful, unconstrained, and friendly. The dry writings of a Trutvetter they prefaced with panegyrics in Latin verse, and the Trutvetter would try to imitate their purer style. Some talented young students of the classics at Erfurt formed themselves into a small coterie of their own. They enjoyed the cheerful pleasures of youthful society ; nor were poetry and wine wanting, but the rules of decorum and good manners were not overlooked. Several men, whom we shall come across after- wards in the history of Luther, belonged to this circle ; — for STUDENT-DA YS AT ERFURT. 2 7 instance, John Jager, known as Crotus Rubianus, the friend of Ulrich Hutten, and George Spalatin (properly Burkhard), the trusted fellow-labourer of the Reformer. Both had already been three years at the university when Luther entered it. Three years after his arrival, came Eoban Hess, the most brilliant, talented, and amiable of the young Humanists and poets of German}'. Such was the learned company to which Luther was in- troduced in the philosophical faculty at Erfurt. So far, different avenues of intellectual culture were opened to him. He threw himself into the study of that philosophy in all its bearings, and, not content with exploring the tangled and thorn}' paths of logic, took counsel how to enjoy, as far as possible, the fruits of the newly-revived knowledge of anti- quity. As regards the latter, he carried the study of Ovid, Virgil, and Cicero, in particular, farther than was customary with the professed students of Humanism, and the same with the poetical works of more modern Latin writers. But his chief aim was not so much to master the mere language of the classical authors, or to mould himself according to their form, as to cull from their pages rich apophthegms of human wisdom, and pictures of human life and of the history of peoples. He learned to express pregnant and powerful thoughts clearly and vigorously in learned Latin, but he was himself well aware how much his language was wanting in the elegance, refinement, and charm of the new school; indeed, this elegance he never attempted to attain. With the members of this circle of young Humanists, Luther was on terms of personal friendship. Crotus was able to remind him in after life how, in close intimac}', they had studied the fine arts together at the university. But there is no mention of him in the numerous letters and poems left to posterity by the aspiring Humanists at Erfurt. He had made himself, Crotus adds, a name among his companions as the " learned philosopher" and the "musician," but he never belonged to the " poets," which was the favourite title of the young Humanists. Many, including even Melancthon, have lamented that he was not more deeply imbued with the spirit of those " noble arts and letters," which educate the mind, and would have tended to soften his rugged nature and manner. But they would have been of little value to him for the quick 28 LUTHER'S CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. decision and energy required for the war he had afterwards to wage. Those intellectual treasures and enjoyments kept aloof not only from such contests, but also from sharp and searching investigations of the highest questions of religion and morality, and from the inward struggle, so often painful, which they bring. As regards the merits of Humanism, which Luther again, as a Reformer, eagerly acknowledged, we must not forget how selfishly it withdrew itself from contact and communion with German popular life, nor how it helped to create an exclusive aristocracy of intellect, and allowed the noblest talents to become as clumsy in their own natural mother-tongue, as they were clever in the handling of foreign, acquired forms of art. Luther, in not yielding further to those influences, remained a German. Philosophy, then, engrossed him, and allowed him but little time for other things. And in studying this, he sought to grapple with the highest problems of the human understand- ing. These problems occupied also the labours of the later Scholastics, however faulty were the forms in which they clothed their ideas. At the same time, these very forms attracted him, from the scope they gave to the exercise of his ! natural acuteness and understanding. Disputation was his great delight ; and argumentative contests were then in I fashion at the universities. But in after years, as soon as the contents of the Bible were opened to his inner understanding, and. he recognised in its pages the object of real theological knowledge, he regretted the time and labour which he had wasted on those studies, and even spoke of them with disgust. Crotus has already told us of the sociable life that Luther led with his friends. The love for music, which he had shown in school-days, he continued to keep up, and indulged in it merrily with his fellow-students. He had a high-pitched voice, not strong, but audible at a distance. Besides singing, he learned also to play the lute, and this without a master, and he employed his time in this way when laid up once by an accident to his leg. Such rapid progress did he make in his philosophical studies, that in his third term, he was able to attain his bacca- laureate, the first academical degree of the theological faculty. This degree, according to the^general custom of the universities, preceded that of Master, corresponding to the present Doctor, of philosophy. The examination for it, which Luther passed STUDENT-DA YS AT ERFUR T. 2 9 on Michaelmas da}', 1502, professed to include the most im- portant subjects in the province of philosophy. But it could not have been very severe. The chief work came when he took his next degree as Master, which was at the beginning of 1505. He then experienced what afterwards, speaking of Erfurt's former glory, he thus describes: "What a moment, of majesty and splendour was that, when one took the degree of Master, and torches were carried before, and honour was paid one. I consider that no temporal or worldly joy can' equal it." Melan cthon tells us , on t he authority of seve ral of Luther^s fellow-students, that his talent was then the wonder of the whole university. In accordance with the wish of his father and the advice of his relations, he was now to fit himself for a lawyer. In this profession, they thought, he would be able to turn his talents to the best account, and make a name in the world. And in this department also, the University of Erfurt could boast of one of the most distinguished men of learning of that time, Henning Goede, who was now in the prime of his vigour. Luther, accordingly, began to attend the lectures on law, and his father allowed him to buy some valuable books for that purpose, particularly a Corpus jfnris. Meanwhile, however, in his inner religious life a change was being prepared, which proved the turning-point of his career. Luther himself, as we have seen, frequently pointed out in after life the influences which, even from childhood, under the discipline of home, the experiences of school, and the teaching of the Church, combined to bring about this result. He could never shake off for any length of time, even when in the midst of learned study or the enjoyment of student life, the consciousness that he must be pious and satisfy all the strict commands of God, that he must make good all the short- comings of his life, and reconcile himself with Heaven, and that an angry Judge was throned above who threatened him with damnation. Inner voices of this kind, in a man of sen- sitive and tender conscience, were bound to assert themselves the more loudly and earnestly, as, in his progress from youth to manhood, he realised more fully his personal responsibility to God, and also his personal independence. To religious observances, in which he had been trained from childhood, Luther, as a student, remained faithful. Regularly he began his day with prayer, and as regularly attended mass. But of 30 LUTHER'S CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. any new or comforting means of access to God and salvation, he heard nothing, even here. In the town of Erfurt, there was an earnest and powerful preacher, named Sebastian Wem- mann, who denounced in incisive language the prevalent vices of the day, and exposed the corruption of ecclesiastical life, and whom the students thronged to hear. But even he had nothing to offer to satisfy Luther's inward cravings of the soul. It was an episode in his life when he once found a I Latin Bible in the library of the university. Though then nearly twenty years of age, he had never yet seen a Bible. ' Now for the first time he saw how much more it contained than was ever read out and explained in the churches. With delight he perused the story of Samuel and his mother, on the first pages that met his eye ; though, as yet, he could make nothing more out of the Sacred Book. It was not on account of any particular offences, such as youthful excesses, that Luther feared the wrath of God. Staunch Catholics at Erfurt, including even later avowed enemies of the Reformer, who knew him there as a student, have never hinted at anything of that sort against him. "The more we wash our hands, the fouler they become," was a favourite saying of Luther's. He referred, no doubt, to the numerous faults in thought, word, and deed, which, in spite of human carefulness, every day brings, and which, however insignificant they might seem to others, his conscience told him were sins against God's holy law. Disquieting questions, moreover, now arose in his mind, so sorely troubled with temptation ; and his subtle and pene- trating intellect, so far from being able to solve them, only plunged him deeper in distress. Was it then really God's own will, he asked himself, that he should become actually purged from sin, and thereby be saved ? Was not the way to hell or the way to heaven already fixed for him immutably in God's will and decree, by which everything is determined and pre-ordained ? And did not the very futility of his own endeavours hitherto prove that it was the former fate that hung over him ? He was in danger of going utterly astray in his conception of such a God. Expressions in the Bible such as those which speak of serving Him with fear became to him intolerable and hateful. He was seized at times with fits of despair such as might have tempted him to blaspheme God. It was this that he afterwards referred to as the greatest temptation he had experienced when young. STUDENT-DA YS AT ERFURT. 3 1 His physical condition probably contributed to this gloomy frame of mind. Already during his baccalaureate we hear of an illness of his, which awakened in him thoughts of death. A friend, represented by later tradition as an aged priest, said to him on his sick bed, " Take courage ; God will yet make you the means of comfort to many others ; " and these words impressed him strongly even then. An accident also, which threatened to be fatal, must have tended to alarm him. As he was travelling home at Easter, and was within an hour's distance of Erfurt, he accidentally injured the main artery of his leg with the rapier which, like other students, he carried at his side. Whilst a friend who was with him had gone for a doctor, and he was left alone, he pressed the wound tightly as he lay on his back, but the leg continued to swell. In the anguish of death he called upon the Virgin to help him. That night his terror was renewed when the wound broke open afresh, and again he invoked the Mother of God. It was during his convalescence after this accident that he resolved upon learning to play the lute. He was terribly distressed also, a few months after he had taken his degree as Master, by the sudden death of one of his friends, not further known to us, who was either assassinated or snatched away by some other fatality. Well might the thought even then have occurred to him, while so disturbed in his mind and overpowered by feelings of sadness, whether it would not be better to seek his cure in the monastic holiness recommended by the Church, and to renounce altogether the world and all the success he had hitherto aspired to. The young Master of Arts, as he tells us himself in later years, was indeed a sorrowful man. Suddenly and offhand he was hurried into a most moment- ous decision. Towards the end of June, 1505, when several Church festivals fall together, he paid a visit to his home at Mansfeld, in quest, very possibly, of rest and comfort to his mind. Returning on 2nd July, the feast of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary, he was already near Erfurt, when, at the village of Stotternheim, a terrific storm broke over his head. A fearful flash of lightning darted from heaven before his eyes. Trem- bling with fear, he fell to the earth, and exclaimed, " Help, Anna, beloved Saint ! I will be a monk ". A few days after, when quietly settled again at Erfurt, he repented having used these words. But he felt that he had taken a vow, and that, 32 LUTHER'S CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. on the strength of that vow, he had obtained a hearing. The time, he knew, was past for doubt or indecision. Nor did he think it necessary to get his father's consent ; his own convic- tion and the teaching of the Church told him that no objection on the part of his father could release him from his vow. Thus he severed himself at once from his former life and companions. On i6th July he called his best friends together to bid them leave. Once more they tried to keep him back ; he answered them, " To-day you see me, and never again ". The next day, that of St. Alexius, they accompanied him with tears to the gates of the Augustinian convent in the town, which he thought was to receive him for ever. It is chiefly from what Luther himself has told us that we are enabled to picture to ourselves this remarkable occurrence. Rumour, and rumour only, has given the name of Alexius to I that unknown friend whose death so terrified him, and has represented this friend as having been struck dead by lightning at his side. The Luther of later days declared that his monastic vow was a compulsory one, forced from him by terror and the fear of death. But, at the same time, he never doubted that it was God who urged him. Thus he said afterwards, " I never thought to leave again the convent. I was entirely dead to the world, until God thought that the time had come." PART II. LUTHER AS MONK AND PROFESSOR, UNTIL HIS ENTRY ON THE WAR OF REFORMATION.— 1505-1517. CHAPTER I. AT THE CONVENT AT ERFURT, TILL 1508. Luther's resolve to follow a monastic life was arrived at suddenly, as we have seen. But he weighed that resolve well in his mind, and just as carefully considered the choice of the convent which he entered. The Augustinian monks, whose society he announced his intention to join, belonged at that time to the most important monastic Order in Germany. Notwithstanding that so much had already been said with justice, in the way of complaint and ridicule, of the depravation of monastic life, its idleness, hypocrisy, and gross immoralit}', still many of them fancied that the solemn renunciation of marriage and the world's goods, and the absolute submission of their wills to the commands of their superiors and the regulations of their Order, constituted true service to God, and raised them to a peculiar position of holiness and merit. Outward discipline, at all events, was universally insisted on. Among the German institutions of this Order, whilst neglect and depravity had crept in elsewhere, a large number had, for some time past, distinguished themselves by a strict adherence to their old statutes, originating, it was supposed, from their founder St. Augustine, but relating, at the best, to mere matters of form. These institutions formed themselves into an associa- tion, presided over by a vicar of the Order, as he was called, a vicar-general for Germany. To this association belonged the 3 34 LUTHER AS MONK AND PROFESSOR. convent at Erfurt. Its inmates were treated with marked favour and respect by the higher and educated classes in the town. They were said to be active in preaching and in the care of souls, and to cultivate among themselves the study of theology. Arnoldi, Luther's teacher, belonged to this convent. As the Order possessed no property, but all its members lived on alms, the monks went about the town and country to collect gifts of money, bread, cheese, and other victuals. According to the rules of the Order, applications for admis- sion were not granted at once, but time was taken to see whether the applicant was in earnest. After that, he was re- ceived as a novice, for at least a year of probation. Until that year expired, he was at liberty to reconsider his wish. Luther, before taking this final step, thought of his parents, with a view to lay before them his resolve. The monastic brethren, however, endeavoured to dissuade him, by reminding him how one must leave father and mother for Christ and His Cross, and how no one who has put his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God. Upon his writing to his father on the subject, the latter, strong in the conviction of his paternal rights, flew into a passion with his son. " My father," says Luther later, "was near going mad about it; he was ill satisfied, and would not allow it. He sent me an answer in writing, addressing me in terms that showed his displeasure, and renouncing all further affection." Soon after he lost two of his sons by the plague. This epidemic had likewise broken out so violently at Erfurt, that about harvest- time whole crowds of students fled with their teachers from the town, and Luther's father received news that his son Martin had also fallen a victim. His friends then urged him that, if the report proved false, he ought at least to devote his dearest to God, by letting this son who still remained to him, enter the blessed Order of God's servants. At last the father let himself be talked over ; but he yielded, as Luther informs us, with a sad and reluctant heart. The young novice was welcomed among his brethren with hymns of joy, and prayers, and other ceremonies. He was soon clothed in the garb of his Order. Over a white woollen shirt he was made to wear a frock and cowl of black cloth, with a black leathern girdle. Whenever he put these on or off a Latin prayer was repeated to him aloud, that the Lord might put off the old and put on the new man, fashioned AT THE CONVENT AT ERFURT. 35 according to God. Above the cowl he received a scapulary, as it was called — in other words, a narrow strip of cloth hanging over shoulders, breast, and back, and reaching down to his feet. This was meant to signify that he took upon him the yoke of Him who said, " My yoke is easy, and My burden is light ". At the same time, he was handed over to a superior, appointed to take charge of the noviees, to introduce them to the practices of monastic devotion, to superintend their con- duct, and to watch over their souls. Above all, it was held important that the monks should be taught to subdue their own wills. They had to learn to endure, without opposition, whatever was imposed upon them, and that, indeed, all the more cheerfully, the more distasteful it appeared. Any tendency to pride was overcome by enjoining immediately the most menial offices on the offender. Friends of Luther tell us how, during his first period of probation in particular, he had to perform the meanest daily labour with brush and broom, and how his jealous brethren took particular pleasure in seeing the proud young graduate of yesterday trudge through the streets, with his beggar's wallet on his back, by the side of another monk more accustomed to the work. At first, we are told, the university interceded on his behalf as a member of their own body, and obtained for him at least some relaxation from his menial duties. From Luther's own lips, in after life, we hear not a word of complaint about any special vexations and burdens. As far as was possible, he did not allow them to daunt him ; nay, he longed for even severer exercises, to enable him to win the favour of God. Even as a Reformer he remembered with gratitude the " Pedagogue," or superintendent of his novitiate ; he was a fine old man, he tells us, a true Christian under that execrable cowl. The novice found each day, as it went by, fully occupied with the repetition of set prayers and the performance of other acts of devotion. For the day and night together there were seven or eight appointed hours of prayer, or HorcB. During each of these the brethren who were not yet priests had to say twenty-five Paternosters with the Ave Maria, more ample formulas of prayer being prescribed meanwhile to the priests. Luther was also introduced already then to certain theological studies, which were under the supervision of two learned fathers of the monastery. But what was of the most import- ance for him was that a Bible — the Latin translation then in 36 LUTHER AS MONK AND PROFESSOR. general use in the Church— was put into his hands. Just about this time, a new code of statutes had come in force for these Augustinian convents, drawn up by Staupitz, the vicar of the Order, which enjoined, as matters of duty, assiduous reading, devout attention to the Hours, and a zealous study of Fig. 4. — Luther's Cell at Erfurt. Holy Writ. Teachers were wanting to Luther, and he found it very difficult to understand all he read. But with o-enuine appetite he read himself, so to speak, into his Bible, and clung to it ever afterwards. At the end of his year of probation followed his solemn admission to the Order, Faithfully " unto death " did Luther AT THE CONVENT AT ERFURT. 37 then promise to live according to the rules of the holy father Augustine, and to render obedience to Almighty God, to the Virgin Mary, and to the prior of the monastery. Before doing so, he put on anew the dress of his Order, which had been consecrated with holy water and incense. The prior received his vows and sprinkled holy water upon him as he prostrated himself upon the ground in the form of a cross. When the ceremony was over, his brethren congratulated him on being now like an innocent child fresh from the baptism. He was then given a cell of his own, with table, bedstead, and chair. It looked out upon the cloistered yard of the monastery. It was destroyed by a fire on 7th March, 1872. Luther now, by an inviolable promise, had bound himself to that vocation through which he aspired to gain heaven. The means whereby he hoped to realise his aspiration were abundantly provided for him in his new home. If he sought the favour of the Virgin and of other saints who should inter- cede for him before the judgment-seat of God and Christ, he found at once in his Order a fervent worship of the Virgin in particular, and all possible directions for her service. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which Pius IX., in our own days, first ventured to raise into a dogma of the Church, was zealously defended b}' the Augustinians, and firmly main- taine^iB^^XaitherTitm^elf, ev^tTafterthe begmning^of his war of Re forma tion. John Palz,^one of his two tHeoTogical teachers in the convent, wrote profusely in honour of this doctrine, and described all Christians as its spiritual children. Under its mantle, says Luther, he had to creep into the presence of Christ. From the multitude of other saints Luther selected a number as his constant helpers in need. We notice parti- cularly that among these, in addition to St. Anne and St. George, was the Apostle Thomas; from him, who himself had once betrayed such cowardice and want of faith, he might well hope for peculiar sympathy. We have already mentioned the set prayers which filled up a great portion of the day. He was required above all things to learn and repeat them accu- rately, word by word. Afterwards, as he tells us, the Hone were read aloud, after the manner of magpies, jackdaws, or parrots. If he wished in penitence to be freed from the sins which had tormented him so long, and were a daily burden on his conscience, the means of confession provided by the Church 38 LUTHER AS MONK AND PROFESSOR. were always ready for him in the convent. Once a week, at the least, every brother had to attend the private confessional. All his sins, without exception, had then to be revealed, if he wished to obtain for them forgiveness. Luther endeavoured to unbosom to his father-confessor all he had done from his youth up ; but this was too much even for the priest. It was by means of a complete inward contrition, corresponding to the infinite burden of sin, that the person confessing was to make himself worthy of the forgiveness which the priest then testified to him by absolution. According to the prevailing doctrine, however, what was wanting to the penitent in com- pleteness of contrition, was supplied by the Sacrament of Absolution. But the punishments reserved by God for sinners were not supposed to be ended by this absolution or forgive- ness ; these had to be atoned for by peculiar observances, imposed by the priest, and by prayer, alms, fasting, and other acts of mortification. For him who was not forgiven, remained hell ; for him who had not expiated his sins, at least the fear and pains of purgatory. Such was and still is the teaching of the Catholic Church. Thus Luther was now summoned and directed to pursue methodically the painful work of self-examination, which had oppressed him even before he entered the convent, and to use all the means of grace here offered to him. But the more he searched into his life and thoughts, the more transgressions of God's will he found, and the more grievously did they afflict his conscience. It was not, indeed, as might have been im- agined with a strong young man like himself, a question of any sensual appetites, stimulated all the more by the restraints of the convent. It was with the passions of anger, hatred, and envy against his brethren and fellow-creatures, that he had to reproach himself Those who disliked him accused him in particular of self-conceit, and of letting his temper break out too easily. Faults of that description, in thought, word, or deed, were to his own conscience as deadly sins, though to the priest who listened to him at confession, they seemed too trifling to call for enumeration. To these were added a number of smaller offences against the ordinances of the Church and the convent, with reference to outward observances and forms of worship, prayers, and so on, all of which, insignifi- cant as they must seem to us, the Church was accustomed to treat as grievous sins. Finally, there arose in his mind a AT THE CONVENT AT ERFURT. 39 constant restlessness, which made him look for sins where none in reality existed. What he had said once before about washing one's hands, that it only made them become fouler, he had now to experience for himself. His contrition made him feel pain and fear in abundance, but not so as to enable him to say to himself that it purged the evil in the sight of God. Ab- solution was pronounced over him again and again ; but who ever gave him any assurance that he had fulfilled its conditions, and therefore could really confide in its efficacy ? As for acts of penance, he willingly performed them, and, indeed, did far more in the way of prayer, fasting, and vigil than either the rules of the convent demanded or his father-confessor enjoined. His body, from his hardy training as a child, was well pre- pared for such austerities, but in spite of that, he had for a long while to suffer from their results. Luther, in later years, could well bear witness of himself that he had caused his own body far more pain and torture with those practices of penance than all his enemies and persecutors had caused to theirs. What leisure remained, after his other monastic duties r_ were over, he devoted most industriously to the study of theo- y logy. He read, in particular, the writings of the later scholastic V theologians, with whom he had partly occupied himself during ; his philosophical course. Of some of these, such as the Englishman Occam, in particular, whose acuteness of reason- ing he especially admired, there were writings which, in re- ference to questions of external Church polity, might have led him even then into paths of his own, if his mind had been disposed for it. These writings were directed against the absolute power of the Pope in the Church, and against his aggressions in the territory of Empire and State. But any such aim was very far removed from the monastic Order to which Luther had devoted himself, and from the theologians who were here his teachers. Palz, whom we have mentioned ' already, had especially distinguished himself by his glorification \ of the Papal indulgences. Moreover, the whole Order, and the German convents belonging to it in particular, were indebted i to the Pope for various acts of favour. Nor was Luther himself | less careful to hold firmly to the ordinances of the hierarchy, than to avail himself of the means of salvation offered by the Church. What at all times in his theological studies enlisted his warmest personal interest was the difficult question, how sinners 40 LUTHER AS MONK AND PROFESSOR. could obtain everlasting salvation. And all that he came to read on that subject in the writings of those theologians, and to hear from his learned teachers in the convent, served only to increase his fruitless inward wrestlings, and his anxiety and sense of need. The great father of the Church, from whom his Order was named, and to whom their rules were ascribed, had once, on the ground of his own experiences of the struggle with sin and the flesh, laid down with great force, and in a triumphant controversy with his opponents, the doctrine that, as the Apostle says, salvation depends not on the conduct of man, but on the grace of God, not on the will of man, but on the willingness of God to pardon, who alone transforms the sinner, and grants him the power and the will for good. But any knowledge or understanding of this theology of Augustine was as strange to his own Order as to the Scholastics. It was taught, indeed, that heaven was too high for man to attain to otherwise than by the grace of God. But it was also taught that the sinner, by his own natural strength, both could and ought to do enough in God's sight to earn that grace which would then help him farther on the way to heaven. He who had thus obtained that grace, it was said, felt himself enabled and impelled to do even more than God's commands require. Reference to the bitter passion and death of the Saviour was not omitted, it is true, by the theologians with whom Luther had to do, and frequently, as, for example, by his teacher Palz, was impressed on Christian hearts in words full of feel- ing. But the chief stress was laid, not on the redeeming love on which man could rest his confident assurance, but on the necessity of offering oneself to Him who had offered Him- self for man, and of submitting even to the pains of death, in imitation of Him, and to pay the penalt)' of sin. In this way, again and again, Luther saw before him claims on the part of God which he could never hope to satisfy. His sorest trial was caused by the thought that God Himself should have the will to let him fail after all his fruitless efforts, and finally be numbered with the lost. And it was just with the later Scholastics that he found, not indeed a theory according to which God had simply predestined a part of mankind to per- dition, but a general conception of God which would represent Him as a Being not so much of holy love, as of arbitrary, absolute will. Luther spent two years in the convent amidst these AT THE CONVENT AT ERFURT. 41 strivings and inward sufferings. His spiritual life, as it was called, of strict discipline and asceticism was quoted in other convents as a model for imitation. Now and then, indeed, he felt himself puffed up with a sense of superior sanctity — " a proud saint," as he afterwards called himself. But humility was the ruling temper of his mind. Frequently, in after life, he described his condition as a warning to others. Thus he speaks of the disciples of the law, who try by their own works, by constant labour, by wearing shirts of hair, by self-scourg- ing, by fasting, by every means, in short, to satisfy the law of God. Such a one, he tells us, he himself had been. But he had also learned by experience, he adds, what happens when a man is tempted, and death or danger frightens him ; how he despairs, nay, would fly from God as from the devil, and would rather that there were no God at all. So great became his inward sufferings, that he thought both bod)' and soul must succumb. Thus he tells us later on, when speaking of the torments of purgatory, of a man, who doubtless was himself, how he had often endured such agony, only momentary it is true, but so hellish in its violence, that no tongue could express nor pen describe it ; that, had it lasted longer, even for half an hour, or only five minutes, he must have died there and then, and his bones have been consumed to ashes. He him- self saw afterwards in these pains, visitations of a special kind, such as God does not send to every one. But they served him then as a proof, and one of universal application, that that school of the law, as he called it, would bring no real holiness either to others or himself, but must teach a man to despair of himself, and of any claims or merits of his own. And, indeed, as we know from all that had gone before, it was not simply the external barrenness of the regulations of Church and con- vent, or a sense of imperfect fulfilment on his part, that caused his restlessness of conscience ; what gave him the deepest anxiety and harassed him the most were those very inward stirrings, which revealed to him his opposition to God's eternal demands, the fulfilment of which he thought indis- pensable for reconciliation to God. His experiences at the convent led him to the perception of those principles which formed the groundwork of his preaching as a Reformer. From his exemplary conduct there, and his wonderful and active conversion, he was compared to St. Paul. In quite another sense he resembled the great Apostle. The F 42 LUTHER AS MONK AND PROFESSOR. latter, when a Pharisee, had laboured to justify himself before God by the law and the prophets. " O wretched man that I am," Luther there must have exclaimed of himself, and after- wards, looking back on his experiences, have counted all as " dung and loss," in order to be justified rather by faith through the grace of God and the Saviour, and to become free and holy. Just as, meanwhile, inside the Catholic Church, the laws, dogmas, and School theories relating to the means of salvation, were never able to supplant entirely the thought of the simple testimony of the Bible, and of the Church's own confession of God's forgiving love and His redeeming and absolving grace, or to prevent simple pious Christians from seeking here a refuge in the inmost depths of their hearts, so now, at this very con- vent of Erfurt, where Luther's inward development in those theories and dogmas had reached so high a pitch, he received also the first serious impressions in the other direction. They found with him a difficult and gradual entrance, from the energy and consistency with which he had taken up his original standpoint. But with all the more energy, and with perfect consistency, did he abandon that standpoint, when new light dawned upon him from his new conception of the truth. Luther's teacher at the convent, by whom we shall have to understand the superintendent of the novices, had already made a deep impression upon him, by reminding him of the words of the Apostles' Creed about the forgiveness of sins, and repre- senting to him, what Luther had never ventured to apply to himself, that the Lord Himself had commanded us to hope. For this he referred him to a passage in the writings of St. Bernard, where that fervent preacher, imbued though he was in his theology with the Church notions of the middle ages, insists on the importance of this very faith in God's forgive- ness, and appeals to the words of St. Paul that man is justified by grace through faith. Remarks of this kind sank into Luther's mind, and took root there, though their fruit only ripened by degrees. Of his teacher Arnoldi, also, he spoke with admiration and gratitude, for the comfort he had known how to impart to him. But the one who at this time acquired by far the most potent, wholesome, and lasting influence upon Luther, was the vicar-general, John von Staupitz. He was a remarkable man, of a noble and pious disposition, and a refined and far- seeing mind. A master of the forms of scholastic theology. AT THE CONVENT AT ERFURT. 43 he was also deepl}' read in Scripture ; he made its teachings the special standard of his life, and was careful to enjoin others to do the same. He strove after an inward, practical life in God, not confined to mere forms and observances. Sharp conflicts and controversies were not to his taste ; but mildly and discreetly he sought to plant, in his own field of work, and to leave what he had planted in God's name to grow up. It was during his visits to Erfurt that Staupitz came in contact with the gifted, thoughtful, and melancholy young Fig. 5. — Staupitz. (From the Portrait in St. Peter's Convent at Salzburg.) monk. He treated Luther, both in conversation and letter, with fatherly confidence, and Luther unlocked to him, as to a father, his heart and its cares. Upon his wishing to confess to him all his many small sins, Staupitz insisted first on distin- guishing between what were really sins, and what were not ; as for self-imagined sins, or such a patchwork of offences as Luther laid before him, he would not listen to them ; that was not the kind of seriousness, he would say, that God wished to have. Luther tormented himself with a system of penance. 44 LUTHER AS MONK AND PROFESSOR. consisting of actual pain, punishments, and expiations. Staupitz taught him that repentance, in the Scriptural mean- ing, was an inward change and conversion, which must proceed from the love of holiness and of God ; and that, for peace with God, he must not look to his own good resolutions to lead a better life, which he had not the strength to carry out, or to his own acts, which could never satisfy the law of God, but must trust with patience to God's forgiving mercy, and learn to see in Christ, whom God permitted to suffer for the sins of man, not the threatening Judge, but rather the loving Saviour. To Christ above all he referred him, when Luther pondered on the secret eternal will of God, and was near despair. God's eternal purpose, he would say, shines clear!}' in the wounds of Christ. Did his temptations not cease, he bade him see in them means to draw him to the love of God. The thoughts of Staupitz turned in this on the temptations to pride, which might them- selves be the means of curing that pride, and on the great things for which God wished to prepare him. In a simple, practical manner, and from the experiences of his own life, he would thus counsel and converse with Luther. During the long course of a confidential intercourse with his friend, his own theology in later years became visibly developed, and his pupil of earlier days became afterwards his teacher. But Luther, both then and throughout his life, spoke of him with grateful affection as his spiritual father, and thanked God that he had been helped out of his temptations by Dr. Staupitz, without whom he would have been swallowed up in them and perished. The first firm ground, however, for his convictions and his inner life, and the foundation for all his later teachings and works, was found by Luther in his own persevering study of Holy Writ. In this also he was encouraged by Staupitz, who must, however, have been amazed at his indefatigable industry and zeal. For the interpretation of the Bible the means at his jcommand were meagre in the extreme. He himself explored ■fin all cases to their very centre the truths of Christian salvation and the highest questions of moral and religious life. A single passage of importance would occupy his thoughts for days. Significant words, which he was not able yet to comprehend, remamed fixed in his mind, and he carried them silently about with him. Thus, for example, he tells us, how powerfull)' he was affected by the word of God, as spoken by the Prophet Ezekiel, " I will not the death of a sinner". AT THE CONVENT AT ERFURT. 45 It was the third and last year of his monastic life at Erfurt that brought with it, as far as we see, the decisive turn for his inward struggles and labours. In his second year, on 2nd May, 1507, he received, by com- mand of his superiors, his solemn ordination as a priest. It was then for the first time since his entry into the convent against his father's will, that the latter saw him again. A convenient day was expressly arranged for him, to enable him to take part personally at the solemnity. He rode into Erfurt with a stately train of friends and relations. But in his opinion of the step taken by his son he remained unalterably firm. At the enter- tainment which was given in the convent to the young priest, the latter tried to extort from him a friendly remark upon the subject, b}' asking him why he seemed so angry, when monastic life was such a high and holy thing. His father replied in the presence of all the company, " Learned brothers, have you not read in Holy Writ, that a man must honour father and mother?" And on being reminded how his son had been called, nay, compelled to this new life by heaven, " Would to God," he answered, " it were no spirit of the devil ! " He let them understand that he was there, eating and drinking, as a matter of duty, but that he would much rather be away. To Luther, however, the post of high dignity to which he was now promoted brought new fear and anxiety. He had now to appear before God as a priest ; to have Christ's Body, the very Christ Himself, and God actually present before him at the mass on the altar ; to offer the Body of Christ as a sacrifice to the living and eternal Gcd. Added to this, there were a multitude of forms to observe, any oversight wherein was a sin. All this so overpowered him at his first mass, that he could scarcely remain at the altar ; he was well-nigh, as he said afterwards, a dead man. With these priestly functions he united an assiduous devo- tion to his saints. By reading mass every morning, he invoked twenty-one particular saints, whom he had chosen as his helpers, taking three at a time, so as to include them all within the week. As regards the most important problems of life, his study of the Scriptures gradually revealed to him the light which de- termined his future convictions. The path had already been pointed out to him by the words of St. Paul quoted by St. Bernard, When looking back, at the close of his life, on this 46 LUTHER AS MONK AND PROFESSOR. his inward development, he tells us how perplexed he had been by what St. Paul said of the "righteousness of God " (Rom. i. 17). For a long time he troubled himself about the expression, connecting it as he did, according to the ruling theology of the day, with God's righteousness in His punishment of sinners. Day and night he pondered over the meaning and context of the Apostle's words. But at length, he adds, God in His great mercy revealed to him that what St. Paul and the Gospel pro- claimed was a righteousness given freely to us by the grace of God, who forgives those who have faith in His message of mercy, and justifies them, and gives them eternal life. There- with the gate of heaven was opened to him, and thenceforth the whole remaining purport of God's word became clearly re- vealed. Still it was only by degrees, during the latter portion of his stay at Erfurt, and even after that, that he arrived at this full perception of the truth. After their ordination the monks received the title of fathers. Luther was not as yet relieved of the duty of going out with a brother in quest of alms. But he was soon employed in the more important business of the Order, as, for instance, in trans- actions with a high official of the archbishop, in which he dis- played great zeal for the priesthood and for his Order. With the scholastic theology of his time, albeit even now in a path marked out by himself, his keen understanding and happy memory had enabled him to become thoroughly familiar. He was scarcely twenty-five years old when Staupitz, occupied with making provision for the newly-founded University of Wittenberg, recognised in him the right man for a. professorial chair. CALL TO IVLTTENBERG. JOURNEY TO ROME. 47 CHAPTER II. CALL TO WITTENBERG. JOURNEY TO ROME. Wittenberg was at that time the youngest of the German universities. It was founded in 1502 by the Elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony, a man pre-eminent among the German princes, not only from his prudence and circumspection, but also from his faithful care for his country, his genuine love for knowledge, and his deep religious feeling. His country was not a rich one. Wittenberg itself was a poor, badly-built town of about three thousand inhabitants. But the Elector showed his wisdom above all by his right choice of men whom he con- sulted in his work, and to whose hands he entrusted its conduct. These, in their turn, were very careful to select talented and trustworthy teachers for the institution, which was to depend for its success on the attractions offered by pure learning, and not those of outward show and a luxurious style of life among the students. The supervision of theology was en- trusted by Frederick to Staupitz, whom personally he held in high esteem, and who, together with the learned and versatile Martin Pollich of Melrichstadt, had already been the most active in his service in promoting the foundation of the univer- sity. Staupitz himself entered the theological faculty as its first dean. A constant or regular application to his duties was rendered impossible by the multifarious business of his Order, and the journeys it entailed. But in his ver)' capacity of vicar-general, he strove to supply the theological needs of the university, and, by the means of education thus offered, to assist the members of his Order. Already before this the Augustinian monks had had a settlement at Wittenberg, though little is known about it. A handsome convent was built for them in 1506. In a short time young inmates of this convent, and afterwards more monks of the same Order who came from other parts, entered the university as students, and 48 LUTHER AS MONK AND PROFESSOR. took academical degrees. The patron saint of the university was, next to the Virgin Mary, St. Augustine. Trutvetter of Erfurt became professor of theology at Wittenberg in 1507. It was early in the winter of 1508-9, when Staupitz, who had been re-elected for the second time, was still dean of the theo- logical faculty, that Luther was suddenly and unexpectedly summoned thither. He had to obey not merely the advice and wish of an affectionate friend, but the will of the principal of his Order. As hitherto he had simply graduated as a master in philo- sophy, and had not qualified himself academically for a pro- fessor of theology, Luther at first was only called on to lecture on those philosophical subjects which, as we have seen, occu- pied his studies at Erfurt. Theologians, it is true, had been entrusted with these duties, just as, here at Wittenberg, the first dean of the philosophical faculty was a theologian, and, in addition to that indeed, a member of the Augustinian Order. But from the beginning, Luther was anxious to exchange the province of philosophy for that of theology, meaning thereby, as he expressed it, that theology which searched into the very kernel of the nut, the heart of the wheat, the marrow of the bones. So far, he was already confident of having found a sure ground for his Christian faith, as well as for his inner life, and having found it, of being able to begin teaching others. Indeed,_while busily^ eD-b&ged jn Bis firstjectures_pn philosophy, h e was pr e- paring to-qaialify himse[f for his theological degrees. Here also he had to begin with his baccalaureate, comprTsing"in fact three dif- ferent steps in the theological faculty, each of which had to be reached b}' an examination and disputation. The first step was that of bachelor of biblical knowledge, which qualified him to lecture on the Holy Scriptures. The second, or that of a Sen- tentiarius, was necessary for lecturing on the chief compendium of mediaeval School-theology, the so-called Sentences of Peter Lombardus, the due performance of which duty led to the attainment of the third step. Above the baccalaureate, with its three grades, came the rank of licentiate, which gave the right to teach the whole of theology, and lastly the formal, Isolemn admission as doctor of theology. Already, on gth March. 1509, Luther had attained his first step in the baccalaureate. At the end of six months he was qualified, by the statutes of the university, to reach the second step, and in the course of the next six months he actually reached it. CALL TO WITTENBERG. JOURNEY TO ROME. 49 But before gaining his new rights as a Seyitcntiarius, he was summoned back by the authorities of his Order to . Erfurt. The reason we do not know ; we only know that , he entered the theological faculty there as professor, receiv- ing,, at the same time, the recognition of the academical rank he had acquired at Wittenberg, At Erfurt he remained about three terms, or eighteen months. After that he returned to the university at Wittenberg. Trutvetter, towards the end of 15 10, had received a summons back to Erfurt from Witten- berg. The void thus caused by his summons away may have had something to do with Luther's return thither. At all events his position at Wittenberg was now vastly different from that which he had previously held. No theologian, his superior in years or fame, was any longer above him. Ere long, however, Luther received another commission from his Order; a proof of the confidence reposed also in his zeal for the Order, his practical understanding, and his energy. It was about a matter in which, by Staupitz's desire, other Augustinian convents in Germany were to enter into a union with the reformed convents and the vicar of the Order. As opposition had been raised, Luther in 15 11, no doubt at) the suggestion of Staupitz, was sent on this matter to Rome, ' where the decision was to be given. The journey thither and back may easily have taken six weeks or more. According to rule and custom, two monks were always sent out together, and a lay-brother was given them for service and company. They used to make their way on foot. In Rome the brethren of the Order were received by the Augustinian monastery of Maria del Popolo. Thus Lu ther went— forth to "the great capital of the world, to the throne of the Head of the Church. He remained there four we eks, discharging his duties, and surrounded by all her monuments and relics of ecclesiastical interest. No definite account of the result of the business he had to transact, has been handed down to us. We only learn that Staupitz, the vicar of the Order, was afterwards on friendly relations with the convents which had opposed his scheme, and that he refrained from urging any more unwelcome innovations. For us, however, the most important parts of this journey are the general observations and experiences which Luther made in Italy, and, above all, at the Papal chair itself. He often refers to them later in his speeches and 4 50 LUTHER AS MONK AND PROFESSOR. writings, in the midst of his work and warfare, and he tells us plainly how important to him afterwards was all that he there saw and heard. The devotion of a pilgrim inspired him as he arrived at the city which he had long regarded with holy veneration.. It had been his wish, during his troubles and heart-searchings, to make one day a regular and general confession in that city. When he came in sight of her, he fell upon the earth, raised his hands, and exclaimed, " Hail to thee, holy Rome ! " She was truly sanctified, he declared afterwards, through the blessed martyrs, and their blood which had flowed within her walls. But he added, with indignation at himself, how he had run like a crazy saint on a pilgrimage through all the churches and catacombs, and had believed what turned out to be a mass of rank lies and impostures. He would gladly then have done something for the welfare of his friends' souls by mass-reading and acts of devotion in places of particular ■ sanctity. He felt downright sorry, he tells us, that his parents were still alive, as he might have performed some special act to release them from the pains of purgatory. But in all this he found no real peace of mind : on the contrary, his soul was stirred to the consciousness of another way of salvation which had already begun to dawn upon him. Whilst climbing, on his knees and in prayer, the sacred stairs which were said to have led to the Judgment-hall of Pilate, and whither, to this day, worshippers are invited by the promise of Papal absolutions, he thought of the words of St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans (i. 17), " The just shall live by faith ". As for any spiritual enlightenment and conso- lation, he found none among the priests and monks of Rome. He was struck indeed with the external administration of business and the nice arrangement of legal matters at the Papal see. But he was shocked by all that he observed of the moral and religious life and doings at this centre of Christianity ; the immorality of the clergy, and particularly of the highest dignitaries of the Church, who thought them- selves highly virtuous if they abstained from the very grossest offences ; the wanton levity with which the most sacred names and things were treated ; the frivolous unbelief, openly ex- pressed among themselves by the spiritual pastors and masters of the Church. He complains of the priests scrambling through mass as if they were juggling ; while he was reading CALL TO WLTTENBERG. JOURNEY TO ROME. 51 one mass, he found they had finished seven : one of them once urged him to be quick by saying, " Get on, get on, and \ make haste to send her Son home to our Lady ". He heard jokes even made about the priests when consecrating the elements at mass, repeating in Latin the words, " Bread thou art, and bread thou shalt remain : wine thou art, and wine thou shalt remain". He often remarked in later years how they would apply in derision the term "good Christian" to those who were stupid enough to believe in Christian truth, and to be scandalised by anything said to the contrary. No one, he declared, would believe what villainies and shameful doings were then in vogue, if they had not seen and heard them with their own eyes and ears. But the truth of his testimony is confirmed by those very men whose life and conduct so shocked and revolted him. He must have been indignant, moreover, at the contemptuous tone in which the "stupid Germans" or "German beasts" were spoken of, as persons entitled to no notice or respect at Rome. He was astonished at the pomp and splendour which surrounded the Pope when he appeared in public. He speaks, as an eye-witness, of the processions, like those of a triumph- ing monarch. But the horrible stories were then still fresh at Rome of the late Pope Alexander and his children, the murder of his brother, the poisoning, the incest, and other crimes. Of the then Pope, Julius H., Luther heard nothing reported, except that he managed his temporal affairs with energy and shrewdness, made war, collected money, and contracted and dissolved, entered into and broke, political alliances. At the time of Luther's visit, he was just returning from a campaign in which he had conducted in person the sanguinary siege of a town. Luther did not fail to observe ■ that he had established in the sacred city an excellent body of police, and that he caused the streets to be kept clean, so that there was not much pestilence about. But he looked upon him simply as a man of the world, and afterwards , fulminated against him as a strong man of blood. All these experiences at Rome did not, however, then avail to shake Luther's faith in the authority of the hierarchy which had such unworthy ministers; though, later on, when he was forced to attack the Papacy itself, they made it easier for him to shape his judgment and conclusions. " I would I not have missed seeing Rome," he then declared, " for a / 52 LUTHER AS MONK AND PROFESSOR. hundred thousand florins, for I might then have felt some apprehension that I had done injustice to the Pope. But as we see, we speak." During his visit he also roamed about among the ruins of the ancient capital of the world, and was astonished at the remains of bygone worldly splendour. The works of the new art which Pope Julius was then beginning to call into exist- ence, did not appear to have particularly engaged his attention. The Pope was then progressing with the building of the new Church of St. Peter. The indulgence, of which the proceeds were to enable the cottipletion of this vast undertaking, led afterwards to the struggle between the Augustinian monk and the Papacy. LUTHER AS THEOLOGICAL TEACHER. 53 CHAPTER III. LUTHER AS THEOLOGICAL TEACHER, TO 1517. On his return to his Wittenberg convent, Luther was made sub-prior. At the university he entered fully upon all the rights andHuties of a teacher of theology, having been made licentiate and doctor. Here again it was Staupitz, his friend and spiritual superior, who urged this step : Luther's own wish was to leave the university and devote himself entirely to the office of his Order. The Elector Frederick, who had been struck with Luther by hearing one of his sermons, took this, the first op- portunity, of showing him personal sympathy, by offering to defray the expenses of his degree. Luther was reluctant to accept this, and years after he was fond of showing his friends a pear-tree in the courtyard of the convent, under which he dis- cussed the matter with Staupitz, who, however, insisted on his demand. He must have felt the more sensibly the responsibility of his new task, from his own personal strivings after new and true theological light. It was a satisfaction to him afterwards, amidst the endless and unexpected labours and contests which his vocation brought with it, to reflect that he had undertaken it, not from choice, but so entirely from obedience. " Had I known what I now know," he would exclaim in his later trials and dangers, " not ten horses would ever have dragged me into it." After the necessary preliminaries and customary forms, he received on 4th October, 1512, the rights of a licentiate, and on the i8th and igth was solemnly admitted to the degree of doctor. As licentiate he promised to defend with all his power the truth of the Gospel, and he must have had this oath par- ticularly in his mind when he afterwards appealed to the fact of his having sworn on his beloved Bible to preach it faithfully and in its purity. His oath as doctor, which followed, bound 54 L UTHER AS MONK AND PROFESSOR. him to abstain from doctrines condemned by the Church and offensive to pious ears. Obedience to the Pope was not re-/ quired at Wittenberg, as it was at other universities. ' Others, besides Staupitz, expected from the beginning some- thing original and remarkable from the new professor. Pollich, the first great representative of Wittenberg in its early days, and who died in the following year, said of him, " This monk will revolutionise the whole system of scholastic teaching". He seems, like others whom we hear of afterwards, to have been especially struck with the depth of Luther's eyes, and thought that they must reveal the working of a wonderful mind. A new theology, in fact, presented itself at once to Luther in the subject which, as doctor, he chose and exclusively ad- hered to in his lectures. This was the Bible, the very book of which the study was so generally under-valued in School-theo- logy, which so many doctors of theology scarcely knew, and which was usually so hastily forsaken for those scholastic sentences and a corresponding exposition of ecclesiastical dogmas. Luther began with lectures upon the Psalms. It is his first work on theology which has remained to posterity. We still possess a Latin text of the Psalter furnished with running notes for his lectures (a copy of it is given in these pages), and also his own manuscript of those lectures themselves. In these also he states that his task was imposed upon him b}' a distinct command : he frankly confessed that as yet he was insufficiently acquainted with the Psalms ; a comparison of his notes and lectures shows further, how continually he was engaged in prosecuting these studies. His explanations indeed fall short of what is required at present, and even of what he himself re- quired later on. He still follows wholly the mediaeval practice of thinking it necessary to find, throughout the words of the Psalmist, pictorial allegories relating to Christ, His work of salvation, and His people. But he was thus enabled to pro- pound, while explaining the Psalms, the fundamental principles of that doctrine of salvation which for some 3'ears past had taken such hold on his inmost thoughts and so engrossed his theological studies. And in addition to the fruits of his re- searches in Scripture, especially in the writings of St. Paul, we observe the use he made of the works of St. Augustine. His acquaintance with the latter did not commence until years after he had joined the Order, and had acquired independently an obIat6€s&holocaafta:ti5cIponcr{«paItareta3Wralos INVEHITVRDOMINVS CHRISTVS , .. !>.-.-;- -/ C6traIoda'pc!irorcfau.qu{pdoechfuitfigu/^,^L,_^_^, .-^^Uvv-^ ^d€ftru«tteinfiuc*^uellcttc& em«grabi> tede ta&crna/ ^2r,lilu4 r^^ rulotuo 5 &radite wade terra vioeriiu^eU* videbut , ^ frtrn. iiit/i«r's Aafeer, at WoVmbiitid. LUTHER AS THEOLOGICAL TEACHER. 55 intimate knowledge of the Bible. It was mainly through them that he was enabled to comprehend the teaching of St. Paul, and to find how the doctrine of Divine grace, which we have alread}' alluded to, was based on Pauline authority. Thus the founder of the Order became, as it were, his first teacher among human theologians. From his lectures on the Psalms Luther proceeded a few years later to an exposition of those Epistles which were to him the main source of his new belief in God's mercy and justice, namel)', the Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians. In the convent also at Wittenberg, the direction of the theological studies of the brethren was entrusted to Luther. His fellow-labourer in this field was his friend John Lange, who had been with him also in the convent at Erfurt. He was distinguished for a rare knowledge of Greek, and was therefore a valuable help even to Luther, to whom he was indebted in turn for a prolific advance in learning of another kind. Closel}' allied with Luther also was Wenzeslaus Link, the prior of the convent, who obtained his degree as doctor of the theological faculty a year before him. These men were drawn together by sim.ilarity of ideas, and by a strong and enduring personal friendship ; they had possibly been acquainted at the school at Magdeburg. The new life and activity awakened at Witten- berg attracted clever young monks more .and more from a distance. The convent, not yet quite finished, had scarcely room enough for them, or means for their maintenance. When in 15 15 the associated convents had to choose at Gotha, on a chapter-day, their new authorities, Luther was appointed, Staupitz being still vicar-general, the provincial vicar for Meissen and Thuringia. He obtained by this office the superintendence of eleven convents, to which in the next year he paid the customary visitation. In person, by word of mouth and equally by letters, we see him labouring with self- sacrificing zeal for the spiritual welfare of those committed to his care, for the correction of bad monks, for the comfort of those oppressed with temptations, as also for the temporal and domestic, and even the legal business of the different convents. In addition to his academical duties, he performed double service as a preacher. In the first place he had to preach in his convent, as he had already done at Erfurt. When the new convent at Wittenberg was opened, the church was not yet ready ; and in a small, poor, tumble-down chapel close by. 56 LUTHER AS MONK AND PROFESSOR. , made up of wood and clay, he began to preach the Gospel and unfold the power of his eloquence. When, shortly after, the town-priest of Wittenberg became weak and ailing, his con- gregation pressed Luther to occupy the pulpit in his place. , He performed these different duties with alacrity, energy, and power. He would preach sometimes daily for a week together, sometimes even three times in one day ; during Lent in 15 17 he gave two sermons every day in addition to his lectures at , the university. The zeal which he displayed in proclaiming the Gospel to his hearers in church, was quite as new and peculiar to himself as the lofty interest he imparted to his professorial lectures on the Scriptures. I Melancthon says of these first lectures by Luther on the j Psalms and the Epistle to the Romans, that after a long and I dark night, a new day was now seen to dawn on Christian doctrine. In these lectures Luther pointed out the difference between the Law and the Gospel. He refuted the errors, then predominant in the Church and schools, the old teaching of the Pharisees, that men could earn forgiveness by their works, and that mere outward penance would justif}' them in the sight of God. Luther called men back to the Son of God; and just as John the Baptist pointed to the Lamb of God who bore our sins, so Luther showed how, for His Son's sake, God in His mercy will forgive us our sins, and how we must accept such mercy in faith. In fact, the whole groundwork of that Christian faith on which the inner life of the Reformer rests, for which he fought, and which gave him strength and fresh courage for the fight, lies already before us in his lectures and sermons during those years, and increases in clearness and decision. The "new day " had, in reality, broken upon his eyes. That fundamental truth which he designated later as the article by which a Christian Church must stand or fall, stands here alreadj' firmly established, before he in the least suspects that it would lead him to separate from the Catholic Church, or that his adopting it would occasion a reconstruction of the Church. The primary question around which everything else centred, remained always this — how he, the sinful man, could possibly stand before God and obtain salvation. With this came the question as to the righteousness of God ; and now he was no longer terrified by the avenging justice of God, wherewith He threatens the sinner ; but he recognised arid savj' the meaning LUTHER AS THEOLOGICAL TEACHER. 57 of that righteousness declared in the Gospel (Rom. i. 17, iii. 25), by which the merciful God justifies the faithful, in that He of His own grace re-establishes them in His sight, and effects an inward change, and lets them thenceforth, like children, enjoy His fatherly love and blessing. Luther, in teaching now that justification proceeds from faith, rejects, above all, the notion that man by any outward acts of his own can ever atone for his sins and merit the favour of God. He reminds us, moreover, with regard to moral works especially, that good fruits always presuppose a good tree, upon which alone they can grow, and that, in like manner, goodness can only proceed from a man, if and when, in his inward being, his inward thoughts, tendencies, and feelings, he has already become good ; he must be righteous himself, in a word, before he works righteousness. But it is faith, and faith alone, which in the inward man determines real communion with God. Then only, and gradually, can a man's own inner being, trusting to God, and by means of His imparted grace, become truly renovated and purged from sin. Had Luther, indeed, made salvation depend on such a righteousness, derived from a man's own works, as should satisfj' the holy God, the very conscious- ness of his own sins and infirmities would have made him despair of such salvation. Moreover, all the working of the Holy Spirit, and His gifts in our hearts, presuppose that we are already participators of the forgiving mercy and grace of God, and are received into communion with Him. To this, as Luther teaches after St. Paul, we can only attain through faith in the joyful message of His mercy, in His compassion, and in His Son, whom He has sent to be our Redeemer. Thus he | speaks of faith, even in his earliest notes on the Psalter, as the keystone, the marrow, the short road. The worst enemy, in his sight, is self-righteousness ; he confesses having had to combat it himself. Herein also Luther found the theology of St. Augustine in accord with the testimony of the great Apostle. While studying that theology, his conviction of the power of sin and the power- lessness of man's own strength to overcome it, grew more and more decided. But St. Paul taught him to understand that belief somewhat differently to St. Augustine. To Luther it was not merely a recognition of objective truths or historical facts. What he understood by it, with a clearness and decision which are wanting in St. Augustine's teaching, was the trusting 58 LUTHER AS MONK AND PROFESSOR. of the heart in the mercy offered by the message of salvation, the personal confidence in the Saviour Christ and in that which He has gained for us: With this faith, then, and by the merits and mediation of the Saviour in whom this faith is placed, we stand before God, we have already the assurance of being known by God and of being saved, and we are partakers of the Holy Spirit, who sanctifies more and more the inner man. According to St. Augustine, on the contrary, and to all Catholic theologians who followed his teaching, what will help us before God is rather that inward righteousness which God Himself gives to man by His Holy Spirit and the workings of His grace, or, as the expression was, the righteousness infused by God. The good, therefore, already existing in a Christian is so highly esteemed that he can thereby gain merit before the just God and even do more than is required of him. But to a conscience like Luther's, which applied so severe a standard to human virtue and works, and took such stern count of past and present sins, such a doctrine could bring no assurance of forgiveness, mercy, and salvation. It was in faith alone that Luther had found this assurance, and for it he needed no merits of his own. The happy spirit of the child of God, by its own free impulse, would produce in a Christian the genuine good fruit pleasing in God's sight. It was a long time before Luther himself be- came aware how he differed on this point from his chief teacher amongst theologians. But we see the difference appear at the very root and beginning of his new doctrine of salvation ; and it comes out finally, based on apostolic authority, clear and sharp, in the theology of the Reformer. And inseparably connected with this is what Melancthon said about the Law and the Gospel. Luther himself always declared in later days, that the whole understanding of the truth of Christian salvation, as revealed by God, depends on a right perception of the relation of one to the other, and this very re- lation he explained, shortly before the beginning of his contest with the Church, upon the authority of St. Paul's Epistles. The Law is to him the epitome of God's demands with regard to will and works, which still the sinner cannot fulfil. The Gospel is the blessed offer and announcement of that forgiving mercy of God which is to be accepted in simple faith. By the Law, says Luther, the sinner is judged, condemned, killed ; he himself had to toil and disquiet himself under it, as though he were in the hands of a gaoler and executioner. The Gospel LUTHER AS THEOLOGICAL TEACHER. 59 first lifts up those who are crushed, and makes them alive by the faith which the good message awakens in their hearts. But God works in both ; in the o^e, a work which to Him, the God of love, would properly be strange ; in the other. His own work of love, for which, however, He has first prepared the sinner by the former. Whilst Luther was prosecuting his labours in this path, he 1 became acquainted in 1516 with the sermons of the pious, 1 deep-thinking theologian Tauler, who died in 1361 ; and at the same time an old theological tract, written not long after I Tauler, fell into his hands, to which he gave the name of German Theology. Now for the first time, and in the per- 1 son of their noblest representatives, he was confronted with the Christian and theological views which were commonly de- signated as the practical German mysticism of the middle ages. Here, instead of the value which the mediaeval Church, so addicted to externals, ascribed to outward acts and ordinances, he found the most devout absorption in the sentiments of real Christian religion. Instead of the barren, formal expositions and logical operations of the scholastic intellect, he found a striving and wrestling of the whole inner man, with all the mind and will, after direct communion and union with God, who Himself seeks to draw into this union the soul devoted to Him, and makes it become like to Himself Such a depth of contemplation and such fervour of a Christian mind Luther had not found even in an Augustine. He rejoiced to see this treasure written in his native German, and it certainly was the noblest German he had ever read. He felt himself marvel- : lously impressed by this theology ; he knew of no sermons, so he wrote to a friend, which agreed more faithfully with the Gospel than those of Tauler. He published that tract — then not quite complete — in 1516, and again afterwards in 1518. It was the first publication from his hand. His further sermons and writings show how deeply he was imbued with its contents. The influences he here received had a lasting effect on the formation of his inner life and his theology. With regard to sin, he now learned that its deepest roots and fundamental character lay in our own wills, in self-love and selfishness. To enjoy communion with God it is necessary that the heart should put away all worldliness, and let its natural will be dead, so that God alone may live and work in us. So, as he says on the title page of German Theology, 6o LUTHER AS MONK AND PROFESSOR. shall Adam die in us and Christ be made alive. But the essen- tial peculiarity of Luther's doctrine of salvation, grounded as it was directly on Scripture, still 'remained intact, despite the theology no less of the mystics than of Augustine, and, after passing through these influences, developed its full independ- ence during his struggles as a Reformer. For_this commuj iion with God he never thought it necessary, as t he mystics m ain- tained, to renounce one's personality, ari3 retire altogether'ft'om I the world and thirigs'^temporaf : a purely passive attitude to- r wards_God,"and a^'BIessedness consisting in sucR""an attitude, jwas not his highest or ultimate ideal. A man's personality, i he held, should only be destroyed so far as it resists the will I of God, and dares to assert its self-righteousness and merits before Him. The road to real communion with God was always that " short road " of faith, in which the contrite sinner, who feels his personality crushed by the consciousness of sin, grasps the hand of Divine mercy, and is lifted up by it and restored. Christ was manifested, as the mystics said with Scripture, in order that the man's personality should die with Him, and imitate Him in self-renunciation. But the faith, on which Luther insisted, saw in Christ above all the Saviour who has died for us, and who pleads for us before God with His holy life and conduct, that the faithful may obtain through Him reconcilia- tion and salvation. What the Saviour is to us in this respect Luther has thus summarised in words of his own: " Lord Jesus,'' he says, " Thou hast taken to Thyself what is mine, and given to me what is Thine ". The main divergence between Luther and the German mysticism of the middle ages consists pri- marily in a different estimate of the general relations between God and the moral personality of man. With the mystics, behind the Christian and religious, lay a metaphysical concep- tion of God, as a Being of absolute power, superior to all destiny, apparently rich in attributes, but in reality an empty Abstraction, — above all, a Being who suffers nothing finite to exist in independence of Himself With Luther the funda- mental conception of God remained this, that He is the per- fect Good, and that, in His perfect holiness. He is Love. This is the God by whom the sinner who has faith is restored and justified. From this conception as a starting-point, Luther acquired fresh strength and energy for advancing in the fight, whilst the pious mystic remained passively and quietly behind. From this also he learned to realise Christian liberty and moral LUTHER AS THEOLOGICAL TEACHER. 6i duty in regard to daily life and its vocations, whilst the mystics remained shut off altogether from the world. The intimate connection between the conclusions to which the views of Tauler tended, and the principles from which Luther started, is shown further by the superior attraction which those sermons, so warmly recommended by Luther, continued to exercise upon members of the Evangelical, compared with those of the Catholic Church. What Christ has suffered and done for us, and how we gain through Him the righteousness of God, peace, and real life, — these thoughts of practical religion pervaded now all Luther's discourses. To the saving knowledge of these facts he en- deavoured to direct his lectures, and discarded the dogmatical inquiries and subtle investigations and speculations of School- theology. At first, and eve n m h is serm ons at .t he convent, he had employed m "his e xpositio n of biblical truths , as w as the cus tom of learned p reactier s, philosopnicai expressions" "ancl references to Aristotle "and Famous S5'lT5'lastics. But^Jatterly;' and at the time we ar e spea king of, he"haci entirely left this off; and, as regards the form of his sermons, instead of a stiff,\ logical construction ofsentences, he_employed t hat sim ple,! lively^powerful eloquence which distinguished him above all preacFiers of his time. In 1516 and 1517 he delivered a course of sermons on the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer before his town congregation, with the view of showing the connection of the truths of Christian religion. He further had prmted in 15 17, for Christian readers generally, an explanation of the sey_en penitential psalms. He wished, as the title stated, to expound them- thoroughly in their Scriptural meaning, for setting forth the grace of Christ and God, and enabling true self-knowledge. It is the first of his writings, published by, himselfjjindjnjhe.. German Janguj^:S,_5vllich . we_possess ; for ' theTater lectures that were published were delivered by him in Latin, and the first sermons we have of his were also written by him in that language. We give on next page the title and preface from the original print. Luther had now become possessed with a burning desire to refute, by means of the truth he had newly learned, the teaching 1 and system of that School-theology on which he himself had| wasted so much time and labour, and by which he saw that 1 same truth darkened and obstructed. He first attacked Aris- ' totle, the heathen philosopher from whom this theology, he 62 LUTHER AS MONK AND PROFESSOR. iDtr&Kliraptt&til^ltnttitt tirurrritrrau&ifgunsnarli t)rmrrit!ifftit(lirnrrnm (iyns fclbcrt. ware cif nttni^* gruit&h'c^Sehci^tet* SfllcttlicOm glt'bmrtM /f pudjicyn U^cn . ^riftbetjtib fti'b »oti gott/fedss ittf vmat) trtinbfr ^€ cba|li.t>oii Dcm tcrt. Dif^crficbm pfalitteit/ ]3fl3UTOincii/?>ase.t>erfeIb.>firtetlic^enTJ€rfcii,'oinbElerer twrrasUttort faitai txtc 3u6cl?oIfl^n Die traii6l<*cton Doctois Jo^onnis J^eiid^* Ifn V" (cviter bcbmfcljcr feptcne. 5^je glo^c a6er vn& au^IeguttK/ ttrfc wol/ fie villctc^C itw.aDDeraiid)ititfcl>niffrlici> fynnes yti^altcnO/woft cchrf>en/m(ig augcfc^en iverDeit. ^attea myt bod> mC gc3ym«.^c nyCer Die cl>tif?cn Qit rtd^ccn.rtDcr^TOeyfeleiT^ Stt3£l?2t'(fu3alfoitat76ey v^ft fey.crttjerOcv^n ttJoU f*^ gen/rtjiefte&iepf4lmeiiau^3ti(cgeii funDcrltd) y?f 3 Oeuc^ fc^cbefil^ id) frcy/ yn cvrts igliqjefi guct>uncC m ju vitcy le2(tiKii. J. tHrtmiittslLuber^iiguffiJtcr QuXOittenberg. Fig. 6. — Title and Preface of Penitential Psalms. LUTHER AS THEOLOGICAL TEACHER. 63 said, received its empty and perverted formalism, whose S3'stem i of physics v/as worthless, and who, especially in his conception '( of moral life and moral good, was blind, since he knew nothing \ of the essence and ground of true righteousness. The Scho- lastics, as Luther himself remarked against them, had failed signally to understand the genuine original philosophy of Aris- totle. But the real greatness and significance which must be allowed to that philosophy, in the development of human thought and knowledge, were far removed from those profound questions of Christian morality and religion which engrossed Luther's mind, and from those truths to which he again had to testify. In theses which formed the subject of disputation among his followers, Luther expressed with particular acute- ness his own doctrine, and that of Augustine, concerning the inability of man, and the grace of God, and his opposition to the previously dominant Schoolmen and their Aristotle. He was anxious also to hear the verdict of others, particularly of his teacher Trutvetter, upon his new polemics. He already could boast that, at Wittenberg, his, or as he called it, the Augustinian theology, had found its way to victorj^. It was adopted by the theologians who had taught there, though wholly in the old scholastic fashion, before him, especially by ( Carlstadt, who soon strove to outbid him in this new direction, 'j and who, later on, in his own zeal for reform, fell into disputes with the great Reformer himself, and also by Nicholas von Amsdorf, whom we shall see afterwards at Luther's side as his personal friend and strongest supporter. At Erfurt, Luther's former convent, his friend and sympathiser Lange was now prior, having returned thither from Wittenberg, where indeed his former teachers could not yet accommodate themselves to his new ways. Of great importance to Luther's work and position •; , was his friendship with George Spalatin (properly Burkardt of it Spelt), the court preacher and private secretary of the Elector Frederick, a conscientious, clear-minded theologian, and a man of varied culture and calm thoughtful judgment. He was of the same age as Luther ; he had been with him at Erfurt as a fellow-student, and at Wittenberg afterwards, whither he came as tutor to the prince, and had remained on terms of intimacy with him. To Luther he proved an upright, warm-hearted friend, and to the Elector a faithful and sagacious adviser. It ,-r was mainly due to his influence thjlthe Elector showed_sucli continued favour to Luther, marks of which he displayed by 64 LUTHER AS MONK AND PROFESSOR. presents, such as that of a piece of richly-wrought cloth, which Luther thought almost too good for a monk's frock. Spalatin had also been a member of that circle of "poets" at Erfurt; he kept up his connection with them, and corresponded with Erasmus, the head of the Humanists, and thus acted as a medium of communication for Luther in this quarter. Else- where in Germany we find the theology of Augustine or of St. Paul, as represented by Luther, taking root first among his Fig. 7. 1 -"v ■ ' -Spalatin. (From L. Cranach's Portrait.) friends at Nuremberg; in 1517 W. Link came there as a highly valued preacher. We have seen how Luther as a student associated with the young Humanists at Erfurt ; and now, whilst striving further on that road of theology which he had marked out for himself, he was still accessible to the general interests of learning as represented by the Humanistic movement. He made the acquaintance, at least by letter, of the celebrated Mutianus Rufus of Gotha, whom those " poets " honoured as their famous master, and with whom Lange and Spalatin main- LUTHER AS THEOLOGICAL TEACHER. 65 tained a respectful intercourse. When the Humanist John ReuchHn, then the first Hebrew scholar in Germany, was declared a heretic by zealous theologians and monks, on account Fig. 8. — Erasmus. (From the Portrait by A. Diirer.) of the protests he raised against the burning of the Rabbinical books of the Jews, and a fierce quarrel broke out in consequence, Luther, on being asked by Spalatin for his opinion, declared himself strongly for the Humanists against those who, being 66 LUTHER AS MONK AND PROFESSOR. gnats themselves, tried to swallow camels. His heart, he said, was so full of this matter that his tongue could not find utterance. Still, the bold satire with which his former college friend Crotus and other Humanists lashed their opponents and held them up to ridicule, as in the famous Epistola Virorum Obscurorum, was not to Luther's taste at all. The matter was to him far too serious for such treatment. The first place among the men who revived the knowledge of antiquity, and strove to apply that knowledge for the benefit of their own times and particularly of theology, belongs un- doubtedly to Erasmus, from his comprehensive learning, his refinement of mind, and his indefatigable industry. Just then, in 1516, he brought out a remarkable edition of the New Testament, with a translation and explanatory comments, which forms in fact an epoch in its history. Luther recognised his high talents and services, and was anxious to see him exercise the influence he deserved. He speaks of him in a letter to Spalatin as "our Erasmus''. But nevertheless he steadily asserted his own independence, and reserved the right of free judgment about him. Two things he lamented in him; , first of all that he lacked, as was the case, the comprehension of that fundamental doctrine of St. Paul as to human sin and righteousness by faith ; and further, that he made even the errors of the Church, which should be a source. of genuine sor- row to every Christian, a subject of ridicule. He sought, how- ever, to keep his opinion of Erasmus to himself, to avoid giving ' occasion to his jealous and unscrupulous enemies to malign him. Bitterness and ill-will, aroused by Luther's words and works, were already not wanting among the followers of the hitherto dominant views of theology and the Church. But of any separation from the Church, her authority and her funda- mental forms, he had as yet no intention or idea. Nor, on the other hand, did his enemies take occasion to obtain sentence of expulsion against him, until he found himself forced to conclu- sions which threatened the power and the income of the hierarchy. As yet he had not expressed or entertained a thought against the ordinances which enslaved every Christian to the priesthood and its power. He certainly showed, in his new doctrine of salvation, the way which leads the soul, by simple faith in the message of mercy sent to all alike, to its God and Saviour. But he had no idea of disputing that every one should confess to the priests, receive from them absolution, LUTHER AS THEOLOGICAL TEACHER. 67 and submit to all the penances and ordinances ordained by the Church. And in that very doctrine of salvation he knew that he was at one with Augustine, the most eminent teacher of the Western Church, whilst the opposite views, however dominant in point of fact, had never yet received any formal sanction of the Church. Zealously, indeed, he soon exposed many practical abuses and errors in the religious life of the Church. But hitherto these were only such as had been long before complained of and combated by others, and which the Church had never expressly declared as essential parts of her own system. He gave vent freely to his opinions about the superstitious worship of saints, about absurd legends, about the heathen practice of invoking the saints for temporal welfare or success. But praying to the saints to intercede for us with God he still justified against the heresy originating with Huss, and with fervour he invoked the Virgin from the pulpit. He was anxious that the priests and bishops should do their duty much better and more conscientiously than was the case ; and that instead of troubling themselves about worldly matters, they should care for the good of souls, and feed their flocks with God's word. He saw in the office of bishop, from the difficulties and temptations it involved, an office fraught with danger, and one therefore that he did not wish for his Staupitz. But the Divine origin and Divine right of the hierarchical offices of Pope, bishop, and priest, and the infallibility of the Church, thus governed, he held inviolably sacred. The Hussites who broke ^ fr om her were to him " sinful heretic s ^ . Nay, at that time he used the very argument by which afterwards the Romish Church thought to crush the principles and claims of the Reformation, namely, that if we deny that power of the Church and Papacy, anj' man may equally say that he is filled with the Holy Ghost ; every one will claim to be his own master, and there will be as many Churches as heads. As yet he was only seeking to combat those abuses which were outside the spirit and teaching of the Catholic Church, when the scandals of the traffic in indulgences called him to the field of battle. And it was only when in this battle the Pope and the hierarchy sought to rob him of his evangelical doctrine of salvation, and of the joy and comfort he derived from the knowledge of redemption by Christ, that, from his stand on the Bible, he laid his hands upon the strongholds of this Churchdom. PART III. THE BREACH WITH ROME, UP TO THE DIET OF WORMS.— 1517-1521. CHAPTER I. THE NINETY-FIVE THESES. The first occasion for the struggle which led to the great division in the Christian world was given by that magnificent edifice of ecclesiastical splendour intended by the Popes as the creation of the new Italian art ; by the building, in a word, of St. Peter's Church, which had already been commenced when Luther was at Rome. Indulgences were to furnish the necessary means. Julius II. had now been succeeded on the Papal chair by Leo X. So far as concerned the en- couragement of the various arts, the revival of ancient learning, and the opening up, by that means, to the cultivated and upper classes of society of a spring of rich intellectual enjoyment, Leo would have been just the man for the new age. But whilst actively engaged in these pursuits and pleasures, he remained indifferent to the care and the spiritual welfare of his flock, whom as Christ's vicar he had undertaken to feed. The frivolous tone of morals that ruled at the Papal see was looked upon as an element of the new culture. As regards the Christian faith, a blasphemous saying is reported of Leo, how profitable had been the fable of Christ. He had no scruples in procuring money for the new church, which, as he said, was to protect and glorify the bones of the holy Apostles, by a dirty traffic, pernicious to the soul. Meanwhile, the Popes were not ashamed to appropriate freely to their own needs that indul- THE NINETY-FIVE THESES. 69 gence money, which was nominal!}' for the Church and for other objects, such as the war against the Turks. In order to appreciate the nature of these indulgences and of Luther's attack upon them, it is necessary first to realise more exactly the significance which the teachers of the Church ascribed to them. The simple statement that absolution or forgiveness of sins was sold for money, must in itself be offence enough to any moral Chris- tian conscience ; and we can only wonder that Luther proceeded so pru- dently and gradually to- wards his object of getting rid of indulgences alto- gether. But the argu- ments b)' which they were explained and justified did not sound so simple or concise. Forgiveness of sins, it was maintained, must be gained by pen- ance, namely, by the so- called sacrament of penance, including the acts of private con- fession and priestly absolution. In this the father-confessor promised to him who had confessed his sins, absolution for them, whereby his guilt was forgiven and he was freed from eternal punishment. A certain contrition of the heart was required from him, even if only imperfect, and proceeding . perhaps solely from the fear of punishment, but which never- theless was deemed sufficient, its imperfection being supplied by the sacrament. But though absolved, he had s till to dis- chargeheavy_jDurcLens_of temporal punishmeatr- penances, im- posed'Jy]the^(^urchj and chastisements which, in the remission [T of eternal punishment, God in His righteousness still laid upon him. If he failed to satisfy these penances in this life, he ,, must, even if no longer in danger of hell, atone for the rest n" in th^torments of, .the fire of .. purgatory. The indulgence ip now came in to relieve him. The Church was content with easier tasks, as, at that time, with a donation to the Fig. g. — Leo X. (From his Portrait by Raphael.) 70 THE BREACH WITH ROME. sacred edifice at Rome. And even this was made to rest on a certain basis of right. The Church, it was said, had to dis- \ pose of a treasure of merits which Christ and the saints, by their good works, had accumulated before the righteous God, and those riches were now to be so disposed of by Christ's representatives, that they should benefit the buyer of indul- gences. In th is manner penances which otherwise woul d hav e Jt to be endured IoF~years_were comrniitedjinto smaT Taonatio ns .' of moneyj quickly gaid _off. T he contrit ion requi red for th e ^forgiyenessjf si ns was not alto gether ignored ; as, f or inst ance, in the official announcements of indulgences, and in the letters or certificates granting indulgences to individuals in return for payment. But in those documents, as also in the sermons exhorting the multitude to purchase, t he chief stress, so far as ^--possiblej was ,laid..u,Bon the payment. The confession, and with it the contrition, was also mentioned, but nothing was said about the personal remission of sins depending on this rather than on the money. Perfect forgiveness of sins was announced to him who, after having copfessed and fell con- trition, had thrown his contribution into the box. For the souls in purgatory nothing was required but money offered for I them by the living. "The moment the money tinkles in the " box, the soul springs up out of purgatory.'' A special tariff was arranged for the commission of particular sins, as, for example, six ducats for adultery. The traffic in indulgences for the building of St. Peter's was delegated by commission from the Pope, over a large part of Germany, to Albert, Archbishop of Mayence and Magdeburg. We shall meet with this great prince of the Church, as now in connection with the origin of the Reformation, so during its subsequent course. Albert, the brother of the Elector of Brandenburg, and cousin of the Grand-Master of the Teutonic Order in Prussia, stood in 1517, though only twenty-seven years old, already at the head of those two great ecclesiastical provinces of Germany; Wittenberg also belonged to his Magde- burg diocese. Raised to such an eminence and so rapidly by good fortune, he was filled with ambitious thoughts. He troubled himself little about theology. He loved to shine as the friend of the new Humanistic learning, especially of an Erasmus, and as patron of the fine arts, particularly' of archi- tecture, and to keep a court the splendour of which might correspond with his own dignity and love of art. For this ct7KaaUano0.^orp«»IclDfligafntt(aiptfcbu>]&;aitd 'ibKa flhifhiirimit iUannu'0}tndpu&fu>rant /Parctnoflu 3&:flRdm^ nulTartjrad tnft-afcnpterpeaaiufl- CtcpntAti. l^maerfie idngntie pftttelitcrad infpf ctarte 6alot(mm6no.l|Sioiu fodmae a»fftnl(ntffinM0i^ tc9q0cbiUItfidele0tpaobtinbllritf;rBd partes infi^ ddtitinadfidd(0pnpbaNit5\ta9riamomptcaM>ifiadai^ttmi'irmff^^ limtnnapof}oto^Tranctt3Mobitn(ompondie:riau8^^ poflb'Xva(tdm^ ^wtyWV ftib(lgfl&poiiiiiUJP.Z>.]CT'U ^^^ ' C5^^ii9pn9nl'f 2i(li>0 ^imi&Uupairtems tcabfotoae? (goauctarctprmat apfkamibt inbecpflreecSnHflktiiibt pafiatttbftiUto^moabomtmtAiaacdictiionwmaiomvdmmpiwt^ pa57tsc?r(mimonm.r(mmmd9tt&ieuapqtoqa4m4fcdin(0foirelig tper<>en ^€ |3^&w4) anjmgjtng bet gorii^cn>4K Fig. II. Title-page of a Pamphlet written at the beginning of the Refor- mation, with an Illustration showing the Sale of Indulgences. 74 THE BREACH WITH ROME. \ should in any way^depreciate, or murmur against, or obstruct j these indulgences, it wa^announced that, by Papal edict, they i lay already by so doing under the ban of excommunication, and could only beabsolved by the Pope or by one of his com- missioners. After Luther had once ventured to attack openly this sale of indulgences, it was admitted even by their defenders and the violent enemies of the Reformer, that in those days "greedy commissioners, monks and priests, had preached unblushingly about indulgences, and had laid more stress upon the money than upon confession, repentance, and sorrow". Christian people were shocked and scandalised at the abuse. It was asked whether indeed God so loved the money, that for ' the sake of a few pence He would leave a soul in everlasting torments, or why the Pope did not out of love empty the whole of purgatory, since he was willing to free innumerable souls in return for such a trifle as a contribution to the building of a church. But not one of them found it then expedient to incur the abuse and slander of a Tetzel by a word spoken openly against the gross misconduct, the fruits of which were so important to the Pope and the archbishop. Tetzel now came to the borders of the Elector of Saxony's dominion, and to the neighbourhood of Wittenberg. The Elector would not allow him to enter his territory, on account « of so much money being taken away, and accordingly he • opened his trade at Jtiterbok. Among those who confessed to Luther, there were some who appealed to letters of indulgence which they had purchased from him there. In a sermon preached as early as the summer of 15 16, Luther had warned his congregation against trusting to indul- gences, and he did not conceal his aversion to the system, whilst admitting his doubts and ignorance as to some important questions on the subject. He knew that these opinions and objections would grieve the heart of his sovereign ; for Frederick, who with all his sincere piety still shared the exaggerated veneration of the middle ages for relics, and had formed a rich collection of them in the church of the castle I and convent at Wittenberg, which he was always endeavour- ing to enrich, rejoiced at the Pope's lavish offer of indulgences to all who at an annual exhibition of these sacred treasures should pay their devotions at the nineteen altars of this church. A few years before he had caused a Book of Relics to be THE NINETY-FIVE THESES. 75 printed, which enumerated upwards of five -thousand different specimens, and showed how they represented half a milUon Fig. 12. The Castle Church. (From the Wittenberg BooA 0/ i?''fe«, 1509 : the hill in the background is an addition by the artist.) days of indulgence. Luther relates how he had incurred the r. Elector's displeasure by a sermon preached in his castle church ^f"* 76 THE BREACH WITH ROME. against indulgences : he preached, however, again before the exhibition held in February, 1517. The honour and interest, I moreover, of his university had to be considered, for tha t church \\ was attached to it, the professor .s_w£re-alsQ-_dignit aries ot t fie TT convent, and the_junivejsity_J)XjafifLted-_hy_lh£!^xevenues of the foundation. Luther was then, as he afterwards described himself, a young doctor of divinity, ardent, and fresh from the forge. He was burning to protest against the scandal. But as yet he restrained himself and kept quiet. He wrote, indeed, on the subject to some of the bishops. Some listened to him graciously ; others laughed at him ; none wished to take any steps in the matter. He longed now to make known to theologians and eccle- siastics generally his thoughts about indulgences, his own principles, his own opinions and doubts, to excite public discussion on the subject, and to awake and maintain the fray. This he did by the ninety-five Latin theses or pro- positions which he posted on the doors of the castle church at Wittenberg, on 31st October, 1517, the eve of All Saints' Day and of the anniversary of the consecration of the church. These theses were intended as a challenge for disputation. Such public disputations were then very common at the universities and among theologians, and they were meant to serve as means not only of exercising learned thought, but of elucidating the truth. Luther headed his theses as follows : — " Disputation to explain the virtue of indulgences. — In charity and in the endeavour to bring the truth to light, a disputation on the following propositions will be held at 1. Wittenberg, presided over by the Reverend Father Martin JJ Luther. . . . Those whq_are unable to attend personally may jl discussthe question with us by letter. In the name of our ' Lord Tesus Christ. Amen.^' ^ It was in accordance with the general custom of that time that, on the occasion of a high festival, particular acts and announcements, and likewise disputations at a university, were arranged, and the doors of a collegiate church were used for posting such notices. THE NINETY-FIVE THESES. 77 The contents of these theses show that their author really had such a disputation in view. He was resolved to defend with all his might certain fundamental truths to which he firml}' adhered. Some points he considered still within the region of dispute ; it was his wish and object to make these clear to himself by arguing about them with others. Recognising the connection between the system of in- dulgences and the view of penance entertained by the Church, he starts with considering the nature of true Christian re- pentance ; but he would have this understood in the sense and spirit taught by Christ and the Scriptures, as, indeed, Staupitz had first taught it to him. He begins with the thesis, " Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He says Repent, desires that the whole life of the believer should be one of repentance". He means, as the subsequent theses express it, that true inward repentance, that sorrow for sin and hatred of one's own sinful self, from which must proceed good works and mortification of the sinful flesh. The Pope could only remit his sin to the penitent so far as to declare that God had forgiven it. Thus then the theses expressly declare that God forgives no man his sin without making him submit himself in humility to the priest who represents Him, and that He recognises the punishments enjoined by the Church in her outward sacrament of penance. But Luther's leading principles are consistently opposed to the customary announcements of indulgences by the Church. The Pope, he holds, can only grant indulgences 'j_ for what the Pope and the law of the Church have imposed ; '' nay, the Pope himself means absolution from these obligations only when he promises absolution from all punishment. And it is only the living against whom those punishments are directed which the Church's discipline of penance enjoins : nothing, according to her own laws, can be imposed upon those H" in another world. Further on, Luther declares, " When true repentance is awakened in a man, full absolution from punishment and sin comes to him without any letters of indulgence ". At the same time he says that such a man would willingly undergo self- imposed chastisement, nay, he would even seek and love it. Still, it is not the indulgences themselves, if understood in the right sHise, Jhat_Jie/wishes,to be attacked, but the loose f4- babble of Ihose who sold them. Blessed, he says, be he who 78 THE BREACH WITH ROME. _» protests against this, but cursed be he who speaks a gainst the TrtrutlTof apostolic indulgences. He finds it difficult, however, to praise these to the people, and at the same time to teach them the true repentance of the heart. He would have them even taught that a Christian would do better by giving money to the poor than by spending it in buying indulgences, and that he who allows a poor man near him to starve draws down on himself, not indulgences, but the wrath of God. In sharp and scornful language he denounces the iniquitous trader in indulgences, and gives the Pope credit for the same abhor- rence for the traffic that he felt himself. Christians must be told, he says, that if the Pope only knew of it, he would rather see St. Peter's Church in ashes, than have it built with the flesh and bones of his sheep. Agreeably with what the preceding theses had said about the true penitent's earnestness and willingness to suffer, and the temptation offered to a mere carnal sense of security, Luther concludes as follows : " Away therefore with all those prophets who say to Christ's people ' Peace, peace ! ' when there is no peace, but welcome to all those who bid them seek the Cross of Christ, not the Cross which bears the Papal arms. Chris- tians must be admonished to follow Christ their Master through torture, death, and hell, and thus through much tribulation, rather than by a carnal feeling of false security, hope to enter the kingdom of heaven." The Catholics objected to this doctrine of salvation ad- vanced by Luther, that by trusting to God's free mercy and '/ by undervaluing good works, it led to moral indolence. But on the contrary, it was to the very unbending moral earnest- ness of a Christian conscience, which, indignant at the tempta- tions offered to moral frivolity, to a deceitful feeling of ease in respect to sin and guilt, and to a contempt of the fruits of true morality, rebelled against the false value attached to this indulgence money, that_the se theses, the g erm_^_so to jpeak, fl of. the Reformation, owed their origin and prosecution. With the same earnestness he now for the first time publicly attacked the ecclesiastical power of the Papacy, in so far namely as, in his conviction, it invaded the territory reserved to Himself by the Heavenly Lord and Judge. This was what the Pope and his theologians and the ecclesiastics could least of all endure. On the same day that these theses were published, Luther sent a copy of them with a letter to the Archbishop Albert, his THE NINETY-FIVE THESES. 79 " revered and gracious Lord and Shepherd in Christ ". After a humble introduction, he begged him most earnestly to prevent the scandalising" and iniquitous harangues with which his agents hawked about their indulgences, and reminded him that he would have to give an account of the souls entrusted to his episcopal care. The next day he addressed himself to the people from the pulpit, in a sermon he had to preach on the festival of All Saints. After exhorting them to seek their salvation in God and Christ alone, and to let the consecration by the Church become a real consecration of the heart, he we nt on to te ll them_plainly, with regard to indulgences,, that he__could_only absoIve]]frqm duties imposed by the,£hurch, and that they dare not rely on him for more, nor delay on his account the duties of true repentance. 8o THE BREACH WITH ROME. CHAPTER II. THE CONTROVERSY CONCERNING INDULGENCES. Any one who has heard that the great movement of the Re- formation in Germany, and with it the founding of the Evan- gelical Church, originated in the ninety-five theses of Luther, and who then reads these theses through, might perhaps be surprised at the importance of their results. They referred, in the first place, to only one particular point of Christian doctrine, not at all to the general fundamental question as to how sinners could obtain forgiveness and be saved, but merely to the remission of punishments connected with penance. They contained no positive declaration against the most essential elements of the Catholic theory of penance, or against the necessity of oral confession, or of priestly absolution, and such subjects ; they presupposed, in fact, the existence of a purgatory. Much of what they attacked, not one of the learned theologians of the middle ages or of those times had ever ventured to assert ; as, for instance, the notion that in- dulgences made the remission of sins to the individual com- plete on the part of God. Moreover, the ruling principles of the theology of the day, which defended the system of indul- gences, though resting mainly on the authority of the great scholastic teacher Thomas Aquinas, were not adopted by other Scholastics, and had never been erected into a dogma by any decree of the Church. Theologians before Luther, and \ with far more acuteness and penetration than he showed in 1 his theses, had already assailed the whole system of indul- 1 gences. And, in regard to any idea on Luther's part of the effects of his theses extending widely in Germany, it may be / noticed that not only were they composed in Latin, but that they dealt largely with scholastic expressions and ideas, which a layman would find it difficult to understand. CONTRO VERSY CONCERNING INDULGENCES. 8i Nevertheless, the theses created a sensation which far sur-fr passed Luther's expectations. In fourteen days, as he tells!-^ us, they ran through the whole of Germany, and were im-^ ' mediately translated and circulated in German. They found, indeed, the soil already prepared for them, through the indig- nation long since and generally aroused by the shameless doings they attacked ; though till then nobody, as Luther expresses it, had liked to bell the cat, nobody had dared to expose himself to the blasphemous clamour of the indulgence- mongers and the monks who were in league with them, still less to the threatened charge of heresy. On the other hand, the very impunity with which this traffic in indulgences had been maintained throughout German Christendom, had served to increase from day to day the audacity of its promoters. Ranged on the side of these doctrines of Thomas Aquinas, the chief mainstay of this trade, stood the whole powerful order of the Dominicans. And to this order: Tetzel himself, the sub-commissioner of indulgences, belonged. Alreadj' other doctrines of the Pope's authority, of his power over the salvation of the human soul, and the infallibility of,' his decisions, had been asserted with ever-increasing boldness. \ The mediaeval writings of Thomas Aquinas had conspicuously tended to this result. And a climax had just been reached at a so-called General Council, which met at Rome shortly after Luther's visit there, and continued its sittings for several years. Tetzel, who hitherto had only made himself notorious as a preacher, or rather as a bawling mountebank, now answered Luther with two series of theses of his own, drawn up in learned scholastic form. One Conrad Wimpina, a theologian of the University of Frankfort-on-the-Oder, whom the Arch- bishop Albert had recommended, assisted Tetzel in this work. The University of Frankfort immediately made Tetzel doctor of theology, and thus espoused his theses. Three hundred \ Dominican monks assembled round him while he conducted an academical disputation upon them. The doctrines he now advanced were the doctrines of Thomas Aquinas. But at the same time he took care to make the question of the Pope's ] position and power the cardinal point at issue : he and his patrons knew well enough, that for Luther, who in his theses had touched upon this question so significantly though so i briefly, this was the most fatal blow that he could deal. " Christians must be taught," he declared, " that in all that 6 82 THE BREACH WITH ROME. relates to faith and salvation, the judgment of the Pope is absolutely infallible, and that all observances connected with matters of faith on which the Papal see has expressed itself, are equivalent to Christian truths, even if they are not to be found in Scripture." With distinct reference to his opponent, but without actually mentioning him by name, he insists that whoever defends heretical error must be held to be excommuni- cated, and if he fails within a given time to make satisfaction, incurs by right and law the most frightful penalties. Further- more, he argued — and this has always been held up against (Luther and Protestantism — that if the authority of the Church ■and Pope should not be recognised, every man would believe _only what was pleasing to himself and what he found in the Bible, and thus the souls of all Christendom would be im- perilled. Luther's theses now found another assailant, and one stronger even than Tetzel, in the person of a Dominican and Thomist, one Sylvester Mazolini of Prierio (Prierias), master of the sacred palace at Rome, and a confidant of the Pope. He too, like Tetzel, based his chief contention on the question of Papal authority, and was the first to carry that contention to an extreme. The Pope, he said, is the Church of Rome ; the Romish Church is the Universal Christian Church ; whoever disputes the right of the Romish Church to act entirely as she may, is a heretic. In this way he treated as contemptuously as he could the obscure German, whose theses, that " bite like a cur," as he expressed it, he only wished to dismiss with all despatch. Another Dominican, James van Hoogstraten, prior at Cologne, who had already figured as the prime zealot in the affair about Reuchlin, which he was still prosecuting, now de- manded, in his preface to a pamphlet on that subject, that Luther should be sent to the stake as a dangerous heretic. But a far more important, and to Luther an utterly unex- pected opponent, appeared in the person of John Eck, professor at the University of Ingolstadt, and canon at Eichstadt. He was a man of very extensive learning in the earlier and later scholastic theology of the Church ; he was a sharp-witted and ready controversialist, and he knew how to use his weapons in disputations. He was fully conscious of these gifts, and made a bold push to advance himself by their means, whilst troubling himself very little in reality about the high and CONTRO VERS Y CONCERNING IND UL GENCES. 83 sacred issues involved in the dispute. He sought to keep on friendly and useful relations with other circles than those of scholastic theology, such as with learned Humanists, and a short time before, with Luther himself and his colleague Carl- stadt, to whom he had been introduced through a jurist of Nuremberg named Scheuerl. Luther, after the publication of his theses, had written a friendly letter to Eck. What then was his surprise to find himself attacked by Eck in a critical reply entitled Obelisks. The tone of his remarks was as wound- ing, coarse, and vindictive as their substance was superficial. They aimed a well-meditated blow, by stigmatising Luther's propositions as Bohemian poison, mere Hussite heresy. Eck, when reproached for such a breach of friendship, declared that he had written the book for his bishop of Eichstadt, and not with any view of publication. Luther himself, loud as was his call to battle in his theses, had still no intention of engaging in a general contest about the leading principles of the Church. He had not yet realised the whole extent and bearings of the question about indulgences. Referring afterwards to the rapid circulation of his theses through Germany, and to the fame which his onslaught had earned him, he says, " I did not relish the fame, for I myself was not aware of what there was in the indulgences, and the song was pitched too high for my voice". People far and wide were proud of the man who spoke out so boldly in his theses, while the multitude of doctors and bishops kept silence ; but he still stood alone before the public, confronting the storm which he had aroused against himself. He did not conceal the fact, that now and then he felt strange and anxious about his posi- tion. But he had learned to take his stand singly and firmly on the word of Scripture, and on the truth which God therein revealed to him and brought home to his conviction. He was only the more strengthened in that conviction by the replies of his opponents ; for he must well have been amazed at their utter want of Scriptural reference to disprove his conclusions, and at the blind subservience with which they merely repeated the statements of their scholastic authorities. The arrogant reply of Prierias, his opponent of highest rank, seemed to him particularly poor. In confident words Luther assures his friends of his conviction that what he taught was the purest theology, that what he upheld and his opponents attacked was a revelation direct from God. He knew too, that, in the 84 THE BREACH WITH ROME. words of St. Paul, he had to preach what to the holiest of the Jews was a stumbling-block, and to the wisest of the Greeks foolishness. He was none the less ready to do so, that J«sus Christ, his Lord, might say of him, as He said once of that Apostle, " I will show him how great things he must suffer for My name's sake ". Luther's enemies in the Romish Church have thought to see in these words an instance of boundless self-assertion on the part of an individual subject. From henceforth Luther, while pursuing with unabated zeal his active duties at the university and in the pulpit at Wittenberg, and taking up his pen again and again to write short pamphlets of a simple and edifying kind, occupied him- self untiringly with controversial writings, with the object partly of defending himself against attacks, partly of establish- ing on a firm basis the principles he had set forth, and of further investigating and making plain the way of true Christian knowledge. He first addressed himself to German Christen- dom, in German, in his Sermons on Indulgences and Grace. His inward excitement is shown by the vehemence and rugged- ness of expression which now and henceforth marked his polemical writings. It recalls to mind the tone then commonly met with not only among ordinary monks, but even in the controversies of theologians and learned men, and in which Luther's own opponents, especially that high Roman theo- logian, had set him the example. In Luther we see now, throughout his whole method of polemics, as we shall see still more later on, a mighty. Vulcanic, natural power breaking forth, but always regulated by the humblest devotion to the lofty mission that his conscience has imposed upon him. Even in his most vehement outbursts we never fail to catch ; the tender expressions of a Christian warmth and fervour of j the heart, and a loftiness of language corresponding to the sacredness of the subject. In the midst of these labours and controversies, Luther had to undertake a journey in the spring of 1518 (about the middle of April) to a chapter general of his Order at Heidelberg, where, ' according to the rules, a new vicar was chosen after a triennial 1 term of office. His friends feared the snares that his enemies f might have prepared for him on the road. He himself did not ' hesitate for a moment to obey the call of duty. The Elector Frederick, who owed him at least a debt of ' gratitude for having helped to keep his territory free from the CONTRO VERSY CONCERNING IND UL GENCES. 85 rapacious Tetzel, b ut who, both now andafterwards, conscienti- ously held aloof tronijme_contest, gave proof orT'thrs occasion of hrs undiminished kindness and regard for him, in a letter he addressed to Staupitz. He writes as follows: "As you have required Martin Luder to attend a Chapter at Heidelberg, it is his wish, although we grudge giving him permission to leave our universit}', to go there and render due obedience. And as we are indebted to your suggestion for this excellent doctor of theology, in whom we are so well pleased, . . it is our desire that you will further his safe return here, and not allow him to be delayed." He also gave Luther cordial letters of introduction to Bishop Laurence of Wiirzburg, through whose town his road passed, and to the Count Palatine Wolfgang, at Heidelberg. From both of these, though many had already de- claimed against him as a heretic, he met with a most friendly and obliging reception. His relations, moreover, at Heidelberg with his fellow- members of the Order, and, above all, with Staupitz, remained unclouded. Staupitz was re-elected here as vicar of the Order; the office of provincial vicar passed from Luther to John Lange, Qf Erfurt, his intimate friend and fellow-thinker. The question about indulgences had not entered at all into the business of the chapter. But at a disputation held in the convent, according to custom, Luther presided, and wrote for it some propositions embodying the fundamental points of his doctrines concerning the sinfulness and powerlessness of man, and righteousness, through God's grace, in Christ, and against the philosophy and theology of Aristotelian Scholasticism. He attracted the keen interest of several young inmates of the convent who afterwards became his coadjutors, such as John Brenz, Erhardt Schnepf, and Martin Butzer. They marvelled at his power of drawing out the m.eaning from the Scriptures, and of speaking not only with clearness and decision, but also with refinement and grace. Thus his journey served to pro- mote at once his reputation and his influence. On his return to Wittenberg on 15th May, after an absence of five weeks, he hastened to complete a detailed explanation in Latin of the contents of his theses, under the title of Solutions, the greatest and most important work that he published at this period of the contest. The most valuable fruit of the controversy so far as regards Luther and his later work, and evidence of which is given in 86 THE BREACH WITH ROME. these Solutions, was the advance he had made, and had been compelled to make, in the course of his own self-reasoning and researches. New questions presented themselves : the inward connection of the truth became gradually manifest: new results forced themselves upon him : his anxiety to solve his difficulties still continued. Luther in his theses, when speaking of the call of Jesus to repentance, had never indeed admitted that the sacrament of penance enjoined by the Church, with auricular confession and the penances and satisfactions imposed by the priest, was based on God's command or the authority of the Bible. He now openly acknowledged and declared that these ecclesiastical acts were not enjoined by Christ at all, but solely by the Pope and the Church. The contest about the indulgences granted by the Pope in I respect of these acts, opened up now the doctrine of the so-called treasures of the Church, on which the Pope drew for his bounty. Luther, while conceding to the Pope the right of dispensing indulgences in the sense understood by himself, guarded him- self against admitting that the merits of Christ constituted that I treasure, and so should be disposed of by the Pope in this manner : the dispensation of indulgences rested simply on the Papal power of the keys. It was now objected to him that herein he was going counter to an express and duly recorded I declaration of a Pope, Clement VL, namely, that the merits of Christ were undoubtedly to be dispensed in indulgences. ' Luther, who in his theses against the abuse of indulgences had abstained as yet from propounding anything which might be inconsistent with the ascertained meaning of the Pope, now in- sisted without hesitation on this contradiction. That Papal pronouncement, he declared, did not bear the character of a dogmatic decree, and a distinction was to be drawn between a f decree of the Pope and its acceptance by the Church through a ' Council. How then, Luther proceeded to inquire, should the Christian obtain forgiveness of sin, reconciliation with God, righteous- ness before God, peace and holiness in God ? And m answer- ing this question he reverted to the key-note of his doctrine of salvation, which he had begun to preach before the contest about indulgences commenced. He had already declared that salvation came through faith ; in other words, through heart- felt trust in God's mercy, as announced by the Bible, and in CONTR O VERS Y CONCERNING IND UL GENCES. 8 7 the Saviour Christ. How was that consistent with the acts of ecclesiastical penance, such as absolution in particular, which must be obtained from the priest ? Luther now declared that God would assuredly allow His offer of forgiveness to be conveyed to those who longed for it, by His commissioned servant of the Church, the priest, but that the assurance of such forgiveness must lean simply on the promise of God, by virtue and on behalf of whom the priest performed his office. And at the same time he declared that this promise could be conveyed to a troubled Christian by any brother-Christian, and that full forgiveness would be granted to him if he had faith. No enumeration of particular sins was necessary for that end ; it was enough if the repentant and faithful yearning for the word of mercy was made known to the priest or brother from whom the message of comfort was sought. Hence it , followed, on the one hand, that priestly absolution and the sacrament availed nothing to the receiver unless he turned with inward faith to his God and Saviour, received with faith the word spoken to him, and through that word let himself be raised to greater faith. It followed also, on the other hand, that a penitent and faithful Christian, holding fast to that word, to whom the priest should arbitrarily refuse the absolution he looked for, could, in spite of such refusal, participate in God's forgiveness to the full. Herewith was broken at once the most powerful bond by which the dominant Church enslaved the souls to the organs of her hierarchy. Luther has humbled man to the lowest before God, through whose grace alone the sinner, in meek and believing trustfulness, can be saved. But in God and through this grace he teaches him to be free and certain of salvation. Christ, he says, has not willed that man's salvation should lie in the hand or at the pleasure of a man. As for the outward acts and punishments which the Church and the Pope imposed, he did not seek to abolish them. In this external province at least he recognised in the Pope a power originating direct from God. Here, in his opinion, the Christian was bound to put up with even an abuse of power and the infliction of unjust punishment. The whole contest turned ultimately on the question as to who should determine disputes about the truth, and where to seek the highest standard and the purest source of Christian verity. Gradually at first, and manifestly with many inward 88 THE BREACH WITH ROME. struggles on the part of Luther, his views and principles gained clearness and consistency. Even within the Catholic Church the doctrine as to the highest authority to be recognised in questions of belief and conduct was by no means so firmly established as is frequently represented by both Protestants and Roman Catholics. The doctrine of the infallibility of the Pope, and of the absolute authority attaching thereby to his decisions, however confidently asserted by the admirers of Aquinas and accepted by the Popes, was not erected into a dogma of the Roman Catholic Church until 1870. The other theory,_ that even the Pope can err, and that the supreme decision rests with a General Council, had been maintameH by (theologians, whom, Tf the same_time, no Pope 'had "ever ve"n- itured to treat as heretics. It was on the ground of thisHatter theory that the University of Paris, then the first university in Europe, had just appealed from the Pope to a General Council. In Germany opinions were on the whole divided between this and the theory of Papal absolutism. Again, the view that neither the decisions of a Council nor of a Pope were ipso facto infallible, but that an appeal therefrom lay to a Council possibly better informed, had already been advanced with imipunity by writers of the fifteenth century. The only point as to which no doubt was expressed was that the decisions of previous General Councils, acknowledged also by the Pope, contained absolutely pure Divine truth, and that the Christian Universal Church could never fall into error ; but even then, with reference to this Church, the question still remained as to who or what was her true and final representative. Luther now followed what he found to be the teaching of the Bible, so far as that teaching presented itself to his own independent and conscientious research, and as, traced home in the New Testament and especially in the Epistles of St. Paul, it shaped itself to his perception. But for all this, he would not yet abandon his agreement with the Church of which he was a member. The very man whom Eck had branded as full of " Bohemian poison," complained of the Bohemian Brethren or Moravians for exalting themselves in their ignorance above the rest of Christendom. A Thomist indeed, who to him was only a Scholastic among others, he fearlessly opposed ; but still we find no expression of a thought that the Church, assembled at a General Council, had ever erred, nor even that any future Council could pronounce an CONTRO VERS Y CONCERNING IND ULGENCES. 89 erroneous decision upon the present points in dispute. Nay, 1 he awaits the decision of such a Council against the charges of heres}' already brought against him, t houp^h with out ever admit t ing h is readine ss, if such a Council _sJiould__asseDlble, to ii subm'it belorehan'd and unconditionally _tp_its decision, jyh^t- '' everitmighf TTe. Above and before any such decision he held" firm to the authority of his own conviction : his conscience, , he said, would not allow him to yield from that resolve ; he ! was not standing alone in this contest, but with him stood the , truth, together with all those who shared his doubts as to the v virtue of indulgences^ Still, while rejecting the doctrine of the infallibility of the Popes, it was a hard matter for Luther to reproach them also / with actual error in their decisions. We have seen how necessity forced him to do so in the case of Clement VI. To- wards the existing head of the Church he desired to remain, as far as possible, in concord and subjection. It was not for mere appearance' sak e, that in his ninety-five theses Tie re- presented his__own view ofTfidulgences as beijig also that of the Fope.~ He hoped, at all events, and wislied with all~his hfeart "that it was so ; and later on, towards the close of his life, he tells us how confidently he had cherished the expecta- tion that the Pope would be his patron in the war against the shameless vendors of indulgences. Even after those hopes had failed, he spoke of Leo X. with respect, as a man of good disposition and an educated theologian, whose only misfortune was that he lived in an atmosphere of corruption and in a vicious age. He was none the less assured of his Divine credentials as the supreme earthly Shepherd of Christendom, and the depositary of all canonical power. The duty of humility and obedience, impressed en him to excess as a monk, must, no less than the fears of the possible dangers and troubles in store for himself and his Christian brethren, have made Luther shrink from the thought of having actually to testify and fight against him. He ventured to dedicate his Solutions to the Pope himsel f. The letter of 30th May, 1518, in which he did this, shows the peculiar, anomalous, and un- tenable position in which he now found himself placed. He is horrified, he says, at the charges of heresy and schism brought against himself He who would much prefer to live in peace, had no wish to set up any dogmas in his theses, pro- voked as they were by a public scandal, but simply in Christian 90 THE BREACH WITH ROME. zeal, or, as others might have it, in youthful ardour, to invite men to a disputation, and his present desire was to publish his explanation of them under the patronage and protection of the Pope himself. But at the same time he declares that his conscience was innocent and untroubled, and he adds with emphatic brevity, "Retract I cannot". He concludes by humbly casting himself at the Pope's feet with the words, "Give me life or death, accept or reject me as you please". He will recognise the Papal voice as that of the Lord Jesus Himself. He will, if worthy of death, not flinch from it. But that declaration of his, which he could not retract, must stand. LUTHER AT AUGSBURG BEFORE CAIETAN. 91 CHAPTER III. LUTHER AT AUGSBURG BEFORE CAIETAN. APPEAL TO A COUNCIL. The task that Luther had now undertaken lay heavy upon his soul. He was sincerely anxious, whilst fighting for the truth, to remain at peace with his Church, and to serve her by the struggle. Pope Leo, on the contrary, as was consistent with his whole character, treated the matter at first very lightly, and when it threatened to become dangerous, thought only how, by means of his Papal power, to make the restless German monk harmless. Two expressions of his in these early days of the contest are recorded. " Brother Martin," he said, " is a man of a very fine genius, and this outbreak the mere squabble of envious monks;" and again, " It is a drunken German who has written the theses : he will think differently about them when sober". Three months after the theses had appeared, he ordered the vicar-general of the Augustinians to "quiet down the man," hoping still to extinguish easily the flame. The next step was to institute a tribunal for heretics at Rome, for Luther's trial : what its judgment would be was patent from the fact that the single theologian of learning among the judges was Sylvester Prierias. Before this tribunal Luther was cited on 7th August; within sixty days he was to appear there at Rome. Friend and foe could well feel certain that they would look in vain for his return. Papal influence, meanwhile, had been brought to bear on the Elector Frederick, to induce him not to take the part of Luther, and the chief agent chosen for working on the Elector and the Emperor Maximilian was the Papal legate, Cardinal Thomas Vio of Gaeta, called Caietan, who had made his 92 THE BREACH WITH ROME. appearance in Germany. The University of Wittenberg, on the other hand, interposed on behalf of their member, whose theology was pbpular there, and whose biblical lectures attract- ed crowds of enthusiastic hearers. He had just been joined at I Wittenberg by his fellow-professor Philip Mel'ancthon, then only twenty-one years old, but already in the first rank of Greek scholars, and the bond of friendship was now formed which lasted through their lives. The university claimed that Luther should at least be tried in Germany. Luther expressed the same wish through Spalatin to his sovereign. He now also ■ answered publicly the attack of Prierias upon his theses, and declared not only that a Council alone could represent the Church, but that even a decree of Council might err, and that an act of the Church Was no final evidence of the truth of a doctrine. Being threatened with ex- ( communication, he preached 'a sermon on the subject, and j showed how a Christian, even if under the ban of the Church, j or excluded from outward communion with her, could still re- main in true inward communion with Christ and His believers, and might then see in his excommunication the noblest merit of his own. The Pope, meanwhile, had passed from his previous state of haughty complacency to one of violent haste. Already, on 23rd August, thus long before the sixty days had expired, he demanded that the Elector should deliver up this " child of the devil," who boasted of his protection, to the legate, to bring away with him. This is clearly shown by two private briefs from the Pope, of 23rd and 25th August, the one addressed to the legate, the other to the head of all the Augustinian convents in Saxony, as distinguished from the vicar of those congrega- tions, Staupitz, who already was looked on with suspicion at Rome. These briefs instructed both men to hasten the arrest of the heretic ; his adherents were to be secured with him, and every place where he was tolerated laid under the interdict. So unheard of seemed this conduct of the Pope, that Protestant historians would not believe in the genuineness of the briefs ; but we shall soon see how Caietan himself refers to the one in his possession. Other and general relations, interests, and movements of the ecclesiastical and political life of the German nation now began to exercise an influence, direct or indirect, upon the history of Luther and the development of the struggles of the LUTHER AT AUGSBURG BEFORE CAIETAN. 93 Reformation, and even caused the Pope himself to moderate his conduct. Whilst questions of the deepest kind about the means of salvation, and the grounds and rules of Christian truth, had been opened up for the first time by Luther during the contest about indulgences, the abuses, encroachments, and acts of tyranny committed by the Pope on the temporal domain of the Church, and closely affecting the political and social life of the people, had long been the subject of bitter complaints and vigorous remonstrances throughout Germany. These com- plaints and remonstrances had been raised by princes and States of the Empire, who would not be silenced by any theories or dogmas about the Divine authority and infallibility of the Pope, nor crushed by any mere sentence of excommunication. And on raising them the}' had made no question of the Divine right of the Papacy. Was it not natural that, in the indignation excited by their wrongs, they should turn to the man who had laid the axe to the root of the tree which bore such fruit, and at least consider the possibility of profiting by his work ? Luther, on his part, showed at first a singularly small acquaintance with the circumstances of their complaints, and seemed hardly aware of the loud protests raised so long on this subject at the Diets. But with the question of indulgences the field of his experience broadened in this respect. The anxiety he evinced in this matter for the care of souls and true Christian morality made him the ally of all those who were alarmed at the vast export of money to Rome, about which he had already said in his theses that the Christian sheep were being regularly fleeced. In another respect, also, the ecclesiastical policy of the Papal see was closely interwoven with the political condition and history of Germany. If in theory the Pope claimed to control and confirm the decrees even of the civil power, in practice he at least attempted to assert and maintain an omnipresent in- fluence. And with regard to Germany it was all-important to him that the Empire should not become so powerful as to en- danger his authority in general and his territorial sovereignty in Italy. However loftily the Popes in their briefs proclaimed their immutable rights, derived from God, and their plenary power, and took care to let theologians and jurists advance such pretensions, they understood clearly enough in their practical conduct to adjust those relations to the rules of political or diplomatic necessity. A' 94 THE BREACH WITH ROME. In the summer of 15 18 a Diet was held at Augsburg, at which the Papal legate attended. The Pope was anxious to obtain its consent to the imposition of a heavy tax throughout the Empire, to be applied ostensibly for the war against the Turks, but alleged to be wanted in reality for entirely other objects. The Emperor Maximilian, now old and hastening to his end, was endeavouring to secure the succession of his grandson Charles; and Caietan's chief task was to exert his influence with Maximilian and the Elector Frederick to bring Luther into their disfavour. The Archbishop Albert, who had been hit so hard by Luther's attack on the traffic in indulgences, was solemnly proclaimed cardinal by order of the Pope. Of Maximilian it might fairly have been expected that, after his many experiences and contests with the Popes, he would at least protect Luther from the worst, however unlikely it might be that he should entertain the idea of effecting, by his help, a great reform in the National Church. He did indeed express his wish to Pfeffinger, a counsellor of the Elector, that his prince should take care of the monk, as his services might some day be wanted. But he supported the Pope in the matter of the tax, qnd hoped to gain him for his own political ends. I He opposed Luther also in his attack on indulgences, on the ground that it endangered the Church, and that he was resolved to uphold the action taken by the Pope. This demand for a tax, however, was received with the utmost disfavour both by the Diet and the Empire ; and a long- cherished bitterness of feeling now found expression. An anonymous pamphlet was circulated, from the pen of one Fischer, a prebendary of Wurzburg, which bluntly declared that the avaricious lords of Rome only wished to cheat the " drunken Germans," and that the real Turks were to be looked for in Italy. This pamphlet reached Wittenberg and fell into the hands of Luther, who now for the first time we hear denouncing " Roman cunning," though he only charged the Pope himself with allowing his grasping Florentine relations to deceive him. The Diet seized the opportunjtji^Qfiered by this^emandjor_a,tax,_to brmg^up a.whole.llsl ofold_ grievan ces ; the_J^aj;ge_.sums. drawn fronL-German .benefic es by the Pope under the name .of annates, or extorted under other pretexts; the illegal usurpation of ecclesiastical patronage in Germany, the constant infringement of coiicordats, and so on. The demand itself was refused, and in addition to this, an address LUTHER AT AUGSBURG BEFORE CAIETAN. 95 was presented to the Diet from the bishop and clergy of Liege, inveighing against the lying, thieving, avaricious conduct of the Romish minions, in such sharp and violent tones that Luther, on reading it afterwards when printed, thought it only a hoax, and not really an episcopal remonstrance. This was reason enough why Caietan, to avoid increasing the excitement, should not attempt to lay hands on the Witten- berg opponent of indulgences. The Elector Frederick, from whose hands Caietan would have to demand Luther, was one of the most powerful and personally respected princes of the Empire, and his influence was especially important in view of the election of a new Emperor. This prince went now in person to Caietan on Luther's behalf, and Caietan promised him, at the very time that the brief was on its way to him from Rome, that he would hear Luther at Augsburg, -treat him with fatherh' kindness, and let him depart in safety. Luther accordingly was sent to Augsburg. It was an anxious time for himself and hi ■. friends when he had to leave for that ^dlstahr^place^^whefe' the Elector, with all his care, I coulff not employ any physical means for his protection, and ' to stand accused as a heretic before that Papal legate who, from his own theological principles, was bound to condemn him, Caietan being a zealous Thomist like Prierias, and already notorious as a champion of indulgences and Papal absolutism. "My thoughts on the way," said Luther afterwards, "were I now I must die ; and I often lamented the disgrace I should be to my dear parents." He went thither in humble garb and manner. He made his way on foot till within a short distance of Augsburg, when illness and weakness overcame him, and he was forced to proceed by carriage. Another younger monk of Wittenberg accompanied him, his pupil Leonard Baier. At Nuremberg he was joined by his friend Link, who held an appointment there as preacher. From him he borrowed a monk's frock, his own being too bad for Augsburg. He arrived here on 7th October. The surroundings he now entered, and the proceedings impending over him, were wholly novel and unaccustomed. But he met with men who received him with kindness and consideration ; several of them were gentlemen of Augsburg favourable to him, especially the respected patrician, Dr. Conrad Peutinger, and two counsellors of the Elector. They g6 THE BREACH WITH ROME. advised him to behave with prudence, and to observe carefully all the necessary forms, to which as yet he was a stranger. Luther at once announced his arrival to Caietan, who was anxious to receive him without delay. His friends, however, kept him back until they had obtained a written safe-conduct from the Emperor, who was then hunting in the environs. In the meantime, a distinguished friend of Caietan, one Urbanus of Serralonga, tried to persuade him, in a flippant, and, as Luther thought, a downright Italian manner, to come forward and simply pronounce six letters, — Revoco — I retract. Urbanus asked him with a smile if he thought his sovereign would risk his country for his sake. "God forbid!" answered Luther. " Where then do you mean to take refuge ? " he went on to ask him. " Under Heaven," was Luther's reply. To Melanc'thon Luther wrote as follows : " There is no news here, except that the town is full of talk about me, and everybody wants to see the man who, like a second Herostratus, has kindled such a flame. Remain a man as you are, and instruct the youth aright. I go to be sacrificed for them and for you, if God so will. For I will rather die, and, what is the (hardest fate, lose for ever the sweet intercourse with you, than 'revoke anything that it was right for me to say." On I ith October Luther received the letter of safe-conduct, and the next day he appeared before Caietan. Humbly, as he had been advised, he prostrated himself before the represen- tative of the Pope, who received him graciously and bade him rise. The cardinal addressed him civilly, and with a courtesy Luther was not accustomed to meet with from his opponents ; but he immediately demanded him, in the name and by command of the Pope, to retract his errors, and promise in future to abstain from them and from everything that might .disturb the peace of the Church. He pointed out, in particular, two errors in his theses ; namely, that the Church's treasure of indulgences did not consist of the merits of Christ, and that faith on the part of the recipient was necessary for the efficacy of the sacrament. With respect to the second point, the religious principles upon which Luther based his doctrine were altogether strange and unintelligible to the scholastic standpoint of Caietan ; mere tittering and laughter followed Luther's observations, and he was required to retract this thesis unconditionally. The first point settled the question of Papal LUTHER AT AUGSBURG BEFORE CAIETAN. 97 authority. On this, the cardinal-legate took his chief stand on the express declaration of Pope Clement : he could not believe that Luther would venture to resist a Papal bull, and thought he had probably not read it. He read him a vigorous lecture of his own on the paramount authority of the Pope over Council, Church, and Scripture. As to any argument, how- { ever, about the theses to be retracted, Caietan refused from the ' first to engage in it, and undoubtedly he went further in that direction than he originally desired or intended. His sole wish was, as he said, to give fatherly correction, and with fatherly friendliness to arrange the matter. But in reality, says Luther, \ it was a blunt, naked, unyielding display of power. Luther could only beg from him further time for consideration. Luther's friends at Augsburg, and Staupitz, who had just arrived there, now attempted to divert the course of these pro- ceedings, to collect other decisions of importance bearing on the subject, and to give him the opportunity of a public vindication. Accompanied therefore by several jurists friendly to his cause, and by a notary and Staupitz, he laid before the , legate next day a short and formal statement of defence. He I could not retract unless convicted of error, and to all that he [ had said he must hold as being Catholic truth. Nevertheless, he was only human, and therefore fallible, and he was willing to submit to a legitimate decision of the Church. He offered, at the same time, publicly to justify his theses, and he was ready to hear the judgment of the learned doctors of Basle, Freiburg, Louvain, and even Paris upon them. Caietan with a smile dismissed Luther and his proposals, but consented to receive a more detailed reply in writing to the principal points discussed on the previous day. On the morrow, 14th October, Luther brought his reply to the legate. But in this document also he insisted clearly and resolutely from the commencement on those very principles which his opponents regarded as destructive of all ecclesiastical authority and of the foundations of Christian belief. He spoke with crucial emphasis of the trouble he had taken to interpret the words of Pope Clement in a Scriptural sense. The Papal, decrees might err, and be at variance with Holy Writ. Ji^n I thp ^/^pnsi-lg Peter him self had .once to be reproved (Galat. ii. 1 II sqq^ for " walking~not uprightly accpfding to tfie" truth of the gospel " ; s urely then his suqcessor was not InfalTiBle. Every faithful believer in Christ was superior to the Pope7 if he 7 98 THE BREACH WITH ROME. could show better proofs and grounds of his behef. Still he entreated Caietan to intercede with Leo X., that the latter might not harshly thrust out into darkness his soul, which was seeking for the light. But he repeated that he could do nothing against his conscience : one must obey God rather than man, and he had the fullest confidence that he had Scripture on his side. Caietan, to whom he delivered this reply in person, once more tried to persuade him. They fell into a lively and vehement argument ; but Caietan cut it short with the excla- mation, "Revoke". In the event of Luther not revoking or submitting to judgment at Rome, lie threatened him and all his friends with excommunication, and whatever place he might go to with an interdict ; he had a mandate from the Pope to that effect already in his hands. He then dismissed him with the words, " Revoke, or do not come again into my presence". Nevertheless he spoke in quite a friendly manner after this to Staupitz, urging him to try his best to convert Luther, whom he wished well. Luther, however, wrote the same day to his friend Spalatin, who was with the Elector, and to his friends at Wittenberg, telling them that he had refused to yield. The legate, he said, had behaved with all friendliness of manner to Staupitz in his affair, but neither Staupitz nor himself trusted the Italian when out of sight. If Caietan should use force against him, he would publish the written reply he gave him. //Caietan might call himself a Thomist, but he was a muddle- I headed, ignorant theologian and Christian, and as clumsv i n I' giving,, jMgment__in _the_,ijia,_tter , as a,, do nkey with a har p. Luther added further that an appeal would be drawn up for him in the form best fitted to the occasion. He further hinted to his Wittenberg friends at the possibility of his having to go elsewhere in exile ; indeed, his friends already thought of taking him to Paris, where the university still rejected the doctrine of Papal absolutism. He concluded this letter by saying that he refused to become a heretic by denying that which had made him a Christian ; sooner than do that, he would be burned, exiled, or cursed. The appeal of which Luther here spoke was "from the 'Pope ill-informed to the same when better informed ". On i6th October he submitted it, formally prepared, to a public notary. While Staupitz and Link, warned to consult their personal safety, and despairing of any good result, left Augsburg, ,:j I Luther ,stilLrernaine4_there. He 'even addressed on 17th LUTHER AT AUGSBURG BEFORE CAIETAN. 99 October a letter to Caietan, conceding to him the utmost he thought possible. M oved, as he sajd^by the persuasions of his dear father Staupitz and his BrotEeTXink, he offered to let the I, whole question of indulgences rest, if only that which drove him^^ tothis^traged'y were put a stop to ; he confessed also to having been too violent and disrespectful in dispute. In after years he said to his friends, when referring to this concessTon, that God ha^Tiever'alTqwed him to sink deeper' than when he Tiad yielded n~ s^ISyisF- The next day, however, he gave notice of his appeal to the legate, and told him he did not wish longer to waste his time in Augsburg. To this letter he received no answer. Luther waited, however, till the 20th. He and his Augs- burg patrons began to suspect whether measures had not already been taken to detain him. They therefore had a small gate in the city wall opened in the night, and sent with him an escort well acquainted with the road. Thus he hastened away, as he himself described it, on a hard-trotting hack, in a simple monk's frock, with only knee breeches, without boots or spurs, and unarmed. On the first day he rode over forty miles, as far as the little town of Monheim. As he entered in the evening an inn and dismounted in the stable, he was unable to stand from fatigue, and fell down instantly among the straw. He travelled thus on horseback to Wittenberg, where he arrived well and joyful, on the anniversary of his ninety-five theses. He had heard on the way of the Pope's brief to Caietan, but he refused to think it could be genuine. His appeal, meanwhile, was delivered to the cardinal at Augsburg, who had it posted by his notary on the doors of the cathedral. From Augsburg Luther was followed by a letter from Caietan to the Elector, full of bitter complaints against him. He had formed, he said, the highest hopes of his spiritual recovery, and had been grievously disappointed in him ; the Elector, for his own honour and conscience' sake, must now either send him to Rome, or, at least, expel him from his terri- tory, since measures of fatherly kindness had failed to make him acknowledge his error. Frederick, after waiting four weeks, returned a quiet answer, showing how the conduct of Luther quite agreed with his own view of the matter. He would have expected that no recantation would have been required of| Luther till the matter in dispute had been satisfactorily ex- | amined and explained. There were a number of learned men, also, at foreign universities, from whom he could not yet have 1 loo THE BREACH WITH ROME. learned with certainty that Luther's doctrine was unchristian ; while, to say the least, it was chiefly those whose personal and I financial interests were affected by it that had become his I opponents. He would propose, therefore, that the judgment of ' several universities should be obtained, and have the matter . disputed at a safe place. Luther, however, to whom the Elec- tor showed this letter, at once declared himself ready to go into exile, but would not be deterred from publishing new declarations or taking further steps. He had a report of his conference with Caietan printed, with i a justification of himself to the readers. And in this he ad- vanced propositions against the Papacy which entirely shook its whole foundation. Already, in the solutions to his theses, he had incidentally, and without attracting further notice by the remark, spoken of a time when the Papacy had not yet ac- quired supremacy over the Universal Church, thereby contra- dicting what the Romish Church maintained and had made into a dogma, namely, that the Papal see possessed this primacy by original institution through Christ, and by means of immutable Divine right. He now expressed this opinion as a positive pro- , position. The Papal monarchy, he declared, was o nly a Div ine J institutioii inth'e^^nFe m.wHIcir5;ery_tem£or^^ X by the progress_of historical deyel_opment,^jmgh t be^ cafled so i also. "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation." Without waiting for an answer direct from Rome, Luther now abandoned all thoughts of success with Leo X. On 28th ' November he formally and solemnly appealed from the Pope I to a General Christian Council. By so doing he anticipated the sentence of excommunication which he was daily expecting. With Rome he had broken for ever, unless she were to surren- der her claims and acquisitions of more than a thousand years. After once the first restraints of awe were removed with which Luther had regarded the Papac}', behind and beyond the matter of the indulgences, and he had learned to know the Papal representative at Augsburg, and made a stand against his demands and menaces, and escaped from his dangerous clutches, he enjoyed for the first time the fearless conscious- \ ness of freedom. He took a wider survey around him, and saw plainly the deep corruption and ungodliness of the powers arrayed against him. His mind was impelled forward with j more energy as his spirit for the fight was stirred within him. ' Even the prospect that he might have to fly, and the uncer- LUTHER AT AUGSBURG BEFORE CAIETAN. loi taint}' whither his flight could be, did not daunt or deter him. His thought was how he could throw himself with more free- dom into the struggle, if no longer hampered by any obligations to his prince and his university. Writing at that time to his friend Link, to inform him of his new publications and his appeal, he invited his opinion as to whether he was not right in saying that the Antichrist of whom St. Paul speaks (2 Thess. ii.), ruled at the Papal court. " My pen," he went on to say, " is already giving birth to something much greater. I know not whence these thoughts come. The work, as far as I can see, has hardly yet begun, so little reason have the great men at Rome for hoping it is finished." Again, while informing Sgalatin, through whom the Elector^ always urged him to 1 moHeration, oTnew PapaTedicts and regulations aimed against hiTn7iTe declared, " The more those Romish grandees rage and meditate the use of force, the less do I fear them. All the more free shall I become to fight against the serpents of Rome. I am prepared for all, and await the judgment of God." He was really prepared for exile or flight at any moment. At Wittenberg his friends were alarmed by rumours of designs on the part of the Pope against his life and liberty, and insisted on his being placed in safety. Flight to France was continually talked of; had he not followed in his appeal a precedent set by the University of Paris ? We certainly cannot see how he could safely have been conveyed thither, or where, indeed, an}' other and safer place could have been found for him. Some urged that the Elector himself should take him into custody 1 and keepTiim in a place of safety, and then write to the legate^ that heheld him securely in confinement and was in future responsible for him. Luther. proposed this to Spalatin, and added, " I leave the decision of this matter to your discretion ; I am in the hands of God and of my friends " The Elector himself, anxious also in this respect, arranged early in December a confidential interview between Luther and Spalatin at the Castle of Lichtenberg. He also, as Luther reported to Staupitz, wished that Luther had some other place to be in, but he advised him against going away so hastily to France. His own wish and counsel, however, he refrained as yet from making known. Luther declared that at all events, if a ban of excommunication were to come from Rome, he would not remain longer at Wittenberg. On this point also the prince kept secret his resolve. THE BREACH WITH ROME. CHAPTER IV. MILTITZ AND THE DISPUTATION AT LEIPZIG, WITH ITS RESULTS. The rumours of the dangers that threatened Luther from Rome had a good foundation. A new agent from there had now arrived in Germany, the Papal chamberlain, Charles von Miltitz. His errand was designed to remove the chief obstacle to summoning the Wittenberg heretic to Rome, or imprisoning him there, namely, the protection afforded him by his sovereign. Miltitz was of a noble Saxon family, himself a Saxon subject by birth, and a friend of the Electoral court. He brought with him a high token of favour for the Elector. The^ latter had formerly expressed a wish to receive^ jtjie golden rosef" a symbol solemnly consecrated by the Pope Himself, and be- stowed by his ambassadors on princely personages to this day, for services rendered to the Church or the Papal see. The bearer of this decoration was Miltitz, and on 24th October, 15 18, he was furnished with a whole armful of Papal in- dulgences. Above all, he took with him two letters of Leo X. to Frederick. The Elector, his beloved son, so ran the first missive, was to receive the most holy rose, anointed with the sacred chrism, sprinkled with scented musk, consecrated with the Apostolic blessing, a gift of transcendent worth and the symbol of a deep mysterj', in remembrance and as a pledge of the Pope's paternal love and singular good-will, conveyed through an ambassador specially appointed b}' the Pope, and charged with particular greetings on that behalf, etc., etc. Such a costly gift, proffered him by the Church through her Pontiff, was intended to manifest her joy at the redemption of MILTITZ AND THE DISPUTATION AT LEIPZIG. 103 mankind by the precious blood of Jesus Christ, and the rose was an appropriate symbol of the quickening and refreshing body of our Redeemer. These high-sounding and long-winded expressions showed very plainly the 'real object of the Pope. The Divine fragrance of this flower was so to permeate the in- most heart of Frederick, the " beloved son," that he, being filled with it, might with pious mind receive and cherish in his noble breast those matters which Miltitz would explain to him, and whereof the second brief made mention ; and thus the more fervently comprehend the Pope's holy and pious longing, agreeably to the hope he placed in him. The other letter, however, after referring to the call for aid against the Turks, goes on to speak of Luther. From Satan himself came this son of perdition, who was preaching notoridiis heresy, and that "^leHy in Frederick's own land. Inasmuch as this diseasecLshee£ rnust not be suffered to infect the heavenly flock, and as the honour and conscience of the Elector also must needs be stained by his presence, Miltitz was com- missioned to take measures against him and his associates, and Frederick was exhorted in the name of the Lord to assist him with his authority and favour. Papal instructions in writing to the same effect were given to Miltitz for Spalatin, as Frederick's private secretary, and for Degenhard Pfeffinger, a counsellor of the Elector. To Spalatin in particular, the most trusted adviser of Frederick in religious matters, it was represented how horrible was the heretical audacity of this "son of Satan," and how he imperilled the good name of the Elector. In like manner the chief magistrate of Wittenberg was required by letter to give assistance to Miltitz, and enable him to execute freely and unhindered the Pope's commands against the heretic Luther, who came of the devil. M iltitz took with him similar injunctions for a number of other towns in Germany, to ensure safe passage for himself and ms^nsoner to Rome, in the event of his arresting Luther. HTwas armed, it was said, with no less than seventy letters of this kind. As regards the rose, Miltitz had strict orders , to make the actual delivery of it to Frederick deperid__wholly on his compliance with Caietan's advice and will. It was deposited first of all in the mercantile house of the Fuggers at Augsburg. This public precaution was taken to prevent Miltitz from part- ing with the precious gift in haste or from top anxious a desire I04 THE BREACH WITH ROME. for the thanks and praise in prospect, before there were reasonable grounds for hoping that it had served its purpose. Towards the middle of December a Papal bull, issued on gth November, was published by Caietan in Germany, which finally laid down the doctrine of indulgences in the sense directly combated by Luther, and, although not mentioning him by name, threatened excommunication against all who" shared the errors which had lately been promulgated in certain quarters. So utterly did the Pope appear to have set his face against all reconciliation or compromise. And yet, as the event showed, room was left for Miltitz jnhis secret instru ctions to «try another rriethod, according as cireurristancesTmighrHictate. Miltitz, after having crossed the Alps, sought an interview first with Caietan in Southern Germany, and, as the latter had gone to the Emperor in Austria, he paid a visit to his old friend Pfeffinger, at his home in Bavaria. Continuing his journey with him, he arrived on 25th December at the town of Gera, and from there announced his arrival to Spalatin, who was at Altenburg. On the way hejiad had instant opportunities of , noticing, both among learned men and the common people, ■ signs of sympath y fo r the man against whom his mission was directed, and a feeling hostile to^ome, of which those at Rome Ineither knew npf~'cared to know. He was a ydilhg and clever man, full of the enjoyment of life, who knew how to mix and converse with people of every kind, and even to touch now and then on the situation and doings at Rome which were exciting such lively indignation. Tetzel also, whom Miltitz summoned to meet him, wrote complaining that the people in Germany were so excited against him by Luther, that his life would not be safe on the road. Miltitz accordingly, with his usual readiness, resolved speedily on an attempt to make Luther harmless by other means. After paying his visit to the Elector at Altenburg, he agreed to treat with him there in a friendly manner. The remarkable interview with Luther took place at Spalatin's house at Altenburg in the first week of the new year. M il titz feigned the ut mo_st .jrankness an d friendliness, n ay , even cordiality. He himself declared to Luther, that for the last hundred years no business had caused so much trouble at Rome as this one, and that they would gladly there give ten thousand ducats to prevent its going further. He describe4 MILTITZ AND THE DISPUTATION AT LEIPZIG. 105 the state of popular feeling as he had found it on his journey ; three were for Luther, where only one was for the Pope. He would not venture, even with an escort of 25,000 men, to carry off Luther through German}' to Rome. " Oh, Martin ! " he exclaimed, " I thought you were some old theologian, who had carried on his disputations with himself, in his warm corner behind the stove. Now I see how young, and fresh, and vigorous 3'ou are." Whilst plying him with exhortations and , reproaches about the injury he did to the Romish Church, he i accompanied them with tears. He fancied by this means to make him his confidant and conformable to his schemes. Luther, however, soon showed him that he could be his match in cleverness. He refrained, he tells us, from letting Miltitz see that he was aware what crocodile's tears they were. Indeed, he was quite prepared, as he had been before under the menaces of a Papal ambassador, so now under his persuasions and entreaties, to yield all that his conscience allowed, but nothing beyond, and then quietly to let matters take their own course. In the event of Miltitz withdrawing his demand for a retractation, Luther agreed to write a letter to the Pope, acknowledging that he had been too hasty and severe, and promising to publish a declaration to German Christendom, urging and admonishing reverence to the Romish Church. His cause, and the charges brought against him, might be tried before a German bishop, but he reserved to himself the right, in case the judgment should be unacceptable, of reviving his appeal to the Church in Council. Personally he desired to desist from further strife, but silence must also be imposed on his adversaries. Having come to this point of agreement, they partook of an friendly supper together, and on parting Miltitz bestowed on him a kiss. In a report given of this conference to the Elector, Luther expressed the hope that the matter by mutual silence might " bleed itself to death," but added his fear that, if the contest were prolonged, the question would grow larger and become serious. He now wrote his promised address to the people. He bated not an inch from his standpoint, so that, even if he should for the future let the controversy rest, he might not appear to have retracted anything. He allowed a value to io6 THE BREACH WITH ROME. indulgences, but only as a recompense for the " satisfaction " given by the sinner, and adding that it was better to do good than to purchase indulgences. He urged the duty of holding fast in Christian love and unity, and notwithstanding her faults and sins, to the Romish Church, in which St. Peter and St. Paul and hundreds of martyrs had shed their blood, and of submitting to her authority, though with reference only to external matters. Propositions going beyond what was here conceded he wished to be regarded as in no way affecting the people or the common man. They should be left, he said, to the schools of theology, and learned men might fight the matter out between them. His opponents indeed, if they had admitted what Luther declared in this address, would have had to abandon their main principles, for to them the doctrine that indulgences and Church authority meant far more than was here stated was a truth indispensable for salvation. Luther wrote his letter to the Pope on 3rd March, 1519. It began with expressions of the deepest personal humility, but differed significantly in the quiet firmness of its tone from his other letter of the previous year to Leo X. Quietly, but as resolutely, he repudiated all idea of retracting his principles. They had already, through the opposition raised by his enemies, been propagated far and wide, beyond all his expectations, and had sunk into the hearts of the Germans, whose knowledge and judgment were now more matured. If he let himself be forced to retract them he would give occasion to accusation and revilement against the Romish Church ; for the sake of her own honour he must refuse to do so. As for his battle against indulgences, his only thought had been to prevent the Mother Church from being defiled by foreign avarice, and that the people should not be led astray, but learn to set love before indulgences. Meanwhile, on 12th January, Maximilian had died. He was the last national Emperor with whom Germany was blessed ; in character a true German, endowed with rich gifts both mental and physical, a man of high courage and a warm heart, thoroughly understanding how to deal with high and low, and to win their esteem and love. By Luther too we hear him often spoken of afterwards in terms of affectionate remem- brance : he tells us of his kindness and courtesy to every one, of his efforts to attract around him trusty and capable servants from all ranks, of his apt remarks, of his tact in jest and in MILTITZ AND THE DISPUTATION AT LEIPZIG. 107 earnest ; further, of the troubles he had in his government of the Empire and with his princes, of the insolence he had to put up with from the Italians, and of the humour with which 0n-iiW^rf(5tajffr5Carmitu(tmieifcttuff^ji1ta£9«]cmirPIRKZYM.HERI- EFFIGIeS • AEl3iri5-SVAE-ANNOL- ill - f IVrvrrVR-iNGEN-iO GAETERAMORTIS EKVN.T- ■ JW-D .XX IV • ^ Fig. 19.— W. Pirkheimer. (From a Portrait by Albert Durer.) 10 146 THE BREACH WITH ROME. see how bent he was, notwithstanding, upon a closer intimacy with that distinguished man. ReuchHn, then an old man, would have nothing to do with Luther and the questions he had raised. He even sought 'to alienate his nephew Melancthon from him, by bidding him abstain from so perilous an enterprise. Erasmus replied with characteristic evasion. He had not yet read Luther's writings, but he advised every one to read them before crying them down to the people. He himself believed that more was to be gained by quietness and modera- tion than by violence, and he felt bound to warn him in the spirit of Christ against all intemperate and passionate language ; but he did not wish to admonish Luther what to do, but only to continue steadfastly what he was doing already. The chief thought to which he gives expression is the earnest hope that the movement kindled by Luther's writings would not give occasion to opponents to accuse and suppress the " noble arts and letters ''. A regard for these, which indeed were the object of his own high calling, was always of paramount importance in his eyes. Not content with attacking by means of ridicule the abuses in the Church, Erasmus took a genuine interest in the improvement of its general condition, and in the elevation and refinement of moral and religious life, as well as of theo- logical science ; and the high esteem he enjoyed made him an influential man among even the superior clergy and the princes of the Church. But from the first he recognised, as he says in his letter to Lange, and possibly better than Luther himself, the difficulties and dangers of attacking the Church system on the points selected by Luther. And when Luther boldly an- ticipated the disturbances which the Word must cause in the world, and dwelt on Christ's saying that He had come to bring a sword, Erasmus shrank back in terror at the thought of tumult and destruction. Conformably with the whole bent of his natural disposition and character, he adhered anxiously to the peaceful course of his work and the pursuit of his intellectual pleasures. Questions involving deep principles, such as those of the Divine right of the Papacy, the absolute character of Church authority, or the freedom of Christian judgment, as founded on the Bible, he regarded from aloof; notwithstanding that silence or concealment towards either party, when once these principles were publicly put in question, was bound to be construed as a denial of the truth. I I ALLIANCE WITH HUMANISTS AND NOBILITY. 147 We shall see how this same standpoint, from which this learned man still retained his inward sympathy with Church matters, dictated further his attitude towards Luther and the Reformation. For the present, Luther had tq_thank the good.f' opinion of Erasmus7~c a"utiously express ed though it was, for aP' greaTa'dvancement of his cause. It was valuable to Luther in regard to those who had no personal knowledge of him, as I ' giving them conclusive proof that his character and conduct 1 were irreproachable. His influence is a-ppa rent_in the answer I of the Archbishop Albert to Luther, in its tone of gracious | reticence, and its remarks about needless contention. Erasmus had written some time before to the Archbishop, contrasting the excesses charged against Luther with those of the Papal party, and denouncing the corruptions of the Church, and particularly the lack of- preachers of the gospel. Much to the annoyance of Erasmus, this letter was published, and it worked more in Luther's favour than he wished. Those hopes which Luther had placed in the young students at Erfurt were shortly fulfilled by the so-called " poets " beginning now to read and expound the New Testament. The theology, which, in its scholastic and monastic form, they regarded with contempt, attracted them as knowledge of the Divine Word. Justus Jonas, Luther's junior by ten years, a \ friend of Eoban Hess, and one of the most talented of the circle of young " poets," now exchanged for theology the study of the law, which he had already begun to teach. To his respect for Erasmus was now added an enthusiastic admiration for Luther, the courageous Erfurt champion of this new evangelical doctrine. A close intimacy sprang up between Jonas and Luther, as also between Jonas and Luther's friend Lange. Erasmus had persuaded him to take up theology ; Luther, on hearing of it in 1520, congratulated him on taking refuge from the stormy sea of law in the asylum of the Scriptures. None of the old Erfurt students, however, had cultivated Luther's friendship more zealously than Crotus, his former companion at that university ; and this evenlrom Italy, where his sympathies with Luther had been stirred by the news from Germany, and where he had learnt to realise, from the evidence of his eyes, the full extent of the scandals and evils against which Luther was waging war. He, who in the EpistolcB Virorum Obscurormn, had failed to exhibit in his satire the solemn earnestness which recommended itself to Luther's taste 148 THE BREACH WITH ROME. and judgment, now openly declared his concurrence with Luther's fundamental ideas of religion and theology, and his high appreciation of Scripture and of the Scriptural doctrine of salvation. He wrote repeatedly to him, reminding him of their days together at Erfurt, telling him about the " Plague-chair" at Rome, and the intrigues carried on there by Eck, and en- couraging him to persevere in his work. Expressions common to the "poets" of his university days were curiously mingled in his letters with others of a religious kind. He would like to glorify, as a father of their fatherland, worthy of a golden statue and an annual festival, his friend Martin, who had been the first to venture to liberate the people of God, and show them the way to true piety. Not only from Italy, but also after his return, he employed his characteristic literary activity, by means of anonymous pamphlets, in the service of Luther. It was he who, towards the end of 1519, sent from Italy to Luther and Melancthon at Wittenberg, the Humanist theologian, John Hess, afterwards the reformer of the Church at Breslau. Crotus himself returned in the spring of 1520 to Germany. Here these Humanist friends of the Lutheran movement had already been joined by Crotus' personal friend, Ulrich von Hutten, who not only could wield his pen with more vigour and acuteness than almost all his associates, but who declared himself ready to take up his sword for the cause he defended, and to call in powerful allies of his own class to the fight. He sprang from an old Franconian family, the heirs, not indeed of much wealth or property, but of an old knightly spirit of inde- pendence. Hatred of monasticism and all that belonged to it, must have been nursed by him from youth ; for having been placed, when a boy, in a convent, he ran away with the aid of Crotus, when only sixteen. Sharing the literary tastes of his friend, he learned to write with proficienc}^ the poetical and rhetorical Latin of the Humanists of that time. In spite of all his irregularities, adventures, and unsettlement of habits, he had preserved an elastic and elevated turn of mind, desirous of serving the interests of a " free and noble learning," and a knightly courage, which urged him to the fight with a frankness and straightforwardness not often found among his fellow- Humanists. Whilst laughing at Luther's controversy as a petty monkish quarrel, he himself dealt a heavy blow to the traditional pretensions of the Papacy by the republication of a I work by the famous Italian Humanist Laurentius Valla, long ALLIANCE WITH HUMANISTS AND NOBILITY. 149 since dead, on the pretended donation of Constantine, in which the writer exposed the forgery of the edict purporting to grant lricb»on©ttttem Fig. 20. — Ulrich von Hutten. (From an old woodcut. the possession of Rome, Italy, and indeed the entire Western world to the Roman see. This work Hutten actually dedicated to Pope Leo himself. But what distinguished this knight and ISO THE BREACH WITH ROME. Humanist above all the others who were contending on behalf of learning and against the oppressions and usurpations of the ,;' Church and monasticism, were his thoroughly German sym- npathies, and his ^eal for the honour and independence of his . nation. He saw her enslaved in ecclesiastical bondage to the Papal see, and at the mercy of the avarice and caprice of Rome. He heard with indignation how scornfully the "rough and simple Germans " were spoken of in Italy, how even on German soil the Roman emissaries openly paraded their arrogance; how some Germans, unworthy of the name, pandered to such scorn and contempt by a cringing servility which made them crouch before the Papal chair and sue for favour and office. He warned them to prepare for a mighty outburst of German liberty, already well-nigh strangled by Rome. At the same time he denounced the vices of his own countrymjen, particularly that of drunkenness, and the proneness to luxury and usurious dealing in trade and commerce, all of which, as we have seen, had been complained of by Luther. Nor less than of the honour of Germany herself, was he jealous of the honour and power of the Empire. In all that he did he was guided, perhaps involuntarily, but in a special degree, by the principles and interests of knighthood. His order was indebted to the Empire for its chief support, although the imperial authority no less than that of his own class, had sunk in a great measure through the increasing power of the different princes. In the prosperous middle class of Germany he saw the spirit of trade prevailing to an excess, with its attendant evils. In the^ firmly- settled regulations of law and order, which had been established in Germanj^ with great troijblejit the end of the middle ages, |he felt mo^ out of his element: he longed rather to resort to Jthe old method of foFce whenever he"~saw justice trampled on. ■'JAnd in this respect also Hutten proved true to the traditions of knighthood. But in the material power required to give effect to his ideas of reform in the kindred spheres of politics and of the Church in her external aspect, Hutten was entirely wanting. More than this, we fail to find in him any clear and positive plans or projects of reform, nor any such calm and searching insight into the relations and problems before him as was in- I dispensable for that object. His call, however rousing and jj- stirring it was, died away in the distance of time and the dimness "of uncertainty. ALLIANCE WITH HUMANISTS AND NOBILITY. 151 Hutten found, however, an active and powerful friend, and one versed in war and politics, in Francis von Sickingen, the "knight of manly, noble, and courageous spirit," as an old chronicler describes him. He was the owner of fine estates, among them the strong castles of Landstuhl near Kaiserslautern, and Ebernburg near Kreuznach, and had already, in a number of battles conducted on his own account and to redress the wrongs of others, given ample proof of his energy and skill in raising hosts of rustic soldiery, and leading them with reckless valour, in pursuit of his objects, to the fray. Hutten won him over to support the cause of Reuchlin, still entangled in a prosecution by his old accusers of heresy, Hoogstraten and the Dominicans at Cologne. A sentence of the Bishop of Spires, rejecting the charges of his opponents, and mulcting them in the costs of the suit, had been annulled, at their instance, by the Pope. Against them and against the Dominican Order in particular, Sickingen now declared his open enmity, and his sympathy with the "good old doctor Reuchlin ''. In spite of delay and resistance, they were forced to pay the sum demanded. Meanwhile, no doubt under the influence of his friend Crotus, Hutten's eyes were opened about the monk Luther. During a visit in January 1520 to Sickingen at his castle of Landstuhl, he consulted with him as to the help to be given to the man now threatened with excommunication, and Sickingen offered him his protection. Hutten at the same time proceeded to launch the most violent controversial diatribes and satires against Rome ; I one in particular, called The Roman Trinity, wherein he de- ( tailed in striking triplets the long series of Romish pretensions, trickeries, and vexatious abuses. At Easter he held a personal interview at Bamberg with Crotus, on his return from Italy. For the furtherance of their objects and desires, in respect to the affairs of Germany and the Church, these two knights placed high hopes in the new young Emperor, who had left Spain, and on the ist of July landed on the coast of the Netherlands. Sickingen had earned merit in his election. He had hoped to find in him a truly German Emperor, in contrast to King Francis of France, who was a competitor for the imperial crown. The Pope, as we have seen, had opposed his election ; his chief advocate, on the contrary, was Luther's friend, the Elector Frederick. Support was also looked for from Charles' brother Ferdinand, as being a friend of arts and letters. Hutten even hoped to obtain a place at his court, 152 THE BREACH WITH ROME. On this side, therefore, and from these quarters, Luther was offered a friendly hand. FRANCISCVS'-VON^-SIGKINGEN ^^ Fig. 21. — Francis von Sickingen. (From an old engraving.) We hear Hutten first mentioned by Luther in February 1^20, in connection with his edition of the work of Valla, ALLIANCE WITH HUMANISTS AND NOBILITY. 153 This work, though pubhshed two years before, had been made known to Luther then, for the first time, b}' a friend. It had awakened his keenest interest ; the falsehoods exposed in its pages confirmed him in his opinion that' the Pope was the real Antichrist. Shortly after, a letter from Hutten reached Melancthon, containing Sickingen's offer of assistance ; a similar communi- cation forwarded to him some weeks before, had never reached its destination. Sickingen had charged Hutten to write to Luther, but Hutten was cautious enough to make Melancthon the medium, in order not to let his dealings with Luther be known. Sickingen, he wrote, invited Luther, if menaced with danger, to stay with him, and was willing to do what he could for him. Hutten added that Sickingen might be able to do as much for Luther as he had done for Reuchlin ; but Melancthon would see for himself what Sickingen had then written to the monks. He spoke, with an air of mystery, of negotiations of the highest importance between Sickingen and himself; he hoped it would fare badly with the Barbarians, that is, the enemies of learning, — and all those who sought to bring them under the Romish }oke. With such objects in view, he had hopes even of Ferdinand's support. Crotus, meanwhile, after his interview with Hutten at I3amberg, advised Luther not to despise the kindness of Sickingen, the great leader of the German nobilit}'. It was rumoured that Luther, if driven from Wittenberg, would take refuge among the Bohemians. Crotus earnestly warned him against doing so. His enemies, he said, might force him to do so, knowing, as they did, how hateful the name of Bohemian was in Germany. Hutten himself wrote also to Luther, encouraging him, in pious Scriptural language, to stand firm and persevere in working with him for the liberation of their fatherland. He repeated to him the invita- tion of N., (he did not mention his name,) and assured him that the latter would defend him with vigour against his enemies of every kind. Another invitation, at the same time, and of the same purport, came to Luther from the knight Silvester von Schauenburg. He too had heard that Luther was going to the Bohemians. He was willing, however, to protect him from his enemies, as were also a hundred other nobles whom with God's help he would bring with him, until his cause was decided in a right and Christian manner, 154 THE BREACH WITH ROME. Whether Luther really entertained the thought of flying to Bohemia, we cannot determine with certainty. But we know with what seriousness, as early as the autumn of 1518, after he had refused to retract to the Papal legate, he anticipated the duty and necessity of leaving Wittenberg. How much more forcibly must the thoughts have recurred to him, when the news arrived of the impending decision at Rome, of the warning received from there by the Elector, and of the protest uttered even in Germany, and by such a prince as Duke George of Saxony, against any further toleration of his proceedings ! The refuge which Luther had previously looked for at Paris was no longer to be hoped for. Since the Leipzig disputation he had advanced in his doctrines, and especially in his avowed support of Huss, far beyond what the university of Paris either liked or would endure. Such then was Luther's position when he received these invitations. They must have stirred him as distinct messages from above. The letters in which he replied to them have not been preserved to us. We hear, however, that he wrote to Hutten, saying that he placed greater hopes in Sickingen than in any prince under heaven. Schauenburg and Sickingen, he says, had freed him from the fear of man ; he would now have to withstand the rage of demons. He wished that even the Pope would note the fact that he could now find protection from all his thunderbolts, not indeed in Bohemia, but in the very heart of Germany ; and that, under this protection, he could break loose against the Romanists in a very different fashion to what he Could now do in his official position. As he reviewed, in the course of the contest, the proceedings of his enemies, and was further informed of the conduct of the Papal see, the picture of corruption and utter worthlessness, nay the antichristian character of the Church system at Rome, unfolded itself more and more painfully and fully before his eyes. The richest materials for this conclusion he found in the pamphlets of the writers already referred to, and in the descriptions sent from Italy by men like Hess and others, who shared his own convictions. All this time, moreover, Luther's feelings as a German were ■ more and more stirred within him, while thinking of what German Christianity in particular was compelled to suffer at the hands of Rome. A lively consciousness of this had been awakened in his mind since the Diet of Augsburg in 15 18, with ALLIA NCE WITH HUMANISTS A ND NOBIIITY. 1 5 5 its protest against the claims of the Papacy, its statement of the grievances of the German nation, and the vigorous writings on that subject which were circulated at that time. He referred in 15 19 to that Diet, as having drawn a distinction between the Romish Church and the Romish Curia, and repudiated the latter with its demands. As for the Romanists, who made the two identical, they looked on a German as a simple fool, a lubberhead, a dolt, a barbarian, a beast, and yet they laughed at him for letting himself be fleeced and pulled by the nose. Luther's words were now re-echoed in louder tones by Hutten, whose own wish, moreover, was to incite his fellow-countrymen, as such, to rise and betake themselves to battle. There were certain of the lait}' who had already brought these German grievances in Church matters before the Diets, and who now gave vent in pamphlets to their denunciations of the corruption and tyranny of the Romish Church. As for Luther, he valued the judgment of a Christian layman, who had the Bible on his side, as highl}', and higher, than that of a priest and prince of the Church, and ascribed the true character of a priest to all Christians alike : these Estates of the Augsburg Diet he speaks of as " lay theologians ". Leading laymen of the nobility now came forward and offered to assist him in his labours on behalf of the German Church. Both he and Melancthon placed their confidence also gladly in the new German emperor. Several letters of Luther at this time, closely following on each other, express at once the keenest enthusiasm for the contest, and the idea of a Reformation proceeding from the laity, represented, as he understood them, by their established authorities and Estates. We find in these letters powerful effusions of holy zeal and language full of Christian instruction, mingled with the most vehement outbursts of the natural passion which was boiling in Luther's breast. Compared with them, the cleverest con- troversial writings of the Humanists, and even the fiercest satires of Hutten, sound only like rhetoric and elaborate displays of wit. Luther, in his Sermon On Good Woi-ks, already noticed as m so replete with wholesome doctrine and advice, had already complained that God's ministry was perverted into a means of supporting the lowest creatures of the Pope, and had declared that the best and only thing left was for kings, princes, nobles, iS6 THE BREACH WITH ROME. towns, and parishes to set to work themselves, and " make a breach in the abuse," so that the hitherto intimidated clergy might follow. As for excommunication and threats, such things need not trouble them : they meant as little as if a mad father were to threaten his son who was guarding him. The sharpest replies on the part of Luther were next pro- voked by two writings which justified and glorified the Divine authority and power of the Papacy. One was by a Franciscan friar, Augustin von Alveld ; the other by Silvester Prierias, already mentioned, who was his most active opponent in this matter. Luther broke out against "the Alveld Ass" (as he called him in a letter to Spalatin) in a long reply entitled The Pope- dom at Rome, with the object of exposing once and finally the secrets of Antichrist. " From Rome," he says, " flow all evil examples of spiritual and temporal iniquity into the world, as from a sea of wickedness. Whoever mourns to see it, is called by the Romans a ' good Christian,' or in their language, a fool. It was a proverb among them that one ought to wheedle the gold out of the German simpletons as much as one could." If the German princes and nobles did not " make short work of them in good earnest," Germany would either be devastated or would have to devour herself. Prierias' pamphlet provoked him to exclaim, in that same letter to Spalatin, " I think that at Rome they are all mad, silly, and raging, and have become mere fools, sticks and stones, hells and devils ". His remarks on this pamphlet, written in Latin, contain the strongest words that we have yet heard from his lips about the " only means left," and the " short work" to be made of Rome. Emperors, kings, and princes, he says, would yet have to take up the sword against the rage and 'plague of the Romanists. "When we hang thieves, and be- head murderers, and burn heretics, why do not we lay hands -j-on these Cardinals and Popes and all the rabble of the Romish ,' Sodom, and bathe our hands in their blood ? " What Luther now in reality wished to see done, was, as he goes on to say, that the Pope should be corrected as Christ commands men to deal with their offending brethren (St. Matt, xviii. 15 sqq.), and, if he neglected to hear, should be held as an heathen man and a publican. While these pages of Luther's were in the press, towards the middle of June, Hutten, full of hope himself, and carrying ALLIANCE WITH HUMANISTS AND NOBLLITY. 157 with him the hopes of Luther and Melancthon, set off on his journey to the Emperor's brother in the Netherlands, and, on his way, paid a visit at Cologne to the learned Agrippa von Nettesheim, accompanied, as the latter says, by a "few ad- herents of the Lutheran party ". There, as Agrippa relates with terror, they expressed aloud their thoughts. " What have we to do with Rome and its Bishop?" they asked. "Have we no Archbishops and Bishops in Germany, that we must kiss the feet of this one ? Let Germany turn, and turn she will, to her own bishops and pastors." Hutten paid the expenses of this journey out of money given him by the Archbishop Albert ; between these two, therefore, the bonds of friendship were not yet broken. Albert was the first of the German bishops ; Hutten, and very possibly the Archbishop also, might reason- ably suppose that a reform proceeding from the Emperor and the Empire, might place him at the head of a German National Church. But Luther had already put his pen to a composition which was to summon the German laity to the grand work before them, to establish the foundations of Christian belief, and to set forth in full the most crying needs and aims of the time. He had resolved to give the strongest and amplest expression in his power to the truth for which he was contending. 158 THE BREACH- WITH ROME. CHAPTER VII. LUTHER'S WORKS— TO THE CHRISTIAN NOBILITY OF THE GERMAN NATION, AND ON THE BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY. In a dedication to his friend and colleague Amsdorf, prefixed to the first of these works, he begins, " The time of silence is past, and the time for speaking is come". He had several pomts, he tells us, concerning the improvement of the Christian condi- tion, to lay before the Christian nobility of Germany ; perhaps God would help His Church through the laity, since the clergy had become entirely careless. If charged with presumption in venturing to address such high people on such great matters, so be it, then perhaps he was guilty of a folly towards his God and the world, and might one day become court-jester. But inasmuch as he was a sworn doctor of Holy Scripture, he rejoiced in the opportunity of satisfying his oath in this manner. He then turns to the " Most illustrious, Most powerful Imperial Majesty, and to the Christian nobility of the German nation," with the greeting, " Grace and strength from God first of all, most illustrious, gracious, and beloved Lords ! " The need and troubles of Christendom, and especially of Germany, constrained him, as he said, to cry to God that He might inspire some one to stretch out his hand to the suffering nation. His hopes were in the noble young blood now given by God as her head. He would likewise do his part. The Romanists, in order to prevent their being reformed, had shut themselves within three walls. Firstly, they said, the temporal power had no rights over them, the spiritual power, but the spiritual was above the temporal ; secondly, the Scriptures, which were sought to be employed against them, could only be expounded by the Pope ; thirdly, no one but the Pope could summon a Council. Against this, Luther calls to CJilSIS OF SECESSION. 159 God for one of those trumpets which once blew do'wn the walls of Jericho, in order to blow down also these walls of straw and paper. His assault upon the first wall was decisive for the rest. He accomplished it with his doctrine of the spiritual and priestly character of all Christians, who had been baptised and conse- crated by the blood of Christ (i Peter ii. g ; Rev. v. 10). Thus, according to Luther, they are all of one character, one rank. The only thing peculiar to the so-called ecclesiastics or priests is the special office or work of" administering the Word of God and the Sacraments " to the congregation. The power to do this is given, indeed, by God to all Christians as priests, but, being so given, cannot be assumed by an individual without the will and command of the community. The ordination of priests, as they are called, by a bishop can in reality only signify that, out of the collective body of Christians, all possessing equal power, one is selected, and commanded to exercise this power on be- half of the rest. They hold, therefore, this peculiar office, like their fellow-members of the community who are entrusted with temporal authority, namely, to wield the sword for the punish- ment of the bad and the protection of the good. They hold it, as every shoemaker, smith, or builder holds office in his particular trade ; and yet all alike are priests. Moreover, this temporal magisterial power has the right to exercise its office free and unhindered in its own sphere of action ; no Pope or bishop must here interfere, no so-called priest must usurp it. As a consequence of this spiritual character of Christians, the second wall was also doomed to fall. Christ said of all Christians, that they shall all be taught of God (St. John vi. 45). Thus any man, however humble, if he was a true Christian, could have a right understanding of the Scriptures ; and the Pope, if wicked and not a true Christian, was not taught of God. If the Pope alone were always in the right, one would have to pray, " I believe in the Pope at Rome," and the whole Christian Church would then be centred in one man, which would be nothing short of devilish and hellish error. After this the third wall fell by itself For, says Luther, when the Pope acts against the Scriptures, it is our duty to stand by the Scriptures and to punish him as Christ taught us to punish offending brethren (St. Matthew xviii. 17), when He said, "Tell it unto the Church ". Now the Church or Christendom must be gathered together in a Council. And like as the most famous of the Councils, that i6o THE BREACH WITH ROME. of Nice, and others after it, hadlieen summoned by the Emperor, so must every one, as a true member of the whole body, and when necessary, do what he can to make it a really free Council : " which nobody can do so well as the temporal authorities, who meet these as fellow-Christians, fellow-priests". Just as if a fire broke out in a city, no one, because he had not the power of the burgomaster, durst stand still and let it burn, but every citizen must run and call others together, so was it in the spiritual city of Christ, if a fire of trouble and affliction should arise. The question as to the composition of such a Council Luther does not proceed to discuss. That he wished, however, the laity to be represented, we may safely assume from the whole context, though it is doubtful how far he may then have thought of a representation of the temporal authorities as such, and, above all, of the Christian body collectively, through its political members. But the main point on which he insisted was, that the Council should be a free and really Christian one, bound by no oath to the Pope, fettered by no so-called Canon law, but subject only to the Word of God in Holy Writ. Under twenty-six heads Luther then proceeds to enumerate the points on which such a Council should treat, and which should be urged in particular in connection with the question of reform. The whole arrogance of the Papacy, the temporal pride with which the Pope clothed himself, the idolatry with which he was treated, were to Luther a scandal and unchristian. Lord of the universe, the Pope styled himself, and paraded about with a triple crown in all temporal splendour, and with an endless train of followers and baggage, whilst claiming to be the vicegerent of the Lord who wandered about in poverty, and gave Himself up to the Cross, and declared that His kingdom was not of this world. Clearly and full}^ Luther shows the various ways, embracing the whole life of the Church, in which Romish tyranny had enslaved the Churches of other countries, especially of Germany, and had turned them to account and plundered them : by means of fees and taxes of all kinds, by drawing away the trial of ecclesiastical cases to Rome, by accumulating benefices in the hands of Papal favourites of the worst description, by the unprincipled and usurious sale of dispensations, by the oath which made the bishops mere vassals of the Pope, and effectually prevented all reform. In this greed for money in particular, and in the crafty methods of CRISIS OF SECESSIOiV. i6i collecting- it, Luther saw the genuine Antichrist, who, as Daniel had foretold, was to gather the treasures of the earth (Daniel xi. 8, 39, 43). To confront this oppression and these acts of usurpation, Luther would not have men wait for a Council. As for the se ' impqsitiaiis and taxes, he says that every prince, noble, and town should straightway repudiate and forbid them. This lawless pillaging of ecclesiastical benefices and fiefs by Rome should be resisted at once by the nobility. Any one coming from the Papal court to Germany with such claims, must be ordered to desist, or to jump into the nearest piece of water with his seals and letters and the ban of excommunication. Luther insists especially on demanding, as Hutten had already demanded, that the individual Churches, and particularly those of Germany, should order and conduct their own affairs independently of Rome. The bishops were not to obtain their confirmation at Rome, but, as already decreed by the Nicene Council, from a couple of neighbouring bishops or an archbishop. The German bishops were to be under their own primate, who might hold a general consistory with chancellors and counsellors, to receive appeals from the whole of Germany. The Pope, in other respects, was still to be left a position of supremacy in the collective Christian Church, and the ad- judication of matters of importance on which the primates could not agree. One other matter Luther dwells on, as affecting the entire constitution of the Church. It is not the mere ad- ministrative and judicial functions that constitute the true meaning of office, whether in a priest, a bishop, or a Pope, but a constant service to God's Word. Luther therefore is anxious that the Pope should not be burdened with small matters. He calls to mind how once the Apostles would not leave the Word of God, and serve tables, but wished to give themselves to prayer and to the ministry of the Word (Acts vi. 2, 4). But he would have a clean sweep made of the so-called ecclesiastical law, contained in the law-books of the Church. The Scriptures were sufficient. Besides, the Pope himself did not keep that law, but pretended to carry all law in the shrine of his own heart. Consistently with all that he has said about the relative positions of the temporal and spiritual powers, Luther goes on to protest, on behalf especially of the German Empire, against the " overbearing and criminal behaviour " of the Pope, who i62 THE BREACH WITH ROME. arrogates to himself power over the Emperor, and allows the latter to kiss his foot and hold his stirrup. Granted that he is superior to the Emperor in spiritual office, in preaching, in ad- ministering the Word of grace; in other matters he is his inferior. But the most important demand advanced by Luther while pushing further his inquiries into the moral and social regula- , tions and condition of the Church, is the abolition of the celiba cy V of t he cl ergy. If Popes and bishops wish to impose upon themselves the burden of an unmarried life, he has nothing to say to that. He speaks only of the clergy in general, whom God has appointed, who are needed by every Christian com- munity for the service of preaching and the sacraments, and who must live and keep house amongst their fellow-Christians. Not an angel from Heaven, much less a Pope, dare bind this man to what God has never bound him, and thereby precipitate him into danger and sin. A limit at least must be imposed on , monastic life. Luther would like to _see the cori vents an d Y^ cloisters turned into Christian schools, wEere men might learn the Scriptures and discipline, and be trained' to govern others and to preach. He would further give full liberty to quit such institutions at pleasure. He reverts to the question of clerical celibacy, in lamenting the gross immoralities of the priesthood, and complaining that marriage was so frequently avoided on account simply of the responsibilities it entailed, and the restraints it imposed on loose living. Luther would abolish all commands to fast, on the ground that these ordinances of man are opposed to the freedom of the ! Bible. He would do away also with the multitude of festivals and holidays, as leading only to idleness, carousing, and gambling. He would check the foolish pilgrimages to Rome, on which so much money was wasted, whilst wife and child, and poor Christian neighbours were left at home to starve, and which drew people into so much trouble and temptation. As regards the management of the poor, Luther's requirements were somewhat stringent. All begging among Christians was to be forbidden ; each town was to provide for its own poor, and not admit strange beggars. As the universities at that time, no less than the schools, were in connection with the Church, Luther offers some suggestions for their reform. He singles out the writings of the ancients which were read in the philoso- phical faculty, and others which might be done away with, as CJ?/SIS OF SECESSION. 163 useless or even pernicious. With regard to the mass of civil law, he agreed with the complaint often heard among Germans, that it had become a wilderness : each state should be governed, as far as possible, " by its own brief laws ". For children, girls as well as boys, he would like to see a school in every town. It grieved him to see how, in the very heart of Chris- tendom, the young folk were neglected and allowed to perish for lack of timely sustenance with the bread of the gospel. He reverts again to the question about the Bohemians, with a view to silencing at length the vile calumniations of his enemies. And in so doing he remarks of Huss, that even if he , had been a heretic, " heretics must be conquered with the pen and not with fire. If to conquer them with fire were an art, , the~executioners would be the most learned doctors on the earth." Lastly he refers briefly to the prevalent evils of worldly and social life ; to wit, the luxury in dress and food, the habits of excess common among Germans, the practice of usury and taking interest. He wpuld like to gut_a^_bridle into n e mo uth of the/i grea t commercial Rrms, e|^ ciailYTEe~rich House or~Fu};K'er ; | for t he ama zing of such enormous wealth during the life of one mar\ could never bi done by right "and godly means. It seerned to him " far more godly to promote agriculture and lessen com- merce". Luther speaks in this as a man of the people, who were already suspicious about this accumulation of money, from a right feeling really of the moral and economical dangers thence accruing to the nation, even if ignorant of the necessary relations of supply and demand. As to this, Luther adds : " I leave that to the worldly-wise ; I, as a theologian, can only say, Abstain from all appearance of evil " (i Thessalonians v. 22). So wide a field of subjects did this little book embrace. We have only here mentioned the chief points. Luther him- self acknowledges at the conclusion : " I am well aware that I have pitched my note high, that I have proposed many things 1 which will be looked upon as impossible, and have attacked many points too sharply. I am bound to add, that if I could, I would not only talk, but act ; I would rather the world were angry with me than God." But Rome always remained the chief object of his attacks. "Well then," he says of her, " I know of another little song of Rome ; if her ear itches for it, I will sing it to her and pitch the notes at their highest." He concludes, " God give us all a Christian understanding, and to i 164 TJIE BREACH WITH ROME. the Christian nobihty of the German nation especially, a true spiritual courage to do their best for the poor Church. Amen." Whilst Luther was working on this treatise, new disquieting rumours and remonstrances addressed from Rome to the Elector reached him through Spalatin. But with them came also that promise of protection from Schauenburg. Luther answered Spalatin, "The die is cast, I despise alike the wrath and the favour of Rome ; I will have no reconciliation with her, no fellowship ". Friends who heard of his new work grew alarmed ; Staupitz, even at the eleventh hour, tried to dissuade , him from it. But before August was far advanced, four thousand copies were already printed and published. A new edition was I immediately called for. Luther now added another section repudiating the arrogant pretension of the Pope, that through his means the Roman Empire had been brought to Germany. Well might Lu ther's fr iend Lange call this treatise a wa r- trurnpet. The Reformer, who at hrsTTherel}' vvished to pomt out and open to men the right way of salvation, and to fight for it with the sword of his word, now stepped forward boldly and with determination, demanding the abolition of all unlaw- ful and unchristian ordinances of the Romish Church, and calling upon the temporal power to assist him, if need be, with material force. The ground-work of this resolve had been laid, as we have seen, in the progress of his moral and religious convictions ; in the inalienable rights which belong to Christi- anity in general, and the mission with which God entrusts also the temporal power or state ; in the independence granted by Him to this power on its own domain, and the duties He has ! imposed upon all Christian authorities, even in regard to all j moral and religious needs and dangers. But he denied alto- I gether, and we may well believe him, that he had any wish to [ create disorder or disturbance ; his intention was merely to 1 prepare the way for a free Council. Not indeed that he shrank from the thought of battle and tumult, should the powers whom he invoked meet with resistance from the adherents of Rome or Antichrist. As for himself, though forced to make such a stormy appearance, he had no idea of himself being destined to become the Reformer, but was content rather to prepare the way for a greater man, and his thoughts herein turned to Melancthon. Thus he wrote to Lange these re- markable words : " It -may be _t hat I am the for erunner^f Philip, and like Elias, prepare the way for him in spirit and in CRISIS OF SECESSION. 165 Fig. 22. Title-page of thk second edition of this Treatise, in a rather smaller size. 1 66 THE BREACH WITH ROME. strength, destroying the people of Ahab " (i Kings xviii.). Melancthon, on the other hand, wrote to Lange just then about Luther, saying that he did not venture to check the spirit of Martin in this matter, to which Providence seemed to have appointed him. From the Electoral court Luther learned that his treatise was "not altogether displeasing". And just at this time he had to thank his prince for a present of game. There is no doubt that Luther received also from that quarter the advice to approach the Emperor, who had just arrived in Germany, and whom he had wished to address in his treatise, with a direct personal request for protection, to prevent his being condemned unheard. He addressed to him a well-considered letter, couched in dignified language. He issued at the same time a short public "offer," appealing therein to the fact, that he had so long begged in vain for a proper refutation. These two writings were first examined and corrected by Spalatin, and so appeared only at the end of August, not, as is generally supposed, in the January of this year. Luther never received an answer to his letter to the Emperor, and therefore never heard how it was received. The dangers which threatened Luther, and through him also the honour and prosperity of his Order, affected further his companions and friends who belonged to it. And of this Miltitz took advantage to renew his attempts at mediation. (He induced the brethren, at a convention of Augustinian friars jheld at Eisleben, to persuade Luther once more to write to the Pope, and solemnly assure him that he had never wished to attack him personally. A deputation of these monks, with Staupitz and Link at their head, came to Luther at Witten- berg on the 4th or 5th of September, and received his promise to comply with their wishes. At this convention, Staupitz, who felt his strength no longer equal to the difficult questions and controversies of the time, had resigned his office as Vicar of the Order, and Link had succeeded him. Luther saw him now at Wittenberg for the last time. He retired in quiet seclusion to Salzburg, where the Archbishop was his personal friend. But Luther's spirit would not let him desist for a moment from prosecuting his contest with Rome. He had yet "a little song" to sing about her. He was in fact at work in August, while rumours were already afloat that Eck was on his way CRISIS OF SECESSION. 167 with the bull, upon a new tract, and had even begun to have it printed. It was to treat of the "Babylonian Captivity of the Church," taking as its subject the^XJTiristian sacraments. Luther knew that in this he cut deeper into the theological and religious principles of the Church, which had come under discussion in his quarrel with Rome, than in all his demands for reform, put forward in his address to the nobility. For while, in common with the Church herself, he saw in the f Sacraments, instituted by Christ, the most sacred acts of > worship, and the channels through which salvation itself, for- giveness, grace, and strength are imparted from above, in those principles he saw them limited by man's caprice in their \ original scope and meaning, robbed of their true significance, j and made the instruments of Papal and priestly domination, f while other pretended sacraments 'were joined to them, never' instituted by Christ. On this account he complained of the tyranny to which these sacraments, and with them the Church, were subject, of the captivity in which they lay. Against h im were arrayed not_onIy the hierarchy, but the whole_torces of Scholastic learning. He knew that whaOre now propounded woiiI3~sound^ preposterous to these opponents ; he would make, he said, his feeble revilers feel their blood run cold. But he met them in the armour of profound erudition, and with learned arguments lucidly and concisely expressed in Latin. At the same time his language, where he explains the real essence of the sacraments, shows a clearness and religious fervour which no layman could fail to understand. The subject of the deepest importance to Luther in this treatise was the sacrament of the altar. He dwells on the mutilated form, without the cup, in which the Lord's Supper / was given to the laity ; on the doctrine invented about the ' change of the bread, instead of keeping to the simple word of Scripture ; and, lastly, on the substitution of a sacrifice, sup- posed to be offered to God by the priest, for the institution ordained by Christ for the nourishment of the faithful. The withholding of the cup he calls an act of ungodliness and tyranny, beyond the power of either Pope or Council to pre- | scribe. Against the sacrifice of the mass he had published just before a Sermon in German. He^as well aware that his principl?S~rnvolved, as indeed he intended, a revolution of the whole service, and an attack on an ordinance, upon which a number of other abuses, of great importance to the hierarchy. 1 68 THE BREACH WITH ROME. depended. But he ventured it, because God's word obliged him to do it. So now he proceeds to describe, in contrast to this mass, the one of true Christian institution, and resting wholly, as he conceived it, on the words of Christ, when in- stituting the Last Supper, "Take, and eat," etc. Christ would here say, "See, thou poor sinner, out of pure love I promise to thee, before thou canst either earn or promise anything, for- giveness of all thy sins, and eternal life, and to assure thee of this I give here my Body and shed my Blood ; do thou, by my death, rest assured of this promise, and take as a sign my Body and Blood ". For the worthy celebration of this mass, nothing is re- quired but faith, which shall trust securely in this promise; with this faith will come the sweetest stirrings of the heart, which will unfold itself in love, and yearn for the good Saviour, and in Him will become a new creature. As regards baptism Luther lamented that it was no longer allowed to possess the true significance and value it ought to have for a man's whole life. Whereas in truth the person baptised received a promise of mercy from God, to which time after time, even from the sins of his future life, he might and was bound to turn, it was taught, that in sinning after baptism, the Christian was like a shipwrecked man, who, instead of the ship, could only reach a plank ; this being the sacrament of penance, with its accompanying outward for- malities. Whereas further, in true baptism he had vowed to dedicate his whole life and conduct to God, other vows of human invention were now demanded of him. Whereas he then became a full partaker of Christian liberty, he was now burdened with ordinances of the Church, devised by man. Concerning this sacrament of penance, with confession, absolution, and its other adjuncts, Luther rates at its full value the word of forgiveness spoken to the individual, and values also the free confession made to his Christian brother by the Christian seeking comfort. But confession, he said, had been perverted into an institution of compulsion and torture. Instead of leading the tempted brother to trust j in God's mercy, he was ordered to perform acts of penance, I whereby nominally to give satisfaction to God, but in reality I to minister to the ambition and insatiable avarice of the ( Roman see, CmSIS OF SECESSION. 169 From all these abuses and perversions Luther seeks to liberate the sacraments, and restore them in their purity to Christians. Nevertheless, he takes care to insist on the fact that it is not the mere external ceremony, the act of the priest in administering, and the visible partaking of the receiver, that make the latter a sharer in the promised grace and blessedness. This, he says, depends upon a hearty faith in the Divine promise. He who believes enjoys the benefit of the sacrament, even though its outward administration be denied him. The mediaeval Church ordained four other sacraments, namely, confirmation, marriage, consecration of priests, and extreme unction. But Luther refuses to acknowledge any of these as a sacrament. Marriage, he says, in its sacramental aspect, was not an institution of the New Testament, nor was it connected with any especial promise of grace. It was but a holy moral ordinance of daily life, existing since the begin- ning of the world, and among those who were not Christians as well as those who were. At the same time he takes the opportunity to protest against those human regulations with which even this ordinance had been invaded by the Romish Church, especially against the arbitrary obstacles to marriage she had created. Even these were made a source of revenue to her, by the granting of dispensations. For the other three sacraments there was no especial promise. In the Epistle of St. James (v. 14), where it speaks of anointing the sick with oil, the allusion is not to extreme unction to the dying, but to the exercise of that wonderful Apostolic gift of healing the sick through the power of faith and prayer. With regard to the consecration of priests, Luther repeats the principles laid down in his Address to the Nobility. Ordination consists simply of this, that out of a community, all of whom are priests, one is chosen for the particular work of administer! God's word. If, as in consecration, the hand is laid upon him, this is a human custom and not instituted by the Lord Him- self. But in truth, says Luther, the outrageous tyranny of the clergy, v^ith their priestly bodily anointing, their tonsure, and their dress, would arrogate a higher position than other Christians anointed with the Spirit; these are counted almost as unworthy as dogs to belong to the Church. And most seriously he warns a man not to strive for that outward anoint- ing, unless he is earnestly intent on the true service of the sts r ire I I70 THE BREACH WITH ROME. gospel, and has disclaimed all pretension to become, by conse- cration, better than lay Christians. In conclusion, Luther declares : he hears that Papal ex- communication is prepared for him, to force him to recant. In that case this little treatise shall form part of his recantation. After that he will soon publish the rest, the like of which has never been seen or heard by the Romish see. In the beginning of October, probably on the 6th of that month, the book was issued. Luther had heard some ten days before that Eck had actually arrived with the bull. He had already caused it to be posted publicly at Meissen on 21st Sep- tember. Early in October he sent a copy of it also to the University of Wittenberg. THE BULL OF EXCOMMUNICATLON. 171 CHAPTER VIII. THE BULL OF EXCOMMUNICATION, AND LUTHER'S REPLY. At Rome, the bull, now newly arrived in Germany, had been published as early as i6th June. It had been considered, when at length, under the pressure of the influences described above, the subject was taken up in earnest, very carefully in the Papal consistory. The jurists there were of opinion that Luther should be cited once more, but their views did not prevail. As for the negotiations, conducted through Miltitz, for an examination of Luther before the Archbishop of Treves, no heed was now paid to the affair. The bull begins with the words, "Arise, O Lord, and avenge Thy cause". It proceeds to invoke St. Peter, St. Paul, the whole body of the saints, and the Church. A wild boar had broken into the vineyard of the Lord, a wild beast was there seeking to devour, etc. Of the heresy against which it was directed, the Pope, as he states, had additional reason to com- plain, since the Germans, among whom it had broken out, had always been regarded by him with such tender affection : he gives them to understand that they owed the Empire to the Romish Church. F"orty-one propositions from Luther's writ- ings are then rejected and condemned as heretical, or at least scandalous and corrupting, and his works collectively are sentenced to be burnt. As to Luther himself, the Pope calls God to witness that he has neglected no means of fatherly love to bring him into the right way. Even now he is ready to follow towards him the example of Divine mercy which wills not the death of a sinner, but that he should be converted and live; and so once more he calls upon him to repent, in which case he will receive him graciously like the prodigal son. Sixty days are given him to recant. But if he and his adherents # 172 THE BREACH WITH ROME. will not repent, they are to be regarded as obstinate heretics and withered branches of the vine of Christ, and must be pun- ished according to law. No doubt the punishment of burning was meant ; the bull in fact expressly condemns the proposition "of Luther which denSuncesThe burning^STheretics"? All flns was called tlTen at RomT, and has been called even latterly by the Papal party, " the tone rather of fatherly sorrow than of penal severity". The means by which the bull had been brought about, made it fitting that Eck himself should be commissioned with its circulation throughout Germany, and especially with its publication in Saxony. More than this, he received the unheard-of permission to denounce any of the adherents of Luther at his pleasure, when he published the bull. Accordingly, Eck had the bull publicly posted up in Sep- tember at Meissen, Merseburg, and Brandenburg. He was charged, moreover, by a Papal brief, in the event of Luther's refusing to submit, to call upon the temporal power to punish the heretic. But at Leipzig, where the magistrate, by order of Duke George, had to present him with a goblet full of money, he was so hustled in the streets by his indignant opponents, that he was forced to take refuge in the Convent of St. Paul, and hastened to pursue his journey by night, whilst the city officials rode about the neighbourhood with the bull. A number of Wittenberg students, adds Miltitz, made their appearance also at Leipzig, who "behaved in a good-for-nothing way towards him ". At Wittenberg, where the publication of the bull rested with the university, the latter notified its arrival to the Elector, and objected for various reasons to publish it, alleging, in particular, that Eck, its sender, was not furnished with proper authority from the Pope. Luther now for the first time felt himself, as he wrote to Spalatin, really free, being at length convinced that the Popedom was Antichrist and the seat of Satan. He was not at all discouraged by a letter sent at this time by Erasmus from Holland to Wittenberg, saying that no hopes could be placed in the Emperor Charles, as he was in the hands of the Mendicant Friars. As for the bull, so extraordinary were its contents, that he wished to consider it a forgery. Still the promise which Luther had given to his Augustinian brethren, only a few weeks before, under pressure from Miltitz, remained as yet unfulfilled. Nor did Miltitz himself wish the THE BULL OF EXCOMMUNICATION. 173 threads of the web then spun to slip from his fingers. Even at this hour, with the consent and at the wish of the Elector, an interview had been arranged between Miltitz and Luther at the Castle of Lichtenberg (now Lichtenburg, in the district of Torgau), where the monks of St. Antony were then housed. Just as Miltitz, as we have seen, had thought to be able to avert the bull by getting Luther to write a letter to the Pope, so now he promised the Elector still to conciliate the Pope by that means. Only the letter was to be dated back to the time, before the publication of the bull, when Luther first gave his consent to write it. Its substance was to be as then agreed upon; Luther, as Miltitz expressed it, was to " eulogise the Pope personally in a manner agreeable to him," and at the same time submit to him an historical statement of what he had done. Luther consented to publish a letter in these terms, in Latin and German, under date of 6th September, and immediately gave effect to his promise. It is hardly conceivable how Miltitz could still have nur- tured such a hope. Neither his wish to ingratiate himself with the Elector Frederick, and to checkmate the plans of Eck whom he detested, nor his personal vanity and flippancy of character, are sufficient to account for it. He must have learnt from his own previous personal intercourse with the Pope, and his experiences of the Papal court, that Leo did not take up Church questions and controversies so gravely and so seriously as not to remain fully open all the time to influences and considerations of other kinds, and that around him were parties and influential personages, arrayed in mutual hostility and rivalry. He must have been strangely ignorant of the state of things at Rome. But as to Luther and his cause there was no longer any hesitation in that quarter. In what sense Luther himself was willing to comply with the demand of Miltitz, the contents of his letter suffice to show. He makes it clear that nothing was further from his intention than to appease the angry Pontiff by any dexterous artifices or concealments. The assurance required from him, that he had no wish to attack the Pope personally, he construes in its literal terms, apart altogether from the official character and acts of Leo. And in fact against his personal character and conduct he had never said a word. But he takes this oppor- tunity, at the same time, of speaking to him plainly, as a Christian is bound to do to his fellow-Christian ; of repeating i 174 TIfE BREACH WITH ROME. to him, face to face, the severest charges yet made by him against the Romish chair ; of excusing Leo's own conduct in this chair simply and solely on the ground that he regarded him as a victim of the monstrous corruption which surrounded him, and of warning him once more against it as a brother. He tells him to his face that he himself, the Holy Father, must acknowledge that the Papal see was more wicked and shameful than any Sodom, Gomorrah, or Babylon ; that God's wrath had fallen upon it without ceasing ; that Rome, which had once been the gate of heaven, was now an open jaw of hell. Most earnestly he warns Leo against his flatterers, — the "ear-ticklers" who would make him a God. He assures him that he wishes him all that is good, and therefore he wishes that he should not be devoured by these jaws of hell, but on the contrary, should be freed from this godless idolatry of parasites, and be placed in a position where he would be able to live on some smaller ecclesiastical preferment, or on his own patrimony. As for the historical retrospect which Miltitz wanted, and which Luther briefly appends to this letter, all that the latter says in vindication of himself is, that it was not his own fault, but that of his enemies, who had driven him further and further onward, that " no small part of the un- christian doings at Rome had been dragged to light ''. Luther sent with this letter, as a present to the Pope, a pamphlet entitled On the Liberty of a Christian Man. This is no controversial treatise intended for the great struggle of churchmen and theologians, but a tract to minister to "simple men''. For their benefit he wished to describe compendiously the "sum of a Christian life"; to deal thoroughly with the question, "What was a Christian ? and how he was to use the liberty which Christ had won and given to him ''. He premises as an axiom that a Christian is a free lord over all things, and subject to nobody. He considers, first of all, the new, inner, spiritual man, and asks what makes him a good and free Christian. Nothing external, he says, can make him either good or free. It does not profit the soul if the body puts on sacred vestments, or fasts, or prays with the lips. To make the soul live, and be good and free, there is nothing else in heaven or on earth but the Holy Scriptures, in other words, God's Word of comfort by His dear Son Jesus Christ, through Whom our sins are forgiven us. In this THE BULL OF EXCOMMUNICATION. 175 Word the soul has perfect joy, happiness, peace, Hght, and all good things in abundance. And to obtain this, nothing more Fig. 23. — Title-page, slightly reduced, of the original Tract On the Liberty of a Christian Man. The Saxon swords are represented above, and the arms of Wittenberg below. is required of the soul than what is told us in the Scriptures, namely, to give itself to Jesus with firm faith and to trust 176 THE BREACH WITH ROME. joyfully in Him. At first, no doubt, God's command must terrify a man, seeing that it must be fulfilled, or man con- demned ; but when once he has been brought thereby to recognise his own worthlessness, then comes God's promise and the gospel, and says, Have faith in Christ, in Whom I promise thee all grace; believe in Him, and thou hast Him. Aright faith so blends the soul with God's word that the virtues of the latter become her own, as the iron becomes glowing' hot from its union with the fire. And the soul becomes joined to Christ as a bride to the bridegroom ; her wedding-ring is faith. All that Christ, the rich and noble bridegroom possesses. He makes His bride's ; all that she has, He takes unto Himself. He takes upon Himself her sins, so that they are swallowed up in Him and in His unconquerable righteousness. Thus the Christian is exalted above all things, and becomes a lord ; for nothing can injure his salvation ; everything must be subject to him and help towards his salvation ; it is a spiritual king- dom. And thus all Christians are priests ; they can all approach God through Christ, and pray for others. "Who can comprehend the honour and dignity of a Christian? Through his kingship he has power over all things, through Y^ his priesthood he has power over God, for God does what he desires and prays for." But the Christian, as Luther states in his second axiom, is not only this new inner man. He has another will in his flesh, which would make him captive to sin. Accordingly, he dare not be idle, but must work hard to drive out evil lusts and mortify his body. He lives, moreover, among other men on earth, and must labour together with them. And as Christ, though Himself full of the Kingdom of God, for our sake stripped Himself of His power and ministered as a servant, so should we Christians, to whom God through Christ has given the Kingdom of all goodness and blessedness, and therewith all that is sufficient to satisfy us, do freely and cheerfully for our heavenljr Father whatever pleases Him, and do unto our neighbours as Christ has done for us. In particu- lar, we must not despise the weakness and weak faith of our neighbour, nor vex him with the use of our liberty, but rather minister with all we have to his improvement. Thus the Christian, who is a free lord and master, becomes a useful servant of all and subject to all. But he does these works, not that he may become thereby good and blessed in the' sight THE BULL OF EXCOMMUNICATION. 177 of God ; he is already blessed through his faith, and what he does now he does freely and gratuitously. Luther thus sums up in conclusion : " A Christian lives not in himself, but in Christ and in his neighbour; in Christ through faith, in his neighbour through love. Through faith he rises above himself in God, from God he descends again below himself through love ; and yet remains always in God and in godlike love." This tract was a remarkable pendant to Luther's remark- able letter to the Pope. His Holiness, so he wrote to him in his dedication, might taste from its contents what kind of occupation the author would rather, and might with more profit, be engaged in, if only the godless Papal flatterers did not hinder him. And in fact the Pope could plainly see from it how Luther lived and laboured, with his inmost being, in these profound but simple ideas of Christian truth, and how he was inwardly compelled and delighted to represent them in their noble simplicity. The whole tone and tenor of this dedication, so tranquil, fervent, and tender, shows further what profound peace reigned in the soul of this vehement champion of the faith, and what happiness the excommunicated heretic found in his God. Next to Luther's Address to the Germa n No bility and his Babylonian 'Ca^vity, tKT5~tract is one of the most importalTfcbntributions of his pen to the cause of the Reformation. It is" clear from its pages that when Luther wrotg^s letter, at the request of Miltitz, to the Pope, he had no thought of making peace with the Papacy, or of even a moment's truce in the campaign. The bull of excommunication he met in the manner in- timated to Spalatin from the first. He launched a short tract against it. On the new Bull and Falsehoods of Eck, treating it as Eck's forgery. This he followed up with another tract in German and Latin, Against the Bull of Antichrist. He was resolved to unmask the blindness and wickedness of the Roman evil-doers. He saw partly his own real doctrines perverted, partly the Christian and Scriptural truth that his doctrines contained, stigmatised as heresy and condemned. He declared that if the Pope did not retract and condemn this bull, no one would doubt that he was the enemy of God and the disturber of Christianity. He then solemnly renewed, on 17th November, the appeal to a Council, which he had made two years before. But how was his attitude changed since then ! He, the accused and condemned heretic,' now himself proclaims con- 178 THE BREACH WITH ROME. demnation and ruin to his enemy, the antichristian power that seeks to domineer the world. Nor is it only from a future Council, and one constituted as the previous great assemblies of the Church, that he expects and demands protection for himself and the Christian truth ; again and again he calls upon the Christian laity to assist him. Thus in his appeal now published, he invites the Emperor Charles, the Electors and Princes of the Empire, the counts, barons, and nobles, the town councils, and all Christian authorities throughout Ger- many, to support him and his appeal, that so the true Christian belief and the freedom of a Council might be saved. Similarly, in the Latin edition of his tract against the bull, he calls upon the Emperor Charles, on Christian kings and princes and all who believe in Christ, together with all Christian bishops and learned doctors, to resist the iniquities of the Popedom. In his German version he defends himself against the charge of stirring up the laity against the Pope and priesthood ; but he asks if, indeed, the laity will be reconciled, or the Pope excused, by the command to burn the truth. The Pope himself, he says, and his bishops, priests, and monks, are wrestling to their own downfall, through this iniquitous bull, and want to bring upon themselves the hatred of the laity. "What wonder were it, should princes, nobles, and laymen beat them on the head, and hunt them out of the country ? " Hutten now followed with a stormy demand for a general rising of Germany against the tyranny of Rome, whose hirelings and emissaries were to be chased away by main force. When two Papal legates, Aleander and Caraccioli, appeared on the Rhine to execute the bull and work upon the Emperor in person, he was anxious to strike a blow at them on his own account, little good as, on calm reflection, it was evident could have come of it. Luther, on hearing of it, could not refrain remarking in a letter to Spalatin, " If only he had caught them ! " Luther however persisted in repeating to himself and his friends the warning of the Psalmist, " Put not your trust in princes, nor in any child of man, for there is no help in them", Nay, when Spalatin, who had gone with the Elector to the Emperor, told him how little was to be hoped for from the latter, he expressed to him his joy at finding that he too had learned the same lesson. God, he said, would never have entrusted simple fishermen with the Gospel, if it had needed THE BULL OF EXCOMMUNICATLON. 179 worldh- potentates to propagate it. It was to the Last Day. that he looked with full confidence for the overthrow of Anti- U Christ. Arid, indeed, hisjdea that Antichrjst had long reigned \t" at Rome was connected in his mind with the belief that the , Last Day was close at hand. Of this, as he wrote to Spalatin, he was convinced, and for many strong reasons. And in fact the Emperor Charles, before leaving the Nether- lands, on his journey to Aix-la-Chapelle to be crowned, had alread}' been induced by Aleander to take his first step against Luther. He had consented to the execution of the sentence in the bull, condemning Luther's works to be burnt, and had issued orders to that effect throughout the Netherlands. They were burnt in public at Louvain, Cologne, and Mayence. At Cologne this was done while he was staying there. It was in this town that the two legates approached the Elector Frederick with the demand to have the same done in his territory, and to execute due punishment on the heretic him- self, or at least to keep him close prisoner, or deliver him over to the Pope. Frederick, however, refused, saying that Luther must first be heard by impartial judges. Erasmus also, who was then staying at Cologne, expressed himself to the same effect, in an opinion obtained from him by Frederick through Spalatin. At an interview with the Elector he said to him, " Luther has committed two great faults ; he has touched the Pope on his crown and the monks on their bellies ". The Archbishop of Mayence, Cardinal Albert, received directions from the Pope to take more decisive and energetic steps against Hutten as well. The burning of Luther's books at Mayence was effected without hindrance, though Hutten was able to inform Luther that, according to the account received from a friend, Aleander narrowly escaped stoning, and the multitude were all the more inflamed in favour of Luther. The legates in triumph proceeded to carry out their mission elsewhere. Luther, however, lost no time in following up their execu- tion of the bull with his reply. On loth December he posted a public announcement that the next morning, at nine o'clock, the antichristian decretals, that is, the Papal law-books, would be burnt, and he invited all the Wittenberg students to attend. He chose for this purpose a spot in front of the Elster Gate, to the east of the town, near the Augustinian convent. A multi- tude poured forth to the scene. With Luther appeared a i8o THE BREACH WITH ROME. number of other doctors and masters, and among them Melancthon and Carlstadt. After one of the masters of arts had built up a pile, Luther laid the decretals upon it, and the former applied the fire. Luther then threw the Papal bull into the flames, with the words, " Because thou hast vexed the Holy One of the Lord,^ let the everlasting fire consume thee". Whilst Luther with the other teachers returned to the town, some hundreds of students remained upon the scene, and sang a Te Deum, and a Dirge for the decretals. After the ten o'clock, meal, some of the young students, grotesquely attired, drove through the town in a large carriage, with a banner emblazoned with a bull four yards in length, amidst the blowing of brass trumpets and other absurdities. They collected from all quarters a mass of Scholastic and Papal writings, and especially those of Eck, and hastened with them and the bull, to the pile, whiqh their companions had meanwhile kept alight. Another Te Deum was then sung, with a requiem, and the hymn, "0 du armer Judas ". Luther at his lecture the next day told his hearers with great earnestness and emotion what he had done. The Papal chair, he said, would yet have to be burnt. Unless with all their hearts they abjured the Kingdom of the Pope, they could not obtain salvation. He next announced and justified his act in a short treatise entitled, Why the Books of the Pope and his disciples were burnt by Dr: Marti Ji Luther. "I, Martin Luther," he says, " doctor of Hoi}' Scripture, an Augustinian of Wittenberg, make known hereby to every one, that by my wish, advice, and act, on Monday after St. Nicholas' day, in the year 1520, the books of the Pope of Rome, and of some of his disciples, were burnt. If any one wonders, as I fully expect they will, and ask for what reason and by whose command I did it, let this be his answer." Luther considers it his bounden duty, as a baptised Christian, a sworn doctor of Holy Scripture, and a daily preacher, to root out, on account of his office, all un- christian doctrines. The example of others, on whom the same duty devolved, but who shrank from doing as he did, would not deter him. " I should not," he says, " be excused ' It is obvious that he refers to Christ, who is spoken of in Scripture as the Holy One of God (St. Marie i. 24, Acts ii. 27), not, as ignorance and maUce have suggested, to himself. THE BULL OP EXCOMMUNICATION. i8i in my own sight ; of that my conscience is assured, and my spirit, by God's grace, has been roused to the necessary courage." He then proceeds to cite from the law-books thirty erroneous doctrines in glorification of the Papacy, which de- served to be burnt. The sum total of this Canon law was as follows: " The Pope is a God on earth, above all things, heavenly and earthl}', spiritual and temporal, and everything is his, since no one durst say, What doest thou ? " This, says Luther, is the abomination of desolation (St. Matt. xxiv. 15), or, in other words, Antichrist (2 Thess. ii. 4). Simultaneously with this, he set out in a longer and exhaustive work the " ground and reason " of all his own articles which had been condemned by the bull. He takes his stand upon God's word in Scripture against the dogmas of the earthly God; — upon the revelation by God Himself, which to every one who studies it deeply and with devotion, will lighten his understanding, and make clear its substance and meaning. What though, as he is reminded, he is only a solitary, humble man, he is sure of this, that God's Word is with him. To Staupitz, who felt faint-hearted and desponding about the bull, Luther wrote, saying that, when burning it, he trembled at first and prayed ; but now he felt more rejoiced than at any other act in all his life. He now released himself \ finallyfrom the restraints of those monastic rules wfth "which, r\ as we havp-rpmarketj-before, he had always tormented himself, besides p erform ing the higher duties of his caTfing. He was \ freed now, as fie wrote to HTs' friend Lange, liiy the authority I of the bull, from the commands of his Order and of the Pope, being now an excommunicated man. Of this he was glad ; he retained merely the garb and lodging of a monk : he had more than enough of real duties to perform with his daily lectures and sermons, with his constant writings, educational, edifying and polemical, and with his letters, discourses, and the assistance he was able to give his brethren. By this bold act, Luther consummated his final rupture l-V with the Papal system, which for centuries had dominated the Christian world, and had identified itself with Christianity. The news of it must also have made the fire which his words had kindled throughout Germany, blaze out in all its violence. He saw now, as he wrote to Staupitz, a storm raging, such as only the Last Day could allay; so fiercely were passions aroused on both sides. J] 182 THE BREACH WITH ROME. Germany was then, in fact, in a state of excitement and tension more critical than at any other period of her history. Side by side with Luther stood Hutten, in the forefront of the battle with Rome. The bull he published with sarcastic com- ments : the burning of Luther's works of devotion he de- nounced in Latin and German verses. Eberlin von Giinzburg, who shortly after began to wield his pen as a popular writer on reform, called these two men " two chosen messengers of God". A German Litany, which appeared early in 1521, im- plored God's grace and help for Martin Luther, the unshaken pillar of the Christian faith, and for the brave German knight Ulrich Hutten, his Pylades. Hutten also wrote now in German for the German people, both in prose and verse. During his stay with Sickingen in the winter at his Castle of Ebernburg, he read to him Luther's works, which roused in this powerful warrior an active sym- pathy with the doctrines of the Reformation, and stirred up projects in his mind, of what his own strong arm could accomplish for the good cause. Pamphlets, both anonymous and pseudonymous, were circulated in increasing numbers among the people. They took the form chiefly of dialogues, in which laymen, in a simple Christian spirit, and with their natural understanding, complain of the needs of Christendom, ask questions and are enlightened. The outward evils of the Papal system are put clearly before the people : — the scandals among the priesthood and in the convents, the iniquities of the Romish courtiers and creatures of the Pope, who pandered with rnenial sub- servience to the magnates at Rome, in order to fatten on German benefices, and reap their harvest of taxes and extor- tions of every kind. The simple Word of God, with its sublime evangelical truths, must be freed from the sophistries woven round it by man, and be made accessible to all with- out distinction. Luther is represented as its foremost champion, and a true man of the people, whose testimony penetrated to the heart. His portrait, as painted by Cranach, was circulated together with his small tracts. In later editions the Holy Ghost appears in the form of a dove hovering above his head.; his enemies spread the calumny that Luther intended this emblem to represent himself. Satirical pictures also were used as weapons on both sides in this contest. Cranach pourtrayed the meek and suffering THE BULL OF EXCOiMiMUNTCATION. 183 Saviour on one side, and on the other the arrogant Roman Fig. 24. — Title-page of Luther's '1 ract Un the Amwer 0} the Goat at Leipzig, slightly reduced. Antichrist, in the twenty-six woodcuts of his Passion of Christ and Antichrist ■ Luther added short texts to these pictures. i84 THE BREACH WITH ROME. ,, Luther's enemies now began, on their side, to write in German and for the people. The most talented among them, , as regards vigorous, popular German and coarse satire, was the p Franciscan Thomas Murner ; but his theology seemed to Luther so weak that he only favoured him once with a brief allusion. He entered now into a longer literary duel with the Dresden theologian Emser, who had challenged him after the disputation at Leipzig, and who now published a work Against the Un- christian Address of Martin Luther to the German Nobility. Luther replied with a tract. To the Goat at Leipzig, Emser with another, To the Bull at Wittenberg, Luther with another, On the Answer of the Goat at Leipzig, and Emser with a third, On the furious Answer of the Bull at Wittenberg. Luther, whose reply to Emser's original work had been directed to the first sheets that appeared, met the work, when published in its complete form, with his Answer to the over-Christian, over-priestly, over-artful Book of the Goat Emser. Emser followed up with a QHadritplica, to which Luther rejoined with another treatise entitled A Refutation by Doctor Luther, of Emser's error, extorted by the most learned priest of God H. Emser. When later, during Luther's residence at the Wart- burg, Emser published a reply, Luther let him have the last word. Nothing new was contributed to the great struggle by this interchange of polemics. The most^ffective point rriade by r Emser and the other defenders orthe old'Church system was the • j old chargeThatXuther, one man, presumed to oppose the whole fjof Christendom as hitherto constituted, and by the overthrow M of all foundatiohs and authorities of the Church, to bring un- i belief, distraction, and disturbance upon Church and State. Thus Emser says once in German doggrel, that Luther imagined that— t What Church and Fathers teach was nought ; None lived but Luther ; — so he thought. In threatening Luther with the consequences of his heresy, he never failed to hold up Huss as a bugbear. In Germany, as Emser complains, there was already "such quarrelling, noise, and uproar, that not a district, town, village, or house was free from partisans, and one man was against another". Aleander wrote to Rome, saying that everywhere exasperation and excitement prevailed, and the Papal bull was laughed, at. Among the adherents of the old Church system THE BULL OF EXCOMMUNICATION. 185 one heard rumours of strange and terrible import. A letter, written shortly after the burning of the bull, gave out that Luther reckoned on thirty-five thousand Bohemians, and as many Saxons and other North Germans, who were ready, like the Goths and Vandals of old, to march on Italy and Rome. But it was evident, even at this stage, that from rancorous words to energetic and self-sacrificing action was a long step to take. Even in central Germany the bull was executed without any disturbance breaking out ; and that in the bishoprics of Meissen and Merseburg, which were adjacent to Wittenberg. Pirkheimer / and Spengler at Nuremberg, whose names Eck had included inu|^ the bull, now bowed to the authority of the Pope, represented ' though it was by their personal enemy. Hutten, who saw his hopes in the Emperor's brother deceived, and believed his own liberty and even his life was menaced by the Papal bull, burned with impatient ardour to strike a blow. He was anxious also to see whether a resort to force, after his own meaning of the term, would meet with any support from the Elector Frederick. He ventured even, when speaking of Sickingen's lofty mission, to refer to the precedent of Ziska, the powerful champion of the Hussites, who had once been the terror and abomination of the Germans. He, a member of the proud Equestrian order, was willing now to join hands with the towns and the burghers to do battle with Rome for the liberty of Germany. But, passionate as were his words, it was by no means clear what particular end under present circum- stances he sought to achieve by means of arms. Sickingen, who had grasped the situation in a practical spirit, advised him to moderate his impatience, and sought, for his own part, to keep on good terms with the Emperor, in whom Hutten accord- ingly renewed his hopes. Each, in short, had overrated the influence which Sickingen really possessed with the Emperor. In this posture of affairs, Luther reverted with increased conviction to his original opinion, that the future must be left with God alone, without trusting to the help of man. Hutten himself had written to him, during the Diet of Worms, as fol- lows: "I will fight manfully with you for Christ; but our counsels differ in this respect, that mine are human, while you, more perfect than I am, trust solely in those of God". And when Hutten seemed really bent on taking the sword, Luther declared to him and to others, with all decision of purpose : " I would not have man fight with force and bloodshed for the 1 86 THE BREACH WITH ROME. Gospel. By the Word has the world been subdued, by the Word has the Church been preserved, by the Word will she be restored. As Antichrist has begun without a blow, so without a blow will Antichrist be crushed by the Word." Even against the Romish hirelings among the German clergy, he would have no acts of violence committed, such as were committed in Bohemia. He had not laboured with the German nobility to have such men restrained by the sword, but by advice and command. He was only afraid that their own rage would not allow of peaceful means to check them, but would bring misery and disaster upon their heads. His expectation — not indeed ungrounded — of the approaching / end of the world, to which, as we have seen, he alluded in a letter to Spalatin on i6th January, 1521, Luther now announced more fully in a book, written in answer to an attack by the Romish / ' theologian Ambrosius Catharinus. He based his opinion on the prophecies of the Old and New Testament, on which Christian men and Christian communities, sore pressed in the battle with the powers of darkness, had been wont ere then to rely, in the sure hope of the approaching victory of God. Luther referred in particular to the vision of Daniel (chap, viii.), where he states that after the four great Kingdoms of the World, the last of which Luther takes to be the Roman Empire, a bold and crafty ruler should rise up, and " by his policy should cause craft to prosper in his hand, and should stand up against the Prince of princes, but should be broken without hand ". He saw this vision ful- filled in the Popedom ; which must, therefore, be destroyed "without hand," or outward force. St. Paul, in his view, said the same in the passage in which (aThess. ii.) he foreshadowed long before the Roman Antichrist. That " man of sin " who set himself up as God in the temple of God, "the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming "- So, said Luther, the Pope and his kingdom would not be destroyed by the laity, but would be reserved for a heavier punishment until the coming of Christ. He must fall, as he had raised himself, not "with the hand," but with the spirit of Satan. The Spirit 'must kill the spirit; the truth must reveal deceit. Luther, as we shall see, had all his life held firmly to this , belief that the end was near. As his glowing zeal pictured the loftiest images and contrasts to his mind, so also this assurance of victory was already before his eyes. In his hope of the near THE BULL OF EXCOMMUNLCATION. 187 completion of the earthly history of Christianity and mankind, he became the instrument of carving out a new grand chapter in its career. The announcement of the retractation required from Luther by the bull, was to have been sent to Rome within 120 days. Luther had given his answer. The Pope declared that the time of grace had expired; and on the 3rd of January Leo X. finally pronounced the ban against Luther and his followers, and an interdict on the places where they were harboured. THE BREACH WITH ROME. CHAPTER IX. THE DIET OF WORMS. If we consider the powerful influences then at work to further the ecclesiastical movement in Germany, it seems reasonable to suppose that they would succeed in accomplishing its ends through the power of the Word alone, without any such blood- shed and political convulsions as were feared ; and that Germany, therefore, though vexed with spiritual tempests — the "tumult and uproar" whose outburst Luther already discerned — must inevitably rid herself of the forms and fetters of Romish Churchdom, by the sheer force of her new religious convictions. And, indeed, even in the short interval since Luther had commenced, and only with slow steps had advanced further in the contest, a success had been attained which no one at the beginning could have ventured to expect, or even hope for. Frederick the Wise, the Nestor among the great German Princes of the Empire, had plainly freed himself inwardly from those fetters, and though, as yet, he did not feel himself called upon to express his sentiments by decisive action, his conduct, nevertheless, could not fail to make an impression on those about him. The nobility and burgher class, among whom the new doctrines had made most progress, were, politically speaking, powerfully represented at the Diets. The most important of the spiritual lords, the Archbishop of Magdeburg and Mayence, who had most cause to resent Luther's onslaught on indulgences, had hitherto adopted a cautious and expectant attitude, which left him free to join at some future time a national revolt against his Romish sovereign. The Diets, indeed, had hitherto submitted to their old ecclesi-, astical grievances without any fear of the wrath or scolding of the Pope. But, as soon as the conviction prevailed among the Estates, that the pretensions of the Roman see had no THE DIET OF WORMS. 189 eternal, Divine foundation, they could take in hand at once, on their own account, the reformation of the Church. As for the episcopacy, in particular, Luther had never desired, as his Address to the Nobility sufficiently showed, to interfere with or disturb it in any way, provided only the bishops would feed their flocks according to God's Word. An independent Ger- man episcopate would then have been well able to undertake the reforms necessary in the system of worship. Luther himself, as we shall see, wished and continued to wish that those reforms should be as few and simple as possible. In the various German States which afterwards became Protestant, the work of reform was in fact accomplished, with- f ^ out any serious agitation, by the Princes themselves, in concert ' with their Estates ; and in the free towns by the magistrates and representatives of the burghers, notwithstanding the fact f > that its opponents were supported by the majority of the empire and by the Emperor himself, who was a staunch adherent of the Romish system. How much easier, in com-/ , parison, must the work of evangelical reformation have been,' had it been resolved on by the power of the empire itself, in accord with the overwhelming voice of the whole nation. Reference was made, and in significant terms, to the savage and cruel war of the Hussites. But no one could deny to Luther's teaching a clearness, a religious depth, and a freedom from fanaticism, peculiar to itself, and utterly wanting in the preaching of the followers of Huss. Again, the wild Hussite wars, which were still fresh in the sorrowful memory of the Germans, had in the first instance been provoked by the use of force, on the part of the Church, against the Bohemians. When Germany revolted, Rome found no such means of force at her command. It might fairly be questioned, if the thought were worth pursuing, whether Luther at that time had sufficient ground for looking for the triumph of his cause, not indeed to the power of the Word and the influences then active in his favour, but to the day of the Lord, which he believed was near. It is true that in such great crises of history as this, the final issue never depends alone on the character and conduct of particular personages, however eminent they may be. In this antichristian system of the Papacy, Luther saw Satanic powers at work, which blinded the human heart, and might igo THE BREACH WITH ROME. indeed succeed, by dint of suffering and oppression, in over- coming for the moment the Word of God, but which. could never finally extirpate or extinguish it. And we Protestants must confess that not only did a great mass of the German people remain bound by the spell of tradition, but that even to honest and independent-minded adherents of the old system, the interests of religion and morality might in reality have seemed to be seriously endangered by the new teaching and by the breach with the past. But never did the most momentous issue in the fortunes of the German nation and Church rest so entirely with one man as they did now with the German Emperor. Everything depended on this, whether he, as head of the empire, should take the great work in hand, or should fling his authority and might into the opposite scale. Charles had been welcomed in Germany as one whose youthful heart seemed likely to respond to the newly awakened life and aspirations ; as the son of an old German princely family, who by his election as Emperor had won a triumph over the foreign king Francis, supported though the latter was by the Pope. Rumour now alleged that he was in the hands of the Mendicant Friars : the Franciscan Glapio was his con- fessor and influential adviser, the very man who had instigated the burning of Luther's works. He was, however, by no means so dependent on those about him as might have been supposed. His counsellors, in the general interests of his government, pursued an indepen- dent line of policy ; and Charles himself, even in these his youthful days, knew to assert his independence as a monarch and display his cleverness as a statesman. But a German he was not, in spite of his grandfather Maximilian ; he had not even an ordinary knowledge of the German language. First and foremost, he was King of Spain and Naples ; in his Spanish kingdom he retained, even after his accession to the imperial dignity, the chief basis of his power. His religious training and education had fairiiliarised him only with the strict orthodoxy of the Church and his duties in respect to her traditional ordinances. To these his conscience also constrained him to adhere. He never showed, any inclination to investigate the opposite opinions of his German subjects, at least with any independent or critical exercise of judgment. A strict regard to his rights and duties as a sovereign was his sole guide, next to his religious THE DIET OF WORMS. 191 principles, in dictating his conduct towards the Church. In Spain some reforms were being then introduced, based Progenies DiwM. oyiNTvs sic carolvs iixe.| lMPERn