THE CONSERmnVEi 
 
 of MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 GEORGE M. STEPHENSON 
 

 JAN 7 1922 ^^ 
 
 /i 
 
 
 ^CAi ^ 
 
 BR 325 .S73 1921 
 Stephenson, George Malcolm, 
 
 1883-1958. 
 The conservative character 
 
The Conservative 
 Character of 
 Martin Luther 
 
 / Bv 
 GEORGE M. STEPHENSON, Ph.D. 
 
 JAN 7 192? 
 
 PHILADELPHIA, PA. 
 THE UNITED LUTHERAN PUBLICATION HOUSE 
 
COPYRIGHT, 192 1, BY 
 
 THE BOARD OF PUBLICATION OF 
 
 THE UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH IN AMERICA 
 
TO 
 MY WIFE 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The purpose of this book is to set forth 
 within the compass of a few pages the more 
 permanent elements in the work of Martin 
 Luther. An effort has been made to single 
 out in a Ufe crowded with great events and 
 minor incidents the conservative thread run- 
 ning through it all. If the attempt has been 
 in a measure successful, the reader will find 
 here portrayed a man, who at every critical 
 moment, fixed his mind on the one purpose of 
 restoring the true faith without an abrupt 
 break with the past. The reader may form 
 his own conclusions as to the principles for 
 which the reformer contended; relative to 
 their conservative nature he must be bound 
 by the testimony of history. 
 
 It would be superfluous to list the many 
 works of research which have been consulted 
 by the author: they may be found in the ex- 
 cellent bibliographies published separately or 
 in the standard biographies and histories. 
 The author desires to record his gratitude to 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 his former teacher, Professor Ephraim Emer- 
 ton, whose well-balanced, scholarly lectures 
 have stimulated a deep interest in the history 
 of the Church and her great leaders. He also 
 acknowledges his indebtedness to the late 
 Doctor T. E. Schmauk and Doctor W. L. 
 Hunton for helpful suggestions and kindly 
 criticism. 
 
 George M. Stephenson. 
 
 Minneapolis, Minnesota. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 I. Formative Years 9 
 
 II. The Catholic Reformer 22 
 
 III. The Break with Rome 43 
 
 IV. The Radicals at Wittenberg 64 
 
 V. The Peasants' Revolt 84 
 
 VI. The Marburg Colloquy 103 
 
 VII. The Augsburg Confession 125 
 
The Conservative Character 
 of Martin Luther 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Formative Years 
 
 ^ Martin Luther was born into an age 
 which yearned for a reformation. The 
 Church of Christ, from an organization which 
 had Hfted Europe out of pagan darkness, had 
 become a monstrous theocracy, a great sal- 
 vation machine which befogged the minds of 
 men and obscured the way of salvation. 
 Great puritanical movements, such as the 
 Albigenses and the Waldenses, had been 
 crushed out with ruthless thoroughness; and 
 the prophets of a new age, John Wiclif in 
 England, John Huss in Bohemia, and Jerome 
 Savonarola in Italy, had thundered in vain 
 against corruption in high places. 
 
 The man who was destined to revolution- 
 9 
 
10 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 ize society, to defy popes and emperors, and 
 to give to the world a new faith was born in 
 the little Saxon village of Eisleben on the 
 tenth day of November, 1483. In his veins 
 flowed the blood of stern, frugal, hardwork- 
 ing peasants, who brought up their son under 
 a strict discipline. He was taught to regard 
 his parents and his superiors with fearful and 
 superstitious reverence. He must pray to 
 the saints to intercede for him against the 
 righteous judgments of a terrible and cruel 
 God. Christ's vicar on earth, the pope, and 
 his lieutenants, the priests, must be regarded 
 with reverent awe. The doctrines of the 
 Church were so firmly impressed on his 
 young, plastic mind that never in his whole 
 life did he waver in his belief in the redeem- 
 ing influence of Christianity. In spite of a 
 restless mind and years filled with honors, 
 triumphs, trials, and discouragements, he 
 carried to the day of his death the influence 
 of his simple, pious parents. 
 
 Luther's father was a practical, hard- 
 headed man, whose education — such as it 
 was — had been acquired in the harsh school 
 of experience. Self-made man though he 
 
FORMATIVE YEARS U 
 
 was, he knew something of the value of an 
 academic training and wished to spare his 
 son the misfortune of going through life with 
 his own meagre learning and limited horizon. 
 No doubt the boy's mental alertness and in- 
 dustry confirmed him in his determination 
 to make the scholar's life possible for him. 
 
 If we may believe Luther's own words 
 spoken in after years, the years of study in 
 the village school were anything but pleas- 
 ant. His teachers were brutal and exacting, 
 and their methods crude and uninspiring. 
 Beset by harsh taskmasters at home and at 
 school, and surrounded by the superstition of 
 a primitive community, little wonder that 
 the ripe scholar declared that the schools of 
 his boyhood were "hell and purgatory." 
 
 When Luther left the home of his parents 
 at the age of thirteen to attend school at 
 Magdeburg, Eisenach, and the University of 
 Erfurt successively, he did not graduate from 
 Medieval influence. He was constantly re- 
 minded of the Church at these places by the 
 large number of convents and monasteries 
 that surrounded him. At the old and fam- 
 ous University of Erfurt, where he enrolled 
 
12 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 at the age of seventeen, he came under the 
 influence of the Occamist, or Nominalist, 
 school of philosophy, which he absorbed so 
 thoroughly that, in spite of his repudiation of 
 its theology, he never entirely shook it off. 
 His practical and logical mind was not at- 
 tracted by the more speculative and theoret- 
 ical studies, but moved rather in the groove 
 of those subjects which sharpen the intellect 
 by logical analysis. His strong, clear intel- 
 lect was a force to be reckoned with, as his 
 opponents who entered the forensic lists with 
 him were some day to learn. 
 
 It was Luther's intention while a student 
 at the university to gratify the wish of his 
 father by entering the legal profession; and 
 for a few months after he had completed his 
 work for the degrees of bachelor of arts and 
 of master he studied law. The measure of 
 his success as a jurist can only be conjec- 
 tured, for his aptitude for theology and his 
 religious nature shunted him into another 
 sphere. At the age of twenty-two he de- 
 cided to become an Augustinian monk. 
 
 Of all the institutions of the Middle Ages 
 none is more characteristic than the monastic 
 
FORMATIVE YEARS 13 
 
 system. The very fact that Luther entered 
 a monastery against the wishes of his father, 
 whatever the circumstances may have been, 
 shows the cast of his mind. With the pros- 
 pect of a career along juristic Hnes and the 
 constant encouragement of his father, cer- 
 tainly the young man was not driven to the 
 step for financial reasons. The Medieval 
 man in him urged him to follow in the foot- 
 steps of the saints. We may be certain that 
 the young student chose the religious life 
 with the solemn conviction which the theo- 
 logian terms the "inner call." Having once 
 made up his mind to surrender, he did so 
 without reservation. With the true spirit of 
 a monk he performed the harsh, menial tasks 
 assigned to him without a murmur. "If 
 ever a monk gained heaven by his monkery," 
 he said, " I must have done so." 
 
 Although he confesses that he got little 
 spiritual consolation out of his three years' 
 stay in the Erfurt monastery, it was not 
 without important results: his studies were 
 not neglected. It was here that he made his 
 acquaintance with the Bible, although he 
 had scanned some of its pages in the univer- 
 
14 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 sity library. Encouraged in the study of the 
 Sacred Book by John Staupitz, the vicar of 
 the German province of the Augustinians, it 
 is said that he became so familiar with its 
 contents that he was able to show his brother 
 friars the exact spot where every quotation 
 was to be found. It can scarcely be doubted 
 that even before he left the walls of the mon- 
 astery the conviction had dawned upon him 
 that the Scriptures had not played enough 
 part in the life of the people. Regarded in 
 the light of his later veneration of the Bible, 
 it must have been the only ray of hope in the 
 long hours when he wrestled with himself and 
 the doubts about the efficacy of the monastic 
 life to work salvation. It has been said that 
 Luther reformed Germany because he had to 
 reform himself; but twelve years of inward 
 strife and varied experience dragged along 
 before the master-key which he had found in 
 the monastery opened the gates of peace. 
 
 Luther's ability and achievements as a 
 scholar gained for him the confidence of the 
 vicar, who was also the dean of the faculty 
 of theology at the newly founded University 
 of Wittenberg. It was through Staupitz 
 
FORMATIVE YEARS 15 
 
 that in the autumn of 1508 he began his work 
 as a teacher in that university. In a short 
 time he made a place for himself in the teach- 
 ing profession. Students flocked to his lec- 
 tures. His very presence was inspiring. The 
 brilHant deep-set eyes, ever ready to smile on 
 a friend and to flash fire at his opponents, 
 left an ineffable impression on those with 
 whom he came in contact. With prophetic 
 insight one of his colleagues remarked that 
 this monk would some day overthrow the 
 teaching at all the universities. 
 
 The succeeding ten years of Luther's life 
 present him in the combined role of monk, 
 priest, scholar, and teacher; and his career 
 bears all the earmarks of a sane, conserva- 
 tive, earnest young man, with a thirst for 
 knowledge and a desire to get right with the 
 world. In fact, as Professor Harnack says, 
 "in Luther's development down to the year 
 1517, there was an entire absence of all dra- 
 matic and romantic elements." He shows 
 himself to have been a man of poise and de- 
 liberation, who regarded with much thought 
 the consequences of his successive steps. 
 
 In the autumn of 1511, after his return 
 
16 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 from the Erfurt monastery, where he had 
 been teaching for a time, he was commis- 
 sioned by the vicar to make a journey to 
 Rome in the interest of his order. Return- 
 ing to Wittenberg the following year to re- 
 sume his duties as teacher, he was in October 
 given the doctorate of philosophy by the uni- 
 versity. In addition to his other activities 
 in 1515 he burdened himself still further by 
 shouldering the duties attendant upon the 
 office of district vicar of the Augustinian or- 
 der, a field which greatly widened the scope 
 of his influence, added a vast amount of 
 practical experience, and brought him in con- 
 tact with all sorts and conditions of men. 
 His frequent absence from the university on 
 administrative business was a healthy cor- 
 rective to his academic life ; while growing in 
 mental stature, he increased in wisdom. 
 
 Several years before he fastened his ninety- 
 five theses upon the church door at Witten- 
 berg the cardinal doctrine of Luther's theol- 
 ogy began to take form: the seed of justifica- 
 tion by faith was in his heart, but as late as 
 the time of his journey to Rome it had not 
 begun to germinate. When he visited that 
 
FORMATIVE YEARS 17 
 
 hotbed of iniquity he was a true son of 
 Rome. At the sight of the city he pros- 
 trated himself and cried: "Hail, holy Rome!" 
 In the spirit of the Medieval pilgrim he vis- 
 ited the shrines and sought to draw on the 
 heavenly treasury for the forgiveness of his 
 sins. But he returned to Wittenberg a dis- 
 illusioned man, although his faith in the 
 Church was not shaken. "I was a foolish 
 pilgrim," he says, "and believed all I was 
 told." The fact that Luther for the next 
 six years lived an active life without having 
 his conduct questioned, gaining the con- 
 fidence of his associates and that of the Saxon 
 government, speaks volumes for his self-re- 
 straint and conservatism. For he was pass- 
 ing through a terrible personal crisis, a strug- 
 gle which might well have caused the very 
 stones of Wittenberg to cry out. But he 
 kept his experiences to himself, and it was 
 not until self-respect allowed him to be silent 
 no longer that he publicly declared the solu- 
 tion of the awful problem of human sinful- 
 ness. 
 
 Luther was not an abstract theologian. 
 He was an eminently practical scholar, who 
 
18 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 studied the Church fathers and the Bible 
 with a practical purpose. Finding little or 
 no relief for his restless soul in the mechanics 
 of salvation furnished by the Church, he 
 read and pondered with his mind fixed on sin 
 and redemption. He re-discovered the old 
 faith of Paul in the New Testament, the 
 faith that the Church confessed daily but 
 failed to comprehend. 
 
 The keynote of Paul's Gospel, and indeed 
 of the whole New Testament, is that all ex- 
 ternal observance of the law is worthless un- 
 less it is based upon the obedience of the 
 heart. The law is a schoolmaster to bring a 
 man unto Christ, that he might be justified. 
 Salvation comes by faith, which is a gift of 
 God, and not by works. It is God which 
 imparts freely and without price the will and 
 the strength to do his good pleasure. No 
 man is justified by the law in the sight of 
 God: for the just live by faith. Paul found 
 the explanation of sin within him in his 
 fleshly nature. "For the good which I would 
 I do not: but the evil which I would not, 
 that I practise. But if what I would not, 
 that I do, it is no more I that do it, but sin 
 
FORMATIVE YEARS 19 
 
 which dwelleth in me. I find then the law 
 that, to me who would do good, evil is pres- 
 ent. For I delight in the law of God after 
 the inward man : but I see a different law in 
 my members, warring against the law of my 
 mind, and bringing me into captivity under 
 the law of sin which is in my members." 
 Now, since there is no way for the nature of 
 man of itself to overcome evil, how is Christ 
 to effect deliverance? The Apostle's answer 
 is that through faith whereby a man identi- 
 fies himself with Christ, he becomes a new 
 creature, so that it is no longer he that lives, 
 but Christ that lives in him. Or, as Luther 
 explained it in one of his treatises, " 'Good 
 works do not make a good man, but a good 
 man does good works; evil works do not 
 make a wicked man, but a wicked man does 
 evil works' ; so that it is always necessary 
 that the 'substance' or person itself be good 
 before there can be any good works, and 
 that good works follow and proceed from the 
 good person, as Christ also says, 'A corrupt 
 tree does not bring forth good fruit, a good 
 tree does not bring forth evil fruit. "... 
 Illustrations of the same truth can be seen in 
 
20 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 all trades. A good or bad house does not 
 make a good or bad builder, but a good or 
 bad builder makes a bad or good house." 
 
 Next to the Bible Luther read the writings 
 of Augustine and John Tauler. Tauler was 
 a mystic who dwelt on the grace of God, 
 while Augustine was accepted by the Church 
 as the greatest of all Church writers. The 
 effect of Augustine's theology was to em- 
 phasize the evil side of man's nature and the 
 impossibility of human effort to overcome it. 
 He accepts substantially the Pauline solu- 
 tion of the problem, that through faith man 
 receives the grace of God, entirely apart from 
 works. The Church recognized both the 
 grace of God and the will of man as a means 
 of salvation, but it did not assert which of 
 the two was of greater importance. 
 
 As a result of his study of the Bible and 
 Augustine and his observations as a monk 
 and priest, it gradually dawned on Luther 
 that the Church had obscured the way of sal- 
 vation by building up a great engine of salva- 
 tion, which was a dangerous instrument in 
 the hands of unscrupulous and corrupt men. 
 Luther's great contribution to the welfare of 
 
FORMATIVE YEARS 21 
 
 man was in his absolute doctrine of justifica- 
 tion by faith, and by faith alone. But he 
 would have resented with great indignation 
 the assertion that he had invented a new 
 means of salvation; quite the contrary, he 
 claimed that he was merely bringing back 
 the primitive teaching of the Church based 
 on the doctrine of St. Paul. It is apparent 
 that Luther was no propagandist. He lays 
 no claim to originality, but he does maintain 
 that he is restoring Christianity to its original 
 state after it had been led astray by the 
 Romanists. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 The Catholic Reformer 
 
 How soon Luther would have announced 
 to Europe his new faith had not the preach- 
 ing of John Tetzel, a Dominican friar, driven 
 him to it is, of course, impossible to tell. 
 Even then it "was only after much hesita- 
 tion and deep distress of mind that he felt 
 compelled to interfere." His protest against 
 what was a recognized scandal was mild and 
 conciliatory, and not the spectacular appeal 
 of a man who was nursing a personal griev- 
 ance or possessed of an itch for notoriety. 
 Throughout his entire campaign against the 
 abuses and errors of the Middle Ages he 
 singled out the doctrines and practices which 
 sink down to the level of the common people 
 and did not waste ammunition on the fine- 
 spun theories of theologians, which the com- 
 mon man neither cared to understand nor 
 could understand. Luther's heart beat for 
 humanity, and he instinctively enlisted in its 
 
 22 
 
THE CATHOLIC REFORMER 23 
 
 behalf when he deemed the hour for action 
 had struck. But Luther was not the type of 
 "reformer" who conjures up grievances in 
 order to give vent to his wrath. He was 
 constructive and conservative. There was 
 violence in his writings and speeches, but 
 that was because his temperate utterances 
 met with violence. His fighting spirit once 
 aroused, he was liable to go too far and pur- 
 sue his opponents with spiteful and coarse 
 invective. 
 
 The turning-point in Luther's life came in 
 his thirty-fourth year; up to that time his 
 development was gradual and rational. The 
 event which brought Luther out was the 
 preaching of indulgences by John Tetzel, 
 whose name would most probably have been 
 lost to posterity but for the fame of his op- 
 ponent. 
 
 Indulgences had come to be a part of the 
 sacramental system of the Church. The 
 sacrament of penance involved several steps. 
 The penitent man must be genuinely sorry 
 for his sins as a condition preliminary to his 
 confession before the priest, who as a minis- 
 ter of Jesus Christ is clothed with the au- 
 
24 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 thority of the Church to absolve him from 
 his sins. As evidence of a contrite spirit the 
 penitent man ought to perform some peni- 
 tential act, as, for instance, a kindly deed or 
 a pilgrimage to the shrine of a saint. Essen- 
 tially the man makes a sacrifice. If at the 
 death of a man the measure of his sacrifice 
 is not full, his soul cannot enter into the 
 heavenly reward, but passes into an inter- 
 mediate state, where it must undergo a proc- 
 ess of purification. The soul remains in 
 purgatory until the unsatisfied sins have met 
 their proper punishment. According to the 
 doctrine of the Church, however, the Church 
 could remit the temporal punishment by 
 drawing upon the "heavenly treasury" con- 
 sisting of the merits of Christ and the saints. 
 This doctrine, so far as it affected the living, 
 became a part of canon law about the middle 
 of the fourteenth century. The popes on 
 their own authority had extended the doc- 
 trine to the souls in purgatory. In the 
 meantime the practice had grown up of sub- 
 stituting a money payment in lieu of the per- 
 formance of an act of charity or of a pilgrim- 
 age on the part of a penitent person. In 
 
THE CATHOLIC REFORMER 25 
 
 Other words, he is granted an indulgence. 
 The purchase of an indulgence costs him 
 something, just as almsgiving entails a pe- 
 cuniary sacrifice. The interpreters of canon 
 law were specific on the point that an indul- 
 gence was merely a remission of the temporal 
 punishment due to sin, but not of the actual 
 guilt of sin. It never became the doctrine 
 of the Church that the forgiveness of sins 
 accompanies the purchase of an indulgence. 
 Moreover, indulgences were applicable to 
 •the remission of temporal punishment in pur- 
 gatory, which appealed strongly to the in- 
 stinct of those whose dear ones had passed 
 away to avail themselves of the privilege to 
 effect their release from their pains. 
 
 Whatever may be said for the "theory" of 
 indulgences, it cannot be denied that they 
 opened the doors for misrepresentation and 
 corruption. In the hands of unscrupulous 
 preachers they were a great danger to a clear 
 understanding of the way of salvation: it 
 was so easy to place the emphasis on the 
 wrong step. It is also a well-established 
 fact that the uneducated and unregenerate 
 man, deliberately or unconsciously, turned 
 
26 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 them to uses entirely contrary to their ori- 
 ginal purpose. 
 
 The indulgence which brought Tetzel in 
 proximity to Martin Luther's parish was 
 proclaimed by Pope Leo X in order to get 
 money for the building of the new Church of 
 St. Peter. The circumstances of the affair 
 were scandalous. There never was a more 
 bare-faced money-making scheme. In the 
 words of a scholarly Catholic historian, "it 
 was a transaction which certainly was un- 
 worthy of so sacred a cause as that of an 
 Indulgence." 
 
 The circumstances were as follows: The 
 pope had entrusted the proclamation of the 
 indulgence in the dioceses of Mayence and 
 Magdeburg to Archbishop Albert of Brand- 
 enburg, a prince of the house of Hohenzol- 
 lern. This ambitious and worldly-minded 
 man had succeeded in having himself chosen 
 to three of the most important Church of- 
 fices in the empire, notwithstanding the fact 
 that a plurality of benefices was in violation 
 of canon law and that the youth of the prince 
 forbade him to hold even one of these posi- 
 tions. In order to secure the confirmation 
 
THE CATHOLIC REFORMER 27 
 
 of the pope to these offices, he was compelled 
 to make a very heavy payment to the Roman 
 court, a sum which he borrowed from the 
 banking house of the Fuggers in Augsburg. 
 When the pope declared the indulgence for 
 the benefit of St. Peter's Church, he made 
 over to the archbishop one-half of the total 
 proceeds of the indulgence in his dioceses, 
 with which he could liquidate his debt to the 
 Fuggers. 
 
 The methods employed in the sale of the 
 indulgences may be explained in the words 
 of a Jesuit historian, Hartmann Grisar: 
 "Luther learned many discreditable particu- 
 lars concerning the arrangement arrived at 
 between Rome and Mayence for the preach- 
 ing of the Indulgence and the use to which 
 half of the spoils was to be applied. What 
 provoked Luther and many others was not 
 only the abuses which prevailed in the use of 
 Indulgences, about which there was much 
 grumbling, and the constantly recurring col- 
 lections which were a burden, both to the 
 rulers and their people, but also the tales 
 current regarding the behavior of the monk 
 acting as Indulgence-preacher. Tetzel did 
 
28 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 not exactly shine as an example of virtue, al- 
 though the charges against his earlier life are 
 as baseless as the reproach of gross ignorance. 
 He was, as impartial historians have estab- 
 lished, forward and audacious and given to 
 exaggeration. In his sermons, mainly owing 
 to his popular style of address, he erred by 
 using expressions only to be styled as 
 strained and ill-considered. He even em- 
 ployed phrases of a repulsive nature in his 
 attempts to extol the power of the Indul- 
 gence preached by him. In addition to this, 
 in explaining how the Indulgence might be 
 applied to the departed, he made his own the 
 wrong, exaggerated and quite unauthorized 
 opinions of certain isolated theologians, put- 
 ting them on an equal footing with the real 
 teaching of the Church. Such private opin- 
 ions, it is true, had also found their way into 
 some of the official instructions on Indul- 
 gences. At any rate, Tetzel, with misplaced 
 zeal, mingled what was true with what was 
 false or uncertain. The great concourse of 
 people who gathered to hear the celebrated 
 preacher also led to many disorders, more 
 particularly when, as was the case at Anna- 
 
THE CATHOLIC REFORMER 29 
 
 berg, the occasion of the yearly fair was 
 turned to account in order to publish the 
 Indulgence." 
 
 Although the elector of Saxony cherished 
 no heretical opinions on the subject of indul- 
 gences, he refused to allow Tetzel and his 
 followers to invade his dominions for the pur- 
 pose of raising money to pay the debts of the 
 archbishop. He could not forbid his sub- 
 jects, however, from journeying to Jiiterbog, 
 a small town across the border, not far from 
 Wittenberg, in order to avail themselves of 
 the opportunity to purchase indulgences 
 when Tetzel, in the spring of 1517, appeared 
 there. Although Luther, as we have seen, 
 was not ignorant of the character of Tetzel's 
 campaign, he refrained from attacking him 
 until the consequences affected him directly 
 as a Christian priest entrusted with the care 
 of souls. Luther as a preacher minced no 
 words in condemning the sins of individuals 
 and the wickedness of his community; and 
 when he was confronted with worldly mem- 
 bers of his parish in the possession of Tetzel's 
 indulgences, his sense of decency was aroused. 
 He felt bound to accept the challenge. The 
 
30 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 remarkable thing is that his fiery nature was 
 held in restraint so long, A less cautious 
 and conservative man would have rebelled 
 at once; while a man afraid to jeopardize 
 his future would have shrunk from any ac- 
 tion. On the thirty- first of October, 1517, 
 he spoke to the whole world, although his in- 
 tentions were far more modest. Instead of 
 thundering from the house-tops, he invited 
 theologians to discuss with him ninety-five 
 propositions, which he formulated in the 
 Latin language. 
 
 Although a number of the theses do strike 
 at the root of papal practices, the protest was 
 couched in conciliatory language, and there 
 were other theses designed to conciliate the 
 pope. While it is unquestionably true that 
 the document as a whole has an evangelical 
 tone and is a protest against a mathematical 
 reckoning of things spiritual, it is highly 
 significant that the word faith does not 
 appear, and that there is no appeal to the 
 authority of Scripture. In other words, the 
 theses, rather than enunciating a new doc- 
 trine, protest against putting the old doc- 
 
THE CATHOLIC REFORMER 31 
 
 trines in a false light, as was done by Tetzel 
 and his followers. 
 
 Repentance, says Luther, is the natural 
 attitude of a Christian man throughout his 
 whole life. Inward repentance, however, 
 shows itself outwardly in divers mortifica- 
 tions of the flesh ; that is, if there is true re- 
 pentance, it will reveal itself. Moreover, 
 true contrition seeks and loves penalties, 
 rather than liberal pardons which relax pen- 
 alties and cause them to be hated. Chris- 
 tians are to be taught that the buying of 
 pardons is not to be compared in any way to 
 works of mercy; that he who gives to the 
 poor or lends to the needy does a better work 
 than buying pardons; that love grows by 
 works of love; that he who sees a man in 
 need, and passes him by, and gives his money 
 for pardons, purchases the indignation of 
 God; that the pope's pardons are useful, if 
 they do not put their trust in them. 
 
 Luther does not expressly deny the doc- 
 trine of purgatory, but he would greatly re- 
 strict the power of the pope over souls in 
 purgatory. Preachers of indulgences are in 
 error who say that by the pope's indulgences 
 
32 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 a man is freed from every penalty of sin, be- 
 cause if it is at all possible to grant to any 
 one the remission of all penalties, it is certain 
 that this remission can be granted only to 
 the most perfect, that is, to the very fewest. 
 Therefore, the pope can remit only those 
 penalties in purgatory which have been im- 
 posed by himself. Who knows, asks Luther, 
 whether all the souls in purgatory wish to be 
 bought out of it? Alluding to the exag- 
 gerated statements of Tetzel, the assertion 
 that, so soon as the penny jingles into the 
 money-box, the soul flies out of purgatory, is 
 condemned as unwarranted by the doctrine 
 of the Church. On the contrary, it is certain 
 that when the penny jingles into the money- 
 box, gain and avarice can be increased. 
 Every true Christian, whether living or dead, 
 has part in all the blessings of Christ and the 
 Church; and this is granted him by God, 
 even without letters of pardon, although 
 these are not to be despised. 
 
 If indulgences were preached according to 
 the true spirit of the doctrine of the Church, 
 the position of the pope would not be com- 
 
THE CATHOLIC REFORMER S3 
 
 promised nor would the laity propound such 
 embarrassing questions as the following: 
 
 "Why does not the pope empty purgatory, 
 for the sake of holy love and of the dire need 
 of souls that are there, if he redeems an in- 
 finite number of souls for the sake of miser- 
 able money with which to build a Church?" 
 
 "Why does not the pope, whose wealth is 
 to-day greater than the riches of the richest, 
 build just this one Church of St. Peter with 
 his own money, rather than with the money 
 of poor believers?" 
 
 "What greater blessing could come to the 
 Church than if the pope were to do a hundred 
 times a day what he now does once, and be- 
 stow on every believer these remissions and 
 participations?" 
 
 "Since the pope, by his pardons, seeks the 
 salvation of souls rather than money, why 
 does he suspend the indulgences and pardons 
 granted heretofore, since these have equal 
 efficacy?" 
 
 The ninetieth thesis is prophetic in view of 
 the reception accorded the theses and the 
 treatment of their author by the officials of 
 the Church. "To repress these arguments 
 
34 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 and scruples of the laity by force alone, and 
 not to resolve them by giving reasons, is to 
 expose the Church and the pope to the ridi- 
 cule of their enemies, and to make Christians 
 unhappy." 
 
 Taking the theses in the large, there can be 
 no other conclusion than that Luther was 
 fully conscious that he was inviting the anger 
 of a powerful and influential element in the 
 Church, for he was threatening to dry up a 
 very fruitful source of revenue which flowed 
 into the coffers of the Church. But even 
 had he desired it, it is scarcely conceivable 
 that he or any one else could have antici- 
 pated their tremendously far-reaching conse- 
 quences, awakening as they did the latent 
 consciences of high and low, rich and poor, 
 learned and unlearned. His method was to 
 enter a modest dissent, calling on the en- 
 lightened opinion of the age to rally to the 
 defence of truth and decency. In spite of 
 the audience to which they were addressed, 
 the moral earnestness of the popular preacher 
 of righteousness crops out. 
 
 It would be difficult to account for Luth- 
 er's regret at the rapid spread of his theses 
 
THE CATHOLIC REFORMER 35 
 
 if he had not declared that he was not clear 
 in his own mind on certain points raised in 
 them. Not only that, but he repeatedly in- 
 sists that he is a loyal son of the Church and 
 of its head, the pope. He is attempting to 
 clear up a principle which he believes is a 
 part of true Catholic doctrine. If he can 
 prove that that principle has been perverted 
 to the detriment of mankind, he shall insist 
 on a return to its purity. In a letter to the 
 elector of Saxony he agrees to stop writing 
 and promises to confess humbly to the pope 
 that he has been too vehement and that he 
 did not intend to injure the Church. He will 
 go even further: he promises to issue a pam- 
 phlet exhorting the people to cleave to the 
 Roman Church and to be obedient and re- 
 spectful. To Pope Leo, a few weeks later, 
 he writes that he would not hesitate a mo- 
 ment to withdraw his theses, if by so doing 
 he could accomplish the end desired. " But," 
 says he, "my writings have become far too 
 widely known, and taken root in too many 
 hearts — beyond my highest expectations — 
 now to be withdrawn summarily. Nay, our 
 German nation, with its cultured and learned 
 
36 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 men, in the bloom of an intellectual re-awak- 
 ening, understands this question so thor- 
 oughly that, on this account, I must avoid 
 even the appearance of a recantation, much 
 as I honor and esteem the Roman Church in 
 other respects. For such a recantation 
 would only bring it into still worse repute, 
 and make every one speak against it. . . . 
 I also gladly promise to let the question of 
 indulgences drop and be silent, if my oppo- 
 nents restrain their boastful, empty talk." 
 In a letter to his friend Scheurl he rather re- 
 grets the spread of the theses, not that he is 
 unwilling to proclaim the truth, "but be- 
 cause this way of instructing the people is of 
 little avail." Had he foreseen all this he 
 would have left out some points and gone 
 into others more particularly. 
 
 Not even during the Leipsic disputation 
 did Luther, in spite of his humiliating treat- 
 ment by Eck, who insisted upon uncondi- 
 tional recantation, threaten to withdraw 
 from the old Church. He declared he would 
 enter the debate "with reservation of full 
 submission and obedience to the Holy See." 
 It was only when his distinguished oppo- 
 
THE CATHOLIC REFORMER 37 
 
 nents gave full vent to their wrath, and he 
 saw that there could be no reconciliation, 
 that he declared that henceforth he must 
 proceed in earnest "against the Roman pon- 
 tiff and Romish pride." Certainly in the 
 early years of the controversy Luther's words 
 and attitude are not those of a man nursing 
 a personal grievance and vaunting ambition. 
 He stands for reform, but reform effected 
 through calm and mature deliberation, not 
 by revolution. His agitation is for a return 
 to the original constitution of the Church, 
 the creed of the fathers. He could not fore- 
 see the social and political upheaval that was 
 destined to follow. His desire was to fore- 
 stall any such calamity by removing condi- 
 tions which might occasion an event of such 
 nature. If revision must come, it was better 
 to revise the dogma of the Church by its 
 friends than by its enemies, who would not 
 approach the task with proper reverence. 
 Do not misunderstand his position. It was 
 not the doctrines themselves that Luther 
 would revise, but the perverted practise of 
 them. As he later said, "We contend 
 against and reject the work of the pope, in 
 
38 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 not abiding by those blessings which the 
 Christian Church has inherited from the 
 Apostles." 
 
 It certainly is not to the discredit of 
 Luther that his mind wavered at times, and 
 that he changed his opinions. His oppo- 
 nents unconsciously excited him to search 
 history for proofs of his assertions and to dis- 
 prove those of his adversaries. As his re- 
 search progressed it became clear to him that 
 Holy Scripture and the Nicene Creed were 
 more sacred than the decrees of Roman pon- 
 tiffs. 
 
 The next three years of Luther's life 
 brought him face to face with problems that 
 would have made the stoutest heart quail. 
 His efforts to purify the Church met with no 
 sympathy from the head of the Church. At 
 first the pope belittled him, but Luther could 
 not be jested out of his faith. The imme- 
 diate response which his theses awakened 
 throughout Germany made him a hero; he 
 understood that his cause was the people's 
 cause. This fact, together with the delicate 
 political situation in Germany, and the evi- 
 dent determination of the Elector Frederic of 
 
THE CATHOLIC REFORMER 39 
 
 Saxony to protect Luther, warned the pope 
 that the matter would have to be handled 
 gingerly. The action summoning Luther to 
 Rome to answer for his heretical opinions 
 was reconsidered. Upon the advice of the 
 papal legate in Germany, Cardinal Cajetan, 
 who was in a position to know the hold the 
 Wittenberg professor had on the people, 
 Luther was ordered to appear before that of- 
 ficial at Augsburg. Apparently Cajetan 
 wholly misunderstood the character of the 
 man with whom he was dealing, for he re- 
 sorted to browbeating and insisted on uncon- 
 ditional recantation. In spite of this treat- 
 ment, after the termination of the interview 
 Luther wrote a respectful letter to the cardi- 
 nal, begging pardon for ill-considered words 
 and promising to maintain silence, provided 
 the same rule was imposed on the men who 
 had led him into "this tragic business." He 
 insisted that he desired to remain obedient to 
 the Church, but feared that an unconditional 
 recantation might subject him to the re- 
 proach of not knowing either what he as- 
 serted or what he withdrew. 
 
 Upon the failure of Cajetan to break 
 
40 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 Luther's will, the pope dispatched a special 
 envoy to Germany in the person of Charles 
 von Miltitz. Again Luther promised to 
 make what amends he could, agreeing to let 
 the matter of indulgences drop, provided his 
 opponents refrained from attacking him; to 
 write a humble letter to the pope; and to 
 circulate a paper admonishing the people 
 to follow the Roman Church. In spite of 
 strong provocation to the contrary, it is 
 plain that Luther is seeking to avoid a breach 
 with Rome. 
 
 The logic of events, however, decided 
 otherwise. The break came about by the 
 challenge of John Eck, a professor at the Uni- 
 versity of Ingolstadt in Bavaria, a scholar 
 and celebrated disputant. Considering him- 
 self absolved from his promise of silence by 
 the attacks of Eck, who called him a fanatic 
 Hussite, seditious, insolent, and rash, he ac- 
 cepted his invitation to a debate at Leipsic, 
 to be held in the early summer of 1519. The 
 debate, as is frequently the case, led the dis- 
 putants into a variety of subjects. Luther, 
 as we have seen, came to Leipsic without 
 questioning the papal supremacy, expecting 
 
THE CATHOLIC REFORMER 41 
 
 that the discussion would concern itself with 
 doctrine; but his opponent manoeuvered 
 him into a position where he had to commit 
 himself on the question of the possession of 
 authority. Luther made some rather strong 
 statements about the supremacy of the pope. 
 He did not deny the Roman pontiff a pre- 
 cedence of honor, but pointed to the Greek 
 Church and to the ancient fathers who were 
 not under his sway. He admitted that there 
 is one Church and one head, but that head is 
 Christ. The obvious retort was that this 
 was the doctrine of John Huss, who had been 
 condemned as a heretic by the Council of 
 Constance. Luther was obliged to admit 
 that the council had wrongly condemned 
 some articles taught by Paul, Augustine, and 
 even Christ himself. The opportunity was 
 too good for the adroit Eck to pass over. 
 With all the rhetoric at his command he 
 painted Luther a heretic of the deepest die. 
 When Eck forced Luther to admit pub- 
 licly in self-defense that he was a Hussite, he 
 shifted the point of controversy, and made 
 the man who was fighting to remain within 
 the Church in order to carry on his work of 
 
42 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 renovation withdraw from its fold to seek 
 protection and reform elsewhere. To use a 
 Modern political phrase, Luther was readout 
 of the party. Eck in common with Cajetan 
 and Miltitz failed to convince Luther of his 
 errors; he did, however, open his eyes still 
 further to the magnitude of the obstacles 
 which one by one were rolled in the path of 
 reform. His attacks upon the Church were 
 step by step forced upon him by his oppo- 
 nents. Up to this time Luther's arguments 
 had been largely historical; hereafter they 
 were to become theological also. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 The Break with Rome 
 
 In the year 1520 Luther crossed the Rubi- 
 con: thereafter there could be no turning 
 back. This memorable year saw the pub- 
 lication of "An Address to the Christian 
 Nobility of the German Nation," "The Baby- 
 lonian Captivity of the Church," and "A 
 Treatise on Christian Liberty" and the burn- 
 ing of the papal bull. The great reformer 
 appears to have made up his mind to clear 
 his conscience. The violence of the "Ad- 
 dress" may be explained by the necessity of 
 making a soul-stirring appeal to the people 
 of Germany, in whom now lay his only hope. 
 
 "The time to keep silence has passed and 
 the time to speak is come, as saith Eccle- 
 siastes," writes Luther. "I have followed 
 out our intention and brought together some 
 matters touching the reform of the Christian 
 Estate, to be laid before the Christian Nobil- 
 ity of the German Nation, in the hope that 
 
 43 
 
44 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 God may deign to help his Church through 
 the efforts of the laity, since the clergy, to 
 whom this task more properly belongs, have 
 grown quite indifferent." 
 
 In this, the most important document 
 Luther ever wrote, he addresses himself, 
 neither to the pope nor to a council, but to 
 the lay princes of Germany. It is significant 
 that, while he goes over the heads of the 
 Church officials, he does not go to the ex- 
 treme of appealing to the common people, 
 but to the powers interested in the main- 
 tenance of order. Reform must come from 
 above. There is no effort to awaken the 
 mob spirit. He would make use of the estab- 
 lished institutions of society — government, 
 church, and school — rather than burn them 
 to the ground in order to rear an entirely new 
 system on the ashes of the old. 
 
 In his characteristically practical way 
 Luther puts his finger on the three great ob- 
 stacles to the reform of the Church. 
 
 '*The Romanists, with great adroitness, 
 have built three walls about them, behind 
 which they have hitherto defended them- 
 selves in such wise that no one has been able 
 
THE BREAK WITH ROME 45 
 
 to reform them ; and this has been the cause 
 of terrible corruption throughout all Christ- 
 endom. 
 
 "First, when pressed by the temporal 
 power, they have made decrees and said that 
 the temporal power has no jurisdiction over 
 them, but, on the other hand, that the spirit- 
 ual power is above the temporal power. Sec- 
 ond, when the attempt is made to reprove 
 them out of the Scriptures, they raise the ob- 
 jection that the interpretation of the Scrip- 
 tures belongs to no one except the pope. 
 Third, if threatened with a council, they an- 
 swer with the fable that no one can call a 
 council but the pope. 
 
 "In this wise they have slyly stolen from 
 us our three rods, that they may go unpun- 
 ished, and even have ensconced themselves 
 within the safe stronghold of these three 
 walls, that they may practise all the knavery 
 and wickedness which we now see. Even 
 when they have been compelled to hold a 
 council they have weakened its power in ad- 
 vance by previously binding the princes with 
 an oath to let them remain as they are. 
 Moreover, they have given the pope full au- 
 
46 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 thority over the decisions of the council, so 
 that it is all one whether there are many 
 councils or no councils, — except that they 
 deceive us with puppet-shows and sham- 
 battles. So terribly do they fear for their 
 skin in a really free council!" 
 
 In opposition to the first contention, that 
 the papacy is above the temporal power, 
 Luther maintained that the only distinction 
 between the clergy and the laity is that of 
 function. There is no essential difference 
 between Christians. This is the doctrine of 
 the priesthood of the common man. Ordina- 
 tion means that the assembly representing 
 the Church chooses one to serve the congre- 
 gation, die Gemeine, as Luther's Bible trans- 
 lates it. To make his meaning still clearer, 
 Luther cites a practical example: " If a little 
 group of pious Christian laymen were taken 
 captive and set down in a wilderness, and 
 had among them no priest consecrated by a 
 bishop, and if there in the wilderness they 
 were to agree in choosing one of themselves, 
 married or unmarried, and were to charge 
 him with the office of baptizing, saying mass, 
 absolving and preaching, such a man would 
 
THE BREAK WITH ROME 47 
 
 be as truly a priest as though all the bishops 
 and popes had consecrated him." 
 
 Regarding the second claim, that only the 
 pope can interpret Scripture, Luther denies 
 the right of an ignorant and corrupt pope to 
 interpret the Bible to the detriment of intel- 
 ligent and pious men. This is an appeal to 
 the validity of Christian scholarship. 
 
 The third wall, that no one can call a coun- 
 cil but the pope, will fall of itself when the 
 other two are down. Scripture directs us to 
 correct an erring member. Therefore, when 
 necessity demands, the first man who is able 
 should use his influence to bring about a 
 truly free council. "Thus we read in Acts 
 XV that it was not St. Peter who called the 
 Apostolic Council, but the Apostles and eld- 
 ers. If, then, that right had belonged to St. 
 Peter alone, the council would not have 
 been a Christian council. . . . Even the 
 Council of Nicaea — the most famous of all — - 
 was neither called nor confirmed by the 
 Bishop of Rome, but by the Emperor Con- 
 stantine, and many other emperors after him 
 did the like, yet these councils were the most 
 Christian of all. But if the pope alone had 
 
48 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 the right to call councils, then all these coun- 
 cils must have been heretical." 
 
 With brutal frankness the Address deals 
 with a vast number and variety of problems, 
 in the discussion of which the author reveals a 
 wide knowledge of history, politics, doctrine, 
 and contemporary conditions. Whether cit- 
 ing abuses or proposing reform, he constantly 
 invokes the authority of Scripture. " For all 
 its scathing quality," writes a Lutheran theo- 
 logian, "it is a sane arraignment of those 
 who ' under the holy name of Christ and St. 
 Peter' are responsible for the nation's woes, 
 and the remedies that are proposed are, 
 many of them, practicable as well as reason- 
 able." 
 
 Having demolished the outer fortifica- 
 tions, Luther in the "Babylonian Captivity 
 of the Church" enters the very portals of the 
 Roman Church in order to release mankind 
 from the bondage of the sacramental system. 
 Discussing each of the seven sacraments, he 
 attempts to show how the meaning and ad- 
 ministration of certain sacraments have been 
 perverted, and how the whole system has as- 
 sumed an importance wholly unwarranted 
 
THE BREAK WITH ROME 49 
 
 by Scripture. Totally rejecting confirma- 
 tion, ordination, marriage, and extreme unc- 
 tion from the list of sacraments, he accepts 
 baptism, the Lord's Supper, and penance. 
 A further study of the Bible convinced 
 Luther that he erred in retaining penance be- 
 cause it had not been expressly instituted by 
 the Lord. 
 
 In attacking the most vital spot of Cathol- 
 icism the "Babylonian Captivity" marked a 
 radical doctrinal departure; but Luther was 
 not yet ready to embrace what ultimately 
 became the Lutheran position on the sacra- 
 ments. He was heartily in favor of private 
 confession, even though it could not be 
 proved from Scripture. Indulgences he 
 threw overboard. "Some two years ago I 
 wrote a little book on indulgences, which I 
 now deeply regret having published; for at 
 that time I was still sunk in a mighty super- 
 stitious veneration for the Roman tyranny 
 and held that indulgences should not be alto- 
 gether rejected, seeing they were approved 
 by the common consent of men. . . . 
 Since then, however, ... I have come to 
 see that they are nothing but an imposture of 
 
50 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 the Roman sycophants by which they play 
 havoc with men's faith and fortunes. Would 
 to God I might prevail upon the book-sellers 
 and upon all my readers to burn up the whole 
 of my writings on indulgences and to substi- 
 tute for them this proposition: Indulgences 
 are a knavish trick of the Roman syco- 
 phants." 
 
 The last treatise is the most dignified and 
 calm of the three. "Nothing that Luther 
 has written," says Doctor Lindsay, "more 
 clearly manifests that combination of revolu- 
 tionary daring and wise conservatism which 
 was characteristic of the man." It is per- 
 haps the most beautiful work Luther ever 
 wrote. "A truly religious spirit breathes 
 in these pages," writes a French Catholic. 
 "Provoking polemic is almost entirely 
 avoided. Here one finds again the inspira- 
 tion of the great mystics of the Middle Ages. 
 . . . He is not a true Christian who 
 would venture to disapprove the passages in 
 which Luther speaks so eloquently of the 
 goodness of God, of the gratitude which it 
 should inspire in us, of the spontaneity which 
 
THE BREAK WITH ROME 51 
 
 should mark our obedience, of the desire of 
 imitating Christ which should inspire us." 
 
 With a charming simpHcity — almost para- 
 doxical of the lofty theme — he writes about 
 the Christian faith, which he sums up in two 
 propositions. 
 
 "A Christian man is a perfectly free lord 
 of all, subject to none. 
 
 "A Christian man is a perfectly dutiful 
 servant of all, subject to all." 
 
 Laying it down without qualification that 
 a man is justified by faith alone, he makes a 
 plea for moderation and toleration in the 
 attitude toward the forms and ceremonies of 
 Rome. Such things are permissible, pro- 
 vided they do not obscure their purpose — to 
 bring man into closer relation to God. "Our 
 faith in Christ does not free us from works, 
 but from false opinions concerning works, 
 that is, from the foolish presumption that 
 justification is acquired by works. For 
 faith redeems, corrects and preserves our 
 consciences, so that we know that righteous- 
 ness does not consist in works, although 
 works neither can nor ought to be wanting; 
 first as we cannot do without food and drink 
 
52 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 and all the works of this mortal body, yet 
 our righteousness is not in them, but in faith; 
 and yet those works of the body are not to be 
 despised or neglected on that account. . . 
 
 "Hence, the Christian must take a middle 
 course and face those two classes of men. 
 He will meet first the unyielding, stubborn 
 ceremonialists, who like deaf adders are not 
 willing to hear the truth of liberty, but, hav- 
 ing no faith, boast of, prescribe, and insist 
 upon their ceremonies as means of justifica- 
 tion. . . . These he must resist, do the 
 very opposite and offend them boldly, lest 
 by their impious views they drag many with 
 them into error. In the presence of these 
 men it is good to eat meat, to break the fasts 
 and for the sake of the liberty of faith to do 
 other things which they regard the greatest 
 of sins. . . . The other class of men 
 whom a Christian will meet, are the simple- 
 minded, ignorant men, weak in faith, as the 
 Apostle calls them, who cannot yet grasp the 
 liberty of faith, even if they were willing to 
 do so. These he must take care not to of- 
 fend; he must yield to their weakness until 
 they are more fully instructed. For since 
 
THE BREAK WITH ROME 53 
 
 these do and think as they do, not because 
 they are stubbornly wicked, but only because 
 their faith is weak, the fasts and other things 
 which they think necessary must be observed 
 to avoid giving them offence. For so love 
 demands, which would harm no one, but 
 would serve all men. It is not their fault 
 that they are weak, but their pastors have 
 taken them captive with the snares of their 
 traditions and have wickedly used these tra- 
 ditions as rods with which to beat them. . . 
 "In brief, as wealth is the test of poverty, 
 business the test of faithfulness, honors the 
 test of humility, feasts the test of temper- 
 ance, pleasures the test of chastity, so cere- 
 monies are the test of the righteousness of 
 faith. 'Can a man,' says Solomon, 'take 
 fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be 
 burned?' . . . Hence ceremonies are to 
 be given the same place in the life of a Chris- 
 tian as models and plans have among build- 
 ers and artisans. They are prepared not as 
 permanent structures, but because without 
 them nothing could be built or made. When 
 the structure is completed they are laid aside. 
 You see, they are not despised, rather, they 
 
54 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 are greatly sought after; but what we de- 
 spise is the false estimate of them, since no 
 one holds them to be the real and permanent 
 structure. If any man were so egregiously 
 foolish as to care for nothing all his life long 
 except the most costly, careful and persistent 
 preparation of plans and models, and never 
 to think of the structure itself, and were sat- 
 isfied with his work in producing plans and 
 mere aids to work, and boasted of it, would 
 not all men pity his insanity, and estimate 
 that with what he has wasted something 
 great might have been built?" 
 
 These three products of Luther's pen show 
 strikingly the development of the man's 
 mind. There are successive stages. At 
 some places he pauses to explain that he has 
 advanced a pace in his view, and admits his 
 former errors; and at other points he takes 
 pains to explain the fact that, because he has 
 turned away from certain teachings of the 
 old Church, it does not follow that the whole 
 must be rejected. 
 
 Blind, indeed, the papal party would have 
 been if it had not perceived that the Witten- 
 berg professor was determined to stand by 
 
THE BREAK WITH ROME 55 
 
 the principles so boldly and clearly pro- 
 claimed in his three great works. Ridicule, 
 abuse, and threats proving of no avail, the 
 pope decided to employ the engine of excom- 
 munication. On the fifteenth of June, 1520, 
 the papal bull was published. It condemned 
 forty-one propositions drawn from Luther's 
 writings as "heretical or false, scandalous, 
 offensive to pious ears, insulting, ensnaring 
 and contrary to Catholic truth;" forbade 
 the reading of his books ; threatened with the 
 ban everybody who should support or pro- 
 tect him; prohibited him from preaching; 
 and threatened him with excommunication 
 if he did not repent and recant within sixty 
 days after the publication of the bull in Ger- 
 many. Luther was now in a position where 
 either he had to admit that he was a false 
 prophet who had misled thousands, and 
 abandon those who at great personal risk had 
 stood by him, or bid defiance to his enemies. 
 He remained loyal to his conscience. 
 
 His answer was unmistakable and dra- 
 matic. In order to announce to Europe his 
 contempt for papal decrees, in the presence 
 of a large concourse of people, of whom a con- 
 
56 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 siderable number were Wittenberg students, 
 on December 10th, he committed to the 
 flames the papal bull and the whole canon 
 law. The fire which consumed these docu- 
 ments severed the last fibre of the bonds that 
 had united Martin Luther to the Church of 
 Rome. Henceforth he was to be an irrecon- 
 cilable enemy to "Antichrist." The fearless 
 German was free to go about his constructive 
 work, to erect a new edifice in place of the old 
 one, from whose portals the pope had ban- 
 ished him. But although he has turned his 
 back upon an ancient institution, he goes 
 back to the time antedating its completion 
 for material to be used in the construction of 
 the new one. Wherever possible he models 
 his structure upon the plans of the architects 
 which designed the Medieval Church; but 
 the foundation rests, not upon the rock of St. 
 Peter, but upon faith — faith drawn from 
 Holy Scripture. Luther set about to restore 
 the Church of the fathers. Could he have 
 done so with the aid and co-operation of the 
 pope and bishops, he would have done it; 
 but when they declined, he became con- 
 
THE BREAK WITH ROME 57 
 
 vinced that they were not a necessary part 
 of the Church. 
 
 Luther's life shows that he did not beHeve 
 that man was made for system, but system 
 for man. If a certain system was better for 
 the spiritual growth of one man, let him 
 abide by that system. His whole idea was 
 to reform, not to revolutionize. It is quite 
 probable that he would have remained a 
 loyal son of Rome had he not rebelled at the 
 corruption within the Church. That cor- 
 ruption he did not at first attribute to the 
 system. When he arrived at that stage, he 
 broke with the Church. The break need not 
 have come had not the organization as ad- 
 ministered by the pope and his advisers of 
 the type of Eck been so absolutely inflexible. 
 
 But even after he had taken this momen- 
 tous step and had incurred the undying 
 wrath and hostility of the adherents of Rome 
 he did not, after the fashion of the men of the 
 French Revolution, sweep away all vestiges 
 of the past. *'\Ve are not ashamed of prais- 
 ing whatever good we find in the papal 
 churches," he declares. But antiquity of it- 
 self has no claim, for "then the devil would 
 
58 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 be the most righteous person on earth, since 
 he is now over five thousand years old." 
 "If what has been in use, from of old, is to 
 be changed or abolished, an indubitable 
 proof must be given that it is contrary to 
 God's Word. Otherwise, what is not against 
 us is for us." "It is dangerous and terrible 
 to hear or believe anything contrary to the 
 unanimous testimony, faith, and doctrine of 
 the entire Holy Christian Church, which, for 
 over fifteen hundred years now, it has unan- 
 imously held throughout all the world." 
 Furthermore, "I believe and am sure, that, 
 even under the Papacy, the true Church re- 
 mains." "But we contend against and re- 
 ject the work of the Pope, in not abiding by 
 those blessings which the Christian Church 
 has inherited from the Apostles." 
 
 Luther was a leader, not a voice; he was a 
 wind which shook the reed, not a reed shaken 
 by the wind. He wanted a change, but he 
 was ardent in his opposition to a general 
 wave of change. He was equally powerful 
 in promoting and resisting change. He did 
 not plant many new trees; he cleared away 
 the underbrush of Medievalism. Frequently 
 
THE BREAK WITH ROME 59 
 
 violent and radical in attacking corruption, 
 he proceeded cautiously in altering institu- 
 tions. Sometimes destructively radical, he 
 was always constructively conservative. 
 
 The next stage in Luther's career brought 
 him to the city of Worms, whither he was 
 summoned by the newly elected Emperor 
 Charles V to appear before the imperial diet. 
 A great change had come over Europe in the 
 hundred years intervening since the appear- 
 ance of John Huss before the Council of 
 Constance. It was a most extraordinary 
 thing that Luther, a condemned heretic, was 
 allowed to be heard before the most august 
 assembly in Europe. When he set out for 
 Worms from Wittenberg on the second of 
 April, 1521, it was with the solemn convic- 
 tion that he had been called to defend the 
 cause of God. His journey of twelve days 
 was a triumphal procession. It is a tribute 
 to his sturdy character and the dignity of his 
 cause that the plaudits of the multitude did 
 not turn his head. Weighed down by the 
 awful responsibility, the man who appeared 
 before the emperor was meek and modest. 
 The young emperor, mistaking humility for 
 
60 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 weakness, declared that Luther would never 
 make a heretic of him. 
 
 In the afternoon of April 17th Luther was 
 admitted to the hall. On a table in front of 
 the emperor lay a pile of his books. The 
 only questions he was asked was whether he 
 had written these books and whether he 
 would stand by them or recant. After the 
 titles had been read, Luther, in a low voice, 
 acknowledged his authorship. In the reply 
 to the second question Luther revealed his 
 presence of mind and his deep insight into 
 the principle involved. He had come pre- 
 pared to be questioned on specific points of 
 his doctrines, but he was not prepared to 
 answer off hand a single question which was 
 to decide his fate and probably the whole 
 future of Christendom. His answer, there- 
 fore, was that since the question concerned 
 faith and the salvation of souls and the Di- 
 vine Word, it would be rash and dangerous 
 to say anything without due consideration. 
 Some have taken Luther's request for time 
 for reflection as a sign of weakness. The 
 very opposite is the truth. The fact that he 
 was denied the opportunity to state his 
 
THE BREAK WITH ROME 61 
 
 principles and defend them in debate prob- 
 ably convinced him that his fate was already 
 decided. If the matter was to resolve itself 
 into a struggle, not only against the pope, 
 but against the emperor, his answer must 
 make the issue clean-cut. That very even- 
 ing he wrote to a friend, "With Christ's 
 help, I shall never retract one tittle!" 
 
 On his second appearance before the diet, 
 the following day, Luther was master of him- 
 self. He could not retract all his books, 
 since some of them even his opponents ad- 
 mitted were worthy to be read by Christian 
 people. Neither could he condemn those 
 books against the papacy and popish pro- 
 ceedings without strengthening their tyr- 
 anny. "Under cover of this my recanta- 
 tion, the yoke of its shameless wickedness 
 would become utterly unbearable to the poor 
 miserable people, and it would be thereby 
 established and confirmed all the more if 
 men could say that this had come about by 
 the power and direction of your Imperial 
 Majesty, and of the whole Roman Empire." 
 The third kind of books had been written 
 against individuals who had defended the 
 
62 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 papacy. He admitted that he had trans- 
 gressed the position and character of a Chris- 
 tian by the vehemence of his attacks, but he 
 could not withdraw them without proof of 
 the errors contained in them. 
 
 Enraged by the audacity of the monk who 
 dared to dispute things that had been con- 
 demned by councils, the papal party de- 
 manded an unequivocal answer to the ques- 
 tion: Do you recant those books or not? 
 Luther's answer was the keynote of Protes- 
 tantism. It was noble, convincing, and 
 courageous. 
 
 "Well, then, if your Imperial Majesty re- 
 quires a plain answer, I will give one without 
 horns or teeth! It is this: that I must be 
 convinced either by the testimony of the 
 Scriptures or clear arguments. For I be- 
 lieve things contrary to the Pope and Coun- 
 cils, because it is as clear as day that they 
 have often erred and said things inconsistent 
 with themselves. I am bound by the Scrip- 
 tures which I have quoted ; my conscience is 
 submissive to the Word of God ; therefore I 
 may not, and will not, recant, because to act 
 
THE BREAK WITH ROME 63 
 
 against conscience is unholy and unsafe. So 
 help me God! Amen." 
 
 All further efforts to shake Luther's firm- 
 ness were futile. He feared his conscience 
 more than papal bulls and imperial edicts. 
 He appealed to a higher law — the law of 
 Christ revealed in Scripture. His warfare 
 against the powers which sought to shackle 
 the human mind went on until he wrested 
 from them the key to salvation — the open 
 Bible. 
 
 The triumph of the papal party at the 
 diet of Worms was a foregone conclusion. A 
 treaty was signed between the emperor and 
 the pope, by which they were to make com- 
 mon cause against their enemies, among 
 whom Luther was one. The edict against 
 Luther stigmatized his doctrine as a cesspool 
 of heresies, forbade the printing, selling, and 
 reading of his books, and made him an out- 
 law. After the diet of Worms the world 
 could never be the same. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 The Radicals at Wittenberg 
 
 For almost a year after he left Worms 
 Luther lived in an entirely different world. 
 After four years of uncertainty and strife, 
 thanks to his friends he lived in seclusion at 
 the Wartburg, near Eisenach, where, safe 
 from his enemies, he could rest and recover 
 his health, which had commenced to break 
 down under the strain. 
 
 But Luther was a man of action; he could 
 not be idle. His pen was never more prolific. 
 Besides writing numerous letters, commen- 
 taries on the Bible, and various treatises, he 
 began the translation of the Bible from the 
 original tongues into clear, idiomatic Ger- 
 man, a monumental achievement which 
 alone would entitle him to lasting fame. 
 "With little apparatus, not even consulting 
 previous translations until the first draft was 
 finished," writes Doctor Jacobs, "he worked 
 with such rapidity that within three months 
 
 64 
 
THE RADICALS AT WITTENBERG 65 
 
 the entire New Testament was in idiomatic 
 German that to the present hour is the won- 
 der of all literary critics. His entire life and 
 character are reflected in the style. All his 
 attainments are kept subordinate to the one 
 object of presenting the thoughts of Revela- 
 tion in language that is the simplest and 
 most intelligible to all classes of the people. 
 In giving the Germans their Bible he gave 
 the German language a permanent literary 
 form, and, upon the basis of a common lan- 
 guage replacing the confusion of dialects 
 that had heretofore been current, unified the 
 German people." 
 
 At the Wartburg Luther had nothing to 
 fear from the papal and imperial party, but 
 the conduct of his friends at Wittenberg was 
 most disconcerting. Without the steadying 
 hand of Luther events moved rapidly. The 
 high tension under which the Wittenbergers 
 had lived for several years made them easy 
 prey for fanatics who were versed in the art 
 of popular appeal. Even the man who had 
 stood closest to him, the gentle and scholarly 
 Melanchthon, was swept on by the radical 
 wave. 
 
66 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 Under the leadership of one of Luther's 
 colleagues on the university faculty, Carl- 
 stadt, innovations were begun, which accel- 
 erated into the wildest excesses. Priests, 
 monks, and nuns, declaring themselves no 
 longer bound by their vows, entered the 
 marriage relation. There was a general exo- 
 dus from the monasteries and nunneries. 
 
 Luther's attitude toward the monastic 
 vow is highly characteristic of the man. Far 
 from regarding it as a useless incumbrance to 
 be brushed aside lightly at the call of per- 
 sonal convenience, he carefully weighed the 
 matter in his own mind and applied the test 
 of Scripture. He had no objection to the 
 marriage of priests, but there was a difference 
 between their circumstances and those of 
 the monks. The monk's oath had been 
 taken without compulsion. As his mind 
 traveled farther and farther away from 
 things Romish, however, he became con- 
 vinced that such an oath could not be bind- 
 ing because it was contrary to the Word of 
 God. It was not until June, 1525, — almost 
 eight years after he nailed up his theses, — 
 that he himself married. Luther's respect 
 
THE RADICALS AT WITTENBERG 67 
 
 for law and order instinctively turned him 
 away from tumult. For this reason he could 
 not sanction the methods of the radicals, 
 who forced the monks to leave the cloister 
 against their will. 
 
 Luther understood, what Carlstadt and his 
 followers did not, that the Reformation was 
 on trial. Each step away from Rome must 
 be taken with caution, citing Scripture and 
 invoking clear and cogent reasoning, to pre- 
 vent enemies from taking unfair adv^antage. 
 From the Wartburg he wrote: "How I wish 
 that Carlstadt in attacking sacerdotal celi- 
 bacy would quote more applicable texts. I 
 fear he will excite prejudice against it. 
 It is a noble cause he has taken 
 up, I wish he were more equal to it. . . . 
 For what is more dangerous than to invite 
 so many monks and nuns to marry and to 
 urge it with unconvincing texts of Scripture, 
 by complying with which invitation the con- 
 sciences of the parties may be burdened with 
 an eternal cross worse than they now bear. 
 I wish that celibacy might be left free, as the 
 Gospel requires, but how to add to that 
 principle I know not." 
 
68 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 As a part of the program to do away with 
 the remnants of Romanism, Carlstadt at- 
 tacked the celebration of the mass with such 
 vehemence that churches were invaded, 
 images destroyed, and priests stoned. 
 
 Out of respect for the wishes of the Elector 
 Frederic, his protector, Luther refrained 
 from public appearance in order to combat 
 the woi'k of the fanatics, much as he desired 
 to do so. In December (1521), before the 
 movement was well under way, he made a 
 secret visit to Wittenberg to see with his own 
 eyes how affairs were shaping. After a stay 
 of several days he returned to his retreat con- 
 vinced that the zeal of the leaders would soon 
 burn itself out. Events proved otherwise. 
 With the advent of the Zwickau prophets the 
 fire burned more fiercely and threatened to 
 spread to other communities. 
 
 In the Saxon town of Zwickau, about 
 eighty miles from Wittenberg, a religious 
 movement entirely apart from Lutheranism 
 had developed. The members of this sect, 
 later called the Anabaptists, were well- 
 meaning and sincere, but their doctrines were 
 so revolutionary — probably impractical as 
 
THE RADICALS AT WITTENBERG 69 
 
 taught by their most extreme prophets — 
 that their application involved the entire 
 reconstruction of the existing poHtical, social, 
 and religious order. Intoxicated with the 
 new wine of faith, some of their prophets, by 
 their crude religious exercises and exhorta- 
 tions, brought deserved ridicule upon them- 
 selves and discredit upon their more level- 
 headed brethren. 
 
 The Zwickau prophets claimed they were 
 inspired. They accepted the authority of 
 the Scriptures as the declared will of God, 
 but they professed to have immediate reve- 
 lations from God. The Bible was Luther's 
 sole authority; the more extreme prophets 
 regarded the inspiration of the Spirit of God 
 superior in authority to the written Word. 
 The Anabaptist, therefore, could dispense 
 with outward organization because he stood 
 in direct relation with God. He looked with 
 contempt on the ponderous tomes of dogma 
 and theological lore. Priest, Bible, and 
 Church were unnecessary mediums, because 
 each man was a medium. He rejected infant 
 baptism because to him it was unwarranted 
 by Scripture and unaccompanied by the 
 
70 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 faith of the individual baptized. The Ana- 
 baptist conception of the "Church" was that 
 of a body of behevers who have been regen- 
 erated by the spirit. This is the "puritan- 
 ical" idea of the Church. It follows, of 
 course, that there should be no connection 
 between " Church " and state. "There was, 
 in fact," writes Professor Vedder, "no re- 
 conciling these teachings with those of state 
 churches, set up, as they often were, by un- 
 worthy princes and ungodly town councils — 
 churches in which little or no attempt was 
 made to discriminate between regenerate and 
 unregenerate. These were reasons enough 
 — these were the real reasons — why govern- 
 ments everywhere tried to harry the Ana- 
 baptists out of their lands." 
 
 When the Zwickau prophets came to Witt- 
 enberg, the radicals who were on the ground 
 readily joined them. Wittenberg became a 
 religious and social laboratory. The stu- 
 dents were advised to quit their studies. 
 Learning was unnecessary; the Holy Spirit 
 would enlighten them. Images and pictures 
 in the churches were destroyed. The situa- 
 tion speedily passed beyond the control of 
 
THE RADICALS AT WITTENBERG 71 
 
 the authorities and the conservative ele- 
 ment. A strong man was needed. The 
 town council sent Luther an urgent appeal 
 to return. Without asking the consent of 
 the elector and at the risk of his life, Luther 
 slipped quietly into Wittenberg, March 6, 
 1522, and in a series of eight remarkable ser- 
 mons, marvelous for their sense of propor- 
 tion, he exposed the fallacies of the prophets 
 and brought order out of chaos. 
 
 One of the men who listened to his preach- 
 ing wrote: "Dr. Martin's coming and 
 preaching have given both learned and un- 
 learned among us great joy and gladness. 
 For we poor men who had been vexed and 
 led astray have again been shown by him, 
 with God's help, the way of truth. Daily 
 he incontrovertibly exposes the errors into 
 which we were miserably led by the preach- 
 ers from abroad. It is evident that the 
 Spirit of God is in him and works through 
 him, and I am convinced he has returned to 
 Wittenberg at this time by the special provi- 
 dence of the Almighty." 
 
 It was the irony of fate that Luther, the 
 man who up to this time had used all his 
 
72 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 magnificent force to expose the hollowness of 
 forms and ceremonies, felt called upon to ap- 
 pear as an apologist for them. The very 
 disturbances he had come to denounce were 
 in a sense the consequences of his own teach- 
 ings. But the methods of reform practised 
 by the prophets were destructive of law and 
 order. Luther would reform without de- 
 stroying. In his own words, reform must 
 begin with milk for babes, the pure doctrine 
 of charity and faith, after which may come 
 the strong meat of drastic law. "Compel or 
 force any one with power I will not, for faith 
 must be gentle and unforced. ... I op- 
 posed indulgences and all the papists, but 
 not with force; I only wrote, preached, and 
 used God's Word, and nothing else. . . . 
 Had I wished it, I might have brought Ger- 
 many to civil war. Yes, at Worms I might 
 have started a game which would not have 
 been safe for the Emperor, but it would have 
 been a fool's game. So I did nothing, but 
 only let the Word act." 
 
 In the eight sermons he frankly stated his 
 dislike for many of the ceremonies and cus- 
 toms of the past, but he declared that the 
 
THE RADICALS AT WITTENBERG 73 
 
 Christian life consists neither in refraining 
 from nor engaging in external practices. It is 
 better to retain indifferent things than to of- 
 fend weak consciences by aboHshing them. 
 When the Gospel was everywhere adopted 
 and understood, all things inconsistent there- 
 with would fall of themselves. 
 
 In the first and second sermons he ad- 
 dressed himself to the subject of the cele- 
 bration of the mass. "Thus there are two 
 things: the one, which is the most needful, 
 and which must be done in one way and no 
 other; the other, which is a matter of choice 
 and not of necessity, which may be kept or 
 not, without endangering faith or incurring 
 hell. In both love must deal with our neigh- 
 bor in the same manner as God has dealt 
 with us; it must walk the straight road, 
 straying neither to the left nor to the right. 
 In the things which are 'musts' and are mat- 
 ters of necessity, such as believing in Christ, 
 love nevertheless never uses force or undue 
 constraint. Thus the mass is an evil thing, 
 and God is displeased with it, because it is 
 performed as a sacrifice and work of merit. 
 Therefore it must be abolished. Here there 
 
74 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 is no room for question, just as little as if 
 you should ask whether you should pray to 
 God. Here we are entirely agreed: the pri- 
 vate mass must be abolished, as I have said 
 in my writings. And I heartily wish it 
 would be abolished everywhere and only the 
 evangelical mass for all the people retained. 
 Yet Christian love should not employ harsh- 
 ness here nor force the matter. It should be 
 preached and taught with tongue and pen, 
 that to hold mass in such a manner is sin, but 
 no one should be dragged away from it by 
 force. The matter should be left to God: 
 his word should do the work alone, without 
 our work. Why? Because it is not in my 
 power to fashion the hearts of men as the 
 potter moulds the clay, and to do with them 
 as I please. 
 
 "Now if I should rush in and abolish the 
 mass by force, there are many who would be 
 compelled to consent to it and yet not know 
 their own minds, but say: I do not know if it 
 is right or wrong, I do not know where I 
 stand, I was compelled by force to submit 
 to the majority. And this forcing and com- 
 manding results in mere mockery, an ex- 
 
THE RADICALS AT WITTENBERG 75 
 
 ternal show, a fool's play, man-made ordi- 
 nances, sham-saints and hypocrites. For 
 where the heart is not good, I care nothing 
 at all for the work. We must first win the 
 hearts of the people." 
 
 In the third sermon Luther considers "the 
 things that are not matters of necessity, but 
 are left to our free choice by God, and which 
 we may keep or not; for instance, whether 
 one shall marry or not, or whether monks 
 and nuns shall leave the cloisters." Any 
 priest, monk or nun who cannot restrain the 
 desires of the flesh should marry, and thus 
 relieve the burden of conscience. 
 
 "Thus, dear friends, it is plain enough, and 
 I believe you ought to understand it and not 
 make liberty a law, saying: This priest has 
 taken a wife, therefore all priests must take 
 wives. Not at all. Or this monk or that 
 nun has left the cloister, therefore they must 
 all come out. Not at all. Or this man has 
 broken the images and burnt them, there- 
 fore all images must be burned— not at all, 
 dear brother! And again, this priest has no 
 wife, therefore no priest dare marry. Not 
 at all! . . . God has made it a matter 
 
76 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 of liberty to marry or not to marry, and thou 
 fool undertakest to turn this liberty into a 
 vow against the ordinance of God? There- 
 fore you must leave liberty alone and not 
 make a compulsion out of it; your vow is 
 contrary to God's liberty. 
 
 "But we must come to the images, and 
 concerning them also it is true that they are 
 unnecessary, and we are left free to have 
 them or not, although it would be much bet- 
 ter if we did not have them. I am not 
 partial to them. A great controversy arose 
 on the subject of images between the Roman 
 emperor and the pope; the emperor held 
 that he had the authority to banish the 
 images, but the pope insisted that they 
 should remain, and both were wrong. Much 
 blood was shed, but the pope emerged as 
 victor and the emperor lost. What was it 
 all about? They wished to make a 'must' 
 out of that which is free, and that God can- 
 not tolerate." 
 
 These extracts from the Wittenberg ser- 
 mons will serve to illustrate their lucidity. 
 Proceeding in the same manner in the re- 
 maining addresses, he discussed various 
 
THE RADICALS AT WITTENBERG 77 
 
 Other matters which were agitating the minds 
 of the citizens, counseling moderation and 
 preaching forbearance. 
 
 Luther's daily life measured up to these 
 precepts. For some time after his return to 
 Wittenberg he retained his cowl and lived in 
 the Augustinian monastery. In one of the 
 churches mass was celebrated with all the 
 old Catholic rites, and his friends were not 
 forbidden to attend. 
 
 Luther's attitude towards Roman Catholic 
 ceremonies and doctrines appears to be that 
 of a "liberal"; but really it is conservatism 
 rather than liberalism. It is because of his 
 conservatism that he preaches liberalism. 
 The paradox is misleading without explana- 
 tion. Rather than see the triumph of the 
 doctrines of men like Carlstadt and Zwingli, 
 which go much farther than his own, he pre- 
 fers to adhere to the "faith of the fathers." 
 A violent rupture with Rome would result in 
 even further innovations. Scripture must 
 be the Christian's guide, and in so far as 
 Catholic forms and doctrines adhere to it or 
 do not oppose it, they are safer than those 
 of the extreme reformers. To his dying day 
 
78 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 Luther never forgot the disturbances at Wit- 
 tenberg and Zwickau. 
 
 Although Luther declared that "the 
 Church of Christ is found wherever the Word 
 of God is preached in its purity and the sac- 
 raments are administered according to the 
 Word and institutions of Christ," he insisted 
 on outward organization. His conservative 
 nature would not allow him to subscribe to 
 the Modern liberal doctrine that each man is 
 his own priest. Quite the contrary, the com- 
 mon man needed the guidance and mediation 
 of a priesthood, which must administer the 
 sacraments and look after the spiritual wel- 
 fare of the people. On one phase of the 
 Lord's Supper he was even more conserva- 
 tive than the Romanists. They had al- 
 lowed the sacrament to be administered in 
 private, but Luther condemned the practice 
 because of the bad moral effect it might have 
 upon others. " For," he declared, "through 
 time every one might so take advantage of 
 the permission, that at length the churches 
 would be empty, instead of being the meet- 
 ing-place of all, where they make a public 
 confession of their faith." The early Chris- 
 
THE RADICALS AT WITTENBERG 79 
 
 tians In the Acts set an example by coming 
 together to partake of the sacrament — again 
 appeaHng to the authority of Scripture. 
 "The sacrament and confession should be 
 administered by His professing servants, be- 
 cause Christ says it was instituted in memory 
 of Himself, which is, in St. Paul's words, to 
 show the Lord's death till he come; and at 
 the same time he condemns those who wish 
 to partake of it alone without tarrying for 
 one another. And no one can baptize him- 
 self. For these sacraments belong to the 
 Church, and must not be mixed up with the 
 duties devolving on the head of the house." 
 To Luther the Church is the community of 
 saints because only those are true members 
 who are sanctified in the true faith. Its 
 members are called, enlightened, and sancti- 
 fied through the Holy Spirit. This was the 
 ideal Church; but some sort of Church gov- 
 ernment was necessary. The right of pri- 
 vate judgment in spiritual matters could not 
 be permitted, because there is a norm, fixed 
 and unerring, which every Christian is under 
 obligation to follow. No one ought to be 
 compelled to accept the Gospel, but no one 
 
80 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 ought to be allowed to traduce it. "If any 
 one does so, the magistrate must have him 
 up and admonish him, and hear his reasons 
 for acting as he does. If he can give none, 
 then he must be bound over to silence, so 
 that the seeds of dissension may not be 
 sown." 
 
 Luther believed that compulsory attend- 
 ance at Church services ought to be estab- 
 lished by law. The Church is necessary to 
 the stability of the state and society. The 
 catechism and the decalogue, he declares, 
 teach both civic and domestic duties all per- 
 sons need to know, whether they believe the 
 Gospel or not. It is the duty of the Church 
 to warn and admonish such members as fall 
 into sin and error, and if this proves ineffec- 
 tual, they must be excluded from member- 
 ship. 
 
 The stability of the Church would be en- 
 dangered if preachers disagree, because the 
 people, unable to discriminate between con- 
 flicting opinions, would be led astray. Nei- 
 ther should the people have the right to dis- 
 miss their pastors whenever they felt inclined. 
 Preachers of a false gospel, however, were a 
 
THE RADICALS AT WITTENBERG 81 
 
 curse to the Church and the community, and 
 ought to be dismissed. 
 
 In 1525, in response to requests, Luther 
 pubHshed his "Deutsche Messe," or "Ger- 
 man Order of Worship." This was a very 
 conservative document, and all the more 
 remarkable considering the advanced stage 
 of the Reformation when it was given out. 
 Luther did not intend that by it an arbitrary 
 ritual should be imposed upon all churches, 
 but that it should serve as a guide. Gowns, 
 candles, altars, elevation of the host, fast- 
 days, and other observances not incompati- 
 ble with evangelical principles, were to re- 
 main unchanged. That Luther should have 
 tolerated these remnants of Catholicism at a 
 time when so many of his followers were 
 exerting pressure of the strongest kind to in- 
 duce him to sanction their radical propa- 
 ganda, reveals the unflinching conservatism 
 of the man. Then, if ever, he had the oppor- 
 tunity of making a hero of himself by throw- 
 ing the weight of his influence on the side of 
 popular demand. But he chose the path of 
 unpopularity. 
 
 Luther's conception of the Holy Scrip- 
 
82 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 tures is briefly stated in his commentary on 
 the Small Catechism: "The Holy Scriptures 
 are the Word of God, written by the Proph- 
 ets, Evangelists, and Apostles by the in- 
 spiration of the Holy Spirit." Every text 
 must be taken literally. "If a controversy 
 occur as to matters in the Holy Scriptures 
 and it cannot be harmonized, let it go. This 
 is not in conflict with the articles of the 
 Christian Faith. For all evangelists agree 
 in testifying to the fact that Christ died for 
 our sins; but with respect to His deeds and 
 miracles they observe no order." He ac- 
 cepted without question all the miracles of 
 the Bible. Throughout his entire life he 
 shows a profound contempt for the human 
 reason without the guidance of the Holy 
 Spirit in things of the spirit. "We must not 
 investigate concerning the Divine Majesty, 
 but must tie our wandering and soaring 
 thoughts to the Word. He who attempts to 
 speculate concerning the clouds falls into an 
 abyss." 
 
 One essential thing in Luther's theology is 
 the identification of the Word of God and 
 Holy Scripture. This belief was probably 
 
THE RADICALS AT WITTENBERG 83 
 
 strengthened by the course of the Anabap- 
 tists, who distinguished between the two; 
 and even Professor Harnack, who through- 
 out his discussion of Luther's theology criti- 
 cizes him harshly when it tends toward dog- 
 matism, excuses his attitude toward the 
 Anabaptists, although he does make him 
 responsible for a great error. Undoubtedly 
 his experience with this radical element 
 caused him to hold even more firmly to con- 
 servatism. Luther's whole work consisted 
 in upholding the due authority of the Bible 
 against the authority of man preached by 
 the Anabaptists and the authority of the 
 Church taught by the Romanists. To 
 Luther the revelation of God's laws through 
 Scripture was all sufficient to guide mankind 
 through life and to eternal salvation without 
 the machinery of the Roman Church; but to 
 release man entirely from authority would be 
 extremely dangerous, not to say impossible. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 The Peasants' Revolt 
 
 In solving the dangerous situation at 
 Wittenberg Luther emerged with great credit 
 and enhanced prestige. He had vanquished 
 the enemies of law and order by his dignified 
 conduct and measured words. He carefully 
 refrained from personalities. He even con- 
 sented to an interview with the prophets, 
 whom he seems to have regarded more with 
 pity than with hostility. But Luther was no 
 /trimmer; no man ever clung with greater 
 -- tenacity to his convictions when principles 
 were at stake. At every crisis in his career 
 his almost uncanny intuition singled out the 
 essentials from the non-essentials. Ever 
 ready to compromise on non-essentials, he 
 was firm as a rock when he judged that the 
 vital principles of Christianity were in the 
 balance. 
 
 It is the fortune or the misfortune of great 
 leaders of men who blaze the way for future 
 
 84 
 
THE PEASANTS' REVOLT 85 
 
 generations to attract a motley host of fol- 
 lowers. For the time being Luther personi- 
 fied the hopes and aspirations of serious- 
 minded men, just as the pioneers of freedom 
 in after years read into the words of Wash- 
 ington and Lincoln sympathy for their cause. 
 Luther had championed the cause of freedom 
 and justice against a tyrannical system which 
 oppressed his fellow-countrymen. How could 
 he fail to respond to the cries for justice and 
 freedom everywhere? 
 
 No phase of Luther's life has been the 
 object of such bitter criticism — with the 
 possible exception of the bigamy of Philip 
 of Hesse — as has his attitude toward the 
 Peasants' Revolt of 1525, one of the most 
 serious social outbreaks Europe has ever 
 seen. "Either Luther is blamed for occa- 
 sioning the revolt," says a recent writer, "or 
 else he is accused of being actuated by wrong 
 motives in denouncing it." It is a paradox 
 of Luther's life that, while he was a stranger 
 to our ideals of liberty, the Modern world 
 owes more to him than to any other man. 
 Just as he was surprised and alarmed at the 
 rapid spread and enthusiastic reception of 
 
86 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 the ninety-five theses, he could never have 
 dreamt of the far-reaching effects of the 
 movement which he inaugurated. He was, 
 as we have seen, a man who regarded with 
 much thought the consequences of his suc- 
 cessive steps, and if he did miscalculate the 
 results of his actions, the reason is rather to 
 be sought in the restlessness of society and in 
 the violence of the opposition. Luther was 
 a religious, not a social and political, re- 
 former. But men's minds are not divided 
 into water-tight compartments. His ideas 
 about religious liberty seeped into men's 
 political and social thinking. If men were 
 equal before the law of God, why were they 
 not equal before the law of man? 
 
 Europe was ready for a religious revolution 
 when Luther was born. Otherwise how can 
 we account for the instantaneous effect of 
 the theses? The kings of France and Eng- 
 land had flouted papal bulls without alienat- 
 ing their subjects. Indeed, these nations 
 rallied enthusiastically around their kings 
 who resisted papal aggression. Nationalism 
 was gnawing at the vitals of the Medieval 
 system. Likewise within the new-born states 
 
THE PEASANTS' REVOLT 87 
 
 a new form of society was emerging from the 
 ruins of the old. Villeinage in England was 
 an anomaly, as the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 
 demonstrated. In the Jacquerie in France 
 in 1358 the discontent of the peasants was 
 made hideous by the most terrible revolu- 
 tionary excesses. 
 
 "The frequent insurrections of the peas- 
 ants throughout the fifteenth century and at 
 the beginning of the sixteenth show plainly 
 that the great social revolution of 1525, 
 which convulsed almost every corner of the 
 Empire from the Alps to the Baltic, was not 
 first occasioned by the preaching and writ- 
 ings of the German religious reformers," 
 writes the Catholic historian, Johannes Jans- 
 sen. "Had Luther and his followers never 
 appeared on the scene, the spirit of discon- 
 tent and insubordination, which had gained 
 ground everjrwhere among the common peo- 
 ple, would still have produced fresh tumult 
 and sedition in the towns and provinces. 
 But it was the special condition of things 
 brought about — or rather developed — by the 
 religious disturbances, which gave this revo- 
 lution its characteristics of universality and 
 
88 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 inhuman atrocity. . . . When once it 
 had become a settled fact that for centuries 
 past the nation had been purposely misled 
 and preyed upon by its spiritual rulers, it was 
 but a slight step further to discovering that 
 the whole fabric of the secular government 
 also, closely bound up as it then was with 
 spiritual rule, was contrived for the sole pur- 
 pose of fleecing the lower orders of society, 
 and that Divine justice demanded its com- 
 plete overthrow." 
 
 "The country population," says the same 
 author in another place, "was especially 
 ready to respond to the preaching of the 
 agitators and to rise in rebellion against all 
 existing institutions. The whole body of 
 ecclesiastics, from the Pope down to the 
 humblest mendicant friar, and every single 
 statute and ordinance of the Church, were 
 abused and ridiculed throughout the provinces 
 in the grossest and most obscene manner; 
 in drinking-taverns, in public bath-houses, 
 on the market-place, in fields, and lanes, and 
 highways, riotous mobs declaimed against 
 * the priests, those servants of Lucifer, those 
 dragons of hell, and all their Sodomitish jug- 
 
THE PEASANTS' REVOLT 89 
 
 gling with saints and idols, prayers and con- 
 fessions, tithes and taxes.' The itinerant 
 preachers went about representing the in- 
 iquities and oppression of the great secular 
 lords as altogether intolerable. 'Spiritual 
 and secular tyrants and oppressors,' so said a 
 scurrilous pamphlet of the year 1521, 'were 
 the iniquitous cause of the plague that was 
 raging in Germany.' For at that time the 
 discontent of the people was aggravated by a 
 deadly pestilence mortality in all the German 
 provinces, while in Bavaria no single town 
 had escaped the epidemic. In Vienna 
 24,000 people had died, and the plague had 
 not yet ceased. At Cologne, all along the 
 Rhine, in Suabia, in Switzerland, and in Aus- 
 tria, the black death was raging." 
 
 The annals of the past testify to the fact 
 that all great class struggles are preceded by 
 more favorable conditions in the lower strata 
 of society. The relaxing of oppression in 
 certain regions causes a slipping and faulting 
 which produce changes in the entire contour 
 of society. Violent pressure either from 
 above or below may disturb the entire equi- 
 librium. 
 
90 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 The demands of the peasants, regarded in 
 the light of the present day, are entirely rea- 
 sonable and just. They demanded the right 
 for each parish of appointing and removing 
 its own clergymen. Tithes of corn would 
 continue to be paid, but the payment of the 
 produce of animals, every tenth calf, or pig, 
 or egg, or the like, was unjust. Acknowledg- 
 ing due obedience to the authorities chosen 
 and set up by God, they declared themselves 
 no longer serfs and bondmen, but freemen. 
 The right to hunt game and take fish was to 
 be free to all. Woods and forests belong to 
 all for fuel. No services of labor were to be 
 more than had been required of their fore- 
 fathers; if more service was required, wages 
 must be paid for it. Exorbitant rents should 
 be reduced, and punishments for crimes 
 fixed. All land which had not been lawfully 
 acquired was to revert to the community. 
 
 The demands of the peasants met with the 
 most stupid and obstinate resistance from 
 the ruling powers. In some instances the 
 nobles went out of their way to impress upon 
 them their superiority. Sympathy begets 
 sympathy, and violence begets violence. In 
 
THE PEASANTS' REVOLT 91 
 
 Its early stages the movement was peaceable, 
 but in an incredibly short time the torch of 
 revolution was carried from place to place 
 until the whole empire was enveloped. Rev- 
 olution is the harvest time of the irresponsi- 
 ble members of society. Criminals, vaga- 
 bonds, and the undesirables of every class 
 joined the peasants, and by their intemperate 
 utterances and fiendish conduct brought 
 odium on their cause. When men's minds 
 are inflamed and the safety of their families 
 is endangered, distinctions are not drawn. 
 In the final reckoning the innocent suffer 
 with the guilty. 
 
 Germany experienced a reign of terror. 
 Castles, monasteries, and churches were 
 burned; towns were sacked; priests were in- 
 sulted; and outrages that beggar descrip- 
 tion were perpetrated before the princes 
 could combine to restore order. So stupen- 
 dous was the rebellion, and so ruthless were 
 the methods of repression, that at least one 
 hundred thousand people perished. So thor- 
 oughly were the peasants subdued that to the 
 end of the eighteenth century their lot re- 
 mained the most wretched in Europe. 
 
92 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 Our interest in the revolt centers on the 
 part Martin Luther played in it. The peas- 
 ants had good reason to expect his sympathy 
 and assistance. Not only was he the son of 
 a peasant, but his words on certain occasions 
 had revealed that he was keenly alive to the 
 injustice of the social order. In the "Ad- 
 dress to the Christian Nobility" he had 
 urged the necessity of a general law against 
 the extravagance and excess in dress and 
 eating and drinking. In a pamphlet written 
 only a few months before the outbreak of the 
 revolt he had been particularly severe on the 
 avariciousness and selfishness of the com- 
 mercial classes. "The regraters, forestall- 
 ers, and monopolists," he says, "are public 
 robbers and extortioners. Such people do 
 not deserve to be called men or to live among 
 respectable folk; they are not even worth 
 teaching and admonishing, for their greed 
 and avarice are so monstrous, so shameless, 
 that the evil of it infects others if they but 
 stand in the same spot. The secular author- 
 ities would do right if they stripped such 
 wretches of all they had and drove them out 
 of the country." Furthermore, had not 
 
THE PEASANTS' REVOLT 93 
 
 Luther defied the canon law and the edict of 
 the emperor? 
 
 It seems to be a fact, however, that many 
 of the radicals understood Luther's philoso- 
 phy of reform, and, expecting no assistance 
 from him, could not say enough harsh things 
 about the man. Thomas Miinzcr, one of 
 them who had felt the sting of Luther's in- 
 vective before, spurned his reliance on the 
 Word of God to effect reform. He would 
 reverse the order. The tares must be rooted 
 out before the harvest. The present order 
 must be uprooted before the seeds of the 
 Gospel could take root. 
 
 But to enlist the support of the man who 
 had worked wonders before would be half 
 the battle. His was a name to conjure with. 
 Many professed his gospel and quoted his 
 writings. They addressed a printed appeal 
 to him, which he answered in a straightfor- 
 ward way, recognizing the need of reform and 
 warning both sides against un-Christian con- 
 duct. 
 
 "In the first place no one on earth is to 
 blame for the confusion and insurrection ex- 
 cept you nobles and lords, you blind bishops 
 
94 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 and mad priests and monks who, even to- 
 day, in your hardness, do not cease to rage 
 and rave against the holy Gospel, even 
 though you know it is true and that you can- 
 not refute it. In addition the secular gov- 
 ernment does nothing but tax and squeeze 
 so that you may maintain your pride and 
 display till the common man neither can nor 
 will endure it any longer. The sword is on 
 your necks and still you think you sit so 
 firmly in the saddle that no one can throw 
 you out. Such false security and hardened 
 arrogance will break your necks, as you will 
 find out. . . . 
 
 "You must reform and submit to the 
 Word of God. If you will not do so will- 
 ingly, you will have to do so by compulsion, 
 either driven by these peasants or by some 
 one else. If you would slay them all they 
 would still be unbeaten, for God would raise 
 up others, since it is He that is punishing and 
 will punish you. It is not the peasants who 
 have set themselves against you, dear Sirs, 
 but it is God Himself who has set Himself 
 against you to punish your fury." 
 
 Addressing the peasants, he cautions them 
 
THE PEASANTS' REVOLT 95 
 
 to be on their guard against false prophets 
 and to consider well the path they elect to 
 follow. 
 
 "That the government has done wrong in 
 resisting the Gospel and oppressing you in 
 temporal affairs is true. But you do a far 
 greater wrong when you not only resist God's 
 Word but tread it underfoot, invade its 
 rights, override God, and, in addition, de- 
 prive the government of its authority and 
 rights, yea, of all that it possesses, for if it 
 have lost its authority, what remains? The 
 destruction of all order is far worse than in- 
 justice in an established order. God's order 
 stands : 
 
 "Be subject not only to good masters but 
 also to the evil. If you so do, it is well. If 
 you do not you may be able to bring some 
 misfortune to pass, but in the end it will un- 
 doubtedly fail, for God is just and will not 
 suffer it." 
 
 His warning conclusion is that God is the 
 enemy both of tyrants and rebels. He ad- 
 vises that certain counts and gentlemen of 
 the nobility and certain aldermen from the 
 cities be selected, who should adjust matters 
 
96 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 in a peaceable way. If both sides yield on 
 certain points, the whole affair, "if it cannot 
 be settled in a Christian manner, may at 
 least be adjusted with regard for human 
 rights and agreements." 
 
 Had Luther's friendly counsel been heeded 
 untold misery would have been avoided. 
 Perhaps the situation had passed beyond the 
 realm of reason. Be that as it may, Lu- 
 ther's words fell on ears deafened by the din 
 of tumult and battle. Realizing the gravity 
 of the situation, he made a preaching tour 
 through the seething districts in a last 
 desperate effort to stem the tide. He saw 
 with his own eyes the destruction which had 
 already been wrought, and returned with the 
 most gloomy forebodings of what was yet to 
 come. Germany was face to face with an- 
 archy. 
 
 Luther, the apostle of reform, could not 
 afford to allow his name to be used in con- 
 nection with revolutions^'' Disregarding all 
 personal considerations, lie made one mighty 
 effort to disentangle the religious reforma- 
 tion from civil war and anarchy. Irrespec- 
 tive of whether or not he saw, as we now see, 
 
? 
 
 THE PEASANTS' REVOLT 97 
 
 that much of the peasant program was pre- 
 mature and impossible of realization at that 
 stage of social development, he cannot justly 
 be criticised for ranging himself on the side 
 of law and order. No Modern government 
 worthy of the name has ever admitted the 
 right of its subjects to resort to arms in order 
 to resist its duly constituted authorities. It 
 may be set down as a fundamental fact that 
 Luther's face was set as firm as steel against 
 the use of force to effect reform, and a careful 
 examination of his whole body of writings 
 and speeches will prove it. He may have 
 been inconsistent at times — what great man 
 is not? — but he was never an opportunist. 
 
 It has been asserted that after his return to 
 Wittenberg from his speaking campaign he 
 prudently waited a few days, until the cause 
 of the peasants was obviously hopeless, be- 
 fore publicly taking his stand on the side of 
 the authorities. Had Luther been that kind 
 of a man he would have waited until the tide 
 had turned. The statement can be dis- 
 proved in the simplest possible manner. It 
 was less than three days after he had aban- 
 doned his journey that he wrote his tract 
 
98 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 "Against the murdering and thieving hordes 
 of Peasants," in which he condemns sav- 
 agely and without qualification the uprising. 
 It was written when the hour was darkest, 
 when it seemed that only the most extreme 
 measures would avail. If the tide had turned 
 and the cause was hopeless, what man would 
 have jeopardized his popularity and good 
 name among the peasants by launching 
 against them the most scathing and violent 
 pamphlet he ever wrote? Would he have 
 exhorted the princes to "stab, smite, destroy 
 here, as you can"? 
 
 The peasants, said Luther, deserved death 
 for three reasons: (1) They had broken 
 their oath of fealty; (2) they had resorted 
 to rioting and plundering; and (3) they had 
 covered their sins with the name of the Gos- 
 pel. In no way did Luther desire an uncon- 
 trolled rising of the people. It was the duty 
 of the prince and ruler in his own territory to 
 protect his subjects against wrongs, whether 
 inflicted by the pope, merchants, or nobles. 
 
 The only justification for the unpre- 
 cedented harshness of Luther's pamphlet 
 against the peasants (if, indeed, it can be 
 
THE PEASANTS' REVOLT 99 
 
 justified) is the instinctive horror he always 
 felt for sudden breaks with the past and espe- 
 cially the resort to force. He probably felt 
 that the situation called for the sharpest 
 weapon he could forge; that anarchy must 
 be dealt a death blow in order to rescue soci- 
 ety and to save the Reformation. Luther 
 always drew a sharp line of demarcation be- 
 tween spiritual and secular authority, and 
 he ever insisted that it was the duty of the 
 Christian subject to be obedient to the secu- 
 lar authority unless the men charged with its 
 enforcement were manifestly in the wrong. 
 
 In his "Address to the Christian Nobility" 
 he lays down the Modern principle that 
 every person living within the boundaries of 
 a state is subject to its laws. He emphatic- 
 ally rejects the Medieval idea of a state 
 within the state, which the strong rulers of 
 the later Middle i\ges and of the early I\Iod- 
 ern Era sought to erase from the minds of 
 their subjects. ''Forasmuch as the tem- 
 poral power has been ordained by God for 
 the punishment of the bad and the protection 
 of the good, therefore we must let it do its 
 duty throughout the whole Christian body, 
 
100 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 without respect of persons, whether it strikes 
 popes, bishops, priests, monks, nuns, or 
 whoever it may be." As usual he invokes 
 the authority of Scripture for his statement. 
 St. Paul says: "Let every soul be subject to 
 the higher powers." Also St. Peter: "Sub- 
 mit yourselves to every ordinance of man for 
 the Lord's sake." 
 
 It must not be forgotten, however, that in 
 the document just quoted Luther made a 
 stirring appeal for reform to be effected by 
 the established organs of society; but if those 
 who have been entrusted with the adminis- 
 tration of their offices are remiss in their 
 duties and disregard their oaths, they may be 
 called to account and even dismissed from 
 office — a fundamental principle of Modern 
 constitutional law. 
 
 If the state is a part of the Divine economy 
 for man, Luther accepted the logic of the 
 situation and held that it is the right and 
 duty of the government to wage war in de- 
 fence of its subjects and its own integrity. 
 In such a war the subjects are bound to offer 
 their estates and lives and to conduct the 
 war so as to bring the adversary into subjec- 
 
THE PEASANTS' REVOLT 101 
 
 tion, without, however, resorting to undue 
 severity and cruelty. 
 
 We shall not stray far from the truth in 
 assessing Luther's part in the peasants' re- 
 volt if we single out the controlling motive of 
 his life molded in the statue at Worms, 
 which represents him armed only with a 
 Bible. "There is no passage in Scripture," 
 he wrote to Melanchthon from the Wart- 
 burg, "where we are commanded to despise 
 those in authority, but rather to honor and 
 pray for them." 
 
 Luther leaned heavily on the secular arm, 
 not only from choice, but from necessity. 
 His unshaken determination to stand by the 
 ruling powers almost overwhelmed him in 
 the fateful year of the Peasants' Revolt. As 
 it was, the insurrection had a disastrous 
 effect upon the conservative reformation. 
 Nothing that Luther could do would ever 
 dispel from the minds of the peasants the 
 conviction that the man whose gospel prom- 
 ised so much for them was anything but a 
 traitor to their cause. Even the princes, 
 many of them, abandoned the evangelical 
 movement, which they believed concealed 
 
102 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 in its bosom the dagger of revolt. Germany 
 divided against itself; the hope of a national 
 Church was destroyed in the conflagration. 
 But Luther, although robbed of some of his 
 hopefulness, never abandoned his conviction 
 that in the long run the shield of faith would 
 withstand the fiery darts of the wicked. 
 
 After the outbreak of the prophets at 
 Wittenberg, says Professor Emerton, "it be- 
 came perhaps the most important and dis- 
 tinctly the most difificult problem of the 
 Lutheran party to show to the world its con- 
 servative and constructive side, without 
 withdrawing for a moment from its original 
 position of hostility to the papal system." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 The Marburg Colloquy 
 
 The historian writes in the sand; and 
 every age writes its own history. The docu- 
 ments of the past — the historian's material — 
 reflect the letter but not the spirit of the age 
 in which they were written. The supreme, 
 and perhaps impossible, aim of the historian 
 should be to breathe into the lifeless pages 
 which record the words of the world's great 
 men their inmost thoughts, conflicting emo- 
 tions, the obstacles which loom up before 
 them, the personal seasoning, and, in short, 
 all those elements summed up in the term 
 the "psychology of the age." 
 
 The student of the Era of the Protestant 
 Reformation approaches his subject with a 
 perspective which enables him to levy a more 
 accurate assessment of values. Herein he 
 possesses an undoubted advantage over the 
 men who were the instruments of destiny, 
 and to whom the future was a closed book. 
 
 103 
 
104 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 But in proportion to the degree in which his 
 age differs in the spirit and conditions of that 
 age, his judgment of men may be uncharit- 
 able and erratic. The citizens of a nation 
 which has demonstrated the practical appli- 
 cation of the truth that all men are created 
 equal instinctively sympathize with the Ger- 
 man peasants, whose demands in their 
 essence breathed that spirit. In Luther's 
 attitude we see reflected the harsh, unreason- 
 able spirit of a time forever past. The dis- 
 criminating mind of Professor Emerton, 
 however, sensed the true meaning of his ac- 
 tion when he wrote : 
 
 "Luther's perfectly sound instinct had 
 shown him from the first that the German 
 people were not to be carried away by any 
 abstractions of democracy. Nor, on the 
 other hand, was there any hope of reviving 
 the ancient authority of the emperor. Luth- 
 er's appeal to the German nobility was based 
 on the fact that whatever political virtue 
 there was in Germany was to be found in its 
 princes, and the response of the princes 
 proved them equal to the emergency. The 
 call to defend the new religion involved also 
 
THE MARBURG COLLOQUY 105 
 
 the prospect of complete deliverance from all 
 imperial control. 
 
 "The full meaning of the Lutheran move- 
 ment is, of course, far clearer to us than it 
 could have been to anyone in the year 1520, 
 and yet as early as 1525 every one of the 
 points of view just indicated had been clearly 
 recognized by every thoughtful observer. 
 The tendencies were plain ; the question was, 
 how soon and how far would tendencies de- 
 velop into facts?" 
 
 In a period when society is fluid abstrac- 
 tions precipitate into the concrete. Ideas 
 become real: individuals personify move- 
 ments. Lutheranism, Zwinglianism, and 
 Calvinism suggest more than men ; they are 
 institutions — civilizations if you please. The 
 personality is there, but it has been poured 
 into a mold. Leadership is much more than 
 a response to the Zeitgeist, but it can never 
 be disassociated from it. 
 
 The religious movements in the several 
 countries of Europe had many things in com- 
 mon, but they were profoundly affected by 
 the personality of the leaders and the condi- 
 tions peculiar to each country. The basic 
 
106 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 principles of Calvinism took form in Calvin's 
 legal mind, but Calvinism carried a distinct 
 flavor in France and Scotland and in the New 
 England wilderness. 
 
 In Germany Lutheranism and Zwinglian- 
 ism jostled each other. Having much in 
 common, they shaded off into each other; 
 but the differences were fundamental. They 
 remain fundamental to this day, when the 
 men and environments which gave birth to 
 them have long since passed away. 
 
 Huldreich Zwingli, the Swiss reformer, was 
 born on New Year's day, 1484, being thus a 
 few weeks younger than Luther. Although 
 there are points of similarity between the 
 two men, their differences are so elemental 
 that it is hardly a stretch of the truth to say 
 that about the only thing they had in com- 
 mon was enmity to the Roman Church. 
 Luther became a reformer in spite of himself; 
 he spoke the plain truth at the diet of 
 Worms, when he said: "Here I stand. I 
 can do no other." He spoke throughout his 
 whole life as one who could not help it. His 
 terrible struggle with the problem of sin and 
 redemption had cut deep lines in his char- 
 
THE MARBURG COLLOQUY 107 
 
 acter. The bonds of historic Christianity 
 held him fast. The thing he sought to avoid 
 above all else was an abrupt break with the 
 past. Only the compelling sense of respon- 
 sibility could jar him loose from the old 
 moorings. 
 
 Zwingli approached Christian truth 
 through the side-door of humanism. The 
 mysticism of the Gospel of John and of the 
 Epistles of Paul in his mind were blended in 
 a background far different from Luther's. 
 Zwingli was the scientist; Luther was the 
 mystic. Science and reason bowed to Luth- 
 er's Bible; Zwingli's Bible yielded its truth 
 upon the application of a more Modern 
 exegesis. Luther's rather arrogant state- 
 ment that Zwingli was of "another spirit" 
 was essentially correct. Zwingli was incapa- 
 ble of taking in Luther's conception of an un- 
 broken doctrinal connection with the past. 
 Luther favored the retention of everything 
 not contrary to Scripture, while Zwingli 
 would retain nothing not expressly com- 
 manded by Scripture. Luther's catalogue of 
 "non-essentials" meant little to Zwingli, and 
 his list of "essentials" was radically cur- 
 
108 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 tailed. The meaning of all this is that the 
 Zwinglian movement was radical, while the 
 Lutheran was conservative. 
 
 The greatest obstacle to the union of the 
 German and Swiss movements was doctrinal 
 divergence; but another circumstance must 
 be taken into account. Zwingli's political 
 philosophy was quite different from that of 
 the German reformer. Luther fought shy 
 of political and social problems. Zwingli 
 was a statesman, who believed that religious 
 reform should be carried on the wings of 
 political action. He was a republican who 
 had imbibed the spirit of a self-governing 
 community, and he had none of Luther's 
 ingrained respect for authority. Luther 
 never favored schemes of aggressive warfare 
 to propagate his gospel, but Zwingli's mind 
 was full of political combinations, and his 
 life came to an end on the field of battle, 
 whither he had marched with his followers. 
 It can readily be understood that Zwingli's 
 political activity was distasteful to Luther, 
 who read into it a mistrust of spiritual forces. 
 
 Luther had heard of Zwingli and his work, 
 but they had never crossed swords until 
 
THE MARBURG COLLOQUY 109 
 
 1526, when they entered into a public con- 
 troversy over the doctrine of the Lord's Sup- 
 per. Luther had already acquired a distrust 
 of his opponent as an ally of the radical 
 Carlstadt. Public discussion carried on at 
 long range seldom promotes harmony, and 
 in this case the upshot of it all was to con- 
 firm the respective parties in their opinions 
 and to reveal the utter hopelessness of a 
 solution by compromise. 
 
 In his explanation of the Third Article of 
 the Apostles' Creed Luther made plain his 
 conception of the way of salvation. "I be- 
 lieve that I cannot by my own reason or 
 strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, or 
 come unto him; but the Holy Ghost has 
 called me through the Gospel, enlightened 
 me by his gifts, and sanctified and preserved 
 me in the true faith; in like manner as he 
 calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the 
 whole Christian Church on earth, and pre- 
 serves it in union with Jesus Christ in the 
 true faith; in which Christian Church he 
 daily forgives abundantly all my sins, and 
 the sins of all believers, and will raise up me 
 and all the dead at the last day, and will 
 
110 CHARACTER OF MARTLN LUTHER 
 
 grant everlasting life to me and to all who be- 
 lieve in Christ. This is most certainly true." 
 
 Luther believed in the total depravity of 
 human nature and in the absolute hopeless- 
 ness of man to obtain salvation by his own 
 efforts. Free will without the grace of God 
 is able to do nothing but sin. Now since 
 man cannot by his own efforts attain unto 
 eternal salvation and lead a Godly life, it 
 follows that it is only through the grace of 
 God manifested in the atonement of the 
 Saviour. God would have all men to be 
 saved, and freely and without price extends 
 his grace to all, but he has appointed certain 
 external and visible means through which it 
 may be received. The means of grace are 
 the Word of God and the holy sacraments. 
 
 Luther, as we have seen, rejected the sac- 
 ramental system of the Roman Church, re- 
 taining only those "outward signs of inward 
 grace" expressly instituted by the Saviour 
 himself, as recorded in the writings of the 
 New Testament. In the "Babylonian Cap- 
 tivity" he retained the sacraments of bap- 
 tism, the Lord's Supper, and penance, but in 
 
THE MARBURG COLLOQUY 111 
 
 the two Catechisms published in the year 
 1529 he retained only the first two. 
 
 Luther's slavish adherence to the literal 
 words of the Bible led him far away from the 
 old Church, but he could not travel to the 
 end of the road with Zwingli and those of 
 like mind who found no half-way station be- 
 tween Rome and reason. Luther's doctrine 
 of the "real presence" of the body and blood 
 of Christ in the bread and wine is fully as 
 difficult, if not more so, for the mind of the 
 rationalist to apprehend as is the Catholic 
 doctrine of transubstantiation, that the 
 "substance" of the bread and wine through 
 the consecration of the priest are changed 
 into the body and blood of Christ, while the 
 "accidents" of taste, color, and form remain. 
 Luther, who accepted without question all 
 the miracles recorded in the Bible, found no 
 stumblingblock in the doctrine that "It is 
 the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, in and under the bread and wine 
 which we Christians are commanded by the 
 Word of God to eat and drink." "Why 
 should not Christ," he asks, "include his 
 body in the substance of the bread just as 
 
112 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 well as in the accidents? The two sub- 
 stances of fire and iron are so mingled in the 
 heated iron that every part is both fire and 
 iron. Why could not much rather Christ's 
 body be thus contained in every part of the 
 substance of the bread?" To make a dis- 
 tinction between the substance and form, 
 and to say that one changes while the other 
 remains, was to Luther an absurd juggling 
 with words, a mere philosophical quibble un- 
 warranted by the words of Scripture. 
 
 As to the efficacy of the sacrament Luther 
 and the Romanists were not so far apart, but 
 their views certainly did not coincide. They 
 were one on the point that by partaking of 
 the sacrament the soul receives food, which 
 nourishes and strengthens the new man; but 
 Luther laid more emphasis on the subjective 
 attitude of the communicant. He denied 
 that the sacrament becomes efficacious in its 
 being celebrated, regardless of the attitude 
 of the individual. He did not, however, 
 make the presence of Christ in the elements 
 dependent upon the faith of the communi- 
 cant. 
 
 Luther, as we have observed, had a pro- 
 
THE MARBURG COLLOQUY US 
 
 found contempt for human reason in matters 
 of faith. His defense of the real presence is 
 not concerned with explanations how it is 
 possible; he is more concerned to deny that 
 transubstantiation is the necessary explana- 
 tion of that presence. He accepted the lit- 
 eral meaning of the words "This is my body " 
 and "This is my blood," and had no patience 
 with those who gave them a figurative inter- 
 pretation, as did Zwingli. 
 
 The intellectual honesty of the man is 
 shown in a letter to the Christians of Strass- 
 burg, of December 14, 1524: "I freely con- 
 fess that if Carlstadt or any other could have 
 convinced me five years ago that there was 
 nothing in the sacrament but mere bread and 
 wine, he would have done me a great service. 
 I was sorely tempted on this point and wres- 
 tled with myself and tried to believe that it 
 was so, for I saw that thereby I could give 
 the hardest rap to the papacy. I read treat- 
 ises by two men who wrote more ably in de- 
 fence of the theory than has Dr. Carlstadt 
 and who did not so torture the Word to their 
 own imaginations. But I am bound; I can- 
 not believe as they do ; the text is too power- 
 
114 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 ful for me and will not let itself be wrenched 
 from the plain sense by argument. 
 
 "And if any one could prove to-day that 
 the sacrament were mere bread and wine, he 
 would not much anger me if he was only rea- 
 sonable. (Alas! I am too much inclined that 
 way myself when I feel the old Adam.) But 
 Dr. Carlstadt's ranting only confirms me in 
 the opposite opinion." 
 
 Christendom for centuries has been di- 
 vided into sects. Mankind craves religious, 
 political, and social creeds. The denial of 
 a creed sometimes affirms another. The 
 period of the Reformation was a time when 
 men demanded a statement of religious 
 principles. This was especially true of the 
 rulers. It was important that the reformers 
 should clear their skirts of political heresies, 
 and to this end they were either called upon 
 or felt it necessary to formulate statements of 
 their religious principles, in order to avoid 
 friction with political authorities. 
 
 The Swiss movement as typified in Zwingli 
 flowed in an entirely different channel from 
 that of the German Reformation, partly be- 
 cause of institutional differences rooted in 
 
THE MARBURG COLLOQUY 115 
 
 national traits and partly because of the 
 character of their leaders. Zwingli could not 
 accept Luther's doctrine of the total de- 
 pravity of human nature, and his mind was 
 unable to follow Luther's Biblical exegesis 
 and mystical conception of the Eucharist. 
 He rejected altogether the doctrine of the 
 real presence. The celebration of the Lord's 
 Supper was a great memorial, in which the 
 partakers confessed their belief in the sacri- 
 fice of the Son of God. According to Zwingli, 
 neither the words of Scripture nor the neces- 
 sity of man required the belief that Christ 
 was corporeally present in the bread and wine. 
 God deals with men without visible and ex- 
 ternal means. Luther detected in this the 
 spirit of the Anabaptists, who taught that 
 God enlightens without the external Word. 
 
 The verbal warfare over the nature of the 
 sacrament was distasteful and alarming to 
 Philip, landgrave of Hesse, who deplored 
 factional strife among the Protestants. He 
 attached no such importance to the issue. 
 It was of far greater importance to empha- 
 size the matters held in common, not the 
 least of which was enmity to the papacy and 
 
116 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 the emperor. His mind was occupied with 
 plans for a defensive league of Protestant 
 princes against the encroachments of the 
 Catholic rulers. For this reason he invited 
 the men who had been hurling epithets at 
 each other to a conference at Marburg, to 
 meet on October 1, 1529. 
 
 Zwingli accepted the invitation with avid- 
 ity, not because he expected to yield one jot 
 or tittle on the question of the sacrament, but 
 because he believed in the possibility of com- 
 ing to some sort of an understanding which 
 would make possible closer co-operation be- 
 tween the factions. He would waive certain 
 points in favor of political expediency. 
 
 Luther was skeptical of the whole business. 
 Political considerations did not appeal to 
 him at all. He had written to the elector of 
 Saxony that there was no necessity for a 
 Protestant league. " Do not, therefore, pro- 
 ceed with this league, for it will only incite 
 the opponents to form one also, and possibly 
 to take measures for self-protection and de- 
 fence, which otherwise they would not have 
 thought of. Moreover it is to be feared — 
 nay, rather, it is almost certain — that 
 
THE MARBURG COLLOQUY 117 
 
 wherever that turbulent young Landgrave 
 has started a league he will discover good rea- 
 sons for not only acting on the defensive, but 
 for resorting to aggression as he did a year 
 ago." By forming an alliance with the 
 "Zwinglians who are fighting against God 
 and the sacrament as the most inveterate 
 enemies of the Divine Word, ... we 
 are taking all their ungodliness on our own 
 shoulders and making ourselves participa- 
 tors therein." 
 
 In accepting the invitation of the land- 
 grave Luther wrote that, while the desire for 
 unity and peace was laudable, he had little 
 hope that the parties could "see eye to eye" 
 regarding the sacrament. "They might 
 have written us long ago, saying how they 
 wished peace, or could still do so, for I cannot 
 yield to them, being convinced that our cause 
 is right and theirs wrong. Therefore pray 
 consider whether this Marburg conference 
 will do good or harm; for if they do not 
 yield we shall part without fruit, and our 
 meeting, as well as your Grace's outlay and 
 trouble, will have been in vain. And then 
 they will boast, and load us with reproach, as 
 
118 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 is their wont, so things will be worse than 
 ever. ... If this spirit of union should 
 result in bloodshed, such action is within its 
 nature, as was seen in Franz von Sickingen, 
 Carlstadt, and Miinzer; and there, too, we 
 were blameless." 
 
 Luther entered the colloquy more to 
 oblige the landgrave of Hesse and the elector 
 of Saxony than out of hope for union. Luth- 
 er's mind was settled when he arrived at 
 Marburg. Was it out of fear that the essen- 
 tial nature of their differences might for one 
 brief moment vanish from his mind that he 
 wrote with a piece of chalk on the table be- 
 fore him, THIS IS MY BODY.? Did it sig- 
 nify that it was not a question of yielding his 
 own opinion, but something far more serious: 
 compromising the Word of God? Luther 
 not only was adamant in refusing to conceal 
 their differences by verbal camouflage, but 
 declined to grasp the right hand of brother- 
 hood extended by Zwingli, remarking that 
 "Yours is a different spirit from ours." 
 
 In pronouncing judgment on Luther's con- 
 duct at the conference, it must be kept in 
 mind that he was as fully alive to the desir- 
 
THE MARBURG COLLOQUY 119 
 
 ability of union as was the Swiss reformer. 
 But union at the expense of God's Word and 
 his own conscience was too great a price to 
 pay. During the progress of the conference 
 he wrote to his wife that, although he could 
 not count the Sacramentarians, as he called 
 Zwingli and his followers, as brethren, he 
 wished to live at peace and on good terms with 
 them. Five years later he wrote to the land- 
 grave as follows: "Now your Grace knows 
 how anxious I have always been for unity, 
 having been much tried by such dissension, 
 knowing how injurious it is to Christ's king- 
 dom, and that the pope would have been 
 humbled long ago had your Grace managed 
 to carry through the much-desired negotia- 
 tions with Bucer and his friends. And even 
 yet I am ready to concede all that I can with 
 a clear conscience, but I fancy that even 
 among the foreign [Swiss] preachers there are 
 few who adhere to Biicer, and both parties 
 will perhaps later decry both one and the 
 other. 
 
 "Nothing could be dearer to my heart 
 than an enduring concord, but if its founda- 
 
120 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 tion be brittle and precarious, then peace is 
 at an end." 
 
 In conclusion it may be permitted to ap- 
 propriate the verdicts of three liberal his- 
 torians, all of whom reject Luther's doctrine 
 of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. 
 
 Professor Harnack writes: "Had Luther 
 yielded in the question of the Eucharist, the 
 result would have been the formation of 
 ecclesiastical and political combinations, 
 which, in all probability, would have been 
 more disastrous for the German Refor- 
 mation than its isolation, for the hands 
 that were held out to Luther — Carlstadt, 
 Schwenkfeld, Zwingli, etc. — and which to all 
 appearance could not be grasped simply on 
 account of the doctrine of the Eucharist, 
 were by no means pure hands. Great po- 
 litical plans, and dangerous forms of uncer- 
 tainty as to what evangelical faith is, would 
 have obtained the rights of citizenship in 
 the German Reformation. Under these cir- 
 cumstances the doctrine of the Eucharist 
 constituted a salutary restraint. In its lit- 
 eral import what Luther asserted was not 
 correct; but it had its ultimate source in the 
 
THE MARBURG COLLOQUY 121 
 
 purpose of the strong, unique man to main- 
 tain his cause in its purity, as it had pre- 
 sented itself to him, and to let nothing for- 
 eign be forced upon him; it sprang from the 
 well-grounded doubt as to whether these peo- 
 ple had not another spirit. In the choice of 
 the means he committed an error; in the 
 matter itself, so far as what was in question 
 was the averting of premature unions, he was 
 probably in the right." 
 
 These are the words of Professor Vedder, 
 who calls Luther a consistent bigot to the 
 last: "And, in fairness to Luther, it must be 
 added that he had a strong reason, quite 
 convincing to his own mind, against the alli- 
 ance proposed, or any alliance. He had 
 actually persuaded himself that a Protestant 
 league would lead to bloodshed rather than 
 prevent it; although the avowed purpose of 
 the union was purely defensive, and no party 
 was to be pledged to anything, unless some 
 member were attacked on account of reli- 
 gion. It is possible, of course, that a strong 
 Protestant league might, in some future con- 
 tingency, have been persuaded to engage in a 
 policy of aggression, but under all the cir- 
 
122 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 cumstances Luther's idea seems entirely ab- 
 surd and without foundation. Nevertheless, 
 we must grant him sincerity and consistency 
 in this attitude." 
 
 Professor Ranke, referring to the refusal of 
 the Lutherans to form political alliances 
 against the emperor and Catholic princes at 
 Marburg and in the years immediately fol- 
 lowing, offers the following observations: 
 "It is very easy to repeat the censure that 
 has so often been thrown upon this decision. 
 It was certainly not the part of political 
 prudence. 
 
 "But never was a course of action more 
 purely conscientious, more regardless of per- 
 sonal consequences, more grand and mag- 
 nanimous. 
 
 "These noble men saw the enemy ap- 
 proach; they heard his threats; they were 
 under no illusion as to his views; they were 
 almost persuaded that he would attempt the 
 worst against them. 
 
 "They had an opportunity of forming a 
 league against him which would shake 
 Europe, at the head of which they might op- 
 pose a formidable resistance to his projects of 
 
THE MARBURG COLLOQUY 123 
 
 universal domination, and make an appeal to 
 fortune ; but they would not — they disdained 
 the attempt. 
 
 "Not out of fear or mistrust of their own 
 strength and valor; — these are considera- 
 tions unknown to souls like theirs. They 
 were withheld by the power of Religion 
 alone. 
 
 " First, because they would not mix up the 
 defence of the faith with interests foreign to 
 it, nor allow themselves to be hurried into 
 things which they could not foresee. 
 
 "Secondly, they would defend no faith but 
 that which they themselves held; they 
 would have feared to commit a sin if they 
 connected themselves with those who dif- 
 fered from them; — on one point only, it is 
 true, but that one of the highest importance. 
 
 "Lastly, they doubted their right to resist 
 their sovereign and head, and to trouble the 
 long-established order of the empire. 
 
 " Thus, in the midst of the jarring interests 
 of the world, they took up a position coun- 
 selled only by their God and their own con- 
 sciences, and there they calmly awaited the 
 danger. ' For God is faithful and true,' says 
 
124 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 Luther, 'and will not forsake us.' He quotes 
 the words of Isaiah, ' Be ye still and ye shall 
 be holpen.' 
 
 "Unquestionably this is not prudent, but 
 it is great." 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 The Augsburg Confession 
 
 It remains to consider the most important 
 document of the Reformation: the Augs- 
 burg Confession. In this connection we are 
 concerned with it as perhaps the most strik- 
 ing and conclusive evidence of the conserva- 
 tive character of the German Reformation 
 and of its founder. At the Marburg Collo- 
 quy Luther spurned all efforts at compro- 
 mise with the radical reformatory movement 
 in the face of the strongest kind of pressure ; 
 at the diet of Augsburg, the following year, 
 his authorized representatives omitted no 
 word or act to emphasize how much Luther- 
 anism had in common with Catholicism. 
 
 After the diet of Worms Luther was le- 
 gally an outlaw, but circumstances prevented 
 the emperor from enforcing the edict. 
 Charles V was a loyal Catholic and was 
 greatly alarmed at the rapid spread of heresy 
 in his extensive dominions; but he felt it 
 125 
 
126 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 incumbent upon him to settle the problems 
 of more immediate concern before proceeding 
 in real earnest against the heretics. At the 
 beginning of the year 1530 he decided that 
 that time had come. The young man who 
 had granted a hearing to the friar of Witten- 
 berg in 1521, shortly after his election to the 
 imperial office, was now the most powerful 
 sovereign in Europe. He had subdued his 
 turbulent subjects in Spain; he had emerged 
 victorious in the wars with his most ambi- 
 tious and powerful rival, Francis I, king of 
 France; he had settled his political disputes 
 with the pope, and was about to receive at 
 his hands the crown of Charlemagne upon 
 taking the oath to defend the pope, the 
 Roman Church, and all their possessions, 
 dignities, and rights; Italy was at his feet; 
 everything was favorable to a settlement in 
 Germany. 
 
 In January, 1530, Charles issued an invita- 
 tion from Bologna, where the coronation was 
 shortly to take place, summoning the elec- 
 tors, princes, and all the estates of the empire 
 to meet at Augsburg on the 8th of April, 
 The conciliatory language of the summons 
 
THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION 127 
 
 indicates that the emperor hoped for a peace- 
 ful settlement; but, failing in that, he was 
 ready to resort to force. The object of the 
 diet was to solve the religious problem, and 
 to prepare for war against the Turks, who 
 were thundering at the very doors of Chris- 
 tendom. The estates were assured that 
 "every man's judgment, view and opinion 
 should be heard, understood and considered, 
 in love and kindness, in order to bring and 
 unite them into a single Christian truth, so as 
 to dispose of everything that had not been 
 rightly explained or treated, on both sides: 
 that a single true religion may be accepted 
 and held by us all, and, as we all live and 
 serve under one Christ, so we may live in one 
 fellowship, Church and unity." 
 
 The Protestant princes accepted the invi- 
 tation, with what hopes for harmony and co- 
 operation it is difficult to say. The elector 
 of Saxony commanded the Wittenberg theo- 
 logians to draw up a statement of their reli- 
 gious opinions in order that the estates might 
 have something definite before them. Luther 
 desired to be present at the diet, but, as he 
 was under the imperial ban, the elector re- 
 
128 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 fused to allow him to accompany the party 
 further than the castle of Coburg. If diplo- 
 matic language could effect a union, the 
 selection of Philip Melanchthon to present 
 the Protestant cause and to accompany the 
 elector was indeed happy. The Augsburg 
 Confession is essentially the product of 
 Luther, although the matrix which embalms 
 the jewels of the Lutheran faith was cer- 
 tainly not the product of his rugged and 
 sometimes uncouth pen. Luther not only 
 approved the Confession, although the final 
 form was probably somewhat more conserva- 
 tive in phraseology than he wished, but he 
 also kept in close touch at all times with the 
 proceedings at Augsburg. 
 
 Undeniably the situation of Protestantism 
 was critical. Melanchthon worked under 
 the most trying circumstances, and had it 
 not been for the firm and cheering letters 
 from Luther, which bolstered up his irreso- 
 lute and timid will, the outcome of the diet 
 might have been disastrous. Luther's firm- 
 ness at Marburg is frequently mistaken for 
 intolerance and bigotry by liberal Protestant 
 historians, but they are all but unanimous in 
 
THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION 129 
 
 approving his conduct at Coburg, Conser- 
 vatism and cowardice were not synonyms 
 with Luther. 
 
 On June 27th he wrote to Melanchthon: 
 "From the bottom of my heart I am inimical 
 to those worrying cares which are taking the 
 very heart out of you and gaining the upper 
 hand. It is not the magnitude of the cause, 
 but the weakness of our faith which is at 
 fault; for things were much worse in John 
 Huss's days than in ours. And even were 
 the gospel in as great danger now as then, is 
 not He who has begun the good work greater 
 than the work itself, for it is not our affair? 
 Why then make a martyr of yourself? If the 
 cause be not a righteous one, then let us 
 repudiate it; but if it be, why make God a 
 liar in not believing His wonderful promises, 
 when He commands us to be of good cheer 
 and cast all our care upon Him, for He shall 
 sustain us?" 
 
 Two days later he writes: "I have re- 
 ceived your Apology, and wonder at your 
 asking how far one may yield to the Pa- 
 pists. For my part I think too much has 
 been conceded. If they do not accept it, 
 
130 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 what more can we do? I ponder this busi- 
 ness night and day, looking at it from all 
 sides, searching the Scriptures, and the 
 longer I contemplate it the more I am con- 
 vinced of the sure foundation on which our 
 teaching rests, and therefore am becoming 
 more courageous, so that, if God will, not a 
 word shall be withdrawn, come what may. 
 
 . . . May God so increase your faith 
 that the devil and the whole world may be 
 powerless against you. Let us comfort our- 
 selves with the faith of others if we have 
 none ourselves. For some have faith, else 
 there would be no Church on earth; and 
 Christ would have ceased to dwell with us. 
 For if we are not the Church, or a part of it, 
 where is it? Are the Dukes of Bavaria, or 
 the Pope, or the Sultan the Church? If we 
 have not God's word, who then has it? I 
 pray without ceasing that Christ may be 
 with you. Amen!" 
 
 That the final form of the Confession, as 
 read before the diet, was acceptable to 
 Luther, may be seen in the letter, under date 
 of July 9th, to Justus Jonas, who was present 
 at the occasion: "There can never be entire 
 
THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION 131 
 
 unanimity in doctrine. For how can one 
 reconcile Christ and Belial? Perhaps the 
 marriage of the priests and the Sacrament in 
 both kinds may be left an open question, but 
 this is after all only a 'perhaps.' Still, I 
 hope that the religious question may be de- 
 ferred, and meantime a world-wide peace be 
 established. If by Christ's blessing this be 
 achieved, then much has been accomplished 
 at this Diet. 
 
 "First, and greatest of all, Christ has been 
 publicly proclaimed through our glorious 
 Confession, so that the great ones of the 
 earth cannot boast that we have fled and 
 were afraid to confess our faith. Only I 
 grudge you the privilege of being present at 
 the reading of this grand Confession." 
 
 On the 25th of June — a great day in Luth- 
 eran annals — the Augsburg Confession was 
 read. So moderate was its tone that even 
 the Romanists were surprised. Yet the doc- 
 ument was not colorless. Professor Har- 
 nack, who criticizes its scholastic arrange- 
 ment and deplores its diplomatic approaches 
 to the old Church and the way it treats the 
 Zwinglians as naughty children, does not 
 
132 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 deny that at the most important points "it 
 struck the nail on the head." Although not 
 originally intended for that purpose, the 
 Confession was admirably suited to become 
 a Church "constitution" or a creed. Like 
 the Constitution of the United States, it 
 constituted a framework of principles upon 
 which might be reared a superstructure 
 suited to the conditions of a given time or 
 place. Throughout the whole document 
 there is a constant appeal to the authority of 
 Scripture. An incident at the diet illustrates 
 this very well. When the duke of Bavaria 
 was informed by Eck that he could refute the 
 Lutheran opinions, not with the Scriptures, 
 but with the fathers, he replied: "I am to 
 understand, then, that the Lutherans are 
 within the Scriptures, and we Catholics on 
 the outside?" 
 
 The Augsburg Confession is divided into 
 three parts: (1) The preface to the emperor; 
 (2) twenty-two chief articles of faith taught 
 in the Lutheran churches; and (3) seven 
 articles in which are enumerated the abuses 
 corrected. 
 
 The preface cannot be interpreted in any 
 
THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION 133 
 
 Other way than as a straightforward assertion 
 that the Lutherans sincerely desired union, 
 if reconciliation was possible. "Wherefore, 
 in obedience to Your Imperial Majesty's 
 wishes, we offer, in this matter of religion, 
 the Confession of our preachers and of our- 
 selves, showing what manner of doctrine 
 from the Holy Scriptures and the pure Word 
 of God has been up to this time set forth in 
 our lands, dukedoms, dominions and cities, 
 and taught in our churches. And if the 
 other Electors, Princes and Estates of the 
 Empire will present similar writings, to wit, 
 in Latin and German, according to the said 
 Imperial proposition, giving their opinions in 
 this matter of religion, here before Your Im- 
 perial Majesty, our most clement Lord, we, 
 with the Princes and friends aforesaid, are 
 prepared to confer amicably concerning all 
 possible ways and means, so far as may be 
 honorably done, that we may come together, 
 and, the matter between us on both sides 
 being peacefully discussed without offensive 
 strife, the dissension, by God's help, may be 
 done away and be brought back to one true 
 and accordant religion; for as we all serve 
 
134 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 and do battle under one Christ, we ought to 
 confess the one Christ, and so, after the 
 tenor of Your Imperial Majesty's Edict, 
 everything be conducted according to the 
 truth of God, which, with most fervent pray- 
 ers, we entreat of God. 
 
 "In the event, therefore, that the dif- 
 ferences between us and the other parties in 
 the matter of religion cannot be amicably 
 and in charity settled here before Your Im- 
 perial Majesty, we offer this in all obedience, 
 abundantly prepared to join the issue and to 
 defend the cause in such a general, free, 
 Christian Council, for the convening of 
 which there has always been accordant ac- 
 tion and agreement of votes in all the Im- 
 perial Diets held during Your Majesty's 
 reign, on the part of the Electors, Princes, 
 and other Estates of the Empire. To this 
 General Council, and at the same time to 
 Your Imperial Majesty, we have made ap- 
 peal in this greatest and gravest of matters 
 even before this in due manner and form of 
 law. To this appeal, both to Your Imperial 
 Majesty and to a Council, we still adhere, 
 neither do we intend, nor would it be possi- 
 
THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION 135 
 
 ble for us, to relinquish it by this or any 
 other document, unless the matter between 
 us and the other side, according to the tenor 
 of the latest Imperial citation, can be amica- 
 bly settled and brought to Christian concord, 
 of which this also is our solemn and public 
 testimony." 
 
 The very first article ratifies the decree of 
 the Council of Nicaea which asserts the his- 
 toric doctrine of the Trinity, and it con- 
 demns all the heresies which in times past 
 have sprung up against it. 
 
 The doctrine of original sin is strongly em- 
 phasized, and it is asserted without qualifica- 
 tion that man cannot be justified before God 
 by his own strength, merit or works, but 
 solely for Christ's sake through faith, which 
 may be obtained by the Word of God and 
 the sacraments. 
 
 Regarding the doctrine of the Church, it is 
 properly the congregation of the saints and 
 true believers, in which the Gospel is rightly 
 taught and the sacraments rightly adminis- 
 tered; but it is not necessary that human 
 traditions, rites or ceremonies, instituted by 
 men, should be everywhere alike. In order 
 
136 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 to show that they were not breaking away 
 from the sacramental side of religion, the 
 Lutherans affirmed the validity of the sacra- 
 ments administered by evil men, that is, 
 that the personal character of the priest has 
 no relation with the validity of his sacra- 
 mental acts. 
 
 Although the existence of the seven sacra- 
 ments is not specifically denied, only two are 
 mentioned: baptism and the Lord's Supper, 
 The statement on the Eucharist is as con- 
 servative as it could be made, asserting 
 "that the Body and Blood of Christ are 
 truly present, and are distributed to those 
 who eat in the Supper of the Lord," and re- 
 fraining from a denial of transubstantiation. 
 The sacraments were ordained, not to be 
 marks of profession among men, but rather 
 to be signs and testimonies of the will of God 
 toward us, instituted to awaken and confirm 
 faith in those who use them. "They there- 
 fore condemn those who teach that the Sac- 
 raments justify by the outward act, and do 
 not teach that, in the use of the Sacraments, 
 faith which believes that sins are forgiven, is 
 required." 
 
THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION 137 
 
 With regard to confession thie document 
 declares that auricular confession is unne- 
 cessary — not essential — but that private ab- 
 solution ought to be retained. 
 
 "Of Rites and Usages in the Church, they 
 teach, that those ought to be observed which 
 may be observed without sin, and which are 
 profitable unto tranquillity and good order in 
 the Church, as particular holydays, festivals, 
 and the like. 
 
 "Nevertheless, concerning such things, let 
 men be admonished that consciences are not 
 to be burdened, as though such observance 
 was necessary to salvation. They are ad- 
 monished also that human traditions insti- 
 tuted to propitiate God, to merit grace and 
 to make satisfaction for sins, are opposed to 
 the Gospel and the doctrine of faith. Where- 
 fore vows and traditions concerning meats 
 and days, etc., instituted to merit grace and 
 to make satisfaction for sins, are useless and 
 contrary to the Gospel." 
 
 In order to show that their teachings do 
 not destroy the state or the family, but espe- 
 cially require their preservation as ordinances 
 of God, . . . "they teach . . . that 
 
138 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 it is right for Christians to bear civil office, 
 to sit as judges, to determine matters by the 
 Imperial and other existing laws, to award 
 just punishments, to engage in just wars, to 
 serve as soldiers, to make legal contracts, to 
 hold property, to make oath when required 
 by the magistrates, to marry, to be given in 
 marriage. 
 
 "They condemn the Anabaptists who for- 
 bid these civil offices to Christians. They 
 condemn also those who do not place the 
 perfection of the Gospel in the fear of God 
 and in faith, but in forsaking civil offices; 
 for the Gospel teaches an eternal righteous- 
 ness of the heart." 
 
 The worship of saints is condemned, since 
 "Scripture teaches not the invocation of 
 saints, or to ask help of the saints, since it 
 sets before us Christ, as the only Mediator, 
 Propitiation, High-Priest and Intercessor. 
 He is to be prayed to, and hath promised 
 that He will hear our prayer. . . ." 
 
 "This is about the Sum of our Doctrine, in 
 which, as can be seen, there is nothing that 
 varies from the Scriptures, or from the 
 Church Catholic, or from the Church of 
 
THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION 139 
 
 Rome as known from Its writers. This being 
 the case, they judge harshly who insist that 
 our teachers be regarded as heretics. The 
 disagreement, however, is on certain Abuses, 
 which have crept into the Church without 
 rightful authority. And even in these, if 
 there were some difference, there should be 
 proper lenity on the part of bishops to bear 
 with us by reason of the Confession which we 
 have now drawn up; because even the Can- 
 ons are not so severe as to demand the same 
 rites everywhere, neither, at any time, have 
 the rites of all churches been the same; al- 
 though, among us, in large part, the ancient 
 rites are diligently observed. For it is a 
 false and malicious charge that all the cere- 
 monies, all the things instituted of old, are 
 abolished in our churches. But it has been 
 a common complaint that some Abuses were 
 connected with the ordinary rites. These, 
 inasmuch as they could not be approved with 
 a good conscience, have to some extent been 
 corrected." 
 
 It is hardly necessary to add that this sec- 
 ond part of the Confession is merely a state- 
 ment of the things which are taught in the 
 
140 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 churches and a repudiation of some of the 
 teachings of the more radical Protestants and 
 of the abuses which have crept into the 
 Roman Church. In the third part an at- 
 tempt is made to enumerate and explain the 
 abuses which have been removed. It is an 
 apology for, or a justification of, what the re- 
 formers had done. Melanchthon confined 
 himself strictly to this purpose, and denied 
 himself (what probably would have been a 
 pleasure to Luther) the temptation to launch 
 a virulent attack on the flagrant corruption 
 and abuses of Romanism. 
 
 The laity are given both kinds in the 
 Lord's Supper because the usage has the 
 commandment of Christ and is hallowed by 
 the practice of the early Christians. "This 
 usage has long remained in the Church, nor Is 
 it known when, or by whose authority, It 
 was changed." 
 
 The marriage of priests is permitted in or- 
 der to avoid the greater evils of incontinence. 
 Furthermore it is evident that In the ancient 
 Church priests were married men, for Paul 
 says that a bishop should be the husband of 
 one wife. 
 
THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION 141 
 
 Regarding the mass, all the usual cere- 
 monies are retained, save that the parts sung 
 in Latin are interspersed here and there with 
 German hymns, which have been added to 
 teach the people. The mass is not to be used 
 for profit, not to be multiplied, and not to be 
 used as a sacrifice. 
 
 Confession is not abolished, and the people 
 are most carefully taught concerning the 
 faith and assurance of absolution; but an 
 enumeration of sins is unnecessary, for it is 
 impossible to recount all sins. "If no sins 
 were forgiven, except those that are re- 
 counted, consciences could never find peace; 
 for very many sins they neither see, nor can 
 remember." 
 
 Fasts and the observation of traditions are 
 left to the will and conscience of each individ- 
 ual, but such observances are not necessary 
 acts of worship. Every Christian ought to 
 "exercise and subdue himself with bodily re- 
 straints and labors, that neither plenty nor 
 slothfulness tempt him to sin." And such 
 discipline ought to be urged at all times, and 
 not only on a few and set days. 
 
 The deplorable conditions in the monas- 
 teries and the unwarranted conception of 
 
142 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 monasticism as a higher Hfe and the exag- 
 gerated obHgatlon or effect of the vow have 
 caused the Protestants to reject the validity 
 of the monastic vow. 
 
 The power of the bishops ought to be con- 
 fined to preaching the Gospel, the remission 
 of sins, and the administration of the sacra- 
 ments. A clear distinction is made between 
 the power of the Church and the civil power. 
 "The power of the Church has its own com- 
 mission. . . . Let it not break into the 
 office of another; let it not transfer the king- 
 doms of this world; let it not abrogate the 
 laws of civil rulers; let it not abolish lawful 
 obedience; let it not interfere with judg- 
 ments concerning civil ordinances or con- 
 tracts ; let It not prescribe laws to civil rulers 
 concerning the form of the Commonwealth." 
 "If bishops teach or ordain anything con- 
 trary to the Gospel, the congregations have a 
 commandment of God prohibiting obedi- 
 ence." 
 
 The Augsburg Confession was conceived 
 in a spirit of conciliation. The Lutherans 
 wished for nothing but peace and toleration. 
 They passed over In silence the vexed ques- 
 tions of Indulgences, pilgrimages, and excom- 
 
THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION 143 
 
 munication. The Confession reflected the 
 spirit of Luther, who contended only against 
 such doctrines and practices which worked 
 serious injury to the purity of the Gospel as 
 revealed in the Bible. Luther may not have 
 been conscious of it, but we see it now, that 
 there was no possible basis of compromise or 
 reconciliation between those who planted 
 themselves squarely on Holy Scripture and 
 those who rejected it as the sole rule of 
 faith. 
 
 Martin Luther never departed one hair's 
 breadth from the principles of the Augsburg 
 Confession. Through many trials and trib- 
 ulations they had become a living part of 
 him; and the vicissitudes and discourage- 
 ments of the sixteen remaining years of his 
 life could not tear them away. 
 
 On the 18th of February, 1546, when the 
 great reformer's eyelids were closing in 
 death, Justus Jonas spoke in a loud voice: 
 "Reverend father, will you stand steadfast 
 by Christ and the doctrine you have 
 preached?" "Yes," was the last word 
 spoken by the man whose devotion to his 
 conscience made the world a better place in 
 which to live. 
 
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